Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Three
March 8, 2006
A. Marianthi asks:
1. If knowledge and love from our higher levels can give us deep ease and compassion in the humanity (ego bound realms) of ourselves then we can extend that to others. With such an inner landscape we will have ease, communion, relationship with most of those who come into our world. Even those who have heavy trips going on.
In the case of intimate love-sex relationships in such a stage of being, I would think that one would tend to follow much spontaneous, post-rational, inner dictates of what is right. Sex, celibacy, erotica would then happen - or not - according to what feels appropriate for self and others on the specific case i.e. no formulas or blanket commandments. This would not guarantee steady, blissful and harmonious results, but results that would expand the mind and heart of those involved and dish out far less trauma-debris than usual intimate relationships.
Now, is that so? Is it much different? Do tell.
Robert answers:
1. I feel pretty much the same way. Being able and willing to wake up in the midst of relational reactivity is essential if we’re to have a more than decent relationship. If we can do this, then we’ve vastly increased the odds that we and our significant other can together gaze with compassion upon the very reactivity that’s just reared its head. The more conscious and loving we choose to be in our relational challenges, the better, especially as we realize that we are not just in relationship, but exist through relationship.
There’s nothing like an intimate relationship to let us know that we’re not as developed or mature as we’d like to think. We may, in meditative retreat or metaphysical flight, assume without much challenge that we are sitting with our less-than-admirable qualities, being mindful of them, etcetera upon spiritual etcetera, but real relationship doesn’t waste much time in letting us know the difference between sitting with such qualities and sitting on them.
Being in such relationship is generally a rude awakening. It steps on the toes of our egoity, unimpressed by our credentials, drawing us into a dharma drama in which our neuroses initially get to star as us, and then are divested of such pretension, becoming but grist for the mill of Awakening. To the degree that we are attached to our egoity and neurotic rituals, a real relationship will, more often than not, seem like just one insult after another.
The sooner we ask what’s right about what’s wrong in our relationships, the sooner we’ll discover the real value and purpose of them.
This may mean approaching our relationships in ways to which we’re not accustomed. Sometimes being off our path is our path. Sometimes what works best is to spend some time in what doesn’t work. We can get so busy trying to be good, trying to stay on the path, trying to be a successful somebody in a conscious relationship, that we stagnate, barely able to move beneath the sheer weight of all our documented failures. Making more room for our intimate relationship to sometimes be messy — which does not mean making a virtue out of laziness and inconsiderateness — helps keep it clean, undirtied by purity and the tyrannies of spiritual correctness.
This does not, however, necessarily mean clear sailing. Any relationship can trigger us. Good relationships trigger the hell out of us without trashing the relationship; great relationships trigger the hell out of us while deepening the relationship. And the best relationships use whatever happens, however hellish or disheartening, not only to deepen the relationship, but to also awaken us beyond it.
In the crucible of truly intimate relationship, we learn to find freedom not from limitation but through limitation.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
B. questions from Jana/Plasmafly:
1. Does Xanthyros still exist in a more open form? Do you miss the old Xanthyros?
2. And will you reissue your audio material, its so outstanding and there is nothing out there like it, only RAM can be RAM see. How about starting an company called "Kick Ass Audio!" Or get www.soundstrue to reissue your material. You must have a lot more also...this is the best way to spread your wisdom.
[Robert, if you didn't want to release the old material, how would you feel about somebody turning that material into audio files of some kind and putting them on the internet? Would you be opposed to that, or would you permit it? -Arthur]
Robert's answers:
