art ruo-Hsin Wu
Q.I don't know why but I feel angry now.
Eric Baret : Yes, because you try to understand. The mind
cannot understand. The only thing we can do together
is to come to see what is not. Yes, is not. The mind
wants to choose, but then you come to see very clearly
at some point that something is stopping you. There is
no freedom, there is nothing pre-determined either,
they are both concepts of the mind. You cannot have
one concept without the other. So yes, you say : “see
that you have a story”, and yes you can say : “there
is no such thing as a story”, because there is no one
there to “have any story”. So what do you do with that?
If you follow the two lines of feeling very deeply
you come to a blank state and in this blank state
there is dissolution. And you see it is not the one,
nor the other. They are both concepts. But these
concepts have been recalled from memory. In time it
becomes evident that life is not a concept. That life
cannot be thought.
That's why you can never say : “I understand
something.” This realization will knowingly remain as
a constant background present before any upsurge of
understanding. All knowing is included in not knowing.
The moment you say " I know this " you exclude the
opposite. So of course you challenge the knowledge
later on and it is very upsetting to the mind. We
realize that wanting to understand was a need to grasp
what cannot be grasped. It goes against what we have
said that there is no sense in anything. You may hear
that and feel very happy. To make sense out of the
idea that there is no sense in anything gives you a
feeling of security. Then someone tells you : " Look
you are making sense out of it " and then the mind
becomes crazy because it sees that it cannot not make
sense out of it. Because when you understand that
there is no sense in anything, you are saying to
yourself : " that makes sense " . You are falling into
the trap. So you have to constantly observe yourself
because you constantly want to grasp what you cannot
grasp and for the mind of course it is very upsetting.
But it works. You must see the mechanism of
understanding there is nothing to understand. There is
nothing to understand, — you hear that and say :
“Yes, now I understand that” and again you fall into
the trap. So you must stop knowingly before
understanding. Jean talked of it as a double absence.
That there is an absence within the absence that is
contained in the presence. But that's on Jean Klein's
level. (We could approach it in a more simple way.)
Q : But Jean Klein used to say that it is good to find
the limits, to push the understanding of the mind to
the very limit.
E : Jean Klein was beyond anything one can comprehend.
So I cannot talk about it. For me the need to know the
limits of the mind is a very beautiful limited-mind
concept, because there is no such thing as a limit to
the mind. The mind is unlimited. Like if you say :
“You must come to feel the limits of your body. It is
unlimited. You can spend 60 million lives and still
every new day — every day you can feel more deeply and
every day you can think more deeply. The limit of the
mind on the body level is totally horizontal. Every
day you can be more certain. So what ? You are going
to die and could have been so much more certain. So
the problem is not to be really certain. It will
remain limited all your life. We must live with that.
Our mind, our body will stay gross all our life. But
you can see that and when I clearly see that whatever
conclusion I reach on the mental level will always be
gross, there is a space in me which resonates, in
which gross feeling and subtle feeling, high mind, low
mind come to be seen as exactly equal. And this space
is presence. And this space is something I can never
reach by making my body subtle or by thinking high
thoughts. This space is always with me when I do not
pretend that I need to make my body subtle or that I
need to my mind to think high thoughts.
I respect what Jean said when Jean was there to say
it. Coming from him, yes it was okay. But it is not
something I would extract from his teaching. Jean's
teaching was alive because of Jean. When Jean would
say something is beautiful, his presence brought it
alive. But now if one says : " Jean said that " , it is
like saying : " Ramana Maharishi said that " . It's
grotesque. Ramana Maharishi never said anything. The
words we have from him are an expression but they were
not his teaching. So I think it is very important we
do not extract words from a spiritual teaching because
spiritual teaching contains no words. We use words
sometimes to convey a spiritual teaching. But the
words of a teacher mean what they mean. So yes, what
he said is of course true but it was to be realized at
the time he said it. It was true then. At another time
he would say the opposite too. So then what was
happening ? He said this and he said that. He said
everything is conditioned and he said everything is
free. So read the two sentences, put them together and
it makes no sense to you. Nothing. So hearing one at
the right time will bring you to silence and then
hearing the opposite at the right time will also bring
you to silence. But now it remains only as a sentence,
and a sentence only brings you agitation. So when you
read Jean's book, if it brings you to silence you are
ready but if you remain in the argument read it again,
so that you come to forget the argument and only
experience silence. But it is important to see how
much we have this mechanism in us to want to grasp.
It's enough to just see it… constantly. And there is
nothing wrong with it ; we just knowingly experience
this grasping process. I feel it in my shoulders, in
my mouth, in my tongue, in my forehead, in the way I
walk, in the way I breathe, in the way I look, in the
way I listen, in the way I read, in the way I think,
in the way I act and constantly, knowingly, I live my
pretension without the pretension of being free from
pretension. Clearly. That's spiritual enquiry.
(Pause)
Some people find it difficult to leave after spending
time together : they feel that something is missing.
This is the ultimate feeling. Something is missing.
What is missing could never be present. Not on this
level. If we leave with the idea that “we have had a
very good talk, now I understand” then it was a waste
of time. We must leave with the feeling that we never
touched upon what was important. It can never be
touched upon, it can never be thought, it can never be
understood. So we leave with a very strange feeling
that of a space which we can not name, we can never
really feel in any way. What is there, is there, that
is all. The discussion, all the exercises were just a
moving, a breathing in that space. But it's very
uncomfortable. The ego needs to go to a seminar and
leave and say : “Now I know something : a new
exercise and I understood something.” Here it is the
opposite. We meet and we leave without understanding
anything, without becoming anything, without knowing
anything. It needs some kind of maturity to be able to
cope with it. And if somebody does not have this
maturity sometimes they get mad and go somewhere else
to become spiritual or to become something. But no we
did not talk about what is important. It is like when
we are in love with somebody, we never say what is
important. We talk about movies, we talk about
dancing, we talk about beauty but there is something
that we don't talk about and that is the course of our
relationship. And sometimes we leave the person that
we love and the mind may tell you “it's too bad, I did
not really express my feelings.” But it should be that
way. There is nothing to concretize. The beauty of
life, the beauty of a relationship is to never touch
upon what is important. It's an art, the art of not
giving substance, or reference points. That is what we
do in the bodywork. We come to the body feeling where
there is no inside, no outside. There is no substance.
This open state is the royal way to not creating an
imaginary world and a self.
Thanks to Roxane
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