Be Who You Are Read online

  In order to understand the non-dual outlook, we must realize that we are prisoners, slaves to certain “clichés” according to which we always see things in a dual, fragmentary way. If we wish to recover the non-dual outlook, we must get into the habit of reconsidering the “fragmented objects” of our usual knowledge in their relationship one to another, so as to obtain an ever-widening global vision in which the conflicts and oppositions merge into complementary harmony. This global outlook must be widely extended and an ever more harmonious reality will be revealed leading to a vision of oneness.

  In the course of this process, one will observe that all problems and conflicts are consequences of a fragmentary outlook. As it becomes less fragmentary, that is more global, we find contradictions becoming oppositions, and oppositions fading so as gradually to become complementary parts. These then appear as aspects of unity. At this point, we have reached the last stage. We stand before an objective unity seized by a subject. There is only one more step before we understand that the subject-object duality is in its turn unreal and that the real is One.

  Question

  I sometimes experience an inner upsurge which I feel to be very precious, but I never manage to make it take shape and express itself

  Answer

  One must attentively observe what it is that impedes the outer manifestation. It may be, that at the moment of the upsurge, in your hurry to express it, or maintain it, you obstruct any possible formulation. It may also be that the upsurge is too weak and that its roots are feeble. In that case, you must let if fall of itself, and try to delve into the depths of yourself. This may stimulate a blossoming, giving life to an awareness which previously was not evident. But in no case must you intervene. You must let the upsurge take place, take shape and blossom.

  It is nearly always due to a lack of patience, or because we are unable to wait without strain, that the upsurge is impeded. We must remain on the watch a long, long time with no desire to intervene, to grasp nor to make use of it.

  5

  The “eternal present”, our theme in these meetings, lies within the depth of ourselves. It is the eternal awareness of the Self.

  Seen from the Ultimate, the world projected by the mind appears and disappears, in other words, it “becomes”. When we talk of time and space, it must be thoroughly understood that their reality is relative, it is a reality in the world of becoming. But beyond space-time is that stillness which knows no becoming.

  If the background is to be revealed, first of all we must ask the essential question: “Who am I?”.

  When we say “I”, we are identical with the background and this “I” expresses our most intimate self. Each time we say “I think”, “I see”, “I hear”, we qualify it. We associate the “I”, the subject, with an object of consciousness, with which we identify ourselves. But if we manage to keep the “I” clear of this identification, then appears the Self, the non-dual, everlasting, unchangeable reality.

  I would like the questions put during these talks to be spontaneous, not elaborated. This spontaneity comes if you adopt an attitude of true listening to yourself.

  We obviously have to make use of language, but we must try, as we use words, to remain open and to transcend them and feel out the ideas in their true reality, beyond the verbal plane. The hearer may then experience a genuine reaction enabling him to put questions which are truly pertinent.

  The path which is here advocated is the direct path. Its process is the elimination of the known, since the experience of the Self, of our true nature, is for the moment unknown to us. The Self can only be described negatively since no positive concept, no part of anything we know, can be applied to it. All thoughts are fragmentations which place us in duality; they set themselves before the Self, thus making unitive knowledge impossible.

  It is therefore by discarding the known, that is to say our thoughts, perceptions and emotions, that integration with the ultimate “I”, the everlasting present, is possible. The man who experiences this return, who has broken down the limitations set up by the ego, ceases to be tormented by desire and fear. He is in no way diminished by the loss of his individuality, he knows himself to be “out of time”. Only such a timeless “I” is entitled to say: “I am”.

  Whether thoughts appear or not, the eternal Presence remains, transcending the three states (waking, dreaming and deep sleep). Nothing can cause the Sage to return to the level of duality. He is established in an undifferentiated state where the Atman, having realised its identity with the Brahman, shines of its own light.

  Question

  All questions put are, in principle, prompted by the ego. It is not the background lying behind the question of course, but the ego (which prompts), hoping thereby to widen its horizon. Nevertheless this questioning ego strives to keep itself at a distance, as far as is possible, so that its questioning may have the widest possible scope. How can this keeping at a distance be made easier?

  Answer

  When you observe something, you are at the same time this very thing and you are outside it. Let us dwell on this point. You cannot observe the nature of an object if you are not outside it. You cannot taste salt if your mouth is made of salt, you cannot recognise an egotistic state if you are not outside of this state. He who observes must be different from the thing which he observes. But, and this appears to be a paradox, it is also impossible for him to know the nature of an object without being at the same time the very essence of this object. Observing something means therefore that one is at the same time inside and outside it. One is that object. The act of knowing is a challenge to the logical principle of identity, because one might say that knowledge is a unified duality, a dual unity. If this paradox is comprehended, one truly listens, the ego will witness the object, he is all awareness, laying the accent on his non-identity with it. This is in fact a contemplative position which is an authentic attitude. Then true questions may arise if there are any.

