(© RKP, 1958)Bliss
It seems clear, as Monsieur Linssen has explained to us, that what we call 'love', with its possessivity, its sensuality, its essential egoism, is in fact the refraction in a denser medium of what he terms 'divine love', that which manifests in the jivanmukta as impersonal caritas and which he has permanently as a state of mind. Manifesting in us through the artificial ego it is polluted by all the desires and avidities of that, and, becoming affective, acquires a shadow which never leaves it and which is suffering.
But the full implication of this has never been stated, as far as I am aware, perhaps because it seems too obvious to the wise men (those who make books); but we are not all wise, and happily we do not (quite) all write books.
It should be obvious that all our poor little motives, the dynamism of everything we do or think, of every action we ever take, of whatever nature, in short every single manifestation of which we are capable, is simply a refraction through our ego of an aspect of Reality.
We may be tired of hearing that what 'is' on the plane of Reality becomes what 'exists' on the plane of seeming, that the One becomes the many (or the 'ten thousand things'), or that every phenomenon must have a noumenon; and anyhow that is usually just an intellectual conception.
We may be able to transmute that into intuitional understanding, into real knowledge, and assimilate it in experience, which is a gauge of enlightenment, if we come to realise it piecemeal instead of en bloc. To that end we may trace back each of our impulses to its noumenal state, and know what it is that is being misused and degraded in our psyche by the artificial ego in whose illusory power we are content to live in a state that most of us recognise as conflict and misery.
For instance, to quote Robert Linssen in this connection, speaking of a liberated man, 'Comment pourrait-il en effet trouver un intéret quelconque dans la jouissance de quoi que ce soit, s'il goute à chaque instant, le 'Souverain Délice' de l'Ananda, qui suggère inlassablement le désir au coeur de tous les etres?'
In these words he tells us that it is Ananda (Bliss) on the noumenal plane that manifests phenomenally via our egos as desire for enjoyment. And we are made to see how futile and transitory are our enjoyments in comparison with the immensity of the Bliss of which they are a dim and fast-fading echo.
We can also perceive that without the artificial ego we could not desire these feeble and make-believe enjoyments - as artificial as the ego which seeks them - and that its elimination cannot but result in leaving us directly accessible to the noumenon of those desires - which is the state of mind called Ananda or Bliss.
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There may be another side to this picture, one that indeed is always turned to the wall.
If all our poor little motives and desires, our pitiful little enjoyments, recognised as such, are really reflections or echoes of Bliss on the plane of Reality, as our deplorable egotistic 'love' is a reflection of its reality, all of which are demonstrated in manifestation, direct and without refraction in the muddy waters of an ego, by liberated men (men liberated from their egos), then do we not malign them a little?
They may be poor relations, but they come of good stock. The echoes may be feeble and confused, but the Voice is Harmony Itself. The shadows may be fugitive and transparent, but the Substance is Reality. If we trace them back to their origin we shall surely find Ourselves.
How much better than going and sitting on our haunches in a cave and regarding our navels as though there were something there to look at, which only results in cramp and hypnosis! If we do as I suggest we will be doing what the Zen Masters have been telling us to do for twelve hundred years, i.e. to seek realisation through living.
'When I am hungry I eat; when I am tired I lie down.'
Since our every sensation is an evidence of Reality, and since it is Reality that we seek to real-ise, a path opens before us in every moment of our lives.
Instead of spurning our desires and avidities, and our little pleasures, on account of their recognisable futility and egoism, we might advantageously lead them up the garden-path so that they may introduce us to the source of their being.
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