127. A taste of Stephen Jourdian

Radical Awakening: Cutting Through the Conditioned Mind – Stephen Jourdain

Posted on June 20, 2009 |

Dialogues

A Childhood and Its Moments

Gilles Farcet: Let’s begin at the beginning, or at least what should be a beginning since, in fact, that experience whose praises you sing is situated outside of time. It is my understanding that even when you were a little boy, unusual inner experiences that others would not hesitate to qualify as “mystical” were common events to you.

Stephen Jourdain: Uh-huh (Steve inhales deeply). It was only decades later that I became aware of the rarity of my experiences. The tendencies I had assumed were universal unfortunately turned out to be anything but that. In fact, my memory goes back a long way, from when I was no more than a year and a half old. I have crystal clear memories of that early period. One thing is certain: I was already endowed with all the interior equipment with which, fifteen years later, I would receive the “rocker,” when that “thing” fell on my head during adolescence. It would seem that I was more or less born fully assembled which, I came to realize later, is not the case with most people. At one and a half years, the inner me was perfectly established and I was fully conscious of myself without, of course, knowing the words or concepts with which I could have tried to express my experiences. Thus, I clearly remember having experienced what I’ll call my first “moment” at the age of one and one-half while I was with my grandfather and amusing myself by trying to push a piece of gravel through a sewer grate-a very diverting and educational game! These “moments” continued throughout my childhood, cropping up almost daily, so often so that I did not live one privileged instant but thousands of them.

GF: Can you describe the characteristics of these “moments”? What would happen?

SJ: The moments were very different. Let me make one thing clear: the content of the awakening is one and indivisible. The original illumination diversified itself little by little without its oneness being challenged. As to these “moments” or “privileged instants,” their content can be extremely diverse. Let’s say that they always appear in the form of an abrupt and totally unexpected rupture. You can’t prepare yourself for one; they hit you on the noggin without a word of warning.

GF: A rupture? In regards to what?

SJ: In regards to the quality of habitual perception, these moments always come with a profound bliss although there are nuances. But let’s say these moments of bliss are nevertheless abnormal and unjustifiable in their intensity, their sharpness and the manner in which they differentiate themselves radically from ordinary perception which, let me clarify this point, is at its most acute in a little child. That an adult’s perception is dulled is to be expected, isn’t it? For a “big person,” such an experience would appear like a spot of gold on a priest’s gray cape. But a small child’s perception operates marvelously. However, these moments are so sharp in the intensity that they make even that small child’s faculties appear uniformly dull. As to the exact contents of these experiences – here are thousands! In several instances, the primary duality of “me” and “the others” vanishes.

Undoubtedly, that’s what many people today wish to evoke when speaking about “the fusion of subject and object,” an expression that strikes me as, at the very least, totally inadequate.

GF: Why?

SJ: There is certainly a union of the subject and the object but they do not “fuse,” they do not disappear in some kind of undistinguishable magma. What’s miraculous in these experiences is that, without in the least losing my identity, in legitimately remaining who I am, I become the table, the stove, or the mountain, or the entire landscape, which, in turn, remains integrally itself. A remains A, B remains B, and yet A is in the heart of B, B in the heart of A. If both terms cancelled out each other’s original nature in this fusion, there would be no miracle, there wouldn’t be anything at all. This point seems important to me to the extent that, ordinarily, I find it poorly understood. If one believes what one reads or hears, if John becomes the tree, the tree, such as it is, is consumed, as is John.

But that’s not it! John remains entirely himself, the tree remains the tree, and yet there is union. It is in this coexistence of fusion and maintenance of the intrinsic identities of both parties where the miracle resides. If an annihilated A fuses with an annihilated B, there’s really not much to fuss about. The extraordinary thing is that two completely different things can be truly joined while each, at the same time, maintains its original nature.

GF: Therefore, this miracle constitutes one of the characteristics of these “instants.”

SJ: Yes. Ordinarily we always feel the rupture between ego and non-ego to be more or less obscure. There’s a kind of primitive break between our inner reality and the rest. At these “moments,” the rupture is abolished. Once again, it is not a question of the simple abolition of duality, but rather the sudden appearance of a unity in the heart of the duality. One derives from this an important impression of a healthy, legitimate duality. From what I’ve heard, a number of teachings or approaches insist on a “nonduality.” Yet, if a falsified duality exists, there also exists a completely legitimate duality that manifests itself not only in space but also in time. Ordinarily, there seems to be a lot of insistence on spatial duality–certainly there is that which separates me from the tree, but there is also that which separates me from what I was or what I will be, that which, for example, separates me from my death. After all, a man’s life is very important! My death is an object that is, in its way, more solid and, for me, more real than the tree which means nothing to me! The duality is there; it manifests itself in space and time, and it is in space and time that the duality is either healthy or corrupt. In my opinion, it is a grave tactical error to set people going in an assault on duality without clarifying the difference between a healthy duality and a corrupt one. They run as much risk of hurting, or even destroying, themselves as they do of being saved. One cannot deny duality, since it is the principle of life. Certainly, a false duality that is the product of a given individual’s mind should be destroyed. I repeat and insist: duality, to the extent that it is a duplicate of reality, a dreamlike and personally fabricated duality, must be ruthlessly destroyed. But when this veil, in the center of which we habitually evolve, is consumed, when this enormous subjective bubble bursts, what is then left? What will you see once you’re outside the bubble? The world, plainly and simply. There is something! There is me and the tree. Duality exists.

GF: Duality remains in a different fashion.

SJ: Exactly.

GF: If I follow you, there is a duality in itself real, which you qualify as healthy . . .

SJ: Healthy, simple, and divine!

GF: As well as an unhealthy, unreal duality that is merely the product of our subjectivity.

SJ: This duality thing is a complex phenomenon. I’ll try to sum up the situation. What at one time would have been called the “soul”-a term that’s fallen into disuse and, at any rate, was clumsily used with one saying, “I have a soul” instead of “I am a soul” -which I call our spiritual essence-is the unique source of everything. It is our essence that is at the origin of what we call the “world” -and by that term I mean not only the so-called exterior reality, but also my spirit, the spirit in my body, my body in the world; and all this together conveyed by time. In other words, everything springs from our innermost selves. Our essence is creative. Originally, that is to say right now, immediately-I’m not speaking about an historic origin but the instantaneous origin-this source that’s within me generates the world: it produces perceptible reality as well as my spirit and my body.

To the extent that we abide there, we are at center-stage of the creation of the world, that is to say, the Eden-like phase of things. Then, instantaneously-and this is where everything gets spoiled-a second creation takes place. For our source is, so to speak, the double, in this second creation, it is I, personally, Steve Jourdain who is the father of the world. I claim both paternity and credit for it, while in the first type of creation, everything issues from my innermost self but in an impersonal way with no personal intervention on my part. At any rate, it is impossible for me to take credit for it. In short, there are two sources: the first, legitimate, which while being the foundation of the person, functions in such a way that that person cannot in any manner claim that he is responsible for what springs forth.

GF: Therefore, an impersonal source.

SJ: To qualify it as such would be improper, since we are at the very center of the person! That’s exactly the paradox, the miraculous paradox. Well, let us say a nonpersonal source in the sense that the ego appropriates absolutely nothing whatsoever.

GF: And the other source, polluted.

SJ: From which proceeds this counterfeit world, this pale copy of a reality-interior and exterior-in which we live. This second source falsifies everything all at once. The falsification takes place from birth; it’s already there when the infant emerges from the mother’s body. So much so that, from the start, we live in a state of permanent hallucination, in the torrent gushing from this impure source.

GF: Let’s go back to your childhood experiences. These “breakthroughs” were thus an integral part of your daily life?

SJ: Yes, and while certain of them were spontaneous, there were others that I elicited. I knew how to make this or that interior gesture that was to lead to one experience or another. It was a game for me to which I dedicated a good hour a day to playing, the way other children play with blocks.

GF: You played with consciousness.

SJ: In a manner of speaking. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t call it that because we are not talking about awakening but about experience. It’s not about the vision of the sea but, say, the sand dune. My entire childhood was dominated by this atmosphere. I didn’t speak about it to my parents because it was part of the secrets of my childhood. Be that as it may, since each individual spontaneously considers himself universal, I thought everybody experienced what I was experiencing. Much later, when I was around thirty and began to talk about it, I was very surprised to discover that my childhood experiences were completely out of the ordinary.

GF: You thought everybody was awakened?

