some thoughts

I would like to read some thoughts which I believe are true:

There is no death. Life cannot die.

The coating uses up, the form disintegrates, but life is—is always there—even if for us it is the unknown.

We cannot know life. It would be pretense to say that we know what life is—what death is.

Some wise men have said that we can know life only after we know death. In any case, death is the end—the end of everything known. And because we cling to the known, the unknown is a fearful thing—for us. So we fear death—but we don’t know what it is, really.

If we wish to know life, we need to die to the known and enter the unknown. It is hard to know what entering the unknown is. Perhaps it’s just being here. At this moment—being here entirely. Just being here quietly as we try to express our love for the one who is entering the unknown.

In moments like this, in front of death, and being free from the known, we can enter the unknown, the complete stillness where there is no deterioration. Perhaps such moments are the only time in which we can find out what life is and what love is.

And without that love, we will never find the truth.

—Jeanne de Salzmann, The Reality of Being. With gratitude to Lee van Laer.

Seeing does not come from thinking. It comes from the shock at the moment when, feeling an urgency to know what is true, I suddenly realize my thinking mind cannot perceive reality. To understand what I really am at this moment, I need sincerity and humility, and an unmasked exposure that I do not know. This would mean to refuse nothing, exclude nothing and enter the experience of discovering what I think, what I sense, what I wish, all at this very moment.
From “The Reality of Being,” by Jeanne de Salzmann excerpted as “Seeing is An Act,” PARABOLA, Fall 2011. (via parabola-magazine)
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Without Beginning or End

“For thousand of years the human brain has been conditioned to act from the center to the periphery and from the periphery to the center by a continuous movement, going out and coming back. How could this movement ever stop? If it ceases, an energy will appear that is without limit, without cause, without beginning or end. To come to this, it is first necessary to make order -to clean house- a task that requires complete attention. The body must become very sensitive and the mind completely empty, without any desire. Understanding comes not by an effort to acquire or become, but only when the spirit is still…”

From THE REALITY OF BEING: THE FOURTH WAY OF GURDJIEFF by Jeanne de Salzmann, Shambhala, 2010. pp.320.  There is also a review of the book by Tracy Cochran on PARABOLA’s website.

Seeing does not come from thinking. It comes from the shock at the moment when, feeling an urgency to know what is true, I suddenly realize that my thinking mind cannot perceive reality. To understand what I really am at this moment, I need sincerity and humility, and an unmasked exposure that I do not know. This would mean to refuse nothing, exclude nothing, and enter into the experience of discovering what I think, what I sense, what I wish, all at this very moment.
Jeanne de Salzmann, The Reality of Being, 205. (Thanks again, acorda)

(Source: acorda)

So long as I have not seen the nature and movement of the mind, there is little sense in believing that I could be free of it. I am a slave to my mechanical thoughts. This is a fact. It is not the thoughts themselves that enslave me but my attachment to them. In order to understand this, I must not seek to free myself before having known what the slavery is. I need to see the illusion of words and ideas, and the fear of my thinking mind to be alone and empty without the support of anything known. It is necessary to live this slavery as a fact, moment after moment, without escaping from it. Then I will begin to perceive a new way of seeing. Can I accept not knowing who I am, being hidden behind an impostor? Can I accept not knowing my name?
Jeanne de Salzmann, The Reality of Being, 205. (via acorda)

(Source: acorda)

It is not a matter of fighting indifference or lethargy or anger. The real problem is vision—is to see. But this seeing is only possible if we return to the source, to the reality in us. We need another quality of seeing, a look that penetrates and goes immediately to the root of myself. If we look at ourselves from outside, we cannot penetrate and go deeper because we see only the body, the form of the seed, its materiality. Reality is here, only I have never put my attention on it. I live with my back turned to myself.
Jeanne de Salzmann, The Reality of Being, 205. (Thank you for posting these quotes from her work, acorda. They are all exceptional.)

(Source: acorda)

If I consider my state right now, I see that I have no real center of gravity, no real “I”. I have a habit of calling my body and my other functions “I” or “me”. But I do not have an “I” that is true and always the same, that does not change, an “I” that could will—not desire, not hope, but will. The different parts of me are not related to each other. My feeling does not experience what my head thinks, and my head does not think what my body senses. Their intensity is different, and they do not have a common aim. They are occupied personally, each for itself with its own desire.
Jeanne de Salzmann: The Reality of Being, 138. (Thanks again, acorda)

(Source: acorda)

When I am quiet, I feel strongly that I am one, that I am whole. I begin to feel that behind all the movements of my ordinary “I” there is something in me that remains stable, like an axis maintaining a certain balance. I have an intuition of a vibration that is totally different in its intensity. It is difficult to attune myself to its resonance, to attune the slow and incoherent vibrations that are moving me. But I listen, and am sensitive to these different qualities. And the more I listen and am sensitive, the more the resonance appears like an underlying sound, a fundamental sound as if in the background, which becomes irresistible. The other vibrations undergo a change, as though the discordant notes attune themselves and the movement quickens by itself. Here, nothing will take place unconsciously. I can only consent and wish consciously—will consciously—to be the site of this metamorphosis. This is what I serve, the purpose of my life. To understand this brings the act of letting go, a quieting of all my tensions to correspond to the essential vibration. I need to understand what I wish. I need an awakened sincerity for this blending to take place. Something has to make room.
Jeanne de Salzmann: The Reality of Being, 134. (Thank you, acorda)

(Source: acorda)

What is put to the test at the moment of manifesting is the feeling I have of myself. All our identifications are animated by an essential force. It is this that we have to confront. The forms that the identification takes are nothing. They are not the heart of the problem. We have to come back to this essential source, to see that it is behind each of our masks. it is really our own force that is stolen from us by the affirmation of our individual self. We say “I” all day long. When we are alone, when we speak with others, we say “I”, “I”, “I”. We believe in our individuality, and this illusion supports our sense of existence. We are constantly striving to be something we are not, because we are afraid of being nothing.
Jeanne de Salzmann, The Reality of Being, p. 88. (Thank you, acorda)

(Source: acorda)

In seeking to open to a sensation of myself, I see that I am still filled with tensions. The only sensation I have is of these contractions, like a wall that separates me from myself. My attention does not reach the Presence in me that lives another life. I feel the lack. The sense of this lack is the greatest truth I can approach today, the star that shows me the way. As long as I am conscious of this lack, purely attentive without interference from my thought or feeling, I see the limits of the world of the known, of form, which I have to abandon in order to face the unknown.
Jeanne de Salzmann: The Reality of Being, 67. (Thank you, acorda. It’s quite an extraordinary book, isn’t it?)

(Source: acorda)