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THE
KNEE OF LISTENING

The Life and
Understanding
of
Franklin Jones
Copyright 1971 By Franklin Jones
All rights reserved
Chapter 20: The Wisdom of
Understanding
The following is a collection of
essays and brief observations, all of which have been
written since September, 1970 and the summary events I have
described in my autobiography. They are the product of a
daily unfolding in consciousness of the wisdom of
understanding. They are written from the point of view of
radical knowledge, radical understanding. Thus, they amount
to a description of real life as opposed to the life of
seeking in all its forms.
This is the intelligence that
exceeds and is free of the great search. It is the knowledge
available to us in real consciousness. As these essays
developed over time, the writing expressed this radical
understanding in relation to many different levels of
experience. The constant point of view is understanding and
radical consciousness, but the form and matter of the
expression is continually modified by different levels of
perception.
Thus, these writings pass between
different degrees and levels of dilemma, different chakras
or levels of being, different questions and
self-perceptions, and different dimensions in which life
identifies itself as physical, vital, emotional, psychic,
mental, spiritual, and unqualifiedly real. The wisdom of
understanding is never exhausted, but it is always already
complete. Its goal is not reality. Its conscious foundation
is reality. And thus the wisdom of understanding is as
endless as the permutations of experience.
These writings, therefore, do not
encompass the totality of the wisdom of understanding. But I
have hoped to make them extensive and as comprehensive as
possible, to the degree that understanding itself, which is
the foundation of it all, right find a radical
communication. Therefore, read theme: for the sake of
understanding, and you will know the wisdom of it.
"Yoga is the restraining of the
mind-stuff from taking various forms." This statement, by
which Patanjali defines the basic purpose and effect of
yoga, the science or technique of self-realization, is the
core of all spiritual practice and experience. Those who
have deeply felt the control which mental tendencies and the
whole system of desires that commands repetition of
experiences of all kinds exercise over life have also sought
to control this mechanism and realize themselves apart from
identification with the mind.
However, that which is most
desirable from this point of view is also most destructive
when pursued with revolutionary intensity. Salvation or
liberation may in fact be that which is experienced and
enjoyed when the mind is no longer in control over conscious
life, but to seek to control the mind, to prevent its
modifications in order to know that which is not mind or
which is prior to the mind is a false activity, a reaction,
a manifestation of the problem itself. Thus, those who
pursue this goal, consciously or unconsciously, by virtue of
the various spiritual and religious means take a negative
position in relation to the mind. They abstract
consciousness from mind and pursue a path of effort,
control, emptying, resistance and self-abstraction that only
brings them to various experiences and degrees of passivity
or emptiness. The willful control or abstraction of the mind
is a pursuit artificially created by the situation of mental
bondage. And those who thus resist, dissolve, abuse, calm
and otherwise manipulate the mind in order to achieve a pure
state prior to the mind are merely making assumptions based
on the analysis of what was originally only an artificial,
unreal state. Thus, the path of religious and spiritual life
is very difficult, an up and down battle with our own
desires,our own self-imagery. Such efforts are desperate and
lifelong games of power with life-forces that act like steam
under pressure.
It is my experience and contention
that both the indulgence of experience through desire and
its control and prevention via the effects of religion and
spiritual techniques are poles of a single problem, the
life-problem or doublebind of desire and freedom. The
libertine and the saint are children of the same dilemma.
The counter-efforts of religion and spirituality are
ultimately as uncreative as the radical exercise of desire
which the libertine evolves. At best they possess only a
temporary and remedial value. What is necessary for life is
neither its exploitation nor its absolute transcendence, but
a creative realization. Everything else is an abandonment of
life by an exclusive emphasis, either of desire or its
opposite, which is only another form of desire. And the
average life is only a confused mixture of the two
efforts.
Creative life is in life itself. It
is not warfare, since it does not assume the concept or
experience of dilemma to be its real and primary datum.
Thus, I have stressed that understanding is the key to real
life, creative life, and not any sort of willful intention
in reaction to life. As long as some form of the idea of
separation, the dilemma, remains the primary recognition we
will be moved to exclusive effort, belief and association
with the contraries to our sins.
Only reality itself is the ground
of creative life, and reality is the heart of real
understanding. To understand is to be freely in life,
already free of the dilemma which is the ground of religion
and technique.
To oppose the mind, even
intelligently, as done by the yogis, is to assume a non-mind
or transcendent self-nature as the goal. But, apart from
understanding or realization, that goal is unreal. It is
merely supposed in reaction to mind considered as false. The
"Self" of yoga is an uncreative state prior to life. This is
not to say that the great yogis do not enjoy what is real.
It is that their path, which they recommend to those who are
suffering, is as unreal as their original dilemma, and it
implies an activity and a goal that does not take its stand
radically in life.
At any moment, I am the form of my
mind. I resist identifying with the activity of my desires
only when I am acutely aware of a dilemma, an effect of
self-exploitation which I can no longer wholly avow and
accept. Only then do I begin to assume a self-concept that
is apart from mind.
But I am still entertaining a
self-image. Whereas before I identified with my desires, now
I identify with a non-desire state, the one who witnesses
desire. Thus, even the "Self" of yoga or the "spirit" of
religion is a mere self-image, a function of the mind.
Knowing this, I can understand the futility and falseness of
my spiritual position, just as before I recognized the
necessary suffering involved in the exploitation of desire,
the forceful repetition of experience.
There is, then, no real alternative
to "mind" or life. Only a creative, continually real and
free realization is true. And it cannot involve mental
control as its basic, central motivation, nor the idea of
dilemma or separateness that provokes it.
The real, creative life is founded
in such understanding. It no longer separates itself from
mind or experience, nor does it identify itself with a
present desire or complex life as a necessary
function.
The life of understanding first of
all sees the effort and idea of separation to be unreal. It
recognizes radical relationship to be real. This is the
ground of real intelligence. And this understanding, which
is no longer apart from relationship, is thus already real,
already grounded in reality or life. Reality is its core,
its motivation.
Thus, reality itself, not
counter-effort and the idea of separation, is the source of
creative life. Reality itself exercises natural, creative
control over experience and accumulated desire. It is not
exclusive or separative but always already free and present,
not resistive and passing into elsewhere.
There is no real exhaustion, no
real enervation. The energy of life is not ours. Its source
is universal. Creative life takes advantage of the physics
of reality, of universal life. This is our only refuge. When
we abide radically in reality, in understanding, we no
longer pursue the exhaustive route of desire or the counter,
uncreative effort of absolute transformation and
transcendence. We are already real. Thus, understanding
alone is the ground of true creative life in the face of any
consequence, any effect, any change, any death.
I assert this in opposition to all
religion, all spirituality. Reality as a radical perception
is prior to all dilemmas, concepts, paths and techniques.
Reality alone is the source of creative, personal existence,
even as it is already the source of all present things. All
other paths are the refusal of reality, the refusal of
relationship, the abandonment of life. The libertine and the
liberated saint are fixed in a motionless effect of
unreality, an exploitation of-the contrary. At least this is
how their image functions in the mind of a seeker who
beholds them. We are already in that which we must realize.
And true realization is not apart from life itself, the
context of energy and activity.
Creative life is active,
functional, relational. Its constant, radical premise is
that which always already is. And that reality is not an
object, a goal or a dilemma but an uncontradicted nature
known only to radical understanding.
Creative life is not a way out but
is always already free of the dilemma. Thus, it is in life,
actively realizing or bringing forth the form of life. And
reality is a form, not an object or goal. When the dilemma
is understood, the separative movement dissolves. Then also
the "objects" which were before pursued as "reality," that
is, the "Self" or "heaven" or etc., are perceived as unreal,
a revolutionary reaction. Instead reality is known as a
present form which includes all of the functions of self or
mind, etc. All things are in this form and creative as it.
It is the free play of creative energy itself on all the
mutual levels of existence. The form is unqualified
relationship. Not the object of relationship perceived by
the functional "I," but the "I" and its objects, the mutual
form. That is reality. Thus, neither the "I" nor its objects
are exclusively reality. And realization is not a radical
activity of self in relation to experience. It is not to be
the "Self" or some divine quantity over against the present
experience. It is to be no longer confused by an exclusive
assertion of the absoluteness of self or of experience.
Thus, the libertine asserts the necessity of his objects via
his desires. And the saint asserts the necessity of his true
"self" apart from his desires. But in truth the form of
reality itself is the only reality, and within it self and
object are functions that have no absolute, separate
value.
It should be clear, then, that
realization is a present, ongoing activity. It is not a once
and for all exclusive state. It is simply real, creative
life that has not abandoned or identified with any absolute
function. Reality is fully capable of life. The indication
of this is the fact of existence, the universe or world
itself. Creativity is the real fact. The indication of this
is the multiplication of existences. The real standpoint of
free life, then, is life itself realize in understanding.
And thus we will not be moved toward apparent exhaustion or
transcendence, both of which are only possible and apparent
effects of certain kinds of exclusive exploitation. The
truth of life is not in these polar possibilities or any
possibility but life itself in its real form.
To this end, this present
recognition, which rests on no accumulation of experience,
holy or unholy, we must resort to understanding.
Understanding is a creative activity that must be realized
now and moment to moment in relationship. It is not to be
identified with any state or any degree of accumulated
purity. Real consciousness, the free and realized state, is
just understanding, which is itself no longer reparative but
in reality. It already enjoys the form of reality.
Understanding is just this primary knowledge, this creative,
free viewpoint. Out of this you may create conditions that
are apparently more enjoyable or beautiful or whatever than
your present ones. But you will not have become more real,
more free or more liberated than in any moment of
understanding.
