Commitment to Truth – Do I want to be true or to be right?

Visionen Magazine August 2002 It seems important for me to address in this specific moment when committing myself endangers my protections. Giving the true answer each time brings me to face the fear and helps me to fall into a deeper natural trust and unknown silent truth. In this subject, here are the questions: Speaking about Truth turns often into speaking about some mystical thinking. This thinking was some years ago, quite unknown in our society and it starts to become usual. The words of the saints that come into our culture are even used in advertisement. Can you explain this whole issue of Truth. The search for truth has been going on as long as humankind developed the capacity for consciousness to reflect back on itself. In our time, the great danger is the egoic support for “my truth.”  As you said, there is a moment of committing oneself that endangers the protections. The protections are the egoic defense mechanisms acquired from countless generations of adaptations for survival.  These are called “my truth.” The ego uses “my truth” to defend its borders and parameters so that it can avoid looking into the void of non-existence. This is where truth is found: in facing the empty totality before time and space and surrendering. This truth reveals the timeless, spaceless, formless, nameless, intelligent totality. A full stop of the momentum of the mind-stream reveals subtle attachments to egoic form. These lies, once revealed and examined, are the gateways to realization of deeper truth. This is an endless game that consciousness plays with itself through the uncovering of itself in more subtle ways. Can you tell us what is your life dedicated to? My life is in service to the awakening of all beings. And what is the invitation for everyone? To wake up. What to do or not to do to hear this invitation? Simply stop where you are in this very moment. The consciousness behind the eyes that is reading these words stops. In this moment of stopping there is openness, a dropping of belief, opinion, comparison, conception, and thought. That stopping unveils the silent intelligence that is always present. What is the use of satsang in this? Satsang is meeting the truth face-to-face. In this case, what is the relationship between true satsang and the many meetings of people happening around here that are called satsang. I can only speak of my own experience. Besides my own meetings, I have only been in satsang with my beloved teacher, Papaji, and with my beloved wife, Gangaji.  It seems that while most people received the transmission of silence, for whatever reason they tend to turn back to their trance of what the egoic mind calls “the real world.” This cannot be blamed on the teacher. It depends on the willingness and the ripeness of the student. Many thousands of people were in satsang with Ramana Maharshi and few actually awakened. I watched a large community of people form around Papaji who seemed to not really be interested in waking up, but only in the scene around the guru. I heard him say, “Be honest, if there were a party in the street right now, you would leave satsang and run out the door.” He would say that these people were not ready to wake up in this lifetime and needed to be near him for their next lifetime. The teacher cannot be faulted for this, and yet you could look at these people and tend to judge the teacher. On the other hand, I once was in satsang with Papaji and someone asked him about all the false teachers.  He said it was because there were so many false seekers and everyone needs a guru. He said as long as there are sheep there will be shepherds. Who the sheep and shepherds are I cannot say, but if you are quiet internally everything becomes clear and obvious. It doesn’t matter if the shepherd speaks the language of satsang, or the Koran, or the bible, or the teachings of the Buddha. The words may be right, but there will be obvious signs for those with eyes to see. Shepherds often have staffs, made of beliefs, concepts, and high spiritual ideas to guide the flock. Only someone who has turned their back on the universe and passed through annihilation knows the secret of the other side. This deep call from Truth implies some changes, or brings natural changes into our lives. This can be very surprising, or sometimes we tend to control that by entering into a new form of cult. What are the new cults in spirituality and what do you recommend? A cult is a collective trance. Look at the cult of Moses. All of Judaism, Christianity, and the Muslim world are living in the consequences of the trance that an angry jealous God spoke to Moses . These days when you hear the voice of God dictating your behavior you are liable to be medicated with anti-psychotics. Since Moses, God has had set of rules and if you disobey God you go to hell, and if God smiles on you and is on your side it is good and fine to slay your enemies. For thousands of years we have been born into this cult in most of the world. (Not that the east is any better with the cults of Buddha and the Hindu gods.) This cult gives rise to the disease of crusading, and its virus of missionaries. All sub-cults within the general cult have the same structure, from the mafia family to the neighborhood place of worship. All institutionalized worship is cult work. Institutionalized worship is the idolizing of protective deities and the giving of offerings in the hopes of gaining rewards. The new cults arising are always a conceptualization of partial truth. Any statement of truth can become a concept used to avoid the direct contact with the unknown. This is a way of allowing the ego to run under the cloak of spirituality. My teacher said any parrot could be taught to say the words of freedom. And just hearing the words can create an enormous shock. But the parrot can only repeat the words and cannot work with