Amigo_2_2001preface march, 2002
When I was preparing this issue I involuntarily remembered a book that I read with fascination around twenty years ago: 'The Dice Man' by Luke Rhinehart, in which the writer ( a bored psychiatrist) lets his life be determined by the throw of dice. Consistently, at every moment when a decision has to be made, he chooses a number of the dice for every possible option. He actually literally does whatever the result of the throw of the dice calls for, leading to all kinds of crazy scenes and many hilarious moments. One never comes to know whether the book is fiction or not.
However, what does remain is a consideration of whether from the personal perspective it makes any difference if you assume free will or not. Could this perhaps be what is meant by self investigation?
There appear to be a variety of approaches to throw light on the subject of 'free will'. It seems to be a subject that can only be spoken about indirectly and everyone handles it their own way as far as language is concerned. It is up to you, the readers, to discover the language that appeals to you and throws light on the subject for you. The subjects free will and surrender ('Your will be done') seems to be inextricably intertwined, but this remark will mean more to the jnani's among us than to the bhaktis.
Wolter approaches the subject effectively by translating your wishes and desires into the question: 'What do I actually want?'. Jan van Delden relates how Odysseus discovered free will. Douglas Harding explains how you can always get what your heart longs for. Hans Laurentius establishes that 'free will' is a contradiction: how can a will ever be free?, he asks himself. Justus Kramer Schipper writes on the subject of how we, dancing like trained bears on a hot plate, make lists of wishes. Jan Kersschot asks himself: 'How can a mirage discover itself?' Jan Koehoorn and his discovery while 'leaning back'. Tony Parsons says: 'You need not be sorry about anything anymore.' Ramesh Balsekar: are you the doer of what you think are your actions? And, a first, from 1988, an interview with Alexander Smit about his realization. In the section, more free will, a collection of texts that we could not exclude. Finally I try to show you how a spoke sticks into a wheel.
Did we as editors have the choice of whether to choose this subject or not?Finally there is no one who chooses, at most there is a thought about a person who wishes to make a choice.
Summarizing: 'You don't have to accept your destiny, you have to choose it.' [Paulo Coelho in 'The fifth mountain']
[Kees Schreuders]
Actually Conversation with Wolter Keers in Gent, April 25, 1973..
If we look at the old classic texts, we see again and again that the great leaders of mankind concern themselves with emphasizing the abc's of life and seldom with the xyz's. I also think that if we want to have a chance for a happy life, we have to keep coming back to abc and ask ourselves regularly: not what do I want, but, what do I really want? It is better to look at what is happening now, at this moment, than to get lost in all kinds of complicated theories.
If we want to become happy, we have to look again and again at what is happening now at this instant: now, if we are here; now, when we get home later; now, when we are working; now, when we are on vacation, and so on. If we pay close attention, a picture emerges ever more clearly of the dimensions of the prison that we build or have built around ourselves: something happens that pleases us and immediately we run off in that direction; we invest an immense amount of energy to acquire what pleases us. Something happens, or there is a threat that something will happen that we find disagreeable, resistance arises, a reaction, and at once we invest all our energy in blowing up what was in the first place an impersonal reaction into ; 'I' am afraid, 'I' am furious, and so on. In this way, we are slaves, lackeys, marionettes of all kinds of reactions that were planted in us in the past. We remain chained to the past, and as long as we keep on feeding these reactions, we remain unhappy.
In general we refuse to see that. If we are unhappy, it is our parent's fault, or our marital partner, our children, our boss; it is not our fault, we mean well. And we totally miss the fact that we make ourselves vulnerable by investing in the body's reactions and the psychic automatism that, served one or another useful function long ago, maybe when we were still very young, but that now fit us like our old baby clothes would.
(animation: Foekje Detmar) What do I actually want? Maybe I'll reach the age of 70, or 80, or 90; if I look back then, what do I want to be able to say? I have wasted and thrown away my life, spent in fear, spent in quarreling, spent in running after all kinds of things that actually were not important. I read a book recently about a new form of therapy developed in America in which one of the people who received this therapy says: 'Neurosis is to do everything you can to hang on to something that you definitely don't want to have.' This is an important part of our lives, we fight, sometimes with tooth and nail, for what we actually don't want to have, for our egoism, for maintaining our personality.
What do I actually want? Actually, I want to be happy. Actually I want love. Actually I always want to return to the state I have known in which I was warmth itself, where all limitations disappeared and the world was a good place to live. But we have changed - we have returned to our old egoism. When we had let go of everything for love, the world was a paradise. But we have come back to the cage, to the prison, out of habit, to what the Germans call; 'du sollst und du sollst nicht', the categorical imperative; this you must, that you may not. We have come back to: this I want, and this I don't want. You can only do one thing at a time, you cannot be love and the ego at the same time. We have to choose. Egoistic love can only be found in dry water and in the squared circle.
What do I actually want? Actually I want Freedom Itself. That is really different from being free of attachments. Freedom is the absence of limits that was there when Love was there, when I put everything aside, when everything dissolved in that one experience. Why didn't I stay there? Why did I come back again to my fears, to my holding on to situations, to persons, to my bank account, my work, my this and that? There is only one possible answer: because I'm crazy. We have to realize very clearly that we are that. We have to realize very clearly , that as long as we search for happiness in a way that we know with absolute certainty, not 99.9% but 100%, will fail, we are crazy. We have to see very clearly that if we try to find Freedom while living in a cage we are crazy. It is not so bad being crazy, but it is really dumb to stay that way. This craziness arises out of the upbringing that we all had in which we were told: you are this, you are that, you are thousand and one things, while the people who told us this knew perfectly well that they were ONE. But also they looked too far away from themselves. They looked at the prison bars, at the semblance of safety. They ignored themselves and clung hard to all kinds of false I's. The life we were brought up to live is often made up of duties, and these are no substitute for love. It is all duty: God demanded a whole lot of duties, and the fatherland demanded a whole lot of duties, and what was left was more duties, for the school, for the family, the neighbors, the church, etc. It is a good way to die slowly. 'Yes, but', says someone who has a similar viewpoint, 'yes, but. you can't just go sit in your chair with folded arms.' No, but that is where you will land if you live that way! And that's what you prepare your children for if you live like that. Because living without love is crippling. Children - (and just between us, grownups) — who are well brought up, that is to say, who are repeatedly brought to the deepest warmth within them, discover that in the ground of their being lies the only real safety that can never be taken from them and they are ready to let go of the prison bars, to let go of their defensiveness. When this happens they become spontaneous. Someone who is happy does not lazily sit in their chair with their arms folded, but is someone who is happy, is full of energy, works with pleasure .. enjoys the company of others with pleasure; shines.
Love and happiness are centrifugal qualities, radiating qualities. Fear, egoism, greed, defensiveness, clinging are centripetal qualities. They are the source of the cramps in our bodies; of all fears and defensiveness. And no matter how we get there either philosophically or via the heart, when in one way or another we are ready to let go of our defenses, only then can the cramp in the body also disappear. Then the centripetal, the cramping, the pulling in becomes centrifugal again. Then we feel that we are no longer lumbering and heavy, but that we are becoming light. 'He danced with pleasure on the street,' a sentence like that can be found in many books. He danced, he was light. But in order to get that happiness every day — and all our activities strive for that — we use all the means that make that happiness impossible, as sure as the night follows the day and the day again follows the night. Egoism is by definition a means, a course of action, a perspective that always misses its target. But in order to see that you have to learn to see well.
Maybe you once had a heavy quarrel with your husband or wife, and maybe you were both right; that often happens in a quarrel, or maybe both were wrong, but you were the stronger and you overpowered the other, you got good and even. And when it was finished you felt like a tough guy. At that moment, you know if you look deeper in yourself, that the victory was only a hollow victory. If you tell someone the unadorned truth, at that very moment you suffer a defeat yourself, at that moment the best in you is covered with a layer of concrete. In other words, at that moment you betray the deepest in yourself. This is just one example out of many that everyone knows from their own lives. Again and again, if we invest energy in feeding disharmony, if we hold on to things and make demands, we build a wall between ourselves and the other. Whoever returns to the deep Experience of this unlimited warmth that we call love, knows that no walls are possible. The experience, the 'state' if you will, becomes manifest when at least for a moment all walls are gone. A person is capable of love with an intensity determined by the thickness of their walls. The higher the walls, the stronger the defensiveness, the less I can love. If we look really penetratingly and ask ourselves 'what do I actually want?', I believe that there in the depth we will find only one desire: to give all that we have, to give everything we have without any holding back. Only when I have given all, all that I have and I am, is the happiness complete. There is a classic image, from the New Testament that says: 'If the seed does not die it brings forth no fruit.'. If I am really honest, and look deep inside myself that is what I want: to die; that is to say to give all that I am, all. In giving you discover even more to give and then you say take that also, that I also renounce. That is indeed a sort of dying. Love is a kind of suicide. It is not just a surface phenomenon. People who flit from the one to the other, and go like butterflies from one flower to another seldom come to this experience.
