God’s Knowledge

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Blue Rigi Lake of Lucerne Sunrise’ – J. M. W.  Turner, 1842 – WikiArt

We know so many things. Everything is based on knowledge, and maybe that’s the way to live, as long as there is a body and a world. Knowledge is the score we need to play our part. But to know something, anything, seems presumptuous. It implies another kind of knowledge — that there is somebody here, a person at a distance, that knows and is a recipient of knowledge. Knowledge fixes us. It gives us a dubious identity — that I am a man or a woman, of a certain age, with certain qualities, and with a whole lot of knowledge, identities, beliefs. That I am unhappy, clever, stupid, happy. That I am a cook, or a carpenter. That there is a chair, a world. That I have skills and preferences. I even have the knowledge of my spiritual attainment.

But there is no knowing anything. To think we know something is a mistake. If we know something, then we haven’t looked well enough. We have stayed at the surface of our illusory world and existence. What we ought to know is the knowledge of our reality, of ourself. That’s the only knowing there is. That’s our world: Knowing. Being aware. All other knowledge is superfluous, is not real knowledge. For what would any such knowledge be, when we discover that there is no entity here with the capacity to possess that knowledge. Go only for the knowing of being, a knowledge which is owned by itself. Notice that you don’t know anything — that’s important to know. We have no knowledge other than the knowledge of our being. Apart from that, everything exists only as in a dream.

We may play the part of the one in the dream, and that’s a beautiful part. There may be a world here that is gorgeous, with many ‘things’ that are known. There may be relationships that have meanings. But this world of things borrows its beauty and making from the reality in which it exists for a time — knowing. And the meaning of relationship is found through its reality, which is love — shared being. Everything happy and true in our life is borrowed from our reality as awareness — the only knowledge there is. If we live or act while ignoring that one knowledge, the world and ourself will appear ridden with conflict and suffering. So notice that the ten thousand things of life — all our knowledge — are transparent, ephemeral, ethereal. What is here massive and solid is their reality as being — the supreme essence of everyone and everything. The truth we live in. Ourself. What is. Not somebody that knows.

There is no other real knowing than the knowing of our essence, of our true nature or identity. This knowledge of ourself is not something we can possess as a person. It is nothing more than pure, objectless, impersonal knowing, and this knowing is all there is, all we are. Everything, everyone, have died in it. That’s why we cannot know anything, for how could we know something without there being first a knower and things with their own reality. The only thing we in fact truly know is ourself, our essence. Our knowledge of anything has died inside pure knowing long ago. It is still available, but its reality is apparent. That’s why we can never be sure that there is a chair, or a world. That’s why every object passes, is not there, is only an appearance.

Even ourself cannot be known objectively. We are alone. Nobody knows us. We as a person are absent. We don’t have a reality as an entity, or a self of any kind. So we are known by God alone, who knows us by knowing Its own being. We are all in the knowledge of God. What follows after the sentence ‘we don’t know anything’ is ‘the only knowledge there is is God’s knowledge’. Or ‘know God, love god, and you will know what you ought to know’. It all boils down to ‘knowing, knowing knowing’. Paul said it all very clearly in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: “If anyone thinks that he knows anything, he doesn’t yet know as he ought to know. But anyone who loves God is known by him.” (8:2-3).

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851)

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Website:
– J. M. W. Turner (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
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Hidden Desire

Posted on by Alain Joly

If you have any desire, any craving, make sure that you crave for yourself first. Make sure that you want yourself more than anything else. Check it. That before you go for something, you have first the will for yourself, for your sweet inner being, for that which sustains you, for that which is behind every one of your desires. Make sure that the one who desires is really you, not an impostor, not a fake self that mimics you but is not you. Make sure that you desire from that part of yourself that is real, that is here, not the will of a secondary thought, of an illusory, separate self, not a fake desire. Fake desires won’t work, won’t take you where you want, won’t give you what you seek. Go for a desire that comes from real you. Check that you know who desires your desire.

How do you know who desires your desire? Well first desire yourself, give at your sweet being a loving gaze, then see if your desire is still there. If it didn’t swiftly go, escape, disappear suddenly, didn’t have the guts of showing up, let alone showing off. If your desire doesn’t stand yourself, doesn’t survive the plain looking at your inner self, at your sense of knowing, of being aware, then your desire is not worth the name, doesn’t deserve to be fulfilled. Make that simple effort first. To watch your own being, to check your presence, melt for a second in it, with it, and then welcome any desire that comes. Sometimes desire can surprise you. Sometimes desire desires the most unexpected thing. Sometimes you find yourself desiring yourself more than anything else.

