(© HKU Press, 1964)If one has understood this, profoundly understood it, is there any longer a reason why one should go on living in subjection to an identification with a psycho-somatic 'I' which one now clearly knows is not what one is? Has one not realised that a 'self' is only one's object, perceptual and conceptual, and that it could not be what we are?
If so, one is free to snap out of that fixation and to live as one is - for one 'is as one is', and one must always be that, from whatever illusory notions one may suffer. Can one not just 'live free' - like Elsa the lioness - without abandoning one's 'lifelong' associations, the 'state of life to which it has pleased God to call us', though now without affective attachment? Can one not go on playing one's part in the play of everyday life, as the actor does in his, liv-ing out one's liv-ing dream, simply and worthily, though without remaining identified with it or 'without taking it seriously' as one says? Envy, hatred and malice will be no more, vengeance will no longer seem desirable, we shall be invulnerable, and we know why - for we have said it again and again in the foregoing pages - and so there is no one to hurt any 'us'. Love and hatred are replaced by universal benediction, manifested as kindliness and good nature towards the world around us which we now recognise as ourself.
We may regard this simply as living noumenally instead of phenomenally, though it may be that pure noumenal living represents a further degree of insight, such as that in which Maharshi and the great sages lived out their 'lives'. But degrees are conceptual, and every liv-ing thing is only Buddha-mind (which is all a Buddha is) whatever his degree of attachment, and recognising 'degree' is living phenomenally.
The Sages did not consistently conform to any pattern of saintliness, their phenomenal manifestations were on occasion quite ungodly. Their phenomenality was not confined to their corporeal functions. Sai Baba (of Shirdi) was often violent, though such manifestations were momentary and rootless, perhaps deliberate. Our notions concerning the behaviour of Sages are only concepts; and anyhow they are not to be copied. We have only to live noumenally - and that implies an awareness which is not aware of itself and which has no room for conceptuality.
Let us do this. Let us live gladly! Quite certainly we are free to do it. Perhaps it is our only freedom, but ours it is, and it is only phenomenally a freedom. 'Living free' is being 'as one is'. Can we not do it now? Indeed can we not-do-it? It is not even a 'doing': it is beyond doing and not-doing. It is being as-we-are.
This is the only 'practice'.
