The Birth of Personhood

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Flower of Blood’ – Odilon Redon, 1895 – WikiArt

It is consciousness — not body, not thoughts — that gives us the impression that we are a person with a continuity. There is absolutely no chance that a bundle of thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, could give us that impression. We borrow our personhood to consciousness, to the fact of being aware — to this light that creates us in the darkness that are otherwise thoughts, feelings, body. Our sense of continuity belongs to consciousness, to presence — that portion of ourself that is empty, unchanging, not objective, but full to the brim with itself. Our thoughts are but isolated events that are changing over the course of time, and so are our feelings and bodily sensations. The content of our mind is like a passing, unpredictable weather. So continuity in that area is absurd. Our essential self is to be found in and as being. What makes us is in that which is unmade. That impersonal part of ourself is what paradoxically gives us the chance of being a person. We are therefore nothing but empty, undivided being playing ‘being a person seemingly characterised by body and thoughts’. We have got it all upside down: Our person is not prior to consciousness. Consciousness is prior to our person, and the sine qua non of our existence or appearance.

Our thoughts are far away from each other, inconsistent, contradictory, confused, hesitant. They are not the voice of our self, are incapable of forming an identity of any kind. Our identity is to be found somewhere else, in something that we cannot get hold of, or limit, or name. The only thing that could link the different events of thoughts, feelings, sufferings, bodily sensations, and perceptions — all that for us constitute our self, a person with a name and form — is the presence of consciousness. We owe the impression that we are something solid, a real person, to emptiness, silence, stillness. So our person is actually non-existent, or rather has its existence in that which stands unseen between the happenings or events that we think make us. So our story, our thoughts, our body, become evanescent, losing their reality, disappearing within the experience of our massive sense of being — its coming to our attention. Being is seen to be the nature of ourself, which we had imagined in passing, isolated, impermanent, objective events and qualities. And believe me, that makes for a beautiful, gorgeous person — the one we have always wanted to be! A person is infinity being born.

The fact that there is a certain coherence in being a body-mind, and that we are able to live a life, is nothing but the expression of a play, a ‘lila’ as the Hindus are saying. We are nothing but a character in the hands of an actor. A body-mind is the little necessary to carry our wider identity to its term. In fact, all that we seemingly are — a person with an apparent life — is just the vehicle for a bigger quest. We are pretending a body-mind, so that we can realise our divine being. We are carrying infinity on our back, on the back of the finite, giving it the seeming, temporary life of an entity progressing in time and space. But this story, this appearance of a life, is but an excuse, something marginal that serves a wider purpose. We are meant to carry God on our shoulders for a while. At first unknowingly. Until we know God knowingly. Until God has acquired enough substance, and has sufficiently widened Its being in our life. Until God can in return carry us on Its own shoulders. And move us. And swallow us. Then, we find the security and courage to surrender ourself in God’s solid being and be like God Itself. We transfer our being in and as God’s being. And die there.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

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Website:
– Odilon Redon (Wikipedia)

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The Ultimate

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Benares, Temple of Tarhishwara or Well of Manikarankia – Samuel Bourne, 1860 – Wikimedia

