On Anger - Article by Eric Baret

[Guest guest]

Dear List Members

 

It is said that Eric is the lantern keeper

since the demise of Jean Klein.

 

Jean spent many years during his search

in India and finally adopted a special form

of Kashmiri Saivism Tantra after studing

advaita from the illuminious Atmananda

(Krishna Menon).

 

Unfortunately due to Muslim interference

and the remote locality of Kashmir, the

works of the pioneers Vasgupta, Abhinavagupta

and more recently Kaviraj Gopinath are

unique to the Indian tradition and

not well known to westerners.

 

It is interesting to note that the Zen

tradition of Japan has included the

Kashmiri text " Vijñana Bhairava Tantra " as

one of their own source text. Some of

these teachings were probably also

transmitted to nearby Tibet.

 

Let Eric words speak for themself.

 

" These things are not to be practiced, they are to be

lived in humility, in silence. Then they really come

alive. Anyone who undertakes them with the idea of

attaining something will always remain restricted by

limitations, like the kaivalya state of the Yoga

Sutras, where the Purushas separate themselves from

limitations and finally remain separate Purushas.

Ultimately there is only silence, so there can never

be any personal achievement of freedom. Of course,

kaivalya, from the higher point of view, the one

Gopinath Kaviraj talks about, is different. The

kaivalya of the Yoga Sutras is a highly satvic state,

but it is still a state one can attain. "

 

 

Q.I don't know why but I feel angry now.

 

E : Yes, because you try to understand. The mind

cannot understand. The only thing we can do together

is to come to see what is not. Yes, is not. The mind

wants to choose, but then you come to see very clearly

at some point that something is stopping you. There is

no freedom, there is nothing pre-determined either,

they are both concepts of the mind. You cannot have

one concept without the other. So yes, you say : “see

that you have a story”, and yes you can say : “there

is no such thing as a story”, because there is no one

there to “have any story”. So what do you do with that

? If you follow the two lines of feeling very deeply

you come to a blank state and in this blank state

there is dissolution. And you see it is not the one,

nor the other. They are both concepts. But these

concepts have been recalled from memory. In time it

becomes evident that life is not a concept. That life

cannot be thought.

 

That's why you can never say : “I understand

something.” This realization will knowingly remain as

a constant background present before any upsurge of

understanding. All knowing is included in not knowing.

The moment you say " I know this " you exclude the

opposite. So of course you challenge the knowledge

later on and it is very upsetting to the mind. We

realize that wanting to understand was a need to grasp

what cannot be grasped. It goes against what we have

said that there is no sense in anything. You may hear

that and feel very happy. To make sense out of the

idea that there is no sense in anything gives you a

feeling of security. Then someone tells you : " Look

you are making sense out of it " and then the mind

becomes crazy because it sees that it cannot not make

sense out of it. Because when you understand that

there is no sense in anything, you are saying to

yourself : " that makes sense " . You are falling into

the trap. So you have to constantly observe yourself

because you constantly want to grasp what you cannot

grasp and for the mind of course it is very upsetting.

But it works. You must see the mechanism of

understanding there is nothing to understand. There is

nothing to understand, — you hear that and say :

“Yes, now I understand that” and again you fall into

the trap. So you must stop knowingly before

understanding. Jean talked of it as a double absence.

That there is an absence within the absence that is

contained in the presence. But that's on Jean Klein's

level. (We could approach it in a more simple way.)

 

Q : But Jean Klein used to say that it is good to find

the limits, to push the understanding of the mind to

the very limit.

 

E : Jean Klein was beyond anything one can comprehend.

So I cannot talk about it. For me the need to know the

limits of the mind is a very beautiful limited-mind

concept, because there is no such thing as a limit to

the mind. The mind is unlimited. Like if you say :

“You must come to feel the limits of your body. It is

unlimited. You can spend 60 million lives and still

every new day — every day you can feel more deeply and

every day you can think more deeply. The limit of the

mind on the body level is totally horizontal. Every

day you can be more certain. So what ? You are going

to die and could have been so much more certain. So

the problem is not to be really certain. It will

remain limited all your life. We must live with that.

