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That afternoon…

That afternoon…

by | May 31, 2025

That afternoon, thick and dull, descended on Haifa with the impersonality of something that does not want to announce itself. There were no signs in the sky, no resonance in the body. Nothing in the atmosphere suggested what was coming, although perhaps it would be more accurate to say: what was ceasing to resist. I sat down to meditate, as I had done so many times before, without a goal, without urgency, without expecting anything. The gesture was repeated with the monotony of a habit now devoid of intention, but not entirely empty. A certain quiet openness persisted, as if even the accumulated fatigue knew something that consciousness had not yet named. Perhaps it was this absence of expectation that made possible—or at least permissible—the occurrence, the event, the formless happening that ensued. There was no rupture. No image came to redeem me, no concept to bring order. If anything took place, it was a halt, a cessation. A discreet, almost undetectable cessation of that internal pressure that, for years, had structured the experience without my fully noticing it.
It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what stopped. Perhaps it was the compulsion to give shape to the ungraspable. Or the effort, as human as it is exhausting, to fix what constantly slips away. It was not a remedy or a solution. Rather, it was a silent collapse of the very need for meaning. The world outside remained the same, but the perspective, the angle from which I viewed it, had shifted. It was not a change in things, but in the subjective architecture that organized them. Suddenly, the inner narrative—that voice that seeks to give continuity to the figure of the self, which describes itself as an agent, a seeker, an interpreter—unraveled. Without violence, without pathos. It simply lost its cohesive force. It was then evident, without the need for any affirmation, that what I had so often sought was not waiting at the end of any journey. It had not been absent. It had simply gone unnoticed under the weight of the search itself.
To speak of “presence” would be imprecise, though tempting. The term carries echoes of a tradition that, while venerable, is not entirely appropriate here. There was no figure. Nor was there anything that could be seen or thought. What manifested itself—if that word can still be used—had no form or location. It demanded no attention, offered no confirmation. There was no distinction between the observer and the observed. That inherent dichotomy had simply ceased to operate. It was not a conceptual synthesis, but a silent erosion of the need for separation. For a timeless moment, life seemed to be sufficient unto itself, with no narrative to shape it and no subject to frame it.
To call this state “fulfillment” would be misleading. Not for lack of serenity, which was undoubtedly there, but because the term implies a totality that was never at stake. It was not a culmination, nor a spiritual climax. There was no definitive understanding, no promise fulfilled. What occurred was an unemphatic nakedness, a way of being in which it was no longer necessary to sustain the world through effort. Nothing was added. The habitual gesture that framed it simply ceased. And in that suspension, without conquest or proclamation, an unexpected freedom emerged. Not the kind that is defended or affirmed as a principle, but another: discreet, without attributes, unarticulated. A freedom that is not obtained or declared. One that occurs when thought ceases to occupy center stage.
Even today, I still have an image of what followed: a walk with no destination, accompanied by a happiness without cause. There was no one to direct it to, no thing to motivate it. It was tenderness without direction, without object. It demanded no understanding, no confirmation. Even the need to understand that there was nothing to understand had vanished. In its place was a wordless evidence that was neither knowledge nor illusion. A form of clarity that was neither conceptual nor discursive. It was not a matter of seeing something new, but of ceasing the impulse to verify, define, or determine. And in that abandonment—more than in any apparition—an unusual lightness was hinted at. A lucidity that was not conquered, but rather willing.
Almost thirty years have passed. There is no nostalgia. Not because what was experienced lacks value, but because it is not found in the past. It does not belong to a “place,” nor can it be replicated through practice. It cannot be recovered. That moment was not fixed in time; it remains among common gestures, in the barely perceptible. In the pause before a word, in the space that precedes a reaction, in the simple act of not responding. That is enough. And if I ever got lost, I would not try to find my way back. Because no path leads to that availability. Access does not depend on movement, but on stopping, on ceasing. Not on reaching, but on interrupting.
What we are—if that expression still deserves to be used—does not wait in the future, nor is it built with effort. It is not the goal of a process, nor the conclusion of a search. It does not hide behind a test. It does not demand revelation. It is what has always sustained, without showing itself, every attempt to find it. It is not found. It is. And it has always been. Although we often forget that we never strayed.”
Prabhuji
The pause

