The Spiritual Catch 22
From the Gold Coast Talk 18 December 1993
The problem of the spiritual life is that he or she who wants to understand what’s going on is he or she who asks all the questions - the monitor, the questioner inside you - and that’s the very thing that has to go.
It’s a Catch 22 situation. When you go into ‘me’, the stillness is what you are. But then look at the confusion of the one who wants to understand! The questioner, the doubter, the one who judges - the monitor - says ‘There’s nothing here. I don’t feel anything. I don’t see anything.’
I tell the monitor in you: ‘You’re the problem. You’ve got to die. You can’t get out of it. Application for discharge refused!’ The monitor is what has to go.
Of course this is incomprehensible to the self, to the mind. But it is your dilemma, isn’t it? You truly want to be free. You truly want liberation. You truly want to find God. And the very wanting of it is the thing that has to go.
What’s the solution to this Catch 22? The truth is that it exists in a great space. And that great space is ‘me’ in everyone: a vast intelligence, the very source of the intelligence of the questioner. There is no thought, no question, in that space. It’s the space of the Buddha - the void in which nothing arises.
What question have you got to ask me? There is no question, because you’re already there. But the self, the questioner, is going to say, ‘I don’t understand. There is a question, because I’m not liberated. I’m not free.’ But I’m not talking to the monitor. I’m talking to the silence and stillness that is the intelligence in the man or woman, which really does not need to understand.
I Am Logical