Written Messages

Paris,

5 July 2022

W. X. explained that for many years now he had been meditating fairly regularly. He had studied the various systems of meditation and somewhat practised them. He had also prayed regularly, he had followed the path of devotion. His meditations had consisted of various forms of self-discipline, or rather he had disciplined himself in order to meditate. But after these many years it seemed that he could not break through to reality, to God.
The various forms of what he calls meditation, are they not concerned with fashioning thought after a pattern? The becoming of the ideal, the flowing into the formulated, the cultivation of the necessary  qualities, are they not all in the direction of self-becoming? Our effort is directed to achieve, and without understanding this effort to become, it may in itself, become the means of preventing that which is. Without understanding him who prays, his prayer may lead, to delusion. So is it not essential to understand the maker of effort? Prayer and effort bring their own reward, but is the reward commensurate with the Real? The reward is according to the effort, and unless the maker of effort understands himself, his effort, his prayers have no right foundation. An answer is not necessarily the true answer, and so without understanding the maker of effort and him who prays, his thoughts and activities have no basis for right thinking and action.
If you do not understand yourself, you have no foundation upon which to build. If there is no self-knowledge, what you build today will be destroyed tomorrow. There is no surety ; there is contradiction, misery, ignorance. If you understand yourself, you understand the whole. Without you the world is not. Without you I am not. You are the results of the past, of all the fathers and mothers just as I am also the result of all the fathers and mothers.  Your father is my father, you are me. You are the world. What you are, the world is. Without understanding yourself, without self-knowledge, all knowledge is ignorance and leads to sorrow.
‘Yes’, he replied, ‘I see that very clearly. I see what you mean by I am my father. It is very revealing’.

So without self-knowledge, self-awareness, right meditation is not possible. Without becoming aware of the thinker, merely to reshape thought is of little significance. Awareness, meditation, then, is self-discovery. To discover, there must be freedom from identification, from judgement, which is a very difficult task. Judgement and identification prevents understanding.  Wrong means will produce a wrong end; through wrong means the True  cannot be found. From the very beginning, awareness must be choiceless. The maker of effort, the maker of choice must be understood and dissolved.

The whole process of awareness or meditation is to reduce the maker of choice, the thinker, to silence.

The thinker expands himself into the result. If you are seeking a result, is not your thought concerned with gain, achievement, the strengthening of the centre of accumulation? Is there not the strengthening of the experiencer and his experience? If you are seeking a result, are you not fabricating time? Through the process of time, is the timeless, the eternal, to be discovered? Time must cease for the timeless to be.

Mind is the psychological time! Mind must cease, for Life to be! Life is Eternal and Eternity.

Jai Life-Eternity