Éric Baret: Interview #2

[Guest guest]

INTERVIEWER: It seems that such grace often happens to people who

never actively look for it. Are there some people more qualified

than

others to receive grace or does it just happen at random to poor

unsuspecting people?

 

A: If it seems to fall at random on people, it is because we don't

observe closely. People who live according to grace may seem to have

lived a very simple life, but I think it is their humility or our

lack of clarity that makes it seem like that.

 

It is our lack of clarity that prevents us from seeing that people

we

imagine to be entitled to grace because they make huge efforts in

sadhana, are in fact totally caught up in the becoming process. They

live in a state of constant tension, in wanting to become something,

wanting to be free. In wanting, there is no room for anything.

Wanting to be free, wanting to be rich, to be beautiful, to have a

red car, all amount to exactly the same thing. There simply is no

room for anything in wanting. The few people who have been audacious

enough to describe the descent of grace have all said that at that

moment they were just silent and quiet.

 

Jean Klein said that he watched a bird on the Marina Drive in

Bombay.

Virgil realized that there was no rush to do anything. It only

strikes in a moment of not knowing, not asserting; it can never

strike in a moment of expectation, where there is waiting or a

desire

to attain something. Anybody seeking grace can only come to see his

limitations. For those who are humble enough to recognize how

undeserving they are of grace, who feel their inability to stop the

dynamics that motivate them, who realize they are totally unworthy

of

grace because they constantly live in a state of expectation, this

clear vision is itself grace. Nothing happens.

 

When I believe that because I do yoga, because I meditate, or do

this

or that, I should come to grace, then it is extremely pretentious on

my part. It is very clear that grace does not result from activity.

Of course, in a profound sense everything is grace: looking for

grace

and looking for money is carried by grace itself. It is what we

need.

We should not change our lives: if one wants to do yoga, if one

wants

to earn money, one should go ahead. We just need to see that our

motivations come from our lack of clarity. At some point we simply

no

longer expect anything from activity. We simply do for the sake of

doing. Grace is nothing other than this becoming totally obvious. It

is not seeing a white elephant or the full form of Vishnu; it is

seeing how pretentious we are. There can never be anything else but

that, that is the ultimate seeing. Wanting to see God is a fantasy.