The Robe

How To See

How to see what is?

There is no – how to see what is, because if you are carrying a how you will distort it. That which is, needs no method, technique, to see it – just silence, a transparent stillness, no thought in the mind, not even the thought of a certain method. No strategy, because all strategies are bound to distort.

In fact, no mind is needed to see that which is. Mind means thoughts. And if there is a traffic of thoughts, you will never be able to see what is, you will see something else. You will see what your thoughts allow you to see. Your thoughts prevent much reaching you.

You will be surprised to know what modern psychological researchers have come to know: ninety-eight percent of reality is not allowed to enter into your being; the mind only allows two percent. So whatsoever you see is only two percent of reality. And because the mind allows only two percent of the reality in and then gives you the feeling that this is the whole, you live in a false world. You think the part is the whole. And you live accordingly – your whole life becomes a falsification.

The mind is a judge; it allows only that which suits it, which fits with it, which nourishes it, strengthens it. It does not allow anything that goes against it. For example, you are listening to me: your mind will allow only that which helps to strengthen your opinions, your ideologies. If you are a Christian, you will hear one thing; and if you are a Buddhist, you will hear something totally different. If you have come here with a prejudice, for or against, you will hear different things. I am saying the same thing, but a Christian will interpret it in his own way and the Buddhist in his own way and the communist in his own way. One who has come with a determined idea that I am wrong will find all the arguments that help his prejudice. Each prejudice tries to get support for itself. So if you think any methodology is needed to see that which is, then you are starting from the very beginning in a wrong way.

That which is, is already there – you be silent, without any prejudice, without any ideology, atheist, theist, without any concept, without any a priori. You simply remain available, open, like a child who knows nothing. Function from the state of not knowing and you will be able to see what is.

Let me repeat: function from the state of not knowing. If you know, you will distort – knowledge is mind. The state of not knowing means you have put the mind aside; now your eyes are without dust, your mirror is clean. It will reflect! It will reflect that which is.

This is the way one comes to encounter reality – and the encounter is going to be shattering. It is not going to help your ideas about it. It will destroy all that you have been always thinking is right. It is going to surprise you. It is going to show you that you have lived up to now in a dream, that you have lived up to now in your own projections, that you have not allowed reality to penetrate you – on the contrary, you have created a world of your own ideas around yourself. You have lived in a capsule, without any windows. That’s how people are living.