Looking through the mask
They don’t like to give names in this particular sect. They don’t like to say God because when the word is used people tend to think of different forms of God. In the West, we tend to think of the illustrations that were in books which were taken from El Greco, or somebody like that – a magnificent old man with a white beard. They don’t like to give a name. They say, “Look through yourself. Don’t rely on a name.”
Look through yourself and try to find the Self, it’s called, rather provisionally. There is a true Self. We can say, “What will this experience be?” They say, “We can try to describe it in terms of all this, but it’s far beyond that.” One teacher said, “People say, oh, you speak of something universal and immortal, but how could the human mind ever have an experience like that? The human mind’s hell in its little brain, in its little sense contacts.” Examples are given. A father, like Mr. Gladstone, for instance, playing with the children on the floor. To the children, the floor, and the game are the whole world, but in the brilliant mind of Gladstone, yes, there’s the floor and the game, and he plays the game to win. They used to say sometimes playing with the children, his eye would flash as it flashed in the House of Commons sometimes. He knows this is a tiny thing. In the background of his consciousness, there’s awareness of the city, of the country, of the world. He had a mastery of the astronomy of the time, of the galaxies beyond.
The teacher said, “Don’t think that because an enlightened mind can deal with small things, that it can’t have, in the background, the rise and the fall of galaxies.” People said, “Oh, ridiculous, ridiculous.” The teachers don’t argue. They say you either perform the experiments, or you don’t. If we have a genuine need, and the time comes when everything turns against us, when those in whom we’ve trusted, have turned to other interests, and those whom we feared have seemed to be triumphant when all our life seems to be in ruins, the Zen teacher says, “Now is the time. While we,” as he says, “are sunk in a bed of comfort complaining about the crumpled leaves in our bed of roses, we’re not going to do anything really serious.” When it’s really vital and important, then, now is the time.
When you have a great disappointment, now is the time to use the energy. You have energy now. The world seems worthless, now you have the energy. If you use that energy in saying, “Oh, why did it happen? These people you can’t trust them,” that energy is just wasted. If that energy can be turned now into an enquiry, into a search, looking through the mask – disappointment is a mask, our triumph is a mask – looking through the mask steadily, calmly looking through it, we shall find a glimpse of what he calls the divine.
One can be a spiritual tourist, let’s say. As a tourist, you visit a country, and the country’s pretty attractive. Marvellous to go to Paris, but you speak to a Parisian, and he’s not particularly enthusiastic. You see, Paris is wonderful, yes, if you’re not a Parisian because when you go to Paris, you’re not working. You’ve got no responsibilities, and you’re spending your savings on the holiday. So, the foreign countries look fine. In the same way, people are attracted to another religion or another attitude. It seems to be fine, but if they were to enter there, if they were to become a Parisian, now you’re working for the upkeep of Paris. It can be a different thing. People are attracted to something like Sufism. Sufism, Muslim belief, wine is strictly forbidden. There is a saying if however, your teacher tells you to soak your prayer carpet in wine, which would be a terrible sacrilege to a Muslim, but if your teacher tells you to do it, do it because he knows the way. One thinks, ‘Yes, this is odd and beautiful. Yes. Oh, I’d be quite prepared to soak my prayer carpet and go and buy wine and soak the carpet in wine. Good wine, of course. You don’t need that cheap wine.’ But if you go into Sufism, no longer as a tourist… well, I saw a teacher in Egypt. His forehead was pitted with scars, where, in his prayer, in his humility before God, he rubbed it on the ground. He used to make his disciples do the same as humility. One thinks, ‘Oh, I’m going under a Sufi teacher,’ and then you’re told that, and you think, ‘Oh no, don’t care for that very much.’ The teacher says, “Is it the look of your forehead, or is it the glory of God? Is it humility before God?” Well, you think, prayer carpet yes. Forehead, no. I’ll go somewhere else.’ Then the spiritual tourist moves on. Whatever he goes in for, he’ll quite soon find that there is some rule, equally strict, that he’s asked to carry out and fulfill.
© Trevor Leggett
The full talk is Getting beneath the mask