Living Truth Jean Klein

Jean Klein Foundation
PO Box 22045
Santa Barbara, CA 93120
United States
[email protected]
First published 1995 by Third Millennium Publications

This edition copyright © Non-Duality Press, February 2007, May 2013
Copyright © Emma Edwards 1995, 2007, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission
from the publisher.
eISBN 13: 978-0-9553999-1-6
Original cover design and layout by Janet Andrews. Additional text and
cover desigh by Julian Noyce
Cover: Fragment, Royal Sarcophagus, 1500 B.C., Palace of Knossos,

Courtesy of the Museum of Herakleion, Crete
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www.non-dualitybooks.org
MASTER OF ADVAITA VEDANTA in the tradition of Ramana Maharshi
and Atmananda Krishna Menon and author of many books on non-dualism,
Jean Klein spent several years in India going deeply into the subjects of
Advaita and Yoga. In 1955 the truth of non-dualism became a living reality.
From 1960 he taught in Europe and later in the United States.
In the late 1980s he was invited to give seminars in the Santa Cruz
Mountains of California. In this isolated, peaceful mountain setting, a small
group of students gathered with their life questions. The conversations of the
1988 seminar were transcribed and printed as a pamphlet entitled Mount
Madonna Dialogues, but it was felt that the contents of all of the seminars
were rich and rewarding enough to be gathered into a more substantial
publication. This book is the result.
Recognition
My deepest gratitude to Emma who has made the teaching accessible and the
book readable. She has kept intact the purity of the teaching which remains
alive only in the absence of the I-image.
Jean Klein
Acknowledgments
Without the help of Janet Andrews, Mary Dresser, Stephen Follmer, Pat and
Barbara Patterson, Worth Summers, Charles Surface, Richard Miller and
many other generous souls, this book would not exist. Our heartfelt thanks.
Table of Contents
Cover Image
Title Page
Copyright & Permissions
Recognition
Acknowledgements
Part 1: Mt. Madonna July 1987
Chapter 1: July 12
Chapter 2: July 13
Chapter 3: July 14
Chapter 4: July 15
Chapter 5: July 16
Chapter 6: July 17—morning
Chapter 7: July 17—afternoon
Chapter 8: July 18
Chapter 9: July 19
Part 2: Mt. Madonna July-August 1988
Chapter 10: July 29

Chapter 11: July 30
Chapter 12: July 31
Chapter 13: August 1
Part 3: Mt. Madonna April 1990
Chapter 19: April 21

Other Works by Jean Klein

Backcover
Mt. Madonna
July 1987
July 12
I want to ask a question about what you said once about listening and
welcoming. When I first heard you talk about this it struck me like a
revelation. This condition seemed a most appropriate way to be, to always
be, but I found that it also showed me that I seemed to be constructed in
exactly the opposite way. In other words, I find that I never really welcome, I
never really listen. I assume a posture of defense, of not listening to myself,
not being open. What can you say that would give me an indication as to how
it would be possible to be in the welcoming, since it is really the opposite of
how I always am?
Very often when you listen to something, you emphasize the object. There is
still an action; there is still eccentric energy, I would say. In welcoming, you
emphasize the welcoming. That means in welcoming you are completely
open, open to the perception. In welcoming you are waiting, completely
directionless. You live freely without any representation, without
psychological memory. Your real nature is welcoming.
When you come to the understanding that there is nothing to achieve,
nothing to obtain—that all knowledge is a going away from what you are
looking for—then there is a spontaneous giving up. You do not give up, it
gives itself up. Then there is welcoming and another way of listening where
the listening and the welcoming are open to themselves. It refers to Itself.
Welcoming, listening, is an impersonal state where there is no place to be
somebody, to be a person. That is why in welcoming you are spontaneously
excited. Excited is not really the word—you are completely expanded. The
moment the person comes in the play, you are contracted, fixed to the body.
Do you live in a state of emptiness? I mean, when you are in meditation or

even walking down the road, are you always in a state of emptiness?
Emptiness is not a state; I correct you, it is a non-state.
I’m curious to know whether, when thoughts spring up out of that emptiness,
do they go on a quarter of your time, or three-quarters of your time, and if
they do, how can you keep your mind still all the time like that? Aren’t you
wanting to think about things?
I never think.
You never think. When you answer a question, are you not thinking?
No. I hear the question in silence, and the answer comes out of silence.
Don’t you yearn for something? Isn’t there a yearning, a magnet that is
pulling you or bringing thoughts into you that makes you want to think? I’m
trying to understand, because it used to be that I did not think; I used to
space out when I was a child and I would just be nowhere. I would repeat a
phrase over and over again or I would have a picture in my mind and would
go through a whole picture and repeat the picture again and again. So I
would not think. To get out of that, I worked to think, and now it is like a
process—always wanting to go on. I always have to have my intellect going
on.
What is the motive of this intentional thinking?
Knowledge, excitement, discovery.
But in the end what do you want really? Happiness? Joy? Peace?
Yes, joy; exciting joy.

So you think in order to find happiness. And have you found it?
Oh, yes.
So you are happy?
Yes, I am.
Well, marvellous!
I have states of spontaneous ecstasy where it... these time periods of

incredible ecstasy, just joy and excitement and wonder... there have been time
periods in my life, and then they go away and are not there any more....
You go away.
You mean, I go away?
Yes, be aware of these moments when you go away.
When I go away from the ecstasy, or when the ecstasy is not there any more?
You go away from your real self.
Oh, I see. So, you are saying that the joining of the self is the ecstasy?
You go away from your real self. Be aware in the moment when you go
away. In happiness and in joy you cannot say, “I’m happy,” “I’m in joy”—it
is not possible. When you think, “I’m happy,” you objectify it, make it a
state. Where there is happiness, nobody is happy, nothing is happy. There is
only happiness.
You are still involved in calculative thinking, looking for a result, an
experience. Real thinking is when you go away from thinking. When you
look away from thinking, that is real thinking. All real thinking starts free
from any thought. Real thinking comes out of silence. You may have a
certain forefeeling of what you are looking for.
I get really confused with the terms: what is thinking and what is not.
What you understand by thinking starts with thinking. That is intentional

thinking, superficial thinking, surface thinking. That is not thinking at all.
Just an exercise.
Yes. Real thinking starts from the unknown, from silence. This thinking has a
completely other way of flowing, I would say. There is never assertion, there
is never domination, never manipulation. This thinking is constantly in a state
of “I don’t know.” The background of real thinking is “I don’t know.”
So is the excitement that comes out of the “I don’t know” the excitement of
the non-state?
Yes. You are completely open to the unknown. In any case, what you are
looking for you cannot know. All that you know is representation. When you
say “I know,” you represent it. Thinking is in representation, but your totality
—what you are fundamentally—can never be thought. You can only be it.
This is my first seminar with you and I would appreciate knowing something
about your life, your background, your path, how you came to where you are.
I have heard that you don’t tell, so I decided to ask myself.
Do you know your motive for coming here? Don’t be too quick; you have
time. You do not have to give an immediate answer, because a quick answer
may come from the mind. Be careful. Look, really, at what is your motive to
come here.
I think I know; my motive is to find peace of mind.
Perfect. That means you have not found it; you are looking for it.
Yes. Someone mentioned your name, and I decided right away to come here,
without thinking.
Yes. It is an adventure, a risk.
Right. Well, I’m a risk-taker.
Yes, you are an adventurer. I like adventurers. Will you pay the price for
what you are looking for? Any price? Are you willing to live free from the
person? Do you see that the person is the biggest price?
Does that mean that you are not willing to share your past?
You can only share with me what you are fundamentally. That we have in
common. That is not a relationship between personality and personality.
When you pay the price of giving up the personality, then you can really
share with me what we have in common. There is really nothing to ask. You
would like a biography.
Can you further explain about the giving up of the personality that you just
mentioned? Is that like giving up the name, fame, shape or whatever that one
has?
I would say that you cannot give up the personality, because you give up the
personality still from the personality. The personality can never give itself up.
It is only through understanding that the personality dissolves. You must
absolutely understand that the personality in itself does not exist. In certain
circumstances it acts as a vehicle, as a tool. So you must not identify yourself
with your personality. Use the personality how and when the situation asks
for it. Then you will have a real personality, not a constipated personality, a
fixed personality. See that the personality that you have taken to be yourself
is a collection of experiences and second-hand beliefs. At least eighty percent
of your beliefs are second hand; there is very little personal experience in it.
So your personality is not original, flexible, creative; it is stuck. When you
see it, you will not use it any more; you give it up, or rather, it gives up itself.
You use it when life asks for it. Of course, the personality is a very useful
tool, but the moment you identify yourself with it, it is a very heavy luggage
to carry.
If the personality is not real, then who is it who pays the price?
The mind sees that what you call the personality is only memory. When the
body wakes up in the morning, where is the personality? You need to think of
it. The personality is thought. When I say you must pay the price, it means
that the mind must see its limits, its restriction. The mind cannot think
beyond the personality because the mind has so successfully identified itself
with the personality. What you are fundamentally, you cannot think. It is the
personality with which you identify which covers your real nature. The
moment the personality gives up, the idea of being somebody gives up, then
you will knowingly be your freedom. You will live your emptiness, your
totality.
So it is the personality who pays the price.
The personality has its own place in your life, a very important place.
Why is it, then, so hard for us to pay the price?

I think it is a very high price, because we are so deeply rooted in the
representation to be somebody. Our surroundings, our society, take us for
somebody. If we take ourselves as somebody we can only see somebodies
around us. So, what is the relationship between human beings? It is only the
relationship between somebodies. And this somebody is a fraction—is rooted
in insecurity, fear, the anxiety to be recognized, to be loved, and so on. And
so the relationship between human beings is only asking, demanding. When
you live in your real nature there is no asking, there is only giving. Because
there is fullness.
There are a lot of techniques around for realization. Do they work?
You should see that the real relationship with our surroundings is in non-
relationship—when we are constantly open. Otherwise, it is only a
relationship within clichés. It is a relationship between furniture. It is
important, in daily life, that you see that your fixed ideas make furniture of
the people around you. And when you really see, stop. Stop, and see how the
seeing acts on you, the impact it makes in you. That is important. Just seeing
is already something, but you must follow it to the end. How does the seeing
act on you? Only there is the transformation, the revolution. Without this
bipolar seeing, no revolution is possible, because this transformation does not
go through the mind. It is an instantaneous understanding when all the facts
have been seen.
What makes you do what you do with this understanding and with your life?
What motivates you to do this?
You are only this understanding; you are not more than this. In this
understanding you will see what is life and what is death. Then, you live in
happiness and make your surroundings happy. What more would you want?
I wondered about your specific choices to play this role. With this
understanding, why do you do this?
There is nobody to do it. There is nobody else to do it. Nobody does it.
Is it a passion for this?
No. Nobody does it. There is not a doer. It is you who superimpose a doer.
There is no doer.
In the life in which your body moves and you sit here and you teach, why do
you do it this way?
My body likes to sit in this way, but there is nobody who moves.
Can I ask this question in another way so that I will get a more specific
answer?
If the question does not come from books or from curiosity, ask and I will
answer. Please.
I love your understanding, and I would like to know what it feels like to be
you—in that understanding. I do not know you; we have never met, and as
you were teaching me today...
I do not teach you... no, no, no, I do not teach. You do not understand. There
is not a teacher.
As you were allowing me to be in your presence today, I was aware of the

fact that you did not know me and it was not an intimate connection or a
personally loving connection which I still think is real in the world even in
emptiness, and I wondered what it was that led you to be sharing this way
with a stranger.
It is only love. There are no others. There are no strangers.
Can you speak about your passion? Is there such a thing?
My passion? What do you mean by passion?
I think that passion is the underlying force, the life force. I think that it is at
the very heart of existence. I think it is not understandable, I think it is not
explainable, I think it is the energy of life itself.
When you look for truth, when you look for beauty, when you look for peace,
then you look with passion—to take your formulation. Yes, that is passion,
because this passion comes from truth and from beauty itself. And your
passion? You love beauty? You love love? I know, you are a fortunate
woman.
Oh yes, very fortunate, very blessed.
[Another questioner] You were talking about giving up the personality. Does
giving up the personality include giving up the importance of things that are
meaningful to you and make you happy? Let us say you are a musician, a
composer, and you would like to find someone who supports you, so you
would be able to compose and get a deep satisfaction from composing. Do
you have to give that up when you give up the personality?
I would say, see that you are more than your personality. Why live in
restriction? In other words, see that you identify yourself as a personality—
you go around as a personality, you look at things around you, beauty, truth,
with this personality; that means you live in restriction. See the real value of
what you call the personality. Do not identify yourself with it any more than
you identify with your house or your car. Then you are completely free.
Nothing is wrong with the personality, absolutely nothing.
But do you have to give up that need for satisfaction from things that are
important to the personality to get to the stage where you do not identify
yourself with your personality, or are they simultaneously compatible?
See only that when you identify yourself with your personality you live in
restriction. What is the use of the personality? Face your daily life free from
restriction. See that all that is perceived, all that is thinkable is an expression
of life, an extension of life. When you really understand that all existence is
an expression of life and that the only mission of these expressions is to
jubilate, to admire life, then you use your personality for thankfulness
throughout your life; and then you use it in the right way.
Well, you see the thing that really struck a deep chord is the price that you
are talking about; what price?
From the point of view of the mind, from the personality, it is a very high
price. I think you would rather give up your bank account than your
personality. Letting go of the personality is a very high price.
But when you give up your personality, might the price include your bank
account?
Absolutely. The personality asks for tremendous security. When you are free
from the person there is no more striving and you know your real needs.
When you really deeply understand that the personality is an hallucination, it
is a very little price to pay.
Is the personality the same thing as the ego?
When you do not think it, where is the ego?
What personality does one use if one does not use the memory personality?
When you are free from memory, there is no more choice. There is choiceless
living. In this choiceless living all your intelligence and creativity are at your
disposal.
The openness that you mentioned tonight—is that your true nature, or is it in
the realm of becoming?
When you live in your openness, then the openness refers itself to itself. That
is beingness.
That beingness is something beyond everyday consciousness, would you say?
Beyond.
Beingness is something more basic than normal consciousness.
It depends how you take the word “consciousness.” When the attention is
sustained, it unfolds in intelligence, in sensitivity; it becomes consciousness,
it becomes alertness, it becomes timeless awareness. It is presence.
You mentioned a moment ago that there is no teacher, yet you have also
spoken of the necessity for a guru. I have come here to be with your teaching
in the hopes that it will enliven me into my consciousness and my beingness.
Would you speak to that?
We are here to clarify the mind. The mind should know the perspective that
something is that is not thinkable. In other words, the mind should know its
limits. When this occurs, there is a spontaneous, natural stopping of mind
function and we find ourselves in a completely new dimension. In this new
dimension there is nobody; there is only love. So, first let us be clear about
what is meant by a guru-teacher. If there is a teacher, it supposes a possible
pupil-disciple. But when somebody takes himself for a teacher, for a guru, he
lives in dependency, in insecurity. And when you take yourself for a student,
a disciple, you also live in insecurity. As long as we take ourselves for
somebody, we are in insecurity. In the new dimension we spoke of, where the
mind gives up all representation, there is no disciple and no teacher. So I give
you no hold to take me for a teacher, and I do not take you for a disciple. In
this non-relation there is magic. There, you can really speak of magic.
A few moments ago, you delineated a few different steps. There is attention,
sustained attention, and various stepping stones along to enlightenment, and
yet there seems to be also just an instantaneous awakening, and I’m
wondering if the clarification of the mind or the sustained attention—what
role that plays in connection to the instantaneous awakening.
The mind must become informed. When the mind is informed there is a
natural giving-up. In this natural giving-up, where there is nobody to give up,
there is an instantaneous apperceiving of one’s real nature.
It seems that what you are describing is not an intellectual process, but an
awareness of just beingness.
It is a form of maturity in life which brings you to certain questions. It is only

a mind that has attained this maturity that can ask questions. And one must
have many questions; one must live with one’s questions, not try to
understand the question with the already known. That means we must live
with the questions in our emptiness. When we live so with our questions
there comes a kind of discrimination, discernment. From all those questions
we come to the fundamental original question: Who am I? This question,
Who am I?, only comes when you have inquired in all possible directions.
Only when you have explored all the directions do you come to the mature
state of asking Who am I? In this question, Who am I?, a mature mind says,
“I don’t know.” It is only in this “I don’t know” that there is anything
knowable, perceivable. For the “I don’t know” is not a blank state, the real “I
don’t know” refers to itself and there the question is the answer. That is an
instantaneous apperception of ourself. That is our timelessness. When we
have explored all the directions, there is a natural giving-up. And then what
you give up—what gives up—has a completely new significance.
When you say exploring all the directions, do you actually mean to try all the
directions that you think are going to give you happiness?
I would say, yes.
So if you think that you should have your own private jet, do you think you
should try to get that?
Because you are an intelligent man, you will eventually see, in inquiring and
exploring, that the moment you got what you wanted there was a moment of
absence of all energy, of all striving, of all becoming. In that moment when
your desire was attained, you felt completely free. When you really live these
moments, they are completely causeless. It is a moment of desirelessness
where you are in your peace, free from all need and projection. But you
ignore the beauty and autonomy of those moments by attributing to them a
cause: a new woman, a new car. And when the desireless moment passes you
are again looking for a new cause, a new direction. You have gone in many
directions and found moments of desirelessness, of happiness, and as you
immediately attributed these non-states to a cause, you wasted their power,
and the so-called cause, a few days later, is completely without any taste.
This vicious circle will eventually bring you to the conclusion that you can
never find what you call peace and joy on the phenomenal level. Then you
really ask for life.
Is that why it seems as if the times I have known the kind of freedom and
happiness of which you speak seem to come after I have felt a deep despair in
which I have almost given up—nothing seems to work— then suddenly I feel
free of it all. Is that what you are speaking of?
Yes, you give up all the directions. And then there comes a stop.
Can I give up yoga?
Ask yourself what brought you to do yoga and what brings you to give it up.
You do not need to give up your singing, your piano playing, your golf. You
do not need to give them up. Why give them up?
The other day in a yoga session you talked of a timeless moment and my mind
merely went: Well, this is a timeless moment, dot, dot, dot; then I realized
that it was a tasteless moment—there was no taste. Is that what you are
talking about?
You can never think of a timeless moment, because thinking is in time. You
can become completely attuned to the moment; then you cannot think and
you are really present. You can never think of presence—when you think of
it, it is already past. You can only be presence.
How can I, in asking this question, right now, experience that attunement?
The moment you ask a real question, you are free from the answer and you
are free from the question. You are automatically in a “don’t know” where
your mind is completely free from representations. There is just waiting and
being open. This openness is reflexive, referring immediately to your whole
intelligence, to your whole sensitivity. It does not look at life from here in
your head, from here in your body. In this waiting there is the answer. You
can never have the answer on the level of formulation. You will have these
timeless moments between two thoughts and between two perceptions. You
will see that between two perceptions or two thoughts there is a nothingness.
There is wholeness, there is life. This, you will have often in daily life. At
first you will be in these moments before a thought and after a thought,
before a perception and after a perception. In the end you will also have this
presence during a perception, during action. Then it is like the juggler you
saw when you were little and your father took you to the circus. He was
juggling twelve balls with only two hands—very difficult. Every ball came
down at the right time to the left and the right hand. How did he do it? You
noticed that he was not identified, implicated, in the play. He was behind his
doing.
When you live your totality you will be behind all your actions. All will
come and go in this background, consciousness. Thoughts will arise and die,
action will appear and disappear in consciousness. This consciousness is your
presence, your real nature. It is the only continuity. Be attuned only to what is
constant in you.
Thank you for listening.
July 13
I wonder if I might pursue the question that I asked last night. I asked about
the relation between the teacher and the student, and you said that there is no
teacher and there is no student. And it seemed to me that if there is a teacher
and a student then there is a whole ground for expectations and desires to
arise. I think that I understood what you meant, because if there is a teacher
and disciple it destroys the relationship. And yet I am still aware that in all
the great traditions there is the talk of the role of the teacher, and you have
spoken of and used the word “guru” in past talks.
You must first see that in reality there is nothing to teach. Then the problem
disappears. One can teach knowledge but one can never teach what one
fundamentally is. One can only teach what one is not. On this phenomenal
plane, on the phenomenal level between teacher and disciple, we can only say
what we are not. So, when the teacher says that you are not this or that, it
belongs to the mind. But we can only say what we are not because we are.
So, saying what we are not comes out of what we are. So, this saying has a
certain perfume, a certain background, a certain taste. When you follow with
your mind the understanding of what you are not, it will lead you to its source
as a shadow leads to its substance, and there is a moment of apperception of
reality. In the understanding that all that is, we reference to the already
known; there is just silence. But in this silence the person has no security and
so the mind comes in and begins again.
When you have lived freely, lived knowingly the not-known, you will be
solicited in daily life. It is like a recall of this non-state. You will first have it
when an activity is completely accomplished, between two thoughts, two
perceptions, and then there comes a moment when you have it in action. That
is important. But coming back, one can only teach what one is not. In this
way, the mind is informed, the mind sees that it has a limited role to play.
Pedagogically speaking, in order to say what we are not, we must first
know the nature of what we are not: body, senses and mind. We cannot
simply say, “I am not my body,” because this saying is superficial. But when
you come to really know your body and you say, “I am not my body,” it is
different.
Yesterday, we were talking about experiencing different things so we would

find out that they are not the answer and we would drop the personality. I
want to ask another related question and that is what psychologists have
defined as the basic human needs: love, security, protection, etc. And
obviously all of us have certain lacks in some of those areas: love, for
instance, security, etc. Should these lacks be fulfilled or satisfied before we
can drop the personality? Is that sort of a direct route, or can you bypass
these needs, or are they going to come up later on?
Your body may have certain requirements, but don’t you know that you are
not the body? The body appears in your awareness and its likes and dislikes
in a certain way go on.
So it is not that fundamental a need, then? Like if your mother did not love
you when you were two years old, you do not have to find another mother
before you lose your need?
No. No. But you should never give up anything, because giving something up
voluntarily causes conflict.
To what are you referring—giving up what?
The body may have certain needs, why give them up? That is a calculation,
there is no spontaneity in it.
Well, if you satisfy it, it certainly is not the answer. If you do not satisfy it,
will it hinder the answer?
Likes and dislikes are compensations. When you have found your real nature
there are no more compensations; there may remain natural needs, that is
true, but there are never compensations. There is a kind of establishment of
hierarchy, I would say.
There are times when seemingly causelessly I experience a feeling of despair

or fear, a sinking feeling which does not seem related to an event. I think you
have said that one should accept and find a good feeling and allow the
despair to be encompassed by the good feeling. But I discover that I cannot
find a good feeling at those times. I can find the despair and the rest is
neutral. I cannot find a place to begin to work with.
When we speak of accepting, it is not a fatalistic accepting, but an accepting

with the view to know what you accept. So, accepting means not to interfere
with your perception. Simply remain completely alert to what you accept.
Then one day you will find yourself in the accepting state itself. You can
never localize this accepting stance. Accepting is not outside or inside. It is
not a concept. It is a state of openness. Because, in accepting, you live in
fundamental certitude that all may come to you. It comes to you; you can
never take it, you never grasp it. All you can do in your life is, I would say, to
wish it, and even the word wish is too powerful. Be completely open to
whatever happens to you. That is non-volitional living. There is a very deep
wisdom in not grasping, not asking, only waiting.
So there is nothing more to do with this feeling than with other feelings just
be all of them?
You have been approaching my suggestions from the psychological view.

The fear is located very often in the abdominal region. Face the physical
location and in locating it in an actual part of the body, you will be able to
deal with it in a concrete way.
You spoke about the energy body. Are there different bodies, or is it one
flow?
You are born with a certain energy capital. You can augment this capital, it is
true. You can organize, you can reorchestrate your capital. You can
administrate it wisely or unwisely, but you are born with a certain capital and
it is important that you come to know it and administrate it well. But you can
only become a good administrator when you are completely detached, when
your ego is not involved. When you administrate with psychological distance,
you use your capital in the right way—all your capital, your energy, your
intelligence, your sensitivity, your money, and so on.
You have said so often in your lectures and your books how important it is for
us to see that we cannot find what we seek in objects. We come to the point,
you said, where we see they do not give us what they promise. Now, in my life
experience this is true. In each experience I wait, in an almost passive way,
for the disappointment. Is there a way that I could see, in a sudden
convincing way, that I will always be disappointed in objects, without having
to go through the whole series of calamities?
When you emphasize the object, then you are constantly in its possession.
But when you really see that the object cannot give you what you are looking
for, in this moment you have a forefeeling of what you are and there is no
more dispersion and there is orientation. When you are oriented, all your life
is reorchestrated. But as you cannot willingly give up your desired objects,
you must really see that when the desired object is attained, in this moment
there is nobody and no cause of this moment. There is absolute joy without
cause. That means accepting that the fundamental joy in you is you. It is
important not only to see it, but to see how this seeing acts on you.
Yes, now the problem is, as you know, that the mind chases the next desire
and the next one very quickly.
Yes, it is not enough simply to see, but take note how the seeing acts on you,
how it affects your organism. This will bring you to maturity. When you
question your life, when you explore your life, you will see that there is a
dispersion of energy in hoping, wishful thinking, daydreaming, and so on.
With this observation comes discrimination. This discrimination does not
come from the mind; it comes from the facts of the situation itself. The only
meaning the object has is to point to the ultimate subject. When you use the
object in the right way, you come to the understanding that every object is
sacred. An object becomes sacred when you see really that its homeground is
in ultimate awareness. I would say that an object not only points to, but is
used to glorify the ultimate. That is why we have art, beauty. It is not very
often in our life that an object is not produced from another object, that it
really comes out of silence. When an object appears in silence it does not
belong to the mind. It belongs to our totality.
You are aware of your actions and reactions and your resistance; it is
important that you see your resistance, otherwise you remain in the chain of
resistance, of reaction. The moment you see it you are out of the process, out
of the chain of reactions, and then when you see it you stand in a certain way
outside the process. When you really stand outside the process I would say
this out-standing refers to itself; you feel yourself free.
In those moments when everything drops away and there is no more tension,
no more thought, there is just stillness and silence and this infinite sense of
well-being and no more questions, is there anything one can do in that
moment to deepen it? It’s like what happened today when I went for a walk
and the one thought that arose was that I don’t want to leave this place; I
don’t want to go away from here.
The appearance—the enlightenment, if you like this word—is instantaneous,

is constantly new; it affects your phenomenal being, that is sure, and in your
phenomenal being there may be many changes which belong to space and
time. The uneducated mind objectifies it.
The mind is very clever. In a certain way it is against life, because the
mind knows that there is no place for its psychological play in living truth. Of
course it functions when necessary in daily living, but eighty percent of its
activity is to maintain the personality; and when you do not use the person
any more, because then there is no more psychological memory, the energy
dispersed in psychological activity is reoriented, brought back to stillness.
There is functional memory, of course, but psychological memory has no
longer a reason to exist.
Do you think it is necessary to cut back on daily activities to be more
available to that deeper silence or stillness?
You will be invited. You can never provoke the invitation. Stillness is not in
time or space and does not need time and space to be. Stillness is the
background of all activity. When you no longer act from the personal point of
view you will automatically find your activities are economical, efficient.
You cannot change by will. Only a right understanding, a clear perspective
can bring change.
July 14
The starting point of all activities is more or less localized in our heads. But
the moment we are invited by our original stillness to be the stillness, then we
should go away from this localization. Otherwise, we remain enclosed in the
battlefield. When you are invited to be still, consciously relax your optic
nerves. In our sense activities the eyes play a big role and the optic nerves are
generally in tension. All the energy employed in seeing is more or less in
intention. So, when you feel tension in the eyes you should, with the help of
your optic nerves, let the localization go through the left and right brain away
from the eye area so that it feels as if the eyes are localized at the base of the
brain. Then you are out of the battlefield. You will feel that all the energy
which comes up is more or less localized in the cervical region, very
precisely at the seventh vertebra. You should enjoy for a certain moment this
localization. Then you may be invited by your deep relaxation to go to the
heart. Perhaps the heart is the last door, for there, there is no more outgoing
or ingoing.
Have you any questions?
Concerning that energy that I feel sometimes coming very strongly through
me, years ago you told me, “Welcome the visitor and let him visit you without
manipulation.” When I work and I feel that energy coming through my heart
and my hands, I have no problem. It is really a healing energy and I feel I am
totally flowing with life and am at peace and it is a celebration. When I am
not working and I feel that spring of strong energy coming, instead of feeling
it through the heart and the hands, I feel it coming to the head. It sometimes
makes me feel tremendously aggressive, I do not feel that element of love, I
feel personal. If I try to hold it back I feel it becoming nervousness. It is much
better now, but I still have it at times and I do not want to manipulate it.
However, I still see it being transformed into nervousness. Could you help
me? Is it simply through observation once more, seeing the personal element
that I have to let go?
The word “observation” is very heavy. I would say, welcome your

nervousness. In the moment when it comes up, have the feeling of your
whole body. You cannot immediately feel the whole body, but there is a kind
of gathering of all the parts of your body. Welcome the energy, welcome the
nervousness. You will see how difficult it is to welcome, because the
welcoming position is completely free from any direction. The moment you
feel that you are localized, concentrated, that the energy is fractional, sit or lie
down, and let your body be an object of your observation. In observation you
are free from all manipulation, all direction, all thought. Then the energy
expands and integrates in your totality, instead of being focussed in one
place.
There is an organic memory of the body in its natural, relaxed, energetic
state. Memory is not localized only in the brain. Our cells contain memory,
an organic memory where you feel your body whole, completely orchestrated
with the energy. You must become acquainted with it.
Also, come to know yourself in the mirror of society, when you are with
people in many different situations. The moment you feel a reaction, face it.
And accept without judging.
Yes. Then your reaction goes away immediately, because there is no fixation,
no localization possible. The moment your attention opens, unfolds itself, it
becomes intelligence, it envelops all your sensitivity. Then your seeing is no
longer fractional, your seeing is global.
So I should not try to control the energy.
There is not a controller, because the controller has the same nature as the
controlled. It is the subject which maintains the object. But when the subject
is no longer relative, when it becomes the ultimate subject, then there is no
more fuel for the object, and there is a fusion between the observer and the
observed. It is the controller which maintains the object.
You may, it is true, through the controller, find a more comfortable place
for your object. You can make the object peaceful through many techniques.
But it is still a lion. You may give some food to the lion, caress it and appease
it, but still the lion is there.
You said, “when the subject becomes the ultimate subject...” Could you
elaborate on that a little?
An object exists because there is a subject, and the subject exists because
there is an object. What we generally call the subject is an object too, because
we can observe it, we know the nature of this subject—its fear, anxiety,
expectations, and so on. Suppose there is fear in your body. The moment you,
as the subject, try to calm the fear or give some justification for it, you
contribute to it. That is why the controller belongs to the controlled. But
when the observer relaxes in pure observing, he loses his qualification as a
subject and vanishes in the observing. And as the object no longer has an
accomplice for maintaining its fear, it dissolves. Then there is no longer an
observer and something observed.
You can find many appeasements for your fear. You can practice
relaxation, you can become a rich man, have a big house, a nice car—all
these kinds of things make your fear temporarily peaceful—but the fear is
still there.
When I think about who I am and who we all are and what we are doing
here, I think: I am here to become this attentive awareness, I am here to
become myself. And we are here to commune, to mingle with one another, to
feel our oneness with one another. I wonder what part there might be for
celebration, for singing, for dancing, and if that would be contradictory to
your work. I wonder if you think about humanity and what humanity means, if
you care or if that is an illusion. I also wonder about this teacher-student
relationship that is, in a sense, enforced by this kind of exchange, particularly
when we do not have more play between us. Not that we cannot play when
you are not here, but there is no organization to play, to celebrate together. I
would like to understand where you are in relation to these things.
In celebration we use the expressions of life, and the expressions of life can
have many forms—music, dancing, singing, painting, play; all kinds of forms
which point to beauty. But you know that the real music is after the music,
the real dance is after the dance. So that any celebration vanishes in joy and
you do not need to go through the celebration form. You do not need to dance
or sing. You can go immediately to your homeground.
And there is another way of celebrating, even when you are not expressing
a special form of art. It is a togetherness where there is no asking, no
demanding, there is only being together. Sometimes you see people who live
in harmony together. There is nothing left to say and they are comfortable in
silence, because the togetherness never changes. It may be dressed
differently, but it is always the same. In science when they say, “We have
found something new,” there is nothing new: It is always the old, dressed
another way. There are couples living together for whom there is nothing
more to say. And it is so intense, this living together.
But is it all right if we sing together or dance together when we work with
you?
Oh absolutely!
I wanted to ask you more about becoming the ultimate subject and observing
the subject and object. I find that if I have a feeling of compassion about what
I am observing in myself or something else, it works better. I do not know if I
am fooling myself, making that up and creating something that is just in my
mind.
Accepting is compassion. When you hear or see beauty, it brings you

