Amigo_2_2001 - de Professional Sidekick · Web viewLove is the subject of this issue of Amigo. A...

A m i g o # 3True Lovejune, 2002

Love is the subject of this issue of Amigo. A world full of other words, ideas and concepts is hidden behind these four little letters: passion, surrender, a knight on a white horse, sacrifice, bhakti, gentleness, the soul mate, unconditionally, devotion, empathy; love for your profession, your activities, your children, your partner, your friends, etc. etc.At first we search for it in our manifest world, only to discover that it doesn't live there. Everything seems like an invitation of The Beloved. If you accept this invitation to come 'home', then you find the true Love.

The expression 'Love is Blind' seems to be exceptionally accurate in this context. At such a moment, the persons cannot be seen or found.What remains is The Love, without someone who loves or is loved. You can compare it to rubbing your hands together. Can you tell which hand is feeling which hand? Your attention shifts from the knower and the known to the knowing (perceiving) itself.

In this Amigo Wolter Keers tells us about loving as an art. Jan van Delden compares it to air, which you feel only if it is stirring. I speak with Hans Laurentius about the difference between love as an experience and Love (with a capital letter). Belle Bruins shares her fascination and resistance with us as she writes about Bhakti. Jan Koehoorn about love and music. And then Nisargadatta: 'Don't refuse to be what you are.' Can it be said more compactly? Francis Lucille speaks about Love as: 'This miracle is the smile of God.' Under the heading poetry you will find a collection of poems and quotes which speak of Love in their own language. Sam explains why One is verb. Vijai Shankar says: 'What isn't love?' And finally I try to indicate that Love has no shame.

Probably love can be seen as that which unites, or maybe to describe it even more accurately: love (with a little letter) is that aspect which shows itself in the world of experience and carries in itself the invitation to be Love (yes, with a capital letter). But, it remains a 'dangerous' word, because it is actually an abstraction which we try to encompass in one word for the sake of understanding and convenience. But is it to the point? Is it something like looking at passionate red without calling it that? What then makes the red red?

Is love then what reconciles the difference between'is this it?...' and 'this it It!'? Exactly the same words, but such a world of difference. Love from the editors.

[Kees Schreuders]

Amigo #3 june 2002 1

'Dear Lord.We accept Youas I am.'[Herman Brood, 2001]

contents:

The art of loving[Wolter Keers]

Love is as the air..[Jan van Delden]

Just let Love overcome you[Hans Laurentius]

Thinking about Bhakti… [Belle Bruins]

Don't refuse to be what you are[Nisargadatta]

Love in the other[Francis Lucille]

What is love not?[Vijai Shankar]

Love & music[Jan Koehoorn]

A little Bhakti book for the enthusiast[poetry]

One is a verb[Sam]

Love knows no shame [Kees]


Bhakti Yoga: the art of lovingWolter Keers(from Yoga Advaita, published with authorization of uitgeverij de Driehoek)

Love and knowing have in common that they are a sort of suicide. If we ever want to arrive at real love, then we need to understand it with our whole being. Love and knowing both begin — or so it seems — in duality: here I am, there is the loved: A loves B and B loves A. But, when we learn little by little to see more clearly, we discover that we had made a mistake. In the experience of love both A and B disappear and have totally dissolved in one Experience that is love itself.

A special difficulty lies in the fact that with love, with that word, we mean two different things: to begin with it means a feeling and even the deepest that we know and which, also in a psychological sense must lie at the basis of our lives, if we are going to function well. Whoever as an infant had no mother to cuddle him, and to sing lullabies to him later and who comforted him when he was hurt, probably has a more difficult life than others. And whoever underwent the tragic destiny that his parents hated him, grows up to become schizophrenic or criminal — in any case that is easily possible.As a feeling, love often has a beginning and an end. But, this feeling is very special, because it transcends itself. Just as the I thought can carry our body, senses, thinking and feeling to what is the actual irreducible 'I', love can take us from the object to the complete oneness in which neither object nor subject can be found: there you and I are one — not as personalities, but as the one Experience that is timeless and without form, larger than the largest. There is no unity in duality: two bodies never become one, two personalities never become one. Unity is there in the love where we have left time and space behind us.And this love is the love in the other sense of the word. This is the love that is meant when it is said in the Bible- and other holy books and traditions that God is love. God is not a feeling, but unchanging, the Light of the light, the Love of the love: that is the meaning of the saying 'I am the light of the world'. This second love, beyond time and space cannot be known as an object, as an 'it', as something that can be perceived by something or someone else. Because, there is nothing beyond the eternity, and moreover in this love there is no one who can ascertain anything, or to witness, or to conclude. One can only know this love by being it, just as the sea knows wetness by being it: the sea cannot go and stand away from the wetness to make some kind of opinion about it … the sea, water, is wetness.


Seen this way, love is maybe the most beautiful way to arrive at what we call self-realization. Because, if we travel this way consciously, lead by the 'distinction' between 'I' and 'not-I', we are led from the very beginning along the richest sources of our existence. After all, what is the nature of the feeling that we call love? To give of oneself. I only need to be in love and I no longer sit on the throne of my ego, but all the attention, and especially that of the heart is directed towards the other. And that alone is enough to change the world: the sky is bluer and Schubert's Mountain Brook bubbles more passionately than before. Thinking and feeling are fluffed up like a pillow and the body reacts spontaneously and full of enthusiasm — we forget ourselves. In such a case we say that we were besides ourselves with joy, by which we don't mean that we were actually out of ourselves — that is of course impossible — but we are miles bigger than we what we thought ourselves to be before when we felt like an 'I'.

The tragedy of most love relations is that slowly or even sometimes with a bang, this horizon-wide experience disappears and there comes to be, in the best case, a relation in which we bump into each other in the house and become some kind of furniture that belongs there and that we are even glad to see for each other, but from which the element of inspiration has disappeared. In the worst case the love is deformed into living like cats and dogs, and the hell of the quarrel marriage comes into being: hardly anything worse can happen to a person. Where did it go wrong? How is it possible, one hears many people say, that this happened to me? All great and important truths are simple and obvious, in this case also. If we have looked well, we see that it is clear that when love was flowing through us, the ego and its cravings were gone, while later, the battle ground was ruled by this ego: we started making demands, defending our rights, blaming and so on. In short: we behaved as if our ego, our personality had a right to the other's love.. we sought love for the ego, for the personality. We wanted to push the cork deeper into the bottle in order to be able to drink better. And then, when no wine came out for a long time, and the cork was stuck in the bottle, we even went and sat on it.But love is to never stand at the cash register: love is a kind of suicide. This is not something new — this is something that we can see as clearly as the sun on a cloudless day. But, we are so rusted into our old habits that we refuse to look clearly and we drag all our old games out of the closet and we adopt the attitude of a small child who had trouble with papa and mama, and who now fights it out with the poor marriage partner. Is that necessary? Does it have to go wrong because we are after all people and not angels? For whoever has at least once clearly seen the whole thing in perspective, there may be falling and getting up again, but it doesn't have to go wrong if both partners are of good will. We found a partner, and we wanted to join with them because we lost our egos in being together — because the love wiped away what held us bound just a few months before. And our experience was that the bounds have fallen away and that our heart embraced the world: didn't we want to hug every tree in the forest, didn't we want to jump naked from a mountaintop to fly like eagles…? The world's literature is full of this.If we want to avoid that a relation fails, and that it reaches its goal if one can speak of a goal, then we have to walk the opposite path. To arrive from the first love — the shining feeling — to the second, where we have totally dissolved in the light, the partners need to treat each other as altars on


which to lay everything that one has and that one is … and when love is there we ask nothing more. The lover is flooded by the urge to give everything that he has and is, even more, even more. This urge is the very nature of love that shows the difference between real and imitation love. Even if you go through the motions of love with a hundred men or women, it remains imitation if the unconditional urge to give all of one's self is not there: giving is the true nature of love. Whoever thinks only of a night of pleasure remains outside of love, even if they go through the motion a thousand times. Whoever is just wants to collect remains outside of love.

Is it possible then that difficulties still remain?

In principle no, but in practice yes. Because time has to pass before we understand what the word 'everything' involves. The bible says that we have to pass through a narrow gate, and that it is more difficult for a rich man (and we are all that) to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven. We can't be clothed and naked at the same time. In other words, we can't know nothing and be full of old standpoints at the same time. We can't love and stand at the cash register at the same time, or try to maintain ourselves in any way. And to reach that we have to be deliberately ready to surrender completely. This is not some ethical story: it is almost a pragmatic certainty, after all as long as I try to maintain myself, my center of gravity remains limited within one or another defense, and as long as I am limited I can't be unlimited. What we have to lay on the altar involves not only the identification with all kinds of bodies in the waking and dream states, but also all our fears, all our deformations, our desire to search for safety where none is to be found (as in the relation with the loved one!), our viewpoints, our entire I-feeling, in short the whole world; but first of all, that part of the world that I call my I-feeling and that I project on all kinds of things and situations. As long as we are jealous, or want to possess, or dominate the other or even demand that the other give themselves to us totally, we stand outside of love, whatever clever arguments we may invent to intellectualize our urge to compensate.