1. The answer to both questions is no.
2. I won’t be reissuing my audio material, as it doesn’t represent who I am now (it was put together a few years before my DSW time, when I was not just a younger version of myself, but a very different man). I may, however, put out some new audio material in a year or so.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
C. Dan/Crystallake asks:
1. "The ego is the mind-made sense of self, the "problematic me". You then go to a therapist to sort out the problems of this fictitious "me". By developing presence and bringing space to this conditioned self, object oriented identifications begin to unravel. After years of psychotherapy the therapist will finally say 'I am done with you' and hand you all the notes and insights into yourself in book entitled "Me"...and you will still are not any closer to the root of the dysfunction the ego creates." -Eckhart Tolle
How do you view the statement that seeking out a therapist is actually an exercise in sorting out the problems of the fictitious self (ego). Tolle's premise is that the dynamics of "having problems" is a structure of the ego, and that in reality there are no "problems". If this is the case, does it alter the value and effectiveness of psychotherapy? I get the impression that the statement is saying that psychotherapy can actually perpetuate the illusion of a separate self and the whole process might be overridden by going to the root of the ego or self by practicing presence and the witness, therefore seeing our "problems" as an illusion. Hand in hand is the premise that one root of the ego is the need to be unhappy, making "enemies" with the now moment (as the space in which all things manifest as objects of consciousness).
How do we distinguish when psychotherapy perpetuates the illusion of self in a dysfunctional manner and psychotherapy that heals a fragmented "little me" and thus enabling a higher expression of the Self to emerge. You mentioned an Integral therapist, this means an AQAL approach?
Robert answers:
1. First of all, I’ll respond directly to the quote:
I don’t know how much experience Eckhart has with psychotherapy. Does he really think the reason (or the only reason) people go to therapists is to “to sort out the problems of this fictitious ‘me’”? If a woman comes to me in agony because she’s just discovered that her husband of two decades has been having an affair with her best friend, I’m not about to regurgitate for her the notion that her ego is fictitious or a mere sleight of mind, whatever truth that might hold. Rather, I’m going to help her deal with her pain, which is not just a problem of her ego (except to the degree that she dramatizes it).
In his quote, Eckhart simply demonstrates his all-too-conventional (and increasingly antiquated) notion of psychotherapy. Does he not realize that psychotherapy can be integral, can include the body, can incorporate spiritual practices and insights, can effectively work with egoity? I have seen clients have direct experiences of the Real during sessions, without any meditative intervention or discussion of the fictitious nature of the ego. Good psychotherapy will bring you closer to what Eckhart refers to as “the root of the dysfunction the ego creates.” (I don’t think we ought to be blaming the ego for this; egoity that is kept peripherally functional to Being does not create dysfunction on any significant scale. What matters is what we do with our egoity.)
And is ego really fictitious? Ego, which is not an entity, but a process, exists, however illusory or fictitious its representational elements may be. If we identify with it, it of course seems pretty solid, especially when it gets to refer to itself as a “me.” What is fictional then is not egoity itself, but the role we have allowed it to assume. If we don’t identify with our egoity, it’s going to seem far from solid, especially when it is allowed to become transparent to Being. But it is still real, if only as a process, an activity, a cult of one awaiting animation. I would say that egoity is not an illusion, however illusory it may be. Its fictitious features do not invalidate its reality.
Now on to your questions (which the above largely answers):
“How do you view the statement that seeking out a therapist is actually an exercise in sorting out the problems of the fictitious self (ego)”? Mostly false. False how? The ego (which is more verb than noun) is not necessarily fictitious, and so-called problems are, more often than not, clearly arising in interpersonal space, rather than just belonging to a self-contained somebody, and may also be challenges, very real challenges, to one’s core individuality. And true how? Many only see their problems from an egoic viewpoint, thereby severely limiting their options, including being drawn to therapists who operate from an merely egoic perspective (and whose rationality may be disembodied enough to actually be operationally irrational).
“Tolle's premise is that the dynamics of ‘having problems’ is a structure of the ego, and that in reality there are no ‘problems’. If this is the case, does it alter the value and effectiveness of psychotherapy?” Yes, in reality there are no problems, but this does not alter the value and effectiveness of psychotherapy (and I’m talking here about good psychotherapy), because what are referred to as “problems” often still need to be addressed, whether they’re reframed as “challenges” or “opportunities” or whatever. I’ve seen many spiritual seekers trying so hard to follow nondual teachings that they shortcircuit or bypass much of their humanity, treating it as though it were a problem!