immediately back to the ultimate. When you see how you function, the way
you think and act, you must not be stuck to the seeing. It is not enough just to
see and to hear. You must see where the seeing automatically brings you: to
your peaceful, natural, vacant state. What is important is the result of the
seeing. As I said yesterday, look how it acts on you. See to which state the
seeing brings you. Spontaneously, activities stop; you are in the light of
totality.
I want to question more about action. My circumstances have been such that
I have been able to sit on the sidelines, so to speak, for the last few months.
The more I taste the silence and space, the more there is a reluctance to act.
It is almost as if action were a dark tunnel I do not want to go into any more.
My job (I work at home) entails writing about things that have no meaning:
management theories. These concepts of dreamland... it is almost visceral,
you know. I feel I have been in a cesspool. I do not want to go swimming
there any more. Sometimes I think I would rather die than go in there again.
It is not important what you do. It is the inner state in which you do it. Next
time you will not emphasize the thing done, the object, you will naturally
come back to the doing. You will be in your natural stand and feel yourself,
establish yourself in this nothingness. Here, nothing is represented, but there
is presence, there is fullness.
You were speaking about the optic nerve, and how that can help us to release
tension. I would like you to speak more on that.
First you will see that your eye activities are constantly in action. Of all the
sense faculties, sight is the most grasping. So, relax your eye activity. First,
relax the eye cavity. You may ask how to relax it. One way is to imagine you
have very big sunglasses on. In front of each eye there is a big, big sunglass.
Then expand the cavity to this size of the sunglass. You will see that a kind of
relaxation comes.
Go back to the eye itself. Try to imagine that the eye is falling completely
out of its cavity. At a certain point of relaxation you will feel that all the
eccentric energy becomes concentric, comes back, and then you consciously
cross the brain on either side. In this way, you have the impression that both
of your eyes join in your neck.
Take note how this activity acts on you. You will immediately feel that
your brain, which is constantly contracting and expanding like a sponge,
becomes relaxed. You will notice that the pulsation moves from a contracted
to an expanded form. Though there is still movement, it is moving in the
expanded form. For a certain while you should localize yourself here. Then
you must have the impression that, with the help of your tactile sensation,
you expand behind you to cover the wall behind you. You will find that not
only your neck but your back covers the whole wall.
Then you may automatically be taken to localize yourself in your heart, not
the physical heart, but the heart of all hearts. It is still a localization, but it is
the last door which brings you neither inside nor outside, to the ultimate
nowhere.
The moment you remain enclosed in the battlefield in your brain, there is
fighting.
You said that when you are expanded behind “you may be taken in the
heart.” Why “may,” and is this heartfelt as an expansion from in front or
from behind?
It is felt in front. I cannot give you a guarantee. It depends on many things.
I have experienced a state where, instead of the observation being on specific

objects, it is over all objects. The same is true of sounds. Does that
experience relate to what you are saying?
You will see that when you look at specific things, your looking is
concentrated. You need to learn to look as a painter looks. The painter never
concentrates on the object itself. The painter looks at an object in connection
with other objects, because, knowingly or unknowingly, the painter knows
that an object in itself has no autonomous reality. It has its reality through the
other objects around. One object reflects another. So an artist has a relaxed
looking, seeing how the object acts and how light gives life to objects. When
you come to the right relaxed looking, there is another state where there is
still seeing but nothing is seen.
As long as you have eyes, there is seeing, but nothing specific need be
seen. As long as you have ears, there is hearing, but nothing specific is heard.
In daily life, in meditation, there is no withdrawal of the senses.
In certain texts they speak of withdrawing the senses. That is a wrong
expression. It is not a withdrawal. The senses come to their natural non-
directed state. There is seeing but nothing is seen. There is presence without
restriction.
I do this sometimes when I am driving a car, but it is a little scary. I let the
body drive the car. I am no longer in control, but I think I am a better driver
because I see everything. Is this what you mean?
Yes. In this moment, there is no thinking.
It is automatic.
If you like, automatic. There is no thinking, especially when you drive in

places where the traffic is very dense and you have no time to think. There is
only seeing, pure seeing, pure perception. There is only function. There is not
a functioner.
You said yesterday in response to my question about a plastic flower and a

real flower that from the ultimate perspective there is only beauty. But I am
wondering. It seems that there is a difference in objects.
That is true. When you see a real flower and an artificial flower, it depends
on the capacity of seeing. When you see an artificial flower there is still an
absence of life that you find in a real flower.
I am interested to know what the relationship is between consciousness and

evolution. Did Neanderthal man have sages? Or is awakened consciousness
a recent phenomenon that is tied in somehow with the evolution of the
species?
There is only consciousness. You cannot apply evolution to consciousness.

Consciousness is. But the expression of consciousness is without end, is a
basket without a bottom... though the form may change. What does it mean,
evolution? It is only a category of the mind. When the prototype of a thing
has changed, it is no longer here. It is finished. It is only the mind that
“changes” it from one thing to another thing. Because in reality all appears
and disappears in consciousness and there is no independent phenomenal
continuity. But that brings us too far in the problem of evolution.
Consciousness has nothing to do with evolution.
Are you saying evolution is a thing of the mind?
Yes, the mind.
There are many expressions of consciousness, and that other question was
whether, in order for consciousness to know itself, are specific forms
required?
It depends on how you take the word “consciousness.” When I speak of

consciousness, I speak of pure consciousness. But very often there is some
confusion. When I think of pure consciousness, I think of pure awareness. I
take the formulation to which I am accustomed. For me all is consciousness.
There is pure consciousness, and then there may be functional consciousness.
Functional consciousness is when there is the presence of an object.
Generally, one speaks of awareness and consciousness. These terms are very
often confused.
Monkeys do not meditate. Do monkeys meditate?
Yes, under the condition that there is not a meditator and nothing meditated
on! In any case, there is awareness, without knowing it.
This is in relation to the question I asked yesterday. I could not express it

clearly. You mentioned that truth and beauty give power and strength. Now,
that is true, but talking in general in relation to society and myself, my
experience shows that in society people hide truth and facts due to some
selfish gain or something. People do not come up with truth and facts in the
situation. And even myself, when I have to confront higher authorities like
bosses or in some other situation where there is a certain amount of fear, or
fear from the other party, I do not come out with the truth or facts as to what
the real situation is. And that is what the other party does when I do business
with them. What my question comes down to is: There is a certain amount of
boldness and frankness needed to not hide the facts. That is one thing, and
the second thing is: To get the same from the other party. In other words,
fighting against evil, to need some kind of power and strength to fight against
evil. And I do not find anybody talking with boldness and frankness. Even I
cannot do it. So I am wondering how can we develop the strength and power
to speak the truth.
The power comes out of truth itself which is beauty; there is power. Truth
expresses itself in society in many forms.
Fighting could be non-violent or could be violent.
There is nothing wrong in fighting. There are many ways to fight. In a

fighting situation, you cannot project a system of fighting. You cannot fight
according to certain norms. Your tool must be ready, your arm must be
relaxed, you must be completely aware, your feet must be strong, that
belongs to the mechanism—but how to fight, you can only see what happens
in the moment itself; you cannot project a way of fighting.
Still, even in the non-violence of Mahatma Gandhi who fought against the
British, he would talk openly about the British kingdom being evil. He had
some kind of guts or boldness or strength to talk that way. There was no one
in India who could talk like that and that is why he was a leader. He could
talk of facts and could put his life in front of them, that is what it amounts to.
What do you suggest to develop that kind of strength and boldness?
When the ego is absent, all the intelligence and power of the universe are at
your disposal. It depends completely on what kind of capital you have. You
fight according to your capital. One cannot give a codified formula of when
to act, how to act, when to fight or not to fight. It belongs to the situation
itself. You act according to the situation. The power to act comes out of truth,
out of your true nature. A systematic refusal to fight is also fighting.
Where does the capital come from?
The capital belongs to you. It is a gift given to you. And you fight and you
live according to this capital. In the end you are in the society but you are not
of the society. Society begins with you. But really, power and right acting
come out of truth. I remind you of the Bhagavad Gita.
Your teaching helps our understanding mentally. What I do not understand is

whether there is something we have to learn with our minds? Sometimes I sit
and inquire and try to reflect about my life and its purpose and what to do,
things like that. I have always given credence to these reflections, as though
from them I would have an understanding and build something, perhaps
become more mature, perhaps become more available to openness. Is there
any value in doing this?
You must be really realistic. Start from the position in which you find
yourself at this moment. Go back home and look at your activities, your
surroundings. You will see that they are more or less fixed patterns. Look at
them again from the welcoming point of view, and you will see which
activities belong to you as a husband, which as a father, as a businessman, as
a man who must earn a living. Face the problems of life—this belongs to you.
See all these activities from the welcoming point of view and you will be
really astonished. Many things will come to the surface of your
consciousness that you never saw before, because you were living only in
patterns, in fixed forms. These elements that surface bring a complete
rectification in your life. From these elements comes understanding and it is
from the understanding that change comes. It is an organic change. See all
your activities from the welcoming point of view. In this welcoming point of
view there is no bargaining of like and dislike. Be very alert to the parasite,
the “me,” who will inevitably put this new position—which comes from life
itself—into question. Do not go in this doubt. When there is a decision that
comes from life, this decision is instantaneous. It does not go through the
analytical mind; it comes from the situation itself. The solution comes
directly from the situation. It is the only way—spiritual, practical, realistic—
to behave. Otherwise, you remain enclosed in a kind of conceptual universe
which you try to escape because there is no comfort in it, no freedom, no
peace. You try new philosophies, new books, a new belief, a new wife, a new
job, and so on, but all this keeps you still in the same universe.
When you really see the pattern which keeps you in this conceptual
universe, there is a moment when you find yourself outside of the cage. In the
welcoming position, if you can call it a position, you are out of the cage. You
may see residues of the cage around you, but you are no longer in the cage.
Of course, when you see things very clearly in this completeness, there are
some practical changes that ask to be made, but I think you will manage it.
You must have the conviction that you have the capital, the energy, to effect
all that is required. When you do not have the energy or talent to effect
something, then inquire where you can find it.
When you try to change your life from the point of view of the split mind,
of like and dislike, the conflict remains. You may change the position of your
writing table to face east or your bed towards the north. You may change
your ways of doing many things, but the conflict in you still remains. You are
involved in the furniture of life. You are wasting your energy with trivia.
What you call the anecdotal instead of the essential.
Exactly.
Do you experience a passion for all humanity to be awakened?
There must be the deep desire to be free. This is absolutely necessary.

Do you experience a longing that all should be awake?
I think the deep feeling, the deep desire to be free comes from freedom itself.
Otherwise, from where can it come? You must live with it.
Yes, but I am asking you whether you feel you really want all of humanity to
understand this?
Of course, of course, of course. Absolutely.
I’m experiencing these patterns you are talking about. They seem very clear
to me and they all seem to go nowhere. There is no satisfaction.
Dissatisfaction is part of the pattern, satisfaction is part of the pattern, there
is no fulfillment. What do you suggest doing?
I would say don’t forget what you have sometimes felt at our meeting; don’t
forget it. The words you can forget, but there is something more than the
words.
You put everything in such a beautiful nutshell, I want to write it down, hold
it. Because then I think I have it.
When you write it down, you lose it.
But can I be sure it will be there?
Absolutely sure.
It is like taping programs off the TV that you want to watch and then you
never watch them because you know you have them.
[Another questioner] You have never used the word “God” since I have been
here. I have a problem with that word. Can you tell me what that word means
to you, or how you understand it?
The word means nothing to me, because it is a concept. This concept

produces certain representations, certain feelings, but it remains a concept, a
representation. In a certain way, when you are stuck to the word, you insult
God. So, I would say the absolute understanding is that you must see it is
only in the absolute absence of yourself that there is God. As long as there is
a self, God has no place in you and remains a concept. Have you heard the
Buddhist saying, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”? It means:
Kill the concept; go away from the concept.
Could you elaborate on the distinction between the blank state and true
silence or the natural non-state?
Very often the progressive way emphasizes purifications and eliminations of

the body and the mind, striving for beautiful feelings, beautiful emotions,
sensations, beautiful thoughts, and so on. But this keeps you in the relation of
observer and observed, the subject-object relationship. Then, when you come
to the so-called last level of purification, you are so accustomed to the
subject-object relationship that you cannot free yourself from it, so that when
you come to the elimination of the last object you find it is a blank state.
Being stuck in the blank state is a great tragedy, and it needs a really
tremendous “appearing” in your life to come out of this subject-object
relationship. Otherwise, it remains an enigma.
In this direct teaching, we face the ultimate immediately. We never see the
body, senses and mind except through the ultimate. The purification comes
from above to below. The ultimate is always in the background. Then, to
awaken yourself in this silent oneness is a spontaneous event.
But if you are stuck in the blank state, welcome it. When you really
welcome it, you will become aware of the mechanisms and see that all your
energy is eccentric. The premise behind the progressive method, no matter
how subtle, is that there is something to attain, something to find, something
to achieve. In the direct method we absolutely know that there is nothing to
attain, that what we are looking for, we are already. So, when you are
completely relaxed in this blank state, welcoming it, you will feel you are
open to the welcoming, open to the openness. Welcoming welcomes its own
welcoming. Welcoming refers to itself spontaneously, without any agent,
without any middleman. There is no other way to proceed. In living open to
the openness, open to being the openness, you are at the threshold of being
taken in your real nature.
July 15
Yesterday you talked about the heart being perhaps the final frontier. I
wonder if you might elaborate on the heart.
The heart is still a localization, but there, you are at the threshold of Reality.
It is the last going out, I would say. But the localization of your heart is still a
localization.
When you say “heart” do you mean the feeling of love that sits in that place?
I am not speaking of the physiological heart, of course. It is a place where

there is a sacred feeling, but one should hear this and immediately forget it.
I think you once said that the silent mind is the final barrier that the yogi has
which keeps him still in duality. You said the silent mind is still an object.
Oh, yes.
How can that be understood? Is it that there are different qualities of

emptiness, different qualities of stillness?
What you call a mind does not exist. The mind is a number of functions, a
number of qualities. When these functions come to a stop, because there are
moments in life when we do not use the mind, then there is an absence of
functions. But this absence of function is not the silence we mean here. The
mind may be silent from time to time, but the nature of our mind is function.
To concentrate on the stillness of the mind may give you a certain relaxation,
but this in itself is a state, a blank state. We are not speaking of this
emptiness. We are speaking of an emptiness without duration, without time.
It is very difficult for us to represent space without a center and without a
periphery. When you look out of the window here, you first see trees, bushes,
meadows, stars, the moon. You look at objects in relation to other objects, but
you never notice the space in which the objects exist. Your looking is a kind
of comparison. You know yourself only in objects because you relate with
your personality which is an object too. So what is important for you is to
experience the absence of all objects, including your center, your personality.
Your presence is in the absence of all objects. In other words, you are really
present only in your absence. Do you see what I mean?
It is important that the mind sees this kind of geometrical representation.
Your absence can never be represented. You cannot think it or feel it. That is
why, in reality, metaphysically speaking, we can never name it, we can only
express it negatively. We can only express our reality negatively, never
positively. What we are fundamentally is our absence. And when you ask
how can you experience your absence, you cannot experience it, because it is
in the absence of the experiencer. Your absence is your wholeness. When
obliged to give a description, one could say, “It is a feeling without feeling
it.”
It seems as though this feeling without feeling can be felt whether the object
is there or not.
When you look, you look from the point of view of an object in subject-
object relationship, but if this last object, the subject-I, disappears, then you
are in your wholeness, absence, space.
When there are no thoughts present in the mind, no thoughts about an object,
subject, or anything, does that mean you are fully present to the situation?
Time and space are created by thoughts. When there is an absence of

thoughts, generally we feel or think the absence, we make it an object and
still project a possible presence. So we must come to the absence of the
absence, the double absence.
During yoga today you talked about releasing “the parasites,” and I’d never
heard you use this term before. You said to let go of the parasites on the
exhalation.
When you do the movement there may be some compensations or reactions

to the movement. These compensations or reactions are, for me, parasites.
When you find the position and relax it a little, you give up these parasites;
you empty the space, you empty the movement. Then do it again until the
movement is completely empty, free of parasites. Do you see what I mean?
Because a real movement must be fulfilled with feeling. When the movement
is fulfilled with feeling it is no longer mechanical. It is the same when you
see art on stage, dance which expresses itself in movement. When the
movement is empty, it has no meaning. From the outside the movement is
there, there is the right architecture in space, but it is empty. It gives you no
joy. Look at the Bolshoi or most ballet companies. Very often of the twenty
or so dancers there are only one or two in whom the movement is really
fulfilled. So when we say “the parasites must go away” we mean the
reactions must be eliminated, and then the movement is fulfilled.
A parasite is something that lives off something else, depends on a host for its
energy, and so...
Yes, the host is memory. It is a memory.
And so they take energy.
Try, when doing the movements to empty the movements. As long as there is
intentional power, energy which remains even as memory, as residue, you are
involved in it and can never take note of it, can never take it as a fact. Unless
the movement is empty, it cannot be realized. When I said “parasite” it was
more or less a poetic expression. Sometimes one needs some words to shock
people. No?
So, is there a quality, other than just being aware of the movement, that you
are trying to achieve by eliminating the parasites?
Yes. As long as there are parasites, you do not give up and empty the
movement to give place to the feeling. There needs to be a giving-up. The
moment you have the sensation that your arm is filled with feeling, perceived
full of sensation, then you will see the muscles work completely differently.
When I lift my arms vertically, there is the same feeling here, here, here,
here. This is very easy, you can do it too. Then there come some complicated
movements which are more difficult. You must be comfortable in all your
movements.
What is important is not to emphasize the body, but to realize that the body
lives in awareness. There is a difference when you do a movement or a
posture and you are completely involved in it, completely stuck to it, and
when it unfolds in awareness.
If the mind is in a quiet state, from experience we know that the mind and the
personality will come back. The state of absence of the person is not
permanent and the person returns. If in the thought free state any effort is
made to maintain it, this effort is an action of the person.
Absolutely.
But if no effort is made the person will return.
To maintain an absence of activity, to maintain a still mind calls for effort.

When you enforce a still mind you go to sleep.
So here is the dilemma.

The moment you sustain your attention you go deeper.
That’s an effort.
It is not an effort. You live freely; you are effortless, because you take it for
granted that your natural, absolute atomic state is completely peaceful,
completely without effort. This beingness is your natural atomic state.
So there should be a kind of willingness to yield to a still deeper state.
You can never go to the original state because you are it. You can only give
up what you are not. The moment you know what you are not, there is a
natural giving-up. What remains, if we can still say that something remains,
can never be named, never explained. Any word you could find would be a
thought, a type of representation.
When the thought has no more capacity to represent, it gives up. You do
not give it up; it gives itself up. Take time with our conversation. All the
activities of your mind and body appear in your space, appear in your
consciousness, in your timelessness.
So you are saying, “You are the consciousness and everything appears in
it”?
Yes. All objects, all that is perceived, all that exists, appears in
consciousness. That is why we say that all that is perceived, all that exists,
has no existence in itself because it depends on consciousness. Consciousness
and its object are one. You can never have two objects at the same time.
There is only one object. So an object has no reality in itself, no existence in
itself. It refers to consciousness. The object appears in space and time, but
consciousness does not move. Objectless consciousness is unthinkable for
many people.
How does it help us to know that there can only be one object in
consciousness at a time? What does that show?
The moment you know that an object exists only because you are conscious,
that an object cannot be known without consciousness and that consciousness
and its object are one, then you are ejected into the unthinkable. You are
brought back to the “I” that cannot be thought and all you can do is find
yourself in the unthinkable.
It is very easy for my mind to make an object out of anything.
But even when you speak of the ego, of the “I,” the “I” is only related to
situations as an object: I am hungry, I am cold, I am depressed, I am stiff, I
am old. The “I” exists only in relation to situations and objects. When you
take away the situation, you can never think “I” This pronoun “I,” standing
alone without qualification, can never be thought. It refers directly to the
unthinkable. You cannot represent the “I”
Yesterday, you gave an exercise where we unfocussed our eyes and located
the attention in the back of the neck. In investigating this I found objects not
to be static, but dynamic. Then someone came by and immediately my
attention changed to perceiving objects in the usual hard static way. When
the exercise was repeated there was an experience of palpable resistance. It
seemed like I needed—this is probably the wrong word—a certain kind of
“will.” Not an ego-will, but a will of another quality or kind. Would you
comment?
But look, when in one moment you realized that you know only what is
knowable, that all you really know is the knowable, when you take that as a
fact, there is a moment that you feel yourself completely out of the cage of
the known. When you take it as a fact that you only know yourself in the
knowable, you are automatically brought back to not-knowing where there is
no experiencer and nothing is experienced. You feel yourself in the non-state
where there is not a knower and nothing is known. Do you follow me?
In what we were pursuing a moment ago, it seems like you are touching on it
again. We can be in consciousness, merely being, but then it seems that that
attention is thrown out by the mind which pulls us away from that inner
being; then somehow we are confused again. So we search and relocate that
feeling of being, but it is constantly being thrown out. Is it a question of
continuing to come back to that inner being? Or will it always be thrown
out?
Live knowingly in your absence. It is really in your absence that there is

presence, and the rest is functioning. In this absence of yourself you live in a
non-qualified state. You function as a father, as a lover, a teacher, a driver
and so on, simply functioning. But you do not take yourself for a driver, a
doctor, a teacher, a father. You simply function. So in all the circumstances
of functioning refer to your absence. There is no more choice. You are no
longer in the psychological structure of shame, like and dislike, of choice.
But what is important is that the moment you take note, take it as a fact
that you only know yourself in the knowable, you must sustain the moment
of this insight; live this moment completely. This moment is timeless and
refers to itself. The stopping in this moment refers to the not-knowing, the
welcoming non-state. It is the original perception where there is not a
perceiver and nothing is perceived. It is an apperception of reality.
What is the relation between the witness state and the non-state?
As long as there is a subject and an object-I speak of the relative subject-there

is a witness. When you see that the subject is nothing other than an object
too, then in the merging of object-subject the witness also disappears and
there is only consciousness.
After an action you can only say that many things appeared and I was
witness to them. It is important that you say, after an action: I was not the
actor, I was not the doer, I was witness to it. This helps you to go out of the
recording to be an actor, to be a doer. At the time of acting there is only
action, only function. You live completely out of psychological time.
The moment that you take it as a fact that you live only in the knowable,
then I would say the fact refers to you. It reveals the ultimate, it reveals your
presence. And how you live this presence, I cannot explain. One can only say
you have the impression that in this presence all is included. Nothing is
outside. There is nothing else.
I think the nearest is when you speak of love. I mean when you speak of
love in an earnest way, not what we call romantic love. In love there is no
border, no center, no object, no lover; there is not a beloved, there is just
love. You are nowhere, but you can say “I am everywhere.”
What is the basis of action? How do we know when to go, or to move?
It is the divine who acts through you. You are more or less a child. You just
act. When you look out of the window and you realize that all the objects that
you see live in this surrounding space, artistically speaking, identify yourself
completely with the space, and from the space, look again at the object. You
will see it has a completely new aspect. You will see yourself extended in this
space. You are the space.
Would it be the same as in painting? The space forms the object.
When you go into a cathedral and see all the stained glass windows, these
windows express the lives of the saints, people with wisdom, and so on, but
all the history that is expressed in the stained glass is visible only through the
light that comes from outside; otherwise what kind of stained glass is it? The
same is true of our life which only has significance with this light, our light.
As I am able to see that beliefs, feelings or emotions are just in that moment
and refer back to the space, then those begin to have no more hold on me so
that there is the continual ongoing sense that everything is coming and going
inside of me.
Yes, yes. Everything lives in you and every thought comes out of the silence
and refers to silence. There is no more psychological living. In this emptiness
there is emotion, I would say there is sacredness, but there is no more
emotivity. Emotion is giving, it is expression, it is beauty, but emotivity is a
defense.
When the fact refers to your wholeness, to your completeness, it reveals
you. And how you live the revealing, how you live the moment when reality
reveals itself, we cannot formulate. It is stronger and more real than touching
the ground, but we cannot explain it. It is our nearest.
I can express it: Memory lives in me; I do not live in the memory.
Absolutely. This is not an abstract concept.
Is this what you are doing in the asana at the end when you held the pose and
you said, “Now stop the movement; take it as a fact”? What I feel is the
dissolving of any ideal images I might be holding of where I think I’m
moving. It is like a dissolving of memory. It is almost as if the body itself
begins to dissolve and then there is just being in that position, or rather the
position is in being. But the essence is probably that one allows the memory
and the ideal images just to dissolve. Is that so?
Yes. It comes from you and goes to you. It comes from you; it refers to you.
There is only one. Oneness expresses itself through oneness. God enjoys
itself through itself, by itself.
Once one is established in one’s presence, the original nature, I assume it is

a dynamic and not a static experience. Is there some—words are very
difficult here—is there some enrichment of that experience of presence? Does
love grow more or is it complete with that first realization?
In real love in this timeless awareness there is no evolution, there is no

progression. If we can speak of a starting point, it is to acquaint oneself with
this thought-free perception. In this thought-free perception the perception
unfolds completely and our attention unfolds completely, and then
intelligence unfolds and total sensitivity—call it awareness. First you are
aware of something, and then you become aware that you are aware. You will
also see that being aware of awareness is when there is an absence of any
object, and you can speak of objectless awareness. Then you come back to
the senses again, and there is awareness with an object. But generally, what
we call an object is not an object. It is an expression of your awareness.
When the object refers to its homeground, it loses its profanity and is sacred.
So, of course, all objects are sacred.
So the love and the insight are complete in one moment, but the manifestation
of love or the manifestation of the insight in the teaching form or in the
world, do these change over time?
Love that comes directly from Love has the power to change things
dramatically.
So the form of one’s life will change radically.
Oh, yes, the way you express it, the sensitivity. It becomes precise. It has
even a kind of logic. Of course, it depends on one’s temperament. You may
express it in a different way than I or she, but its homeground is the same.
The expression can take many forms and these are never exhausted. The
expressions of love are constantly new, never come to an end.
In that sense then you no longer see vulgarity.
No, no. Vulgarity is seen only by the mind.
But the mind can see it.
Who can see it?

