CALISTHENICS MARCH 1981
AWARENESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS – RECOGNIZE LIFE –DETACHMEMNT ---DYING – IMRESSIONS NOT THOUGHTS ---ANOTHER ORDER OF LIFE ---EGO –INSTRUMENTATION ---RELIGION ---HEART EXERCISE –ALL ENCOMPASSING – LOVE --- TRANSPARENCY ---“WE” ---HEART EXERCISE
There is a practice of awareness that requires that you become aware of the functioning of your consciousness to see how it tricks you. It has to be practiced and it's very easy -- you don't have to stop what you are going to do it. All through the day, catch yourself thinking of doing this or that and watch what kind of thinking it is -- related to what, expressing what -- until you become conscious of how your mind works.
You might remember I told you that when you experience whatever you experience, there is life in what you live, and when you try to explain it or express it to someone you always have a hard time. You can never express the fullness of what you live, meaning the mind is still very poor. But, if I convey this information to you and along with it the life behind the information, you take the words but you don't ever follow up. You know that in your everyday life you have impressions that you express in one way or another; you also realize that you never express them fully because the impression is full, or whole, and the expression is bound to take an angle of approach or a point of view. And, taking an angle of approach does not allow you to express the whole, only certain aspects of it.
So by following up I mean: Practice referring to what you live -- all the time. It's quite interesting and very simple. Before you know it you will refer to what you live when you express instead of to what you think. 'This is the hardest point with wh^ich we try to come through: Learn to recognize, acknowledge and respect what you live.
Your mind has a tendency to consistently destroy livance. If you know the mind's reflexiveness, you will notice that whatever you live, the mind immediately makes an image of it and before you know it you are relying on the image (point of view) and the wholeness is gone. This does not mean, I repeat, it does not mean that you are unable to live the wholeness. It does mean you handle consciousness very poorly. Not acknowledging what you live but only acknowledging a point of view -- this is the prevailing paradigm in which you were born. The frightening thing in this situation is that you live differently all the time and you have a hard time acknowledging it. Well, perhaps the word "acknowledging" is not good, because sometimes you acknowledge but you have a hard time acting on it.
Why not come back to what you live all the time. This is simply a first easy step which obliges your mind to respect the livance. Yes, the livance can be expressed along a certain angle but you still stay with what you live, knowing perfectly well that you're not expressing everything. Now, depending on how someone else approaches what you live, you might adopt another angle, and still another one. You are free to do it because you dwell in your livance.
You are not free when you dwell in a picture. The difficulty with dealing with a picture is that you have to move, to act. When you dwell in the livance this is not a difficulty, it is simply logical and evident. But, you will notice that there is in the prevailing mind the tendency to put a distance between you and what you have to do -- supposedly in order to reach it. How can you reach something that is already working? You know it and experience it every day. It is not a matter of high mysticism or long meditation, it's a simple matter of acting.
…symbolically speaking, when you die the ties are severed, whether you want it or not. In the practice of dying they are severed by yourself, willingly, which is a fully different condition.
Now, let us say that I am linked to the flowers in front of me. I die, but I still look at the flowers. I feel myself going away , and as the links are severed there is a greater and greater distance. This happens not because I project it but because of the severance of the link that translates in consciousness as distance. The more and more I cut, the more and more relative the flowers become (kind of blurred). But I stay related in the usual way and let the action go on until the consciousness changes -- and it does change. it is entirely different from the usual method of getting away and turning your back on what you lived here. You continue to look at the situation in which you were until it fades away completely -- meaning you let the other part of yourself do the work until the consciousness is taken with it. And it is not the conscious you that does the work.
Actually what happens is that another part of yourself is working throughout the personality and this is what changes the consciousness completely. It's not the mind making a disconnection, although you might start with that. If you really mean it (which means it's not just the mind, but is much more whole), the disconnection is real and there is a distance establishing itself. As I said before, distance is very relative. Any change in modes is expressed as distance because you no longer live in the same way.
