Gangaji. Maui interview

I would say it’s really important for everyone to know that I’m a regular person with regular issues that people have, that human beings have. I have an individual history that had particular issues but it’s just a version of what everybody has. And I was looking for happiness all my life I guess. I think that is an essential human ingredient and for some people happiness means just enough food so that you don’t starve. For some people it means safety so that you aren’t killed, or raped, or harmed. But for me in my particular situation, being born in a free country and being relatively at peace, I was just personally unhappy. So I didn’t have big problems but I had this search, this pursuit of happiness that started very early and turned into a preoccupation. So by the time I met my teacher, Papaji, H.W.L. Poonja, in India… and it was like the pursuit of happiness… it’s an amazing kind of dilemma because it’s actually a gift – to be able to pursue happiness. But then as we pursue happiness, we often become more aware of what’s blocking happiness when happiness is already present. And that’s what happened to me. And Papaji told me to stop my pursuits. He told me to be still. He recognized what he saw in many people and, I guess, what he knew with his own experience that the pursuing of happiness had become so mental, had become such a problem-oriented endeavor that I was overlooking the space of being, the truth of myself.

Well, fear is, as far as I can see, the root human controller. We all have it as animals and it’s a wonderful emotion. It serves us in our survival. But it very easily becomes co-opted by society or familial or cultural or religious ideas of what a person or a group, or a family, or a nation should do. So it is a universal with animals, maybe with plants too. And as a universal there is nothing wrong with fear. And if we’re willing for fear to be recognized as simply part of this experience of being an animal, being a human animal, then we can recognize that we are conscious animals and we can actually have the choice to open to the fear, rather than to be directed by the fear or to repress the fear. Because there’re many people who recognize that fear has directed them, and they recognize the prison of that, and they hate that and so they learn to suppress that and move against the fear. And that’s very valuable. I wouldn’t counsel anyone to not do that but there’s another choice and that’s to not follow the fear, to not obey the fear and also to not suppress the fear. To actually open to fear, this root human emotion, survival emotion, to open to it as energy, as simply vibration. And in order to open to it as simply vibration we have to stop telling whatever narrative we are currently telling about what we are experiencing.

I don’t wanna trivialize fear in any way and say, “Just open to it”. No. because it can be huge. It can be the terror of non-existence. That’s fundamentally what it is, the terror of death. So maybe not everyone is ready to open to it. There is a timing in one’s life where you recognize that you’ve tried everything you know to try. And like when I met my teacher he told me to stop trying anything. And when I stopped trying anything, I was aware of a very deep fear, horror of who I might be if I didn’t try something, if I wasn’t succeeding, or if I wasn’t accumulating, if I wasn’t moving up on the spiritual ladder. I felt I would just fall back into this mess that I had escaped.

And so that was the way I was holding it in the narration of who this person is. And the challenge for me and the challenge that I offer other people is to stop that narrative, to stop this story for a moment and open to what’s here. And for many people what’s here maybe some anger, maybe some sadness, but at the root, at the bottom is fear. And when we are willing to open to that, it’s actually fear of non-existence, the fear of death. And when we are willing in this moment to die, not wanting to die, not hoping to die but willing, then there is… there is no fear because that’s what it is in our bodies for – to keep us from dying, luckily, beautifully. But for a moment not being tyrannized by survival – is a moment to recognize yourself as free consciousness. And then fear may appear or not, but you have recognized yourself as that that is before survival and after survival and during the survival of the particular creature.

So I invite people and support people and challenge people to meet whatever has been avoided. Sometimes emotions are nested but finally we get to fear and in that then to meet what is under fear and finally to meet yourself as you are before any name of yourself or any distinction of yourself as male or female, enlightened or unenlightened. And then here – here you are, here we are – oneself.

I was brought up a Christian and at an early age I had a beautiful experience of the love of Christ and I still can feel that in my being. I was er… I think six years old and it was huge and you know… I was conditioned as a Christian and conditioned that there was heaven and hell. I was most likely going to hell but if I worked hard, I could maybe get into heaven. And then as I grew older and I actually went to college and studied different religions, I recognized that there was a continuum or a thread that was present in all religions and that was that there is something bigger than what we know.

I found that it’s true for most people… it’s very uncomfortable to be without a doctrine. So very subtly I formulated new doctrines and sometimes, at some periods they were Buddhist, at certain periods they were New Age and metaphysical and co-creative… And when I met Papaji, that was so radical for me because I heard him saying, “Stop generating anything, stop doing anything”, and for me that meant a moment with no belief.

I appreciate belief systems and I have been in belief systems, but I appreciate most what is free of any belief. What all beliefs are perhaps pointing to at the core, all doctrines, all religions but that no doctrine, no religion, no belief can capture in totality. And that can be experienced.

We have some ideal of Enlightenment as a perfection of emotions and mind and body. Different groups have different ideals. But it becomes part of what keeps us separate. Until we have attained some perfected ideal, we are not enlightened and so therefore we have not succeeded. So it becomes corrupted and becomes put into our mindset or our narrative just like getting the best job or the best mate or more power.

And I would say usually Enlightenment, the way it’s talked about, is about power and acquisition of power. And that can be positive in the sense of gaining power over your circumstances. This is very positive power. Even over your emotions – it’s positive. But when it becomes this just out of reach power, this power of perfection, it can almost be fascistic because everything else that is not of this power, does not give this power is hated and shunned and has to be gotten rid of. And I think that there are many religions of Enlightenment and spiritual movements of Enlightenment that actually support this ideal of perfection.

On the other hand to even hear the word “Enlightenment” can be awakening because the word is beautiful: Enlightenment, you know, the light within or discovering the light or bringing the light within. So there are many different gradations of that and in that sense I think that they’re levels of Enlightenment. When you look at the word that way and concept… and it serves. To hear the word “God” or to hear the word “truth” can actually bring you to a place of God or truth or Enlightenment.

If we’re speaking of Enlightenment as that which points to the totality, the perfection that includes all imperfections, the fulfillment that has room for sadness and grief and fear and anger, the connection that makes no distinction between you and me and makes no distinction between Enlightenment and unenlightenment, then in my experience the only reaching of that is the willingness to stop reaching for anything, to open to what is always here, regardless of what is being thought or felt or experienced. What is always here. And that is the light of Consciousness and it is always shining even in the darkest moments.

So when I was with Papaji and he told me to stop trying to be something, I just relaxed. And that’s what I am inviting people, that’s the first thing. It’s just – relax. Stop trying to change anything and recognize what is already here. There is no formula. You don’t have to be from a certain part of the country. You don’t have to be a certain gender. You don’t have to have particular karma or particular astrological alignment to discover the truth of who you are. I would just say, “Trust yourself”. And when I say, “Trust yourself”, I’m not speaking of trusting your thoughts; they aren’t trustworthy. Or your emotions; they aren’t trustworthy. I’m not saying, “Suppress your thoughts or your emotions”, but to trust yourself as to trust what is always here. It’s deeper and closer than thought or emotion or circumstance. It’s always here. And in the willingness to trust that it discovers itself.

I am interested in as skillfully as possible meeting with people, but the real meeting is something that’s beyond the person or the people and me. It’s a synergy. It’s a mystery. Not everyone is moved by what I have to say or moved by my presence and some people are. And that’s the way it is in the world. It’s a kind of mysterious unfolding that you are drawn to certain people. Those who are drawn to me – I give myself to you in support of their discovery of the truth of who they are. And in that I benefit of course even more because I am discovering another aspect of myself, free.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-21