2006

 February: Seeing Straight

Has somebody got something they want to raise or say?

Gantry: I like being here since I came a few days ago. I also have a question. If you are with a master, to learn, must you follow the things he says, do the things he says? Or can you have your own opinion and, in a way, not agree with what he says?

Students, followers or disciples rarely agree with what the master tells them to do. If you agree with what he says then it is not really a teaching, it may be a confirmation, a kind of approval, it may give you more energy or confidence or trust in what you are doing that it is right, but it’s not really a teaching. I often quote John Klein who when asked, ”How do you know if the teacher you are with is the right teacher?” replied, ”Does he take you further away from yourself? If he does then he’s a good teacher.” The opinion you have, and your idea of what is right is based clearly on the extent to which you can see. To agree with a teacher is often to accept that the teacher sees more totally and deeply than you do. If you trust the teacher is benevolent and not doing things for some ulterior purpose, such as gaining something from his students, then since you are with him and you have decided to trust him, you have to trust that what he says, that what he asks you to do, is based on a perspective that is deeper than yours, and is based on his love for you and his wish for you to get out of the trap that you are in.

That is the whole basis of what is known as surrender just to say ‘yes’ to whatever happens. To do that – as I know full well, because I did it a hundred times with my teacher – can be the most fantastic teaching. By saying ‘yes’ to somebody who asks you to do something that feels wrong or alien to you, and you do it, then you find that in doing it you operate from some other place than your usual place – which is your ego; your ego doesn’t operate because it has said, ”No. I don’t want to do that,” so it’s something that’s not supported by the ego.

In order to do this something else in you – outside the ego – wakes up and says, ”Right this is OK. In fact I feel free in doing this: free of my need to always confirm to myself that the way I am living my life is the right way and is going to get me into a state of happiness and fulfilment. By simply going ahead and doing what the teacher asked me to do I see now that I was totally identifying with a set of views which led to a certain style of activity that was habitual and preventing me from experiencing life in a different way. I was responding to life in the way I always respond, and that’s a trap, a limitation.”

When you see the whole of life as something that grows out of a potential in you when you were born and that throughout your life the people who influenced you and the teachings you picked up established a certain way of seeing things then you can say, ”OK that’s who I am and I can go on more or less unchanging in my life.” Or you can suddenly get a feeling, ”I am trapped by my own views here. I see something moves in me so I behave in my old way immediately, before I have a chance to see who I am and what is really there, and what can come out of that meeting of ‘what is there’ and ‘who I am’. Maybe my response could be – instead of getting angry, or jealous, or hurt – ‘there is another way of responding’ but what I have become is always responding in the same harmful ways. Harmful not only to others but also to myself.”

What the teacher tries to do is say, ”Well you are locked into that so if I say, ‘Instead of doing what you normally do, do this’ ” – then that is not part of your bundle of habitual reactions and that gives you a chance to follow a new way and puts you in touch with a part of yourself that you didn’t know existed. It’s not part of the collection of reactions based on the particular perspective you have arrived at in your life. This is the intention when a teacher asks you to do something that you feel is not true or right for you, or even against your own nature.

When you say, ”No. I won’t do it,” that brings you back into the old system. The master is trying to get you out of the system to experience yourself – not just to tell you and that’s it. If he tells you to do something and you say, ”OK it feels wrong to me but maybe this guy can see more than I can” and you do it, then suddenly some energy comes to support that doing and you experience yourself in a completely new way.

This is dangerous, because if you surrender to the wrong people – powerful, tyrannical people –as people do, they say ‘yes’ in order to survive, then you can find yourself behaving in ways which are against yourself and also against the rightness of a person’s life. So the wise teacher who is trying to help you can be confused with the tyrant who is trying to pervert you. People say, ”Don’t do that because it could be the wrong kind of person.” There is always the possibility that you are surrendering to the wrong kind of advice or challenge – so you don’t do it. But if you trust it…

The learning that I had in Poona – doing exactly what you are asking, against all my inclinations – were the best teachings I had in my life. I don’t work that way any more, it’s not possible here and I don’t know how else my students can learn those lessons that I learnt. I hope there is another way, but I don’t know how.

On the other hand if you stay and fight with the teacher, and say, ”I am going to do it my own way,” that can also be a teaching – as some people have done and still do with me. Through that fighting with someone who has a lot of power and strength, wisdom, knowledge and understanding, you can develop a lot of your own power from within. The danger with this is that you become a powerful ego but the odds are, if you are with a teacher in a day by day situation, as you get that power it will carry you out of yourself.

The power that you get through responding to a powerful person – who generally is intending a lot of goodness, and has a lot of love of his fellow beings, and that’s why he works – through interacting with that with your fighting, some of the quality of the teacher, will transfer to you.

If you are in a spiritual community it would be almost impossible for you to gain strength for wrong attitudes or behaviour, where you become more and more powerful so you become more like the devil than the divine. This is supposed to have happened with Satan – that he got all his strength in this reaction. The story of Satan smells for me because I know that with this kind of reaction – that comes through challenging and struggling with the teacher – you also get a new quality of wisdom and openness. So in the end you may come to the same state as one who surrenders.

