Awakening is a radical transcending

Excerpt from a radio interview in Paris on 20­­ December 2014 in Paris on Radio Ici et Maintenant.

Interviewer Laurent Fendt:

"What did you gain as a result of your many years of meditation?"

Andreas: "We do not gain anything. We loose everything. We loose all kinds of negative, emotional attachments. We loose our ability to judge. We loose all the emotional and psychic toxins in our bodies and minds. And the more of the old programs and conditionings we loose, the more peaceful and happy we become.

In the process of meditation we loose many things that make us unhappy. That is my greatest observation. Meditation makes us conscious how we make ourselves miserable and the more conscious we become about all the methods we use to create our misery, we then can stop those methods. That is what meditation does. It shows us how we make ourselves miserable. Then we stop it.

Furthermore, a successful process of meditation will take us beyond the mind. Have you ever heard about the biblical term "Peace beyond understanding?"

What the term really means is the peace of no-mind, the peace that resides beyond the mind activities. A successful process of meditation will take us to a point where the movements of the mind become calmer and calmer. It can bring us to a point that is described in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are the Bible of Yoga. It is a tremendously important book. Anybody who is interested in yoga and meditation should read it. One of the first statements in this book is, "Yoga Chittam Vritti Nirodha."

What does the term "Yoga" mean here? The terms means "Realization of our true nature." This realization, according to the Yoga Sutras, can only happen when the movements of our minds become calm and ultimately reach a complete standstill.

Now some people may say that it sounds like becoming an unconscious vegeatable, but it is not like that. Within the process of yogic effort and meditation, when the mind becomes calm we are absolutely present. We become truly anchored in the Here and Now, as the name of your radio station indicates.

When we arrive completely in the moment, everything stops. We are not in the moment when the mind is running because the mind distracts us. What does the mind do? It takes us either into the past or the future. If the mind process stops, we arrive in the moment. And in that moment we see the truth of what we are.

And that is an extremely shocking insight. It is shocking because it is so vast.

What we learn in this world is to identify with a very, very limited existence. The entire process of the education of the society is to teach us our limited postion in the clockwork of society. We are assigned to be just a little cog, a little wheel. That is what society is telling us. We are taught constantly to identify with the things we cannot do. We are indoctrinated with the belief systems that limit us.

Generally speaking, our mind is an assortment of believes that create an unbelievably limited position for us within an unbelievably vast universe.

A successful process of meditation breaks all those belief systems and enables us to transcend all those belief systems. That is not an intellectual process. An intellectual process again is a process of the mind. We do not shift from the intellectual notion of our limitations to the the intellectual notion of our unlimitedness, in which case we just become a megalomaniac.

What really happens in successful meditation is that the inner space, which is closed in most everybody--- it suddenly opens and expands. And I can only say this is really a shocking experience. Anybody who doesn't say it is shocking has not really experienced it, as far as I am concerned.

It is really shocking because the difference between the event and the previous stream of life experience is so huge.

It is comparable to a birth. In the birth the baby is shocked and the mother is shocked. Everybody is shocked. The birth represents a radical transcendending of the preceding state.

Awakening is a radical transcending. In that radical transcending we realize that we are Children of the Universe. We realize the Universe is ours.

There is a beautiful scene in the movie "Men in black." At one point we see an entire civilization in deposit box in a train station. You probably know those deposit boxes we find at airports or train stations where we can leave suitcases. So in the movie our main characters at one point open such a box and they find an entire society of people living there. The beings that lived in that box believed that being in that box was all that life was all about.

And that is exactly our situation. We think that what we are surrounded by what constitutes our life. We live in an apartment in Paris. We have a family. We have a job. We live life within the confinements of the society that surrounds us and we think, "That's it."

That is "living in the box." And if somebody opens the door to that box, what happens is that you are having an explosion of consiousness. One moment you are a french citizen. The next moment all changes and you realize you are a Citizen of the Universe. That is radical transcending.

The process of meditation can bring that to you. When that happens, everything changes.