Blueprint for Happiness - Groundhog Day as a Spiritual Guide 9782957428809

Table of contents :
Part I – Definition and Teachings
- Definition 7.
- Teachings
o Buddhism 23.
o Hinduism 36.
o Advaita 37.
o Kundalini 41.
o Tao 44.
o Miscellaneous 46.
o No technique 49.
o Monotheistic Religions 50.
Conclusion 66.
Part II – Frequently Asked Questions
- Basic Questions 69.
- Essential Questions 117.
Conclusion 130.
Part III – Groundhog Day – or How to Live Life in the Present 132.
Conclusion 158.

Citation preview

Blueprint for Happiness

Groundhog Day as a Spiritual Guide

Metch 1

ISBN – 978-2-9574288-0-9 First edition – 2020 Copyright Metch, all rights reserved.

Cover picture by Mikkolo

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To my parents

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Introduction

5.

Part I – Definition and Teachings -

Definition

-

Teachings o o o o o o o o

7.

Buddhism Hinduism Advaita Kundalini Tao Miscellaneous No technique Monotheistic Religions

Conclusion

23. 36. 37. 41. 44. 46. 49. 50. 66.

Part II – Frequently Asked Questions -

Basic Questions

69.

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Essential Questions

117.

Conclusion

130.

Part III – Groundhog Day – or How to Live Life in the Present

132.

Conclusion

158.

CONCLUSION

163.

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Introduction This book is about enlightenment. What is it? How does one “get there”? What do all spiritual masters have in common that allowed them to “achieve realization”? Considering that from one teacher to another they often have opposing views, do they even have anything in common? Which beliefs should be adhered to, which practices adopted? Is there a common thread connecting the teachings of the various spiritual schools? What if an enlightened person does not live near you to help you progress? Well, the 1993 movie Groundhog Day does answer some of the most pressing questions regarding enlightenment, especially the ‘How?’, but we will analyze it in the last part of this book only. In order to understand what’s essential about that movie, we first need to understand spirituality itself. One of the most fundamental lessons learned in school is to first carefully read the subject of the exam, the question that is asked. It is better to waste ten minutes to make sure you’ve understood it than to rush in and write an off-topic essay. This is an analogy that has rarely been better illustrated than in spirituality. Too many seekers go from one guru to the next, from one teaching to another, all because they have no clear understanding of what exactly they are looking for. The aim here is to understand what enlightenment really is, to go over the available teachings, and to dispel certain contentious points, so that the reader can serenely deepen their understanding of the path that will best suit them. Some expressions will be used indifferently below: awakening, realization, death of the ego; also Consciousness, the divine, the Brahman, non-self, the immaterial... These words are interchangeable because what they describe is beyond the usual

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experience of reality through the senses alone, which language fails to properly express. Also, the words ‘achieve,’ ‘reach’ will be accompanied by quote/unquote since nothing is achieved nor reached. Enlightenment is a state that is already underlying everything, and to recognize this does not need any ‘doing,’ but rather a lot of ‘undoing.’ This book is intended for all beginners in the field of spirituality, or people seeking to clarify certain points in this discipline that can often seem confusing. Tackling the available literature on this subject is a daunting task as there are so many different schools, teachings, and practices, as well as seemingly contradictory beliefs. To ease in the student into this vast field, three divisions have been made. The first part of this book is an overview of the most influential spiritual schools and teachers. People familiar with spirituality will probably already know some of the information it contains. The second part is a synthesis of the answers given by various teachers and gurus regarding a number of questions, ranging from the mundane to the metaphysical. Finally, the third part is devoted to an analysis of the 1993 movie Groundhog day and how it represents the experience of an individual gradually learning to live in the present moment.

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I - Definition & Teachings 1. What is enlightenment? Enlightenment is a state of consciousness characterized by an absence of compulsive thinking (ahamkara in Sanskrit). It is the realization that we are not a body, but that we have a body. Enlightenment is a permanent state in the sense that no enlightened person has ever “regained” their ego once dropped. When compulsive thinking ceases, it ceases once and for all. The thought process is always possible, of course, but it is no longer an uninterrupted phenomenon accompanying the life of the individual, it becomes a choice, an action taken when necessary. In-between thoughts, only sense perception is left. Living then becomes a series of moments during which awareness, attention, is monopolized by sensations. Scientists have estimated that the brain produces between 12,000 and 50,000 thoughts a day! We don’t save time by not thinking, since it is a phenomenon that happens on top of what we are already doing, but we gain tremendously in terms of quality of life on a daily basis. We live consciously, i.e. more intensely. How do we know that it is a real phenomenon and not the ramblings of wobbly minds? Let’s imagine for a moment a father and his daughter who got stranded on a Pacific island following the crash of their plane. Let’s say the father broke an arm and a leg, and the daughter is very young and doesn’t know how to swim, nor has she ever seen anyone swim before. They have food for a while but the only true hope for them is to cross to the next small island which is inhabited. The father can’t do it because of his broken limbs. So it is up to the little girl to save them both. She can’t swim, and has no idea that swimming is even possible. How does she know she can cross over to the other island? She doesn’t. Only

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her father can convince her that it is indeed possible. Therefore, he has to hammer into her mind: 1) the fact that swimming is indeed possible, 2) that she can learn how to swim, and 3) instructions on how to swim while watching her from the shore. “Join your arms in front of you, then bring them back along your body…” and so on and so forth until the daughter knows how to swim so that she can reach the other island. Well, enlightenment is a bit like that. You have masters convincing you it is real, telling you what to do or not to do, but in the end, only you can experience it. So, what do the masters tell us? That enlightenment is a state of consciousness in the sense that the perception of reality then becomes different from that allowed by the brain alone. The ego perceives divisions in all things: beings, objects, ideas. The absence of ego allows the realization of the uniqueness of life, of “reality.” Only Consciousness exists and all the elements of creation are merely its manifestation. As for knowing what this new perception consists of – for once all teachers agree on one point – its description is impossible because words are powerless to express the ultimate truth. It is an experience so alien from what we are used to, so extraordinary, that any language remains too limited to express it. The seeker will have to wait until they experience it to know what it is really about. Consider the testimony of Suzanne Segal, an American woman living in Paris in 1982 when she was disconnected from reality out of the blue. She was then about to hop on a bus home. As I took my place in line, l suddenly felt my ears stop up like they do when the pressure changes inside an airplane as it makes its descent. I felt cut off from the scene before me, as if l were enclosed in a bubble, unable to act in any but the most mechanical manner. I lifted my right foot to step

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up into the bus and collided head-on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite, blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges, splitting me in two. ln the gaping space that appeared, what I had previously called “me” was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left of my head. “I” was now behind my body looking out at the world without using the body’s eyes. […] The bus arrived at my stop on the rue Lecourbe, and l got off. As I walked the three blocks home, I attempted to pull myself back into one piece by focusing on my body and willing myself back into it where I thought I belonged in order to regain the previously normal sensation of seeing through the body’s eyes, speaking through the body’s mouth, and hearing through the body’s ears. The force of will failed miserably. Instead of experiencing through the physical senses, I was now bobbing behind the body like a buoy on the sea. Cut loose from sensory solidity, separated from and witnessing the body from a vast distance, I moved down the street like a cloud of awareness following a body that seemed simultaneously familiar and foreign.1 This testimony gives an idea of what the true self is, and it is not the body. Other than the cessation of compulsive thinking, there are secondary physical or physiological characteristics associated with enlightenment (reduced eye movements, modification of Theta and Delta brain waves, to name just two examples), particularly in the case of 1

Suzanne Segal, Collision with the Infinite – A Life Beyond the Personal Self, Blue Dove Press, 1998.

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Kundalini, which will be discussed later, but they remain anecdotal. What defines this state is the cessation of the constant flow of thoughts. There are, broadly speaking, three paths to get there: 1) Those to whom it happens, often without them having done anything about it (Suzanne Segal, Eckhart Tolle, John Wren-Lewis…); 2) Those who have a sudden realization of the emptiness of phenomena, a “eureka moment” as Stephen Jourdain dubbed it, often after an intense introspection (Ramana Maharshi, Satyam Nadeen…); 3) Those who progress slowly and laboriously, often toiling for years to tame and eventually drop their ego (most teachers). All spiritual disciplines distinguish two principles: that which has a form and that which doesn’t. God and its creation, Purusha and Prakriti, the atman (the individual soul, of the same nature as the Brahman, the collective soul, God the creator) and Maya (the illusion that is the material world), Essence and Function in Chinese philosophy. The true nature of the self is pure Consciousness (the first principle in the pairs above), the body – and the universe itself for that matter – is merely a false reality (the second principle). The problem comes from the identification with the body through the ego (both from the second principle). We end up forgetting what we really are. The ego believes that what happens in the material world is real and at the same time creates all the suffering it experiences. Realizing that we actually belong to the first principle, the uncreated, allows us to get rid of all suffering. What happens does not happen to us, only to the character we play. So how does one stop making the mistake of identifying with the body? Understanding compulsive thinking is the key to all spiritual teachings. What is it all about? Take five minutes of your time and, sat comfortably in your chair, observe your thoughts. Very soon you will

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realize that ideas flow in your head without you being able to control them. You can choose to hold on to this or that particular thought, but you can’t choose the vast majority of the ideas that come into your mind during the day, and you won’t be able to interrupt their endless flow either. Thoughts come to you, always. It is like wearing headphones that you can never take out of your ears. When you shower, eat your meals, walk, drive, talk, these thoughts just never stop. When you watch your favorite movie or send an e-mail you are thinking about something else at the same time, you are never 100% focused on your action. Man always does two things at the same time: thinking and living. And we automatically identify with our thoughts, believing that there is no difference between us and them, that we are our thoughts. Yet we are not just what comes into our head. In a state of deep sleep, there are no thoughts, but the body is doing just fine regardless! Enlightenment is living without this burden of every instant that is compulsive thinking. It is to overcome that single obstacle that spiritual disciplines exist. And as we will see, the absence of thought is not death, a “zombified state,” quite the contrary. All teachings (including those advocating the absence of technique) seek to discipline the uninterrupted sequence of thoughts before putting an end to it once and for all, thus making it possible to perceive reality as it is, to remember one’s true nature of pure consciousness, flawless and immortal. Perhaps the simplest illustration of this idea of spiritual discipline is the series of ten plates “Ten Bulls2,” or “The Taming of the Bull,” attributed to Tensho Shubun, accompanied by the verses of Kuoan

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The images and verses were taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Bulls.

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Shiyuan. Here the bull represents the ego, which must be tamed in order for man to live in peace. An example of a simple spiritual teaching

In Search of the Bull In the pasture of the world, I endlessly push aside the tall grasses in search of the Ox. Following unnamed rivers, lost upon the interpenetrating paths of distant mountains, My strength failing and my vitality exhausted, I cannot find the Ox. The average person believes that they are their thoughts, their ego, that they choose what goes through their mind. They don’t even consider that it is possible to live without thinking about anything. That is why the seeker, here, does not find the bull.

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Discovery of the Footprints Along the riverbank under the trees, I discover footprints. Even under the fragrant grass, I see his prints. Deep in remote mountains they are found. These traces can no more be hidden than one’s nose, looking heavenward. One must carefully study one’s thoughts to realize that they do not stop at any time of the day. To understand compulsive thinking is to discover the bull’s-eye track.

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Perceiving the Bull I hear the song of the nightingale. The sun is warm, the wind is mild, willows are green along the shore Here no Ox can hide! What artist can draw that massive head, those majestic horns?

Once compulsive thinking is glimpsed at, the seeker understands what the root of the problem is. The ego is a wild and fiery beast, jumping here and there, non-stop, never leaving any respite for the individual to enjoy life. We must face it in order to master it and find inner peace.

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Catching the Bull I seize him with a terrific struggle. His great will and power are inexhaustible. He charges to the high plateau far above the cloud-mists, Or in an impenetrable ravine he stands. Then begins a constant struggle, a constant vigilance so that the ego never regains the upper hand for very long. If anger rises, one must recognize it as such and not feed it, let it wither away in order to regain serenity. The same with sadness, anxiety, fear, which are all manifestations of an ego that is not your true self. You must not let yourself be manipulated by the external – or internal – circumstances of life. It is a thankless task, one that is constantly being repeated. More than once, you take two steps backward for every step forward.

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Taming the Bull The whip and rope are necessary, Else he might stray off down some dusty road. Being well-trained, he becomes naturally gentle. Then, unfettered, he obeys his master.

After a long practice, the seeker is able to recognize the ego when it manifests, the emotions when they invade them. Reason alone allows them not to be overcome by anger (“I’m fed up!”), despair (“I’ll never make it!”), or arrogance (“Soon, I’ll have powers!”).

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Riding the Bull Home Mounting the Ox, slowly I return homeward. The voice of my flute intones through the evening. Measuring with hand-beats the pulsating harmony, I direct the endless rhythm. Whoever hears this melody will join me. From now on, the ego “works for you.” The disciple no longer gets carried away by negative thoughts, but instead gives birth to positive ones that are beneficial to everyone around. Yet, those are still thoughts that arise in the mind. The journey is not over.

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The Bull Transcended Astride the Ox, I reach home. I am serene. The Ox too can rest. The dawn has come. In blissful repose, Within my thatched dwelling I have abandoned the whip and ropes.

The seeker has reached a serenity that is not yet awakening. They appreciate life more and more for what it is, without obsessing over an idealized past or hoping for a future full of false promises. They live in the present moment, never clinging to their thoughts.

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Both Bull and Self Transcended Whip, rope, person, and Ox all merge in No Thing. This heaven is so vast, no message can stain it. How may a snowflake exist in a raging fire? Here are the footprints of the Ancestors. Living at last in the present, the seeker reaches the realization of emptiness, shunyata. There is no longer either ego or seeker. There remains only witnessing life, watching it play out like a movie whose perfect script has been written long ago.

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Reaching the Source Too many steps have been taken returning to the root and the source. Better to have been blind and deaf from the beginning! Dwelling in one’s true abode, unconcerned with and without The river flows tranquilly on and the flowers are red. This journey full of pitfalls will have required a lot of efforts in order for the disciple to simply live their life, without getting caught up in the ebb and flow of events. But life goes on and the disciple must play their part in it.

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Return to Society Barefooted and naked of breast, I mingle with the people of the world. My clothes are ragged and dust-laden, and I am ever blissful. I use no magic to extend my life; Now, before me, the dead trees become alive. Once freed, the awakened one returns to the world, often becoming a master in turn, showing the way to other disciples so that they too may be freed from the ego. D. T. Suzuki or Eckhart Tolle compare the struggle with the ego with a cloudy sky. Consciousness is the clear and pure sky, thoughts are the clouds. The less you think, the more Consciousness will be present, until the day the clouds have disappeared, and the sky will remain immaculate and shining. This series of ten vignettes succinctly summarizes what generally corresponds to several years – even decades – of assiduous spiritual practice. What it

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doesn’t say is how to achieve this “taming of the bull.” This is where the various spiritual teachings come in handy, a brief sample of which is analyzed below.

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2. Teachings The purpose of the following pages is not to describe in detail the spiritual branches available – for that the reader will easily find the appropriate literature – but to understand their respective essence in order to help the interested individual in choosing the path that suits them best and finding the teaching that “speaks to them.” It is important to bear in mind that all teachers say the same thing in their own words – knowing that it is impossible to describe accurately the “true reality,” the divine within – even if their words sometimes seem contradictory. There are different messages for different audiences, eras, or personalities. All the teachings aim at chasing thoughts out of the mind in order to realize the immaterial, the underpinning of all creation, the soul. In the end, the purpose of any technique is to make people aware that there is ultimately no technique and that the quest is itself an obstacle to the realization: the absence of desire is the key, and wanting to reach enlightenment is a desire that must be quelled in due time. “An enlightened person does not want anything,” said Osho, reminding us what the absence of ego truly entails. (a) Buddhism Buddhism is a religion in its own right, with its beliefs, dogmas, and rituals. Buddhists deny the existence of God, or at least of a single god as the creator of reality. According to them, every being, every thing, is both creator and creation. Unlike Hinduism, in which the notion of enlightenment also exists but remains a side issue, the core belief being the worship of one or several gods, enlightenment is the very essence of Buddhism. The Samsara, the cycle of reincarnations of the soul, can only be ended

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through realization, awakening, as the disciple ‘reaches’ nirvana. Celibacy, renunciation to wealth or the consumption of meat and alcohol, almsgiving, prayers, and compassion towards all living beings are as many pillars of this spiritual discipline to which it is necessary to dedicate one’s life. Buddhism advocates the avoidance of temptation rather than its sublimation. At the origin of those teachings is one exceptional man: Siddharta Gautama. Siddharta was a prince of the Shakya family, born in Lumbini in present-day Nepal around the 5th century BC. According to legend, at his birth an astrologer announced to his father that the young Siddhartha would become either a great king or a spiritual master. Suddhodana, wishing that his son would become a king after him, took all the necessary precautions to hide from his son anything that might have ushered him on a spiritual path. Cloistered in the royal palace, receiving all the care and attention he could dream of, Siddharta led a comfortable life. At the age of sixteen, he married the beautiful Yashodara, a union that gave them a son, Rahula. At the age of 29, Siddharta managed to escape the vigilance of his guardians and went for a walk in the nearby city. There he had four encounters – which had been spared him so far – that changed the course of both his life and humanity itself. The first encounter was that of an old man. On this occasion, Siddharta learned of the existence of old age and decay. Then he saw a sick man, which made him realize that the body is not the prey of time alone. His third realization was to see a dead man being taken to the funeral pyre. Finally, he met an ascetic man devoid of all earthly possessions. Siddharta asked him how he could live so serenely when suffering was so omnipresent. The ascetic replied that in order to live

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without suffering, one had to abandon all the desires, pleasures, and comforts that the world had to offer. What brought peace to the ascetic was the fact that he, in turn, brought peace to others. Siddharta decided to leave the palace and find an answer to this question: is it possible to put an end to suffering? Living as an ascetic, Siddharta subjected his body to the most demanding sacrifices, thinking that in this way his spirit would be freed. He realized his mistake shortly before he almost died of hunger and exhaustion. One day he saw a musician adjusting his zither. When the strings were too tight, the sound was too high-pitched, when they were too loose, the sound was too deep. Siddartha had discovered a staple of his future teachings, the Middle Way. When he had finished with too austere an asceticism, he devoted himself to meditation without respite. Finally, six long years after leaving his comfortable palace, the Buddha (“the enlightened one”) as he came to be called, had ‘achieved’ the realization, Nirvana. He spent the next forty-four years teaching his doctrine, a doctrine which, if scrupulously followed, promised the end of suffering to his followers.3 What did his teaching consist of? The Four Noble Truths 1) All is suffering (dukkha) 2) The origin of this suffering is attachment (samudaya) 3) The end of suffering requires the end of desires and attachments (nirodha) 4) The Noble Eightfold Path (magga) is the way to get there

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This part of Buddha’s biography was so popular that it inspired a Christian version of these events, the epic of Barlaam and Jehoshaphat.

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The concept of inescapable suffering does not mean that one cannot experience anything good in the world, but simply that all that is good can and may come to an end. Pleasure and happiness in all their forms are conditional simply because they are subject to change. The impermanence of all things, the omnipresence of suffering, and the idea of non-self (anatman, the absence of an individual soul) are the three fundamental truths of the Buddhist religion. Let’s say you buy a bike, which you really need to get to work. You’re happy you’ve finally managed to acquire one. Unfortunately, it may not last. For plenty of reasons, you could well lose what you’ve enjoyed so far. Your attachment to your property is a potential cause of suffering, dukkha. It does not mean you will suffer because of it, only that your peace of mind is conditioned by the fact that you will be able to ride it day after day. If your bike is broken, there goes your peace of mind. But if you weren’t attached to it, its loss would not be as traumatic, hence eliminating dukkha. The same goes for any property or personal relationships. Everything is potentially suffering because everything is conditional, changing, impermanent. You can lose what you have at any time. According to Buddhism, attachment to objects and people is a burden that we ourselves create, and we must free ourselves from it in order to live happily. Specifically, there are ten fetters that we have to get rid of:      

Believing in a self (believing you are merely your body) Doubting, being full of uncertainty Being attached to rites and rituals Sensual desires Being malicious, wanting to harm others Desiring a material existence, desiring a rebirth in a body

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

  

Desiring an immaterial existence, desiring a rebirth in a formless realm (better than the material world, but worse than nirvana) Pride Restlessness Ignorance (of the reality of the non-self and the illusion of the self)

A rich man once came to see Master Nagarjuna, who was known to live on the streets and had no possessions except for a bowl to receive offerings. He presented him with a bag containing his fortune and explained that he was willing to give it to the guru if he would rid him of his attachments. Nagarjuna then leapt up, grabbed the bag and ran away through the maze of crooked alleys in the neighborhood. His victim rushed after him but could not catch him and returned, morose, to the place where they had met. Nagarjuna reappeared a few moments later and gave him back his bag. “Why did you chase me if you were ready to part with your wealth?” asked the wise old man cheekily. In order to get rid of these ten fetters, Buddhism advocates the Middle Way: not renunciation, not obsession either, but rather detachment in all things in order to achieve an absolute peace of mind. For this, Buddha conceived the Noble Eightfold Path: The Right View The Right Resolve The Right Speech The Right Conduct

The Right Livelihood The Right Effort The Right Mindfulness The Right Samadhi (concentration)

The sole purpose of each discipline is, in its own way, to not let thoughts, especially negative thoughts, dominate one’s life, and to make the

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disciple a being full of abnegation, humility, and compassion, in the image of Buddha himself. In general, the Noble Eightfold Path seeks to minimize opportunities to feed the ego. If you have to think, focus on positive thoughts rather than negative ones. Then, there will come a time to get rid of positive thoughts as well, so that only the presence remains, the experience of life pure and unfiltered, being there. Buddhism has codified human behavior in order to mimic what it’s like to be enlightened. As such, parallel to this Noble Eightfold Path are the qualities required to put it in practice (the five spiritual faculties, the five strengths, the seven factors of awakening). Buddhism teaches its disciples to live like Buddha in order to become a Buddha. When you are present at every stage of your day, the quality of your experience is greatly enhanced. Let’s imagine that you have had a conflict in the morning, with a neighbor, a customer, a driver on the road or anything else. It’s lunchtime and you keep going over what happened earlier. So instead of focusing on your meal, instead of tasting the food, instead of savoring that dessert, you clutter your brain with negative thoughts instead of sensations. The taste of the dessert is lost on you since you are focused on something else entirely. You are missing out on your experience of the now, i.e. on your life. Buddhism applies this example to every aspect of life. There are three main branches of Buddhism practiced throughout the world. Mahayana Buddhism (“Great Vehicle”) The ‘Great Vehicle’ gets its name from the fact that its followers aim at the liberation of all beings, not just Buddhists.

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Mahayana Buddhism is more syncretistic than others, having assimilated various deities and beliefs during its gradual expansion throughout Asia. Its followers represent 56% of the world’s Buddhists and are present mainly in China, Vietnam, North and South Korea, and Japan. Theravada Buddhism (“School of the Elders”) It is the oldest and most conservative branch of Buddhism, although the name itself is recent. As Mahayana Buddhism grew, it began to denigrate all those who practiced Buddhism for their enlightenment alone – which was the case with the Theravadin orders – and included them under the term Hinayana Buddhism (literally “Deficient Vehicle,” usually called “Small Vehicle”). Theravada Buddhism adheres strictly to the teachings of Buddha. Its followers represent 38% of the world’s Buddhists and are found mostly in Southeast Asia excluding Malaysia and Vietnam, as well as Sri Lanka. Vajrayana Buddhism (“Adamantine Vehicle”) or Tantric Buddhism Tantra is a branch of Buddhism (and Hinduism), often simplistically associated in the West with Tantric sex. In reality, Tantra simply means ‘technique.’ One of the founding texts of this discipline is the Vijnana Bhairava (or Vigyan Bhairav) Tantra, a collection of 112 techniques used to achieve realization. Each of these techniques has the same objective: to make one be present in the action rather than focused on thoughts while the action takes place. Disciples of Vajrayana Buddhism make up 6% of the world’s Buddhists and are found mostly in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and Mongolia.

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Chan, Seon, and Zen Buddhism Let go, or be dragged. Zen proverb The Mahayana Buddhists prophesied early on the three-step degradation of their own religion. In the first phase, the age of the right Dharma, the followers strictly followed Buddha’s teachings. In the second phase, the age of semblance of Dharma, the followers began to practice what was no longer quite the Dharma taught by Buddha. In the last phase, the degenerate age (‘mò fǎ’ in Chinese, ‘mappô’ in Japanese) in which we currently are, the teaching of the Dharma is in constant decline. This evolution in the teaching of the doctrine established by Buddha would explain why later schools such as Chan and Zen put less emphasis on sutras, teachings, or on rituals, and more on practices such as meditation. Chan Bodhidharma (5th or 6th century AD) is the monk who supposedly introduced Chan Buddhism in China. This religion, which was originally a typical Mahayana Buddhism, was then nourished by the contributions of Chinese culture, and in particular Taoism. It essentially consists of a balance between the study of sacred texts (even if the importance granted them is much less pronounced than in Mahayana) and the intensive practice of different types of meditation, both physical and mental. Chan is mainly divided into two schools: the so-called southern school, which teaches the possibility of sudden awakening through the realization of the empty nature of the self, and the northern school, which teaches a gradual awakening.