The thing in ourself that has the capacity to know anything is itself not a thing. We can only exist in relation to things, but only the state of no-thing can we ever truly be. The illusion that we are something separate, a self — whatever we are — is due to the knowing of an object. When no such objective knowing is being activated, then there is no necessity to be anything. There is no purpose in being a self. The being that we appear to be is realised as void. And without a self to know them, things have no support for their reality. Within that perspective, all things dis-appear, are swallowed back into no-thingness, into where they have never ceased to be. This ultimate realisation is in fact not a realisation. It is the ultimate truth contained in simply being, when all duality has been nipped in the bud, unable to show any reality as such, lost in a being so subjective that nothing can be there which could be formed and recognised as ‘other’. This is the end of form. It is the state of no-thing that cannot be spoken of. It can only be approached, envisaged, but never lived as an objective experience, or from the position of an experiencer. It is the timeless, objectless point where the moth dis-appears into the flame of being. Its identity as ‘moth’ has been dis-qualified from itself to never be formed again. Now engulfed into the very no-thing that we are when all objectivity has dis-appeared, we are left with being, our pure essence, where no form could ever be formed. This is in fact, paradoxically, how a world, a thought, anything, can seem to appear — through the intercession of formlessness. This place is where we can never go. This thing is what we can never be. World, thought, self, death, bondage, liberation, are only the gaming of god, or infinite being, with no reality of their own. Only at the point of un-being, of coming to an end, can we ever be true, ultimate being. This is what ‘ultimate’ in fact means: ‘to come to an end’. To cease being anything is the ultimate truth of life. What is left is pure, essential, unqualified, infinite being, where no self or world could ever come to be. This, truly, is the ultimate. That ultimate, because of its purity, can bear in itself the illusion of being coloured or stained; because of its essentiality, can be divided in an endless chain of cause and effect; because of its unqualified nature, can adopt any form or quality; in reason of its unknowability, can be known through a multiplicity of names; and because of its infinite nature, can be seemingly separated as a multitude. And it does this without ever ceasing to be the ultimate. Now, know in all occasions that you are not a suffering self lost in the multitude, with a name, a form, and qualities — an entity living in a world, endlessly caught in multiple, arbitrary causes and effects. Know only being as your ultimate, uncreated self. There only is the abode of peace.

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Text by Alain Joly

Photograph by Samuel Bourne (1834-1912)

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Website:
– Samuel Bourne (Wikipedia)

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Remembrance

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Remember’ – Nicholas Roerich, 1924 – WikiArt

All the things that stand out in us, and that we finally believe to be us — our story — are the rugged parts of our existence. They are what we fear or project. What we separate from and refuse to embrace. What we identify with and refuse to let go. What we have used for our identity, to shape our person, and draw some pride and contentment, or some shame and resentment. All the same. We are the children of circumstances and failures, of successes and apparent choices. Of sufferings. So we have shaped ourself with and from what we are not — from what we can remember and hook on. From events and ideas. From what can give us a form and a semblance of reality. But with all these, we are left only with what doesn’t truly satisfy us, doesn’t quench our thirst, doesn’t make us a rock but only a fragile, elusive entity. There is more to us than story and existence. There is what we cannot remember and make a story of. What we cannot fit into the shape of a person. What we have left unnoticed in the interstices of our life.

Why is it, do you think, that we often have difficulty remembering the happiest parts of our lives, which tend to disappear into thin air? Why cannot we seize happiness? Why is it that we seem to disappear in it and with it? That the best part of what we are, is the part less remembered and graspable? We tend to emphasise the foreground, the highlights, what exists, appears, and disappears. We have little consideration for what stands behind, unnoticed — the still, silent, benevolent matrix of it all. The unfathomable that we are, with its indomitable nature. That which lends a ground to all forms and appearances, including time and space. That which is not an object in our experience. Which is not an idea or a representation. Which is alive and can only be felt in and as the depth of our being. Which has the solidity of a rock that can never be moved. Which will never be a person, never have accidents, never be shamed or shaped by circumstances or events. This most profound nature of our being holds for us the peace and happiness which we are seeking in the foreground. We borrow the happiest parts of our existence to our own nature, while thinking it lies in chances and accidents.

If this nature of ourself is not felt, we will live with fear and lack. So this is our worthiest remembrance. This is where we have to be. To live as that field of being is to remember our nature as the rock-like essence of all beings, things and events. Then, this sublime identity that we have found ourself to be will matter more than any life achievement or result. It will be like the air we breathe. It is ourself seen in the conscious light of our being. In this, happiness is prevailing because it is the very colour of being. In fact, happiness is devouring our old self, which is why and how we as a separate entity disappear every time we feel at peace and content. Peace becomes our very identity — the eternal, ever-present nature of our being. Life then puts on the clothes of clarity and well-being, and our self deserts the ruggedness of the eventful life of time and place. What we ‘remember’, according to the etymology, is what we ‘call to mind’. So we ought to be cautious of what we remember or forget. That will condition our being happy or miserable.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947)

