The Path of Initiation

To say that we modern human beings are confused and without a center or a ground for our being is to repeat clichés already overworked in the literature of existentialism. Still we see our world exploding and expanding with a frightening degree of complexity and multiplicity.

A world of multiplicity that produces ever increasing levels of anxiety due to meaningless existence through a lack of inner harmony holds the first group in captivity to an objective consciousness. In this perspective such human beings are the center and goal of their value system, their motivation and moving force behind their thoughts, words, and deeds.

This growth neither depends on nor provides an increase in worldly knowledge, skill and possessions, but aims at closer contact with supra-worldly Being. This requires a different kind of knowledge, a knowledge that is based on a special kind of experience, penetrates the mystery of Being, and bears within itself the way that leads to Being. It is, as Dr. Karlfried Graf Durckheim calls it, “initiatory” knowledge.

To “initiate” means to open the way to the mystery of one’s true nature in union with the inner Center that knows no circumference, Being itself.

The path of initiation is a continued process, but begins with a new awakening of one’s essential or true nature grounded in experiencing Being as the center of life. The goal of such initiation is to achieve a new structure whose every shift and ripple lets the Absolute show through. Experience of the Divine always remains a gift and a grace from Ultimate Being and there is nothing we can do to bring such experience about. Yet the way to transformation demands the cross of inner discipline and inner attentiveness to achieve a state of mind and being that is a sign of the conscious level of union with Life already realized.

This path of initiation means sacrificing everything that prevents us from serving the Absolute and unconditionally accepting everything that helps us to do so. The spirituality and transformative process along which Durckheim guides anyone who wishes to follow his teaching is not for the dilettante or for one who seeks some exotic way of transformation without the cross.

America. He has often repeated in his writings the truth commonly taught in all true religions: that once the disciple has made contact experientially with the Inner Master, he/she will then discover the outside master to lead one farther.

Graf Durckheim was for me “THE” master who made it possible to discover the only true Master, Jesus-Christ! It was the great turning point of my life.

Graf Durckheim was the key which opened the door to experience; my “knowledge” became Life, intelligence descended into the “heart”, the Word became flesh within in the great vivifying movement of the Spirit toward the unique Source of all Life which is the Father. Now I was discovering experientially the divine Trinity confessed mentally for so many years! From that moment on, the door was wide open. It opened onto a space which gave birth to all the experiences which shook my life afterwards: in particular, it led to a radically different understanding of the Bible and of the Tradition which made it possible to rediscover the Fathers of the Church and I progressively rooted myself in Orthodoxy.

Can words translate his extraordinary force and this ageless youth, his fiery temperament, his look at once full of tenderness and yet piercing you to your depths, his often overwhelming smile which illuminated his face, his voice in turn melodious and passionate, his bursts of laughter and his humor…No text could ever render the essence of this encounter! Thank you, Graf Durckheim, for the marvelous time spend at your side, thank you for the wealth which you communicated to us, thank you for what you did not say but which the intimacy of your presence revealed to us, thank you for the love which you gave us and which will always be alive within us.

I “I HAVE CALLED YOU BY YOUR NAME”

GRAF DURCKHEIM: Well, that is a big question! I believe it started very early. Certain impressions of my youth had a deep effect on my life. It goes back to my early childhood. I underwent experiences which were filled with that quality which we call numinous. This is a very particular atmosphere. According to C.G. Jung, the reality which manifests itself in this numinous quality is the basis of all religion.

Eventually these were no longer particular experiences, but a kind of perpetual contact, a state which came and went. It is not possible to be permanently open to this reality, but there does come a time when we always feel the call to turn toward its depths.

The great mystery touches us when we receive sensorial qualities directly.

It was precisely because the Mass was incomprehensible to me, but charged with mystery, that it held me breathless: the truth is in the ungraspable.

A.G.: The “ungraspable”…This

adoration beyond all useless and impossible reasoning. True faith is found in a disposition of the heart in which the mysteries speak without going through the grinder of reason…This

I discovered at the same time that it was in facing death that we step forward toward true life. That experience was later a part of my teaching: by accepting death, we discover and receive life which is beyond life and death, LIFE in capitals.

Tao-Teh-Ching of Lao Tzu: “Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub, It is on the hole in the center that the use of the cart hinges, We make a vessel from a lump of clay, It is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful. We make the doors and windows for a room; But it is these empty spaces that make the room livable. Thus, while the tangible has advantages, It is the intangible that makes it useful.” And suddenly It happened! I was listening and lightning went through me. The veil was torn asunder, I was awake! I had just experienced “It.” Everything existed and nothing existed. Another Reality had broken through this world. I myself existed and did not exist…I was seized, enchanted, someplace else and yet here, happy and deprived of feeling, far away and at the same time deeply rooted in things. The reality which surrounded me was suddenly shaped by two poles: one which was the immediately visible and the other an invisible which was the essence of that which I was seeing.

These are things which I discovered much later, but that is when I was carried in this direction. It also gave me a certain courage to live, a certain innocence in relating to things and people. There was suddenly another reality there, an angelic one, which surrounded me from that moment on.

Then the desire to know rises within us, to

know those who through the ages have drunk at the same Source and have been enlightened by the same Fire. Can you tell us what “wood you warmed yourself with?”

Meister Eckhart created such an explosion within me. I could not put down his “Treatises and Sermons” which I perceived as an echo of the divine music I had just heard.

With the experiences of Meister Eckhart, I place myself on an entirely different level, on absolutely solid ground, on an unshakeable reality, the source, the deepest call which truly forms the center of the human being. But this requires a poverty of spirit which invites us to a complete letting go in order to make possible the birth of God in our being.

Eckhart is Dionysian in his soul. And this theology has the same approach to the divine as you do. Denys the Areopagite, a direct disciple of the Apostles, invites us, in order to unite with God, to renounce all rational thinking, all sensible or intelligible objects, all that is and all that is not.

the great theologian Guardini, the painter Paul Klee and all those with whom I found the same melody on different chords. And the question was already rising within me: was not the great experience of Eckhart, LaoTzu, Buddha, the same one?

But that time was especially marked by work on the philosophy of Unity. I was completely fascinated by the reality and the problem which never left me: a Unity which holds everything and which, in an inner Order, gives birth to forms. It was in this way that the mystery of Transcendent Being rose in my conceptual consciousness; much later, I perceived it in its Trinitarian impetus and under its three aspects: Fullness, Order and Unity.

