Lecture given at a conference organized by the Israeli Association for
Spiritual Medicine and Psychiatry
"Medicine, Love and Religion - The Transcending
Healing Power of Love", Shefayim, Israel, May 8-9, 1997.
So, speaking about what love is not, we can start with the need to love and the need to be loved, and to observe that such needs are related to a feeling that something is missing. This feeling is experienced as a defense, a contraction. From this contraction there are many reactions, and usually reactions create another reaction which is expressed either as rejection or grasping.
Most of the reactions could be synthesized only by grasping and by rejection. Most suffering can also be synthesized by rejection and grasping.
The habit of grasping is a deep reflex which can be observed at a body level in the small muscles of the face, of the eyes, the ears. All these subtle tensions are a sign of defense, and the desire to change them is also a defense.
By observing this reaction, a kind of distance is spontaneously created. It is not a distance which comes from detachment or the desire to be detached. It is a space which arises when there is an acceptance of what happens at the right moment, and what happens at the right moment can be objectified as reactions, tensions, defenses, resistances.
If we continue to observe the functioning of the mind, we are able to see that these reactions are related to self-image. This means that the idea of what we are, which is also an old habit, is influenced by society, conditionings, family, memory.
So the question is: is there another way of looking, free from psychological memory, free from anticipation?
It is also possible to note that usually the quality of observation is distorted by the filter of the memory, the habit of interpreting and discussing what happens. And these habits create something like a noise, a hindrance to a freshness of being, a freshness of looking.
Is it possible to observe the body? Is it possible to observe the things around us? Is it possible to observe each perception without entering this system of interpreting, of concluding?
The idea that we are something is also a conclusion. If we try to explore this conclusion, it will appear empty, without substance - only repeating what other people have told us.
The exploration of the question of love needs real sincerity and authenticity in order to explore what love is not, for understanding that a desire to be loved or a desire to give love, is simply a reaction. What remains is no more desire to love and no more desire to be loved.
It is important to live with these questions without trying to answer them too quickly because usually a quick answer is a kind of conceptualization. Love and beauty can easily be conceptualized but the concept is not what is behind the concept.
Breathing is an expansion. Love is an expansion. You cannot localize breathing only in the chest or only in the abdomen. Everything is breathing, also the space around you is breathing. When you ask, but where is love located, there is no answer. You cannot put love in a box. similarly you cannot put the "I" in a box.
It is not a question of finding a new way of escaping but just of seeing what happens.
Q: I wasn't sure whether you were making a statement or asking a question on this one. When there is no more desire to love or be loved - is that a question you are asking?
J-M: Yes.
Q: If this is a question you are asking, then surely there is an answer. If there is no more desire to love or be loved, you are pretty dead, are you not?
J-M: Dead! Dead from what?
Q: Are you six feet under? Don't human beings go through a time of moving on, or whatever you like to call it, desiring this need to be loved or to love until they cannot do it anymore?
J-M: I don't understand. What is the question?
Q: My question is: you say, "what is a question?" We know nothing of whether there is a human being when there is no more desire to love or to be loved. You say that is the question you are putting to the audience?
J-M: It is better to forget these words.
Q: Well, we are talking about love, at least since I've been here. How can I possibly forget it?
J-M: But the topic is: what love is not. We are not talking about love.
Q: Would you mind telling me what we are speaking about
J-M: We are speaking about what love is not.
Q: You have me confused. How can you say what love is not, if love is? That is the question. Have we finished the debate?
J-M: Thank you for your participation.
Q: May we have other confusing questions, or less confusing questions?
Q: I was just going to suggest - I spoke too fast this morning and you spoke too slowly. I think it is better.
Q: In silence comes the truth. We are going to be balanced.
Q: I have one comment and one question. The question is to clarify your intent. What is the intent of exploring what love is not? Maybe you could comment on that. And the other is: it seems really fitting, to me, to pose the question when there is no longer a desire to be loved nor a desire to love. It seems that has been the topic of the day because it is posed differently. But it seems to be that, the way I'm making sense of it, love itself doesn't assume or long to be loved nor does it long to love and so the question seems as if it has an answer: that love itself doesn't have either of these desires. So, what sounded like a sentence to death turned out to me, to seem the opposite, so I wanted to comment on this.
J-M: We can speak only about what we are not, because we are speaking about objects. Objects are what is perceived but we cannot speak about what is perceiving, because what is perceiving is that in which the objects of observation appear and disappear. The words describe these objects but cannot describe that in which these objects appear and disappear. You cannot see what you are. You can only be it.