That’s a fairly general picture of the options.

The first option, if the person you are surrendering to is trustworthy, is guaranteed to show you new things, the second way is not. The trouble with this process of working with people to get them to do something to get out of themselves is that it leaves many students in an extremely vulnerable position. Then if the teacher – unknown to him or herself – starts to act, not out of love, but out of some personal intention and applies that energy of personal intention to the surrendered student then he can really damage them. They can’t tell the difference, because when they say ‘yes’ they are already saying, ”I don’t think this is right.” When you say, ‘yes’ to a teacher of that kind you are unlikely to agree with him, because if you agree with him then it’s not a surrender. So you feel, ”I don’t want to do this, but OK I trust.” Then when he tells you to do something that is not good you can’t tell the difference between that and what finally realize was very good for you.

This happened in the world that I came from. The terrible things that happened in America where people continued to say, ‘yes’ to things that were abominable and which no-one should say yes to. They couldn’t change and say, ”It was all right to say ‘yes; up to now; but now it’s not” because it was never all right. Nor could they say, ”Surrender is all right up to now but now this does not feel right any more” because on the way surrender never felt all right even when it was a positive surrender. This is the danger. This happened in America in the famous Jones ashram incident in America when they all committed suicide. Up till then maybe he was a very good teacher: teaching unselfishness, openness to others, fellowship, not being confined to your own existence and desires, that kind of attitude most people have in their lives just to satisfy themselves in some personal way. It gets them out of that and they say, ”We feel great, we feel more open.” Then he says ”Now the best thing is to go to heaven” and they all say, ”OK.” It’s a very dangerous thing. Most of the people who have got enlightened through somebody else have done it in that way, through being with a teacher. But some terrible things have also happened through teachers too. It is very difficult to recognise the difference between a surrender that is for your benefit and a surrender that is for somebody else’s benefit, where you are being victimised and exploited to achieve this.

The second way is a danger because if you just fight and leave because you disagree, then you haven’t actually got the possibility of getting the flavour through your opposition. If you stay and continue to battle with the teacher in a very strong way for some years then you can breakthrough your ego in that way.

The other way is not so much a break through it’s a leaving behind. Breakthrough is dangerous because if you don’t actually break through you end up with a superannuated ego that’s even worse than when you started that says ”I can compete against the teacher.”

So I will be sending a little note around asking, ”Are you the surrender type or the fighting type?” Then I know how to deal with you. I know what type you are (to Mishka), and you (to Tarifa).

Danato: I guess you know with everybody.

That’s the way it normally goes. I learnt lessons when I was involved in such a way, when the main way of teaching was to simply do as you were told. I discovered things that I don’t know how else I could have learnt them. I also said at that time, ”I don’t know how other people can learn that and I don’t work that way, so I hope there is another way.” Now I think there is such a way and in an invisible way this is how I operate here. When I said to Mishka ”You’re this type and Tarifa is that type” and Danato said, ”I guess you know with everybody” – this is not a polarity. You’re not all one style or the other. I think that through this amazing process people can be brought quickly – through the seminars and also here in the house – into a state where this polarity is dissolved, they feel themselves on a deeper level where the difference between surrender and struggle is transcended.

People can make their progress – not through fighting and not through surrender – but simply through moving deep inside themselves – through surrender, through struggle – to a different part of themselves. You can either break through or you can surrender and go outside of the circle of ego that you are locked in.

This third way is to simply go deeper and deeper inside through feeling different levels or circles of energy of yourself and the whole complex group of people around you: you in the whole energy field, you as part of human society, you as part of universal life – all these are circles of energy widening out and if you can move through these circles then you arrive at the same place as you would through these two traditional ways of surrender or struggle.

Then these ways become irrelevant, because the scene and the process is different. I guess the reason why I am not a disciplinarian and don’t tell people what to do –hardly any of you guys have been told what to do by me – you may get it from some of the senior people here, but not from me. I trust that your progress through the energy dimensions is happening and that you are seeing things for yourself to gain more openness and wisdom; that what you hope to achieve is happening simply through the quality of energy here in the house and the orientation that I try to give everybody in seeing things in energy terms. This is a kind of leapfrog through the levels of energy, then these two possible pincers of surrender and conflict become irrelevant.

So, Gantry, it was nice that you said first, ”I really liked being here,” and then you asked that question. You forgot that really it’s not a significant question here, but it is in your mind, because you have asked a similar question before when I was in Belgium, but even when you come with that in mind, ”Am I going to surrender to Michael when I am there or not” you find, ”Well, it’s nice to be here!” So maybe you never have to know which one of those to do because you don’t have to do either. But you never know! So I am not promising anything.

Betaoa: Michael I have two points which may be related. When I lie in bed and I wake up I have the impression I am lying the other way around. My head is there where my feet should be. Second point is a therapist found out that I was left-handed and I have been trained to be right-handed. What is your opinion on that? Is there a relationship between these two?