But vulgarity does not affect you if you are not an object; you do not identify
as an object, so it has no effect, in a sense.
[Another questioner] A lot of the questions so far I find very intellectual, very
cerebral. Is it important to ask these questions of myself, or is just living with
myself and watching what I do enough?
When questions come up, take your questions seriously. Do not try
immediately to answer through the already known—through your memory.
Live with your question simply, but do not try to find the question. In
observing your life and observing your surroundings questions may come up,
questions like “What is life?” There comes a moment in life when you make
a kind of balance sheet. Then you go through all the numbers on the balance
sheet. And then when you come to the end you ask yourself, “Is this really
life? Is this all there is? I have done so many occupations; I have seen so
many girl friends; I have been to so many places. Is this really life?” Do not
try to give an answer. Do not try even to find an answer in you. Only see
things as a fact. But do not emphasize the fact. When you emphasize the fact
you remain with the fact. You can only see a fact when you stay outside of it.
When you are on the platform and you see the train rushing by at eighty miles
an hour, you are out of the movement and can see it clearly. When you are in
the train you cannot see the speed. The moment you see a fact it refers
immediately to your timeless presence. It reveals your timeless presence and
vanishes in your timeless presence. Live with it. It is very strong when the
fact refers to your presence.
July 16
Truth never changes, but the expressions of truth are constantly in change,
continually new. It is only the “person” who, looking for security, turns life
into repetition. In reality, there is analogy between moments, but there is no
repetition. When you face life you must never look at it through memory. Be
free from memory. You bring certain aptitudes into play, aptitudes from
heredity, father, mother, and also certain learned tools, ways of behavior
acquired through your education and experience. All this belongs to your
personality. In facing life without memory and accepting totally the facts, you
find yourself open to life. In this openness there is intelligence, in this
openness there is sensitivity. So the real personality comes from the moment
itself, from the situation itself. There is nothing personal about intelligence
and sensitivity. The real personality arises with the situation and dissolves
with the situation, leaving no residue. You are free from memory. There is no
compromise. You act according to the situation. So there is nothing personal
in the real personality. When you act according to the situation, it is action
without will, free from the ego. In other words, real action is looking away
from the personal action. You must look away from the target. To obtain the
goal you must look away from the goal.
The usual way I encounter a situation is with a sense of insecurity. I

understand from what you say that this is because I’ve forgotten who I am,
my real self, therefore I’m insecure. Now, I don’t understand what you mean
by saying that in action we look away. Do we look away from the past, or do
we look away from the situation we see in front of us, and see it empty?
Look away from memory. Alan Watts wrote in a beautiful book many years
ago, The Wisdom of Insecurity, “Real security is insecurity.” That means that
there is a perfect insecurity for the I, and in accepting this, there is security.
There is only security in the egoless state. Life meets you constantly in a new
way. We put it in a framework of previous moments, but when we know we
project the already known, then we must give it up. We can see immediately
that we have taken a direction that does not belong to the situation. Real
thinking is looking away from thinking. Real acting is looking away from
acting.
Do we call certain situations to ourselves in order to learn the next step in

expansion?
When you see the situation from a certain point of view, like or dislike, then
you act according to your like. Then you can never really face a situation.
You must face a situation with your choiceless observation.
I think I understand your words, but what’s happening is that I find this
pattern of reactions already in momentum in a situation and it’s as though
it’s happening to somebody else who’s going through old patterns, old
memories, manipulation, silly things for his own purpose, and I’m watching it
from outside. I want to shake him from this foolishness, because it’s not even
a person, just a series of gestures. It’s like looking at a stranger.
When you act according to your like and dislike, you live in the past and you
are isolated from the present situation. Free from psychological memory, you
are one with the situation, and the action in this situation leaves no residue. In
the transpersonality which comes from heredity, from what you have learned
in school, your experience, your desire to be a perfect artisan, there remains
something functional. But the elements required to really face the situation
with intelligence and sensitivity come from the situation itself.
Is it the element of insecurity that makes me keep calling on memory, keeps

one relying on memory?
Yes, because we cannot find our familiar selves in waiting. The actor who
goes on stage with memory is never a good actor. The real actor has the
feeling of his role, of the global feeling of his play. But he doesn’t rely on
memory. There may be a kind of excitement, but this excitement is a sacred
excitement; it comes from the play that is performed itself. The excitement
from the I-image is really destructive. The excitement that comes from the
play is completely different. So, in life it is the same.
We keep operating in the circle of personality and memory and our true
personality can only be realized by being open to the situation. I want to say
that there must be a way to find a vehicle or a medium to be open, but that’s
just going back into the personality.
One can never face life appropriately with the already known. We repeat life
but life never repeats. Why superimpose repetition on what is constantly
original?
In my own personal life, when a new situation arises, the first feeling I have
is that of fear. I can imagine myself in the state of being at that moment
without fear, but I am not sure how to achieve it. I seem to have two choices
—to embrace my fear, see the person who is afraid and lovingly embrace him
and hold it. The other way seems to be to put it aside and put myself in
another frame of mind that states, “This is a new occurrence. It is happening
right now. I am in the moment. I will act.” Are both of these authentic or am I
trying to push away the memory of the person, the ego in the second state?
Something happens before you notice the fear. There is a moment when you
see the situation in relation to your personality, your ego, and then you are
afraid. So the fear belongs to what, really? It does not come from the
situation. There may also be anticipation that the person will not immediately
find, through memory, the power to face the situation. The ego anticipates a
failure; “I may not be a hero in this situation.” Then the fear comes in even
before the situation arises. It has already taken place in you. You must face
the ground of the fear.
How?
When you are not in a crisis of fear, inquire. Inquire “Who is afraid? Who has
fear? Who anticipates?” You will never find this “who” and you will see it is
an illusion. Once you are in a state of fear, then look at it pragmatically,
objectively like a scientist. To do this you need to accept the fear. When you
accept the fear you are out of the process of fear and as you are out of the
process, the fear cannot remain as a fixed energy. It dissolves in your
acceptance. Then look at the situation again. This second looking is
important. Take the opportunity to look at the situation from the completely
impersonal point of view, from your globality, from your totality.
When I think of accepting my fear, I get even more frightened.
You are still emphasizing the object and growing it, feeding it. In real
acceptance, you do not emphasize accepting the fear, the object, but you
remember the accepting itself. The object is emphasized only long enough to
bring you back to the subject, accepting. The object is a pointer to its
accepting. When you accept the fear, you are free from the fear.
You mean you accept being fearful?
In accepting the fear, you are not in the fear, the fear is in you, and the fear
cannot live because you find yourself in a state where there is no place for a
person to maintain and feed the fear. With this glimpse of freedom from fear,
look at the situation again. When you explore fear several times in this way,
you will see that you become aware of the situation even before the person
reacts. The person may still come in, but much later. This delay is important.
Is there an element of surrender in acceptance?
Absolutely, complete surrender, but not in a fatalistic sense. You must

experience it.
When there’s acceptance of fear or anger, does this dissolve the fear or
anger before it is manifest? Do I try to stop it or does it stop of its own
accord before it comes out? Or is it alright if it does come out and I still
accept it and let it go?
You feel the moment the anger has taken place in you. From then on when
you try to justify the anger or to rationalize or argue it, everything you do
only contributes to the anger. When you really see that no technique, no
system, no new element can take away the anger, and, in fact, only constantly
feeds it, then you accept the anger. In accepting it really, you will see there
comes a kind of transfer. Whereas before, you constantly emphasized the
anger, in this transfer the power which you used to emphasize the anger goes
back to the acceptance and you will emphasize the acceptance itself. And
then there is something wondrous. You will see that acceptance is not bound
to what is accepted. Acceptance exists in itself, is completely free from what
it accepts, and refers to itself. Feel this accepting state. How do you feel? You
are completely free. Being aware of this free feeling is most important
because you will know with conviction that you are no longer completely
stuck to, bound to the anger. And see what happens in this moment. When
you accept the anger you are not in the anger, the anger is in you, and as you
are in this acceptance, this totality, this emptying, there is no longer a
possibility of feeling the anger. It dissolves, because it is nothing other than
energy. When you really deal with anger, you will see it is a pointer to your
real nature, to your real center. In any case, what you are really looking for in
life is to find the center from which you function, love, act, think, do. You are
looking for a center.
The word accepting is conditioned. It has a little bad taste, let us say.
Accepting is grim, it is a heavy word, too much weight. Perhaps it is better
not to use it. So a better word is welcoming.
In welcoming, automatically the word refers to itself, its openness,
receptivity. In welcoming you are already receptive.
I’m trying to work with spots in my body that are tense, and trying to let them
dissolve. There’s a little release in the throat, then I go to the back. But by the
time I get back to the throat it’s constricted again.
Your body is your vehicle, it’s your tool. You need it for acting. You must
explore it. In exploring it you will see it is conditioned through previous
action, previous reactions. What we call our body is mainly only a field of
reactions from previous situations, childhood and so on. So when you face
your vehicle, your body, you will see there are residues of resistance in it.
Explore where the resistances are, in the same way as we have been talking
about here—emphasizing the accepting itself—and there comes a moment
when you are free from this resistance and will use your body in a completely
different way. We were often angry yesterday but today we are not angry, yet
there are still residues of the anger very deep in the body. These residues
form the muscle and nervous tensions in the body. Face these tensions
directly without analyzing their origin.
Become acquainted with your body, first in non-action, lying down and
sitting. See how the zones of which you are conscious appear to you. You
will find many zones you are not aware of. So there comes a kind of palate of
sensation, of feeling. Certain parts are completely light, transparent, others
heavy and dense. Then in a certain way, you need to choose to emphasize the
zones that are completely empty. Familiarize yourself with the empty feeling,
then invade with the empty sensation, the other tense zones. In this way, you
come to a kind of homogeneous feeling of your body. You first come to this
feeling in a situation where there is no action, when lying down for example,
then you can keep this homogeneous feeling, I would say this healthy feeling,
in action. Whether it’s the art of singing or walking, or playing music, or
jogging or fighting, you have a relaxed unconditioned body ready for action.
Look at the people jogging on your street. They don’t know how to run. A
relaxed body must be employed in action. You know that book Zen in the Art
of Archery? It is very interesting. You must not be affected by all the residues
from past actions. In a certain way he spoke of deconditioning the body.
Coming back to the question that every situation is new, free from
psychological memory, like a good actor... but in his psychological memory
he has years of experience. If he makes that memory flexible rather than rigid
and depending upon the new situation he acts, is that what you mean by free
from psychological memory?
You face the situation in a choiceless state. This means you accept, you
welcome the situation. In this moment, the situation refers to your
acceptance, to your welcoming. The situation articulates itself completely.
And this situation brings its own solution, its own acting. There is no
reacting. The acting comes out of the situation itself. Intelligence and
sensitivity come out of the situation. It is the situation which, in a certain
way, builds in you the personality which belongs to the moment itself. The
action comes out of the situation itself. To act really you must look away
from acting, be free from the notion of acting.
But the actor should be prepared through training and experience to handle
that situation.
He must be an artisan. He has learned how to speak, how to pronounce, he

has undertaken voice culture, pronunciation, body behavior, all this belongs
to the profession.
Profession is psychological memory, right?
No, no, no, functional memory. It doesn’t need to be remembered at all times.
It comes up in the moment itself, when you need it. When you’re thirsty, you
drink.
I’m still not clear on looking away from acting.
Looking away from acting means looking away from willful acting, being
free from the ego. There is no intention, no strategy. The moment you look at
the situation from the personal point of view, it becomes a psychological
problem, a conflict.
There are a lot of choices, right? Is choice a function?
See how you yourself function. When you face a situation, see immediately
that choice comes up. When it gives you security or pleasure, you identify
yourself with it. When it does not give security or pleasure, you push it into
the unconscious, or you push it away. So in both situations, in identification
with the situation as well as in pushing it away, in both the situations, you are
isolated, not one with the situation. That you must see.
Can you differentiate between ego and personality?
Ego and personality are the same. Psychological memory belongs to the
personality. It is only to create a number of securities for the person. When
the reflex for psychological security leaves you, the psychological aspect of
the personality also goes away and only the functional aspect remains. When
you live in psychological time, you live only in anticipation, past future, past
future; you are never present.
What about individuality? What makes us different from one another?
The moment you face the situation from your personal point of view you can
be sure there is conflict, there is choice. The moment the notion of being a
personal entity goes away, you live completely in your openness, in your
emptiness. Everything that appears in your life refers to this emptiness. Then
there is really functional behavior.
So functional behavior brings in all one’s innate talents, intelligence and

sensitivity. It explores the range of human possibilities. But psychological
conditioned behavior, being limited, is sheep-like and restricted in
expression. Are we not more different, unique, when we function freely than
when we function in bondage?
Absolutely.
I have some further questions about choice. When in conflict, I clearly see it’s
my mind in conflict. Once that conflict is seen, is it sometimes necessary that
the mind has to make a choice, or with greater awareness, is it possible to go
beyond the conflict so that the decision or action that’s required, especially
about something in the future, can come from the totality?
Timeless awareness is beyond choice.
So in some respects choice doesn’t matter, which direction ...
There is no personal choice. There may be action, but it does not go through
the mind.
The solution to the situation is beyond choice.
Absolutely.
If the spontaneous understanding comes up to indicate a certain direction,

but the time to act isn’t yet, should you always stay with the original
intuition?
The action is instantaneous. The understanding is instantaneous, but the

realization of the intuition is in time and space.
But by then do you have to remember the original?
No, you must live with the intuition.
So you keep it alive.
Yes. It is the intuition that helps you to realize the action in space and time. It
is very important.
But how do you keep the intuition alive without it being memory?
The intuition has nothing to do with memory. Intuition is a global feeling.

When you’re an artist, and you have a real picture to express, you live a long
time with the picture to realize it in space and time. Very often when you lose
the intuition, the mind comes in, calculation comes in, and you are not in the
direction. I think you can see it in history. In many situations you can see
where there was intuition, one went to a certain point, and then calculation
and intention, the mind, the person came in. Then comes the conflict, the
struggle.
You see that in religious traditions.
Oh absolutely, you can see it in the Catholic system. Very precisely, you saw
it in the meeting in Constantinople when the Roman Church separated from
the Greek Orthodox Church. It was a big conflict for the church. It was a
choice through reasoning, not intuition. You also have a similar separation in
Buddhism between the Hinayana and Mahayana.
What is the relationship of intimidation and fear? When you meet a

physically powerful person there is a certain hind of intimidation. But even
more intimidating is when you meet a very powerful personality. Then I lose
a sense of what is happening.
In the first situation it is biological survival. In the second it is psychological

survival.
But the response to the psychological survival is total breakdown. It seems to

be a very poor response.
Biological survival is completely normal, in a certain way. But psychological

survival is completely an illusion.
How would you view that situation? Where’s the reality, and what’s the
illusion?
The illusion is that you take yourself for somebody. Free yourself of the
notion of being somebody. You must not only have the idea that you are
nothing, but you must be alive in this nothingness. In this nothingness,
psychological survival has no meaning.
There’s nobody to protect?
You’re a very competitive man, that you know. You take a certain pleasure in
competition, that you know. You like to fight. You like to be the hero, to
come out as the winner of the battlefield.
Should I not have that feeling? Is it wrong to play to win as opposed to

playing for playing’s sake?
Playing is for the love of playing, simply playing. The pleasure is in doing it.
So I guess from your answer that there is an alternative way of being—other

than competitive. What is it?
Real being is in your emptiness and when life asks you to face a moment,
then you really face the moment. You are open for something which is
beyond your psychological memory. Psychological memory is very little,
very limited in fulfilling what the situation needs from you. It is very
inadequate. The moment you are completely open to the situation, you will
see how rich you are. But this richness does not belong to you, it belongs to
the cosmos, to the world.
You’ve sometimes talked about the cosmic personality. Referring back to the
previous question, in terms of Jung, in terms of deep psychological structure,
each of us is living out a myth, some archetype, and Jung’s idea of the
highest archetype would be the Solar Hero, Jesus becoming Christ. Now as
one comes through their psychological manifestation, they begin to see that
they always take a certain stance in a situation, either of a hero, or
conciliator, or whatever these myths or archetypes are. And so many of us,
being afflicted, do not really live that through. Is there anything to this
Jungian perception?
I think in this way, every being occupies a place in this cosmic web.
Everyone is a link in the chain. The whole web is everywhere. There is
nothing outside. Everything that has been, that should come, is already in our
cells, I would say. All that has been and what should come is already in the
now. There is no past, there is no future, there is only now. Our brain
functions in past-future, memory. But in reality, that only belongs to our
brain function. We live in the now. It is perfect simultaneity. The film is in
one moment. The film goes on in space and time but the film is actually here.
So I would say we have in us all totality: Egyptians, Chinese, all our history,
all our past is in us. In a way we have a certain role to play. Everything is in
the film, but we are the light that illumines the screen. We are not on the
screen. So what is on the screen is more or less a pretext that points back to
our light. Whether you believe it or not is also on the film!
Is the film already made? Does it already exist?
In a certain way, I would say the film is already made, but from the ultimate
view, the film is made from moment to moment. It is difficult for our minds
to grasp, that at the same time the film is already made and that the film gets
made from moment to moment.
We follow the direct path, and for the ten years I’ve known you, I feel that
I’ve been ready. I’ve been listening to talks, doing yoga, learning to breathe,
and I know that my personality is not going to get...
Oh, I like this question. Be a little more aggressive.

I know my mind is not going to get it, my body is not going to get it, I am
what I want to be and there is nothing to strive for. Of course I could read
more about the lives of the saints, I could do more yoga, but I heard you once
say to somebody, “I offer you enlightenment, see that you refuse it.” If I am
already what I’m striving for, I want enlightenment now.
You can have it, but you must immediately see the cost of it, the price.
I don’t see any price. I could see it a few years ago. I don’t feel like there’s
any fear of the price anymore. I’ve seen the uselessness of my desires, of
being the personality. Therefore I accept the personality for functional
purposes, but there’s really that desire for surrender to beauty and love. This
is clear. However, I also see that I am not enlightened. I want to be. My mind
says, “Don’t be arrogant.” My heart says, “Why wait?” Of course, my body
still has certain things; my mind is not peaceful. How can I still go on and
find my axis?
When you see it in the moment itself, there is understanding. But I think later,
there may come in again a kind of bargaining. That you should see also. But
when you have seen it once, you may be sure you will be solicited in other
moments.
And from that solicitation to solicitation....
You may come to the establishment.

July 17—morning
Stillness has nothing to do with consciousness or unconsciousness. Stillness

is the room here without objects, without even the walls. The objects appear
in stillness. When you see that an object refers to the totality that you are
fundamentally, then the object has a completely different significance. You
know the Zen saying certainly better than I do, the one where first, the
ordinary person is completely involved in the mountain, sees it as a
mountain; then there is a moment when there is a switchover and the seeing
refers to itself, then there is no mountain, only awareness. Then he looks
again at the mountain. There is still a mountain, but it is not a mountain in the
same way as before because it refers to consciousness.
This means that the mountain is no longer isolated. It belongs to the looker.
It does not mean that the object dissolves; the object is still there. But it is
seen in consciousness. It becomes sacred. The moment it does not refer to
totality, to your real being, it is vulgar, it is ordinary. But the moment it refers
to your ultimate being, it is sacred.
In that sense, then, in the awareness of just being in the awareness, objects
are continually arising, but that awareness is never relinquished, forgotten.
You can never forget it. This has nothing to do with memory.
I understand. I do not mean it in the way of memory. I mean that you are not;
the object does not distract you.
Yes. Consciousness is a continuum.
If that is so, then what is the difference between the one who is aware of that
and the one who is awake?
This awareness knows itself by itself. It does not need an agent, a middleman,
to be known. You know it only in oneness, where there is no subject-object
relationship. But the object is not autonomous, it needs consciousness to be
known. When you understand something objective, you will see that there is
a reflex to be stuck to the object. But to understand something that is not
within the conceptual framework, you cannot be stuck to the objective
understanding and you are brought back to being the understanding. In this
being understanding there is no representation. There is no thinking. Do you
see what I mean? You must observe how you function. When you come to
the conviction that you understand something that is not thinkable, then it
must bring you back. When you understand what is truth, what is
unthinkable, it brings you back to the non-state where there is no
representation, where you are not in subject-object relationship. You will
even note changes on the organic level. Your forehead has no more role to
play. You are taken behind you.
When you ask most people, “Who are you?” they say, “Well, I am the mind,
or I am the body.” But once you start looking, pretty soon you come to the
conclusion: I am not this or that. I have reached a place where your teaching
about acceptance seems to be taking on a lot of meaning for me. I have
realized that when I say I am the body or the mind, the problem is that I have
never claimed my body and my mind. When I watch my own mind it always
seems to be in reaction to something. Even when I watch my body, my mind
seems to handle the body sensation in terms of reaction or in terms of delay.
And when I bring acceptance to these sensations, to what I used to call my
world, it starts to dissolve. But what seems to block total dissolving is the
sense of being a sinner, of being in the wrong, where all things seem to come
to this sinner which I call myself. I experience this from a feeling level, not
from a mental level. Is there any advantage in trying to be open to the
perception of this center from a feeling level? I cannot get a hold of it on an
intellectual level. Is there any advantage to accepting that sinner?
When you look at a thing, generally you are not even aware of it because
there is immediately resistance, reaction. And this resistance creates another
resistance, another reaction. In other words, you find yourself in a chain of
reactions. But, when you become aware—and by becoming aware I mean
seeing it with an innocent mind, with an innocent awareness, an innocent
attention—when you become aware that you react, that you resist, then these
reactions and this resistance no longer have an accomplice. This means there
is no longer a subject-object which controls, evaluates, compares.
Automatically, then, this resistance and reaction, this energy unfolds and
vanishes in your globality. The letting-go of resistance brings you back to
your presence which can never be thought or touched. You can never.. .you
can only say that it is more than all existence. Existence is in space and time,
but this presence is beyond time and space. Live this dimension in the
moment itself. Be completely attuned to it. By that I mean do not try to
objectify it, do not try to touch it. When you try to make it touchable, it is
already away.
[pause]
You are completely open to a new dimension. We know awareness only
when it refers to objects. We do not know awareness when it refers to itself.
When it refers to itself, it is a new dimension, if you can even speak of a new
dimension. It is like when I ask you what you have in your hand and you
immediately say, “I have nothing in my hand.” But you do have something in
your hand. You have your hand in your hand. You have sensitivity in your
hand. Your hand has its own feeling, its own hand, I would say. Or if I ask
whether you have something in your mouth, you say, “No, I have nothing.”
But there is the taste of your mouth. To clarify this analogy: When the object
is not there, consciousness has its own taste, I would say the real taste.
Once you totally taste that taste, the taste that you are, is that permanent? I
mean, once you are...
Oh, absolutely! The taste has tasted its own taste. It knows that the real taste
never goes away. It knows the background to all other tastes.
I have another teacher whom I also love. I have read recently that this can be
a big mistake. Atmananda Krishna Menon referred to this. I was wondering if
you could comment on this situation.
Life is the best teacher. Every circumstance, in a certain way, is a teacher. I

think every situation, every moment brings you to a question. You have to
deal with situations, with objects, and every situation, every moment can
bring you back to the “Who am I?” What is this “I” that you can never
represent? What is the fundamental global feeling of “I”? You can never
concretize it, but still there is a kind of original feeling. So, every moment of
every situation can bring you back to this inquiry. And what happens then, is
that you live in an unknown.
The problem is that when you find yourself in the “I don’t know” there is still
the reflex to know. In your not-knowing you are still fixed to a possible
knowable. The awareness that there is still a goal in your not-knowing may
be the Teacher. Otherwise, all your life you will be stuck with this possible
knowable which is actually a blank state. But when the question comes up to
ask “Who am I?” and you come to the real “I don’t know,” then there is an
up-giving, a giving-up of all that is knowable. And then you are living in
waiting without waiting. It is an opening, and you will feel, without feeling it,
that openness has its own taste.
You said that every moment can bring us back to the inquiry, “Who am I?”
or the inquiry into our real nature. Should we consciously let all objects do
this, refer all situations to this inquiry as a kind of sadhana, or is it a matter
of accident that one day I will wake up and all situations will refer to the
global “I”?
It is not an accident. You will find certain moments when you are available to
it.
So in part what you are saying is that this dilemma I present is only a
function of taking myself as a student?
Yes.
That if I approach life from the open and impersonal perspective, then life
will be my teacher?
Do not take yourself for a professional disciple. [laughter]
Jean, the gift then seems, as you are saying it, to be the taste.
Yes, yes.
It is the consciousness knowing itself. That’s it. It is the hand feeling itself.
And then living in that taste.
Yes.
Can one move towards that sensation, that taste? Is this taste that we can go
towards maybe the final sensation?
You cannot go to it. You can go toward to a certain extent, but then you are
involuntarily consumed in a certain way. The explorer is consumed. You
disappear. Only in the absolute disappearance of the person is there the taste.
So the taste stands without duality.
Without duality. I can tell an experience that occurred when I was about
seventeen years old, where the ego was consumed. I was returning home after
completing some work and I was completely satisfied. There was nothing
more to add or change. It was finished work. I was at the station waiting for a
train and it was announced that the train was going to run twenty-five
minutes late. Now, it was a fact that the train would be twenty-five minutes
late and that there was nothing to do to produce the train. That I had done my
work was a fact, too. So it was a moment when I was completely without
expectation, wishing, without exploring anything at all. I found myself in
absolute nothingness. But I did not know myself in this nothingness.
Then a cock [rooster] crowed, even though it was two o’clock in the
afternoon. And in this moment my attention was taken by the sound of the
cock and I was aware that there was silence around the sound. The cry of the
cock made me aware of the silence, not only the objective silence of the
countryside but the absolute tranquillity within. This event echoed in me for
many, many years. It left a kind of organic memory. It brought me to more
than an experience. It is very important that you become aware, through the
object, that you are in silence, in being.
This is an example, then, of the object pointing back to silence, its source.
Yes.
You were speaking before about waiting. My mind was saying: Why doesn’t
he say receiving? An image suddenly struck me of a bus stop, with someone
who needed to get somewhere and kept looking and walking back and forth
and all of that, trying to hurry the bus, and I was just watching him. And it
seems it is very sly, because the waiting ultimately erases the observer in the
waiting. If one is truly waiting, then without their knowing it, the witnessing
is worn away. But there is no sense of that until the final dissolution.
Perhaps you find yourself at a bus stop looking at someone who strikes you
as especially nervous or impatient. It interests you very much. You simply
look, and you observe that the more the nervousness is articulated, the more
relaxed you find yourself. When you come more and more to absolute silent
observation, you uncover more and more of the observed. At first the
observed is emphasized, but your observing faculty is so strong that you are
taken by it and you feel yourself in a dimension of stillness that you never
experienced before. It is very important.
When observation becomes more and more relaxed and memory does not
come in, we really look at something. Then attention automatically unfolds
and becomes increasingly without tension. There is no expectation. There is
no anticipation. We find ourselves in an observation which is completely
dimensionless.
Real observation is a very important faculty which we must learn.
Generally, observation is polluted by memory and thoughts, comparison,
judging and so on. When the observer remains as the controller, when he
looks to take something of the observed, then the observer can never discover
itself. Real observation is innocent observation where no one is observing
and there is no intention. Observation is welcoming, is openness. In
sustaining this openness, open alertness, there is a moment when the energy
from the observed, free from all will, from all obtaining, goes back to the
observer. Then there is no more eccentric energy. It comes back. I would say
it becomes concentric. And when the energy comes back in a concentric
movement, then the observer knows itself in the observing faculty. Then
there is a feeling of expansion and you live in intelligence and sensitivity.
So the wanting to... the unconscious grasping is really, in essence, a need for
power over the object...
Oh, yes.
... which is a mistake almost all disciples make with so-called teachers.
Yes, yes.
Jean, you talked yesterday about security and insecurity. Could you explain it
a little more?
The reason you are so conditioned to volitional living, willful living, living
with purpose, is because you try to find security. It gives you a false sense of
security to project your own experiences and memory and live by these. But
you will see that projecting can never give you security. It gives only
temporary and apparent security, because life proceeds in a completely other
way.
When you give up intentional living, when you are open to life, there is no
more place for the person. This openness to life is a perfect insecurity, but in
this apparent insecurity for the person there is security. Alan Watts said there
is security in insecurity, which means you find your real security when there
is no projected security. When you look for security you can never find it,
because you project memory, the already known, and life is constantly and
completely different from what you expected.
To be attuned to the real nature of life, you must live completely in the
unknown, without any strategy. In this attuning, you will find yourself secure.
Otherwise, you are swimming upstream all your life. Apparently, the person
is in insecurity, but what is not the person is in real security.
When you go on the battlefield you can take all your instruments, all the
tools that you need, but you must never codify any way of living. You must
be completely open to the moment itself. When you are completely open to
the moment itself, there is apparent insecurity, but you will come face to face
with real security. We constantly project security through experiences or
memory. In projecting security we can never find security. In the non-
projecting of security we find real security. But this non-projecting is a kind
of insecurity for the person, it is true.
Jean, practically speaking, does this mean no plans, no collecting money, no

gathering of things?
I would say: Be alert. Be alert. Simply, be alert. Leave all your luggage at
home and be alert. Face life.
Money gives security. Security to pay the bills. I am not talking about
comforts or something, but bare necessities. If a situation comes where I see I
may not be able to pay the bills even, there is insecurity.
But insecurity is memory. Face the facts. Behave according to the facts. It is
the fact which shows you have to act. That is all you can do.
Facts like: the money is running low, should I do something to produce it?
Yes, face what life imposes on you. You do so many things without
projecting security or insecurity. When you are thirsty you take a glass and
you drink. You do not think about it. There are so many acts in daily life
which come completely spontaneously to us according to the situation. But
the moment our ego is involved, our sense of person, rightness, what is our
due, we are in conflict and cannot act spontaneously. Do not bring in
memory.
But Jean, the memory is there. Until it is washed out, it is going to keep on
coming. Memory is there from my past, my experiences, my likes, dislikes and
so on. When I see an object or run into a situation, a memory comes up to
make a judgment of the situation. Somehow that has to be suppressed or it
has to be cleaned out. If it is not there at all, it is clean, there is nothing to
worry about. But...
What has to be done, do it. Do it because it has asked some action of you. But
do not bring in the mind, evaluation, comparison. All that is memory. Face
the facts. You will see that the moment you face the facts, you will be
solicited to act.
July 17—afternoon
When we emphasize the observer, our consciousness, there is no longer a

doer who manipulates the body, who moves the body. There is a completely
impersonal approach to the body. All tensions, reactions, even those deeply
rooted in the body, have no more hold, and sooner or later this tension is
eliminated and we become more aware of the energy body which underlies
our physical body. We become familiar with the deep layers of sensitivity of
the body and we come to know our original body. But knowing our original
body is still more or less a by-product, because what is emphasized is
consciousness, our presence.
When we emphasize the feeling sensation, we use our muscles in a
different way. Our muscle is in antagonistic function. This means that in this
movement there is an agonist and antagonist. In other words, there is one part
of the muscle which contracts and the other which expands. When the muscle
is wrongly used, there is an over-contraction and an over-stretching, but when
we use our muscles with aware feeling, these over-activities are reduced and
the muscles, in a certain way, come together and function harmoniously.
Then you feel no more hindrance. So the body must become an object of our
awareness. When it is felt—allowed to be feeling—it comes to life. This
coming to life begins on the level of the skin with tactile sensation. I would
say there is a resurrection of the flesh.
I want to clarify further the answer you gave me yesterday. When you say you
may receive it, the verb “may” has two meanings: you have permission to,
and “may be.” But what hinders me receiving it, because up till now I can
feel my resistance, my fears, all sorts of emotions? Is it just in my inability to
receive, to wait for divine grace to do its work? Or do I still have a role to
play?
When I say it may happen, I mean it comes in a certain way like an

unexpected gift, when you are open to the unexpected. Then the mind knows
there is something beyond it and it is open to a new direction. The mind gives
up its determinism. And as the mind gives it up, is open to something
unknown.
When you act in your life with will, you will not have any gifts. Few gifts
come when willed. But when you are completely open to life, you will be
astonished, enriched by the gift-giving. That is why I say you can wish it in a
certain form, without willing it.
You mean you can hope for it, but not force it? Can you give it a helping
hand?
I will answer it another way. When you are waiting for the expression of life,
you are waiting for the gift because all that comes is a gift. The ultimate gift
is the waiting.
Waiting for what?
For nothing. It is waiting for its own waiting, waiting without any will. Then
this waiting refers to itself. And this waiting is open. You can never take,
feel, think this openness. You can never understand it because it is the being
understanding. When you say “I have understood,” it means the
understanding is still a formulation, still a representation. But before you say,
“I have understood,” there is the living understanding. Later you make it
understanding through your formulation, your representation. You must
never say, “I have understood.” When you “have understood,” you represent,
objectify, it. Real understanding never says “I have understood.” When you
are completely in wholeness, it is beyond the mind. Think about it. It is not a
specific gift for which you are waiting. The ultimate gift is the waiting itself.
Being open. Perceiving.
You said in an earlier book that the aim of meditation in the direct path is the
elimination of the object. I wanted to ask you about that. When your
awareness is space-like and objects appear within it, coming and going, from
that place it seems that one could either go back into dreams with the objects
or, if the attention is released somehow, the objects don’t appear to be
separate. They appear to be one large object. Just one object. Is this the right
direction?
Our timeless awareness is the light behind all appearance, all objects. The
object appears in this silent awareness and disappears in this silent awareness.
So this silent awareness is constantly there. It is a continuum. You do not
need to sit in a special way. You can also walk. It is always there. It is there
when there is activity and you work, and there when you rest.
But why eliminate the object then? You said that was the most necessary, the
final thing. Because you said when the object is eliminated, then the subject is
eliminated.
Yes. Because it is the subject which maintains the object. When there is the
fusion of the subject in the object, the object has no more hold for its
objectivity, and there is no more subject and object. There is only presence.
In a certain way the subject and object are superimposed onto our reality. But
we are fascinated by the object. It is as when we see ourselves in front of a
shop and we look at all the fascinating things—a most interesting computer,
one we have never seen before, for example—and we are so taken by this
invention that we forget ourselves.
In the end one cannot even speak of “an object.” There is only oneness.
You can never take consciousness away from the object. But you can take the
object from consciousness and consciousness remains. Consciousness just is.
It is permanent. Timeless. I have not answered your actual question, but it is
answered.
The object is almost an invention of the mind, it seems. In the waiting, it goes
away by itself.
The waiting, the essence of waiting is our reality. Because in waiting there is
nothing asserted or manipulated or concluded. It also belongs to creative
thinking. In creative thinking nothing is asserted, nothing dominates, and
nothing is manipulated. It is a simple seeing of the facts. It is a constant
interrogation, I would say.
Creative thinking is a constant interrogation. That is why, in a certain way,
Krishnamurti speaks of negative thinking and positive thinking. I remember
under positive thinking he speaks of scientific thinking, rational thinking.
Negative thinking is looking away from thinking. It is thinking which does
not start from thinking, thinking which does not start from thought. I never
use the terms negative or positive thinking, but he uses them. I thought it
might be quite useful for certain people.
The answer came through in what you said. The answer is that the waiting
itself is the natural elimination of the object.
Yes.
That is the ultimate negative approach.
Yes. Absolutely. The openness approach.
So the object cannot sprout in the waiting. If waiting is there, the object
cannot sprout as an object.
In this openness the object finds its real significance. Only then does it refer
to our totality, to our presence. Otherwise, it refers only to an object, our
person, and then it is constantly in a relationship of object to object. The
person is an object we can know. We know this person who chooses. We
know this choice.
If you are in waiting you can’t choose. It’s impossible.
Yes. Yes. Fundamentally, we know that all is given.

