Guest guest Posted March 10, 2006 Report Share Posted March 10, 2006 we have enough to digest for a all year here! What are you on, what are you thinking!! Thank-you for way to much.. burp!! Patricia --- " Bob N. " <Roberibus111 a écrit : Every time I have a concept, it is something that I could apply to a number of individuals. We're not talking about a concrete, particular name like Mary or John, which doesn't have a conceptual meaning. A concept applies to any number of individuals, countless individuals. Concepts are universal. For instance, the word " leaf " could be applied to every single leaf on a tree; the same word applies to all those individual leaves. Moreover, the same word applies to all the leaves on all trees, big ones, small ones, tender ones, dried ones, yellow ones, green ones, banana leaves. So if I say to you that I saw a leaf this morning, you really don't have an idea of what I saw. Let's see if you can understand that. You do have an idea of what I did not see. I did not see an animal. I did not see a dog. I did not see a human being. I did not see a shoe. So you have some kind of a vague idea of what I saw, but it isn't particularized, it isn't concrete. " Human being " refers not to primitive man, not to civilized man, not to grownup man, not to a child, not to a male or a female, not to this particular age or another, not to this culture or the other, but to the concept. The human being is found concrete; you never find a universal human being like your concept. So your concept points, but it is never entirely accurate; it misses uniqueness, concreteness. The concept is universal. When I give you a concept, I give you something, and yet how little I have given you. The concept is so valuable, so useful for science. For instance, if I say that everyone here is an animal, that would be perfectly accurate from a scientific viewpoint. But we're something more than animals. If I say that Mary Jane is an animal, that's true; but because I've omitted something essential about her, it's false; it does her an injustice. When I call a person a woman, that's true; but there are lots of things in that person that don't fit into the concept " woman. " She is always this particular, concrete, unique woman, who can only be experienced, not conceptualized. The concrete person I've got to see for myself, to experience for myself, to intuit for myself. The individual can be intuited but cannot be conceptualized. A person is beyond the thinking mind. Many of you would probably be proud to be called Americans, as many Indians would probably be proud to be called Indians. But what is " American, " what is " Indian " ? It's a convention; it's not part of your nature. All you've got is a label. You really don't know the person. The concept always misses or omits something extremely important, something precious that is only found in reality, which is concrete uniqueness. The great Krishnamurti put it so well when he said, " The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again. " How true! The first time the child sees that fluffy, alive, moving object, and you say to him, " Sparrow, " then tomorrow when the child sees another fluffy, moving object similar to it he says, " Oh, sparrows. I've seen sparrows. I'm bored by sparrows. " If you don't look at things through your concepts, you'll never be bored. Every single thing is unique. Every sparrow is unlike every other sparrow despite the similarities. It's a great help to have similarities, so we can abstract, so that we can have a concept. It's a great help, from the point of view of communication, education, science. But it's also very misleading and a great hindrance to seeing this concrete individual. If all you experience is your concept, you're not experiencing reality, because reality is concrete. The concept is a help, to lead you to reality, but when you get there, you've got to intuit or experience it directly. A second quality of a concept is that it is static whereas reality is in flux. We use the same name for Niagara Falls, but that body of water is constantly changing. You've got the word " river, " but the water there is constantly flowing. You've got one word for your " body, " but the cells in your body are constantly being renewed. Let's suppose, for example, there is an enormous wind outside and I want the people in my country to get an idea of what an American gale or hurricane is like. So I capture it in a cigar box and I go back home and say, " Look at this. " Naturally, it isn't a gale anymore, is it? Once it's captured. Or if I want you to get the feel of what the flow of a river is like and I bring it to you in a bucket. The moment I put into a bucket it has stopped flowing. The moment you put things into a concept, they stop flowing; they become static, dead. A frozen wave is not a wave. A wave is essentially movement, action; when you freeze it, it is not a wave. Concepts are always frozen. Reality flows. Finally, if we are to believe the mystics (and it doesn't take too much of an effort to understand this, or even believe it, but no one can see it at once), reality is whole, but words and concepts fragment reality. That is why it is so difficult to translate from one language to another, because each language cuts reality up differently. The English word " home " is impossible to translate into French or Spanish. " Casa " is not quite " home " ; " home " has associations that are peculiar to the English language. Every language has untranslatable words and expressions, because we're cutting reality up and adding something or subtracting something and usage keeps changing. Reality is a whole and we cut it up to make concepts and we use words to indicate different parts. If you had never seen an animal in your life, for example, and one day you found a tail -- just a tail -- and somebody