Spiritual enquiry is a waste of time

Does spiritual enquiry have any value?

Spiritual enquiry, where I come from, is a waste of time. Everybody is wasting their time indulging in spiritual enquiry. Spiritual enquiry is basically so that you will keep living the life of ignorance. The more that you keep enquiring, the less you will discover of the truth. Eventually, you've got to say, ‘What is the truth?’

Well, the truth is now. And now is what is. And what is, is everything in sense, this moment, now, in the observer's own experience – only what is. It’s no good saying, ‘I have a knowledge of God’. Or ‘I have a knowledge of my car’. Or ‘I have a knowledge of this and that’. That is not what is. That is in your imagination – in your inner space. The only thing that is here now is what is – the phenomena in front of you now. That’s the truth.

So, Barry, is spiritual enquiry really a distraction from the truth?

Yes. While you're engaged in spiritual enquiry, you'll be distracted from what is and go into areas which have been provided by spiritual masters, the Buddhists and all other religions. You’ll be going into inner space and starting to imagine what God is, what Jesus is, what Mohammed is, what Buddha was talking about. You’ll be going into all sorts of ceremonies, mantras and all the rest of it – which is all a lot of rubbish compared with the truth.

The truth is now – the phenomena in front of you, what is, as it is, now. That is the only truth. The rest of it takes you away from that. And inevitably, because you are away from that, you will have to suffer and know confusion and contradiction. In all the masters that you listen to, you will find contradiction, because no one is saying the truth is only now – and it is the phenomena you see with all your senses.

So, Barry, not many people are actually walking around in this moment, or living now. What's in the way then? Is there a process or is there some way to get rid of everything, so that then you are just living now?

Yes. That’s the process of living. Your living life has been provided so that you can suffer enough and go through tragedy – go through loss (because everybody dies, ones you love and your own body). Everybody has to go through all that, which is living, with its temporary successes and temporary failures; and temporary driving into the world; and temporary depressions and confusions. And temporary moments in which you are in that state of mind where you sense that there is a God or truth – temporary, that is, because to hold that as an uninterrupted state requires being absolutely and completely now, every moment, in your senses. You can't do that until you have lived sufficiently and suffered with all that I just described – trusting that that will eventually get rid of your imagination about the truth instead of perceiving the reality of the truth. And the reality of the truth is now; it never was anything else, only now. It is utterly and completely in the phenomenal existence; that's where it is.

There’s no truth in inner space

Surely you have to have some kind of purpose to your life to distil the experience of suffering; otherwise it seems you can just go on suffering and suffering?

Well, no. By the divine intelligence that's behind it all, everybody's living life is gradually and imperceptibly driving them through tragedy, loss, temporary successes, plenty of failures, into a greater knowledge that they know nothing and that everything they think is rubbish, everything they deduce is rubbish, everything the scientists have ever proposed is rubbish. In other words, more and more negation of all their beliefs and thoughts. It's an imperceptible movement by the intelligence of God that everybody is involved in. But it's so slow, it's so imperceptible, that that process is not enough really. And that's where a master comes in.

We would expect a master to say there is only one truth and that is now. And that is in the phenomenal existence, in what your senses supposedly are reporting, now. That is the only truth. But it is the way of ignorance, of people, to look for something more. They want to look for Jesus. They want to look for the void. They want to go into all the things that all the teachers and masters have given them: the gunas, the shastras and all this past and rubbish – because it's not the truth, now. The only truth, now – if only you can find a master to tell you this – is to be now, in your senses; and what you are seeing and what you are hearing is the truth. But if you perceive anything inside, in your inner space, it is not the truth. The truth is only here, now, in your senses. That's all.

What do you mean by ‘inner space’?

Inner space is where you think, where you want, where you imagine, where you wish, where you dream, where you have spiritual realisations, where you realise God, where you realise truth, where you realise love. All that happens in inner space, demonstrably, in your own experience. And there's no truth in that.

Well, that’s just a bit beyond everybody. It seems like the end of everything that we think of as having some value.

I’m afraid it is beyond everybody – until they find a master who will speak to them of the truth. But every master's not speaking to them of the truth. The masters are giving the people nice ceremonies, nice little mantras, nice little stories about the past, nice little parables, all this rubbish. They limp in front of the people. The people that are interested have to be told that there is only one truth – and it is now. Anything that you are imagining, anything that you're building on as an opinion, any position, is not the truth, because that happens inside of you. And there's no truth inside of you.