“Well, what do you want to know?” “Can you tell me what is an archetype?”

At that moment, he answered: “Pattern of behavior.” By that he meant a predisposition of our behavior rather than the result of a habit.

I met Heidegger again twenty years later, when Suzuki, the eighty year old prophet of Zen visited me and wanted to see him. It was an encounter of a man of the word with a man, who, as a Zen Master, is certain that in opening our mouth we are already lying! For only silence contains truth. These are some anecdotes on Heidegger, but he never had any influence on my work.

Every image of divinity is originally an extraordinary and overwhelming experience without images which is both frightening and vibrant with joy. They place us on another level. But later, the experience is projected on the screen of the self and takes the shape of a picture which, through the

conceptual spirit, is transformed into something or someone, and now understood as cause of this experience when it is actually its consequence!

We should take with particular seriousness the parable of the vine and its branches where Christ says: “Abide in me as I in you…” That is when we enter into this profound reality to which Jesus refers when he affirms that “before Abraham was, I Am.” This is not a misunderstanding, but a reference to a reality beyond time and space which is not merely a privilege of the Christian; it is the same reality spoken of by the Zen master when he asks what face you had before your parents were born. He is not questioning you on your previous incarnation, but speaks of the reality within which is beyond all other realities.

an old man came to greet me. I did not know him “Suzuki,” he stated.

I questioned him immediately on the different stages of Zen. He named the first two, and I added the next three. Then he exclaimed: “Where did you learn this?” “In the teaching of Meister Eckhart!” “I must read him again…” (though he knew him well already).

That is how I came to understand Zen as exercise. You know that the disciple of archery shoots for three years on a target of straw of one meter in diameter, at three meters in distance. This is of course an inner exercise which has nothing to do with the fact of hitting an exterior target. Then

Then he continued: “But if you look within the way you look without, you make of the within a without.” That is an extraordinary statement! It

This discovery has brought a great deal to my life and to my work. It joins with the wonderful verse from Novalis: “Every visible surface has an invisible depth raised to a state of mystery.”

Zazen, which is the primary way of living Zen through exercise, opens a Path in the desert of our current abstraction to allow us to advance toward our true maturity.

It is not a matter of throwing oneself into nothingness, but of getting rid of all concepts, all images.

“Go, sell all you have…” To be absolutely nothing is to be everything. Perfect poverty is found only when perfect emptiness is perfect fullness. It is also the “innocence of paradise” toward which the Fathers of the Desert strived and of which the staretz Zozima became the spokesman in “The Brothers Karamazov.” But can we be at the same time a Japanese sage and a Father of the desert?

Man is not only man or woman. She is in him, and he is in her, and to the extent that man does not develop his feminine side and vice-versa, he does not become a man but a robot!

Ii The Greatness And Decadence Of Humanity

We are citizens of two worlds: an “existential” one which is a conditioned reality, limited by time and space, and an “essential” one unconditioned and beyond time and space, accessible only to our inner consciousness and inaccessible to our powers. The destiny of man is to become the one who can witness to the transcendent Reality at the very heart of existence. To achieve this, we must first learn to take seriously the experiences through which, in privileged moments, Being touches us and calls to us. This is the fundamental meaning of all spiritual exercise as I understand it: to open ourselves to our essential being through experiences which manifest it and to enter upon a way of living which allows us to witness to Being in daily life.

His “worldly” self has seduced him to the extent that he considers it the only source of consciousness, even objective consciousness.

The unity of being is broken: the emphasis is unilaterally placed on the exterior, rational pole and smothers the deeper reality, thereby separating us from Being.

A. G.: It is the source of unhappiness, longing and inexplicable suffering, the cause of many illnesses and psychic disturbances, the very loss of the meaning of life. But this is the result of a story which is as old as humanity!

G. D.: Old and more than ever contemporary! We are speaking of original sin. Man wants to become god by his own means and to do so he eats the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge. He says: “I am I,” or worse yet: “I want to remain what I am.”

A. G.: He distinguishes the good from the bad, as the Bible says, and falls into opposites, fabricating an ideology in which he projects himself. Having cut himself off from Life which is beyond dualism, he tears apart the image of God which inhabits him, and creates his behavior according to his own image.

By fastening himself to something both outside and within himself, man suddenly places himself in a static reality opposed to the Life which knows no limit. He confines himself to the petrified universe of concepts, thoughts, and Kant’s famous categories: time, space, identity, and causality. From this objectifying consciousness, he places himself outside of the primary reality, the true Life. Then “death becomes the wages of sin” in the sense that man puts himself on another plane and turns his back on his original country, finding himself in exile. At the same time, death appears to him as a frightening response for those who live sheltered from the very things which would give them true security.

He lives in a lie and constantly represses his thirst for his true Self. His life is a death and all that he does is polluted at the onset. He disintegrates himself and the universe along with him. This is original sin. We experience such inner alienation every day. But we have the capacity to transform this state of death into a state of resurrection. Metamorphosis is possible, this is the goal of all your work!

G. D.: In the end, human beings always remain children of paradise. A. G.: God never ceases to call out “Adam, where are you?” in the depths of the human heart.

G. D.: But we “do not have ears to hear.” Propelled by his ideas, he only hears the God of the philosophers and closes the door to Being which continues to call him and search for him.

Without that there is no real education, nor serious medicine, and all fields seeking to deal with human nature are doomed to failure. Only this union of the existential self with the essential self, dealing with the whole of man, carries him to his full maturity and bears fruits, the first and most important of which is to be able to say “I am” in the full meaning of the word.

At the heart of all that is, man secretly senses this great “I Am” from which comes and to which returns all of life. Each being is called to realize in his own way this divine “I am” which seeks to express itself in modalities as varied and diverse as are all creatures of the universe.

It is a matter of liberating the Holy Spirit within us and taking original sin seriously, not as past history, but as the only sin which we never cease to commit. It is vital to rediscover the unconditioned within the conditioned. Man’s suffering comes from being a stranger to himself. That is his deepest agony.

Today, man has no place in education. It

the child has no creative freedom; very early on he must be careful to make good grades under the threat of not being allowed into college. The little child who is a bit slow, a dreamer, who leans over his work in an almost meditative way, doesn’t have a chance. Only the sharp kid, the quick one, is worthy of interest.

