“Have I Said It?”
Lately I have been enjoying this series of words by that most controversial of gurus, Franklin Jones. Now, I have never been able to warm up to his prose, despite the fact that people whom I warmly respect will not hesitate to recommend his “Method of the Siddhas” or “The Paradox of Instruction”. However, this series of writings is much more up my alley. Ironically, it was never among the countless works that ended up being published during his lifetime or posthumously.
Perhaps every spiritual teacher has one or two pet themes that they harp upon. It may be advice to us to forego our obsessions with “women and gold” or to inquire into the source of “the I” or to realize the vanity that is “spiritual materialism”. For Jones, it seemed to harp around the idea that seeking is a primal mistake of sorts and that happiness, bliss, etc., is “always already the case” if we would just drop our habitual seeking.
Thank you to the proprietor of the Beezone website for hosting these texts; I think that they are indeed worth a look.
A brief sample from one of the chapters:
The life of seeking
Is founded in prior dilemma,
And it does not work.
The search is futile.
Ultimately
The search is failing.
The principle of the search
Is suffering.
To be
In the state of seeking,
Whatever the form,
Is to be
In the same state
Of suffering.
Fear is the most basic form
Of seeking.
Your trouble is an illusion.
Your search is a reaction
To your suffering.
Your actual dilemma
Has barely been conceived by you,
Barely experienced.
At the very best,
The search itself begins
To break down.
Eventually everything will break down.
Those who dream long enough,
Who try all the alternatives within the dream,
Who have suffered all the attainments
And failures within the dream,
Who no longer have anywhere to go,
Who are only dreaming,
Who are suffering,
Who no longer take their search “seriously,”
For whom the search is no longer
The thing to which they resort,
Who have despaired of their adventures,
Their ecstasies, their attainments,
Their ways, their methods,
Who are only suffering,
Who are only in dilemma,
Who in fact are only experiencing this contraction,
The compulsive avoidance of relationship,
But are doing nothing about it any longer,
Who know they cannot do anything
About it any longer-
They become sensitive
To the sunlight.
When you no longer have any alternatives,
When the search has died,
Then truth becomes your real possibility.
Then truth, real life,
Enters as a living possibility.
It will be your obvious need
When you have no options.
When you no longer
Have any more options,
When you have worn yourself out
Doing your number,
And you have tried
All the trips and methods,
Paths and lifestyles,
Strategies and places to go,
Then all of that
Begins to break down.
That is really the most hopeful sign.
You are only upset,
So what difference
Does the search make?
When all that has failed,
Then suffering itself becomes the point,
Becomes the experience,
Rather than all of the seeking
That is only a reaction to it.
Then a man falls into his suffering,
Becomes conscious of his suffering,
Understands his suffering,
And sees what is already the case.
When there is no defense left,
When the bottom falls out,
When there is nothing to stand on,
That is “liberation.”
When you see it absolutely,
When you see the thing itself,
The simple thing,
That is the end of it.
You fall apart.
You scream,
Or you can’t say anything,
But it just ends.
All of a sudden
The whole process
Is not going on anymore.
It becomes unnecessary and,
At last,
Impossible.
There is only
Divine consciousness,
And you are that.
There is only bliss.
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