(Warning: Do not read this if you want to remain attached to the self !)
If we are interested to go beyond the sense of a personal self, of “personhood” with all
its suffering and entanglements, and realize enlightened life, then we need to begin to
contemplate ourselves in a new way. Metapsychiatry advises us to follow the path of
Yen-Hui and the enlightened example set by him. As the story goes:
Yen-Hui mind-fasted excellently and knew how to “erase the self utterly.” He withdrew
from the world in order to prepare himself to take on the job of becoming the King’s
advisor--a highly dangerous position, given that all his predecessors had a history of
execution in the moment when the King became dissatisfied with their counsel. And when
the King called a citizen to his court to serve, refusal was an unacceptable choice.
Therefore, Yen-Hui was in a very difficult conundrum; so, he went to consult his spiritual
teacher for guidance. Yen-Hui’s Zen master agreed that he was in a highly vulnerable
position, and advised him that his only hope for safety lay in erasing the self utterly.
“No self” = “no execution!”
“Man is in this world,” Dr. Hora reminds us, “to participate in Existence as a beneficial
presence.” And as Yen-Hui was motivated by a genuine desire to be beneficial, it
seemed he might be able to protect the people from troubled and treacherous times and
from an oppressive regime. It is Divine Love-Intelligence that urged him toward the
process of purification that would enable him to be an instrument of Its Infinite Mercy and
Wisdom in the world.
So Yen-Hui demonstrated his absolute sincerity: he left the world’s clanging and banging,
its interaction and mental clutter, and set to realize emptiness. He studied day and night;
he mind-fasted and meditated for three years, the story goes. When he returned to the
world, he went directly to see his Zen master, the renowned Chuang-Tse, and informed
him, “I am enlightened.” Whereupon his master replied, “Prove it.” “Before I left to mind-
fast and meditate, I thought there was a ‘Yen-Hui’ ” he answered, “but now I know there
never was a ‘Yen-Hui’.” “You are enlightened!” his master proclaimed.
Dr. Hora supposes that in this holy process in which Yen-Hui was engaged that, perhaps,
Yen-Hui started his day something like this:
Every morning he would wake up and say, “I am not this body. I am not this person. I am
not what people call me — I am not ‘Yen-Hui’ [insert ‘your name’]. I am not my personal
history. I am not my story. I am not my eyes or my ears. I am not my mind. Everything I
see and everything I was told about myself seems to be true, but it is not true.”
Contemplation of the Zen koan: “Show me the face which you had before your parents
were born” is helpful in realizing this truth; and the biblical words which Dr. Hora often
quoted: “Without father, without mother, without genealogy…without beginning of days
nor end of life …” … but “… hid like Christ in God…” can also lead us gradually to the
same understanding. (Heb 7:3 & Col 3:3)
Metapsychiatry informs us that lies can be useful. This remark encourages us to make
use of the unreal to reveal the real; it suggests that it can be a helpful exercise to deny
the appearance world and work from the negative up to the positive.** Using the
juxtapositional method to see what is not, i.e., what seems to be, and refuting the picture
or the form as real, heightens our awareness of what really is and helps us to overcome
the world’s downward drag and hypnotic influences.
And Dr. Hora goes on to say, in the process of refusing the picture, as Yen-Hui did, when
you hear a bird sing, for example, ask: “Do I hear this bird singing or is my ear hearing
this?” (Is there an “I” here to hear this?) “If you see a snake coming toward you, or a
ground hog, or a deer, ask yourself, ‘Am I seeing this, or am I just imagining it?’ ” If we
are imagining this reality, then we are imagining its content as well. *** Dr. Hora advises
us to question everything about ourselves that we have always taken for granted. Little
by little, we reach a point where we can begin to annihilate a sense of self, of a “person”
moving through a form-world which seems real, and we are, more and more, in the
supremely Loving void we call emptiness. This emptiness is not numbness or a “dead”
zone — it is fullness of Being (alive, alert, conscious, indestructible). It is a void that is de-
void of garbage thoughts, illusions, dreams and fantasies, de-void of self-confirmatory
and interaction thoughts and experiences. As Christ did, so must we, if we would like to
live beyond the dream: “Christ emptied himself” (Phil 2:7).
In this way all of the invalid ideas we have of ourselves can be eventually erased, and we
are freed of the early conditioning from childhood. It is important to remember, too, as
Meta teaches, that we are living in a “mental deficiency,” that the entire human condition
suffers from cognitive deficiencies, from limited perceptivity, and a universally
experienced desire to confirm ourselves as a reality with its concomitant inability to
discern existence or “life” beyond appearances, beyond the material, finite experience.