If you want to become aware of the workings of a situation and link that to something else, the "something else" is in the center of gravity, and the instrument changes because of the action going on. This is not the mind telling the something else" to do it (which would be just the mind projecting a change). When something else is working it means you are aware of being the "something else". You need more than being aware of the "something else" because that's a perception. You need more than a perception.
Participant: What's come out of this is my awareness that I still believe that I am my body. I have experience that tells me that's not so, but to my knowledge I don't have a key through which I can reach or be what I am. None of the things I've ever tried has created that for me and my consciousness knows that it won't occur.
….For instance, when you say "I am the body". What if you die and lose the body and are still able to say "I am the body", but without the physical body. You will be able to repeat the same sentence on several levels -- levels that do not even exist in your consciousness now. What is the value of the sentence.
You have certainly heard of conditions of near death. When people have died for a moment and then come back they reported that they were fully alive, they had a body, only it wasn't physical. It's called an astral body, or even an etheric body, but it's still a body. Now you pretend that you are the physical body, because, let us say, you have an awareness using a physical brain. When the physical brain is gone you have a different awareness, but the difference is so small that for dead people who came back didn't even realize the difference. It's actually nearly exactly the same without brain support.
….consciousness is not biological in the usual sense. Signals are biological but what uses the signals is not. Observe in your life: You meet someone and you have an impression. If you try to tell your impression to someone else, you are completely unable to express the whole impression. Whatever the overall impression you have of a situation, an object, a person, a group, whatever, you can never fully express it in words. You may try several approaches, it still won't be complete. This means that every day you live a greater condition and you still rely fully on that device called the mind -- the brain aspect of the mind -- which is so unreliable. Learn to rely on the holistic aspect of what is called an impression which is all-encompassing. Training requires that you do just that. You can't rely on the impression; you can't handle the impression at will -- not yet -- but you can learn to make your mind a lot more limber and make it realize that it is here to express , formulate that overall impression. This means that the impression is acknowledged in the first place, whereas, you are used to acknowledging the ongoing thoughts first. Thoughts are always more limited. You realize this in your everyday life this means you have a clue in your everyday life that you live much more than you acknowledge ("you" meaning your mind or emotions), which implies that you are suddenly much more than you acknowledge. If your system is not adequate to assess your holistic impression, how can it be adequate to assess what you are. It cannot. If it cannot, it does not mean that it is not possible to be aware of it. When you have an impression it's fully alive for you, it's just that you haven't yet gone into shaping it. Learn to dwell with the holistic condition that is fully alive but hasn't yet taken shape in thought forms or emotional feelings or even sensations. It's a simple matter of repeatedly putting your attention on it. You need to repeat and repeat and repeat to become familiar with something. It's not a matter of using a great burst of energy "in order to..." Its much more a question of repetition this is why I say it's simple. Simply start moving. One step at a time, instead of six or seven but repeatedly.
You know usually when people speak of samadhi they think of it as a very high spiritual point. No, it's only a degree of concentration. All the samadhis, except the last one which is without seed, deal with mind matter called chitta in Hindu. It is a training of the mind and only that. The last one which is without seed, thus without object or thingness, this might allow you to go beyond the mind. So you can see that you stay in the mind for quite a while. You use it|, you learn to recognize the functionings and so on, and in the case of the practice of dying you learn the ability to drop certain functions. If you are concentrating and you have things popping up, if you have learned to die you can die to the popping up too.
Martin: You cannot be outside the greenhorn. It is so easy to make projections. In the greenhorn condition you have all of man's knowledge, scientific or spiritual -- all of it. Obviously you are not out of that. As images go, we have the whole universe known by man (it's big for the senses) -- it's all greenhorn stuff. It belongs there, that's it's place. So whatever way you go, even if it is cosmic, it's greenhorn stuff. You must keep all human knowledge at the greenhorn level and not project it into other levels. If you don't tick to this discipline you'll never know what is beyond the greenhorn.
