(Page currently in renovation and text correction)

10 / 30 / 2011

More absurd, I die.

The word God is no longer trendy in Western spiritual renaissance and secular spirituality. On the other hand, we talk a lot about the Self, universal consciousness and supreme intelligence, the source and origin, true being and false ego more or less illusory, if not completely useless and just good to be destroyed, reintegration into a sort of primordial unity, the One or Oneness, soup of energy or ocean of bliss, an immanent and transcendental cosmic principle, and so on according to the tastes of the commentator or teacher who speaks of those beautiful metaphysical ideas. And the magic keyword that we hear now in almost all spiritual discourses called Satsang or interview, which would allow, among other things, to explain these very strange concepts and reveal the ultimate truth, if not to enlighten everyone, is the term "Non-Duality". But what are those Neo gurus really talking about ? Do all these concepts make sense beyond a purely intellectual talk ? Do they refer to a pragmatic approach based on experiences and the observation of a hidden truth difficult to explain ? Are they more than metaphysical exercise in rhetoric, but without any relation to the world we really live in ? Does the term "Non-Duality" actually have the slightest meaning in everyday life ? This is indeed questions we can ask ourselves when we listen to such words and speeches, which somehow fly far above the stars.

The crazy story that follows may allow the reader to better understand, or let 's say more humbly, get an idea of what those concepts are trying somehow to convey, it is its only intention or pretension. In any case, the experience told here, the only one in all my writings, doesn't distinguish me from ordinary people or would raise me on a pedestal above the human condition that everyone knows. That's also why I generally prefer not to tell personal stories since it's extremely easy to make people believe it, suggest it or imply it very clearly when telling spiritual experiences. Today, many people do it and do not hesitate one second to distinguish themselves from the others on the Neo spiritual scene as if they were enlightened, liberated or, with a touch of an amazing modesty, only awakening, but, in fact, no need to say it, totally enlightened and liberated from suffering.

The readers should therefore read this story, to say the least, pretty bizarre, without omitting its purely subjective aspect, and if they had to live exactly the same experience, they would probably have a completely different vision, explanation, description and understanding of it. Every spiritual experience is, of course, personal and therefore subjective since only one person among the others lives it, but it doesn't mean that what this experience reveals is personal and subjective. In itself, it's not a teaching that could be transmitted to others, but since it has the power to change radically our life, it cannot be ignored in a spiritual quest either.

The narrative of personal experiences revealing something that doesn't seem personal is a very delicate subject because as far as the most authentic spiritual teachings are concerned, they are available in every holy book and sacred scripture written a long time ago, and that makes the narrative of personal experiences completely futile since they show something that may be considered as absolutely true, but without any explanation on how to live such an experience. No one can do better or say more about than the most traditional teachings. So what's the point of telling personal experiences ? It might, maybe for some, clarify or let us say refresh some concepts, which were probably very clear when those books were written, but which became totally incomprehensible today, it's without doubt a major problem we have especially with the Bible. So let's move on to this rather funny story in some of its aspects, and perhaps also instructive for some.

In this winter of 1986/87, I was fed up with my life, but so fed up that it had become unbearable. The reasons for this desperation could not have been more ordinary, heartache due to a particularly painful romantic break-up and its consequences, which had put me physically, emotionally and mentally in such a lamentable state that I had to end it by any means. But I was too disoriented to actually take the very simple decision to kill myself, which was, however, the most evident to stop my pain.

It has already been two and a half years since I have been traveling in Asia and mainly in India. And after an exhausting trip to Tibet where I almost died at high altitude in a huge desert of mountains expanding infinitely, I told myself that I didn't actually need to commit suicide, what for ? I was already in such a pitiful physical state that the only thing I had to do was to let myself simply die in the most natural way, and to achieve this in good conditions, I went back to India in the Himalayas looking for a quiet place. That's how I found a small Ashram on the banks of the Ganges in Uttarkashi where Swami Girdanandaji, aka Girijanandaji, lived, the person I had to recognize as my Guru 5 years later during another amazing experience since the idea of having a Guru, a master or someone like that was absolutely not my cup of tea, as you will easily understand by reading the following.

The first month passed peacefully so to speak. With my 56 kilos for 1.83 m of flesh and bones, in other words a living skeleton that didn't have for much longer to survive in spite of an excellent vital energy, I was still practicing Asanas and meditation with which I lived rather insane experiences I took for the last jolts of my mental life, kind of hallucinations I considered unimportant even though some of them were frankly nightmarish and others bringing me to heaven. After all the non-ordinary, mystical, paranormal or whatever experiences I lived for more than a year, I was indeed more than fed up with all of them. I only wanted to rest in peace before I even died.

I didn't find very interesting the Swami who was looking after the Ashram where 5 other people lived. The few discussions we had together at the beginning of my stay were so absurd that I preferred not to speak with him. He had the knack for driving me even crazier than I was, and that wasn't really necessary in my state of mind already quite insane. Everything he said was sending me back to what I thought of myself, an image as absurd as his own words, and nothing else. His spiritual practice or thinking, so to speak, boiled down to constantly question everything by starting before anything else with the self, the one who actually had the impression of looking for something in spirituality, life or death, and my own death he could obviously see coming pretty fast did not disturb him at all. To summarize his spiritual philosophy or art of living, he considered that it was totally useless to ask questions on anything, in particular spirituality, as long as one doesn't know who is asking the questions, that is to say "me", and that didn't obviously answer any of my questions when I asked him.

He seemed to have no interest at all or very little in Yoga as defined by Patanjali. In short, it was very difficult to know what he was thinking, and even if he was still able to think coherently. Just to give an example of the incongruity of our relationship, one day when I went to the market, I asked him if he wanted me to bring him back something to eat. He replied then very seriously: "But who is this 'I' going to the market ?" It goes without saying that I left without answering. I was not in the mood of putting up with that kind of crazy talk, which in truth was not stupid, but on the contrary the way of transmitting his teaching I would qualify as systematically destructive or at the very least highly disturbing.

It must be said that at that time, Advaita, that is to say "Non-Duality" according to Vedanta, which is a very serious philosophical system, a paradigm or way to express the sacred truths contained in the Vedas, was much less popular than today, and especially of what it has become in the West, kind of very trendy cocktail party talks for petty-bourgeois more or less intellectuals. Nirsagadatta Maharaj's famous book, "I Am that", was not yet circulating among travelers or in the Ashrams of India. Almost no one knew Poonjaji and his absurd teaching to say the least quite dangerous for uninformed Westerners. As far as I am concerned, Krishnamurti was irrelevant because his talks were too vague, mixed up with theosophical ideas and leading nowhere. The Gurus of Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh were mainly oriented in the practice of Bhakti and devotional Mantras, and that was absolutely not part of my spiritual quest.

In the early Eighties, Rishikesh was a paradise where Westerners did not jostle for enlightenment. During the winter 1984, we were about 30 between Muni Ki Reti, Ramjhula and Lakshmanjhula and it was easy to meet everybody in a Chai-shop drinking tea and exchanging thoughts which I have to recognize were not very philosophical nor intellectual. Only one thing was interesting for us, the practice of meditation and spiritual experiences. The Asana and Pranayama were only useful to be able to remain sitting perfectly still for hours and be very receptive. These yogis addicted to spiritual experiences had nevertheless understood that the mind was the barrier to be destroyed by any means, and with Walter, an American Yogi who lived in Yoganiketan for many years, we tried all possible techniques, some of them causing nothing more than a coma. The result was that we lived experiences, some couldn’t obviously be remembered, but the mind and the ego were still powerful, probably more than ever. And very quickly the search for enlightenment or liberation was not any longer the point of my quest. It remained only spiritual experiences, but experiences that actually led nowhere. Like any good Westerner, I had no time to lose. I wanted a liberation as fast as a packet of instant noodles, otherwise what could be the point to look for something which didn't really make sense? The exploration of the mind I was doing was in fact much more exciting than trying to break free from it.

Among these seeker of a so-called spiritual enlightenment reigned also the philosophy "No God no master". Those who look for a Guru were going directly to Poona, they didn’t come in Rishikesh. The adepts of the Shilom preferred Goa or Manali according to the season. There was virtually no tourist in India like now, not more than on my first trip in 1979 which had been a simple introduction to Hindu spirituality and a cultural shock difficult to bear. During these years, it was easy to get acquainted with travelers because we were always going to the same places according our subject of interest. It’s only after the death of Osho, when some Sannyas came in the north to Lucknow which was not particularly a charming town that Rishikesh became again a spiritual center as popular as at the time of the Beatles. For a while, it was only a Hindu pilgrimage site where a small group of foreigners was still in search of miracles.