Good psychotherapy does not just increase functionality, but also can awaken. Yes, psychotherapy can perpetuate the illusion of a separate self, but it does not have to, and can in fact illuminate that illusion to such a degree that the inherent inseparability of all that is becomes blazingly obvious. The fact that this doesn’t happen more often doesn’t mean that psychotherapy is a suboptimal strategy, but rather that not all that many psychotherapists have effectively integrated spirituality into their practice.
“How do we distinguish when psychotherapy perpetuates the illusion of self in a dysfunctional manner and psychotherapy that heals a fragmented ‘little me’, thus enabling a higher expression of the Self to emerge?” Compare psychotherapies and psychotherapists, and check out their results. Psychotherapy that heals and integrates has a very different feel than psychotherapy that merely rearranges belief systems or settles for cookie-cutter diagnosis.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
D. Arthur/adastra asks:
1. Do you believe anything personal survives death? Do you think it works against our process of awakening to think so? Does it facilitate our process of awakening to believe in some form of personal after-death survival? Or is it simply irrelevant one way or the other?
2. Is it possible to evoke a nondual experience in another person, and if so, how would you go about it?
3. Short of employing neurochemical dynamite, how can one induce a nondual experience in oneself? Or is it, always, an act of grace?
Robert answers:
1. Yes, but not necessarily in such an intact manner as we might like to believe. My sense is that what happens after death is what is happening right now. Our self comes and goes; we don’t. Sometimes when I’m looking back (and don’t get a knot in my neck), I don’t see a string of previously incarnated me’s, but instead everything, in dazzling contingency in all directions, at once familiar and evernew.
“Does it facilitate our process of awakening to believe in some form of personal after-death survival?” Maybe, maybe not. Go beyond belief to firsthand experience, and explore your attachment to continuing as what you take yourself to be, and your aversion to the possible non-continuation of that.
2. Yes. How would I go about it? Probably through skillful questioning during a time of effortlessly direct eye contact, following a time of deep psychoemotional opening. This, of course, would be best handled by a spiritual master like Ramana Maharshi, whose gaze would be a supremely potent invitation to step into the nakedly nondual.
3. By not trying to induce such an experience. By going to the roots of the spiritual ambition that fuels the desire to induce such an experience.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A. Marianthi asks:
1. If knowledge and love from our higher levels can give us deep ease and compassion in the humanity (ego bound realms) of ourselves then we can extend that to others. With such an inner landscape we will have ease, communion, relationship with most of those who come into our world. Even those who have heavy trips going on.
In the case of intimate love-sex relationships in such a stage of being, I would think that one would tend to follow much spontaneous, post-rational, inner dictates of what is right. Sex, celibacy, erotica would then happen - or not - according to what feels appropriate for self and others on the specific case i.e. no formulas or blanket commandments. This would not guarantee steady, blissful and harmonious results, but results that would expand the mind and heart of those involved and dish out far less trauma-debris than usual intimate relationships.
Now, is that so? Is it much different? Do tell.
Robert answers:
1. I feel pretty much the same way. Being able and willing to wake up in the midst of relational reactivity is essential if we’re to have a more than decent relationship. If we can do this, then we’ve vastly increased the odds that we and our significant other can together gaze with compassion upon the very reactivity that’s just reared its head. The more conscious and loving we choose to be in our relational challenges, the better, especially as we realize that we are not just in relationship, but exist through relationship.
There’s nothing like an intimate relationship to let us know that we’re not as developed or mature as we’d like to think. We may, in meditative retreat or metaphysical flight, assume without much challenge that we are sitting with our less-than-admirable qualities, being mindful of them, etcetera upon spiritual etcetera, but real relationship doesn’t waste much time in letting us know the difference between sitting with such qualities and sitting on them.
Being in such relationship is generally a rude awakening. It steps on the toes of our egoity, unimpressed by our credentials, drawing us into a dharma drama in which our neuroses initially get to star as us, and then are divested of such pretension, becoming but grist for the mill of Awakening. To the degree that we are attached to our egoity and neurotic rituals, a real relationship will, more often than not, seem like just one insult after another.
The sooner we ask what’s right about what’s wrong in our relationships, the sooner we’ll discover the real value and purpose of them.
