2005

 January: The Indefinable Universe

Well, I only have two written questions.

Sataranda writes:

A long time ago you gave a talk called ‘The Learning Of Love’. For me, this is what it’s all about. May I ask you for an energy drawing on the learning of love, to use it for a tattoo, and for the Energy Work I started, and which I will continue.

Tattoos are extra!

Other words that really touch me are: When the inner becomes the outer and the outer becomes the inner, there is the kingdom of God.

So, for Sataranda, the learning of love, that’s what it’s all about. You know, when I was young, it was the Hokey Cokey that was what it was all about. You haven’t heard of the Hokey Cokey, huh? It was a dance tune. “Do the Hokey Cokey – that’s what it’s all about!” Now you remember it, huh? But now Sataranda has corrected this misunderstanding and says that it’s not the Hokey Cokey that it’s all about, it is love.

Or maybe it’s sex, because that makes life go on. Or maybe it’s unity, because that’s where we all come from. Or maybe it’s bliss, because that’s the highest experience we can have. Or perhaps it’s fish and chips, because English people can’t exist without fish and chips. Or perhaps it is the sound of this machine behind me, which fills reality.

If you make something what it’s all about, Sataranda, then you become too focused. Then if there’s not love, then you’re not on target, and if you feel love, then that’s ‘it’. “Now I’m on target, now I’m off target, now I’m on target…”

I haven’t the faintest idea what it’s all about. So if you have, maybe you should sit here and I should sit there. As soon as you make a box, then… Well, it is interesting, because if you have a box, then you have inside the box and outside the box. And the second thing Sataranda says he loves is, ‘When the outer is the inner and the inner is the outer, there is the kingdom of God.’ So that means no box is allowed – because with a box there’s always an inner and an outer.

This quote that he refers to is from a gospel that was found in the last century called the Gospel of Thomas. Most people think that the four gospels that are in the New Testament are the only gospels there are, but there were a great number of gospels, and only those were chosen which seemed to fit the people who were running things at the time the New Testament was compiled, so a lot of them were destroyed. But since then, a few have been found – the Gospel According to Mary Magdalene, the Gospel According to Thomas, and others. And in the Gospel of Thomas, these are the words: ‘When the inner becomes the outer and the outer becomes the inner, there is the kingdom of God.’

Well, that I agree with. I agree with that. That’s part of my teaching and part of what we are doing here. But to say that, doesn’t say, “This is what it’s all about.” It says, be one with everything, see that you’re part of everything, and then live. And when you live, all sorts of things can happen, including love, very beautifully – including many things which are not on the list of best things to be, but they are also life.

So, Sataranda, my friend, this is something you like to do: to aim. To set up a goal and aim. And that is okay sometimes, because it gets you moving, but you have to forget the aim moment by moment, or you will miss much.

One of the things I said might be one of the main qualities in life was the sound of this amplifier here. Now, if you really listen to that sound, listen to it so much that it fills the moment, nothing else but that, then while you’re getting a oneness with that sound, your mind stops. So it is a door out of the mind and its belief that it knows what’s what or can find the answer to what’s what, like, “Love is what it’s all about.” That is a mind thing. Of course, love is exquisite, and when you’re in the state of love, as opposed to being in love, it feels as if this is the truth. But then it goes. But even when it goes you can still be in the truth, Sataranda. You can lose the state of love, but you can still be in the truth – the truth is just not manifesting in that particular way any more.

So it is very dangerous to make a prescription: “This is what it’s all about.” The moment you have something like that – which is really a formula, isn’t it? – then every moment, every experience you have to check against the formula. “Does it fit? No. Throw it away. Does this fit? Well, a little bit. Good. Make it fit a bit more.” And then the formula controls the life. Well, you can’t have that! We can’t have a formula controlling our lives. We can’t put up such a power over us – a concept, a quality. It is just one quality amongst many.

There are qualities that have no name even, which are available to human beings. Love is exquisite, but sometimes you can be in a place where you ask yourself, “What is this? What am I feeling now?” and you have no answer, there’s no word for it. You have broken through the sound barrier. You just are, and it is wonderful, but what it is, you do not know.

So do not set up goals like that, everybody. It is very limiting.

Life is best lived as a mystery. And the less concepts you have, the less beliefs you have, the less goals you have, the less understanding that you have, really, the more possible it is to live the mystery. What happens if you live the mystery is that today you say, “Aha, the mystery is telling me this is the way to be,” and you live it like that, and it can be very rewarding. But the danger is that you then say, “Ah, that’s the way to be!” And then the next day you turn to this that you have discovered in the mystery, and you start saying, “Well, now, today, I will live the mystery through this.” But it is not appropriate any more. Something else is required. And you have maybe what is required.