I’m trying to understand, Jean. In the ultimate stillness it seems that
obviously the person no longer exists. Is that an egoless state that has to
happen before the ultimate awakening? And is that stillness the light that is
always constant? Is that beyond consciousness?
When you are completely open there is not a notion of an “I.” It is not there.
There is also no choice. So what appears, appears anew, but you are not.
July 18
I’d like to go back to the question that was asked the other night about
whether the film was already made. You seemed to be saying that there was a
destiny, by the fact that you said, “Yes, it was already made.” And yet, saying
that it was being lived out in timeless space also seems to imply a certain free
will.
The film is essentially in the now. But you, as a questioner, are also in the
film. The film flows in time. The difference between you and the film is that
you are the light that gives reality, existence to the film.
Does this give us the free will of choice?
You have the idea that you act freely. But this acting is also in the film. You
are essentially free when you awake in your light.
What does that freedom mean?
Freedom from the idea of being somebody. In other words, the film points to
your real nature, which is essentially timeless.
Jean, when you use the word “film,” is that synonymous with the idea of
objects? It seems to me that...
All that appears is on the film. But you give life to the film.
But if the film is already made and one just gives light to it, it means...?
The word “already” does not apply here. It is constantly in the now.
“Already” belongs to time. You create the world the moment you think of it.
Are there five billion individual films, or just one? Does each person have his
own film?
His own belongs to what? What belongs to his own? To you? There is no
you. There is appearing and disappearing, with which you mistakenly
identify yourself instead of identifying with the continuous background,
consciousness. There is only a functioning.
The film is functioning?
The film is functioning, without any purpose. So don’t emphasize the film;
emphasize the light. All that appears is in the film.
It doesn’t matter if we’re immersed in a mathematical problem or sitting

admiring the scenery.
Exactly. All is in the film.
Whether we’re global thinking or very self-centered thinking.
You must see what you mean by global thinking. All that appears, all that
you qualify as thinkable, is on the film. You must see what I said, that all you
perceive is on the film. But you see very little on the film, because you
identify yourself with the film. Because you identify yourself with the film,
you see only a certain fraction of it. The moment you really know that you
are the light, you will see the film is much richer.
But the watcher of the film is not in the film, is it?
No. The watcher is the light.
Does this light have any identity?
This light is timeless. The film is in time and space. We are here to find our
real nature. Take it for granted that it is all in the film, but that you are the
light. And I would say, be the light.
The light which makes the film visible.
Absolutely.
The film is readily understandable. It’s a mechanical phenomenon.
Absolutely.
One can make cyclotrons and all sorts of things to figure out the various
aspects of the film. But it’s just all on the film, and it’s meaningless.
Yes. But it is something tremendous when you see that what you are
fundamentally is not on the film. It is something... it is a revolution. It is a
revolution that makes your mouth immediately fall open. [laughter]
It’s a complete mystery.
Yes! It makes you astonished.
Jean, could you say that the welcoming is a bridge between time and
timelessness? There is no bridge, of course, but it seems to be the closest to
that in the waiting.
Time and space are in the horizontal position, and reality is vertical. There is
a moment where the vertical and horizontal meet together. That is in the now.
The horizontal can never exist without the vertical. Reality is only in the now,
in the present.
Would you say the waiting without waiting is a sort of openhanded invitation
to... ?
Constantly. I would say you are then in the vertical position. But you must
not emphasize the possibility of receiving something, but rather the receiving
itself.
The receiving itself. Right. Otherwise I jump into time.
Yes. Yes. The receiving refers to itself. What we call the past, present, and
future are only memory. All time, one, two, three, is memory.
Which is the horizontal movement.
Yes. Because what we call present is also the past. Right.
When there is looking, there is looking. It is only after, that you say, “I
looked at the flower, and it was myself looking.” But you can never
simultaneously see the flower and say that there is looking. Because
consciousness itself and its object are one.
So, you’re saying the moment is always the vertical.

Always. You can only be the seeing. Later you think. You don’t know that
you think. It is only after the thinking that you can say, “I saw it.” But you
can be completely aware of the moment. It means you are the moment
without thinking it. When you think it, it is already the past.
In the moment there is only perceiving, there is only feeling, there is only
seeing.
Yes. There is only beingness.
Yes. But it seems like it brings with it a quality of joy.
But in beingness there is no subject-object relationship.
But when beingness refers to itself isn’t there a quality of something?
It is beingness. It is impossible to qualify it. When you qualify it, it refers

already to the known, to the past. You can’t qualify it, you can only say it is a
total absence of any need. It is total fullness.
You once said it was “an explosion of wonder.”
Yes.
Why is that?
It is an explosion because you have always found yourself in patterns, and

suddenly the insight takes you away from the patterns. That is why it appears
as an explosion.
In the word “satchitananda” there is the word “ananda”, which means bliss.
When I look at you, often—especially when I’m at the dinner table and I just
look at you—it seems there’s just laughter.
There is only looking when you look at me. There is only looking. There is
not a looker. And nothing is looked at. No? And then you say, “I looked, and
I saw this gentleman.”
I feel discouraged because I see patterns repeating and repeating and it’s
very hard for me to see progress. Instead of feeling freer, I simply feel that
these tendencies continually seem to have the same overwhelming strength.
And I feel this fear of letting go, the fear of death. I’m very tense. And I’m
unable, in meditation, to resolve this, to find free space.
When there is really transmutation, the memory of progress doesn’t exist.

When you speak of progress, there is comparison. But when there is really
transmutation, there is no more comparison possible. It may be that you find
yourself in certain situations and you say that two years ago you found
yourself in the same situation, but it is absolutely impossible to speak of
analogy between your response two years ago and now. You say it is
astonishing how I have reacted then, and how I have acted today. I find
myself in a situation with more or less the same intensity, the same
antagonism, and this time I feel myself completely free, comfortable. Then
you can say, “Yes, I look at things in a different way, and I have made some
progress.” But as far as your timeless nature is concerned, you can never
speak of progress.
But wouldn’t there be a feeling of being less victimized by the mind, by

tendencies, maybe a greater feeling of distance? I just feel my meditation has
not gone deep enough to effect a transformation, and I don’t know what to
do.
Look at things free from all expectations, without comparison. Then things
refer to your presence. That is the only way to come to transmutation. There
is no other way to bring real understanding, being the understanding. And in
really being the understanding, the intellectual understanding has completely
dissolved. Being the understanding means you feel yourself in this totality.
Be this totality. Don’t be stuck to mind understanding which keeps you in
representation.
What is the meaning of “let go,” and how to use it properly?
In not letting go, there is anticipation. There is memory and end-gaining.
Not letting go?
Yes. To really face life, you must face it with your openness. So the already
known must be given up. You must face life completely open-minded,
empty, without any representation. Then you come to the understanding of
life, and then you also use life in a right way.
What is the proper way of looking at an illness that one might have, and what
is the most effective way to help self-healing?
Our body is mainly felt. The feeling is a global feeling. Every organ in our
body is a vibration. All the organs in our body are like a symphony of sounds.
When the organ loses its precise vibration, then it is ill. We have already
spoken about this. You must stimulate the organ with light vibration. You
feel the vibration in colors and sounds. As a treatment, you should visualize
certain colors that belong to specific organs, and then bathe in the color,
visualize the color in front of you—three or four yards—and go in the color
with your energy body, with your sensitivity. You take a bath in the color.
Then come back into the physical body, and you will see how the organ
reacts after this treatment. The organ which was ill from its tension, tension
which belongs to its surroundings, is emptied.
Does one maintain the emptiness?

You must maintain the emptiness. And then again, with this emptiness, bathe
in the color. Then the energy body comes back in the physical body,
completely refreshed. And you wait to see how this part of your body, which
was ill, reacts.
Let’s say that you have a cancer growing in your intestine, or something like
that. What is the proper attitude to take about that? What do you say to
yourself about that? How do you defuse the resistance?
I would say that first it is caused by a lack of certain substances in your body.
Or, you can also say there are certain encumbrances in your body, certain
wastes that you have not eliminated. So, face the lack of elements in your
body and then try to eliminate the waste.
Should there be any intention to heal? Generally you say to live without
intention. But when faced with something like that, what should the attitude
be?
One must completely surrender to it, in other words, welcome it, accept it, do
not refuse it. When you refuse it, then you feed the illness. In other words,
you must be positive. You must not refuse it. You must not escape it.
Jean, it seems that if you accept, you create more spaciousness which may
create the ability to heal. But what is the difference between acceptance and
resignation, which would tend to give a little more negative force to the
illness?
When you welcome it, when you take it as a pointer, it is really positive to
your illness because then you are not in any way an accomplice to it. You
contribute to the healing. Real acceptance is not a sacrifice. There is no
resignation, no masochistic element. Acceptance is welcoming. In welcoming
it you are completely open to it. There is no resistance, no reaction. In
principle, the body comes from health. The body knows its health, because
the body has organic memory of the natural, healthy state. Ideally medicine
and the doctor help nature. They don’t fight the illness. But the specific
healing of which we are speaking is that you must completely empty the part
which is ill. Then you project this part completely in front of you—not your
whole body, only this part. You project it, and then you go in. When you live
knowingly in this projection, you are not here, you are there.
Jean, you spoke earlier about living in the sensation of the subtle physical
body or the energy body and then coming back to the physical body. I don’t
quite understand what you mean by that.
You are able to project your energy body in a certain space in front of you.
Then you are there, where you project the energy body. You are there, not
here. The physical body is here, the energy body is there. You disassociate
your vital body from your physical body, your conditioned physical body.
When you say it’s there, what is your experience of it?
You are conscious there. You are conscious of the place there, where you
project it. You can project an image there, you can sit here and visualize an
image. It’s not this that I’m speaking of.
Is the projection a sensation?
Yes. Really go there.
How do I do it?
When a mosquito moves in your hair, before you take the initiative to take
your hand and explore the place where the mosquito is, you are already there.
No? Sometimes you are even too lazy to take your hand and go there. It is
enough to think of it, to do it.
So this projection is a thought, in thinking?
You give the order to your vital body to do it.
Jean, could one learn this kind of healing if one were interested, as I am?
Certain books have been written. There are certain hospitals and clinics
where you find every room painted a different color, sometimes two colors.
There are also rooms with stained glass of different colors.
One uses colors not only for people who are mentally ill, but also
physically ill. Because every color has its vibration. This vibration is a
physical reality, and it also has its spiritual, psychological expression. You
act differently when you see the color red than when you see blue or yellow
or violet. You generally look at violet, but you never ask how it acts on you.
You may eat a pineapple and ask how the pineapple has acted on you, how
your body feels after absorbing the pineapple; but when you inquire how
yellow or violet acts on you it’s very interesting.
Does everyone respond the same to specific colors or are there differences?
No. It is not subjective. Green or yellow have their expressions. When you sit
before a very green meadow and you identify with the green, plunge
completely into the green, you will see how the green acts on you; it is very
interesting. It needs a certain sensitivity, of course.
Does the energy body have any special significance, or is it just part of the
physical body?
The physical body is an extension of the vital body.
So they are both really objects.

Absolutely.
If I sent my energy body to touch your knee, would it be felt?
If you really used the energy body in the right way, it would be felt. And the
energy body is not diminished through space. You might find yourself in
Madrid and hear someone in New York. It is very astonishing, but it is true.
In the bodywork, when we’re experimenting, looking at a certain posture,

how do I know when to come back and when to push it a little bit, to stretch it
a little further, not just with the physical body, but with the energy body?
The vital body is the vanguard for the physical body. It goes first and the
physical body follows. When a movement is made it must always be made
first with the vital body, which then takes the physical body with it. There’s a
moment when automatically you cannot go further. Then you stop.
If someone is without any particular guidance, doing very intensive

pranayama and meditation many hours a day for many months, is there any
risk in that, any risk of insanity or energy imbalance in a permanent way?
The moment there is right observation, I would say silent observation, in the
silent observation there is inquiring, there is exploration, there is making
acquaintance with the perceived, with the object. Then, you can be sure, there
is a reorchestration of energy.
I think I have understood that in any situation there is nothing to gain,

nothing to lose. Can you clarify that?
When you come to the absolute certitude that what you are fundamentally
already is, then there is nothing to gain, nothing to lose, because you are. All
kinds of striving, religious overcoming, or what they call knowledge, has
nothing to do with what we are looking for. When you really see that there is
nothing to lose, nothing to obtain, there is a natural giving up. Then, you
really say, “I don’t know.” In this “I don’t know,” there is nothing knowable.
You cannot project something eventually knowable. You live knowingly in
the “I don’t know,” which is a completely new dimension.
If it is true that there is nothing to gain and nothing to lose and our nature
just is, then why take any action? Why not just do nothing?
When you give up all religious longing, you give up all knowledge
concerning your real center. Live with this giving up. Don’t try to understand
it. When you once have seen that there is nothing to obtain, nothing to lose or
gain, live with it. All dynamism for obtaining something, for achieving
something, all this energy is spontaneously stopped. And what happens then
is that it is your experience, your own, your nearest.
Can you speak to us about suffering?
Inquire who is the sufferer. Who suffers? It is the mind which suffers. There
is body suffering, but the suffering of which you are speaking is purely
psychological. You should explore who is the sufferer, what is the sufferer.
You will see that it is only a projection. We are speaking in your case, of
course.
It seems that this question is extraordinarily important, about nothing to gain

and nothing to lose, because the very thing that seems to alter the openness is
the notion that there is something to lose and something to gain. And your
answer is very clear. We are looking for happiness and bliss and we always
think it’s an object. We always want to understand it, read it, think about it,
sit and reflect on it. I know that you’re right. You demonstrate it every time.
But somehow there is a kind of magnetic memory which succeeds in seducing
the part of my mind which functions in a system, a belief system, which still
works in this pattern. I see the mechanics of it, yet it’s like there’s something
missing. Why does this actually still happen to me now? That’s what I don’t
understand.
When you say there is nothing to gain, nothing to obtain, nothing to lose, is it
really your experience that this is so?
No.
It is more or less second-hand information.
Right.
You believe it.
Right.
So, I would say, make it your own experience. All that is attainable, all that
you can obtain, you have very often had in your hand, in your profession, and
at that moment you were happy—you were in a desireless state. At that
moment, there was not a you, an experiencer, nor even a cause of this
moment. You were completely one in this happiness. But you also know that
you attributed a cause to this timeless moment and that later, the so-called
cause that had apparently given you happiness left you completely
indifferent. This proves to you that what you are looking for can never be
found in something thinkable. That is important. You come to the conclusion
that it is the nearest. What is the nearest you can never obtain or lose. It is. It
doesn’t belong to existence. It is. It is the isness.
In welcoming, I want no more. There is no more wanting, I don’t have to

change anything.
Exactly. In welcoming you are this fullness, because the welcoming refers to
itself.
There is a moment when you say, “What is it? What is life? Who am I?”
For the mind, all activity is given up. The moment you give it up there is also
some change in your body. All that exists, all that we project, is in front of
you, but there is a sudden transference from the front of you to behind. It is
the giving up which brings you behind. Because, in a certain way, you feel
your reality behind you. All that is in front of you is not you, is an expression
of you. It is in space and time. You are behind you. When you give up, in the
same moment you are taken behind.
Giving up in this way, and being taken in this way—are they same thing? I
mean, is it automatic?
Yes. But you must not dwell on this. Hear it once, and when you have
understood, forget it. Don’t make a philosophy of it, or a way to approach
reality. Of course not.
When you really say, “I don’t know,” you are free. There is no more
representation. You give up. You have looked everywhere, in all directions,
and this has brought you to the certitude that it is not there. See how you feel
in your body. Your real freedom you feel behind you.
Just as you are speaking now, for the first time I understand experientially
the words “being open to openness.” Or at least I have the flavor of it.
Because I realize the openness I’ve had before was for the possible knowable,
this intriguing phrase you used yesterday. I never thought of it, but I realize
that I was being receptive, but waiting for some thing, though I didn’t know
what it was. And tonight it’s clear that openness unfolds from itself unto
itself. That the initial psychological acceptance becomes a broader energetic
opening that just keeps unfolding from itself. It’s quite a remarkable
realization.
When the openness refers to itself, there is no more formulation possible.

You must be very careful in saying, “I know it.” It is a kind of profanity.
I come and I listen to the talks, and I have a hind of general, but somewhat
foggy, notion of the way the world is, and the relationship between objects.
I’ve never really taken it as I would a class in mathematics, to understand as
a system, because it was my understanding from the teaching that that was
not the way to go about it. Is that correct?
When the mind comes to a certain clarity, this clarity is representation. Clear
representation is important for the mind. In this representation, the mind
knows itself, knows its limits.
Can you speak a little about listening?
Listening?
Yes. We have such difficulties listening to one another.
Real listening is in this openness. But first you should become aware that you
don’t listen. You can never try to listen. You can never try to listen better.
You can only say, “I have become aware that I don’t listen.” That is enough.
Because originally you are listening, originally you are open.
Can you speak on faith in the guru, and detachment from the guru?
You ask a certain question. This question does not come from information
from books or from hearsay or from second-hand information. The question
comes out from the moment itself. In your absolute earnestness, then, comes
the question. “What is life? Who am I? How can I face life? How can I face
the expressions of life?” That is your question. Then the teacher gives you
certain indications, certain ways how to look and listen. This is second-hand
information, too. But you must believe it and make it your own.
You find yourself in New York, and you don’t know where to go and you
have no map. You ask somebody who appears to knows the streets of New
York, because he looks like a New Yorker. So you ask him and he gives you
the information on how to go. This is second-hand information, but you must
go where he said. You must believe him. And then you will find the street.
Then it is first-hand information. In this way you must have faith in the
sayings of the guru.
And detachment?
As he gives you the directions on how to find life, how to find your real
center, in this moment one cannot even speak of attachment or detachment.
There remains friendship, I would say. Friendship.
But the man on the street doesn’t feel he’s a guru just because he knows
where the street is, does he?
In any case, you must accept what he said. Because he has gone the same
way. He found it. So he can only say the way that he found, nothing else.
You must go the same way.
Without doubting on your way?
You must never doubt the guru. He shows you the way to go. He doesn’t go
for you; you must go. Then it becomes first-hand information for you. But as
long as you have not reached the place or the street, it is still second-hand
information. In this connection you must feel a certain freedom, a certain
comfort in relation with him. In a certain way he gives you freedom. He
doesn’t give you any psychological or other holds. You see him, but in reality
he is nothing. That is the only way.
When you come here and I say to you, “You are nothing,” and you really
hear that you are nothing, what happens? There is no more memory. You
give up what you believe yourself to be. You find yourself spontaneously in
emptiness. But this emptiness is not an object, not a representation. It refers
to your totality. It is a global feeling. It is original perception. When you have
it once you will be solicited a second time, a third time. But when you have it
once, enjoy it!
July 19
Could you speak a little bit about how the breathing is related to the
movements?
The posture is one thing, and going into the posture is the second thing.
When you go from one posture to another, you must never anticipate. That is
living in intention. Once you have given the order to your body to go from
one posture to another, you have given the order. But then you remain only in
the feeling. You go from one moment to another moment.
There is no anticipation to a finality. And with the breathing it’s the same.
It means you are completely one with the object which presents itself in the
moment. You are completely one with the object, one with your body, one
with your body feeling. There is no thinking. There is only feeling. You go
with the feeling.
Will you speak a little about resistance. I’ve been aware in this seminar of my
physical resistance and emotional resistance and how they’re connected. If
you can let go of the emotional resistance, does it release the physical
resistance?
The emotional resistance comes up when you relate the posture to yourself.
To the “I,” the person?
Yes. You must only function. You have given the order to the body. The
body executes the command.
When you find resistance in your body...
Then face the body. Don’t face the emotion, face the body. And then come
back in the posture, and do it again. But keep the feeling sensation alive,
very, very strong. When the old pattern of resistance comes up, don’t deal
with it, don’t fight it, don’t control it. What is important is the inner feeling,
the inner quality of the body, and your alertness.
But can the resistance you find in your body have an emotional source?
It is the feeling of the body, the resistance, that creates the psychological
situation.
Ah.
Not the other way around. In your case, going in front of you, bending
forwards, doesn’t create a problem. But when you go the other way, there
you must be very, very careful. You should really proceed as when you are in
a room with no light. You move through touch.
You feel it.
Yes. You really feel it. When there is a reaction, a compensation, come back.
Don’t relate the bodywork to yourself. You are awareness forever, and there
is no “I” to do it, to feel it.
The bodywork is on the observable, the known. It’s obvious. We see it. We
sense it. Is there ever an action, in the sensible world, which arises from the
emptiness?
The emptiness of the body and the mind emptiness are one. Don’t make two
of them. The body emptiness has its reality, its existence, in your emptiness.
When there is really directionless attention, this attention unfolds in
intelligence and in sensitivity. When I speak of sensitivity, your body
sensitivity is included. You have the impression you don’t think with your
head, you think with your body. You don’t hear with your ears, you hear with
your body. You don’t smell with your nose, you smell with your body.
The body is the same. Body movement is the same. All appears in your
emptiness. All appears in you, but you are not in it. You only know it because
it is in you. The knowing capacity is only possible because you are out of
what is known. The known must be in the knower. But the knower is not in
the known. Otherwise knowing is not possible. The known can never know
itself. An object can never know another object.
What is important is that when you come into a room and look around your
environment, you look with an open mind. You will be aware when memory
comes in, at your office, understanding the problems with which you deal in
your business. Refer all those things to your presence, to your globality.
Globality means without the split mind, without a mind of choice which lives
in complementarity. Don’t go into choice. Let the choice come from the
situation itself. It is the situation that makes the choice, and you are only the
executor of the choice. You are a channel. Perhaps more clearly, you are not
the executor, you are the execution. There is no more psychological
involvement. This psychological involvement is more or less a defense.
When there is alertness, there is life, it has its own taste call it love. But
there is nobody who loves. You execute things as asked by the situation. You
will be astonished at the intelligence that appears when you really look at the
facts, not from the point of view of the split mind but from wholeness. The
split mind goes into old patterns of like and dislike. But from your totality,
from morning to evening you are in a kind of equanimity. It is important.
You really live in this equanimity.
I have a question about acceptance. Very often when something has been
denied, as when a person finds out someone close has died, there’s a sense of
pushing that away or wishing it hadn’t happened. Then when the realization
comes, often there’s a grieving. And I wondered if that process of grieving
and crying is part of the process of coming to a full acceptance?
I think it is a completely wrong relationship with life.
Wrong?
Yes, wrong. What is important is that you must understand what is life, and
what are expressions of life. When you really understand life, dying has a
completely new significance. In the West we mainly emphasize the object
part. Emphasize life in you, and you will see only life. Face other people and
your surroundings with life.
Would you say that dying is a part of life?
Yes. When you really understand life, you can say that every evening you
die. Even from moment to moment you die. Your relationship with this
transformation is completely different. This understanding gives you a
different sleep and waking up. You say you give yourself to sleep because
you know, through memory, that you will wake up tomorrow morning. But
there will come a moment when you won’t wake up any more. What is
important is to know yourself behind the waking and sleeping states. Then
there is a completely different approach to the continual changing.
How does the experience of deep, dreamless sleep differ from the sage in the
waking state?
You speak of the sage. For the sage the dream state and the waking state are
the same. There is no difference. And sleeping is a state, too. These are states
which belong to your presence.
Is there a certain self-awareness, a vivid self-awareness or awakeness behind

all three?
There is awareness in continuity. And the three states are more or less a
superimposition. The moment you are free from any involvement in that
waking state, you will also have that distance in the dreaming state.
Just like a phenomenal appearance that’s either there or not?
Absolutely. When you dream, it is, for you, a waking state. It becomes a
dreaming state when you are in the waking state. You say, “I dreamt. It was a
mind production.” But it is actually the same. The psychological time may
change. In the dream state, in twenty minutes according to your watch in the
waking state, you can have three marriages and three or four children. And
your children and wife or husband are very beautiful. But it only lasted
twenty minutes. [Laughter]
In a situation, a business situation mostly, I get the feeling that I’ve been
cheated, deceived, or the other party has not lived up to their commitment.
For example, they’ll say we’ll meet for dinner at five o’clock, and the guy
doesn’t show up. And that’s a fact. You said that the answer will come from
the situation, but I noticed that the solutions that come to my mind are
usually to get even with the party. Is this a healthy approach, or is it
something else entirely?
Try for some time to postpone all judgment. Postpone it. When you postpone
it you will come back again and look at the fact. Because the reaction is very
quick. There is a choice. When there is a choice, don’t go in. Try just for one
morning. For one morning, try to postpone all decisions. Try to look more
deeply.
Let the situation overtake the judging...
Yes. Let the situation come completely to you. Don’t judge it. Don’t try to
take anything from the situation. Wait. Wait till the situation acts really on
you. Do it only in the morning. And then you don’t do it in the morning; you
do it in the afternoon. Become acquainted with this way of dealing with
things, with your surroundings. When you postpone judgment, you will have
a foretaste of freedom. Because the moment you don’t judge or compare, you
see facts as they are and you are free from them.
But what happens is, the excitement takes over and I get angry.
That is a fact, too.
In other words, postponing judgment will be postponing function, and

postponing action.
Yes. You face the fact. Then you accept the fact. You can only face the fact
when you accept it. And then you explore it. But as soon as there is decision,
comparison... stop. I would say, for you, postpone it, look at it again.
You receive a letter in the evening. You read the letter and say, “This man
is completely impossible.” Immediately you react from the letter and take
your fountain pen and write a reply. But you don’t post the letter in the
evening, because you are too tired. Then the next morning before posting the
letter you say, “I will look at it again.” And you see your reply was
completely stupid.
Postpone for the moment. In postponing things, you have the foretaste of
freedom. To see the facts, you must accept the facts. In accepting the facts
you feel yourself in the acceptance, in your freedom. You are not bound to
the situation. You are not stuck to it.
But I have made preparations to meet someone who doesn’t show up. This is
a fact that he’s not at the meeting.
Yes. But that you react is also a fact. That you react immediately and say,
“This man is outrageous. I will not deal with him.” This is also a fact. The
moment you react, see your reaction. And see what is the problem or subject
you wanted to discuss. See it again. Suddenly you will discover it is a very
good idea that he has cancelled the meeting, because you were not ready to
confront him, to face him.
Last night when you were talking about disease, you said that one of the
causes of disease could be waste products that are lodged in the body.
Yes.
Could waste products include emotional residue? When you feel anger, for
instance, you can find it in your body.
Absolutely.
If it’s not processed somehow, can it cause a residual effect?
When you are angry or jealous, all these kinds of qualities that belong to the
“I,” to the “me,” have a very deep reaction in the body. It makes the body red
or yellow, they become yellow. Psychological reacting means a deep reaction
in the body. The reaction can even go so far as to destroy the body.
So the important thing for physical health is...
It may be that your body has very often suffered through your anger, through
your jealousy. And after reacting, you felt your body was not really
comfortable. Psychologically you may now be free from the situation, but
there is a kind of residue in your body. This residue can perhaps remain for a
long time. It can become a pattern. It goes so far that you say, “It is my
body.” You forget that it was a reaction. But it is still a residue of previous
reactions. It means you have disturbed, in a certain way, the rhythms of
certain parts of your body. You have disturbed the organic body. So do
something to heal your body. There are many forms of medicine which bring
you back to real functioning.
You get rid of the residues.
Yes, exactly. In sounds and in colors, as we said, there is a kind of vibration

and rhythm. The moment you identify this part with certain elements around
you which have this rhythm, it stimulates your rhythm. It is a very fine way
to heal. It works for certain people. If it doesn’t work, there are many other
approaches. There are people who work through acupuncture, and there are
certain people who don’t react to it. But our psychological behavior acts very
deeply on our body.
You see anger come up, and you see as a fact that it’s accumulating in the
body?
When you see it as a fact you stand out of the process. You are no longer an
accomplice to it. As we said yesterday, watch it. Go with it. Sleep with it.
Love it. Not only accept it, but become a companion to it, to free it. It is a fact
and you must take it as a fact. A fact can only exist when you are completely
out of the process. Otherwise it is not a fact. It means seeing things from a
completely impersonal point of view, if we can speak of a point of view.
I’m aware of the feeling that I have my life to go back to after this seminar,
which is not the way I want to approach it. It’s not the kind of thing I want at
all. I want this opening, this energy to continue. It just seems beautiful that
there’s the possibility... that the world isn’t really there, or...
But don’t go back into the old pattern. Go to your room and see the position
of your bed and your writing table and your pictures. Go back and be open to
the place where you are living. There are many people who are completely
conditioned to the place where they are living. They go away for three weeks
to free themselves from habit. Then when they go home they look at it in a
new way, so see things in a new way.
And the thing is, without relating it at all to me, you know...
But there is not a “me.” [laughter]
Last night when I was rolling up the microphone cord, suddenly there was a
déja vu experience that lasted more than a few seconds. I suddenly had the
association of having seen the film twice. I very rarely do that because, of
course, I’m not emotionally taken into the film and the actors and all of that.
But when I have seen a film twice what becomes interesting is the
professionalism of the actors and the props and all the different things
around it that make up that particular moment. I feel that my conditioning is
to believe that the story and emotion, the fight for free will and all that, is
real. That’s a deep conditioning. This other is so silent and still, I almost
invariably pass it by.
It is very interesting to see a play a second time. The first time you saw it you
took pleasure in it, you took something from it. The second time, there is not
the slightest intention to take something from it, to learn from it, to have
pleasure in it. You simply see it. It is very interesting to see how things
appear the second time. Many things come up that you did not see the first
time. It’s even astonishing to see how much of real value appears the second
time simply because you are not involved in it.
Mt. Madonna
July-August 1988
July 29
In this seminar we emphasize awareness through body sensation. In other

words, the body is an object of our attention. What we generally call our
body is a contraction, a construction, a pattern. It is conditioned by habit,
resistance, memory.
The question is, How can we become free from this conditioning? The
body belongs to the five senses, but mainly the body is felt. It is tactile
sensation. When our attention is free from intention and tension, the vast
palette of body sensations naturally appears. In this body approach we use
certain visualizations, for example visualizing space, to come to a body that
is completely transparent, completely empty.
We may be aware that when we look into open space our muscles and
nerves react in a different way than when we look at a very heavy rock. So to
come to the natural feeling of our body we should first visualize empty space
and introduce this empty space into our body. We should visualize certain
parts of our body and see how this space visualization acts on the muscles
and nervous system.
When we face the conditionings in our body we should not stop there. We
should first look at the parts of our body which are completely healthy, which
are completely empty of aggression, of resistance. From the part that is
completely healthy we permeate the unhealthy part until there is a sensation
of emptiness in the whole body. In this emptiness the muscles function
completely differently. But in emphasizing this visualization, there is no
willing. Our attention is completely without any intention, anticipation, end-
gaining.
When you say visualization do you mean to use the imagination, the mind’s
eye, perhaps a joint that is not moving properly, to visualize it as moving with
a sense of ease and openness?
The moment you move your lower arm it is the biceps, the agonist, which
precedes the movement. But the agonist not only does the movement, it also
unnecessarily carries some weight. Generally what happens in our
conditioned body is that the agonist contracts through memory and the
antagonist relaxes. But when you proceed with the visualization that the
body, the arm, is a completely transparent sensation, then you will see the
agonist will not contract completely and the antagonist will not lengthen
completely. Both will, in a certain way, come together. In coming together
they will be completely freed from all tension.
First, you visualize the empty space and you bring the empty space into
your body and let it pervade your arm completely. Then you go away from
the vision. You remain only with the feeling, with the empty feeling.
So you do visualize with the mind?
Yes, of course. You cannot visualize with anything other than the mind. It is
a crutch, a pedagogical crutch. It is a trick, if you like.
When you visualize space and you bring this space nearer to your head you
will feel expanded. This expansion is not an idea. You can measure it.
The biceps and triceps function in a new way after you have visualized
them. You can prove it. You can measure it.
When you realize you are not your body, does this exercise still help you?
Before saying “I am not the body” you must first know what you are not.
Become more and more acquainted with your body. In this way you become
detached from your body. There is a feeling of distance.
The moment you become aware of a sensation of your body you are
detached from it. In this moment the perceiver is not an object. The perceiver
is completely attention. In this attention there is freedom from all expectation.
It is a completely innocent presence. At this moment there is no more object
to object relationship.
My body experience sometimes seems to be the thoughts or emotions I am
feeling.
In this case you have conceptualized the perception. You should free yourself
from the concept and only face the perception, the feeling of the body. We
can never have a concept and percept together.
Why do you say “visualize space”? It seems to me awareness is space.
Absolutely. But when we speak of visualization we speak only of a trick, a