You cannot find the truth until you have expunged all that's inside of you. All that's inside of you is the clamour of your emotions and the clutter of your mind. Should you happen to eliminate a tiny bit of the clutter or the clamour, then it is true that a reflection of the truth may shine through; and you will be exalted in that moment and think that you have realised God. But it's only a reflection of God. It's only a clearing of a little bit of the intellect, which is a reflection of God in existence. But then there's all the rest of the clamour and the clutter around it. The intellect is smeared and covered with all the rubbish of belief and religion, and the hopes and the untruths that masters have spread. And you'll never find any absence, which is the state of truth, unless you're able to be now – with nothing arising inside.

Nothing arising

Do I have to keep reminding the Buddhists all the time of what the Buddha said that was important? – ‘I have nothing arising.’ What does ‘nothing arising’ mean? It means no opinions, no beliefs, no mantras, no wanting, no trying, no effort, no clamour, no clutter. But try and tell a Buddhist that, as a way of life. I'm talking about a way of life, which is: Only what is, is the truth. There is no truth in anything that is inside – it's all imagination and reflection. And truth cannot be a reflection.

A reflection is like a reflection in the mirror. When you look into the bathroom mirror, you get a reflection. Is that you in the bathroom mirror? No, it's my reflection; a reflection of something that's in front of the mirror. A reflection can never be the real thing. So, any realisation of God is only a reflection of God in the intellect. And that's not God; it's not good enough. God is now. God is this moment, now, every moment. And that's only in what is.

But how does one achieve this? Is there one thing that I can do to help eliminate the clutter?

Yes. Get rid of ‘I’ – I who am always reflecting on something. If I'm not reflecting on my memory, I am reflecting on my emotions. If I am not doing either of those, I'm dreaming. And, of course, I'm dreaming while I'm awake – wishful thinking. I'm always reflecting on something because I am so unintelligent. I'm at the lowest end of intelligence – the human mind. And I haven't got the stillness that can focus on every moment, as the external existence, as it is now. As soon as that's done, I disappear. I only exist in the past – as a reflection on the past, on my memory, my emotions, knowledge, or information. I only exist there. But in the moment, where there is only perception, now, of the external, I disappear. Then there is the state of absence. And there's no person; there's no individual. There's just what is.

So what can you do? You've got to get rid of ‘I’. You've got to stop reflecting. You've got to stop thinking. You've got to stop wishing. You've got to stop wanting to escape. You've just got to stop all those things. You've got to stop reflecting on your emotions, on your thoughts, on your memory. While you do that, I exist.

So is that what you mean when you speak about negation?

Yes.

It's a negation rather than a positive doing?

Oh, yes. It's a negation of everything – except doing. Nobody on earth can stop doing. The Buddha went into a cave (so we're told) and he wanted to meditate. But that was a doing. He wanted to starve himself. That was a doing. Nobody can stop doing in this existence. And that's all right. What's wrong with doing? Nothing. You can't help it. But you don't have to be attached to the doing so that it produces an ‘I’ who reflects on the doing. It's when I reflect on what I am doing – that's the problem. If I reflect on what I am doing, I then wonder, ‘Is it right or is it wrong?’ And as soon as I do that, I reflect on the religious culture that I am in, or some morality or ethic that I've heard of, and I try to live that – and that's impossible. You can't live a morality; you can't live an ethic, because it will always mislead you and you'll end up wondering what you're doing.

Inner sense

When I try to reflect on the truth I make up all sorts of things. I imagine what masters have said, what Jesus said, what Babaji said, what Andrew Cohen said. I reflect on that and I think I’ve got hold of something. I then apply that to doing, as a ceremony, as a practice. And that’s rubbish because ‘I’ am doing it, ‘I’ has decided; whereas the truth is to get rid of ‘I’. And I'll say it again: The only way I can get rid of ‘I’ is to get rid of my self-reflection, my self-consideration, my selfishness, my day-dreaming, my wanting, my trying – by negation. That gradually gets rid of ‘I’ – the pest. So, you have to stop reflecting on all that stuff . . . Like now.

If you could only hold this state, now, you'd be able to see there's only what is . . . Nothing arising. I'm still doing – talking. But, in this moment now, when that bird is singing and these trees are moving and the clouds are there, there's no ‘I’. It's just one great something or other that I cannot name – except to say it's phenomenal. It is that – in a sense. But is that all it is? Nobody can say. That's the mystery of sense . . . Nobody can say what it is. Anything that's said about it is an interpretation and a mental exercise. It's what is now. That's the mystery; that's the secret.

Is any resonance inside me, with what I see outside me, valid?

