Still My Aboslute Favorite All-Time Quote
Here is kernel of the essay, "Love can not be [received or] given"
from a talk with Wolter Keers in Gent on January 18, 1978.
http://www.ods.nl/am1gos/am1gos3/index.html
This remains at the top of my favorites list. If you read
this and 'take it to heart,' it dissolves every possible
question.
[Quote]
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 the 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 then 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; 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.
from a talk with Wolter Keers in Gent on January 18, 1978.
http://www.ods.nl/am1gos/am1gos3/index.html
This remains at the top of my favorites list. If you read
this and 'take it to heart,' it dissolves every possible
question.
[Quote]
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 the 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 then 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; 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.