SJ: No, no. Let’s not confuse the various inner experiences with the awakening itself-the vision of the sand dune and that of the sea. I knew very well that the people I met were not awakened. That which had “produced” itself, if I can put it that way, for me at the age of sixteen had not been produced for them. On the other hand, for me it was a foregone conclusion that everyone had experienced what I had during childhood. Discovering that this was not so came as one of the greatest surprises of my life and was, at the same time, very disquieting. For, after all, what happened to me at sixteen seemed to have depended on pure luck. There would be one chance in a billion that such a thing could occur. One in a billion is not much, but it is something, after all. But I discovered that almost nobody else had even an inkling! As a result, it became even harder for me to share with others what I had experienced. I already had the feeling that an abyss separated me from others, but that chasm then became infinitely wide.

GF: Before going further, I have a question about your remembrance of things. You say your memories go back a long way. Do the experiences we’re talking about favor that kind of long term memory?

SJ: Yes, and I would even say that to a certain extent I never was a child. In fact, when comparing myself at one and a half and at sixteen, a fraction of a second before the awakening, I do not see any difference. I was exactly the same. In fact, I think my memories go back even further. Fine, that’s not important, I say that in passing, but to the extent that one can accord the slightest reality to intrauterine life, I have memories of that life, too.
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An Awakened Adolescent.
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GF: Is reading the great authors a requisite of the awakening?

SJ: In any case, it can’t do any harm. Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not saying it’s absolutely essential to read these authors-and there are others-nor even that it’s indispensable in itself to be interested in literature. Yet the terrain must be prepared, the garden cultivated, the sensibility refined . . . One cannot misinterpret the importance of culture in the profoundest sense of the word. Of course, literature, Rimbaud, Proust, and all the others also participate in hallucination and sleep, but it’s a good way to dream. And it’s hard to wake up when you’ve dreamed badly. In my humble opinion-which is,to be sure, highly pretentious-for a Westerner, reading Rimbaud is more practical than reading I don’t know which “Sri Whatshisname.”

GF: I see you then as a sensitive, curious, cultivated adolescent-And then the awakening is sprung on you, if I can put it that way. Would you be kind enough to try to describe this non-event one more time?

SJ: I’ll try to put it another way-for my own ears if for no one else’s. The psychological circumstances were very precise. It “produced” itself one evening. Several days earlier, I had discovered Descartes’ famous statement: “I think, therefore I am,” and I had the intuition that it concealed-at least for me-a secret of enormous importance. I felt I was directly, in my very essence, involved in this formula. On this “great evening,” then, I was trying to extract the secret from this statement. Apparently, I approached it in the same manner as one does with koans-a word I wouldn’t discover until I was fifty years old. My approach was very realistic-let me mention in passing that one of the characteristics of my dream is to be extremely pragmatic: when I want to kill a fly, I grab a newspaper and swat it. Most people act that way, you say. As to material things, yes, but not when it concerns the spiritual. By that, I mean that when they encounter the “illusion,” they try to suppress the “Illusion,” in general, rather than confront themselves with their illusion. It’s like trying to liquidate the entire species of flies when swatting the one that’s bothering you. In short, I came to grips with my problem in a practical manner. “I think, therefore I am”: instead of examining the question of “Being,” “Thought,” and their relationships, I made myself the subject of the sentence, referring to the living reality of these words in me. I tried to grasp that formula, not intellectually, but with my very life. I pursued this effort for half an hour, an hour, until exhaustion. My intellectual faculties cried for mercy, I felt as if I were dragging myself along on bloodied knees and said to myself, “You’re crazy! Give it up! In the state you’re in, you don’t have the slightest chance of penetrating the mystery of that sentence.”

Yet, I did persist beyond good sense, showing a considerable aptitude for folly. Nevertheless, it would appear that this inner capacity to drive myself on like a madman was not without its virtues, for, all of a sudden, everything exploded. How can I describe the sudden nature, the total abruptness of the “event”? I detest using the word “supernatural,” but it’s the only one I can find that properly describes the suddenness of the awakening. With indescribable rapidity, I passed through to the other side of the mirror and found myself waking to an infinite wakefulness in my very center, in the center of that wakefulness which, itself, wasn’t an object but an intemporal act I was able to perform. I knew that I knew all there was to be known, that I had attained the infinite value, touched the essence of the essence of all things and of myself. . . I knew.

What did I know? Impossible to say. Let’s try nonetheless to define the phenomenon more precisely. That indivisible unity which is the awakening has, despite everything, several names: me, being, consciousness, infinite value. But, to cap that indivisible unity, there is something more important and that relates to knowledge. Not only I am but I know. In a sense, “I know” precedes “I am.” Knowledge is the strongest piece on the chessboard of the absolute and it’s irreversible: it’s as impossible to unlearn this intimate act as to unlearn riding a bicycle. I’ve insisted on the indivisible nature of the awakening. Still, and here again we must come upon a paradox: as soon as this other, interior light flashes, it rapidly gives birth to a certain number of “powers.”

Powers

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It’s true that the great joys susceptible of being generated by that infinite, inexplicable, unjustifiable value are completely unheard of. Compared to these joys, the greatest pleasure accessible on earth in the usual conscious state is nothing but straw and dust. But these joys are themselves nothing but straw and dust in relation to the unjustifiable, supreme quality, the inexplicable infinite value. Seeing this value supplies nothing; one doesn’t approach it in the hope of any gain. One could speak of lack of involvement as with moral value. One doesn’t do good in order to be rewarded; one does it for goodness’ sake.

GF: From a certain point of view, yes. Still, if I do a good deed, even in the most unselfish way, it’s because the simple fact of doing good permits me to maintain an inner state that’s much more precious to me than what I’d feel after doing evil.

SJ: Excellent observation. Let’s be clear: the awakening does in no way constitute an end. One can only attain it by passing backwards through all intentions, all motivations-including that of attaining the awakening. One must strip oneself of all one’s intentions, all one’s wishes, even the highest. One doesn’t move towards the awakening, for if one can invoke even the slightest argument for moving towards awakening, one turns his back to it. In fact, the infinite value, once again, offers nothing. That leaves the problem you’ve just posed. It’s an objection one is certainly entitled to make: “You’re in the process of telling me that this value offers nothing in the usual sense of the term, but would you tolerate, even for a second, having someone deprive you of it?” The answer is an immediate and resounding: No! I wouldn’t tolerate it for a second. It’s the most precious asset in the world.

GF: That’s a paradox.

SJ: Yes? So what? In the end, why should I give a damn if there’s a paradox? What’s important to me is to describe the phenomenon, not try to explain it.

GF: There’s another objection people always make: Isn’t the awakening selfish?

SJ: In a sense, yes, absolutely. If the awakening withers in me, I will die spiritually. I care about it more than anything else as if it were my very essence-for the simple reason that it is my essence. Thus, on the one hand, I’m my own man. On the other, in accomplishing the spiritual act that allows me to induce the awakening, the infinite value. I’m no longer strictly my own man. The underlying reason for which I accomplish this gesture is of another order, it’s nonselfish, universal-but I cannot really explain it.

GF: Since we’re talking about selfishness, has the experience made you regard other people differently?

SJ: That’s a profound question. Among the faculties, powers, or savoir-faire inherent in the awakening I spoke of earlier, there’s the immediate and exhaustive knowledge of the structures of the normal state of consciousness. The very make-up of the awakening inscribes the knowledge of, on the one hand, the act through which the awakening will engender itself and, on the other, the nature of the error or falsification from which the normal state of consciousness proceeds. From the moment the awakening produces itself, you know more about the six billion inhabitants of the planet than they know themselves because you know the exact nature of the dream they are dreaming. You know the mechanism of the hallucination that holds them spellbound. All that because this mechanism is precisely the same for everyone.

GF: You’re speaking in a general manner, but, here and now, I’m sitting across from you, my wife is also sitting across from you. Does the awakening give you any particular sensibility or faculty of perception about each person you encounter?

SJ: You’ve just asked me a very indiscreet question. In order to respond, I need to return to this non-event that is the experience we’re talking about. It’s perfectly obvious that the awakening burned the psychological being that I was. But since, at the same time, it burned the flame with which it burned that being, nothingness returned to nothingness and the psychological being that I was escaped intact and unharmed. A universal destruction takes place at the moment of the awakening, but since that destruction is itself implicated in the range of what is destroyed, the universal sword thrust stabs itself so thoroughly that the psychological being rises again, healthy and whole. Thus the awakening is a thrust for nothing, so to speak, whose sole effect is to eliminate all the rot, and separate the wrong duality from the right one. The psychological being annihilated in the fire of the awakening is reborn, covered with the dew of the dawn of creation. Fundamentally, as I already said, absolutely nothing has happened. I became me. Nothing changed, everything changed.

