Stephen Jourdain

Some incredible exerpts of Stephen Jourdain's conversation with Gilles Farcet



SJ


All that is a dream! Every instant, everything we designate outside our consciousness that appears real to us, endowed with a reality that’s autonomous and exteriour to our own consciousness, everything we perceive outside outside though the window of our thought all that is hallucinatory. This hasn’t one atom of reality. It’s a purely imaginary phenomenon. They’re subjective effects that your sleeping consciousness surreptiously turns into a reality that’s autonomous and separate reality from you. That’s the nature of the hallucination. To sense your past, the past in general or the future or Paris or the cosmos as something real as realities separate from you is to hallucinate like a madman who walks down the street talking to a phantom interlocutor. This fellow has lost his marbles because he has turned a purely subjective and unreal effect into objective reality. All this should show you the extent of what must be eradicated. All this also shows you the immensity of what must be put back into the heart of consciousness to be dissolved there.

Once this enormous conversion takes place theres nothing wrong with jiggling a marionette and playing. But one must absolutely perceive that my future, my death, me producing the thoughts im in the process of producing etc are nothing but marionettes jiggled by the mind by virtue of a horrible spiritual sickness that pounced on me a billion years ago; my soul no longer feels its own fingers jiggle the marionette and treats it like a stranger.Thus, you must deny the undeniability everywhere it rages that is to say, the totality of your preceeptions.


SJ

The destruction to be accomplished is phenomenal. One cannot attack the dream in fragments. When one wakes in the morning the dream disappears all at once. Thus it is necessary to annihilate everything to pierce all eyes of thought in discovering at the same time that one has never seen with any other eye than the eye of the thought. That, therefore, is the work I would demand you do and its imperative you do well. For either this work is accomplished and you become who you are – your own truth, the infinite value in the heart that was once called God.


SJ

The universe is nothing but a bubble that my soul is blowing. Thus its necessary to blow the bubble. The life of the person caught up in the state of ordinary consciousness unravels at the centre of the subjective bubble he never ceases to blow above his head, a forgery of the universe that includes the thinking subject. He evolves in the interior of the thought of the self. When things click, this bubble bursts like a soap bubble. In reality the uusual state of consciousness has no solidity and can burst any moment.


SJ


In order to reabsorb the hallucination, bringing back what is only thought to the source of thought in such a way that it appears in its true mental nature, that is to say as nothingness, a first method would consist of making an attack at the very heart of the dream. The Central rivet of the hallucination is nothing other than the absolute belief in myself in the act of producing a thought of dreaming this or that. ….if people corrected the way they situate themselves they would eliminate 98% of their problems. Then they would be in the zenith of their dream and close to bursting it.


SJ

The sun of awakening that rose for the adolescent Jourdain has since continued its course and modified its glow. After forty years, I no longer have a body. By that I mean I am no longer situated in the body. Evidently, if someone mentions my foot, Im not going to confuse it with the table! But my body, as an experience no longer exists; the fundamental modification has taken place. Its accompanied moreover by a modification of spatial perception. In the same manner, I no longer have a spirit. It has been a good thirty years since “my spirit” in the usual sense of the term totally disappeared. And about a year ago, I said to myself, “ Shit, I no longer have a spirit, no longer have a body. How in the hell will I be able toe explain all that to someone who has a spirit and a body and who to boot snoozes? Ive got to remember what its like to have a spirit and a body. Thus, I made a great effort, all alone in the kitchen, and suddenly remembered – once again I found myself incorporated, I became once again a spirit in a body. That only lasted a few seconds but I almost croaked !
 

Mid Leap

It’s a difficult choice. It appears that one needs to maintain consistent efforts – neither too much or too less. Then the waiting. Conscious waiting seems impossible. When one is conscious there seems to be an urge to always try something - be in sensing the body or watching the breath. Then how do we allow the other energies to participate and even enter if we are so engaged in "doing" . My own fantasy is that effort continues and when the energy is all spent, awarenss vanishes and deep sleep takes over. In a way, that sleep allows no resistance and thereby allow higher energies to come and visit. And maybe unexpectedly a deep insight will arise. Like cultivating the field and then waiting for the rains and the rain god to arrive. I sometimes feel that even the trying and the Working is not something that I do – its been done thru me. It’s the wanting to have a quick closure or the frustration on not reaching that space that comes from a lower part around my presenses. That needs vigilance. And see what is in me that wants a quick closure. Or a wanting a permanence.

Sometimes when one is on the verge of an insight there is a sense of even impending disaapointment - as though if the search is over there is no longer any more meaning in life. It is indeed frustrating to be mid stream - the bank left behind does not appeal and the bank ahead is only faintly visible.



