Saturday, July 26, 2014

Isa Upanishad






Isa Upanishad

1
All this—whatever exists in this changing universe—should be
covered by the Lord. Protect the Self by renunciation. Lust not
after any man's wealth.
2
If a man wishes to live a hundred years on this earth, he should
live performing action. For you, who cherish such a desire and
regard yourself as a man, there is no other way by which you
can keep work from clinging to you.
3
Verily, those worlds of the asuras are enveloped in blind
darkness; and thereto they all repair after death who are slayers
of Atman.
4
That non—dual Atman, though never stirring, is swifter than
the mind. The senses cannot reach It, for It moves ever in front.
Though standing still, It overtakes others who are running.
Because of Atman, Vayu, the World Soul apportions the
activities of all.
5
It moves and moves not; It is far and likewise near. It is inside
all this and It is outside all this.
6
The wise man beholds all beings in the Self and the Self in all
beings; for that reason he does not hate anyone.
7
To the seer, all things have verily become the Self: what
delusion, what sorrow, can there be for him who beholds that
oneness?
8
It is He who pervades all—He who is bright and bodiless,
without scar or sinews, pure and by evil unpierced; who is the
Seer, omniscient, transcendent and uncreated. He has duly
allotted to the eternal World—Creators their respective duties.
9
Into a blind darkness they enter who are devoted to ignorance
(rituals); but into a greater darkness they enter who engage in
knowledge of a deity alone.
10
One thing, they say, is obtained from knowledge; another, they
say, from ignorance. Thus we have heard from the wise who
have taught us this.
11
He who is aware that both knowledge and ignorance should be
pursued together, overcomes death through ignorance and
obtains immortality through knowledge.
12
Into a blind darkness they enter who worship only the
unmanifested prakriti; but into a greater darkness they enter
who worship the manifested Hiranyagarbha.
13
One thing, they say, is obtained from the worship of the
manifested; another, they say, from the worship of the
unmanifested. Thus we have heard from the wise who taught us
this.
14
He who knows that both the unmanifested prakriti and the
manifested Hiranyagarbha should be worshipped together,
overcomes death by the worship of Hiranyagarbha and obtains
immortality through devotion to prakriti.
15
The door of the Truth is covered by a golden disc. Open it, O
Nourisher! Remove it so that I who have been worshipping the
Truth may behold It.
16
O Nourisher, lone Traveller of the sky! Controller! O Sun,
Offspring of Prajapati! Gather Your rays; withdraw Your light.
I would see, through Your grace, that form of Yours which is
the fairest. I am indeed He, that Purusha, who dwells there.
17
Now may my breath return to the all—pervading, immortal
Prana! May this body be burnt to ashes! Om. O mind,
remember, remember all that I have done.
18
O Fire, lead us by the good path for the enjoyment of the fruit
of our action. You know, O god, all our deeds. Destroy our sin
of deceit. We offer, by words, our salutations to you.

End of Isa Upanishad

The Peace Chant

Om. That is full; this is full. This fullness has been projected
from that fullness. When this fullness merges in that fullness,
all that remains is fullness.
Om. Peace! Peace! Peace!

Invocation

Om. May Brahman protect us both (the preceptor and the
disciple)! May Brahman bestow upon us both the fruit of
Knowledge! May we both obtain the energy to acquire
Knowledge! May what we both study reveal the Truth! May we
cherish no ill feeling toward each other!
Om. Peace! Peace! Peace!

Om. May the different parts of my body, my tongue, prana,
eyes, ears and my strength and also all the sense—organs, be
nourished! All, indeed, is Brahman, as is declared in the
Upanishads. May I never deny Brahman! May Brahman never
deny me! May there never be denial on the part of Brahman!
May there never be denial on my part! May all the virtues
described in the Upanishads belong to me, who am devoted to
Brahman!
Yea, may they all belong to me!
Om. Peace! Peace! Peace!