told you, " That's a tail, " would you have any idea of what it was if you had no idea what an animal was? Ideas actually fragment the vision, intuition, or experience of reality as a whole. This is what the mystics are perpetually telling us. Words cannot give you reality. They only point, they only indicate. You use them as pointers to get to reality. But once you get there, your concepts are useless. A Hindu priest once had a dispute with a philosopher who claimed that the final barrier to God was the word " God, " the concept of God. The priest was quite shocked by this, but the philosopher said, " The ass that you mount and that you use to travel to a house is not the means by which you enter the house. You use the concept to get there; then you dismount, you go beyond it. " You don't need to be a mystic to understand that reality is something that cannot be captured by words or concepts. To know reality you have to know beyond knowing. Do those words ring a bell? Those of you who are familiar with The Cloud of Unknowing would recognize the expression. Poets, painters, mystics, and the great philosophers all have intimations of its truth. Let's suppose that one day I'm watching a tree. Until now, every time I saw a tree, I said, " Well, it's a tree, " But today when I'm looking at the tree, I don't see a tree. At least I don't see what I'm accustomed to seeing. I see something with the freshness of a child's vision. I have no word for it. I see something unique, whole, flowing, not fragmented. And I'm in awe. If you were to ask me, " What did you see? " what do you think I'd answer? I have no word for it. There is no word for reality. Because as soon as I put a word to it, we're back into concepts again. And if I cannot express this reality that is visible to my senses, how does one express what cannot be seen by the eye or heard by the ear? How does one find a word for the reality of God? Are you beginning to understand what Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and all the rest were saying and what the Church teaches constantly when she says that God is mystery, is unintelligible to the human mind? The great Karl Rahner, in one of his last letters, wrote to a young German drug addict who had asked him for help. The addict had said, " You theologians talk about God, but how could this God be relevant in my life? How could this God get me off drugs? Rahner said to him, " I must confess to you in all honesty that for me God is and has always been absolute mystery. I do not understand what God is; no one can. We have intimations, inklings; we make faltering, inadequate attempts to put mystery into words. But there is no word for it, no sentence for it. " And talking to a group of theologians in London, Rahner said, " The task of the theologian is to explain everything through God, and to explain God as unexplainable. " Unexplainable mystery. One does not know, one cannot say. One says, " Ah. . . Ah . . . " Words are pointers, they're not descriptions. Tragically, people fall into idolatry because they think that where God is concerned, the word is the thing. How could you get so crazy? Can you be crazier than that? Even where human beings are concerned, or trees and leaves and animals, the word is not the thing. And you would say that, where God is concerned, the word is one thing? What are you talking about? An internationally famous scripture scholar attended this course in San Francisco, and he said to me, " My God, after listening to you, I understand that I've been an idol worshipper all my life! " He said this openly. " It never struck me that I had been an idol worshipper. My idol was not made of wood or metal; it was a mental idol. " These are the more dangerous idol worshippers. They use a very subtle substance, the mind, to produce their God. What I'm leading you to is the following: awareness of reality around you. Awareness means to watch, to observe what is going on within you and around you. " Going on " is pretty accurate: Trees, grass, flowers, animals, rock, all of reality is moving. One observes it, one watches it. How essential it is for the human being not just to observe himself or herself, but to watch all of reality. Are you imprisoned by your concepts? Do you want to break out of your prison? Then look; observe; spend hours observing. Watching what? Anything. The faces of people, the shapes of trees, a bird in flight, a pile of stones, watch the grass grow. Get in touch with things, look at them. Hopefully you will then break out of these rigid patterns we have all developed, out of what our thoughts and our words have imposed on us. Hopefully we will see. What will we see? This thing that we choose to call reality, whatever is beyond words and concepts. This is a spiritual exercise-connected with spirituality-connected with breaking out of your cage, out of the imprisonment of the concepts and words. How sad if we pass through life and never see it with the eyes of a child. This doesn't mean you should drop your concepts totally; they're very precious. Though we begin without them, concepts have a very positive function. Thanks to them we develop our intelligence. We're invited, not to become children, but to become like children. We do have to fall from a stage of innocence and be thrown out of paradise; we do have to develop an " I " and a " me " through these concepts. But then we need to return to paradise. We need to be redeemed again. We need to put off the old man, the old nature, the conditioned self, and return to the state of the child but without being a child. When we start off in life, we look at reality with wonder, but it isn't the intelligent wonder of the mystics; it's the formless wonder of the child. Then wonder dies and is replaced by boredom, as we develop language and words and concepts. Then hopefully, if we're lucky, we'll