Bonus book content
A LETTER FROM THE READER TO HIMSELF
My Dear Child,
Since blue-green algae, you have come a long way – vegetable, animal, human – and have not ceased to evolve. Your eternal consciousness has clothed itself in a multitude of envelopes. I have been waiting for you since time immemorial for you are nothing else but me. The illusion that surrounds you must separate us no more. You must now start on the journey and be ready to leave this planet. I cannot help you from the outside, for where I am, inner and outer are One. In order for us to find each other, you must discover the truth for only it can save you. I cannot give it to you for it is my substance and I cannot divide myself. But I can tell you where to find it. For a long time you have searched for it outside yourself, whether in the depths of matter by creating particle accelerators or on the outer edges of space by sending telescopes in orbit. That is not where you will find it. It is not outside yourself. It lies at the very heart of your being. All you have to do is to want me passionately and follow the path of those who have already found me, and we will soon be reunited.
Your Consciousness that wants you to Get Out of this World Alive.
Introduction
This book will help you to sharpen your questioning skills. And by asking yourself key questions such as “Who am I?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, “What is the origin of the universe?”, you will feel more alive.
To get out of this world alive, you need to have a better understanding of who you are. The only elements that you have at hand are your thoughts, your emotions, your sensory perceptions and your dreams. Use them correctly and you will change your life.
This inner journey will be accomplished in four stages.
Distancing, the first stage, allows you to remain conscious of the thousands of thoughts and feelings that arise within you every day. To that end it makes full use of the body’s sensations. Distancing is a technique and, like all techniques, it requires a period of learning and training. It shows you how mechanical you are. It allows you to see the automatic behavior patterns that rule you and to grasp how dominated those thoughts and feelings are by fear. It will also allow you to see the extent to which you repeat the same patterns and scenarios, a process easy to spot in others but much harder to acknowledge in yourself.
Through Discernment, the second D, you set up a method for introspection that will enable you to dig into the repressed uncon- scious layers you are made of and to dismantle your old sufferings. Soon, by applying the first two Ds, you will create a seeker* within yourself who will work for you on a permanent basis.
It is at this stage that your life starts to change for you identify less with fear and guilt. Thereafter the choices you make are better because they obey a different logic. As you begin to understand how you function, you gradually shift from making unconscious losing choices* to making conscious winning ones.
When you get to the third D, Disidentification, your evolution really accelerates. By letting go of your old patterns, you experience a finer quality of mental silence. If you then commit yourself to a consistent practice of introspection and silence, as many traditions have taught, you develop a psychic body, a soul that operates above thought, above memory. Other worlds open up to you. Although fear and guilt are still present, you are more and more on top of them. By moving above your shadow, above the undisclosed, repressed, fearful aspects of yourself, a new part of you made of light and energy connects to other dimensions.
The Fourth D, Discrimination, will permit you to abandon your final identification, the basic conditioning of you as a person that you have maintained all your life. You now discriminate between what you will become – Truth, the Absolute, consciousness of life itself, the Divine – and what you are about to surrender, your shadow, your repressed emotional body, that you have partly understood and dismantled through the practice of Distancing and Discernment. You will question the essence of the human condition: being, perception, who you are, who perceives? Once you have developed a taste for metaphysical inquiry, for deep questioning, at a certain moment one of these questions will lead you to your absence, to your emptiness. This disappearance of your mechanical nature is what Buddhists call the void, what Christians call the ‘death of the old man’. Opening onto the void, causing the death of the old man are the means by which you can be born to awakening, to enlightenment, to Truth, to the Kingdom of Heaven. To reach this dimension is to encounter the freedom that you are seeking.
The reason why this text includes many quotations of spiritual teachers is because they are pioneers of consciousness. It is not the religions from which they came or founded that are of interest for religions are mere frameworks and systems of belief. What defines these teachers is that they take consciousness beyond frameworks and systems of belief, beyond everything with which you readily identify. In their wish to share this consciousness, they often disturbed the status quo and, like Jesus, Hallaj, Marguerite Porète and Socrates, paid the ultimate price.
Is it not extraordinary that, in spite of the thousands of years and thousands of miles that separate them, Christians such as Meister Eckhart, Sufis such as Hallaj, Hinduists such as Shankara, Taoists such as Lieh Tzu, Ch'an teachers such as Huang Po and many others deploy similar concepts and point towards a freedom beyond context and culture, beyond what conditions you? A freedom in which the observer dissolves in the observed. Spiritual teachers should not be thought of as representatives of systems of belief but as scientists who explored the upper levels of consciousness. As such, they are the scouts of man’s ultimate frontiers. Is it not striking that quantum physics shows that the act of observation alters the very nature of what is being observed? And is it not remarkable that the Zohar, Lao Tzu and Jesus taught that you must balance your masculine and feminine sides? For what physics and psychology have discovered and put within easy reach, they stated hundreds, if not thousands of years ago.
