Eric Baret - The function of seeking

Excerpt from Éric Baret — Science and Non Duality 2014 Interview

What is the function of seeking?

 Seeking is an expression of truth, it’s not a way. Abhinavagupta, in the Tantraloka, is very clear: all the yoga practices are an expression of truth. Yoga does not bring [us] to truth but truth expresses itself through yoga. So the way is an expression, sadhana is an expression. It is because you fore-feel, you fore-felt silent, silence that your life becomes sadhana. But to do sadhana to reach silence is the wrong way of thinking. The very fact that you look for something is a proof you already feel it, you already have it. The very fact you asked the question proves you know the answer — the answer is before the question. You only ask a question because you fore-feel the answer or else you cannot ask a question. So for a sadhana, when you look for God, this looking comes from God directly. It’s just an expression. But the looking does not bring you to what you look for. What you look for is behind you — the way you express yourself is the theme of the seeking, maybe at the beginning, but will end up being a celebration of what cannot be thought, what cannot be found. You are what needs to be found – you are not the finder of anything – the truth is in back of us, not in front of us. That’s why it can never be reached, it can never be understood, it can never be felt, it can never be sensed — because we are what needs to be sensed, felt and seen. We are not the seeker, we are what is sought. So, sadhana and seeking and expression provokes a direct transposition of the fore-feeling of truth, in the realm of spiritual dynamism.

Read the full  SAND 14 interview transcript

 HERE

 

Khalil Gibran - The madman

HOW I BECAME A MADMAN

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus:
One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep
and found all my masks were stolen
-- the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives
-- I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “

Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.” 
Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me. 
And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried,
“He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him;
the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time.
For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face
and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more.
And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.” 
Thus I became a madman. 
And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness;
the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood,
for those who understand us enslave something in us. 
But let me not be too proud of my safety.
Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief. 

read more:

THE MADMAN 

 

Rumi - Silence

A man once asked Rumi: “Why is it you talk
so much about silence?”

 and he replied: 

“The radiant one
inside me has never said a word."