return to wonder again. The Master was in a mellow mood and the disciples were inquisitive. Did he ever feel depressed? they asked. He did. Wasn't it also true that he was in a continual state of happiness? they persisted. It was. What was the secret? they wanted to know. Said the Master, " This: Everything is as good or as bad as one's opinion makes it. " To a fearful religious visitor the Master said, " Why are you so anxious? " " Lest I fail to attain Salvation. " " And what is Salvation? " " Moksha. Liberation. Freedom. " The Master roared with laughter and said, " So you are forced to be free? You are bound to be liberated? " At that minute the visitor relaxed and lost his fear forever. Dag Hammarskjold, the former UN Secretary-General, put it so beautifully: " God does not die on the day we cease to believe in a personal deity. But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance of wonder renewed daily, the source of which is beyond all reason. " We don't have to quarrel about a word, because " God " is only a word, a concept. One never quarrels about reality; we only quarrel about opinions, about concepts, about judgments. Drop your concepts, drop your opinions, drop your prejudices, drop your judgments, and you will see that. " Quia de deo scire non possumus quid sit, sed quid non sit, non possumus considerare de deo, quomodo sit sed quomodo non sit. " This is St. Thomas Aquinas' introduction to his whole Summa Theologica: " Since we cannot know what God is, but only what God is not, we cannot consider how God is but only how He is not. " I have already mentioned Thomas' commentary on Boethius' De Sancta Trinitate, where he says that the loftiest degree of the knowledge of God is to know God as the unknown, tamquam ignotum. And in his Questio Disputata de Potentia Dei, Thomas says, " This is what is ultimate in the human knowledge of God -- to know that we do not know God. " This gentleman was considered the prince of theologians. He was a mystic, and is a canonized saint today. We're standing on pretty good ground. In India, we have a Sanskrit saying for this kind of thing: " neti, neti. " It means: " not that, not that. " Thomas' own method was referred to as the via negativa, the negative way. C. S. Lewis wrote a diary while his wife was dying. It's called A Grief Observed. He had married an American woman whom he loved dearly. He told his friends, " God gave me in my sixties what He denied me in my twenties. " He hardly had married her when she died a painful death of cancer. Lewis said that his whole faith crumbled, like a house of cards. Here he was the great Christian apologist, but when disaster struck home, he asked himself, " Is God a loving Father or is God the great vivisectionist? " There's pretty good evidence for both! I remember that when my own mother got cancer, my sister said to me, " Tony, why did God allow this to happen to Mother? " I said to her, " My dear, last year a million people died of starvation in China because of the drought, and you never raised a question. " Sometimes the best thing that can happen to us is to be awakened to reality, for calamity to strike, for then we come to faith, as C. S. Lewis did. He said that he never had any doubts before about people surviving death, but when his wife died, he was no longer certain. Why? Because it was so important to him that she be living. Lewis, as you know, is the master of comparisons and analogies. He says, " It's like a rope. Someone says to you, 'Would this bear the weight of a hundred twenty pounds?' You answer, 'Yes.' 'Well, we're going to let down your best friend on this rope.' Then you say, 'Wait a minute, let me test that rope again.' You're not so sure now. " Lewis also said in his diary that we cannot know anything about God and even our questions about God are absurd. Why? It's as though a person born blind asks you, " The color green, is it hot or cold? " Neti, neti, not that. " Is it long or is it short? " Not that. " Is it sweet or is it sour? " Not that. " Is it round or oval or square? " Not that, not that. The blind person has no words, no concepts, for a color of which he has no idea, no intuition, no experience. You can only speak to him in analogies. No matter what he asks, you can only say, " Not that. " C.S. Lewis says somewhere that it's like asking how many minutes are in the color yellow. Everybody could be taking the question very seriously, discussing it, fighting about it. One person suggests there are twenty-five carrots in the color yellow, the other person says, " No, seventeen potatoes, " and they're suddenly fighting. Not that, not that! This is what is ultimate in our human knowledge of God, to know that we do not know. Our great tragedy is that we know too much. We think we know, that is our tragedy; so we never discover. In fact, Thomas Aquinas (he's not only a theologian but also a great philosopher) says repeatedly, " All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly. " An anxious couple complained to the Master that their son had abandoned the religious traditions of the family and proclaimed himself a freethinker. Said the Master, " Not to worry. If the lad is really thinking for himself, the Mighty Wind is bound to arise that will carry him to the place where he belongs. " Something more about words. I said to you earlier that words are limited. There is more I have to add. There are some words that correspond to nothing. For instance, I'm an Indian. Now, let's suppose that I'm a prisoner of war in Pakistan, and they say to me, " Well, today we're going to take you to the frontier, and you're going to take a look at your country. " So they bring me to the frontier, and I look across the border, and I think, " Oh, my country, my beautiful country. I see villages and trees and hills. This is my own, my native land! " After a while