Wake Up Now (14 page)

During another retreat, Jean periodically repeated the statement, “The seeker
is
the sought; the looker
is
what he or she is looking for,” in a slow, hypnotic voice, with an emphasis on the word
is
. Each time something inside me would vibrate, like a tuning fork resonating to a familiar frequency. At the end of the retreat, as I was driving home, not thinking of anything in particular, the phrase “The seeker is the sought” floated up into consciousness like a bubble. Suddenly my entire world turned inside out, and I knew without doubt exactly what those words meant.

Even if you don’t have a living teacher, you have access to the written wisdom of the great masters and sages and can allow their words to resonate inside you in the same way. The key is to sit quietly, set aside your conceptual filters and interpretations, and let the teachings drop into the still pool of your being like pebbles. Choose sayings that seem enigmatic or paradoxical but also somehow inviting to you, and don’t make any attempt to understand them at a conceptual level, though conceptual understanding may gradually present itself. Just live with the ripples, the silence and forefeeling of truth that these sayings evoke. Eventually they may awaken you to the living source from which they arose.

Throughout this book I offer formulations that may act as turning words if you’re ready. Here are a few more that have had particular resonance for me:

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.

—Meister Eckhart

You are the light behind all perceptions.

—Jean Klein

God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

—Empedocles (also attributed to Pascal)

You have not understood until you have solved the riddle of the one who thinks he has understood.

—Nisargadatta Maharaj

Consciousness and its objects are one.

—Jean Klein

Perhaps even more awakening than the live words spoken by an enlightened sage is the silence in which he or she abides—or, more accurately, the silence that he or she is, fundamentally. The ultimate source of all the nondual teachings, this silence has the power to draw the listener more and more deeply into itself—into the fertile emptiness from which manifest reality springs—and to elicit in those who are ready and oriented a direct experience of truth. Without this silence as ground, even the most profound pronouncements are nothing but empty talk.

Ramana Maharshi spent much of his time in silence and would often respond to questions by gazing silently into the eyes of the questioner and only then responding briefly in words. Neither a strategy nor a teaching technique, Ramana’s silence was the natural expression of his deep abiding as the undivided Self of all. Jean Klein, who similarly taught through silent presence as well as words, often said, “In your absence is your presence.” Indeed, when the separate self is entirely absent, as it is with sages like Ramana or Jean, the silent presence is powerful and all-pervasive.

In the Indian tradition, seekers may travel long distances simply to sit in the presence of an enlightened master or sage. Known as
darshan
(“seeing”), the silent, mutual gazing that occurs is considered to be the source of tremendous blessing and even spiritual illumination. But silent presence can never cause awakening, any more than the parting of the clouds can cause the radiance of the sun. Rather, the limiting and confusing patterns and beliefs (
samskaras
, or
vasanas
) naturally burn up in the light of the Self like clouds before the sun, revealing the innate luminosity that all beings share.

In the Zen tradition, the passing of the Dharma (“truth”) and the mantle of teacher from master to disciple involves what Bodhidharma called a “special transmission outside the scriptures, no dependence on words or letters,” but a “direct pointing to the human heart” (meaning true self, or the nature of mind). In fact, the Zen lineage traces itself back to one of the Buddha’s primary disciples, who reportedly received transmission when the Buddha silently held up a flower, and the disciple, Mahakasyapa, simply smiled.

Remember that inquiry only bears fruit in a heart that is open and available for truth. Being present for what is just the way it is (as described in
Chapter 4
), which naturally flowers into unconditional presence or listening, calms the pool of mind without effort or manipulation and allows the pebbles of inquiry to spread their ripples throughout your welcoming awareness. Instead of “practicing” presence, you might prefer following Adyashanti’s instruction to “rest as primordial awareness itself,” if these words resonate for you. But deliberate practices aren’t always necessary. Sometimes the rawness of suffering or crisis or the loss of a familiar identity or ground may blow you wide open, stop your mind, and invite spontaneous self-inquiry. Like Job, you may even have the good fortune to find yourself stripped of everything you hold dear and pleading with God for a voice from the whirlwind to reveal to your tear-filled eyes the truth of your existence. In such moments, only the absolute truth will suffice.

The question “Who am I?” just stimulates
my thinking. What should I do?

Don’t ask the question like a mantra that you repeat automatically again and again. Instead, reserve it for moments when you feel open and aware and relatively stress-free. Then ask yourself the question slowly several times. Let it resonate throughout your whole being, and allow an answer
to emerge—or not. Above all, don’t try to figure it out with the mind—you won’t get any answers worth having.

You may find it helpful to remind yourself that you use the word “I” constantly to refer to some inner point of reference, as in “I see, I hear, I feel.” But this “I” doesn’t refer to the body or the mind, since both of these can be experienced. So who is this “I”?