Symbolically, it is easy to project onto other levels: We have an M level, a U level- higher up, and an A level still higher.It's so easy to do. But, one level higher is another order of life. By another order of life I mean life expressed in ways that are utterly different from anything known in the greenhorn condition -- totally different. This is why I speak of discipline. Totally different means totally different -- not even a symbolic projection is acceptable. We do it when we speak because we have to use images, but when you live it you stick with the discipline. If you live something that seems to be new and you have any reference for describing it you are still at the greenhorn level and you're fooling yourself. We are dealing with higher disciplines here and it's very demanding.
You have an image of yourself and when you become more sensitive to a higher condition, you think it means higher than yourself. You have the usual condition and the higher ones. When you discipline yourself to live the higher condition in the first place, the usual self drops and there is just one condition. We could also logically say: Put the usual self one step higher and then we have one condition as before -- It's simply a matter of where you put the self,-- but I hesitate very much to say that because you will raise the usual self (as you image it, with the same qualities; and same aspects) to the higher condition -- and it's no longer the same.
You know the sense of ego you have (ego in Latin means I, so the sense of I-ness) is an image of an image. The ego itself is, in mysticism, already much higher than what you call your self. It is also known in mysticism that this ego is only a reflection of something. You have a reflection of a reflection. Now imagine that you make a reflection of a reflection, can you see all the distortions that can step in. Fantastic!
The fact that you respond or sense or even see a higher condition ought to be the proof for you that you are not what you imagine you are, because what you imagine is unable to do that. The usual self is wishful and wanting -- wanting so much that you don't realize that you can do it already. This happens all the time. You are directed to go toward a higher condition. We work for effectiveness -- that so-called "higher" condition has to come out. It's operative already.
There is a point you might not be aware of: If you have yoga training you will be aware that the real you is using all the abilities of what is called the person to work on what is called "this level", the physical world. This is how they express it. You have to realize that you are not the person. The person is a tool. If you are aware of the functioning of the mind and so on, you would realize that you have signals coming in and some sorting out that is called discrimination, but the awareness itself is not in the instrument -- the signals are. But, not having that training, not knowing what the substance and movement of the mind are, not knowing how to deal with them, this kind of information is very relative. You don't know what to do with it. The explanation tells you that the person is an instrument, but if you identify yourself with the instrument you are lost.
Now if you want to ask me what it serves to have that personality, in my usual way I would simply say that there is no purpose at all.
For me, as well as with traditional yogis, the instrumentation is a tool to work in this world. It is an outgoing action. It is not meant for reaching unknown conditions. The unknown conditions have to come out. From the unknown condition you train your consciousness, your mind, your whole personality
… When you say "without any effort" there is a sense of passiveness: the personality waiting to be used. It doesn't work that way. Signals are working in your system, let us say, like in electronics. In an amplifier, for instance, there are coils, transistors, etc. waiting to be used. What you don't realize is that I just push the button, they do the work . There is a specific type of working that is done by the amplifier -- I just give the direction. The real you gives the direction.
There is always the tendency to a form of passiveness, this stems from what we call religion. Religion is not understood by the general public as a discipline. It's taken as a dream: If you go to church on Sunday you have done your duty. This is much too easy. Saints of the church worked all the time, every day. The tendency here, at least as far as beginners go, is just the same. You come here and listen to me -- it's not the point, there is work to be done. There is a discipline within the person that has to be practiced. When you want to center on a condition and you want it to be clear, it has to be clear -- fully transparent. You cannot do it if you don't have discipline within the person, for instance the ability to drop ties.
If you want a truly higher condition, in the book I spoke of Major Death, and believe it or not it's Major Death. You drop all the ties -- whatever -- to everything. Your whole past, your whole understanding of functioning in this world, or your understanding of God. You drop God too, the main reason for this is that it is an image.
This implies the functioning of the person and the ability of the person to do it's part. As I said just before, you work as a unit. By now, let us say your ego is here and you have your known condition below and the other condition. Once you are trained this is gone. Little by little your whole understanding of personality will be gone too. You function that way only because this is what you perceive. It doesn't mean at all that this is what is. work .
