The Dream of a World

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Milton`s Mysterious Dream’ (part) – William Blake, 1816-20 – WikiArt

There is a fraud in our life. An illusion that makes us feel that life is going to get better. That time or circumstance will bring us to a place of understanding, where our troubles will come to an end, where there will be betterment, improvement, change. To believe this will make us miss that we are already here and now in a place of no change, of no betterment, where nothing can improve or get better. This place is our very self, our sense of being that we have never been able to affect or modify, no matter how relentless our life has been, no matter our despair, our sorrow, our losses. Nothing we have gone through has touched it in any way. All our stories and sufferings have taken the shape of our thoughts and beliefs about them. But while we are desperately trying to give a form to our life, a solidity to our body, a reality to our problems, and a truth to our beliefs, right here and now, right where it all is seemingly taking place, hidden within experience, enveloping it all, is already a presence, a vastness, a reality that is embracing everything, and that is our only reality, our only place, our only possible self in this living experience.

For there is not a world there where we could be in. That would be a lovely idea, but the fact is: there is no possibility to prove the existence of such a world. We can only assert it, marvel at it through our senses, study it, analyse it, but of a solid proof there is none. The existence of a world is dependent on our perceiving it, and perceptions are contained in our knowing them. Without the knowing faculty, there cannot be a world. The whole glory and misery of the world, of the whole universe, is all gathered in that fathomless fraction of knowing, or awareness. Without that simple, ungraspable, dimensionless, ethereal element of knowing, no world could ever come into existence. So in fact, knowing is all there is, consciousness is the essence of every single appearance that comes to be seen, heard, touched, or experienced. The world is shaped, or its appearance created, through our being aware of it. So the whole of our living experience is but a dream in consciousness, a game that can be played and enjoyed at the level of our body-mind, but whose reality is only the awareness of it.

Now, where are we if we are not in a world? Where are we if the world is not even there? What is this something that we feel we are in, and exists, and is undoubtedly? What is a world, an experience, when we have passed through all illusions, all beliefs, all shaky appearances? What is left here that holds our experience, that is indomitable, indestructible, present without a shadow of doubt? This place is our self, what we are, our very essence, the reason behind our saying ‘I’. So we live in our self, not in a world. We see our limited existence pass and consume itself within that which is creating it, which is our own aware being, the knowing that we are and could never not be. And there, in ourself, in being, where the world takes its apparent form, is found what we have been looking for in every direction, in a non-existing world, in experience: a sense of relief, peace, beauty, love, and the understanding of our essence, the explanation of it all. An explanation that is not conceptual, but a living one, a subjective one, something made plain by being it. We and life then become self-explanatory. The fraud has been diluted. All imagination has died down. Now our living experience has acquired the rawness of truth. Something that is, unlike the world or our experience, beyond doubt and absolute.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by William Blake (1757-1827)

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Website:
– William Blake (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
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An Abundance of Spirit

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Chateau Noir’ – Paul Cezanne, 1904 – WikiArt

We always go too far, too quick. We jump to the objective display of reality, and in doing so leave our reality behind. It is a strange phenomenon, this forgetting, this negligence, this hurry. In fact, we pass ourself by, and rush towards what we think matters the most, what we believe to be real. This is how we have made this life difficult, an impossible thing to comprehend, and a hardship: in this forgetting, in this passing by. Our suffering is the product of a simple, single act of absent-mindedness. We have put ourself into oblivion by having made the facile postulation that reality is in the objective, in what we can see, hear, touch with our senses. And then have clung to it, to the point of losing our mind inside it, and losing ourself with it. What an absurd thing to have done.

We ought to be slow and still, if we are to meet our nature. We need to be attentive, if we are to notice our being. Not the one-pointed kind of attention, that we are already so well-acquainted with, but the sluggish one. The lazy one, that doesn’t want to go out and stumble into the world. That doesn’t feel like wrestling with thoughts. That cannot be bothered with the threat or seduction contained in the last surge of a sensation or a feeling. I can assure you that there is already a lot to see, hear, feel, on our way to the vast, far-ranging world that our senses provide. So let us not have time or space on our schedule. Let us forget the agenda that our person has and wants to fulfil. Let us not form any concept, idea, or projection, and delve into what is here before every appearance.