To grasp this and to exercise the
creative play it makes possible is the core and substance of
real life. And it has nothing at last to do with religion
and spirituality. All religions and all paths may at last be
the same, as the great prophets have argued, but real life
is distinctly free of all of them, all their gods and goals
and states. Just as the Zen masters burned the wooden images
of the Buddha for heat, the real man will abandon all his
religion and spirituality in the fire of real energy, the
creative force of life.
And do not think that I am
suggesting "understanding" to be a kind of sudden
enlightenment in the Zen sense. It is free of such required
perceptions, such "experiences." There is nothing peculiar
about real consciousness. not a perception of self or world
or any object, but it is the free creative viewpoint.
Reality is what is, not what is known, acquired, attained or
distinguished. This is real life, even in death, for there
is no opposition to creativity anywhere, except it seems to
be where there is no primary understanding.
Experience is void. It is without
form,. without qualification, without limitation or center.
Memory is form, qualification, limitation, and the
implication of subject or person. The infinite, the true,
the unqualified, the real is always already known, but there
is a functional confusion imposed by the memory of
experience as images, sensations, reactions, feelings, etc.
with boundaries, and a center. Memory is itself a symbol of
reality with the real force of life hidden in the mystery of
its form.
Thus, various teachings prescribe a
path whereby the mind is emptied, suppressed, controlled,
unburdened, etc. But such a path is endless, never finally
epitomized or exhausted. To follow it is to be involved in
warfare based on the assumption of mystery, limitation and
exclusive personality. All paths are means of interpreting
the symbol which is the functional mind or memory with all
its forms and planes. Thus, the phenomena of all paths are
manifestations of the formal mind. By these means reality
itself is always not yet, always the goal of striving. And
thus it appears symbolically and experientially as an
exclusive peace whose very formlessness is itself a
mysterious symbol. But I assert that reality is not properly
the goal of striving but the source and foundation and
motivation of real creative life. Thus, I abandon all paths,
all mental techniques, all religions and spiritual
fascinations. I adhere radically to the form of reality. By
this understanding, the whole effort and strife of warfare
with limited formal awareness is overcome. The dilemma is
dissolved by prior truth.
There is great discussion among
spiritual seekers about whether God or reality is with or
without form. The final word appears to be that both notions
are true, manifestations of different levels of conscious
awareness. But these controversies are founded in the
functional mind. As if we ever experienced real limitation
even in the perception of the world! The limitation known as
"form" is merely a mental symbolization which prevents
direct awareness. But in fact even the world, the source of
forms, is void, unqualified, implying no separate self or
object. In reality form is inclusive and thus unqualified.
But in memory form is exclusive, limited, implying subject
and object in opposition. Clearly then, all methods of
overcoming the mind and its effects are an endless,
self-creative dilemma. Paths are already bound to their
illusions. There is no realization apart from understanding,
from radical adherence to the form of reality. Radical
understanding is the only real and true life. And to it
consciousness is always already free, unqualified and
present. It is natural and simple, the-foundation of
creative existence moment to moment rather than an
abstracted, symbolic state that is always prior to mind and
thus prior to experience. Real consciousness is experience
and thus prior to but not different from the
mind.
Traditional teaching recommends
either attachment to God or attention to Self-knowledge.
Thus, consciousness is made attentive to the exclusive forms
of primary object or subject. By a process of understanding
I seek to obviate such motives. By virtue of understanding
it becomes clear that reality is not exclusively enclosed or
epitomized in any object or subject but is always and only
manifesting as their inclusive form. Thus, rather than
concentration in any exclusive form, I affirm understanding
as not separate from reality. Understanding asserts no
exclusive awareness or concentration. It is unqualified,
direct, void, in which objects do not "stand out" to
consciousness, nor do they imply a separated
subject.
Life that is real, founded in
understanding, bears no peculiar state, no special abilities
or visionary capabilities that are necessarily coincident
with and the result of such understanding. It is simply
creative life without fear or answer or question, but direct
and unqualified.
Religion and spirituality are a
call to the "Witness" that is the source, the reality and
the truth. The "Witness" is the "God" of religion and the
"Self" of spiritual philosophy.
But the call to the Witness is made
by men, or by a state of knowledge that has adapted to the
form of ordinary humanity. The call is always made to those
who suffer, who do not know. Thus the call is a cure for
ignorance and misdirection. The call and the dilemma are
inseparable, and, just so, the call and the dilemma are the
structure wherein the Witness is intuited and
pursued.
In fact there is no Witness. Even
the "I" and "me," "you," "it," even the "Thou" have no
exclusive reality. All of these are functions, moments
within a great process. And only that process itself, as a
whole, is reality. There is no stability, no sufficiency, no
epitome in the unique form of anything. Every manifestation
is a moment inseparable from the force and consciousness of
the whole.
When understanding replaces the
dilemma in the heart of life, then there is no longer any
possible attraction to the call to the Witness. That call is
seen to be an extension of the dilemma and not a function of
reality. Real understanding is an unmoved sublimity since it
is no longer separate from the whole or separate from
anything. And this non-separation is a matter of
consciousness, of depth, not of vision or thought. Thus, it
is not "satori" or some developed and psychic state. Nor is
it a matter of feeling the same as, equal to what one
perceives, etc. It is a creative state in which the dilemma,
the motivating idea of separation has been eliminated. That
is it entirely.
To such understanding, such
unqualified real life, there is no recourse, no resort, no
liberation, no Witness. There is no exclusive alternative to
life or consciousness or relationship itself. There is
simply the removal of the dilemma through understanding, and
with it goes all fascination, all exclusive motivation, all
identification with what is separate and supported only by
its limited capsule of energy. Reality or understanding
knows there is no Witness, no other, no self, no limited and
separate identity. Indeed, the state of Witness is the
dilemma. In reality there is the process itself, and I am
never at any moment different from the manifestation itself.
There is no prior consciousness, no spirit, no Self, no God.
All distinctions are communications in dilemma. And the
truth is not that there are no functional operative and
relational distinctions or roles, etc., but that the force
of conscious and creative life that always, already exists
does not identify with them. Conscious life is free of the
identification with contradiction or separation.
From the viewpoint of real
understanding all things can be described quite differently
than from past fixations in dilemma and the great search.
There is no entity anywhere and no Witness, great or small,
to any entity. There is no God, no Self, no Universe, but
only reality, the unqualified bliss of creative presence. To
give it a name prior to understanding, or to pursue it as a
goal is to abandon it entirely. That which is the Witness is
true, but that which is pursued as the "Witness" is death
itself.
The avoidance of relationship is
the key process in consciousness. It is the root cause of
all suffering, ignorance and misadventure. Relationship or
union is not, however, the truth over against the pattern of
avoidance. Indeed, the sense of relationship as "me" or "I"
over against it, that, It, That, and all the objective
references, including the references to the primary other,
such as You, He and Thou, is the most fundamental effect and
creation of the activity of avoidance.
The primary activity of avoidance
of relationship is the root source of the implication of
self and object. It is the means whereby this perception is
created and enforced. When crucial insight is regained
through enquiry, the creative work of understanding, it
becomes clear how the entire enterprise of ordinary
consciousness, even in its most evolved forms, is a trap, an
exclusive double-bind wherein life becomes interiorized
within an artificial perception and activity. It is not
that, properly reformed and controlled, the usual form of
conscious life attains to the highest. This is not so
because the most primary, indeed, primitive activity of the
usual life is avidly at work manufacturing a form of
perception that is its very bondage. The one who would
reform himself is already the one who is creating the
dilemma.
The avoidance of relationship,
whatever its causes in a real cosmology, history or physics,
is what men ordinarily consider to be-perception. The
activity of perceiving something, anything, by any means,
whether via sense experience, memory, or other mental
process is the very activity that creates the primary form
wherein we cause our suffering.
Until the avoidance of relationship
has been fully comprehended in the direct process of
understanding, there is no activity, no experience, no
moment in time or space wherein we do not manufacture the
causes and effects of bondage and falsity. The avoidance of
relationship creates by implication the sense of "I" as the
limited capsule of life and the recognition of "other" as
the universe or force wherein the self is contained,
confronted, surrounded, manipulated and trapped.
Our most prior situation is one
without qualification. It is creative, whole, full,
undaunted, without center or bounds. However, without
perfect understanding, this is merely an idea, a symbol.
Indeed, the idea of "God" or "Self" or "Brahman," etc., is a
reflection in the mind of this prior reality. But the paths
of religion and spirituality point to such objects or goals
without emphasizing the necessity of prior understanding for
the actual attainment. Instead, they take the absence of
understanding, which is a combination of faith or aspiration
and ignorance or "sin," etc., as. the primitive data wherein
the path is created. Thus life becomes means and effort
toward salvation or liberation. It becomes a kind of
counter-effort or deconditioning, wherein life effects are
removed by a kind of piecework process. And the individual
is called to value and seek the event of his deconditioning,
the moment of emptiness and stability.
In the ways of the East this
emptiness, the removal of all effects, the pure Self, is
valued as the primary state. In the West, the tendency is to
value a point in time wherein a certain relationship will be
epitomized, and all effects will be within the creative
province of the unqualified God. But nowhere, East or West,
is it taught that all such paths and their goals are
extensions of the very activity that is itself the dilemma.
If it were taught, there would be no paths, no goals, no
religions and no spiritual phenomenology.
Thus, to make real life possible,
we must begin with understanding, not with a description of
the goal, the opposite of suffering, not with a description
of the path, the way out of suffering, not with a cosmology,
which can only be true and real if produced and' received in
perfect understanding, and not with any analysis of the
human mechanism, which, apart from perfect understanding,
cannot be truly known but always remains confused with the
dilemma itself.
Prior to understanding there is no
value whatsoever in talking about "God," or "Self," the way
and its means, the structure and phenomena of the original
universe, or the instrumental entity who is related to all
of these. These are fruitless notions since, prior to
understanding, they are merely extensions of the form of the
dilemma, and, when understanding is attained, these fall
away and dissolve in the humor of reality. Thus, it is
necessary to understand. And understanding is a matter of
observing experience and the patterns of our
lives.