No one is caring for the whole human being. It is the same for the life of the State: it is a fishnet of laws, commands, ordinances and organizations which leave very little freedom to man. Man’s freedom is reduced to the freedom to accept non-freedom, which is not quite the project God has in mind for humanity! It is strange that even the Church has not been spared. It has also become an organization from which the theologians, men of science, have evacuated all mysticism.

A. G.: Eckhart is condemned as a heretic, Francis of Assisi constrained to a rule, John of the Cross thrown in prison, Joan of Arc burned alive…Louis

The Father-Policeman who frightens us becomes the Father-Love revealed by the Son, so that from being slaves we become sons of God in freedom. We are entering today into the times announced by the Christ Himself: “I will not leave you desolate…The Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things.”

If the Spirit, the great Third One of the Holy Trinity, is the One who assures the unity of the Father and of the Son, he also expresses absolute unity in absolute diversity. This immense creative power, which is beyond opposites and the diversity of life, is our own inner transcendence. As soon as it awakens within us, it transports us to another level which is above good and evil.

For example, the Christ’s requirement of loving one’s enemy: the rational self cannot do it, we know this only too well, for it is against our nature; now, we can obey this command on the transcendental plane.

But the Christ wanted to say something utterly different, it seems to me: “Love the other as if he were yourself,” that is, find in the other your own essential Being, the Christ. There is only one essence, and I believe that, as soon as the spiritual or transcendent eye opens within us, we can see in the other what we are in our essence.

Iii Earth And Sky: Our Double Origin

A. G.: What is the “essential self”? G. D.: It is the core of man through which he participates in the supernatural reality of the divine universal Spirit. The essential Being is the absolute within man, the source of his freedom where the Divine expresses Itself through an individual and particular form in the world of space and time.

Each man should be able to say with Saint Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”; for the experience of essential Being is the experience of Christ present within us, and the unity which is accomplished in that moment must be felt like that of “the vine and its branches.”

I would add to this conception the law which man carries within and of which Christ speaks when he says: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light.” This sentence is valid for every living thing: within the flower is its life, its path, and its truth. It is the same for man; in his essential core, he contains his life and his truth which only realize themselves to the extent that this essential core becomes the law of his evolution.

The path which a flower takes from the seed to the blossom and finally toward the fruit is the reality of the inner image put to work. It is the path which has a sequence of preordained stages already contained in the seed whose movement is the life of the flower and its truth. It is therefore the law of becoming which is the path, and the right path is the truth of being and of life.

the courage to say “No!” and to feel oneself fundamentally free. At that moment, this “small voice” represents the presence of Being. There is the relative consciousness which is filled with the requirements of the community and there is the absolute consciousness which is the expression of Being and which requires at certain moments a rejection of what the community demands.

This absolute consciousness is an eruption of the creative and transcendent force which inhabits us. It is a weapon against all external requirements, liberating us from all conformism, taboos, morals and traditional practices imposed on us by beliefs and placing us under the imperatives of our inner conscience. We are on new ground which has nothing, absolutely nothing in common with the old world.

It was Christ who came to reveal that we are not the servants of a distant God and subjected to an external potentate, but the children of a Father called to awaken to those living waters of the divine Spirit within our essence.

G. D.: He who has “ears to hear” can perceive it in every moment in the smallest of circumstances. For example: we feel the need to meditate, to dive into our inner depths, and at the same time there is a letter to write to someone who is suffering. The two require our presence and we can distinguish between the call of being and the call of existence…What to do? We decide to meditate, and suddenly another center is manifested in relation to which we feel responsible for the decision we have just made. Perhaps it is this center which says: “This time you would have done better to write that letter and respond to the requirement of existence rather than to the requirement of your essential being.”

The one who takes up the path of initiation develops inner antennas which allow him to receive the least intonation of this small voice and to follow it.

The Qualities Of The Five Senses: Windows On The Invisible

We look at things believing that they are as they appear to us, while in actuality they are only the result of how our consciousness sees them: a fly for example has an entirely different sensibility than ours! We are lost when we attempt to reflect on reality without considering the human filter.

We know today that a mother rabbit in America is strongly shaken when a thousand kilometers away in Europe, one of its babies is killed. We also know that plants react to the spiritual attitude of the person who cares for them. We have photographed the aura of certain plants, a living reality sensitive to the love of the people who surround them.

When Martha, “absorbed by many worries,” asks him to tell her sister sitting at his feet to help her, he replies: “Martha, Martha you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion which shall not be taken away from her.” It is this “one thing” which we must explain when we speak of the experience of the Divine.

This is not a spiritual path but an inflation of the worldly self and its habitual ways: having, knowing, getting. The inner transcendence which makes new creatures of us is of another order, and completely escapes our calculations and rules of measurement because its coordinates are radically different.

And at that contact, we react automatically: it makes us vibrate, rejoice, frightens us or leaves us indifferent, we feel invited or pushed away. But the more our deep self is awakened, the more the face of each encountered “you” changes, deepens, and lets the infinite “You,” the light of essential Being break through the finite “you”! From then on, our sight and hearing are transformed. Everything that comes to us is tainted by this gentle Breath which calls to us and fills us.

This is the very definition of the numinous given by Rudolf Otto, the great specialist of the sacred. In eroticism, we live these two moments: trembling and fascination. We tremble because we are always afraid of giving ourselves and therefore of dying and we are fascinated by the new life which arises within us.

Fourth, worship in which we are invited to kneel, literally or internally, to let go of all that is “Me.” It is in this letting go which is human and normal that a door opens through which the Divine enters. Meister Eckhart says that we need only open the door, for God is always before it and wishes to enter as long as we go out, because there is not room for both of us.

A. G.: That is true poverty when our whole being becomes liturgical, when the “little self” prostrates itself. Then, as Meister Eckhart says, God becomes at the same time the place where He works and the work itself. It is always the same movement: the empty calls forth fullness.

G. D.: You remind me of the story of a man who said: “You know, I prayed all night, I pushed and pushed and tried to break down this door which separated me from God whom I felt so near…Finally, I collapsed from exhaustion, and suddenly the door opened by itself. I had only to let go and God entered!”

God than thoughts or rational consciousness. We cannot cheat with the quality of the senses, they are what they are, no more no less, and touch us immediately.

on the condition that we know how to remain in a sensation; us into a bath of divine glory, it is a festival for our senses.