So please, before having the desire for something, desire yourself first. Stay there, in yourself, with yourself, have a sweet moment in the company of your being. See that you might be desiring it with all your heart, that no desire could ever compete with the desire for your self. See that could make a life of the desire for yourself. That you’d never want to leave yourself, even for a second. That what you want is to fully inhabit yourself — being yourself, which is being your sweet being, ravishing in its presence. Make sure that it becomes your primary desire. The most important one, which you want to fulfil, expose, indulge in. Indulge in yourself first. Don’t part from yourself, break up, and then indulge in the most silly, inefficacious, incompetent things. Don’t ever do that. Indulge after you have indulged all your might in yourself. Then see what you might further indulge in.

So always see yourself as the first object of your desire. This desire doesn’t always need to be expressed. You will notice that it is fulfilled by simply being. You have all your desires — expressed or in potential — fulfilled through the act of simply being. Being is like a magical formula, a universal recipe, the desire behind all desires. Being is the sweetest object of desire. Yourself is your bliss, where peace lives, where love is like your very essence. Your many desires for so many things have concealed yourself. So it’s only a matter of desiring the only thing worth being desired — yourself. Then you may have a thousand more desires, it doesn’t matter. They are not yours anymore. They have come from the hidden, unfathomable, inexpressible place of your inner self and being. Desire this place of no desire, of completeness. Respect it. Try to fulfill it. This is God’s hidden desire. After you have fulfilled God’s desire, be wild and determined with any other desire that may remain.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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The Word ‘God’

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Italienische Landschaft’ – Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes – WikiArt

Long before any idea of a God, before any belief or possibility of a deity, of a divine command, God is already here, hiding within yourself. Or rather you yourself have just come hiding God. It means, don’t make God into an idea, a form, a projection born of your fears, of your eagerness for peace or relief. God is not ahead of you, or before you, or above you. God is not an entity, or anything that would not be your own.

God wouldn’t be God if it were an idea, a conceptual form far away from your self. For God is not something abstract, vague, distant. God is resplendent. God is shining. Not in a far away, unreachable place. God is brightly here, just as you are. You are, because of God. Because God is, you are. God is the very essence and quality of your being.

There is nothing above or beyond your being. It seems that there is, because you have limited your being by giving it a qualification. You have found it better to clothe your being with something. Then God goes hiding. Or you yourself are hiding your own divine self or essence, the possibility of your being only being. For there — in being — is the key to god.

In that being, God is. God is doing your being. That’s the extent of the presence of God in your life. In that, there is not even the possibility of a belief in God. In that, you feel God’s presence every time you feel your own presence, which makes God very present indeed in your life. In that, a belief in God would in fact trample God. It would make it an entity. A distant thing. A poor meaning. Not God at all.

Who do you think is ‘doing’ your being right here, right now? Think of that for a while. What is this being that I am? What is this I am that I am? Answer that in verity, through your actual experience, and God won’t be a secret to you anymore. God will cease being distant. You will be yourself made of the presence of God. No belief in God could ever match that.

But remember that once God’s being is recognised to be your being, then you won’t find room anymore to have your own personal being. Your own being will be lost to God. Now there is only God, which actually means there is no God at all. The idea of God is for when you have distanced yourself from God, when you don’t know yourself — that you are God’s being. In recognising yourself as God’s being, you will have lost both your being, and the idea of a God. It is a form of death.

So think twice before you say that you want to know God, or to know yourself. For this knowledge will leave you with being only. There won’t be a you. And there won’t be a God. There will be the purity of being, which is the everlasting life in death, which is to live as the One. You will lose your apparent doership, the control that you think you have, every objective identity that you believe makes you.

But in that loss is the finding of yourself, of who you are. In that loss is the end of your suffering, and the discovery of your nature as peace. This finding of your essence is the meaning behind the word ‘God’. In finding God, you will have rid of God, and of yourself. What is left is more than any word can tell. More than the word ‘God’ could ever convey. There would be no word at all. Except you. You would be the living word for ‘God’. 

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819)

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Website:
– Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (Wikipedia)

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Not A Thing

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Seascape’ – Théodore Rousseau, 1831 – WikiArt

Although we feel to be inside the world, there is an identity in us that is not of the world. Rather the world is in that identity. The world — everything — has been made the likeness of ourself, should ourself be seen not as a thing, but as that which could never be made into a form of any kind. That’s how and when you know who you are, when you are not a thing, not an entity, not anything that can be named or qualified. There is not a thing here that you can be. We have inherited this habit, this insistence in being something. So we have pinpointed ourself and have given it a substance of its own. In this trying to be something, we have been rendered suffering adults, drenched in belief and habit, in fear and hope, addicted to security. We have lost our childhood, what is here before every qualification, and that we only worship remotely, as something precious and lost — our innocence, the playfulness contained in living, the not knowing, the absence of urge, the sense of awe, the leisure contained in plainly and simply being.