crutch, to free our body from this deep conditioning, heaviness, reaction,
resistance, fear and so on.
Of course, the body has its reality in this space, in this reality.
We have identified ourselves with the body. We have become stuck to the
body. You may see that when you go to stillness you have a habit of
localizing the stillness somewhere in the body and making it a sensation.
In meditation there is no localization. There is no hold on anything. In this
total giving up there is no more center.
You have said your emotions are actual changes in sensations in your body.
When you visualize your body as empty and nonexistent what happens to the
existence of emotions? What happens to happiness and anger?
Happiness and anger disappear, in a certain way. They are interdependent

counterparts. You cannot have one without the other. When you look at them
there is a kind of conversion. Then each of them is unrelated, but remains in
your awareness, your attention, your presence.
For healing purposes you can push visualization very far. And not only the
visual. You can visualize certain colors that belong to the healing process and
you can also produce certain sounds in your body that belong to the healing
process.
Happiness, in the ultimate sense, is not a concept. In objectless awareness
happiness, which commonly belongs to a psychic experience, is completely
reshaped.
The experience of bliss seems to be somewhat body-based. Does that go too?
In real bliss nothing is excluded from the bliss. All is bliss.
For several months I have had almost no energy and something in the throat.
I have tried to stay with awareness. But I don’t know how to be over a long
period of time.
You should visualize this unhealthy part several times in a day. But don’t go
directly to the unhealthy part. First explore the healthy part. Then you can
invade the unhealthy sensation with the healthy sensation. It may not be easy
in the beginning. At first you invade the unhealthy part with the healthy part,
later you can visualize the unhealthy part immediately in this space.
So you must visualize several times in a day, until you have adopted a new
pattern of sensation. It takes time.
I’m a little confused. It seems the thrust of your teaching is an awareness

without choice of whatever happens in the body. If it’s a pain or tension that
attracts the attention the proper approach is a choiceless awareness of that.
But tonight it seems like you’re saying, “Don’t look right at that, look away,
even if you’re drawn to that tension, look away to a healthy part of the body
and try to visualize spaciousness, and then try to somehow move that
spaciousness, without any will power, to invade the healthy part.” This is
confusing to me.
You are not the body, senses or mind. But in order to be able to say “I am
not,” you must first know what you are not. So there is a natural accepting of
what you are not. In this accepting there is not an “I” that reacts, controls. It
is simply attention.
You will see the conditioning of the body is very strong. That means the
patterns are very deep. So you go to many levels of the body feeling. All
these levels, you are not. Still you must know what they are, until you come
to the absolute natural feeling of emptiness. Then when you close your eyes
and try to visualize your body, you will not find it. It is expanded in space.
There may apparently be a contradiction. But there is actually no
contradiction.
Evil or negativity seems to have its own existence. We can choose to invite it
into our lives, accept it, or not have it present.
Evil for whom?
Obviously, evil for the person overwhelmed by self-doubt, negativity, etc.
It refers mainly to the “I” In the absence of the “I,” the “me,” there is no more
inner accomplice to the emotion, what you call evil. There is no more inner
accomplice with feelings. They disappear.
It is not the evil we must face, but we must see from which point of view
we are looking. When we look from choiceless awareness, directionless
attention, our point of view is openness. It is in this openness that all will be
explained. It explains itself.
When the body becomes part of our objective awareness there is a time
when the body truly lives in our awareness and the emptiness of our body
belongs to ultimate peace.
Is it effective to just drop the idea of someone trying to gain clarity, to just be
in the sensation of the moment, to give no importance to the mind?
When you know yourself in this objective awareness, multidimensional

attention, things and people appear to you in a different way. You don’t see
them any more from the point of view of your personality, but you see them
from your transpersonality. You don’t impose any pattern on them. You
simply listen to movements, to the speaking, to the formulation. You listen.
In this listening to the other person there is love. In a certain way you also
stimulate the other person. The person feels himself free. There is no more
superimposition of the personality. Then there is no more object-object
relationship.
Are you suggesting we live freely in the openness?
We generally call it pure perception, direct perception. In direct perception

the mind doesn’t control, interpret, bring in the past.
In the beginning there is the perceived and the perceiver. Of course what
we call perceived and perceiver is mind. But there comes a fusion where
there is no more perceiver, no more perceived, there is only perceiving and
perceiving is being.
Then you live totally your complete freedom.
You drive your car according to the road and the other cars. You function
according to the situation. All that appears lives in your freedom.
This kind of awareness could be done with any object. Is the reason we are
doing it with the body because the ingrained habits are so deep and this is a
way of cleaning them out?
Yes. There may seem to be a little contradiction. We often speak of the direct
approach, but here we are taking pieces of the progressive approach.
U.G. Krishnamurti, not J. Krishnamurti, says a whole different thing happens

in the body when the universal life energy moves through the body, and any
awareness, any letting go, is futile.
You must make the distinction between pathological appearance and the
changing of the body, when spontaneously the notion to be this or that
disappears and you see life from your wholeness. In this spontaneous change
there is some other brain function. So one may feel physiological change, but
it is not the process mentioned by U.G. Krishnamurti. This man is a
pathological case.
You spoke about direct perception. I notice that sometimes the personality
jumps in and prevents a direct perception.
Yes. It is a reflex deep-rooted in us. We go directly from cognition to

recognition.
This uprooting of our conditioning, is it instantaneous, not a progressive

process?
In the direct approach one points directly to the Self, to the ultimate. All
belongs to the choiceless awareness. In the progressive way you remain in the
subject-object relationship. At the end you may find that you can never free
yourself from this subject-object relationship. Choiceless awareness,
attention, is non-dual. There’s nobody to be aware. There’s nothing to be
aware of. There is only awareness.
We sometimes use elements that belong to the progressive way. Body
awareness, for example, belongs, in a certain way, to the progressive way.
But here we emphasize the attention. The moment we listen to our body we
make our body completely free from repetition. In this moment the attention
refers to itself. You know in the moment itself that you are attentive.
So evil and negativity serve as an object to bring us back to our awareness?
The object, in a certain way, brings us back. It may also be an accidental

object like illness or beauty.
Do you believe there are actually accidents?

No. The mind, the ego, believes in them. It is only an idea to maintain
somebody. If you believe in accident you also believe in non-accident.
Is “dying to the body and being reborn to the spirit” another way of saying
what you are saying?
The teaching mainly concerns the dying of the “I,” the “me”; then you are
free from psychological memory.
Can this shift happen without crisis, or is crisis an element of it?
In principle, there are no crises. But practically speaking there are crises.
Practically speaking, can there be a non-crisis jump?
Crisis belongs to the psyche. It is like a spiral. It goes up and it goes down.
When it goes down there are moments of non-crisis.
As a doctor you intervene in those moments when there is no crisis
because in the moments of non-crisis the patient can prepare himself for the
crisis-how to approach the crisis in a different way.
It seems to me that the crisis is associated with the letting go of the “I,” and
it can be a struggle, an emotional upheaval. Is this a necessary component?
As soon as the conditioned mechanism has no more role to play, there is an

up-giving and in this letting go there is pain, so-called pain.
Some people have described enormous crises, they have come to the brink of
losing their sanity, have been unable to take care of their body functions for
weeks or months during this transition. Is this a necessary component?
We must be very careful when we look at them. There is the pathological
case and there is a normal transformation.
There was a big crisis in St. John. Also Ramakrishna. But you must be
very careful... there may be a touch of the pathological.
This pathological reaction is really a reaction. It is a refusal. In normal
transformation there is no refusal. There is suffering in a certain way, but this
suffering is of a completely different quality.
Why do you teach?
There is nobody who teaches. There is only teaching. In reality there is no

teaching because there is nothing to teach.
How can one be free from psychological memory?
The moment the reflex to be an individual entity dies you live in the present,
from moment to moment.
You go back to the past because you have learned certain things from the
past. This we call functional memory. But you don’t go back to the past to
retain the “I,” the “me.” Generally our daydreaming, our thinking, is from
past to future. We are living in a becoming process. We believe we are
something.
It is quite beautiful when you live in the present. Memory is there, but not
psychological memory, not the desire to be somebody. You have moments in
daily life when you are so, when you don’t go back to the past, you don’t
create the future. You know these moments.
July 30
Could you speak about the role of truth-telling as it affects the realization of
our true nature?
What do you understand by “truth?” You must first discover what is untruth.
What has no existence in itself is untruth, it needs an ultimate knower,
consciousness. When you have really discovered this untruth you will find
yourself in being truth. You can always objectify untruth but truth can never
be objectified. You are it. So the moment you have really discovered what is
untruth, you find yourself spontaneously in truth. From this point of view you
will see there’s no untruth, there’s only the extension of truth. It is more or
less an expression of truth.
But never try to objectify truth, to localize it. Never. Truth is in your
absolute absence, when you are completely absent.
It makes it sound as if almost any action would be justifiable if it is an

extension of truth.
When action springs from non-action, then it springs from truth. When action
springs from action it is reaction.
Since being with you I’ve had a sense of coming home and there’s a real
sense of peace. But with that is the feeling of wanting to be affirmed or
acknowledged by you. I look at that and ask “Who’s wanting to be
affirmed?” and although it’s subsiding it still arises again and again. So my
question is: Where is the place for me to be affirmed by you, the teacher, the
guru? And is it one more mistake of the arising of the ego?
Who looks for affirmation? Who? When you live really in this homeground,
the homeground doesn’t look for anything. You have had a glimpse of what
we call truth. Be completely attuned to this glimpse. You have it. You need
only to be established in it. So live with it completely. It looks for you.
Looking for affirmation, recognition, is more or less a going away from it.
It’s difficult to formulate the question, but I’ll start with my experience.
Normally, I’m asleep. That is, I’m in fantasy, in the mind, not in perception,
so that I’ll be walking in beautiful woods but thinking about something else.
But something wakes me up and I come back to where I am. This awareness
that brings me back to where I am makes me ask, “Who am I? Am I the
mind? Or is the mind only looking at the mind?” I can look at feelings and
sensations in the body because they are objects, but who is looking? Do I
make any sense to you?
The question is, “Who am I?” [laughter]
But it’s important to feel who I am. It’s disturbing to go back and there’s just
nothing there! But still there is. That’s the dichotomy: There’s nothing but
there’s something, and that makes me suffer. The more I look, the more it
hurts. I know the hurt is a fantasy too! All this goes on inside of me and I
would like to comprehend it. The effort to comprehend is maybe wasted
energy in a way. I never will...
When you ask the question “Who am I?” you have no reference to the
already known, you live automatically, spontaneously, in the unknown. It is
in this moment when there’s no reference to the already known that the “I
am” appears. But the “I am” is never named, never pronounced. The “I am,”
when you speak it, is a form of assertion. But the “I am” springs up when you
say “I don’t know” and there’s no reference to something knowable, when
there is an absolute “don’t know.” Then the “I am” takes you. But it’s not an
affirmation, not an assertion, it is an absolutely global feeling of certitude. All
else-what you perceive, what appears-is mind. The waking state, dreaming
state, sleeping state appear in mind. But you are not the mind, you are the
knower of the mind.
How can you know without reference? How can you know without knowing
something?
“I know” and “I don’t know” are both concepts appearing in the mind. When
you see it clearly then there is a convergence of “I know” and “I don’t
know,” and this moment reveals the “I am,” which is beyond knowable and
not knowable.
Right now my perception is: “I am.”
Perception belongs to the “I am.” The “I am” is behind all perceptions. It

gives light to the perception. But it cannot be perceived.
So in my sitting here right now, I’m not entirely in a dream, there’s

something real?
Perhaps it would be good for you to inquire what is the motive of your
suffering. Listen to this suffering. It may be a pointer. Suffering is always a
pointer. To listen you must be still; otherwise, you cannot listen. In this
listening there’s no affirmation, no assertion, there’s only openness. And
when the listening is open the openness appears as “I am,” but you can never
think it or assert it. It is an eternal question, an eternal waiting.
I think I understand, thank you.
In the last year I’ve entered into two peculiar states, or non-states. There’s
absolutely no problem but something needs clarification. There is a great
deal of energy that’s shooting through the body. This morning I lost the body,
although it’s so vivid... Emotions come up, they’re all ok, they’re just there.
And yet there’s a fear because things occur and I have no control.
But do not control. Why are you looking for control? Watch only. Listen to it.
Be witness to it. In witnessing there’s no controller.
What if I’m teaching and a great laughter comes up, or I’m walking down the
street and start crying? Normally, there’s a social convention that controls
these happenings, but if there’s no controller and it just comes up and it’s
really oh...
Watch it, just look at it.
There’s nobody there to watch it. There’s just some kind of confusion in it
that needs clarification and if there’s a problem it’s that energy ... it’s the
fear... there’s a sadness. It’s very lonely.
Do not interfere. Do not control. Let it happen. You’ll see that you do not let
it happen, you interfere. You direct it, control it. You never face the actual
sensation, the perception. Let the sensation be an object of your awareness
and you will feel some space between the object and the observer. You will
no longer be so involved.
So there’s no proper position relative to this energy? Because it’s hard to

walk sometimes, hard to function, hard to pick up a fork because there’s so
much energy...
When you simply watch this energy, it comes to a reorchestration, an

integration. But when you don’t watch it, when you control it, think about it,
analyze it; when you interfere, then there is distortion.
Someone said once that to be unable to stay present to what you’re

experiencing is to give your true power away. Would you say witnessing is
the ability to stay present with what you are witnessing?
As long as there is an “I,” a “me,” a self, there is witnessing. When you

recognize that this self is an illusion, an appearing in mind, an object like any
other, the reflex to be someone disappears and with it, the witness.
But the witness is an important stage...?
Yes. It is a crutch, a very important pedagogical crutch to bring you to know

you are not the doer, not the thinker, you are the witness. In saying I am the
witness you don’t go any more into the recording: “I am the doer, I am the
thinker, I am the enjoyer, I am the sufferer.” There’s only function.
What is the significance and the importance of this state?
You mean the state of the witness?
The state of the witness, when there’s no mind, no memory, only perception,
no concepts.
The Ultimate Witness where one can no longer speak of a witness is the “I
am,” pure consciousness.
Does the significance lie in the “I am” state itself or in what it does to you?
Is it significant because you feel completely free, one with the universe or
God? Is the feeling it gives you important or is it important because it is the
truth?
When you are established in truth you live your autonomy; in other words,
you are free, free from what you are not. You are a happy being. But at the
end when you look deeper at all your motives, you look for happiness and
very often you may have these moments of happiness. But after these
moments the “I,” the “me,” appropriates them for itself and makes them
psychological. Psychological happiness has nothing to do with ultimate
happiness, this ultimate happiness where no one is happy and there’s no
cause of the happiness. It is completely causeless.
One could almost think that an infant might have that kind of happiness and
that the mind has developed memories and psychological complications
which can be dropped when it realizes it. The fact that we can drop all this
does not prove for me that even this does not belong to the mind. If all
belongs to the mind and the mind realizes this, it may still be all in the mind.
Is it just the other side of the coin or is it universal enlightenment?
All this belongs also to the mind.
Does happiness belong to the mind also?
The mind belongs to happiness but happiness does not belong to the mind.
A child is born out of happiness. It first appropriates itself to its
environment in the mother and when it is free from the mother it appropriates
itself to its other environment. There’s a moment when the happiness
identifies itself with the object and then you lose the happiness.
When the “you” in you becomes happy, you lose happiness.
Exactly, you make an idea of happiness, then you lose it. Because in creating
psychological happiness we veil the real happiness.
It seems that there are many masters who have experienced the “I am,” but
very few have become established in it. Can you speak about this?
You must first have a glimpse of this permanent state, then this glimpse, in a
certain way, looks for you. When you have the glimpse once you’ll have it
very often—between two thoughts, between two activities, before going to
sleep or waking up-until you are established, until you are it in non-action
and in action. But make sure it’s not in the mind. Don’t look for it in the
realm of the mind.
You asked yesterday if there’s a teacher. I told you there’s no teacher, no
teaching, nothing to teach. There’s only being open to the openness. It was
not striking enough for you. If we would live in another century I’d say we’d
close the shop because there’s nothing to sell and nothing to buy. [laughter]
I wanted to ask you about the exercises. What can I do about falling asleep
during the exercises?
What is important is that you slept well. [laughter]
What about spacing out, daydreaming, during the exercises?
It may be an adequate moment to discover the dreamer. Once we have

discovered the dreamer there is no more going away and all the energy that
was directed in the becoming process refers to the moment itself. And then
there is a stop. Be completely attuned to the stop.
But this habit of daydreaming not only appears when you do the exercises
or other activities. Anticipation is daydreaming. Our aspirations and goals are
daydreaming. There’s a tremendous energy wasted in this end-gaining where
we are looking for survival, survival of the “me,” the “I” This energy is
useful for discovering what we are not and revealing what we are
fundamentally.
Earlier you spoke about the light behind all perceptions and in one of your
books you spoke of being visited by a light which your teacher explained as
light reflected by the self. Would you talk about this light? Is it the pinpoint of
light that appears when you close your eyes, or is it the clearness of things,
or something else?
When you come to the point that you really see that there is nothing to be
taught, nothing to become, to attain, then you are free from all expectation,
all dynamism to produce. It is a normal, spontaneous stillness. You are open
to what you are and the presence that you call a teacher is knowingly
established. Poetically speaking, it is a transmission of the flame but there is
nothing transmitted. Transmission is only a way of speaking. You are
stimulated.
You live mainly in a landscape furnished with many objects. You are
attracted by all the objects, but in this attraction you completely lose the sense
of space. When we speak of light it means that there is an absence of all
representation. When you do not project an absence of consciousness onto
the absence of objects, you will suddenly feel yourself in a completely new
dimension of space.
Enlightenment is only the moment when there’s the absolute understanding
that what you call the “me,” the “I” is nothing other than a fabrication of the
mind. This understanding is the freeing of the mind, the freeing of the self,
and you feel yourself in openness, in this not-knowing.
Is any life situation workable? For example, you say to be the witness, but in
my experience some life situations are so full of demands and activity that it’s
very hard to create the space for that kind of awareness. Should one change
one’s life in any way, or go on retreats where there is the time to have some
glimpse of the non-state which then alters one’s life, or is every situation
workable?
You know only relationship where you take yourself for somebody, that
means for an object. When you take yourself for somebody you see only
objects, so in this relationship you are completely stuck to the other “object.”
There is no space feeling, there is constantly invasion of your space. This
absence of space-feeling is familiar to you. But you also know relationship
when the “I,” the “me,” has no role to play, as it is sometimes in love.
It is only in the absence of the “I” that there is space-feeling relationship.
There’s no dynamism to grasp, to take, no “I want.” Become more aware of
these two states.
But the pattern of taking oneself for an object is so strong it seems to be

linked to survival. If I don’t hold onto me, I won’t survive.
It is very deep-rooted. You can never produce the dying. The only thing is to
see that you have enclosed yourself in a world of objects. In your question I
see you would like to try to get out of the world of concepts. But your “I,”
your “me,” belongs to this concept, so you have found books and you have
certainly listened to many teachers, and one has given you many tricks, ways
to come out of this conceptual universe. But in reality you turn in a vicious
circle. When you really see it, you will already be out of it.
July 31
In order to attain liberation is it necessary to go through yoga or some

physical disciplines, or is it enough to be in the presence of a master?
Ask yourself first, “Who is it who is looking for liberation, who finds himself
in bondage?” In that question you will find the answer. You will see there is
nothing. There is nobody.
You project somebody to be liberated, somebody in bondage. This
somebody is an object among other objects. See very clearly there is nobody
to be liberated, nobody is in bondage.
When we do breathing exercises you talk about the gap at the end of
exhalation...
The underlying reality of the activity of breathing is the truth; it is what you
are fundamentally. The inhalation and exhalation are more or less
superimposed on this reality. So when you take the gaps in breathing as an
absence of activity then you miss the presence, you miss the truth. This gap
can never become an object. You are completely one with it. It is a non-dual
moment—if we can call it a moment—where there is no subject-object
relationship.
The breathing exercises here are not taken as in the Yoga system. In the
Yoga system they are more or less a technique for directing certain energies
in our body. Here the breathing exercises—if we can still call them exercises
— are for a spiritual purpose.
When we are trying to feel the whole body in a posture I go back and forth
between visualizing and feeling.
You cannot project a picture at the same time as there is something heard,
something touched, something smelled. You can never have them together.
So you should first visualize the picture, the empty space. Transpose this
empty space into your body. You will see immediately how this picture acts
on you. And then you go away from the picture and there is only sensation.
In sensation there is no representation. No thinking. No concept. Only your
moment-to-moment being. It is like when you walk through the streets
without the idea of going anywhere. There is no anticipation and no finality.
When you say, “Feel the entire structure of the pose as an architect,” do you
let it come to you, or do you try to see it like a drawing on a page?
You should be able to visualize, to project the physical body in front of you.
Then completely go into this projection with all your vitality, your energy, so
that you are one with it. If, in this projected energy body, you make an
invisible movement you may feel some muscle reaction, that is, memory, in
your static, physical body. So you must completely detach the projected
fluidic energy body, full of sensation, from the static physical body. Detach
the invisible movement from the old muscle structure. When the sensation is
completely detached from the old physical body, it will take the physical part
in charge. So first see yourself in space, then live completely in this space.
What is the purpose of doing these exercises?
It is a pastime. We must have a reason to be together. Are you satisfied?

[laughter]
I have this idea that you and I live in different worlds. In my world I am still a
body and there are separate objects. I know that you tell me it is an illusion.
But how much of an illusion? If a bomb dropped on us and we were all
turned to dust, would that have any effect in your world?
In your world there is fear. There is anxiety. There is lack of freedom.

Explore your world. Explore it. Don’t judge it. Don’t make any
interpretation, any conclusion. Explore it. Then one day you will find
yourself beyond the explorer.
You don’t know what an illusion is. You’ve heard of it. You’ve read about
it. When you explore, see how the exploration acts on you. That is important.
How this reaction, this action, acts on you is the turning point.
You speak often of glimpses of reality. In the last couple of days I’ve had such
glimpses. Is there nothing I can do to extend those times?
There is nothing to do. In doing, you go away from it. See it. Discover
yourself in the seeing. The seeing is the answer. It is what you are looking
for.
Emphasize the seeing. Seeing is stillness. Nothing is seen. You are more or
less looking for a state, an object. But what you are can never be objectified.
Be completely open to your surroundings. All your surroundings are
objects. Surroundings begin with your body, senses and mind. And your
further surroundings are body, senses and mind, too. All is object. You are
the ultimate subject. The ultimate subject can never be objectified. All that
exists, all that is perceived, are objects in your awareness.
So be completely open, until one day you discover yourself in this
openness. You can never assert it. It is a non-state where you are constantly
in question. You will see that this question is the answer.
I watch holding on and desiring, and repeating pattern after pattern. I’m
wondering, what is letting go without trying to force it?
When you look at the patterns you are out of the process. When you look at
them you are completely detached. Then turn your head. Look to the looker.
You will never find the looker, because you are the looker.
It will seem obscure for you. But think about it, tomorrow.
You tell us the various characteristics of this state, how you have felt, etc. So
the mind has a tendency to compare, “Am I experiencing this... ?” Is it
possible to be in that state and not know I am in it?
But you can never know because there is not a knower. The knower belongs
to knowledge. Knowledge belongs to the mind.
So the second question is if you are in it, is it possible that you can’t even
say what it is, only live it?
You can only live it. You can never know it, because it doesn’t belong to
the mind. It is the mind which asks the question.
Have you ever had an experience where you sat there with all the students
and had nothing to say?
In reality there is nothing to say. We are here only for the joy of being
together.
What you are looking for, you can have. You can have it now. But in a
certain way you refuse it. You can only have it in one moment, in one instant.
That is why I call it apperception. If you look for it in progression you remain
in the mind. You may live in many interesting experiences but you remain in
fear. You can have it only in an instant. Then, when you look at yourself, you
will no longer find the pattern to which you are accustomed.
It is like an ant looking for its house, which you have crushed with your
foot. You will find that for some time it is uncomfortable because you can no
longer find your pattern. It is very interesting because there is no more
suffering. Automatically, your conceptual world comes to you in another
way. The brain will function in a different way and this change may at first
cause little physical disturbances. But the real transmutation of the mind is
only from this point. Other transmutations are only changing the furniture;
facing the bed south and then facing it north.
One asks you to look at the body without judging it, without comparison,
without interpretation, without conclusion. Only listen. Look into it. Listen to
the body without asking. In this listening, this looking, there is no role for the
“I,” the “me.”
Earlier you spoke of the body movements and postures as a pastime, a
pretense to come together.
You must grasp it immediately or forget it. You are laughing three days after
the joke.
Why is it that so few people throughout history have experienced this

transmutation? Is it an evolutionary step?
Who asks the question? Is the question not asked for psychological survival?
When I’m observing my mind and it is preoccupied with an earlier event, it

seems like there is something making that mind go round and round.
The past has only one value: not to repeat the error. But it has no value which
belongs to the moment itself. So you may learn from your past, but don’t
build the future with the past.
You said the world of illusion is characterized by fear and anxiety. In the
world you live in is there ever a situation where fear could arise?
Only an object can experience fear. If you identify yourself with an object,
then there is fear. As long as you believe yourself to be somebody there is
fear and anxiety. As an object you live in insecurity. To maintain what you
think yourself to be, you try all means to be free from fear and anxiety, but
you find yourself in a vicious circle. One day you will see the person is only a
mind construction made up by memory, education, experience, society. It is
only in this moment that you become free from fear and anxiety, because
then you no longer need to preserve this I-image. You see that it has no
reality.
What about biological fear?

When you look at the world, your surroundings, from the point of view of
what you believe to be, there is fear. When you look at the world from your
totality, which is no longer a point of view, there is no longer fear.
When there is fear, first free yourself from the concept of fear and then
face the perception. And then ask, “Who is afraid? Who has fear?” In asking
the question you objectify, distance yourself, from the perception. So the
moment fear appears, free yourself from the concept and face the perception.
When one does not identify oneself as an object, are there objects in his
world? A watch remains a watch and you can see what time it is, but you see
it in a different way. You don’t see it as separate. You see it as a reflection of
awareness.
Exactly! The scientist believes that an object has an independent existence.

