Physical disease is the expression of a state of conflict which involves the psychological, emotional and spiritual levels.
It is not possible to treat the body without going deeply into the conflicts which created the physical disease.
Long before the appearance of the first symptoms of a physical disease, areas of tension and contraction can be identified in some parts of the body.
Each human knows his/her sensitive areas, those ones which react painfully when a psycho-emotional state appears.
By exploring more deeply the mental tendencies creating this state of tension, what can we find?
First, a deeply rooted habit to live in anticipation. This pattern is revealed by an inability to live the present moment, and an involvement in some mental processes related to the memory content: images, emotions, and projection of a mentally created future.
This reflex of retro- and antero-projection appears as a defense, a need for psychological security.
The body carries the scar of this defensive tendency, predominantly as a contracture of the agonist muscles, those which grasp, the muscles of superior and inferior limbs, of the face, the eyes, the ears.
This physical crystallization of psychological tendencies is closely related to the quest for happiness, perceived as something external, a kind of aim or goal which must be reached. This projective tendency contributes to the habit of living 'in front', in the anterior physical space and in the imaginary space called future.
If we return more deeply toward the source of happiness, we come back to a state of being, independent of the circumstances. Facts, events and situations act as catalysers, but living happiness is a feeling which has its own existence, and can be revealed separately from any trigger circumstance.
Meditation focalizes the attention toward the source of feelings like joy, happiness and fulfillment.
By defocalizing the sensation from the circumstances, the fulfillment, object of each desire, appears objectless, not related to a physical, mental or emotional situation.
Meditation is like a coming back to the center.
It is only after a long exploration of the phenomenal world, that the mind is ready to returning to itself, toward the knower of the phenomenal world.
Each thought, feeling and perception find its existence only because of a subject which perceives, a perceiver.
What is this 'I' which lies at the heart of observation, listening and attention?
If we can grasp this central I, it means that the I itself has become an object of observation. It is no more the observer but the observed.
It is then necessary to explore more deeply the nature of that which observes, by taking care of not transforming it into an object of observation.
The I then appears as an original matter, an eye which sees everything except itself.
The primordial I cannot be then known on an objective level, but only through a direct aperceptive knowledge: I knows itself.
The establishing in this fundamental I means the exit from the manifest world, from time-space, from phenomenal evolution.
Starting from physical matter, we came back to mental matter, for returning to the silent background in which body and thought manifest themselves.
Physical and psychological diseases, by creating an uncomfortable state, are therefore an opportunity to go to the source of the conflict, to return to the essence of the I, in which lies the object of all quests.
We will close the circle with some stanzas offered as an homage to the formless being:
Meditation is not a technique.
Meditation is not an act.
Meditation is not an intention.
Meditation is not a desire.
To what do the technique, the act, the desire and the intention lead?
Breathing dies in the vacuity of silence.
Breathing arises from the vacuity of silence.
What do breathing and the absence of breathing share?
Both refer to a subject.
This subject, what it is?
What is the background in which breathing and no-breathing appear and disappear?
What is the link which unifies breathing, absence of breathing, silence, body and thought?
Physical and psychological diseases are the expression of a friction of energies.
The fluidity of the movement of energies is disturbed by some resistances.
These resistances are the reflection of a fear.
Fear is a reaction.
A reaction implicates someone who reacts.
This someone, where is he? Can we situate, locate him? Is he real or is he only a ghost?
Returning to the source of the disease needs to go the root of the self.
This ascent against the current of thought and belief prunes the weeds of the mind mirages.
The liberation is a recognition of the impossibility to perceive the perceiver.
The object brings to the objectless subject. The absence reveals the presence.
Abstract. Conference on "The quest for the true Self", January 1996,
Saint Louis, USA