Our mind, our body will stay gross all our life. But

you can see that and when I clearly see that whatever

conclusion I reach on the mental level will always be

gross, there is a space in me which resonates, in

which gross feeling and subtle feeling, high mind, low

mind come to be seen as exactly equal. And this space

is presence. And this space is something I can never

reach by making my body subtle or by thinking high

thoughts. This space is always with me when I do not

pretend that I need to make my body subtle or that I

need to my mind to think high thoughts.

 

I respect what Jean said when Jean was there to say

it. Coming from him, yes it was okay. But it is not

something I would extract from his teaching. Jean's

teaching was alive because of Jean. When Jean would

say something is beautiful, his presence brought it

alive. But now if one says : " Jean said that " , it is

like saying : " Ramana Maharishi said that " . It's

grotesque. Ramana Maharishi never said anything. The

words we have from him are an expression but they were

not his teaching. So I think it is very important we

do not extract words from a spiritual teaching because

spiritual teaching contains no words. We use words

sometimes to convey a spiritual teaching. But the

words of a teacher mean what they mean. So yes, what

he said is of course true but it was to be realized at

the time he said it. It was true then. At another time

he would say the opposite too. So then what was

happening ? He said this and he said that. He said

everything is conditioned and he said everything is

free. So read the two sentences, put them together and

it makes no sense to you. Nothing. So hearing one at

the right time will bring you to silence and then

hearing the opposite at the right time will also bring

you to silence. But now it remains only as a sentence,

and a sentence only brings you agitation. So when you

read Jean's book, if it brings you to silence you are

ready but if you remain in the argument read it again,

so that you come to forget the argument and only

experience silence. But it is important to see how

much we have this mechanism in us to want to grasp.

It's enough to just see it… constantly. And there is

nothing wrong with it ; we just knowingly experience

this grasping process. I feel it in my shoulders, in

my mouth, in my tongue, in my forehead, in the way I

walk, in the way I breathe, in the way I look, in the

way I listen, in the way I read, in the way I think,

in the way I act and constantly, knowingly, I live my

pretension without the pretension of being free from

pretension. Clearly. That's spiritual enquiry.

 

(Pause)

 

Some people find it difficult to leave after spending

time together : they feel that something is missing.

This is the ultimate feeling. Something is missing.

What is missing could never be present. Not on this

level. If we leave with the idea that “we have had a

very good talk, now I understand” then it was a waste

of time. We must leave with the feeling that we never

touched upon what was important. It can never be

touched upon, it can never be thought, it can never be

understood. So we leave with a very strange feeling

that of a space which we can not name, we can never

really feel in any way. What is there, is there, that

is all. The discussion, all the exercises were just a

moving, a breathing in that space. But it's very

uncomfortable. The ego needs to go to a seminar and

leave and say : “Now I know something : a new

exercise and I understood something.” Here it is the

opposite. We meet and we leave without understanding

anything, without becoming anything, without knowing

anything. It needs some kind of maturity to be able to

cope with it. And if somebody does not have this

maturity sometimes they get mad and go somewhere else

to become spiritual or to become something. But no we

did not talk about what is important. It is like when

we are in love with somebody, we never say what is

important. We talk about movies, we talk about

dancing, we talk about beauty but there is something

that we don't talk about and that is the course of our

relationship. And sometimes we leave the person that

we love and the mind may tell you “it's too bad, I did

not really express my feelings.” But it should be that

way. There is nothing to concretize. The beauty of

life, the beauty of a relationship is to never touch

upon what is important. It's an art, the art of not

giving substance, or reference points. That is what we

do in the bodywork. We come to the body feeling where

there is no inside, no outside. There is no substance.

This open state is the royal way to not creating an

imaginary world and a self.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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