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Seon Korean Buddhism consists mainly of a modified tradition of Chan, called Seon, imported into the kingdom in the 7th century. Jinul Puril Bojo Daesa, known as Jinul, was the monk who thoroughly reformed Seon in the 12th century to give it the form it still has more or less today. In particular, he unified the two apparently antithetical conceptions of enlightenment, the one considering that it happens suddenly, and the one considering that it happens gradually. There are two main orders in Seon: Jogye and Taego. Like Chan and Zen, Seon attributes great importance to the practice of meditation, as well as the study of a limited number of sacred texts. There are more Protestants than Buddhists in South Korea. North Korea is officially an atheist country. Zen Zen, very much present in Japan, is a sub-branch of Mahayana Buddhism (of which several subbranches also exist in the country: Nichiren Buddhism, Amidism or Pure Land Buddhism, the schools of Nara, Tendai, etc.). It is in turn divided into three main schools: Rinzai, Obaku, and finally the most important one, Sôtô. If Buddhism was introduced in the country in the 8th century, Zen itself only exists since the 12th century, when Dainichibô Nônin created the first school of this new spiritual path. Concerning the sacred scriptures, many Zen schools emphasize the significance of the Lotus Sutra, Buddha’s most precious teaching according to them, reaffirming the possibility of enlightenment for all.

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When Panshan Baoji was near death, he said to the monks, “Is there anyone among you who can draw my likeness?” Many of the monks made drawings for Panshan, but none were to his liking. The monk Puhua stepped forward and said, “I can draw it.” Panshan said, “Why don’t you show it to me?” Puhua then turned a somersault and went out. Panshan said, “Someday, that fellow will teach others in a crazy manner!” Having said these words, Panshan passed away.4 Puhua was right: how can one draw what has no shape, i.e. the true self? Such anecdotes, named koan, abound in Zen. Both Chan and Zen use koan (as well as their shorter versions, ‘hua tu’ in Chinese, ‘wato’ in Japanese) to force disciples to reflect on their true nature as well as the nature of reality. Koan are those insoluble questions or proposals that make the student realize that the solution lies beyond the mind. They have different degrees of difficulty. Their purpose is to escape the logic to which the ego is accustomed and bound by. The immaterial is beyond logic just as it is beyond forms. The mind cannot comprehend it. Zen tries to goad disciples into going beyond what the mind can grasp. A typical koan takes the following form: Two clapping hands produce a sound. What is the sound of one hand? (Hakuin Ekaku) 4

Andy Ferguson, Zen’s Chinese Heritage - The Masters and Their Teachings, Wisdom Publications, 2011. Puhua was a 9th century Chinese monk after whom a Japanese Zen sect was created, Fuke-shû (Fuke is the equivalent of Puhua in Japanese).

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Huineng asked Hui Ming: “Without thinking of good or evil, show me your original face before your mother and father were born.” (Wumenguan) Hua tou are usually even more succinct: “What’s this?” “Who’s carrying that corpse?” “Who am I?” This type of questioning is similar to that found in the school of non-duality, Advaita, a school that teaches, through introspection, to realize that the ‘I’ that the seeker believes he is does not actually exist, that the ‘I’ is pure fiction. There is no such thing as ‘me,’ much like actors are not the characters they play. That character has no substance, no importance. It is just a temporary phase. Apart from these reflective exercises, Zen monks practice different kinds of meditation: by focusing on breathing, observing mental activity, simply sitting (zazen), etc. Once again, the goal always remains the same: to go beyond the mind, to escape thoughts. Zen disciples also practice the recitation of poems such as the Sandokai or the Five Ranks of Tozan (Dongshan). They are used as mantras, reminding disciples of their objective. The Five Ranks poem of Dongshan Liangjie5: I – The Relative within the Absolute In the third watch of the night Before the moon appears, No wonder when we meet 5

From Isshu Miura and Ruth Fuller Sasaki (Zen Dust: The History of the Koan and Koan Study in Rinzai Zen, First Zen Institute of America in Japan, 1966).

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There is no recognition! Still cherished in my heart Is the beauty of earlier days. II – The Absolute within the Relative A sleepy-eyed grandma Encounters herself in an old mirror. Clearly she sees a face, But it doesn’t resemble her at all. Too bad, with a muddled head, She tries to recognize her reflection! III – Coming from within the Absolute Within nothingness there is a path Leading away from the dusts of the world. Even if you observe the taboo On the present emperor’s name, You will surpass that eloquent one of yore Who silenced every tongue. IV – Arrival at Mutual Integration When two blades cross points, There’s no need to withdraw. The master swordsman Is like the lotus blooming in the fire. Such a man has in and of himself A heaven-soaring spirit. V – Unity Attained Who dares to equal him Who falls into neither being nor non-being! All men want to leave The current of ordinary life, But he, after all, comes back To sit among the coals and ashes. The poem of the Five Ranks describes the spiritual progression from the recognition of the

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emptiness of phenomena to the maturity of a fully realized consciousness. The first two rows imply a purely intellectual understanding of reality. At the third paragraph, this understanding is a mixture of intellect and intuition. Finally, in the last two paragraphs, the understanding of awakening is purely intuitive. The understanding one has of enlightenment usually follows this progression. First, it is an intellectual comprehension, purely ‘on paper.’ With practice, this comprehension is an intuition, the seeker feels what he or she is after. Finally, enlightenment becomes a practice merged with the life itself of the individual concerned. Zen has developed several terms related to enlightenment. Kensho (“to perceive one’s (true) nature”) and Satori (“understanding”) refer to experiences in which one has a fleeting vision or perception of their true nature, of the immaterial character of the ‘true reality.’ Daigo (Daigo tettei) is the state of awakening, of total realization, with no turning back. All aspects of Japanese culture are imbued with the influence of Zen. From martial arts to floral arrangement (ikebana), from architecture to the tea ceremony (sadô), the familiar uncluttered style of Zen still resonates to a large extent in the psyche of the Japanese people (much more so than Chan or Tao in China, a country largely influenced by Confucianism, which is not a spiritual discipline). About 35% of the Japanese population considers themselves Buddhists (Mahayana and Zen), a figure that is steadily increasing. The branches of Buddhism that are Chan, Seon, and Zen require a particular state of mind, imbued with poetry and a return to simplicity, to the essence

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of things and phenomena. Zen is not the domain of predilection of logical minds. (b) Hinduism If Buddhism is a spirituality imbued with religion, Hinduism is a religion imbued with spirituality. Hinduism is roughly divided into four branches (with countless sub-divisions): Shivaism, Vaishnavism, Shaktism, and the Smarta tradition. All of them consider the sacred scriptures of the Vedas and Upanishads to be fundamental. They also all accept the concepts of karma, Maya (the illusory nature of reality), free will, and the possibility of moksha, liberation, even if the means used to achieve it differ. The first three branches consider their respective deities to be the creator of all things: Shiva, Vishnu, and Devi, the feminine deity. According to the Smarta tradition, all gods and goddesses have the same rank. Beyond that, beliefs diverge as to the rituals, dogmas, and practices characteristic of any religion. Indian spirituality distinguishes three major schools when it comes to enlightenment: the path of action, karma yoga, the path of devotion, bhakti yoga, and the path of knowledge, jnana yoga. Some include a fourth path, raja yoga, which corresponds to certain physical practices of yoga as we know them in the West, unlike the other paths for which the word ‘yoga’ refers to a range of spiritual practices, not necessarily body poses. Thus each disciple can find the path that suits him or her best: action (karma and raja yoga), reflection (jnana yoga), or devotion to a deity or a guru (bhakti yoga). In all cases, spiritual discipline requires an unconditional commitment. Nothing less is required to dissolve the ego: an unconditional surrender to experience unconditional love.

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Hinduism divides the truth seeker’s life into four phases (the lot being called Varnashrama Dharma): Brahmacharya (celibate student), Grihastha (head of the family), Vanaprastha (gradually withdrawing from the world), and finally Sannyasa (withdrawn from the world). The first two phases correspond more or less to the way of life pretty much everyone is familiar with: one has to study, then find a job in order to be able to start a family. In the third phase, the children having become adults in their turn, the wise one can take a sincere and serious interest in spirituality, gradually abandoning their material attachments. When the time to retire has finally come, the sannyasi leaves the world in order to reach enlightenment. Life is not seen an obstacle to the realization, a problem that one should avoid, but rather a step like any other on the spiritual path. However, just because the knowledge that enlightenment is possible is widely spread and accepted does not mean that all Hindus devote themselves to it. The belief in reincarnation may incite many followers to postpone spiritual matters until a better life comes up. Hinduism is the third most popular religion in the world.

(c) Non-duality - Would it not be better if saints mixed with other people in order to help them? - There are no others to mix with. The Self is the only reality.6

6

David Goldman (ed.), Be As You Are – The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, Arkana, 1985.

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Non-duality is a school in its own right, often called Advaita (“not two”), or Advaita Vedanta. The principle of this philosophy is to overlook the seemingly dual aspect of reality. No distinction is made between the individual soul, the atman, and the collective soul, the Brahman. To shatter the illusion of this duality, Advaita denies the usefulness of techniques and advocates introspection instead. The question ‘Who am I?’ must be thoroughly pondered in order to arrive at the sudden realization of the illusory nature of reality. According to the Advaita tradition, there is no right or wrong, for only consciousness exists. To do something ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to someone else is to do it to oneself. ‘There are no others,’ as Ramana Maharshi said. This is probably the most intellectual and areligious school, given that it does not consider rites and other devotional practices as being essential to the spiritual path. Some consider it to be a purely philosophical system. Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897-1981), and Ramesh Balsekar (19172009) are three of the most popular Indian representatives of this school of thought. They all insist on the fact that only Consciousness exists and that everything in the world is but a manifestation of it. One must therefore force oneself to consider the non-self – people, animals, objects – as an extension of oneself. The mantra “neti, neti,” or “neither this nor that,” is used for this purpose by some gurus. The objective is, by repeating these simple words a few hundred or thousand times a day, to force the ego to no longer distinguish between the self and the nonself. The presence of the ego is no longer possible because the other no longer exists. It is a radical change of attitude towards the perception of reality that is required. The question most frequently used in Advaita is “Who am I?” Where do the concepts of ‘me’ and ‘I’ come from?

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Jean Klein (1912-1998) was a French spiritual teacher who spread the teachings of Advaita. Here is what he wrote in The Ultimate Reality: “So, once the position of the Witness, the Spectator, the Knower is understood, what we can call the Non-Dual Experience happens spontaneously. There is therefore no need for effort, will, or discipline. 7” No technique, no practice, just a deeply felt understanding that we are not our body in order to achieve realization. Stephen Jourdain (1931-2009) lost his ego at the age of sixteen after a prolonged reflection on Descartes’ ‘cogito’. “Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum, sum ergo Deus est,” as he tells it. “I doubt therefore I think, I think therefore I am, I am therefore God is.8” Jourdain had the intuition that this sentence contained a fundamental truth and intensely focused on it for several hours in a row before he realized that the ‘I’ does not exist, only Consciousness. Who am I? You’re thinking, “I’d like to go to the beach this summer.” Who or what wants to go to the beach, exactly? Not your body, evidently. The body, including the brain, is just an arrangement of cells. They need food and water to live, but they don’t want anything. So thought itself wants to ‘go to the beach,’ 7

Jean Klein, La joie sans objet, L'ultime réalité, Sois ce que tu es, p.70, Almora, 2009. 8 Strictly speaking, this sentence as a whole does not appear as such in Descartes’ [1596-1650] works. The most iconic part, ‘I think therefore I am,’ occurs in the Discourse on the Method (1637). The first proposition, ‘I doubt therefore I am,’ was formulated almost a century and a half later in an article praising Descartes. The last one, ‘I am therefore God is,’ appears in an early work by Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1629).

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but a thought is immaterial. Yet it is thought which gives rise to the electrical impulses in the brain which will cause your body, in a few months’ time, to be sunbathing. Something immaterial will have moved something material. How does it work? “Because I am both body and mind!” you will exclaim. Yet, in deep sleep the body is at rest while the mind is completely absent. Where is the ‘I’ then? Where did the mind go? When you say, “I am this or I am that,” “I like this or that,” what does that ‘I’ refer to? What you like or dislike may change over time. You may hate spinach as a child, and love it as an adult. Are you the same as you were before, or has your self changed? If you say, “I’ve never smoked in my life,” would you stop being you if you smoked a cigarette at that moment, or is it simply that your self is evolving, changing? “I love this book.” Wouldn’t you be you if you’d never read it? Or if you could never read it again? Or if you didn’t share your tastes with others? Your body has no preference for this or that particular book. Only your ego does. What is left when the ego is no more? Is the ‘I’ the sum of your memories (and again, some of them might be false or erroneous) and your desires (always changing)? In this case, they are still mere thoughts. Are you all your thoughts? If the following thought goes through your head: “I’m so angry I could hit that person right now! “, would you say that you really think that? And if not, how do you distinguish between thoughts that are really you and thoughts that are not, that are just passing by? Are you your anger, your love, your emotions? Yet, even if you didn’t experience them, you would still be alive, just like most creatures on Earth. Moreover, these emotions are constantly changing. Does your ‘I’ then change permanently as well? Are you yourself one day, someone else the next day? Emotions fluctuate, evolve. Is there really an impermanent ‘I’?

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The answer is no. You cannot say that there is an unchanging ‘I’ that corresponds to you throughout your life. The ‘I’ is an ever-changing set of thoughts. So what’s left in you that’s unchanging? Neither the body nor the mind! Only the non-self, the eternal witness, the soul. It is this work of introspection that Advaita encourages to practice. Advaita does not really deal with religious discipline, even though it is based on certain sacred Hindu texts. It is primarily an intellectual path. (d) Kundalini Kundalini is a spiritual practice unfortunately associated with a lot of nonsense as well as misconceptions. Initially, it is a type of yoga that aims to raise the divine energy from the perineum, along the spine, through the seven chakras (energy centers), to the top of the skull. The key is the visualization of two serpents coiled around themselves at the sacrum, spiraling upwards to the brain, above which the student must visualize a radiant thousand-petaled lotus. The two serpents represent the two streams of energy ida and pingala, one cold, the other warm. So much for the theory. One of the better books on the subject is Gopi Krishna’s Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man. It is interesting in more than one way. Firstly, because at some point its author half-failed to awaken the Kundalini – which almost cost him his life – during the first manifestation of this phenomenon: only one out of the two energy currents was activated, pingala. This is of the utmost interest because we always learn more from a failure than from a success. Secondly, the author analyses with hindsight, scientifically, in details, the physiological changes that accompanied his awakening and endured for the remainder of his life. Finally, Gopi Krishna clarifies a lot of

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preconceived ideas about this spiritual practice and mercilessly sweeps away far-fetched and unfounded beliefs. Initially, Gopi Krishna did as many before him, he followed meditation instructions, without having a deep understanding of what exactly kundalini was. Deeply concentrated on the radiant lotus, he felt a localized energy near his perineum and then, “a stream of liquid light entering [his] brain through the spinal cord.9” That’s when his troubles started! Loss of sleep and appetite, extreme fatigue, inability to concentrate and anxiety affected him for weeks on end. He even reached the point where he had “lost all feelings of love for [his] wife and children.10” It was while researching what had happened to him that he realized that most people talking about kundalini knew nothing about how it works in reality. It is a recurring problem in spirituality in general, not just regarding kundalini, there is a lot of theory but little actual practice, so preconceived ideas and other fantasies are unfortunately passed down from one generation to the next. In the end, Gopi Krishna learned that he had only activated one stream, that of heat, pingala. After countless efforts he finally managed to correct the situation and experience a full-blown kundalini ascent. The description of his travails is followed by detailed notes on the biological and physiological changes affecting his body and perceived by Gopi Krishna. “There was no doubt an extraordinary change in my nervous equipment, and a new type of force was now racing through my system connected unmistakably with the sexual parts, which also seemed to have developed a new kind of activity not 9

Gopi Krishna, Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man, p.24, Shambhala, 1997. 10 Ibid, p. 26.

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perceptible before. The nerves lining the parts and the surrounding region were all in a state of intense ferment, as if forced by an invisible mechanism to produce the vital seed in abnormal abundance to be sucked up by the network of nerves at the base of the spine for transmission into the brain through the spinal cord.11” Gopi Krishna describes other physical changes he has undergone. These are to be added to the list of differences between the state of nonawakening and that of awakening, even if they seem to affect only those concerned with kundalini, which is far from being the case of all spiritual teachers. “What I realized […] is the fact […] that in the human body there exists an extremely subtle and intricate mechanism located in the sexual region which […] [effects] a marvelous transformation of the nervous system and the brain, resulting in the manifestation of a superior type of consciousness, which will be the common inheritance of man in the distant future. 12” The physical transmutation born of enlightenment is not only affirmed here but also described in great details. All in all, Gopi Krishna dispels in his account the illusions about the very existence of the thousandpetaled lotuses as well as the colors or Sanskrit letters associated with each chakra, which most students eagerly learn. It isn’t necessary to learn the Sanskrit alphabet in order to practice that discipline. It is not even necessary to visualize a real lotus on the top of one’s skull. Reality is always simpler than what the ego makes of it. Many books are of course available on the subject for the interested researcher: Sivananda,

11 12

Ibid, p. 45. Ibid, p. 91.

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Silburn, Shyam Sundar Goswami, etc13. But this is the kind of practice for which a guru is highly recommended. As you may have discovered thanks to Gopi Krishna’s testimony, it is a yoga that is not without risk for those who do not know exactly what it is all about. (e) Tao Taoism is a Chinese spiritual school, famous for popularizing the Yin-Yang symbol, born essentially from the teachings of a 6th century BC wise man, Lao Tzu, transmitted through the Tao Te Ching, the Book of the Way. The character of Lao Tzu (a pseudonym literally meaning ‘old master,’ his real name may have been Li Er) has a sort of mystical status, some people even go as far as doubting his very existence. According to a legend, he ‘achieved’ enlightenment by watching a leaf detach from a branch of a tree and fall to the ground. He witnessed the leaf swinging here and there, twirling with the winds. From this scene he drew a profound analogy with the life of man. Once born, he is constantly tossed around by the events in his life over which he has no control, before his final rest. Lao Tzu had just learned to let go. The story also tells that towards the end of his life, he wanted to leave everything behind and live as a hermit in the mountains. As he left the city, he was stopped by a guard, Yin Xi, who forced him to write down his teachings before letting him go. That’s how the Tao Te Ching came to us. Taoism is based on a handful of simple precepts.

13

Incidentally, the effects of kundalini on the brain have been studied in a CIA-sponsored research. The document’s reference is CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5.

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- The Tao, which is translated as ‘way,’ which is the guiding principle of creation, the natural order of the universe. The term ‘way’ implies a direction, a purpose, a finality. Man travels along this way, without being the master of the events, good or bad, that affect him during his journey, without even ever knowing where it leads. Perhaps the closest term to this in Western languages is the Greek ‘Logos,’ which is translated by ‘word’ in English, the very same ‘word’ spoken of in John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was in God, and the Word was God.” This ‘Word’ represents the order of creation. - Wu-Wei, or non-action. It should be noted that no spiritual teaching advocates inaction. We are here on Earth to live, and live we shall. What is to be done is not to involve the ego when the action takes place. Those interested can read Eugene Herrigel’s account, Zen in the Art of Archery, in which he describes this exercise in detail. His archery teacher spent several years to get to him understand that the arrow is fired, the target is hit, and yet there is no shooter, nothing is fired. It takes a lot of practice to become the witness of the action and not the actor because it is not intuitive, the ego keeps getting in the way. You have to let the Tao, the Way, do its work, thinking neither about the act nor anything else. - Ziran, which can be translated as ‘natural’ or ‘spontaneous,’ is a concept close to Pu (‘simple,’ but also ‘raw wood,’ ‘unhewn log’). Thus we read in chapter 19 of the Tao Te Ching: “Evince the plainness of undyed silk, Embrace the simplicity of the unhewn

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log [Pu]14”. (The latter proposition is also found in another Taoist work, Chuang Tzu’s Zhuāngzǐ.) The idea advocated with this concept is a return to nature, to a simpler way of life, close to what it was originally. One must appreciate things as they are, and events as they come, and shun the superfluous in order to find beauty in nature’s rawness. This is a recurring theme in the Tao Te Ching. - The Three Treasures that are compassion, frugality, and humility. These virtues mentioned in Lao Tzu’s work are those that the disciple must develop if he hopes to attain the (spiritual) immortality promised by Taoism. In addition to this moral perfectionism, Taoism advocates purifying the body through a healthy and frugal diet, even vegetarianism according to some teachers. There also exist alchemical practices that are more superstitious than spiritual. Taoism is the way back to simplicity and letting go. If its influence is significant vis-a-vis several aspects of Chinese culture, including the arts and medicine, it is mainly Confucianism that has influenced the country’s policies and society in general. Confucius, a contemporary of Lao Tzu, developed a mixed system of moral philosophy and politics. Respect for the family and for individuals, strict morality, and a fair system of justice are all pillars that have helped sustain the Chinese society for the past 2,500 years. But unlike Lao Tzu, Confucius never concerned himself with spirituality.

14

Victor H. Mair, Tao Te Ching, An entirely new translation based on the recently discovered Ma-wang-tui manuscripts, Bantam Books, 1990.

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(f) Miscellaneous Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was the quintessential philosopher-teacher. His technique was to focus on an intense reflection upon enlightenment, something suited for people primarily concerned with the intellectual aspect of the spiritual research. Like the supporters of Advaita, he affirmed that spirituality is not characterized by any one path. He said: “Man cannot come to [the truth] through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.15” Krishnamurti’s oeuvre is too prolific to be succinctly summarized. An aspect of his thinking process, to give just one example, is the following reflection: is it possible to live without concepts? As human beings we appropriate the world around us by defining everything we can get our hands on, in order to find a common basis for communicating with the rest of humanity. We then use language, gestures, and ideas or concepts. Let’s say you are sitting on a bench, in the city or in a park. You are looking at a car, which belongs to the larger group of vehicles in the field of transportation. And your thoughts continue to associate this object with other concepts. In the same way if you look at a plant or a tree. You start by naming it and then think about its fruits, properties, etc. You start thinking about the name of the tree. The associations of ideas thus go on and on. Is it possible to ‘witness reality’ without thinking about 15

https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/about-core-teachings

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anything? Is it possible to see, to listen, without judging? Krishnamurti’s writings are imbued with these kinds of questions. He could have made his own the following statement attributed to Socrates: “A life without examination is not worth living” (Plato, Apology of Socrates, XXVIII). Osho (1931-1990, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh), was probably the most influential spiritual teacher from the 1960s to the 1980s. Impossible to classify, his teaching is prolific enough that it touched all fields of spirituality. He has commented on most – if not all – of the founding scriptures of the various spiritual schools that exist. His description of how the ego functions, how it tricks us at every turn, is one of the clearest and easiest to understand available to students of enlightenment. If Buddhism advocates renunciation, Osho advocated sublimation through acceptance. One must accept everything that makes up life: humor, sexuality, emotions, death. We must not live in fear of anything, avoiding rather than embracing what life is all about, because none of its components is an obstacle to spirituality. Osho’s practices ranged from meditation and dancing sessions to the study of texts as well as artistic expression. His Ten Commandments are as follows16: o Never obey anyone’s commandment unless it comes from within you also; o There is no God other than life itself; o Truth is within you, do not search for it elsewhere; o Love is prayer; o To become nothingness is the door to truth. Nothingness itself is the means, the goal, and attainment; 16

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajneesh

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o Life is now and here; o Live wakefully; o Do not swim, float; o Die each moment so that you can be new each moment; o Do not search. That which is, is. Stop and see. (g) No technique Another Krishnamurti, Uppaluri Gopala or U. G. (1918-2007), was opposed to all teachers and teachings, claiming that the quest was a waste of time and effort, and an obstacle to what he called ‘the natural state,’ realization. According to him, all teachers were as many charlatans promising what they could never deliver! He denied being a teacher himself. He merely exchanged conversations with people interested on the subject but shunned any label and advocated giving up spirituality altogether. Satyam Nadeen, whose real name is Michael Clegg, is a fervent believer in the total absence of free will. According to him there is no technique to adopt, no practice to devote oneself to because there is no actor, only Consciousness. “The bottom line, folks! You have no free will. You don't make the choices. You are not the doer. Neither is anyone else out there the doer. There is only Consciousness acting through the individual mind/body organism that we call this bag of skin and bones. Once you get this, and I mean really get it, say, like St. Paul got it when he was struck down by some kind of Divine Lightning and in a flash clearly saw the ignorance of his former thinking, then I would say you have received your wake-up call.17”

17

Satyam Nadeen, From Onions to Pearls – A Journal of Awakening and Deliverance, New Freedom Press, 1996.

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The seeker is thus called upon to forget that he is a seeker and forget that there is anything to look for. One must live, quite simply, without being involved in what happens, and perhaps the Consciousness will ‘take you’ if it so wills. The problem with these ‘teachings’ is that you cannot do anything with them! If awakening does not depend on the individual, then techniques are useless. So be it. But if this is the case, why is one pushed to practice them by the very same Consciousness? If we indeed have no free will, those who abandon the quest fulfil their role just as much as those who practice techniques in order to ‘reach’ a state of enlightenment. The aspiration to the divine, to the absolute, remains an underlying impulse of the human adventure. We wish to ‘go home,’ that is to say, to find our true infinite nature. (h) Monotheistic Religions Judaism seems to be the only religion that does not openly mention the concept of enlightenment. There are, of course, authors who have tried to interpret the Hebrew scriptures in their own way to make a connection with spiritual enlightenment, but this concept seems to be altogether absent from the texts and practices themselves18. Islam, on the other hand, considers it via its esoteric branch, Sufism. 18

It should be noted that the esoteric system that is known as the Kabbalah (based, among other things, on the Sefer Yetzirah, the Zohar, and an interpretation of the supposed hidden meaning of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament) contains notions such as non-duality or immortality. The problem is that this path is based precisely on subjective interpretations of the texts, and it is therefore difficult for specialists to reach a consensus on these themes. In any case, there is nothing like a codified “path to enlightenment” in Judaism unlike in other religions.