But we are no angels. We don't live 'beyond Good and Evil'. This kind of argument only shows a lack of seriousness. Whoever sees problems arising in themselves need not feed them, not to mention blow them up into a storm. One can feel when a fault has been made immediately. It is immediately clear when tension arises. Then you can do one of two things: either accept the invitation of the ego, of the personality, the feeling of having a right, life insurance and so on; or one can retreat for a few moments into silence, to ask oneself not what is one tempted to do now in the short run, but what we actually want in the long run. That is the return to the worldwide heart that encompasses creation. One can almost immediately return to that; one can then bring the picture to mind of how that is. And in the complete relaxation that is coupled to that perspective it becomes clear that the demands that I made a few minutes ago, were nails that would have fastened me to what I don't really want (which makes us think of one of the expressions of Janov's patient — from out reading of his book in June 1973 that said: Neurosis is doing everything that we can to hang on to what we don't really want). In other words, non-neurotic behavior is to look at what we actually and finally really want. That is the Experience that as a fire that burns everything bursts into flame as soon as


I give and attempt to give everything that presents itself as my property at this moment — and especially all my dependencies, all my identification with body, thinking and feeling, all my standpoints, my fears and everything else that I have built up in the past to defend and preserve my imaginary personality.

Whenever we give ourselves again and again in the totality of that moment on the altar that the other has become for us, then it must happen that the chains melt and fall apart. Again and again we can have that surprising experience: just a few months ago I dreaded this and was afraid of it… and now it has all disappeared. Until I finally actually awake and discover that I am free. Probably all of this, whenever two people deeply love each other, shall be a way of the heart that leads from one joy to another: because this way of self-dissolution in what the ego calls nothing is a crusade through paradise. Whoever gets the taste of letting go of defenses loses his fears of giving and of being exploited, wounded, misunderstood and so forth. Every letting go of an illusory safety that the defense offers us means a victory — exactly the opposite of the chains that get heavier and heavier after every illusory success in a quarrel.

It is another question whether this is possible without a spiritual master. In theory there is no decisive reason to indicate why we unavoidably must have a spiritual master on this way of the heart, bhakti. In practice however it seems to be necessary for every person without exception. Without a spiritual master one also gets stuck on the way of bhakti. The master is by definition love itself — what we have called the second love in this article, beyond thinking and feeling, beyond time and space. The love of such an, extremely rare, spiritual master is deeper than we know or can know as long as there remain any trace of duality in us. For those who are really looking to lose themselves there will probably come a moment when he or she will long to lay themselves down and leave themselves behind at the feet of love itself, that is to say at the feet of a guru who has been found and recognized as such. In him there is no egoism left, and you know, with absolute certainty, that he alone is safety itself, because there is no ego left in him that would want to exploit you in any way whatsoever; that he is safety because he is what you are really seeking. When, leaving everything behind you become smaller and smaller, until only a single point remains, you find in him the one who will take you through the eye of the needle, far beyond all fear and calculation.The final realization of the deepest I itself, beyond time and space, requires the unity of head and heart. Some arrive with baggage that demands a solution via the head, other are rather more heart people, but both are needed. As soon as one understands the ultimate perspective and sees that the I is the experience that has heart and had (and all other things) in common, one lives from a standpoint that is neither heart nor head, but of which these are two manifestations. The decisive insight has arrived. There only remain a few obstacles to clean up: a few things to recognize that we unjustly call I. If one is serious, the way via the head is direct. But for whoever can follow the way of the heart, the way of the head is long and laborious. Is not the heart the motor, the source of power of our existence? Shri Atmananda (Krishna Menon) once said: 'The heart does easily and in a few beats what the head sometimes needs years for, for example understanding that the entire creation and myself are 'translations' of one


indivisible love. This is what I sometimes call by your name, and sometimes by mine.'

Love can not be givenFrom a talk with Wolter Keers in Gent on January 18, 1978. (Appeared earlier in Yoga Advaita, March 1978)

Question: And love?

I had a meeting yesterday evening with a group of psychiatrists and psychologists. There I defended the proposition that there is only one psychic obstacle and that you can reduce all of psychology and psychotherapy, and all psychiatry to that one obstacle. That one problem is that we have forgotten that we are love. It was told to us when we were little that we got love from our mother and father and so on. And when it all maybe went wrong later in all sorts of ways, we discovered that we had not received enough love. And so love became for us something like a sack of potatoes that you can give and get in a big sack or a small sack and the like.This has nothing to do with love. What we actually are is the most humble of all humble things, that in which everything arises. That is the light itself. Nothing is more ordinary, common, everyday than that light; we have known nothing except that. Love is the discovery of myself (the light) in the other; the recognition of the Silence that I am in the other. That is love. Love cannot be given to anyone, you cannot get love; you can't make water wet, because water is wetness. Neither can anyone give you love, no one can receive love from you, you can only recognize love in yourself and you can recognize love in others. The moment that it happens, there is naturally no other anymore, because you indeed recognize in other, in the most literal sense, notice well, in the most literal sense; yourself. I never speak to anyone except myself, and you never hear anyone except yourself. I cannot underline enough how literally true this is. Love is to recognize yourself in the other, in what you unjustly saw as 'an other' until that moment. But it is yourself that you see there because there is only one Self. There is only one light. There is only one love. The recognition of yourself in the other, of the Silence that you are in the other, of the light that you are in the other, that is what we call love. It is not a question of giving, it is not a question of receiving, it is a question of recognition.

What is well true is that when the recognition has taken place there arises in us a reversal of movement. When I have not yet recognized it, I have a calculating machine going and then I find you to be nice or not nice: then I can either earn money from you or not, then you will say friendly words to me, or give me trouble, and so forth. That is all calculated with a centripetally directed mentality. But the moment I recognize myself in the other, who then is no longer an 'other', because I am speaking to myself behind the eyes, at that moment a centripetally directed movement become a centrifugally directed motion. You need only have been in love once to know that you are as large as the universe.Fear is one obstacle. And every fear is the fear of losing love. I am afraid to let myself be seen as I am because you may think that I am crazy or bad, or something or other. And then there is the wall: then there is 'I' here and


the other there. I am afraid that I am going to lose the love of the other. You see, whenever I think that love is something that I can possess than I am afraid that I am going to lose it. But, when I have seen with my entire being that I am that Love, what then? Water can never become wetness, because water is wetness: you can't lose love because you are love. Seeing that clearly dissolve all fears one by one; fear of death then becomes laughable. Then you can also be totally yourself in a psychological sense; you can drop all your resistances, because what others think about you is then their problem; 'you' are that which the others are seeking. And if they project a mental picture on you it is because they project a mental picture on themselves; they see themselves as a personality and therefore they see all living beings as personalities.

As long as I take a position as something that I am not, namely as something that could possess Love, as something that searches for Love, just so long am I subject to the laws of desire and fear. And where there is fear and longing there is karma and the whole story. As soon as I see what I am this imaginary world falls apart in pieces. The moment that I recognize this — always unexpected — a subtle explosion takes place and this material world turns out to be nothing but a dream, exactly the same as a nightly dream, there is absolutely no difference; both are nothing else than movements in Consciousness, and the movement that is there for a given moment is seen by me as real — in the day time it is the waking state, the world, the primary feeling, and at night it is the dream world, which is then just as real for me as the dream world now. But if I look at the experience that the dream world and the waking world have in common then I see that they are nothing other than movements in that One Consciousness that I have always been. I don't have to do anything to become it because I am it. I am the One Experience. In everything and everyone, in every movement I am this One Experience.

When this becomes a lived Experience then there is no more psychic fear possible; then there may be pain, but suffering is no more possible. I recognize that in all people, I recognize That as myself in all people, and because I know as a lived Experience- not as a theory — that there is nothing else than love I love all people, because I see Myself also through the eyes of the schizophrenic or the criminal or whosoever.Last time we discussed the image of the water and the waves; first we all think that we are a wave and that the neighbor wave is a competitor, then at a given moment, we discover; I am water and the neighbor wave is also water, and the more we pay attention to the water the clearer it becomes, until we are totally in the depths where there is nothing else but water, then we see that we are that one water and all the waves and by means of these waves the water speaks with itself.In terms of religion; this Light is what religious people call God. We are that Light, each of us consists of nothing else than that Light. Every great tradition and religion says it; that God is omnipresent and is Light and Love. Not only Christianity but all the great religions say that in one way or another. In other words: John is not speaking with Peter, but God is speaking with himself, through the one and through the other.

If this is seen and all the old ballast and ideas, such as 'I am a thing weighing so many kilograms' have disappeared, then what remains is the


one lived Experience. That is what one calls Enlightenment or Freedom. It is never something new. It is That which you are now and have always been, and whoever says that he can give it to you is a swindler.


It is like the air itself that experiences its own wind.Jan van Delden on love, Love, Bhakti .. in answer to questions from Amigo.

Amigo: It is said that, that if you discover that a 'somebody' cannot be found anywhere Love reveals itself. Can you say something about this?