V From Death To Life: The Break-Through Of Being

The attraction of danger is the experience of the indestructible; it is in the presence of death that we experience the extraordinary premonition of something which cannot be destroyed.

Yet we must never forget that without such a separation we could not become conscious of the divine. We should condemn neither the self nor original sin: there are faults which cause the discovery of what is right, there are lies without which we would never find truth, there are weaknesses without which we would never know what power is, and there are falls without which we would never know what it means to get up again…In the end, everything is connected and one doesn’t go without the other.

We must not say: because there are shadows, we cannot see the light; it is the shadow itself which holds the repressed light, just as each death anticipates life and no suffering would have meaning without the hope for healing.

But suffering had to be unmasked and the abyss of death had to be overcome so that the supreme night could become supreme light. This is the “Lost Secret” to be found in all traditions. “Night and Day are two sisters who have the same love, the Sun…” as is written in Hindu scriptures. Should we not move forward into the night of our suffering to discover the dawn of the new day which awaits us?

G. D.: That’s it! The more we enter into the night of our suffering, the more we find that man is eaten up by three great distresses: —the fear of destruction, the anguish before death and annihilation; man is no longer rooted in the source of life and to suffocate his fear he surrounds himself with a security system. —Despair before the meaninglessness of life; cut off from the vital inner reality, man builds himself an ephemeral and artificial universe. The third distress is the utter sadness of isolation, because divided man is alone even though he is made for dialogue. To be able to communicate through every possible means, he creates for himself all sorts of false relationships.

Yet if someone has an experience of Being, he is transformed from one moment to the next. He is no longer afraid of death, he accepts meaninglessness and feels sheltered from solitude. This transformation is the first and greatest evidence that we have been touched by the reality of Being beyond our normal experiences: we are suddenly freed from our usual conditioning.

But it is important to know that having the experience of awakening to another reality does not yet make us awakened persons. I have met people who have had dozens of such experiences but are far from being awake to this other reality. That requires a continual effort toward transformation.

This is where the third criteria comes from: the quality of the numinous which no longer manifests itself under the shape of dispersed events but radiates in all its beauty, and makes the smallest object transparent. It is an Atmosphere…A Presence.

This is the appearance of the Adversary: the Devil! There where Life is born, the Adversary arises; he is the personification of the power which tries to consciously stop or destroy the life willed by God. The more a person is oriented toward the supernatural life, the more the Adversary attempts to turn him away. This is not a pious story, but a fact found in an inexplicable psychological experience.

G. D.: The motivating force of a seeker is always that which he seeks! The Reality he is seeking is always there in his search. He could never search for the divine if he did not carry the divine within him. There

What is there that is not miraculous? The simple fact that things exist, that a color is a color, that a sound is a sound…This is all miraculous! Does it cease to become miraculous because it is known by everyone? And why is it only miraculous when it goes beyond the frontiers of the known?

What publicity there is concerning these so-called spiritual experiences! When a true mystic like John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila, or a Buddhist saint managed to levitate, it was kept secret. Today, there is money to be made in it…and the mystery evaporates! It’s abominable!

A. G.: “Narrow is the way which leads to life and few there are who find it,” Jesus said. “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me…” Only those who “leave their nets” and bet everything on one card are worthy! “Who will find his life shall lose it and who will lose his life for my sake shall find it…” This is also one of the great central teachings of the “Synthesis of the Yogis” by Aurobindo: “True gift of self, total and without reserve, pitiless erasing of the ego, making of all life the altar of this sacrifice, leads into the vast movement of the Divine Joy.”

Drugs awaken the desire for repetition which ends in the destruction of the mind, takes away the power to work, and ruins their victim. Rare are those cases where the person who experiences the beyond through L.S.D. feels it as a call to enter into the experience through a meditative discipline. But I must also say that drug users often know something which is unknown by those who have not experienced it! And no one can take away this “something” which they have glimpsed.

For one, it is a happy old age, for another it is having children, for a third it is a job they enjoy, another would like an easy death…There are as many answers as there are people on earth. And yet a single answer is valid for all: the person who has truly tasted Being knows once and for all that the meaning of human life is nothing other than becoming a witness to the divine presence in existence.

man. The walls which he had built in the face of fear crumble, his artificial quest for meaning in the face of the absurd runs aground, and his empty affections are transformed. Suddenly, Being reveals meaning to him at the very heart of meaninglessness, and at the very heart of his solitude a supernatural love surrounds him, vivifies him and gives him unity.

If we are rooted in essential Being, we feel the power of Being in our weakness. God is strong when we are weak, as the Bible says. In absolute weakness, when we can do nothing more, when we are abandoned to death, at that moment we can suddenly feel invaded by a great power in the very depths of our weakness. The power of the existential self based on what we have, what we know, what we can do is broken, and finally gives way to what we are in the depth of our essence.

G. D.: To accept is to “live one’s death!” “Live your death” is also the title of a book from my old American friend Keeleman, the father of bio-energy. He says that throughout existence there are little deaths that must be accepted and “letting go” progressively becomes second nature.

G. D.: Resignation and heroism are two manifestations of the existential self. To accept, yes…To resign, never! Accept even the darkness within us.

“If man recognizes himself in his hell, that is, sees the Devil within him, his meanness, his darkness, his great uncleanness, and instead of pushing all that away he forgives it in love, then the divine can illuminate him…For me, this is Resurrection.” These are words that could be meditated upon forever…By accepting the darkness, a light arises beyond black and white. That is the idea beneath the “accept the unacceptable” and one of the essential truths in Zen.

“May your will be done and not mine…Into your hands, Father, I commit my spirit…”

Not only does he freely accept death, but also the absurd: no one had understood his message and most had rejected it. Also, he did not defend himself before Pilate or Herod or even among his own; without a word, he accepts all humiliations. Finally he is also in virtually total isolation: his closest friends betray him and abandon him…So Christ did not come to take away this suffering created by the world, but to teach us to accept the unacceptable as he did! The cross will be taken away only from the one who has carried it…

The mystical tradition then continued this way of life and Saint Therese of Lisieux made it very simple and available to everyone: recognize a reality for what it is, accept it and offer it to God.