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Christianity also, to a lesser extent, through Hesychasm, a discipline reminiscent of the meditation and devotion (bhakti) of Oriental religions and spiritual disciplines. ‘To a lesser extent’ because, while “The Hesychast tradition and Sufism share the belief that one should remember God constantly and with every breath,19” there is a fundamental difference. “Whereas in Hesychasm deification can be expected fully in the next life and can only be approached in this life through synergy or cooperation between God and man, in Sufism union is possible in this life. There are those Sufis who, while in this world, have already passed beyond the gate of death or annihilation and who have experienced already the supreme state of union or unity while still living in this body.20” o

Judaism

Judaism does not believe in this idea of ‘deification,’ enlightenment. The immortality of the soul itself does not seem to be a consideration in Judaism. “The early Jewish religion, on the other hand, had entirely relinquished immortality; the possibility of an existence after death was never mentioned in any lace,21” writes Sigmund Freud. This view seems to be supported by some rabbinic authorities (while others would disagree). Rabbi Harry Waton, for instance, wrote: “But Jehovah comes down from heaven to dwell on this earth and to embody himself in mankind. For this reason, Judaism concerns itself only about this earth and

19

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Prayer of the Heart in Hesychasm and Sufism, 1986. 20 Ibid. 21 Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, Hogarth Press, 1939.

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promises all reward right here on this earth. The Kingdom of God is to be realized right here on this earth. The immortality which men are to enjoy, they will enjoy right here on this earth.22” And further down, “The immortality that mankind generally believes is an immortality of the soul in heaven. When a man dies, his soul goes up to heaven and unites with God. The soul comes down to the earth to exist in an embodied form, function through life, and then goes back to heaven where it remains forever. This is not the immortality of which the Bible speaks. The Bible speaks of an immortality right here on earth. In what consists this immortality? It consists in this: the soul continues to live and function through the children and grandchildren and the people descending from them. Hence, when a man dies, his soul is gathered to his people. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and all the rest continue to live in the Jewish people, and in due time they will live in the whole human race. This was the immortality of the Jewish people, and it was known to the Jews all the time. 23” Herbert C. Brichto corroborates this when he writes that “the family tomb is the central concept in understanding biblical views of the afterlife24”. According to Jewish cosmology, other than erets, the earth, there exists Shamayim, the heavens, places for God and other heavenly beings, and Sheol, the realm of the dead, however virtuous or wicked they were in their lifetime. “Olam ha-Ba (afterlife) is rarely discussed in Jewish life. […] Jewish teachings on the subject of afterlife are sparse: The Torah, the most important

22

Harry Waton, A Program For The Jews and An Answer to All Anti-Semites, 1939. 23 Ibid. 24 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheol

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Jewish text, has no clear reference to afterlife at all. 25” Donald Gowan tells us that: “There was no belief in personal afterlife with reward or punishment in Judaism before 200 BC.26” All this to say that Judaism is focused on the existence in this life, the immanent rather than the transcendent, on religious practices rather than spiritual ones. The material world alone matters, and living in it in accordance with God’s precepts. “The Torah and Talmud alike focus on the purpose of earthly life, which is to fulfill one's duties to God and one's fellow man. Succeeding at this brings reward, failing at it brings punishment. Whether rewards and punishments continue after death, or whether anything at all happens after death, is not as important.27” Therefore, enlightenment, experiencing the ‘reality beyond’ in one’s lifetime is not a consideration in Judaism. o

Sufism (Islam)

Sufism is not a particular branch of Islam. There are Sufi brotherhoods (tariqa) among both Sunnis and Shiites. But in all cases, followers are required to practice Islam. What distinguishes the Sufis is their interpretation of religious precepts. According to them, the Coran must be read both literally (the form, zahir in Arabic) and esoterically (the content, batin). Muhammad and his companions (sahabah) – in particular Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law – are considered the first Sufis. The oath (bay’ah) that 25

Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy. William Morrow and Co., 1991. Quoted in https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/afterlife-in-judaism. 26 Donald E. Gowan, The Westminster Theological Wordbook of the Bible, Westminster John Knox Press, 2003, p. 188. Quoted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_ of_the_dead. 27 http://www.religionfacts.com/judaism/afterlife

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binds them is the foundation of the brotherhoods of the order. “Indeed, those who pledge allegiance [bay’ah] to you, [O Muhammad] – they are actually pledging allegiance to Allah. The hand of Allah is over their hands. So he who breaks his word only breaks it to the detriment of himself. And he who fulfills that which he has promised Allah – He will give him a great reward.” (Coran, 48:10). Thus, a Sufi disciple (tassawuf) creates a spiritual bond with the Prophet Muhammad by swearing an oath to a Sufi superior. And through Muhammad, he can hope to know Allah. Sufis practice such things as repetition – just like a mantra – or mental evocation of the name of God (dhikr Allah), in order to achieve annihilation of self (al-fana) and union with the divine (al-tawhid). “If only one could keep the mind in the body and prevent it from wandering away while concentrating upon the Name located in the heart one would become a saint.28” The Sufi is in a constant struggle – al-jihad alakbar, the ‘Great Holy War’ – against the passions that beset him. In addition to repeating the name of God, Sufis practice meditation (muraqabah) and adab, which is the observance of etiquette in the Arab world, respect for good manners, morality and decency. Nasreddin One of the more emblematic figures of Sufism is the (in)famous Nasreddin (or Nasruddin) Hodja. He was a very real character, a Turkish (or Iranian) man from the 13th century. His legend was built around the stories he is supposed to have told. Thanks to his jokes, moral fables, or pedagogical tales, his influence has spread widely, and not only in Sufism.

28

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, op. cit.

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Here is a typical story involving this atypical character. One day, three children were playing in the streets of a village. The first child saw a paper bag on the ground, probably fallen out of a passer-by’s pocket. The second also saw it and announced it aloud to his playmates: “Hey, there’s a bag lying there!” The third child ran and picked it up. When he opened it, he found some juicy dates in it. After counting them, he cheerfully declared that there were ten of them. “What to do? There are ten dates and three of us. How should we share them?” he asked. The first boy said, “I saw the bag first, the last date is mine.” Not to be outdone, the second boy said, “I’m the one who told everyone, I should get the tenth date.” “No, I’m the one who grabbed the bag, the last one is mine,” exclaimed the third. Unable to resolve their argument, the three children saw Nasreddin passing by. Knowing his wisdom, they asked him: “Blessed Hodja, there are three of us and we have ten dates, we don’t know how to divide them among us. Can you help us?” “Of course,” answered Nasreddin, “do you want to split them according to man’s law, which is fallible, or according God’s law, which is infallible?” “The law of God, of course!” replied the three boys in unison. Nasreddin then took the dates, gave seven to one of the boys, three to another, leaving none for the last. Dervishes Among the most notorious brotherhoods of Sufism are, of course, the whirling dervishes belonging to the Melevi order. This order was founded by Sultan Veled, son of Djelal-Eddine Roumi, the famous 13th century Persian poet, and several of his disciples. The roundabout dances they perform are called sema or sama.

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Those who turn in the direction of prayer, whirl in both this world and the next. Pay heed when a circle of friends whirl, circling round and round, the Kaaba is the center. 29 The openly declared aim of this dance is to enter a mystical trance. The practitioner stands on his left leg and gives impulses with his right foot to gain speed, turning counter-clockwise. The arms are stretched out, raised at head level. The right hand palm points to the sky, the left hand one to the ground. At each rotation, the name of Allah is pronounced more or less loudly. In some dances, the practitioner gradually accelerates the rhythm before stopping abruptly, then starts the cycle again. The purpose of this technique is to overcome the ego (nafs) and to unite with the source of all things (kamal). The concept of union of the human and the divine in this life is therefore recognized by these followers of Islam (but sacrilegious to others). The Spiritual Quest According to the Sufi Order of the Nashqbandis30 This Sufi brotherhood has developed a series of eleven spiritual exercises with the purpose of realizing that very union. 1.

Hosh dar dam – Conscious Breathing

Be aware of your breathing. You have to breathe deeply in a natural rhythm without worrying about breathing. Breathing in and out is done with God in mind. (Virtually the same technique appears in the

29

Kabir Helminski, Ahmad Rezwani, Love’s Ripening: Rumi on the Heart’s Journey, 2008. 30

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleven_Naqshbandi_principles

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Tantric book Vijñâna Bhairava and in various practices of Buddhism and Yoga). 2.

Nazar bar qadam – Watch Your Steps

Watch your steps, be aware of your intention. Be careful and do not be distracted from your goal, maintain your awareness and be open to opportunities to do the right thing at the right time. 3.

Safar dar vatan – Journey Homeward

Make an inner journey, that is, within yourself; observe yourself in a detached but not too self-critical way, learn from your mistakes, and go from qualities that leave something to be desired to qualities worthy of praise. 4.

Khalwat dar anjuman – Solitude in the Crowd

Develop the ability to detach yourself from external noises, disturbances and confusion while surrounded by people; remain calm, sometimes with the help of dhikr [the repetition of God’s name]. Also, be able to refocus your attention on the outside world if necessary. If on the surface the Sufi is in the world, in his inner self he is with God. [We find the same precept in Hesychasm.] 5.

Yad kard – Essential Remembrance

Remember the experiences you had, and that you are part of a tradition from which you can draw positive energy and strength. With the help of internalized or vocalized dhikr, remember the names of God; remain alert so that the heart becomes aware of the presence of truth (al-haqq).

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6.

Baz gasht – Restraint

Be self-disciplined, for example by cultivating patience, preventing your thoughts from wandering through the repetition of the shahada [declaration of oneness with God and acceptance of the fact that Muhammad is his prophet], to make a work of contrition and to return to the path of virtue. 7.

Nigah dasht – Attentiveness

Focus on the presence of God. Be vigilant and open to subtle perceptions, positive energy, positive opportunities and impacts. Be alert to the thoughts that cross your minds. 8.

Yad dasht – Recollection

Perceive your being and body, recollect positive memories and experiences. 9.

Wuquf-I zamani – Awareness of Time

Suspend your intellect, judgments, and preconceived ideas. Reconsider your actions and thoughts. Consider the way you spend your time, be grateful for good deeds done to you and ask for forgiveness when it comes to your wrongdoings. 10. Wuquf-I adadi – Awareness of Numbers Carry out exercises involving numbers, such as being aware of the number of repetitions when practicing dhikr (It must be an odd number), or practice mental operations using the Abjad system [Arabic numerology: to each letter is associated a number].

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11. Wuquf-I qalbi – Awareness of the heart or visualization Visualize your heart (qalb), perhaps with God’s name written on it, and identify with the truth or with God. As can be seen in this brief description, these particular Sufi emphasize meditation and the use of the mantra that is the name of God, in addition to a profound moral transformation. Similar requirements are also found in all branches of Buddhism, Taoism, as well as miscellaneous spiritual disciplines. Gurdjieff George Gurdjieff was a Russian of Armenian origin, probably born in the 1870s, who died in France in 1949. He was – or at least claimed to be, depending on whom you ask – a teacher in the field of spirituality and occultism. He established centers in France and the United States to transmit what he called the “Fourth Way.” Spirituality was divided according to him into three main branches: the way of emotions (belonging to the monks), the way of the body (belonging to the fakirs), and the way of the mind (belonging to the yogis). Each path aims in its own way at the realization of the true self (i.e. the disappearance of the ego) through the mastery of its respective medium. His teaching was supposed to merge the three paths into one more accessible to the Western audience of the time. One of his major inspirations was Sufism, especially Sufi dances. He had his followers practice various “sacred dances” and other cathartic movements. There existed for instance a series of 39 of these movements, some of which bore names such as ‘the finger-pointing dervish,’ ‘Tibetan weekdays,’ ‘abrupt stop,’ or ‘black and white magic.’ Gurdjieff’s biography, Meetings

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with Remarkable Men, was brought to the screen in 1978 by Peter Brook. To sum up, Sufism has been – and still is – attacked on several fronts by the more orthodox branches of Islam, branches for which certain practices are useless or even almost sacrilegious. In particular, Sufism was banned in Turkey in 1925 by President Ataturk himself, and remains banned, at least officially, to this day. Many of the spiritual practices of Sufism are virtually indistinguishable from those common in India or Tibet today. Meditation, being alert to one’s thoughts, chasing them away by pronouncing the name of God, the betterment of one’s personality, etc… All these techniques are found in the textbooks of most other spiritual schools. o

Hesychasm Be still and know that I am God.31 We had to learn anew how to be, to simply be – without purpose nor motive. Meditating like a mountain was the very meditation of Being, “the simple fact of Being”, before all thought, pleasure or pain.32

Hesychasm (from a Greek word meaning ‘rest, calm’) is a mystical tradition of the Orthodox Christian Church inspired by the following words spoken by Jesus: “But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who 31

Psalms, 46:10. Jean-Yves Leloup, Écrits sur l'hésychasme – Une tradition contemplative, 1990. 32

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sees in secret will reward you openly.33” (The Hesychast and anonymous author of The Way of a Pilgrim took literally the injunction found in 1 Thessalonians 5-17: “Pray without ceasing.”) Hesychasm advocates striving to reach nepsis, which is a state of constant attention and alertness to thoughts, intensified by asceticism. “Sit in a high place and keep watch if you can, and you will see the thieves come, and you will discover how they come, when and from where, how many and what kind they are as they steal your clusters of grapes. When the watchman gets tired, he stands up and he prays. And then, sitting down once more, he bravely carries on with his task.34” Here the thieves represent the thought constantly plaguing us. Meditation, then, is aimed at not allowing oneself to be overwhelmed by the unceasing flow of thoughts. We must remain immovable no matter what thoughts enter our brain. This is the common theme running through the pages of one of the fundamental texts of Hesychasm: The Philokalia of the Neptic Fathers. The goal of asceticism and nepsis is to purify both body and mind, to empty oneself of negative thoughts and harmful foods in order to gradually give way to the divine (in a manner similar to what is practiced in Taoism). Contemplation (contemplatio in Latin, theoria in Greek – which can also be interpreted as ‘enlightenment’) has as its ultimate goal theosis or ‘deification’: “God became man so that man could become God,” according to Athanasius of Alexandria. Speaking of the moral transformation required of believers, an Orthodox priest explains: “We become

33

Matthew, 6:6. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 27, SPCK, 1982. 34

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more and more like God, although we don’t become God.35” Some have – and with good reason – made the connection between Hesychastic asceticism and meditation and their Buddhist counterpart. Here again, the difference is more in form than in substance. o

German Mysticism

Christian spirituality also includes the influence of German mysticism, a spiritual school dating back to the 12th-14th centuries and whose main representatives, often Catholics, were Meister Eckhart (1260-1328), Henry Suso (1295-1366), John van Ruysbroeck (1293-1381), John Tauler (13001361), Rulman Merswin (1307-1382), and Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). This group of religious devotees occasionally distinguished themselves by their specific teachings which differed at times from those of the Church. Relying to a very large extent on the New Testament rather than the Old Testament, on the source of the texts, Jesus, rather than on their interpretation by the Church, some of those mystics advocated the possibility of the union of the soul with God in this life. Verily, know this: as long as you have a drop of blood in your body and a bit of marrow in your bones that has not been consumed by the love of true abandon, do not even think that you have surrendered; and know this also: as long as the last fragment of true abandonment is lacking in you, as long as you have not truly acquired it, God must 35

Andrew Damick, an orthodox priest, but not a Hesychast, in a video entitled ‘Five differences between Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism.’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MzWnO1VfvY

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remain a stranger to you forever, and you will not feel the greatest and deepest bliss in this time and in eternity. [...] A well-ordered religious man should be so stripped of his own will that one would never see in him anything other than “I am not.” [...] Many people willingly surrender themselves to God and do not want to surrender themselves to men. They are willing to be tormented by this or that, but not by men. No! We must surrender ourselves as God wants us to surrender ourselves.36 “Surrender as God wants us to surrender” means unconditionally. It is the price to be paid in exchange for eternal life. Quid pro quo… It should be noted that not all members of this particular school would be given the label of “enlightened” in the sense we understand it today. Some owed their title of ‘mystics’ because of the visions and other divine apparitions they experienced. This was the case of Hildegard of Bingen when she was still a child, Henry Suso, or also Hermann Joseph (1151-1241). Many of the adherents pertaining to this German mysticism were pious Christians, but among them were most likely to be “enlightened” individuals who experienced this “divine union” during their lifetime. “Accordingly, we are rightly deified when we are exalted to the point that in a oneness [of being] we are (1) a oneness in which are all things and (2) a oneness [which is] in all things37,” writes Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) in On Divine Sonship. It is therefore necessary, in order to be freed of the ego, to perceive the unity of Consciousness in the plurality of 36

John Tauler, sermon nº83, in Les Mystiques Rhénans, Marie-Anne Vannier, Cerf, 2010. Emphasis added. 37 Jasper Hopkins, A Miscellany on Nicholas of Cusa, chapter III.70 of De Filiatione Dei, The Arthur J. Banning Press, 1994.

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phenomena, just as Advaita, among others, advocates. Nicholas of Cusa again in On the Vision of God: “Lord my God, Strength of the frail, I see that You are Infinity itself. And so, there is not anything that is other than You or different from You or opposed to You. For Infinity is not compatible with otherness, because there is not anything outside it, since it is Infinity. For Absolute Infinity includes and encompasses all things.38” In other words, ‘everything is Brahman’! No Indian guru or Tibetan monk would disagree with that! John van Ruysbroeck tells us: “To die to sin is to live to God, to be emptied of self and detached from all that pleases or displeases, leads to the Kingdom of God; heart and desire must close to things of earth to open to God and things eternal, if we desire to taste and see that the Lord is sweet. 39” “Emptied of self” means to be rid of compulsive thinking; “detached from all that pleases or displeases” means living in non-duality. Ruysbroeck further informs us that “if the spirit is to contemplate God with God, without intermediary, in this divine light, three things are necessary for a person. 40” These three things are: to be empty of thought, full of love for God, and to be aimless in darkness, for “in the abyss of this darkness in which the loving spirit has died to itself, there begin the revelation of God and eternal life.41” In The Little Book of Enlightenment, he tells us further: “These enlightened people are lifted 38

Jasper Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’s Dialectical Mysticism, Text, Translation, and Interpretive Study of De Visione Dei, chapter 13.56, The Arthur J. Banning Press, 1985. 39 John van Ruysbroeck, Love's Gradatory [The Seven Steps of the Ladder of Spiritual Love], chapter XI, translated by Mother St. Jerome, 1914. 40 Wim van den Dungen, The Spiritual Espousals, Book 3, The Third Life: the contemplative life, 2013. 41 Ibid.

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up with free mind above reason to a bare vision devoid of images. There lives the eternal invitation of God’s unity, and with imageless naked understanding they go beyond all works and all practices and all things to the summit of their spirit. There their naked understanding is penetrated with eternal clarity as the air is penetrated by the light of the sun. The bare elevated will is transformed and penetrated with fathomless love just as iron is penetrated by the fire. And the bare elevated memory finds itself caught and established In a fathomless absence of images. 42” Here again, the “absence of images” refers to the end of compulsive thinking. If the language is poetic, worthy of the label of ‘mystic’ to their author, the truth remains identical to that pronounced by Buddha almost two millennia earlier, or by Osho 500 years later. One could quote over and over again but the result would be the same: German mysticism is a spirituality that differs only in appearance from those found everywhere else in other eras, past and future. Jakob Böhme (1575-1624), a German-speaking mystic and Lutheran, came later on the Christian spiritual scene than his Rhenish predecessors. His works The Way to Christ or Life Beyond the Senses are filled with the same Christian fervor as the works of the German mystics who preceded him. In them, Jakob Böhme advocates an unlimited devotion to God as the only way to dissolve the ego (which he calls the ‘self’). Master: And if thou canst, my Son, for a while but cease from all thy thinking and willing, then thou shalt hear the unspeakable words of God.

42

Bernard McGinn, The Little Book of Enlightenment in The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, chapter 11, Modern Library, 2006.

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Disciple: How can I hear him speak, when I stand still from thinking and willing? Master: When thou standest still from the thinking of Self, and the willing of Self. When both thy intellect and will are quiet, and passive to the expressions of the Eternal Word and Spirit; and when thy soul is winged up and above that which is temporal, the outward senses and the imagination being locked up by holy abstraction, then the Eternal Hearing, Seeing and Speaking will be revealed in thee, and so God heareth and seeth through thee, being now the organ of his Spirit, and so God speaketh in thee, and whispereth to thy Spirit, and thy Spirit heareth his voice. Blessed art thou therefore if thou canst stand still from self-thinking and self-willing, and canst stop the wheel of thy imagination and senses.43 Deepak Chopra expressed the same vision in his works: the universe sees through our eyes, hears through our ears. It observes itself through us. The mysticism of these Christians has on more than one occasion caused the Church to react, denying any possibility of union of the soul with God in this life. In particular, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa were accused of pantheism, which, combined with his other proposals considered heretical, led to the former being duly tried by the Inquisition. (A trial whose outcome he never witnessed, having died the year before the sentencing). To summarize, the so-called ‘mystical’ schools of Christianity, which aim to bring the soul closer to God, or even to unite it to Him, require absolute devotion and frequent meditation on His name. The disciple 43

Bernard Holland, Dialogues on the Supersensual Life by Jakob Behmen, Methuen & Co., 1901.

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focuses his thoughts only on Him at first, gradually emptying his ego to make way for the divine. These practices differ only in form from Indian bhakti or Buddhist meditation. The only notable deviation in bhakti is that it can have as its object not only any deity from the Hindu pantheon, but also any guru, living or dead. The principle remains the same: to submit body and soul to someone else, to annihilate one’s will for the benefit of the other’s. For Christians, this devotion is aimed at Jesus and/or God the Father. What sets the German mystics apart is their absolute faith in Jesus. Faith is not mere belief. Belief is less strong, subject to change. Faith is unshakeable, absolute. One can very well be a believer but not have faith. Meditation, on the other hand, is based either on a deep listening to nature, for example in Hesychasm, or on an intense concentration on the face or name of Jesus. Meditation according to the oriental schools can be done on any deity, the breath, an object, or nothingness. The form changes, the essence remains the same: being devoid of thoughts.

Conclusion As we have seen in this section, spiritual schools share certain beliefs and techniques. Both mantras and meditation in various forms are transmitted by masters to their disciples. They are also required to change their personality and bring forth compassion, humility, as well as other virtues required by their religion or guru. In all cases the goal is always the same, a union with the divine, the rediscovery of our true nature, by dissolving the ego, that which in us creates division between ourselves and the rest of creation.

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All spiritual paths lead to the lone summit of realization. But this requires a profound reworking of the self, a radical change both internally and externally. It is necessary to eliminate vices and cultivate virtues. “A man has as many masters as he has vices,” writes St. Augustine in the first volume of his City of God. So the path to freedom requires sacrifices. The ego must die to make way for emptiness. The ‘I like/love’ and ‘I don’t like/love’ must disappear and be replaced by a passive presence that sees, hears, tastes, but does not judge. Enlightenment is the liberation from attachments to the material world in order to realize one’s true nature: pure Consciousness, immortal, radiating endless love. It is for this purpose that spirituality has developed the techniques mentioned above, intended to put an end to compulsive thinking.

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II – FAQ This section aims at tackling the more commonlyasked questions (minor ones at first, and ‘big ones’ farther down) in the field of spirituality, and synthesizing the answers from different teachers ranging the whole spiritual gamut. There is no bias intended, every school is treated impartially. The point is to show that in many instances, gurus from diverging background will answer yes and no respectively to the same question. How might that help the reader in desperate need for truth? Well, as we are going to see, the truth is that the answers to those questions are of no relevance to you living in the present! Why are the majority of teachers Indian or Tibetan? Death, misery and suffering are as many experiences that Western societies expend a lot of efforts avoiding, denying. We generally go to a great length in order not to face them. Death, on the other hand, is part of daily life in India and Tibet; it is a natural phenomenon that is largely accepted, at least more so than in the West. In India cremations are a daily occurrence and those ceremonies take place in open spaces where everyone can witness them. Poverty and suffering are inevitable in such a populated country, so, in a sense, people just get used to them. In Tibet, sky burials are a widespread practice due to the lack of land for cemeteries, or wood for cremations. The flesh of the recently deceased is cut out in chunks by a specialist, a rogyapa, before both remains and flesh are placed in dedicated places to be devoured by vultures. The body is seen purely as an organic vehicle for the soul, something of no great importance, like a car for someone who owns thousands.