You present your solution to the mystery, and it doesn’t fit, and you think, “What am I going to do now? – Try and make it fit.” And when it doesn’t work: “Now I’m lost. I am lost, because what I thought I had found doesn’t work.” The opposite of found is lost, so you say, “I’m lost,” but you’re only lost because you thought you had found. If you understand that you can never really find, then you can never really be lost.

You must all have had moments where you suddenly realised, “Aha, now I understand the way to deal with this person, or that person – my children, or my parents, or my friend,” and it works maybe for a day or two, and you think, “Ah, right, that was it,” and then suddenly it’s not working any more. Then you think, “Help! Now what am I going to do? I’m lost! It doesn’t work. My formula doesn’t work.” No formula works. You cannot capture a multitudinous life in a formula.

So I’m suggesting that instead of finding, or even beginning to look for, the secret of life, you just do everything you can to deal with whatever situation you’re in in the most perfect way you can. And what working spiritually with meditation and with the other dimensions of reality that we work through in these seminars we meet in does is to provide you with more alternatives, greater width, greater scope to deal beautifully with the moment of your life, each moment of your life. That’s how I see it. Not to find the answer, but to equip yourself with more alternatives, more possibilities, more depth, more width. More love, indeed – that’s part of it – but not as an abstraction, but as something that can contribute to the way you deal with life.

Now, that brings me to the second question also:

Beloved Michael. Lately I have noticed that it gets more and more quiet in my head. Thoughts don’t drag me away as much as they used to. I also feel love for all people, even the ones who used to annoy me. I am feeling happy, and I get the feeling that nothing could break this happiness. However, I am aware of the fact that the mind is a tricky thing which might be able to fool me – but I know it can’t fool you. Therefore I am asking you, are these feelings genuine, or is this a trick of my mind to distract me?

Well, let’s take the first part of his question. The mind is getting quiet, the thoughts don’t drag him away, he’s feeling love for people, even people whom he didn’t feel love for before, which means, to continue what I was saying to the first question, that now in ordinary everyday situations he has a lot more scope in how to respond. Now he doesn’t have to respond with anger to someone who irritates him, or with curtness or rejection, he finds that he can respond more positively, and that he can open to that person. Through the work that he’s done on himself in various ways, with me and maybe with others, this is what he now finds.

He’s mentioned particular things he has noticed about himself, but really – if it’s genuine what he’s saying, and he’s not just thinking that he’s feeling these things, but he’s actually experiencing them in real life: that his mind is quiet, it gives him a lot of space, and there’s a lot of joy when the mind goes quiet, and a lot of relaxation, and he can respond to people with love, whereas before he could not – then he has gained much freedom, much width in his response to life. So that confirms what I’m saying. This is what it gives you, the Work: a fineness, a human fineness in your responses more and more.

Then he goes on to say, “It feels like this is true for me.” He feels happy, and he feels that nothing can take away this happiness. Well, I guess if I was a Zen master, right now I would go over to him and I would pull his beard really hard in a response, even to something as direct and personal as that. This is again setting up a principle: that, “Well, I feel happy, and now nothing can take away that happiness.” As the Germans say, “Don’t paint the devil on the wall,” or as we say in English, “Don’t tempt fortune.” In other words, if you make this statement that, “I think nothing can take my happiness away,” you are tempting the fates to prove or to test you, and they can test you in fairly extreme ways.

So it’s beautiful that you have made such gains in your life, and found some tranquillity – as I see that you have – and some openness. I can see by the smile you gave just now when I talked about pulling your beard that there’s some genuine openness and a width in you that was not there before. But don’t say that it cannot be taken away, because if you do, if you hang on to that, then in subtle ways you will start avoiding things that you feel might take it away, and then you will start missing things that can give you something that you have not yet got. You will start playing safe. You’ll say, “Well, I’ve got this now, and it’s very precious,” and then you’ll say, “Well, I don’t think anything can take it away, but also I want to make sure that nothing does take it away,” and then before you know where you are you’ve got a principle: to protect it. And then you’re not available to everything. Then in some way you are guarded, not open, not totally open all round.

So it’s beautiful that you have gained these things, but don’t believe that they cannot be taken away, or do not set that up. If things happen that would normally take happiness away from people, or from you in the past, and they don’t, then say, “Oh, that’s good,” but don’t say, “So I’m right!” – because something even more terrible could happen.

I am reminded of a story I tell sometimes – and so some of you regular people may have heard it – about the great Austrian composer, Bach. Johann Sebastian Bach. Was he Austrian or German?

Participant: German.

German, right. He and his family, as I recall the story, were in London. He was doing some work there, maybe for the king or whatever, and then he had to go back to Germany, and while he was away there was an epidemic in London – typhoid or something, I think it was – and his wife and six of his children died in this epidemic. And Johann Sebastian Bach wrote in his diary: “When I returned from Germany I discovered that my wife and six of my children have died. I hope that this will not take away my joy.”