one of the guards says, " Excuse me, we've made a mistake here. We have to move up another ten miles. " What was I reacting to? Nothing. I kept focusing on a word, India. But trees are not India; trees are trees. In fact, there are no frontiers or boundaries. They were put there by the human mind; generally by stupid, avaricious politicians. My country was one country once upon a time; it's four now. If we don't watch out it might be six. Then we'll have six flags, six armies. That's why you'll never catch me saluting a flag. I abhor all national flags because they are idols. What are we saluting? I salute humanity, not a flag with an army around it. Flags are in the heads of people. In any case, there are thousands of words in our vocabulary that do not correspond to reality at all. But do they trigger emotions in us! So we begin to see things that are not there. We actually see Indian mountains when they don't exist, and we actually see Indian people who also don't exist. Your American conditioning exists. My Indian conditioning exists. But that's not a very happy thing. Nowadays, in Third World countries, we talk a great deal about " inculturation. " What is this thing called " culture " ? I'm not very happy with the word. Does it mean you'd like to do something because you were conditioned to do it? That you'd like to feel something because you were conditioned to feel it? Isn't that being mechanical? Imagine an American baby that is adopted by a Russian couple and taken to Russia. It has no notion that it was born American. It's brought up talking Russian; it lives and dies for Mother Russia; it hates Americans. The child is stamped with his own culture; it's steeped in its own literature. It looks at the world through the eyes of its culture. Now, if you want to wear your culture the way you wear your clothes, that's fine. The Indian woman would wear a sari and the American woman would wear something else, the Japanese woman would wear her kimono. But nobody identifies herself with the clothes. But you do want to wear your culture more intently. You become proud of your culture. They teach you to be proud of it. Let me put this as forcefully as possible. There's this Jesuit friend of mine who said to me, " Anytime I see a beggar or a poor person, I cannot not give this person alms. I got that from my mother. " His mother would offer a meal to any poor person who passed by. I said to him, " Joe, what you have is not a virtue; what you have is a compulsion, a good one from the point of view of the beggar, but a compulsion nonetheless. " I remember another Jesuit who said to us once at an intimate gathering of the men of our Jesuit province in Bombay, " I'm eighty years old; I've been a Jesuit for sixty-five years. I have never once missed my hour of meditation -- never once. " Now, that could be very admirable, or it could also be a compulsion. No great merit in it if it's mechanical. The beauty of an action comes not from its having become a habit but from its sensitivity, consciousness, clarity of perception, and accuracy of response. I can say yes to one beggar and no to another. I am not compelled by any conditioning or programming from my past experiences or from my culture. Nobody has stamped anything on me, or if they have, I'm no longer reacting on the basis of that. If you had a bad experience with an American or were bitten by a dog or had a bad experience with a certain type of food, for the rest of your life you'd be influenced by that experience. And that's bad! You need to be liberated from that. Don't carry over experiences from the past. In fact, don't carry over good experiences from the past either. Learn what it means to experience something fully, then drop it and move on to the next moment, uninfluenced by the previous one. You'd be traveling with such little baggage that you could pass through the eye of a needle. You'd know what eternal is, because eternal life is now, in the timeless now. Only thus will you enter into eternal life. But how many things we carry along with us. We never set about the task of freeing ourselves, of dropping the baggage, of being ourselves. I'm sorry to say that everywhere I go I find Muslims who use their religion, their worship, and their Koran to distract themselves from this task. And the same applies to Hindus and Christians. Can you imagine the human being who is no longer influenced by words? You can give him any number of words and he'll still give you a fair deal. You can say, " I'm Cardinal Archbishop So-and-so, " but he'll still give you a fair deal; he'll see you as you are. He's uninfluenced by the label. A woman in great distress over the death of her son came to the Master for comfort. He listened to her patiently while she poured out her tale of woe. Then he said softly, " I can not wipe away your tears, my dear. I can only teach you how to make them holy. " The Master became a legend in his lifetime. It was said that God once sought his advice: " I want to play a game of hide-and-seek with humankind. I've asked my Angels what the best place is to hide in. Some say the depth of the ocean. Others say the top of the highest mountain. Others still the far side of the moon or a distant star. What do you suggest? " Said the Master, " Hide in the human heart. That is the last place they will think of! " I want to say one more thing about our perception of reality. Let me put it in the form of an analogy. The President of the United States has to get feedback from the citizens. The Pope in Rome has to get feedback from the whole Church. There are literally millions of items that could be fed to them, but they could hardly take all of them in, much less digest them. So they have people whom they trust to make abstracts, summarize things, monitor, filter; in the end, some of it gets to their desk. Now, this is what's