(Jan van Delden and Jan Koehoorn)

Jan: The love that we are talking about here is Love with a capitol letter. This can only be made clear if everything is brought back to the recognition of the one, all encompassing, objectless consciousness. Or, as I like to call it: the first cause. All other forms of love where the concept of love seems to apply, are under closer inspection always coupled to an object and have absolutely nothing to do with Love (with a capitol letter).When the all-encompassing non-dualistic standpoint of Love has more and more corrected the false object/subject standpoint, at a given moment it will not be able to look at anything without Love being the very first it sees. This actually means that you can no longer see the waves of the play of waves separately from the fact that it is only water playing with itself.

Amigo: Is Love then another word for surrender or grace? Surrender is not something that you can rationalize or do or not do. Surrender if it happens is grace ... Is the offering of the person an act of love or is love the result of that offer?

Jan: First of all you have to ask yourself who could take that decision to sacrifice his personality (or ego). You think that the personality can initiate something to overtake the thinking. Sacrifice is nothing, a knot in the thinking.

Love is exactly the feeling of grace; just as you become aware of the wind if you have heard about the invisible air (the first cause) and you recognize it's all inclusiveness. Thus, you cannot see it objectively, but you can really experience it.

Now we always experience, as long as we think we are a personality, a subject-object relation. So, the thinking says: I experience this as a subject here and that comes about because of that object there and after that I find it to be nice, delicious, boring, terrible and so on. That makes it seem


as if we are stuck with the thinking, as if we are totally dependent on having or not having objects towards which our longing goes out and to what these objects as player of the supporting role have to say or give.

So long as there is still someone (the leading actor) who experiences, and so long as there are still experiences, it seems as if the air and the wind are caused by something outside yourself and Love is still divided. It appears as if the wind comes and goes. To be undivided Love, you first have to see through 'having experiences' and dissolve as a person or doer in the being of the experience itself. Everything is experienced. There is nothing else but 'experiencing'. After a thorough investigation, the content of experience is seen to be an impersonal happening of the first cause itself. Shiva dances with himself, standing still within. Air enjoys immovably its own wind.

Amigo: You have once said - and I also read it in Wolter - that Love in the world is so fragile. What do you mean by that precisely? Do we have to make a distinction between love with a little 'l' (the opposite of fear and hate) and love with a capital 'L' that has no opposite?

Jan: Yes, that distinction is paper thin. If you still don't live without difficulty in experience itself, then before you know it, thought is there to divide everything. And in that dividing, in cause and effect, you again lag behind the experience instead of being the unchangeable experiencing itself. When for example, the hormones come into play, it become very difficult to remain seeing that happiness/unhappiness is at that moment not caused by (and by the way is also never is caused by) the interaction between the leading character and the supporting character.

All the craziness that seems to be called up in the splashing of the waves, is only the play of the one water. Never more or less. But try to explain that to you partner! Grace is needed to not lose sight of the water during the hurricanes of life. The grace of seeing only water. This is thus not grace for one wave, but from the water itself. In general, and that is true also for the speaker, this happens in phases, as a result of which step one is just as important as seeing that no step has ever been taken.

Amigo: Is it now possible for you to react in words to the question that you once put to Wolter: 'Why is it that I don't know what love is?' Love seems to be an important 'motive' for the search...

Jan: Love is the only reason for activity. Searching to become this love, allows all activities to transform step by step into an easy, undefined, self-evident happening. If I still run after my longings like a crazy man, I nevertheless do it unconsciously for the sake of the state free of longing that is Love. Because, a longing that is satisfied by the object of that longing, provides nothing more than a moment free of longing. So, whatever happens you are already on the right track - and if it is granted to you- you will slowly go for it totally.

Love is by definition a being there without longing. Once you have seen that no object and thus no situations exist, that these objects and situations have never existed and shall never exist, there arises a certain


self- evidence. Just like the recognition of the futility of the years' long seeking of a wave in wave land is direct and definitive when the water is recognized in one wave and subsequently in all waves, until the self-evident nature of this recognition finally leads to the seeing only of water that moves immovably.

Amigo: How is it actually possible that we all know what the word Love stands for in the core and hunger after it without ever being able to feel or know what it is?

Jan: But you experience it without interruption! Out of ignorance you only pay attention to the content of the experience (the experiencing), instead of being the experiencing itself. If you are lucky - to say it like that - you will suddenly be surprised as to why you care more about one wave than about another wave. While your thinking may find some other wave far more attractive, you feel attracted to another wave for unclear reasons. So shall the powerlessness of the thinking to do something about this happening be recognized more and more until the thinking doesn't pay attention to it anymore and your reality follows the saying: it is HIS cup (and no more Jan's).

Little by little you will begin to see your thinking as a sort of child of yours, about three years old, and you will no longer pay any serious attention to that child. You enjoy the baby talk of that infant and just let it calmly come along. If you learn to let your thoughts pass by, it is in practice the seeing of the objectless Love - that you are Love! - a question of timelessness.

Amigo: Is love a difficult subject? Can it even be talked about? Why is it such a bhakti-subject? Many jnana- spiritual masters speak with so much love about their own spiritual masters...

Jan: Yes it is because a jnani knows from experience that the thresholds, that the ideas about love can create, are so many and difficult to pass, that he shall first try to direct the attention to the theoretical seeing and perceiving of the object-less impersonal being a witness. In this way he tries to take the attention away from thinking to one is a 'somebody' who always wants to experience and follow after his feelings of happiness.

Wolter was for me the first person who needed nothing from me and still gave me full attention. Also, nothing had to be kept in balance as in normal life: I do this and now you have to do that. Slowly my mistrust was broken through in this way and he showed me that love and attention is something that is beyond subject and object. He took me slowly towards being love. But that is something so totally different from everything that we had up to that moment known (call it: normal) has experiences, that the handling of that experience - namely having attention for the attention itself - took some time.

It demands going past the giving of attention to the coming and going of thoughts, opinions and feelings by holding that attention on the attention itself. It is an undivided experiencing, without opposite and opinions about the experiencing, because there is no one in the experiencing. It is the experiencing itself, the quiet burning of being there. It is like the air itself that experiences its own wind. This being carried along by something that I


still thought at first came from and was from Wolter, was afterwards taken away from him and Jan, and become something from the Love itself, the Love which had never been away. It is because that happening is mixed with tears and emotion the first time that talk about it often seems bhakti-like. Now, that is beautiful, because you can see thus that a bahkta and a jnani are for all that like two hands resting on one and the same belly. In practice it is thus first apparently the force of the attention of the spiritual master for you as a seeker within which the talking and the being together and such tells its story, until you may see spontaneously that everything is happening by itself and that the knowing is finally a kink in the thinking, a little joke of the Self.

Jan van Delden


http://www.ods.nl/la-rousselie

Just let Love encompass you!(an e-mail conversation between Kees Schreuders and Hans Laurentius)

Knowing that you are nothing is WisdomKnowing that you are everything is Love.

-Nisargadatta Maharaj- Kees: It is said that if you discover that a not-'someone' is nowhere to be found Love reveals itself. Would you like to expand on this?

Hans: One way of approaching this is to look at the ego as a mental structure based on fear, mistrust, doubt and more of that kind of thing. I consider the ego-I to be a refusal of, or defense against Love and Insight. In other words, the ego-I is the denial of reality. When this mechanism falls apart, the always-available Reality and her first 'radiations' comes directly into the field of experience. One of the emanations of Reality (or of the Self if you wish) is Love. Considering that the tendency to

chase after the Self and its emanations falls away, these appear quickly and get the chance to become manifest, where previously the primarily I-directed items got all the attention. Some of the emanations or radiations are Love, Clarity, Silence, Relaxation, Openness and such. These were already always there, only they were not noticed, (any longer), because of the I-deformation that ate up the most energy and attention.When it is seen, (really), that a someone does not exist, or to say it differently, when it is seen that the I is one of the constructions or manifestations that we witness, the center of gravity takes a radical shift. The identification falls away, in other words, the fear falls away and Love, Surrender, Trust, Joy and such arise in its place. And the most beautiful and marvelous thing is that there isn't 'someone' who has Trust, but that Trust itself is present.The whole search for Love indicates that we have a suspicion that love is there, but the search itself keeps Love at a distance.That is the paradox that there naturally is much discussion about, and the reason that I have said that the essence of the teaching is 'do nothing'. This simple statement generally needs a lot of explanation which would also make it clear that Love and Insight are twins. Nisargadatta says that very clearly, which explains why his statement that shows both sides as one movement is one of the most beautiful.In short, the Real shows itself in various expressions as indicated above, as soon as (Self) denial falls away.

K: Is Love another word for surrender? Surrender can not be discussed and is nothing that you can either do or not, it is grace


if it happens.