Friday, July 25, 2014

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Awareness



Awareness is Non-Effort:
Does not effort mean a struggle to change what is
Into what it is not,
Or what should be or what should become?
We are constantly escaping from what is
To transform or modify it....
Only when there is no awareness of what is
There is an effort to transform.
So effort is non awareness.
Awareness reveals the significance of what is
And the complete acceptance of the significance
Brings freedom.
So awareness is non effort:
Awareness is the perception of what is
Without distortion.
Distortion exist whenever there is effort.



Dada Gavand - Solitary pilgrim




Dattaram Madhavrao Gavand was born in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1917. The eldest child of his parents, he came to be called Dada or elder brother.

Early in his life, he heeded a compelling inner urge for spiritual understanding. On account of his father’s untimely demise, he inherited the family business at the young age of 18. He ran the business very successfully but became disillusioned with the exclusive nature and binding effect of wealth, prestige and comfort. He saw the dehumanizing effect of commercial culture and also the limitation of tradition. He saw marriage as a glorified trap. Hence he chose not to marry and at the age of 38, after carrying out his family responsibilities of getting his 5 sisters and only brother married and settled, he went off by himself, in search of the true significance of life. He read the work of Theosophists like Madame Blavatsky and Annie Bessant. He also personally met J. Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharshi and the Mother of Pondicherry.

After some years of wandering, and many times of trial and testing, Dada finally realized to his amazement that the search was indeed totally within. Hence, in the year 1955 he left his cozy home, went far away from Mumbai to Mount Sajjangad, stayed in a tiny hut there and began an inquiry unto himself.

His Awakening


By being with himself in watchful attention, Dada faced himself totally. Without following any prescribed discipline, he saw the activity of his own mind very aloofly, and questioned the projections and workings of the entire mechanism of mind. 

In Dada’s own words, “I had to be with myself wholly in order to face myself. I was confronted with the play of ceaseless and countless thought–desires. By watching the drama of thought-mind, without getting involved in it or carried away by it, I began to understand the whole content of myself. 

“As I was observing the play of my mind, I suddenly realized that the established pattern of thought-emotion was disturbed, and the whole mind-structure was in turmoil. There were no layers, no orderly arranged movements of thought any more. Intellect and logic lost their validity, and the consciousness was in flux. Everything was in intense motion, like boiling water. 

“The ego itself became highly disturbed, agitated and sensitive. I came face-to-face with fear. I had to sense that fear fully and stay with it without reacting to it. With this challenge, my watchfulness and alertness grew much deeper, keeping me in the moment of the present, creating room — a space in my inner being — to absorb the thrust of thought. This was a prelude to change – a jump.” 

Such a jump, beyond the mind, appears to be a totally unpredictable and unexpected occurrence. As Dada describes, “Something inside me literally exploded, giving me the shock of my life. In a split second, a fountain of unknown energy sprang forth from within. This surprising energy flow was of a truly new kind, different from anything I had ever sensed or experienced before. It felt soft, sensitive, joyful and dynamic yet peaceful. It filled me with profound reverence, deep awe and love. Such a mystical and powerful explosion in my inner domain was a miraculous event.” 

With this change in Dada’s life came a tranquility, joy and understanding never known to him before. Moreover, his creativity increased manyfold and he began to compose poetry. Thereafter, he continued his inner journey, staying in semi-solitude for 19 years in a small cottage in Mahableshwar. 



SOLITARY PILGRIM

Intense longing of many years
And revolt of spirit has brought me here.
In scorching sun and gusty wind,
I climbed the mount to reach your door.
Alone, determined, devoted one.
With bleeding heart and battered soul.
Lifting heavy steps one by one,
To meet the mysterious, the unknown One.

 •*¨`*•.༺   ૐ   ༻ .•*¨`*•

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Bhagavad-Gita 2:22




Worn-out garments are shed by the body,
worn-out bodies are shed by the dweller within the body,
new bodies are donned by the dweller, like garments.

Not wounded by weapons, not burned by fire,
not dried by the wind, not wetted by water,
such is the one.