When I first came to India I met Ramana Maharshi. And there, for the first time in my life, I saw Love sitting there on a chair, literally shining almost like the sun. Through this Presence, for days, I could do nothing else than to say to whatever overcame me take this; take everything from me. The love of this man went through you like a laser beam and everything that was not in complete harmony with it stood out. Then you said inwardly; please take this away from me also. I remember that Jean Klein once made the following comparison: most people go to a guru to get something. They have the feeling that they, spiritually speaking, are going to a three star restaurant and will get a really good meal. But they are really surprised when instead of getting a tasty meal, the chef comes out with a great big knife and cuts their stomach out, empties their pockets, undresses them and goes on until there is nothing left. That's how it is with a guru. Is this not the standard? Do I give, do I let go, do I dissolve everything in Love, or am I collecting, standing at the till, am I being calculating, am I keeping the cage closed? There you don't have to be a great psychologist, or a great philosopher. A maid we had before the war who had absolutely no education beyond primary school explained these things to me when I was around 14 or 15 years old. You understand, there is no need to study these things, you don't have to be old or wise, a child can understand it. Well, that's the choice, this way or that way? Building up a wall, or dismantling the wall. The choice is very simple.
'Yes but, …', as soon the words 'yes but' come, we are building the wall up, these words belong to fear. One should count to at least ten each evening and ask: have I become at least a gram lighter today? Have I let something go today? Is there a fear that I dared to examine? A possession that I have left behind? Or did I become heavier today? Are my pockets fuller? Have I fed my reactions? Did I defend my personality? Have I taken distance from my fears, demands and longings, or have I nourished my fears, longings and demands?
What do I actually want? That is the a of abc. These are the questions that it comes down to: what do I actually want, and who am I actually? What do I actually know? Love may be the most beautiful path. I do not say that it is the easiest. I don't know if there is an easiest path? But, it is the most beautiful path to the extent that you don't have to go through a crisis because if you allow love again, your heart bursts and love penetrates your entire being, your head, your whole being and then your home and workplace. That letting go is a celebration; it is a path to Freedom that goes with a smooth accelerated motion. If you let things dissolve in the One Love that you are actually are, in the depth of your being, then the first time is the most difficult because you are not used to it; the second time it is already easier.
What do I actually want? Do I want to remain in a cage, or do I want to live under the blue sky? To do as if this is too difficult, or too dangerous, or to say that this can't be dome in society, and 'what will the neighbors think' is not intelligent. Not daring to look at problems is simply lack of intelligence. Because if I live as if I am different from what I actually am, I can never be myself, then I am punishing myself in the most awful way. What have I done to deserve that? When you are with very good friends, who you really love, you say; here I can be myself, in love and harmony with myself. If I want to be myself that can only happen if I begin with accepting. To accept that there are innumerable possibilities in me, good and bad, beautiful and evil, just as in every person. As long as I do not accept that I cannot become happy. As long as I only want to see the things that flatter my ego and refuse to see the things that my ego finds humiliating, I do not become free. As long as we do 'as if'' we are dumb, we demonstrate a lack of intelligence. Maybe a certain amount of courage is needed, but what requires more courage; to be brave a few hours now and then, or to drag on for 40 or 50 or 60 years more like a cart horse? Again, it says in the bible: the truth shall make you free. As long as we live as if we are someone else than what we are, we are heavily chained. As long as I do as if I am a pretty picture, with this and that principally good qualities, I am chained. Then I will defend this picture; I become angry with everything that does not flatter the picture; I only accept what flatters the picture. In other words, I am completely dependent on my surroundings. I am a marionette of my surroundings and a slave of all kinds of reactions that were planted in me in the past and have taken root.
What do I actually want? I believe that being someone else's slave can also be a path. But then you have to be a total slave. If you can be a perfect slave, by which you say; this body is yours, everything, I possess nothing more, then you come to the same situation as in Love; then you also no longer possess anything. But it is not simple to be such a perfect slave. I believe it is easier to follow the path of Love. Then you also possess nothing. But we must never become the slave of, and allow ourselves to be bullied by, the feelings that just come up in us. If I look sharply, I see that when things happen that are disagreeable to my ego, or things that flatter my ego a reaction arises. This reaction in and of itself is not yet a chain, but the moment the reaction is seen as an 'I' : 'I' am afraid, 'I' demand, long for or run after something — then we are sitting in the cage. If instead of that we simply establish; there, this and that is the reaction, then it is not even necessary to attribute, as in psychology, that the reaction is due to the fact that grandmother let me fall when I was a baby. No: there, this instant, is the reaction. And, I am not a reaction, a reaction is something that comes and goes, and I am something that lasts. Thus, 'I' am not a reaction. To say that 'I' am scared is a pure lie. To say that 'I' am angry is thus a pure lie. I am the perceiver of a reaction that is fear or anger, is longing, is being flattered and so on. It is only by attaching an I-feeling and clinging to it that we remain dependent on what ever happens to come up. If our 'neighbor' is a little refined, then he knows exactly how he can chat us up in order to bring out the right reactions; then he can do whatever he wants with us. So we follow all kinds of banners, against capitalism, or against communism, or for or against Vietnam or whatever you like; not because we actually know what we are doing, but because we are being manipulated, or can be manipulated because we are afraid.
As long as we are afraid, the society can do what it wants with us, our surroundings can do what it likes with us. So we are not only the puppets of our reactions, but moreover we are also the puppets of our surroundings and the society. This is in glaring opposition to the state that we know; the state of Light that is limited by nothing, warmth limited by nothing, in which we can actually hug every tree in the woods. If we put it that way can we speak of a choice between love and egoism? Arriving at Freedom is nothing else then letting go again and again, of seeing that my safety does not lie in my bank account, or in power or in anything else. In the world there is nothing that is actually safe. The only actual Security is finally what can not be taken away from me, and that is myself. Freedom is naturally freedom from the personality. I have already said: Freedom is not the same as lawlessness. Freedom is not chasing after whatever you like because everything is possible, that's exactly the cage I think. Freedom is: being independent of all things. Again freedom is not freedom for, but freedom from egoism, freedom from the personality. I believe that it is absolutely necessary , even if it is only for a moment per day to look at the deepest depth in myself, to see what I actually am, what 'I' actually want. Because: what I actually want is what I actually am. What do you love the most, yourself or Love? If I look deep in myself, it seems to be an impossible choice, because my deepest self is Love. Only in this Love I am myself. Love and I myself, there in the depths, at the source of Life, are two words that indicate the same thing, and is therefore actual, living from the source, only living from the Source, and not from all kinds of entrenchments, or seeking for compensation. Of course, the word says it all. Whenever I abandon the Source, when I live from a personality, from an image, from feelings, from fear, from frustration, then I never reach it. There is an English expression: 'More never ends'. After every compensation we start running immediately, looking for something else. But when we allow the deepest in ourselves to get warm, as it were, and if we, if I may say so, become awake again in the depth, using all means available: by remembering more or less what it was like when Love was there; by seeing that 'I' am not all the things that I defend and by seeing that the defensiveness keeps the wall in place instead of letting the warmth run free, then it must happen that the wall begins to waver.
There was once a giant In the Hindu mythology, every time the giant chopped someone's head off the power of his defeated enemy was added to his power. Finally he became so strong that no man could defeat him and little by little he dared to challenge the gods. The rest of the story is not so interesting, but what is symbolically meant is that every victory, every insight, every letting go of fear, or of greed strengthens the side of the Source, adds to it the energy that was first invested in resistance. In this way the side of Source becomes steadily stronger and the side of resistance steadily weaker, until at a certain moment the entire wall is wiped away. Then we come into the state that we have all experienced and about which we all immediately say: yes, this is what I actually want.