G. D.: It’s very simple! Fullness of life is the universal life as creative force; this is the Creator whom the Bible calls Father. The Law is the inner law which structures, orders, and forms all things and gives them meaning; this is the Word, Christ: “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” The Word is the Principle of all formation, giving form to all that exists. Finally there is Unity which expresses itself in love and reunites in harmony all that was separated; this is the Holy Spirit.

A. G.: Do you see a link between the three? G. D.: In Life, nothing stops. Movement always leads from the Father to the Son and from the Son through the Holy Spirit it returns back to the Father. The Trinity is a movement, the eternal movement, the mysterious movement in which we all participate as living beings. Nothing exists outside of the Holy Trinity and each living being is an image of it. Life becomes Form, and the dynamic Unity which is at the basis of everything that is living links all things; nothing exists outside of the Holy Trinity because everything is within in.

A. G.: “God becomes man so that man can become God,” says the Tradition with saint Athanasius and “God experiences man so that man can experience God” proclaims saint Irenaeus.

Jesus said: ” I have come to give you Life” and “it is better that I go away for I will send you the Holy Spirit.” When the Word is crucified, the Spirit brings it to life for us.

there is the self conditioned by time and space, for which reality exists only in forms. Yet these both hide and reveal the universal essence, the Reality of all realities, something incomprehensible, invisible, which can penetrate us. The only thing which is important for me is to become conscious of these three forces of the Trinity of Being and to create the conditions which allow us to enter into its movement. This is the meaning and goal of the practice I propose.

VI “THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE”

GRAF DURCKHEIM: To create conditions is first of all to speak of technique. Let us not be mistaken about technique, it is not an external thing. As the Orientals say: “Perfect technique is the Tao, and the Tao lived is technique.” That is to say that it is already an expression of essential Being.

Christ: “I am the Way.” So the Christ is the Way, and the Way is the Christ. In this experience, everyone will observe very quickly that a proper attitude of the body is already prayer. G. D.: Yet for essential Being to manifest itself fully in a personal form, there must be a transformation of the whole person: body, soul, spirit, for the obstacles are found on all levels and interpenetrate each other.

“The body is the spatial-temporal form of the spirit.” Because of this, we are seeing here a return among Christians, because for many centuries the body was made the principal obstacle on the way and the opposite of spirituality. One had to renounce it and tame it, which is a very curious thing for a religion in which God

wanted to make Himself flesh and take on the body of a man. If the body incarnates the spirit, how can we separate it from the person? The body is man in his way of being here in the world.

We continue our meal and a moment comes when, if we take one more bite, we will feel a little stuffed, a little blocked, abruptly deprived of a contact with our depths; that is when we have sinned against our inner spirit of transcendence. Yet it has nothing to do with our health or our beauty. We are cut off from ourselves and we regret that one bite too many.

Each tension of the body expresses a fear of the world, against the moments to come which might be disagreeable. We are always on the look-out, we are worried about having to defend ourselves or having to attack someone and not being physically or spiritually able to do so. The strongest contraction is located in the shoulders and the back of the neck. It always represents, as I have said, an outlook of fear toward the world. Whereas the tensions around the heart and the solar plexus represent a fear of emotions; those in the area of the stomach represent a fear of cosmic forces; those in the feet are a fear of the earth and a fear of taking root. Neither medication nor massages will change anything, except for the discovery and exercise of a confident attitude through the body that we are. We can say that every illness in man is the expression of a derangement of the person, of the body that we are.

G. D.: Exactly! Meditation and all meditative life which comes from it, are the great responses to the invitation of Jesus: “metanoia,” repent! They are a radical obedience to be lived on another level than that of moral altruism. It is a break- through of the mystery which we are within, and of a free life oriented exclusively toward the manifestation of divine Being. This is not the product of a pious imagination or an object of belief but the results of a total revolution of consciousness which is born within us.

For my teaching, I take “meditation” in its passive sense: meditari, to be led toward the center. In this sense, the word meditation is a generic term which covers, for me, the three well-known phases in the Middle Ages: “concentration, meditation, contemplation.”

The divine seeks to realize himself in us, and we have nothing to do but to let it act. The gardener’s work is a good example: he cannot pull on the plant in order to make it grow faster, but he must ready the conditions so that this movement, this dynamism of life will not be blocked.

The importance of the proper vertical position while sitting is especially important. It comes out of a good anchoring in the abdominal region where our center of gravity lies, the “Hara” where all our energy gathers. Here everything holds together: the rooting in the lower end of the trunk gives birth to a surging toward the crown, and the supple, relaxed chest allows in turn for the “Hara” to manifest. Rooted in the earth, rooted in the sky, such is man’s constitution, his double origin. Escape, sleep or dreaming are a thousand miles from true meditation.

if the fullness of the mystery of Being is to take hold of us, we must leave the agitation of the multiple and detach our consciousness from everything which occupies it.

G. D.: To create emptiness within oneself, to become a virginal cup, is a vital condition for every Christian. The Word can become flesh in us, but if we are encumbered by the multiple, we cannot “receive it” as saint John says, “because there is no room in our inn.”

If after a half hour of meditation we are still the same as before, then we can be sure that we were in a false attitude.

Indeed, all bad breathing is the consequence of the little dominating self which has pulled the Breath from the vital center animated by the diaphragm and placed it in the upper part of the chest, activated by the auxiliary muscles. Proper

Lived consciously during meditation, this movement takes hold little by little of the whole person and transforms him through continual deaths and rebirths.

It is a true burial of the old man, always to be taken up again, a death to all the rigid forms of existence so as to be reborn on a whole different level as a person, with all the dimensions which this term implies.

This is the great letting go and surrender in expiration, and the regenerated return in inspiration. So man is seized in his totality, body-soul-spirit, by this movement of transparence which, with each breath, contains in condensed form all that must mature on the way. There are no limits to the progress of this movement of transformation. Breathing is the transforming movement par excellence. It is innate to us. We must be extremely watchful of the relation between expiration and inspiration. When we have understood that we must not breath in, but “let it breath us in,” then we will be able to live our breathing completely. We will first have to pay attention to the expiration, that is to say, the letting go.