If you still find that the question “Who am I?” activates your mind, you can use an alternative, such as “What am I?” or “What is this?” or “Who is experiencing this moment right now?” (described in detail in the “Wake-Up Call” at the end of this chapter). If none of these questions appeals to you, feel free to formulate one that does or set aside self-inquiry entirely. Remember that no technique or practice is required to awaken to the truth of who you are.

When I ask the question “Who am I?” or “Who or
what is aware right now?” all that comes is “I don’t
know.” I feel like I’m not doing it right.

“I don’t know” is a wonderful answer. It means that the mind has given up trying to formulate a conceptual response and finds itself on the edge of the unknown. Let this not knowing be vivid and alive, rather than dull or resigned. You’re alert, present, aware, and you don’t know who you are. Keep looking for the “I,” and let the not knowing resonate.

Isn’t it enough to “be still,” as Ramana Maharshi
suggests? What’s the point of activating the mind
with questions when I’m already resting in silence?

If you’re truly resting not only
in
silence, but
as
silence, then all questions are unnecessary. Generally, however, there’s a subtle separation between the “I” who’s resting and the silence in which it rests, which is implicit in the words you use. You can spend days and even years resting in this way without genuinely awakening to the vibrant truth of your being. Self-inquiry, which Ramana himself heartily recommended, is designed to collapse the gap and allow the separate self to dissolve completely in the silent ocean of the Self.

Wake-Up Call

Who Is Experiencing This Moment Right Now?

Set aside twenty to thirty minutes for this exploration. Begin by sitting quietly with your eyes closed for five minutes or so. Rest your awareness on the experience of sitting, and allow your body to relax.

Now open your eyes and allow your awareness to settle on a particular object: a table, a chair, a bookcase, a desk. As you gaze at this object, ask yourself, “Who is seeing?” Clearly, the object is seen, but
who or what is seeing? If you reply, “I am, I’m the one who’s seeing,” ask yourself further, “Who is this ‘I,’ and where is it located?”

Next, open your awareness to the sounds around you. Clearly, sounds are being heard, but who or what is hearing? Again, you may say, “I am, of course,” but who is this “I,” and where is it located?

Set aside any conceptual answers, such as “I am consciousness” or “I am a child of God or a being of light,” because they won’t provide the answer you seek. Relax, breathe softly, and let your inquiry be direct and experiential. “Who am I? Who am I really?”

Perhaps, like many people, you believe that you are your brain or your thoughts. But both of these can be experienced—you can sense your brain and think your thoughts. The deeper question is “Who is sensing and thinking?” Likewise, if you point to your heart, consider that your heart and your feelings also can be experienced. But who or what is experiencing? Anything you can locate or name is an object of awareness. The question is “Who is aware? Who is the ultimate subject of all objects?”

Keep inquiring, in an ever-deepening regression, trying to find your way back to the “I,” the source of all experiencing. If your inquiry becomes too effortful or mental, just relax and sit quietly once again. After a few minutes, resume your questioning, not as an intellectual exercise, but as a whole-body search for the ultimate experiencer. You say, “I feel, I think, I see, I taste, I know,” but who is this “I”? Who is experiencing this moment right now?

Transcend what, and by whom? You alone exist.

—Ramana Maharshi

One day, Tony Parsons was walking across a London park when his attention spontaneously shifted from his thinking and his preoccupation with future events to the feel and pressure of his footsteps as he walked. After a few moments, quite unexpectedly, the me watching the walking dropped away and only the walking remained. “Total stillness and presence seemed to descend over everything,” he recalls in his book
As It Is
. “All and everything became timeless, and I no longer existed. I vanished and there was no longer an experiencer.”

For Parsons, who did not have a meditation practice or a spiritual discipline, this experience without an experiencer occurred as an unexpected and unsolicited revelation and quickly blossomed into a full-blown spiritual awakening. “Oneness with all and everything was what happened,” he writes, “and an overwhelming love filled everything.” He had stumbled on what he called an open secret, “an apparent gift that had always been available and always would be”—the
fact that “nature, people, birth and death, and our struggles, our fears and our desires are all contained within and reflect unconditional love.”

For Suzanne Segal, the awakening occurred unexpectedly as well. Devoted to the practice of Transcendental Meditation in her early twenties, Segal, a Chicago native, had stopped meditating, married, and moved to Paris with her French husband. Pregnant with their first child, she was stepping onto a bus one warm afternoon when her accustomed sense of identity “was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left of my head. ‘I’ was now behind my body, looking out at the world without using my body’s eyes,” she relates in her memoir
Collision with the Infinite
.