Not dried, not wetted, not burned, not wounded,
innermost essence, everywhere, always,
being of beings, changeless, eternal, for ever and ever.


Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Wu Hsin -" Me"



“Me” must be seen to be imagination. If “me” is imagination, Then all the “of me’s”, that is, All the “mine’s”, are likewise imagination. When the situation is examined thoroughly, It is discerned that there is no basis for Selecting one appearance out of the totality and Labelling it as ”me”. As such, there is no “me” who receives enlightenment. When there is no one home to accept the delivery, What can be delivered? The answer cannot be located by thinking. How many more months, years or decades will it take Until you see the futility of this approach? What you are is not conceivable or perceivable. And you cannot try to deny it by declaring “I am not”. Stop trying to quench this thirst By drinking the sound of water. Turn away from thinking. There is no need for practices per se. Just ponder the words of Wu Hsin and Try to grasp their full meaning. This is sufficient for returning. Returning means going back to The source and support of everything and Resting there. In that, the misconception that There ever was a thinker, a doer, A perceiver and an enjoyer simply disappears. Sooner or later you are bound to discover that If you really want to end the searching, You must return the way that you came. This is what Wu Hsin advises. It is the way he traveled and he invites you to take it. The rest is up to you. You can never find the truth because This “you” as an entity is a lie. A lie can never reveal what is true. It is like living with an ash in your eye. You can never see clearly. For you to see things as they really are Requires the removal of this “ash”, Which is the cessation of One’s preoccupation with a seeming self.


Harri Aalto - Heart-Felt Clarity





I experience that one of the primary qualities of wakefulness is a quiet, all-encompassing feeling that can only be described as a continuum of universal-to-individual love. Along with perpetual clear awareness, my most fulfilling sense is one of unbounded love. I mostly write about pure knowledge, but really the most delightful, quietest sparkle of my life, is untainted universal love. This almost-silent feeling enhances all knowledge with a glowing physical presence so subtle that no experience is found outside its eternal range.


In fact, my body’s participation as a feature of consciousness, is held in silent thrall by the wonder of love’s pervasiveness. This primary quality of pure happiness, that is found everywhere, has its unchanging, adamantine existence, established as the quality that unifies my experience and understanding.


First found, first seen—the mother of all experience—no other experience is as accepting or as universal as love. In my heart is seated the presence of the Divine, in unmoving, unending, reverberating glory; there sits the heavens, the universe, the world, and my family. The point of my heart contains a divinity of pure perception as brilliant and expanded, that only love can keep it intact as the universal point of my awareness in an ocean of wholeness.


Recently, Catherine my wife experienced a tangible fullness and opening of her heart that has not diminished over time. Her experience has had the extraordinary effect of now revealing both of our heart-felt, heart-centered physiologies in my awareness, as the structure, emergence, and expressions of unbounded unity.


Having the experience of two physical hearts pulsing in unity, has had the outcome of tremendously increasing my personal familiarity with pure silence expanding its sublime stillness into daily and family life. Attending this experience is a universal love so tender that even its most miniscule expansion or contraction is nothing but pure joy. These two divine energies, spinning as silence, have collected my children, community—in fact, all beings—to the very central structure, story, and awareness of my wholeness.


I now watch the first stir of unboundedness with a fuller, on-going intimacy, which is both the mother and father of that stir. I—the stillness of unbounded wakefulness—am seeing my own nature as divine mother, not only abstractly, but also as my daily goings-on. Experiencing two beating hearts as one movement of wholeness, everything suddenly roars brighter, fathoms fuller, is a divine richness that personifies the Absolute as nothing other than my—and everyone’s—eternal consciousness. Even my physical heart seems to beat stronger, more steadily, in its new found integrity as its Absolute twin nature.