What do I actually want? If I go just a bit deeper into, it becomes completely clear. Every time I do not hold to that, if I build up my walls, if I stick my claws out, if I run after some compensation, if I win a hollow victory, maybe , I betray someone else, but the worst is that I betray my deepest Self, that which I actually want, and that which I actually am. Somewhere in Hamlet Shakespeare says: 'This above all, to your own Self be true, then it shall follow as the night the day, you can not then be false to any man.' That is the proper order. If we live from the Love that we actually are, if we are just ourselves, in the deepest meaning of the word and live from the Source, then the rest is as it should be. Every time that we don't do that we stick a knife into our own ribs — even if we think that it is someone else's ribs. When we are searching for our deepest self we cannot accept anything as given by an authority. We have to verify everything that : is it true or not? It is just like eating; no one else can eat for you. And also in this case: if it is all theory that you have learned just mentally, then that is completely useless, then it is better to learn to play chess or study the violin, or do something else. That does not help us. Everything that you see for yourself, and what you recognize yourself liberates. A theory is only excess baggage.
A few questions have been asked during the pause, one in response to a sentence in 'Yoga and Vedanta': 'Something that comes out of something can not be different from the something it comes from.' I believe that it has become clear to you in the meanwhile, is that so?
Questioner: Yes.
The illusion is a thought!
If you can see the illusion as wrongly seen truth, as Light wrongly interpreted, but nevertheless Light, then the illusion disappears. It happens sometimes that someone discovers that hate is distorted love: 'I wanted so much to love you, but somehow it has gone wrong and now I hate you.' But, this hate is actually distorted love. Discovering that can cause the hate to disappear and then the love comes back. So is it also with this: if you see that the illusion is nothing other that Light itself, the illusion disappears. And that is the intent of this text.
What I find to be strange, is that you see in the long run that everything is going to love everything. Then there is simply no more difference whether come across a person, or an animal, or nature; there is simply nothing more to say. But there are other people who find that to be annoying, who feel disturbed by that.
There are people who think that you want to misuse them if you love them. Sometimes it happens that children are strongly warned against sexuality. Girls like that think all men are beasts, because they see a connection between the men and beastlike sexuality in themselves. Boys are often malformed in precisely the same way. If a normal boy begins to love such a girl, then she feels: 'he' wants to take advantage of me. That's what happens. In that way love is seen to be like something that has nothing to do with love. You see things at your own level all the time, you do not see what is actually happening, in this case you do not se that someone loves you. You interpret something that is actually love as beastliness. So if someone feels disturbed because you have a big heart, then that person has problems! But we can not do anything about that. What we could do is to explain to the person that indeed we love them, but that does not mean that we want to possess them or dominate them or lure them into a trap. Just the opposite, I want exactly nothing, But we have to understand what love is.
The great confusion arises because people mean two or even more, three or four things with the word love. With the word we mean: certain feelings, feelings of warmth that we connect with a person or a situation, with music: I love Schubert, I love my brother, I love someone in a love relation, in a sexual relation, and so on. But in these case we are talking primarily about a feeling. Love, that is complete Freedom, it is not about any feeling. The love that tries to lose itself in a marriage partner for example , begins as a feeling, but as a feeling that rises above itself: it is a feeling that grows into space, into warmth and there the partner disappears, everything dissolves, only Love itself remains. There, there is no A who loves B and no B who loves A: A and B have completely disappeared and there is only the one unlimited. This love brings with it the vision that this thing (this body) and that thing (another body), and that thing and that other thing are all manifestations of what I am myself. In this sense there is not a trace of preference; in this sense no one is closer to you than another.
Love, finally, is something that never leaves you. It is a another word for knowing, for being eternally present. It is not something that has a beginning and an end. The feeling 'love' is one of the doors towards this Love itself. It is therefore clear, that this unlimited Love can never possess or want to possess anything or anyone. How could it be possible, it would be as if my right hand wanted to possess my left hand, that makes no sense. In love there is no owner. If love could possess anything it would be the Universe; everything or nothing, you could say either, but not a piece, you can not split yourself up in pieces. You are the love in the other. The Guru that brigs you to the Truth, to Freedom, to Love is Love itself and speaks to the Love itself that you are. In the beginning you see him or her as a man or a woman, because you see yourself as a man or a woman.
You discover that in everyone, but if you no longer react to other's attacks, then they probably think that you are arrogant, or indifferent or even crazy.
They think: this person has become indifferent. But that is absolutely not the case. Indifference is being closed, resistant. This is precisely the opposite. But we are so used to fighting for our interests, for our wall, for our cage, that when someone is happy we become angry and say that they are egotistic. But, the one who says that, what does he do himself? He is looking for exactly the same, only he does not know how to find it. He thinks that he can be free by strengthening the cage. The moment he discovers that an ego can never be happy, he stops fighting and then he gets into exactly the same problem with his surroundings. I believe we all have a period in which the others say: 'Losing your ego is very egotistic, you only work on yourself.' But at a certain moment it must happen that they discover that something new has happened, something that they can not exactly pinpoint, but something that has more worth then there was before, something that attracts them more than what happened before. Then sometimes you see that understanding begins to dawn.
We are afraid of Freedom. We are brought up to be slaves. First by our parents; we had to become what papa and mama thought that we had to become; they had some imagination that a neat child should be like this or that.. and you had to become that. So we learned to play a role, not to be what we are. That is the beginning of every neurosis. That is how we grew up one layer of armor on top of another. And now suddenly Freedom is offered to us. That scares us — we are afraid that we have to encounter the unknown completely alone. Fear of Freedom: we have to have a papa. There is a very interesting book by Fromm, you should read it sometime: 'Fear of Freedom'. It is mostly about the problem of various countries, all kinds of peoples choose dictatorial presidents. One wants to have a father, one thinks in terms of the family in which father gives the leadership, who thinks for you, decides for you and watches over you. And so it is with us, we do not want freedom, we are afraid of it. We have to realize that we find freedom scary. What should I do? We even find, if we are a bit neurotic, scary to lose our problems, because what should I do without my problems? There is a psychiatric joke in Holland: 'I am so glad that I do not like spinach, because if I liked spinach then I would have to eat spinach and I don't like spinach'. That is the main knot: fear of healing, because if I heal I have to do all kinds of things that I don't feel like doing. The patient does not see that if he is healed these things are not at all so bad, that they practically do themselves; that they are altogether not mountains but molehills. We are all acquainted with that because we all have some of that in common. At a certain moment you become afraid of being healed, afraid to break down your walls because you feel so safe behind them. Who feels safe behind the wall? The wall feels safe. In fact there is no one behind the wall. Naturally it is the other way around: the wall is the insecurity. Why are you insecure? Because you have put up a wall against the environment. If you are one with your surroundings then insecurity does not exist.
Do you want a definite example? Fear itself. What is fear? A fear is mechanism that is suppose to hinder our becoming unhappy. When a small child approaches the heater you say: Look out, that hurts! So you plant a fear to prevent the child from touching the heater. Thus, this is a useful fear. But now let me that transplant that. I am afraid of you, I am afraid that something will be taken from me, I am afraid that I must do something and so on. The fear whose only purpose is that I do not become unhappy, that I do not burn my fingers is now used as a medicine. But that is worse then the complaint. Fear itself is the sickness. It can go very far. Someone I knew tried to explain to me what he had: that he was not only afraid of fear, but that he was afraid of fear of the fear, for the fear of the fear! Let us not try to understand that. There is fear, let us stop there. The fear disappears if I again and again establish: there is a feeling of fear. And that is what we all want: the disappearance of the fear — not to cultivate fear of the fear. I believe that if you have looked with me this evening then it has become completely clear what we actually want. Every person knows deep in their heart what they actually want. Well, let us then throw all these fences that we sit behind into the fire of the love that we are and that we actually want.
I believe that the thought 'now' is the biggest problem for me; I keep seeing that as a sort of knower.