This may mean approaching our relationships in ways to which we’re not accustomed. Sometimes being off our path is our path. Sometimes what works best is to spend some time in what doesn’t work. We can get so busy trying to be good, trying to stay on the path, trying to be a successful somebody in a conscious relationship, that we stagnate, barely able to move beneath the sheer weight of all our documented failures. Making more room for our intimate relationship to sometimes be messy — which does not mean making a virtue out of laziness and inconsiderateness — helps keep it clean, undirtied by purity and the tyrannies of spiritual correctness.
This does not, however, necessarily mean clear sailing. Any relationship can trigger us. Good relationships trigger the hell out of us without trashing the relationship; great relationships trigger the hell out of us while deepening the relationship. And the best relationships use whatever happens, however hellish or disheartening, not only to deepen the relationship, but to also awaken us beyond it.
In the crucible of truly intimate relationship, we learn to find freedom not from limitation but through limitation.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
B. questions from Jana/Plasmafly:
1. Does Xanthyros still exist in a more open form? Do you miss the old Xanthyros?
2. And will you reissue your audio material, its so outstanding and there is nothing out there like it, only RAM can be RAM see. How about starting an company called "Kick Ass Audio!" Or get www.soundstrue to reissue your material. You must have a lot more also...this is the best way to spread your wisdom.
[Robert, if you didn't want to release the old material, how would you feel about somebody turning that material into audio files of some kind and putting them on the internet? Would you be opposed to that, or would you permit it? -Arthur]
Robert's answers:
1. The answer to both questions is no.
2. I won’t be reissuing my audio material, as it doesn’t represent who I am now (it was put together a few years before my DSW time, when I was not just a younger version of myself, but a very different man). I may, however, put out some new audio material in a year or so.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
C. Dan/Crystallake asks:
1. "The ego is the mind-made sense of self, the "problematic me". You then go to a therapist to sort out the problems of this fictitious "me". By developing presence and bringing space to this conditioned self, object oriented identifications begin to unravel. After years of psychotherapy the therapist will finally say 'I am done with you' and hand you all the notes and insights into yourself in book entitled "Me"...and you will still are not any closer to the root of the dysfunction the ego creates." -Eckhart Tolle
How do you view the statement that seeking out a therapist is actually an exercise in sorting out the problems of the fictitious self (ego). Tolle's premise is that the dynamics of "having problems" is a structure of the ego, and that in reality there are no "problems". If this is the case, does it alter the value and effectiveness of psychotherapy? I get the impression that the statement is saying that psychotherapy can actually perpetuate the illusion of a separate self and the whole process might be overridden by going to the root of the ego or self by practicing presence and the witness, therefore seeing our "problems" as an illusion. Hand in hand is the premise that one root of the ego is the need to be unhappy, making "enemies" with the now moment (as the space in which all things manifest as objects of consciousness).
How do we distinguish when psychotherapy perpetuates the illusion of self in a dysfunctional manner and psychotherapy that heals a fragmented "little me" and thus enabling a higher expression of the Self to emerge. You mentioned an Integral therapist, this means an AQAL approach?
Robert answers:
1. First of all, I’ll respond directly to the quote:
I don’t know how much experience Eckhart has with psychotherapy. Does he really think the reason (or the only reason) people go to therapists is to “to sort out the problems of this fictitious ‘me’”? If a woman comes to me in agony because she’s just discovered that her husband of two decades has been having an affair with her best friend, I’m not about to regurgitate for her the notion that her ego is fictitious or a mere sleight of mind, whatever truth that might hold. Rather, I’m going to help her deal with her pain, which is not just a problem of her ego (except to the degree that she dramatizes it).
In his quote, Eckhart simply demonstrates his all-too-conventional (and increasingly antiquated) notion of psychotherapy. Does he not realize that psychotherapy can be integral, can include the body, can incorporate spiritual practices and insights, can effectively work with egoity? I have seen clients have direct experiences of the Real during sessions, without any meditative intervention or discussion of the fictitious nature of the ego. Good psychotherapy will bring you closer to what Eckhart refers to as “the root of the dysfunction the ego creates.” (I don’t think we ought to be blaming the ego for this; egoity that is kept peripherally functional to Being does not create dysfunction on any significant scale. What matters is what we do with our egoity.)
