Jeanne de Salzmann: The reality of being (1889-1990)

                      Another Vision

I seek what I am, to be what I am. I have a habit of thinking of “body,” on the one hand, and of “spirit or energy” on the other. But nothing exists separately. There is a unity of life. I wish to live it, and I seek it through a movement of return toward myself. I say there is an outer life and an inner life. I say this because I feel myself as distinct, as existing apart from life. There is, however, only one great life. I cannot feel separate from it, outside it, and at the same time know it. I must feel myself a part of this life. But it is not enough to desire this or to seek an intense sensation of it. I can enter into the experience only if I have first come to unity in myself, only if I have come to be a whole. There are two movements in me: a movement of energy from above which, if I am free enough to listen to it, penetrates and acts through me; and another movement, dispersed and without order, which animates my body, my thought and my feeling. The two are very different, and I cannot bring them into accord. Something is missing. My attention is unable to follow them at the same time. Sometimes it settles on the void, the infinite, on emptiness; sometimes on the form. When the attention settles on emptiness, it is the form that dissolves. When the attention is on the form, the sense of the void disappears. It is necessary to pay the price.

Can I be free enough to receive what is unknown, behind all my avid movements toward the outside? This unknown, which is behind and beyond, cannot be perceived by my senses. I am able to see a form, but I cannot know through my senses the true nature of what it is. My thinking knows forms but cannot grasp the reality behind them, the reality of what I am, which appears just before and after each thought or feeling. What we experience—sounds, forms, colors, thoughts—cannot exist without a background. But this background cannot be perceived by my senses. It remains unseen, not experienced. The forms and the reality are parts of a single whole, but they exist in different dimensions. The real is not affected by the material of my thinking and cannot absorb it. Reality is on another level. Yet the material of my thought absorbs the real and constructs illusions based on forms. The form acts as a veil hiding the reality. When the reality of myself is not felt, I cannot help but believe in this illusion and call it “I.” Nevertheless, the illusion is only a mirage which dissolves the moment silence is established.

I have to see that there is a space between thoughts, a void that is reality, and I need to remain as long as possible in this space. Then another kind of thinking appears, clear and intelligent, a thought of another level, another dimension. I see that the usual thought, which is limited and measureable, can never understand that which is beyond measure. With my usual vision I see the physical aspect of the world. With this other vision I see another dimension in which the immeasurable has its own movement. If my centers are absolutely still, without any movement, the energy can pass through them. I see what I did not see before. I see what is. In this seeing there is a light, a light that is not ordinary. Things appear and disappear in the void but are illuminated, and I am no longer so taken by them. In this seeing I can understand my true nature and the true nature of things around me.

It is not a matter of fighting indifference or lethargy or anger. The real problem is vision—to see. But this seeing is only possible if we return to the source, to the reality in us. We need another quality of seeing, a look that penetrates and goes immediately to the root of myself. If we look at ourselves from outside, we cannot penetrate and go deeper because we see only the body, the form of the seed, its materiality. Reality is here, only I have never put my attention on it. I live with my back turned to myself.