H: A consequence of what is said above is that Love and Surrender are emanations of being the Self. Even these emanations moreover are not the Self itself, but the direct working out of these on the body-mind by the falling away of denial, searching, striving, etc. Love and Surrender are not the same, but come, to say it that way, from the same source. Surrender is there the moment the resistance or the seeking is given up. Then 'one' surrenders. It can no longer be denied, it carries 'you', as it were, along. You can no longer resist, you give it up.It is the same with Insight. Simply said, you cannot not see it any longer, thus it is seen. Insight is always there, but we are so busy seeking, fighting, discussing, etc. that it does not get the opportunity to penetrate. At a certain moment the mind gets tired of it, or the mind is so convinced that it becomes still; then the emanations can take over the whole thing to put it that way. The trick is then not to think that the emanation, or that one of them 'is it'. They are and remain experiences. What we are, is entirely available to them, but has no preference for one or another. I have seen that people are enormously moved by Love and go into panic when this disappears. They thought that they had it forever and later thought that they had lost it again. A little investigation makes it abundantly clear that you (Consciousness itself) are still there and precedes every arising and disappearance of all experiences, including Love. It then also becomes clear that it is often so that people have certain preferences; Love rather than Emptiness, or Bliss rather than Strength and Stillness. These last preferences need to be seen also.But, it is true, you cannot do Surrender and if it happens you can also not leave it. In reality everything is Love. Love brings you to the pathless path, Love brings you Insight, by means of Love everything you need to 'let go' arises, through Love you discover that You are That. That is why I often say, whatever happened at this spot, is in any case not Hans' merit: it just happened. Great Grace up to this very moment!

K: I still have to think of Krishna Menon's statement; 'Knowing an object does not prove its existence; it only proves the presence of Knowing.' You describe that as: 'love as an emanation of 'it', remains an object, but could not you then translate Love as Knowing? For the Knowing, it does not matter what it knows.

H: You are completely right, that is exactly why I say that Love (as an experience) is not the ultimate. The experience of love, universal love if you wish, is an emanation. Love itself is what we Are and thus not a feeling or experience. I find it excellent to call Consciousness, Knowing, Love, and I do that sometimes because as you say Knowing is completely without judgments and is totally available to whatever may become manifest. Knowing never says 'no', it does not exclude anything, that is why it is Love. We can thus say that the Love that becomes manifest is an emanation, but that in which it occurs- the Knowing as Krishna Menon calls it — IS Love.

K: What is the difference or similarity between love (with a small l, the opposite of fear and hate) and Love (with a capital 'L' that has no opposite?


H: Well. The answer is contained in the question. One is dualistic and the other is not. One belongs to the I and the other to the Self. But nevertheless… little 'l' love is essentially made of the same stuff, but it can be suppressed by emotions. When strong emotions come up, it goes out of our experience. The mistake that is made is that people always couple love to an object: a person, situation, group, etc. IN that way it is made small and personal and subject to the emotional-mental. But the love between people is also a reflection of Love. Consciousness is infinitely loving, it demands nothing, makes no conditions, judges nothing, excludes nothing, etc. People do that, and that is also OK with Consciousness — or to say it better, it makes no difference to it. But people who imagine themselves to be somebody see others also as somebody. It can happen that the 'messenger' (or Guru if you wish) gets anger or love directed towards him because everything is made personal. One can experience such a deep Love around those who radiate it, and then fall in love with the form, because it is not seen that it is purely Love-in-action, and the so called body sitting there in front of you does not 'do' that, but that the body-mind is only an expression of that.The manifestation of Love is something marvelous and can hardly be understood by the thinking mind. It is also not necessary by the way, just let Love encompass you.

K: How could it be that in our core we all know what the word Love means and hunger after it without ever being able to know or feel what it is?

H: If we could not know or feel what 'it' is, we could also not know it in the core. Don't you think? So this question is not correct. We indeed all know perfectly well what Love is. But in general we know love principally as bound to a subject, while in reality it is a spiritual dimension. The personal or object directed love is always contaminated with fear and longing. For instance loving someone contains the fear of losing them and because of that all relations degenerate into a kind of livestock trade and claiming, and not allowing each other to be free is more often the rule than the exception. Really loving someone implies for me also, and above all, sincerity and the inherent wish that the other can be totally themselves.There is a natural strong relation between Love and Truth, which explains why I often use the words as one term: Love-Truth. Real Friendship or Love embraces non manipulation, or to say it positively: the spontaneous inclination to 'bring the other to themselves', if that seems necessary. That should happen by itself, not as a strategy, because then you get terrible situations as happens with all intentional attitudes. The wish that the other be themselves is a natural consequence of being 'yourSelf'. You then don't go along with the little ego-games of the other, you don't strengthen them, don't fight with them, but indicate where the opening is in the interaction. By being Love-Truth, you repeatedly bring the 'other' back to their original state. That is in reality what also happens during Satsang. Therefore Satsang is not something that I do, but something that I am (on the level of the visible active side).Thus, we know Love thoroughly, but 'from the inside out' and we have come to believe that Love can not be a basis to live from. Then we cannot serve our own concerns, but we hardly know our own interests anymore.And that is actually what we are! Love, Openness, Joy, Strength, in short


Life itself. Those are our concerns. So, the strange situation is that as ego-I we hunger after love, but are also afraid of it, we know from somewhere that if Love 'triumphs' the I falls apart. We know perfectly well that if fear and longing are the guides Love can not become visible. And we know that where Love 'takes over' the ego can't survive. That is why we as ego-I can not know what it is; we can however come to know it as soon as the spirit is in it's natural state.In other words, Love can not be known as an object of the I, that is why we don't trust it, whereas when Love has put the I aside there can be a tremendous surprise about why we did not trust it. There are as it were two dimensions. But once it is entirely in, a process will begin, even if it is to begin with from out of the ego, to get to know it. The longing for it will grow. And when Insight is achieved into the functioning of the imaginary, the breaches in the I-construct become steadily bigger and everything becomes more open, clearer.Ramana said once that the sadhana does not bring enlightenment about, but brings an end to ignorance; and then the Self does the rest. I find that beautiful, and that is the way it is. You can be ready to come to insight, to be touched, but 'you receive' the being touched and the insight. Then the process of working through comes into action by itself. Because Realization is not a process, but the thorough falling apart of the ego-inclinations.To make it clearer: I call the ego the malformation of your original character that is your basic 'programming'. This becomes malformed through all kind of happenings and ideas so that the original character that in reality is originally the vehicle of, or is directed by Love-Truth, becomes veiled. Realization brings a process into motion by means of which the body-mind again becomes the vehicle of the true. I call that in this place 'becoming more and more empty of Hans'. As long as he lives there will always remain a touch of Hans-ness, as a personal flavor of the expression of THAT, but the malformation falls away. The depth of the Realization and other factors determine that this process goes faster or slower, thoroughly or less thoroughly. The more the working through has taken place, the more the embodiment of Truth (or Love) there is. Ramana is thus Love, pure Love, plus a taste because of which we call him Ramana.

K: Is Love a difficult subject? Can it actually be spoken about? Why is it such a Bhakti subject? Many Jnani-spiritual masters speak about their own Masters with Love.

H: It is clear that there is no problem in speaking about it. For me, as I said, Love and Truth one. It is therefore a theme that comes back again and again in the Satsangs. That is because during the Darshans, or moment of stillness during the Satsang this quality is very strongly noticeable. It is the Love that makes it possible for the words, the Knowing, to come inside. It is the still inaudible quality that opens people, makes them receptive and makes them radiate. The words themselves are meaningless if that energy is not there. That is why both Love and Clarity or Insight have to be there, if real Satsang is to happen.Love alone is fine, but does not clarify. Clarity itself is also fine, but does not go deep, it does not really touch you. Love and Wisdom are thus for me like my two legs, they are both needed for walking, and one is no more important than the other. They belong together. So, for me it is not a Bhakti subject, it can be spoken about with Clarity. But, as I said, if it can


not be felt, transmitted as it were, it is only blah blah.Naturally the Jnanis speak about their Guru with much love, because Love is the basis of the functioning of the so-called teacher/disciple relationship. The actual spiritual master is Love-in- action. In the beginning the disciple or seeker is only busy in gathering knowledge, but if it goes well he understands quickly that it is not about intellectual knowledge, but about something much deeper. Then, if he opens himself, he will feel that the Guru approaches him from enormous compassion, a compassion that is probably not understandable, but is definitely noticeable. That can move one deeply. Finally it seen that Love and Insight only appear to be differing paths for the seeker, but that is really not the case.

K: If I understand you correctly I could summarize what you said as: what we are is not recognizable by the senses or the mind, has no distinguishing characteristics or properties, goes before and beyond; still we re-cognize it. By what means then or how, does the question immediately arise in our minds?Love (as one of the emanations of the Self) is actually the messenger ('the invitation' is perhaps even a more beautiful word) that indicates to us that we could solidly re-cognize the rarity, the subtlety of the Being or something like that without the mind or the senses. But, that mind has a tendency to try to find the root of it in the world of experience (where else could it seek?), of something that is purely spontaneous and without cause. Love is it's own cause and so it refutes every cause and effect argument. Love shows the mystery of life. Is what remains is wonder?

H: Yes, love as an experience thus points to Love itself, that can not be known by the thinking and feeling systems. It is, you could say, Love that knows itself: Consciousness becomes conscious of Itself. Self-realization is not of the person, but 'of' the Self and shows itself by means of radiance at the body-mind level. The radiation is for that matter completely spontaneous and simply takes the 'system' in which to begin with the I-movement played the leading note over. What we actually are, Love thus, expresses itself more and more easily via the body-mind system. So we as people are more and more emptied of the imaginary and more and more the embodiment of the Real.