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Website:
– Nicholas Roerich (Wikipedia)

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Creep

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Radiohead @ TD Garden (Boston, MA)’ – by Kenny Sun – Wikimedia

I wonder if you have ever seen the face of love, what loving indifference is? I have some days ago, while watching a concert by Radiohead on the internet. It was during the band’s most celebrated hit, called ‘Creep’. This song is the stage of an unrequited love. But I suggest it goes further than that. It is the story of a rage, of not being enough. We all have lived through expectations that were turned down. We all have made efforts that didn’t pay off. We all want to feel special, to belong, to be at peace. We abhor being behind ourself, faking our contentment and control. So we all have known this feeling of being a ‘creep’, or at least of not being good enough. That’s why we live so hectically, constantly looking for better and more, wanting to feel complete, enough at last. Maybe that’s why the song happened to be such a hit, beyond its obvious musical qualities: it is like an echo of the secret battle we are engaged in, of our quiet desperation, and of our repeated attempt to put an end to our suffering.

I was watching the song being played, the singer yelling its rage amongst the gnashing saturated blasts coming from Jonny Greenwood’s guitar, lights illuminating the stage like a flash of lightning would. Then it surprised me. For just a few seconds, the camera caught in the public a young woman whose attitude was quiet, mildly concerned, but deeply tuned to herself. Everybody around her was involved, shouting, dancing, taking their share, drawing their identity and happiness from the vibes of the music. But she was not. Didn’t need to. Her need was to be quiet. Peace was her home. Beauty was where she was, and where she had landed on. She was tasting her being. She was taking it all in, but with a peaceful, loving indifference. For her, separation had been slain, and she had become a silent watcher, a taster of being, a madonna.

There was no need for her to dance and shout the lyrics of her favourite Radiohead song, for she dwelled in silence. It was all taking place somewhere else, in a placeless place where time was nowhere to been seen or experienced. All our objects of adoration are never the point, are never the goal. They are the means to feel and taste in ourself this most profound sense of peaceful being that is always here, always now with us, and that we miss in reason of our obsessive attachment to objects, with their derived outcomes and rewards. When the love or enthusiasm for an object — a song, a piece of art, a football match — is brought to its paroxysm, we merge with it, and in this merging forget our own person. This forgetting is the stage set for a meeting with ourself, for an encounter with our own silent being. We feel what we could call, a paradoxical serenity. So the pleasure of the senses is never the object of our desire, and never what our seeking is about. We are after something more elusive, the harder catch that is our own being. We long for this profound sense of peace and security that lives there as our identity. This serenity is not dependent on circumstances, but lies naturally in and as our most intimate being. This pure being is our true identity, and is in fact what we are really seeking behind all our pleasure oriented pursuits. Pleasure can never be a match to being. Pleasure is but the child of separation, while being is the realisation of our deepest identity as love, and its expression as oneness.

Love takes over experience. Love dominates experience, it brings it down to its knees, reveals what it is made of. Experience appears to be of secondary importance, not because it is not important, but because its importance lies in the light that shines on it and gives it its reality and meaning. We cease to be personally involved. We are just present, and this presence is our most precious and efficient involvement. We are indifferent not because we do not care, but in reason of the preeminence of love in our heart, with its acute, unfocused awareness. Love responds to the whole. There is no personal self present, that feels separate and insecure, fearing and seeking. That one is absent, leaving all the place to the quality of simply being, with no preferences in it, but with a total, impersonal, peaceful engagement. This peace is the most profound signature or identity contained in every experience that we go through. To recognise the nature of ourself as peaceful being, is to recognise the nature of experience as that one same peaceful being. We will never have to complain: ‘I wish I was special’. Never have to say: ‘I don’t belong here’. In love, there is no being a creep.