happening to us. From every pore or living cell of our bodies and from all our senses we are getting feedback from reality. But we are filtering things out constantly. Who's doing the filtering? Our conditioning? Our culture? Our programming? The way we were taught to see things and to experience them? Even our language can be a filter. There is so much filtering going on that sometimes you won't see things that are there. You only have to look at a paranoid person who's always feeling threatened by something that isn't there, who's constantly interpreting reality in terms of certain experiences of the past or certain conditioning that he or she has had. But there's another demon, too, who's doing the filtering. It's called attachment, desire, craving. The root of sorrow is craving. Craving distorts and destroys perception. Fears and desires haunt us. Samuel Johnson said, " The knowledge that he is to swing from a scaffold within a week wonderfully concentrates a man's mind. " You blot out everything else and concentrate only on the fear, or desire, or craving. In many ways we were drugged when we were young. We were brought up to need people. For what? For acceptance, approval, appreciation, applause -- for what they called success. Those are words that do not correspond to reality. They are conventions, things that are invented, but we don't realize that they don't correspond to reality. What is success? It is what one group decided is a good thing. Another group will decide the same thing is bad. What is good in Washington might be considered bad in a Carthusian monastery. Success in a political circle might be considered failure in some other circles. These are conventions. But we treat them like realities, don't we? When we were young, we were programmed to unhappiness. They taught us that in order to be happy you need money, success, a beautiful or handsome partner in life, a good job, friendship, spirituality, God -- you name it. Unless you get these things, you're not going to be happy, we were told. Now, that is what I call an attachment. An attachment is a belief that without something you are not going to be happy. Once you get convinced of that -- and it gets into our subconscious, it gets stamped into the roots of our being -- you are finished. " How could I be happy unless I have good health? " you say. But I'll tell you something. I have met people dying of cancer who were happy. But how could they be happy if they knew they were going to die? But they were. " How could I be happy if I don't have money? " One person has a million dollars in the bank, and he feels insecure; the other person has practically no money, but he doesn't seem to feel any insecurity at all. He was programmed differently, that's all. Useless to exhort the first person about what to do; he needs understanding. Exhortations are of no great help. You need to understand that you've been programmed; it's a false belief. See it as false, see it as a fantasy. What are people doing all through their lives? They're busy fighting; fight, fight, fight. That's what they call survival. When the average American says he or she is making a living, it isn't a living they're making, oh no! They have much more than they need to live. Come to my country and you'll see that. You don't need all those cars to live. You don't need a television set to live. You don't need makeup to live. You don't need all those clothes to live. But try to convince the average American of this. They've been brainwashed; they've been programmed. So they work and strive to get the desired object that will make them happy. Listen to this pathetic story-your story, my story, everybody's story: " Until I get this object (money, friendship, anything) I'm not going to be happy; I've got to strive to get it and then when I've got it, I've got to strive to keep it. I get a temporary thrill. Oh, I'm so thrilled, I've got it! " But how long does that last? A few minutes, a few days at the most. When you get your brand-new car, how long does the thrill last? Until your next attachment is threatened! The truth about a thrill is that I get tired of it after a while. They told me prayer was the big thing; they told me God was the big thing; they told me friendship was the big thing. And not knowing what prayer really was or not knowing what God really was, not knowing what friendship really was, we made much out of them. But after a while we got bored with them -- bored with prayer, with God, with friendship. Isn't that pathetic? And there's no way out, there's simply no way out. It's the only model we were given -- to be happy. We weren't given any other model. Our culture, our society, and, I'm sorry to say, even our religion gave us no other model. You've been appointed a cardinal. What a great honor that is! Honor? Did you say honor? You used the wrong word. Now others are going to aspire to it. You lapsed into what the gospels call " the world " and you're going to lose your soul. The world, power, prestige, winning, success, honor, etc., are nonexistent things. You gain the world but you lose your soul. Your whole life has been empty and soulless. There is nothing there. There's only one way out and that is to get de-programmed! How do you do that? You become aware of the programming. You cannot change by an effort of the will; you cannot change through ideals; you cannot change through building up new habits. Your behavior may change, but you don't. You only change through awareness and understanding. When you see a stone as a stone and a scrap of paper as a scrap of paper, you don't think that the stone is a precious diamond anymore and you don't think that that scrap of paper is a check for a billion dollars. When you see that, you change. There's no violence anymore in your attempt to change yourself. Otherwise, what you call change is