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Being constantly confronted with these realities facilitates the acceptance of death, which is the greatest obstacle to overcome in the struggle against the ego. A revealing testimony on this subject is that of Vimalananda, in Robert Svoboda’s Aghora trilogy, in particular the first volume, At the Left Hand of God. In the same way that in magic the left hand path represents the branch of black magic, some Aghori (a peculiar group of ascetics) are adepts of this left hand path, which consists in embracing all that is negative, dark, fearful, repugnant to the ego, and first of all death. These followers of Shiva frequently live in smashan, sites dedicated to the cremation of the dead. They sprinkle themselves with the ashes resulting from the cremation process and often use human bones and skulls as tools in order to transcend their fear of death. The more the ego is accustomed to these harsh living conditions, the less opportunity it has to strengthen itself or hide in complacency. “Death is inevitable, so I might as well get used to it,” thinks the Aghori. This fear of death is the ultimate obstacle for the ego, and it will have to be confronted one way or another. Aghori do this by attending cremations; Hindus and Buddhists firmly believe in the immortality of the soul and reincarnation. In doing so, they attack the root of the problem, that is to say the ego. In a West on the other hand, influenced by the belief in a single mortal life, with no possibility of return, the ego has a stronger motivation to cling to its existence. ‘Why let go if this is my only shot at life?’ But once mortality is accepted, the ego has no more reason to exist. It is purely a survival mechanism. Once the fear of death transcended, this mechanism becomes obsolete. (Osho said that all fear in one way or another stems from the fear of death. If the latter is cut at the root, the former disappear along with it).

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Disciple: How is it that so few Souls do find it [A/N: the divine within], when yet all would be glad enough to have it? Master: They all seek it in somewhat, and so they find it not. For where there is Somewhat for the Soul to adhere to, there the Soul findeth that somewhat only, and taketh up its rest therein, until she seeth that it is to be found in Nothing, and goeth out of the Somewhat into Nothing, even into that Nothing out of which all Things may be made. […] Herein now it is that so very few find this most precious treasure in the Soul, though everyone would so fain have it; and might also have it, were it not for this Somewhat in every one that letteth44. Spirituality seeks to make one’s ego, and therefore one’s desires, hopes, wishes and so on, disappear. “Father ... not my will, but yours be done,” reads Luke 22:42. The corollary of accepting death is the absence of a will of one’s own. An awakened person is fine wherever they are, no matter what the circumstances. Absolute faith in their beliefs seems to be conducive to Indians and Tibetans spiritual seekers in their quest for the dissolution of the ego: They are more willing to give up everything. Why are most masters men? Osho claimed that women made up threequarters of his followers, that women always outnumbered men in spiritual sessions, but that nevertheless most of the masters were men. Why is this? According to Osho, this is due to the fact that the taming of the ego is a long-term endeavor, a constant struggle, which also explains, among other things,

44

Bernard Holland, op. cit.

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why many Indian gurus were members of the kshatriya, the warrior caste. There is, however, a multitude of cases of enlightened women since the time of Buddha, in India and elsewhere, such as Meera, Sahajo and Daya, or Anandamayi Ma, to name but a few, or the American Suzanne Segal, mentioned in the first part of this book, as well as Bernadette Roberts. Gender has no bearing when it comes to the readiness to face one’s mortality. Why does awakening occur more often in temples or isolated places? Most teachers have ‘achieved’ realization in temples, caves, or other isolated places. Is it because the divine is more present in the mountains than in the cities? No, it is because it is easier to accept nature than it is human nature. Nature may be cruel but it is also amoral. When an earthquake kills 250,000 people, it is a tragedy, but there is no one to blame: that’s just the way it is! Animals kill one another in order to survive, that’s the way it is. Human nature on the other hand can be either moral or immoral, and that’s a problem for the ego: it’s almost impossible getting used to it! The ego seeks to have always more (and ideally, to become immortal). But in order for some to have more, others must have less. It is therefore an incessant struggle in which the ego is engaged in order to predominate, to win as many conflicts as possible. Awakening, on the other hand, is accepting reality as it is, being at peace with oneself and with the world, whatever its state. Being part of society means interacting with individuals with different views, with opposing interests. We come into conflict every day over the slightest trifle: when stuck in traffic, because of our employer or colleagues, because of our spouse, etc. The ego loves

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conflicts, it thrives on every asperity of life or annoyance, every opportunity to grumble, complain, rage. This gives it purpose: to act in order to change things in its favor. “I must change this, do that, buy stuff… and then I’ll be ok,” reasons the ego. The opposite path is that of spirituality: “If I accept this, then I don’t have to do anything and I can be at peace.” But if we cannot accept reality in its entirety, we must start by limiting our reality to what we can accept. Do you find the news frustrating every day for one reason or another? Stop watching or listening to it. Ones lives very well without it! Are you fed up with the disadvantages of the city life? Go to the countryside, if you can. But don’t do it thinking that it will make you progress spiritually. If you decide to move, do it for yourself, to improve your quality of life, not because you think it will bring you closer to enlightenment. The ego is always there, wherever you are. In the country it will cling to other details, engage in other conflicts than those common in a big city. Same if you go from a big company to a small one. The bigger the conflicts, the harder the blow for your ego if you accept to lose. Monks living in temples or communities of likeminded people are much less subject to ego-feeding situations. The ego is powerless in the face of nature alone. One can only accept nature; it is as it is. One can whine about the weather being too hot, too cold, or too rainy, but it is easy to get used to it. The ego has less material to survive on in a remote place than in a populated place. But it’s always there, that’s the trap. It will cling to hitherto insignificant details for the good reason that major conflicts have been reduced or even eliminated when you changed your life or your attitude to it. You must then recognize it as such and not allow yourself to be led by the negative thoughts and emotions that will then arise.

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Perched high in the mountains or meditating alone in a temple, you are alone in front of nature and your thoughts. Your mind easily finds its natural rest. The nature of the ego, on the other hand, is a permanent obstacle to a true peace of mind. Isolation is conducive to inner calm. This is why yogis die alone. Disciple: Enough, my dearest Master, I can no longer endure that any Thing should divert me from it [A/N: the love of God]. But how shall I find the nearest way to it? Master: Where the way is hardest, there go thou; and what the World casteth away, that take thou up. What the World doth, that do thou not; but in all things walk thou contrary to the World. So thou comest the nearest way to that which thou art seeking. [...] For the Way to the Love of God is Folly to the World, but is Wisdom to the Children of God. 45 Isolation is therefore a double-edged sword: as there are fewer conflicts, it is easier to be at peace with oneself, but the more difficult it is to inflect the ego because it is less visible, less pressing. It is a balance that everyone has to find. What we learn in spirituality, can it be useful in everyday life? Here are the recommendations found on a website for those who want to learn freediving46: “The “apnea mode” implies: - A deep muscular relaxation […]; - A mind free of all personal worries, of all parasitic thoughts, of all constraints, of all negative

45

Ibid. https://www.apdi-villefranche.com/activer-le-modeapnee/amp/. Emphasis added. 46

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ideas and especially those related to the difficulties to come; - An acute awareness of the present moment within oneself; - An acute awareness of the present moment around you (before immersion). [...] Learning not to think about anything is the most difficult, unnatural and laborious thing there is. [...] The work of muscular and mental relaxation should ideally be used every day, not just when freediving. Firstly, because only practice will allow you to quickly enter an “apnea mode,” and secondly, because the more you are used to entering these states of consciousness, the better you will feel in general, when practicing other activities altogether. Anchoring oneself in the present by putting aside the rational and Cartesian mind, always full of thoughts and prejudices, quickly allows: - To become more intuitive; - To be less stressed; - To perceive situations in their global scope (and not a partial, biased point of view, according to what the Cartesian mind infers with relation to our codes of values and conduct and not according to reality itself); - To better respond or act in a given situation, gradually removing limiting factors.” To get rid of one’s “parasitic thoughts” and live in the present is the quintessential endgame of spiritual teachings. They, too, explain that it should be a practice of every instant, not only of a given moment during the day as when one wishes to meditate or do yoga. Meditation should not be an isolated exercise to which one hour is devoted every now and then, but a way of life in its own right. The recommendations cited are not specific to freediving. To a certain extent, all high level sports and a multitude of other physical and mental

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activities require a similar discipline47. Probably the best known example is martial arts (as practiced by the Shaolin monks, for instance). The purpose of repeating the same gesture thousands of times is that it becomes a reflex, that a decision-making process by the brain no longer is necessary. The ego must be silenced in order to ‘let the universe do its work.’ Martial arts are not a physical discipline but a mental discipline first and foremost: the finality is the control of the mind (the ego), the control of the body is merely the means to it (and not the other way around). Good martial artists learn to empty their mind of emotions and thoughts that disturb their judgment. (By the way, this is precisely why many of them make poor actors, having learned so well to control their emotions). It’s the same principle for yoga: mastery of the mind requires mastery of the body, not vice versa. The point of spiritual discipline is that it impacts daily life positively, whether one ‘achieves’ enlightenment or not. “To become the spectator of one’s own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life48,” wrote Oscar Wilde in 1890, possibly influenced by Greek stoicism, which he studied at university, but already foreshadowing the surge of Eastern spirituality in Europe a few years later.

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See for instance Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery, Vintage, 1999. “Out of the fullness of this presence of mind, disturbed by no ulterior motive, the artist who is released from all attachment must practise his art. […] If everything depends on the archer’s becoming purposeless and effacing himself in the event, then its outward realization must occur automatically, in no further need of the controlling or reflecting intelligence.” 48 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oxford World’s Classics, 2006.

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Isn’t the death of the ego the death of the individual? Awakening is the death of the ego, not the death of the whole personality. Ramesh Balsekar wrote that his guru, Nisargadatta Maharaj was temperamental, prone to anger. These traits are shared by U.G. Krishnamurti, an adept of provocative statements. Sri Ramana Maharshi and Stephen Jourdain were chain smokers. Many masters had their reputation tarnished for one reason or another. Enlightenment is not perfection. When one of his readers told him: “I’m afraid I’ll become a drone if awakening occurs,” Eckhart Tolle jokingly replied: “No, now you are a drone, wake up!” Stephen Jourdain said: “The Supreme Good is the human being. It’s the same thing. It is not separate from the quality of humanity. In fact, I think that a man who awakens becomes a man for the first time in his life. The quality of humanity and pure Consciousness are one and the same thing.49” A being is a manifestation of Consciousness. The ego identifies itself with this manifestation and believes that it is merely its thoughts, its emotions, its preferences. Spiritual discipline consists in ceasing to identify with these phenomena: anger arises within oneself because it is programmed to rise, it is never a choice to become angry. “Emotion” comes from the Latin “e-movere,” i.e. “to be moved.” You don’t choose to get angry any more than you choose to fall in love. With practice, anger, envy, joy, are all perceived, but without identifying with them they have nowhere to go and quickly fade away. “What happens to this body doesn’t happen to me,” one might keep repeating in one’s head. You just have to witness your emotions, without getting carried away

49

Interview with Stephen Jourdain, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSlghvouAD8.

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by them. “None of this makes any sense. How can everything just go on as before, still talking and walking, sleeping and dreaming, crying and laughing, but no ‘me’ doing any of it? 50” wonders Suzanne Segal. The ‘I’ doesn’t do anything because it’s watching the scene unfold and is not doing anything itself, only re-acting. The play is staged by the Universal Consciousness, and the individual consciousness, the atman, the soul, the ‘I,’ is a mere spectator. “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” as Shakespeare famously wrote in As You Like It. What would happen if actors and actresses really believed in what happens to them in movies? Well, that is precisely what we all do, and spirituality is here to wake us up. Disciple: But how shall I comprehend it? Master: If thou goest about to comprehend it, then it will fly away from thee; but if thou dost surrender thyself wholly up to it, then it will abide with thee, and become the Life of thy Life, and be natural to thee. Disciple: And how can this be without dying, or the whole destruction of my Will? Master: Upon this entire surrender and yielding up of thy Will, the Love of God in thee becometh the Life of thy Nature ; it killeth thee not, but quickeneth thee […]. 51 The phrase “If thou goest about to comprehend it, then it will fly away from thee” is very important. It is one of the stumbling blocks for practitioners in spiritual matters. For years, masters have been repeating to their students: “You have to think of God / Brahman / Buddha and only God / Brahman / Buddha, there should be no more space in the mind 50 51

Suzanne Segal, op. cit. Bernard Holland, op. cit.

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to think of anything else.” But to think of God/Brahman/Buddha remains a thought. With time, concentration helps in muting compulsive thoughts, but the last step is to let go of concentration itself. One must no longer think about anything, not even God/Brahman/Buddha, in order to finally be in the present. There is no time to think when you pay attention to what your senses perceive. This is precisely why our brains shut off a great deal of sensory information: there’s just too much of it. But if you let yourself be overwhelmed by them, then thinking becomes superfluous. Is enlightenment instantaneous or is it a long process? There exist two opposing opinions on this subject. According to the majority of the teachings, awakening is a total transformation of the being spread out over several years, or even several lives according to the Buddhists and Hindus. Buddha himself is said to have spent 500 lives between the moment he felt his first spark of compassion and his enlightenment. Most masters tell their followers to ‘bridge the gap’ between their present state and the awakened state: an awakened person shows compassion to all beings, so from now on, show compassion to all beings. An enlightened person does not fear death, so try such and such practices in order to rid yourself of your fear of death. Etc., etc. In short, one must already live as an enlightened being in order to reach enlightenment, as Phil will learn by himself, as we will see in the last part. A minority of gurus teach that awakening can come suddenly through an absolute realization that only consciousness exists. These are mostly representatives of the school of non-duality, Advaita Vedanta (Ramesh Balsekar in particular), as well as

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those who firmly believe in the absence of all free will (U.G. Krishnamurti, Satyam Nadeen, etc.). Does enlightenment give the answer to all questions? Life became one long unbroken koan, forever unsolvable, forever mysterious, completely out of reach of the mind’s capacity to comprehend.52 Let’s consider those to whom awakening happened without their having ever sought it, such as Eckhart Tolle or John Wren Lewis. The former had to read books to understand what he was going through, the latter also had to inquire about his condition and seek help, to no avail since he never met with an individual who had a concrete and first-hand experience of what enlightenment really is. Suzanne Segal spent ten years living in fear, believing she was suffering from either psychosis, schizophrenia, insanity, or a depersonalization disorder. It took a study of Buddhist doctrines and a meeting with Jean Klein, an adept of Advaita Vedanta, to accept and eventually begin to feel comfortable with her new state of being. Even Gopi Krishna, after his kundalini awakening, had to seek explanations from the great gurus of the time in order to understand what was happening to his body, without success either. Kundalini was supposed to be fairly well understood, but theories did not help Gopi Krishna, practice did. Enlightenment is not like having a direct line to the Universal Consciousness that would give the answer to all questions. If a person had learned all their life that 2+2=5, once awakened, that person would continue to believe it unless proven otherwise. 52

Suzanne Segal, op. cit.

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Knowledge and wisdom do not instantly ‘descend’ into the individual whose ego has dissolved. Consciousness changes, the perception one has of reality, but not the brain itself or what is in it. Neither do reflexes, for that matter. There will always be people who, hearing that an awakened person is no longer afraid of death, will make a joke of it by trying to leap in front of them by surprise. Of course, the victim will jump. “Ha! See, you still know fear after all!” they will be told. The death of the ego is not the death of reflexes. Reflexes exist to maintain life in this state by short-circuiting the brain, which is too slow for emergency decision-making. They are a purely nervous response, whether one is afraid of death or not doesn’t change anything. So, no, awakening is not some kind of intellectual panacea, but it is one for developing a steady peace of mind. Imagine that life is a tunnel. Awakening is not the light at the end of it, it is the fact that being surrounded by the darkness of this tunnel no longer bothers you. Only the ego is looking for answers, the true self has no need for them. It is the truth.

If I apply the techniques as I have been instructed, conscientiously, will I ‘achieve’ enlightenment? There is never any guarantee. It is the commitment that counts, the will to annihilate one’s ego, not the technique(s). But the more general question that needs to be asked is: “Can spirituality help me at all?” And on that particular point, the answer is a resounding yes. Even if you take enlightenment out of the equation, living in the present and fighting off your ego allow you to approach life’s problems in a more serene way, with less stress, without fear. The art of letting go can be learned, it’s not that some people are just born with

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it. Once you master that skill, whether or not you experience some travails in your life will be less significant, even not at all. Because none of this is real! Applying techniques to get rid of our fears makes life easier, even if enlightenment itself remains out of reach. What is needed to reach that state is to be ready for a complete overhaul of the self, because it takes no less to truly let go. But, and this is very important, there is no need to give up everything in order to devote one’s life to enlightenment, or to take refuge in an ashram. You have to learn to feel at ease where you are, just like Phil, as we will see in the third part. (This does not mean that you shouldn’t move or change job if you don’t like where you live or work, only that you shouldn’t do it because you believe it will make you progress spiritually.) Spiritual practices bear fruits of different flavors; we must not focus on awakening only. Spirituality helps to improve relationships, the relationship one has with others and the world at large. That’s always a good start. How long am I in for? The rest of your life! It is not possible to give a time span. For some enlightenment is a brief experience, a sudden realization (Ramana Maharshi, Satyam Nadeen...), for others it is even instantaneous, by the divine will, when they were not looking for it (Eckhart Tolle, Suzanne Segal, John Wren-Lewis…); finally, some spend their life without ‘achieving’ it. It took the Buddha six years, between the ages of 29 and 35, before he could ‘reach’ Nirvana. The realization took two years to Osho, three to Nisargadatta Maharaj. Often it is after years of practice, or at least a commitment to spiritual discipline, that disidentification with the ego has occurred (Nisargadatta

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Maharaj, both Krishnamurti...). But the figure of 12 years is common in Indian scriptures and legends. - “He shall remain a student for twelve years in order (to study) one (recension of the Veda), Or, if (he studies) all (the Vedas) twelve years for each, Or during (as long a period as he requires for) learning (them).53” - In Hinduism, it takes twelve years of study to train a member of the Brahman caste, priests, or other guardians of spiritual values. - In many Indian monastic orders, candidates are required to complete twelve years of training before becoming sannyasins. - Twelve is also given in many Indian legends as the number of years needed to reach enlightenment54. - Mahavira, the 24th tirtankhara (teacher of the Dharma) of Jainism is supposed to have ‘achieved’ omniscience after twelve years of austerity. - Suzanne Segal lived 12 years in anxiety after her awakening because she still hadn’t accepted what had happened to her. At the end of those 12 years she finally experienced the boundless joy commonly associated with enlightenment.

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The Gautama Sutras, translated by Georg Bühler, chapter II, verse 45-47. 54 See, e.g., Keith Dowman, Masters Of Mahamudra – Songs and Histories of the Eighty-Four Buddhist Siddhas, State University of New York Press, 1985; also Robert Svoboda’s Aghora trilogy, etc.

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- Another American allegedly experienced awakening after 12 years of intense Zen practice55. Why 12 years? In Judaism, 13 years (12 years for girls) is the age at which young boys become men (and young girls, women). Before that, they are considered not responsible for their actions. “Satan has had full freedom, directing the formidable years of a child until 12 or 13 years old, which is when everyone is developing their behavior patterns that will affect the rest of their life. The Zohar says we have to change all that, to become a righteous person free of turmoil, free of chaos.56” The Zohar reads: “And this is why the soul will not start fulfilling the mission it was commanded to perform until it has completed thirteen years in this world. Because from the twelfth year onward, the soul is aroused to fulfill its task. [...] And then AFTER TWELVE YEARS, the soul can be seen in this world […]. Then the soul departs from the filth of the serpent [A/N: evil] and enters to the holy work. […] After the body has lived these [A/N: thirteen] years, the soul is aroused to fulfill its holy task. It then receives full control over the body and inspires the goodwill necessary to overcome the serpent. And then the serpent will not be able to control the body as it

55

This American remains anonymous to this day. He goes by the nickname ‘The Wanderling.’ His testimony, along with the reference to the twelve-year period of transformation before his awakening, can be found on the following web page: http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awakening101/ZenE nlighten02.html. 56 Rav Berg, https://kabbalah.com/en/master-kabbalists/ the-war-within.

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did before.57” The Kabbalah further teaches: “Thirteen is the age when – that’s why boys get bar mitzvahs at the age of thirteen by the way – that’s the age when the soul gets completely, like, solidified in your body.58” Tzvi Freedman explains: “Why do we become a bar mitzvah at adolescence? Because something dramatic happens to our minds at this time: A sort of awakening, a state of consciousness, a realization that “I exist.” The Jewish sages called it da'at--roughly translated as “knowledge” or “consciousness.” Knowledge usually means knowledge about things outside of oneself. But this da'at is the knowledge of the one who is knowing. The “I.”59” So, if it takes a dozen years for the soul to anchor itself to the body, to realize that the “I” exists, perhaps it takes that long for it to “cast itself off,” to stop believing itself to be the “I”? In Buddhism, these ‘moorings,’ our attachments to Creation, are called skhandas (aggregates). There are five of them: the body, sensations or feelings, perceptions, mental activity, and consciousness. It is the attachment to these aggregates that is the cause of suffering. Perhaps this is why it takes so long to ‘achieve’ enlightenment, because severing all these attachments – which is the same as dissolving one’s ego – is a long-term task. They built up for years, and as time passes we always want more of anything. So cutting off that many attachments is increasingly difficult as we get older. Few people want to give up everything voluntarily! 57

Moses de León, Shimon Bar Yohai, The Zohar, Treaty Lekh Lekha, 8:42-45, ed. Michael Berg. 58 Madonna, 1997 interview, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sIppRFljc8. 59 Tzvi Freedman, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_ cdo/aid/299648/jewish/Daat.htm.

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But the number of years required is not important. In reality what matters is not the duration but the commitment. This length of time of twelve years is first and foremost a way for the master to teach the disciple to be neither too impatient nor too despaired. Ananda was Buddha’s cousin. He followed him the second year after Buddha ‘attained’ enlightenment. For twenty years he was his disciple. After that, he became his private secretary and interface between him and his community of followers, the sangha. Ananda had a tremendously effective memory, and many of the texts recognized as Buddha’s teachings in his early years have been reported by him. But Ananda had set conditions before he assented to following his revered cousin. Among other things, he had asked to be able to appear before Buddha at any time to ask him any questions he might have. Thus, his commitment was conditional, which explains why he never ‘achieved’ realization during the master’s lifetime. It was only after Buddha’s death, more than forty years after having decided to follow him, that Ananda experienced enlightenment. The lesson here is that if one gives oneself entirely, unconditionally, then enlightenment may occur in a short span. Do I need to ‘achieve’ enlightenment in order to be unconditionally happy? It’s the other way around! One must first be unconditionally happy, at peace with oneself and with the world, then enlightenment occurs. It is a common mistake to believe that one has to experience realization in order to finally experience happiness. We will see this in more details in the last part. It is a blessing in disguise for the ego when one is miserable, it gives it something to busy itself with:

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there is a problem – unhappiness – and a solution must be provided. The generic solution the ego finds is to acquire more of something, no matter what it is. More food, more freedom, more pleasure or pain, more money or fame, more work or leisure, more drugs, more power, and so on. In some cases, it even seeks more spirituality, more knowledge of Buddhist teachings, tantric scriptures, etc. It is a vicious circle. The more the ego has, the more it wants and the stronger it becomes. The stronger it is, the harder it is to subdue. Spirituality takes the opposite path: always less. It would never dawn on the ego to tell itself that it is the source of the problem, of all problems. For the ego, the problem must necessarily come from someone or something else, it is never itself. One must therefore learn to be satisfied with one’s fate at every moment, then the ego has nowhere else to rush to, no better future to hope for. Matthew 22:39 states: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is a massive assumption made here, and it is that the individual does love himself or herself, which is rarely the case to begin with. Loving oneself does not mean displaying hubris, pride, or misplaced self-gratification. It simply means accepting oneself as one is. Accepting one’s work, one’s body, family situation, geographic location, salary, etc., is not the same as accepting oneself as a person. Once you accept yourself, it is much easier to accept others. Happiness starts with that. What does one become once enlightened? Life goes on. He who thought he was the actor of his life becomes the spectator. But interactions with others continue. You still have to eat, drive, sleep, see your friends, read, go to a doctor’s appointment, etc. While a minority of seekers has probably withdrawn from the world, most of the awakened

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ones have passed on their experience so that it can be of use to others. Some continued to work, to lead a family life, to learn. Life does not stop when the realization emerges that nothing of what is called ‘reality’ exists. On the contrary, enlightened people appreciate it even more for this very reason. What about the powers one is supposed to acquire with enlightenment? “Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu were walking together along a forest path one day when they came upon a fast-flowing river which barred their way. Immediately Lieh Tzu sat down on the bank of the river and meditated upon the eternal Tao. Ten minutes later he stood up and proceeded to walk on the water to the other side. Next, Chuang Tzu sat in the lotus posture for twenty minutes, whereupon he stood up and also walked across the river. Lao Tzu, watching this in amazement, shrugged his shoulders, sat down on the river bank like the others and meditated for over an hour. Finally, with complete trust in the Tao, he closed his eyes, took one step into the river and fell in. On the other shore, Chuang Tzu laughed, turned to Lieh Tzu and said, “Should we tell him where the rocks are?”60” This joke told by Osho is there to remind us that spirituality is not the path of confrontation. Some obstacles are made to be overcome, by building a bridge over a river for instance, but sometimes these obstacles are impassable, and forcing things by using so-called ‘powers’ will not lead to anything good. Buddha himself spoke of siddhis, powers that can be acquired by dedicated practitioners. He described

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Osho, Tao: The Golden Gate, Vol 1, Chapter 5, A World Inside You.