 

Place of I

So many unknowns. So many mysteries. Reading Stephen jourdain’s experience clearly shows that the source is the reality. Everything – the body, the thoughts this universe all emerge from this source. Its as though an instant second creation happen and abrograted the true original creation. Stephen says and it sounds so true..humans are like vegetation. Like grass and trees.
It appears that the truth cannot be known unless the “I’ is placed outside of one;s current identity. Only then a taste of the truth can be experienced. This is what probably Nisarga data maharaj says – just keep dwelling in the I AM.
He says such beautiful things about memory and time. My memory of the past is NOW. My memory of the future is NOW

Happy Birthday

Nisarga Datta says What is Born is either aware or asleep or awake. So what is born? Its such an amazing question. What is Born? Something limited out of an unlimited? Is being born being identified with this body and limit myself to this confines? So being born becomes the day I start identifying with the body? The baby on birth is not identified with the body. It continues to exist as a wide expanse. Then its conditioned to beleive - or in a way we stuff a baby into a body. And an immortal being is bestowed with mortality !! So is REMEMBERING ONESELF all about remembering how it was when one was born? before this whole identification happened? and then get the whole flood of experience to remain in that state for eternity?

Chimera...

The last couple of days have been days of healing. Here I was lamenting on my distance..such a vast distance from the Divine..or the so called Objective understanding of the universe..and at some point in time even questioning my need for closure of this search..(where is this need coming from in the brain? is it the rational centre that needs closure..can there be completeness without closure..?). And then i read Keats and Wordsworth..after so many years..actually first time in the mind numbing school where the poetry was taught in a manner so brutual..and then in college..
and these poets seem to have gone through the same pain im going thrru right now..this pain of being touched by something and then losing it..

(Excerpts from Ode to a nightingale)..keats

“ ..Thou was not born for Death, immortal Bird
No hungry generations tread thee down
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad hear of Ruth, when sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn…
……Adieu! Adieu! Thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still streams
Up the hillside; and now ‘tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:- Do I wake or sleep?


Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thou unravish’d bride of quietness
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme
What lea-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of Dieties or mortals or of both
In Tempe or the dales or Arcady
What men or gods are these ?What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit?what struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstacy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter;therefore, ye soft pipes, play on:
Not to the sensual ear, but more endear’d
…..
With forest branches and trodden weed
Thou silent form dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: cold Pastoral
When old age shall this generation waste
Thou shalt remain in the midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to who thou say’st
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”, - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.



From Prelude : WordsWorth

“….ye presences of Nature in the sky
And on the earth! Ye visions of the hills!
And Souls of lonely places! Can I think
A vulgar hopes of yours when ye employed
Such ministry, when ye through many a year
Haunting me thus among my boyish sports,
On caves and trees, upon wood and hills,
Impressed upon all forms the characters
Of danger or desire; and does did make
The surface of the universal earth
With triumph and delight, with hope and fear..”

Danse cerebre

I am sitting at the poolside of Tanglin club. A colonial slice in the middle of the bustling and exploding Singapore. There almost seem to be an immediate relief from the outside. The severity of the precision in Singapore – the way the traffic moves, the very precise way of people walking, even the trees look so precise the way they stand and the way they are shaped. A complete lack of spontaneity. Monastic. And with all these precision and symmetry there is no beauty. What is missing is movement. Beauty comes in movement. Precison is death. Its frozen. There is no place for anyone else. There are no surprises. There is no flowering. The club is a worm hole in the space-time continuum. You go back to a time where there was neither a rush nor a need for precision. A time of repose and watch the clouds pass by. There is order without precision. There is time for a dance. Like dance with its steps yet all the room in the world for a personal expression.

Sex Machine

So what is sexuality..what is the feeling..? where does it pop up from when you see a hot body floating past? where does it pop up from in the middle of the night or in the middle of a meeting?
Does the eye pick up an object and switch on a gear inside that starts off the whole process of desire..then aquisition and then quenching the desire..and then the desire just vanishes! pop! and then even when the hot body makes its mandatory and (relentless?) appearance there is no desire..no feeling..
it probably means that the simuli that comes from the eye ..needs some kind of an accumulated fuel to burn..it seems that once the desire is quenched the fuel is burnt and therefore nothing for Round2 till there is an accumulation of the fuel. It feels so silly looking at the whole thing like a machinery.takes the romance out of my passion..! but then in Mid Summer Shakespeare very nicely brings about the absurdity of the emotion of love..it doesnt really matter if the object of your passion is a donkey..its the chemicals inside that really cause all that passion..
The human machine seems to love repeating moments of pleasure..the burning of the fuel brings in the pleasure and therfore the pattern is set..
So the question is - DO I burn this fuel quenching the neeeds of the body..? what if i dont burn this at all?? what happens to the fuel? will it get burnt elsewhere? say imagination? or anger..??
its so frustrating not to know the workings of this body..! isnt there a manual somewhere..then..when the hotbody comes..the desire is quenched ..but the fuel is intact.. perpetual motion between celibacy and consummation.