When you go deeper, you see that an object cannot exist without awareness.
When you live in globality you are no longer bound to the objects, no
longer bound to your surroundings. The objects belong to you. In a certain
way they are in you. But you are not in them.
You say this stage is not progressive, that you arrive immediately. Do you
mean to say that the first moment you found yourself in it, it had all its
ramifications and subsequently no other experiences were added to it?
When you have this sudden insight and you look at your surroundings, your
surroundings appear differently because the patterns you have created in you
are the patterns created by the mind, the “me,” the “I” These patterns are only
for security for the “I,” the “me.” But the moment you have this sudden
insight these patterns become only a kind of grimace.
Does this state have its own characteristics? Are there different types of
experience in that state that you are now open to?
In this non-state an experience appears temporarily. Every experience appears

in non-experience. The real experience is non-experience. If you remain an
experiencer you remain in the garage. A real experience must dissolve in
non-experience.
When you have this sudden insight it strikes all your psychosomatic being.
It leaves an echo in this psychosomatic being. This echo is a reminder. That
is enough.
Do you think we will all have this insight you speak of?
Of course. You cannot be one moment without it. You are it.
So what is it that we are waiting for?
You are only accustomed to relating to objects, so you wait for something,
but what you are fundamentally is not something. When you really wait for
nothing, you are open. You will find yourself in the open waiting, not in
waiting for something. Then you will see that what you are waiting for is the
waiting without waiting, the openness.
Does this waiting take energy?
As long as there is directed energy in this waiting, there is projecting, there is

waiting for something.
This waiting is completely free from all projecting. In this waiting there is
no expectation. When you say really profoundly, “I don’t know,” in this not-
knowing there is no longer any reference. When there is no more reference,
all dynamism is stopped. So there is no longer anything eccentric. All energy
that has been explored in an eccentric way becomes concentric. It is an
absolute state of waiting, which is space; there is no center, no frontier. It is
an empty space. It is the ultimate receptivity. You can also call it intelligence
but there is nobody who is intelligent. There is only presence.
There is nobody to look for something, because it is your nearness.
Nothing can be more near to you than what you are. It is enough to live with
this for some time, not to think about it, not to manipulate it, but simply to
live with it.
It seems initially as though the thinking mind is everything, but when there is
awareness the mind is seen in different ways. What is the mind when it is
used properly?
When you live in openness the mind is only function. From the point of view
of awareness the mind is a vehicle.
A vehicle for communication?
For many things. The mind lives in awareness, there is function but nobody is
functioning. There is not a functioner, not a doer. There is only function. In
painting there is not a painter. There is only painting. When there is a painter
there is no longer painting.
August 1
It seems as though thoughts appear from somewhere deep inside and come
to the surface. Is there a belief that keeps the process happening?
I don’t give you exactly the answer to your question. The energy which you
need to be, this energy comes directly from being itself. This energy must not
be dispersed. It is only for the Ultimate. When you know that what you are
fundamentally can never be objectified, can never be an object, there is no
more dispersion of energy to look for something objective, perceptible.
If I give an answer to your question it belongs still to the dispersion of your
energy. Do not misunderstand, I speak of spiritual energy which comes
directly from the self.
Is that when the reorchestration of the energies, that you talk about so often,
happens?
Yes, when this energy is used for something else, it is dispersion. There may
be on the body level a kind of energy. I do not speak of this energy. I speak
only of what comes directly from what you most desire.
Are you saying there are two kinds of energy?
There is only one energy, of course, but this energy of which I speak comes
directly from what you desire.
It takes a certain discrimination to use energy. We come to using it rightly
through inquiry. Inquiry frees you from dispersion.
Does inquiring mean loving what you are inquiring about?
In inquiring you welcome all the facts in your life. In this inquiring, choosing
does not come in. Welcoming comes from your completeness, your totality.
In this completeness there is no division, no positive, negative, pleasant,
unpleasant. So you see things as they really are, as facts. It is only through
welcoming them that there is right acting.
When I welcome anxiety or fear, I experience a reduction of the anxiety. Then

I want more of the reduction, then I get lost.
When you become more and more accustomed to welcoming there are times
when you no longer emphasize what you welcome. You emphasize the
welcoming itself. And this welcoming is not objective. You cannot think it,
feel it, localize it, because you are it.
Anxiety and fear arise only when there is object-to-object relationship. In
your fullness, in this welcoming, there is no fear. And when fear comes up,
free yourself from the concept fear and look at the perception. When you also
welcome the perception there is no accomplice to it and it dissolves. Then ask
again the question, “Who has fear?” because only an object can have fear. A
subject cannot have fear.
This teaching seems to emphasize the non-personal. What happens when I go

back into the world, how can I deal with the people I work with, live with,
and so on?
You cannot deal with your surroundings according to certain systems or

ideas. There’s nothing codified on how to deal with this question. You must
see it and deal with it in the living moment itself. The real answer is to be it,
to live it. Otherwise it is more or less an intellectual communication. If it is
with your patients, let them express themselves completely. Don’t interfere.
If you see he has forgotten something in his explanation you must tell him
that he forgot something. He must completely empty himself. When he is
completely empty, there is the answer. Perhaps not the formulated answer,
but the real answer, the living answer.
The patient tells you what happens in his life, this is more or less self-
memory, of course. And at these moments when the patient speaks to you, in
a certain way he objectifies, he pictures, what he tells you. And he feels
himself at a certain distance. He questions himself, he questions his memory.
This distance is important. In looking at what he communicates to you he
finds himself in a certain welcoming. He may have a glimpse of the real
living answer. He will feel a certain comfort after telling you what he has to
communicate.
What does one do when an emotion seems to be overwhelming?
When you are completely identified with your emotivity you cannot do
anything. It is only after the crisis that you can do something. Then, objectify
your emotivity. Feel where it is localized in certain levels of your body.
When you localize it, it no longer has a hold because you, as observer, have a
distance from the emotivity and it dissolves. Then go back again and ask the
question, “From which mechanism does this reaction come?” because
emotivity is a reaction. You will see that this emotivity is a reaction that
belongs to a kind of hypothetical person. This you must see.
You will first be aware of it after the emotivity. Later you will be aware
during, or even before the emotion comes up. But the moment you feel
reaction in you, immediately objectify the reaction. Don’t wait and let it take
hold. The only thing is to free yourself from what you believe yourself to be.
It seems that we are always creating dualism, which dissolves in witnessing.
The reaction takes place in object-object relationship. The moment you

become aware of it, you are completely out of the process of this object-
object relationship.
Would you say more about dispersing energy, conserving energy, and using it
in different ways?
The energy of which you are speaking comes from what you desire. What
you really desire comes out of discrimination. You must see very clearly that
what you desire can never be on the objective plane. An object apparently
gives you, for a certain moment, satisfaction. But at the moment of living the
happiness, the joy, the object, the so-called cause of this happiness, is not
present. And also the you that you believe to be is not present. There is only
happiness. It is only afterwards that the ego, which has been struck by it, says
this happiness comes from this circumstance, or this person, or this object.
This you must really see—that there is no permanent happiness in objects.
And then you will live in a happiness where there is no one who is happy,
there is only happiness. You will feel this in discrimination, in inquiring, in
certain moments in your life. But you are constantly in striving, in
accumulation, competition, end-gaining, becoming.
When you live constantly in the becoming process, at the end there comes
the question, “Is what I am looking for really objective?” and you will see
that the many things that promised you happiness one or two years ago, now
leave you completely indifferent. You can never attain in the objective world,
in the perceived world, what you really desire. When you realize this, there is
a stop. There is a stop because there is nothing further to inquire.
But then there comes the desire for this desireless state. From this moment
there is a different orchestration. You no longer spend your energy on things
that have no value to you. You spend your energy on things that glorify the
ultimate. There are still a certain number of objects in our world that glorify
the ultimate! So, in this way, your energy is no longer dispersed, it is
concentrated, it is oriented. The energy to attain this desireless state, this
permanent happiness, comes from the permanent happiness itself.
Of course, all that is perceived is energy: energy, matter and movement.
There may be a kind of hierarchy of energy. This I don’t know. For me, all is
energy. But this spiritualized energy is a particular energy. It comes directly
from what you most deeply desire.
In inquiring, this spiritual desire comes up. It’s only in welcoming your
surroundings that there is understanding. There is no one who selects;
selection comes when you welcome things.
The understanding comes directly from what you welcome. Because the
solution is in the environment, not in you.
I experience anxiety and fear, and when I’m sensitive to who is experiencing
these sensations I can disperse them. As they disappear, a certain energy
seems to be created because I’m liberated from the hold they have on me.
In understanding all your motives and actions there is discrimination. In this

discrimination you use the energy in the right way. It is a kind of selection,
but you don’t select it. The selection comes directly from what you observe.
You know that you utilize your energy now differently than you did twenty
years ago. You were interested in so many things twenty years ago that you
are now indifferent to. It takes a certain maturity to visualize energy in the
right way.
I don’t understand what you mean when you say energy comes from desire.
When you desire to be what you really are, that comes from your being itself.
It is very strong. That’s why I often say the Self is looking for the Self. It is
the Self in you that is looking for the Self. These Selves are not two. It is the
same Self.
In psychological theory there’s a lot of emphasis placed on the mourning, the

grieving process. Is this contrary to the teaching that there is no real “me” to
grieve?
When there is relationship with others, and this relationship is based on love
there is no emotivity. There is not a you and not another. The emotivity that
disturbs you is when there is object-to-object relationship.
Should one mourn the absence of a teacher?
There is not a teacher and not a pupil. There is only friendliness. There can’t
be emotivity, for any emotivity hinders you from being. There is only
teaching. Free yourself from the teacher and the pupil.
See that your relationship is from object to object. Take note of it. Realize
that very often you take yourself for Joseph Smith. All these years you have
taken yourself to be Joseph Smith. All that you have accumulated is Joseph
Smith’s. There is only looking for security for Joseph Smith. When you see it
really clearly, it appears as an enormous nonsense in your life. This seeing
will strike you so strongly it has an effect on you. You feel it in the body.
Give up Joseph Smith! Joseph Smith has no existence; he is memory,
accumulated memory, society, education, experience, and so on. Don’t deal
any more with this concept. That you must see.
You will come to a moment in your life when you will see that Joseph
Smith has taken up so many years. Then there is a natural giving up. Then
you are nothing. And this nothing is your fullness. And this nothing is all
your intelligence. Then your real personality, which is no longer personal,
comes up.
It is something tremendous.
If all there is is consciousness....
You spend tremendous energy living in becoming; tremendous energy is

wasted in the becoming process. See it very clearly. You see it. You are
released from it.
What is the forefeeling?
When there is inquiring... it is through inquiring that understanding comes. In

this understanding the mind is different, becomes orchestrated another way. It
is a mind which is more essential. It is no longer a disturbed mind. When the
mind is no longer disturbed, when the mind becomes oriented, then there are
gaps which are not an absence of activity. Rather you have the impression
that these gaps are like windows where reality comes in. That we can name
forefeeling.
This forefeeling is a kind of admiration. This admiring comes directly from
what you admire. When you are not taking yourself for an admirer you will
become what you admire.
In the forefeeling is the substance that comes really from what you admire.
When you are completely attuned to the admiring, it brings you to the
threshold of the admired. It can bring you only to the threshold. It is still a
process of subject-object relationship. It is a gate. From this threshold you are
taken. Nobody takes you. It is a sudden insight. It is a total absence of
yourself. Because this presence can only have its own place in your absence.
As long as you believe you are somebody there is no place for this presence.
All your patterns will change. It will even be an effort to try and find
yourself in this pattern. You will understand that there is no pattern, that
every moment in life is new.
It seems that when we stop discriminating the heart opens to everyone, there
is just love. In that situation what happens to love with a spouse? What would
be special about two people if there is no specialness?
What you call specialness is a characteristic which you have detected in

relation with the other person and you have superimposed it on the other
person. So you don’t really see the other person. You see only the
superimposition.
What brings people together is this love. You can be sure that when there
is no yeast in the cake there is no cake. It is only in this love that the real
characteristics come up. Only when you feel yourself in this love can you see
it in another. And this love can make the other completely free. Otherwise, if
you see yourself as a woman you have only a relationship between woman
and man, or with son or daughter. Then there is repetition; when there is
superimposition there is repetition. But when there is a real love relationship
there is not a fixed personality, and then the people around you are very rich.
It is when you are looking for security as a woman that you superimpose
cliches, certain ideas, certain patterns on the other one.
But what would cause you to stay with one particular person?
Go back in your life to when you were young and you met somebody and you
said this person is really perfect, I love this person. Ask yourself what has
given you this love. It is because this person has given you freedom, has not
fixed you in a pattern. There is no memory. It is beautiful.
Meet somebody and don’t superimpose your memory on them and you will
see that so much richness comes out. Otherwise you superimpose, you project
a cliche, and you imprison the person. You react according to the pattern you
superimpose. This you must see. It is very interesting. When you live with a
woman or a man and you see them every day, there is a kind of repetition.
But when there is no you and he or she, no you and your son, or you and your
daughter, there is a current of love, of friendship. This love which is freedom
from memory, is the yeast that you really need. Even the relationship that
plays such an important role, the sexual relationship, becomes healthy and
permanent only in this freedom from memory. Otherwise, it becomes boring.
I am sure you feel that this is right. Then when you’re seventy-six and
there are not many things left to say to your husband you will find richness in
silence.
August 2
How can I learn to really relax?

When you direct your attention to a part of the body, there is a slight reaction.
So I would say do not direct your attention to the part where there is
heaviness or resistance, direct your attention to a part which is completely
relaxed, transparent, and from there invade the unhealthy part, until you have
the whole feeling of your light body.
You can contact your body on so many levels, but even the body in a
completely healthy state appears in you, in your consciousness, your
attention, in your listening, in your awareness. All these words are the same.
When you really listen to your body, it is an object of your observation.
When your observation is like that of a scientist, without anticipation, only
inquiring, then you will feel a space-sensation between yourself and the
observed. You will further feel yourself observing. Then there is a moment
when the observed vanishes completely in the observing so that there is no
observed nor observer. You can never fix, never localize the observing
because it is beyond space and time.
In this observing is the total absence of yourself. It is your real presence.
Inside there is a voice that constantly talks—endlessly chatters—and I am

wondering what that voice is and who it is talking to.
You are aware of it, otherwise you could not know it. First, become familiar
with this coming and going, accept it. You will see that you don’t accept this
coming and going. You don’t go with it, you fight, interpret, refuse. In all
these reactions you feed the comings and goings. You give them fuel. When
you do not feed them you will see that these upcomings will no longer be
maintained because very often they are residues from postponed ideas. But
when they come, don’t try to analyze or in any way emphasize the upcoming.
You are the knower, so emphasize the listening, the awareness.
Listen to your surroundings and make acquaintance with listening itself.
Your attention must be bipolar— listening without projection, without going
in any direction. Only be open, receptive. Receptivity belongs to your whole
body.
In dual teachings the notion of service has an important role but in non-dual
teaching the idea of being of service doesn’t have much meaning. For me,
wanting to be of service is a strong desire and leads to attachment to the idea
of being a server. Could you say something about the transition to action
without a sense of doership?
When you live in this society and some elements of the society ask you for
help, if you see you are able to help, help—but don’t try to be a professional
helper. Ask the question, “What is my motive for helping?” Perhaps it is a
compensation, a going away from yourself, a looking away from the
essential. The most useful help for society is that you are free from help
yourself. But when the moment asks for help, help!
You spoke this morning of body-music and body-vibration. My experience is

that there is one energy, but in this there’s a scale of energy beginning with
the gross, carnal bodily sensation that has many distillations and moving to
feeling and the subtle body vibration or music. When you speak of the
integration of energies, are you speaking of the integration of all these
manifestations?
First you must face the body as it appears in the moment itself. Let the body
speak as it appears in the moment itself. You will first contact the surface of
the body, the outer layer. When the outer layer is completely expressed you
will come to deeper levels because there is a big palette of feeling in the
body. You will come to the level where there is only vibration. This vibration
is like music. When these vibrations expand—because the nature of the
vibration is expansion—then you come to the moment of a very big
expansion where there is only vibration. And in this complex of vibration you
will find one moment what we call the nada, original sound, from which all
sound, all vibration, comes. These are still all objects. But I would say these
objects tend to be integrated in your presence, in your observation, so you
must not be fixed on the vibration. In any case you cannot hear this music if
you are not ready to hear it. It can never sound for profane people, only those
who are oriented.
Every organ in our body has a certain vibration and when you take all the
organs together there is a very great harmony. It is certain that in a new age
of therapy we will use sounds. When an organ does not function it means it is
out of tune. Certain organs in the body belong to the sound itself but others
belong to the harmonics; the harmonics are very subtle. These organs are
very delicate and can come out of tune very quickly.
Sounds have not only an effect on the physical plane but also on the
emotional plane. Sounds and colors have not only a physical power but also a
psychological power. When we say “blue,” on the physiological level it is a
cool color, calming. From the point of view of the painter, blue gives
perspective, and from the psychological view there is adoration in the color
blue. So colors too have a big effect on many levels and play an important
role in healing through visualization.
But one must not be systematic. There are people who heal through
sounds. They say we have seven cervical vertebrae which belong to the seven
sounds, and we have twelve dorsal vertebrae which belong to the half-sounds.
It is a little too easy. [laughter]. It is a very artificial way of thinking.
Another question comes up from what you’re saying regarding the energy
body. In some texts it speaks of there being five different manifestations of the
body, the physical, energy, emotional, mental and divine bodies. I assume
that when it says emotional body it doesn’t mean the emotive body. Can you
talk more about how we can work with these other bodies?
I never face any particular energy. What you are talking about belongs to the
progressive way and you know I do not practice or advocate the progressive
way. When I went in the direct way I didn’t have much time to lose myself in
progression!
Can I interrupt for a minute—what I spoke of is from the Crest Jewel of
Discrimination by Shankara, which is an Advaita text.
But although he named it, he never worked on it. He points directly to the
ultimate and from the ultimate he was waiting for the transforming in space
and time of the parts of the body. I am not interested in all these fractions.
Become more and more acquainted with your body on all its subtle levels,
the fine vibrations which are really music, because when we talk of things
created, they are only vibrations, nothing else, energy in movement and
matter. In poetic language we can say the world is created by music. As we
are the world, the universe, all the music of the universe is in our body.
Something new has been happening to me in this seminar. I realize I have

spent many years cultivating this “I” and even on my spiritual path,
cultivating certain states of awareness and trying to become more present in
my life in general. And I’m coming to a point in the last few days where I’m
really beginning to see what seems to be the essence of what you’re saying,
that this “I” that I have been cultivating all my life is an illusion. That is
beginning to dawn on me for the first time. It has always been there and I’ve
always resisted it out of fear, but now I’m seeing it. I noticed today that there
was a lot of sadness around that and I wondered what you have to say about
all this.
I think, go home and see your life from an undivided mind, a choiceless mind
free from selection. In seeing your life so, what you see will bring you certain
understanding, certain conclusions. In seeing your surroundings so, you will
find yourself out of the becoming process. You will do things that have to be
done but you will not become the doer. At the end you will come to the deep
intimacy with yourself, the absolute autonomy. You have, in a certain way,
understood that the existence of the person is an illusion, a fabrication from
memory, looking constantly for security. So the moment you become free
from the person you no longer deal with this reflex and you will live
completely in the absence of yourself and you will become a happy man.
But do not give anything up intentionally. Do not organize anything with
intention. When you really understand your life, even your practical life,
financial, etc., you will do it in a completely different way. But as long as you
are on this earth you must earn your livelihood to live. It is not a problem to
live. It only becomes a problem when you live in the becoming process. Then
you spend enormous energy and work every day for being unhappy!
Is there any relationship between spontaneously awakened kundalini and the

realization that we are not the person? Is this irrelevant or is there some
correlation?
When there is understanding, when all is understood, automatically the

energy centers, what they call chakras, awaken. The understanding of the
truth is also the awakening of our subtle energy. So, to focus and work on the
awakening of kundalini has no meaning. It is a completely artificial
procedure which takes you into the progressive path of subject-object,
seeking experiences and forgetting your true nature. If the research of
kundalini is for healing, for medical purposes, that is completely different I
agree, but for spiritual awakening—no !
I remember twenty-five years ago I met some important people in India. It
was just before the invasion of Tibet by China. I met some Tibetans who had
a high function in certain Tibetan centers and we became very friendly in a
very short time. They told me that some of their monks would be coming to
Europe and they asked whether they could have my address. I gave them my
address. They told me that these monks had realized absolute freedom, that
they were really free. I said to them it is marvelous that you send such friends
to me. So the monks came to Paris and I showed them all the sights and we
went to the wide avenue that goes to the Opera and, as you may know, there
are many picture houses and theatres. I see it all again clearly! I observed
these men at several different moments and the most noticeable thing was
that their sexuality was not at all integrated in them. They were completely
disturbed by all the beautiful women who passed us. It was so striking for me
that when we passed a picture house with posters of women almost undressed
they were completely disturbed! So I thought, these people who are
completely free are not absolutely free.
To come back to your question, there is no meaning in opening certain
centers without being really free. It is completely a waste of time and energy.
This does not mean you don’t look at a beautiful woman or a handsome man
when you are free! It depends how you look! [laughter]
August 3
Yesterday afternoon I think you said that psychological acceptance is when

there is somebody there accepting, and real acceptance is just the accepting
and it doesn’t matter what you accept, there’s just accepting.
Yes.
What puzzles me is that it seems that in order to really accept one would have
had to have gotten rid of the ego and you don’t get rid of the ego till you
know who you really are. It seems like a paradox, because in order to know
who you are you have to accept. Can you explain this?
To know something about your finger you must accept your finger. You must
know something about the shape, the joints, the temperature. Accepting
means with a view to know. It is more or less a scientific approach. It is an
unconditioned acceptance that has nothing to do with fatalism. Just
unconditioned acceptance with a view to know. In this acceptance there is no
place for anybody, only acceptance. You cannot localize this acceptance
anywhere, not in your body nor in your mind. It is openness; it is your
nothingness. It is completely unfurnished.
Is it the same as when you say welcoming?
Exactly the same. In this acceptance nobody accepts, there is only accepting.
When you accept something there’s a moment when you are no longer bound
to what you accept. When there’s an “I,” there is psychological acceptance
and you are bound to what you accept. In your totality you are not bound to
the object, not bound to the situation. Then you will see what happens. You
will have the experience of space between you and what you accept because
you are no longer stuck to it, no longer identified with it. This acceptance is
your totality, your wholeness. It is not divided into positive and negative, like
and dislike. Dislike and like belong to the divided mind. In reality they do not
exist, they are not needed because the solution is in the situation, the action is
in the situation. Every situation has its own action. So the situation acts
through you, but there is nobody who acts.
So come to the moment where you feel space in what you accept, and as
what you accept is in the acceptance, as the accepted has its potentiality in
acceptance you will feel that the accepting refers to itself, that openness
refers to its own openness. It is, it is your total nature. Do you see the
difference?
Yes. I see clearer now.
Psychological acceptance is not acceptance. The ego accepts what gives it

pleasure and what doesn’t give pleasure it pushes away. So the ego identifies
itself with whatever gives it pleasure and this identification automatically
brings suffering. But you must experience it in the moment itself. When you
have problems in your life, you will see that when you accept them
psychologically that you are tormented. There is enormous suffering. The
moment you accept them in your totality, you will see that the point of view
of the ego is only a fraction. It is this fractional view that brings suffering.
When you see things from your wholeness, your globality, you will see many
elements in the situation which you didn’t see before. You’ll see new things
in your life that were concealed by your fractional looking. A fraction can
only see a fraction and action that comes out of fractional seeing is fractional.
And what does fractional mean? It means not integrated in your wholeness,
lacking in harmony.
So choices made from the ego will always bring suffering because you
cannot have pleasure without its counterpart, pain.
What about making long range plans? I find myself wanting to make plans
for far into the future. It is hard to do this without taking myself as an object,
but it seems some long range plans are necessary if things are going to take
place. How can I do it without objectifying?
When there is object-to-object relationship there is choice and you know the
person and its needs with which you identify. It is a big cake you have
cooked all your life— education, parents, society. It is very heavy to carry
this kind of personality. I don’t have the muscles to carry this much weight!
Then without this baggage one lives from moment to moment without making
plans?
Yes, you live from moment to moment and sometimes the moment asks for
action. But then you don’t act any more with luggage.
I want to continue the question of acceptance. Sometimes something happens

and I welcome it, but a fractional part of me says, “No I’m not going to
accept this.” So what I’ve been doing is welcoming the saying “No,” too. Is
this right?
When you live in openness or you face certain elements in your life, in this
openness you will have an instantaneous response and this instantaneous
response is put in question by the ego. When it doesn’t please the ego you
push it away and when it pleases the ego you identify with it. But you have
very often had the experience of instantaneously seeing the facts, the truth,
before the mind disputes it. Only after, you put it in question. You must see
this in the moment itself, not later through memory.
Sometimes you will see the situation from the split mind, but there is also a
part of you open to the whole and the next day you come to a completely
different conclusion.
Let’s say I speak to my father and I don’t like the way he’s living his life. I
tell myself it’s important to accept him the way he is, but there’s a tightness
inside me that refuses to accept his life.
But the moment you accept your father’s life you will be open to the past. He
is the result of society, education, conditioning, too.
But what happens when I don’t get there? I know it, but there is an irrational
part of me that says “No, I want him this way.” This part does not go away.
When you accept your father you will see his life becomes open. It’s not
simply an intellectual justification of his behavior to say he is the result of the
education of his father and grandfather and the society in 1850. What is
important is that when you accept him, you will find the way to deal with
him. In the way of dealing with him you will help him. He will understand
himself through you, through your approach.
But you must love your father. There’s no question about it, you must love
your father. He has undertaken so much suffering to bring you up. There
were lovely moments. He prepared you to become a man. He has done so
much for you. You must love him.
[long pause]
No—it’s not true? [laughter]
[Another questioner] How can I love my father? I cannot remember any

lovely moments with him. He did nothing to prepare me as a woman. In fact I
cannot remember any time when he was not drunk or angry.
As a child is the result of his environment, so your father is also conditioned.

What you call your father is only a concept, seen from the point of view of
taking yourself for a daughter. “Father” and “daughter” are concepts and
from these mental images there can be no meeting. You can only free him
from his problem when you knowingly take the stand of love. That means be
in your total absence of being anybody, especially a daughter.
You have been talking about bringing spaciousness, emptiness, into one’s
life. I’m having a hard time differentiating between concept and percept.
Sometimes I feel I’m experiencing emptiness in the body, but the image is so
strong I feel it must be an intellectual concept, and I’m confused about this.
Once you have understood that the ego, the personality, is a mind
construction which you know, that it is an object like any other object, you
will no longer go into the reflex to identify yourself with this personality.
When you feel the emptiness, when you see it, you are in your emptiness.
It is enough to just see when the “I,” the mind, comes in the picture. Because
the I-image is an object like any other. It is a reflex, a tic. People take
themselves very often for a tic. [laughter]
The I-concept stimulates in you an affect and a percept, affectivity and
sensation. The I-image, the image of suffering, the happy image, all have a
very strong impact. When you say chair, railway station, car or ear, there is
no power in it. But when you speak of fear or anxiety, it is very powerful.
When you pronounce “fear” you already tremble. The I-image has the same
power.
In doing yoga in the morning this week I have become very aware of the cage
of my musculature. You have said that you can see the cage but there is no
prisoner. I am just becoming more and more aware of the cage. I’m
wondering if it is enough to just become aware of the cage?
Absolutely. The moment you are aware of the cage, you find yourself outside
the cage.
I have the first part. [laughter] I feel the cage.
Yes. You know the feeling of the cage. So inquire now who is the knower?
What is the knowing faculty?
I keep on looking for something beyond the cage.
It is the object which brings you back to your listening, to your hearing. You
think the cage appears as a continuity but in reality the cage is a
discontinuity. The cage lives in continuity; it itself is discontinuity. It is an
idea, but you, the seeing, are not an idea.
You find yourself in a lack of freedom, in anxiety, anger and so on, and it
is normal that you desire to get out. So you try by all means to escape. But a
moment comes when you see that you belong to the cage, and consequently
that all your doings also belong to the cage. This moment is very important.
When you see it there is a stop. Then the question “Who am I?” is completely
appropriate.
It is the seen which automatically brings you back to the seeing. Because
the seen has its relative reality, all its substance, its reason to be, in the
seeing.
Is the connection between the seen and the seeing a logical one?
When the mind comes in, yes. But when your seeing is free from the mind,
free from expectation, then the mind doesn’t come in, there’s immediately a
direct seeing. So the seen unfolds and refers back to the seeing. You can
never take or grasp the seeing. An eye can never see its seeing. You can only
be the seeing.
That the seen brings you back to the seeing is a pedagogical approach, and
a very good one!
In the state or non-state of union, what is the place of drawing energy from
the source, for example, in prayer, asking for something. Maybe somebody in
your family is ill and you want to get some healing energy to that person. The
automatic response is to pray to the universal source of energy, but it doesn’t
feel quite right when you are one with it. So how does prayer fit in? Is there a
place for prayer?
Prayer is not for asking. A prayer which asks is not a prayer. You can only
love the person who is ill. I think in this moment you stimulate the member
of your family because the power doesn’t come from outside, it’s in the
patient. The healer or doctor stimulates this power in the patient. He is a
channel sent from the divine. He stimulates your own energy in you. There
are, in our society, people who are very powerful in stimulating the energy of
others. I think they have more reason to be doctors than the learned doctors.
You know from your own experience that when you learned to be a doctor
you were not a doctor. You become a doctor through your experience with
patients. When you love somebody you give them energy.
When someone dies, how do you let them go?
In any case you die every moment. A thought appears and disappears. You
die every evening before going to sleep and you are born every morning. Ask
yourself in your profound intimacy: What is there before the thought appears,
what is there when the thought disappears? What is there before I go to sleep
and so on? You will see that there is life. Life has never been born. Life is.
So, as you get undressed before going to bed, in the same way when you
see the moment has come for you to go, you get undressed. You take off all
your qualifications. You put all your qualifications aside so that you are
completely naked. Before going away you must give up completely. You can
do it now—this giving up. Don’t take all your qualifications, ideas and fears
with you into sleep. It is beautiful when you see the moment to go has come
and you have learned how, I would even say learned the technique, to give
up. Dying is not a problem.
Sometimes one gives up all qualifications before going to sleep and then has
a dream and one wakes up with the baggage of the dream. You talked about
going from the seen to the seeing. How can one do this with the dream?
The seeing can also reveal itself in the dream. But as the sleeping dream and
waking dream are exactly the same, come back from the seen to the seer in
the waking dream.
When you go from the seen to the seeing, when you feel yourself in seeing,
it’s a liberation. In this being the seeing there is nobody, there is only life,
only light. There is peace in it. There is real equanimity in it.
This morning you said to feel the energy and the vibration in the posture.
More and more I feel this energy in my daily movements. It feels like
continuously dropping pebbles in a pond, or a harp constantly being played.
It is energy which lives in you. It is a very fine substance. This energy has a
healing quality. It is really sound. It is, of course, an object perceived. It also
has its substance in the seeing, but it is nearer to the seeing than body
heaviness.
But it is still dual. There is still the pebble falling.
Yes. But this sound vibration brings you near to the seeing.
There’s often a sensation of heat throughout the whole body as if it’s burning
away the barriers.
Yes, it is a kind of purification. It is not a pattern because it belongs directly

to life.
This vibration seems like a refuge for the mind that is easily distracted. The
subtlety of the vibration is more subtle than the mind so that the mind seems
to be able to settle there. It seems to be a home for the mind.
Yes, it is a transition to bring you to really being knowing being listening.
Am I free?
When you are hungry you eat, when you are thirsty you drink. It is not a
decision. It comes spontaneously out of the situation. It does not go through
the discriminating mind.
In this actual situation, you hear me talking, an answer comes. Is everything
mechanical then?
You hear the answer in your silent mind and the answer also comes from the
silent mind. I hear your question in my stillness and the answer comes out of
stillness. It has nothing to do with the mind.
So it isn’t automatic. It’s fresh and new.
Absolutely. I have not learned what I say to you.
So I’m not free, I’m only free if...
But you are free! Don’t think that you are not free. Free and not free belong
to the mind. You cannot speak of free without being bound. But still it is
better to say free than not free. When you say “I am free,” it frees, it relaxes
all your energy. The real freedom of which we are speaking is beyond free
and not free. The moment you don’t think of freedom and bondage, what
happens? You just act, you act according to the situation.
So the worry about making a decision is all part of the mind. All there is to
do is watch it and the watching is the freedom.
Yes. Otherwise, it turns to the left. All that you elaborate in your mind turns
to the left. You have experienced this in your life. The mind turns everything
into sour milk.
[long pause]
Of course there’s also sour cream. [laughter]
I’d like to know more about the breathing and today for the first time I
understand what you mean about being passive on the inhalation. I see that
in the past I have always had to do something to take in the air.
The body takes itself in charge in inhalation and exhalation. You don’t need
to direct it. It’s not a process of will. But the moment you explore your
breathing capacity you will see that you use only a fraction of your capacity.
So in the breathing exercises you will first discover your capacity, and as you
have understood that there are many parts in your body which are not sensed,
which are not sensitive for you, the moment you sense these parts and direct
your breathing to them, you nourish them, make them awake and localize
them.
Breathing is powerful. Breathing is beautiful because inhalation and
exhalation are superimpositions on the real background. The real background
is your stillness, so every time an exhalation is accomplished you live in your
stillness. You don’t live in the absence of breathing, but you live really your
stillness. Then you become aware of when the body needs the inbreathing
and you immediately use all your capacity in this inhalation.
Exhalation and inhalation are pointers to what you are fundamentally.
After each exhalation you feel really at home, and the inhalation comes up
out of this homeground.
Breathing has a spiritual value. It is also used to give the body energy, but
then it is used in another way. As we have done it till now it is more a pointer
to the spiritual background.
Does this whole dilemma that we find ourselves in hinge on the idea that we
take ourselves for a person?
Of course. It covers your real being. This thought moves many other thoughts
because it cannot exist alone. It only exists in relation to other thoughts: “I’m
angry, I’m alone, I move, I’m hungry.” It belongs only to the this and that,
otherwise it has no existence. It looks constantly for survival.
Is there a good way to see this?
Only to see the mechanism, that the “I” only has reality in connection with
something: “I live, I eat,” and so on. But when you insist on the “I” without
association, you will see it is the only concept which cannot find substance
for its existence, and then the I-thought becomes the ultimate because you
can never think of it. When you say “I,” simply “I,” it is something other than
“I’m hungry.”
This is a positive, affirmative approach. It has value when you have really
understood what you are fundamentally. Then you can say “I—I am.” But as
long as you have not understood the I-thought in this way, it is better to take
the negative approach: “I am not, I am nothing, I am in my absence of a me.”
So when you realize really profoundly the moment of your total absence, you
can also say “I” But then it is not an “I,” not a divided “I,” not separate from
all the “I”s. It is consciousness.
Pedagogically it is better, therefore, to realize your absence so that you no
longer deal with the I-image and feel your total freedom.
The space in which all objects appear, is this an absence?
Absolutely. That is what Meister Eckhardt meant when he said, “Only in my

absence, He is.” When you are, He has no place.
Look at different painters and you will see which painters go from space to
the object and which face the object immediately. The painter who goes from
space, from light to the object, this object has life, has color. It is sensitive, it
is sensual. When you go directly to the object it has no flavor. You must go
very slowly to the object, go around it—do not even touch it.
Did you say earlier that there has to be a cage to be a person and anything
the person wants is in the cage and limited?
Yes, the person has created the cage.
So when there is something that appears to be beautiful, even when it’s a

reflection of truth, is it still within the cage?
In this cage there may be moments when the ego, the person, is not present.
Light may come into the cage from outside. But see that you create a system
to come out of the cage because you feel uncomfortable, restricted and you
turn in a vicious circle.
So all yogic methods are only postponing...
Yes. There comes a moment when you ask, “Is this really life, this constant
striving, living in the past, constructing the future, competition and so on and
so on. Is this life?” There’s a moment when you ask the question, not with the
mind but with more than the mind. You are really serious, really earnest
about asking it. To ask this question you must be earnest, serious.
Following that question, it seems that the cage is constructed of many

thoughts that you think are happiness.
It is true. Still, when a child is attracted by all the toys and games there is a
moment when he forgets his mother. But he comes back to his mother. The
objects of the world are so attractive to us and bring us to this forgetfulness.
But there are moments in life when we come back. We come back and ask
for our homeground.
August 4
After one has seen through the I-thought and it no longer has a hold, are
the residues that come up in certain situations a conditioning in the body that
will take time to work out? For example, you might see your mother and the
old pattern might come in immediately.
Of course if you take your mother for your mother and you for her son—the
relationship between mother and son or daughter is very strong because the
mother sees the son as a prolongation of herself. So she superimposes “my
son” on you and you go in the trap. See it in the moment itself.
It is not only the seeing but the impact of this seeing in you, how has it
acted in you, that is important. Seeing this is the transmutation.
Let me be more specific. There’s an ideal that many seekers on the path
subscribe to, that after the moment of awakening one goes through life and
never has a reaction again. My question is: Are there not momentary
reactions but also the instant seeing of that reaction?
Yes, reaction is an object like any other. It depends on how you see your
environment. You can see it from the point of view of your five senses, the
body. You can see it from the point of view of the mind, the person. And you
can see it from the point of view of consciousness. But you know exactly
when you are completely at home in your absence.
What is present when you are absent?
Your totality.
How do you feel it?
How can you feel absence?
How can you call it absence if you don’t feel it?
You cannot feel it. It is not an object. In other words you feel it without
feeling it.
Like awareness?
Awareness could be called a feeling that is not bound to the senses.