The pause

by | May 30, 2025

“There are phenomena whose uniqueness lies precisely in their ability not to show themselves. They do not announce themselves with fanfare, they do not demand attention. Their appearance, if one can speak of appearance, does not obey the logic of the exceptional, but rather that of the unnoticed. They do not present themselves as experiences in the usual sense: they are not added to the repertoire of experiences that can be remembered, classified, or attributed to a subject. They are inscribed in another way. They do not add, they subtract. They do not illuminate, they extinguish what was superfluous. And in doing so, they reveal something that was not absent, but covered.
What is glimpsed in this descent does not have the texture of a declarative truth. It does not aspire to be proven, nor does it impose itself as evidence. Rather, it stands as a tenuous certainty that does not need to impose itself in order to remain. It appears without preamble, without announcement, without exaltation, without introduction, without frame. The most ordinary of days, the very normality of life, an involuntary suspension of internal discourse: in these tiny cracks, something presents itself. Something that does not change, that does not lose its eternal freshness, that has not been affected by the passage of time or by the self-construction work to which the self devotes itself with varying degrees of devotion. That something does not refer to an entity, to a “something” or “someone.” It cannot be thought of as a foundation, nor can it be thematized as a category. Any attempt to fix it within the usual frameworks of conceptual thought betrays its nature. There is no form, figure, name, or outline. There is no story to organize it. It does not assert itself, but neither does it withdraw. Without manifesting itself or hiding, it remains available without intention. Distance is not the obstacle; the difficulty does not lie in remoteness. The problem arises from the very disposition with which we relate to experience. We live under the unspoken premise that each moment must lead to another that is fuller, denser, more interesting, more meaningful, better, or superior in every way. Modern subjectivity is conceived as an unfinished task, as a figure in constant elaboration whose legitimacy depends on the horizon of its own overcoming. This establishes an economy of lack that demands of the subject a continuous effort to improve, to correct, to transform themselves into an ideal that is never fully attained.
Accepting that there is nothing to achieve—no self to realize, no ultimate meaning to fulfill—destabilizes that horizon. It deactivates the narrative tension that sustains experience as something with direction. Hence, it is so difficult to admit, even silently. Contemporary thought, shaped by the ethics of performance and the logic of improvement, distrusts any statement that does not imply progress, trajectory, goal. A way of being that does not depend on the promise of becoming something else has become almost unthinkable. And yet, when that machinery stops—even for a moment—what is revealed is not nothingness. Nor is it a sense of fulfillment as compensation. Instead, a way of being emerges that does not respond to any purpose, that does not require intention, that does not obey the logic of achievement. This is not an extraordinary experience, nor is it a sudden understanding. It is the interruption of the narrative of the self, the possibility of being without telling oneself.
The term “awakening” has been used so often—and with so many interests—that it no longer names anything without bringing with it a host of spiritual promises. There is no revelation here. There is no break with the past. There is no dividing line marking a before and after. There is nothing that is possessed or achieved. Only the impulse to sustain oneself through a constant narrative dissolves, without violence. Life ceases to be property, and with that it loses its weight. This cessation does not require resolution. It does not lead to final clarity. There is no meaning to be attained, no stabilizing answer. What is experienced, if that verb can still be used, is a form of lightness that does not come from a solution, but from the interruption of the need to resolve. It is not a matter of having arrived anywhere. Only the internal friction has stopped. Not as a conquest, but as a deactivation.
That kind of pause cannot be sought. It does not respond to a strategy, technique, or methodology. It is not produced by will. It arrives unannounced, sometimes in the most trivial gesture: a leisurely walk, an unintentional silence, a moment that does not demand interpretation. It is where thought has nothing to add, but is not perceived as absent either. What is there does not seek to be named. It does not demand translation. It does not point to another place. Its consistency lies in not needing to be integrated into any system. To speak of freedom in this context requires revisiting the concept itself. It is not about choosing or affirming something about oneself. It is not about having options. Freedom here is not possibility, but the cessation of compulsion. What liberates is not a decision, but the end of the need to decide. When the impulse to define oneself fades, what remains does not need a name.
The greatest obstacle, then, is not outside. It is not the world, nor language, nor the finitude of the body. It is that persistent conviction that life must be oriented toward an end. That impulse toward another place, toward a different state, interrupts the possibility of being with what is already given. The difficulty lies less in action than in pause. Less in movement than in functionless stillness.
What remains is not at the end of any journey. It does not dwell on the margins. It does not demand to be found. It is not lost, nor is it conquered. It is not related to will. It does not respond. It is, as it always has been, though not as an object, nor as a substance, nor as a certainty. It sustains without asserting itself. And when no demands are made of it, it simply allows itself to be.”
Prabhuji
A smile, a joke, a laughter