We may see, in slowing down, that there is here a presence that stands still, transparent, and aware. We may hear the sound of a silence that stays unaffected by the clamour of existence. We may feel the world to be but the thousand colours of our sumptuous being. We may notice the pregnancy of spirit in what is seen, heard, felt, and realise this pregnancy to be our very own nature felt, heard, seen. This abundance of spirit in our life is but the disappearance of the entity that sees, hears, feels the world, and the surging of the One as our own and only reality or world. Then we won’t pass truth by anymore. Our own nature will be unmistakable, unmissable. It will meet us in the face at the first surge of an object seen, heard, felt. We won’t miss it because it is all there is. Because there is here the absence of a self living in separation, and the absence of a world as world. This absence is our presence, our nature, our self, our world, and there ends our suffering.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)

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Website:
– Paul Cézanne (Wikipedia)

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’katholikos’

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Life of St. Ignatius Loyola. Plate 4.‘ – Carlos Saenz de Tejada – WikiArt

You’ve got to respect the whole. That’s how you live the good life, in having reverence for the totality of your experience. Not just for the superfluous, all that is being the foam of life, that exists and appears, that you can see, hear, touch. You will never make a totality from the world of objects, from thoughts and perceptions. These are but occasional appearances, superficies. They are above you as it were, dancing upon you, at the periphery of who you are, but are not the reality covering your experience — its most profound constituent. You’ve got to go beyond the mundane and the obvious. For we keep leaving something out of experience. We don’t take the whole thing. We are choosy, only care for objects, don’t integrate our ‘within’ — where the reality of our being is. Notice that there is a world here, that is encompassing our world — a presence pervading our reality, taking everything in.

Actually, this is what the word ‘catholic’ is about. In Greek, ‘katholikos’ means: ‘pertaining to the whole’. We have to pay due respect to the whole, to the totality. We must look back at what we truly are, and find there the expression of the whole. I am not sure that Ignatius of Antioch had this in mind, when he first coined the term ‘catholic’ in the early 2nd century AD. He probably meant that the new belief, the new credence, was to be the universal truth, meant for everyone, adopted by all. But there was no need for adoption — the baby was already in the womb. There were no beliefs to be had, no hopes to project and entertain, no happiness to seek outside of our common day experience as being. He didn’t see that in this very word was the answer to all religions, to every quest for the divine peace; that what we were looking for was already here, close, so close to our very experience; and that there was no need to form a belief about it, or a new credence.

To accord with the whole is to be reconciled with our true nature — the reality of our being. It is to be ‘of one mind’, which is what reconciliation means, and to be brought together under the vault of one reality. This is achieved by turning towards the One, which is our true and only constituent. Universality wasn’t meant to be achieved in multiplicity. Universality is the quality of oneness noticed. The totality is in every place you happen to be. There is no totality of which you wouldn’t be the vessel. For the whole is not a geography, not a place to be in. It is the embrace of being. There is a totality in and as the being which you are now, here. You are not inside a totality. The totality is inside you. But mind you, this most venerated Christian Patriarch Ignatius of Antioch did say something of the highest order, when he brought up the word. He said that “wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” Yes. Yes indeed. Wherever we as our deepest being are, whenever we as our most profound nature-consciousness are, there is the expression of the whole, of oneness — the totality which is the very nature of the Lord’s House, and which is our nature and our house too.

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Text by Alain Joly

Quote by Ignatius of Antioch (died c. 108/140)

Painting by Carlos Saenz de Tejada (1897-1958)

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Websites:
– Ignatius of Antioch (Wikipedia)
– Carlos Saenz de Tejada (Wikipedia)

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Vedantic Logic

Posted on by Alain Joly
Hampi Vijayanagara, Karnataka – India

We are always too late with our identity. We come after. We experience something within, a sensation, an unease, a thought, and then say: I am that. We start from what happens, from experience, out of which we draw some identity. We are lazy. We identify with what comes. We experience our body, and draw the conclusion that this body is what we are at the deepest level. And then we live from there, from this conclusion, from this belief, this concept of ‘me-my-body’ — which we refer to as ‘I’. Our chance has passed. We have drawn comfort in that conclusion, but have invited its many companions of voyage too, which are suffering, fear, lack, and the likes. We have given ourself to the wind of arbitrary experiences. We depend on everything that passes uninvited. No wonder we suffer, finding there no stability, and no peace. We are at the mercy of what comes. So we are desperately trying to shape what comes, in order to shape our identity, and derive from it some elements of happiness. Hence our constant striving, seeking, debating with life, struggling with what we are, and with what the world brings.

We think that all the responsibility falls on us, that we are the designers of our identity. We are little ghosts exhorting themselves to happiness. And every time we fail and fall from this imaginary pedestal, we head for another direction, another hope, another expectation, and so goes our life — dependent and miserable. Until we finally listen. Until we see that there is an identity before any experience of body and mind. It isn’t that difficult to see and understand. This is only logic. This is, as Swami Dayananda Saraswati used to say, Vedantic logic: “Vedantic logic and worldly logic are diagonally opposite. Worldly logic is: ‘I experience sorrow; therefore I’m sorrowful’. Whereas vedantic logic is: ‘I experience sorrow; therefore I’m not sorrowful’.” So we have to go further back, and it takes some courage. For we are so gullible. We don’t have any true, reasonable stand. Yet, the way we speak betrays our intuition that we are not fully identified with our body and mind. After all, we constantly comment on them. We are not fully implicated. We put ourself at a distance from our own identities, but don’t go far enough. We stay somewhere along the way, as a self separate from it all. We don’t finish the journey. We don’t look well enough. We presuppose we are something, a somebody, a person, and leave ourself there, close, so very close from a higher, nobler truth.

