In stating a feeling of fraternity with Nisargadatta, I do not refer to lineage,
method, or cultural background, but an apparent agreement on the simple
understanding of and experience of what "I" am, which, in my view, is the crux
of the matter, and is what I teach. How one comes by that understanding is not,
as I see it, of the essence, and my reading of Nisargadatta indicates that he
also felt it was not of the essence. I can point to numerous examples of
satsangs in which he said that simply finding the source of the sense I AM would
awaken anyone who was willing to believe it. Why would he ever say such a thing
if he believed that only years of rigorous and specific practices according to a
specific lineage were necessary? I never met Nisargadatta, so I could be wrong,
but I imagine he and I would have gotten along just fine.
I never considered the word "mystic" a derogatory term, so I am
a bit surprised
to hear it used that way.
NDM: Do you feel it's ok to take aspects from this ancient tradition, as
the teachings of Nisargattada for example, who never charged anyone for his
teachings and then turn around and market it in America?
Robert: I certainly do not. I
look with great distaste at the consumerist approach to so-called
"spirituality," and with even greater distaste on those who pander to it. I am
not involved in that at all, have never been involved in it, and have no
intention of being involved in it.
NDM:
How would your students know if they awaken to their inner guru or to their
inner ego? How would they know what is the voice of the inner guru, as opposed
to the voice of the inner ego? Can you tell me what is the difference?
Robert: I can
try to tell you. Ego is thought. Ego is words. Inner guru is silence.
Inner guru is space. Part of my work with seekers is to help them to discern
that space, to appreciate that silence, and then, finally, to abide in it.
When
inner guru “speaks,” it is heard as a silent knowing, not as thought at
all. Thought—ego—may jump in quickly to interpret, debate with, or claim the
messages of inner guru, but there will always be a space, a moment of knowing, before thought can begin its work. Listening to inner guru, and
honoring inner guru means savoring the knowing while ignoring the thoughts
which inevitably arise. This is called separating the wheat from the chaff.
By
the way, I know it is becoming fashionable to say that there is no student and
no teacher, or that you only need a teacher if you are dreaming that you
need a teacher, and this is sometimes called “nonduality,” but I don’t buy it.
For one thing, it feels a bit like a word game. If someone writes a book
expousing a no student/no teacher philosophy, and telling you that a teacher is
not needed because you already are awakened, how is that not teaching? If
someone buys the book and begins trying on that point of view, how is that not
being a student?
However, on a certain level this no student/no teacher business
is true.
So on that level it is not a word game, but even on that level, most of
us—I was one of these—need, at one time or another, a teacher, or a “mentor,” if
that word works better. Teacher and mentor are both just words. Time with a
teacher is a very good insurance policy against converting a couple of exciting
breakthroughs, triggered perhaps by reading something or attending a satsang or
two, into a dive off the deep end, and imagining oneself “enlightened.” I am so
grateful to have had Walter there to tell me, “No, Robert. That’s not it.
No, Robert. That’s not it.”
This
is very sensitive ground. Apparently, in a certain way at a certain time one
simply must surrender to a wiser hand. Speaking personally, arriving at that
time feels like what I can only call grace. This aspect, grace, makes the
relationship between teacher and student a sacred matter. I can recall times
sitting alone with Walter and asking him questions that went as deep into my
doubts and fears as I thought I could go, and then, by Walter’s words and
Walter’s behaviors, being made to go even further. In other words, I can recall
being totally vulnerable with him. Trusting him. And my trust was well
placed. His answers were not just bright philosophical beacons—that’s already
wonderful, but you can get that from a book, if it’s the right
book—but were beacons especially lit to shine upon my precise, personally
expressed, deepest inquiries. That is something you can’t get from
any book.
Method, if there is to be any, must not be received from any book, because what
is written is fixed, and does not relate directly to the seeker, who,
although called “a seeker,” is really not part of any certain class, but a
unique manifestation, a “once upon a once.” Method, if it is to be
living, must arise in response to the exact condition of the student or seeker,
and that can be seen only in real time, within a sacred relationship, never
through scripture--“holy” or not--or guide books.
NDM:
Isn’t it very easy to put faith in your inner ego because it is going to tell
you what you want to hear. The same thing with a dead guru. A dead guru cannot
call you on your self-delusion. We have all heard the horror stories about many
teachers who have awakening glimpses only to have this hijacked and swallowed
whole by their inner spiritual ego. Such as the case you mentioned. What are
your thoughts on this?
Robert: I am
not sure which case you mean. Adi Da, perhaps? But no matter, what you say is
true in general. It is easy for someone who has begun to awaken to
mistake states or transitory experiences for a true awakening. Then, if that
person is put in the role of teacher, living up to the role, enjoying
some narcissistic gratification from the idea of being “enlightened,” or even
exploiting that role financially or sexually, as has happened so often, may
overwhelm or even destroy the awakening. I cannot judge others in this regard,
so let me tell you how it was for me.
