The Masters are continually telling us to cease image-making, conceptualisation, mentation of all kinds, and to rest in the void. As with the abolition of the notion of a so-called 'ego' or 'self' - every term is employed, so that no loop-hole shall be left. Again and again Huang Po says, 'If only you would do that,' explicitly stating that it is the only way, and that, in certain cases at least, it will surely open the way for the final and supreme intuition.
What, then, is this so very important process, and this void? The process is surely the original form of Dhyana, so unfortunately translated 'Meditation' - how much less inaccurate an idea they would have given us if they had rendered it as 'Non-meditation', though 'Meditation- Non-meditation' may be a more valid description of it.
No doubt there are people among us who understand this process and who even practise it, but I have never knowingly had the good fortune to meet one of the West, and some people go out to the far-East in order to learn it. Even so one wonders what, in fact, they learn, and, more particularly, if that really is what the Masters meant - since they roundly condemned 'meditation'. In meditation there is movement; in concentration there is effort; in dhyana there is neither.
The aim is 'to destroy the concept-forming dualistic mentality' by means of 'wisdom coming from non-dualism', i.e. transcendental (intuitive) knowledge destroys conceptual knowledge, the latter being inevitably erroneous. In short it is dualistic thought which has to be transcended. Later Huang Po goes so far as to say, 'Yes, my advice is to give up all indulgence in conceptual thought and intellectual processes. When such things no longer trouble you, you will unfailingly reach Supreme Enlightenment'.
Moreover the term 'void', even tempered with the assurance that it is also a 'plenitude', is highly repugnant, if not terrifying, to most of us, and the idea of letting go of our precious intellect, even for a moment, is almost unbearable.
Suppose we approach the problem, since evidently it is vital and of supreme importance, in our own way and in our own terms, since those of the Masters come down to us via dubious translations (all translations from ancient Chinese pictograms must necessarily be dubious), dating back a thousand years, and of words spoken by and to men of a different race and a very different culture from our own.
Is the answer not simple - as answers should be, if they are real? Are the Masters not asking us just to withdraw our subjectivity from the object, thereby reintegrating the subject?
Is that not something we can understand? Is that not something we can do? And when we do that are we not invulnerable? Was it not from that state Socrates said, 'Ils peuvent me tuer, mais ils ne peuvent pas me faire de mal'?
In that state, if someone comes and insults us, practises a fraud upon us, or strikes us - we do not react. How could we? What we misinterpreted as an 'ego' is no longer there. It is almost as though we were reading about such actions in a newspaper, only, in the latter case, we tend to identify ourselves with the victim - and react.
In that state the mind is still, but there is no lack of, but increased awareness. It is a state of disponibilité. No concepts arise, but intuition can enter freely. Its tranquillity is restorative, and its serenity has an element of bliss.
The Maharshi seems to have been in that state when his ashram was attacked by robbers. And did not Ouspensky seek to inculcate a similar practice, which I think he called 'self-remembering'? Thank Goodness there is nothing original in what I suggest! I hope indeed there never is, else how could such suggestion be valid?
Reintegrate the subject, then the object and all objects will be just such and no more. Surely that is life in dualism as it should be lived in dualism, and the life of man as it was before the 'Fall'? Surely that state is the famous 'void' - and there is no 'ego', or anything to be mistaken for that, anywhere in existence.