Long story short : from "No God no master", I arrived to "No instant enlightenment or liberation". There was only left the ultimate miracle that everyone will know one day or another, death itself. What a great spiritual trip in India ! All that to explain the state of mind in which I was when I met my Guru who was, I thought of course, an eccentric among many others. For those who don’t know this amazing country, I have to say that Hindus are the most extravagant people who live on earth, and that makes them absolutely unique and wonderful. India is also the best place to lose one’s sanity. And to be honest, mine was hanging from a thread that was breaking down all over the length.

The reader may wonder how I could consider death with so much impertinence. The answer is very simple. When you have seen death in front of you, you don’t fear it anymore. You love it! How is it possible? Death is normally the antithesis of what we know, what we like and what we live for. No, death is in fact the supreme experience of life, the most beautiful that we can live, the one that releases us from every burden, beliefs and thoughts. Nothing is known of what actually life is as long as we haven’t seen death in front of us. If we take reincarnation in consideration, birth that we think to be the beginning of life is also a death in another reality of which we don’t remember anything. It's a pity not to keep at least the impression of dying because we would certainly appreciate much more the privilege of being alive. And if we didn’t forget that life hangs on a thread which can break at any time for no special reason, we would live probably much less in our mind.

So I have seen death in Tibet during a "Sky burial", celestial funeral which did not move me a lot. I even found quite poetic that we can cut up a corpse into pieces, crush them with a hammer and finally give this food to an assembly of vultures. The concept of recycling the body after a great flight in the sky before falling down to earth as compost seemed to me more interesting than to pile corpses in a cemetery. It’s obviously an idea that not many westerners would find very poetic but rather disgusting. But for Tibetan people who believe in reincarnation instead of a kind of lottery between hell or paradise forever, the body doesn’t have any importance after death for the simple reason that it’s dead. Does it make sense?

Anyway, when I came back to Nepal, I received a letter announcing me the tragic death of a friend, and this affected me much more. But it’s in Varanasi a month later where of course I also went to see how dead people are cremated that I really experienced death. One evening, I fell from exhaustion in my bed with the firm conviction that my life was over. At the time I completely gave myself up to this fate, I experienced the greatest happiness of my life. The intensity of the impression of dying and the sweetness of the feeling, the subtlety of the physical sensation and the joy of this kind of enormous relief cannot really be considered as an experience of happiness. It is much more than that, perhaps of bliss. And of course it only lasted a very brief moment. In the middle of the night, although already dead so to speak, I woke up, and there I saw death approaching, a very graceful feminine silhouette covered with veils floating in a moonlight space. Then she went away maybe thinking that I was not good enough for her yet, and I fell asleep again. The experience was so extraordinary that I could almost take it for an invitation. After having lived it, I could still be afraid of suffering, but surely not of dying. However it took me a month to recover from this experience and my state of physical exhaustion caused by an imaginary disease according all the doctors who tried to cure me without success. This state of an unexplainable deterioration was perhaps an initiation to what was going to follow some months later.

What I am going to narrate now makes absolutely no sense. The reader doesn’t have to worry, especially after what he just read about death, I didn’t understand either what did happen to me. I nevertheless still live this experience and cannot refrain one day from thinking about it. I will not go into explanations which would explain nothing, the experience itself being too incomprehensible. I will only try to describe it as accurately as possible and back it up with remarks which may help the reader to understand better the context in which it took place. It’s in my humble opinion the most absurd but also the most divine of all the experiences that one can live. The vision of death is childish compared to the experience of consciousness and non-duality. It’s nothing more than a B movie of adventure compared to the vastness and perfection of the Self.

One morning, after a month in Uttarkashi, a small town lost in the Himalaya between Rishikesh and Gangotri, the person who I was wake up. He opens his eyes and looks at his hands.

(I can assure you that I never looked at my hands just after waking up. Why would I do something so weird ?)

He looks at these hands as if he had never seen them before without realizing that they are his own hands. The texture of the skin, the color, brightness, shape, and all the details of these hands are truly amazing. And even better, they can move with just the intention to do it. What a remarkable sight to have hands! What a surprise!

(I guess the reader think that I was completely mad, and I can easily understand why. If it was not about my own experience, I'd think the same. Why to say "the person who I was" which means that I am not anymore. Who else but me could look at my own hands through my own eyes? The intention to move them to better know how they look like determines in principle that I am myself the person who holds this power. These remarks are quite logical, but the experience I am describing is far too irrational for the reader to figure out how it really looks like.)

After marveling at these hands for probably a few minutes, this man noticed that he also has a body, or more precisely, the feeling of having an enormous amount of living matter that accompanies these hands. This body lying in a bed give the impression to be huge. But now, how to move something so big?

(The general impression that emerged from this experience was a kind of astonishment mixed with curiosity. I never wondered who I was myself for at least knowing the experience that was lived by a person with who I obviously stop to identify with. In other words, I was watching the reactions of an unknown man who himself was surprised to have a body. Hard to find a more insane situation!)

Without knowing and having time to see how, this person stands next to his bed. He now looks at his feet and feels dizzy when he realizes the distance between the floor and his eyes. Is he standing on a 7-storey building to see his own feet? What's going on? Yesterday ... No, there has never been any yesterday or past. The experience is lived in the present moment and is beyond any possible understanding. There are nothing more than perceptions, feelings and impressions, only an experience lived in an incomprehensible "here and now" which creates a state of amazement impossible to describe.

(The question which puzzles me and I never resolved is simple : "If there is a state of amazement or any other, who is in this state to know it? How to have a particular state of mind if it does not concern me personally?" I am describing the experience of a man who suddenly realizes that he is a human being, but himself doesn’t determine my presence as the witness of his own experience. If I am not who this person is, how do I know what he feels and why is he surprised to be a human being with 2 hands, 2 feet and a body? He is not born after a night of deep sleep into nothingness to discover suddenly that he has the body of a 30 years old man. The whole experience is absurd and it’s just the beginning.)

After this state of giddiness which lasted I guess a few seconds, how now to move a so massive body?

(He should know since he just stands up.)

How not to lose balance? How to go to the door without falling down? How to simply put a foot in front of the other in this strange room which is not really unknown? Still without understanding or having time to see how, he finds himself standing up in the garden of the Ashram. And there, what a sight was waiting for him! Amazement is an euphemism compared to what he feels now. The garden is resplendent of beauty, perfection and love. It's breathtaking. Everything that he sees expresses love. Yes, pure love unrelated to an emotion or a sentiment. Each detail of the garden is so beautiful and perfect that it could make him cry, but he doesn’t. The admiration for the creation replaces every other feeling. It's not a secret garden that he’s seeing ; right in front of him is the intrinsic quality of the whole universe. This garden is like a tiny piece of a giant hologram. And even more incomprehensible, the meaning of the sacred writings he read and heard in the past resonates silently somewhere in his mind too. But these ancient and very strange sayings don’t need to be expressed as thoughts to reveal that they are absolutely true. This man can only see and thus understand very clearly at once everything ; he can at last see what he has never seen before and yet which suddenly becomes so obvious. The body doesn’t disturb him anymore ; he or the body itself knows how it works. And it disappears to make only room for the experience of the external world. Now, there is no body or eyes to see through what is happening outside. There are only sensory perceptions, especially visual perceptions, and nothing else.

(How long did this experience last? Maybe a few minutes or hours, but the feeling I kept makes me thinking that it was eternal. Time didn’t stop of course. The garden, the Ganges and the hills around were still in the temporal and spatial dimension which manifests the ordinary world that we perceive every day. But the man who was watching this show of perfection, beauty and love was out of it leaving his body in the reality that he was contemplating. The body didn’t have anymore the slightest importance. It was gone in favor of the sensory perceptions of a world which, it is important to notice, was nevertheless outside the space that the body itself represented. So we are still in the field of duality between an outside world and an inside "body and mind" with an obvious limit to differentiate the two, the surface of the eyes as far as visual perceptions are concerned.)