Trishanku...reality sandwitch.

Before i really start let me ay homage to the food gods for a fantastic dinner at Lara Djong Grand in Jakarta. Two divine places in Jakarta - Oasis and now Lara DjongGrand. Thanks to Buddha for being in the restuarent and starting vacantly as I ate. Also a nice reminder of the real distance between us. He with nirvana..me half way between hapiness and nirvana. This probably is the worst place to be. When One is firmly planted on the ground. It really dosent matter. When one is in Nirvana it really effin doesnt matter. And when ur in the middle...your ground below is as far away as the sky above.
I have learnt not to reach up any more. i guess if its important for the universe, nirvana will probably happen anyways. If it doesnt i guess too bad for the universe. Maybe at best I will stare at death in the eye and not just go out kicking and screaming. But the sight from here is not pretty:
The mind-body seems to be some kind of a processing unit where various energies enter for some proocesses. Some energies enter thru the senses ..esp the eyes..and some enter thru the head..and they just battle it. I sometimes watch the battle from a distance..whatever the processes and all that pain and sensations. For some reasons even though I watch at a distance I hurt too...and i will continue to hurt till or if..."the energy level changes and I go so far away that finally the battle doesnt touch me"..I wonder if this "search" is some kind of a bondage..where the search keeps u in perpetual bondage of sadhana..Work..or whatever...beg plead..besech the universe to spot me..and grant me grace..the grace of eternal distance from the battles..grace of immortality..
its not in my hands..all i have to do is wait..and hope i get the pick of the draw..the awarness comes and goes..of its own voilition...i have no say in the matter..and so does my going to sleep happens..all on its own..i wonder what the hell is my role in all this..wonder why I am? is universe short of witnesses that they need people to just "witness"???
So when I am up in the morning..and my body is burning with a hunger for a touch of feminine energy, this awareness comes up that this feeling is because my energy levels have "docked" in a part of the brain that activates the sexual centres and will seek release from there. So then its got to be undocked and "channeled" into this "bank" of awareness that will in future tell me that when im horny next that I need to undock it and channel it to bank of awareness that...
What happened to the good old wank?? what happened to just seducing or being seduced and just let the kink take over?
So while i sometimes think im not the body..or sometimes I think fuck man..i am not supposed to be the body..im supposed to be this being-awareness..and with the knowledge that im not this who im supposed to be and i dont know whaT im all about..i continue to exist..like a man who's lost his name and woke up in a strange country

Shadow of doubt

SO the day goes on..trying to pull myself back..in that wonderful state where clearly the experience of pure being awareness pervades..the assumption that that im am the body is now demolished because of what Ravi said " Your shadow is following you..so are u the shadow"? Now that means this body is only a shadow following pure awareness..

Now realise so clearly Ramana Maharishi's relentless question of going to the source of the "I" - it is to show the fiction of the assumption being made that "I am the body.."
why did that assumption come? where did it come from ? was it suggested? When the birth happened, the pure awareness must have prevailed..and then firtly a name was given..and that must have immediately limited the awareness..what if we did not have a name atall?

how is the being awareness at the time of birth to be retailned? what goes wrong..? is it possible to find a way to save our babies..or do all of them get banished from the Garden of Eden..each moment there is someone banished from the garden of eden..

Sacred position of the Awareness

FUndemental shift in today’s sitting with Ravi. Ravi mentioned remarking about someone’s sharing “ Subtle energies are always trying to reach us. When, due to the right conditions the energies enter, we say WE have had a wonderful experience. WE seem to have ursurped and owned up that experience.
Then he said “breathe in the air from the atmosphere”

These two sentences shifted something for me. Firstly I suddenly realized the mechanical ness of “I” and saw the CD changer pick up the “I” CD to load it. I now knew I can watch and fight this. For 2006, this then will be my prime exercise. To watch when I takes ownership. Even the language would change. It would have to be without the “I” as though a phenomena is happening. Like instead of “I” have an idea – it becomes “ an idea is happening “.

The second significant experience has been the who is breathing..and when “I” is not existing, then “I” cannot be breathing. Suddenly now the atmosphere has become a living organism for me and this Awareness is a link between the Organism – Harish and the atmosphere that is providing the sustenance of air – and my responsibility is now to ensure that this organism is nourished and taken care of. And then like Harish, all organisms now become the responsibility of this Awareness. Its like watering a plant. For a long time I thought I was the plant. Now I know im the gardener and its my job to bring the water from wherever it is and water the plant daily. And then take care of other plants so as to ensure that there is all round flourishing.

The “I am” breathing will have to change to “Am” breathing.
( TO copy in the Diary too)