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what types of powers exist, and what qualities are necessary to obtain them (knowing the scriptures, having reached an inner peace, being able to achieve states of trances, being wise; respectively sila, samadhi, jhana, and prajna). Patanjali referred to these phenomena in his Yogas Sutras, as does the Akankheyya Sutta. These siddhis are mentioned by all branches of spirituality, but it is almost impossible to separate what is true (a minority of the stories) from the legends (the overwhelming majority of the stories). Those who have best codified the ‘powers’ (which are often untapped abilities of the human body rather than true ‘miracles’) are the Buddhists. Naropa was a Tibetan monk of the 11th century, a disciple of Tilopa, known to (even master of, according to some accounts) Naropa, himself master of Milarepa. Naropa left to the world his six yogas (or six dharmas) which are tantric practices intended to facilitate or hasten enlightenment: Tummo – the yoga of inner heart, the practice of which raises the body’s temperature; Gyulü – the yoga of the illusory body; Ösel – the yoga of the clear or radiant light; Milam – the yoga of the dream state; Bardo – the yoga of the intermediate state (between death and rebirth); Phowa – the yoga of the transference of consciousness. Tummo is perhaps one of the most widespread practices in the sense that it has been adopted by many non-Buddhists. It is not difficult to find groups practicing this technique. In a similar vein, the Dutchman Wim Hof acquired his reputation of being the ‘ice man’ after having achieved several feats and broken about twenty world records thanks to his ability to withstand cold temperatures. He attributes

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this result to a breathing technique of his own, which is close to what tummo practitioners achieve. Gyulü consists in visualizing the body as being without substance, merely one more expression of mâyâ, the illusory nature of the whole world. Ösel is a meditation used to keep the mind at rest, stopping it from getting carried away by thoughts and emotions. Milam seeks a state of mindfulness within dreams. The concept of Bardo has, like Tummo, become widely spread throughout the world, even among non-Buddhists, thanks in particular to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bardo Thödol. Bardo means ‘intermediate state.’ If there are usually six states in Tibetan Buddhism61, the Bardo referred to here is the state between death and rebirth. Phowa is the yoga of the transfer of consciousness, at the moment of physical death, to a more favorable divine realm or a better incarnation. Books on ‘magical powers’ are unfortunately flourishing these days. Unfortunately, because they tend to distract seekers from the simplicity of the spiritual path, making the ego thirst for supernatural powers that may or may not exist. It is not advisable to foray into this particular field of spirituality because it will only strengthen the ego. The quest for enlightenment is demanding enough in itself in terms of personal commitment not to have to add unreasonable objectives, such as learning about these dubious siddhis. And the more serious ones, such as the six yogas of Naropa, are not the kind of 61

The six Tibetan bardos are: the bardo of birth, the bardo of the dream state, the bardo of meditation, the bardo of the moment of death, the bardo of the luminosity of the true nature, and the bardo of transmigration.

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yoga that can be learned from a book. It requires years of assiduous practice at the feet of masters who are experts in the field. In any case, these yogas are not necessary – and certainly not sufficient – to ‘experience’ enlightenment. One last anecdote on this theme of supernatural powers, told by Osho: “Once such a so-called spiritual man came to see Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna was sitting on the bank of the Ganges in Dakshineshwar, where he used to live. The spiritual man said to Ramakrishna, “I have heard that you are a great saint. If you really are, then come with me and walk on the water. If you can walk on the water then I can believe that you are spiritual.” Ramakrishna laughed. He said, “Can you walk...?” The man said, “Yes, I can walk.” Ramakrishna asked him, “How long did it take you to learn to walk on the water?” The man said, “It took me eighteen years of tremendous effort, austerities, TAPASCHARYA, fasting, prayer. I lived in a cave in the Himalayas. I sacrificed everything. Then this spiritual power has been given to me.” Ramakrishna said, “I am not spiritual, I am a simple man, very ordinary. But one thing I would like to tell you. When I want to go to the other shore, the ferryman takes me for just one paisa. Your whole eighteen years' effort is not worth much more than that. You wasted your eighteen years. You may be spiritual, but you are a fool, you are utterly stupid! I have never come across such an unintelligent person -- wasting eighteen years just to walk on water! Then what is the point? Okay, you can walk on water, so what?”62” 62

Osho, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 11. This anecdote exists in several forms. Edward Conze reports

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What do the experiences of the various enlightened masters have in common? Hardly anything, except maybe everyone agrees that this experience of enlightenment is indescribable! Still, they all tried to describe it, in their own words. Apart from that, most of the enlightened seem to agree on the fact that enlightenment is a process spread out over several days, sometimes in several phases. Both Krishnamurti, Osho, and Eckhart Tolle speak of about a week during which “transformations” occurred, sometimes repeated over time. “The mystical state seems to have a growth pattern of its own,” writes John Wren-Lewis63. In the case of Gopi Krishna, physiological alterations began in the weeks or months following his kundalini awakening. Ramana Maharshi had two ‘death experiences,’ one at the age of 16, the other later on, at age 32. This experience is not always pleasant. U.G. Krishnamurti always referred to his awakening as a ‘calamity’: “I call it "calamity" because from the point of view of one who thinks this is something fantastic, it depicting Buddha himself and a yogi who can walk on water in Buddhism: Its Essence and Development. William Somerset Maugham also mentions it in one of his novels (to which we will get back in the third part of this book): “I remember one of them telling me of a Yogi who came to the bank of a river; he hadn't the money to pay the ferryman to take him across and the ferryman refused to take him for nothing, so he stepped on the water and walked upon its surface to the other side. The Yogi who told me shrugged his shoulders rather scornfully. ‘A miracle like that,’ he said ‘is worth no more than the penny it would have cost to go on the ferryboat.’” The Razor's Edge, Heinemann, 1944. 63 John Wren-Lewis, The Dazzling Dark, https://www.nonduality.com/dazdark.htm.

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blissful and full of beatitude, love, or ecstasy, this is physical torture; this is a calamity from that point of view. Not a calamity to me but a calamity to those who have an image that something marvelous is going to happen.64” And further down: “The energy that is operating there does not feel the limitations of the body; it is not interested; it has its own momentum. It is a very painful thing. It is not that ecstatic, blissful beatitude and all that rubbish – stuff and nonsense! – it is really a painful thing.65” Enlightened people are in some way detached from the world. Of course, they can take a critical look at the state of the world or at the travails humanity experiences, but they will never say to vote for this or that political party, for example. They know that none of this matters, since all of creation is an illusion, a dream. Awakening remains a transformation of oneself, never of the others. Spirituality requires changing individually, changing others belongs in the realm of politics. These two types of changes are mutually exclusive. Those who wait for the world to change so that they can finally experience happiness will be disappointed. One should no longer worry about it, leave it as it is because it has no real substance and heads wherever it should. The world is not our concern. Our concern is to live each moment conscientiously, putting all our attention to the present only, not the past or the future. Enlightened people’s perception of time is different. Linear time as we know it is no longer meaningful to them. There is only the present, a new creation of the world moment after moment.

64

Rodney Arms, The Mystique of Enlightenment, The unrational ideas of a man called U.G., Part One, Dinesh Vaghela, 1982. 65 Ibid.

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But in the end, as Satyam Nadeen jokingly says, even enlightened, your car will still break down when you find yourself in the middle lane. What books should one read? A file containing most (but not all) of Osho’s books available in English in a single volume comes to a staggering 40,000 pages! There are at least fifty books by Jiddu Krishnamurti available in English. The literature gathering the teachings of Buddha alone, without any commentaries, also tallies an impressive number of volumes, as do the sacred writings of Hinduism alone (four vedas, 108 upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Bhagavata Purana, etc., etc.). In other words, it is impossible to read everything, and easy to get lost in the lot. Why such an abundance of writings in spirituality? That must mean awakening is complicated business, right? Quite the contrary, awakening is desperately simple, as we will see in the third part. Which is why there is much said and written about it. Every master is forced to use a plethora of metaphors and analogies in order to make the disciple understand that material life is an illusion, precisely because this truth is simple. Witnessing, being there, is simpler than breathing. How do you go and explain how one breathes? You just do. What is complicated is the ego. The ego is protean, always changing, cunning, restless, implacable. Thus, each teaching corresponds only to means of fighting against a certain type of ego at a given time. There are doctrines for when one is angry, impatient, discourteous, hateful, downhearted, proud, etc., etc., etc… There are doctrines for intellectuals, philosophers, for the meek or the rich, for rational or superstitious people, and so on and so forth. There are doctrines that served in the past, others that

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serve now, others that will only serve in the future. An author’s book may not be useful this year to a particular seeker, but it might be useful the following year. The ego is in the image of life itself, constantly changing. Spirituality just adapts to it, whatever the situation. Hence the literature available on that subject. Knowing that there really is something for everyone, the reader will first have to choose according to their affinities. Older texts of any spiritual school should be read in annotated versions that greatly facilitate understanding for the modern reader, especially when a multitude of concepts alien to that reader’s culture are expounded. Synthesis works provide an overview of a theme before delving deeper into specific doctrines. For instance, the Lam Rim of the Tibetan Buddhists, based on Atisha’s A Lamp for the Path of Enlightenment (Bodhipathapradipa). This book summarizes Buddha’s doctrine of the path to enlightenment into three different fields of study that depend on the motivation and commitment of the disciple. Osho’s commented version of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra provides a deep understanding of the workings of the ego and methods for detaching oneself from them. Cryptic or poetic spiritual teachings such as the Tao Te Ching can be re-read every year, the understanding that can be gained from them evolving in parallel with the spiritual progression of the reader. It is better to read a book on spirituality from time to time, to remind oneself of the road ahead, rather than devouring them one after the other. Breaks between books allow the mind to better assimilate the information recorded. In any case, one should always keep in mind that all teachers say the same thing but in their own words. Once this is remembered, it is easier to

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unravel the problems caused by the ego’s refusal to accept a given situation. Which temple to join? Detachment is good and its mother is exile. Someone withdrawing from the world for the sake of the Lord is no longer attached to possessions, that he should not appear to be deceived by the passions.66 Christianity and Buddhism ask their most faithful followers to withdraw from the world. This is because it then becomes easier to lose oneself into the divine. It is indeed easier not to be tempted at all than to resist temptation, temptations which abound in our modern societies. But this does not mean that Consciousness is more present in temples than in a downtown apartment. Which temple to join? Is there a temple, a church, an ashram, known to induce awakening more so than other places? No, of course not. The problem with joining one, trying to meet a guru, is that the ego goes there hoping that something will happen. The expectation negates the supposed benefit of a stay in a temple. Where you are, there is the temple. If you are in an ashram, you will ‘attain’ realization if you live in the moment in that ashram. The same if you are at home or camping. So, what is the point of trying to go somewhere else? Is it necessary to use mantras? This Word [A/N: Aum] is indeed Brahman. This Word is indeed the Supreme. He who 66

John Climacus, op. cit., Step 3.

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knows this Word obtains whatever he desires.67 As we have seen in the first part, mantras, those words or phrases that are repeated over and over again by the disciple, are common to all spiritual disciplines. - Sufis call this practice dhikr and use the name of Allah; - Hesychasts use the name of Jesus, God the father, or Kyrie eleison (“Lord, have mercy”) indifferently; - Buddhists use either the syllable AUM/OM or the full sentence “Om mani padme hum” (‘Om’ being the sacred syllable, ‘mani’ means ‘jewel, pearl’, ‘padme’ is the lotus flower, and ‘hum’ is the spirit of enlightenment); - Hindus practice ‘japa’ – the repetition of words or sentences – and use a multitude of different mantras: ‘tat tvam asi’ – “you are also that” –, ‘neti, neti’ – “neither this nor that” –, the names of the various deities they worship, etc. It is considered that the most sacred of the mantras found in the Vedas, the Hindu scriptures, is the Gayatri Mantra taken from the Rig Veda: “We meditate on the glory of that Being who has produced this universe; may He enlighten our minds” (as translated by Swami Vivekananda); - Sikhism has a related practice called simran. This word, strictly speaking, means ‘remembrance.’ The simran is more broadly a meditation that can be 67

Katha Upanishad, II-16, translation by Swami Paramananda, https://www.hinduwebsite.com/sacredscripts/hinduism/parama/katha.asp.

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articulated in various ways. One of them is the internalized repetition of the name of god or of a word reminding one of the absolute in order to purify oneself and to gradually rid oneself of one’s ego until liberation is ‘achieved.’ A mantra is simply a tool used to not let one’s thoughts have free rein. The word itself does not matter, it is the repetition that counts, the fact of focusing on something concrete other than what is going through one’s head. In theory, it is true, to each word corresponds a vibration, a particular frequency. Different words will produce different frequencies, some possibly positive, some possibly negative. Thus, in the trilogy dedicated to his teacher by Robert Svoboda, Vimalananda recounts how each sound in Sanskrit produces a bija mantra (‘bija’ means ‘seed’) whose repetition creates effects of its own. “Each of my ‘children’ repeats a certain mantra. Maybe they picked it up from a book, or maybe some guru gave it to them, or whatever; that doesn't matter. What matters is that they are reciting those mantras with sincerity,68” he says. According to some, it is the guru who should attribute the mantra to the disciple according to his abilities. There are also said to be mantras that are adapted to this or that disease (including snake bites!), this or that state of mind, not just mantras destined to the spiritual quest. Some mantras need to be spoken aloud, others need to be internalized. An Indian teacher, Eknath Easwaran, has written a book in English, The Mantram Handbook, about mantras to be used in daily life. In practice, for the vast majority of people using a mantra, the difference between one word and another is insignificant, it is only the repetition of that word that matters. Unless you intend to become an 68

Robert Svoboda, Aghora II – Kundalini, Brotherhood of Life, 1993.

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expert in this field, like Vimalananda, simple words will do. But the mantra is not all. For instance, imagine while you’re driving someone fishtails you. The natural reaction of the ego will be anger: “Watch it, jerk!” you might think or even say out loud. A mantra like “aum” (or anything else really) would help you not identifying with that anger as soon as it rises in your head. The word cuts off the link between the thought and you acting upon it. But the real clicker is a true transformation of oneself. Once you tame or even get rid of the ego, then the negative emotion does not even arise in you, rendering the use of a mantra pointless. In this case the thought “Watch it, jerk!” would simply not occur to you, you would simply accept the situation as it is. But as long as you need a mantra, you might want to keep using it. Does one need a guru? In practice, many masters never had a guru themselves. Buddha himself, in his quest for liberation from suffering, moksha, went from teaching to teaching, going each time beyond what his masters told him to practice. Here, the disciple always surpassed the master. Then he made his own path and ‘attained’ realization on his own, meditating under the bodhi tree. On the other hand, for those willing to walk the path of bhakti, devotion, it is recommended to be someone’s disciple. The object is then to submit oneself entirely, unconditionally, to one’s guru or deity. This devotion is not a deliberate choice to live in ‘bondage’ but an act of deep love. The individual unreservedly submits themselves to a higher will, so their ego no longer has a hold. Having a guru is also recommended for those tempted by the yoga of kundalini (see Part I) and other types of physical yogas such as hatha yoga.

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Ramana Maharshi was asked: “You say that association with the wise (Sat-sanga) and service of them is required of the disciple.” He replied: “Yes, the first really means association with the unmanifest Sat or absolute existence, but as very few can do that, they have to take second best which is association with the manifest Sat, that is, the Guru. Association with sages should be made because thoughts are so persistent. The sage has already overcome the mind and remains in peace. Being in his proximity helps to bring about this condition in others, otherwise there is no meaning in seeking his company. The guru provides the needed strength for this, unseen by others. [...] The Sastras (scriptures) say that one must serve a Guru for twelve years in order to attain Selfrealization. What does the Guru do? Does he hand it over to the disciple? Is not the Self always realized? What does the common belief mean then? Man is always the Self and yet he does not know it. Instead he confounds it with the non-Self, the body, etc. Such confusion is due to ignorance. If ignorance is wiped out the confusion will cease to exist and the true knowledge will be unfolded. By remaining in contact with realized sages the man gradually loses the ignorance until its removal is complete. The eternal Self is thus revealed.69” There is a reason why Buddhist monks teach their disciples: “If you see Buddha during your meditation, kill him!” As long as you walk in someone else’s shadow, God included, you will not see the light. So, if you have to follow someone, do it, but after a while you will have to carve your own path. The best guru is life itself. No guru will ever break your ego as effectively as life does. The surest and 69

Ramana Maharshi, Silent Teachings & Sat-sanga, https://spiritual-minds.com/silenteaching.htm.

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quickest ways to erode the ego are failure and loss. Failure teaches humility, and awakening is only the greatest lesson in humility: the realization that the ego is not in charge. What does it take to ‘reach’ enlightenment? Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.70 In reality, this state is already there, underlying everything we do, but the ego prevents one from realizing it. That is why one does not ‘achieve’ or ‘reach’ enlightenment, it happens, but not because of the disciple’s efforts. The individual can help with the use of certain techniques, some discipline, an intense work on themselves, but they cannot provoke it. As for the teachings on that matter, there are as many as there are gurus. All the following options are the same. For enlightenment, it is necessary to live: - in full consciousness (being aware of one’s body and sensory perceptions at all times); - by letting go (no need to worry or get attached, because death will win in the end); - in the present moment (never thinking about the past, the future or what you are doing, just being aware of your actions); - without compulsive thoughts or ego (without mental manifestations in the face of life’s circumstances); - at peace with oneself and with the world (ensure the ego has no frustrations vis-à-vis one’s personal life (‘I am poor, alone, miserable,’ etc...) or the state of the world in general (‘There is too much violence, greed, 70

Matthew 10:39, NIV.

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poverty,’ etc...), so that it has nothing to complain about. (Krishnamurti used to say: ‘I don’t mind what happens.”); - without any particular desire, without making specific choices (to let oneself be carried by life without trying to go somewhere with intent or to reach any goal one sets); - as if one were a spectator, not an actor (to think that everything that happens is Consciousness’ doing and that only its will is at work, all is therefore ‘for the best in the best of worlds’); - in non-duality (never considering anything as good or bad per se); - without discriminating between self and non-self (there are no other people or things, we are all one). All these paths come back to exactly the same point: accepting that life unfolds – according to a plan or not, as one chooses to believe – and that there is absolutely no reason to take it seriously, because we are not our bodies. None of this is real! The goal doesn’t matter, only the path matters, so we need to be aware of every step, no matter how trivial it may seem. “If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live,” wrote the Chinese author Lin Yutang. Disciple: But being I am in Nature, and thus bound as with my own chains, and by my own natural will, pray be so kind, Sir, as to tell me, how I may come through Nature into the Supersensual and Supernatural Ground, without the destroying of Nature? Master: Three things are requisite in order to this. The first is, Thou must resign up thy Will to God, and must sink thyself down to the dust in his mercy. The second is. Thou must hate thy own Will, and forbear from doing that to which thy own Will doth drive thee.

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The third is, Thou must bow thy soul under the Cross, heartily submitting thyself to it, that thou mayst be able to bear the temptations of Nature and Creature. And if thou dost this, know that God will speak unto thee, and will bring thy resigned Will into Himself, in the supernatural ground, and then thou shalt hear, my son, what the Lord speaketh in thee.71 […] Disciple: O loving Master, pray teach me how I may come the shortest way to be like unto All Things. Master: With all my heart. Do but think on the words of our Lord Jesus Christ when he said: “Except ye be converted and become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” There is no shorter way than this, nor can a better way be found.72 Renouncing the temptations that the world offers, being devoid of desires, the same recipes are always advanced by the various teachers. When all desires dwelling in the heart cease, then the mortal becomes immortal and attains Brahman here. When all the ties of the heart are cut asunder here, then the mortal becomes immortal. Such is the teaching.73 One can one truly live without desire? The root of the problem is the refusal of the ego to accept its own mortality. Its ultimate dream is the conquest of death, hence the surge in recent years of the transhumanist movement. The repeated promises of a future where human consciousness will be 71

Bernard Holland, op. cit. Ibid. 73 Katha Upanishad, VI-14, VI-15, op. cit. 72

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downloadable into quasi-immortal robots is like heaven for the ego. And short of immortality, the ego quenches its unending thirst for growth by accumulating goods and gratifications. Once the fear of death is conquered, the ego literally has no more reason to exist. How does one recognize the ego? There are as many methods as there are spiritual teachings. What is required is constant vigilance because thinking never stops. Orthodox Christians, for example, detail the six stages of temptation as follows: Provocation: Our lives are beset with ‘provocations’ such as videos or images we see on TV and on the internet, followed by blasphemous thoughts. It is at this stage that we have to struggle. Momentary disturbance of the intellect: This is the stage of ‘the calm before the storm.’ We become aware that we have a choice between right and wrong by succumbing or not succumbing to temptation. Coupling: At this stage we begin to become attached to that thought. We consider the possibilities and create our own thoughts by imagining sins. Assent: Once we have decided to sin, to act according to our thoughts, we are already guilty. Prepossession: The more you find yourself in step four, the more ‘predisposed’ you are to particular sins. The Fathers call this ‘second nature.’ Our human nature is that of the Fall, predisposed to sin, but it is not our nature to commit sins. Nevertheless, sin can become second nature. In other words, purity is our original nature, sin is initially foreign to us.

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Passion: In this final stage, thinking has become a passion dominating our lives, making us obsessed with sin, and pushing us to sin again and again. But this passion can still – and must – be eliminated and healed. Keep in mind that you think, but you are not your thoughts. If you feel an angry thought rising up inside you, do not identify with it. Let the anger go. As you repeat this exercise, distancing yourself from your thoughts, it will become more and more natural. It is possible to live without the incessant ebb and flow of the mind, but one must wish to transcend one’s own emotions and reactions. They are within you, but they are not you. You are the immutable spectator, unaffected by daily events. This is merely a habit to adopt. As the Bhagavad Gita says: “Seek refuge in the attitude of detachment and you will amass the wealth of spiritual awareness. The man who is motivated only by desire for the fruits of his action, and anxious about the results, is miserable indeed. When consciousness is unified, all vain anxiety is left behind. There is no cause for worry, whether actions proceed well or ill. Therefore, devote yourself to the disciplines of yoga, for yoga is skill in action.74” Spirituality is equanimity. The ‘soul,’ i.e. the Self, is indifferent to what happens in the world, because everything is an illusion. The ego is a survival mechanism that considers anything that may cause harm to the body under its care, real or imaginary. Emotions give it substance, nourish it, make it stronger. The less we let ourselves be carried away by them, the less the ego has a hold on us, until it gives 74

Eknath Easwaran, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, Volume 1, The End of Sorrow, Chap. II-49-50, Nilgiri Press, 1993.

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in once and for all. After that, thoughts arise occasionally, but they are no longer the center of life. To paraphrase a famous saying, one must think to live, not live to think. What does it mean not to cling to one’s thoughts? It means adhering to the following rules: - Not living in the past. That you have fond memories of your past is all well and good, but you have to leave them behind if you want to be in the present. - Not anticipating the future. Imagine that you have a meeting. You think this or that will happen, you think you will say this or that, and you will be told this or that. It’s all a waste of time. If you have 1,000 scenarios in your head, then reality will be version 1,001. If you can think of 10,000, reality will be scenario number 10,001. That does not mean that if you think about your next holidays, they won’t happen. But the details you can picture will never materialize. So there’s no need to think about the future. - Not getting attached to negative emotions such as grudge, jealousy, envy... Two Buddhist monks were on their way back to their temple when they stopped on a river bank. A woman asked for their help in order to go across. The next bridge was far away and she did not have the strength to swim. Although touching a woman was a violation of the edicts of their order, one of the two monks agreed to carry her across the river on his shoulders. The episode went off without too much trouble. The woman thanked them and left on her own to her village. The two monks went on their way.

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Two hours later, the second monk, the one who had not touched the woman, said to the first: “How could you carry this woman when our laws forbid it?!” To which his coreligionist replied: “I helped this woman off my shoulders two hours ago. Why do you keep carrying her?” What’s done is done, there’s no point in dwelling on it indefinitely. - Controlling your desires. The ego has a tendency to go from desire to desire, never being satisfied, at least never for very long. The seekers must therefore get rid of their desires, including and especially, in the end, the desire for enlightenment. As Meister Eckhart wrote: “If, then, I were asked what is a poor man who wants nothing, I should reply as follows. As long as a man is so disposed that it is his will with which he would do the most beloved will of God, that man has not the poverty we are speaking about: for that man has a will to serve God's will - and that is not true poverty! For a man to possess true poverty he must be as free of his created will as he was when he was not. For I declare by the eternal truth, as long as you have the will to do the will of God, and longing for eternity and God, you are not poor: for a poor man is one who wills nothing and desires nothing.75”

75

Meister Eckhart, Maurice O’C. Walshe (translated and edited by), The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, Sermon 87, Herder & Herder, 2009.

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There is a good reason why Jesus warned us that only “children76” and the “poor in spirit77” will enter the kingdom of God, a kingdom which – need it be reminded? - is “within you78” and not in the afterlife. Children and the poor in spirit do not care about the world any more than the enlightened, they merely enjoy their immediate surroundings. Nor do they care about norms and other rules, conventions or appearances. They remain constantly amazed by the beauty of the world. If there is one thing that the enlightened masters are not, it is jaded. That is why their behavior often appears illogical, reactionary, or even crazy. It cannot be otherwise because they are literally out of touch with this so-called ‘reality.’ In conclusion, one must aspire to live simply, and simplicity does not pertain to the realm of the intellect. Why does suffering exist at all? A significant part of suffering is self-inflicted, usually because of our attachments. The description of this phenomenon by Buddha himself and his immediate followers remains valid to this day. A little introspection is enough to realize this. If happiness depends on something external to oneself, for example one’s partner, one’s belongings, what can change this state of affairs? A lot of factors! That partner may leave, get sick, die; your belongings may get lost, stolen, etc. In other words, happiness is conditioned by the fact that the relationship doesn’t 76

“Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3, KJV. 77 “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3, KJV. 78 “[…] for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:21, KJV.