  In some of the other talks, you spoke of “living knowingly in a state which is not a state”. . . Could you help us to understand this?

  Strictly speaking it is impossible to talk intelligibly of this state which is not a state. I can only tell you that when this non-dual experience takes place, one knows it. I concede that it is difficult not to be baffled by this concept of non-objective knowledge, that is to say a knowledge where there is no knower of the object. And yet I pray you, even if you are gifted with an active imagination, please make no effort towards this “non-objective knowledge”. This knowledge will spontaneously and of itself open your eyes when the time comes.

  The important point is that you should eliminate in yourself every element which is not the experience.

  Do you think it is possible to go beyond desire and find a state of permanent “well-being”?

  Yes, but the transcending of desire can only follow a thorough understanding of its nature. As long as we have not returned to our true being, we are subject to desire. We turn from one object to another, that is to say from one compensation to another. It must be thoroughly understood that if we endeavour to vanquish or transcend desire, this in itself is a desire, and if we strive to be detached while our ego resists with all its might, we are creating a conflict.

  True detachment comes when things leave us of themselves. And they leave us as soon as we have really understood that they never keep their promises.

  Does the realised man constantly retain this attitude of aloofness when he faces the objective world?

  The man who has realised his true nature continues to face all his obligations, to live in society. Simply he is no longer a party to the activities of a society whose only aim is to satisfy the ego. Unbridled accumulation, and ambition, inordinate desire to develop one’s individuality, the need to intensify one’s personal qualities with an aim in view, all that this implies no longer concerns this man. He is still in the world, but he is not of the world.

  If one rejects asceticism, how can one approach re
alization?

  As far as you are concerned, you must begin by drawing up an inventory of yourself. But it is not by drawing up a list of qualities and defects which is more or less accurate that you will make such an inventory, but by observing yourself from moment to moment. Your impulses, those spontaneous reactions which reveal your sympathies and antagonisms, your daily mechanisms, such as judging yourself, will now stand out clearly. You will then notice that your fundamental desire is to try to make all happenings coincide with what you would like to be or to have.

  The fact of noticing these things will give birth, albeit tentatively at first, to a habit of standing back from the object. Then, without any action of your will, a certain elimination will take place and, from day to day, you will be less inveigled in what you observe, and one day the independent nature of the beholder will appear to you (there will be nothing left to behold). The beholder will now lose his quality of being a witness and will return knowingly to pure consciousness. When the object and the subject disappear, reality appears. Each thing in its own time. You must first discover those landmarks which point in the right direction. Ascertaining something does not involve creating new bonds, new conditions, it is simply a case of establishing oneself in the state of witness, thus creating a distance between the thing observed and yourself. However, it is very difficult for many people to accept themselves as they are and to bow before the reality of facts. One is always escaping from oneself, one never accepts oneself as one is, because one has fallen into the habit of comparing oneself with a model. At times one sees oneself as superior to this model, at other times, inferior, thus we are always troubled. To reach ultimate knowledge, the only acceptable way is objective vision without choice or judgement.

  Why does the ego make its first mistake?

  The first mistake does not belong to the ego, it is the mistake which gives birth to the ego and the world Avidya” (ignorance) of Vedanta, the “Forgetting” of Plato, from which arises fragmentation, that is to say a world with “selves” that believe themselves to be distinct. The ego appears and the world comes into being, its disappearance causes the world to vanish; this is what happens in the state of deep sleep, thus showing us that the world and the ego are one. Beyond the ego and the world stands the everlasting and causeless “I am”. That which ignorance has added to this “I am”, in other words the ego and the world, knowledge takes away. What then remains is our true nature. But intellectual preoccupations cannot bring about the vanishing of the ego. To us it is only perfect discrimination that reveals the egoless state.

  Does man’s true nature differ from one individual to another?

  When the “I” is stripped of name and form, its unique and indivisible nature remains, and this is the same in all beings. But when false identification deceptively breaks up this “indivisible nature”, it gives birth to the illusion that these are separate centres. As long as we identify ourselves with these fragments, that is to say with our body, our impulses, our ideas, no real understanding is possible with others. No system, be it political, philosophical or religious, can alter this.

  Beyond the social and revolutionary ideas of a free and brotherly humanity, would there exist the metaphysical ideal of a reality where egos, names and forms disappear and are fused in the one?

  That is so.

  Do you think that a well carried-out psychoanalytical treatment can lead us to the discovery of our true nature?

  All psychological therapies, psychoanalysis among them, are based on a point of view which, for Vedanta, is the very cause of what one might call a fundamental neurosis, a metaphysical neurosis, which is the arising of an ego believing itself to be separate.