Well, I have to bow to Bach, because if an epidemic took my wife and six of my children away, I don’t think I’d be saying, “I hope I don’t lose my joy.” I might be able, after all my years of working with spaces, to find a space outside it, but I do not think I could be in a state of joy. Even so, enjoy your state, and enjoy your feeling of loving all people, but again, as with Sataranda, don’t set it up as something that if you’ve achieved it, then you’ve got a good life, and that if you lose it, you’ve lost life.

Nothing can stand for life. No individual thing, not even such a beautiful thing as love for all people can stand for life. What are you going to do if a man breaks into your house and attacks your children or your partner with an axe? Are you going to feel love for him? And if you don’t, does that mean you’ve failed? Maybe you feel love for this person who unfortunately has the mentality to want to kill somebody you love – he is nevertheless a human being – so you say, “I love this person.” But if you don’t do that, and you get angry with him, and you do all you can to stop him, even maybe harm him in stopping him, does that mean you’ve failed to be loving, because love is the highest principle?

So you see, when you set things up, you two guys, and anybody else, then if you’re not careful, you get controlled by it, and then you begin to stop yourself from doing something that might be absolutely normal and natural and spontaneous, like defending somebody you love against an attacker. Then the principles say, “You can’t do that.” But that spontaneous response in the moment, for me, has a hundred times the value of any principle that you try and apply in that moment, even if that principle is as beautiful as, ‘Love is all.’

‘Love is all.’ ‘Union is it.’ ‘We are all one.’ ‘Everybody is my brother.’ ‘Turn the other cheek.’ Beautiful principles. But principles are not flexible. A principle is not flexible, and life is constantly changing. To have experienced love, to experience bliss, oneness, deep peace and silence, as we do in our seminars, this is very beautiful, but then to try and bring all this furniture and put it in front of you each moment, and say, “Before I face this moment, there’s my love, there’s my peace, there’s my unity, there’s my bliss, there’s my enlightenment. Right, now what is it you wanted to say to me? What is it you want to do? At the top of the fence, I am. Life is on the other side, and before I respond to life I have to get my principles lined up here…” – you can’t live like that. Let the work happen behind, but don’t take away your spontaneity, your natural response, which is beyond all principles, all qualities, beyond everything we set up as being something to aim for. Beyond and behind all this there is your nature, your human nature, your source expression.

So whatever you experience, even if it’s beautiful, belongs to that moment that you experienced it and felt its beauty. You have all felt in a state of love – a few times, at least; you’ve all been in bliss a few times – many times, some of you; oneness, deep peace, tranquillity – you have all felt these things. But when you are not feeling them, what use are they? What use is it that you have had all these experiences? If you are feeling angry, very pissed, like Danilo is about being unable to see his daughter… When he is angry, and hurt, and feels pissed, and is crying, then the fact that the week before, maybe, when we were in a seminar together, he felt a deep peace and unity and acceptance, that might help him to not get caught up in his response, but this response is his truth.

So we cannot carry things like that. Experiences last no longer than they do. We cannot carry them forward, they are not exchangeable. So each moment we are faced with precisely that moment, and any moment everything can change.

So what about that?

(to one particular participant) What about you here this morning? You’re lying on the floor, and you’re in some trip, if you don’t mind me saying so, screaming, and I look again a few minutes later and you’re dancing around like crazy, looking totally joyful. If I then say, “Well, what about all that?” (referring to the screaming, etcetera) you’ll say, “What? When?” It’s finished. That was then, this is now. But the moment we feel something beautiful, we say, “This is how I want my life to be.” But we can’t make life the way we want it to be.

So it’s always each moment. And all we can hope is that all we do to explore what we are and what is possible in us, and to open up energies in us that make us feel great, and all these trap doors that open somehow, behind the scenes, and the contents you allow to flow into you, all this will be of benefit to you, will be good to have in this moment, right up to the moment of death. And then when all these things are there at the moment of death, all that you have seen and done, you will be able to say, “Okay, this is what’s happening now. It’s still a mystery. It’s a mystery what is going to happen next, but it’s been a mystery all my life anyway, so what’s the bloody difference? It’s always a mystery!”

So in a way, each moment is a dying moment, because it’s always a mystery. When we’re alive we keep thinking we’ve solved the mystery for ourselves, but we haven’t. And once you see you haven’t solved the mystery, then you start living the mystery. And then dying holds no terrors, because it’s always been a mystery. “Here’s another mystery. And here’s another moment to be in the best place I can be, and deal with what’s coming to me.”

Questions and Answers, Belgium, 23rd January 2005