Understanding - Franklin Jones

[Guest guest]

FRANKLIN: Everyone has understood?

 

QUESTION: I haven't understood. Explain it to me.

 

FRANKLIN: Very good. What haven't you understood?

 

QUESTION: Well, you said " Did everybody understand? " and everyone

seemed to understand but me. Would you explain it to me?

 

FRANKLIN: Explain what?

 

QUESTION: Well, you could start with the word " understanding. "

 

FRANKLIN: Yes. There is a disturbance, dissatisfaction, some

sensation that motivates a man to go to a teacher, read a book about

philosophy, believe something, or do yoga. What we ordinarily think

of as spirituality or religion is a way to get free of that

sensation, that suffering that motivates us. So all paths, yogic

methods, forms of seeking, beliefs, religion, grow out of this

sensation, this subtle suffering. Ultimately, all these paths are

attempting to get free of that sensation. That is the traditional

goal. So all men are seeking, whether or not they are very

sophisticated about it, using very specific methods, yoga,

philosophy, religion, whatever.

 

When that whole process of seeking begins to break down, the man no

longer quite has the edge of his search left. He begins to suspect

himself. He begins to doubt the whole process of his search. Then he

is no longer fascinated with his search, his method, his yoga, his

religion, his ordinary teacher. His attention begins to turn to this

sensation that motivates his entire search.

 

When a man begins to re cognize, consciously to know again that

subtle motivation, this is what I call " understanding. " When he

begins to see again the subtle forms of his own action, which are his

suffering, that recognition is understanding. When this becomes

absolute, perfect, when there is utterly, absolutely no dilemma, no

form in consciousness interpreting the nature of existence to the

individual, when there is no contraction, no fundamental suffering,

no thing prior to consciousness, this is what I call " radical "

understanding.

 

There is a subtle contraction in the process of man, and it

constantly changes the quality of consciousness. It creates the

identification of consciousness with the contracted sense. That form,

that body, that mentality. And in that act of identification, it

differentiates itself from other forms, other beings. Then the rest

of life is spent, through exploitation of the movement of desire, to

overcome that creation. Through the movement that is desire we seek

constantly to create a connection, a flow of force between the

contracted identity and everything from which it has differentiated

itself. Yoga, religion, spirituality, philosophy, all our strategies,

even our simple psychological strategies, our lifestyles, have this

same form. They are all attempts to release energy between this

contracted, separated one and all from which it is differentiated.

Thus, all ordinary activity is founded in this dilemma, this self

created contraction.

 

Traditional spiritual life is a search in this same form. There is

dilemma, and there is the spiritual method, which is an attempt to

overcome this dilemma. When the individual begins to see again the

dilemma that motivates his method, that seeing is understanding. As

long as he is simply seeking and has all kinds of motivation,

fascination with his search, this is not understanding. This is

dilemma itself. But where this dilemma is understood, there is the re

cognition of a structure in consciousness, a separation. And when

that separation is observed more and more directly, the person begins

to see that what he is suffering is not something happening to him,

but it is his own action. It is as if he is pinching himself without

being aware of it.

 

The root of spirituality is not some activity like desire that seeks

to

get you to the super Object. Genuine spirituality is understanding of

the whole process of motivation. It is to recognize the root of it,

this contraction, this separation. When you no longer have any more

options, when you have worn yourself out doing your number, and you

have tried all the trips and methods, paths and lifestyles,

strategies and places to go, all the forms of concentration, whatever

they are, then all of that begins to break down. You discover that

you just don't have the jazz left to really carry it on any more. You

find yourself more depressed, just a little bit too much depressed to

meditate or to hunt for sex. You just don't have the jazz, the

necessary fire of motivation. Then upsetness begins to overwhelm you.

The crisis begins to come on. You don't really have a path anymore.

You may talk a lot about it, feel a lot about it. It remains a part

of your mind, but you don't really have a path any longer. That is

really the most hopeful sign. The guy is beginning to rot! When fruit

begins to rot, then it falls with seed into the earth. But as long as

a man is very righteous, as long as he has got his trip, he is not

ripe. It is only when the trip begins to kick him in the face that he

begins to soften up, bruise a little bit, feel his fear, his

suffering, his dilemma, this constant upset of all our mortality.

 

We are all going to die. We are all going to lose this awareness,

this enjoyment. I can't endure that dilemma from day to day. From the

moment I was born, that upset me. I wasn't the least interested in

tolerating moment to moment existence as that kind of suffering. Life

wasn't worth the involvement if its summation had to be death, zero.

What difference does it make ho w turned on I can get if I must fall

out the bottom, arbitrarily. Everything is wonderful today. But you

wake up tomorro w and the world of lovely friends is delivered to you

dead, the insane parcels of everything disappearing. So all

righteousness, all ordinary spirituality or the search for

consolation is nonsense. It is a refusal. It is unreal.

 

The usual perception is that of the agonizing fact of identification,

the act that is ego, this refusal of one another, this lovelessness,

and this living craziness. And all of your ordinary processes are

bound up with that craziness, until you begin to get sick of it. Then

you are no longer talking about your 'trip, " your yoga, how groovy it

is and how you're going to get there, everything is so soul

beautiful, and all this crap. You will become obsessed with your

darkness, your heaviness. You will try to feel good, but you know you

feel lousy. You really feel upset. It is really bad, it is really an

annoyance. You are only upset, so what difference does the search

make? If you go through that long enough, you begin really to get

upset, and your meditation becomes concentration on your upset.

Whereas before you were al ways doing your number to avoid that

upset, now you can't do anything but be upset. And while you are

meditating on your upsetness, you happen to get involved here, in

this Ashram, and you get even more and more upset all the time. You

come to me, and I make you more upset. You think you are supposed to

be having a very groovy spiritual experience here, becoming more and

more turned on. But when you come around, people yell at you. They

call your attention to your crazy number. You are trying to do your

best, but everybody is hitting you over the head. All such experience

is very aggravating, but it begins to reinforce the real meditation

that has now started to go on in you. It is this crisis, this falling

apart, this rot. And it will persist, until you begin to observe,

somehow, this activity of yours.

 

When you begin to see what you are doing, when you begin to re

cognize it, you will see it first of all in very direct, human terms.

You will see it in the simple, human, practical things that you do.

Later, you will begin to see it in subtler ways. You will observe the

whole quality of your mind, your ordinary activity, your game, the

drama, the event that is always going on, until you begin to see it

most precisely and in a very subtle way. When you see it absolutely,

that is radical understanding. When you see the thing itself, the

simple thing, that is the end of it. You fall apart. You scream, or

you can t say anything, but it just ends. All of a sudden the whole

process is not going on anymore. And this apparent event, unlike all

other apparent forms of action in the manifest worlds, is not

followed by a re action.

 

People do in fact tend to use the enquiry as a " method. " They may

read about it, or they may even have begun to engage themselves in

the preliminary stages of life in the Ashram, and they begin

to " meditate " by using this form of enquiry or some other form of

looking at themselves. But in such cases, enquiry is always used in

the spirit of method and seeking. Everything tends to become the

search, until understanding or real intelligence is alive. But even

though such people are going on with all of that, still doing their

number, if they are involved in the conditions of this work,

everything will eventually break down. If only a person has the

endurance for it, or the need for it, the looseness for it, or only

the inability to go out and play his game again, whatever it is. Some

such inner quality must keep a man or woman in place, so this work

can take hold in them.