When you are in love, when you love your love, you love yourself. You
are nowhere. You know these moments when you love your love and are
nowhere.
You want to take it in your hand, fix it and see it objectively. That is not
possible. It creates a subject-object relationship.
What is there in the absence you are talking about? I mean, there has to be
something because I am alive, I am not dead.
There is Life but not the expressions of life. Life is there. When you see an
object and you are completely concentrated on the object you feel this energy
of concentration. Give it up and you will feel yourself behind you.
Give up the concentration?
Yes, give it up completely and you will find yourself behind you. But the
object is still there. See what your relation is at this moment. You see the
object and at the same time you are aware of the seeing.
But when you give it up you essentially have no relationship with it.
Then, I would say the object is in you. It is perceived by your perceiving, by

the perceiver. Give up perceiving and conceiving, and what remains is your
presence.
In that process does the object itself change?
Surely, because when you look at an object through conceiving, the object is
memory. Try to see an object without memory the way a poet or certain
scientists see it. See how it appears and disappears in our presence.
Something which appears and disappears in our presence is no longer an
object.
Well, is our presence something we are aware of?
I will make a little concession for you. [laughter] Awareness is aware of its
own awareness. [more laughter]
Yes, but that is not much of a concession!
[Another questioner] A moment ago you said an object appears and

disappears in your presence. Can you say more about this?
An object is the five senses. When cognition becomes recognition there is no

more cognition because the five senses, sense perception, and thinking can
never occur together. So the moment you give up the five senses there is only
recognition and when you give up recognition you are one with the object.
You see a flower. First it is a flower through your five senses, then you
recognize it and name it, then you qualify it. But when all this is over you are
one with the flower.
When there is sense perception only certain things may appear. You see
the flower and much more. When you let the flower become totally free, you
may see certain subtle forms, certain colors which you don’t see with your
usual looking. Then there is a direct perception, a pure perception without the
interference of the mind.
In that pure perception is the flower still there, still an object, it has not
disappeared?
Oh no, there is still an object but as the object appears in your consciousness,
your presence, and disappears in your presence, it has no independent
existence. Logically, what appears and disappears in something is essentially
that something—in this case a no-thing, consciousness.
In pure welcoming, listening, where there is no recognition, no refusal of

recognition and no analysis, the object disappears as an object. What seems
to be in its place is oneness expressing itself without any sense of division.
When there is pure perception there is wonder.
There is wonder, but in this oneness there is only expression of oneness.
When you are in wonder there is nobody. There is only wonder. Then the
Self admires the Self.
The Self is everywhere, not localized.
Wonder is a non-state but your whole body is affected by the wonder. There
are echoes of the wonder in you but you should not objectify these residues
because if you do, you create a state of them, fix them. Astonishment is the
same.
I’m still stuck on what you mean by object. If I’m looking at the flower...
Let us not go too quickly. When you look at the flower do you see a flower?
If I don’t name it...?
Do you see a flower? No, there is only seeing. Then you name it and say, “I
see a flower.” And then you say, “I, Paul, John, saw the flower.” You cannot
ever have them altogether.
There is only seeing.
In the pure seeing there’s presence... ?
You live your own presence. There is only seeing. That you saw something
comes after. That you saw it comes even later. These are only concepts.
So the appearance of the object is this coming after, me making it into an

object, and the disappearance of the object is the disappearing back into just
seeing?
Absolutely. So really there is no object at all.
So you’re saying objects exist only when there’s a subject, a personal “I”
observing, and when there’s no subject there’s no object, just the suchness of
things.
Exactly. Only suchness.
Is this why we do the yoga? To experience ourselves from moment to moment

in the pure state?
I would say you live in an inquiring state. Your body is perceived but you are
the perceiving. Your body is an object like any other.
If one sees things from the right brain, the artist’s view, is that a time when
one would be more open to inquiry?
In pure perception you are one with the perception and the perception is real.
The conception is more or less a gentlemen’s agreement.
So at the moment when you drop the concept and live in the percept, is this
the moment to ash “Who am I?”
Our brain, our education, is built up so that when we see an object we name
it. This belongs to our education, our culture. But to qualify it is something
else again. It belongs to our personality, what we take ourselves to be.
In the state where the mind is not interfering, as when there is painting
without a painter, is this the same open state in which one would inquire into
one’s real nature? Are there moments when our brain is more conducive to
self-inquiry?
When there is only painting without ideas, anticipation or goal, you are a
channel for all your expression. It is in waiting that the expression takes
place. In painting you are not aware of your opening. But one day you may
become aware of this waiting, this openness free from somebody. This, then,
is the same state as inquiring.
There are moments in daily life when you are completely free from all
volition and the brain comes to its natural, relaxed, alert alpha state. Only in
these moments comes the insight of what you are, but you later objectify it.
I find this moment of sudden insight becoming like the Holy Grail. It recedes.
Is it useful for us to think like this, of a before and an after? Having this
insight has become an obstacle for me.
I agree that having an insight is not good English. Rather, you are it where
there is no possessor of it. Live with this being, live in the state of not
knowing like a child. In knowing there is no room for the new, or an insight.
You can never objectify an insight. It is an instant apperception of reality
that does not go through the mind. So when you have it, go away from it.
It must be really understood that you can never assert an insight. You
cannot say, “It is this or that.” In a real insight you are openness, like an open
flower, no more or less.
Is it possible we’ve had it without knowing it?
When you have an insight there remains a certain memory. Of course this
memory is in space and time. It belongs to the mind. But when you really live
with this residue of the insight, I would say you are open to a new insight.
An insight is sacred. As soon as the mind touches it there is profanity.
What can you say to that person who feels that that insight remains out of
reach? They may say: “I’ve been listening to you for fifteen years, doing
what you say, and I’m still not convinced I’ve had this insight?”
I would say that he had a wrong approach to himself and to the world.
When someone says to you, “You are really yourself in the absence of
yourself,” what happens then? You stop. But you are so accustomed to
dealing with objects that you try to make this stop, this absence, objective, to
make “an experience” of it. We are so accustomed to subject-object
understanding that we objectify the understanding by saying “I understood.”
When the non-understanding is completely dissolved there is nothing left to
understand. There is only beingness, and we must live this beingness, this
absence, knowingly.
It takes time, it takes a long time to come to the maturity, to the
understanding, that we are ourselves in openness. Then there is nothing to
assert or confirm. We are simply open and this openness refers to itself. One
knows oneself in this openness, not knowing, like you see this chair. It is a
constant wonderment, a constant astonishment.
Often you’ve used the word “earnest” for the truth-seeker. Is it not wondrous
to you to see someone sit for twenty, thirty, forty years and never seem to
come to this maturity? [laughter] How can we understand what exactly is
meant by “earnest” on a path where any effort is against the self-inquiry and
where making an effort of any kind keeps one in immaturity?
When you are not earnest you cheat yourself. What does it mean to be
earnest?
But if we are in such bondage that we can’t see this, where to begin? When
you read the scriptures they almost invariably speak about the qualities of the
student, personal honesty being one, and the moral virtues. It seems today
that we don’t hear any teachers speaking about this and yet it is fundamental.
I think that there appears in the life of every human being one moment when
the question “What is life?” comes up. When you really look at this you see
that you are constantly in the becoming process, never in the now. You are
constantly past-future, past-future. You prepare the future with the past.
When you take note of this, you are brought to ask “Who am I? What is life?”
As long as the student doesn’t come to this point he is not a student.
The moment the student asks the question and has no reference to the past,
he finds himself spontaneously in a state of not-knowing. In this not-knowing
he is in a new dimension. It isn’t even a new dimension because in this, there
is not any direction. One must live with the question. By living with the
question I mean not looking for a conclusion, an answer, because the living
with the question is itself the answer. But we look constantly for an answer.
If everybody in the world was in this state of oneness and suchness, would
there be any need for existence, for life?
There would only be dancing.
I thought you would say that. So actually our essential nature is that and this
is a gift from nature to us to have fun and play.
As a child plays.
Is the reason for taking good care of the body simply so that you can play
with it?
Of course.
Is work play?
Yes. Working is playing, but we put too much weight on the word “work.”
You have really gone to the core of the whole thing!
He’s been pushed. [laughter]
We were speaking of earnestness. Is earnestness when you no longer think

that happiness lies in a certain person or object?
By earnest we mean seeing facts as they are without controlling them,

without interfering with them. Being earnest is seeing facts. You can only see
facts from the undivided mind. When the mind is split in pain and pleasure,
positive and negative, one cannot say it is an earnest way of looking at things.
When you are in this state or non-state, does it eliminate the need for a
psyche?
There is no more psychic living. You simply function.

Is there any difference between the perception of an object from the
standpoint of the relative and the ultimate subject?
This relative subject is an object like any other, but in reality there is no
object.
You cannot see the relative subject and its object at the same moment
because the relative subject is an object too. You must see that consciousness
and its object are one. There can never be two. You think you have two
thoughts at the same moment because it happens very quickly, but you don’t.
Awareness, consciousness, is always one with its object.
So we move back and forth very quickly like a flashing light? That is the
reality we construct?
Yes.
What is it about the fact that consciousness and its object are one that is
freeing? I don’t quite understand that.
You are the ultimate subject. There is no object without a subject. The
ultimate subject is a continuum, constantly there. In this continuum there is
no time, no space. You create time and space only when you think. They are
concepts. To measure, you need time. But they do not belong to what you are
fundamentally. You know only space and time, but what you are is timeless.
You identify with your thoughts, time and space, but your real nature is
timeless. Time and space are expressions of the ultimate, live in it, have their
reality in the ultimate.
When there is wonder or astonishment, when a desired object is attained,
there are many opportunities in the day to feel your non-dual, timeless nature.
Earlier you said when the insight comes, remain open, move away from it,
from experiencing it...
Yes. You can never think it. When you think of it you fix it, objectify it.
Ordinarily when the word “earnest” is used, the tendency is to think of

someone actively searching through books, asking questions and so on. In
reality that is the ego’s search. Real earnestness comes in the application of
the enquiring, for example, to look between two thoughts.
Absolutely.
So that if there is a student who is sitting for years of time and space, their
whole orientation is wrong and that just has to be seen.
Yes, looking in books is the survival of the “I”
And even asking questions is dangerous because you have objectified the
situation so you can only ask questions playfully, not searching for an answer
but just as a mutual exchange of happiness.
Yes, and the answer should never be a fixed answer. It should be an open
answer. One must never assert it. So there is only openness. In this openness
there is not a student nor a teacher.
Many people who never ask questions, never play, it seems to me, and it
seems that they are missing something wonderful. Isn’t sitting and saying
nothing a wrong tendency?
There is a moment when a student may live in not-knowing and have no

question. There are also people who are in the garage for a long time-many
people are in the garage.
Sometimes they have questions but there is fear to ask. And sometimes
there is the feeling that the question cannot be manipulated by words. I will
find my own answer. I will be my own answer.
When a question is asked, a teacher has two ways: to answer or not answer.
To answer means it goes through the mind and must be dissolved in the mind.
So it is best to either give no answer or give an answer that creates a new
question in the questioner. There are many pedagogical tricks!
But if it is asked in a spirit of earnestness and playfulness then it seems to me

there are reverberations and resonances so that one belongs to the process of
creation and in this process of inviting creation you learn something. So in
asking playfully one comes to much deeper levels and there can be a
quickening as opposed to a slow simmering and the attitude of “I am going to
do it myself,” which is a dubious idea at best.
I think we must become acquainted with living in not-knowing. The real

knowing is in this not-knowing. You cannot formulate it or objectify it, but
you know fundamentally that you are it.
August 5
I have been searching for a long time for truth or God. When I began I was
crippled by anxiety and fear. Now I feel I have an innate understanding of
what truth is not, but I do not yet feel I have glimpsed what truth is.
You are looking for an experience, for God, for beauty. This means you see
what you are looking for as an object. I would say: Simply inquire who is
looking. When you really inquire, you will see that the looker is what you are
really looking for. That is the shortest way, if one can still speak of a way.
Be clear in your mind that what you are looking for can never be an object.
Because you are what you are looking for, so you can never see it, never
comprehend it. You can only be it. Being it means you have no
representation, no idea of it. You are free from all concepts. When the mind
sees this it comes to a stop. You are still. All your ideas of yourself, all your
qualifications must come to a stop. Then you find yourself in a kind of
nakedness. You are this nakedness, free from all qualifications. So, be it
really. Be completely attuned to it.
In all the time I have known you, you have never really talked about sitting
meditation, about what to do when we sit with you in the evenings.
It depends what you understand by meditation. Meditation is not something

to meditate on, because you can only meditate on what you know already and
this is memory. When you go deeper you will see that you must discover the
meditator and when you uncover the one who meditates you will see that it is
only a cerebral construct. Then automatically the meditator and what he
meditates on comes to a stop and there is only being. Poetically I would say
there is only a current of love.
Meditation is what we are. It is constant. It is not time-bound to the
morning or the evening. We sit together only for friendship, to be together, or
to be for a while in a laboratory to discover that there is nothing to meditate
on and no meditator.
So really it is no different than being in openness at any time of day?
Absolutely. Being in openness, in non-assertion means being in meditation. It

is the light behind all perceptions. It is present in your activities and your
non-activities. We are it fundamentally and we can never objectify, never
represent what we are fundamentally.
In other words, it is absolutely our absence. In our total absence there is
presence. It is a global feeling without feeling it. But our tendency is to make
an object of it.
In the progressive way we become even more conditioned because the
progressive way is through subject-object relationship. The less can never
understand the more. We go directly to the more and from the more we go
down to the less, or, let us say, from the whole to the fraction.
In looking for it you must see that you are what you are looking for. It is an
enormous discovery to see that the looker is what is looked for. So it is a total
openness, a total expansion. In the beginning it may be simply attention
which is still a brain function. But the moment this attention is sustained
because it interests us, then we will see that the attention grows; it becomes
alertness, alertness becomes intelligence, intelligence becomes awareness. So
all that belongs to our psychosomatic nature and is grasping, taking,
attaining, comes to a stop. Not only to a stop, it comes to a state of not-
knowing, a state of “I don’t know” where all is open. Every cell is open.
When you are open to your surroundings, an unconditioned openness, that
means an openness without any expectations, wishing and so on, then this
openness refers to itself. It is a non-dual experience. So we can never touch it,
never see it, never hear it as we can never see our own face. It is our nearness
itself.
It feels as if something’s dying....

To be, you must die. The dying of the ego is not an act of volition, it is an act
of understanding. The mechanism to be something may appear from time to
time but you are aware of it, you do not deal with it, so when it no longer has
a role to play it disappears. You feel yourself in your globality. In this non-
state of completeness, there is spontaneity. There is no more intention. It is
strictly function. There is no more psychological involvement.
There is then a spontaneous giving up. Nobody gives up. When you see the
false as false there is a normal, spontaneous giving up. It is in the nature of
seeing something false.
I have a three-and-a-half-year old son and when I look at him from my

wholeness I see this lovely little being with shining eyes who has come into
my life to teach me, to be my friend, and for me to look after him while he is
so little. Does he have to go through his own process of forgetting who he is
and identifying with his body, mind and senses? No matter how clear I may
be, he has to go through that and then eventually come back to himself. Is this
true?
It is in the temporal nature of the human being to identify himself with what
he is not. But as a father you must show him what he is through your own
presence, your own way of seeing and living with things. You must never
assert in this relation. All must be open. He has to come naturally to this
inquiring. And, as you said, it is the relationship of friends, not of father to
son, son to father, which is restricted living. In real friendship there is no
restriction because you have no image to superimpose on your son and when
you do not superimpose an image on your son, he will feel himself in this
freedom, free from conditioning.
A child is the result of his environment. But you know what we mean, so
you will spontaneously have this comportement, this way of living naturally
and true.
I have some kind of understanding of what you are saying, but I feel myself
still in the cage. When you talk of not taking oneself for an object or the
personality, I can understand that in an intellectual sort of way and in a
practical sort of way in my life where I feel it is a restriction. But when you
speak of being this understanding I feel a lack. Is there any way to come to
this being the understanding?
When we speak of being understanding it means a timeless moment where

nothing is understood. It means silence. The moment you say “I have
understood,” you have objectified the understanding. This is normal for the
scientist; but the scientist, like the truth-seeker, has a timeless moment before
he says “I understood.” In this moment before he objectifies the
understanding he is in the timeless state. What is normal for the scientist has
nothing to do with the truth-seeker. The difference is that the one objectifies
his understanding and the other has been told that he cannot objectify what he
is, so he loses himself in that timeless moment. When he has heard that there
is nothing to understand, to objectify or represent, he will not be tempted to
do it.
What do you mean by “loses himself in the timeless moment”?
He is one with the understanding.

When the non-understanding comes to the understanding it is like a
magnet. It absorbs the non-understanding.
Is it just a habit to objectify?
Yes. But the scientist is looking for an object and so manipulates the
objective world, but the truth-seeker knows that he can never be an object.
You have the experience, you know moments when you are nowhere but
you are present.
Can this living understanding be prevalent in one’s life?
You will discover this being understanding in many moments in daily life.
Before an intention appears. Before a thought appears and when it has
vanished. Or when the thought process comes to an end and the mind knows
its helplessness, its limits. The mind must know its limits. When the mind
knows its limits there is a giving-up.
This non-state you are speaking of, is it like the best moments in your life? I
am thinking of moments with my children when there is love and wonder and
joy.
Yes, but wonder and joy cannot be thought. It is an ultimate feeling. You
cannot think of joy or peace. We have tens of thousands of years of humanity
and language and we have not found the word that brings us beyond the
words peace, love, freedom. How can you objectify freedom? It is
inconceivable.
In this state of you not being there and me not being there, do I create you
and you create me for the sake of playing?
I do not need to create you because I am you! [laughter] You are looking for
fishing. You look for a fish! [laughter]
Yes!
But you will find that you cannot hook a fish.
What then do I play with?
Nothing.
I thought you would say I play with love, joy or openness.
No. Joy, love, plays with itself. Openness plays with itself.
That’s because it is me.
Who is this “me”? It is a thought. Do not objectify the joy in “me.” In the
absence of you there is only joy. Then there is not you and me, not you and
others. There is only isness.
But one of the obstacles we have is that we take it all too seriously. It is really
not that serious, or do you think it is serious? I think it is a big joke, what we
think we are.
Yes, it’s a big joke. It depends how you see it. You can laugh or you can be
still and look again.
[long pause]
In your observation there are certainly residues of volition.
Is there any way of cultivating the earnestness you spoke of? I find that at
moments I am very earnest, but on the whole I take myself to be something
and...
Then you are no longer earnest. Earnest means not taking yourself for what
you are not. Only then are you earnest.
But I generally cannot see my way out of it. I am trying to do something. How
can I get out of that trap? The desire is to be free, but somehow I cannot find
the right direction. It is a combination of being too lazy and forgetting the
direction.
To see very clearly that you take yourself for what you are not, is very
striking. Feel the impact that comes when you see it. It must be felt in the
moment of the seeing, not later through memory. See it. The shock, the
impact in the seeing, is the transforming factor bringing the transmutation of
your whole nature. It is not just taking note.
At periods through the day today I felt that I had left my home-ground. But
underneath that is the feeling that you do not ever really leave the
homeground, that I just think I leave it.
When the seen points to the seeing, live the seeing. That is your homeground.
When the seen points to the seeing, there is no one who sees and nothing is
seen. There is only seeing. This seeing can never be objectified because you
are it. It is your homeground. So every object can bring you back to your real
nature. So when we ask for the reason for the existence of an object, it is only
to reveal this homeground, the ultimate subject.
As we have said very often there are certain objects which, par excellence,
bring us back to our homeground automatically. Beauty, for example. But
every object has the faculty to bring you back to the seeing, to your real
nature, if you let it.
In the same way, the heard brings you back to hearing and you cannot
objectify the hearing. You are the hearing. There is no one who hears and
nothing heard. There is only hearing.
This is very practical, pedagogical advice for you. Very often in daily life
let go of the object and you will see that it comes back spontaneously because
every object desires to come back to its homeground. But you fix it, you
make a concept of it, you refuse to let it come back to you and then it dies.
August 6
It is important that you become more and more aware of your body, aware of
what you are not. So you must explore what you are not. In the exploring
situation you are detached from what you explore, there is space between the
exploration and what is explored.
You will come to the absolutely relaxed body. This is not a passive body,
but is an energetic, dynamic, elastic body. This exploration can take place in
all your daily activities, so that you don’t go back in the old pattern of
defense, tension.
When you have this relationship with your sensitive body you will have
this relationship with other levels of your body. You will find yourself out of
the process, autonomous, free from your body-image. The moment you look
at the body, you are free from it. But you must first learn how to look without
any end-gaining.
There are many opportunities in the day to bring back the perception to the
perceiving where there’s not a perception and not a perceiver. It is the inner,
deep stillness where nobody is still and nothing is still. There’s only stillness.
There are moments when it comes to you because it looks for you. Or in
other words, it looks for itself because there are not two. It solicits itself by
itself.
You will also become more and more free from the self-image once you
have seen that it has no existence, that it is completely built of memory. You
will use it less and less and, as in the end it has no more role to play, it will
disappear. Then you will live really in openness. In this openness all is open,
nothing is closed. Every object comes to the openness, appears and
disappears in openness, refers to the openness. Then there’s spontaneous
action free from reactions.
So you must be open to all the levels of your body and mind, your
muscular tension, emotivity and defense. Only in this openness is
transmutation possible.
I found our group very harmonious and I thank you for coming.
Mt. Madonna
April 1990
April 21
What we are looking for is our nearest. The question is the answer, because
the answer was before the question. Otherwise there could never be a
question. Any other answer would be only an object. We are the ultimate
subject. What we profoundly are can never be an object. Understanding this
immediately produces a re-orchestration of energy. Looking for something,
achieving something, grasping for something, living in end-gaining,
becoming-all this eccentric energy comes to a stop. It is not a process of will;
it is a natural giving up. In the stillness which follows, we are completely
available.
Allow whatever desires to come, to come, because you can never go to it,
it can only come to you. We can never go to it because there is no way to go
to it and nobody to go there. It is the instantaneous awakening of our totality
which is neither outside nor inside, neither introversion nor extroversion.
It is not a state because in a state you go in and you come out. It is the
light, permanent light, eternal light, which is behind all perception. This
openness is our real nature where there is nobody open and nothing is open.
There is only openness. It can never be named, because it is without any
quality. That is why it is the ultimate negative state.
We are so accustomed in our life to functioning in subject-object
relationship on the level of the mind. It is mainly the personal entity which
we believe we are which hinders us from being available. Speaking simply,
one should be free from being somebody. In the state of openness there is no
place for somebody, for an I-concept. The question “Who am I?” is the
answer. There is no other answer. It is the living answer.
All that is positive is an object, but what you are fundamentally can never
be an object. It is objectless, nameless and without any qualification. It is the
ultimate negative state, and in its freedom, all is possible. It is ultimate
creativity. The ultimate negativity is beyond positive and negative. Because
what you are fundamentally is without any quality and is timeless and
spaceless, it would seem perfectly clear that no technique, no system, no so-
called progression can bring you to what you are fundamentally. All this is a
going away from it. The ultimate understanding is an insight that you are
your totality, that there is not a knower of it, that the totality is its own
knowing, that it is not in subject-object relationship. Generally, we make an
object of it. Most so-called meditation is in subject-object relationship.
It is through listening, through unconditioned listening free from memory,
free from any expectation, that you come to this insight. You must first have
the insight, a glimpse. Then live with what brought you to the threshold of
this glimpse. There will be a moment when you no longer need to do all this
preparation. The understanding that your real nature is never an object, never
an assertion, brings you automatically to openness, to not knowing.
Knowledge of truth exists only through not knowing. This not knowing is
openness, and openness is truth. Openness is not a psychological state but a
way of living where there is beauty in relationship, because there is no more
relationship, there is only Relation.
So live with the understanding which brought you to this glimpse. Do not
touch it or manipulate it or in any way try to make it clear on the intellectual
level. Do not touch it, otherwise you take all the perfume from it. As we said,
you can never produce the glimpse by will. You can only remember the
elements which brought you to the threshold of this glimpse. There is nobody
who has a glimpse, but your whole body-mind is struck by it, and it leaves a
residue in the body-mind. Live with this residue, live in innocence, without
any desire to change it, provoke it or recreate it.
Can one function in day-to-day life?
Free yourself from all beliefs, from second-hand information, hearsay. Look
with a new eye, free from the point of view of the I-image, then you will
discover beauty. Otherwise there is only repetition. Explore without any
affirmation, without any conclusion. Live in your non-concluding silence.
Do you believe in miracles, like walking on water or raising the dead?

Oh, I don’t believe in miracles. Every moment is a miracle when you look at
it with your real eye. There are no special miracles.
That’s no answer. Do you believe that special powers exist?
They exist like other objects exist. What do you want to do with siddhis and
miracles? Have nothing to do with it. I think it is a miracle that you can sit on
the chair and that you have the freedom to be yourself. It is the only freedom
that you have. There is no other freedom.
Are we then locked in a prison?
We are so accustomed to dealing with objects that it is inherent in the human

being to try to look at himself also as an object. You take yourself for Edward
Smith and you live as Edward Smith, accumulating knowledge in the name of
Edward Smith, but Edward Smith has no reality. It may take time, but one
day you will see that you have been living an entity which has no reality.
That moment is a very important revolution in your life. Then you will find
beauty in nothingness, in being nothing. Because in this nothingness you are
all. When you are nothingness you face your surroundings in their totality.
When you are nothing, you are free from choice, free from selection, free
from discrimination. You let life propose to you. When the psychological “I”
proposes, its propositions are based not on beauty and truth, but on survival,
psychological survival for the person.
There is already in you a forefeeling of this openness, where there is no
center and no border. In this openness all your intelligence is at your disposal.
There is fresh seeing without the interference of memory.
Come to love yourself. Not the self that you are not, but the true self that
you are. Then you will not be stuck to your personality and there will be
objectless relationship. That is beauty.
Is spontaneity free of what we would call negative responses? Is it always

loving?
Loving has no qualities, no name. It is not an object. You can never think it.
You can only be it. What is important is that you must live with it. It must
come to being the understanding, which is a global feeling. You should live
in this essence. At first, as we said already, you can only remember the
sayings which brought you to the threshold of this reality, but you must
become completely impregnated by the understanding and it will dissolve in
a state of silence. This state of silence is the essence of understanding. It is
only in this emptiness that there is presence, silent presence. It is silent
presence because you are totally absent.
Real giving up is through understanding. It is a natural flow of up-giving,
otherwise there is still somebody who gives up. Then you will find your
hands completely empty. It is only when your hands are completely empty
that you feel a fullness in your hands. In seeing things as they are, you will
become more and more free from conclusion.
Is each individual in constant tension and without the tension it

spontaneously reverts to the ultimate “I”?
Yes, but you can never separate an object from the subject and the subject
from the object. Subject-object, cause-effect, is only on the mind level. In
globality there is no subject-object because the perceived and perceiving are
one.
When you live in openness you are available, free from conclusion. Then
when there is conclusion that comes from the situation, it is impersonal and
belongs to the moment itself.
What does it mean to love oneself?
When you look for yourself you can never find the one you are looking for.
There comes a day when there is a certain maturity in you and you will see
that the looker is what he is looking for. What you are looking for is peace,
silence, yourself, and it can never be an object. It is a feeling. It is a jewel in
your feeling. You must love the jewel. You must be it, never go away from it.
The jewel is the jewel of your heart. But first you must love what you are
really, then you can also love the surroundings. When you are not, then there
is love. It seems very clear, no?
In a religious way of speaking it is only when you are not that God is. But
when you live with the glimpse of truth you are already orchestrated. Your
energy is more or less orchestrated. Follow the shadow and it brings you to
its substance. When there is intelligence, there is creativity and beauty. The
ultimate is beauty, beauty that can never be defined.
Let us be for a little while in silence.
April 22
Living with our question without conclusion keeps us in openness. There is

a time when we are open to the question, and there is a time when we are
open to the openness.
Before the yoga this morning I felt very tight and afterwards I felt very
relaxed and open. The question occurs to me as to whether it’s possible to
experience the openness in a body that’s tight. I have my own suspicions
about it, but I would like to hear from you.
When the body is expanded, it is in openness. In a certain way, you have

understood how to relax the body. I would say, first give up all tensions, all
reactions, and then feel your body tactile. It is only through this tactility that
you can expand in your surroundings, in space. From this stance, listening to
sounds, listening to words is completely different. You know, as a musician,
that when you play a sound, it is a vibration you produce in the first sound-
box, the instrument you are using. Then there comes the second sound-box,
your environment, which is the hall in which you are playing. This second
sound-box brings the vibration to your ear, to your whole body. It is a
completely new hearing, completely different than when you hear directly
from the instrument to your ear. One must absolutely use the environment,
the room, the hall.
Music, in a certain way, is a language. When you know this language,
know the phrasing, know the timing, your listening is in a kind of
anticipation. You listen with memory. But when your body is completely
expanded, you follow the line of the music the way you follow a butterfly. So
face your relaxation, and expand the body. In a body that is expanded in
space, there is no reaction; there is really welcoming, receiving, receptivity.
So you see, the space feeling is very important.
I have a question about faith. The open, relaxed, expanded body-mind brings
us to the threshold, yet for someone who simply believes everything you say,
believes in the teaching—could that faith in itself be enough to bring
someone to the threshold?
When you are expanded in space, you are in a state of allowing; you allow
that it comes to you. You find yourself in ultimate receiving. Then you are
one with the space, completely attuned to it. There is certainly a moment
when you find yourself in the allowing, in the openness. This openness is not
objective, it is not asserted.
Can faith or belief take you to that openness? Even if you do not feel the
openness, is faith enough to take you to the openness, even if the body is in
contraction?
The teacher must be able to free you from contraction. When there is reaction
you are stuck to the object and you are far from receiving. But you know how
to listen to your body. The moment you listen to your body, listen to certain
parts of your body, there is a natural giving-up. You may first be aware of the
weight of your arm or your legs, then the feeling of the temperature may
come in, and then already the different parts of the body are in expansion. For
example, when you look at an object that is very far away, your looking is not
fixed; it is simply looking. You feel the space in you. You are the space.
It belongs to the technique of an actor to speak to an object that is quite far
away, to see the object and to have a conversation with this distant object.
Then the voice changes completely. So, explore this feeling of spaciousness.
I wonder if there’s a choice. I go through the day, and most of it is taken up