I will try to state it plainly,
from my own experience. When the pattern and contents,
mentality and moment to moment activity of our lives is
observed, it becomes clear that the primary symptom of all
suffering is separation, being separate, limited, a
self-exhausting capsule of potential energy, and an activity
operating to effect such a state. All suffering is an
effected enclosure, emptiness, unconsciousness and death.
And, over against this, the suffering individual perceives
the universe in mystery, as a vast container of living
potentiality and desirable force whose essential objectivity
prevents both union and the manifestation of its essential
nature.
Suffering is separation and
separativeness. And suffering is the primary fact for
individual life. The problem of life for all men is how to
realize life under the conditions of suffering,. How to
remain active, creative, relatively and at least temporarily
fearless, optimistic and effective? The problem of life is
the problem of humor and creativity.
And the way of life, whether in the
case of the ordinary man in his medium solution, or in the
case of the great seeker, is all of the intentional means of
surmounting, overcoming, transcending and perhaps finally
reversing the milieu of life as suffering. Death is the
primary symbol encountered in all of the Quests of
humanity.
But understanding includes more
than this recognition of suffering. For it becomes clear
that all our events manifest not merely the element of
separation, but that all of our activities, down to the most
primitive mechanics of consciousness, are in fact a
deliberate creation of separation or suffering
itself.
This is where understanding
abandons the path of the great solutions. For suffering in
this sense has been recognized by all of the great teachings
in the world. But, in the past, suffering itself, described
in the cosmologies of Buddhism and Vedanta, or in the
symbols of Judeo-Christian history, has been conceived
objectively, reduced to experience itself. Thus, the great
paths have directed men to a solution to suffering, which is
the whole apparatus of liberation or salvation, including
its cosmology, its philosophy or theology, its means and
techniques, its goals and its significant
phenomena.
But understanding does not root
itself in the primacy of suffering or sin. It does not
identify suffering with any irreducible necessity. It simply
observes the content of experience with radical adherence,
and does not react with any of the provisional assertions
that characterize the great search.
Thus, understanding moves into the
cognition of suffering itself. And it becomes clear that
separation is a primary activity in consciousness that not
only controls perception and activity but creates them. When
such understanding arises, then suffering is viewed in an
entirely new way. Its importance ceases to be in terms of
that from which
it separates, whether such is
called God or universe or reality, etc. And it also ceases
to be in terms of that which it separates, whether such is
called soul or self or ego, etc. Rather, the importance of
suffering is realized to be in terms of the activity of
separation itself.
This is of utmost importance. All
of the great paths, which are reactions to suffering
conceived as primary and irreducible, concern themselves
with the phenomena and results of-suffering. That is, they
evolve the pattern of their activities out of the primary
assertion of that from which separation takes place, be it
"God," "Self," "Brahman" or etc., and that which is
separated, be it the "soul," or "self," or "ego," or etc.,
and the process of finally overcoming this asserted dilemma
is one in which that which is separated moves by various
efforts within and without itself to an ever more inclusive
union or identity with that from which it is
separated.
But, in contrast to all of the
revolutionary paths of mankind, real understanding is a
radical, unqualified process that makes no resorts beyond
itself. Thus, it does not react to the preliminary and
formal recognition of its own analysis. Understanding is not
a temporary activity that must be abandoned as soon as the
implications of its own discoveries become forceful.
Understanding is a radical activity, identical to reality,
that admits no alternatives or resorts. This is clearly so,
because understanding is equally able to contemplate even
its own arguments, and the processes of great seeking are as
impotent before it as the middling confusion which we first
encounter in the process of self-knowledge.
Thus, there is no force prior to
understanding. All that is encountered in the phenomena of
life and consciousness is its proper field. Therefore, once
it has known the evidence of suffering, and then also known
the falsity of the alternatives, the paths out of the
suffering, understanding still continues.
And what has been realized to this
point? First, that separation or suffering is primary to the
whole of life experience. And, second, that the alternative
or counter response to suffering is simply that, a
counter-effort, and thus false because it is founded in and
inseparable from the continuous creation of
suffering.
This is the most intense and
crucial moment in understanding, for it is at this point
that all, indeed all of the usual and even extraordinary
activities that have been adapted to life have become
unnecessary and, at last, impossible. At this point,
conscious life becomes truly radical understanding, and it
begins to evolve on a totally new basis. It is at this point
that understanding begins to take on an intentional force.
It is at this point that the form of enquiry I have
described becomes the primary activity of conscious
life.
Understanding has now come to
recognize the fact and activity of our dilemma. And it has
seen and radically abandoned the alternative means with all
of its categories, entities and phenomena. A life in this
condition can no longer abandon itself unconsciously,
without understanding, to the patterns of self-indulgence
and avoidance that characterize ordinary life. Neither can
it adapt itself to any means or consolation whereby these
patterns and their results are weakened, dissolved or
transcended. Such a life cannot identify itself in any of
the phenomena of sin or sainthood.
Yet it is not in a double-bind,
unable to move. Indeed, it recognizes that sin and sainthood
are in fact the manifestations of the double-bind which
reflects our dilemma. Now understanding begins to enjoy its
essential and radical freedom. And it begins to act on the
basis of its own realization.
Thus enquiry begins with intensity.
Enquiry is not a method, a technique to which understanding
adapts itself. It is the process of understanding itself,
evolved out of the intuition of its own force and form.
Enquiry is founded in the perception of reality, not the
phenomena of suffering. For understanding has at this point
recognized the process of avoidance to be the primary
activity of consciousness and the root of suffering. Thus,
enquiry is simply the further investigation of life, the
real observation of life. It is not adapted in order to
pursue a certain deliberate goal, form, or solution. It is a
radical activity, that is, not a resort, a recourse, a
counter or preventive technique. It is an activity that
knows no recourse, that has no possible resorts. It is the
manifestation of understanding, which knows nothing in life
apart from its own discovery, which is the content of life
itself.
Thus, understanding continues as
enquiry. The approach to life becomes radical, intense,
unqualified. And life becomes naturally, by virtue of its
intensity, its unqualified, living force, controlled,
centered, direct, and creatively simple. And the enquiry is
simply questioning in the depth of our living form:
"Avoiding relationship?" And at each moment of enquiry the
knot of life dissolves and the fixation and solidity of
energy at every focal point of our living being falls out
into an infinite perimeter, so that we begin to experience
ourselves as an unqualified form.
The enquiry continues moment to
moment, in the arbitrary mental and personal events of daily
life and in the periods of formal exercise that are real
meditation. Until the form of life that formerly was
suffering, analyzed as ignorance, soul-adventure, sin,
flight from God, and all the rest has been epitomized and
replaced by unqualified understanding, the enjoyment which
is reality itself.
Experiencing, or reacting to
phenomena, and seeking are the only two things being done.
The differences between individual lives are created by the
degree to which either experiencing or seeking is the
primary effort in distinction from the other. The libertine
is the primary evolution of the way of experience, and the
saint is the primary evolution of the way of seeking. The
ordinary man, who neither experiences nor seeks in an
intense, exclusive manner is merely confused, unreal,
mediocre and finally baffled. The libertine and the saint
are merely unreal.
My life has been an exploitation of
these ways. I have known the extreme enjoyment of the
libertine and the saint. And I have known the most ordinary,
medium life. But there is also understanding, which is
reality, and by it I recognize every form of
suffering.
In this book I have had to confront
a most difficult means of instruction. I have had to
demonstrate my way of life in order to assert the
objectivity of phenomena which neither I nor any man
ordinarily would support. But, in the end, I have had to
argue against the very things I have proven in my life, in
order to speak the truth.
My own path began in despair. The
precious religion of my youth was stolen from me by the very
ones who gave it to me. Thus, I was moved to search the
paths of religion and spirituality in order to ascertain
whether the phenomena, the miracles, the experiences and
advocations of the great paths were factual. And I found
them to be so. What is called Kundalini Shakti, the
universal conscious force that inspires and fills all
religion and yoga and spiritual philosophy is an objective
reality. Those experiences are factual and depend on no
illusions in the sense of such subjective forces as belief
to create or maintain them. The Kundalini or mother-Force is
part of the evidence universe, as objective as any form of
energy, and as external to us as the functional phenomena
employed by libertines and businessmen. But, in the end, I
was forced to abandon all of the sublimity. The phenomena
called "spiritual" as well as those called "sinful" are all
part of a spectrum which includes the whole range of
experience and seeking. Reality itself is the only matter
that makes a difference in the adventure of life, and it
stands critically above all our efforts and all our
discoveries.
Both the search for spiritual
realization and the exploitation of life on a sensual level
are traps. The search for experience as well as the search
for liberation from the bondage to experience is all the
same activity, born out of the absence of understanding, the
uncreative movement that is not reality.
I have written this in the form of
autobiography because my own life is perhaps the best
instruction I can offer. The mere assertion of understanding
is not sufficient to create understanding in the hearer. The
hearer must be allowed a creative recognition. Otherwise the
symbols wherein his life is trapped will not dissolve.
Therefore, I have displayed my life as much as I have had
patience and perspective to illustrate it. I hope it has
been fruitful for you. But know this. I do not stand for
spiritual efforts of any kind. Nor on some middle ground
between excess and effort. There is no virtue in the endless
reaction to life, nor in the exclusive enjoyment of any
effect. Only understanding, only reality itself is the truth
of all events. Therefore, understand. Abide in understanding
as radical truth, and then never again become enamored and
fascinated by any way at all. Then you will abandon the
symbols of the way as freely as a child his toys. To the man
who understands there is no exclusive power in any of the
ultimates of life, and he will maintain his radical humor
and freedom in the face of divine beings as well as the most
disgusting elements of ordinary life
To this there is no way at all. It
is not an attainment but a natural activity. It is creative
life, perfected by no exercise, dependent on no experience,
no circumstance, no force or presence. It is our only and
present capability, wherein we live not as little capsules
of life seeking union with what is outside or true, but as
already free, including all things in the force of our
being, already unlimited by any distractions, entities or
functions. We are already real, and reality is
understanding.