Gradually, however, we can come to see that we are something other than what we have
believed ourselves to be. Dr. Hora continues, “When you hear with your ears, don’t
‘hear’ with your ears.” Beethoven could “hear” whole symphonies when he was “deaf.” By
this example, we can know that it is possible to “hear’” without a sensory organ (and to
see and to know by direct revelation from the Mind of God — the One Mind.)
What Yen-Hui learned was that when you “see” with your eyes, don’t “see” with your
eyes; when you “hear” with your ears, don’t “hear” with your ears; when you “think” with
your “mind,” don’t “think” with your “mind.” Instead, cultivate an awareness that can see,
hear and think through the Spirit. As consciousness, Spirit hears through us perfectly —
and sees through us perfectly and knows through us perfectly and loves through us
perfectly. (See Meta’s Prayer of Glowing.)
Yen-Hui thought there was a Yen-Hui, but there never was a “Yen-Hui”! Who is reading
these words?
_____________________________________
* This message is inspired by Chapter 6, “What Yen-Hui Understood,” in “Encounters
with Wisdom, Book One of Dialogues with Thomas Hora, M.D.”
** Practicing the idea of moving from the negative to the positive approach (Meister
Eckhardt’s concept of the via negativa/via positiva ), we can re-collect, if we are having
an unpleasant experience or symptom or problem, that “No such thing is happening
in Divine Reality, in the Mind of God” (Dr. Hora). Therefore, it cannot be real or
enduring. In other words, “I” am not really having this experience – it is just what seems
to be. "I am only experiencing a thought, a garbage thought.” All experiences belong to
the dream-world; knowing this to be truth, we can refuse them, whatever form an
experience might take — be it a disappointment, a hurt, an injustice, a “should thought,”
a sense of resentment, a symptom, pain, or any form of discord, or dis-ease, or even an
atrocity, and seek to see the Truth-of-Being instead, right where the problem seems to
be — and be freed.
*** The Zen Master says: “The past is a dream; the future is a fantasy, and the present is
imagination.” The Prayers of Beholding or Right Knowing can direct us to that sacred
place where Truth can be realized).
If we are interested to go beyond the sense of a personal self, of “personhood” with all
its suffering and entanglements, and realize enlightened life, then we need to begin to
contemplate ourselves in a new way. Metapsychiatry advises us to follow the path of
Yen-Hui and the enlightened example set by him. As the story goes:
Yen-Hui mind-fasted excellently and knew how to “erase the self utterly.” He withdrew
from the world in order to prepare himself to take on the job of becoming the King’s
advisor--a highly dangerous position, given that all his predecessors had a history of
execution in the moment when the King became dissatisfied with their counsel. And when
the King called a citizen to his court to serve, refusal was an unacceptable choice.
Therefore, Yen-Hui was in a very difficult conundrum; so, he went to consult his spiritual
teacher for guidance. Yen-Hui’s Zen master agreed that he was in a highly vulnerable
position, and advised him that his only hope for safety lay in erasing the self utterly.
“No self” = “no execution!”
“Man is in this world,” Dr. Hora reminds us, “to participate in Existence as a beneficial
presence.” And as Yen-Hui was motivated by a genuine desire to be beneficial, it
seemed he might be able to protect the people from troubled and treacherous times and
from an oppressive regime. It is Divine Love-Intelligence that urged him toward the
process of purification that would enable him to be an instrument of Its Infinite Mercy and
Wisdom in the world.
So Yen-Hui demonstrated his absolute sincerity: he left the world’s clanging and banging,
its interaction and mental clutter, and set to realize emptiness. He studied day and night;
he mind-fasted and meditated for three years, the story goes. When he returned to the
world, he went directly to see his Zen master, the renowned Chuang-Tse, and informed
him, “I am enlightened.” Whereupon his master replied, “Prove it.” “Before I left to mind-
fast and meditate, I thought there was a ‘Yen-Hui’ ” he answered, “but now I know there
never was a ‘Yen-Hui’.” “You are enlightened!” his master proclaimed.
Dr. Hora supposes that in this holy process in which Yen-Hui was engaged that, perhaps,
Yen-Hui started his day something like this:
Every morning he would wake up and say, “I am not this body. I am not this person. I am
not what people call me — I am not ‘Yen-Hui’ [insert ‘your name’]. I am not my personal
history. I am not my story. I am not my eyes or my ears. I am not my mind. Everything I
see and everything I was told about myself seems to be true, but it is not true.”