  The aim of psychoanalysis is to restore health and balance to this separate ego which it considers as a justified reality. The psychoanalyser wishes to restore a balanced and harmonious ego, an ego in harmony with its surroundings and with other creatures. This ideal appears on second thoughts to be entirely naive. When we wish to be a balanced self we, in fact, wish to prolong an imbalance under the best possible conditions by appealing to energies which may reinforce, fix and establish an egotistic state which is really the basic imbalance, the source of all others. This is just as absurd as fighting the symptoms of an illness without applying oneself to the illness itself. The psychoanalytical cure is therefore not really a cure. It does not rid the sick man of his sickness, it helps him to live it, with the ego. His sickness is an imaginary one. From the Vedanta point of view, a psychoanalyst works always, be it unconsciously and in all honesty, like “Monsieur Purgon”, the doctor in Molière’s “Malade Imaginaire”. A true Master knows that what we usually call health and balance is in fact imbalance and sickness. He will not endeavour to steady an imbalance, to uphold by props what is about to fall; he will strike at the fundamental imbalance, the original error, thereby establishing that true health which can only exist as a result of our feeling of unity with the whole.

  What can we do to eliminate the social and economic fetters and impediments? Are certain professions not in opposition to spiritual research? Just imagine the conditions of a man who works in an armament factory! He knows very well that the thing that he makes will sooner or later spread pain and death. What can he do?

  This question concerns a particularly difficult problem: the relationship between social life and spiritual research.

  The “traditional societies” (in Guénon’s meaning of the word) were constructed so as to allow man to live on earth and gain heaven in the best possible way. Conflicts obviously did arise between the temporal and spiritual needs, but there was never a fundamental opposition because no one dared to doubt the primacy of God over Caesar. Nowadays, Caesar negates God, or even claims to assume his place. In communist countries the supreme values are social; in capitalist countries, they are power and money. What is spiritual is denied, belittled or ignored. Modern man is therefore at a terrible disadvantage where spiritual research is concerned.

  However, this disadvantage must not be exaggerated. As the desire for the spiritual increases, all social life becomes less binding, and a much simpler adaptation is sooner or later established. As soon as a man really awakens to spiritual life, certain incompatible conditions become unbearable, inacceptable, and he then lets go of certain things, he changes his profession, he re-adapts himself; such a re-adaptation must be neither forced nor willed and, above all, not anticipated. It happens naturally and spontaneously as the spiritual orientation asserts itself clearly.

  A religious man whose faith is deep and authentic, and who completely trusts God, with full and entire love, such a man may he not come upon this impersonal and unified life of which we speak?

  We cannot clearly understand the question without probing into the meaning of the word “Love”.

  In his “Banquet”, Plato defines love as being the desire to possess permanently what is good. But the desire or the love of good is only conceivable if there is a knowledge, a previous experience or a memory of the good. One might thus say that any love is a home-sickness, a longing for a lost paradise.

  The man who lives in a condition where he knows no liberating activity, lives in a world of pain and sadness which from time to time gives place to sparks of joy. All human endeavour strives towards the keeping and the prolonging of such moments.

  The mistake that most men make is to believe that these moments of joy are caused by the conditions which precede them.

  It is a long and arduous task to free oneself from this error. What may help us is when we notice how relative are such joys which, as we very soon see, are not always produced by the same conditions, since what is a condition of joy for one man is not so for another, and what was the condition of yesterday’s joy is no more so today. Thus a man finds himself on the threshold of true spiritual research which begins with a return to oneself. This is the first step towards the Self.

  In treading this path, one gradually discovers joy without object, unconditional joy, the
very joy of our being. In the beginning therefore we find love, which is desire for perfect joy. This love, as we have seen, implies a knowledge or a memory of joy. In itself it is only a pure driving energy. The outcome of the search depends entirely on the way in which energy is employed. We all love bliss and we love bliss only. As is said in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, “we do not love creatures for themselves, but only for the bliss of the Self which they contain”.

  Love will be enlightened when we come into contact with that bliss which is free from any condition or object. It must be thoroughly understood that we have no need to acquire love, because in the depths of ourselves we are “desire for perfect bliss”, or in theological language: “love of God”. No one needs to acquire nor to increase love, but only to enlighten it on its true aim.

  This saving knowledge is obtained by the elimination of fragmentary knowledge, by the awareness that objects can neither contain nor produce bliss. And this awareness is finally an act of discrimination. A chance is offered to us for this discrimination to emerge at every moment of joy. Each moment of joy allows us to see the essential difference between its “foundings” and joy. Every time this discrimination is experienced in full consciousness, there is access to pure joy, discovery of being and identification of one’s being with total being.

  The love and abandon of the authentic bhakti is the result of a purification of love by knowledge. Otherwise it is only a sentimental urge, quite valueless for liberation.

  It is important not to mistake the letting go of that passion which results from merging with the object, with the letting go of liberating love which is an illumination due to knowledge.