Anything that I can experience as
an object, any distinct entity or force at all is not
outside or apart from me. To think so is to believe the
primary implication of that experience, which is that there
is "me" limited by "that." And thus I am already involved in
a dilemma wherein I can only communicate with "that" through
efforts of desire, union and transcendence. But objective
experience is itself the activity of unreality. It is the
process of the avoidance of relationship. Wherever I
experience in this way I am primarily, in the deepest level
of conscious life, acting to avoid relationship, enforcing
the implied dilemma of "me" and "that." But understanding,
which is direct enquiry into the process of the avoidance of
relationship, is already free of this entire dilemma. And it
already enjoys what is not this dilemma. It is the enjoyment
which is reality itself, that which already is, prior to the
dilemma and the implications of the form of experience. And
that enjoyment sees no "me" and no "that." It is not forced
to assume the interior position implied by the external
fact. Therefore, it does not move from the center outward
into the universe of things that is separate from itself. It
is already apart from "me" and "that." It intuitively knows
the universal life.
This was the meaning of my first
great experience at the Ashram. The "me" was removed in the
instant of awareness that "me" was only an artificial entity
and activity motivated in fear and separation to find a
stable form of existence. But in that instant of vision the
point of reference was dissolved, and I saw that I was not
an entity that needed to struggle to survive, but there was
only a process being lived. I was not in that process or
identifiable with it. The game and the pilgrimage were over.
The very thing that had motivated me to India and which
still trapped me there for another two years was disappeared
in the sudden awareness of reality. In that moment, and now
continually in the instant activity of understanding, there
is only reality. There is no implication of me or anything
outside me, no dilemma, no trap, no path, no remedial
action, no search, no fascination, and no exclusive
motivation. There is this constant awareness of the absence
of bounds and centers. It is not that I have become God or
one with some Spirit that acts on many planes of created
life. Even these are fragments of the ideas of separation.
The universal entity is only another center, another
exclusive and bounded force that acts on what is outside it.
It is simply that there is no center, no entity, no bounds,
no dilemma. There is only this tacit understanding,
creatively enacted moment to moment, in which there is no
experienced self or other but only unqualified and joyful
freedom even in the midst of life. On such grounds I deny
the value of all paths, all experiences, all resorts, not
only for my own apparent life but for all men. Therefore, I
teach no paths, I point to no entity, no resort, no means at
all. After abandoning all such things from our interest, I
assert only present understanding as radical
Truth.
And I invite anyone who is
motivated to any ends, be they in the direction of ordinary,
habitual desires, or in the form of spiritual practice, even
where such desires and practices have become fruitful with
all the evidence of enjoyment, ease or great powers and
visions, to approach all of this with understanding, with
the enquiry: "Avoiding relationship?" If they will only do
this, their entire adventure will reveal its hidden form,
the tiny interior tension that supports it all will easily
unloose, and all the parts of conscious life will fall away.
The center will dissolve and the barriers that enforced
distinctions will dissolve. What remains is reality,
unqualified, unsupported. And that truth carries not the
slightest implication of our ordinary path. Then there is
the event of real life, where all the puny nonsense and
trouble is forever gone.
Self indulgence is the avoidance of
relationship. It is a form of seeking, and it fixes us in
unreality. Its product is the apparent loss of health, of
well-being and energy. And the consciousness it formulates
is separative, divided, obsessed, confused and partial,
walled in mystery and compulsive mentality. But the opposite
is its like.
The effort of deconditioning, of
purification and deliverance apart from or prior to
understanding is also estrangement, search and a fixation in
unreality. Apart from radical understanding there is only
these things, all of the manufacturing of experience and
seeking. But where there is radical understanding there is
none of this. There is peace, joy, truth, reality, love,
creativity, enjoyment, knowledge, clarity, intelligence,
wisdom, freedom, power, sensitivity, ability and every other
kind of effortless virtue. But there is only understanding.
Apart from understanding, even these are the avoidance of
relationship, the illusory powers of suffering.
Reality is present bliss. Reality
is my motive, and the sole cause of my insistence that all
paths, techniques matters of ultimate progress and evolution
toward the true are in fact unreal and unnecessary. All of
them are the avoidance of reality, and reality is the form
of relationship. Above all, they are the avoidance and
destruction (in experience) of present bliss, the already
real, free and full.
Enquiry or understanding is
knowledge in its fullest sense, prior to mind, emotion,
vital and physical existence. Thus, it also realizes the
control and creative fulfilment of these in the form of
reality. In the East it has been said that "sadhana" or
spiritual practice can be based in any one of several of the
levels of our being. Thus, there are the separate but
eventually inclusive paths of knowledge, devotion, selfless
action and physical discipline.
But all of these are already
included in the form of enquiry or understanding. And that
inclusiveness is not "synthetic," a complex activity in the
manner of such as Sri Aurobindo. It is a prior
inclusiveness, a singular form of attention and realization
that bears effects in every level of being without requiring
any separate attention to their forms. Understanding is a
most prior activity of reality itself and not of the
separated entity in his forms. Thus, its creative effects
are also universal. Thus also, the qualities of reality,
which are unqualified bliss and conscious being, are not the
goals of understanding or reality but its present nature.
There are some for whom liberation
is their freedom. Therefore, they are all the time away,
concentrated in those processes which remove the obstacles.
There are some for whom salvation is their freedom.
Therefore, they are all the time apart, concentrated in that
relationship which undermines all harm. But there are also
some for whom their freedom is that which they already are.
Therefore, they are always already here, whose presence is
love.
It tends to be the case that the
thing men affirm themselves to be is different from that
which they are actively being. Therefore, the business and
creative activity of life is the activity of knowing about
what we are being. This rather than any search toward or
affirmation of what we otherwise and ultimately may or must
be. Thus, it is to live already free, radically related,
unqualifiedly alive, without boundaries or center but only
situations or forms, only manifesting, which is unqualified
energy in relationship, which is love.
The mood of the great search is a
concern for lawfulness, what already is, apart from our
presence and activity. It is either a grim or comic
self-manipulation. The mood of reality is an unqualified
consciousness, which is present, creative, expansive
activity without prior necessity of an ultimate kind. It is
always the form of humor.
The attitude which is the great
search is created by a most prior error, the failure to be
already real. Thus, it misinterprets all forms and processes
through the superimposition of its primary symbol or
mentality. The true life is not a matter of overcoming the
obstacles which are these misinterpretations identified with
forms and processes in life. It is rather to have already
understood, and thus to be free of the prior error, the
symbol or mentality which is unreality and the source of
motivation to the search.
When I have lost real
consciousness, then I am stuck with manifest existence and
the great search, which is merely an extension of the
phenomenon of joining or contact. Thus, I become aware of a
revolutionary milieu of dichotomies and alternatives, in
which my first decision is always whether to pursue the
source of lawfulness or to exploit its form. That is, I must
decide whether to be grim or comic, to become disciplined
and limited to the point of regaining reality, or to exploit
the forms of life for the sake of enjoyment, as if there
were no necessity.
Thus, for example, the unreal,
typical man is constantly deciding about food and sex. He
either tries to control it or he exploits it, and the
average life is an alternating cycle, fitted with the
traditional psychology, wherein one or the other emphasis is
temporarily but not radically applied.
For myself, I know that whenever I
feel involved in such necessary decisions, and life has
become a matter of problems and dichotomies, I have already
lost the form of reality. Therefore, I invest no life at all
in such problematic decisions, which obviously have no
ultimate necessity or truth, whichever form of the decision
is made. I always and only am devoted to understanding, to
the present form of reality, which is real enquiry.
Just as the paths of karma yoga,
bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, etc. are all manifestations of the
leading tendencies in particular individuals, just so, the
perceptions of God or reality as with or without form, or
the truth as dualism, qualified dualism, qualified monism or
qualified non-dualism, monism or non-dualism are also
manifestations of a certain leading tendency or posture. All
of these are perceptions of the same reality seen from the
viewpoint or through the structure of a particular form of
existence.
Thus, all are views of reality. All
are themselves qualifications or formulations of reality.
Even the nondualistic comprehension of Advaita Vedanta is an
imposition, an exclusive interpretation, albeit one that is
refined to an exquisite degree.
The Vedantic non-dualism is one in
which the description of reality, that which already is, is
interpreted via the imposition of the concept of ignorance
on reality. Just as the more or less dualistic conceptions
pursue the absence of ignorance via devotion, surrender,
selfless service, etc., the non-dualistic pursuit moves via
knowledge in its deepest sense, known through discrimination
and meditation. But the ignorance which is to be removed is
at least the temporary source of the form in which reality
is known. The perception of separation, otherness,
multiplicity, etc. is transitionally maintained as identical
to the nature of that which is perceived. Thus, the universe
and all objects are, to ignorance, to be transitionally
accepted as "maya" or cosmic illusion. But this is not so in
fact.
All of the various paths or
descriptions impose the form of their ignorance upon the
thing perceived. It is this imposition and not the prior
experience of the universe which is the fault or problem in
these descriptions. One who has followed his path to the end
does not realize the radical disappearance of the manifest
universe. Only the form of his ignorance is dissolved in
perfect consciousness. Thereafter he knows nothing separate
from reality, but the form of reality retains its radical
existence, its infinite paradoxical play.
