“You’ve been chasing bliss for your whole life—and there’s the rub: bliss is a butterfly, a bird that can’t be caught; you can only wait until one day you find that it has landed on your shoulder. It happens only when you are in a state of no-desire, with not even the desire for bliss. That is one of the greatest dilemmas. It is a natural desire to be blissful, it is instinctive. It is not only man who is seeking bliss, all beings are in search of it, but the problem is that the search, the very search, is a hindrance. It takes you away from the moment, and bliss can only be found here and now. All seeking and searching takes you away from the present. It creates future. Future is not part of time, future is a projection of our desires. Only present exists; past is memory, future is desire. They are not part of time, they are part of mind. Only the present is time, because only the present is real. There are people who are searching for money and there are people who are searching for God; they are not different people, not at all. They are the same kind of people, although down the ages they have been thought to be very different, almost opposite to each other. One is condemned as worldly and the other is praised as spiritual, but the truth is that both are of the same category. It is not a question of what you are seeking; the object of your search makes no difference—you are seeking, that is more important. You can seek God, you can seek money, you can seek power, you can seek bliss, but because you are seeking you will remain miserable. Modern man is seeking too desperately because money has been achieved. Now money is no longer a relevant goal and the mind feels empty. Now the mind is desperately looking for new objects. Unless the mind finds new desires and new objects, it cannot exist. It exists through desiring, so it goes on creating new objects for you to desire and to rush and to run after. You are running after shadows; you will not find them. You are running after the horizon which exists nowhere; it only appears to. The distance between you and the horizon will always remain the same because it is just an illusion. The future is an illusion like the horizon. You have been searching for bliss too seriously and that has made your whole life a long long anguish, anxiety, tension. My message to you is: drop seeking. There is nothing to be sought, there is nothing worth desiring. Let the future disappear from your being and then it is there! Then you can call it bliss, you can call it love, you can call it truth, you can call it God, or nirvana or whatsoever you wish to call it. I have felt it more and more with the people who come from Esalen: they are searching for bliss too seriously and getting into unnecessary trouble. Hearing, reading that bliss can be found here and now, they try to be here and now. Now that is absurd! You cannot try to be here and now—trying is always then and there. You cannot try and be here and now. It cannot be made a program: it is an understanding, a simple understanding, that there is nowhere to go. The Zen people say: Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. That has to become your sutra. You have done so many therapies, so many groups, and they are all efforts to find something, to change yourself, to become more integrated, more centered, more rooted, this and that—just new names for old rubbish. This is the whole old spirituality taking on new names, new labels, because the old labels have become out of date; they are no more ‘in currency.’ So people don’t talk about God—it looks a little odd. To talk about God looks embarrassing. People talk about being centered, rooted, integrated. This is the same old game. And the problem becomes more subtle and more complex, when intellectually you understand that, ‘Yes, bliss can be found only here and now, so now I will try to be here and now.’ You are putting legs on a snake. You will destroy the poor snake completely: the snake needs no legs. To be here and now needs no effort: it is a simple understanding—a nonintellectual, existential understanding. It does not need any great logical mind to grasp it, it is a very simple phenomenon. Looking at the futility of desire, one simply recoils from desiring. Not that one starts trying to be in the present: seeing the futility of desire, the desire disappears and suddenly you are in the present. It is a happening. My suggestion for you is that something more like Vipassana or Zazen is going to help you. You have done enough of encounter and gestalt therapy—enough is enough! But this has been the problem with Esalen people: they come full of jargon, modern jargon, psychological, absolutely up to date. They don’t talk about occultism and esoteric, theological things—they bring fresh bullshit! Up to now very few of them have really proved of much worth. The greater lot has proved to be very ordinary—for the simple reason that they think they understand. The greatest barrier in understanding is to think that one understands. Sannyas means dropping all knowledge and becoming a child again. And the second word, ‘Jacob,’ means: may God protect you. Don’t seek bliss, don’t be seriously after it—I am afraid you may be still seriously after it, that’s why ‘Jacob’ is good: may God protect you! Only God can protect Esalen people—there is no other hope!”
stormborns
blakekathryn
ellievsbear
theartofmadeline
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