As to the question you just asked, from a psychological standpoint, it’s obvious that I have an intuition about the interior atmosphere in which the person I’m speaking to evolves. But this is a rational, explicable intuition. On the other hand, I’ve had abominable experiences, so abominable that I hesitate to mention them. Sometimes I have a direct access to some one else’s consciousness-a devastating experience because I see the corruption and, moreover, its variables. The coloration of the corruption isn’t always the same. If I were a Christian, I’d say I see Satan. I avoid, or should I say flee, these appalling visions because they’re so painful. I can be with someone refined and brilliant and suddenly, without meaning to, I fathom his putrefaction. Moreover, that doesn’t necessarily happen in the person’s presence. Take careful note that I recognized my own corruption prior to the awakening! Nevertheless, I want to vomit into the toilet. These are horrible experiences, really, that I could compare to the horror that seizes me when I try to remember, to regain the sensation of sleep. You know, in a certain sense, the awakening evolves gradually as one lives it. The sun rises and remains the sun, but it’s not exactly the same color at noon as at dawn or at five o’clock in the evening. In the same manner, there’s a sort of full day to the awakening. The sun of the awakening that rose for the adolescent Jourdain has since continued its course and modified its glow. After forty years, I no longer have a body. By that I mean I am no longer situated in a body. Evidently, if someone mentions my foot, I’m not going to confuse it with the table! But my body, as an experience, no longer exists; the fundamental modification has taken place. It’s accompanied, moreover, by a modification of spatial perception. In the same manner, I no longer have a spirit. It has been a good thirty years since “my spirit,” in the usual sense of the term, totally disappeared. And about a year ago, I said to myself: “Shit, I no longer have a spirit, no longer have a body. How in the hell will I be able to explain all that to someone who has a spirit and a body and who, to boot, snoozes? I’ve got to remember what it’s like to have a spirit and a body.” Thus, I made a great effort, all alone in the kitchen, and suddenly I remembered-once again, I found myself incorporated, I became once again a spirit in a body. That only lasted a few seconds but I almost croaked!

Fine, okay, it’s a matter of a universal experience, almost everyone lives in this manner and I myself spent sixteen years like that and stood it very well. But there in the kitchen, I couldn’t stand it at all, it was a dreadful shock. I felt as if a layer of spiritual ammonia had spread over me. It was a moment of inner agony. All this to say that those times when, suddenly and without wanting to probe the consciousness of the guy I’m talking to, I experience the same sort of agony; suddenly, and with my soul, I receive the unmentionable stench of the everyday of consciousness full in the face—a stench that obviously isn’t detected by those who wallow in the cesspool and have never escaped it. Really, it’s a horrible odor of decadence and carrion. Obviously, it’s not a physical odor, but a stench that, as spiritual as it might be, is no less nauseating. Reeking is not exclusive to the material world. A spiritual stench exists and it’s dreadful. Let’s talk about something else, shall we?
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Writing the Awakening.
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…I had to retake the road traveled by philosophers for the last several thousand years to confront and solve the various philosophical enigmas. To a certain extent, I have succeeded in this task. Once the thing was intellectually got hold of, it was a matter of expressing it and thus having recourse to words. Therefore, I had to learn to write-not make grammatical errors and, above all, initiate myself to the oh so important usage of the semicolon (a must in French literature). That took a while-years, to be exact. Once one knows how to write more or less, it is necessary to pay attention not only to the meaning, but also to the color of the words. Two synonymous terms do not have the same color. It’s this attention to the color of words that differentiates the writer from someone who merely writes. The latter naively believes he has expressed his idea as soon as the sentence is grammatically correct and the words are logically aligned. But that’s not so! The act of writing begins when the intuition of the qualitative aura of the word, beyond its intellectual sense, springs forth.

GF: What you say makes me think of something Jean Sullivan wrote: “Swindling: to convince others that the words aren’t very important because the spiritual reality is inexpressible and, thereby, to justify the platitude of mechanical associations. Yet, without language, that is to say with neither action nor creation, there is nothing.”

SJ: That’s brilliant! Brilliant! That leads us to another problem about which there’s a lot to say and, preferably, say well. There exists a presumption as vile as it is widespread according to which the indescribable character of the interior experience authorizes us to give up when it comes to putting it into words. This presumption serves as an excuse for the enunciation of all sorts of platitudes and the collapse of language. It’s the most vulgar alibi of thought. It exhibits unheard of naivete and thoughtlessness. Such statements, if they can be excused coming from a child of twelve, are intolerable when they come from the mouth of a man who’s reached the age of twenty-five, thirty, or even sixty-five! Every supposed adult uttering such idiocies deserves to be spanked.
First question: are human thought and language adequate to grasp the reality we’re talking about? Personally, I’ve always had the clear intuition that the response would be affirmative. To a certain extent, human thought and language can transmit this reality. I would not have sweated blood for forty years trying to say this thing if I didn’t have faith in its expressible nature. Therefore, let’s sweep away these presumptions once and for all. Second question: why is it describable and conceivable? This ultimate self is conceivable because it is the legitimate conception of itself. There’s no difference between the awakening and the awakening justly conceiving of itself. The same process is at work. Now, is the conception by which the self apprehends itself beyond the spoken word or at its very center? As far as I’m concerned, it is definitely at the center of the spoken word-a word that’s not human but preverbal, a language which, though original, is no less of a language. The perfect adaptation of the human word to this prehuman language isn’t extraordinary if one accepts the idea that, in the beginning, there was the word. I am the word! The word is perfectly adapted to God because God is the word.

GF: The presumption you denounce is part and parcel of the primary anti-intellectualism existing in spiritual circles. There again, taking as pretext the fundamentally irrational character of the ultimate experience, many people have an annoying tendency to cut short all attempts at zeroing in on the question by denouncing it as “intellectual” -an adjective that, in their mouths, is as loaded with horror as the epithet “communist” was in the conservative America of the 1950s.

SJ: There you have it! Once again, it is a question of a shameful facility. Thus, another judgment of saying that that thing would be out of the range of human thought-to say “everything is in everything,” and other prefabricated expressions, is like addressing only the “popular masses.” That well justifies reason, particularly against what is most noble in intelligence and sensibility. One tramples intelligence and sensibility with delight and in clear conscience. Plato? Sheer rubbish! Descartes? Into the hopper! Ah, it’s useful to feel oneself justified to thus trash all the attempts by exceptional men to approach and formulate the essential! It is useful and shameful. For if it’s true that neither Plato nor Descartes nor Kant made the ultimate breakthrough of which I’m talking, there’s still the fact that, by putting to work the higher faculties of the human spirit, they approached it. In the same manner that no legless man can hope to win the New York marathon, no intellectual cripple could pretend to make the quantum leap by which one becomes oneself.

GF: Among the people supposed to have attained the awakening or approached it, history and tradition present us, on the one hand, examples of very refined, intelligent, cultivated beings and, on the other, with examples of uneducated monks sweeping the cloister-humble characters living that which the literate and the wise men speak of without having had the experience.

SJ: That’s exactly right, but there’s no contradiction between those two extremes. When I speak of a man using the noblest
and highest faculties of his spirit, I’m not referring to an inflated ego. Any and every child of man has the possibility, the right, and the duty to measure himself, be it clumsily, against the major enigmas of philosophy. The value of this process doesn’t reside in the fact that it can result in thick books or subtle considerations, but in the process itself. One can well imagine an extremely simple and totally uncultivated type initially asking himself all sorts of naive questions and finally arriving at the essential one: “I am! What is me?” and alone in his shepherd’s cottage, tackling this enigma barehanded. Undoubtedly, the shrewd Parisian intellectuals would double up laughing faced with such naivete. Yet, it’s precisely in this manner that one should proceed. Thus, I see nothing absurd or shocking in the idea that a monk or an uneducated peasant could open himself to this reality. It took me thirty years to learn what a koan is, yet it was precisely this instrument that I had used without knowing it. Descartes’ cogito was my Koan. Still, I wasn’t a great philosopher. I was a sixteen-year-old kid. Yet, it remains a fact that the action and the usage of certain faculties were present.
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Reincarnation

GF: You say the sun rose because the sky was ready. Why was the sky, your sky, ready? For, after all, everyone doesn’t land into the awakening at sixteen . . .

SJ: Yes.

GF: Let’s take the famous example of Ramana Maharshi. As he himself testifies, the Maharshi was a very lively youth, not particularly interested in spiritual matters until that famous night when the awakening happened to him at the age of sixteen. According to the Hindu perspective, this young man was an old soul, a highly evolved being. His precocious awakening had been preceded by spiritual preparation accomplished during numerous previous incarnations. The concept of “reincarnation” is certainly much more subtle than that which we generally UIiderstand in the West. The Hindus can thusly “explain” the awakening in an unruly kid. Where do you stand with respect to this kind of consideration?