Thus, it is clear that the
non-dualistic description and path is as much a symbol and a
transitional viewpoint as the dualism of the bhakta. The
Advaita Vedanta is also a viewpoint on reality, a
limitation, a qualification, a manifestation of a tendency.
Like all the rest, it is a description of that which is
experienced founded in the imposition of the form of that
experience. In this case, as all others, the idea of
ignorance peculiar to its tendency or posture is the source
of its interpretations of experience.
Thus, the non-dualistic conception
is ultimately no more perfect, reduced, purified or simple
than the rest. It is also a symbol, an imposition, a
conditioned and transitional concept, a viewpoint on reality
rather than reality itself.
Indeed, all of the classical
conceptions are ultimately non-dualistic. They all recognize
the primacy of the one Nature or Divine Being, its absolute
inclusive form, and the necessity of a perfect or
non-problematic realization of it. All paths are only
transitionally unique, symbols in which the description of
what is is conditioned by the form of perception which
exists prior to ultimate realization, liberation or
salvation. But, in any case, it is reality itself that is
being indicated, intuited and pursued.
I stand in radical opposition to
the great search in a2!1 its forms. The limitation which is
seeking or ignorance is only prolonged and intensified by
these conceptions, even though they result in secondary
benefits to life that are apparently more desirable or
harmonious than simple exploitation. in fact, philosophy is
a practical matter of conscious life-realization. And the
poetry which precedes that realization is only transitional
and interesting, but not radically necessary.
Because this is so, and because I
do not speak for ignorance or any peculiar viewpoint but
only in the form of reality, I assert that there is no
valuable description of reality prior to realization. There
is only understanding now, which is itself realization,
non-separation. And in that applied reality many perceptions
may be attained. The form of my experience changes from hour
to hour in the play of reality. At times I am a devotee, at
others a pristine monolith of power, at others the primary
consort of the Shakti, etc. But always it is only reality.
This true existence under all conditions or temporary views
is possible only where all paths are understood in reality.
The avoidance of relationship,
whose very process and its consequences are the substance
witnessed in understanding, is the primary act of
identification and differentiation. When understanding
begins to arise, the individual is consciously relieved of
many patterns of avoidance, including all kinds of unlove,
incapacity and obsessive habits. He becomes more relational,
communicative and positive. But when understanding is
attained in its radical and inclusive form, there is also a
primary transformation of experience.
At first understanding promotes a
healing of effectiveness and freedom within the I-that
structure of awareness, where "that" signifies all forces in
opposition or contact, high or low. But at last that very
structure dissolves in understanding. The whole complex of
identification with a "personality," an arbitrary center of
memory and experience that the mind rigs up as an entity
ceases. And thus also the objects seen over against that
"I," because there is no concrete "I" from which to
differentiate them, cease to be differentiated.
Perception and consciousness, then,
are loosed and unqualified, and this unqualified
consciousness remains as the known and realized form of
being, even under the usual conditions of natural life. All
of this is the truth of understanding, wherein
identification and differentiation are seen to be the
avoidance of relationship in its most prior and primary
sense.
Man, like every other manifestation
in reality, is a totality, non-spearate, unqualified,
powerful and perfect. His life is universal life and
consciousness. However, he lives as a composite of separate,
limited and rival functions or as an entity identical to its
lowest and mortal form. Therefore, he is devoted to
exploitation, random efforts at unified creativity, and
great search or ascent. He is a libertine, a hero, an
artist, and a mystic. But, instead of all this, he needs to
know what he is ultimately, in the realized universe, and to
act on the assumption of his perfect totality. That is the
higher way than suffering or search, pleasure, pain,
liberation or salvation.
Understanding is at once a state
and an act. It is effective and always already free. It is
intensive and also instant.
Therefore, understanding is the
removal of all contradictions, the already free,
unqualified, real state. Everything else is seeking. That
is, everything that is apart from understanding seeks
understanding as its primary effect, consciously or
unconsciously, whatever else may be its obvious goal. Thus,
all life prior to understanding is involved in the great
search.
Apart from understanding, the
activity of life is separative, and separation is its
primary experience and effect. And the viewpoint of every
manifestation is qualified by conditioning in every area of
experience wherein it is concentrated apart from
understanding.
Understanding is the removal of
contradiction, the realization of the unqualified viewpoint.
It is not something toward which life is evolving. It is not
the goal of life, nor does its realization occur in the
ultimate event of life's dissolution. It is in fact the
ground of life, its prior form. Therefore, neither life nor
time is to be wasted in the evolution of understanding.
Understanding must be radically assumed, and creative life
begun, removed of its primary dilemma.
The man who understands is already
free. He is not identical to any of the forms of his
manifestation or their functional objects, and neither is he
separate from any of them. He is unqualified reality as
creative life. He enjoys the use of all his forms. He enjoys
each of the qualities and forms of his being.
Understanding as enquiry is the
highest principle applied to life. It realizes individual
life creatively, in higher and higher degrees of inclusive
and limitless power.
Understanding is blissful life. It
is light and energy in action.
Whenever I seek I experience the
loss of bliss, of conscious reality. Therefore, in my
experimental way I have had continually to abandon every
path, every method, every goal, every concept and activity
to which I have been temporarily drawn. I am always forced
to abandon myself solely to understanding as a radical
perception and motive. Only then do I again know the form of
reality and experience the continuity or circuit that links
every dimension of being. Thus, I am rooted in unqualified
reality and enjoy it as truth.
Therefore, I am moved to assert
only understanding as radically real and true. Everything
else is some form or combination of the concept and activity
of-separateness. If I root myself in that very dilemma I
must live unconsciously as a self-exploiter, consciously as
a self-saver, or mediumistically and dependently as one who
awaits the acts of his salvation.
Those who are devoted in the great
search experience pleasure and pain, vision and experience
of the levels of existence, and also the medium mixture of
high and low. But the life of understanding is already and
radically real and true. It is not coincident with any of
the creative or created phenomena of the great search. Its
fulness, its bliss, its knowledge, its motive, all of its
attributes are as free and pure as space. The certainty
beneath all of its attributes is the form of reality, which,
when it is not avoided, simply stands as the structure
supporting all things.
When I understand and so am free of
every form of the great search I am simply and already free
and full, blissful and joyous, alive, in knowledge, able to
create in life free of the dilemma that always manifests as
turning away.
As soon as I turn from radical
understanding to any form of knowledge, motivation or
activity I turn into dilemma. I become disturbed, gradually
confused and in search, and I develop chronic disturbances,
discomforts, compulsions, etc. When I turn again merely to
understanding I enjoy the fulness and radiance and
completeness of reality. The form of reality is itself the
only true control of life. Everything else is a form of
attack from some partial viewpoint or concentration.
Understanding is the principle and
form of real consciousness. It is necessarily what it is
also because of the nature of consciousness in a universe,
and, in particular, because of the multi-dimensional nature
of conscious life as it manifests here. I am referring
specifically to the laws of motion, and especially to the
law which is stated in the form: "to every force there is an
equal and opposite reaction" or "for every action there is
an equal and opposite reaction."
The implications and results of
action bear directly on the realization of conscious life.
Any pattern of life or prescription for the liberation,
salvation or transformation of life involves action. Indeed,
most of our activity, either on the level of exploitation
and experience or that of release and realization is already
a reaction, a response to a considered dilemma or undesired
circumstance. Thus, from the viewpoint of free awareness,
which is understanding, all action, "sinful" or "spiritual;'
is unavailing because it is bound to the cause of a
reflection or reaction which is the very thing it seeks to
avoid. All action is pertinent only to the field of action.
That is, it is confined to the cause of effects, to
modifications in circumstance, not to reality, which is
unqualified and free.
The "sinner" exploits experience
without conscious understanding and so builds the mass of
reaction which is all of the patterns and results, desirable
and undesirable, that are out of his ultimate control. The
spiritual man pursues the liberation from such "karma" by
various processes of purification and release. But his
action also recreates and reinforces the reaction of life.
Thus, the seeker classically suffers the resistance of
"lower" life, and he is forced at last to abandon the
"lower" entirely in order to possess the permanent enjoyment
of the "higher." The sinner is trapped in the exclusive
field of action and the saint is trapped in the exclusive
field of consciousness. Both are trapped in their exclusive
field because of the law of action and reaction.
Reality or real life is already
free of the double-bind of action and reaction. Clearly, it
cannot be realized by action. All action is exclusive, being
separate from or counter to its reaction. To act in order to
accomplish freedom, truth or reality is therefore false and
unavailing. Therefore, the realization which leads to
understanding and real life is the apparently desperate one
of the inescapability of the exclusive results of any kind
of action.
It should be clear, then, why I
have stressed the necessity and sufficiency of understanding
as the radical path of real life. Understanding is already
liberation from all paths, all "dharmas." Understanding
alone is clinging to reality, the "me" of God and of the
Scriptures.
The program for suffering and death
and the opposite program of truth and sainthood are forms of
the same bondage. And there is no more value in the
fascination with religious or spiritual objects and means
than the fascination with the exclusive objects and means of
life. Exclusive ascent is as unavailing and false as
exclusive descent. We may cure ourselves and purify
ourselves of many effects through spiritual effort, but only
reality itself is prior to all effects, all action and all
reaction.
Understanding is real
consciousness. It is the foundation of life. And the man who
understands is intelligent, a master of action, a master of
effects. The man who clings radically to the way of
understanding is already free of the dilemma that requires
exclusive ascent or exclusive descent. His freedom does not
depend on the attainment of any special mode of
consciousness or experience. Thus, he is creatively present,
and he uses the fulness of the circuit or form of reality in
order to perfect the quality of life.
The man who proceeds without
understanding is bound to a dilemma and seeks understanding.