January 2002 Hans Laurentius


http://home-1.worldonline.nl/~fengcons/

Thinking about bhakti…February 2002. Here I am, yet again sitting in a classroom waiting for words of wisdom from yet another Advaita master. In the front of the room the 'bhakti game' is going on: photos are being dusted and arranged, flower petals are scattered over the altar, tablecloths are straightened, flowers are put into vases, incense is burned, pillows are fluffed up, garlands are arranged, once more, a little bit of fluff here, another one there. One man, four women and not let's not forget the water carrier and the I-sit-here, you-sit-there-part and the covering of bare knees with shawls and skirts. Almost everywhere it is the same ritual, still even in Holland anno 2002.Question marks and irritated thoughts arise in my mind; untill 'my little-I' steps aside and I cannot help noticing the dedication of the devotees. I feel moved by the innocence of it all and I remember Alexander's words: 'Every object is a glimpse of God.' And: 'There will come a moment that you discover bhakti. Suddenly it will be there like a child starts speaking words. That moment is unpredictable, but it is guaranteed to come. And that is not only true for women…'

I wonder whether what I see is bhakti, and why it moves me as much as it puts me off. Come on, stop, arranging flowers has nothing to do with bhakti. Or does it? It's just the way women are, always arranging things... It's the nature of the beast. Does it or does it not have anything to do with jnana? Why does it bother me so much? Are jnana and bhakti two expressions of the same thing? Can you not have one without the other? I should know it after all, it also happened to me, in the past with Osho, and later I bought socks for Alexander and I cleaned his bathroom. Was that bhakti or wasn't it bhakti? What is the difference? Cheek to cheek with Shanti Mayi's I sang the stars out of the sky, and at Jan's I take care of his tea when I get the chance… Why do I get so excited about it? Why the heavy reaction? It feels so old fashioned. It gets under my skin. Times have changed and I am only interested in jnana, insight, consciousness or silence. Period. We are alive now in 2002: the time for scattering flowers is over... Or is it?What did Alexander (Smit) actually say about bhakti? Sometimes he called it 'fantastic', and another time it was: 'Bhakti is just for 'immature seekers'. Depending on who asked the question or who was sitting opposite him. 'Jnana is too abstract for women; bhakti is more suitable for them'. But he also said that bhakti cannot be separated from jnana. And, he loved rituals... In short, that didn't help a bit. And so I simmer a bit more and then I enjoy the direct Advaita arrows coming from Vijai Shankar (More from him in this Amigo).But naturally there is a little afterthought. We are devoting an issue of Amigo to 'love', 'Love' or 'True Love' and we don't know what we are talking about. Is love the same as bhakti? Does love end in bhakti? Do Love and bhakti come from the same source? Is Love what we are? Is bhakti what we are? Is bhakti the opposite or the complement of love? Or is bhakti from another dimension? What is the difference between devotion and love or between devotion and insight? Or is devotion an expression of love? Is it true that there comes a moment


that bhakti grabs you by the short and curlys? I cannot help thinking about Jan (van Delden) who stole Wolter's heart when he stood up during a discourse and asked: How come I don't know what love is?It is clear: we don't know either...Meanwhile we have collected and received much material in our striving for insight and decided to simply pass everything along so that every reader can get out of it what is suitable to them. (By the way Wolter's answer to Jan was: 'Because you cannot seek Love. Love is what you are...')

Alexander Smit (1948-1998) on bhakti'Bhakti' means doing everything as if you are doing it for your Guru. If you can do everything in his name, then that is bhakti. The word bhakti means devotion, dedication. Whatever you do, wherever you work, in a factory or in an office — do it with extreme dedication. Consider all things to be your friends, and all your friends as 'altars' where you can lay everything down. That is devotion. Lay everything that moves your heart on the altar. In Hinduism the puja table is the symbol of dedication. Don't hold anything back. The larger your love the less you hold back. If there is nothing to hold back then you share everything with everybody. That is how simple the bhakti path is. And, the effect is immediate. That is why women are so attracted to it.Everything that you love becomes holy. When you play the violin, the violin becomes holy. You care for your instrument, you polish it so that it shines and is clean and is a pleasure for the eye. There is love, dedication, and devotion. When that love is not there things are abandoned: your heart isn't in it anymore, you become indifferent. Real devotion is all-inclusive, not exclusive includes everything and everyone. Your dedication has to embrace everything. You have to embrace everything from your Heart. Everything. Your dedication has to open your Heart to all living creatures. That is the true meaning of bhakti. If it does not concern everything and everyone it is not bhakti. Then it is sectarian, 'holier than thou' and all that kind of nonsense.jnana and bhakti come from the same source. jnana, the path of discrimination (what is real and what is not real) ends in bhakti and bhakti ends in jnana. They complement each other and finally they merge in each other. Devotion is the best way to lose your (psychological) self, because we try to control things too much. We want to steer. But in realization there is absolutely no more control. There is nothing more to steer! But women can allow that better than men. That is why women feel more connected to bhakti. It fits them better. But, I am extremely delighted when they choose the jnana path. You could naturally ask why I give jnana teachings to women when bhakti fits them better. I do that because I know that ultimately they will devote themselves to the Real, which is what they are, the Self, Adman, the Consciousness itself.(Fragment from a tape dating from June 1990)


Vivekananda (1862-1906) on BhaktiBhakti is a real, genuine search after God, a search beginning, continuing and ending in Love. One single moment of the madness of extreme love to God brings us eternal freedom. When a man gets it, he loves all, hates none; he becomes satisfied for ever. [.] The one great advantage of Bhakti is that it is the easiest and the most natural way to reach the great divine end in view; its great disadvantage is that in its lower forms it oftentimes degenerates into hideous fanaticism. [.] All the weak and undeveloped minds in every religion or country have only one way of loving their own ideal, i.e. by hating every other ideal. Herein is the explanation of why the same man who is so lovingly attached to his own ideal of God, so devoted to his own ideal of religion, becomes a howling fanatic as soon as he sees or hears anything of any other ideal. [.] There is Bhakti within you, only a veil of lust and wealth covers it, and as soon as that is removed Bhakti will manifest by itself. [.] Bhakti differs from

your Western idea of religion in that Bhakti admits no elements of fear, no Being to be appeased or propitiated. There are even Bhakta's who worship God as their own child, so that there may remain no feeling even of awe or reverence. There can be no fear in true love, and so long as there is the least fear, Bhakti cannot even begin. In Bhakti there is also no place for begging or bargaining with God. The idea of asking God for anything is sacrilege to a Bhakta. He will not pray for health or wealth or even to go to heaven. [.] Philosophy says, 'Check everything.' Devotion says, 'Give

up all to the stream, have eternal self-surrender.' It is a longer way, but easier and happier. [.][From: Teachings of Swami Vivekananda; Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta, India - 1948]

Words of a bhakta:Sahajo, an enlightened woman from Rajasthan, India, 18th century.No duality, no enmity.Sahajo says: One is without desire.In a state of contentment and purity,There is no dependence on the other.When asleep, one is in the empty sky of the divine;When awake, one remembers the divine.Whatever one says are divine words.One practices desireless devotion.One is ever-drenched with love,Intoxicated in one's own being.Sahajo says: One sees without discriminating,No one is a beggar or a king.The sage is alone, no need for company,


Her only companion is her own being.She lives in the bliss of awakening,She drinks the juice of her own self-nature.The dead are unhappy, the living are unhappy,The hungry are unhappy, the well-fed are unhappy.Sahajo says: the sage alone is blissful,She has found the eternal joy.

(From a beautiful Osho book titled Showering Without clouds — Reflections on the Poetry of an enlightened woman, Sahajo.The Rebel Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., 50 Koreagon Park, Poona 411001 MS, India)

Osho talked only in Hindi about Sahajo because he found the beauty of her words could not be expressed in English. The book was finally published in an English translation in 1998 so that we could still enjoy it.


Don't refuse to be what you are.[quotation from 'Pointers from Nisargadatta Maharaj' by Ramesh Balsekar, page 204][…] "That which you are, your true self, you love it, and whatever you do, you do for your own happiness. To find it, to know it, to cherish it is your basic urge. Since time immemorial you loved yourself, but not wisely. Use your body and mind wisely in the service of the self, that is all. Be true to your own self, love your self absolutely. Do not pretend that you love others as yourself. Unless you have realized them as one with yourself, you cannot love them. Don’t pretend to be what you are not, don’t refuse to be what you are. Your love of others is the result of selfknowledge, not its cause. Without self-realization, no virtue is genuine.

When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is, and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the depth and fullness of your love for yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection. But when you look at any thing as separate from you, you cannot love it for you are afraid of it. Alienation causes fear and fear deepens alienation. It is a vicious circle. Only self-realization can break it. Go for it resolutely." [...]


Love in the other Francis Lucille was a friend of Wolter Keers and a student of Jean Klein.