SJ: First, let me tell you what my position has been for a long time-there’s indubitably a relation between the extraordinary energy I expended during my battle with Descartes’ Cogito, the madness and stubbornness I showed even when I was nearly passing out, and the eruption of the awakening. The nature of this relationship remains highly mysterious since I can in no way consider that it was a matter of cause and effect. The cause, it’s the awakening! The fact remains that the awakening is born in a precise intellectual context consisting in an intense effort necessarily doomed to failure to pierce a mystery that included in itself the notion of “me,” of “I am,” and of “thought.” Moreover, there were circumstances relative to my sensibility. After having experienced at the end of my childhood, a slight loss of sensitivity, I took to reading Rimbaud. Thus, I lived in a world that made me profoundly vibrate second after second. In short, there was an intellectual disposition and a disposition of my sensibilities that were inseparable. Neither sensibility alone nor the intellectual approach alone would have led me anywhere.

But in the end, all that explains nothing. At this point, I’ve formulated a hypothesis: if I passed on to the other side, it’s because these two categories of circumstances made me take a detour, without my knowing it, to another world, that of the unborn where the “spiritual colors,” apparently endowed with creative power, emerged to allow me to accomplish the interior gesture in the proper way.

GF: But where do you stand in regards to the concepts of reincarnation, of evolution?

SJ: First of all, my vision changed when I became conscious of the extraordinary privileges I had enjoyed since birth. As I said, I thought people, if they were asleep, slept the sleep of the just right at the zenith of the dream. Once I realized this wasn’t the case I, at the same time, became conscious of a truth that is not very heartening: people are not born equal; their chances of awakening are unequal. Some are gifted, others are not. It’s atrocious, scandalous, but that’s the way it is. To the extent that the scandal poses a question, one would very much like to find explanations. For a long time, the people I saw harped on the ancient idea of the “old soul” refined by numerous previous lives. Given my family origins, I violently rejected all that, saw it as superstition, like flying saucers, and other hocus pocus that only merited my scorn. This didn’t keep me from looking for explanations myself. As far as these stories of reincarnation are concerned, if I weren’t extremely cautious about my human insights, about what inhabits me, I would, in the end, be inclined to take them very seriously. There exist, in fact, in the very texture of my experience, elements that I can legitimately interpret, without total affirmation, in terms of reincarnation and previous lives.

GF: What do you mean? What are you alluding to?

SJ: You know, when the awakening erupts, it’s a purely spiritual fire. Then an unexpected phenomenon occurs, which is that this spiritual fire suddenly inflames perception in its totality. It’s then that the multidimensional attention intervenes. The extraordinary richness of the landscape in which we evolve appears and one is capable of paying attention to a hundred billion things at once-that’s accompanied by a prodigious undoing of the world’s hierarchy. When the awakening spreads the fire throughout the entire field of perception, a series of totally unknown qualities appears. Just as no one can have a true foretaste of awakening before it erupts, no one can know what the perception of these qualitative beings can be before having seen them. These qualitative beings are simply not part of usual human perception. To put it in humorous terms, let’s say that that makes forty years that, with my soul and not my eyes, I “see things” no one else sees. And that makes forty years that I ask myself what the nature is of the things I see, without ever getting a satisfactory response. I am overwhelmed with love for what I see but simply do not know what it all means. When I was a real estate agent, I went through situations worthy of the Marx Brothers. I had to cover my eyes in order to be able to continue functioning in my profession. I would almost have fallen to my knees to issue a prayer, “Oh marvelous joys, oh marvelous fairies, marvelous angels, stop assailing me, bug off so I can make my phone call about Mrs. Thingamabob’s apartment.” It was an aberrant situation, so laughable that I’d sometimes frankly crack up. Yet that was my life for a very long time. In short, I see these things without knowing what they are. I call them the “one things,” for they’re indivisible. Nevertheless, qualifying them that way, I have neither designated nor described them. Sometimes I speak of angels with regret because of my anticlerical ancestry. I don’t know the words. . . Fairies? That doesn’t sound very serious. But despite all my problems with vocabulary, the fact is there there are these damn, formidable angels assailing me. These “things” that are equivalent to an unimaginable thrust of joy.

GF: You see that all day long?

SJ: It floats in my perception constantly, functioning like an old-fashioned bathtub water heater. There’s the pilot light and if you turn the button-psscch! Everything ignites. I carefully maintain myself in the state of the pilot light, for if the water heater ignites entirely, my functioning, as far as daily life goes, is out of the question.

GF: Could you be more precise about what you see?

SJ: Yes, what are these things that I’m seeing? First, I see them with my soul, my spiritual essence. It’s a matter of direct perception, alongside which the most extreme human joys appear insignificant. It’s a dagger’s thrust of bliss. In a word, these things that my soul sees, that make it tremble with joy, are something other than my soul while at the same time being nothing other than it. There’s absolute identification between my soul and them-these things are more me than I am. On the other hand, my soul exists and contemplates them. It’s thus a matter of a very strange relationship, leaving the great question: What, in God’s name, do I see? I’ve often said to myself that it closely resembles the vision of previous lives. These qualitative beings are one and indivisible but resemble windows overlooking a landscape. The window is one, but through it, I perceive things that I cannot really identify-a great mix, like the great mix of human events and human lives. It’s not unthinkable that, through these qualitative beings, I’m put in direct contact with entire segments of human lives. Is it a question of my previous lives, other lives? I don’t know a damned thing. But there’s something there that could give credit to this idea that reincarnation exists. By that I mean that even if no one had told me about it, the perception of these things could have given rise to this notion in me. I have the impression of perceiving all that across immense temporal distances. Thus, in the very texture of my experience, there are elements susceptible to being rationally explained in terms of reincarnation. Nevertheless, I’m not at all certain about this, and, moreover, don’t think that anyone can be.
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Ecstasy.
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GF: It’s not unusual for awakened ones to put aside a time for meditation, give themselves, each day, an hour or thirty minutes of silence to regenerate themselves. I do not have the impression that’s the case with you.

SJ: First of all, it’s necessary to grasp that the awakening comes first in relation to the ecstatic and legitimate effects it induces. The supreme knowledge is of a radically different essence than the ecstasies and other extraordinary joys it’s likely to induce. It would be dangerous to concentrate on the ecstasies.

GF: Moreover, all spiritual traditions warn against this temptation.

SJ: Oh, really? So much the better, for it’s very important. From the moment the awakening sets fire to everything, there’s a danger of perversion at the very heart of the thing. The relationship between the awakening and the ecstasies that it induces exclude all attachment to the latter. The principal danger lying in wait for the awakened one is that he’ll get attached to the awakening. Certainly, when the awakening erupts in someone, the life of that person becomes a dialogue between that supreme knowledge and himself. The merest attachment to the awakening signifies the destruction of the awakening. In fact, it presents a trap that’s very easy to avoid, one in which you can’t fall if one is awakened. On the other hand, the trap of the ecstasies is less clearly marked. I have found myself in that position: for six months, I did a lot of stupid things and my experience wavered. I was totally forewarned of the danger of attachment, but when the ecstasies pounce on you, it’s humanly impossible not to regret them. It’s a very pernicious phenomenon-let’s say the awakening is God and the ecstasies are heaven. On the one hand, I’m loyal to God since I have
no attachment to Him at all. On the other hand, I allow myself to be captivated by the heaven that God induces. Therein lies a subtle possibility of perversion. Heaven is merely an extension of God. To attach oneself to heaven and regret it is, in truth, to attach oneself to God and regret it-which is to say, to kill God. That’s what happened to me for awhile. I therefore took the most extreme measures to protect the awakening from the tragic tactical error consisting in attaching oneself to the ecstasy. It was very difficult, but I succeeded. Therefore, I absolutely no longer look for ecstasy. As it turns out, it’s always there in a latent state. I don’t try at all to plunge into it. Once again, the pilot light is there and that suffices. If it ignites, so much the better. If it does not, tough luck. I don’t give a damn!

GF: You never meditate, then?

SJ: No. At most I make minor corrections. The awakening is a living thing, not a comfortable armchair to sit in. The powers of sleep are always present; the devil is always there, except that he has lost all his vigor, all his power. Thus, from time to time, I make small spiritual adjustments; I straighten out the course, as I’ve done all my life. But it’s not a problem; I know how to do it and, for thirty years, I have behaved in such a way that the awakening hasn’t budged.

Death

GF: Obvious question: where’s your death in all that, Mr. Jourdain?