It is only after letting go that we can receive; inspiration comes of itself. As soon as the inspiration is active and voluntary, we close the door instead of opening it. Inspiration has three aspects in the same movement: openness, visitation and fullness. If you ask someone to breath out deeply, most of the time they will take in a big breath because they are certain that you must first take before you can give. This is true on the existential level: one must have in order to give, but on the spiritual level, it is exactly the opposite; you must give everything to be able to receive. Inspiration is always the gift of a good expiration; we receive it and in this sense it has a double meaning: it is the breath which fills me for the proper functioning of my organism, and it is on another level the “inspiration,” I am inspired or It inspires me; in inspiration, a Presence takes hold of me…

We must become conscious of it, follow it and not simply “do it.” This is true for all respiratory movement; in general, man’s breathing is falsified, most people breath from the wrong part of their body, with the chest instead of the diaphragm. This is the result of an attitude of fear and insecurity. As soon as we are…

The first duty in expiration is to let go, first in the shoulders, that is, to let go as a person and not as muscle. We work on ourselves, not on our body. This letting go in the upper body of oneself at the beginning of breathing is spontaneously followed by a descent during expiration, a gift of self which becomes a surrendering at the end of the expiration. Our pelvic region becomes a receptive cup for a new life and we are calm, without fear.…

A. G.: Surrender is a giving over of oneself, the summit of openness in confident waiting. The moment between expiration and inspiration is not a static stop but rather opens onto the mysterious living abyss…

G. D.: With practice, these two great movements, expiration-inspiration, become the two poles of a unique movement called the “wheel of metamorphosis,” death… birth… relaxation…tension…Harmony between tension and relaxation brings about the “right tension.” It is important to see the difference between relaxation and dissolution. Proper tension-relaxation are the two…

The person who is not constantly centered goes from contraction to dissolution: tensed toward the upper part of the body or slouched over, these are two attitudes which lead to death. The Devil, the Adversary of life, does two things: he stops the movement above or below, in hardening or dissolution, two static attitudes…

On the other hand, when the “right tension” deepens, the breathing movement becomes almost imperceptible; then the source of Life, Being, can visit us. This overwhelming moment can lead us to ecstasy or root us within ourselves. But little touches of…

One of the greatest Zen masters said that he only had three such experiences in his life. Expiration is a leap into the unknown with total confidence and without restrictions, developing the receptivity of the seeker in the extreme, leading him to radical surrender of all things and making him enter into the mystical night, the darkness…

G. D.: This should encourage us because it is a tireless work so that these experiences, which sometimes last only a fraction of a second, can become always more frequent and deeper. The “wheel of metamorphosis” must turn relentlessly. The false attitudes of the body which block union with Being are progressively eliminated. The tensions and rigidity which always express a distortion of the person are better detected and released. Rooting oneself in the vital center destroys all the false securities and a person evolves from a state of fear and contraction to a state of absolutely original confidence.

Yet in all his work, it is first the effort which counts, not the result! And these efforts are made in every moment, not merely in meditation.

G. D.: If someone reduces the “Hara” to its literal meaning of “stomach,” they have not understood anything because it refers to the constitution of the whole man thanks to which he gets rid of the predominance of fears and the contracted little self. The person who is in his “Hara” is not located in his shoulders but in a solid base from where he can accept the world and life as they are, in a deep confidence. The “Hara” is the vital center of man; yet the true center will always remain his heart. To keep the heart open, we must never concentrate on it in an objective way, but first learn to feel oneself in one’s vital center so as to come in contact with the universal power which inhabits it. As you know, there are two forces in us: the one of the will which we “do” and the universal force in which we participate and which we must learn to receive.

The force which we access through the “Hara” is an individual manifestation of this universal power which is called “Ki.” We have a thousand proofs of this power, and here is a simple example of it: I put my arm straight out horizontally and ask someone to bend it. If I remove my hara and pull in the stomach, the other person will eventually bend my arm. If, on the other hand, I let go of myself in my arms and am well relaxed and in my hara, I let the power rise into my arms and no one will be able to bend it.

Willpower has nothing to do with it. It’s a very curious thing. Another example: Sitting on a chair, two men can easily lift you up. If you place yourself in your hara, they will not be able to. We still don’t know what this is on the physical level.

said. Therefore, Being is the true center of all that exists and all that exists does not realize its inner truth unless it allows Being to manifest itself in its particular form.

Life no longer turns around man but around divine Being and its manifestation.

To be centered can be translated then through an extreme sensitivity toward everything that inhibits transparence, and to all that favors it. This is a state of permanent critical watchfulness which mobilizes a person in their totality. Here the body in its form, its attitude and all its dynamism is the expression of the becoming of the person on the way to transformation.

The openness to hara roots him in cosmic forces and liberates him from the slavery of the little self, while opening him to the upper part of the body; chest—neck—head, which roots him in spiritual forces. But it is only when the integration is made between earth and sky that man finds his true center in the heart, there where his personhood comes forth.

Physically, this point is found at the level of the solar plexus. That is where the horizontal and the vertical cross: earthly life, conditioned by all the weight of history; and celestial life, unconditioned, beyond space and time, divine Being. It is only in this tension that the personal center of man is formed; when he allows the unconditioned to manifest itself in the conditioned and strength blossoms in weakness, meaning in meaninglessness, love in the cruelty of the world; when man knows that he can live only from Being, for Him and with Him, and accepts over and over again the responsibility of not betraying it by escaping into the horizontal. At the heart of this tension, and animated by this incessant movement between the horizontal and the vertical, man is on the cross.

The symbol of the cross is also that of the universal situation of all that exists, containing the tension between supernatural reality along with the image of the seed and the conditions which permit it to manifest this image in a conditioned form. So all of creation is itself on the cross.

But there is more: this cross which reveals the center of man and of all things is also the incandescent center of an encounter with the Christ. He is the Center of every center and the Principle of all form, the Word through which the whole man is in his center there where he feels himself one with Christ and hears His call as the inner Master. His whole life then comes out of Christ.

G. D.: You touch here on the very heart of all my efforts! I seek to place myself in the wake of Christ and not in that of the Buddha. My aim is not to propose experiences of liberation or of illumination but their fruit which is transformation into a true person. Christ has shown us the way of this becoming and has lived it before our eyes.

man becomes conscious that he is himself this great Life and is called to manifest it, to let it shine through him in existence.

Vii Toward A New Art Of Living

personhood. The word person comes from “personare”: to ring through, to become an existential self which is transparent to essential Being. The meditative act opens man and allows the divine Voice, which is the expression of his essential being, to “ring” through his conditioned self. From this transparence is born the person and it is then that man fulfills himself.