At the very first stirring of my awareness, joyfulness is already mirroring a recognition of the fullness and divine thrill of awakened bliss, more than hinting at the heavenly, being-filled, structural oneness of creation. It is here, in the dome of my concentrated heart, where love is the bliss-full state of ringing wholeness. As the Absolute appears to break up, I experience that it is the unifying quality of love that shelters my individuality at the very center of this infinite experience. I see pure unbounded love, looking at the face of Absolute silence, while remaining both completely universal and completely personal.


I perceive, that in the warm directed glow of love, even pure indivisible consciousness is known— is seen—as nothing other than a universal, heavenly family. This unbounded, delightful abstract feeling is the fundamental, pulsing structure that seamlessly reveals and illumines a universal, societal fullness, where my existance is the collective and individual home of all the stories and beings of creation.


Consciousness, experienced as love: here my whole experience is very personal, very rich, and thick in unity, even my discriminating intellect finds an ocean of clarity from point to infinity, from my family to all families. Universal love spills uninterruptedly into its own divisions, curving back again and again, never actually having to move to be the fullness of my—everyone’s—divinity. I see a field of bubbling silence, singing to itself as the ground state of my awareness. I watch this eternal structure as churning streams of light and consciousness systematically condensing into a vast celestial-to-earthly society, sparkling altogether as the shining, multi-layered sheathes of my consciousness and physiology.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Jean Klein - Be who you are



Be Who You Are: An Interview with Jean Klein
By Stephan Bodian
 
 
 Jean, I find you and your teaching interesting for a number of reasons. For one thing, you are a Westerner who went to India long before such journeys were common and ended up attaining a high degree of realization. What prompted you to go to India?

I was hoping to find a society where people lived without conflict. Also, I think, I was hoping to find a center in myself that was free from conflict – the kind of forefeeling or foretaste of truth.

While in India, you found a teacher with whom you studied for a number of years. What is the value of a teacher for the spiritual life?

A teacher is one who lives free from the idea or image of being somebody. There is only function; there's no one who functions. It's a loving relationship; the teacher is like a friend.

Why is that important for someone on the spiritual path?

Because generally the relationship with other people involves asking or demanding – sex, money, psychological or biological security. Then suddenly you meet someone who doesn't ask or demand anything of you; there is only giving.
A true teacher doesn't take himself for a teacher, and he doesn't take his pupil for a pupil. When neither one takes himself to be something, there is a coming together, a oneness. And in this oneness, transmission takes place. Otherwise the teacher will remain a teacher through the pupil, and the pupil will always remain a pupil.
When the image of being something is absent, one is completely in the world but not of the world; completely in society, but at the same time free from society. We are truly a creative element when we can be in society in this way.

What did your teacher teach you?

The teacher brings clarity of mind. That's very important. There comes a moment when the mind has no reference and just stops, naturally, simply. There's a silence which you more and more live knowingly.

And the teacher shows you how to do that. Did you learn any meditation or yoga techniques from your teacher?

No. Because what you really are is never achieved through technique. You go away from what you are when you use technique.

What about the whole notion of the spiritual path – the idea that you enter a path, follow a certain prescribed way of practice, and eventually achieve some goal?

It belongs to psychology, to the realm of the mind. These are sweets for the mind.

What about the argument that if you don't practice, you can't attain anything?

You must first see that in all practice you project the goal, a result. And in projecting a result you remain constantly in the representation of what you project. What you are fundamentally is a natural giving up. The mind becomes clear, there is a giving up, a stillness, fulfilled with a current of love. As long as there is a meditator, there's no meditation. When the meditator disappears, there is meditation.

So by practicing some meditation technique, you're somehow interfering with that giving up.

Absolutely.

How?

You interfere because you think there is something to attain. But in reality what you are fundamentally is nothing to obtain, nothing to achieve. You can only achieve something that remains in the mind, knowledge. You must see the difference. Being yourself has nothing to do with accumulating knowledge.

In certain traditions – Zen, for one – you have to meditate in order to exhaust the mind; through meditating the mind eventually wears itself out and comes to rest. Then a kind of opening takes place. But you're suggesting that the process of meditating somehow gets in the way of this opening.