SJ: Obvious question, obvious answer, and nevertheless always surprising:

death = the-thought-of-death = nothingness

Once you’ve emptied death of all objective substratum, of all reality, it can no longer frighten you much. Death is a pure thought, a pure extension of my spiritual essence and thus. . . nothing! What about my physical death? Same thing! I don’t believe in any way whatsoever in the existence of a physical reality. I don’t believe in it intellectually or philosophically and, above all, emotionally. People talk to me about the physical body; I don’t know what that means. ‘Just the same,” one exclaims, “you have a body, organs.” No! Those are conventions, thoughts one should erase. The blackboard of knowledge must be blank. Everything must be erased and, among the things erased, figure my organs, my heart, the bullet that’s going to go through me and kill me, my death, and the universe. All that must be constantly eradicated; the blackboard itself must be erased. And that’s all I have to say about death.

GF: About death perhaps-but Gilles’ death, Steve’s, your wife’s?

SJ: I can’t compromise and am obliged to answer sharply: that future you talk about in which you’ll die and I’ll die is an extension of the principle “me.” In itself, it has no reality whatsoever. There’s no objective substratum and thus no death that’s pure thought. Even when you’re taking your last breath, I’ll tell you the same thing-it’s pure thought. One must, imperatively and for practical reasons of spiritual survival, treat the problem in that manner. I can only reject what your question designates. Doing this, I reject the question itself, he who poses it, and he who responds to it. It’s very important to approach things this way. In fact, it’s one’s chance of survival and eternity. I’m going to concede a point and admit that death is a real thing. The only victory that one can hope to have over death resides in its perception as pure thought. That’s all.
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The Dream at the Center of the Dream

GF: You speak about the fundamental process by which I secrete my own reality. To defuse this incessant process of secretion, or at least to see it for what it is-an infernal mechanism that I operate myself-would amount to an awakening of myself. But the process of secreting an imaginary reality lies at the very center of the latter. We don’t even live the dream; we dream it. For example, I can come down to the kitchen in the morning, find you making coffee and say to myself, “Oh, Steve doesn’t seem too receptive; he appears in a foul mood; he’s mad at me.” And from there it’s possible to continue to think, “Of course, it’s my fault, I don’t know how to conduct myself correctly, I abuse his hospitality,” etc., etc, while you are quite simply making coffee without feeling the least bit of animosity towards me. In this case, I ascribe an emotion to you; I don’t see, I think. Most psychological problems and emotional disturbances cause our dream to seem more like a nightmare than sweet reverie, born from a propensity to think in the very center of this thought that is our existence. Not content to dream, we dream in the darkest depths of the dream.

SJ: Now there’s a very pertinent remark! At the heart of the embryo of mental health that reveals to our self the unreality of its personal productions-and which thus prevents you from taking the mental image of your wife for your wife-there’s a delirium of interpretation that’s more or less serious.

GF: That’s ordinary madness. Not to mention a persecution complex, what one considers psychological problems; all of us let our imaginations run wild, more or less, without that being considered the least bit pathological.,Most of the problems our existences are filled with could be avoided if we stopped thinking and began seeing. We’re the ones who transform the dream into a nightmare.

SJ: Exactly. Let’s put aside the awakening and stay within the domain of the relative: it’s important to dream well, to dream happily. If the dream itself is corrupt, there’s not a chance in a billion that it will explode. If people corrected the way they situate themselves in relation to their reality, they’d eliminate ninety-eight percent of their “problems.” That would not be the awakening, but a harmonious dream. They would be close to the zenith of the dream and in a position to burst it.

The Importance of Dreaming Well

GF: Isn’t the first step, then, the most urgent, to become normal, to eradicate in oneself the functions that corrupt the dream?

SJ: You’re absolutely right. I never thought of that!

GF: You understand-I see the danger coming-certain readers of our dialogue are going to knock themselves out uselessly trying to pierce the bubble even though they dream very badly, are nowhere close to the “zenith of the dream,” to use your expression, but somewhere in the lower depths. Wouldn’t the first job, the only pertinent one, until the new order, be to force oneself to dream well?

SJ: You’re right. I suffer from a grave handicap where teaching is concerned: my life stopped, for all intents and purposes, when I was sixteen. Moreover, I was a very happy child and adolescent. Not that I was devoid of problems, but I handled them very well and only made a slight deal of them. In short, from my birth to the awakening, I always dreamed very well. So much so that I gravely underestimated the nature and fullness of the problems to which people fall victim. I judge the extent to which the dream itself is perverted. Even Satan is capable of degenerating. Once again, we’re alone and it’s we ourselves who, without knowing it, make up the questions and the responses. If, at night, I dream that a wolf devours me, I’m relieved next morning to substantiate the unreality of the wolf and of me devoured. That’s equivalent to recognizing that I am both the wolf and its victim. Both are creations of my dream. Also, if one could make people conscious that they are the creators of their relative existence and the problems it comprises, one would already have taken a large giant step. No use looking further: the great drama for human beings is to not feel they’re sufficiently loved, to not feel sufficiently appreciated by their family, their friends, etc., etc. If one could, for example, show the person who feels scorned that he himself generates the scorn, generates those who scorn him, and keeps this hallucination alive second after second, one would completely rid him of his problem. The dream would remain a dream, the fundamental hallucination would remain an hallucination, but it would considerably assuage itself. Then it would even be possible for a little light of the awakening to filter into the heart of the dream. That is certainly the first job that one must accomplish to be truly effective. But on this subject, I can only verify my handicap.

126 Living a life and dying a death.

We are engrossed in our living, and little we do, to pause and see, if ‘this is all there is’. We seek happiness always in terms of our status in society, meaning -wealth, and also a good health ,but we are not able to match them up, to our expectation.

Some aspect of life, is always short of our expectation. If not health and wealth, it could be our relationship. Its more like, we tend to mend one and the other goes off balance. Could it be that all three of it ,is in an imbalance, keeping our efforts of living, as the balancing act, carefully hoping that we don’t fall off badly in one aspect or another.

There is no fun in living with too much effort. Its like dying. A person that imagines his life is in danger from health aspect or wealth aspect, is in a struggle with life. It reminds one, as if in a state of imprisonment. Life of a person in a prison on the death row. He doesnt know when he will face death. But he knows, that he will not go out free, alive. He spends a lot of time, struggle to be courageous in facing the ultimate situation. It’s a lot of effort. We do the same, as if life itself has imprisoned us, as a person.

We do funny things, living our normal life. Chasing status and almost reaching there. Chasing health and not almost successful. Chasing survival when in financial crisis, but the chase seems to make it worse.

Is there a end to all this panic or exhaustion and related unhappiness?

Do we understand life, in order to live? And do we understand death in order to die. These question are important and needs to be dealt with. We do not question our thoughts.

What is life verses what living is and what is death vs what dying is.

We imagine that living is life and dying is the opposite of living. Is it true?

Lets consider some of our own ideas.

How doe we perceive. The colour, the shapes, the sounds , the tastes etc. That’s what life is. The source that allows the experience of our day to day living. It’s a fantastic gift of nature, that is using us to taste it, in its different aspects. The way we taste nature is how the world is experienced by us. That’s the only world we have. The blind has a colorless world, the deaf a silent world and the fearful have a dominating world. & billion worlds, one for each. 

Could there be more to this than that meets the eye? There should be. One world cannot express in 7 billion ways. And if it does, what kind of a world could it be? Virtual, at the most. The reality is one and appearances many, like that.

In contrast to what we perceive, what could be thoughts. Why do we have thoughts . From where does it get fabricated. What makes them and what stops them and what loves to play with them? Life, of course, as if a person. Strange. How do we get a sense of 'me' to this body?, is it another thought etc.

Now we need to analyse the nature and properties of thoughts verses our sensed world. Our experience is a product of memory or knowledge projected on sensations. That’s the limitation of the world on us. What we perceive is filtered in thought and causes an experience and is adding to memory and becomes more powerful by the day, in regulating your living, in the world.

Life, that perception is, in converted into living life, negotiating the outer world with the inner self, in order to die, contently. Does life have a purpose, can it be made to suit your desires etc are never ending questions that stops one form enjoying ones life to the fullest.

Living life to the fullest is not related to enjoyment. To be joyful is , to be at peace with oneself is, in all circumstances and to enjoy, is to try and be in circumstances that cannot be better than of now.

Circumstances will never be better than of now, and so one should be enjoying under all circumstances. May be this achievement falls through as an accident, when one transcends what he know. You must forget what you know , in order to know something that will never forget.