There are also English language texts to be found on his website: www. francislucille.com

What is love? The word ‘love’ refers to a lived experience. It is a paradoxical experience because even though we have all experienced the reality of it, it appears to escape every attempt to grasp it, to describe it or to repeat it. The tender delight we had in our childhood when we looked at a beautiful colored illustration, the soft emotion when we think about a loved one, the impulse that moves us to encourage a stranger in deep sorrow and to help when in danger, the repulsion that grips us when cruelty is committed against oppressed innocence. All these circumstances among many others point to a common experience that cannot be described or defined. If we want to go deeper into the discovery of this central experience it seems that our investigation evaporates due to a lack of objective support. If we do not have the words to express it and there are no images to describe it, it is because there are no perceptions or sensations to experience it objectively. Nevertheless we do have this experience. That is the paradox: it is unmistakably present. It has the same undeniable and ethereal character as conscious presence. We know this experience in the same way we know that we are conscious. If we try to describe the trajectory up to the very last moment where it crosses over into the inexpressible, it seems as if the ‘I’ feeling dissolves, perhaps only temporarily, into a more spacious reality, infinite, a blessed peace that brings an end to all the emotional or intellectual agitation. We are not strangers to this new dimension. It is not the discovery of a spiritual America. It is immediately recognized as absolute intimacy and tenderness. It is the center of our self and the world, simultaneously. This presence is love.

Is there some particular condition before this quality of authentic love and compassion is revealed?The condition is the temporary or permanent disappearance of the idea of a separate ‘I’. This disappearance can never be the result of an action done by this ‘I’. Love flies on its own wings and knows no laws. It is the emergence of grace that wrests us from the hypnosis of separation. Liberation arises out of freedom itself.But you should not conclude from this that every act and practice intended to establish us as love is useless. Such a decision would confine us to intellectual dullness. The longing for love comes from love itself, not from the separate ego. On the contrary, we have to surrender to everything that takes us to love. In this surrender we discover true life, the inner peace that we have always sought.


Can love exist without an object?Love exists only without an object. Love is the love of the objectless by the objectless. An object puts clothes on love, and dressed veils it. What we love in a person is neither the physical body nor the thoughts. It is the conscious presence that we have in common with him or her, the self, the objectless. The veil can exercise a temporary power of attraction, but only the true self that remains in the background can bring us what we seek. We don’t love the other, we love the love in the other. This does not mean that we have to turn away from the other to turn towards God, the objectless, but rather that we see the other as an expression of love. Relations with our partner, son or daughter, a stranger, a foreigner then take on another dimension. Daily life becomes a field of experience that is forever new. If we approach the other as potential divine consciousness, we force God to remove the mask, which he does with a miracle; and the miracle is the smile of God.

Francis Lucille


What is love not?Love, love, and once again love. Can't get enough of it in this issue of Amigo. Now then, what is love actually? At our request Dr. Vijai Shankar goes deeply into all aspects of and around love. We asked him a few questions and he was so friendly as to answer them by e-mail.

Amigo: What is Love??

Dr Vijai Shankar:

Love as a question:Firstly, one must understand whether 'what is love' can be a question which can be answered? Love cannot be a question. For, if it is a question then an answer should be there. If the answer is there where is it? This question is ancient and an answer should have been found by now! If the answer had been found the question would have disappeared. But the question still remains meaning the answer has not been found. If it has not been found as yet then what is the certainty that it will be found. May-be the mind can never find the answer! Also, a single answer, which will please all minds, is not possible for each mind has its own ideas of love.. Hence a universal answer is an illusion. Individual answers are there for love and for this very reason there are arguments about love for each mind will contradict the answer of another mind. This contradiction is normal for each mind lives in a different point in time. Hence 'what is love' is an illusionary question, which has no answer!

Love as concept:Love is not something to know about! Whatever is known by the mind is merely a concept. Love cannot be a concept, for concepts are different in every mind and love is not so limited as to be different in each mind. Love is neither a concept nor an opinion. Love is not something you can convey through words either. Words cannot convey what you really want to say. When the mind comes in to answer the question what is love, it puts forth its conditioned concepts of love, which has been doctrined to it from without. These concepts address love as to how it should be! Should means the future. This future will never come and so the concepts of love never actualize. This creates agony among lovers. The concepts take the form of an expectation, a demand, a manipulation. Each ego merely tries to dominate the other. Because concepts are not identical arguments and anger replaces love. Love then becomes merely an interval between two fights. This interval, mind calls love and even this is not love. For the resting period between fights, which the mind calls, love is actually a resting period before the next fight erupts to defend each mind's concepts of love. All notions and concepts of love is merely a bargain! Hence concepts too cannot be love.

Ego and love:It is the ego, which asks the question what is love? Firstly it is wise to


remember that the ego is false and so the question also becomes false. Secondly, the answers given by the ego to itself or to others will be false too. This falsity is taken as truth by the ego. That which is false cannot be in life. This is the reason one finds it hard to find love in life. When the ego says, 'I love you' it merely means that 'I need to be loved' this is domination, a kind of a mental slavery. Due to dependency and security the other caters to the needs and demands of the dominant ego's demands. This the dominant ego thinks is love, which is in fact just tolerance posing as love. So long as the ego is present love cannot be present. For the ego is always in the past or the future and love is always in the timeless now. Love happens the moment the ego is dissolved into the beloved. Only the other remains and the ego is absent. Then love will blossom to such an extent that even the other will disappear and then two will be absent and only one will remain. Nameless and formless. This being is love.

Love an illusion:If the world is an illusion, which it is, then the thoughts too are included in this illusion. Let us try to understand how the words 'I love you ' are an illusion? When the ego says I love you it is trying to convince the other into a belief that it loves the other. Constant repetition of the words 'I love' creates a belief that truly he or she loves the other. If love is truly present then where is the need to say I love you? There is no need to say I love you or discuss love or talk about love. You can only talk about that which is absent. What is present will be evident by itself and there is no need to talk about it. If love is there, it is there, present, alive and throbbing. Only because love is absent the ego has to say I love you. This absence of love is taken as if Love is present. What is actually present is the presence of tolerance of the other due to dependence and security. This is the illusion, to think love is present by merely saying, ' I love you'. The words I Love you creates a belief that love is present. This belief will give rise to a fear that love might disappear. Hence repetition is demanded and the ego feels comforted that love is present. The mind has the habit to convert the other into an object to be used. This is because the mind through its senses recognizes that which can be objectified. This mechanism makes the mind to convert love into an object to be used. Hence in life the husband through the mind converts the wife into an object to be used and the wife likewise converts the husband through the mind into an object to be possessed. This is not love. The mind also says what love should be! Should be means in the future. Should always points to the future. The future is non-existent and so too love will be non-existent the moment you say how it should be!

So your question 'what is love' cannot be answered, if anyone answers what love is remember well that it cannot be love! Love is your very being and not a state of mind. So it would be proper to ask, ' What is not love'

Amigo: How come that we do not know what Love is even though we hunger for It and the Awakened Ones tell us that Love is what we are.

Amigo #3 june 2002

When two lovers loveThey love the two of themThey love the one of them

In the space between.Yates

27

Dr Vijai Shankar:

Love as the known:Love can never be the known for love is the unknown. Love is like life, unknown, mysterious and illogical. Love cannot be contained within the mind's structure of ideas and rules. Love is like breathing causeless but yet there! We hunger for love for love is our being. Unless we know who we are the thirst for love will be there. The thirst is just the longing to meet ourselves! Love has no meaning. Love like life is mysterious where neither logic nor reasoning exists. Love is like a breath. You cannot say I will only breath for two hours a day and the rest of the day I will not. Similarly love is present just like breathing all the time. Love is life no matter what the mind says about life, love has nothing to do with it. You simply love all and everything no matter what. You are love, and not some concept or opinion.

Amigo: Is Love another word for surrender or grace?

Dr Vijai Shankar:

Surrender: Surrender happens the moment we realize that the ego is not the doer. Surrender happens the moment we realize that we do not lead life but life is led for us. Surrender happens the moment we realize that we do not make life happen, life happens to us.

Grace:Grace is the very essence of life. Grace is another name for love. It is the Grace, which keeps us alive. It makes seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching possible. It is Grace, which imparts sentient to the mind.

Amigo: Is our love for 'realization' a good pointer?

Dr Vijai Shankar:

Love as a pointer to realization:Firstly, all beliefs should drift away from the mind. These beliefs are based on doubts. When one gets to doubt the mind then the direction of doubt will be towards the center. This direction will give rise to faith in oneself. Faith in turn will express itself as devotion, which is love for Existence. This universal love for all that is in Existence is by itself a pointer to realization that Consciousness is the first illusion of Awareness!

Amigo: Has Bhakti anything to do with the True Love that we are?

Dr Vijai Shankar:

Bhakti:So long as the Ego is present behind the bhakti then that bhakti is just another act of the ego. If bhakti is time oriented then that bhakti is in the mind for time is in the mind. Bhakti is timeless unremembered remembrance that Awareness is all there is! This unremembered remembrance of God is love.

Amigo: Is there anything we can 'do' to 'get' there even though we do understand with our minds that such a thing is absolutely impossible?


Dr Vijai Shankar:

Doing:The matter is over the moment you realize that 'to do' and 'to get' GOD is impossible. This understanding is not total hence the question remains. This is because the Ego thinks that it is the doer! The ego is merely a claimer and not a doer!