Transition/Direction
I often suggest exercises, ways of working things out -- these are meant to give you a direction. We give you the form of the exercise, but as soon as the exercise is working, meaning you live it, the form goes, because it's now your own life. The form goes, but the direction stays. When you live it you know what you have to do. All the variations that are not expressed in words come out plain and simple when you live. So accept any exercise as being literally a directive or direction: you work in that direction . The direction is expressed in words but the direction has no shape. If you take a road straight North, the direction is not the road. Straight North is a direction and has no shape. If you follow the road that goes North and then the road bends, you have to continue North -- even if you don't know what is beyond so you take your compass and you continue going North to whatever shows up.
Heart Exercise
I want to propose an exercise to you that is very important. It deals with centering on the a of the U region (the directive principle in the U region).
As I watch you speaking of your difficulties, either here or in your everyday life, all the functioning is in the head and the heart is forgotten. When you live heart 90 percent of the problems are gone. You cannot live heart without the radiation flowing out like sunshine -- the reverse will not work. You can live plexus as an ingoing movement, but the heart is naturally giving.
We are going to play the "Moonlight Sonata" and center heart. If you have read the book you know that heart is located in the middle of the sternum (aU). Actually in practice you have to deal with a variable. If you feel your plexus at the middle of the sternum, go higher. If you go too high and you feel your throat, go lower. In any event place your heart (place of radiation) sufficiently high so that the plexus response is gone, because here we have the worst existing mixture . When we speak of heart there is often a rush of warm feelings from the plexus. A person who is warm-hearted may be acting heart, but the warmth comes from the participation of the plexus. The heart is very clear and directive.
As far as the involvement of the consciousness goes, place the center sufficiently high: Too low and you have plexus; too high and you have throat. Look for a neutral point in between. Now, if you are very sensitive, there might not be a neutral point -- meaning you feel a little plexus and a little throat when in the middle of the sternum if this happens look for more throat and less plexus. You have to learn to give out fully with heart with no plexus at all. You were raised in a surrounding in which heart is linked to plexus activity, so you have to overcome that trend.
If you radiate heart spontaneously you don't have to bother with centering. Those who don't radiate heart spontaneously can use the symbol of the sun.
So, just imagine a sun, as big as you want, the center being somewhere on the sternum. The sun is radiating fully and free, very clear. If you want a color, make it slightly golden (between white and golden). Let it radiate fully until there is only that. When it is radiating fully, you will be aware of a huge field of radiation all around. As soon as you are aware of the evidence of the field of radiation, begin to breathe in the radiation from the field.
Breathe it in, and, depending on how you want to work with the breath, you can decide that when you breathe out it spreads throughout the body. Breathe in, it comes in, breathe out and it spreads throughout the body. Do this until you feel that this field has trans-penetrated the entire body. As you do this you will notice that a continuum will begin to establish itself between the field and the body-instead of a barrier keeping the field out.
As you watch the field and the throughness and transparency of your body, you will notice that the center of gravity of the action is the field. You will no longer need the symbol of the sun -- it will be gone. It will be simply an abstract thought that if you watch the radiation and how it acts, it creates a center in the middle of the sternum.
If you practice this every day, you will become field aware because you will be breathing the field -- instead of being self-centered (centered on the center and forgetting the radiation).
( Music )
You might observe that most of you have a tendency to control what you do with your mind: The head orders the center to radiate. Heart activity is heart activity, it starts from there, or, if you have the other vision, the field creates the center.
When you start the movement from scratch, it might help to use a symbol , but as soon as you start living it, the object aspect of sun is gone. The more you breathe that radiance the less the center will seem to be an object. The more you breathe the radiance, the more you might begin to challenge your understanding that the radiance starts from the center.