He acts, and thus he is concentrated and devoted to the
realization of reality through the manipulation of "karma,"
the field of action, of necessary effects. His methods are
desperate, and the effects he enjoys are exclusive and
temporary, until the time of reaction. The idea of the
"return of the repressed" is a consequence of the same
necessity. Apart from understanding, the radical assumption
of reality, there is only the reinforcement of primary
dilemma on the personal or the super-personal
scale.
The one truth to be constantly
known is the unqualified truth, the radical knowledge of
reality. The search for it through dualistic or problematic
suppositions and means, or the avoidance of it by
abandonment to dualistic experience or efforts to draw on
that source without consciously being it are mere suffering
and dilemma. The only truth I know and affirm moment to
moment is radical reality.
Whenever I become involved with
teachings, paths, goals, Gurus, methods, means, concepts or
anything but radical consciousness I awaken to the same
suffering, agitation and necessary reactivity that is my
dilemma. True knowledge or radical consciousness is the only
real context of life. Everything else awakens the field of
alternatives and dualistic striving where some things must
be avoided and others sought, but where that which must be
avoided is always coming into life and that which is sought
is always yet to be realized. The only truth is radical
truth with nothing added, no other content, no separate
extension, no concept.
There is only radical knowledge.
All paths are suffering or avoidance. There is no growth
into reality but only reality. To be in the state of
seeking, whatever the form, is to be in the same state of
suffering. Therefore, I do not seek. I depend on no Guru
because I do not assert the difference between myself and
reality. Therefore, neither do I concentrate on internal
sources, on sounds or lights within, on invisible states
above. Nor do I seek to bring the influence of the Soul into
the mind or life.
I seek no perfection at all, and
therefore I am no perturbed by the imperfect. I point only
to radical consciousness or reality.
This moment is the moment of
reality, of union, of truth. The only truth is radical
truth. Even the moment of self-indulgence, of avoidance, of
separativeness is the moment of reality. Nothing needs to be
done to it or you for it to be so. Nothing needs to be
accomplished, purified, undone for it to be so. Nothing
needs to be avoided, transcended or found for it to be so.
This is the greatness of truth, of understanding, for it
disarms all fear, all circumstance, all dilemma. It is
always already the case.
We are never at any moment in the
dilemma we fear ourselves to be. Only this radical
understanding in the heart of life is the ground of real
peace and joy. All else is seeking and strife and
fear.
Therefore, it is not a matter that
concerns us exclusively, apart from anything else. It is not
an alternative to any experience. It is always already the
case. This radical understanding is the only real
liberation, and it alone is the truth and realization of
this moment. Every motive is seeking. Every turning away is
avoidance. Every turning upwards is avoidance. Every turning
downwards is avoidance. Every turning towards is avoidance.
All these things are seeking, for they are not abiding now
in the form of reality. Thus, to turn at all is to act. And
every turning will awaken the reaction of turning the
opposite way in time.
The truth is radical non-avoidance
moment to moment. It is to live this moment, this event
without conflict, directly. Where there is understanding
there is no turning, and every action turns no way at all,
for there is only radical consciousness behind it, turning
no way, knowing only great bliss.
The way is only radical
understanding, which is free consciousness. If a man begins
to understand, then he will abide in understanding, and he
will not come into conflict with his moments, his motives,
his actions, his reactions. He will abide now, and now, and
now. And this alone, not any motive or search or effect of
these, will transform the complex of his living. And that
complex will never be his concern, to transform it or escape
it or transcend it, for he lives in understanding and draws
joy even in pleasure,
in ignorance, in failure, in
suffering, pain and death. Only because he abides in
understanding is he already free, already liberated from his
life.
Therefore, I affirm only
understanding and no state or object yet to be attained. It
is not a matter of purity first or at last, nor of sanity,
nor wealth, well-being, goodness or vision. All these are
the imagery of search, the vanity of external
peace.
Understanding is the ground of this
moment, this event. Therefore, enjoy it, for you alone are
the one who must live your ends and all the stages of time.
The man who understands, who is always already free, is
never touched by the divisions of the mind. And he alone is
standing when all other beings and things have gone to rise
or fall.
I do not recommend self-indulgence.
It is separative. Nor do I recommend the avoidance of
self-indulgence, for it is also separative. I recommend no
motives at all and no active goals. I do not turn men's
attention to such things at all but only to understanding,
whatever motives are already active in them. Thus, the holy
and profane will know the only peace, even while they are
holy and profane.
The seeker is happy only in his
desired condition. If he pursues pleasure, then he feels
full only when embracing his objects. And if he pursues some
higher, divine or spiritual goal, then he feels full only in
sublime conditions, and he can tolerate only degrees of
purity. In either case, the on!,.- real fulness is in
understanding.
Without understanding, the
pleasure-seeker avoids purity and sublime awareness in the
forceful repetition of experience. And, without
understanding, the holy seeker flees bad company in fear,
and every counter to his purity and attainment spurs his
anger and motivates his forceful ascent. But the man of
understanding is not concerned with purity or pleasure. He
is deep in the consciousness of understanding, and all
events do not amount to a dilemma for him. He is a man of
joy and pleasure, of love and knowledge, ability and help,
detachment, calm, energy, clarity and force. He knows all
desires are exclusive, and so he is not concentrated in
desire. He knows desire is neither true nor false, and
therefore he does not avoid desire. For him, desires are
only events, and he knows it is fruitless and impossible to
avoid circumstances. And so, even though he desires, he only
understands. Therefore, he appears as any other peculiar
man, except he bears a humor known only to understanding.
The ascending ones proceed in fear,
as fearful as the descending ones. They live by exploiting
themselves and those who follow, for they are only desirers,
like the rest. There is no unique and free man in all the
world, except the an who always understands. And he is
impossible to find. Therefore, understand.
Through understanding and enquiry
these is an end to all seeking. Understanding is no-seeking.
The great peace of being, of no search, has a locus
analogous to the right side of the chest. Sri Ramana
Maharshi said that this was the place of the Self, and he
cited references in various Scriptures in support of his
assertion.
It is my experience that when there
is an utter cessation of seeking, and the mind and the whole
living being is not motivated to move out to various
objects, high or low, then consciousness is seated in the
area analogous to the right side of the chest. It is not in
fact there, in the chest, but it knows every body and every
life function from there. That is, if there were to be a
movement out, the energy would appear to have to rise to go
to the throat. and head, and to descend to go into the solar
plexus and below.
Consciousness in this state of
no-seeking merely observes whatever comes to it or is
communicated to it from the various centers below and above.
Even the motive of love that moves in the heart chakra is
observed by it. It is not in any way to be identified with
any chakra or creative center. It is pure and most prior
consciousness. In Vedanta he is called the Witness, who
neither wakes nor sleeps nor dreams. He is Siva even while
knowing his consort, Shakti.
However, it is my experience that
this state of noseeking is not itself the form of reality.
In terms of the great search it seems to be liberation
itself, the great release. So it is, and I would call it the
heart of understanding, the center of all being. But reality
is not noseeking as a special or exclusive state. It is
unqualified. It is not merely the Witness. It is unqualified
being. And when there is the manifestation of existence it
is manifested as existence. But there is no dilemma. Thus,
when understanding has realized itself as no-seeking in the
heart it does not remain there as an exclusive concentration
of the mind. When no-seeking is realized in the heart there
is simply no-seeking, no concentration. One becomes the
heart. All the functions of one's being become the heart.
The heart becomes the constant locus of all activity. There
is no separate one to concentrate in it.
Thus, one who has realized himself
as no-seeking in the heart also realizes the Form of
Reality, the circuit of life, the Amrita Nadi. He becomes
present as that Form, which contains all things. He is free,
blissful, creatively alive. Thus, he is not only no-seeking,
which is freedom. He is eternally present, which is bliss
and no-dilemma.
The fear of death is the beginning
of understanding. Seeking is simply clinging to various
concepts, goals, things, methods and paths that seem to
promise release from death, from the knowledge of death, and
from all suffering, which is separation and death. The man
who knows there is no release from death understands. He
knows that that which seeks release from death must die.
Thus, his seeking comes to an end. His fear, which is
resistance to death, ends. He ceases to operate as the one
who must die and who seeks release from death. He abides in
understanding, which is prior to the one who must die. The
one who is understanding is reality, and he exists as the
form of reality.
But only he can abide as
understanding who knows all seeking is fruitless for what
seeking actually seeks. To know that all seeking is a
pursuit of the removal of death from consciousness is
understanding. Fear is the most basic form of seeking.
Therefore, understanding is the absence of fear.
The man who understands ceases to
extend himself as the one who must die and the one who must
be afraid, who must seek. The activity of understanding
neither pursues nor avoids. It is simply constant
understanding. It is noseeking, non-avoidance, abiding as
understanding, which is conscious reality.
Trouble begins only where there is
identification with the seeker. Truth is not the notion: "I
am not the seeker - I am not the dying one who fears and
seeks." Truth is simply the understanding of seeking. Where
there is understanding there is not the contrary to
anything. Therefore, the one who understands does not affirm
what does not seek, what does not die or fear. Only the
seeker affirms such things in order to conquer fear, search
and death. Thus, religion, spirituality, philosophy,
technique, salvation, liberation and all the
rest.
But the man who understands simply
understands and abides as understanding, the direct
awareness of life moment to moment. The man who understands
always is understanding, until the movement in him that
extends itself as the seeker ceases to arise. Then he
neither understands nor enquires but abides without dilemma
as that which cannot be avoided, the form of reality.
Moment to moment we are creating
and reinforcing that which must die. Moment to moment we are
devoted to the escape of that one we create as ourselves
from death and the consciousness of death. We pursue the
loss of the consciousness that he must die by various
distractions and pleasures. We pursue the removal of actual
death from him by spiritual and religious action. But only
understanding is prior to the creation of him and thus all
of his seeking.
Where there is understanding there
is no creation of him and no search. Where there is abiding
in understanding there is only that which is already the
case.