simply moving the furniture around. Your behavior is changed, but not you. The disciples were absorbed in a discussion of Lao-tzu's dictum: " Those who know do not say; Those who say do not know. " When the Master entered, they asked him exactly what the words meant. Said the Master, " Which of you knows the fragrance of a rose? " All of them knew. Then he said, " Put it into words. " All of them were silent. The only way to change is by changing your understanding. But what does it mean to understand? How do we go about it? Consider how we're enslaved by various attachments; we're striving to rearrange the world so that we can keep these attachments, because the world is a constant threat to them. I fear that a friend may stop loving me; he or she may turn to somebody else. I have to keep making myself attractive because I have to get this other person. Somebody brainwashed me into thinking I need his or her love. But I really don't. I don't need anybody's love; I just need to get in touch with reality. I need to break out of this prison of mine, this programming, this conditioning, these false beliefs, these fantasies; I need to break out into reality. Reality is lovely; it is an absolute delight. Eternal life is now. We're surrounded by it, like the fish in the ocean, but we have no notion about it at all. We're too distracted with this attachment. Temporarily, the world rearranges itself to suit our attachment, so we say, " Yeah, great! My team won! " But hang on; it'll change; you'll be depressed tomorrow. Why do we keep doing this? Do this little exercise for a few minutes: Think of something or someone you are attached to; in other words, something or someone without which or without whom you think you are not going to be happy. It could be your job, your career, your profession, your friend, your money, whatever. And say to this object or person, " I really do not need you to be happy. I'm only deluding myself in the belief that without you I will not be happy. But I really don't need you for my happiness; I can be happy without you. You are not my happiness, you are not my joy. " If your attachment is a person, he or she is not going to be very happy to hear you say this, but go ahead anyway. You can say it in the secrecy of your heart. In any case, you'll be making contact with the truth; you'll be smashing through a fantasy. Happiness is a state of non-illusion, of dropping the illusion. Or you could try another exercise: Think of a time when you were heartbroken and thought you would never be happy again (your husband died, your wife died, your best friend deserted you, you lost your money). What happened? Time went on, and if you managed to pick up another attachment or managed to find somebody else you were attracted to or something else you were attracted to, what happened to the old attachment? You didn't really need it to be happy, did you? That should have taught you, but we never learn. We're programmed; we're conditioned. How liberating it is not to depend emotionally on anything. If you could get one second's experience of that, you'd be breaking through your prison and getting a glimpse of the sky. Someday, maybe, you will even fly. I was afraid to say this, but I talked to God, and I told Him that I don't need Him. My initial reaction was: " This is so contrary to everything that I've been brought up with. " Now, some people want to make an exception of their attachment to God. They say, " If God is the God that I think He ought to be, He's not going to like it when I give up my attachment to Him! " All right, if you think that unless you get God you're not going to be happy, then this " God " you're thinking of has nothing to do with the real God. You're thinking of a dream state; you're thinking of your concept. Sometimes you have to get rid of " God " in order to find God. Lots of mystics tell us that. We've been so blinded by everything that we have not discovered the basic truth that attachments hurt rather than help relationships. I remember how frightened I was to say to an intimate friend of mine, " I really don't need you. I can be perfectly happy without you. And by telling you this I find I can enjoy your company thoroughly -- no more anxieties, no more jealousies, no more possessiveness, no more clinging. It is a delight to be with you when I am enjoying you on a non-clinging basis. You're free; so am I. " But to many of you I'm sure this is like talking a foreign language. It took me many, many months to fully understand this, and mind you, I'm a Jesuit, whose spiritual exercises are all about exactly this, although I missed the point because my culture and my society in general had taught me to view people in terms of my attachments. I'm quite amused, sometimes, to see even seemingly objective people like therapists and spiritual directors say of someone, " He's a great guy, great guy, I really like him. " I find out later that it's because he likes me that I like him. I look into myself, and I find the same thing coming up now and again: If you're attached to appreciation and praise, you're going to view people in terms of their threat to your attachment or their fostering of your attachment. If you're a politician and you want to be elected, how do you think you're going to look at people, how will your interest in people be guided? You will be concerned for the person who's going to get you the vote. If what you're interested in is sex, how do you think you're going to look at men and women? If you're attached to power, that colors your view of human beings. An attachment destroys your capacity to love. What is love? Love is sensitivity, love is consciousness. To give you an example: I'm listening to a symphony, but if all I hear is the sound of the drums I don't hear the symphony. What is a loving heart? A loving heart is sensitive to the