Well, to a degree. I can't deny the beauty of existence. But there's an actuality – a resonance, as you used the word then. It re-sounds off something that is real inside of me. And, I would say, that is the sense behind the senses.

There is a complex of sense behind the differentiated senses. Out here my senses are separated from each other: for example my sense of hearing is separate from my sense of touch-feeling and so on. Whereas the complex of inner sense is one complete complex of sense. Whenever there is a bird song – and I don't try and name the bird, but just hear the beauty of it – or I see the beauty of anything, that is an immediate resonance with my inner sense. Through the differentiated senses, it reaches the complex of the undifferentiated senses; and that's where I know beauty.

The complex of inner sense contains all beauty that can be recorded in what is, through the senses. For instance, I just saw the ducks flying towards me; it made me smile because the perception of them goes straight into my complex of sense, through my sense of seeing. My body smiles because the real sense behind the differentiated senses is a place of beauty, of a love that is recognised as beauty and that's all; a love that doesn't recognise ugliness because there is no such thing, but a love that recognises beauty or rightness or truth.

When I say that what I'm seeing now – the paddocks, the trees, the skies, the cloud and whatever my senses are reporting in sound and sight – is the only reality, I don't know how deep this reality is within these senses. I'm not saying that reality is not here and also resonant with something else inside; I'm not saying that. But it's an immediacy – it's an immediacy of beauty, of contentment, of fulfilment, of sweetness, of rightness. And that means this immediacy, now, of the senses is resonating with something that is more complete, within.

There is just what is

Everybody knows the beauty of nature or their loved one when they see the smile on their face or the sweetness in their eyes. Everybody knows this. There's an immediate resonance. The only problem is that the emotions and the mind (or mentality) have come between the outer, differentiated senses and what they perceive and the response to that inside in the complex of sense. Something comes between, like clouds over the sun. And so, instead of getting the message of the pure resonance, just the purity of it without any questions arising – ‘Well, why is this happening? How is it happening?’ – the mind gets in the way, and starts asking questions.

The whole world is trying to make sense of sense perception. And you can't do that. You cannot understand sense. You cannot make sense of sense.

Picking up what you were saying about what I see in front of me is the only reality, the Buddhists, as far as I understand the Buddhists, say that the impermanence of this world, of what I see in front of me, is suffering. Where's the error in this?

Right. I want you to show me impermanence now... You can't. But that's what the Buddhists have done.

But it is true that, first of all, the only way to the truth is to be able to see the fact of existence. The fact of existence – if we are sensitive and real enough to see it – is that it is a place of suffering; that it is a place of disease, old age and death. And don't worry, you're going to get old and you're going to end up in hospital, whoever you are and no matter how healthy you are now. And you are going to end up in hospital dying, possibly in terrible physical pain – because this is a place of suffering. And if you think you're not, then just stick around; and you will see that's what is going to happen to you in this existence. That’s what experience is about, so that you will see the fact of existence. And, as such, you could translate that into the fact that this is all transient. And that's a reasonable conclusion to draw. Do you notice the word: a reasonable ‘conclusion’?

But then, as you gradually see the fact of existence, as I've just described, you may be moved, like the Buddha was moved, to find out what's behind this. And if you do that, which I suggest you do, you will find out that I, my self, am behind all the pain and suffering. And I will find out that I, my self, am discontent, unhappiness, wanting, trying, imagination, self-reflection and self-consideration. And I will find out that that is the cause of all the unhappiness on earth – in my life and everybody's life.

As I go on, looking into the fact and discovering the truth, I will eventually arrive at what I'm saying now: There is only one truth. And that is: No conclusion; no assumption; no definition of what is in front of you. In other words: What is. And there's no impermanence in what is. There's just what is. The bird is flying across the sky there. Is that impermanence? No. That's the bird flying across the sky. And if I see a dead bird on the grass, is that impermanence? No. That's a dead bird. What does ‘dead’ mean? It just means that the body is no longer animated, alive. Is that impermanence? No. Impermanence is a conclusion. But you've got to reach that state right through your life. It's got to become the whole living life. It's got to become such a focus on God, on the truth behind the fact, that it's uninterrupted. Otherwise, you get distracted by events and circumstances. And I start arising and start defining, assessing, evaluating and all the rest of it. And once I start that, misery begins for me.

Thank you very much for being with me. I come to life when I'm talking about God. It resonates with my inner sense, what ever that is, I don't know. A wonderful resonance happens in me.

– From an interview on 21st of July, 2001

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