The person who I was can only see, smell and feel. He can apprehend the true nature of all the things which composes this garden, the Ganges that flows tirelessly beside it, the surrounding hills, the sky, the clouds, everything which comes in the field of his sensory perceptions. It's simple and beautiful, it's perfect and it expresses the supreme power of love. And beyond this world of amazing realities that this person contemplates without emotion, if not some kind of admiration, everything is clear and most of all absolutely obvious!

(What "obvious” could mean in such experience?

So far I have described the perceptions of a person who, so to speak, just comes to be born. What he sees cannot therefore be obvious. It may be unknown, new or incomprehensible, but certainly not obvious. If his sensory perceptions express something obvious, it means that this person has already seen what he's seeing now, but without grasping the true nature of his perceptions. So he has a past and this garden is not unknown. He already lived one month in this Ashram and crossed every day this garden to go to his room.

Although the experience is absurd, it’s an experience that is lived and cannot be denied or referred to a past better known. The impression which emerges from it can be described as follows. The beauty, perfection and love he sees don’t express anything really new. This garden, he must somehow know it and the impressions that his sensory perceptions awake are already known too. But, now and for the first time in his life, he can grasp reality face to face and keep it in focus. He can finally apprehend what this reality is ..., ordinary and of a supernatural power. Let’s say that for the first time he can really perceive what’s in front of him and could only be seen before in a wrong way, just a little askew. The angle of his perceptions has somehow changed. Formerly, it denatured them. Now it reveals the quintessence of all that is possible to perceive.

How to explain better this strange feeling? The apparent presence of the mind doesn't allow us to know reality as it is. It must disappear so that reality discloses its secrets, its beauty and perfection, the pure expression of love, the divine act of a potential out of reach, the dance of Shiva that Hindus describe so well in a magnificent statue. How to represent better the universe and the creation in its entirety than by the dance of a God who holds in his hand a drum to mark the rhythm of time, and how to show better what we are and do day after day in a much less aesthetic dance.

Life is a movement ; it's moving with the body and the mind. Who ceased to move them since birth? How could we stop dancing? But the dance of the ego in his mind is frankly pathetic compared to the movement of time and what is appearing in space. The ego dances in his little head without realizing that the person he thinks to be lives within a divine dance which he unfortunately doesn’t find very interesting. He is far too subjugated by his own fantasies in his mind which mostly make him suffering for simply see that he is living in the middle of a paradise, an Eden of short duration however perfect and eternal at each moment.

The creation of the Divine can only be perfect. The absolute power to create a universe so vast and so complex cannot produce something imperfect. Even a nihilist should understand that it’s this perfection which allows him to believe in nothing and yet gives him the privilege to be alive. The creation is perfect otherwise the concept of perfection but also of imperfection has no meaning. And if it’s the case, how can we still be pessimistic and disenchanted by life. Nihilism rarely expresses something better than sadness and regret, a nihilism which for a long time haunted my life and that I knew too well before this experience.)

The person who I was is in ecstasy over the creation in this garden of roses. Then he notices an amazing fact ; his head is empty. Since he woke up, not a single thought has crossed his mind. He knows that this is not normal, but how to express it if he no longer has at his disposal the ability to articulate a thought in his mind? He therefore watches the void, nothing but the absence of a mental life which usually never leaves him. In this void, there is nothing to rave about, no thought and emotion, no feeling and impression, nothing but the perception of emptiness. And yet, it isn’t nothingness. The outside world is no longer interesting. His attention is captivated by what is within himself, and soon he discovers beyond the emptiness which usually expressed his mental life now absent, his ultimate power, the power to carry on the experience of knowing…, knowing what makes him really alive and conscious.

This person is not dead. He lives on the contrary as he has never been able to do it before. After discovering the emptiness of his mind, the power of knowing unveils its true presence which is infinitely more sublime than the perfection, beauty and love expressed by his sensory perceptions of the creation. There is no other name for this ultimate power than just being conscious. But when he realizes what really this simple faculty to know is, it dissolves instantly in the vastness of consciousness itself. What makes possible the knowledge of his body, the outside world and the emptiness of his mind was nothing more than the faculty to be conscious, a power which had obviously never left him during all his life. But now he realizes what the true nature of this incredible power is. In the contemplation of this infinite and eternal power which is so natural, simple and obvious too, it’s not anymore the person who lives a new amazing experience. It’s consciousness itself which discovers its own existence, gigantic and saturated with bliss. What determined the presence of this person, his body, feelings and perceptions, has disappeared. There is only now the immensity of the power of knowing oneself, knowing the Self and the true nature of being in itself, nothing more that what we really embody.

(For Hindus, Sahaja Samadhi is the natural state of being. Brahman is God, none other than the Self and Sat-Chit-Ananda: "Being, consciousness and bliss". That’s what everybody is with or without Self-realization. And consciousness is obviously the true nature of being in itself. To clear up a lot of misunderstanding about the so-called liberation, it's important to explain that nobody is in this bliss, this being and this infinite consciousness. Being is "one without a second", Ekam Evam Advityam, a term repeated throughout the Vedas. There is nobody in this natural state called "Sahaja Samadhi". No one realizes the Self ; it manifests itself spontaneously. Nobody breaks free from the ego ; it simply disappears. The person who survives to this experience has no more identity and the slightest reference to experience a personal impression. He is dead while remaining alive. "He is part of the show" if I may say it like that. And it’s with him that consciousness discovers the creation, the nature of reality, the most ordinary reality which suddenly becomes more than amazing.

The person itself becomes in fact what it has always been, a living organism, a kind of instrument to know the world in which it lives. But if we all are in fact this universal consciousness, why does this consciousness suddenly go into ecstasy when it discovers its true nature, what it is, what it has always been and what it will be forever? It doesn't really make sense. So it seems that the person despite the fact to be only an instrument of knowledge experiences also the true nature of the being it incarnates. The only answer I found to this puzzle which no longer makes possible to know who really is the witness of this experience, who is what and who truly holds the power to be conscious is quite simple. It’s enough to take the intellect as a mirror to understand that it always reflects the presence of consciousness. It is this consciousness which gives to the intellect psychic faculties such as reasoning, remembering, knowing, etc. But this intellect was before this experience at the disposal of the ego and the mind which clutters up with thoughts its natural intelligence, that is to say its clarity and power to reflect reality as it is. If the ego ceases expressing its personality and identifying with its body, the intellect is instantly flooded with the presence of consciousness. Therefore we can also say that the person with his body and all the mental faculties of its brain is in his natural state although the true witness, the only subject able to apprehend the object of all his perceptions, is consciousness and nothing else, the body and the brain being only an instrument of knowledge.

There is obviously a difference between the experience and the study which makes possible the description of it. When the experience is lived, the impression to be this universal consciousness that we embody is an undeniable fact. But it’s impossible to say : "I am the universal consciousness" because this consciousness does not speak nor think. It’s only pure and perfect bliss. "I am consciousness" has no meaning because the "I" which would state this nonsense cannot represent something else than an identity, and not only consciousness doesn’t have one, but it doesn’t need it to know itself. It may be called God if you wish. But it doesn’t determine its own existence with something already known as the ego does it permanently, nor it distinguishes its presence from the creation as we shall see later.)

Consciousness reveals suddenly itself vast, silent, peaceful and absolute. It is filled with wonder at what it has always been, perfect and unknowable. This power knows no bounds. It’s itself the only one able of knowing where nothing appears. It’s a kind of potential in raptures about its own potentiality and nothing else because there's nothing there to discover. Consciousness is in ecstasy of being conscious, and it obviously cannot do anything else beyond the temporal and spatial dimension of the universe. In the absence of any kind of manifestation, it can only marvel at its own power. Without the means to exercise it in time and space that is to say in reality, this power in itself expresses only bliss.

(I don’t know how long this experience lasted, maybe a few minutes or hours. I remember that I was standing up in the garden with eyes open and flooded with the unimaginable power of quite simply being conscious. Why this power is thus unimaginable if it is so simple? The fact of being conscious reveals indeed a multidimensional eternal and infinite space, and of course the pure and supreme performance of existing, nothing more than to be and know oneself. But to know precisely what? Nothing and everything at once : to know the origin, the essential, the foundation of all reality without any manifestation to disturb consciousness, just to know the power of knowing. It’s "I am" in all its inhuman purity.