Yes. This practicing is still produced by will. For me, the point of meditation is only to look for the meditator. When we find out that the meditator, the one who looks for God, for beauty, for peace, is only a product of the brain and that there is nothing to find, there is a giving up. What remains is a current of silence. You can never come to this silence through practice, through achievement. Enlightenment – being understanding – is instantaneous.
 
Once you attain this enlightenment or this current do you then exist in it all the time?

Constantly. But it's not a state. When there's a state, there is mind.

So in the midst of this current there is also activity?

Oh, yes. Activity and non-activity. Timeless awareness is the life behind all activity and non-activity. Activity and non-activity are more or less superimpositions upon this (and) constrain beingness. It is behind the three states of waking, dreaming, and sleeping, beyond inhalation and exhalation. Of course, the words “beyond" and “behind" have a spatial connotation that does not belong to this beingness.

In the midst of all activity, then, you're aware of this presence, this clarity.

Yes, "presence" is a good word. You are presence, but you are not aware o it.

You've often called what you teach the direct way, and you contrast it with what you call progressive teachings, including the classical yoga tradition and most forms of Buddhism. What is the danger of progressive teachings, why do you think the direct way is closer to the truth?

In the progressive way, you use various techniques and gradually attain higher and higher states but you remain constantly in the mind, the subject – object relationship. Even when you give up the last object, we still remain in the duality of subject and object. You're still in a kind of blank state, and this blank state itself becomes an extremely subtle object. In this state, it is very difficult to give up the subject – object relationship. Once you've attained it, you're locked into it, fixed to it. There’s a kind of quietness, but there's no flavor, no taste. To bring it to the point where the object vanishes and you abide in the beingness, a tremendous teacher or exceptional circumstances are necessary.
In the direct approach, you face the ultimate directly, and the conditioning gradually loses its impact. That takes time.

So the ultimate melts the conditioning.

Yes. There's a giving up, and in the end you remain in beingness.

You say that any kind of practice is a hindrance, but at the same time you suggest practices to people. You teach a form of yoga to your students, and to some you recommend self-inquiry, such as the question, "Who am I?" It sounds paradoxical – no practice, but you teach a practice. What practices do you teach, and why do you use practices at all?

To try to practice and to try not to practice are both practice. I would rather say listen, be attentive, and see that you really are not attentive. When you see in certain moments in daily life that you are not attentive, in those moments you are attentive. Then see how you function. That is very important. Be completely objective. Don't judge, compare, criticize, evaluate. Become more and more accustomed to listening. Listen to your body, without judging, without reference – just listen. Listen to all the situations in daily life. Listen from the whole mind, not from a mind divided by positive and negative. Look from the whole, the global. Students generally observe that most of the time they are not in this listening, although our natural way of behavior is listening.

The path you are describing is often called the "high path with no railing" which is the most difficult path of all. The average person would not know where to begin to do what you're talking about. Most could probably be attentive to their inattention, but after that, what? There's nothing to grasp onto.
 
No, there's nothing to grasp, nothing to find. But it is only apparently a difficult path; actually, I would say it is the easiest path.

How so?

Listening to something is easy, because it doesn't go through the mind. It is our natural behavior. Evaluation, comparison, is very difficult, because it involves mental effort. In this listening there is a welcoming of all that happens, an unfolding, and this unfolding, this welcoming, is timeless. All that you welcome appears in this timelessness, and there is a moment when you feel yourself timeless, feel yourself in welcoming, feel yourself in listening, in attention. Because attention has its own taste, its own flavor. There's attention to something, there's also attention in which there's no object: nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to teach, only attention.

And in that moment of pure attention, you realize the one who's being attentive?

I would say that this attention, completely free from choice and reflection, refers to itself. Because it is essentially timeless.

The Zen master Dogan said: "Take the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate the self." That seems to be similar to what you're talking about.

Yes, but one must be careful. Turning the head inwardly is still doing something. There's really no inward and no outward.