Fear and seeking arise only where
there is no understanding. Therefore, understanding must be
continuous. Radical abiding in understanding, in direct
consciousness of experience moment to moment, is the way of
life. Everything else that is real will come as a result of
it.
The central and common focal point
of the philosophical adventure of both the East and the West
is the "antahkarana." The peculiar way that is common to all
the Eastern solutions and the other which is common to all
the Western systems is a result of the philosophical
estimation of the meaning and purpose of the antahkarana,
the parts of the mind.
The Eastern view typically sees it
as the root of ignorance, of separateness and otherness.
Thus, the basic philosophical method is applied to quieting,
transcending and separating from the antahkarana in order to
realize the more prior consciousness that is not mind but
purely conscious being.
The Western view typically sees it
as containing ignorance, as falsely conditioned or yet
unevolved. But the basic philosophical method is applied to
purifying, controlling, opening and perfecting the
antahkarana by making it the usable medium of the higher
being, God or soul.
The symbol of the East is,
typically, liberation, and that of the West is perfection or
salvation. The East concentrates in what is eternally prior
and the West in that which is eternally possible. Thus, the
East is aligned with various notions equivalent to the Hindu
concept of the uncreated Self that is Brahman, One without a
second. But the West is aligned with the idea of the eternal
Christ who is the sign and promise of the goodness and
perfectibility of existence.
The practical effort of the East is
toward liberation, the unqualified knowledge of fundamental
Identity. The practical effort of the West is toward
salvation or union, the graceful knowledge of non-separation
from the creative Source.
These two ways are equally true and
justifiable from the point of view of experience. Both are
consistent and complete. They are not the same, and there is
no universal religion. But there are not antagonistic,
except on the level of bloody politics and ecclesiastical
opposition.
It is true, however, that from the
point of view of understanding or reality itself both of
these fundamental positions and all of their various
historical mutations are unnecessary. They form the polar
alternatives of the history of the great search. They are
founded in dilemma. They are motivated to a goal and a
solution even before they encounter the mind.
In fact, at the beginning and
forever only radical understanding is necessary and real. It
is totally without dilemma and it never becomes aligned with
any fundamental or radical distinction. It is always and
already prior to the dilemma, and thus it is not moved
toward any state or goal that is prior to itself or any
function or experience. It does not already see otherness
and a dilemma in the mind, necessary or temporary. The
antahkarana is already ok. Therefore, neither is it
motivated to liberation, perfection, liberating action or
perfecting action, Self-realization or union with God, Self
as self or Soul as self, prior Being or eternal Christ. It
is only what it already is, which is understanding, which is
reality, which is always already without contradiction,
without dilemma.
After examining the ways of
contradiction, of action and reaction, of alternatives of
seeking, it is necessary to cling radically to understanding
and adapt to no path at all. Then there is no discipline, no
method, no goals, no motives, no exclusively pure and
purifying actions, no exclusively impure and destructive
reactions. There is no concentration in any place but only
the understanding of all tendencies and movements into
concentration.
The life may appear the same as
ever, or worse, for it is not obsessed with
self-manipulation, but the relationship to the complex of
self is entirely new and radical. Thus, a man proceeds in
understanding alone, pursuing no higher or other state,
enjoying the succession of states without exclusion. He
lives without making any form or state of living or
non-living his goal or motive. The understanding he already
enjoys is also his only motive.
He is already free. Therefore, he
is only full of humor in the face of all seekers. Neither
salvation nor liberation is his goal, nor experience, nor
any form of consciousness. Death is no longer his concern,
nor life. All states are the conditions of truth for him. He
knows no dilemma. He is a great man of pleasure. He is even
a profoundly superficial man, for -ow can he be deep who
knows no perimeters and no center at all? He cannot be
grasped or identified. Therefore, he is not the source of
fascination. Since the man of understanding cannot he found
or followed his existence avails no one. Therefore, he is
not important. There is only understanding.
Understanding is no-dilemma, no
contradiction, no-seeking, no avoidance, no motive, no goal,
no separation, no exclusion, no outstanding truth. It is not
something, some state, some form of thought, some
experience, some special activity. It is only the
understanding of any condition. It is true knowledge at any
moment. It is the cognition of suffering, experience and
forms of knowledge. It is unqualified relationship at any
moment. It is in the form of enquiry. It sees
avoidance.
It sees relationship. It is
unqualified enjoyment. Since it neither depends upon nor
operates on the basis of any kind of opposition but always
only understands, it is full. It is bright. It is energy. It
is the foundation of creativity. It holds on to nothing and
opposes nothing but is only understanding. It is the
foundation of all relationship.
Everyone knows what understanding
is. Everyone knows how to do it. It is only that they must
begin to make understanding the radical basis of life, the
one thing done, the one force of existence. They must begin
to resort only to understanding an to nothing else. All
things done must become no different from understanding.
Where there is only understanding there is no difference, no
contradiction, no separation. Reality is the same as the
form of reality.
Life as seeking, as separation and
exclusion, as avoidance of relationship is simply an
expansion of the model of consciousness we are actively
creating moment to moment. When enquiry has become profound,
the man who understands sees the fundamental act constantly
performed in the subtlety of consciousness. There is the
assertion of "me" or separate identity and "that" or what is
not "me." This very simple, seemingly necessary and innocent
act of perception is really a creation, a decision. It is
the primary act of separation, of avoidance, and not merely
the practical marking off of boundaries. It is the model of
all ordinary consciousness and perception. It is expanded,
enforced, reinforced and infinitely extended in every form
of consciousness, until it is seen as seeking,
separativeness, avoidance of relationship and every kind of
suffering.
Understanding is the primary form
of consciousness, and thus to understand precludes the
separative motive and creation. Thus, it also precludes the
model of suffering and search, the constant creation of "me"
and "that." Consciousness as understanding constantly
creates after the form of understanding, which is free,
unqualified, inclusive and real. Thus, the form of reality
becomes the new model of creation and experience in the man
of understanding.
As long as the mind tends to move
attention to various areas and fix it in various patterns,
follow it to its destination and enquire "Avoiding
relationship?" Soon it will rest in the heart. It will
settle deeply there, unmoved, in-the state of no-seeking.
Then, no matter what arises, within or without, it remains
conscious as no-seeking, no moving. Then enquire of it
"Avoiding relationship?" And it will rise and expand,
including the whole form of reality, and so become the
"bright."
First there is understanding, the
recognition of seeking, avoidance of relationship, suffering
and unqualified relationship. Then there is enquiry, which
follows the mind to ever;; place of the act of avoidance,
high or low, in descent or ascent. But then understanding
becomes its own radical state. Reality abides in the area of
the heart, to the right side of the chest. And it simply is
there and every moment, every pulse, everything that arises
is confronted with the same assertion:
no-seeking.
Reality is itself unmoved. And it
radiates the whole form from this heart point, so that its
bliss becomes the expression of our real form. Then there is
no cognition, no outstanding movement apart from this
unqualified state. Everything else is seeking and avoidance,
but when a man has radically understood, he is no longer
moved. What arises in him is confronted by reality itself:
no-seeking. In the heart he knows the absolute bliss of the
non-necessity to seek in any direction. Thus, whatever
arises, he simply allows it to arise. He has ceased to be
concerned for life and death.
His greatest service to all is to
abide as reality, as no-seeking, as understanding. Thus, all
men will be drawn to the heart of reality. The life he
enjoys is that which is latent in him, but he does not
enforce it. The pattern of avoidance founded in the model of
I-that, the act of identification, separation and
distinction which creates motive, motion or desire has
dissolved in his knowledge.
He expresses only reality, the
unqualified existence, because it is what he is.
Understanding is the nature of
consciousness, the present foundation of life. Sacrifice is
the unmotivated rule of the worlds, the conscious form of
all action that proceeds forever in the form of reality.
Such is the sum of all necessary knowledge.
When Reality works to purify and
perfect the vehicle of sacrifice there is order, presence,
joy, freedom and knowledge. But when the man without
understanding works to purify the vehicle of ignorance there
is disorder, avoidance, despair, separation, bondage and no
understanding.
Where there is understanding there
is the vehicle of sacrifice. Where there is no understanding
there is the vehicle of ignorance. Where there is
understanding there is reality. Where there is ignorance
reality is sought. Where there is conscious sacrifice there
is reality. Where there is no understanding there is the
persistence of suffering.
There is only reality, which is
conscious as understanding, which proceeds as enquiry
("Avoiding relationship?"), which constantly realizes itself
as no-seeking, which is fulness and no-dilemma, which is
silent, which is bright or creative force.
Every moment, the dilemma is being
created after the model of experienced consciousness,
I-that. Therefore, there is no end to necessary
understanding and enquiry. There is no point where enquiry
can be abandoned and the life devoted to some form of
purification and evolution. Reality is understanding,
enquiry, no-seeking, fulness, no dilemma, silence and
brightness or creative force. It is always these. Therefore,
the way of understanding includes and accomplishes all
things. Be devoted to understanding and do not turn to seek
at all.
Understanding arises in the
observation of life. Thus, it is seen that all life is
seeking. And all seeking is commonly rooted in suffering.
And all suffering is rooted in the act of the avoidance of
relationship and the resultant sense of separation.
Likewise, all happiness is commonly rooted in the sense of
union or non-separation.
When understanding arises the man
begins to use understanding. Where he sees himself seeking
or motivated to seek he enquires of himself directly:
"Avoiding relationship?" By this enquiry, rooted in
understanding, he founds himself in the awareness of what
always already is, prior to avoidance.
Where there is no-seeking there is
simply the enjoyment of reality, which is prior to
avoidance. In the man of understanding, who is established
in no-seeking, life is created in the conscious form of.
reality, prior to all dilemmas. In him there is no-seeking,
no separation, but only the enjoyment of reality.