At the beginning of the path, we do exercises, but as the experience deepens, we become exercise. It is no longer a “knowledge” but a way of being. We reach human maturity when the time in which we lose contact with Being becomes shorter and shorter. According to the old dictum, “each moment is the best of occasions,” the practice in daily life means, in all things, recollection and conversion.

This is a deification which becomes more and more complete. Man learns to listen, to feel the divine through all that he encounters, not only in a beautiful flower or a lovely countryside, but he begins to see the invisible in everything. He hears what cannot be heard…He sees, he feels, he touches the Presence; it is therefore through the senses that he begins to witness to the divine.

For example, he sees in a flower not only the conditioned flower which everyone can see, but he sees through the flower the divine essence in the particular form of that flower. That way of experiencing the life of the flower and of recognizing it is in turn a manifestation of the Divine. Another way of witnessing to the Divine is through action. Whatever we take in hand, literally or figuratively, painting or gardening, building a house or giving form to anything, is again an opportunity. I saw this in Japan, observing a peasant who had to make a hole in a wall. He thought for a long time: “Where will I put this hole, more on the right or the left?” Finally, the place which he found gave the whole wall a particular character which revealed something from beyond: a harmony, which can be found in every piece of artwork, otherwise it is not worthy of the name.

Efficiency is not the goal of the work, but rather the becoming of the one who is doing the work.

Finally, a last way to manifest the “divine” is through love. Love is the true arena of the presence of the divine, but again we must say that love has a completely different quality if we are rooted in transcendence. There is no question here of a love-sentiment, the nice, consoling one which reassures and warms…But of a love which recognizes and awakens in the other his or her essential center. That kind of love can be very severe.

The one who is in contact with Being will therefore be very careful when consoling the beloved. Consolation can be very dangerous. Some time ago, a person wrote to me: “See in what a dead end I find myself; do you have a word of consolation for me?” Knowing this person well, I answered: “Even if I had a word of consolation, I would not give it to you because then I would permit you to remain in your dead end. You must jump out! And if I helped you to put up with your situation, it would be very nice on my part, but a great mistake.”

A. G.: This leap from nice humanism to deification announces a radical transformation for those who consent to live it.

In every moment, we are touched by this “triple radiance” as the liturgy calls it, in a very realistic way: confronted with the dangers of annihilation, diminution and death, the Fullness of the Father seeks to engender us. Confronted with the ridiculous of life and all the forms…

When our prayers call for us to become “initiates of the Trinity,” they express the very essence of all Christian anthropology which aims at nothing other than this deification, this transparence of the whole person “in the light of the triple inner sun” and to become a person who moves from the image of God within to a true resemblance. We can say that, at each moment, in our attitude, our way of walking and sitting, this human-divine wedding can take place in the simplest way and is our true vocation outside of which…

G. D.: Nothing exists outside of this triple eruption of the great Life, incorporated into all that exists. Our work is to be open and to stay in contact with it. The openness of inner consciousness begins…

It is an attitude of constant seeking, like the hunting dog who never loses the trace of the game. Attention is always directed toward the depths. In Japan, a friend asked me if I did the exercise of Zazen. I replied: “Yes,” and he asked me: “When?” “In the morning from seven to eight o’clock.” “Oh! So you have not yet understood anything! If you do not continue it all day long, it won’t do you any good.” But if I had said: “I am in exercise all day long,” he would have said: “That does you no…

Meditation acts on our way of being in daily life and daily life acts on meditation, but in both cases, it is the same attitude. Whatever we do: walking, sitting, peeling potatoes, knitting or the most superficial thing, we can look within and remain open to the possibility of being…

It is a prison whose doors are locked! As long as the little self has not blown open the doors and left its cell, no contact with Being is possible. Consider all those so- called “religious” persons whose apparent sainthood is only an enormous cramp! Their features are…

G. D.: Man is an inseparable whole. If he is divided in himself, the body on one side, the soul on the other and the spirit who knows where, what can he bring to others, what can he…

I believe that, fundamentally, for true mathematicians or physicians there is a great spiritual or religious surge which can accompany them throughout their work, and the discovery of the solution to a problem can be a very intense moment of spiritual experience. Their career is their way of responding to that longing for the extraordinary mystery of Life and their entering into the…

As soon as we have another vision of the human being, we can see to what extent he is mutilated everywhere. It must be said that education today is particularly disastrous.

The famous “catharsis” which the Greeks experienced both in the Games as well as in the Theaters provoked a divine explosion in the actor and in the spectator. Perhaps there remains a little of this in the shouting of the crowds in the stadiums? I don’t believe it is simply collective psychosis. “En-Theos,” the root of “enthusiasm,” means in Greek: to be in God.

G. D.: Yes! When I lived in Japan, I was at the same school as Herrigel, the author of “Zen in the Art of Archery.” For three years, we learned how to shoot on a straw target one meter in diameter at three meters in distance. It was not a matter of hitting the target, but of developing an ensemble of movements which were the condition for a technique of true archery. The goal is that one day, after years of exercise, you can perfectly master the technique in such a way that you shoot without the intervention of the self and to the total exclusion of the will. When the ambition to hit the target and the fear of missing it are completely removed, then the technique, absolutely cleansed of all ambition and know-how and liberated from the little self, makes possible in and through your depths the release of the arrow. It is no longer you who shoot, but the deep Reality which shoots through you and, in a particular act, sings the eternal song of the apparition of Being.

G. D.: Certainly! If, with the same seriousness, you make gestures in daily life which are repeated over and over, then you will one day be able to do these gestures without the self getting involved and you will be able to have the same experience. Everything can become exercise. My Master Teramoto told me that his principle exercise in the morning was to shave, that there was a sequence of movements which were the same each day and that in seeking to perfect them, he was offering himself the opportunity for a profound experience.

It is a matter of feeling the act, not to think it, but to do it in full consciousness, the attention directed toward our depth. That is why, among the automatic movements, breathing is such a privileged terrain. As soon as you follow it consciously, without interference, you can be seized by the divine Breath. This can be applied to any job. For instance, an accountant who adds numbers all day long. His way of being there while writing those numbers can be a prayer. The fact that his consciousness is occupied by some work does not in any way inhibit contact with Being.