Q: Deconstructive contemplation can be a very good preparation for meditation. Have you some more comments or questions?
Q: The comment I'm trying to make is that maybe you have been trying to do something to us or to make us experience something, and I'm not sure it really worked. I wonder if there is not a time to experience and another time to talk about experience. But a mixture of the two is a little bit strange.
J-M: The objects of experience are temporary. The object of experience is a state of experience. It is temporary, it changes, but listening itself does not change. Feelings, sensations, thoughts and sounds are constantly moving. But the change is recognized because there is no moving. The recognition of movement comes because we are observing from the non-moving point. The observation itself does not move. So there is an impression of movement like it is possible to have an impression of movement by lifting the arm, but at the right moment you know that you are not moving. You know yourself as being outside the movement.
Q: I have a feeling of separation between the heart and the mind as if some sort of spontaneity is lacking. I'd like to know if you have some kind of comment to make about this.
J-M: If the words don't come, they don't come. It is very tiring to control. Just say that it is tiring to control.
Q: Do I understand you correctly when you say that love is only when we are not?
J-M: Yes, actually.
Q: I think that what we are experiencing here, at least this is what I am getting, is an attempt by the lecturer to explain to us that love can only be when we are not and as long as we are perceiving, we are experiencing, we are listening, we are anything, we are desiring then we are reacting. The only time that love, real love, can be is when everything ceases. That is what love is. That is what we have been talking about all day, at least that is what I think you are trying to convey.
Q: Actually your talk reminds me of what we have in India, as a theory of Maya, that everything is an illusion. You can see a mirage as water when you are driving but when you go up close there is no water. Can you relate to that: that everything is an illusion, when you see your hand moving and it's not moving but you think it is moving.
J-M: Oh, there is simply a confusion. It is only confusion. There is a feeling of movement.
Q; Is it an illusion?
J-M: You are saying that it is an illusion. There is a feeling of movement but you can experience, within the moment, that you don't move. It is necessary to observe the movement with attention and openness in order to be able to see the objects moving and flowing without controlling them, and at this moment a natural space is created. It is not an artificial space created by an act of tension. It is a natural space which arises in the absence of tension.
Q: I'm sorry, I have this very strong impression. When I was a child I used to listen to a fairy story by Anderson, called "The King's New Clothes". It goes like this: the king is supposed to show off his new clothes and the courtiers around him say "Oh, what beautiful clothes you are wearing". But, in actual fact the king is naked. So, I have a very strong impression that I am in the most surrealistic situation I have been in for a long time, like in an avant-garde theater play - one of those new wave festivals in which everyone is asked to play a part.. This is how I've been feeling, very strongly, for the last hour.
J-M: As Mr. Benedict said at the beginning of the afternoon, love brings out different things and you are deducing.
Q: Jean-Marc, I've heard you three or four times at these conferences and I love you very much but I must say that I am very sad that I have heard you. I am really very sad. I think that first of all we have our perceptions of several things which are real. They are perhaps partial and we don't comprehend the whole thing but we comprehend something. We are also conditioned. We have our own limitations and so therefore our own perception is limited, but it is real. So I am happy that this Rambana Institute pays such great attention to medicine as spiritual life but I hope that this will also be done in a way that people are prepared for something better. I mean, I find it to be such a negative way, the way we are educated. We have a very bad reputation, but don't take it personally . There is a verse in the gospel - the teacher makes his disciples worse than he the teacher is. So, you are full of goodwill, it is absolutely true, but I think it is a confusing message. That is frankly what I think.
J-M: Thank you.
Q: Forgive me, Jean-Marc but I feel called on to say something in response to this gentleman. This is my third conference this year. I came here to listen to Jean-Marc and I think I understood what he is doing. I came from London: I flew in yesterday. The last time I saw Jean-Marc was in Paris. In the silences between his speaking I felt my heart open very much and I think that for that reason I traveled here, which is perhaps a mistake as I can do that in London. But, nevertheless, I think that what is happening here is that love brings up all that which love is not. So, what each of us is experiencing is his own personal obstacle to love, both at the heart level and at the mental level. I can understand that this often arouses hostility and in the time that he's been speaking I've experienced fear, I've experienced anger, I've experienced many things. I think he is a great teacher because he is leading into love through the experience and what is happening here is that we are disappointed because he is not teaching us as we would have expected him to teach. So, I just wanted to say thank you.
Q: In other words, what comes out, is it our projections or what is it?
J-M: Thank you very much for your attention. Have a good meditation.