Yes, that is very important, we have to avoid projecting a knower on the thinking. There is a thinker in your head, and if that disappears then there is a knower in your head, but that is not the real knower. Rather than projecting a personality on the Knower, try to see that a thought is nothing else than Consciousness, since that does not have the aroma of a personality, see it as nothing other than Consciousness, Knowingness.
If you actually have no more problems, but are still living in illusion.. what would that be?
In your case it seems to me to be the beginning of the emptiness that we often spoke about. Every person knows: I am One. That is a central unavoidable intuitive knowing. Around this middle point I have planted all kinds of little I's, from I as child to I as old man, I-as-this, I-as-that, entire walls of resistance. I do not live as the true center, 'I Am that I Am', but I live as one who is temporarily projected in a role. On a given day I will see that, and I will see that these I's are not really I, that they are all roles that appear and disappear, a number in the waking state, and a number in the dreaming state; but I am not an 'I' that comes and goes. I am always present.
Now slowly, all those little I feelings are disappearing. The there comes a period when we are almost problem free: there are no great difficulties. You live in a sort of waiting state. That is the Emptiness of the Not-Knowing announcing itself. As long as there is any trace that I am a person who … and you can fill in the rest — the emptiness is not yet complete. But at a certain moment we come to a completely perfect Not-Knowing: the personality knows absolutely nothing, just as little as that chair knows.
Is that what Jean Klein meant with: Je ne sais pas?
Yes, exactly the same, 'I' as a personality knows no more than this table; 'I' as a personality am an object of Knowingness, precisely as this table is an object of Knowingness. The moment the emptiness is perfect in all sorts of ways, the Light manifests itself, the Knowing. But this is speaking very schematically. What I say is completely true, from one moment to the next, the Emptiness changes into Fullness. But it is also true if I say that it happens little by little.. Ignorance, misunderstandings, seeing wrongly, disappear bit by bit. My fears must disappear, one by one, and each time I become lighter. I become more sensitive than before, my body becomes more sensitive, I am no longer blocked and so on. It goes like this gradually further until every becomes transparent and the emptiness is perfect.
(published with permission from 'uitgeverij De Driehoek')
If it happens, it is grace Jan van Delden
We are sitting with a very small group of people in the mild October sun in the Dordogne (France) and ask Jan 'the shirt off his back' about 'free will'- do we have that or don't we have that?
Jan: You have to come to the conclusion yourself that you can only say something about 'free will' after everything has become clear. I always use Odysseus as an example to talk about these things. When the story of Odysseus begins, he has just won the Trojan war with his Trojan horse stratagem. Odysseus insists that he thought it up and did it. He finds that he did that out of his free will, and everyone around him confirm that. As far as 'the world' is concerned it is clear that everyone has a 'free will'. You can't meddle with that. As long as you are only looking from the level of 'Johnny' (the personality) there is free will. That is how you experience it, and that is how you have to be with others, otherwise you are cast out. Meanwhile I can say to seekers: 'If you had free will, you would stop wanting anything and be happy NOW.' You would after all have become happy long ago! Then you have to admit, after all, that you have never succeeded in making yourself happy. Looking back you will see that it is therefore not in your hands, that it is not by means of a 'you' that you are happy. For a long time I wanted to stop smoking, but you can say that you want to stop smoking, but that does not mean that you also can DO it. I have since stopped, but not because I wanted it at the moment that I wanted it.
Question: That happens suddenly? Therefore you cannot DO anything? It is either there or not? Jan: The head says: I want to stop smoking/greed/ sexual desire/gluttony or whatever, but the DOING is not in your hands. That can also be an eye opener to let you see that free will does not exist. If I have to choose between two cookies, and I know that almond cookies are not as tasty as those chocolate cookies, then my hand goes automatically to the chocolate cookies, mmm. There is no need to carry on a discussion at that level. I choose that cookie, Period. I can prove that intellectually, then it seems to be true: I choose, therefore, Free will. Just like the Trojan Horse — the whole world agrees. There are no difficulties with that. The difficulty comes when you say that it was not Odysseus, but Consciousness itself that thought of the Trojan Horse. 'If God doesn't do it, then Johnny tries it in vain' Then everybody is ready to jump on you. All the Mothers Teresa and Presidents Bush become angry. Then you are taking away their little successes or actions. And that is what the world is all about.
It is easy to say that in a welfare state, but how do the poor people in Africa or Afghanistan, for example react? If that is 'imposed' on them then you can ask that. What do millionaires say: I was at the right place just at that moment, or at the Exchange, or born in a good nest or whatever. People often do not see that everything is grace. You might have been born in poverty this morning. For the rest, most poor people are in India or such, and if there is no direct war they are very happy. In India there are also many people who are conscious of the fact that it is Consciousness that arranges everything. When Americans can't make do with what they have, they always begin to talk about God, because they have no social safety nets such as we do. Everyone in American has learned to believe. Much more than is the case with us. Actually 'Free will' makes no sense. You are either happy or not. You are either thankful or not. You can give as much as you like, a person can always misunderstand what they are given.
So we actually have nothing to want? I would think of 'free will' as an abstraction, and once you understand that 'free will' does not exist, then you are comfortable in your skin, then you have understood the story well. Before that time there exist no 'will' at all, The whole idea of 'willing' is based on having, having, having. And there are always conditions to getting anything. 'Please, in the future I want to have.. a family, two children, a nice house'. Everyone 'wants' and is unhappy later. 'If I do not have this or that I am unhappy' That is inherent in life. That belief in what is not there brings us a lot of grief. It is better not to want something.
There are people who purposefully make something, they create what they say they want. What about that? I used to walk with my ex along the beach dreaming and fantasizing for hours about everything that we were going to do: living in the woods, finding mushrooms, making cheese, growing vegetables. We dreamed like that for years. Now, I could say: look, it succeeded, I live in the woods now, but that is nonsense. Afterwards you can say that it is so, but that is only true for a few people, not for everyone and if it does not apply to everyone, then it is a belief and has nothing to do with the truth. I always tell the story of the shark and the pilot fish who swim around him and think they know which way the shark is going to swim: he is going left, no, right, oh no he is turning around, see, I was right. All that drivel is in our heads all day long while the shark just swims along and the pilot fish's bullshit has nothing to do with whether he swims right or left, under or over. But that is where we live all the time, that is what we believe and that is what we suffer from. If you just look at what happens, then that whole 'I did it' business stops, and you don't listen to it anymore. Simply let the little fishes bullshit. Don't listen to the little fishes anymore. They only talk about what might happen and how it could happen…. If I had not done that, then .. if I actually had done that… then … if he or she had or had not said this or that, then … The shark has nothing to do with all that. He is just living completely spontaneously.
How is it possible then that it does seem to succeed for some people? If the idea helps you, then it is okay. But you are naturally creating an artificial situation. You have no influence on the NOW! Sooner or later you will get a kick in the ass, because Consciousness has somethig to tell you sometime that you overlooked. That HAS to happen sometime if you are fated to come Home.
Is that the spiritual master's 'job'? You need a spiritual master to teach you how to handle what the Nothing is like. Before you are ready for the Void you must be finished with your spiritual master! Odysseus also experienced that. He tried to attack Troy for ten years and finally he succeeded. The whole world says: 'Fantastic Odysseus!' But, Poseidon, ruler of the sea, does everything possible to thwart Odysseys, because Odysseus has burned out the eye of Poseidon's son Polyphemos, the one-eyed Cyclops (the truth), and Poseidon wants to teach him a lesson. Poseidon says: 'Yes, yes, conceited, irritating little man we'll let you know who is really in charge…' Odysseus has to wander all these years until he becomes suspicions and begins to understand that the gods and not him do everything. He has to travel that long path to discover what 'free will' actually is.
Thus, everything in its own time. There is a season for everything. Yes, therefore it says in the Odyssey': 'You have to begin somewhere.' One person might have a Rambo in himself who has to live itself out at the last moment, another might belong to the 'Phalaken', another can not pass by the Sirens and cannot cope with the 'Bag full of wind' (that is with 'Nothing') yet.. Sooner or later you meet all these facets, but at the moment that it is needed the only thing that works is 'grace', and there are people who need the strength of the word or of belief, and sometimes they also arrive completely Home. But finally they will see that the strength was not in Johnny/Odysseus/personality/ideas, but in the realization itself; the wave was made of water, but the wave imagines that it has discovered water. At a certain moment you have to see how ridiculous that is.