I don’t describe indeed an experience but the revelation of a fact that everyone knows perfectly well contrary to what one might think, the simple fact to be conscious, and also a fact of which we ignore the true nature because we are never interested in what is absolutely simple, obvious and natural. The mind is far too complicated to appreciate the obvious reality as it is because in it, there is no room for any of its fantasy, any of its phantasm, nothing of its own reality. Reality as it is amounts to its death.

The Hindus say that the truth is closer to yourself that your own eyes. What could be closer to me than the very fact of being conscious of myself ? This truth may seem absurd or a kind of riddle ; it’s however a fact of experience that nobody can deny.)

Does consciousness grow weary of its nature unrelated to the manifestation of time and space? Does it get tired of its vastness and perfection? The fact is that it comes back to the discovery of the little man who can no longer ignore its presence. From now on, it’s consciousness itself which observes what he will become. It shows him without explanation what is the absence of ego and mind. In a split second, this man understands all the foolish words he read or heard about it. Then consciousness takes possession of his sensory perceptions. It wants to see through his eyes and know his life at the very moment he lives it. The man realizes thus that there is no interior life or outside world. The conscious space which manifests the creation is identical to the space that makes him conscious of his own existence as a person. Duality has given way to a complete amazement. The field of non-duality is supreme. It reveals the most obvious : "Everything is consciousness and knowledge." Nothing else can exist. Knowledge and reality are indistinguishable from each other ; reality, knowledge and consciousness neither. In other words, it’s impossible to separate a fact from the consciousness of it, the reality of the world where we find ourselves from the knowledge of it, and of course knowledge itself from what is known.

(If parallel worlds exist ad infinitum in other dimensions even though we cannot grasp them with our ordinary senses of perception and limited intelligence, they will never go beyond this simple fact : "Consciousness and knowledge are one." Consciousness, the very fact of being able of knowing, and knowledge, the obvious fact of what is known, cannot be separated. Together, they express what is called "non-duality".

How and why the Divine would have fun to create something that the divine consciousness itself or anyone would not be able to know? This question is not a riddle. A fact which is obviously a manifestation is necessarily known; if not, it has no purpose or "raison d’être" and, consequently, will not appear. To understand this apparently absurd reasoning, we just have to realize that consciousness is universal, i.e. omniscient, what any reasonable person will never admit. Why? Because a reasonable person would recognize the existence of something if this thing is the object of a perception or a conceptualization, precisely what consciousness will never be for the simple reason that the fact of being conscious cannot become itself an known object of consciousness, being itself the only and eternal witness as the Vedas explain and repeat endlessly. So there is only one way to find out what really consciousness is ; it’s to simply be conscious and explore the experience of this mental faculty. Yes, but how to proceed and fully realize the true nature of it when we already know that we are conscious? In truth, nobody knows. Spiritual paths such as introspection, devotion, renunciation and all other yoga techniques are supposed to prepare to Self-realization, or in other words the revelation of what really is consciousness. But it cannot be said that a technique causes this realization. As I wrote in "Egocentricity and spirituality", these techniques make possible to empty one's cup, but no one knows how to fill it with bliss and why it happens suddenly.)

(In regard to the understanding of the foolish words that the man has read and heard, I have to narrate a fact that will enlighten the reader on one of the causes which maybe provoked this incredible experience. One day, I was in the office of Swamiji for I don’t know what reason and I saw a book which was thrown to the ground. I asked him what it was and he answered me that the best way to find out, it’s to take it and read what it is all about. A few days after reading this book, I bring it back and explain to him that in my opinion, it’s possible to go beyond non-duality. He looked at me right in the eyes and said : "You didn’t understand anything." I took it as if he has treated me like an idiot. Rather frustrated if not angry, I took the book back to read it again. It was" Pointers of Nisargadatta Maharaj" written by Baselkar and it especially was the first book I read about non-duality and the Yoga of knowledge. At that time, I was very impressed by the Sutras of Patanjali, the concept of freedom explain by Castaneda in "The eagle's gift" and some works of Sri Aurobindo. I didn’t know the Upanishads and what the Jnanis, masters of knowledge who realize the Self, were speaking about. After reading again this book more carefully in order to stop looking like a fool, I understood indeed that there could be nothing beyond non-duality, and that collapsed the foundation of all my beliefs, or more precisely what I imagined. As a nihilist in search of an ideal of freedom as stupid as the one who is seeking it, I could not decently have any belief. So I brought this book back to Swamiji without a comment to avoid any unpleasant remarks and asked him if he had another book on the same subject. He sprang to his room and soon returned with "Collected works of Ramana Maharshi." This book, and in particular the text entitled "Vivekachudamani" did much more than undermining my imagination. I read and read it again several times because I had the impression that it was taking me in a kind of spiral rushing into emptiness before I could understand the meaning of the text. When I read it, this book was absolutely magical. It caused an experience I never had before. And from that moment, I began to live the worst nightmare of my life until I woke up with a body as unknown as the world in which it was living.)

The two months which followed the beginning of this experience of the Self did not leave me any particular memory. I carry on living peacefully in the Ashram, but I stopped practicing yoga. My health was slowly getting better. As for the idea of ​​dying, it vanished like any other thoughts. During these two months and the five years that followed, I no longer had the ability to think or act, and even less to identify myself with the person I was. Had I thus become a kind of zombie? Not at all! The man who I was lived very well his life without "me". He always knew what to do just at the right time to do it. He no longer practiced meditation, but what he called "sittings", a practice which consists in sitting anywhere and watching anything. And sometimes, not very often I have to say, some thoughts crossed his mind. So he wrote them on pieces of paper and they became many years later materials to write the book "Egocentricity and spirituality". Nothing prevented him from living his life as normally as possible, and without any worry. How could he worry about anything in the absence of his faculty to think? When thoughts crossed his mind, they were not his but only thoughts. Certain situations awakes thoughts, he only had to listen to know them. And what’s about "me" in this very strange experience? Where do I fit in? Who I was and what was I doing? My presence, so to speak, was located in his ability to be conscious. I accompanied the person I was step by step in his life with a vivid interest and absolutely not concern about it. It is quite remarkable to observe what a body can do. This body that I should rather describe as a living organism or a person is incredibly intelligent. It doesn’t need a personal identity obsessed with his self-importance to live and express all its qualities. It may be only stardust as some people are used to say, but it’s a very well organized dust which has reached a level of refinement and sophistication that nothing on earth where it lives can match.

The mystery of life remained whole. Without thought and question about it, there was actually no mystery at all. The meaning of life for this body was simply to live until it dies. What the point to think about it when life is there, in and out, night and day? Life was a fact so obvious that it was not necessary to think about it.

(Let’s go back to my stay in the Ashram where was living the person who should become my Guru, Swami Girdanandaji.)

Swamiji stopped speaking to me. All his crazy remarks and talks were over. When we met, our relationship was limited to a few smiles. Do you think I went to see him to explain the experience I was living? No, this idea never crossed my mind. Do you think I could imagine for a moment that he had anything to do with this experience? No, it took me five years to realize that this old man was my Guru. The least I can say is that I was pretty stubborn. Not very surprising for a person who was obsessed by a crazy concept of freedom, a kind of ideal which obviously resulted in the philosophy of "No God no master" and therefore "no Guru"!

But the most difficult to explain is that this experience of the Self and consciousness frees the person from any kind of justification. How come? Just imagine what you’d become if suddenly you couldn’t manifest with thoughts your self-consciousness which repeats endlessly "I, I, I…" in your mind. Life would be so simple and natural that you will not feel any desire, especially not the desire to express your personality. To be clearer, I would say that you would have absolutely nothing to communicate to the others or yourself. And even more, if you’d stop to identify yourself with what you have always considered as your body and your mind, not only you would not have anything to say, but you wouldn't have the means to do it. What could you do with the faculty of thinking and speaking if the mind doesn't concern you? You could only watch it when it manifests without any judgment on any subject. Anyway, the fact is that I never went to see Swamiji to speak about this experience. It was he who came one day to tell me that I had only one week before my visa expires.