So be like a child, who has it all. Be like before every incarnation that you have been forced to identify with, in order to fit in, to feel aggrandised. Our urge to be something has deprived us from our being sufficient, fulfilled in and as our own being. By adding to being, we have lost what gave us our true essence, our identity, our security. It all came from that acquired, mindlessly rehearsed, and deeply ingrained belief that we are not enough, that we are separate, that we have to achieve, progress, be competent. There is no joy in fitting, in being proper. There is no competence involved in being who you are. Any child knows it. Babies are masters in knowing being. We’re just the bragging ones, the ones who have made life a travail, an ordeal, for silly reasons of being something. We spend all our precious time in alleviating the suffering and inadequacy we have ourself created.

There is no suffering in being. We should have left it there, when we were only being, contented in our own presence, before the thought arose that there had to be more and better than just being. The thought of it has made a mess. Now we are in the world rather than the world is inside us. Now we are something or someone, rather that being nothing that can be named, objectified, personalised, belittled or limited. Now we have created travail and conflict rather than staying quietly in the joy and peace contained in being only being. Now we are isolated beings rather than all gathered in our one shared being. Now we are many, divided, scattered, broken up, instead of being one before oneness itself, which is like being the one child of God’s undivided, unbroken, one being. This not being something is not a posture of the mind. It is the noticing of our true nature, of what is here in and as ourself that could never be made something. Our sense of being imperfect, isolated beings is born of a simple lack of attention. We have not seen the obvious. That we are the unborn, the infinite, the ‘not a thing’, and that as that, we hold in one single embrace everything that can be named and exists in time and place, everything that can be given a birth and a death, and that is now like the One inside the One. 

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867)

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Website:
– Théodore Rousseau (Wikipedia)

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Harp of the Spirit

Posted on by Alain Joly
Fresco of Ephrem the Syrian, 14th AD (part) – Protaton Church,  Mt Athos – Wikimedia

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If you go for its gems, you will find the Christian tradition to be unbelievably rich of the highest wisdom. The work of Ephrem the Syrian is one such gem. He was a prominent Christian theologian and hymnographer born in 303 AD, expressing himself in the Classical Syriac language of early Christianity, in the eastern part of modern-day Turkey. But he was also known for his outstanding poetry, which he used as a vehicle for theologian purposes. Over four hundred of his hymns have come down to us, and many more got lost along the way, that have earned him the title of ‘Harp of the Holy Spirit’. It is said that his poetic descriptions of the Last Judgment influenced Dante Alighieri in some sections of the Divine Comedy. There is no doubt that he had a passion to put his long years of studying and reading into the fire of experience, as can be felt in this eloquent verse:

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“On a certain day a pearl did I take up, my brethren;
I saw in it mysteries pertaining to the Kingdom;
Semblances and types of the Majesty;
It became a fountain, and I drank out of it mysteries of the Son.”
~ The Pearl, Seven Hymns on the Faith (1:1)

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Ephrem the Syrian is said to have been baptised as a young man, and to have been a deacon, with a more limited liturgical role than a priest, and a duty centred on service. He had a great knowledge of the Scriptures and was devoted to his mission as a teacher. He made theology accessible through his poetry, and is recognised as one of the first to introduce songs into the Church’s public worship. He was eager to transmit his passion and devotion in whatever way was possible to him.

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“In its brightness I beheld the Bright One Who cannot be clouded,
And in its pureness a great mystery,
Even the Body of Our Lord which is well-refined:
In its undivideness I saw the Truth
Which is undivided.”
~ The Pearl, Seven Hymns on the Faith (1:1)

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There is no doubt that he was an influential man, being honoured with titles like the ‘Sun of the Syrians’, or the ‘Column of the Church’. He lived a simple, ascetic life, embracing the ideals of poverty and celibacy. During the last decade of his life, he moved to Edessa, and stayed there in a small cave overlooking the city, devoting his time to his writings. In Hymns on Faith (VIII.9), he stressed that “the intellect was not intended to pry into hidden things”, emphasising the fact that our deepest identity as being cannot be understood conceptually, through the mind, but is a living, subjective reality. In his Hymns on Paradise, he described this with these exquisite words:

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“Your nature is far too weak
to be able
to attain to its greatness,
and its beauties are much diminished
by being depicted in the pale colors
with which you are familiar.”
~ Hymn on Paradise, XI:7

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Discover the hymns of ancient theologian Ephrem the Syrian… (READ MORE…)

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Boundary

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Book of Wisdom’ – Nicholas Roerich, 1924 – WikiArt

It is naive to imagine that there is a boundary or separation between consciousness and the world we are conscious of. It would be extraordinary to find that boundary, where our consciousness ends and where the outside world begins. We have an apparent and necessary boundary between body-mind and world, for our convenience, for practical purposes, and have left it there as an unquestionable fact. And everybody has complied, including scientists, that this separation must exist, that consciousness is a competence of the body, that it cannot be challenged, that it would be madness, beyond reason to do so. But there is an impossibility here. For this boundary can never be found at the deepest level, or even conceptualised. It is inexistant. Something like a pure invention. But this illusion of a separation was broken, seen through long ago, in the world of mind, of which our spiritual traditions are experts. Sages have seen long ago that there was here, between consciousness and the objective world, a seamless relationship, an undoubted oneness, no boundary, no separation, not even an unlikeness. It was all one with nothing besides it. The world is wholly contained in Mind, as Mind, and Mind or consciousness is all we are, all there is — our fundament.