Life is magical. It’s a miracle to see, to hear, to taste etc and one needs to be in gratitude to life from birth to death to give this feeling of ‘awe’ in every instant of life. How does life do this fantastic act, again and again and again , as if for the first time, every time. Its beyond thought or mind to grasp it. But nevertheless, the gratitude allows one to soak oneself in all our perceptions and be grateful to nature for making us its sensory apparatus. No matter how life unfolds,  you are there to perceive it. It’s a shock, that we are able to perceive and that’s makes life so lively and alive. To be alive is such a miraculous fact and its so ordinary and gets lost in the filters of thoughts.

Our living has become difficult and seems to be taking its toll on our life, as if, of a dying person. So we are living as if we are dying. That’s true for most of us. We constantly blaming circumstances, be it in relation or in health or in thought, and are talking to ourself, not how to get over it, and move ahead, but to what and how and why, all these happen to us. We keep the past alive, and bloat it up, to use the past to project it into our future.

How else can we live happily?

Pause a little with the speed of dying, in daily living. Get a little friendly with ourselves and probe into the very activity of what life is and where stand as a person. Do ‘me’ as a person live life or does ‘life’ as it is, expresses as a ‘living or dying’ person.

Living is a light game of life, expressing itself in various forms. No harm is experiencing what is happening as the perception, but never get hooked in personalising the experience through filters of dualistic knowledge that will lead to unhappiness. Life is whole and plays out, itself as in parts. That’s only for the game, a crazy game, that it loves to do. Love your participation as the doer, but only to support the cause of life that is wanting to express itself and forget it, once played out. Its simple really. Enjoy your fear, your weakness, your smartness, etc. Its part of the act, as if real.   

125. Change and the need to grasp.

Life is ever changing is a known ‘idea’. However there seems to be a craze or inherent property in humans to grasp all form of change, as if from a unchanging form, in order to take control of the form. It's as if, man can with his limited understanding, imagine nature in its ever changing format, and freeze change to a linear format, to enable him meet up with the demands of the change. We 'think' we can understand 'creation’ in its entirety. Apparently, this  seems to help in living, as if to make living easier or meaningful, purposeful and less painful or more controlled. It gives a confidence to plan future with maximum pleasure or minimum pain, thus giving a sense of control over one’s ‘life’.

Therefore, only humans know all that is , in creation, through this prism of thinking called logic linked to knowledge. We even know about how the creator creates. Luckily there is no end to such knowing, as if the game between nature and human mind, is always moving in a state of ‘catch me if you can’ scheme.

So, change has become the biggest thing in human life that needs to be controlled, by getting it into the frame of ‘known’, as if, we have some kind of armour, to save ourselves from its unknown areas. There is always a fear of the unknown, which is pushing mankind to get all unknowable formats into ‘our’ known formats. Hence the known content keeps increasing, as our knowledge, to help us deal with the ‘unknown’. In fact the knowledge of the unknown is more suitable to factor this, but such a sentence seems illogical.

Knowing, as knowledge and as concepts, gives meaning to reality and thereby ‘manifesting’ reality in this ever changing game of nature. It gives us a chance of being its controller, and help us manipulate the ‘known’ to face the unknown. It’s like we can use the past to conquer the future. It gives the feeling of being separate entities indulging in the game of ‘using’ nature to one’s benefit, in order to play the game of duality, adventurously. In the right way, its an option for a lot of fun and games and makes living a playful atmosphere. However on the negative side, it can influence the individual to feel helpless and unworthy and send him into a victimised world. So its necessary to know what the creation is and what we are in order to surrender when the going gets rough and the game becomes unenjoyable. For most of us, the world is a dangerous zone that has be negotiated with a lot of effort and it gets tiring to play the game of individuality from birth to death. The society is responsible for putting the veil of ignorance so that the ‘wholeness’ of creation is hidden with respect to the duality that we experience and the standard or human living is taking more and more challenges to live life simply. The compulsion to get into the game of duality starts at an young age and is totally forgotten that this addiction needs to be taken lightly, or else the power of the game is always stronger than its manipulation. The game  is as much a manipulator than we separate individuals, that it goes unnoticed and gets violent sooner or later. However in the end, we have a chance to reconcile and surrender our individuality to be merged into the wholeness and forget about all the hardships that we undertook in the imagination of our individual reality

The belief system make ‘facts’ out of beliefs and ‘cast’ the spell of reality or objectivity to the ever-changing flux of creation. Science and Society widen the range of belief system to tear our roots in wholeness and keep us in the vortex of individuality. There is no way out from the ride on the giant wheel of thinking and grasping, because it becomes the very nature of human existence experiencing creation as an external world, separate form oneself, that needs to be negotiate and harness to live happily. One day it becomes tiring and we collapse. But creation being the mother of all objectivity, has to embrace itself in the whatever state we are and unveil our true nature, so that we may take pride in its mysteries and be in awe at what it can unfold, all the time.

The Mind or faculty of thinking based on logic, which is simply a tool to manifest the dualistic nature of the world, is the most wonderful instrument that allows us experience objectivity, but when we ignore the essence of nature as being our own self, and start believing in our own manifestation as absolute reality, separate from us, it begins to ‘bite’ and harm us from being able to live in harmony with the rest of the creation. Thus the magic of non-duality goes un-noticed and in most of the cases results in non acceptance of what the creation unfolds, leading us to be in sorrow and feel victimised by the power of the external world that we need to negotiate.

Grasping is conceptualising in limitations. So when an object moves, we try to grasp it as moving in constant speed, or constant acceleration or constant change of acceleration or constant format of motion as symbolised by a mathematical formula, etc etc. Similarly, limiting change into fragments of patterns with some kind of a ‘constant’ seems to be a mathematical faculty of thought, in case, one could define thought mathematically.  So even chaos will be thought one day, into a pattern, or order, as if order is a theme of creation, that has to be followed by all creation, as its ‘basis’. Then we can control nature and live happily. That’s the basis of grasping or thinking. And the game goes on birth to death.

At some point the game goes out of hand and gets to be witnessed outside of our routine belief or in the absence of our beliefs and suddenly, we understand that the whole game came into ‘realistic’ existence with the use of our beliefs and began to manifest as reality. Or else, its nature was a very light dream, full of change and being experienced in all its colours and dimension, making the change as the primary symptom of creativity. If one could ride the wave of change, by simply surrendering to the changes that unfold, knowing that all of this is only an experience, we could have all of creation as our main entertainer, experiencing its magical unfoldment bathe us in its totality. We could then appreciate how lucky we are to be alive and experience all of this that is happening around us, by being its only experience -er and not separate from it.   Its would be entirely a different world, fruitful in its existence and enjoyable to its very core. It would require a lot of vigilance not to be pulled into becoming part of the thinking world, where thought creates reality and though creates the limited ‘me’ just to make a play and not for any seriousness. It becomes more lovable, rich and impressive. 

So wake up to the reality that thoughts are unreal and only meant to grasp the virtual into a state of realness only as a game of life and live happily thereafter. 

124. Fitness of the Mind and Body.

We think we know a lot about fitness of our body and /or the mind. There are even teachers, offering fitness of body and fitness of mind. I am' not' discussing the so called medical practitioners, where, you know you are not fit, to perform daily habits like eating, sleeping, standing etc and take help. There is a big science that seems to be in place to treat that kind of illness. But that is about 'illness'. Its not about fitness. But a normal person, who wants to be more fit, going to gym, yoga, guru’s, meditation and what not, that's the game i am talking about. 

Generally, we assume our body is not fit. This where it starts.  How do we know? Not from our own experience, but by comparing to others. I should be as fit as the other. Then very soon, we have idols in way of fitness. It may includes Olympians, rock climbers, gymnasts, gamer and the whole world. There is social fitness also. Stage shy, personality building and what not. They are further advertised by claims of people, who have been benefited by such activity called fitness training. There are personalised schools, in corporate houses dealing with mind and body fitness for their employees. The owners decides that the employees are unfit. His demand of their fitness, needs much to be fulfilled. So its free from his side. More like giving chemicals to a cow, to yield more milk, and telling the cow that I am doing this to keep you fit and ‘Happy”. Don’t forget the happiness part, that gets forcibly included in the package.

