Éric Baret: Interview #3

[Guest guest]

INTERVIEWER: Then what point is there in making any effort? Even if

we have no goal, we will move in some direction or another, and we

may call this " effort " . Does it make any difference whether we

just

hang out with friends and watch TV, or attempt to become satvic,

live

in a very pure environment and read sacred texts? Is there any

difference in the end?

 

Only for the one who projects. All values are only our values.

Maharaja lived in very tamasic surroundings, ate meat, and he lived

in freedom. Some people live in an ashram and are very pure, but

they

live in fear and expectation. So things have no value. For someone

living next door to a musician, playing the piano for an hour

everyday day is an effort, but for the musician it is not an effort.

If it is an effort, he is not a musician. Someone who does yoga and

knows that he is doing yoga, is not doing yoga; for in yoga there is

no room for knowledge, it is only feeling. If you are making an

effort, if it is an effort to meditate, then it is total nonsense.

At

some point, the effort is to watch TV, not to meditate. Things come

naturally. Some foods attract you more than others, some friends

attract you more than others, some music more than others, some

spaces more than others: it is totally functional and none is better

then the other. For many people the battlefield could be a place of

grace, where they realize their fear and what they really are made

of. For some others, this place is meditation. Grace is to be found

where volition, and pretense end.

 

When we think we are making an effort, when we claim we are doing

something, there is no room for grace. Realize that there is no

doer.

It is not for me to choose to do yoga or not. I just witness it. If

I

do yoga, I do yoga; if I don't do yoga, I don't do yoga. How can I

change my life? I can not change anything. I am a witness to the

fact

that I am drawn to live in the Himalayas, that I am drawn to live in

a hotel, in a ballroom. To think that one is better than an other

makes absolutely no sense. They are just different life styles. We

all need different encounters so as to mature. In order to mature,

some people need to meditate, whereas others need to do drugs or to

go at war.

 

We are not entitled to grace because of our pretense that we are the

doer. There is no doer but the Lord Himself. When I see that I am

nothing: there is only the Lord. Then grace can be said to be

forefelt. To believe that I should be somewhere other than in a

concentration camp is wishful thinking, a judgment.

 

For Jacques Lusseyran, Auschwitz was his grace. For some people,

yoga

is a grace, but for most people it is pure delusion. For most people

doing sadhana is an illusion; it brings sorrow and leaves them

dissatisfied. It will not bring them anything, especially if they

expect something from it. They end up saying that they didn't get

what they wanted. That is their problem. If I believe I need to do

this, or that, or to read sacred texts, I'm in for big trouble, I'm

in for feeling lonely, separate, because I am looking for myself

where I am not. Of course I feel unloved, misunderstood, experience

difficulties. When I come back to myself, I realize I was looking in

the wrong direction, I was trying to find myself in my body-mind. I

acknowledge this lack of understanding. I accept it lucidly; I

cannot

think otherwise. What remains is resonance: I'm present. I'm not

present to something, I'm simply present. I find happiness here,

once

I no longer believe it is somewhere else. Thinking that I must do

this or do that is simply a story.

 

If I have to move one millimeter, it is of no interest to me. What I

want is none other than what I have. If I look deep inside myself, I

don't have to make a single movement. Anything that I can find

outside myself, I may loose. I go nowhere, I stay where I am. If I'm

in jail I stay in jail, if I'm in an ashram I stay in an ashram, if

I'm at home I stay at home. Out there, there is nothing waiting for

me. To think that there is anything other than what is here right

now

is a total fantasy and it prevents grace from being felt.