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Text by Alain Joly

Photo by Kenny Sun (Wikimedia)

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Website:
– Creep (Radiohead Song) (Wikipedia)

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The Ending of Time

Posted on by Alain Joly

“Don’t wait for the right time, make this time right.” I read this quote lately, attributed to Neem Karoli Baba. Let’s meditate on it. For no uttering of a master is ever innocuous and randomly said. It comes from a deep source that is ever overflowing. If you do catch what it means, if you chew what these words contain of wisdom and truth, you will see how the now of time blends into the now of being. For there is no now of time. The now of time is a well-rehearsed illusion. Its only reality is practical, for the right functioning of the body in the field of experience. But there is one other reality that is here now, and this is the reality of yourself, of who you are truly in and as the eternal now of your being. In this newly discovered reality, you will notice that there is no possibility of waiting for the right time. The right time for an understanding is a handy projection to give you the hope that you need, and spare you an immediate death, a confrontation with your true self. Your hidden assumption behind the so-called ‘right time’ is: ‘You should better postpone. You should better wait. There is a sometime that will come right one day in the future. So keep at it. Keep meditating, keep practising. The fruit will come eventually. You will come to deserve it. But not here, not now. It is for another now — a future now.’ But let’s be cautious here. For the right time will never come. Of that I can assure you. It can’t. This time is not there. It has no reality. It is an escape. A postponing for your own sake. Cleverness at work. There is no waiting with truth. This timeless now that your being is made of, is the only time there is and will ever be. Assert this truth. Lean towards it. See that understanding already shines in and as your own being. Spare yourself the waiting. The ‘right time’ is a spiritual myth.

Make this time right. Make it the ever flowing home of your being. Feel that you are now, the now you seek in the future, and this now can never leave you. This now will never pass, and never come to be. This now has grown to infinite proportion. It envelops you. It cannot be pushed to another now, for now is always one. It has no duration. Feel that you are yourself this ‘right time’ which you want to postpone and find in the future. Sink into it. Make it disappear as time, and reveal its true identity as being. That’s how you make this time right: by being the being that you are. By living your truth. By sensing that what you are is not an object in time and space, but is the very container in which time and space can spread their limbs. Time is what thought has superimposed on the reality of being. If you stay at the level of time, it means that you are still living in your thoughts, and are lured by their promises. To make this time right is to go beyond thought. It is to pierce time through — which is yourself as thought — and discover that beyond time is a nature that is timeless. Beyond the idea of your being a separate, time-bound entity, is a presence that is always here, always now, and therefore always true and right. This presence doesn’t need a now to come into being. This presence is what you are, untouched by time or place, ignorant of even the possibility of ignorance, and devoid of any idea of lack or seeking. You will never again wait or expect to be anything other than what you are now, for being is your true and unavoidable, indissociable nature. From now on, this time of now will forever be the right one, for the simple reason that it bears within itself the ending of time, and the revealing of the unborn. In fact, the ultimate virtue of time is in the eternity that it hides.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

Quote by Neem Karoli Baba (1900-1973)

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Website:
– Neem Karoli Baba (Wikipedia)

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The Formula of Life

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Rocks and sea’ – Paul Gauguin, 1886 – WikiArt

There is something mathematical about the spiritual life. You need to get the formula right, which is simply to recognise being as your one only identity. Simply being, with no addition to it. Concentrated being. If you cannot recognise yourself as that, then life will bounce back at you in endless, nasty, different ways. You will be made into somebody frail, vulnerable, suffering. Out of your failure at being who you truly are, you will draw an idea of who you are, a belief in being a separate entity, identifying yourself with your body-mind. This invented self is a diminution of your real identity. It has, inscribed in its very making, an imbalance, a lack. You will feel small, incomplete, at the mercy of beliefs and images, assailed by objects. You will be made uncertain, needy, a seeker of your lost identity. So you will then receive many of your experiences as a threat, as something that can hurt you, diminish you. That’s how fear arises, out of incompleteness, when there is a flaw in the equation of being. You are as to say behind yourself, mistaken. You have failed at just being, and are now being this and that. You have lost your anchor for a trip into objectivity. You have exchanged wholeness for separation.

