Transcript: Hi there. So, today I want to explain real quick what psychoanalysis is, very briefly, and why I recommend it generally speaking to seekers. So first of all let me just explain what therapy is. Therapy is a very general term. It’s the idea of a healing modality. People use it in all kinds of ways, like touch therapy, massage therapy, aroma therapy. So many things can be therapy. Psychotherapy is what attempt to heal the mind or psyche using some variety of talking. Of these there are many different kinds. For example, one of the most prominent is called cognitive-behavioral. But the oldest and deepest in my opinion, especially for seekers who want to understand themselves deeply is psychoanalysis, which is the school of psychotherapy that was started by Sigmund Freud, but has evolved a long time since then. So what makes psychoanalysis different? Well first of all, let me just make a quick distinction here. Psychoanalysis technically refers to the most intensive style of the treatment, which is at least usually three times a week. Psychodynamic psychotherapy or psychoanalytic psychotherapy are kind of lighter, somewhat less intense versions of it. Now what distinguishes psychoanalysis and its sort of little siblings is their focus on the unconscious. They don’t believe that you necessarily know what’s going on inside yourself, that you know what the problem is or why it is you’re doing what you’re doing, and how you necessarily want it to be changed. That is uncovered through a process of investigation which can take quite a long time. The beauty of this is that it is a very, very light touch. Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy don’t try to control you, don’t try to mold you or change you in any very direct, blunt way. Instead, you go through a process with the therapist or analyst of uncovering what it is that’s going on in your mind, things that have come up since childhood, and things that are revealed in the relationship between you and the therapist or analyst. So these are very, very subtle things that go on that other psychotherapies often don’t pay as much attention to because they are trying to “fix your problem” immediately, assuming that they know what the problem is, that you know what the “problem” is. But psychoanalysis doesn’t’ assume that you know what the problem is, doesn’t assume that it’s so simple. It believes that our mental conditions come from a series of conflicts that have arisen from early childhood onwards, and that to discover this is a very slow process that takes time and nevertheless can be extremely illuminating for spiritual seekers, because that’s the only way of getting at many of the most complicated, subtle and persistent issues that bedevil them. All right, so this is just an introduction.
A person does not get enlightened; enlightenment simply is the truth
Transcript:
So a misconception that people have is that a person gets enlightened. Right, you think of yourself as a person, a mind, a body, and you think that’s what gets enlightened. But actually ,enlightenment is simply the truth. Enlightenment is simply what is already the case. The entire story of being a person, a body and a mind and essentially a kind of limited entity — this precisely is the story that is false. So, the story of a person who was ignorant and then becomes enlightened, this kind of story is precisely what isn’t the case. So the entire idea that a person could be enlightened is exactly the idea that the truth of enlightenment which is there regardless of how many times the idea may crop up that it isn’t — remains. It’s like a rock, right, and these, these thoughts of being a person to whom enlightenment occurs are just like these shadows. The shadows cannot actually touch the rock which is the simple truth, the matter of fact. And it doesn’t matter how many times one may think differently. The fact is, enlightenment is, and the story of being a limited person isn’t.
Being is simply the constant silence behind thoughts. But that is a thought.
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In truth, Self is so simple. Self is simply being without any pretension to hope or to fear, to doing anything else. Self means the total relaxation of all mental effort. It is that space of silence, the hum of the refrigerator, the constant phone tone that underlies your life. You know it. It’s simply what you are, constantly. And if you just relax, that is it. You’re there. But the moment you say “I’m there,” you’re not there. The moment you say, “when I say ‘I’m there, I’m not there,’” now you’re not there. Except that you are. In all those cases, you are there. You are there even when you think you’re not there. The thoughts of not being there are merely thoughts of not being there. In fact, they’re not even thoughts of not being there. The very idea of not being there is just a thought. The very idea that there can be a thought of not being there that afflicts you is a thought. Thoughts cannot affect you. Thoughts cannot afflict you. Thoughts don’t even exist. The very one who says “there is a thought” is a thought. Thoughts are like mirrors put together facing each other. They’re recursive. Move the mirror, even one of them, even slightly, and all the thoughts disappear as if they never were. And in fact, they never are. They never were, they never are. The mirror alone is. Not even the mirror. Because the mirror is contrasted with its reflections, and its reflections are unreal, which means the mirror is just a thought. No, no, something beyond the reflections and the mirror. Not even that. Beyond is a thought.