whole of life, to all persons; a loving heart doesn't harden itself to any person or thing. But the moment you become attached in my sense of the word, then you're blocking out many other things. You've got eyes only for the object of your attachment; you've got ears only for the drums; the heart has hardened. Moreover, it's blinded, because it no longer sees the object of its attachment objectively. Love entails clarity of perception, objectivity; there is nothing so clear-sighted as love. When a disciple came from a faraway country, the Master asked, " What are you seeking? " " Enlightenment. " " You have your own treasure house. Why do you search outside? " " Where is my treasure house? " " This seeking that has come upon you. " " How shall I get the grace of never judging my neighbor? " " Through prayer. " " Then why have I not found it yet? " " Because you haven't prayed in the right place. " " Where is that? " " In the heart of God. " " And how do I get there? " " Understand that anyone who sins does not know what he is doing and deserves to be forgiven. " The heart in love remains soft and sensitive. But when you're hell- bent on getting this or the other thing, you become ruthless, hard, and insensitive. How can you love people when you need people? You can only use them. If I need you to make me happy, I've got to use you, I've got to manipulate you, I've got to find ways and means of winning you. I cannot let you be free. I can only love people when I have emptied my life of people. When I die to the need for people, then I'm right in the desert. In the beginning it feels awful, it feels lonely, but if you can take it for a while, you'll suddenly discover that it isn't lonely at all. It is solitude, it is aloneness, and the desert begins to flower. Then at last you'll know what love is, what God is, what reality is. But in the beginning giving up the drug can be tough, unless you have a very keen understanding or unless you have suffered enough. It's a great thing to have suffered. Only then can you get sick of it. You can make use of suffering to end suffering. Most people simply go on suffering. That explains the conflict I sometimes have between the role of spiritual director and that of therapist. A therapist says, " Let's ease the suffering. " The spiritual director says, " Let her suffer, she'll get sick of this way of relating to people and she'll finally decide to break out of this prison of emotional dependence on others. " Shall I offer a palliative or remove a cancer? It's not easy to decide. A person slams a book on the table in disgust. Let him keep slamming it on the table. Don't pick up the book for him and tell him it's all right. Spirituality is awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness. When your mother got angry with you, she didn't say there was something wrong with her, she said there was something wrong with you; otherwise she wouldn't have been angry. Well, I made the great discovery that if you are angry, Mother, there's something wrong with you. So you'd better cope with your anger. Stay with it and cope with it. It's not mine. Whether there's something wrong with me or not, I'll examine that independently of your anger. I'm not going to be influenced by your anger. The funny thing is that when I can do this without feeling any negativity toward another, I can be quite objective about myself, too. Only a very aware person can refuse to pick up the guilt and anger, can say, " You're having a tantrum. Too bad. I don't feel the slightest desire to rescue you anymore, and I refuse to feel guilty. " I'm not going to hate myself for anything I've done. That's what guilt is. I'm not going to give myself a bad feeling and whip myself for anything I have done, either right or wrong. I'm ready to analyze it, to watch it, and say, " Well, if I did wrong, it was in unawareness. " Nobody does wrong in awareness. That's why theologians tell us very beautifully that Jesus could do no wrong. That makes very good sense to me, because the enlightened person can do no wrong. The enlightened person is free. Jesus was free and because he was free, he couldn't do any wrong. But since you can do wrong, you're not free. ** If you do not wish to receive individual emails, to change your subscription, sign in with your ID and go to Edit My Groups: /mygroups?edit=1 Under the Message Delivery option, choose " No Email " for the Nisargadatta group and click on Save Changes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 10, 2006 Report Share Posted March 10, 2006 Nisargadatta , OConnor Patricia <gdtige wrote: > > > we have enough to digest for a all year here! > What are you on, what are you thinking!! > Thank-you for way to much.. > burp!! > Patricia > --- " Bob N. " <Roberibus111 a écrit : > > Some have not had the benefit of having or hearing the words of Nisargadatta nor his lineage. The body/mind gordian knot that makes up this old sailor/cowboy, has been moved to present the tidingses of this Indian avatar. For a delightful list of more enlightened beings Pat, check out the appendices in the last of the posts on the book..and if you go on to read THEM...Oh My what a wonderful surprise you are going to experience. Again I am happy that you are in a state of enjoyment re these humble presentations.......bob As our Eeyore says... " Think,Think,Think " in his Paul Wichell voice..LOL > > > > ** > > If you do not wish to receive individual emails, to > change your subscription, sign in with your ID > and go to Edit My Groups: > > /mygroups?edit=1 > > Under the Message Delivery option, choose " No Email " > for the Nisargadatta group and click on Save Changes. > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 10, 2006 Report Share Posted March 10, 2006 Nisargadatta , OConnor Patricia <gdtige wrote: > > > we have enough to digest for a all year