Sixteen Months to Freedom Christophe REAL December 9, 2019 "Take the mind for what it is, all the rest is automatic" T. Padmanabhan 1 Acknowledgements I thank T.Padmanabhan for answering my questions and help- ing me all the Way through, for reading this book several times, suggesting improvements and suggesting that it might help other people. I thank Ana Bedouelle for encouraging me constantly along this path. I thank Stephanie Michaux for translating this book into En- glish. 2 Introduction Dear reader from the West, you're entering the world of East- ern philosophy with this book, and chances are you don't know much about it. This introduction is intended to give you the necessary information you need to read the book correctly. You probably think that different religions aren't com- patible, and it's no secret that many people from the West -especially in Europe- are very suspicious regarding religion. Each religion has at its heart a certain mysticism. We won't be talking about religion but about mysticism which is unique in the following sense. The purpose of all mysticism is to reach a State, and this State is unique and universal, meaning it doesn't depend on any specific religion. When someone reaches this State, religion refers to them as a saint, usually meaning that this person is enlightened by God. The religion I was educated in, for example, forbids people to think of this State as something reachable, or something natural. This religion presents this State as something that can only be given to few people by God Himself. Essentially you're not allowed to think of this State as something that you 3 4 can reach by yourself following a simple and relatively easy set of instructions. Buddhism is different. Because prince Siddhartha, who later became Buddha, was a man, it seems natural to think that that every man can reach the State, simply following Bud- dha's Path to the State. You eventually come to think of a set of instructions, and you'll first assume that the Path to the State is exceptionally long and difficult. This is probably the picture drawn by your imagination when it comes to thinking about zen and medita- tion. India has its own peculiarities. Upanishads is an ancient Way to reach the State which makes the path to the State in- finitely easier. Essentially you can reach the State by a process of renunciations. The State can't be anything assertive (at least for the mind), so if you try to define it, it will not be what you de- fine. At the end of the process of renunciations, definition after definition, you fall into the State. Quick and easy! The Upanishads' Way is the only Way to reach the State which won't take 20 years of meditation, or anywhere near that amount of effort. In fact, the Upanishads' Way is fairly easy, and any person determined enough and dedicated to the goal is almost certain to succeed. In India at the beginning of the twentieth century, Ramana taught a way which was equivalent to the Upanishads. Padmanabhan's Way has been developed in [A] and [G], it is inspired by Upanishads and the teachings of Ramana. It's extremely quick and easy. Everyone determined and dedicated enough will reach the 5 State in a few days. I insist on the fact that the reading of [A] and [G] is par- ticularly dense and difficult. This is one of the purposes of the present book, which will help you understand these two fundamental articles. This also means that these articles have nothing to do with what we're used to hearing in the West concerning the State of Enlightenment, and Padmanabhan isn't your common guru. Padmanabhan is one of the best theoretical physicists in the world, I came to know of him as famous in the West among string theorists for an article written in 2002 in which he could show that Einstein's equations could be deduced from the con- cept of entropy, and he and his daughter in 2014 gave a solution to the most difficult problem in theoretical physics of the last 30 years, the so called cosmological constant problem. This should be proof enough that reaching the State will not impede you to live your life, whatever it is. Now what is the State? First the State is not what your common guru may adver- tise as: "meditate with me and you'll stop aging, you'll always be healthy, you'll become successful and rich." Your common guru may be a genius merchant and knows perfectly well that your culture reinforces your ego so much that you essentially only buy into ego boosting. Instead when we compare the 4 visions of the Buddha, the first three visions are an old man, a sick man, and a dead man. Essentially at this stage prince Siddhartha understands these three elements as the basis of the real world rather than denying them. Sorry to start with the bad news, but your forever young 6 fantasy and your ego problem are the very problems you need to solve. And reaching the State is the solution. This is what the State is in the first place: a way to protect yourself from the ego, from the mind, and a way to accept your aging and mortal condition. It is also a way to stop being completely insensitive to the suffering of other people, and on the contrary start becoming sensitive to other people. The problem is not to reinforce the ego by finding a way to realize your forever healthy fantasy, the problem is to destroy the ego so you essentially don't care about being sick or healthy, or even dying. At the same time you'll start caring about others. This important element is in [G], but I warned the reader that [G] is dense, subtle and difficult, and I've met many people who had carefully read [G] but didn't understand this funda- mental fact. Very strangely, I've heard many times in the West the idea that the duality of State and ego is natural and belongs to the human nature, and that constantly being in the State is impossible, and is only a fantasy of the ego (and would rein- force the ego trying to do this). I've heard this strange idea so many times, it's very common in the West. Another false and widespread idea is that being in the State is equivalent to just stopping your thoughts. You can't actively stop your thoughts, which is an assertive and aggressive attitude too. The State can only be reached through renunciations. Likewise if I could give you some aggressive medicine which would "stop your thoughts", you wouldn't reach the State any- way because you wouldn't have grown in compassion as all you did was take the medicine. 7 This is what I came to understanding from private letters I exchanged with Padmanabhan. First, Padmanabhan cor- rected the false idea that the State was about stopping my thoughts. He said that this doesn't work because it's too ag- gressive. Instead, the State is a State where the mind vanishes by itself. As the reader can see, stopping is an assertive action, re- ferred to as too aggressive by Padmanabhan, the term "van- ishes", especially applied to the mind, really refers to a re- moval process. Proclaiming values is assertive, proselytism is assertive, and in this context, this assertiveness is reinforce- ment of the ego. This is why there can't be any proselytism concerning the State. This book in not about changing people, this book is just about helping people eventually, when they have decided to change themselves in the first place. But now, if we consider the State as purely removed, the permanency of the State is the complete vanishing of the mind so first it is possible, and second it is the ultimate goal we should pursue (removed as far as the mind is concerned). The problem in this kind of discussions, I have noticed many times, is that no one agrees with the vocabulary we use. Essentially there are almost as many definitions of the term ego than there are people reading this text. What I call ego here, following [R], is the illusion of the mind which creates the thought of a (false) "I", attached to the correlated illusion that this "I" is separated from the world. As the mind vanishes, all thoughts vanish and the illusion of this "false I", which is a mere thought, also disappears. As a consequence, you don't see yourself as separated from the 8 world anymore. This is contained in [A] and [G], but as I said, reading Padmanabhan's writings is difficult. Hegel versus Buddha: "change the world" versus "change yourself". In his letters to me, Padmanabhan pointed out a key notion: belief systems. Whatever your mind conceives -whenever it fails to vanish- necessarily belongs to a belief system since the mind needs to believe in itself, as a "false I", since every single thought can only be conceived by the mind as "I think". This includes your highest values, your favorite scientific theories, your feeling of responsibility. Ego is a term widely used in the West. This term has different acceptations according to who uses it and who listens to it. In an effort to better understand Eastern philosophy, we should clearly stop using this word and replace it by "false I" or simply "mind".