So we have invented the reality of a world out of the reality of consciousness. After all, it is a beautiful find, a gorgeous dream, that we have a world, and that this world was shaped, sculpted by our five senses for as long as our senses have existed, and for as long as our bodies have been made the inevitable side effects of the appearance of a world. Everything — world, body, mind, senses — is an appearance in a more fundamental, non-objective reality. So nothing new, or other, or different was ever introduced in our reality. Reality is all there is. Consciousness is our playground, our only field or ground, and it is hosting everything in and as itself, including our apparent self. This is how we have a father and a son. A reality, and a temporary, individual, apparently located point of view on that reality. But between father and son, between reality and ourself, there is only one seamless consciousness. God has made sure that all things and beings find a habitation within him — or her. And then, ‘within’ was too taken away, for how would you have a within and a without when there is only the One?

So we have to meditate on the appearance of this world. On what is hiding behind it. On what it teaches us on our nature, on our reality, on our humanness. By the way, being human is by no means derogatory. In its most ancient Sanskrit root, the word for ‘human’ means: “The being whose essence is the capacity for self-remembrance of its divine nature.” So this knowledge of the reality of the world is a sacred knowledge. For with that knowledge firmly held, you can now enjoy personhood without the burden of separation, without the suffering that is its natural outcome. So we don’t have to be spiritual anymore. We have acquired our personhood, our humanness. Our nature has been realised, uncovered, in its primal, intended truth, and it is once and for all. Now we can enjoy a world for the first time. Now we can be lovers. Watchers. Listeners. Devoid of the superfluous. Free of our cumbersome, limiting beliefs. Recognising and accepting God’s will as our own. 

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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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A Universal Cure

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Creation of the World XIII’ (part) – Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, 1906 – WikiArt

The part that we’re playing is not small. We are not living in a corner, limited by the skin of our bodies, and the world is not limited to the time and space in which it seems to unfold and have its conflicts and sufferings. The world has a foot in the infinite. In fact not just a foot, it is bathed in infinity, in eternity, and so are we, we who have been made small and suffering entities by our limiting beliefs and prejudices. We are ruling the world with our thoughts and then blame ourself for it. For the results are of course as limited as our thoughts can be. We have made the world the hostage of our limitations, and its hostility is in fact our own, that we have projected unto it. We believe and think we can only play small and limited, but in fact, we haven’t quite seen ourself as we are, and from this blindness comes the entirety of the world’s agony, and ours too.

Fortunately, ours and the world’s true essence comes spilling over in every possible way through the manifestation of beauty, and through the many expressions of love or peace. That’s what makes it so attractive in spite of all, and that’s where we should be way more curious than we are. Beauty, love, intelligence, peace, are not created by the random structure of a body and the passing thoughts in our mind. This is not where they are manufactured. They are born of infinity and wholeness. They are the expressions of the One, which we can never own. We are in fact rather owned by them, embraced by the infinity that is their reality. We must surrender to this god given identity. We don’t have to play small. Would we think of god playing small? So why would we of ourself, who are like the arm and willpower of God in God’s dream? So we don’t have to play small in this world. We ought to play our given, sacred part. We ought to be what we are and recognise ourself and the world as a whole, indivisible being. A being that is nothing but our own, that is experienced here and now every time we say ‘I Am’, and that we are fortunate enough to share in.

Act on the world from within. Mould it from there, from the source of yourself and of the world, from the ground of being that you feel as your own being, and that is the common ground of all beings and all things. This ground has the best ability. Religions haven’t called it Paradise or Eden for nothing. There is always a truth behind every misunderstood word. This ground of being is where you can play big, from within, from the interior of everything and everyone. You don’t have to create a new reality. It’s already there within and without, for the taking and for the looking. This reality is already here, already yours. There is love and harmony woven in the fabric of life, just here and now in and as our given experience. Our efforts to heal ourself and the world are veiling this reality, and so are our limited thoughts, which carry the false reality of there being persons and separation instead of the reality of one being and the peace contained in the infinite. Our own unlimited being is the ground where we can play big, for it is as large as God’s being if we are willing to notice its real, undefeatable nature. In fact, being is a universal cure, and it’s always at hand.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911)

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Website:
– Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (Wikipedia)

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