What can be done in a week without thinking is amazing. Swamiji not only told me that I had to leave India as soon as possible, but there were also demonstrations and strikes in Garhwal, the region where we lived, which would prevent me to do it. The roads were closed and there was no means of transportation. According the state of mind I was in, you can easily imagine that the news left me indifferent. Administrative matters do not really concern the consciousness of a someone in an ecstatic bliss. It’s therefore Swamiji who some days later came to look for me because he had finally found a bus going down to Rishikesh. I took my bag and went to his office to pay the rent of my room. He asked me to sit in his armchair and sat next to me on a stool. We were looking peacefully at the Ganges when for no particular reason I said : "So that's it !". And he replied with a smile and shaking his head as all Indians are used to do : "Yes, that's it !". This is the whole discussion we had about the experience of the Self before I leave. When I remember this very short talk, the situation is so absurd that I can only laugh. To thank him for what he did I don’t know how, anybody would have kissed his feet. But the experience I was living was so natural that I never got such an idea. As I said, it took me five years to realize that I had a Guru. So I took my bag and, after the highly philosophical talk that we just had, a metaphysical discussion at the very least extremely basic, I went away with the intention of coming back as soon as possible because I had nothing else to do and nowhere else to go.

After Rishikesh, I went to Varanasi where I still had a bag instead of going directly to the Nepalese border. This bag was in the house of a person I had met some months earlier, Jacques Vigne who seems to have become well known in the world of spirituality today if I believe Internet. But I couldn't remember where he was living, and I must say to those who don’t know Varanasi, it’s a very ancient city similar to a labyrinth of narrow streets where it's very easy to get lost. Carefree and above all without the slightest thought in his mind, the person who I was ventured into the maze of these picturesque streets in which you never know where you are heading for. I still don’t understand how this amazing feat is possible, but this person found without knowing what he was looking for the house where he had left his bag. After knocking on the door, an old Mataji as we say respectfully in India to describe a grandmother opened the door. She didn’t speak a word of English. So I explained to her with gestures and some words of Hindi the reason for my coming. She didn’t seem to understand the purpose of my visit in her home and slammed the door in my face. What to do when there's nothing left to do ? Well, I stayed in front the door waiting. Maybe a quarter of an hour later, Mataji opened the door with a big smile and my bag in her hand. Is there anything to understand? Life is sometimes of a disconcerting simplicity : just need to be patient!

Then I took a bus to go to the border which I crossed the next day before it closed and my visa expires. Five days after my arrival in Nepal, I found myself in a plane in destination of Paris. Why? I don’t know. This journey in France lasted only a few months before I embarked for Asia again, but this time flying over India without stopping there, which is totally absurd. Why did I go in a monstrous Chinese city instead of going back in the Himalayas on the banks of the Ganges where I knew a wonderful and lovely Ashram ? I don't have any idea why, but I know that I lived five years in an extremely peaceful state in which the silence of consciousness reigned supreme until a strange thought crossed my mind. This thought that I will never forget was so obvious that I really don't know why I didn't have it before : "This old man I met in the mountains, it’s my Guru !" This thought immediately changed what I should call my mental operating system. The little word that overthrew what I was going through is this "my" Guru, the Guru who is "mine", who belongs to "me". After five years without a personal identity nor the ability to express my own thoughts which obviously were absent, I found myself with a Guru, a body and all my mental faculties without leaving the silence of consciousness. Such reversal of situation should have been an incredible surprise. In fact, it left me totally indifferent. And the first thing I did was to go back to India to meet the man who became "my" Guru. But I never saw again with his body. Never mind, this trip gave me the opportunity to discover another extraordinary caracter, Mister Brahma Chaitanya of Gangotri, who initiated me into Vedanta and especially Advaita Vedanta.

Why to tell this story if it’s not to brag about my achievements which should make me a so-called enlightened and liberated one, a free living soul, a Guru or some other stupid qualification very fashionable today in the west ? Do you think that this kind of experience makes someone a son of God, an avatar, a master of anything or a enlightened and liberated soul? It only unveils what we all are, our true nature and nothing more. When I discover years later the emergence of westerners who claim to be enlightened and liberated guru after a spiritual experience, I just couldn’t get it. What kind of joke is that? What did they understood about their experience? Instead of realizing that they are human like anybody else, they want to teach to everybody how to live and how to get such experience although they cannot know themselves how it happens… if it really happened. I’d like the reader to understand that the person I was before, during these five years and the twenty which followed has never changed. Why should he change? He is certainly not perfect, but is perfection itself something else than a thought? Of course this experience after leaving the ecstasy of it makes you thinking about the true nature of consciousness, of life itself and what’s going on in the world, but it doesn’t make you better, more smart or superior in any way than anybody else. So what is there to teach? And why to use spiritual teaching as a power over the others? It’s insane. If these people want to follow the Guru tradition of the Hindus which only really makes sense in the Hindu context, do they know what it really means? They should read a little about the life of Ramana Maharshi and think twice at their pretension instead of taking spirituality as profitable ego-trip.

The concept of spiritual liberation is utterly absurd. Whatever the truths a person can realize, he or she remains a body with the mental faculties of its brain, a man is a man, a woman remains a woman, and it they come from a western culture, they don't suddenly become Hindus. All the magical and extraordinary stories told about this so-called liberation don’t concern the ultimate goal of spirituality, to know the truth and find out what we are, our true nature. This experience of pure bliss and non-duality, of happiness and unlimited freedom that we all seek in some way everyday, teaches nothing and certainly not how to live it. The experience shows what is true and the superficiality of the mind, and it does it without any explanation. The few people I met on the road who has also lived the same experience, which cannot really be considered as an experience since it reveals the true presence of the being that everyone already embodies, know perfectly well that this experience doesn't make you a saint and especially not a Guru. It reveals another realm of reality. And this amazing domain of reality is in fact so simple and obvious that it’s difficult to talk about to those who don’t know it. Let's be very clear on this topic; there is no liberation of any kind in this experience. It could be called an awakening, a Satori, an epiphany, or more simply a spiritual experience, but it's not the definitive Self-realization from which nobody comes back.

The worst in this experience is that it also reveals that everything is perfect. It's absolutely immoral in a world where there is so much suffering. But there it is! Everyone has to hear this truth as he can understand it and act as he wishes. This kind of realization is not an open door to an indifference or ecstasy which would make us forget the realities of the world we live in. Consciousness loves action, its Shakti. The creation is the only way out of its own contemplation without leaving it. It’s, as the Hindus say, a performance, a dance, a show, an illusion, a dream ... Yes, it's immoral but we have to understand the philosophical context of this view of reality. On the other hand, look at the results of Judeo-Christian morality. Never forget that the immoral and spiritual knowledge of the Hindus always begins with the practice of Yamas and Niyamas, the most basic moral and social code of humanity that teaches how to live correctly, how to respect others and oneself, and also respect the nature, the very world may be illusory but real enough to live in. What’s left of this moral and social code in the West? And this is we, westerners, who are going to judge that Hindu spirituality is immoral, that the world cannot possibly be perfect and at the same time a dream, and that we are not entitled to embody the Divine on the grounds that it's a privilege granted only to an elite, not to say to the only son of God? How the Divine could be so immoral and insane?

In the spirituality as we know it today, 99% are about stories and search for power, many different kind of psychic or very basic power, 1% maybe is about the final truth and supreme knowledge. But what the proponents of spirituality don’t see is that this 1% determines the ultimate power, the power to embody a universal consciousness and live in peace. Yes, just to live in peace! And better to understand the meaning of the word "peace" in regard to the Self, the heart and the mind if we really want to know the beauty and perfection of this bliss.

Would we have another mission in this world than to live with a clear consciousness and a body which is going to die soon or late? Nothing prevents us to act as we like, but why not to do it without torturing our mind with futile thoughts and especially without disturbing the others. The only message I got from this experience is as Ramana Maharshi said : "Thinking is not our true nature." There is something else. There is an experience of the Self which is true, truer than anything already known, and everybody can live it. We just need to look for it and be sincerely dedicated to this spiritual quest. We just have to really want the truth because we already intuitively know that everything in the world we live in is fake and somehow a lie. But what we don't realize is that we are the lie. Our egocentricity, self-importance and self-esteem are the lie which fake our understanding and perception of everything inside and outside of our self-consciousness.

Can we understand that the expression of our life and thoughts are mostly a pretext to assert the personality of an ego which in fact doesn’t exist? Do we realize how much we waste our life in the mind rather than living with what we really are, a body with a heart, an intelligence and above all an eternal and infinite consciousness? That's what gave us Mother Nature, the creation and the Divine. Isn’t it an amazing gift for all our life? There is too much suffering in the world. Why should we create more of it with our petty problems of personal identity? We have a divine right, the power to think, to use our imagination and to communicate. What do we do with it? We have the supreme power of being conscious. What do we know about it?