And is ego really fictitious? Ego, which is not an entity, but a process, exists, however illusory or fictitious its representational elements may be. If we identify with it, it of course seems pretty solid, especially when it gets to refer to itself as a “me.” What is fictional then is not egoity itself, but the role we have allowed it to assume. If we don’t identify with our egoity, it’s going to seem far from solid, especially when it is allowed to become transparent to Being. But it is still real, if only as a process, an activity, a cult of one awaiting animation. I would say that egoity is not an illusion, however illusory it may be. Its fictitious features do not invalidate its reality.
Now on to your questions (which the above largely answers):
“How do you view the statement that seeking out a therapist is actually an exercise in sorting out the problems of the fictitious self (ego)”? Mostly false. False how? The ego (which is more verb than noun) is not necessarily fictitious, and so-called problems are, more often than not, clearly arising in interpersonal space, rather than just belonging to a self-contained somebody, and may also be challenges, very real challenges, to one’s core individuality. And true how? Many only see their problems from an egoic viewpoint, thereby severely limiting their options, including being drawn to therapists who operate from an merely egoic perspective (and whose rationality may be disembodied enough to actually be operationally irrational).
“Tolle's premise is that the dynamics of ‘having problems’ is a structure of the ego, and that in reality there are no ‘problems’. If this is the case, does it alter the value and effectiveness of psychotherapy?” Yes, in reality there are no problems, but this does not alter the value and effectiveness of psychotherapy (and I’m talking here about good psychotherapy), because what are referred to as “problems” often still need to be addressed, whether they’re reframed as “challenges” or “opportunities” or whatever. I’ve seen many spiritual seekers trying so hard to follow nondual teachings that they shortcircuit or bypass much of their humanity, treating it as though it were a problem!
Good psychotherapy does not just increase functionality, but also can awaken. Yes, psychotherapy can perpetuate the illusion of a separate self, but it does not have to, and can in fact illuminate that illusion to such a degree that the inherent inseparability of all that is becomes blazingly obvious. The fact that this doesn’t happen more often doesn’t mean that psychotherapy is a suboptimal strategy, but rather that not all that many psychotherapists have effectively integrated spirituality into their practice.
“How do we distinguish when psychotherapy perpetuates the illusion of self in a dysfunctional manner and psychotherapy that heals a fragmented ‘little me’, thus enabling a higher expression of the Self to emerge?” Compare psychotherapies and psychotherapists, and check out their results. Psychotherapy that heals and integrates has a very different feel than psychotherapy that merely rearranges belief systems or settles for cookie-cutter diagnosis.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
D. Arthur/adastra asks:
1. Do you believe anything personal survives death? Do you think it works against our process of awakening to think so? Does it facilitate our process of awakening to believe in some form of personal after-death survival? Or is it simply irrelevant one way or the other?
2. Is it possible to evoke a nondual experience in another person, and if so, how would you go about it?
3. Short of employing neurochemical dynamite, how can one induce a nondual experience in oneself? Or is it, always, an act of grace?
Robert answers:
1. Yes, but not necessarily in such an intact manner as we might like to believe. My sense is that what happens after death is what is happening right now. Our self comes and goes; we don’t. Sometimes when I’m looking back (and don’t get a knot in my neck), I don’t see a string of previously incarnated me’s, but instead everything, in dazzling contingency in all directions, at once familiar and evernew.
“Does it facilitate our process of awakening to believe in some form of personal after-death survival?” Maybe, maybe not. Go beyond belief to firsthand experience, and explore your attachment to continuing as what you take yourself to be, and your aversion to the possible non-continuation of that.
2. Yes. How would I go about it? Probably through skillful questioning during a time of effortlessly direct eye contact, following a time of deep psychoemotional opening. This, of course, would be best handled by a spiritual master like Ramana Maharshi, whose gaze would be a supremely potent invitation to step into the nakedly nondual.
3. By not trying to induce such an experience. By going to the roots of the spiritual ambition that fuels the desire to induce such an experience.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
posted by adastra at 11:33 AM
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