Those who aspire to wisdom will soon develop the intuition that the One, the Absolute, lies at the origin of everything that we know. That sense of unity must be the point of departure for your search.
The Four Ds, whose principles have been known by different names in a variety of traditions, incorporate a method of self-inquiry that opens onto your true nature. One day it will suddenly appear beyond the constraints of polar opposites, beyond large/small, pleas- ure/pain, heaven/earth, being/non-being. It is what you really are. Once you realize this, you get out of this world alive for you are now beyond the polar opposites conscious/unconscious and are pure consciousness.
Whoever steps onto this path will encounter rapid results straightaway. Progress will depend on four qualities: a good level of awareness, willpower, courage and intellectual honesty. The more you intensify your practice, the more conscious you become, the more life reacts positively.
You can only be free if you know yourself. To achieve this, you must have the discipline and the courage to explore your foundations. It is only by applying the right techniques that you can first understand, then see, and at long last let go of the resistance covering up your fears and your guilt.
Myths and folk tales often tell the same story. A knight clad in armour – the ego – rides deep in the dark forest – the unconscious. His task is to vanquish dragons and demons – his guilt, his fears, his conflicts. On setting foot in the castle, he removes his armour and embraces the Sleeping Beauty lying in a glass coffin who instantly wakes up. This scene represents the union with your true nature.
This book is a manual which will guide you through life and towards its ultimate conscious state, awakening. It is designed to help you to ask questions about your motivations, your mechanisms, in other words yourself. To achieve the best results, you must obey two rules:
• You must have a real desire to change your life.
• You must accept that everything that happens to you happens because of you.
Unless these rules are taken seriously, you will not have the discipline to pursue the work on yourself and will blame others – your parents, your environment, society or God – for the troubles you face. Consequently you will never dig deep enough to explore your conditionings, nor dismantle the fear and guilt that lie at the root of your choices. At the same time it is important to be logical and coherent: although you induce what happens to you, if a disaster hits you, you are not responsible for the disaster, only for the way that you deal with it.
In this book the wisdom of the philosophers and mystics of the great traditions has been synthesized and adapted for today. You will discover, for example, that the concept of the sub-personalities was first elaborated by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the 2nd century AD. You will encounter a simple method of psychological introspection whose roots lie in Hinduism. You will learn to interpret and use your dreams in order to accelerate your evolution through an original and precise method that has proven its worth. The techniques that are found in various ancient texts have been brought together, tested and adapted for you in this practical manual.
This book provides a precise plan of the mechanisms of fear and guilt which run your life and explains how you can free yourself from them. It is divided in three parts. The first explains how your function, then develops the system of the 4Ds. The second is made up of the Questions and Answers that arose from a series of lectures given in London and New York between 2005–2012. The third, an anthology of the non-dualistic literature that lies at the base of the philosophy, includes quotations from the teachers of the principal traditions. There is also a glossary defining the core concepts, an extensive bibliography and a list of aphorisms.
To get out of this world alive, you need to have a better understanding of who you are. The only elements that you have at hand are your thoughts, your emotions, your sensory perceptions and your dreams. Use them correctly and you will change your life.
This inner journey will be accomplished in four stages.
Distancing, the first stage, allows you to remain conscious of the thousands of thoughts and feelings that arise within you every day. To that end it makes full use of the body’s sensations. Distancing is a technique and, like all techniques, it requires a period of learning and training. It shows you how mechanical you are. It allows you to see the automatic behavior patterns that rule you and to grasp how dominated those thoughts and feelings are by fear. It will also allow you to see the extent to which you repeat the same patterns and scenarios, a process easy to spot in others but much harder to acknowledge in yourself.
Through Discernment, the second D, you set up a method for introspection that will enable you to dig into the repressed uncon- scious layers you are made of and to dismantle your old sufferings. Soon, by applying the first two Ds, you will create a seeker* within yourself who will work for you on a permanent basis.
It is at this stage that your life starts to change for you identify less with fear and guilt. Thereafter the choices you make are better because they obey a different logic. As you begin to understand how you function, you gradually shift from making unconscious losing choices* to making conscious winning ones.
When you get to the third D, Disidentification, your evolution really accelerates. By letting go of your old patterns, you experience a finer quality of mental silence. If you then commit yourself to a consistent practice of introspection and silence, as many traditions have taught, you develop a psychic body, a soul that operates above thought, above memory. Other worlds open up to you. Although fear and guilt are still present, you are more and more on top of them. By moving above your shadow, above the undisclosed, repressed, fearful aspects of yourself, a new part of you made of light and energy connects to other dimensions.