Look at a bricklayer: the way in which he throws the cement on the wall…What a magnificent movement, it’s like a dance. For the master-mason, there can be a numinous experience in the repetition of this gesture. Or painters who always make the same movement…I know several for whom it is a true spiritual exercise.

G. D.: Their situation is comparable to that of soldiers on the front, facing danger and death. To the extent that they accept the unacceptable, they may be invaded by a feeling of profound liberation, at the very heart of their slavery. In any case, nothing, not even their atrocious conditions can inhibit their advance on the inner path.

Viii Shadows And Lights On The Way

ALPHONSE GOETTMANN: Several thousand years ago, Patanjali, the father of Yoga, said: “The practice is the intensity of permanent vigilance.” In other words, whether it is meditation or daily life as exercise, everything depends on attention; it is the fundamental attitude and the key to awakening to the divine.

GRAF DURCKHEIM: Of course! Permanent attention is the first art which we must exercise. It is a state of critical awakening which with no let-up constantly watches the movements of our spirit and of our body. This is very difficult. Attention contains the word tension: it is a “tension toward” something, without contraction, animated by the yearning and the desire for a faithful contact with Being.

By consciously following our breathing, we are able to eliminate all thoughts which arise “like a horde of monkeys around your head” according to a Japanese saying. They go away only if you are able to remain concentrated on a single point.

A. G.: Are we not touching upon the secret of all geniuses and especially of the saints? The biographers of Francis of Assisi said that he concentrated a gigantic energy on a single point. Swami Sivananda speaks so much of the “one pointed mind,” of the spirit concentrated on a single object. In the same way, the ancient tradition of the “Jesus Prayer” focuses the whole being on a single center: the heart.

G. D.: I have personal experience of the profound efficacy of the “Jesus Prayer.” It is the Christian “mantra” par excellence. “The Way of the Pilgrim” which tells of this practice greatly interested me. There is mention there of a book known as “The Philokalia,” and on that subject a strange thing happened to me…I

Nothing makes you more present to the passing second than sitting in total immobility while being conscious of the mysterious activity of life; attention is then at its highest summits.

It presupposes a decision which goes to the end of your being as it progresses on the way. The depth of the decision is the only assurance of loyalty to the path that you want to take. It is only when you have truly decided to climb to the summit of a mountain that you will not turn back at the least fatigue. The depth of the commitment is the best assurance of attention.

In the firmness of the decision is found the point of honor in relation to God: if we let go, we betray ourselves and the inner Master who is more severe than the external Master.

A. G.: Good relaxation, concentration on a single point, a decision lived in a stern discipline are therefore the levers of attention. It seems to me that the consciousness of living a decisive choice requires that everything become organized around this primary goal. Beyond confused or contradictory aspirations, the requirement of the decision forces us to select, to place priorities in values and initiatives, to painfully eliminate other things…We then enter into a state of offering: is this not the meaning of sacrifice? In the eyes of some people, we diminish ourselves perhaps, or divide ourselves, while in reality the true decision centers us completely, regroups and unifies us. We live intensely from the present and forge the future.

Unfortunately, when I ask my students what their ritual is, I notice with sadness that many of them do not have any. But those who adopt one are very happy with the experience! This is an ensemble of signs which we give ourselves to express the link between existence and the divine.

G. D.: What blocks it is that which depth psychology calls the “shadow”; it is something dark in man, and therefore dangerous, because he runs away from it and identifies himself with his facade which he wants to maintain and which he believes to be part of his primitive consciousness: “Yes, I am good, I am honest, etc.” This education to “do good…behave as we should…be in harmony with the gestures required by the ethics of a community,” all this permits man to forget what there really is behind the facade. Behind it is the “shadow,” the vital impulses which should have been part of the life he lives, but which have been inhibited from expression.

“the good boy is the one who obeys.” What a terrible statement! “Children are good because they obey.” This authoritarianism is at the center of many human malformations. It is the father who says of his children, “I don’t know what they want…They always speak of their freedom…In my house, everyone must do what I want!”

This image is also the origin of all our aggressions against God.

IX CROSS OF CHRIST OR RED CROSS?

GRAF DURCKHEIM: There was once a Japanese master who regularly made the rounds of his monastery. One day, he encountered the cook who said to him: “Master, I am a communist, so I think about others, and when I do the cooking, I think of our monks to make good food for them.” He gathered his courage and asked: “Master, about whom and about what do you think all day long?” “Oh! answered the master, “I only think about myself.” The cook was frightened. What does it mean to say “I think about myself all day”? The question is often asked: “Do not the people who meditate and take the inner way become egoists?” This is a great misunderstanding, for we are not digging into our existential self, but are seeking to be anchored in Being. This requires, as we have stated, an indispensable work on our subconscious and on ourselves. We take care of ourselves, but for what purpose? Precisely to open ourselves to the Transcendent Reality at the heart of the self which, by definition, is universal Love!

It is only at this level that the other can be perceived as a companion on the Way, in a consciousness that we are “one” in Being.

Putting aside all that is peripheral or agitation on the surface, questioning even certain friendly or communal ties, we may seem bizarre, disloyal or abnormal in the eyes of many, but it doesn’t matter because we are in other dimensions and no longer have the same points of reference.

Christ. True human community is comparable to a circle formed by brothers and sisters holding hands, carrying each other’s burdens, but their gaze is focused on the Center: the Christ. Our greatness comes from our answer to the love of God for us.”

This is exactly what we seek in meditation, face to face with God. I often say: “A good meditation produces three effects: you feel strong, even if you are weak for it is another force, different from natural strength or weakness; you are in order internally even if everything is in disorder; and you find yourself in contact with unity. You will have the feeling that the trees bow as you go by, that the stones smile, the grass moves to greet you and the people who walk by will feel closer to you than ever before. Yet your kindness and your goodness will have nothing to do with ethics. The quality of love which is an expression of Being is not the result of a submission of egoism to an ethical behavior but to the values of the good, the beautiful, the real.

A. G.: We do not incorporate ourselves into the standard morals, but into the triple force of the divine Trinity.

There is no need to make efforts for that which comes from the heart; if we must force ourselves to be good, it is no longer an emanation of Being! We are no longer in the domain of the will.

A. G.: “Thy will be done…” We enter into absolute conscience, unbearable for all institutions which live from ethics and morals. G. D.: Such a consciousness is always revolutionary because it goes beyond the framework of a community.