So, if I think my free will is at work that is actually a signal to take a better look. Yes! At first you go in search of the water and that seems to be an investigation of the wave (the person). When the wave realizes that it is made of water, and that all the other waves are also made of water, and that there is nothing else than water, then it sees the ridiculousness of the whole search, because there has never been anything else except water. Then the whole structure collapses. Until then you have to stay where you are at. You must therefore not just believe what I say. It is not about belief, it is about your seeing it! But there are many bhaktis who derive much from the strength of the word and who also can see wonders therein — who do not use their thinking, but their trust in God and that always works, but if you use your trust in God for your personal preferences then sooner or later you will see that it turns around. If I think, 'God is for America', then I am making a real mistake. Then sooner or later he comes to be on the side of the terrorists because there are always two sides to every case. The Americans have been to church, but so have the Germans, just to name another country, And both boast about their own God — sometimes it is true, but in the totality it is not true.
If free will does not exist, is then everything predestined, including realization? Yes, that's correct. But what is predestined? That the wave discovers that it is made of water? Even though he is made totally of water? That's neither here nor there! If you have seen it all, that makes no difference either. The most you can say is: there was a self image in the Self in which a dream played itself out and it really looked as if there were something, but finally it was all rubbish. Water has the same wetness everywhere. And nothing has ever happened except the imagination of a self. There is only the knowing of a dream: there is no dream, there is the knowing of a dream; in the dream there are no objects, no material, thus only the knowing was. Therefore nothing is the matter. But, you must not say that when you are watching TV and you see all the distress happening now! That's not right. Then you are making a mistake. But you do have to see how it actually is inside yourself. That does not mean that you don't sympathize, or make no contributions or anything in situations where support and help are needed now!
Do you still dream? Yes, I sometimes dream. Never about anything that has to do with the teaching. I dream when I have eaten something bad, or have the flu. Then I wake up in the night and have difficulty in falling asleep again, and when I do fall asleep it is early in the morning and those are the moments when we dream. I often have the same dream, mostly about a squat that I always come back to, and I have conversations with people whom I don't know at all in the waking state. Strangers to me, but in the dream I know that I have said the words a thousand times. The dream comes back again and again. So you can see that dreams, just like the waking state also have continuity. So you can not say that a dream is more abstract than the waking state or anything like that. It is absolutely the same. The more you see, the better you know that the dream state is the same as the waking state; all sort of things happen in both and the same way in both. In the dream the experiencing is exactly the same. The waking state has more so-called continuity, while the dream state is more chaotic and varied. If I am full of worries, then I am also full of worries in the dream state. That does not say that this (the waking state) is real! … In the beginning it is a way of finding the reality, but you can also try to distinguish between the knowing and the known by using the faculty of differentiation. Later on you don't have to do that anymore, then you know it.
If you actually examine it from all angles then I understand that it makes no sense to still talk about 'free will'. That actually becomes laughable, because that is the level of the person. And yet, I still have the stubborn idea that I can for example choose to I identify or not. I can after all know that I am in an identity and I can either leave it like that or change it. Is that so? Do you really have this choice? If it happens it is grace, it is always grace. No matter how you look at it. There is no other way. When the time is ripe it happens. So, if you think that there is something like subject-object and that you are on the subjective side you can pay attention there. That moment is indeed very important; that is what determines it. Then it becomes a fact, but if you can direct your attention there, then that is also grace. Thus, there is grace if that happens and not because there is an 'I' that can do something. It is always consciousness that does it. In and of itself it is always an opening if you can direct your attention, but that is pure grace…
Directing your attention is a fantastic opening, because it is exactly like the NOW, and you see more and more clearly that the whole free will is an empty word, but that this empty word brings you to the fact that consciousness arranges everything. The more you go into it, the more you see that Consciousness arranges everything. Then you stop explaining things to people and trying to improve them if they do not want it themselves. If I see more and more that Consciousness does everything then I have no job. Moreover, I have no job.
Then you can also no longer be vexed by other people. No. nothing. There is annoyance sometimes, that is possible, but that does not happen because of the people; it is no more than a passing thought.
So you can actually not do anything wrong. No. And you can also do nothing right.
Actually I wanted to do this or that. Is that all nonsense? Yes, that is pilot fish bullshit. I see a little tree, I am mowing around it, I fail to pay attention for a moment, little tree gone. I should have paid more attention! That is neither here nor there. And the next thought says: you see, you are not paying attention. Then the pilot fishes go to work. And if you allow it, then you are even going to believe them! You do your best, you know that. And, if you don't do your best you know that too.
That does not mean that you have to restrain yourself if the kids are bawling, or count to ten before sinking into a pool of self pity. It does no harm to pull your self together then. But you need not exaggerate that; in general there is no need to do anything. Let it be. At most you can say 'Johnny' was a bit dumb, but at eventually it means nothing more than that.
At least then you have a certain distance. That is what I used 'Johnny ' for, for a long time; if that appeals to you use 'Johnny', but as a third person, because that way you see that it is Johnny's problem and not yours. Because you are not Johnny, You are that in which Johnny appears. That way you continually make the subtle distance between John and his world, and You. Until it becomes definite that you can not be any part of that John and that only the knowing of John exists. Then there comes a definite break. In the beginning you have to yo-yo with it a bit.
Like a film in which Johnny does this and that? Yes.
It has nothing to do with me? No. Even if Johnny falls like a ton of bricks for all the stories and opens all the e-mails, sob songs and all, as soon as you come around again, you see that it was all nonsense. And thus you need not fall into 'you see, it is not for me because I have opened the e-mails again, I got fooled again, so again I have not understood it, etc. etc.' Then you have to pass through that also. And as soon as you can do that, then it no longer matters if you fell again, or you identified again, because how can the water fall into something? And once you know that everything is water, then it makes no sense to think that one 'wave' could have done it better than another 'wave' if you are talking about water. But, if we are talking about skills, or capacities, or talents, then yes, that is something else, but then we are talking about a totally different level. Then I say: 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's '. You just have to know what your strong and weak points are, as a person. My strong points are such and so, my weaknesses are so and so. That is what makes life so nice.
Do you have any more advice? The best thing is to know ahead of time that twaddle comes into your mind at difficult moments. Thus, you have to anticipate that at moments when there are not yet any problems. You must know that. Don't go 'searching' just when there is a rotten situation, because then you are going to call up rotten situations just so that you can go 'seeking'. Many people only begin to search, or to look at themselves seriously when they feel rotten or have fallen into a crisis situation. Then 'seeking' is going to intertwine itself with rotten situations and will create rotten situations in order to keep 'seeking'. If you regularly 'seek' and then just at the moments when you feel good, when apparently you have no need to look at 'yourself', then that is much better, because then that associates a good feeling with 'seeking' and you can slowly 'train' that better, whatever that might be…
In my case I got a lot from the 'humming of the silence'*. If that appeals to you, you can apply it during washing the dishes, or drinking coffee, then you can do it also when there is a crisis situation, or you are crying because all your things have been stolen, or in processing all kinds of traumatic things. By directing the attention to the humming, which as it happens seemed to be a good natural method for me, you can go on doing things and simultaneously see how things are and at the same time see that you are completely powerless and that there is also absolutely nothing in which you had, or ever had any say. Then you no longer judge the results of your actions because you see that nothing has ever been asked of you…
And hopefully you may even succeed in avoiding the WHY-question! As soon as you have a why-question, stop immediately. Delete the e-mail immediately without opening it. Delete. WHY? Delete. WHY? Delete. It becomes easier and easier.
Alexander always said about the 'why this or that' or 'this wanting or not wanting': 'You want what is not there, and you don't want what is there', it's that simple, he said, and according to you Wolter was also not so eager to go into that 'wanting', or into 'free will' and so forth. No, because 'wanting' always implies 'wanting something' and that implies that you are not in agreement with what there is NOW. You want to change something in reality! Wolter did not like to speak about it because it does not make things clearer but actually complicates them. You can simplify instead of complicate. He said: 'You do have a free choice, but you can not choose the choice itself,' or: you can choose between right or left, but you can't know WHY you have the choice between right and left.