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get worse, your items remain in your possession, etc., which is bound to happen at some point. Same thing with material goods and even the body: everything is subject to change. This happiness is therefore precarious because it is conditional. And it is not by accumulating wealth, by stuffing ourselves with drugs, or by jumping from one relationship to the next. The more we cling to the world, the more we suffer. Tired of conditional love, we always aspire to something better. That’s where spirituality cones in. Is there such a thing as unconditional happiness? The answer is yes, but only if there does exist something that is immaterial, impermanent. In other words, only your true self (the soul, say), immortal and perfect, does not change depending on the circumstances of life in this world. The natural state being the absolute good, that of the Universal Consciousness, this is precisely where the only unconditional happiness that can be is. A movie screen is not affected by the film projected on its surface, as Ramana Maharshi would say. Same goes with the ‘soul.’ Suffering may also be the means that the divine has found for some people to turn inward and abandon the ego. The quest for the Absolute is deeply rooted in the human psyche, and suffering is an incentive to devote oneself to it. The more one suffers, the stronger the incentive to find the only alternative there is: spirituality. Perhaps suffering is the means that Consciousness has found to teach us compassion. Why does evil exist at all? Theodicy – or why did God create or allow evil – is a thorny subject that provokes endless debates that only faith can put an end to. It is also the corollary of the question above: why is isolation conducive to enlightenment? If one must accept one’s mortality

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above all in order to know inner peace, accepting evil is part of the trials to be faced. There is no obvious answer as to how, though. Buddhists and Hindus believe in karma, so good and evil are merely the fruits of past deeds, and one gets only what one deserves. For the religions of the Book, evil is due to the free will that man enjoys by the grace of God. If there were no evil, there would be no good, just as if there were no death, life would have no meaning. Ramana Maharshi made the analogy between the soul, consciousness, and a movie screen. Whatever film is projected, the screen remains intact at the end of the session, untainted, unaffected by either the duration or the content of the film. Such is the soul of man: pure, perfect, indifferent to what the body undergoes in the course of its life. In Hinduism, the notion of lila (or leela) is fairly common. Lila is the divine game, the playful manifestation of the divine through its Creation. We are as many actors in a heavenly play that we should not take seriously at the risk of creating our own suffering. If we imagine life as a 5D movie (corresponding to the 5 senses), the characters suffer and die, but not the actors who know it is just a game. According to Satyam Nadeen, the Universal Consciousness deliberately tries to experience what is not its very nature: limitations. Take the attributes of God: He is infinite, omniscient, perfect, good, He is unconditional love. Then His Creation will have the opposite of all these attributes. The universe is finite, temporary, man is fallible, his love often conditional, etc., etc. Satyam Nadeen gathers that the universal Consciousness seeks limitations, suffering, the temporal, the conditional, in a word, what it is not. This is why there are very few awakened people according to him: they represent the end of a limitation and the Consciousness does not want them!

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Einstein’s point of view regarding the existence of evil was as follows: - Does cold exist? - No, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider to be cold is in fact only the absence of heat. (The faster the particles move, the more heat increases and vice versa). - Does darkness exist? - No, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is really just the absence of light. We can study light, not darkness. - There is no such thing as evil. It is like cold and darkness. God did not create evil. Evil is what you get when man does not have the love of God present in his heart.79 According to the Kabbalah, the finality of the existence of evil is that it can be defeated by mankind, for the benefit of mankind itself80. A final

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In Judaism, yetzer hara is the congenital inclination to do evil, by violating the will of God. According to the Talmudic tractate Avot de-Rabbi Natan, a boy's evil inclination is greater than his good inclination (yetzer tov) until he turns 13 (bar mitzvah), or until a girl turns 12 (bat mitzvah), at which point the good inclination is “born” and they are able to control their behavior. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yetzer_hara) 80 “It is similarly written in Etz Chayim, Portal 50, ch. 3, on the authority of the Zohar, that the evil of the animal soul is transformed and becomes perfect good like the good inclination itself, when it is stripped of its “unclean garments,” meaning the mundane pleasures in which it had been clothed. […] This, then, is the divine soul’s desire: that it create, by means of its intellectual faculties, a fear and love of G‑d so powerful as to transform the animal soul to good.” R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi, R. Yosef Weinberg, Lessons in Tanya, Likkutei Amarim ch. 9.

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interpretation concerning evil is the belief in pure causality, a determinism without free will (the incompatibilism thesis): since the Big Bang, a long chain of cause and effect has been taking place that leads us to the state of the world today. There is neither evil nor good, just what must inevitably happen by causality. All of these examples provide as many ways to rationalize evil, because in all cases it will have to be accepted in order to live in the present, and at peace with it. How can this be done? This is where isolation, among other things, can help. ‘The less you know, the better,’ as the saying goes. Evil is so ubiquitous in today’s society – and increasingly so – that we have to find ways to hide it, to ignore it, otherwise we can rapidly become overwhelmed by despair. We must start by accepting the evil done to us, and that begins with not responding to it. Primum non nocere. The doctors’ precept, “first, do no harm,” should apply to everyone, and in any case to those who seek to overcome the ego. In the following question, ‘How to accept non-duality,’ you will find another interpretation concerning the existence of evil, that of Hegel, that will shed a different light on the subject. How to accept non-duality? If the slayer thinks that he slays, or if the slain thinks that he is slain, both of these know not. For It neither slays nor is It slain.81 The son of Mila Sherab Gyaltsen and Nyangtsa Kargyen, Thöpaga, more commonly known as Jetsun Milarepa, was born in Tibet in the year 1040. While https://www.chabad.org/library/tanya/tanya_cdo/aid/623 7/jewish/Lessons-in-Tanya.htm 81 Katha Upanishad, II-19, op. cit.

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he was still a child, his father, a wealthy merchant, died. His aunt and uncle took over all the property of Milarepa’s family, taking them in under “their” roof, but de facto robbing them of all their possessions. The years that followed were filled with deprivation, humiliation, and various sufferings for his mother, his sister, and himself. Physically and mentally exhausted, his mother sent Milarepa to learn magic in a neighboring province so that he could exact revenge on the slaveholders who exploited them shamelessly. With the help of black magic, Milarepa caused the collapse of his aunt and uncle’s house during the wedding of their eldest son. 35 people perished as a result. His uncle and aunt survived only to taste the bitter fruit of Milarepa’s revenge in which his mother rejoiced. In a 2006 movie made about his life82, there is a scene most relevant to the spiritual path. After seeing the deaths of those 35 people, the surviving villagers, in a fit of anger, set out in pursuit of Milarepa. The latter finds refuge in the hut of a Buddhist monk, who, although knowing what he did, decides to hide Milarepa anyway in order to protect him from the villagers’ wrath. This scene is absent from the seminal work covering Milarepa’s life83. In any case, feeling remorse for his actions, Milarepa decides to turn to the Dharma. He will later become one of the greatest enlightened Tibet has ever brought into the world, having achieved realization “in one lifetime.” Milarepa (whose nickname means ‘cotton wool,’ in reference to the thin piece of cloth he wore all the time, despite the harsh climatic conditions of his country) will remain a model of selfsacrifice and frugality. All his life he was content with virtually nothing, and sometimes less than that! 82

Milarépa, la Voie du Bonheur, Jupiters-Films. Marie-José Lamothe, Milarépa – Œuvres Complètes – La vie – Les Cent Mille Chants, Fayard, 2006. 83

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This story is a textbook example of an evil deed turned into good (not that one has to resort to murder to progress spiritually, mind you!). Hegel dubbed this the “cunning of reason.” According to him, there is a force that directs human affairs and transforms evil into good. Hegel never decided on the source of this force: is it immanent (coming unconsciously from human themselves) or transcendent (coming from God)? (Imagine a flight of starlings making wavelike shapes in the sky. One cannot say that this or that bird gives the impulse to the group to go in this or that direction because the whole group flies “like a single starling.” Either one imagines a ‘will’ common to all these birds – greater, then, than the aggregate of individual wills – which makes them fly in unison, or one sees the hand of God at work in them altogether). Indeed, Hegel alludes to the first possibility in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right84, and to the second in his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences85. This “reason” or Providence (or God) uses human passions to achieve 84

“It is the reason immanent in the system of human wants and their activities, which fashions this system into an organic whole, of which the differences are members.” Georg W. F. Hegel, S. W. Dyde, Philosophy of Right, §200, Batoche Books, 2005. Cited in La ruse de la raison, Jacques D’Hondt, Laval théologique et philosophique, 51 (2), 293– 310. https://doi.org/10.7202/400915ar. 85 “God lets men, who have their particular passions and interests, do as they please, and what results is the accomplishment of his intentions, which are something other than those whom he employs were directly concerned about.” Georg W.F. Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic (with the Zusätze), Part I of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, §209, Hackett Publishing Company, 1991. Cited in La ruse de la raison, Jacques D’Hondt, Laval théologique et philosophique, 51 (2), 293–310. https://doi.org/10.7202/400915ar.

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its ends. “This may be called the cunning of reason — that it sets the passions to work for itself, while that which develops its existence through such impulsion pays the penalty, and suffers loss. 86” All that is negative for man, tyranny, wars, revolutions (the “loss” and “penalty” mentioned in the quotation), are in fact necessary evils for this “reason” to achieve its ends. Rather than reason, Schiller attributed this finality to History itself: “However lawlessly the freedom of man may seem to deal with the contest, it calmly gazes upon the confused play, for its farreaching view already discovered in the distant future the way where this lawlessly roaming freedom will be guided by the reins of necessity. What history keeps secret from the reproachful conscience of a Gregory and a Cromwell, it rushes to proclaim to mankind: “The egoistic man may indeed pursue baser ends, but he unconsciously promotes splendid ones.”87” We may or may not believe Hegel and Schiller’s interpretation, but it is not useless to see in the events around us the expression of a higher will. “The ego submits only when it recognizes the Higher Power88,” said Ramana Maharshi. The purpose of this is to rationalize the events that beset our lives. Accept them and be happy, or reject them and suffer. “The best to be said for it is that when you've come to the

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Georg W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, Batoche Books, 2001. 87 Friedrich Schiller, What is, and to what end do we study, Universal History, Translated by Caroline Stephan and Robert Trout, in Friedrich Schiller Poet of Freedom Volume II, The Schiller Institute, 1988 (https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/transl/Schiller_essay s/universal_history.html). 88 Ramana Maharshi, The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi, chapter Mind Control, Shambhala Classics, 2004.

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conclusion that something is inevitable all you can do is to make the best of it.89” This fatalism does not make evil disappear but makes it easier to accept. And, again, this idea must be repeated like a mantra every time we are faced with a situation that is difficult to swallow. The more you accept, the faster the ego will dissolve. Why did God, who is all-powerful, give shit a bad smell?90 This is what John Wren-Lewis would have answered, recounting in The Dazzling Dark his experience of involuntary awakening following a near-death experience caused by poisoning. I felt like exclaiming, “Of course! That’s absolutely right!” and applauding every single thing with tears of gratitude—not just the now sleeping Ann and the small jar of flowers the nurse had placed by the bedside, but also the ominous stains on the bed sheets, the ancient paint peeling off the walls, the far from hygienic smell of the toilet, the coughs and groans of other patients, and even the traumatized condition of my body. From the recesses of my memory emerged that statement at the beginning of the book of Genesis about God observing everything “he” had made and finding it very good. In the past I’d treated these words as mere romantic poetry, referring only to conventionally grand things like sunsets and conveniently ignoring what ordinary human consciousness calls illness or ugliness. Now all the judgments of goodness or badness which the human mind necessarily has to make in its activities along the line of time were contextualized in the 89 90

William Somerset Maugham, op. cit. Edmond de Goncourt, Journal, 1892.

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perspective of that other dimension I can only call eternity, which loves all the productions of time regardless.91 The non-self does not discriminate between material experiences because everything is only Consciousness. It takes the ego to create divisions ex nihilo, whether pleasant or unpleasant. It is for this reason that Aghoris live in smashan, cremation grounds, to get used to the idea of death.

The Essential Questions Preliminary remark - Are the answers necessary for everyday life? An extremely useful exercise to do when you are faced with a question that you feel is important but for which you do not have an answer is the following. Take a typical day in your life and go over it in as much detail as possible, in intervals of about ten minutes. For example: “I get up. I eat breakfast. I shave/put on make-up. I get dressed. I leave the house. I take the car/bus/train. I arrive at my workplace.” And so on and so forth until the time at which you go to bed in the evening. Now, at each of these steps, ask yourself the question: “Do I need to know the answer to the question that bothers me in order to accomplish the task I am currently doing?” Let’s say you’re wondering about the possibility of reincarnation. Is this belief necessary for you to be able to accomplish your daily actions? The answer is no, as you will soon find out. The answer is always no. No question needs an answer for you to live your life because…you are already alive, quite simply! That 91

John Wren-Lewis, op. cit.

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does not mean the answers have no effect on how you may live, but they don’t change the fact that you are alive. Humans were living very well even before they started asking themselves these philosophical questions! Do you need to know the difference between Purusha and Prakriti to drive your vehicle? Do you need to know what gunas are in order to play with your children? To have read the Prajnaparamita Sutra in 8,000 verses to send an email to a supplier/client? Or to know that this text belongs to the so-called apophatic branch of theology before you can go to the movies? (Apophatic theology – or via negativa – aims at defining something by listing what it is not. For example: God is all that is not limited, not mortal, not corruptible, etc.) Keep in mind that if a condition was necessary to free oneself from the ego, all enlightened would have to fulfill it. Are there conditions that all enlightened met, and if so which ones? That is what we will see in the following questions. From the moment you choose this or that particular belief, it will impact your way of life: someone who is convinced of the existence of the immaterial will probably find it easier to accept the accidents they will experience during the course of their life than someone who does not believe in life after death for instance. But in both cases, a belief, an answer to a deep question, does not affect the very fact of being alive. And awakening consists precisely in living one’s life at every moment, without constantly thinking about something else either in the past or the future. The only difference between an enlightened person who drinks a glass of water and a ‘normal’ person who drinks a glass of water is that the enlightened person does not think about anything else while acting. He grabs the bottle, undoes the cork, pours the water into the glass, puts the bottle back, puts the cork back on, grabs the glass, lifts it up

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to his mouth, drinks, and finally puts the glass back on. He perceives the weight of each object, the water flowing down his throat, the feeling of refreshment. The ‘unenlightened’ will follow the same steps while thinking about something else entirely, because this activity seems trivial for the ego, which prefers to imagine less banal, more useful things. So here are some of the important questions that may clutter the seeker’s mind and distract them from living in the moment. Does God exist? No enlightened person has the answer; it remains a matter of personal belief. Buddhists consider themselves atheists, unlike followers of Jesus or Muhammad, Hindus, and so on. The belief in God or in a higher consciousness altogether neither guarantees nor hinders spiritual progress. What is there after death? You’ll have to wait until you’re there to find out! This question only matters to the ego, which is afraid of the unknown in general, the true self is eternal and does not care about the answer. Does karma exist? As a person acts, so he becomes in life. Those who do good become good; those who do harm become bad. Good deeds make one pure; bad deeds make one impure. You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.92 92

Brihadaryanka Upanishad, chapter 4, in Eknath Easwaran, The Upanishads, Nilgiri Press, 2007.

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The man possessed of wisdom should always strive to collect and fix his mind. One never has to enjoy or endure the good and bad acts of another. Indeed, one enjoys and endures the fruits of only those acts that one does oneself. The person that casts off both happiness and misery walks along a particular path (the path, viz., of knowledge). Those men, however, O king, who suffer themselves to be attached to all worldly objects, tread along a path that is entirely different.93 Karma (a word meaning ‘action’) is the concept according to which everything that happens in life is the fruit of our actions during all our past lives. If something good happens to you, you have earned it because of what you have done in your past lives. Conversely, an ordeal or tragedy is the result of your past bad deeds, even though you have no memory of them. The idea of karma nowadays is often associated with an almost immediate reward or punishment. Originally, good and bad karma accumulated over all the incarnations of the soul and was distributed between the present and future lives. What is important in accounting for karma is the intention. An accident caused by an individual does not affect their karma. Causing an evil deliberately on the other hand, generates bad karma. The detachment from action advocated in spirituality is supposed to ‘erase’ karma – especially negative karma – from the individual. Not to do evil deeds, not to expect a reward for a good deed, is the middle way. Is there any reality to this notion of karma? To find out, one would have to have access to the past 93

The Mahabharata of Vyasa, xii.291, Kisari Mohan Ganguli, 1883-1896, http://www.sacred-texts.com.

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lives – provided they exist at all – of each individual. Accessing these memories would theoretically allow us to learn whether we are rewarded or punished for our good and bad deeds respectively. From a theoretical point of view, this concept contradicts that of free will, and debates about their coexistence in the various spiritual schools are never-ending. Karma is a belief which, even if its reality remains unfounded, can be extremely useful to its adherents. On the one hand, it can motivate the individual to do the right thing – the right action spoken of in Buddhism – hoping for spiritual fruits in return, even in the distant future. (In the same way that the belief in heaven and hell may influence Christians in their daily lives). On the other hand, it can make it easier to let go in the face of conflicts encountered in one’s life. Let’s say someone screwed you over, it will be easier to let go of it if you believe in a transcendent and implacable justice that will do its work even if you are not there to see the effects. In this case, you need to have an unfailing faith in this concept, not just a belief like: “Something good/bad has happened to someone I love/don’t love. Thanks, karma!” That’s not karma. When you really have faith in it, then there is no more injustice, no more good or bad, no more good or bad luck either. Absolutely everything is simply cause and effect. Believing in karma can be useful, but is it necessary? Who does not believe in karma among the enlightened? Eastern schools are attached to it with the exception of representatives of Advaita, nonduality, and those for whom free will does not exist (Satyam Nadeen for example). According to Advaita, the individual, the actor of his life, has no real existence. Consciousness alone acts, so there can be no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ acts. This does not mean, however, that the followers of this discipline can behave as they wish, without any consideration of laws or morals,

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since an enlightened does not wish for anything anyway. Islam and Christianity deny karma in the original acceptation of the word, a punishment or reward depending on past lives. But there are passages in the Bible that suggest karma in this life: “for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.94” And again: “Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.95” If we compare to the Buddhist interpretation of karma, this would be more a matter of divine justice than mere causality. To summarize, is belief in karma a sufficient and/or necessary condition for enlightenment? No, this belief is neither sufficient nor necessary, since some enlightened people believe in it while others do not. What about reincarnation? The concept was known to the Greeks, who called it palingenesis (‘new birth’), or metempsychosis (‘displacement of the soul’). The idea was that the human soul after death took on another mortal form, human or otherwise. The same concept is known in Hinduism where reincarnations are determined by the karmic level of the individual: good karma ensures a birth in a higher position or caste, bad karma can cause a birth at the lower rungs of society, or even in the animal kingdom for hardened criminals. In Buddhism, the definition is slightly different because this religion does not believe strictly speaking in the very existence of an individual soul, called atman in Hinduism. Buddhists speak of anatman. The soul in each being is merely a part of the universal soul, but it has no individuality. There is a transfer from one 94 95

Galatians 6:7, NKJV. Job 4:8, KJV.

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body to another of a manifestation of this universal Consciousness, but not of a particular soul. Imagine that the ocean is the divine, the universal Consciousness, the Brahman; each wave on the surface represents a being, human or animal. When a wave reaches the shore (representing physical death) and then merges back with the ocean as it withdraws, another wave takes its place, but it cannot be said to be exactly the same wave. And a wave that ends on this side of the ocean is not the same wave that ended on that other side in the past. Everything is Consciousness, without distinction from one being to the next. But traces can remain from one wave to another. Thus, it is common practice among the highranking Buddhist lamas and monks in Tibet to possess objects which will be recognized by their next incarnation. This is how the ‘tulku,’ the ‘Living Buddhas’ are identified, representing awakened beings who are very advanced on the spiritual path. Reincarnation is a subject that generates – unfortunately – an overabundance of literature. The aforementioned faculty of Buddhist lamas to recognize objects they owned in a past life has aroused the interest of many researchers. There are countless examples of individuals who have had vivid memories of things and events that existed or took place before their own birth. The problem is this, as Ramana Maharshi (who did not believe in reincarnation) put it: “Just because they are memories does not mean that they are your memories.” How can we know for sure that a memory of a past event is not simply the individual who has access – by sheer happenstance – to those memories that do not relate to him? Unfortunately, it is impossible to know. Either you believe it or you don’t. But is that belief necessary? It can be useful, just as the belief in karma makes it easier to let go. The caveat is that it can just as easily lead to

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procrastination: ‘If I don’t succeed in this life, I might as well accumulate good karma and try again in my next life. My next self will take care of this enlightenment stuff.” It’s a pretext, an excuse not to live in the present right now by sacrificing your ego. Waiting for another life only postpones the problem. Awakening always occurs in the present, never in the future, so there is no need to put off everything until tomorrow. Apart from that, one must remain vigilant about esoteric beliefs in this field. Thus one may read, for instance, that an individual must have incarnated in each of the twelve houses of the zodiac before he can claim awakening. Should we then have to find someone who can tell us what our past lives were and make sure that this is indeed the case before embarking on the spiritual path? No, of course not. Milarepa is famed for having ‘achieved’ realization ‘in one lifetime’ (meaning it was his first incarnation as a human being). In conclusion, is belief in reincarnation a sufficient and/or necessary condition for enlightenment? Neither one nor the other, since there is no consensus among all the masters. Is free will absolute, partial, or does it simply not exist? During childbirth it became utterly clear that all of life is accomplished by an unseen doer who can never be located. The previous sense of an “I” who was doing was totally illusory. The personal “I” had never been the doer–it had only masqueraded as the doer. Everything continued as before,

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only the person who used to think she was doing was absent.96 It would take a whole book (or even books) to really deal with this subject, and here again, the masters’ opinions differ. What can be said is that there is no such thing as absolute free will. We cannot do whatever we want at any given moment. Obligations and constraints of life in society, trends, cycles, give us a general direction. We should rather talk about degrees of freedom when it comes to small details of daily life. The only individual who is absolutely free is the one who wants absolutely nothing, in other words, the enlightened. Then again, if there is only one Consciousness and no individual ones, what can have free will? From the point of view of the ego, to believe in free will is to have to accept man’s actions; not to believe in it is to have to accept God’s (or fate’s). For in any case, one must accept evil. Is belief in free will a sufficient and/or necessary condition for ‘achieving’ realization? No, since not all the enlightened believe in it. Is it necessary to practice meditation? If it were enough to sit in the lotus position to achieve enlightenment, all frogs would be as many Buddhas.97 Before knowing whether it is necessary to practice meditation, it is necessary to determine precisely what meditation is. Unfortunately, two common misconceptions that hinder understanding are: 1) that when meditating, one must arrive to the 96 97

Suzanne Segal, op. cit. Louis Pauwels, Les dernières chaînes.

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point where one is thinking about nothing; and 2) that meditation leads to states of consciousness beyond what can be described or experienced by the average person. In reality, it is not possible to have an absolutely empty mind unless one is in deep sleep (and then again, residues of electrical activity can be observed). As for supernatural experiences of quasidivine states of consciousness (samadhi), they occur much more rarely than we would think, when they occur at all! Meditation, at least for most practitioners, even experienced ones, is in fact a state of heightened attention. Imagine a ten-lane highway connected to your brain. This ever-open highway carries various information that the brain will then process. You cannot close a lane or open a new one. There are ten of them, period. On average, seven to eight of these lanes are hogged by thoughts as they flow uninterruptedly. The remaining two or three convey the data brought by your senses. In early childhood, the difference is not as unbalanced, but with the mastery of language, thoughts gradually begin to predominate until they occupy the vast majority of our “available brain time.” The discipline advocated by the various spiritual schools – in particular through meditation – aims at allocating all of these ten lanes to the data brought in by the senses, not to thoughts98. In this way it can be said that only an 98

It is interesting to note that, unlike meditation, experiences of sensory deprivation have been shown to be dangerous to people. Many experiments have been conducted on this subject, particularly in the 1950s. The vast majority of people tested could not tolerate more than a day or two of this treatment. Anxiety, hallucinations, and depressive states soon appear. It is a recognized method of torture (and used as such). This was remarkably well illustrated in the 1963 movie The Mind Benders, featuring

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awakened person really lives his life. The average person thinks while their life unfolds. Thus, the goal of meditation is to be ‘effortlessly concentrated’ on the stimuli that constantly reach us: the sensation of the body sat on the mat, the hands that touch one another, the sounds that we can hear, etc. As this is a lot to experience at the same time, some practices tend to disregard certain sensations in favor of others. Many schools (yoga, tantra, Zen...) teach to focus on breathing. You have to feel the air coming in your nostrils, inflate your lungs, then leave out your nostrils (or your mouth). Others teach their disciples to place their consciousness in their big toe for instance! Becoming the big toe, focusing on what it feels in order to forget about everything else. It doesn’t matter what the point of focus is, what matters is that it gives the mind something to distract it from the constant flow of thoughts. But if the point is to concentrate on breathing, what difference does it make if you do it sitting in the lotus position, or sitting in your chair, lying in your bathtub, or standing in line at the store? It makes no difference at all. It makes zero difference. The lotus position exists only to say, “That’s all I do.” But you can do the same exercise under any conditions.