Little by little you will sense different things like, for instance, when heart becomes very real and the radiance is very real, you will realize that more and more you don't recognize yourself as a person, an object. There is still an object aspect, but it's much less objectified, much less a thing. If you continue you will know All-Encompassing Love, but for that you need the ability to concentrate for quite a while. You might need to hold for half an hour, one-pointed. At the beginning it's practically impossible. So, at the beginning, there is the Law of Direction. You come back to heart, whatever happens with your mind or emotions. Simply the habit of coming back, again and again, no matter what happens, will develop what is called concentration -- the ability to hold a direction. The obstacles are not important. The point is to continue -- simply that.
There is something that you can do with this exercise. Take the feeling of heart, that opening up, that radiation, and then sense your plexus, which goes in the reverse way, and by contrast you can finally realize what the outgoing movement is.
But the first step is radiating heart; be aware of the whole field of radiation and then just breathe that until your body is fully penetrated. Then go further until you have a real sense of what we call transparency (which means the field goes right through). When this transparency is established, every time you live, you will automatically live that transparency related to heart.
When this is established you might want to live live heart/radiant-field and then die. The body will be gone, the center will be gone, but there will be that beautiful field, tremendously free and all-encompassing. When you succeed in doing this you will begin, just begin ,to grasp what I mean when I say: "when the Pilot dwells in the All-Encompassing Love, He is said to be the Knower".
There is another aspect you can think about, feel around, if you want, practice if you can, that might help you too. When you practice heart, you begin: "I" practice heart. But, as I said, you breathe in the field and the field is not an "I". You would say "I" create the field, but when the field is there the "I" is gone and you breathe that and this acts and there is a change on the body, without the intervention of the "I". It is not done as "I" awareness goes. The field does it.
For instance, we are a group. Psychologically speaking, if we act together we ought to come out as a "we", but there is one major difficulty -- very major. Your understanding of "we" is: the sum of all of us make the "we". No, this not the "we". The only way I can express it pretty clearly, is that when you practice the "we", the "we" takes the place of the "I" -- literally, completely. There is no summation of all the people present. There is one collective expression that expresses here. This is "we". Where the I expressed, at the same place, the "we" expresses. Then you establish a balance; then you are ready for something else that does express in either "I" or "we".
When you are fully I-centered, when I work you see Martin working. You hear me say "we" very often, sometimes it's Martin working, sometimes its "we" working. Sometimes it's neither Martin nor"we" because it cannot be expressed in these ways.
When you practice heart and you die, and there is heart; you face a problem, because you don't liver "I". You persuade yourself that "I" live that. If you happen to say in your mind "I" live that, you have already lost the real beauty of it. So you live it again as is, and as is it is not an "I".
….. When you are drawn towards it means that you are responding. It also means, in a way, that you are starting to do the same, but you might not be aware of it. You are drawn because of a syntony, which implies a kind of similarity. But, the word similar is not good because you could say an artificial flower is similar to a real one, so the term is tricky. But true response which is implied in being drawn, implies that it is acting in you.
Can you see that when I play there is no "I" -- there is no "me playing". Or as you can see with Georgette, what radiates permeates the radiation around everyone.Can you see that? If you had the awareness of "I" doing it, you wouldn't have that. You might try to communicate which means that there has to be at least two: there is me and there is the other one. When there is no me, that problem is solved. If you ask her what she experiences, she will tell you that there is no "her" and "you". What is going on there (relatively speaking) is going On all over the place all the time.
…. There is a Hindu saying: "The effort is the aid; the effort is the hindrance". It means that it depends entirely on how the effort is applied. If you make an effort to be centered -- you start to move, to be concentrated on something, let us say -- the effort helps you to take that position. But, once centered, you forget about the effort, it would distract you. So we cannot do away with the effort. Literally it is usually first an aid, it starts you moving, and once you move, forget it.
Participant: Well, one thing that's happened in some cases is that periodically in a person's life they will come naturally to heart, or to the natural state of a human being and that will be ignored or shunned of discounted by others around them. So it gets to a certain point where a person doesn't trust that, so in coming to classes like this, one thinks that their natural ability doesn't work and then there is fear involved in dealing with you, for example, in the training.
