Chapter 122November 26, 1958

Falling apart. Everything is falling apart.

Yes, that’s it ... (silence) That is the knot of karma: that sensation, that perception, that is the knot of karma.

My perception is that I have something to do, I don’t know what, and only afterwards ...

But do you feel it as something to do physically?

Yes, I don’t know, this project of the Belgian Congo,117 for example, it seemed to me ...

Pardon me, but that is childishness! ...

physical life where one is free, where one is pure, where one is far away ... Above all, to stop this thing from grinding on, finished with the head, and finished with thinking whatever it might be. If there is a yoga, it would be done spontaneously, naturally, physically, and without the least questioning from up there – above all, a complete cessation of that (the head).

(Extract from the last Wednesday class)

Basically, the vast majority of men are like prisoners with all the doors and all the windows shut, so they suffocate (which is quite natural), but they have with them the key that opens the doors and the windows, and they don’t use it ... Certainly, there is a period when they don’t know that they have the key, but even long after they do know it, long after they have been told, they hesitate to use it and doubt that it has the power to open the doors and windows, or even that it may be advisable to open them. And even once they feel that ‘After all, it might be a good thing,’ a fear pursues them: ‘What is going to happen once all these doors and these windows open? ...’ They become afraid – afraid of losing themselves in this light and in this freedom. They want to remain what they call ‘themselves.’ They love their falsehood and their slavery. Something in them loves it and remains clinging to it. They feel that without their limits, they would no longer exist.

That is why the journey is so long, so difficult. For if one would truly consent no longer to be, everything would become so easy, so swift, so luminous, so joyous – though perhaps not in the way men conceive of joy and ease. At heart, there are very few beings who are not enamored of struggle. There are very few who would consent to having no darkness or who can conceive of light as anything other than the opposite of obscurity: ‘Without shadow, there would be no painting.