That happens spontaneously. He saw of course, that you have to be careful, as I do and as do all the others that know it, that you have to be careful because things are always intertwined and most people who are on the first level want answers on the second level; grade school children who come on with Einstein's relativity theory, that leads nowhere. We must not be impolite, so we say as much as we can about it. And in reality it is so simple. Everything was so intellectual in the past. All those philosophy books… yeah.. I looked into them for three hours.. I could not say a word about them! And this is all so simple, so concrete, so unimaginably simple .. that you can't even understand that there are so many books written about it.
And that you even can talk about it! It will stay that way. I can always talk about it.
Nisargadatta said that too, even when he was dying and could still speak. Yes, it is surprising. It is the only thing you can wake me up for.
I decide now to go read, or to go listen to a tape. So I am after all making a choice. Yes, but you can't make the choice itself. The moment that you indeed make the choice is not in your control. 'I now choose to stop this lousy mood'. That you can not do. No one can do that!
Or you say: 'I'm going to stop smoking now' and the next minute you light a cigarette. Or I am going to decide now not to have anymore bad thoughts.
So what it's about is that we should not mix levels. Yes. Give Caesar what is Caesar's and give God what is God's. And is some cases you must not let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.
Another piece of advice is to investigate 'free will' by for example, going to buy a house and asking yourself why you prefer one house to another. You can ask yourself why you want to drink coffee with one of the owners and not with another. You can ask yourself why you find something beautiful; you can ask yourself why you buy one auto and not another. Investigate it. Look to se if YOU do it. The you will discover that the answer is 'I don't know' and that therefore you don't know why you 'do' something. When I stood here then I knew, 'I want this house'. When that moment comes it comes by itself, but then the head immediately says: 'I decided it'. That is not at all true. It came spontaneously. But most people don't want to hear that, because most people are busy trying to make things concrete — I want a job, a family, a child, money in the bank, a car — and I say that at that level 'free will exists'. If you want a better job, then do as if free will exists, create your job, create your house, bring your life in order, learn to choose, see to it that you have skills to enable you to live — but that is all at a different level than we are here discussing. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. You should not mix up these two levels.
Otherwise, you might say 'I do not need any more education' and such. No, you do need an education. You must be able to function in this world. Keep on voting, participate, develop yourself, try to get a balanced ego, only then can you be free of it. A frustrated ego can not let go of itself. It can only damage itself and kill itself, but not see through itself. It would be beautiful if you could create balance in your personality to a certain extent. An inferior feeling little ego such as I had, needs a diploma to know who he is. The moment I got my diploma it became clear to me. It was my last diploma, If my ego had then said that Johnny must still become a professor … then I would have had a problem. The moment when Johnny had achieved something I could let Johnny go.
Did that happen the very same day? Yes.
When was that? June 3, 1983. The day that I had to defend my thesis. Then I refused to play that little game any longer. And then in the train on the way to Wolter in France, there was a friendly homosexual who did everything for me, as if he understood that something had happened with me. I observed everything, but I was only directed inwards. I mean by that; I did not go 'outside' I remained sitting calmly. He went for the sandwiches and cared for me without being asked. I always say: if you still have a longing then go for it first, at least if it is realistic. You have to examine it continuously. 'Who am I'? or 'Where does that appear'? You have to examine that constantly. Preferably when you have no problems.
What is the difference between the search for truth and the psychological route? Those are certainly different tracks? That depends on your tendencies. If I have a frustrated little ego and I do hatha yoga, stand on my head, meditate and get some peace out of that, I might have perhaps gotten the same rest from a good encounter group as they were then called. It doesn't matter. It is about the moment when you seriously ask yourself, 'who am I?'. From that moment on you really begin to seek. Previous to that it is just tinkering with yourself, with your personality, on the outside. I went searching because I couldn't get along in the world. I was unhappy. I did not know what love was and such. There is often a whole range of preconditions. If I become enlightened I will … It doesn't work that way. If you still have plans, if there are still some buried agenda items it is better to bring them out into the open, and to do them. That is how you learn to look at your longing. See clearly once what happens and then you know. Do you still want to climb the Eiffel tower ten times? Do you want to have that feeling? Do it then and see what happens to your longing. If a new longing arises immediately then you recognize what has happened. Keep going in this way until you can see that movement arising in you. If you realize that the previous longing didn't mean anything, and that it didn't mean anything this time, then you perceive that your new longing will also not bring what you actually seek. And then you know that longings belong to the person and not to who you actually are.
I still want to dare to make a parachute jump. I can understand that. I used to have that sort of thing also, but it is nonsense. First there has to be a little challenge.. and then only.. are you happy? Are you only then going to live? A Johnny that has to first dare before he as a wave can see that he is made of water? … First dare and then only can the realization complete itself? Yes yes, that is what we call 'creating preconditions.'
*See Amigo #1 'Hummology '; Jan over attention to the attention.
Every escape is bound to fail
The following interview with Alexander took place in 1988. It seems like an eternity ago. For me it was a time of the after effects of a spiritual search in which people of the same generation from all parts of the world searched en masse for new ways and dimensions of religious experience and came into contact with the contrasts between West and East. We had learned new concepts and ideals, values and norms. 'Spiritual' communes sprung up everywhere; we were building a 'new world' that collapsed again, as always and yet again. In written or translated texts, words such as Guru or Spiritual Master or Him and Her were written in capital letters and He or She were treated as deities as is still the case in India and its surrounding countries.
It seems to me now, in 2002, that my interview with Alexander reflects the spirit of that time. 'It seems old fashioned' writes Sietske Roegholt in reaction to a letter I wrote, 'to think that way about teachers who after all nowadays would rather be a friend or are still so young in thei r 'complete or not complete' realization…' We both find that a new time has arrived , that of the complete demythologizing of the teacher. Some people cheer that on, others are holding their breath. Are we throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Are there probably not enough people of the caliber of Nisargadatta among us at this moment? Questions without answers. Whoever knows can say it.
One of the reasons that this interview has never been made public before, is that Alexander always taught me that disciples should never know how their spiritual master came to clearness; it would lead them to make ideas about how 'it ought' to happen to them. Now, 3 years after his death I notice two things: a. almost every day a new spiritual master, man or woman, appears, and b. they speak openly about their realization. And the seekers? Slowly it has penetrated them that 'it' is only a 'happening' that moreover has as many forms as there are people.
What Alexander had foreseen, has long become 'reality', no matter how much he would have found that to be bad; the West has made much of the Eastern religious experience its own. It is in the nature of things that this new flower has come, because that's the way it must happen, that's how it is and that's how it always will be in the Play of Consciousness.
b.b., 21.10.2001
In conversation with Alexander Smit.
Alexander at the age of 25. September 1988. Location: the kitchen of his house on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam. We were busy going over the translation of THE NECTAR OF THE LORD'S FEET (Dutch title SELF-REALIZATION) by his Spiritual master Nisargadatta Maharaj and he wanted to do an 'interview 'for a change, as a sort of practice. The interview has survived a computer crash, break-in and theft, because luckily I had typed it out and printed the tape previously. I have preserved this as a treasure for years. Until now.
Alexander met Nisargadatta in September of 1978. In the beginning of September of that year Jacques Lewenstein had been in India and come back with the book I AM THAT and tapes of Nisargadatta.
Alexander: That book came into the hands of Wolter Keers. He was very happy with it, because after the death of Krishna Menon (Wolter's spiritual master) he had not heard anything so purely advaita. After Wolter had read the book he decided to translate and publish it 'because this is so extremely good'. Wolter gave me the book immediately and I was very moved by it. Then there was an article in Panorama or The New Revue: GOD HAS NO TEETH. A poorly written story by the young man who did Showroom (TV). There was a life-sized photo of Nisargadatta's head in it. That was actually my first acquaintance with Nisargadatta. By then Wolter had already told me: 'I can not do anything more for you. You need someone. But I wouldn't know who.' But, when he had read I AM THAT he said: 'If I can give you a piece of advice, go there immediately.' And that I did.
What were you seeking? I was seeking nothing more. I knew everything. But, if you had asked me what I had learned I would have said; I don't actually know it. There is something essential that I don't know. There was a sort of blind spot in me that no one knew what do with. Krishnamurti knew nothing that he could say about it. Bhagwan was for us at that time not someone that you would go to, at least for this sort of thing. Da Free John was also not it. Those were the known people at that time. I had a blind spot. And what typifies a blind spot is that you don't know what it is. You only knew that if you were really honest with yourself, if you really went to the bottom of yourself, that you had not yet solved the riddle.