In aligning your desires, beware the shiny and seemingly attractive
One of the key steps for seekers is to obtain a quiet mind, and, unlike the traditional method of renouncing all desire, I advocate that people be honest about what they want and pursue it. Of course, this is easier said than done. You might be reluctant to recognize what you actually want because your family or society would disapprove, because you’re afraid of rejection or failure or success, or for any number of other reasons. This is why finding out what you actually desire is an iterative process: you imagine or try something, express how you feel, and if it doesn’t feel quite right, adjust the idea. And you do this again and again. And good psychoanalytic therapy can be very useful for this too.
This whole process of refining and understanding what you want, which I call the “science of desire,” is completely different from just asking yourself what you want and accepting whatever answer comes to mind. This is the problem with questions that appear in self-help books like “What would you do if you had unlimited money?” Often the answers that come to mind when we ask ourselves such questions are totally wrong.
This is because we can be very easily deceived by what we think we want. Often shiny ideas like money or prestige sound good. “Of course I want that!” we seem to say to ourselves. “A beautiful, office, lots of money, tons of respect as an investment banker, a job where I’d be working on high-profile corporate deals that will change the world? Sign me up!”
This is all very superficial. The actual work and settings and people involved in that kind of job, for example, may be extremely different than that shiny TV-ad-idea you have of it. This is why actual experience of the job, talking to people, getting real data, is so important. The guts, the flesh of the thing, has to be understood as well as possible, and that has to be evaluated as to its emotional resonance, not the top-line surface of it.
So next time you’re evaluating something, beware of shiny summary. Look beneath the hood to what the option actually involves in all its muscle and blood, try that, experience that, and then see how you feel, and re-evaluate if necessary.
The habit of thinking of what to do next is hard to break.
The habit of thinking in terms of what to do next is hard to break. Your true sole job is to relax and reside in peace at all times, bar none. For no reason and nothing should exception be made. That is the true vocation of the human being. Through that all else gets done, without his or her knowledge.
Doing nothing, the sage does all, Lao Tzu says.
When trying to relax, anxious thoughts sometimes arise: “I’m staying inactive too long! When will I wake up and do things? Time’s running. Ok, enough relaxation, now I’ve really got to get up and do!” And then the further questions: “When will I do? What will I do? How will I do it?” And on and on and on.
As soon as you touch thought, the entire architecture of the maze lights up. Notice the wording here; if you touch thought. If thought occurs spontaneously, impersonally, that is fine. That is, if it happens despite your utter calm, as an involuntary spasm!
There’s no one then there to suffer the consequences. (Not, of course, that there ever really is.)
Only when utterly, insouciantly unconcerned with even the next second, let alone the next minute or hour, can real action — action whose source is the mysterious and the creative and the playful — take place.
On motiveless motivation
If there is a seeing-through of the idea that we are the ones in charge of our lives, that there is indeed anyone “at home” to make decisions, and anyone “at home” to enjoy (or suffer) their consequences, the mind becomes very quiet, very silent. After all, the motivation to think arises chiefly from desire — and not just any desire, but rather desire which arises from the identification of ourselves with the imaginary entity called a person.
Actually, that’s the only thing which is normally called desire at all.
What happens in place of this if the mind is quiet? Well, it depends on who you ask. For the ‘person’ whose mind is quiet, nothing can be said to be happening at all! What happens when you’re distracted, when you’re not paying attention — in that moment, do you notice what goes on around you? No, you do not. So what is the experience of the world like when you’re not paying attention to it? The non-egoic ‘state’ is like that.
And yet from the ‘outside’ standpoint, the mind and body seem to continue to act. But what motivates them to act? And the answer is that something beyond normal identity-based desire motivates them. Something else. Something that we can call non-egoic desire if we like, but it’s really not like desire at all. It’s something else. It doesn’t do, think, or feel because it wants something. It does — why? Because — unclear. It just does. For its own inscrutable reasons.
Its motivation is motiveless.
In fact, only this motiveless motivation is ever in operation — even in ‘egoic’ motivation.
The pure intellect -- a contradiction in terms
Surrender is an action non-action. It is a refraining from action. It is a not picking up of the mind. It is a refraining, hands up, a backing away.
It cannot be defined what it is. it is not a doing. It is not a refraining from action. It is not a not picking up of the mind. These all would suggest that there is a someone or something which chooses to do something, even if that doing is a not doing. Yet there is a choice, but there is not a choice. The choice consists in knowledge, but knowledge is not a choice, not a doing.
There is a choice from one side, and that choice leads to another side, a side where there are no sides.