More information on Dr Vijai Shankar can be found on: www.ksashram.org


http://www.ksashram.org/

Love & musicMost popsongs are about love. I once heard the following remark from a producer: there are actually only four themes for a pop song:

I love you

I hate you

I'm leaving you

I'm coming back

Explained like this, love is about two people who complete each other to a greater or lesser degree, and enter into an agreement for a longer or shorter period of time. That can become anything from a one-night stand to a diamond anniversary. Two people come across each other and notice a certain force of attraction. In each other's company they discover that it is almost impossible to think, because they only have attention for the other. This occurrence is so essential to mankind, that it is expressed in all sorts of ways in all forms of art. Thus, also in music. Ninety-nine out of a hundred pieces of music are about love.

If you try to analyze what the characteristics of love are you land in an awkward predicament. Naturally if it were easier to describe there would not be so many songs written about it. Whatever you say or write about it remains insufficient to express love. So, we write One more song, we make another poem. It is not always about earning money as in contemporary pop music. In the past composers were often penniless. Mozart is probably buried in a pauper's graveyard in Vienna (that is not known with certainty).

In love differences disappear, discrimination falls away. One cannot speak anymore about two people who love each other. There is no more space even for one person. Something like that happens in making music. The personality can not stay in place considering that the entire attention is focused someplace else. There is probably no need for a personality, for a doer in love and art; or maybe to say it even better, there is no SPACE for a personality or a doer. If we examine the things that we like, they are also often things in which there is no personality present; watching films, reading books, meditating, making love, making music. There are also chemical ways to change or dissolve the personality, but these have adverse side effects because they are artificial.

What we seek is to dissolve in oneness, and we can make the discovery that we are the oneness ourselves. The difference is namely so great: first you are seeking for oneness, dissolution in love and sexuality, thereafter sexuality is an expression of the


oneness that you are. If I think that eternal bliss and absolute love can be found outside of myself I become a beggar. For example, you can see that in people who are hopelessly in search of the one love, in the form of a person; who will see to it that they should be happy for the rest of their lives, or in couples who are always trying to change each other. They don't understand that the other appears in them, is them. It is not someone else, thus there is no need to try to change them. If you discover that your basis is Love itself, then you change from a beggar for love into Love itself. And then, you don't project absolute happiness in the outer, in a partner, a relation, love, money, or whatever.

Then, you can just as well have relationships, boyfriends or girlfriends, you don't go in search of them, but you don't avoid them. It is a crowning, not a settling. You don't become a celibate. It might happen, but it is not at all necessary, why should you? If a relationship appears on my path then I know with crystal clarity that it appears in Me. If I now try to avoid that, I have probably not seen that it is not absolute. I also do not stop playing the piano because I have seen that it is temporary. Everything is simply a reflection, a manifestation of the Love that I am.

Supertramp - The logical songWhen I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily,oh, joyfully, oh, playfully, watching me.But then they sent me away to teach me how to besensible, logical, oh, responsible, practical.And they showed me a world where I could be sodependable, oh, clinical, oh, intellectual, cynical.

There are times when all the world's asleep,the questions run too deepfor such a simple man.Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?I know it sounds absurdplease tell me who I am.

I said, now watch what you say or they'll be calling youa radical, a liberal, oh, fanatical, criminal.Oh, won't you sign up your name, we'd like to feel you'reacceptable, respectable, oh, presentable. A vegetable!

At night, when all the world's asleep,the questions run too deepfor such a simple man.Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?I know it sounds absurdplease tell me who I am,please tell me who I am,who I am,


who I am,who I am.

[Jan Koehoorn


http://home.planet.nl/~jan.koehoorn

A little Bhakti book for enthusiastsHere follows a collection of poems and quotes and such, speaking of Love in the language of poetry.

Acda & de Munnik - Jan van Delden - Boselfje - Tony Parsons - Joost Lips - Johan van der Kooij - Osho - Yates - Jean Klein - Byron Katie - Mevlana Jelalu’ddin Rumi - Kahlil Gibran - Sengtsan, Hsin Hsin Ming - John of the Cross - Ramana Maharshi - Wei Wu Wei

Acda & de Munnik - Not or never beentext: Thomas Acda / music: Thomas Acda and Paul de Munniktranslated from the original Dutch song

I see two people on the beachThey're holding hands by water's reachIt's sunset, bliss makes the words stopI know her well cause you are sheShe smiles at him and that is meBut that can't be cause I mess it all up.

I couldn't possibly be himThe peace, the love, that's not for meFamiliar like an old golden thread,You have my love, that you can see,But I know that just can't be,I wear a ring but we never have wed.

I am myself notOr all those years never beenThe right man playing out the wrong sceneI am myself not or just never been.

I see two people, they both standShe turns around, we've got to goLook in her eyes there's the same painTwo people long ago involvedAll this loving such a wasteWe can't help it but we'd rather refrain

I am myself notOr all those years never beenPlaying a game that I never can winI am myself not or just never been.

Oh, let it the sun beOh, let it the beach beLet it the sea beLet me do something nowSo that you never want to see meOh, let it be the salt


http://www.headless.org/Nederlands/introduction-nl.html



Let it be my dumbest faultBut please let me never forgetNever more forgetNever forget this day by the sea

I am myself not or all those years never beenI am myself not or all those years never beenI am myself not or never been.

.Of course it hurt.My traveling was full of pain.The pain the fuel,that burned like a hell,Burning my delusionsof many universes made away.Suddenly that tear-jerk hissing of the ego,The devil himself, was no more alone but could be heardTo issue from all the beings.

When it seemed from all the beings to comeThat one I with blaring trumpets, felling all warriorsand all their worlds,To plunge them deep into the sea,where all appeared as one,There love was bornfinally after all hissingtangibly on center ground,to see all and all surroundingas itself.In the grip of the intangibleI love only Myself.Through the nectar of desolationBurns the Light.

Jan van Delden

.The warriors seem notto tire of their worldsdefend themselves with sword and shieldas a habitI feed them with nectaragain and again they conjure tricksand if they don't workthere follows merciless violencethe warriors are cleverhave a thousand tricks


to keep me in their grasp.Still I will fight onthrough frenzy and desolation.I thank God thatmy bow is stretched each timeand aiming towards the lightBehold from there the spectaclethat's playedand see that it is only so thatattentiveness can shine on it.

---

Love for the colorlessSometimes it's a little hard,colors are so pleasant,nice to sit in,and to disappear into.They are not all the same,sometimes they are so enthralling.

I've known the thousand colors many years,Believed in many colors many years.I listened to red.enjoyed with yellow.Swooned away with pink.

But now, sometimes, I see a whole.It isn't blue, or purple, and not green.It simply has no color.One big light.Everything in it.Each, with it's color.

When I am allowed in the light,all seems so colorless, so dull and uninteresting.All I see. is the great play.The worth of red, brown or orange,does not matter any more.They play a game.

Not always do I see it so,some colors are so used to me.They don't easily go.I still believe so much in them,I still am too attached.

But when I see all colorsthe whole one light,no color more can make me sad,or even happy,in the middle again.


I see that I am no color anymore,I only re-cognize,all appearing and disappearing.Then there is light,light without color but oh so colorful!

Boselfje

.[.] When the self is no more, there is simply an abiding in the beloved. The game goes on and there is a response to the game. But the response comes from nowhere and goes to nowhere. And the game and the respons is the divine expression. All and everything is seen and heard and felt as the beloved. And the beloved is the ground of all that is. [.]From: As It Is – Tony Parsons

.Oh, he loves me as himself;I doubt no more, just cross overwith no bridgeno transport meanspure Wonder,

When our eyes flowto formless silence;where is my teacher then?where am I?

Love, I fall at your feetYou fall at my feetthen we both move our feetto delightfully, oh delightfulgo around undefined

---

It escapes mebut seeit is also here,in the middle of escapingit can never escape me.

If Knowing realizesthat it can not Know Knowingseeking Knowing stopsand Knowing falls back into Itself again.

She seeks no more but findsItself in all forms;she is the seeing from all open doorsof that which has no doors.

So, if you ask for Love


there is no road that goes there;then it is Love Itself that asks to findthe Love that it already is.

The child picks something up,the world exists no more,only this jewel; Lovepicks Itself up.

---

Oh God I sing Youand You know,even if you don't exist or somethingas many claim nowadaysthat's fine with me,as far as I'm concerned they are also rightand I sing only for myself.

Maybe that's a little dumbfor a mortal creatureto claimthat a relation with God exists.

A mortal creature can see that a relationship with Godimplies the I-appearancewould happen outside God, which is absurd.

I have no affair with God. I see that God and I are both ideaswithin a Wonder not understood.

While the ideas of God and Iflounder on the shore; they find themselvesto be in the ocean of silence

God is Love, the consequence of nothing;no offer can acquire Love,it is already Love that the person forgets.

----

She has no properties;she just allows them all,so if you call it your dog,a chocolate baror your guru;it is always Loveyou follow.

Love lives in every love, even the one with a little letter;big letter L is saved for the always Knowing Love


that also hate incorporates that the little lruns away from.

---

Allowing without motiontired of the hate of avoiding,

(Every form realized in mewith no story)

All forms dissolvein worshipping the worship

Everyone knows her, but notwhere she lives, or her identity

Because Love is the dance of giving and receivingwhere no one gives, no one receives.