Dirk Bogarde. In it, he submits himself to an experiment in which he is immersed smack in the middle of a swimming pool in a dark room (ancestor of the sensory deprivation tank). He sees nothing, hears nothing, feels nothing outside the oxygen mask on his face, tastes nothing except his saliva, and perceives nothing with his skin other than his suit. As the hours go by, he becomes delusional, paranoid. The ego turned on itself can only sink into madness, it needs a frame of reference with boundaries in order to exist, it needs the outside world. But if we only perceive the latter, then the ego has no more room to be. Deprived of things to focus on, the ego vanishes.

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Many teachers reject the usefulness of meditation. Why meditate? In fact, once we understand that thoughts never leave us alone, and that the goal is to live without them regardless, life itself becomes a meditation. It is not a certain period of the day that one devotes to not thinking, it is the whole day itself, as we will see with Phil in the last part. To meditate while walking is to walk in full consciousness, paying attention only to the information transmitted by the senses. It is the same when we drive, eat, read, shower, etc. All in all, meditation, like many other spiritual beliefs and practices, may be useful to the practitioner, but it is neither a prerequisite nor an impediment to enlightenment. Is it necessary to practice certain techniques? Enlightenment is a matter of practice.99 There are no techniques.100 They’re just tricks.101 John Wren-Lewis informs us of the following: “I know from firsthand experience that the “joy beyond joy” is greater than the wildest imaginations of a consciousness bogged down in time. But I can also see that the very impulse to seek the joy of eternity is a Catch-22, because seeking itself implies a preoccupation with time, which is precisely what drives eternity out of awareness. Even disciplines designed to prize attention away from doing are simply another form of doing, which is why they at 99

Buddha. U. G. Krishnamurti. 101 Osho, referring to spiritual techniques. 100

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best yield only occasional glimpses of the eternal Ground of consciousness in Being. So what to do? One thing I learned in my former profession of science was that the right kind of lateral thinking can often bring liberation from Catch-22 situations, provided the Catch-22 is faced in its full starkness, without evasions in the form of metaphysical speculations beyond experience. This is the exploration to which my life is now dedicated.102” Some say that techniques are useless and do not lead to enlightenment. These people are absolutely right! But it takes a lot of practice to understand why they say that. In the same way, it takes a lot of reading to understand that all knowledge is useless when it comes to living in the present moment. This is the paradox at the heart of spirituality. Osho said that disciples could go 99% of the way. They had to make efforts in order to live as awakened individuals, corresponding to 99% of the path to awakening, but that the remaining 1% belonged to the divine, to the universal Consciousness. Anyone can decide for themselves. But it is recommended to disciples to practice techniques...as long as they think those are necessary. If a time comes when they realize that techniques are useless, they can choose to abandon them or keep using them, it makes no difference. Since there is nothing to meditate upon, there is no meditation. Since there is nowhere to get lost, one cannot get lost. Although there is an innumerable variety of deep practices, They have no reality for your mind in its natural state. Since both practice and practitioner do not exist, 102

John Wren-Lewis, op. cit.

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If, by those who do or do not practice, Practitioner and practice are perceived as nonexistent, Then the purpose of the practice is achieved And also the end of the practice itself.103 Here again, we see that the practice of various techniques may be useful to students, but neither guarantees nor hinders spiritual progress. Conclusion The purpose in this chapter has not been to deny the usefulness of knowledge or to denigrate spiritual or religious beliefs, but by observing the diversity of enlightenment experiences and the apparent contradictions from one teaching to another, to make it clear that these beliefs and this knowledge are not necessary in the spiritual quest. They may be useful for progress, but they are not required for enlightenment itself. None of the fundamental doctrinal points in this field are necessary, much less sufficient to realize the nature of reality. It is not without reason that Meister Eckhart concluded his 2nd sermon, Ubi est qui natus est rex Judaeorum, in the following manner: “In this way your unknowing is not a lack but your chief perfection, and your suffering your highest activity. And so in this way you must cast aside all your deeds and silence your faculties, if you really wish to experience this birth in you. If you would find the newborn king, you must outstrip and abandon all else that you might find.104” Nicholas of Cusa saw fit to write a whole book, De Docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance), to underline this very point. A Zen Buddhist monk of the 103 104

Padmasambhava. Meister Eckhart, Maurice O’C. Walshe, op. cit.

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9th century, Deshan Xuanjian, was a recognized expert in scriptures, and in particular the Diamond Sutra. One day, he met an old lady selling tea in the street who asked him the following question: “In the Diamond Sutra, it is said that the mind of the past cannot be grasped, the mind of the future cannot be grasped, and the mind of the present cannot be grasped either. So, with what mind do you accept this tea, dear monk?” Deshan could not answer. Back at the temple, he burned all his books and scrolls. He reached enlightenment shortly afterwards. More than a fable, this anecdote is here to remind us that awakening lies not in knowledge, nor in the work of the mind, but precisely in the disappearance of the mind. So what is it like to live in the present? For those who do not have the chance to live next to a guru willing to let you follow them, there is an alternative that we will analyze in the last chapter.

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III – Groundhog Day – or How to Live Life in the Present105 Have you ever thought to yourself: “I’d love to read all of Dickens or Dostoevsky, but I’d rather wait for the movie.” Are you tempted by the promises of the spiritual path but repelled by the abundance of literature and its apparent plethora of contradictions? Well, you’re in luck, there’s a film that sums up the spiritual quest, the gradual awakening of an individual, and all this in less than an hour and forty minutes. It’s a 1993 movie called Groundhog Day, written by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis, directed by the latter, and starring Bill Murray and Andy MacDowell. Many readers will be familiar with the synopsis: a man is forced to relive the same day over and over again, before finally being able to get on with his life. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was a psychiatrist who in the 1960s established a model (called the Kübler-Ross Model) detailing the five stages that terminally ill individuals go through before their clinical death. These five stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. We will see in this last chapter that the main protagonist of the film, Phil, goes through these five stages, even if he doesn’t face his physical death (well, he does, as we will see, but that’s not the most important bit), but the death of his ego. This is the price one has to pay in exchange for enlightenment! We are going to analyze the film, scene by scene, and compare each one with those that the individual faces on the spiritual path.

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This third part is based on an essay published by the author in 2012 on the website smashwords.com.

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Introduction Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) is an embittered and sarcastic weatherman with a rather high opinion of himself. As he has every year for the past four years, he and his team are preparing to leave Pittsburgh for a special report that he pretty much hates doing, namely the annual weather forecast given by Groundhog Phil in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. For those unfamiliar with it, it is a real celebration, not just a Hollywood script idea, that has been around since 1887. Phil is a groundhog in the flesh which, on February 2nd of each year, ventures outside of his lair at Gobbler’s Knob. If he sees his shadow (if the weather is good, essentially) and then returns to his den, it means six more weeks of winter frost. If he doesn’t see her shadow on the other hand, it means that spring will come early. Phil is supposed to make some grunting sounds in ‘Groundhogese,’ interpreted by a specialist in that language who then announces the forecast for the year. (Actually, the ceremony along with its weather forecast are written in advance by the organizers, but that’s part of the show). Phil (the man, not the groundhog) hits the road on February 1st, accompanied by the show’s producer, Rita, played by Andy McDowell, and the cameraman, Larry (Chris Elliott). While the latter two stop at their hotel, Phil has a room booked in a nearby B&B. Phil is the stereotypical selfish, frustrated, misanthropic individual. He’s rather successful in life (he’s a weatherman on TV, so he has to make a decent living), but remains bitter and sarcastic in spite of it all. He would probably like to have more notoriety, more money, to do news reports worthier of his talent. He announces at the beginning of the movie

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that he will probably go work for a competing channel: he is wanted elsewhere to do real journalist work. Basically, Phil thinks himself a star (he refers to himself as ‘the talent,’ and ‘a celebrity’). “I don’t want to be stuck covering the groundhog for the rest of my life,” we read in the original script. For the ego, happiness is always somewhere else, in another moment, be it in the past or the future, but never in the present. The ego can never be satisfied with the here and now because it means immobility, stagnation, the end of the quest, and the ego survives on action, motion. Thought is an eternal flow. Living in the present represents the cessation of this flow, i.e. death for the ego. Phil doesn’t think about other people, which as a rule he can’t stand, and he doesn’t even respect his co-workers. “I don’t really like other people,” we read him say in the script. “You know, people like blood sausage, too. People are morons,” he tells Rita in the van, on the way to Punxsutawney. Phil is ambitious, addicted to his urban lifestyle, and probably thinks about this small town in rural Pennsylvania as a dump from which he can’t wait to get out. In short, Phil is really nowhere: not at his job, not in his relationships (the script makes it clear that he has a string of inconsequential flings), not where he is. He keeps projecting himself in a better future. On February 2nd at 6:00 am, the alarm clock on Phil’s bedside table lights up to the sound of the song I Got You Babe by Sonny & Cher: it’s Groundhog Day! When he gets out of his room, he comes face to face with another one of the B&B’s patrons, then with the owner herself, serving breakfast. In both cases he is himself: sarcastic and expeditious. He doesn’t want to waste his time with these people. They’re not ‘on his level.’ He goes into town, passes by a bum he doesn’t want to give anything to, then runs into someone who recognizes him, an old high school

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friend, Ned Ryerson, an endearing and somewhat clingy character (he’s an insurance salesman). Once again, Phil tries to escape at all costs from this conversation that is already bothering him before it has even started. Finally, he arrives at Gobbler’s Knob, the groundhog’s lair, where more than a hundred people are already gathered, dancing and singing. Phil is obviously not comfortable in the midst of what he calls ‘hicks,’ so he meets up with Rita and Larry to film the event. “This February 2nd, at 7:20 and 30 seconds, Punxsutawney Phil, the seer of seers, prognosticator of prognosticators, emerged – reluctantly, but alertly –in Punxsutawney, PA, and stated in Groundhogese: “I definitely see a shadow!” Sorry folks, six more weeks of winter.” A jaded Phil signals Larry the cameraman to wrap up the story. He counts down on his fingers (the final ‘one’ being the bird!) and announces: “This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.” Rita asks him to do it again “without the sarcasm” but Phil couldn’t be bothered: “We got it, come on...” The team is on their way home in their van when two setbacks block their path and force them to turn back: a traffic accident and a gigantic blizzard (which Phil the weatherman had not forecast!). Back to Punxsutawney for our team. These scenes confirm Phil’s eternal state of dissatisfaction. He is sarcastic with the townsfolks he meets because he thinks he is better than them. He’s sloppy in his reporting because he doesn’t think the segment is serious. Rita says the same thing in the script: “As far as I'm concerned there are no little stories, Phil. Only little reporters with big egos who think they're too good for the job they have to do.” As Rita rightly says, Phil’s problem is his ego. Reality is an expression of the divine, of the universal

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Consciousness, nothing exists that it has not willed. So there’s nothing small, insignificant. Everything that exists is important, this is one of the lessons Phil will have to learn during his five-step test, the first of which comes right now. Phase I – Denial Phil wakes up again at 6:00 a.m. on the morning of his second day in Punxsutawney. The same song, I Got You Babe, can be heard on the alarm clock radio, which surprises him a little. The radio hosts utter the same phrases and jokes as the day before. “What’s going on, boys? You’re playing yesterday’s tape,” Phil remarks aloud. The hosts announce Groundhog Day, which makes Phil realize there might a problem. He looks out the window and sees that the snow brought in by yesterday’s blizzard is gone. (The script explains that Phil is trapped by a spell cast by a vindictive, magic-practicing ex-girlfriend he had just dumped earlier. The movie gives no explanation as to why the time loop is happening, which is even better because it mimics how things are in real life. We can speculate to no end on the ‘how’ everything was created, but the ‘why’ will always elude us. Same goes with Phil’s adventure.) The same interactions with the B&B guest and the landlord follow. On his way out, Phil asks a passerby to confirm that it’s indeed February 2nd because he still can’t believe it. In town, he meets Ned, his high school friend, again, before getting to Gobbler’s Knob where the ceremony takes place. “Something’s going on, I don’t know what to do,” Phil, visibly upset, tells Rita. “I’m having a problem. I may be having a problem.” Panicked, he can’t bring himself to finish his reporting and goes back to the B&B, determined to spend the night there, knowing the blizzard will prevent him from reaching Pittsburgh. Before going

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to bed, he breaks his pencil in half and puts it on the bedside table. On the “third” day, the loop starts anew. The radio turns on, the song plays, the pencil is intact. Phil rushes into town avoiding any interaction with the inhabitants. He asks Rita to meet him at the diner and skips the whole Groundhog Phil ceremony altogether. “Rita, I’m reliving the same day over and over. Groundhog Day. Today,” he tries to explains to his baffled producer. Distraught, he goes to see a neurosurgeon and undergoes scans that reveal nothing abnormal. He then proceeds to stop by a psychiatrist who is just as powerless to solve his problem. Trapped, filled with despair, Phil is having drinks at the local bowling alley. Sat at the bar, he tells the two men sitting next to him, “I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank pina coladas. At sunset, we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. Why couldn’t I get that day over and over and over?” His neighbor, a half-empty beer mug in his hand, replies: “You know, some guys would look at this glass and they would say: ‘You know, that glass is half empty’; other guys would say: ‘That glass is half full.’ I peg you as a ‘glass is half empty’ kind of guy, am I right?” Phil then asks them: “What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same and nothing that you did mattered?” “That about sums it up for me,” his neighbor replies, looking dejected. Phil is now out of touch with reality. Condemned to relive the same day no matter what happens, he realizes that nothing matters anymore. His ego is like a beast caught in a trap and going in circles hoping to find a way out. Phil then begins the long and tortuous path that will lead him to become the one ‘who sees the glass half full.’

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Phase II – Anger As he gets out of the bar with his two drunken sidekicks, Phil drives them home. On the way he ponders: - “Let me ask you guys a question… - Shoot! - What if there were no tomorrow? - No tomorrow? That would mean there would be no consequences, there would be no hangovers. We would do whatever we wanted! - That’s true! We could do whatever we want,” concludes Phil. Consistent with this conclusion buttressed by an unassailable logic, Phil decides to knock over a mailbox with his vehicle before engaging in a wild pursuit with the police. “I’m not gonna live by their rules anymore!” he announces to his terrified passengers…before ending up in a cell. What do you imagine happens once Phil has decided to let his ego run wild? Wouldn’t you do the same thing if you were in his shoes? He wakes up in his room, giddy and all excited, thinking about how much he’s going to accomplish with his day. In town, he says to the tramp standing on a street corner: “Catch you tomorrow, pops.” He throws a big punch in the face of his high school friend, Ned Ryerson. Following an epic feast at the diner, Phil strikes up a conversation with a beautiful woman, which he will use to seduce her the next day. Letting his ego loose, believing that he can afford to do anything he wishes, his behavior becomes increasingly criminal. He takes advantage of knowing in advance everything that is going to happen to steal a bag full of money from an armored truck during a transfer operated by two ageing guards. He uses the

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proceeds to take his conquest of the day to the theater – to see a movie, Bronco Billy, he has “seen over a hundred times” – in a brand new Mercedes, dressed as a cowboy as an homage to Clint Eastwood. He uses people to indulge his passions. He is more selfish than ever because he lives his life with impunity, because he has not learned to discipline his ego yet. He is accountable to no one, there is no authority to reprimand him when he acts like a fool or behaves like a thug. What the police or justice may do to him is erased comes midnight. He is above both the laws of man, and that of God (if he even believes in Him at all). His behavior is immoral, but this is not going to last. Why is that? Because if our true nature consisted of evil, we could do it without ever stopping. But the opposite is true, as Phil will soon realize. Compared to the original script, the film has cut a scene where we see Phil hitting rock bottom of this dissolute phase of his life. He gets a tattoo all over his body – something he couldn’t have done in a single day, by the way –, dons a leather jacket, and throws a party in his B&B room, listening to heavy metal at full volume, while two women are languidly lying in bed with him. He says to himself: “There’s got to be more to it than this.” This is a fundamental awareness on Phil’s part, a type of awareness shared by a growing chunk of the population, and not only adepts of spiritual teachings. Widespread pollution, worsening economic conditions, an all-out focus on material things… The less humane the world becomes, the more individuals are incentivized to look for an alternative. And this alternative cannot be materialistic, since materialism is the source of the problem. Only the spiritual can now help find a solution. That’s the journey upon which Phil is about to embark without knowing it.

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After sinking into all the excesses – gluttony, tobacco, alcohol, sex, one can even imagine the most abject crimes such as rape or murder, even if is explained neither in the movie nor in the script – he realizes that they bring no lasting satisfaction and are as hot sand in the mouth of a thirsty individual. There must indeed be “something more,” otherwise life would not be worth living. To the ego, that something must be material. Then it can make an effort to try and obtain it. But the more we have, the more we want. Actor Jim Carrey said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” Former U.S. President Richard Nixon waxed equally philosophical when he said during an interview: “For me, the unhappiest people of the world, those in the watering places, the international watering places like the south coast of France, Newport, and Palm Springs and Palm Beach, going to parties every night, playing golf every afternoon, then bridge; drinking too much, talking too much, thinking too little. Retired. No purpose. And so, while I know there are those who totally would disagree with this and say: ‘Gee! Boy, if I could just be a millionaire, that would be the most wonderful! If I could just not have to work every day… If I could just be out fishing, or hunting, or playing golf, or traveling, that would be the most wonderful life in the world.’ They don’t know life, because what makes life mean something is purpose, a goal, the battle, the struggle. Even if you don’t win it.” It is this purpose that Phil will discover throughout the movie, learning how to live his life while enjoying every moment of it. And for that he will have had to go through this phase of recklessness, of moral corruption. As the English poet William Blake so eloquently put it in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”

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Phase III – Bargaining Having gone from pleasure to pleasure and from woman to woman with success, Phil then tackles the only one that really interests him: his producer, Rita. He uses each passing day to learn a little more about her while trying to change to conform to her expectations. Indeed, earlier, Rita had listed 17 criteria that she felt corresponded to the perfect man, criteria that Phil then tries to meet. After countless attempts, he finally succeeds in inviting Rita to his room. They kiss, but Phil ruins it by blurting out: “I love you!” These three simple words startle our producer who’s beginning to believe Phil’s charm was “a setup.” “Are you making some kind of list or something? Did you call up my friends and ask them what I like and what I don’t like? Is this what love is for you?!” And again, “I could never love someone like you, Phil, because you’ll never love anyone but yourself!” She proceeds to slap him and says: “That’s for making me care about you!” This is the bargaining phase because Phil’s reasoning is as follows: ‘I promise not to do anything bad anymore. I’ll behave decently, but at least let me have this, let me have sex with Rita, then I’ll be happy.’ It’s typical ego behavior where the ego can’t get what it wants. The greater the resistance, the more it spurs the ego. It gives it the opportunity to think, to find options, subterfuges. The ego never gives up unless we conquer it. Here, Phil fails again and again because he tries to force the issue. As Tom Robbins said: “We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.” Instead of being himself, Phil wasted his time trying to become the one Rita dreamed of, and it ended up with a slap in his face.

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Given his failure, you can feel that Phil’s behavior and state of mind have changed: he’s overdoing it now, he’s overacting, as if everything was pointless no matter what. He tries to provoke things to get the result he wants (sleeping with Rita) rather than letting things happen. (“Do nothing, and everything will be done,” as the Taoists teach.) The next few days he tries to woo Rita again, but it ends with a slap in the face every time. In one scene in the early evening, before returning to the hotel, both of them are in the main square when Phil gets into a snowball fight with some children. Except that he takes part in it in an artificial, exaggerated way, as if he was tired of rehearsing this scene and just snapped, so much so that he worries Rita. Phil is now entering the next phase of his personal evolution. Phase IV – Depression 

Disillusion

Having experienced failure after failure, Phil has stopped caring altogether. About anything. When he doesn’t stay in his room all day, or in the B&B’s lounge to watch game shows on TV, he can’t be bothered with reporting on Groundhog Day. He is gripped by the clutches of despair. No matter what he does, nothing changes, at least nothing that could make him happy. (He hasn’t learned to change himself yet.) He neither gains nor loses anything through his actions, because every morning the same circus starts all over again. Why make any effort if everything he does is useless? “I’ve come to the end of me, Rita. There’s no way out, now” he tells his producer when he thinks he’s at the end of his rope…before kidnapping Groundhog Phil! After another car chase, he hurls it from the top of a quarry, crashing his vehicle and creating a stunning fireball at the same time! Phil finally

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dies…only to be woken up by the same song, I Got You Babe, at 06:00 the ‘following’ morning! The ego often has the same reactions when faced with failure: anger, disappointment, depression. All because of unfulfilled desires. If, as the various gurus advocate, you manage to live without desire, then you will escape the emotional roller coaster that the ego has gotten you used to. 

Suicide Attempts

Driven by despair, Phil tries relentlessly to end his life in every way imaginable: dropping a toaster in his bathtub, throwing himself in front of a truck, or jumping off a bell tower. Seemingly immortal, Phil comes to the conclusion that he is a god. And who could blame him? He survived everything: explosion, stabbing, poisoning, freezing, hanging, fire, etc.! One morning at the diner, he tries to convince Rita of his epiphany by showing her that he knows everything about everyone in Punxsutawney, including her. “There’s nothing I can do about it,” a blasé Phil says to a baffled Rita. But his attitude has slightly improved. He’s not down in the dumps like he used to be. He’s back to his old self – more or less, he’s more self-conscious now: “I am a jerk” he admits to Rita when he finally comes around what is happening to him. His ego finally begins to yield. Having managed to convince Rita that his strange adventure is indeed real, Phil spends the day with her, but this time without trying to seduce her. She tells him, “Sometimes I wish I had a thousand lifetimes. I don’t know, Phil, maybe it’s not a curse. It just depends on how you look at it.” But Phil is not devoid of desires just yet: “I don’t deserve someone like you. But I ever could, I swear I would love you for the rest

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of my life,” he whispers in Rita’s ear as she’s just fallen asleep. This day with Rita marks a new turning point in Phil’s evolution. He’s beginning to feel better. He’s finally chosen to make the most of his experience. What helps to inflect the ego is on the one hand failure, and on the other hand the acceptance of the inevitability of events, letting go. Phil has no way out, no options. Nothing he can do will change his situation. Getting angry won’t change it, pleading or praying won’t change it. Phil is forced to do something he doesn’t want to do, so he might as well give it his full attention and make the most of it, “bite the bullet,” so to speak. For those who believe in reincarnation, Phil experiences in a lifetime what takes many from the average individual. It has supposedly taken 500 lives to Buddha himself to ‘reach’ enlightenment, from the moment he showed his first spark of compassion. He was then in one of the many hells that exist according to the Buddhists, plodding under some burden or another, manhandled by demons. The man walking next to him was tired and obviously failed to do his share of the work. Buddha wanted to help him, and as a reward was struck on the head with a scourge by one of these demons. He died instantly before he began the long and sinuous path of successive reincarnations that would lead him to enlightenment 500 lives later. Phase V – Acceptance ‘Where is it,’ thought Raskolnikov. ‘Where is it I’ve read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he’d only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting

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solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be! … How true it is! Good God, how true! Man is a vile creature! … And vile is he who calls him vile for that,’ he added a moment later.106 

Making the most of his experience

On his way to Gobbler’s Knob, Phil, for the first time, gives money to the local tramp. All of his money. He brings coffee and doughnuts to both his coworkers. He makes an effort to make the story go as smoothly as possible and even makes small talk with Larry, the cameraman, whom he had ignored until now. Phil is both detached (giving the bum all his money) and serious, professional. No story is too insignificant for him anymore. Just because nothing matters doesn’t mean that you should take things lightly or do anything you felt like. The following dialogue (cut for excessive religiosity perhaps) takes place between Rita and Phil in the original script: - P: But what if the rules changed? What if none of your actions had consequences? - R: There would still be an absolute morality. There has to be an absolute good, regardless of the circumstances. - P: Oh, is that so, Miss Plato? Then let me ask you this. Where does this “absolute good” come from? From the sky?

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Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Part II, Chapter VI, translated by Constance Garnett, PlanetPDF.

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- R: [shrugging] I don't know. From my freshman Philosophy course, I guess. Rita’s absolutely right. There is an absolute good that comes from the divine, from Consciousness, of which this is the natural state. And Phil becomes living proof of that as we go along. He shows all the qualities – kindness, abnegation, charity, etc. – when he knows very well that it is absolutely useless, since he will have to do the same thing again the next day! Phil realizes that goodness is the only path leading somewhere, even though he doesn’t understand where, even though he doesn’t understand why. Phil has the intuition that it’s the only path that makes sense, the natural path. And this path is all the more difficult because he is the only one who is aware of it, the rest of the inhabitants, unsuspecting of anything, keep their usual moral compass. The path of spirituality is the path of solitude, unless one lives in a temple or a community of like-minded individuals. Osho wished to make his followers, his sannyasins, as many Zorba the Buddha, ‘enlightened bon vivant.’ It is a mixture between Zorba the Greek, a character from Nikos Kazantzakis’ 1946 novel Life and Morals of Alexis Zorbas, a lover of good food and life in general, and the Buddha, an icon of compassion and benevolence. Phil becomes a little bit the incarnation of it. He is on the path of spirituality without having cut himself off from the world. He doesn’t live in a temple or on the street, he is part of society, changing it from within through his positive behavior. He probably has to drink alcohol, eat well on occasion, and he wants to have fun, but he knows not to take anything seriously because none of it is real. 