the mind of the seeker. The parrot does not emanate the silent transmission of authentic being. And yet, if a true, sincere seeker sits with the parrot and projects the truth of consciousness onto the parrot, the parrot can work as a function of enlightenment. A true seeker is the most important ingredient. Then even a parrot will be useful. My advice is to find out for yourself. No other is needed between you and your self. You have the full capacity to realize what is true for yourself. Nothing needs believing. And believing can’t touch the bliss of touching nothing. I meet some people who have meditated for years. They suddenly enter into a new relationship with someone and it seems to them that they lose what they thought they gained through meditation. They cannot bear or face what comes, what happens, the sexuality, the violence, the desires, and so on; they cannot face the world as it is. What helps in that case? And how come that this long experience in meditating didn’t prepare them to face what is? What makes the difference? Anything that can be gained will eventually be lost.  Realizing the truth of yourself is not gaining anything new. It is simply stopping all the reaching for everything else. Most meditation is an attempt to gain something in the future, like a quieter mind or an easier time. This is certainly more desirable then stirring up violence, ignorance, and greed. However, negative forces and subconscious identification can lie dormant and unexamined in the calming effects of what is often called meditation. True meditation is intelligence aware of itself, examining its root and surrendering to its source. I was never looking for a so-called Master in my life. You came into my life through my friends and were presented as a Master.  I was very impressed by all the projections of power and hope onto you. But in my meeting with you, I entered into a new commitment. Beforehand, I was committed to keeping good relationships despite what was happening in them.  I assumed love is stronger and perceives more clearly than me in this matter. And I was somehow waiting for things to become better, thanks to my love. You showed me by some miracle, at least I can’t understand and explain it, that I’m invited to a much deeper commitment, that life exists beyond the limits that I surrendered to. Surrendering did hit me and still brings a continual flow of self-recognition and events that keep me alive. This is difficult to explain. You inspire me to surrender more and more and this encourages my receiving a deeper responsibility of open commitment. What I want to share with you is my discovery of the importance of this so-called master-disciple relationship. It happens for me in a fully personal way that I never imagined. The deepening of my commitment to Truth is its issue and it shows me how much Joy, how much Love is in life. My main concern today is to give to this Greatness the best response that I can, even if it seems impossible to give back what I receive. Could you try to share with all of us here the beauty and the love in your own relationship with all the people that you meet around the world? Why do you travel to Germany this year? My teacher once said that a true student has no head and a true teacher has no teaching. In the mysterious meeting of no head and no teaching there is a transmission of silence in the most intimate way. Completely personal and truly non-personal conscious love sees itself and confirms itself. The bliss of that meeting is unspeakable and the source of all great art, poetry, and sutras. People project all different levels onto the so-called teacher. For some the teacher is a father projection, for others the teacher is a love object or an object of fear. For some there is attraction and for others a repulsion. Some come very close and some stay very far. Each is appropriate in its place and each can be a strategy for escape. One of the great gifts of the teacher is that the teacher does not believe your lies. The true teacher sees through you and your projections. The true teacher knows there is no difference really between master and disciple. Yet in the appearance of master and disciple, the true teacher is the fire and the disciple is the wood. If the wood comes green and wet to the fire there will be a lot of smoke and crackling and sparks flying before it catches. The disciple’s job is to tend the flame with full attention. The master’s function after the transmission of the flame is to make sure that no log rolls out of the fire. When everything is consumed and the fire has done it’s work, what is left is the truth of existence. On the completely personal level, as to why I am traveling to Germany, as a Jew I grew up with an intense fear and hatred of Germany. I remember my death in the Warsaw ghetto and felt blown into this life with a commitment to kill as many as I could as they came to get me. It is quite a delight to find deep love and true hearts living in German bodies. It seems that the wounding of the German psyche has prepared a deeper possibility of opening to love and a deep desire to discover truth and freedom. On the other end, I just came from Costa Rica where ripeness comes from a society based on peace and understanding. It is so beautiful to see the same sweetness and depth of surrender there as well. And of course as an American, I grew up in what we used to call “the belly of the beast.” The fire of that has also given birth to many ripe souls. So all conditions on Mother Earth can be useful for producing ripeness. All of life has the capacity to reflect love and truth. What a karmic dance this love displays. All displays are merely that. Displays. Only an image. The image is not reality and yet it reflects reality quite expertly, only upside-down and inside-out.Emptiness reflected as substance giving rise to all form, which through investigation is revealed to be empty.