The Fourth D, Discrimination, will permit you to abandon your final identification, the basic conditioning of you as a person that you have maintained all your life. You now discriminate between what you will become – Truth, the Absolute, consciousness of life itself, the Divine – and what you are about to surrender, your shadow, your repressed emotional body, that you have partly understood and dismantled through the practice of Distancing and Discernment. You will question the essence of the human condition: being, perception, who you are, who perceives? Once you have developed a taste for metaphysical inquiry, for deep questioning, at a certain moment one of these questions will lead you to your absence, to your emptiness. This disappearance of your mechanical nature is what Buddhists call the void, what Christians call the ‘death of the old man’. Opening onto the void, causing the death of the old man are the means by which you can be born to awakening, to enlightenment, to Truth, to the Kingdom of Heaven. To reach this dimension is to encounter the freedom that you are seeking.
The reason why this text includes many quotations of spiritual teachers is because they are pioneers of consciousness. It is not the religions from which they came or founded that are of interest for religions are mere frameworks and systems of belief. What defines these teachers is that they take consciousness beyond frameworks and systems of belief, beyond everything with which you readily identify. In their wish to share this consciousness, they often disturbed the status quo and, like Jesus, Hallaj, Marguerite Porète and Socrates, paid the ultimate price.
Is it not extraordinary that, in spite of the thousands of years and thousands of miles that separate them, Christians such as Meister Eckhart, Sufis such as Hallaj, Hinduists such as Shankara, Taoists such as Lieh Tzu, Ch'an teachers such as Huang Po and many others deploy similar concepts and point towards a freedom beyond context and culture, beyond what conditions you? A freedom in which the observer dissolves in the observed. Spiritual teachers should not be thought of as representatives of systems of belief but as scientists who explored the upper levels of consciousness. As such, they are the scouts of man’s ultimate frontiers. Is it not striking that quantum physics shows that the act of observation alters the very nature of what is being observed? And is it not remarkable that the Zohar, Lao Tzu and Jesus taught that you must balance your masculine and feminine sides? For what physics and psychology have discovered and put within easy reach, they stated hundreds, if not thousands of years ago.
Those who aspire to wisdom will soon develop the intuition that the One, the Absolute, lies at the origin of everything that we know. That sense of unity must be the point of departure for your search.
The Four Ds, whose principles have been known by different names in a variety of traditions, incorporate a method of self-inquiry that opens onto your true nature. One day it will suddenly appear beyond the constraints of polar opposites, beyond large/small, pleas- ure/pain, heaven/earth, being/non-being. It is what you really are. Once you realize this, you get out of this world alive for you are now beyond the polar opposites conscious/unconscious and are pure consciousness.
Whoever steps onto this path will encounter rapid results straightaway. Progress will depend on four qualities: a good level of awareness, willpower, courage and intellectual honesty. The more you intensify your practice, the more conscious you become, the more life reacts positively.
You can only be free if you know yourself. To achieve this, you must have the discipline and the courage to explore your foundations. It is only by applying the right techniques that you can first understand, then see, and at long last let go of the resistance covering up your fears and your guilt.
Myths and folk tales often tell the same story. A knight clad in armour – the ego – rides deep in the dark forest – the unconscious. His task is to vanquish dragons and demons – his guilt, his fears, his conflicts. On setting foot in the castle, he removes his armour and embraces the Sleeping Beauty lying in a glass coffin who instantly wakes up. This scene represents the union with your true nature.
This book is a manual which will guide you through life and towards its ultimate conscious state, awakening. It is designed to help you to ask questions about your motivations, your mechanisms, in other words yourself. To achieve the best results, you must obey two rules:
• You must have a real desire to change your life.
• You must accept that everything that happens to you happens because of you.
Unless these rules are taken seriously, you will not have the discipline to pursue the work on yourself and will blame others – your parents, your environment, society or God – for the troubles you face. Consequently you will never dig deep enough to explore your conditionings, nor dismantle the fear and guilt that lie at the root of your choices. At the same time it is important to be logical and coherent: although you induce what happens to you, if a disaster hits you, you are not responsible for the disaster, only for the way that you deal with it.
In this book the wisdom of the philosophers and mystics of the great traditions has been synthesized and adapted for today. You will discover, for example, that the concept of the sub-personalities was first elaborated by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the 2nd century AD. You will encounter a simple method of psychological introspection whose roots lie in Hinduism. You will learn to interpret and use your dreams in order to accelerate your evolution through an original and precise method that has proven its worth. The techniques that are found in various ancient texts have been brought together, tested and adapted for you in this practical manual.
This book provides a precise plan of the mechanisms of fear and guilt which run your life and explains how you can free yourself from them. It is divided in three parts. The first explains how your function, then develops the system of the 4Ds. The second is made up of the Questions and Answers that arose from a series of lectures given in London and New York between 2005–2012. The third, an anthology of the non-dualistic literature that lies at the base of the philosophy, includes quotations from the teachers of the principal traditions. There is also a glossary defining the core concepts, an extensive bibliography and a list of aphorisms.