Now you look everywhere frantically for something to complete you, and you find it a hundred times, in a passing object, in a success, an achievement, a bout of luck, a relationship. But these are fake friends that will fail you. For there is nothing here in the objective world that can match being. Dissatisfaction will hover over you again and again, no matter how many objective goals you may set your heart on, and attain. You will never resolve that equation. A flaw will remain, and your life formula will be left empty of meaning, unable to find its resolution. These objects that were your hope for fulfilment will finally come biting at you, for they are but the tricks that you have used as an escape from yourself. They are your being that you have let down, and split apart. They are your means to mend and repair yourself. But to project yourself in objects is to hope, expect, envy, and open the door to endless suffering. This wound is the sign of your incompleteness, the symptom of your failure at recognising your true identity. Every neglect or rejection of your true nature creates openings where experience will come and stand in front of you as something to be afraid of, or to desire. So you are never safe, never alone. It all comes back to you as a mirror of your own insufficiency.

Remember that you will attract to yourself everything that you cannot hold as your own, and understand. To be at peace in this life is a very simple matter. It lies in only one experience, which is the experience of being. Being is your universal health insurance. Being is your completeness, and therefore your well-being. If you don’t own in and as yourself your well-being, if you fail to occupy the totality of your experience — finding safety there — then you will be assailed by life. Experience will send its soldiers at you, which are but all that you cannot hold or recognise as being your own being. Hurt, confusion, fear, misunderstanding will become your usual, well-rehearsed environment, that you will accept as normal. They will become the weapons that turn against you every time you don’t fully integrate experience as the very blood and bones of infinite being. So don’t let experiences down, to live on their own, lost, clothed in separation and enmity. The enmity of experience is of your own making. You are responsible for what hits you or heals you. And you have in yourself, as yourself, the remedy for every hurt or suffering that overcome you. You have in and as your own being the ability to feel whole, complete, self-satisfied. There lies your natural competence at living. This is how you have experience always on your side, like a friend that you never fail to embrace. This is how you complete the formula of life — through clarity and brightness of being.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

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Website:
– Paul Gauguin (Wikipedia)

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Entangled Life

Posted on by Alain Joly

There’s been a trend here for millennia. I would call it the trend of entanglement. Or maybe it is rather a habit, a belief, an erroneous view that we are bound, attached, entangled to our life, to its situations and circumstances. We are enmeshed in our thoughts, worries, conditionings, capacities, habits, patterns of living from which we get no release. Thankfully our sleep comes timely everyday to deliver us from the demon of entanglement. Yet we have to bow to the evidence that our perpetual seeking is nothing but our repeated attempts at freeing ourself from the prison of entanglement. We have tied ourself to its relentless effects, and are suffering consequently. We have failed to see that our entanglement is born out of our belief in being separated from the life we are in. We most of the time feel alone, detached, broken up, disconnected from our surroundings which as a result challenge us, and against which we have to fight, or from which we must repeatedly flee into further separation. That’s the life we live in for the most part. That’s what we have. An entangled life.

Now, the reason we feel so overcome and ruled by our circumstances — and often defeated by them — is that we take our many entanglements for a reality. Through our being a person, we have made everything that is ‘other’ a possible threat or cure, and live therefore in constant insecurity — hence our compulsive seeking or avoiding. But we haven’t gone far enough, to find out that there is a supreme, sacred entanglement, which ties us to our self in an irrevocable way. This entanglement with our being is devoid of all previous entanglements. It ties us in an embrace so total that our person feels merged with the being it is made of, and discovers itself to be not there, or rather to be only one, undivided being with no need or possibility to be tied to anything but itself. That’s how the feeling of being entangled is vanquished: by a more radical, ultimate, terminal form of entanglement. An entanglement with no entanglement in it, for it has disentangled itself from all objectivity or otherness, and be made into a subjectivity so absolute that it has only itself as a possible other — which means no otherness at all. This absence of otherness is the surfacing of a life that we discover to be devoid of inner suffering or conflict. It is a life of freedom, untied, disentangled, and therefore spacious, peaceful, and bound only to its essence, which is love.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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