I noticed that you use the word "attention." Is this the same as what the Buddhists call mindfulness – being acutely aware of every moment, every sensation every thought?

Mindfulness mainly emphasizes the object, the perceived, and not perceiving, which can never be an object, just as the eye can never see its seeing. The attention I'm speaking of is objectless, directionless, and in it all that is perceived exists potentially. Mindfulness implies a subject-object relation, but attention is nondual. Mindfulness is intentional; attention is the real state of the mind, free from volition.

What about the yoga you teach, which you call "bodywork?" What is it, and why do you teach it?

You're not your body, senses, and mind; body, senses, and mind are expressions of your timeless awareness. But to completely understand that you are not something, must first see what you are not. We cannot say "I am not the body" without knowing what it is. So you inquire, you explore, you look, you listen. And you discover that you know only certain fractions of your body, certain sensations, these are more or less reactions, resistance. Eventually you come to a body feeling that you have never had before because when you listen, it unfolds and the sensitive body, the energy body, appears. It is most important to feel and come into contact with the energy body. Because in the beginning your body is more or less a pattern or superficial structure in the mind, made up of reactions and resistance. But when you really listen to the body, you're no longer an accomplice to these reactions, and the body comes to its natural feeling, which is emptiness. The real body in its original state is emptiness, a completely vacant state. Then you feel the appearance of the elastic body, which is the energy body. When you speak of "bodywork," it is mainly to find this energy body. Once the energy body has been experienced, the physical body works completely differently. The muscle structure, the skin, the flesh, is seen and felt in a completely new way. Even the muscles and bones function differently.

What is the yoga that you teach like?

It is not really yoga. It's an approach to the body based on the Kashmir teaching. The Kashmir approach is largely an awakening of the subtle energies circulating in the body. These energies are used to spiritualize the body, to make it more sattvic (literally, "pure" or "true"). In a sattvic body there is already a giving up. You see more clearly what you're not – your tensions, ideas, fixations, reactions. Once the false is seen as false, what remains is our timeless being. By spiritualizing the body, therefore, I mean orchestrating all the dispersed energy that belongs to the false. Our approach is an exploration without will or effort. It is inspired by the truth itself. The natural body is an expression, a prolongation of this truth.

But I understand you use the traditional asanas of hatha yoga.

Every gesture, every position the body can take, is an asana; there are certain archetypes that are not even mentioned in the classical texts of hatha yoga. But there archetypal positions par excellence that bring the harmonization of body and mind. Before going to these archetypes, however, one must prepare the body. There is no point in assuming these archetypes in a conditioned body. Otherwise, yoga is nothing more than a kind of gesticulation. What you see for the most part in Europe and the U.S. is gymnastics, gesticulation, and has nothing to do body integration.

Do you have any other reasons for not using the term "yoga"?

Yes. The term "yoga" means to "to join," so there must be something to join, something to attain. But join who? Join what? In a certain way the body approach helps you to listen quietly. It is through real listening to the body that you come to true equanimity of mind and body.

Should this be practiced every day?

Don't make a discipline of it, because in discipline there is anticipation – you are already emphasizing the goal. This doesn't belong to exploration. Practically speaking, wait until you're invited by the energy of the body itself. This recall of our natural state is not memory. It comes from the needs of the body and appears spontaneously. Go to it as you would to a dinner invitation. Otherwise you're doing violence to the body.
In your daily life you may experience moments of absolute silence in which there is nothing to do, nothing to avoid, nothing to achieve. In these moments, you're completely attuned to this stillness without any effort. Become more and more aware of these timeless moments, moments when you cannot think, because when you think, the moment is already past. Present moments free from all thoughts. Often you'll have these moments when an action is accomplished, when a thought is finished, in the evening before you fall asleep, in the morning when you first wake up. Become more and more familiar with these gaps between two thoughts or two actions – gaps which are not an absence of thought, but are presence itself. Simply let yourself be attuned to these timeless moments. You will increasingly welcome them, until one day you are established in this timelessness, knowingly the light behind all perceptions.