with attention to objects, getting work done. But then part of the day might be
lived in what you call expanded, a feeling of... I have it now, I can hear
myself talk and still see the room. It is different than if I am concentrating on
what I’m talking about. Is there a choice as to whether I can be in this space
or does it just happen? The point is, do I waste a day if I keep my nose to the
grindstone, so to speak, to make more money? [laughter] It is hard not to be
practical and get the work done and make sure somebody else is getting their
work done. But that seems to detract from the expanded feeling—I think I
know what the expanded feeling is. Do I earn as much money if I stay in the
expanded feeling? [laughter]
Space feeling is your real nature. It is the nature of the body to feel in space.
Five or six times a day feel yourself expanded in space, especially before
going to sleep. One day it will become your natural state. When you need to
concentrate, you do; then you automatically come back to the organic relaxed
state.
If I get into an argument with my wife and can get into that spaciousness, that
would be pretty good.
It is very important; otherwise, you live in reaction and reactions are closed.
One reaction inspires another reaction so you live in a closed circle.
When you have to be with angry people, you must help them.
Help them? How?
Free them from anger.
How? By not reacting?
Exactly. Not reacting. The moment you do not react, it comes back to them.
They are aware of it and it is a transformation for them.
Could you say, in the context of a lifetime, what is the importance of the
individual quest? For example, yesterday evening I got a feeling from what
you were saying that the personality is not something one should try and
change before one starts, but as you follow this particular path, the
personality is transformed, or falls away quite naturally.
When there is the understanding that you are not your personality, that the
personality is a very useful vehicle but you should not identify yourself with
it, then you are free from the personality. The moment you are free from your
personality, creativity is stimulated. Because when you live identified with
your personality, you live in memory, and the personality is blocked. When
you are not identified with your personality it is open, free from memory and
all the intelligence of the unknown comes in—creative ideas, right actions,
intelligent actions.
Can you talk about how there can be differences between objects if we live in
non-concluding?
In order to explore an object, a situation, you must see it from multiple points
of view. When you look at it without interference, just taking it as a fact, it
unfolds. When an object unfolds, it shows that you are really ready and able
to receive it. Every object has its secret. It is only in your openness that the
secret unfolds. But in the end the secret belongs to you. It is you who have
projected the object; the object has its potentiality in you. It does not exist
independently. The real personality, if we can speak of a personality, has no
borders, it is not fixed. It appears only when you need it. To be really creative
in space, you must be the space. I am thinking here of architecture or painting
or sculpture. There must be a deep space relation, a feeling of space. It has
nothing to do with thinking, conceptualization.
Is the space you’re talking about now still an object?
Yes.
If it is, what is the relationship of that to consciousness?
When you are completely one with the object, one with the feeling, so that
the perceiving and the perceived are completely one, then you will see that
the perceived is in the perceiving, but the perceiving is not in the perceived.
That makes you free, autonomous with the perceived. That is consciousness.
What is the relationship of witnessing to being one with consciousness?
Do not try to make the witness objective. When you see an object you are one
with the object. Three hours later, you say you saw the object. Witnessing is
not a function, because two functions do not go together. Do not make the
witness objective. In any case, you are the witness. Do not create an observer,
a controller.
I feel myself in space, feel mainly unfurnished, without representation, all
the day. I feel it as consciousness. The eyes are open, the ears are open, but
there is nothing seen, there is nothing heard. Maybe we can call it audibility
or visibility, but there is nothing heard, nothing seen. But there is visibility,
there is audibility. You see what I mean?
Most of the time we are identified with objects, but not consciously. Can we
consciously become one with the object you are talking about?
When you see an object from the point of view of the I-image, you are
identified with it, you are in bondage. When you see an object from your
wholeness, your globality, you are not bound to it. See the difference,
experience it in life. When there is a personal relationship with objects, there
is bondage.
That is what we mean by saying an object is not independent. Would it be

helpful to let the mind know that they are not independent? It seems as if we
automatically think that everything is separate.
In the moment of seeing an object there is oneness. The object appears in the
seeing. It is only on the level of the mind that we say there is a seer and
something seen. On the level of consciousness there is only seeing. When the
mind is informed of the true perspective there will be maturity.
What do you do or not do with the mind?
Live with the object, ask the question of the object, make the acquaintance of
the object. Live only in questioning.
You know by experience that the moment you establish a personal
relationship with your surroundings, you are bound to them. But in seeing our
surroundings objectively, as facts, we are not bound. When our surroundings
are free, they come to us, express themselves to us. We feel our surroundings
in us, but we are not in our surroundings. It is only when our surroundings are
in us and we are not in them that there is real looking, real seeing, real
understanding.
How can we see something and not make it into an object?
It becomes an object the moment you name it, qualify it, judge it. An object
is known through your five sense perceptions and the sixth sense of
conceptualization. The body of your lover is perceived and the intelligence of
your lover is conceived, but when you are free from the perceiving and the
conceiving, you are one with your lover. Then there is no longer a lover and
beloved. There is oneness. That you know.
An object is perceived by your five senses. An object in itself does not
exist. It needs light, it needs the sun, it needs the shade and it also needs other
objects. All this belongs to our sense perceptions. When you inquire into all
this beauty—how light caresses an object, how light makes an object—in the
end you see that an object is nothing other than light.
And what is light? That is consciousness. When you explore with your five
senses, you will be astonished because it opens you to a completely new
concept of reality. You discover new words. You come to a new language, a
new formulation. All this exploration occurs when you are a ripe explorer. A
mature explorer is free from looking for results. You can never really explore
when you look for a result.
After I asked the question I remembered the Zen saying: They say that
mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. Then you come to a point
when mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers.
Ultimately mountains are just mountains and rivers are just rivers. I think
that is the point you make.
Yes. First, it is a percept. Then in life somebody comes and says, “It is a
percept because you perceive it” and you are for a moment one with the
perceiving. This is the deep insight. Then you see that the perceived appears
in the perceiving. All this belongs to a certain quality of feeling. You see a
mountain, you look at a mountain, and you are the mountain. It is you, in a
certain way, who project it. It is the quality of feeling. You can conceptualize,
you can project many ideas, but what is important is the feeling.
Do beauty and purity have a greater power to bring us to awareness than just
any mundane object?
All the beauty that you feel is the beauty of your Beloved. But any object is a
pointer, pointing to the ultimate, because it has no existence in itself. It finds
its existence in the perceiving, in consciousness. When you emphasize the
beauty in the object, it is only a “Hallelujah!” to the ultimate.
Does this same pointer exist for emotional states?
When emotion has the character of emotivity, then it is a reaction. When it is

an emotion it comes out of the ultimate itself, it comes from your heart.
Emotion is not objective; it is ultimately subjective. But when there is
reactivity, it is an object of your observation. You can discover in yourself
whether it belongs to emotion or to emotivity. I think in our dictionary there
is no distinction, but emotivity is psychological and emotion is free from the
psychological.
Most of what we see is experienced in our thoughts and our feelings, in our
activities and reactions. It seems to me that it is colored by this identification
with myself. So the question is, where does one start? If I try to start with the
object, I am doomed. Is it possible for me to work with this idea that I am
only consciousness in such a way that it begins to have an influence so that I
can give up all this striving and doing?
Striving and doing stop the moment you see that there is not a doer and that
you can never find an answer. In striving, all you can find is an object. It is
very important that you see this striving energy in you, this looking for a
goal, looking for a result, looking for finality. It comes out of the insecurity in
yourself, the insecurity of the I-image. The I-image is rooted in insecurity
because it is not independent. It can only live in situations that you create. So
you constantly create situations from memory, from the past. See it,
understand it and feel the impact the seeing has on you. This brings
transmutation, transformation. But you must see it in the current of life.
When you see that you are not an object, when you immediately see all
that you are not, then you automatically live in consciousness. This is not a
concept, it is a feeling-if we are allowed to qualify it. It is a feeling of being
free, being free in fullness, in completeness, a feeling of ultimate satisfaction.
One is free from all possible desire.
[long pause]
It is as if you walk in a forest, the sun is rising, and you realize in one
moment that it is Sunday and that you do not have to work. [laughter]
Do you think it is possible for us, living very busy lives and subject to outside
influences every day, to have this awareness?
Be free from the opposites. See how the mind fears being free from the
opposites. Live in the heart. The moment you live in the heart, it refers to
itself. Then there is no more qualification, there is no more mind; there’s only
oneness, love.
May I ask you something? When you sit there and you shut your eyes and
you’re quiet, are you meditating? Do you have to meditate any more? Or
does it follow you, stay with you?
There is nobody. The eyes are more or less closed because the eyebrows are
heavy. [laughter]
Sometimes when I am in a busy place like a grocery store at rush hour or in a

big group where everybody’s talking, my listening shifts, and instead of being
able to hear specific words or understand anything, all I hear is a lovely
babble. Is that the kind of thing you are talking about when the self evolves,
and you are not listening to anything, you are just hearing?
There are moments when you hear sounds, but you can’t distinguish
anything. As long as you have ears, it will be so. This kind of audibility,
which is not really hearing, is there. Likewise, the eyes may be open and you
do not see any special object, there is nothing seen and nothing heard. But
meditation, presence, is everywhere there. Very often people close their eyes
or ears in a kind of introversion. This kind of introversion does not bring
them to meditation. Meditation is when all is present. All that is, all that you
are, is in this stillness. It is beyond the stillness of the senses, of the mind. It
is behind the mind. You can have it before the body wakes up in the morning.
The world is not awake because the body creates the world, but there are
moments when you are lying down where there is nobody present and
nothing is present, but there is presence. You will not feel it every morning,
but as I have pointed it out to you, you will discover it.
On the one hand this doing, any doing, seems incompatible with the no-
practice that you teach. On the other, there is the feeling that certain
techniques help to clear some of the contraction. I think that many of us here
are involved in psychology in one way or another, and I wondered if you
would speak on that.
Psychology refers to the progressive way. Here we are concerned with the
direct way. The progressive way is progression in the mind, but what we are
fundamentally is not mind-stuff. It is beyond the mind. That is why we do not
refer to the progressive way, but we may, in certain circumstances, use
elements which belong to the progressive way. It depends how one deals with
these elements. As long as you believe that there is an independent entity
which can become more and more good, more and more simple, more and
more honest and so on, with practice, then you are on the progressive way.
The progressive way functions in subject-object.
As a psychologist you know that there are certain tensions in your patient,
certain reactions, aggressiveness, and so on. You feel it, you see it; you even
feel the tension in the room. Then you should have a conversation with your
patient. The patient comes to you to be healed; it is only because of an
uncomfortable feeling in him that he comes to you. You must question him.
The moment you question him, he is obliged to give an answer. To be able to
give you an answer, he must listen to himself. You ask, “Is it warm? Is it
cold? Is it dense? Is it heavy?” and so on and so on. You do not need this
kind of information, but in this moment you bring your patient into the
situation of listening. The experience is listening. In this listening, there is a
curative state. He becomes detached from his illness. As he is no longer in
complicity with it, it unfolds, you can be sure. You must deal only with the
present physiological state. Going back to the past, to your father and mother,
crying, screaming and rolling on the floor is no solution.
Sometimes you speak of listening to the body, and sometimes you speak of
seeing it or observing it. I am wondering if there are moments or
circumstances when it is more appropriate to do one or the other?
To listen to the body the interfering “I” must be absent. It is the same in
seeing or observing, the same presence without someone who is present,
listening, seeing, looking. There is only awareness without anyone aware.
Generally we take into sleep with us all of our qualifications, what we call
ourselves. When the body wakes up in the morning, all of these qualifications
wake up also. So it is important to make ourselves completely naked in the
evening, and in the morning try not to go into the old patterns of feeling and
thinking. Be only looking or doing free from the point of view of the doer. It
is the doer who makes the work difficult. When there is simply doing, you
are no longer psychologically involved in it. There is only doing, there is only
functioning. In reality we are only functioning. We are seeing, we are
hearing, but there is not a seer, not a hearer, not a doer, not a functioner.
There is no entity in the cosmos; there is no entity at all.
Thank you for coming.
April 23
You may have some interesting questions.

During meditation and the body work there is oftentimes an experiencing of a
presence, and with it comes a feeling of gratitude. The first time I heard you
speak I had a brief glimpse of something which felt more like a no-presence.
It didn’t come during a meditation or any conscious effort to still the
thoughts; it was just an instantaneous flash of what felt like no-mind. So my
question is: Is the experiencing of a presence, and the experiencing of non-
presence the same thing? Or is one a preparation for the other?
In your case, the presence is mind; the absence of presence is consciousness,

beingness. When you hear the perspective of the truth, you listen to it. It is
mainly a formulation referring to what you are not—that means, body, senses
and mind. This knowing belongs to the mind, is on the mental level. It is in
the moment when the teacher exposes what you are not that what is appears.
It is an experience without an experiencer, a glimpse of truth, an insight. But
there is no presence. Nobody is present. Put another way, there is only
presence, but this presence is not objective. It cannot be known by the mind.
We know ourselves mainly in subject-object relationship, but what we are
fundamentally can never be an object. When you look with the wrong
perspective, all that you look for is objective and all that you can find is only
an object. One day you will see that this takes you nowhere and in this seeing
there is a giving up. When you really live this upgiving you come, in the end,
to the understanding that the questioner is the answer, that there’s no
objective presence. It is only in the total absence of yourself that we can
speak of presence. And this presence refers to its globality. Once you have
had this glimpse, this insight, then keep it. You may go away from it, but
when you remember yourself and the formulation which brought you to this
threshold, you will again be brought to this experience without an
experiencer.
You will find yourself in openness. Openness can never be an object,
because openness refers to itself. Become open to the openness. So follow the
line which brought you to the threshold of your insight, the glimpse of truth.
When we use the word “presence,” we mean only this presence when there is
a total absence of yourself. This moment is not conceptual; it is perceived, it
is feeling, global feeling, not the feeling as when you feel something. It is a
feeling without feeling.
You have spoken of emotion, like the feeling that one gets when looking at a
sunset. How does this kind of feeling fit with the other “feeling without
feeling”? There seems to be a tangible presence about the feeling of joy.
In the moment of wonderment, there is no subject-object relationship, no

perceiver. You are completely attuned to beauty; there is oneness. When you
adore beauty, you are in a state of adoration, where there is only adoration,
and not a knower of it. This adoration comes from the adored. So when you
follow your adoration, you will automatically find yourself in the adored, the
perceived in the perceiving, because there are not two; there is only one.
You would like to see the sunset, feel yourself in wonder, and at the same
moment be an observer. That’s not possible.
When you say “I’m happy” you are no longer in happiness because you
have objectified the oneness and put it in subject-object relationship. You
have made it an experience with an experiencer. You can have many
experiences, many, but all these experiences are in the realm of the mind. The
real experience is the non-experience.
Sometimes I receive teachings or have glimpses in dreams, and I wondered if

you would talk about those kinds of dreams and how to work with them—to
bring them from the dream state into waking life, in some way integrating
them.
You can have a glimpse of truth in a dream, as you can have it in the waking
state. In the morning, when the body wakes up, you say, “I dreamt I found
myself in fulfillment,” and the residues are in your body-mind. So what you
can do is to keep these residues from the non-experience. The residues may
leave an organic memory which may solicit you and bring you back to the
fulfillment.
May bring you back to that experience in the waking state?
Exactly.
They don’t seem to have the same impact on the body-mind in the dream state
as they do in the waking state.
But still they are residues, the same residues as when you come out of deep
sleep. There are residues from deep sleep that you ignore, residues of peace,
of beauty, of freedom.
Is it helpful to write dreams down? To bring them and their residues to the
waking state so that...
I would not write it down, because then you fix it. But I would take note of it,
that is true. Also bring the perceived back to the perceiving. Let the perceived
unfold and dissolve and abide in the perceiving which is a global feeling.
An object is never detached from truth, because it exists, has its
homeground, its support, in truth. That means an object can never exist
without truth which can be called the ultimate subject, our real nature. Every
object, therefore, can bring us back to our reality.
It is important that you discover in you the eternal question. The eternal
question is the answer. When you ask the eternal question you are completely
open, open in not-knowing.
In human relationships, it seems that most of the conflicts we experience are

interpersonal conflicts which are the result of personalities clashing. In other
words, it’s personal. When I listen to you and to the questioner trying to fix
you at the level of the person, it seems that you refuse to get involved at that
level, or you simply don’t get involved. My question is: Does there come a
point as we move along on the path of this teaching where it’s important to
actually refuse to get involved in the personal in our relationships with
others?
It is the idea of being somebody which cuts you off from a global relation
with your surroundings. From the point of view of the person, there is
constantly choice and selection, looking for security. This, you know. On the
level of the person there is no understanding, there is no love; there is
relationship but there is no real relation. The moment you take yourself for “a
person,” you can only see other “persons” around you. Just as when you take
a stand on the level of the senses a word is sense perception; and from the
level of the mind, it is only a concept, but from the stand as consciousness,
the word is consciousness. So in the same way, when you take a stand on the
level of the mind, of the person, you can only see persons. Thus one person is
in constant insecurity, looking for security in other persons. This looking for
security may even be expressed in goodness, in giving, in serving, and so on.
But this social behavior often comes from the need to create security for the
person and rarely from real compassion, freedom from the person.
The person is only a concept, built up by experiences, hearsay, beliefs,
education, language. When you really see this, then the concept gives up,
gives up itself, and you find yourself free, absent from the idea to be
somebody. Look around you in this freedom from selection. You will see
facts, things around you, that you never saw before when your seeing was
fractional, seen from the point of view of the person. It is the most important
moment in daily life: to see that you are nothing. It is in this nothingness, this
absence of representation to be somebody, that there is fulfillment, globality,
total presence.
Is this nothingness the point of death and life?
It is only in this nothingness that there is fullness. The word “nothingness”

refers to all that is objective, because all that is objective is your projection.
What you are is consciousness, the ultimate subject. That is your nearest. It
was already, before your parents conceived you, even before the creation of
Adam. In this case the problem of dying has no meaning.
There’s nobody who lives, and nobody who dies. It is important that you
keep this insight. It is this insight which brings a new orientation into your
life. You can never change your life. It is only from this non-point of view, of
conscious ness, that there is change, that there is no more compensation. In
other words, you are oriented; all your dispersed energy is reorchestrated. It
brings you to a new understanding of life, a new way of behavior. A new
behavior cannot be obtained intentionally. It is the glimpse of reality which
changes the chess board completely.
When you talk of earnestness, does it mean being attuned to that glimpse?
Yes, by earnestness I mean to live with this understanding, and to see in daily
life how this understanding acts on you, how it brings you to a new
orientation. That is what I mean by earnestness. There’s no more dispersion.
What about effort? In other words, having had a glimpse and being aware
how it acts on us, subsequently we may feel that we have strayed from that
glimpse, that we are not in tune with that glimpse. Sometimes it feels like
there is some effort required to find our way back.
But the effort can only come from a somebody. The effort is intentional,
involving choice. When there is a glimpse of truth, the body is affected,
expanded, then when you are again engaged in striving, in end-gaining, in the
becoming process, you feel it in your body. The body is no longer expanded
in space. There’s no more space feeling, even in thinking. So you are aware
of the contraction because your new organic body feeling of freedom solicits
you. When you do not ignore this solicitation you become more and more
free from psychological memory, past and future. You find yourself more and
more in the actuality, the presence, in the now. All this has nothing to do with
thinking or representation; it is an original feeling. In our language we have
no word for this original feeling, this original apperception.
So when we feel ourselves inscribed in the end-gaining, should we just be
aware of it?
Exactly. Yes. Be aware of it. And then you turn your head.
It’s a discovery in not-doing. In really not-doing, there is doing. But there’s
no interference of the person. You act according to heaven.
Act according to... heaven?
Heaven, yes. [laughter]
So we let the body’s space feeling be our guide and stay attuned to that
feeling and when we feel contracted, we are aware of the contraction.
This feeling of expansion, space, is your real nature, because your real nature
is space. It is only your reaction, your anxiety, your fear, which brought you
to contraction. When you were a child your reactions eventually became a
chronic condition and now you believe you are this tension, this conditioning.
But a time will come when your expanded body will become completely
integrated.
What happens when one realizes one’s spacious nature?
When you recognize that you react, you may not react against this reaction
and you will be free of the vicious circle of reaction. The moment you are
free from the reaction, look again at what produced the reaction. You can do
it at any moment in daily life.
You may several times find that you are reacting, but you will no longer
react against reacting. That state will last for some time, then there’s a
moment when you will be aware in the moment that you are in reacting, so
you will not accomplish completely the reacting. It is interrupted. The
impulse is interrupted. Then you will feel it before the impulse strikes your
brain. It is very interesting. [laughter] I would say then that you are
completely free. People on the street can tell you that you are an idiot, and
you won’t react.
Where does this I-thought, the ego, come from? I can see how the I-thought
builds upon itself and reinforces itself, so that it becomes a really strong ego,
a contracted personality. But where did the very first impulse to identify as a
separate “I” come from in the first place?
It comes from memory. What we generally call memory is only for

maintaining the “I,” the person. When you see really that the “I” is a concept,
then you are free from psychological memory. But functional memory
continues. You use it when you need it, in the moment itself. But you don’t
daydream any more, you don’t invest your memory or project it into the
future. There comes a moment when you ignore the person and in the end,
you forget it.
So this “I” doesn’t come from anywhere? We just imagine it.
Completely. When the body wakes up in the morning, where is the “I,” the
“me”? Realizing this is a moment for laughter.
I notice that I live from several points of view. Sometimes I live from the point
of view of someone who needs an answer, who is trapped in a situation and
needs a way out, but there is really nowhere to go. And at other times it
seems as though there is just listening itself and there’s no motivation behind
it. That feels really clear. But I don’t see where there’s a choice involved in
what point of view I take.
You know moments in the day when you face facts, when you don’t judge
them, interpret them, you simply accept them without conclusion. In these
moments you are no longer stuck to the situation, you are free from it and
then there is understanding of the situation. Only then is there right acting.
When you look at your surroundings from the point of view of the “I,” you
are bound. But when you see your surroundings from your globality, you are
free from them. This freedom is not a concept, it is an original feeling.
Freedom is not a concept.
A couple of nights ago, you said, in response to someone’s question about

miracles, that the real miracle is to be sitting here in this chair.
Absolutely. The stone, the vegetable, the animal—each helps you to sit on
this chair. It is so beautiful, so miraculous that you are born as a human
being, and not as a snake. There’s nothing foreseen in your life, there’s no
free will. The only freedom you have is to attain what you are fundamentally.
[long pause]
Sometimes it seems that one creates everything in a way, and yet at the same
time the world just spontaneously appears...
You are the creator. You create every moment. You project every moment.
So even when it spontaneously appears...
It is you, it is you.
Do I have any responsibilities?
As long as you believe you are somebody, there is responsibility. When you
are free from the I-image, the problem of responsibility doesn’t come any
more in the picture, because all your doing is adequate, appropriate to the
moment itself. As long as you believe you are this person, there is
responsibility, and there may be karma.
We are so accustomed to localizing ourselves, in the body, in the mind, in
the feeling, in the sensing, in the representation. But this freedom of which
we are speaking is not outside and not inside. You can never localize this
freedom. The eyes function, the arms function, the feet function, but there is
not a functioner, there is not a doer, there’s not an actor, there is only acting,
doing. What we are fundamentally can never be localized. It is found in non-
localizing. So trying to find it through introversion or extroversion is going
away from it. Do not try to remember the words spoken in these meetings.
Remember their scent, their flavor, and allow yourselves to be solicited by
this perfume, the silence behind all words. It comes from what you most
deeply seek. It, only, is the answer to your questions.
[pause]
April 24
Find yourself in a state of non-conclusion, free from assertion, because all

that is concluded is an object. What you are fundamentally is not an object,
can never be perceived. When you look for it you can only find something
perceived, an object. Realizing this brings you back to looking without
looking for anything. Then you are in astonishment. In astonishment you are
where there is no object, very near your real nature.
In daily life transpose this understanding. Do not be driven to conclusions.
It is the I-concept that makes conclusions. In the absence of an I-image you
are completely open to your surroundings, to the world, and free from the
need to conclude. Then, free from intention, you discover your spontaneous
being. In living open to your surroundings without concluding or interpreting,
there comes a moment when you are open to the openness. It is a feeling that
you are the vastness. Understanding must absolutely dissolve in this feeling
of being understanding. This understanding is a silent feeling, an absence of
all representation. At first when you say “I have understood,” there is a
representation, but this representation dissolves in knowing. The
representation belongs to knowledge and knowledge dissolves in knowing.
When knowledge dissolves in knowing, there is really being the knowing.
You are the knowing.
Generally, you never give enough time so that knowledge dissolves in
knowing. First see how the knowledge acts on you. The understanding must
be really clear, because only clear understanding can dissolve in knowing.
When this clear understanding appears, live with it, free from manipulation of
the already known. The knowledge unfolds and becomes clear understanding
before dissolving. This unfolding in silence has a special taste, a special
perfume. You may have this perfume now or later. It is this taste which is
important to remember. All other things exist, but this perfume is.
Have you any questions?
Understanding comes from consciousness and then dissolves back into
consciousness. Is that right?
Yes. It comes from consciousness and it refers to consciousness. They are not
two, there is only one. When you look for it, it is looking for you. When you
desire understanding, it is understanding which desires you.
What do you mean?
When you feel it, it comes from what you feel. There is no feeling without
what you felt already being there. It is exactly like when you follow a
shadow, it brings you back to its substance. When you really live with the
feeling of this insight, it brings you to the felt. So when this understanding is
not really deep you make an object of what has to be understood. But what
you are can never be an object, can never be perceived. What is perceived is
the mind.
In doing the yoga I sense that when I can let go of concepts and form and be
in spaciousness, that intelligence functions as an appropriate response to the
moment. It somehow feels beyond the conceptual mind and is always
appropriate to a given situation. There is a different feeling quality about that
than the conceptual mind.
Be free from the doer, be only doing. Be free from the action, be only acting.
The doer does not exist; it is a concept.
So could we say, then, that everything that is happening is really coming from
spaciousness?
There is only happening.

In every situation where there is no conclusion from the I-image, you are
brought back to your total absence, which is, in reality, your presence. You
are free from the object part. In real non-conclusion you are not stuck to the
object, you are free from the object.
There seems to be some fear in me, to not conclude.
But you should immediately see who is afraid. You will see that you have
established a personal relationship with a certain situation. See the situation
only in openness, free from the I-image. You will see the situation
completely differently. This is impersonal living, because in actuality there is
only living, there is not a liv-er. So when you introduce a liv-er, you
introduce a concept.
When a personal relationship is established there are reactions. You go
from one reaction to another. So, practically speaking, immediately face your
reaction. When you face your reaction you feel yourself out of the process.
This feeling is a complete absence of yourself, absence from the I-image.
You feel your space, your vastness, your immensity. The moment you are out
of the process you are no longer stuck to the reaction. Then see what happens
to the reaction. It dissolves, because there is no longer an accomplice to it.
You talked about the pranayama actually having an effect on the patterns of
the brain. You have talked before about the breathing as a way of quieting
the mind. Could you say more about that?
You know that when there is insecurity in your thinking, your breathing is
completely affected. So when you do certain of the breathing exercises, you
quiet your thinking. When you have an important meeting which causes deep
anxiety, do this breathing. Before an artist goes on stage, he first practices
this breathing, and the physiological nervous system becomes quiet.
I have a question about letting go. Must we first let go of all our old ideas
before the new manifests?
Before you face a situation, completely free yourself from anticipation. Face
the situation in a state of unknowing. When you face the situation with
intention, then you miss the real content of the situation.
In the past months I have been thinking about the idea of solving the
problems in my life, forging a certain direction as opposed to letting it
unfold. That is why I have been feeling....
When you see things with a clear mind, free from intention, there is
discernment about what is important and what is less important. A clear mind
comes when you are open and alert, especially in your situation. Alert means
being free from intention, free from the “I” Then real intelligence takes over.
Do not draw any conclusion from our meetings here. Simply take it into
consideration when it comes to you.
Do not try to memorize anything. When it comes to you it has its own
flavor, otherwise it remains only as formulation. What is important is the
flavor. The flavor is really the being understanding.
Thank you.
Other Works by Jean Klein
Be Who You Are
Who Am I?
I Am
Beyond Knowledge
Open to the Unknown
Transmission of the Flame
The Ease Of Being

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Jean Klein Foundation

First published 1995 by Third Millennium Publications

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a

eISBN 13: 978-0-9553999-1-6

Cover: Fragment, Royal Sarcophagus, 1500 B.C., Palace of Knossos,

Part 2: Mt. Madonna July-August 1988

Chapter 10: July 29

Part 3: Mt. Madonna April 1990

Chapter 19: April 21

Other Works by Jean Klein

Do you live in a state of emptiness? I mean, when you are in meditation or

What is the motive of this intentional thinking?

Knowledge, excitement, discovery.

Yes, joy; exciting joy.

So you are happy?

I have states of spontaneous ecstasy where it... these time periods of

You mean, I go away?

Yes, be aware of these moments when you go away.

You go away from your real self.

What you understand by thinking starts with thinking. That is intentional

I think I know; my motive is to find peace of mind.

Yes. It is an adventure, a risk.

Right. Well, I’m a risk-taker.

So it is the personality who pays the price.

Why is it, then, so hard for us to pay the price?

There are a lot of techniques around for realization. Do they work?

Is it a passion for this?

As you were allowing me to be in your presence today, I was aware of the

Can you speak about your passion? Is there such a thing?

My passion? What do you mean by passion?

Oh yes, very fortunate, very blessed.

Is the personality the same thing as the ego?

When you do not think it, where is the ego?

That beingness is something beyond everyday consciousness, would you say?

Beingness is something more basic than normal consciousness.

It is a form of maturity in life which brings you to certain questions. It is only

I would say, yes.

Yesterday, we were talking about experiencing different things so we would

To what are you referring—giving up what?

There are times when seemingly causelessly I experience a feeling of despair

When we speak of accepting, it is not a fatalistic accepting, but an accepting

You have been approaching my suggestions from the psychological view.

The appearance—the enlightenment, if you like this word—is instantaneous,

The word “observation” is very heavy. I would say, welcome your

And accept without judging.

So I should not try to control the energy.

Accepting is compassion. When you hear or see beauty, it brings you

It is felt in front. I cannot give you a guarantee. It depends on many things.

I have experienced a state where, instead of the observation being on specific

Yes. In this moment, there is no thinking.

If you like, automatic. There is no thinking, especially when you drive in

You said yesterday in response to my question about a plastic flower and a

I am interested to know what the relationship is between consciousness and

There is only consciousness. You cannot apply evolution to consciousness.

Are you saying evolution is a thing of the mind?

Yes, the mind.

It depends on how you take the word “consciousness.” When I speak of

Monkeys do not meditate. Do monkeys meditate?

This is in relation to the question I asked yesterday. I could not express it

Fighting could be non-violent or could be violent.

There is nothing wrong in fighting. There are many ways to fight. In a

Where does the capital come from?

Your teaching helps our understanding mentally. What I do not understand is