The current culture encourages us to desire always more, more money, more power and more notoriety to inflate the ego and have more problems too. Isn’t life complicated enough in the modern world of today? Instead of thinking all day long on the past, the present and especially the future if..., why not to think sanely at what we really want and like, and what we all are individually, small creatures, created as the term implies, with a life to live without pretension? "I have problems" is to claim that "I" exists and has a reality. "I want, I can, I wish, I desire, I hope, I suffer, I, I, I…" is still the expression of an useless self-importance. "I am a spiritual master, a Guru." Oh my dear, who are you to patronize me? "I am a sage who knows the truth and can teach to you." Let me laugh! Life is anything except pretending to be wise. How to find the truth without being crazy enough to look for it beyond the mind? A minimum of madness is essential just to think that such a truth could exist. But this divine madness doesn’t make suffering. It opens up a space that you will discover with rapture.

"The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to experience."

Aart van der Leeuw

(In response to an anonymous reader who treats me of "super ken-guru" because I dare to criticize the gang of ken-gurus to which he probably belongs, could he tell me if the fact of expressing my thoughts makes me also a "super thinker"? I would be glad to read that in his next mail, but given the content of his writings, I already have an idea of the answer.)

11 / 30 / 2011

Non-duality and the absolute.

Nothing more absurd to explain.

Nothing more divine to experience.

Before to become a concept,

non-duality and the absolute determine a state of mind, a state of being in itself and especially the true nature of being as such.

And this knowledge is much more than an experience.

12 / 6 / 2011

Good Lord ! What is the real nature of a spiritual experience ?

What is it for ?

And finally, does it need a purpose?

The concept of "synchronicity" or "significant coincidence" is amazing. What could be more puzzling? But what Jung didn't realize is that there is only significant coincidences in the Self and reality as it is, the reality perceived when we are in our natural state, Sahaja Samadhi. But you don't have to be in this state to understand why. And somehow, if you understand why, it means that you already are in this state because understanding itself is a peculiar state of mind very close to the true nature of being.

If you stop living in your mind which means among other things jumping back and forth with your thoughts in the past and the future, what could be left? Only the natural perfection of the present and, of course, meaningful synchronicity, i.e. obvious relations of cause and effect and events which have necessarily a signification bound to the context of perfection.

The being as such with its intelligence cannot separate obvious, natural, perfect and meaningful.

In other words, what has a meaning is always obvious, natural and perfect. As a matter of fact, only the concept of synchronicity denies the synchronicity of everything happening in our life and in the world.

So to sum up, nothing happens by chance if you are not living in the conceptual sphere that represents the mind. It's nevertheless true that there are stunning events and combination of circumstances which defy understanding.

There won't be also any perfection without mystery.

Some experiences teach more without understanding than many explanations.

And if some of them always come back, it's only because they have not been understood yet.

It seems that life tries to teach something inexplicable.

12 / 10 / 2011

Spiritual liberation is to realize that the Self is your true nature. And because it's your true nature, the one you maybe don't know but cannot lose, some Gurus say that you are already liberated.

You don't see the space,

you look at what is in the space.

You don't see the light,

you look at what is lighted up.

You ignore consciousness,

you just enjoy to be conscious.

What a shame not to see what's inside yourself!

Space, light and consciousness.

12 / 13 / 2011

Self-realization is "to be".

Nothing more, nothing less !

What's the point to speak about?

You know what means "to be".

The fact is that you don't.

You know what means to be this or that.

But just to be, you have no idea of what it is.

So we can speak a lot about it.

The Self is closer to you than your own eyes.

And of course, you don't see it.

The Self is also inside and all around you.

And you don't see it too.

Let's be very clear on this point.

You can only realize the Self when you are in your natural state, Sahaja Samadhi.

It means when you are an ocean of bliss, the Self.

When you leave this state, Self-realization is over and the ego reappears.

In other words, you didn't realize the Self, but had a glimpse of it.

Don't fool yourself with your spiritual experiences.

"To realize the Self, it's to be the Self"

and not anymore the body and the mind that you thought to be.

Just imagine what could mean not to be at all concerned by the person you were before Self-realization.

12 / 17 / 2011

_ Is non-duality a religious experience? A mystical experience? A spiritual experience?

_ No, it's much more simple, just no "I" different of the experience, whatever the experience is. The most ordinary will be fine.

I remember myself.

Why should I forget it?

The past is not an illusion

nor something else than experiences already lived?

"Myself" doesn't mean anything else than "already lived".

1 / 5 / 2012

With others, it's too easy.

If you like experiences, take yourself as the guinea pig.

In that way, you will be the first to know if something went wrong.

1 / 12 / 2012

A psychologist will obviously consider the experience of consciousness or Self-realization as a mental sickness, an identity crisis, a hysteria attack, a neurosis, a psychosis, a loss of contact with reality, a symptom of schizophrenia or paranoia, etc. and he will find a lot of words to describe what he cannot understand. And he will have of course a mountain of arguments to prove it. But what he doesn’t know is that everybody would love to have this sickness, him the first.

Life is an experience which never stops to teach until the end,

and maybe more than ever at the end.

The most narrow letter.

One of the most amazing experiences that one can have is to realize that "I" is only one letter of the alphabet and nothing else. It's just a word!

Our self-consciousness is nothing more than a concept, a thought, the idea we have about ourself at the precise moment of the manifestation of this idea in the mind. Before and after, there is no self-consciousness. If it comes and goes, I and me don't exist either.

Fullness is an emptiness where nothing is missing.

Not a trace of a desire, that's what could be called a divine peace.

Each experience has many and serious consequences.

Better to look for a good one when it’s possible!

4 / 15 / 2013

The plenitude of "here and now"

Plenitude means abundance, adequacy, the condition of being full, ample or complete.

If you feel full, complete and that nothing is missing, it’s a state of mind without any desire and stress. It’s a very peaceful, silent and open state of consciousness. It’s the most basic experience of consciousness itself. This experience of being simply and fully conscious is available at every moment. Just be aware of it. More you become conscious of this kind of instant enlightenment, more it happens unintentionally. And soon it will be your natural state.

5 / 12 / 2013

You won’t find the true extreme in physical feats,

but just behind a thought…,

any thought.

Somehow, a spiritual experience is always a love story.

7 / 11 / 2013

Experience

"Wait and see… by your Self."

No duality, no difference

"Before Enlightenment chop wood carry water.

After Enlightenment, chop wood carry water."

What's the difference?

There is no difference.

That’s precisely the difference!

To be and to do

I am what I’m doing when I’m doing it.

And I can do it only because I am conscious of it.

8 / 8 / 2013

Tat Vam Asi (Tu es ça)

To be one with consciousness is to be conscious of the person you thought to be, and not to be anymore a person who think to be conscious. So if you are the universal consciousness, who is going to speak about it? Being, consciousness and bliss, the Self and the Divine, the absolute and non-duality don’t speak. With who or what could they speak? The concept non-duality means that there is not two, that is to say there is not another with who one could talk.

8 / 30 / 2013

Infinite space

You need to be very small to experience something very big.

And the smaller you are the larger you can enjoy.

So small that at the end…

"The end justifies the means"

Negation in not an end in itself, but the mean which must soon or late be dropped. No spiritual experience can negate the essential conditions for the happening of this experience, which are of course the body and the mind, that is to say the person that we are and who is capable to live this experience. A truth without having the experience of it is only poetry.

10 / 3 / 2013

Enlightenment doesn’t pay the bills

Whatever the spiritual experience we live, there is one experience that is not going to stop as long as we are alive, the one which makes us human beings. So living is somehow the most spiritual experience that we can really have because whatever we try to realize in our spiritual quest, we will never go beyond our basic needs. And after having realized the ultimate and supreme purpose of this spiritual quest, we will still have the same needs.

We spiritualize our entire life in every of its aspects, even the most ordinary, or we enjoy sometimes a good show, a mystical experience, which will somehow always be disappointing because it never lasts enough, that is to say forever.

So the question: "What truly is enlightenment? An amazing experience or a remarkable life lived on a noble path, a just and correct one as would says Buddha?"

Why not both?

Lux Omnia Vincit

The proof that anybody can do it, it’s that I did it.

The proof that I can do it, it’s that someone did it.

10 / 8 / 2013

Incense for the gods

If the ultimate goal of spiritual life was to live mystical experiences, shops of hallucinogens would be the only sacred places where people would come to pray.