Well, my brother who is a year and a half older than me was naturally left-handed but was trained to be right-handed. Between his birth and my birth the educational system decided, ”We won’t change them any more.” So I was allowed to stay left-handed. That might account for the fact that I’ve done nothing but struggle with my brother ever since and I’m still struggling with him! Maybe it can have a strong effect on people. On the other hand, as far as I know, he doesn’t think he sleeps upside down!

But, I think there could be a connection. It’s all to do with the left hand side and the right hand side of the brain. With some people what is normally the left-hand side is on the other side, so the rational side and the artistic side are on the other side to most people. But I don’t think that change is very significant. I think that your waking up and feeling you are upside down is more significant, reflecting some major distortion in your life. It is as if your head has been turned the wrong way round. What does it mean in German if you say, ”You are turning everything on its head” do you have and expression like that? I don’t mean doing it literally.

Vimaya: Turning it on its head means you are searching behind for the reason.

Mishka: You don’t take facts as they are but look behind for a deeper meaning.

I think that’s fairly obvious. We have another expression in England, ”You’ve got the wrong end of the stick” – that means you’ve not understood what I’ve said. But turning things on its head means that you are distorting things because you want to see it in another way. You see things in this way – but you are seeing things in a way that other people don’t see them – because when you do that it makes you feel comfortable. It makes you feel that the way you are running your life or seeing things is correct. In order to maintain that you have to turn everything on its head so that it fits in with the way you are living or behaving. So behind turning everything on its head is the motivation to be right.

You were made to be right-handed because some other people who thought they had some understanding thought that was the right thing to do. They thought it would work out better in the long run if you were like everybody else and wrote right-handed, and if you were allowed to stay left-handed that would damage you. Have you had this experience while you were here or have you had it for some time?

Betaoa: I had it at home, but I’ve had it here as well.

I think the message you are getting is that something in you is saying, ”You are getting things upside down, you are not seeing things the way they are.” When there is some doubt about the way things are then it’s OK if you don’t agree with people; but when you don’t see things the way they are, even though it is clear that they are that way, you aren’t disagreeing with people, you are seeing things the way no normal person would see them. I think the message to you Betaoa is that you are attached to the way you see things, and that prevents you from seeing things the way they are.

Betaoa: What do I do to get out of it?

Stop seeing things any way at all. You don’t see things in any particular way, until you start thinking about them. Can you hear that sound? How do you hear it?

Betaoa: It sounds like water’s flowing somewhere.

What is your particular way of hearing that sound? How do you hear that sound different from Rasya or Vimaya or me?

Betaoa: I don’t know.

Probably no way huh? You just hear it, we all just hear it, unless you’ve got a special ‘something’ in your ear. If you’ve got a big recorder then you will hear it much louder. We all hear the sound in the same way. So when I say ”Don’t see things any way at all” I mean experience life like you hear that sound. Do you all understand? Can you experience life – all of you – like you hear that sound?

When you hear that sound – to quote myself, and Zen – ”You don’t add anything to the hearing of that sound.” There is nothing to add on to that. You can say ”Well, it sounds a bit like this; or it might be the refrigerator or the air conditioning,” but the hearing of the sound before you even think what the sound is, is the same for all of us. To hear the sound you don’t have to add anything. To experience life you don’t have to add anything. The moment you have an opinion about what is going on, you have a point of view. That point of view is your personal point of view, and that may be standing everything on its head, but you go on doing it because that’s your point of view.

If you try and change your point of view then maybe you won’t stand everything on its head, though you may get it to stand at an angle of sixty degrees. Nobody sees anything clearly because it’s almost impossible to see anything that’s in life without first deciding or judging what it is like or whether it is positive or negative, good or bad, right or wrong. All this goes on before the pure experience touches you. Something is in front dealing with it. If you don’t have that then things are just as they are. ‘This’ is happening, a response is happening in me, but I don’t identify with that, I begin to see things just as they are. That is the enlightened way to see life. I don’t say that you do this, I’m just interpreting what you have told me – that the moment anything happens you have a judgement or a view that it’s good or bad. You agree or disagree. Something in you immediately jumps. Your feeling when you wake up in the morning that ”This may just be the way I go on seeing things, that is based on what ‘I’ see not what is, so I go on repeating the way that I see. That prevents me from actually experiencing what is happening. Because I am dividing the world into what it is OK to see and what is not OK to see; those people it’s OK to be with, those people it’s not OK to be with; those to listen too, those not to listen too.” As soon as you divide the world like that you miss so much. When you are just open and experience life like that sound, ”Ah, that’s how things are here in my world. This is what is going on around me. Just this.” No opinion, no judgement, no ‘yes’ or ‘no’, right or wrong, good or bad – that is how to see in an enlightened world.

Betaoa: Thank you.

OK. Goodnight.

4 Suits Darshan, 1st February 2006