Focus on the action, not its fruits

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Phil immerses himself in reading for the sake of it, with no ulterior motives, not just as a way to seduce Rita. He also starts learning to play the piano. Phil finally focuses on the action, not the fruits of the action, which is a fundamental precept in spirituality. - “You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.107” - “Abandoning all attachment to the results of his activities, ever satisfied and independent, he performs no fruitive action, although engaged in all kinds of undertakings.108” - “One who neither hates nor desires the fruits of his activities is known to be always renounced. Such a person, free from all dualities, easily overcomes material bondage and is completely liberated, O mighty-armed Arjuna.109” All we are responsible for is action in the present moment. What follows from this is not our responsibility. We must give all that we have in the moment, without thinking of the benefits that we will reap later, nor of the possible harmful effects. We can prepare an exam, work on a project, plan a trip, but what happens to it, success or failure, is not up to us as individuals, so there is no need to worry about it. While we’re on the subject of concentration, there is a famous scene in an episode called Superstition from the 1970s TV show Kung Fu featuring David Carradine. While Kwai Chang is still a young disciple, his master, the venerable Po, gives him the task of 107

Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Bhagavad Gita As It Is, II-47, p. 165. 108 Ibid., IV-20, p. 298. 109 Ibid., V-3, p. 334.

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walking on a beam over a pool supposedly filled with acid. The very skeletons of the apprentices who failed before him can be seen at the bottom. What had to happen happens and the ‘grasshopper’ falls into the pool. He panics and struggles but finally comes out unscathed. It was only water after all, a good joke from his master. Why did he fall? Because he was scared. He imagined what would happen if... The beam wasn’t so narrow that the exercise was impossible, only the ego intervened and ruined everything. That’s why you have to stay focused on what you’re doing and not let it go away by imagining the worst. The Frenchman Alain Robert, nicknamed Spider-Man, has made a name for himself around the world with his incredible feats of climbing barehanded skyscrapers without any rope of any kind. If he spent his time imagining what would happen to him if he fell, he would never have made it past the first floor! The key is to be focused on the moment, not on what’s coming next. 

Acceptance of Death

Phil’s still working on himself. During his first interaction of the morning with the hotel guest, he decides to recite a short poem. Later, he is seen perfecting his ice sculpture skills. He’s come a long way since his second day in Punxsutawney, but his ego is still there beneath the surface. Running into his old friend Ned, and in order to shut up the chatterbox, he hugs him long enough to make him feel uncomfortable and run away! Phil’s ego is not yet prepared to accept an insurance salesman… The decisive step for Phil in his personal evolution is right around the corner: he will have to accept his mortality. Strolling in town one evening, he crosses the path of the tramp he had seen earlier in the morning. The latter is just aimlessly wandering,

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staggering. Phil grabs him by the arm and takes him to the local hospital, only to be told a little while later that, unfortunately, the old man has died, which Phil refuses to accept. “I want to see his chart,” he tells the nurse. “Sometimes people just die,” she replies almost jaded. But Phil’s ego is having none of it. It can’t accept the death of the old man because then it would have to accept its own. Phil proceeds to spend the next few days trying to prevent the old man’s death, but to no avail. (In the script he is even seen poring over voluminous medical textbooks, so determined is he to understand the reason behind it.) But each time, the tramp in question inevitably dies. It’s as much a lesson about the inevitability of death as it is about the inevitability of fate that Phil must accept. It is written that the man must die on February 2nd, and even Phil, knowing all that may happen in town in advance, cannot do anything about it. All one can ever do is accept the ups and downs of life in order to be happy. Nothing good ever comes from the ego refusing to accept a state of affairs, whatever it might be. In the end, Phil decides to make this old man’s last day on Earth as pleasant as possible. In doing so, he completes his spiritual evolution: having accepted the physical death of a fellow human being, he has accepted his own death, and his ego has dissolved in this realization. Phil has completed the five phases of the Kübler-Ross model. He has ‘reached’ enlightenment. Which is why, after seeing him kneeling over the just deceased body of the old man in a deserted alley, the very next shot in the movie in his final February 2nd, and the first day of the rest of his life.

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Phase VI – Enlightenment Finally, the last day of Phil’s time loop has come. We find him in Gobbler’s Knob, giving such a moving speech in front of the camera that even the other journalists shoot him rather than the crowd gathered there. The people around him are almost in awe of his mere presence. So much so that Rita herself expresses an interest in him: - P: I gotta go. - R: Phil. That was surprising. I didn’t know you were so versatile. - P: I surprise myself sometimes. - R: Where are you going? Would you like to get a cup of coffee? - P: I’d love to. Can I have a rain check? I’ve got some errands I’ve gotta run. Okay? So, now Phil is blowing Rita off, after wasting so much time trying to seduce her! Phil’s errands consist of him spending the day as the Good Samaritan of Punxsutawney. He rescues a boy falling from a tree, helps three elderly ladies change a flat tire on their car, he also saves the ceremony’s MC, a man named Buster (played by Brian Doyle-Murray, Bill Murray’s brother in real life), who’s choking on a piece of steak while eating in a restaurant. In the original script, Rita follows Phil on his last day and can’t figure out how he can be in the right place at the right time every time, in a town where he spends one day a year. The following dialogue takes place: - P: What do you want to know? - R: Who are you?

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- P: I really don’t know. […] I live each day as if it's the only day I've got. There are no more actors inside Phil. He has accepted so much that his ego is no longer there. He has initiated all the moral transformations advocated by Buddhism, Christianity, Sufism, Zen. He has come to terms with his peculiar life situation and let things follow their course, wherever they may lead him. He has become the witness of his life, and no longer harbors the ego’s delusion that he is the actor. Later on, we find Larry and Rita heading to the town dance. As they get into the hall, they are astonished to discover that the pianist of the band is none other than...Phil. His piano teacher is also there and congratulates herself on hearing him play: “He’s my student!” she tells Rita. Which means Phil went to see her on that day even though he already plays really well. He continues to work on his skills; he perseveres in his commitment to learn. Rita is more than impressed. An auction of several bachelors is organized, she takes advantage of the occasion to “buy” Phil for herself. Before leaving the hall they meet Ned Ryerson, the insurance salesman. Phil had bought a whole bunch of insurances from him earlier that day. Deprived of his attachment to money, he has no problem sharing it and giving it to someone else who needs it to provide for their own family. Phil and Rita are outside; he’s sculpting her portrait in a block of ice. He announces: “I’m happy now, because I love you.” This time Rita doesn’t slap him because she knows he’s sincere, and because now it’s mutual. After which they end up in Phil’s room. The next scene begins with the clock radio playing the same song as before, I Got You Babe. Phil wakes up and probably thinks he’s going to have to do it again, another February 2nd, for the umpteenth

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time. But he soon realizes that the dialogues uttered by the two radio hosts are different, and it is Rita who holds out her arm to turn off the alarm clock. Phil can’t believe his eyes, it’s February 3rd! He’s finally out of the loop. The rest of his life can finally begin. Phil has learned his lesson; he has learned to live in the present moment. And it only took him 10,000 years110! In the original script, Phil concludes with the following words: “And so began my final lifetime, and ended the longest winter on record. I would find myself no longer able to affect the chain of events in this town, but I did learn something about time. You can waste time, you can kill time, you can do time, but if you use it wisely, there's never enough of it. So you'd better make the most of the time you've got.” Phil has learned his lesson in humility. “I’ve killed myself so many times, I don’t even exist anymore,” he tells Rita in the film. But it’s his ego he’s really killed off. Phil’s ego is no more, he has given way to the nonself, the eternal witness that is Consciousness. Phil realized that he is no longer the film projected on the screen, but the screen itself, pure white, unaffected by what is shown.

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10.000 years is the figure given in the original script. The movie doesn’t give any information about the time spent in the loop. In the DVD commentary, director Harold Ramis said that he estimated the time spent by Phil in Punxsutawney to be 10 years. Guesstimates range from a low 8 years, 8 months, and 16 days (https://www.wolfgnards.com/wolf-gnards-574/) to almost 34 years (https://whatculture.com/film/just-howmany-days-does-bill-murray-really-spend-stuck-relivinggroundhog-day), which is closer to what it would probably take someone to learn everything Phil has learned during his “test.”

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At the end of the movie, Phil has bridged the gap between his initial ego-driven life and an awakened state. He: - Is no longer sarcastic and always has a good word to slip in a conversation; - Commits acts beneficial to all, helps whom he can; - Loves his work and does it like a true professional; - Expresses no negative emotions and brings out positive ones in those around him; - Pays attention to what he does at all times, whether it’s his reporting or when he’s helping people; - Is no longer driven by his ego, desiring this and that, but instead lets things take their course; - Has gotten rid of his ambition, feels compassion for everyone; - Understands that there is a supreme good and that, if reality is just a dream, it does not mean that one can harm others, quite the contrary. This, in short, is the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism described in the first part of the book. Phil is free (liberated) because he does not want anything anymore. He ends up with Rita because she bought him for 339 dollars and 88 cents, not because he tried to seduce her. He didn’t do anything and let things happen on their own. He has created the perfect love. The absence of desire is liberation, and this absence is born from the fact that he lives in the present moment, without locking himself in the past or hoping for the future. He is simply there. All the virtues that he develops during his personal evolution are those that were in him the whole time. Phil did not begin to fell compassion for all because he was enlightened, he ‘became’ enlightened because he felt

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compassion for all. The happiness he was looking for had always been with him, in the now. Differences between the movie and reality - Phil realizes that something is wrong because he is reliving the same day over and over again. The other characters have no idea what’s going on. In reality, the quest for the absolute is the prerogative of a minority, driven by a search for meaning, an ultimate purpose that will always elude us but must necessarily exist (or so we believe). Seekers are like Phil, suspecting that there is a ‘way out’ of suffering but struggling to find it. - Some of Phil’s actions are determined by the fact that he knows in advance what is going to happen. He knows that the boy will fall out of the tree at such and such an hour, that the three old ladies’ car will break down at such and such an hour, and that the bum will die in any case. So he adapts his schedule to those times. In real life, this is no different from having appointments. You schedule one with the dentist, but between now and then, you don’t need to think about it. That is living in the present. Also, gurus teach to seek to do neither evil nor good. This does not mean that one should not help, only that one should not aspire to it. If the opportunity presents itself, one must of course help the person who asks for it (as we saw with the anecdote about Milarepa mentioned in the second part), but it is the ego that seeks to be active and to congratulate itself for ‘helping its fellow neighbor.’ The natural state is one of rest, not action. Once Phil is out of his ordeal, he will do exactly that: he will help when he can and enjoy life in the meantime.

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- The progression in the struggle against the ego is not linear, like Phil’s transformation for the better in the movie. It is more like repeating cycles, with phases during which one pays less attention to one’s thoughts, and phases where one takes two steps backwards! Each bitter failure or loss gives rise to its own five-stage model of acceptance. If Phil never mentions spirituality, how do we know that’s the path he takes? Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to Dharma see no Dharma in everyday actions. They have not yet discovered that there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma.111 Spirituality is simple, so simple that many people miss it. It was one of George Gurdjieff’s more absurd ideas to write his Tales of Beelzebub to his Grandson in a deliberately abstruse way so that only the ‘elect’ could understand its meaning. It is only adding confusion to an area which truly does not need it. Misunderstanding in spiritual matters does not arise from the fact that the truth is complicated, but from the fact that it is hopelessly simple! “When I am hungry, I eat. When I am sleepy, I sleep.” This is how a Zen monk (Rinzai) explained his life as an enlightened to his audience. At no point in Groundhog Day are existential or philosophical questions about karma, reincarnation, or the existence of God addressed…because they are not necessary to live our lives! It’s not that they are not important or do not help find meaning in life, but having the answer to one of these questions will not change the fact that you are already alive! And awakening is living in full consciousness, in the 111

Dogen.

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present moment, being a witness when your life unfolds, not lost in thought, in an elsewhere that never comes. It’s living like Phil on his last February 2nd. “The main point I want to make here, however, is that perhaps the most extraordinary feature of eternity consciousness is that it doesn’t feel extraordinary at all112,” John Wren-Lewis tells us. How can this help me in my daily life? Everything is significant, but you should take nothing seriously! So all interactions, even the most trivial ones, Phil learns to appreciate them and to devote himself to them body and soul. May it be the hotel guest who wants to talk about the weather, the ungrateful boy rescued in extremis from a fall, or the cloying insurance salesman, Phil devotes his full attention to them, whether he gets something out of them in return or not. Even though the boy never says thank you, Phil perseveres in helping him every day. Whether he really needs insurance or not, Phil signs Ned’s proposal, not because he’s rich, but because he’s learned to share the wealth he has so that others can benefit from it: Ned has to live as well, and he probably has a family to support. From the point of view of Consciousness, life is a zero-sum game: what you do to others, you do to yourself. In the same way, we have to invest in our relationships with others, whether with family or friends, but also with colleagues, neighbors, invitations we begrudgingly accepted, strangers on public transportation, etc. You have to learn to let go in all circumstances. There will always be people that are ingrates, envious, jealous, vindictive, and the like,

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John Wren-Lewis, op. cit.

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and if you wait for them to change in order to be happy, you will quite simply never get there! You mustn’t be obsessed with knowledge either. Phil doesn’t have the answer to any question, but that doesn’t stop him from enjoying life. There’s nothing to know in order to live in the present. “I don’t care about the truth113” is one of the more profound statement an enlightened, Stephen Jourdain, has ever uttered. There’s nothing to know, nothing to understand, only experiencing the now. What would Phil do? Phil never gets angry because he knows the game of life doesn’t matter. He never feels hubris regarding what he’s learned (the piano, ice sculpture…). He is never bitter or downcast in the face of circumstances, such as the fact that the young boy he saves never thanks him, or that the tramp is destined to die. Phil doesn’t care about anything because he knows that nothing that happens ever matters. And he probably has the intuition of an absolute good (as mentioned in the original script), since that’s what he becomes himself as he progresses. But if his brain knows this since his second February 2nd, it took thousands of identical days for his ego to finally accept it. That is why the spiritual path is so difficult: even when one knows deep down that ‘reality’ is not reality, the ego cannot accept it because it fears death more than anything else. Imagine that you are in Phil’s place. You have been living the same day over and over again for years. Now, you’re playing a game of poker; you already know what cards all your opponents have and all possible combinations thereof. At first, you try to win as much as you can and enjoy the proceeds, but 113

Interview with Stephen Jourdain, op. cit.

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after a while…? After winning a hundred times, you get bored, suddenly you don’t mind losing anymore. “You can have this one!” you think to yourself. After all, what’s the point of winning if it doesn’t lead to anything (for you, not for the ego). It’s like playing with your children: no parent minds letting them win. Same thing if you’re bowling or playing pool: what’s the point when you’re sure you’ll win the game? There’s no point. Winning is good, but when you realize that it doesn’t matter, you think it’s the other person’s turn to enjoy it. “Go ahead, if you think you’re getting something out of it.” Phil doesn’t get anything out of it anymore. He doesn’t have to win to exist anymore. When you realize you’re ‘immortal,’ nothing matters anymore. Of course, it’s not the body that’s immortal, but the soul. It is from this point of view that it is worthwhile looking at everyday situations. So it would be useful to ask oneself the question when a conflict erupts: What would Phil do? Or to ask oneself, following a failure or loss: What phase of the model am I in? This makes it easier to accept suffering when you know it won’t last, or when you’ve already been through a similar experience and come out of it alive. Life goes on. Conclusion Groundhog Day is the story of a man who experiences a spiritual enlightenment by learning how to appreciate life in all its aspects. Phil’s evolution over the course of the film is the archetype of a gradual spiritual evolution (as opposed to the sudden awakening advocated by Advaita or certain Zen schools, for example). He thus learns to love all the facets that make up existence, the good as well as the bad. He shows abnegation, sacrificing himself for the benefit of others. He does good without expecting

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anything in return. Since he has neither past nor future – all days being the same – he can only live in the present. That’s all we ever have. His whole life has become a meditation: when he does ice sculpting, when he plays the piano, when he interacts with the townsfolk, he is there. Phil quite certainly doesn’t know whether karma / reincarnation / free will / God exist, because he doesn’t need the answers in order to live his life: he is already alive! All that matters is that he is there every moment, allowing life to unfold in the best possible way. Phil lets Consciousness do its thing and enjoys the show serenely, detached. In the course of his ‘ordeal,’ Phil has learned to use the two most common features of almost every spiritual teaching, as seen in the first part: a mantra (Phil’s mantra is literally “Groundhog Day,” and the fact that every day repeats itself, forcing him to focus on what he is doing at any given moment) and a profound personal transformation (he went from bitter and sarcastic to generous and compassionate). For that, he did not need any incentive. He did not change to try and seduce Rita, nor to gain anything at all, nor to escape his plight. Phil changed because it was the right thing to do. Because there is such a thing as the right thing to do. And when we learn to do it for its own sake, not for personal gain, that is when the ego vanishes, at times only temporarily, and then, one day, out of the blue, for good. Phil has lived like an enlightened one, and has therefore experienced enlightenment himself. Incidentally, this is not the first time Bill Murray has played the role of a man on a spiritual quest. In 1984 he appeared in a movie called The Razor’s Edge. It is the second adaptation of the eponymous novel by British author William Somerset Maugham. The title of his book is taken from the Katha Upanishad: “A rise! Awake! Having reached the Great Ones

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(illumined Teachers), gain understanding. The path is as sharp as a razor, impassable and difficult to travel, so the wise declare.114”115 Maugham visited India and met, among others, Sri Ramana Maharshi (who makes an appearance in the book under another name). Maugham said that nothing in his book was of his own invention, that he had simply adapted the story of a man he had known there. This work tells the story of an American, Larry Darrell, traumatized by his experiences in France during the First World War (he is a pilot in the book, an ambulance driver in the film). In search of meaning (especially because he has experienced firsthand the evils of war), Larry begins by leading a bohemian life before landing in India to embark on the study and practice of spirituality. Two scenes in the film are of particular interest. In the first one, freshly arrived in India, Larry is staying on a boat moored on a dock, on a river. In the morning, he sees an Indian man sat in a wooden canoe, washing dishes. The Indian man tells him that washing dishes is a “religious experience.” This man is actually the owner of the boat in which Larry sleeps; he is also the one who will take him to meet Guru Shri Ganesha. This Indian man understood the words of Dogen and other masters, that there is no daily act outside of Dharma. Doing the dishes is a task simple enough not to have to think about it, and physical enough so that one can concentrate on each movement without thinking 114

Katha Upanishad, 1-III-14, op. cit. For those familiar with the grail lore, this idea of the razor’s edge may remind them of the crossing of the Sword Bridge by Lancelot, a necessary step in order to deliver Queen Guinevere from Méléagant. Lancelot must crawl over the edge of this bridge which is a literal sword in order to cross the river, and gets cuts all over his body as a result. Faith, courage, endurance to suffering are the qualities that both the knight and the disciple must display in order to accomplish their respective task. 115

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about anything else at the same time. In another scene, we find Larry, after having met his guru, sat in a rundown shelter high on the snowy peak of a mountain. He’s freezing and has no more wood to kindle the fire that keeps him warm. All he has are a few of his books that he started devouring after the war (the frantic acquisition of knowledge being an integral part of his quest for meaning), and has been lugging with him from France ever since. He then decides to burn them to keep himself warm (not unlike Deshan burning his books after understanding their futility). It doesn’t take more than that for Larry to realize that enlightenment is not an intellectual process. At which point he gets up, admires the breathtaking view before him, the wild and unvarnished beauty of the mountains, and we understand that he ‘reaches’ at this moment the realization he had been looking for so long, without even knowing it. Here is the excerpt from the book describing his awakening: “I have no descriptive talent, I don’t know the words to paint a picture; I can’t tell you, so as to make you see it, how grand the sight was that was displayed before me as the day broke in its splendour. Those mountains with their deep jungle, the mist still entangled in the treetops, and the bottomless lake far below me. The sun caught the lake through a cleft in the heights and it shone like burnished steel. I was ravished with the beauty of the world. I’d never known such exaltation and such a transcendent joy. I had a strange sensation, a tingling that arose in my feet and travelled up to my head, and I felt as though I were suddenly released from my body and as pure spirit partook of a loveliness I had never conceived. I had a sense that a knowledge more than human possessed me, so that everything that had been confused was clear and everything that had perplexed me was explained. I was so happy that it

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was pain and I struggled to release myself from it, for I felt that if it lasted a moment longer I should die; and yet it was such rapture that I was ready to die rather than forgo it. How can I tell you what I felt? No words can tell the ecstasy of my bliss. When I came to myself I was exhausted and trembling. I fell asleep.116” While The Razor’s Edge describes a sudden awakening (after a demanding work on the part of the main character), Groundhog Day describes a gradual awakening, a step-by-step adjustment to seizing the moment. In both stories, the main character continues his life after achieving enlightenment. He doesn’t abandon society behind him, on the contrary, he wants to enjoy it to the last drop. In both movies (as in life) the spiritual quest is a quest for meaning, in a world which has less and less to offer. In both movies, the main character must accept death. The death that Phil has to accept is that of the old tramp. The death that Larry must accept is that of a soldier (here again, played by Brian Doyle-Murray, Bill Murray’s brother) who sacrificed himself for his fellow comrade during the war, and therefore died in his place. Both represent the vicarious deaths of their respective egos. Phil thinks that there must be “something more.” He’s right: it is the supreme good that he will bring forth in him as he goes through his repeating days, even if he does not know wherefrom it originates. As for Larry, he seeks an answer to the reason for the existence of evil. And if, in the end, he found none satisfactory, he still managed to accept what he could not understand. In the end, nothing more is required of us.

116

William Somerset Maugham, op. cit.

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CONCLUSION Enlightenment exists to the extent that it is the realization that the material world has no concrete existence. But one could almost speak of enlightenments in the plural, given that each experience of this ‘true reality’ underlying creation vary greatly from one enlightened person to the next. There is no law that can be of use to everybody when it comes to awakening: every experience remains unequalled and unrivalled, and every path to ‘reach’ it specific to a single individual. There is no knowledge or practice that guarantees enlightenment. Why, then, choose the spiritual path if it is so difficult? For starters, imagine for a moment how much your life would change if you weren’t subjected to about 25,000 thoughts – often negative ones – cluttering your mind each day. Spirituality can help in making one’s quality of life better. Secondly, while there are infinite ways to experience conditional happiness on Earth, the path to unconditional happiness is unique, and that is what spirituality is all about. Phil spent between 10 and 10.000 years getting it wrong, every single day, but he needed to get it right only once to gain his freedom. Like him, every day for us is a new February 2nd, a new opportunity to get it right. How? By living without thinking; by being there when event unfold. That’s all. The purpose of this book is not to oppose knowledge, but to realize that knowledge is neither sufficient nor necessary for enlightenment. “Every belief of the intellect, every truth known to the intellect should be shot down. Of course, this is already a belief, so it should be shot down immediately as well,117” explains Stephen Jourdain. He is all too right. “Abolish learning and you will be 117

Interview with Stephen Jourdain, op. cit.

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without worries,118” confirms the Tao Te Ching. Enlightenment is simple, desperately so, but it is not easy. It is simple because you are already what you seek. It is enough to be present while life unfolds, as Phil has shown us. You don’t have to think, you just have to be. Yet it is not easy, because for that you have to silence your thoughts. Unfortunately for us, the ego is an enemy that fights relentlessly. One has to be steady and never lose courage. Why is it so hard? “Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.119” Do not think, just accept things as they are. Spirituality is the art of dying before death. One’s ego has to die before one can truly live. It will therefore seem opportunistic, but the seeker should believe in what helps them accept the world, only then can they live in peace, detached from the ego. And you can change your mind about your beliefs along the way or you can hold on to them, it doesn’t matter as long as you live in full consciousness, in the present, without being overwhelmed by compulsive thoughts. Whenever you ask yourself a seemingly important question, remember that you will find enlightened people having opposing positions on that particular issue. The only logical conclusion is that the answer does not matter. If the answers to the big questions do exist, no one is required to know them. Otherwise, all the enlightened would answer the same thing for each one of them. If there were a definite belief to be had in order to ‘attain’ realization, it would already be shared by all, and there would be only Buddhas on Earth! If there were a precise technique to ‘achieve’ enlightenment, we would already all be enlightened. If there were a temple, ashram, or isolated place to go to in order to ‘reach’ Nirvana, there would already be no more ego 118 119

Victor H. Mair, op. cit., chapter 19. Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade.

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in human beings. The problem is that one has to have learned and practiced a lot to realize the futility of both knowledge and practice! There are no techniques or schools as your spiritual path is your life itself. It is not that you experience spirituality during the course of your life, it is that your whole life is your spiritual path. As they say, “you are not a body endowed with a soul, you are a soul temporarily donning a body.” That doesn’t mean that you don’t have to change anything. But it’s not the course of your life that needs to be changed, only your attitude and your perspective in the face of what’s happening to you. You have to see the glass half full all the time, just as Phil learned to do. Imagine being told that you only have a month to live. Now, you’re about to park your car when someone steals your spot at the last second. Are you really going to get so upset over so little? Do what Phil did and live every day as if he was the only one you had.

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