Preamble to the psychological work
By applying the techniques described in this book, you will begin a journey within yourself. You will soon achieve rapid results and in a few months your life will change. The more you work on yourself, the more you master the techniques, the more the seeker within you will grow.
As your understanding of identification and duality improves, you will be able to put the two keys to good use. The four maps will also explain how you function mechanically. Learn to use these maps. The one that shows you the link between fear and guilt; the one that shows what the choice of least harm is for you; the one that explains how the different parts of you have been built; and the one that shows you what part of you is centre stage and in control.
The fundamental element that you will be working with is fear. Your psychological structure has been built to manage it. Note that you experience two types of fear: an instinctive fear that you share with all mammals and that is felt whenever your physical security is at risk; and another fear that is illusory, that triggers anxiety and by which you are often possessed.
You will learn to observe that this fear is linked to guilt. You will acknowledge what it has created in your life. Then, using the right tools, you will be able to dismantle it and, finally, to let go of it. You should also remember that raising your level of consciousness will put your old identity at risk and that it will always resist. Whenever you keep forgetting an essential word or phrase which has struck you, you are on the right track. This blocking mechanism is clearly described in Dr Collins's foreword.
As your understanding of identification and duality improves, you will be able to put the two keys to good use. The four maps will also explain how you function mechanically. Learn to use these maps. The one that shows you the link between fear and guilt; the one that shows what the choice of least harm is for you; the one that explains how the different parts of you have been built; and the one that shows you what part of you is centre stage and in control.
The fundamental element that you will be working with is fear. Your psychological structure has been built to manage it. Note that you experience two types of fear: an instinctive fear that you share with all mammals and that is felt whenever your physical security is at risk; and another fear that is illusory, that triggers anxiety and by which you are often possessed.
You will learn to observe that this fear is linked to guilt. You will acknowledge what it has created in your life. Then, using the right tools, you will be able to dismantle it and, finally, to let go of it. You should also remember that raising your level of consciousness will put your old identity at risk and that it will always resist. Whenever you keep forgetting an essential word or phrase which has struck you, you are on the right track. This blocking mechanism is clearly described in Dr Collins's foreword.
preamble to the metaphysical approach
You have now reached the metaphysical part of this teaching. The goal is to gain access to where there is no access. In order to open the door that cannot be open for you - for from the side on which you find yourself, there is no handle - you will need to sharpen the sword of your intelligence on the whetstone of metaphysical inquiry. The psychological work, which implies seeing in yourself what you do not want to see, will have to be pursued at the same time. It is the combination of both at the moment that you least expect it that will reveal your true nature.
preamble to part ii
From what you have read so far, you have seen that your ego will generate to the very end distractions, lures and decoys to maintain its position, its logic of identification. As you make your way through the Questions and Answers that follow, your understanding of the teaching will grow.
The work that this book encourages you to do is first psychological and is closely linked to your mastery of Distancing and Discernment. You will find a section in which the technique that you need to interpret your dreams is described in detail. It also takes place on the psychic level which will be addressed in the section on the Soul. Finally, the work focuses on the metaphysical, the point where you put fundamental questions to yourself. To raise your consciousness means establishing a new understanding which will need to be abandoned for the next level to be reached, just as a mountain climber, attacking a cliff face, must let go of his hold to continue his ascent.
The philosophy of the Four Ds is both a progressive and an abrupt path. It is progressive because as you raise your level of consciousness above your shadow, you transmute this repressed structure into another energy, your soul. It is also abrupt because once you have attained the summit, you will have to dive into the void. The void is the antechamber to awakening but it is only void from the point of view of the ego. From the point of view of the awakened being, everything is resplendent with the energy of the universe.
The work that this book encourages you to do is first psychological and is closely linked to your mastery of Distancing and Discernment. You will find a section in which the technique that you need to interpret your dreams is described in detail. It also takes place on the psychic level which will be addressed in the section on the Soul. Finally, the work focuses on the metaphysical, the point where you put fundamental questions to yourself. To raise your consciousness means establishing a new understanding which will need to be abandoned for the next level to be reached, just as a mountain climber, attacking a cliff face, must let go of his hold to continue his ascent.
The philosophy of the Four Ds is both a progressive and an abrupt path. It is progressive because as you raise your level of consciousness above your shadow, you transmute this repressed structure into another energy, your soul. It is also abrupt because once you have attained the summit, you will have to dive into the void. The void is the antechamber to awakening but it is only void from the point of view of the ego. From the point of view of the awakened being, everything is resplendent with the energy of the universe.