--- Joost Lips

.Speaking of Love…[Johan van der Kooij]

'Yesterday I met a very charming woman,I was totally gone about her…'How many times have I heard that said already?Unknowingly we use Vedanta in our speech:'I was totally carried away...': by the woman, the man, the painting, or some other objectI as a person was gone, but why?

Wouldn't it be much nicer to remain present as a person, to enjoy her or the object?Apparently something so radical happened that it would be superfluous for me to remain as a person. I dissolved temporarily in love itself.

Musing over love and her many forms of expression I heard in my heart and mind a song from my teens: Suzanne by Leonard Cohen.As if by magic I became aware of the deeper meaning of the words:

(text:) Suzanne takes me down to a place by the river(commentary:) Love, unconditional love takes me to 'shamata', stop, and invites me to look at my feelings

(text:) You can watch the boats go by, you can spend the night forever (commentary:) Time and the timeless exist together, I live both in the relative and the absolute

(text:) and I know that she's half crazy and that's why I want to be there


(commentary:) A deep recognition passes through me when I am with her

(text:) and she gives me tea and oranges that come all the way from China(commentary:) Love, or unconditional love expresses itself in many forms, even the palpable

(text:) and just when I want to tell her that I have no love to give her(commentary:) At the moment that I think that it is impossible for me to surrender to the absolute

(text:) she gets me on her wavelength and she let's the river answer(commentary:) Everything comes to life, and the insight arises that I have never been separate from what I actually am, Love

(text:) and I want to travel with her, and I want to travel blind cause she's touched my perfect body with her mind(commentary:) I say yes unconditionally because she is the source of everything, even my thoughts.

.LoveShould come out of yourSilence, awareness, meditativeness.It is soft, it is unbindingBecause how can Love create fettersFor the one it loves?Osho

.When two lovers loveThey love the two of themThey love the one of themIn the space between.Yates

.In true Love, there is neither a lover, nor a beloved.A moment comes, indicated by the body, to celebrate this love on the physical plane. To feel this oneness bodily, comes directly from Love itself.Jean Klein

.Love is so vast within itself. It’s where you die. You don’t die into fear; you die into love. It’s so vast that it will burn you up. It’s so jealous and greedy for itself to be mirrored back that it will leave you nothing. And when you’re feeling that if you don’t give it away you’ll die in it, it’s so vast that there’s nothing you can do with it. All you can do is be it.Byron Katie


.You have to hear the story of love from love itself.Because she's like a mirror, both dumb and saying much.Mevlana Jelalu’ddin Rumi

.Love only gives itself and draws only from itself.Love possess not and wants not to be possessed;for love is itself enough.Kahlil Gibran (in ‘The Prophet’)

.The Great Way is not difficultfor those who have no preferences.When love and hate are both absenteverything becomes clear and undisguised.Sengtsan, Hsin Hsin Ming

.Love always searches Love and does not stop till Love is found.John of the Cross

.See Love. Hear Love. Reach out and touch Love. Eat Love, sweet Love, and smell Love. For Love is but the Self’s Awareness of Itself.Ramana Maharshi

.Love-hate can not exist outside the dualistic universe of sense perceptions and personal experience. 'Impersonal love' is something like 'immaterial material', or some other contradictory expression.Wei Wu Wei


One is a verb[Sam Pasiencier]

The word Advaita literally means 'not two'. Two is duality. I, and a separate world. Advaita is the teaching of non-separation. In Dutch they say 'van de een komt het ander', 'from the one comes the other'. So, before we can say two, we have to be able to say one. The number one begins the counting process.If you look in a dictionary you will see that the word 'one' is classified as a noun or pronoun.I would like to make it clear to you that it is in fact a verb, One'ing. Understanding that will make many other things clear.

Once upon a time you were a little baby and the apple of your parent's eyes because you were so cute, (you looked just like them), and so smart, and they wanted very much to turn you into a human being with all the appropriate capacities like walking, talking, going to the toilet all by yourself, and counting. They carried you down the stairs and counted the steps, one, two, three, etc. Or Papa held up some fingers and asked you 'how many?' (They still do that with drunks and pathological cases I think).Mama used to play a little game with your edible toes, this little piggy went to market, this little pig stayed home, etc. Little by little your body parts were labeled and counted so you 'knew' that you have one nose, two ears, two arms, etc. The process of counting began with your very body.

All of this took place in the undifferentiated consciousness that you were. Little by little you were able to differentiate, first Mama and Papa and gradually other things like cats, and sisters.

What you learned with Papa on the stairs was a list of sounds. One, two three… uno, dos, tres… And they were very proud if you could get up to five or six without making any mistakes because basically the list is arbitrary.. In India it is ek, do, teen, char, panch. It could just as well be oble, goble, gooey, luk.. Again, at this point it is only a list of sounds. That is not yet counting. Another list of sounds is the alphabet: a, b, c, etc. but we do not associate that with how many of something we have. We don't say I have t pairs of socks. But we could in another system.

The first step towards counting is separating, differentiating, focusing on something to the exclusion of everything else. If you imagine yourself to be on Venus looking at a totally strange scene that you have never seen before, you might not be able to tell where something begins and something else ends. That is not so difficult to imagine I think.

In computer language this first step is 'selecting'. It is isolating, seeing as separate, pointing. Only after performing this activity can we say something like there are 'three' eggs on the table. The table has 'four' legs and so on. To count larger amounts we have to go through the process of separating and naming repeatedly until all that we wanted to count is exhausted. To count seventeen of something (unless you


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are Dustin Hoffman in the Rainman) you have to go point-one, point-two, point-three, etc, until you come to point-seventeen.

If this is all clear now I would like to say that counting is the act of one'ing over and over. And one'ing is the act of separating, thus of creating duality where there was unity. I'm not saying that this is bad in and of itself. In fact it is necessary and utilitarian, ordering three cups of coffee would be very difficult without it. It is convenient, but not the reality.Learning this one'ing you also learned to consider yourself as separate from the whole. Counting began with your very body. Some primitive tribes count up to nineteen on fingers and toes and twenty is called 'the whole Indian'.

I hope that it is also clear that this one'ing is a verb, an activity, only you learned it so long ago and so deeply that you do not remember that it is an activity and it all happens automatically. But in fact if I ask you to find one of something now you will first select it with your vision. And so the act of one'ing is also the act of objectifying, of creating separate objects. It is a verb.

Taking one to be noun has certain consequences. It creates a static world in which process is forgotten. It creates a world in which you begin to think of yourself as a noun, with describable qualities. It is part of the forgetting of who we really are. Remembering that we are a process, a verb, and not a static thing, a one, is also remembering the wonder that we are, and that we are being lived.

We have been taught, at least in our Western culture that we are separate. Advaita tries in every possible way to remind us of our unity, that the one that we take ourselves mistakenly to be is in fact the whole. The whole is the only thing that has the right to be called One. And it is so in many religions. The One. The Absolute. When you were taught to count you were also subtly taught to objectify your body, as you also learned to objectify the cat and your sister and your little red car. Remembering that you are 'objectifying', 'one'ing' seems to very difficult, you learned it like bike riding, hard to forget. Try doing it deliberately, taking the automatic out of it. It may help to remind you that you are the Consciousness selecting.
















Sam Pasiencier


mailto:[email protected]

Love is (there) always, everywhere, without shame. How do you represent something like that? I came closest with the image of a glove. See the glove then as an image of Love and the hand as the image of the ego.

The hand squeezes itself into the glove and tries to fit itself to the glove or wants that the glove fits the hand. Whatever the hand does and without caring what it thinks of the glove, the glove follows the hand without shame.

If you settle into that unconditional Being-there, the glove fits like a second skin. The separation (between the hand and the glove) disappears, the hand becomes the glove and vice-versa. You can also compare it to the artist who becomes one with his painting, the musician with his instrument or composition, the artisan with his object. If the apparent inner world ( hand plus glove), becomes one with the outer world, the difference between inner and outer disappears there also. Love unites with itself.

The glove appears then to be poured out of Love for Love.

[Kees Schreuders]


http://www.ods.nl/ikben

c o l o p h o n c o n t r i b u t o r s o n t h i s i s s u e :

Jan van DeldenHans LaurentiusFrancis LucilleJan KoehoornPhilip Renard

Ramesh Balsekar Dr Vijai Shankar

Boselfje Joost Lips

Belle Bruins (interviews, editor & translations)Raf Pype (editor)Kees Schreuders (editor/publisher & lay-out) Foekje Detmar (illustration with and transcription of text Wolter Keers)Sam Pasiencier (translations from the Dutch)

with thanks to:Yolande Deuss Mahadeva Leenstra Linda CooperMarie-Christine de KroonJohan van der Kooij

editorial statutesAMIGO, a periodically appearing web-magazine, is a platform for texts about diverse Non-dualistic approaches. Said more poetically: Amigo wants to show you in that empty chair, that you see at the head of this magazine, that you have found an unconditional friend.

Every issue will in any case contain texts by Wolter Keers and be in the spirit which he gave to the magazine 'Yoga Advaita' founded by him.







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