10 / 24 / 2013

Exerpts of an interview of David Godman by Rick Archer available at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xayU4f5--I

DG - When the liberated man dies, there is no name, no form that continues in any realm whatsoever.

.............................................................................

RA - There is an old Tibetan saying which I’ve said far too many times during these interview shows, but it’s "Don’t mistake understanding for realization. Don’t mistake realization for liberation." So it implies that there are stages of realization and stages of enlightenment.

DG - No, there are levels of mind; there are levels of experience, but no stages of liberation. Every liberated being is in the same state. Everybody else is in a state of mind.

............................................................................

(About the so-called "Crazy Wisdom")

DG - I think if you are fully enlightened, then you don’t have any choices. You don’t decide what you do. You don’t decide what you don’t do. You don’t get tempted by desires. You don’t have to fight them off.

10 / 25 / 2013

Lux mentis scientia (Knowledge is the Light of the Mind)

When time stands still,

silence is here and now,

crystal clear.

It's like a shower but from inside.

Don't try to understand.

Stop thinking and see by yourself.

12 / 19 / 2013

Live your own experience

Your thoughts will always prove to you that you are right. Then what?

The search for the truth is not about right or wrong.

It’s a quest which obviously shows that you don’t know.

As for the Guru who is supposed to know, he or she perfectly understood the difference between conceptual and experiential knowledge.

So don't lose too much time with the experience of others because it will always be tasteless compared to yours.

The very strange concept of time

If it’s possible to predict the future,

it’s only because it’s happening now.

Alone and unique

You are the only one who can realize the Self.

Nobody else in the world will be able to do it for you.

It’s a full time activity or an entertainment

Sometimes you are active and sometimes passive.

Understand very well the difference between sitting and dynamic meditation.

If you are on a spiritual path, you absolutely need to practice both.

Being and knowing

Self-realization is not about becoming something else.

It’s about being right now what we already are very deep inside ourselves.

And already being it, we only can become conscious of what it is.

12 / 23 / 2013

Bliss

The true pleasure is beyond every pleasure.

But who has the guts to taste it.

1 / 5 / 2014

"Spiritureality"

What is enlightenment?

Seeing reality as it is.

What is reality as it is?

We have no idea of what it is.

We will never have any idea of what it could be.

That’s what enlightenment is all about.

1 / 9 / 2014

The next step

After a deep mystical experience, we have to experiment new ways of doing things and of understanding life with new structure of the mind, otherwise what was the point of it? Only the pleasure of living an experience?

The full picture

Our true nature is the one of a vast conscious space that we cannot really ignore. Being determines the presence of an infinite space of bliss ever present in consciousness.

But our true nature is not only the one of a pure consciousness. We also embody the experience of life with a body and a mind.

Bliss and then

If a blissful experience could solve every problem of the daily life, the entire humanity would live in a paradise since a very long time.

2 / 23 / 2014

Dipa Ma about enlightenment

"Oh, you don’t understand! Life was dull and boring before. Always the same routine, nothing new. Once you get rid of all that stale stuff you’ve been carrying around, every moment is fresh and new, interesting and alive. Now everything has zest and taste. No two moments are ever the same."

http://www.tricycle.com/interview/enlightenment-lifetime-meetings-remarkable-woman?page=0,0

3 / 18 / 2014

Free will or fate

Materialism or spiritualism, reality or illusory dream, the power of self-consciousness or the power of the situation and circumstances, etc.

Why no theory is able to truly explain how life is unfolding such as we live it minute after minute, second after second? Is it my choices, that is to say my thoughts, unconsciousness or the situation which determines my actions? It seems that every theory about this subject is right as well as wrong, that none of them can even answer to the questions they raise.

It seems obvious that I can think and act with my will power. And it’s true that I can simply be the witness of my thoughts and actions without interfering with any intention, except the one of only watching what’s going on. But how does it really work beyond my personal impression?

Of course I will never find any answer to this question by thinking or acting. So why do I want to know how it works while in fact life is unfolding naturally with or without my consent? Because suffering is a mental mechanism which works so well that I’d like to definitely stop it or at least be able to interrupt it whenever I wish with just my will power.

Who is the master on board?

Or even better, is there any beyond what I think?

"I come from where I’ve been"

It’s useless trying to forget it.

Enlightenment has nothing to do with oblivion

and even less with the darkness of amnesia.

4 / 20 / 2014

Tao and enlightenment

No one would say that a book is exceptional because the last sentence is amazing.

What could mean a sentence out of its context?

Singularity of good and evil

The eternal contest between good and evil is far from over even if you think to be liberated from it.

Just wait and enjoy the show!

That's going to be another kind of mystical experience that you won't forget either.

6 / 23 / 2014

The image of the crucified or superman

When it is said that liberation comes from within, and true happiness and peace of mind can only be found inside us too, it certainly doesn’t mean that our relationship with the outside world is without importance. The final touch of the teaching of Jesus is probably when, on the cross, he doubted about the authenticity of his identity with God and so demonstrated that he was still human. And any sensible person would understand his doubt without any explanation because we all are human too.

Who on earth can sincerely think that it’s possible to experience bliss with a nail in each hands and feet hanging on a cross? If it was truly possible after being liberated, I really wonder why every true Guru enjoys a simple, safe and quite comfortable life as anybody else. Why do they teach sanity, how to be a good and sensible human being and not how to become a martyr perfectly insensitive to any kind of suffering even those of the body in order to prove the authenticity of their teaching about liberation?

Let’s be back on earth and stop believing that spiritual liberation makes people superhuman and frankly inhuman, that Jesus couldn’t suffer on the cross or that Ramana Maharshi was totally unconcerned with the tumor he had under his arm.

Our true nature is Sat Chit Ananda: being, consciousness and bliss. The true nature of what or more precisely who? If it’s not of the person with a body, a mind and a soul, that we all are individually, it cannot be the true nature of Brahman who already is identical to Sat Chit Ananda and who has never been anything else. Isn’t it obvious? Brahman doesn’t need to realize the Self or to be liberated. He is pure and absolute knowledge and so he cannot ignore his true nature, that is to say himself. How knowledge could become ignorance and remain absolute or consciousness become unconscious of itself? How could there be some darkness left in the light? It would be a complete nonsense and certainly not a paradox.

To teach as many Neo Advaita gurus do it today that God loses or forget himself in order to create and enjoy the creation, then to rediscover his true nature through an enlightenment, awakening and Self-realization is not only an absurdity, but it also contradicts every definition of Brahman found in the Mahavakyas. We are nothing more than humble human being with a divine nature. Nothing more in this world! Isn’t it enough? "I am Brahman" is a Mantra concerning what is the true nature of being and of a conscious existence, not of who we are as human beings. We are nothing more than simple people, and the fact to know it naturally at any time without any effort proves that our true nature is this pure consciousness always present in any event.

We are conscious human being. Consciousness is our true nature. Being human is our modest reality. So let's enjoy both and stop believing that we are God?

Astronaut

Is the body nothing more than a spacesuit under the automatic control of a brain

that we give up when it’s not anymore functional?

If so, let’s have a cosmic experience!

Sit, close your eyes, watch and let it go up to heaven

just to see.

Meditation is always beyond the one who meditates.

Psychedelic

- What do you think of mind expanding drugs?

- If you got an ignorant mind, all you get is expanding ignorance.

Lama Govinda

The game

If you think to be enlightened and liberated, ask to yourself "Who is enlightened and liberated?"

And bingo! Back to square one.

From the fourth dimension

How is it to be human?

Because without the space suit, it’s pretty vast!

A very dangerous statement and belief

"I speak from my experience."

With a so strange and sophisticated

and not especially always reliable instrument like the brain,

we never really know what it means.

Static and full of energy

What’s great with consciousness and spiritual awakening is that you don’t have to expect anything sometime in the future. It’s always in a process of realization.

7 / 13 / 2014

Aware of Nirvana now

Awareness, that is to say knowing, is always and only possible here, now and everywhere.

And awareness, pure attention, determines also a perfect peace of mind.

Do you realize what it means, the power and beauty of it?

To be or not to be… anymore the thinker

A spiritual experience shows that we are on the right track and the quest can really start because now we know what we do have to realize… until the next experience. But if you think that this experience is the end of the path and you are liberated, you obviously didn’t understand that you still are the thinker and of course quite far from liberation. Let’s be clear on this point even if it’s difficult to admit, Self-realization as Ramana Maharshi embodied during his life time are extremely uncommon.