Anyway, its time to analyse the issue. Let’s take the idea of body fitness. The idea of fitness of our body is purely mental, rather than physical. Your mind decides that, your body can be improved upon, and is beneficial to oneself. That’s how minds work. To keep you engaged. Or else, it's out of business. So we are forced into more examples of comparison, by what we read, see etc. The authority of Society and the world on us, seems to be unparalleled and binding. But what’s the reality? I see a 'lean' man at 70 years of claiming in a party that he is as fit as a fiddle. Can go to the bath room on his own, walks on his own, cooks on his own and even has fun of all sorts. He is very content about his fitness, that makes me feel, that he is in his 'peak', of how much fitness should be, to a person. Then I see another, of the same dimensions, a little younger, get up in the morning, doing yoga, listening to fitness freaks, going to the gym, marathons, local sports clubs and he has a list of what all he is doing. He is still not finished. Still not fully fit. Still more to go. I don’t know if he thinks he is fit enough or that he requires to be more fit. I don’t even know if fitness is something that keeps getting digested like food, that you need some intake every day to maintain it. Anyway, I leave it upto to the mental state of the guy, to take a call. But I have made my point, that physical fitness is a state of the mind and not the body. In fact, bodily fitness has no end. You cannot come to a point to state that, Now I am fit. There is always more to go, like acquiring knowledge. Even Google, who knows all, keeps acquiring more and more. Its like that. Its more like, you will never ever be fit.  There is always a gap of dissatisfaction. And the thing gets worse, when your routine upkeep gets a dent for a while. So the more fit you are, the more fit you can be, and so more unfit ‘now’.

Now lets take the fitness of the mind. The Guru’s seems to know what mind is. I don’t know a damn. I don’t even know that, you see. I am too young for that.

So you have lots of stress, a gap of how you are or the world should be, or you should be vs what is , as of now. It’s a lot. Financial stress, physical stress, House, Office, relationship, habits, children, education,  colleagues, friends, enemies, and you can add yourself, your in laws, your relatives, and the whole world. You expect all to change, circumstances to change and what not, to reduce that gap and you want some one else like God or a Guru to sort it out. On a smaller level, astrologers and councillors could help. You are unfit, mentally and is caused by the gap of stupidity, which I may call as ‘vast’. The vaster it gets, the unhealthier you get to be. In fact someone will tell you, you got to align yourself to the ‘cosmos’ to handle the issue. Presently the cosmos doesn’t include you. You are separate from it.  I don’t know if you will change the cosmos or cosmos will change you, to effect the required change. But its something where there is scope, one thinks, and that efforts are required. Some seek religion and even better spiritual gurus and all such stuff.

Accepting the state of affairs of oneself, and the world inside and outside, AS IT IS , as of now, because it is already the case, is what mental fitness is. The mind doesn’t intend a ‘future’ 'now'. It’s at rest. You are happy. Fitness of mind is its nature to be Happy. But the nature of mind, is in its fitness to be unhappy. So its a double trouble game. Thinking based of comparing and relating, just leads to more hypothesis or thinking. Intellectual thinking, acts out a thought, as immediately as found true. We don’t do that. We think and think and think. We need a bag full solutions from all angles to take care of all our problems at once. I am unhappy about my relationship. So get a divorce. No. I need my partner to adjust to me, In fact I will appreciate if the whole world adjusts itself, make me pretty, figure fit, good relationship, good money, good humour, good party animal, good health, etc etc etc. One thought leads to another and because of constant thinking suddenly, you are mentally unhappy. You are 'stressed'. 

Unless you know what you are, you are mentally prone to make yourself feel bodily and mentally unfit. But we all know what we are. However the ability to think, has a major side effect. Its largely materialistic, scientific, logical etc which are more towards selfishness of a separate self. It generates a separate self. It is a game that we learn to play, to think that we are limited to the body and noting outside of it. This is the cause of all unwanted thinking. It causes fear and fear is the unhealthy or the unfitness. There is no other problem. Fear is the gap between acceptance and resistance.  The mind has a role to create this parity to maintain itself, by the creation of an ‘I’ thought. As long as we do not crash into the ‘I’ thought, suspecting that it real, and we are limited only by that, we should be ever fit. Its ok to play the game of an 'I' thought, in that way. Its like accepting your name tally to be you. But you are not reducible to your name tally. You are always more than that. Happiness is our nature, but we can pretend to be unhappy, to play the game. But it’s a light game. The game of individuality is for fun. So be light and be happy. That’s a fitness mantra, for both body and mind. You can do the treadmill, to have fun running on it, or to meet your girl friend in that way or whatever for, that one does it. That’s just for fun. 

123. The Limited Form is not IT.

This is the ‘Basis’ of Non –Duality. If you crack this statement, you would have ‘cracked ‘ yourself. That’s a shrewd statement, but true.

What do they mean by that statement and more than that, what is the “IT” that is spoken about.

This problem arises due to the complexity or simplicity by which ‘creation’ works. We know we are  but ‘we’ cant know ‘what’ or ‘who’ we are, simply because the “IT’’ that we are, does not fit into these categories, that we look seek, to ‘know’ this .

Where does the fault lie. Firstly, we have been conditioned not to look into ‘how we function’, by a hypnosis.  Life plays out, in making a personal feel to the form, as if the ‘person’ could be the ‘It’ to the body. Taken for granted that ‘It’ , would make a meaning of all that should be ‘known’ about a  form, which is simply ‘the knowledge’ of the form, takes the ‘being’ of an ‘It’ of that form. So we say, knowledge of the form, helps conceptualise the objectivity to the form, as if objectivity is more primary than form. So we start looking at the form’s objectivity, as our projected knowledge, or the ‘conceptualisation’ of that form, and also of ourselves and play out the game. So we don’t look at ‘THAT”, but we simply look at our own ‘idea’ of what that is. Nothing wrong there, as long as we are always aware about the reality or unreality of taking our projection to be ‘matter’ or objectivity or thingness of that form, and deal with it as its final beingness. You will get into trouble, more often than not and isolate yourself, more and more, for not being capable of dealing with the ‘It’ in a way you thought, you could control etc. and feel unhappy. It could extended to our own selves or to what we think we are, and find that, we have less and less control over what we think we are, as an ‘object’.

‘IT’ is the essence of ‘form’.  For example, water is the essence of an ocean, or clay is the essence of a pot. We have been taught to capture the knowledge around the forms, as if in separation and to deal with our knowledge of it, as if ‘that’ was its essence. The whole ‘world’ is tuned into the same frequency of this ‘hide and seek game’and so the whole game looks ‘normal’. But what is normal, is not the reality and in imagining that as its reality, the game of ‘objectivity’ plays out with its own rules of ‘might’ is right and beauty is better and my ‘thingness’ is more superior etc. However, going back to the example that ‘IT’ is the essence of ‘forms’, we are put into a perpetual confusion, that ‘a piece of the whole’ could be what these examples point out to. The limitation of such pointers prevent them to ‘make the point’ because we are trying to use the example without taking into account that the example, cannot be 100% correct. We try to use an example, a pointer, a concept, to point out even beyond the point.  So we can say there are two ‘Its’. One what we can conceptualise, as the ‘itness’ to forms and the other, as we think them to be, and the other which is  the absolute  essence, or its reality, that is beyond the formation of the form, even though it’s the basis of giving rise of all forms.   Its like the ‘light’ making images on TV, as if people. We can say that there are no people and there is only light there, but we enjoy the TV, as if we felt the images as forms or people themselves, and they made the meanings that was expected of them, like real people.  IT is simply the basis of perception. The thinking mind, which is our only tool to grasp objectivity, using ‘our’ knowledge of form, as if matter or essence of form, cannot do justice in finding its own essence.  Its like using ‘form’ to known its ‘matter’ or the TV image, to know its source as ‘light’. The behaviour of ‘form’ is the behaviour of ‘matter’ and not vice- versa. The method of using logic fails, when we want to go beyond ‘mind’ and its projections, and there can be no other logic, because there is only one logic which is the creation of mind, which in turn is the play  of the ‘source’  to look outward, as if all knowledge and logic are the basis of understanding the world, in a true and absolute way.

Game of “life” is based in ‘Knowing’. The ‘knowing’ property is aliveness.  We all know whatever we know, but we don’t know, how is it, that we know!.  We just know, even without any knowledge of how is it that we know.  Because that is ‘what’ we are. The ‘field of knowing’ is what we are. This ‘knowing’ is perfectly alive. IT is life and Life is This. It does itself and knows itself, as if in separation. It has a clever way to make believe with thought that ‘knowing of content’ should have ‘content’ to knowing, as if ‘of’ their own ‘existence’ or as if ‘outside’ of such Knowing. Contents exists, by virtue of their ‘knowing’. Like ‘knowing of pain’ is ‘pain’. So we say, pain exists, as a knowing of it. Not as an ‘it’. So is the world. Its simply the knowing of the world. No’ world’ as such, separate from its knowing. So knowing is all there is. That is the IT, that can magically behave, as if, we all have ‘thing-ness’ to ourselves and to others. So it seems that there could be a ‘world of objects’ separate from us, and independent of us. This seems so, but not so. We all know this, but have been hypnotised by life, to behave in separation, like a movie actor, who assumes to be the king, within and without the movie.