For the first time in Bombay? A little staircase going up to an attic room. First came my head, and the first thing that I saw was Mrs. Satprem and Nisargadatta. There were maybe three or four people there. 'Here I am', I said. And he said: 'So, finally you came.' Yeah, that is what they all say, that I heard later, but for me it was the first time that I heard it. I did have the feeling when I went in that now it was really serious. Now there is no escape possible, Here something is really going to happen. Naturally I had already met many of these people: Krishnamurti, Jean Klein, Wolter, Swami Ranganathananda, Douglas Harding, and also some less well known Indians. I was naturally too young for Ramana Maharshi and Krishna Menon. They died in the fifties. I was 7 or 8 years old then. That is not the age to be busy with these sorts of things. It held also true for us at that time, 'wait' for a living master. And I had a very strong feeling that this was the man that I had been looking for. He asked if I were married, what I did, and why I had come to India.
What precisely did you want from him? Self-realization. I wanted to know how I was put together. I said: 'I have heard that your are the greatest ego killer who exists. And that is what I want.' He said: 'I am not a killer. I am a diamond cutter. You are also a diamond. But you are a raw diamond and you can only be cut by a pure diamond. And that is very precise work, because if that is not done properly then you fall apart into a hundred pieces, and then there is nothing left for you. Do you have any questions?' I told him that Maurice Frydman was the decisive reason for my coming. Frydman was a friend of Krishnamurti and Frydman was planning to publish all of the earlier work of Krishnamurti at Chetana Publishers in Bombay, And that he had heard from Mr. Dikshit , the publisher, that there was someone in Bombay who he had to meet. (I AM THAT was of course not yet published at that time because Frydman had yet to meet Nisargadatta). Frydman went there with his usual skeptical ideas. He came in there, and within two weeks things became clear to him that had never become clear with Krishnamurti. And I thought then: if it all became clear to Frydman within two weeks, how will it go with me? I told all this to Nisargadatta and he said: 'That says nothing about me, but everything about Frydman.' And he also said: 'People who don't understand Krishnamurti don't understand themselves.' I thought that was beautiful, because all the gurus I knew always ran everyone down. It seemed as if he wanted to help me relax. He didn't launch any provocations. I was able to relax, because as you can understand it was of course a rather tense situation there. He said; 'Do you have any questions?' I said; 'No.' 'When are you going to come?' 'Every day if you allow me.' 'That's good. Come just two times every day, mornings and afternoons, for the lectures, and we'll see how it goes.' I said: 'Yes, and I am not leaving until it has become clear.' He said; 'That's good.'
Was that true? Yes, without a doubt. Because what he did — within two minutes he made it clear, whatever you brought up, that the knowledge you presented was not yours. That it was from a book, or that you had borrowed or stolen it, or that it was fantasy, but that you were actually not capable of having a direct observation, a direct perception, seeing directly, immediately, without a mediator, without self consciousness. And that frightened me terribly, because everything you said was cut down in a brutal way.
What happened with you exactly? The second day he asked if I had any questions. Then I began to ask a question about reincarnation in a more or less romanticized way. I told that I had always had a connection with India, that when I heard the word 'India' for the first time it was shock for me, and that the word 'yoga' was like being hit by a bomb when I first heard it on TV, and that the word 'British India' was like a dog hearing his boss whistle. And I asked, could it mean that I had lived in India in previous lives? And then he began to curse in Marathi, and to get unbelievably agitated, and that lasted for at least ten minutes. I thought, my god, what's happening here? The translator was apparently used to it, because he just sat calmly by, and when Maharaj was finished he summarized it all together; 'Maharaj is asking himself if you are really serious. Yesterday you came and you wanted self-realization, but now you begin with questions that belong in kindergarten'… In this way you were forced to be unbelievably alert. Everything counted heavily. It became clear to me within a few days that I knew absolutely nothing, that all that I knew, all the knowledge that I had gathered was book knowledge, second hand, learned, but that out of myself I knew nothing. I can assure you that this put what was needed into motion. And that's how it went every day! Whatever I came up with, whether I asked an intelligent question or a dumb question, made absolutely no difference. And one day he asserted this, and the following day he asserted precisely the opposite and the following day he twisted it around one more time even though that was not actually possible. And so it went, until by observation I understood why that was, and that was a really wonderful realization. Why do I try all the time to cram everything into concepts, to try to understand everything in terms of thinking or in the feelings sphere? And, he gave me tips about how I could look at things in another way, thus really looking. And then it became clear to me that it just made no sense to regard yourself — whatever you call yourself, or don't call yourself — in that way. That was an absolute undermining of the self-consciousness, like a termite eating a chair. At a certain moment it becomes sawdust. It still looks like a chair, but it isn't a chair anymore.
Did that lead to self realization? He kept going on like this, and then there came a moment that I just plain had enough of it. Really just so much … I would not say that I became angry, but a shift took place in me, a shift of the accent on all authorities outside of myself, including Nisargadatta, to an authority inside myself. He was talking, and at a given moment he said 'nobody'. He said : 'Naturally there is nobody here who talks.' That was too much for me. And I said: 'If you don't talk then why don't you shut up then? Why say anything then?' And it seemed as if that is what had been waiting for. He said: 'Do you want that I should not talk anymore? That's good, then I won't talk anymore and if people want to know something then they can just go to Alexander. From now on there are no more translations, translators don't have to come anymore, there is no more English spoken. Only Marathi will be spoken, and if people have any problems then they can go to Alexander because he seems to know everything.' And then began all the trouble with the others, the bootlickers and toadies who insisted that I had to offer my apologies! Not on my life. Yeah, you can't offer excuses to a nobody, eh?! And to me he said; 'And you, you can't come here anymore.' And I said: 'What do you mean I can't come here anymore. Try and stop me. Have you gone completely crazy? ' And the translators were naturally completely upset. They said nothing like this had ever been seen before. And he was angry! Unbelievably angry!. And he threw the presents that I had brought for him at my feet and said: 'I want nothing from you, Nothing from you I want.' And that was the breakthrough, because something happened, there was no thinking because I was.. the shift in authority had happened. As I experienced it everything came to me from all sides: logic, understanding, on the one hand the intellect and on the other hand at the same time the heart, feelings and all phenomena, the entire manifest came directly to me from all sides to an absolute center where the whole thing exploded. Bang. After that everything became clear to me… The next day I went there as usual. There was a lecture, but indeed no English was spoken. I can assure you that the tension could be cut with a knife, because I was the guilty party of course. He wanted to push that down my throat and the translators just went along quietly. There was not even any talking. And the next day, there was not even a lecture. He arrived in a car, and drove away when he saw me and went to a movie… Then I wrote him a letter. Twelve pages. In perfect English. I had someone bring the letter to him. Everything was running over. I wrote everything. And his answer was: let him come tomorrow at 10 o'clock. And he read my letter and said: ´You understood. This confrontation was needed to eliminate that self-consciousness. But you understood completely and I am very happy with your letter and nothing happened.' Naturally , that cleared the air. He asked if I wanted to stay longer. 'From this situation that took place on September 21, 1978, I want to be here in love .' And he said; 'that is good.' From that day on I attended all the talks and also translated sometimes, for example when Spaniards, or Frenchmen or Germans came. I was a bit of a helper then.
So actually you apply the same method as he did: the cutting away of the self-consciousness to the bone and letting people see their identities. Was that his method? Yes. Recognizing the false as false and thereafter letting the truth be born. But the most wonderful thing was, MY basis dilemma, and if I say 'my' I mean everyone in a certain sense, is that if at a certain moment you ask yourself: what did I come here for, that seems to be something completely different from what you thought. Everyone has ideas about this question, and I had never suspected in the farthest reaches of my mind that the Realization of it would be something like this. That is the first point. The second is, it appears that a certain point you have the choice of maintaining your self-consciousness out of pride, arrogance, intellect. And the function of the Guru, the skill with which he can close the escapes from the real confrontation was in his case uncommonly great, at least in my case. And for me that was the decisive factor. Because if there had been a chance to 'escape', I would certainly have taken it. Like a thief who still tries to get away.