9 / 6 / 2014

Just to set the record straight

"Do not mistake understanding for realization,

and do not mistake realization for liberation."

Buddhist saying

But today, we could simply say "Do not mistake a simple spiritual experience for true liberation".

For some strange reasons, westerners tend to jump over every step.

It’s probably due to the discovery of escalators in shopping malls.

Do nothing, practice nothing, just be delighted in delusion and sweet dreams in the great Neo Advaita bubble.

Bye bye forever !

"Life is a state of mind" (in "Being there")

If spiritual liberation is nothing more than a peculiar state of mind, the ultimate truth, the Self, God, being, consciousness and bliss, etc. is also a state of mind.

But what could mean "The absolute truth is a state of mind" ?

I just don’t get it because I thought it was a revelation about something true and universal, and not a personal impression.

Possible experience

Just imagine what could be waking up one morning without the presence of yourself.

10 / 9 / 2014

That’s life !

All the lives are different.

The needs of experience for each one are too

although the desire for liberation is the same for everybody.

What are you really looking for ?

A spiritual experience lasts only a moment.

Self-realization is forever.

And after

After all, life goes on.

And how it goes on is more important than any spiritual experience.

10 / 25 / 2014

The Self

The power of the mind is so extraordinary that it seems sometimes that microcosm and macrocosm are perfectly combined and information transfers from one to the other.

The most amazing is that it also can happen with the body. And that’s a divine impression…, to feel the universe through oneself. But of course, it’s nothing more than a subjective impression.

On the other hand, the Self cannot be perceived. We can realize and be the Self, but we cannot know it from a point of view inside or outside what it is, pure consciousness. The only way to know the Self is to be the Self, and when we know it, we obviously are not anymore a body with a mind.

Such a realization cannot be understood intellectually, but only lived. But lived by whom ? By a person who can only be a body with a brain and its mental faculties. And now it’s even more incomprehensible because in fact, we have to be what we are not in order to realize what we truly are, or in other words, we have to be a person in order to know that we are not a person or more precisely that our true nature is the one of a pure and universal consciousness which cannot compared to the reality of an individual consciousness limited to the mental faculties of a brain.

So what could be the experience lived by someone who has realized the Self ? Here the term "non-duality" can help because it allows us to have an idea of what seems to be a complete absurdity. The Jnani is truly the Self without losing the knowledge of his or her body including its physical and mental activities. The universal consciousness, which is also pure bliss, replaces the individual consciousness of being a person limited by physical and mental faculties. The Jnani can only be what Brahman is, Sat-Chit-Ananda, and yet he or she still is a human being.

12 / 3 / 2014

"The sage is enlightened, but he doesn’t advertise the fact."

Taoist quote from Chu-feng

Why not ?

Why is it usually not advise to speak about enlightenment in traditional spirituality, but only the path which leads to it ?

The reason is simple ; once the ego hears about a peculiar state of mind, liberated or something else, and therefore knows the extraordinary experience it wishes to live, it can reproduce it in its imagination, but only with its own means, that is to say on a mental level, not beyond, and of course, it’s not anymore a genuine enlightenment.

If you don't believe me, how can you figure out any kind of experience you never lived, but only heard about it ? The description of a painting or a story for instance ?

3 / 17 / 2015

Candies

Experiences or so-called awakenings are nothing more than candies on the path.

The path is spiritual.

The experience is interesting.

The path leads to Self-realization.

The experience comes to a dead end..., a memory.

The path is called Tao, Dharma, truth, virtue, enlightenment, knowledge, etc.

The experience happens in space and time, a moment.

The experience doesn’t make the person better or happier.

The path does it ; it is its purpose.

The experience is great.

The path is wisdom… pure and simple.

Yes…, wisdom !

5 / 1 / 2015

Awakening or new dream

The moment you think to be spiritually awakened, enlightened or liberated, you are not awakened, enlightened and liberated.

It’s purely a figment of imagination.

The moment the ego pretends to any realization of the Self, consciousness, non-duality, etc., this personal identity didn’t realize anything.

Only the ego can pretend to this kind of achievement.

And this is the least concern of consciousness itself that watches peacefully as usual the circus of thoughts and states of mind rising and falling one after another.

A blissful state of mind is still a state of mind and not the natural state of pure consciousness that cannot be associated with any specific state, which of course would condition something that can only be unconditional and absolute.

If non-duality truly means "without a second", there is no limit, boundary and restriction, and consequently there is nothing beyond, no state and no condition.

If someone pretends to Self-realization, a Self without a second, to whom it can pretend to such a realization ? To another who wouldn’t be a second... someone ? It doesn’t make sense !

Beautiful experiences…, then what ?

If you take away from your spiritual life the quest for awakening, what’s left ?

A spiritual experience doesn’t make you a better person.

So if you have the privilege to live one or some of these beautiful experiences, what’s left of your spirituality when the experience is over ?

Nothing ?

Spirituality is the practice of Dharma, refinement of your personality, purification of your psychology, effort, choice, will power, free will, compassion and love instead of hate and cheating, quest for truth, integrity, honesty, sincerity, the opposite of cowardice…

There you can find some real spirituality and wisdom, and not in any sublime experiences or ridiculous metaphysical blah blah blah presented on a silver plate with a beautiful smile.

6 / 2 / 2015

Understanding

Many are those who think spiritual awakening and Self-realization are… or only result from a conceptual understanding and intellectual achievement.

How could it make sense ? Spiritual awakening and Self-realization obviously transcend the intellect and thoughts if they truly are spiritual, that is to say, beyond any concepts. If they were only kind of understanding, it would be enough to realize that the true "I" cannot be the object of any perceptions, but the immutable subject, consciousness itself, and that this subject is pure bliss and pure being beyond time and space too because it can only be beyond duality in the absence of objects.

But as long as pure bliss and pure being are not a fact experienced by a living being, somehow a revelation that cannot let any doubts about what they are, it doesn’t go beyond a theory with very little importance.

I really wonder why today a huge crowd of Westerns think that spirituality is only food for thoughts and doesn’t have to be practiced, and also why they even call it "the direct path". Since there is no path at all, no Dharma, no practices, no knowledge, but nothing except kind of intellectual blah blah blah, why not to simply call it "nihilism" ? Maybe because it won’t sound spiritual enough ? Too bad ! It could have been more honest.

5 / 11 / 2016

Mystery

Be sure that death will tell what was "The meaning of life"

at every believer or nihilist without exception in one way or another.

And if there is nothing and no one to hear it,

the explanation will be even more obvious.

11 / 2 / 2016

When one reaches a certain level of so-called "realization",

that is to say "understanding beyond belief",

which doesn’t go beyond the intellect anyway

because there is obviously no level in "Self-realization",

experience of pure and global consciousness or even less the one of non-duality,

thinking doesn’t help anymore, but only the ultimate question

"So what’s left ?" can still have any meaning and purpose.

One has to ask that question if one really wants to find out the answer.

It’s not going to fall magically and blissfully from the sky

and it’s obviously not positive… "thinking" that is going to help.

Going back to a path, Tao and Dharma,

or starting to tread the path is the only answer and solution

after a spiritual experience or so-called awakening

despite one might usually think and which is, most of the time,

"I’m done…, totally liberated !” and so “Now let’s be a guru"

because such a thought doesn’t surely express any wisdom

or realization of anything, except the one of a very clear personal egocentric

ambition with a touch of extravagant megalomania.

Wishing to help others is a very noble ambition, but becoming a guru…

as blind as the people following his or her teaching is not a humanitarian effort

or the expression of compassion unfortunately becoming very trendy today

and so profitable that it’s a real "business of unconscious generosity".

Before giving or paying, understand clearly the experience you're trying to buy.

A true spiritual experience, realization or teaching and wisdom

cannot be a new consumer product.

That will never happen as long as we search for something really true and pure.

2 / 5 / 2018

It cannot change

"That which is born must die, and that which is acquired must be lost."

This universal law is eternal.

Concerning Self-realization, what comes and goes is without importance.

That truth dismisses any kind of mystical experiences

even the most sublime, and especially those ones,

the most misleading.

Truth is truth.

You have it right in front of you,

and right inside of you.

There is no way you can miss it.

But it's maybe too ordinary for you.