Cannot there be an experience where ‘I’ is really, truly ‘I’? Where ‘I’ cannot be projected or conceptualised? Where it is not belittled, depreciated? Where it cannot be coloured, biased, conditioned? Where it is here in ourself, as ourself, like a pure, unalloyed, super subjective identity which is like a tower in our life, knowing everything that comes without having to be anything, without drawing an identity from it? And experiencing every single object of body-mind-world while staying itself unaffected, unaltered, and whole? After all, when we say ’I am depressed’, what we really say is that ’I’ is ‘depressed’. ‘Depressed’ has become my new identity. So ‘I’ is being repressed, suppressed for a while, replaced by ‘depressed’. But the good news is that if there is an ‘I’ that can be depressed, this same ‘I’ is here standing before the state of being depressed. There is a being before being depressed. We have let ourself being coloured, forgetting that we are in fact that which is here to be coloured. We have lent ourself to the first coming visitor. But the Vedantic logic is here to remind us that when depression is on us, or affects us, it only hides our true identity for a while. It conceals us but doesn’t change us. We stay what we are — a being untouched — depression being only what clouds us for a time. There is something here under cover, a reality, a presence, an aware being that is only being itself. This being can never be touched by depression or sorrow. What is touched by sorrow is a belief, an idea, a projection of ourself as an entity that can be affected by the passing weathers of life. Meanwhile, this pure, innocent being that we are, and that is our one only identity, stays on, living its life of being only being, while a non-existing self is playing depressed and being melodramatic.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

Quote by Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1930-2015)

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Website:
– Dayananda Saraswati (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
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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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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 Face of the Infinite

Posted on by Alain Joly

For many things in life, we are exigent, demanding. We won’t let things be as they are. We are picky — we want more and better. We expect, hope, resist, desire, and are rarely satisfied. We are seekers of advantageous situations, and have a good idea of what they can be. Yet when it comes to ourself, to knowing who or what we are, we lose all inquisitiveness. We take ourself for granted. We may want to be more loving, less violent, have more of the good qualities, and less of the bad ones, but who is the ‘I’ that desires these things, we don’t want to know. Maybe we have an intuition that there is great danger in uncovering our true identity. After all, it was never talked about, a sort of family secret that society doesn’t want you to interfere with. Even religion is not clear about it, that encourages you to rather follow, pray, and submit yourself to God, but not to know who you are. At least not in a clearly stated way. You may know about anything you want, but please keep yourself out of it. In fact, ‘Know Thyself’ is the least encouraged commandment in this world of ours, and that alone should be enough to fuel our curiosity.

So who am I? What is my identity? What is this last part of my experience that is yet to pioneer and fully settle in? Which has remained untouched, virgin of our constant and fanatic rummaging? Which hasn’t yet been recognised for the simple reason that it is not a place we can know, let alone go to? It is so ourself that it cannot be seen, felt, experienced as something objective, or as an entity. This land of ourself has slipped out of our attention. We are blind to our eternal home. We have left behind us, untackled, unidentified, in the darkness of our wilful mind, the vibrant sky of our being. So what is my true identity? What is this unchanging substance that is the formless form of my being? In other words, what am I identical with, or the same as? ‘Same’, in its most ancient etymology, has the meaning of ‘one’. So we can rule out all the separate, isolated objects that we project ourself to be — that includes our body and our mind, and the many thoughts we’re thinking. Our identity is not in something which we identify with, but in the expression of oneness — the one being that is by definition free from all identification. This identity with the One has been achieved from time immemorial. We don’t need to come back to it, to rehearse it, or affirm it. Our identity has dissolved into the One, which is identified with no other than itself.

Where does unity or oneness live in my experience? In what portion of my conscious being can I feel an absence of otherness? Where do I find in myself no distinction, variation, or divergence, not even a breach that would differentiate me from reality? Where am I wholly and only being? What is it that I truly am, with no intervention of a past or a future? Where is this within that is also without? What is this ‘I’ that I could never ever cease to be? Who am I when all objectivity and multiplicity have died down? Where do I find an absence of ‘me’ in myself? Or rather, where do I find a sense of ‘me’, in me, that is not already the ‘me’ of everything and everyone? Where am I when every remnant of a seeking mind has left? Where do I find an individuality that is not universality? Where could I not find God’s presence in my experience? Where is this ‘where’, where I can never say where, what, when, how, why to what I am? And lastly, where have now all my questions dissolved? Only settle for a living, silent answer. Any other verbal or conceptual answer at this point would ruin it all. It would be like slamming the door in the face of the infinite.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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