So you don't recommend practicing meditation as a regular discipline?

No.

Talk about stillness and silence. Are these goals of spiritual life?

When I speak of stillness and silence, nobody is still and nobody is silent; it is only silence and stillness. This stillness does not refer to somebody or something.

So in the midst of this stillness there is activity?

Yes. Stillness is like a hinge of the door. The body is the door that opens and closes constantly, but the stillness never moves.

T. S. Elliott called it "the still point of the turning world." Since the practice has no goal – in fact, there isn't even a practice – what is the purpose of spiritual life at all? Obviously, most of us would say that we are not enlightened or liberated, and so we do feel a need to go somewhere where we are not. Then it seems as if we do need to undertake some kind of spiritual life. What is that like?

I would say that we are constantly, without knowing it, being solicited by what we are fundamentally. But the feeling by which we are solicited is often mistaken for something objective, for a state or some relative mental stillness that we can achieve through effort or practice. We seek this state as a kind of compensation for real stillness. The moment you're really solicited by the inner need and you face it and visit with it, you will be taken to it. But generally we are looking for compensation.

This process you're talking about is very different from the way we usually do things. Usually we have an idea in mind of where we are going and then we set out in a certain direction and use our will to get there.

But all doing has a certain motive. I think this motive is to be free – free from oneself, free from all conflict.

The motive is a good one then, the response is a little misguided.

When you become more and more acquainted with the art of observation, you'll first see that you do not observe; when you see that you don't observe, you are immediately out of the process. There is a moment, a kind of insight, when you see yourself free from all volition, free from all representation; you may feel yourself in this fullness, this moment beyond thought. It's mainly through observation and attention that you come to feel what you are fundamentally.

How would you describe liberation?

I’ll give you a short answer. It is being free from yourself, free from the image you believe yourself to be. That is liberation. It's quite an explosion to see that you are nothing, and then to live completely attuned to this nothingness. The body approach I teach is more or less a beautiful pretext, because in a certain way the body is like a musical instrument that you have to tune.

And we tune it to play on it the song of our own nothingness.

Exactly. Liberation means to live freely in the beauty of your absence. You see at one moment that there's nothing seen and no seer. Then you live it.

This is what you refer to as living free from psychological memory.

Absolutely.

Is it really possible to live in the world in this state of total openness and freedom from your own identity, doing the things we do – leading busy lives, taking care of family, etc.?

Yes. You can live in a family perfectly without the image of being a father or mother, lover or husband. You can perfectly educate your children not to be something, and have a love relationship with them as friend, rather than as a parent.

One teacher of vipassana meditation who is also a clinical psychologist has written, "You have to be somebody before you can be nobody," meaning that for many people, particularly now in the West, who have been brought up in dysfunctional families, there are very often such deep psychological problems, such a deep lack of self – esteem and such a conflicted or uncertain sense of who they are in an everyday way, that they must first develop psychological and emotional strength before they can embark on the path to becoming nobody. There are people who would hear you say that ultimately we have no identity, we are nothing, we live in this nothingness, and would turn around and say, "Oh, yes, I know that." What they are really talking about is their own inner emptiness, their own inner feeling of lack or deprivation, which is a kind of sickness. Do you agree that we have to be somebody before we can be nobody?

First you must see how you function. And you'll see that you function as somebody, as a person. You live constantly in choice. You live completely in the psychological structure of like and dislike, which brings you sorrow. We must see that. If you identify yourself with your personality, it means you identify yourself as your memory because personality is memory, what I call psychological memory. In this seeing, this natural giving up, the personality goes away. And when you live in this nothingness, something completely different emerges. Instead of seeing life in terms of the projections of your personality, things appear in your life as they are, as facts. And these appearings naturally bring their own solution. You are no longer identified with your personality, with psychological memory, though your functional memory remains. Instead, there is a cosmic personality, a trans – personality, that appears and disappears when you need it. You are nothing more than a channel, responding according to the situation.


Read introduction and download PDF HERE