Until the hypnosis of Life, is unveiled by grace of Life, this activity, being the ‘play’ of life, to behave in separation will continue. IT loves the game and is here to stay. But, once the game starts to ‘rot, or to have a doubt that we have no control on what is happening, there is a intense seeking to get back ‘home’, meaning, to get back to your true nature as Life, other than as ‘ separate entities’ .   Its not something we do, but the doubt about the reality of our ‘Being’ that takes us out of the hypnotism. Its like a patient that is not co-operating being hypnotised, when he knows it. Only that could bring us to ‘be’ IT.

122. Memory, Thoughts and Emotions.

Actually 'thoughts' are 'emotions'. Thoughts are emotional. They are energetic by essence. 

Thought is an understanding of a situation and emotion is the feeling of the thought. Energy is wrapped around thought, so that its meaning is interpreted as feelings. So conversely, emotions are thoughts.

Thoughts are memory or its projections in various permutations and combinations. And memory is a kind embedding of content of creation.  Thoughts itself is a content of creation and can register in memory, just like content of solid matter, sensed as a sensation. So we memorise, what we know around us and also have thoughts around such matter, making the memory more colourful. We also memorise, thoughts about thoughts.  So memory gives rise to thoughts and thoughts give rise to more thoughts.  Soon we become neurotic with thinking and thinking makes a notion of a centre, to which they make meaning and such a centre makes the notion of a 'me'. Except for a centre, to meaning making, the 'me' sense has no role or simply need not exist. As notional, it exists, just to play the part of a 'centre' to 'thought made' unfolding of creation.

The basis of memory is knowledge. The application of knowledge to content of creation, or to 'forms' makes it registerable to memory.  The whole creation by itself, as the content of ‘now’ is ever changing. Unless the change is given meaning, by knowledge, it cannot be registered to memory. Knowledge is kind of a code to memorise content or events. So we can memorise creation as matter and events. When time is involved, we make a story of the content in time so as to make meaningful memory. Meaningless content are forgotten, unless it becomes a unique meaning. Like finding Chaos to be a pattern. 

Making meaning to forms or conceptualising of 'content of creation' is minds ability or purpose of the mind. There by, there is a meaning to life and such a referencing makes a ‘me’ sense, as its centre, around which meaning making goes on. It becomes the nature on mind to pick up this skill and play out its skill, projecting knowledge to forms, as if they ‘matter’ thereby and also to events so as to register as happenings. This endless game of the mind is the dance of life, trying to grasp its own creation, as if from different angles, being different entities with different conditioning and creating a mind boggling complex game to entertain itself. Its too intelligent to engage in simple games, and therefore loves to complicate its creation so as to evolve for the better or worse, improving its own skills. Its like a child, that ever remains childish, with evolution. But life is too powerful to be taken to task, and so we better leave it alone, except where, it loves to engage us, enjoy its game of ‘knowing’ itself, as if Life was 'we' in essence.

All of life, is a knowing game. It plays its game, using ‘knowing’ as its essence. So we can say that all that is happening is made of ‘knowing material'. All that is happening, is only known in duality, or grasping of the content, as if to an entity, but the content is nothing but essentially, just its ‘knowing’. So we can say, 'Being' of life is just the ‘knowing’ of it, and all there is –is just ‘knowing’. The aliveness of creation is essentially ‘gamed’ using the filed of Knowing as essence.  So all content is just the knowing of it. Content and 'Knowing of it' are not two separate things. There is no content, other than just the ‘knowing’ of content. We can say that 'all of this' is of ‘knowing’ material, which by itself is ‘matterless’ and matter to knowing, is simply dressing of knowing, by dualistic knowledge or conceptualising, so as to reveal knowing of content, as ‘content’ to knowing or an external 'world', to an internal 'me'.

So Happy knowing, conceptualising, memorising, thinking and making ‘me’ out of the whole isuue, as if separate from the whole. 

121. To look within.

Many times, we are advised to go within and we wonder ‘where’ this within could be. Does it mean to put attention in the chest or heart area? Does it mean, concentrating on what our feelings are, at the point of attention? Or can we dissolve the attention altogether and see what happens.

This is very trick statement. The sense perceptions are taken, as if, drawn outward. It senses sight, sounds, taste etc. as if ‘knowing content’ in awareness. There are also sensations like feelings, emotions, etc, that arise ‘in’ thoughts, or stimulated ‘by’ thoughts. Thoughts itself are self energetic packages, that adds more meanings to itself, in terms of emotions and feelings. Its like using body language to express words. Thoughts are words, feelings and emotions too, all packaged in one. We don’t know how fast it arises in awareness, stays for a while, like duration of perceptions that we sense, and moves on. Thoughts are also sense perceptions of mind, as they project interpretation to perception in dualitical language, so as to experience perceptions, as if in separation.. Or we can say, mind is the space wherein arises thoughts emotions and feelings, and all sensations of our five senses too. We really don’t locate it as a space in the head, because the feelings are more to the body, than to the head. We may go cold, or limp, by fearful thoughts. These arising’s finally express itself as more of our body language.

Considering that all these sensations are content to knowing, as arising in awareness, it is possible to turn or focus our awareness to these contents 'only'. However contents keep changing and we know that, we are not this content. An sight, if we may call, is to see clearly, what we are not. You cant see what we are, because its not a seeing. You cannot make, 'being' as a content. You cannot have an insight of yourself. Its already the case.If what you are is aliveness, its everywhere and you cannot make it an object, because its already, whats perceiving. So an insight, if you will, is at beast, what you are, as what you are not.
If I want to keep my focus of attention, or .awareness' on my body parts, in a fraction of a second, I get absorbed in neurotic thought process, which has become habitual. It appears that Awareness is aware of all content, but it selects, randomly, some content to keep itself busy, and we really cannot direct our attention to what we want, on a prolonged basis. The mind seems to be in charge of itself and responds to our will power only for a short while, like changing directions or tracks and then, does what it wants. So its both voluntary and involuntary. Its like being on auto, and we try to put it on manual, but goes back to auto. But Mind is always aware of content. Either sensation as content or else, thought itself as content. Its like breathing, voluntarily or automatically. So all actions, thoughts, sensations, etc etc which are content awareness are partially monitored, by what we call our attention or our focus of awareness. However all of these content is referred as ‘outside’. Or we could called all of it is outward perception. So then what is ‘inward’ perception.

When we are not caught up in thought, the focus of attention on content is withdrawn,  as we do by closing our eyes or meditating, etc, we start withdrawing ( we dont start or stop, but its a way of stating) our attention or the focus of awareness. With conscious effort, when the mind is still, ‘if’ we can push our attention on the field of awareness itself,  or the source of thoughts, which can only happen, when the content to knowing, or arising of sensations are totally absent, then 'perhaps’ we have achieved such a state. Then we say, that the activity of all outer perceptions have stopped and what remains is 'knowing' of the field of content, or source of awareness or 'looking' inward. That’s when the awareness that was like an arrow, focused on content, fans out itself, like a Japanese fan,on all content, to include the whole field of awareness, in which a sense of limited attention does not exist. The whole field of consciousness is the perception, It becomes self evident in a way. Knowing can even know an absence of content, and ‘ not knowing’ is an impossibility, because it still needs a knowing to be so.

In the beginning, we cannot have peace of mind. when we meditate, all evil thoughts keep coming up. We are aware of these thoughts and we fight to stop it. There is an internal war going on. If at all, there is some cessation, it could only be 'war weariness' . Complete peace is like a roar of an ocean. You are conscious of your own body to its core. So there is no 'silent' state at all, unless you are clinically dead. But, there is a sense of dissolution of the ‘me’ sense into the field of consciousness, once in a while, where there is a realisation, that consciousness is not limited to the body. Even absence of sensation, can be known in consciousness, and that still exists as you. So even the absence of the body, as a bundle of sensation, is still a content to knowing. It finally dawns that this consciousness is all there is, knowing all presence and absence of content as sensation. That is the place ‘within’ as the 'source'or field of knowing. The source of all content that arises, the field in which all arises, to play out as this universe, by arising as a bundle of sensations. It also is realised that all there is, is only this source, as the essence of all content, as the source itself expresses as content, and uses thoughts to interpret content as 'object' to knowing, outside of such knowing. It as if, the source is making this up, as a foot print, of its actions, to make a story in memory, in a dualistic way. We are left with only such a reflection, that keeps doing itself to make presence feel as a world ob objects. It’s a dance of consciousness.
So to look inside is an act of grace and to look outside is a conditioning of the mind. You are involved in neither.
Good Luck on seeking. There is nothing to attain.