Martin :You have to realize that what I call natural implies the Divine condition --not exactly nature only. "Man was born in the image and likeness of God." So, a so-called higher condition that your consciousness tells you that you haven't yet reached is something that belongs to you already. The faulty aspect is in the consciousness itself -- not in the whole condition. The whole condition I would call natural to man. This is why I so often say that actually it's quite simple. It's simply because people identify themselves with their least developed faculties that they find supernatural what they actually are. You have to remember, I repeat it all the time: If I saw you as you see yourself, we couldn't work together. We can work because I see something else and the "something else" is right here -- not somewhere. So, if it begins to show through the personality, fine it's only natural.
Do you have a little bit of scope of what is involved in heart since we showed something? Obviously we showed something that does not go along with the popular concept of heart. Still you can see it's centered heart. As long as you possess the ability to distribute love (I-centered), this is not All-Encompassing Love.
Whether you believe it or not, the Love we showed easily encompasses the whole earth. Factually. Actually. If we did it with I-awareness, it would be limited to this room.
….The interferences come when you dwell in the more concrete aspects. I'll give you an example: Look at the radiation with Georgette. You can see it works throughout the room --whether you are aware of it or not. If you participate then you bloom the same, if you don't participate it works anyway, which means we don't speak of interferences on that level. It works anyway. You are here to work so let's work. The difference is in the so-called individuals -- for their consciousness. If you are tuned in it works down to the conscious level, if you are not it works only above consciousness -- sometimes way above. But it works.
…. You know, I can understand that there are situations where you want to express heart and it is not received and this may block you, or others may want to express heart towards you and you don't receive, but when you train heart as we ask you, your awareness of heart radiation changes totally and utterly. The new one you can radiate all the time. The old one, which is more psychological, cannot -- it has qualities to it that some people may not accept, and this involves, of course, not only heart; if it were pure heart nearly everyone could accept it. I say usually because some people are so limited that they just don't take it. What creates the block is thought patterns and plexus. The real heart radiation is beyond thoughts, higher than that.
Let us say, for instance, you see the radiation with Georgette, you sense something when you see it for someone untrained there is only one person in the chair and nothing else. This is a very usual situation, and in a way this is with what you struggle yourself. Because your eyes spontaneously would see a chair and a person sitting in it and that's all. But your overall impression is more than that. This is why I tell you to dwell with that overall impression. Don't be to hasty in defining a person and a chair. These might be the least important aspects in the whole business.
Okay, there is something I would like you to remember when you practice this so-called exercise: An exercise is a way of putting life into a shape -- it is not designed to reach something. remember that.
One Final Point:
The Statement of Purpose tells you that we are involved in a work and the participants are supposed to participate in the action going on. There is no excuse for not doing what is asked for -- unless you have a better way, then you are excused. Otherwise you come here for your own benefit only, and this is ego-centered. If you come here for your own benefit -- forget it. It's that simple. We are not a spiritual growth group. The group is meant to be trained for action. The other side is very demanding and you have to assume responsibilities. If you are not prepared you might be a little scared. This kind of fear can be easily overcome if you realize that if there is an urge, the urge means a direction that your consciousness might not yet understand. The first point is to remember to always keep the direction -- whatever the difficulty -- and go on.
I remind you that difficulties, pain, distress, whatever you want to call all the transitions you go through, are due to the identification of the ego with the condition. When you work you don't identify; you ask your whole personality to bring out what you know of the other side. You are centered on a purpose, not on yourself. It is always difficult because it's not an easy dream -- you face realities -- but the difficulties are always very simple, so they are not difficult. You can experience them as simple tasks to be done, or as difficulties to surmount -- this is your choice. And, I do mean it, it's your choice. You make the choice of whether you find the way difficult or fairly easy but exacting. Things simply have to be done and then everything changes. And, they have to be done, not for you, but for the expression (on any level) of what has to be done.