Contemplation of the Zen koan: “Show me the face which you had before your parents
were born” is helpful in realizing this truth; and the biblical words which Dr. Hora often
quoted: “Without father, without mother, without genealogy…without beginning of days
nor end of life …” … but “… hid like Christ in God…” can also lead us gradually to the
same understanding. (Heb 7:3 & Col 3:3)
Metapsychiatry informs us that lies can be useful. This remark encourages us to make
use of the unreal to reveal the real; it suggests that it can be a helpful exercise to deny
the appearance world and work from the negative up to the positive.** Using the
juxtapositional method to see what is not, i.e., what seems to be, and refuting the picture
or the form as real, heightens our awareness of what really is and helps us to overcome
the world’s downward drag and hypnotic influences.
And Dr. Hora goes on to say, in the process of refusing the picture, as Yen-Hui did, when
you hear a bird sing, for example, ask: “Do I hear this bird singing or is my ear hearing
this?” (Is there an “I” here to hear this?) “If you see a snake coming toward you, or a
ground hog, or a deer, ask yourself, ‘Am I seeing this, or am I just imagining it?’ ” If we
are imagining this reality, then we are imagining its content as well. *** Dr. Hora advises
us to question everything about ourselves that we have always taken for granted. Little
by little, we reach a point where we can begin to annihilate a sense of self, of a “person”
moving through a form-world which seems real, and we are, more and more, in the
supremely Loving void we call emptiness. This emptiness is not numbness or a “dead”
zone — it is fullness of Being (alive, alert, conscious, indestructible). It is a void that is de-
void of garbage thoughts, illusions, dreams and fantasies, de-void of self-confirmatory
and interaction thoughts and experiences. As Christ did, so must we, if we would like to
live beyond the dream: “Christ emptied himself” (Phil 2:7).
In this way all of the invalid ideas we have of ourselves can be eventually erased, and we
are freed of the early conditioning from childhood. It is important to remember, too, as
Meta teaches, that we are living in a “mental deficiency,” that the entire human condition
suffers from cognitive deficiencies, from limited perceptivity, and a universally
experienced desire to confirm ourselves as a reality with its concomitant inability to
discern existence or “life” beyond appearances, beyond the material, finite experience.
Gradually, however, we can come to see that we are something other than what we have
believed ourselves to be. Dr. Hora continues, “When you hear with your ears, don’t
‘hear’ with your ears.” Beethoven could “hear” whole symphonies when he was “deaf.” By
this example, we can know that it is possible to “hear’” without a sensory organ (and to
see and to know by direct revelation from the Mind of God — the One Mind.)
What Yen-Hui learned was that when you “see” with your eyes, don’t “see” with your
eyes; when you “hear” with your ears, don’t “hear” with your ears; when you “think” with
your “mind,” don’t “think” with your “mind.” Instead, cultivate an awareness that can see,
hear and think through the Spirit. As consciousness, Spirit hears through us perfectly —
and sees through us perfectly and knows through us perfectly and loves through us
perfectly. (See Meta’s Prayer of Glowing.)
Yen-Hui thought there was a Yen-Hui, but there never was a “Yen-Hui”! Who is reading
these words?
_____________________________________
* This message is inspired by Chapter 6, “What Yen-Hui Understood,” in “Encounters
with Wisdom, Book One of Dialogues with Thomas Hora, M.D.”
** Practicing the idea of moving from the negative to the positive approach (Meister
Eckhardt’s concept of the via negativa/via positiva ), we can re-collect, if we are having
an unpleasant experience or symptom or problem, that “No such thing is happening
in Divine Reality, in the Mind of God” (Dr. Hora). Therefore, it cannot be real or
enduring. In other words, “I” am not really having this experience – it is just what seems
to be. "I am only experiencing a thought, a garbage thought.” All experiences belong to
the dream-world; knowing this to be truth, we can refuse them, whatever form an
experience might take — be it a disappointment, a hurt, an injustice, a “should thought,”
a sense of resentment, a symptom, pain, or any form of discord, or dis-ease, or even an
atrocity, and seek to see the Truth-of-Being instead, right where the problem seems to
be — and be freed.
*** The Zen Master says: “The past is a dream; the future is a fantasy, and the present is
imagination.” The Prayers of Beholding or Right Knowing can direct us to that sacred
place where Truth can be realized).
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Obliterating the self ~ the false human identity *
the MetaWay
by Susan von Reichenbach