Did he ever say anything about it? He said that unbelievable courage is needed not to flee. And that my being there had almost given him a heart attack, that he no longer had the strength to tackle cases like mine as he became older. So I have the feeling that I got there at just the right moment. Later he became sick. He said: 'I have no strength anymore to try to convince people. If you like it, continue to come, maybe you can get something out of it, but I have no strength anymore to convince people like him (and then he pointed to me). I am so grateful to him, because it only showed how great my resistance was. There has to be a proportional force that is just a bit stronger than your strangest and strongest resistance. You need that. It showed how great my resistance was. And it showed how great his strength was, and his skill. For me he was the great Satguru. The fact that he was capable of defeating my most cunning resistance — and I can assure you after having gone into these things for 15 years — my resistance was extremely refined and cunning, was difficult for him even though he knew who he was dealing with. That's why I had to go to such a difficult person of course. It says everything about me. Just as he said in the beginning that it said everything about Frydman. But I have never seen the skill he had in closing the escape routes of the lies and falsehoods so immensely great anywhere else. Of course I have not been everywhere, but with Ramana Maharshi you just melted. That was another way. With Krishna Menon the intellect could just not keep it together under the gigantic dismantling, but by Nisargadatta, every escape was doomed to failure. People who came to get something, or people who thought they could bring something stood naked outside the door within five minutes. I saw a great many people there walking away in great terror. At a certain moment I was no longer afraid, because I felt that I had nothing more to lose. So I can't really say that it was very courageous of me. I can only say that in a certain sense with him I went on the attack. And what was nice about it is that he also valued that. Because, he sent many people away, and these really went and mostly didn't come back. The he would say: 'They are cowards. I didn't send them away, I sent away the part of them that was not acceptable here.' And if they then returned, completely open, then he would say nothing about it. But during those happenings with me, people forgot that. There was also a doctor, a really fine man, who said; 'don't think that he is being brutal with you; you don't have any idea how much love there is in him to do this with you.' I said: 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that.' Because I didn't want any commentary from anyone. After all, this is what I had come for! Only the form in which it happened was totally different from what I had expected in my wildest dreams. But again, that says more about me than about Maharaj, and I still think that.
So, his method was thus to let you recognize the false as false, to see through the lies as lies, and to come to truth in this way? Yes, and that went deeper than I could have ever suspected. The thinking was absolutely helpless. The intellect had no ghost of chance. The heart was also a trap. And that is exactly what happened there. That is everything. And I know that after that day, September 21, 1978, there has never been even a grain of doubt about this question, and the authority, the command, the authenticity, has never left, has never again shifted. There is no authority, neither in this world or in another world, that can thrust me out of the realization. That's the way it is.
Did Maharaj say that you had to do something after this realization? I asked: 'It is all very beautiful, but what now? What do I do with my life? Then he said: 'You just talk and people will take care of you.' And that's the way it has gone.
Did you go visit him often? Various times. As often as I could I was there every year for two or three months. Until the last time. And when I knew that I would never see him again there was entirely no sadness or anything like that. It was just the way it was. It was fine that way,
Did he do the same with others as he had with you? Not as intensely and not so persistently.
You get what you give? Yes, that is so. In a certain sense he did that with everyone, but if someone was very sensitive he approached it in a different way. Naturally it makes difference if an old nun is sitting in front of you, or a rebel like myself, who also looks as if he can take quite a bit. The last time he said; 'He will be powerful in Europe. He has the knowledge. He will be the source of what I am teaching.' And then he directed those headlight eyes of his towards me. That is still so wonderful… It is ten years ago now, and it seems like a week. I have learned to value his words in the passage of time. The things I questioned in the past I see becoming manifest now. At first I thought; the way he has put this into words is typical Indian conditioning after all, but the wonder is that all the advice that he gave taught me to hang on to them. I didn't follow them a few times and that always lead to catastrophes.
For example? For example he said to me: 'Don't challenge the Great Ones. Let them enjoy.' And I have to admit that I had trouble with that. But knowing my rebellious character — and naturally he saw that immediately — he still had to give me that. And every time that I see that, that aspect of my character wants to express itself, I hear his voice: 'Don't challenge the Great Ones.' He anticipated that. I know that for sure. And in that way he also said a number of things that suddenly made sense. Then I hear him. And Wolter always said: 'After the realization, the only words that remain with you are the words of your Guru. All your knowledge disappears, but the words of the Guru remain.' And I can now confirm that that is true, that it is like that.
Was Wolter also a disciple of Nisargadatta? No, but he was there often.
I have understood that you find the Living Teaching very important. Is that especially true for Advaita? The objection to books about Advaita, including the translations of Nisargadatta's words is that too much knowledge is given in them. That is an objection. People can use this knowledge, and especially the knowledge at the highest level to defend and maintain their self-consciousness. That makes my work more difficult. Knowledge, spiritual knowledge, can, when there is no living master be used again to maintain the 'I', the self-consciousness. The mind is tricky, cunning. And I speak out of my own experience! Because Advaita Vedanta, without a good living spiritual master, I repeat, a good one, can become a perfect self contained defense mechanism. It can be a plastic sack that leaks on all sides, but you can't find the leak. You know that it doesn't tally, but it looks as if it does tally. That is the danger in Vedanta. Provided there is a good living master available, it can do no harm. But stay away from it if there is no master available! Provided it is well guided Advaita can be brilliant.
Do you mean that people could act from their so called 'knowing' as if they are more than the content of their consciousness? That they therefore assume that the content is worthless? Yes. That is why up to now, I have never wanted to write a book. But, as long as I am alive there are Living Teachings. When I die they can do whatever they want to with it, but as long as I am alive I am there.
To take corrective action? Yes.
Do people have a built in defense mechanism? At the level of the psyche there is a defense mechanism that prevents you from taking in more than you can cope with, but at a higher level sooner or later you have an irrevocable need for a spiritual master who can tell you certain things, who has to explain things because other wise you get stuck. Whoever doesn't want a living master gets stuck.
Books could lead to people becoming interested and going on a search. To a good spiritual master of flesh and blood. Living!
Did Nisargadatta foresee that you would manifest as a guru? I think guru is a rotten word, but he did say: 'Many people will seek your blessings.'
So you couldn't do anything else. It happened by itself. He said; 'The seed is sown, the seasons do the rest.'
Isn't that true for everyone? Yes, but some seeds fall on good soil and something grows, but other seeds don't grow. Out of million sperms only one reaches the egg.
At Nisargadatta's bhajans were also sung and certain rituals done, especially for the Indians. Did you also participate in that? I participated two times. The bhajans I thought, were really special…
What is their goal? Singing bhajans has a purifying effect on the body, thinking, and feeling, so that the Knowledge can become manifest and finds its place there. I don't have any need of it, but I see that the singing offers social and emotional solace and thus I am not against it. In addition prasad was distributed and arati done.
What is arati? A form of ritual in which fire is swung around and camphor is burned. Camphor is the symbol of the ego. That burns and nothing remains of it. Just as in self-realization nothing of the self-consciousness remains. It is a beautiful ritual. It makes you attentive to all kinds of things. The fire is swung at your eye level so what you see may be beautiful, at your ears so that what you hear may be pure, and at your mouth so that what you eat may be pure. It is Hindu symbolism that has become so common in India that it has mostly become flattened out and routine. It has something, as a symbol , but Westerners shouldn't try it unless they understand the symbolism completely. I find the singing of OM good, that works, that is a law. It works to purify the body, thinking and feeling, so that the Knowing that it is can be manifest and find a place in your life.
Did Nisargadatta follow a certain tradition? But of course. The Navdath Sampradaya. The tradition of the Nine Gurus. The first was Jnaneshwar (Jnanadeva) from the 13th century, who became realized when he was twenty and also died at that age. Nisargadatta was the ninth.
Are you the tenth? No. I always call Maharaj 'the last of the Mohicans'.
Still you always talk about the tradition. I work following a traditional background, because there lies the experience of a thousand years of instruction. Instruction that works! I have learned to value the Tradition. I am totally non traditional, but in my heart I am a traditionalist. When I talk about 'the tradition' I mean the tradition of Advaita so as that became manifest in the Navdath Sampradaya.
What is the importance of tradition? The importance of a tradition is just as with vio