In the seeker, the ordinary and
traditional man who does not found himself radically in
understanding, life is a constant, experimental exploitation
of the forms of seeking. Thus, he can only seek in order to
understand, and he cycles through all of the various,
alternative forms of seeking, high and low. His way is
endless suffering.
But the man of understanding
observes the activity and motive of seeking in himself.
Wherever he sees it, he does not exploit it, but instead
enquires of himself, "Avoiding relationship?" Understanding
has led him to know the nature, sources and effects of
seeking. Therefore, wherever he finds it in himself, he
enquires of himself according to his
understanding.
Thus, instead of seeking, he
enquires and immediately knows the unqualified state in the
form of reality. Wherever seeking arises, he enquires. And
where there is no-seeking there is only conscious reality.
Understanding and no-seeking are, respectively:, the
functional and the most prior or unqualified aspects of
reality as consciousness.
Where there is no-seeking there is
no differentiation, no identification, and no desire. There
is only unqualified life, life without dilemma, truth
itself.
Therefore, where there is seeking a
man may either seek or understand. If he seeks, his path and
his suffering are without end. But if he understands, he is
always already free. The man who understands and uses
understanding is conscious, real life, whose source is
no-seeking, which is unqualified, uncontradicted,
motiveless, inclusive, nonseparate and perfect.
The Shakti known to spiritual
seekers is the Shakti of seeking. It provides continuous
experiences and the desire for experiences, as if such
things would lead to perfect truth. But the only true and
real Shakti is the Shakti of understanding, which arises not
where there is seeking but only where there is
understanding. It is known only as no-seeking. Where the
radical force of understanding has become no-seeking in the
heart, the real Shakti is known as the form of reality,
unqualified and non-separate.
To the seeker, Shakti is "maya,"
illusion or fascination. It is only part of the dilemma and
the search. But to the man of understanding there is only
reality, which is conscious as no-seeking in the form of
reality. Thus, the real Shakti is only the form of reality
known to no-seeking in the heart.
Thus, all of my Shakti yoga was
only seeking and experiences, an endless fascination. But
when understanding arose there was already no-dilemma and
only the form of reality. Thereafter, there was no peculiar
experience that was the Shakti, but only the form of reality
itself was seen and enjoyed directly, without motive or
goal.
"Siva-Shakti" is no-seeking and
unqualified relationship as-the primary knowledge or
realization of present consciousness. All the rest is
seeking, suffering, and separation, whether these are known
as miracles and visions or compulsive physical desires and
experiences.
Where there is no-seeking there is
no differentiation, no identification, no desire. There is
no separation, no avoidance, and no suffering. There is no
motivation. But where there is seeking there is all of these
things. Where understanding arises in the midst of seeking
all of these things fall away, each effect revealing its
cause, until there is only the perception of what is prior
to the whole enterprise of seeking. Thus, in understanding
we remain established in reality and the form of reality,
which is no-seeking and unqualified relationship.
There is a point of view in which
we identify with mortality, and all life seems overwhelmed
with suffering, charged with death. Then there is another
which identifies with life in the face of death, and it is
the highest development of sensitive personality. Its mood
is pathos and its victory is poetry. But there is a higher
view that identifies with neither life nor death, and it is
charged with neither life nor death but calmly knows the law
that conceals their mystery. It rests in no-seeking or
reality, not in what is born or dies. This is the common
realization of all saints, and I have described and known it
as understanding. It abides as love, it creates true beauty
and power, and it enjoys the world as the form of free
sacrifice.
Every man is free to recognize
these degrees of*philosophy in himself. And every man is
free to turn this world according to his knowledge. I have
come to plead for understanding, not for life or death. I
have come to plead for a true knowledge of the world, so
that it may be freed from its covering of life and death.
But only you can accomplish this vision. Until then, we all
stand waiting for love and a kingdom not of this world.
Ordinary meditation and practice
will not make a real man, nor even one whose goodness is
real. It will only manipulate him within the dilemma. The
state of meditation, the act of motivated concentration and
ascent, is not the form of the real and good man. Nor is the
disciple in his response to the Guru the form of the real
and good man. Only by present understanding,living already
free, do we serve life and know it. The rest is nonsense and
exploitation.
The pursuit of survival is the root
activity under lying all seeking. The conscious state,
no-seeking, is characterized by allowing everything to be
lived. However, apart from conscious, present understanding,
even the attitude of allowing everything to be lived is a
form of seeking, of trying not to die. Apart from radical
understanding there is only the desperate attempt not to
die, and at every moment where there is not radical
understanding there is the present, actual threat of death.
Apart from present understanding there is only fear and the
avoidance of death, and its precise activity is the complex
avoidance of relationship now and now and now.
Therefore, since every moment is
the moment of fearful death and the attempt to create that
which shouldn't die but must die (the separate self), how
can spirituality, religion, method or any other product of
motivated consciousness satisfy us? Only understanding is
radically apart from the cycle of death and creation of what
dies. Only understanding is not motivated to seek survival,
avoid death and destroy relationship, even if the apparent
goal and methodology of the seeker is truth, life, freedom,
goodness, love and relationship.
One can experience physical and
vital well-being by removing the sources of enervation and
toxicity. One can experience mental and emotional
well-being, the clear and quiet mind, by analyzing the
structure of mental and emotional problems. One can
experience spiritual realization and enjoy the form of
reality in its superconscious shape by dissolving the
process of the radical avoidance of relationship. But one
will not cease to suffer, seek or experience dilemma and
identification with what is separate unless one abides as
no-seeking in the heart. Therefore, understand and abide in
every form of understanding, until understanding becomes
radical activity and realizes its nature as consciousness
itself.
The logic of Narcissus is not only
"I-That" but "Me-That." Each is made conscious by becoming
object to the other.
"I-that" is the state asserted by
the seeker, and also that with which he begins.
"I-Thou" or "Me-Thou" is the form
of perception resorted to by seekers for the sake of
consolation and peace. "Thou" is the mantra of the seeker.
The true way is the one that is
blissful now. The true teaching turns you to present bliss
and does not require you to create it. All ways that turn
you to paths, goals, gradual attainments and the idea of a
necessary and ultimate future that is an evolutionary and
revolutionary state unknown in the present are false. They
are patterned after the model of separation and are only
forms of seeking. Understanding is present bliss,
unqualified freedom and reality, consciousness itself
without motion or necessity. Bliss, which is conscious
reality, is the ground of all creativity, transformation,
and evolution.
For one in whom knowledge arises
and consciousness
or reality remains as the point of
view or foundation rather than the goal or mystery of life,
every form of existence, communication, or perception is
sacrifice. The law of every level of being, every body,
realm or experience is conscious sacrifice. It does not
involve an addition to himself. Only the seeker adds to
himself and absorbs all things. It involves sacrifice. Every
level of being and every body, realm or experience is
voluntarily given to those dimensions themselves and those
in whom consciousness lives as life. But also because life
is thus a voluntary sacrifice, never held, retained or
driven to survive, it never amounts to a loss or depletion
in him. Only the seeker becomes empty and is driven to
fulness.
Thus, the one in whom knowledge
arises, the man of understanding, is constantly devoted only
to two things: the constant abiding as knowledge,
consciousness, reality, or no-seeking in the heart, and the
constant intuition, witnessing and offering of every level
of being, every body, realm and experience as
sacrifice.
Such is the ground of freedom and
the way of understanding. Those who also understand already
live by these laws and found themselves in them without
seeking or effort. Those who do not understand seek reality
as a mystery, and endure life as a given dilemma in which
the law of sacrifice forever turns them to death, emptiness
and strife.
Those who do not sacrifice all
things while abiding in reality are in turn sacrificed
unwillingly upon it while grasping for the answer.
The word of those who do not
understand but make philosophy out of seeking is love,
peace, fulness, surrender, and hope. The word of those who
understand is no-seeking, no motion, no speech.
Understanding confounds and breaks
the heart of those who identify with the universal meal.
Understanding is not the way for those who would be
sustained. Those who are full of any kind of life are
anxious for the survival of created things. But those who
understand are empty and soundless.
Yet, those who understand are love.
They are already peaceful, full, surrendered and not
confounded. And those who do not understand pursue the
knowers of truth in order to acquire their characteristics
as food and power. But they do not understand the origin of
things. They are always weeping and angry in the company of
free men.
Thus, the man of understanding is a
visible dilemma to those who do not understand. Those who
seek him without understanding become grave and revert to
forms of suffering. But those who understand live
comfortably in his presence and are unmoved.
Those who understand acquire no
stable expression, but their forms change in every
circumstance. Their teaching adapts to the habit of every
appearance. They adopt no visibility that persists. Since
such men cannot be found, all men must turn to
understanding. Thus, when truth arises, the one in whom it
arises is unknown.
The spiritual seeker acts upon his
instruments, environments and relationships in order to turn
them to God or reality. Thus, he operates on these things
with the various goals of seeking in mind. He hopes or
thinks thereby to purify the sources of dilemma and
eventually to perceive reality, the union with God, and so
forth.
But the man is radically founded in
understanding has none of the motivations of the seeker. He
acts upon the instruments, environments, and relationships
simply to make them lawful and not separative. His mood is
the already free and whole one realized in enquiry. His
operations on these things have no other goal. They are not
aspects of his seeking. His present activity only expresses
his wisdom and his consciousness. He sees the wholeness of
things, and creates in the consciousness of radical
relationship. He does not exaggerate himself as effort, nor
does he allow his instruments, environments and
relationships to become more or less than their simple
utility and presence. He does not recreate anything into a
higher thing or an instrument for a higher thing. The native
actuality of undistorted things is his pleasure and the
image of his prior peace.
He does not turn anything into a
symbol. Even his own person represents nothing but itself.
The simplicity and actuality of things is the communication
of reality. Only the seeker makes sym |