Sri Ramana Maharshi spoke of the idea that the ego even of knowers rose up (jnanis), but that it was blunt, broken, burned up, harmless, because the jnani’s attention was fixed so solidly on the Self or source of thoughts, of mind. Yet is the attention indeed fixed? What does it mean for attention to be fixed on the Self, which is not a something, not an object, not a dimension of attention? It might be said to be withdrawn from the objects of the mind and world, but who is so withdrawn? Would not that “it” also be an object?
It could be claimed that the Self in this case is actually the pure intellect, the subtle sattva (the reflective quality of awareness), but as Ramana Maharshi also said, such a pure intellect is effectively the pure, absolute Self, like two mirrors reflecting each other. These kinds of verbal formulations are concessions to the language of ignorance, which must conceive even the absolute in its limited, dualistic terms.
The paradoxical 'action non-action' of surrender
A little audio clip on the meaning of surrender… and the strange way it leads to Knowledge beyond itself
Enlightenment from 30,000 feet
Enlightenment is itself a piece within a larger Puzzle
“But after all, who knows, and who can say
Whence it all came, and how creation happened?
The gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?
Whence all creation had its origin,
he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
he, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows — or maybe even he does not know.”
One lesson on which all schools of spirituality agree is that nothing on Earth is worthwhile for its own sake. All goals, however grand, are limited. They cost pain to get and if gotten are always in danger of being lost. Eventually they are lost, and then more is desired again. This is a hamster wheel and a fool's game. When this is realized, the basis of motivation must change.
Even the “magical" and the “divine” are just words, and can never serve as a true basis for long-term, sustained action in the world. The mind cannot truly conceive the meaning of these words, and so converts them into more limited, dead things.
Curiosity is the key
What, then, is the basis for enlightened action in the world? What is there to act for and why?
No thing can suffice. And enlightenment is, indeed, the recognition of the not-a-thing that is our own self. We are, of course, not even the doer. And yet this question arises...
For there remains -- in the very fullness, in the very completeness of our true Self -- a delicious, delightful, strange and colorful incompleteness.
What is the nature of this incompleteness? Where did it come from and what is its point?
The more we ask such questions, the more we realize the fact of our confusion. That confusion is not weak or harmful. On the contrary. it is the one true, durable motivation. It is the other side of the coin of enlightenment, that which accepts the necessary limitation of life and in fact feeds on it: curiosity.
It's all about The Puzzle
Life is a deep well of mystery and while enlightenment points to our true nature as total peace, it does not resolve this mystery.
We don't know the name or nature of this Mystery. Its name is its heart, its unsolved Question. We simply know that, deep within us, it calls to us.
It is a Puzzle, it is a Wonder, and whatever name we put to it never quite captures it. The name is dead as soon as it is spoken, for the reality changes instantly, constantly. We think it is here, and try to catch it, but it turns out it was over there the whole time. It moves endlessly without seeming to have moved at all. This is the game we are all playing, and when it is recognized as a game, it becomes fun.
Two paths to putting the jigsaw pieces together: wider and deeper
We cannot fully win this game. In fact, what we want is to be puzzled more and more deeply, more and more delightfully. And that requires finding answers which are themselves doorways to more intricate questions. It's like a video game with an infinite number of levels.
There are two ways of playing this game.
One is lateral: it connects various disciplines. Bring the humanities together, the sciences together, the arts together, and then connect all the insights of these different domains with each other. The entire experience of the entire human race must eventually connect and show a bigger piece of the Picture.
The other is vertical. We must each go deeper and deeper into our own specific viewpoint, our own precious and utterly unique individuality. How do we do this? We express what it is like to experience our experiences so accurately and originally that others can feel the way we feel. We at least try. All of us have exclusive access to our own story, to our own memories, and they are a fund of answers -- not just for ourselves, but for everyone. We all have the duty and pleasure of being artists.
Answers are just questions in disguise
The entire task of human knowledge and wisdom and creation is to help us piece together this strange Puzzle, this Thing which we all want to desperately know. What is that Thing? What is its meaning? This is the heart of the heart of what we don't know.
Every revelation leads us to greater clarity and greater mystery. That's the frustrating joy of the chase. There is an infinite unfolding of the unknown into the known, and that into the even more unknown.
It is to speak, and by speaking, to see, more of the infinite facets of the Question that is the real task. We are pushing against the limits...deeper and deeper, subtler and subtler.
The truth is stranger than we can possibly imagine. That strangeness is God; that strangeness is our true Self. We are it and we wish to see it. We are unlimited, and so unlimited that we are capable of limitation. And within the folds of these paradoxes there lies nestled the Question.