here! > What are you on, what are you thinking!! > Thank-you for way to much.. > burp!! > Patricia > --- " Bob N. " <Roberibus111 a écrit : > Sometimes I get emails from the silent members who complain that the regulars here self indulge with their own mind stuff and they want to see Nisargadatta related ideas and I have to admit that Bob went the other extreme. Dear Bob, please keep the posts as excerpts (digestable quotes) and this may also be fair to the publisher. The US publisher of I am That is a very gracious but let's not push it. Thanks, Hur Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 11, 2006 Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 Nisargadatta , " Hur " <hur wrote: > > Nisargadatta , OConnor Patricia <gdtige@> > wrote: > > > > > > we have enough to digest for a all year here! > > What are you on, what are you thinking!! > > Thank-you for way to much.. > > burp!! > > Patricia > > --- " Bob N. " <Roberibus111@> a écrit : > > > > Sometimes I get emails from the silent members who complain that the > regulars here self indulge with their own mind stuff and they want to > see Nisargadatta related ideas and I have to admit that Bob went the > other extreme. > > Dear Bob, please keep the posts as excerpts (digestable quotes) and > this may also be fair to the publisher. The US publisher of I am That > is a very gracious but let's not push it. > > Thanks, > > Hur > Hi Hur...I am a publisher myself, although it is music not fables and facts in book form, that I issue. As for your concern regarding the publishers in the States of the (United?), I can only say that the entire book was found freely available on the internet. Never would I, as a copyright house myself push such an issue. And I most assuredly concur that they are the owners of the right of first publication and do also appreciate their benevolence. ...Thanking you ever-so-much for your vexations regarding the issue .............bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 11, 2006 Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 Nisargadatta , " Bob N. " <Roberibus111 wrote: > > Nisargadatta , " Hur " <hur@> wrote: > > > > Nisargadatta , OConnor Patricia <gdtige@> > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > we have enough to digest for a all year here! > > > What are you on, what are you thinking!! > > > Thank-you for way to much.. > > > burp!! > > > Patricia > > > --- " Bob N. " <Roberibus111@> a écrit : > > > > > > > Sometimes I get emails from the silent members who complain that > the > > regulars here self indulge with their own mind stuff and they want > to > > see Nisargadatta related ideas and I have to admit that Bob went > the > > other extreme. > > > > Dear Bob, please keep the posts as excerpts (digestable quotes) and > > this may also be fair to the publisher. The US publisher of I am > That > > is a very gracious but let's not push it. > > > > Thanks, > > > > Hur > > > Hi Hur...I am a publisher myself, although it is music > not fables and facts in book form, that I issue. As for your concern > regarding the publishers in the States of the (United?), I can only > say that the entire book was found freely available on the internet. > Never would I, as a copyright house myself push such an issue. And I > most assuredly concur that they are the owners of the right of first > publication and do also appreciate their benevolence. > ..Thanking you ever-so-much for your vexations regarding the issue > ............bob >And I am in agreement with you..the posts were to long as stated on a post by Phil as well. Again, I was just trying to share some of the writings of Nisargadatta with other members, as it has been questioned by others within the group whether certain of the posters hsve ever read ANYTHING by him. It was all about fairness and to show some folks where some of the words of wisdom claimed as self discovery by some responders to posts herein, are getting " their " thoughts and statements of great truth from. I make no such claims as to being the Truth nor possessor thereof. I am a searcher and seeker and lover of all,that's all. ..bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 11, 2006 Report Share Posted March 11, 2006 Nisargadatta , " Bob N. " <Roberibus111 wrote: > > Nisargadatta , " Hur " <hur@> wrote: > > > > Nisargadatta , OConnor Patricia <gdtige@> > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > we have enough to digest for a all year here! > > > What are you on, what are you thinking!! > > > Thank-you for way to much.. > > > burp!! > > > Patricia > > > --- " Bob N. " <Roberibus111@> a écrit : > > > > > > > Sometimes I get emails from the silent members who complain that > the > > regulars here self indulge with their own mind stuff and they want > to > > see Nisargadatta related ideas and I have to admit that Bob went > the > > other extreme. > > > > Dear Bob, please keep the posts as excerpts (digestable quotes) and > > this may also be fair to the publisher. The US publisher of I am > That > > is a very gracious but let's not push it. > > > > Thanks, > > > > Hur > > > Hi Hur...I am a publisher myself, although it is music > not fables and facts in book form, that I issue. As for your concern > regarding the publishers in the States of the (United?), I can only > say that the entire book was found freely available on the internet. > Never would I, as a copyright house myself push such an issue. And I > most assuredly concur that they are the owners of the right of first > publication and do also appreciate their benevolence. > ..Thanking you ever-so-much for your vexations regarding the issue > ............bob > It is an odd behavior indeed when people gather words together in a certain sequence...and yell: " MINE! " toombaru Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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