In
the memoir you published,
Awakening Never Ends, I wrote about my big dream, and my work with Walter
Chappell. I mentioned also, but only in passing, that I suffered a serious
illness a few years later. In fact, that illness was life-altering, and probably
was the final step in baking the awakening cake, so to speak. I suffered fevers
and delirium for many months, had uncounted strange dreams and visions, and,
when I recovered, I felt like a completely different person. During the long
months of the illness, I once consulted a naturopathic doctor—a man younger than
myself. At one point in the course of that consultation, I looked into his eyes,
and saw a vast, almost oceanic compassion for my suffering, and instantly, in
silence, the knowledge arose: “This is what I should have been doing.” The
knowing was not that I should have been doing naturopathic healing, but doing
oceanic compassion. Actually, I had been “doing” compassion for a long
time, but, as they say in the Caribbean, “not to the fullest.” My primary focus
was always on myself, my life, my experience.
When
the illness first struck, I had been in the midst of a hot art career. After my
recovery, I could not imagine doing all that any more. It became clear to me
that I had something else besides imagery and ego to offer to others—something
more direct and closer to the truth of my being. I flirted with the idea of
beginning to teach. In truth, people, particularly young ones, already had been
coming to me for years for some kind of teaching, but I never called it
“spiritual.” It would have been so easy simply to claim that role and run with
it. But something stopped me from doing that.
As I
told you earlier, I had never much liked the guru scene, and could not see
myself in that posture. Also, I knew my own personality well enough to
understand that egoic inflation was always a possibility, and, if that
ever got underway, what could possibly stop it? That is when the idea of
psychotherapy came to mind. I had read psychology for years, and already had a
pretty good background. In the next three years, I got a masters degree, a
Ph.D., and established my psychotherapy practice which still continues. So my
identity has been psychotherapist, not spiritual teacher, and in the course of
thousands of hours of sitting in a small room dealing with the pain and
suffering of my clients, I have had a pretty good look behind the scenes of ego,
theirs and mine. All I can say is that when someone comes to me seeking
awakening, the man called Robert who meets that person is not on any kind
of ego-trip, and he knows it.
NDM:
How would you know if one of your students were truly awake or not? Do you give
them some kind of test?
Robert: The
Zen tradition has that idea, koans, battles of wits, etc. No, I don’t give any
tests. My work with students—I prefer to think of them as seekers,
actually—is not so different from the rest of my psychotherapy work. In fact,
the seeker is suffering from a kind of spiritual illness, literally a dis-ease—what Zen calls, ”riding a donkey looking for a donkey.”—and the
treatment is more like therapy, than teaching. Teaching implies adding
something; therapy involves healing something. Awakening is like being
healed of a mistaken idea, a mis-identification. The healing is not about
changing one idea for another, or adding any idea, but in noticing what is
already present prior to ideas at all.
I
know that the seeker (or student if you like) already is everything that
he or she ever really wanted to be, but the “dis-ease” keeps her (or him) from
realizing that, embracing that, and living it. As Walter once said to me, “You
are in the middle of Lake Superior dying of thirst.” The details of the method
of healing vary—everyone is different—but typically, the student arrives and
sits down. Usually I say nothing, and wait for her to speak. By listening
carefully to what is said and how it is said, it is easy for me to tune in
empathically to the place where she is coming from. That empathic attunement is
effortless for me. I do nothing. It happens. This cannot be explained. It is a
gift I happen to have, and it is how I do psychotherapy and also—for want of a
more felicitous term—spiritual teaching. This attunement is a knowing,
and is nothing I could ever explain. My therapy teachers, who knew nothing about
my awakening experiences, which I kept hidden from everyone in those days, all
told me I had that gift, and that it was rare.
So,
if you understand this, here I sit abiding in the silence called “awakeness,”
while another human being sits before me, speaking. “Awakeness” hears the words,
looks into the eyes, and picks up on the subtle levels. “Awakeness” intuits
where that other person is, where the blockage is, if I can call it that,
the dis-ease. This knowing is not thought, not description, but a wordless
knowing. We converse. Sometimes, but not always, I deliver a bit of discourse.
The healing moment arises when my student has a brief comprehension of her true
self, a sudden opening to the emptiness in which ego and everything else,
including “oneself,” continually arises like a movie on a screen. When that
happens, the entire tenor of the relationship suddenly shifts. In the blink of
an eye two “awakenesses” are sitting there looking into one another’s eyes. I am
calling it “two awakenesses,” but really it is just one “awakeness.”
“Ah,” I might say. “Yes.” Or, with a more experienced student, I might say
nothing and perhaps just raise an eyebrow.
No
student can fake this. Yes, people can pretend to be silent, and they may even
fool themselves, as you were saying, but you can’t fool old Dr. Robert. This is
a brief and cursory look at how I work.