A smile, a joke, a laughter

by | May 30, 2025

“There is a smile that does not come from wit or consolation. It is not mockery or ironic evasion. It is a sober, lucid smile that bursts forth when the tension of a search that never made sense subsides. It does not signal a discovery, but rather the unraveling of a fiction, the collapse of an inner fantasy. It is the final gesture of someone who, after trying everything, understands that the journey was unnecessary and that the destination was always right under their feet. This gesture does not arise from an extraordinary experience. It does not respond to any spiritual practice or moral achievement. Awakening, in this context, is not an eruption or a revelation. It is rather evidence that does not need to be imposed: too close, too simple to have been recognized by a consciousness accustomed to seeking complexity rather than clarity. It does not demand transformation but cessation.
Ignoring the obvious is not the result of an accident. It is inherited, learned, repeated until it becomes a collective habit. Ignorance, when institutionalized, becomes culture. Through languages, religions, traditions, educational systems, national narratives, and ethical doctrines, a system is consolidated that not only conceals being, but also turns it into a promise for the future. Nothing is hidden more effectively than the obvious when it is postponed in the form of a desire or an aspiration.
For generations—or incarnations, if we adopt another language—a sophisticated architecture of distance was constructed. The detour from the present was called inner evolution. Absence was dignified through the language of virtue: purification, ascension, redemption, renunciation. Evasion became an itinerary.
Enlightenment is an uncomfortable word. It has been overplayed by religions, emptied by ideologies, ridiculed by rationalism. And yet it has not been surpassed. Its strength lies in what it names without being able to explain: a cessation of effort that reveals the original condition. It is not a conquest or a prize. It cannot be attained, achieved, obtained, taught, or learned. It is recognized. And in recognizing itself, it deactivates all pedagogy of improvement. This thesis is intolerable to the seemingly separate “I.” It needs to defer the truth in order to manage it. It feeds on goals and objectives. It organizes itself around deficiencies. Its identity is affirmed through projects of transformation. Its narrative revolves around a fiction: that of an “I” that is still incomplete and must become.
Hence, it seeks enlightenment, but not to find it, but to avoid the moment when it is revealed to be unnecessary. We are already where we pretend to be going. And we forget this with discipline. Not out of stupidity, but out of fidelity to a narrative that precedes us. A narrative that turned lack into virtue and delay into a path.
The story attributed to the Buddha expresses it clearly: a man bowed before an enlightened being, and the latter, without hesitation, returned the gesture. “Why do you do that?” he asked. “Because you are already what I am. Only you don’t know it.”
This is not naive consolation. It is an ontological statement. If being cannot be lost, then it cannot be acquired. No method can lead to it. Any technique that promises to achieve it only postpones it. Even the most refined spiritual practice, if it starts from the assumption of a lack, consolidates the fiction it seeks to overcome. The question is not how to get there, but how the illusion of not having arrived is sustained. What habits maintain it? What forms of thought repeat, with nuances, the same denial of what already is?
It is not necessary to withdraw from the world. No retreat or consecration is required. There is no monastery more demanding than a mind that has abandoned all strategy. There is no height more legitimate than a moment lived without representation. There is no symbol more complete than the disappearance of all symbols.
Twenty-nine years ago, the effort ceased. There were no visions or ecstasy. No words were revealed. What happened was an interruption in the attempt to correct myself. Tired of dividing myself, I stopped demanding to be someone else. And when the conflict ceased, nothing new emerged. Only what had never left was revealed. It was like waking up from a deep sleep, composed of commands and expectations. And in that awakening, no promise appeared. Only presence. Nothing was missing. Nothing required transformation. The mental structure that demanded another state had dissolved. Only the evidence remained. I recognized the same thing in others. They were also there, although convinced that they were absent. Not out of spontaneous ignorance, but out of loyalty to a system that makes effort its justification and enlightenment a future goal that must never be achieved.
Perhaps it is a joke. Not cruel, but perfectly woven. A way of hiding the obvious behind a game of conceptual disguises. A strategy of existence to preserve wonder: to forget in order to remember, to search in order to laugh.
Enlightenment is not earned or achieved. It is not granted or attained. It is not pursued or sought. It is allowed. It does not demand willpower, but rather the cessation of its insistence. It does not call for action, only the interruption of the project of transformation.
When it happens, there is no message to proclaim. There is no doctrine to transmit. There is laughter. Silent, without arrogance. The laughter of someone who is not beginning, because they were already there. Laughter that does not start a journey but dissolves it.”
Prabhuji
The occurrence of the sacred

The occurrence of the sacred

by | May 30, 2025

“The occurrence of the sacred does not obey fixed locations. It is not distributed according to hierarchies or established by law or decree. It often bursts forth discreetly. It does not require grand gestures, but rather spaces of reception. A phrase that resists interpretive closure, a disarming glance, a silence that imposes itself without intention. In such moments, no certainty is imposed: what emerges is a more precise question. The sacred offers no solutions. It unsettles, it does not close; it leaves a crack open. It does not come to fill a void or complete a lack. It makes audible what the usual abundance had stifled. If something legitimately transcendental happens, it does not reside in a realm separate from ordinary life. There is no sharp cut between what counts as profane and what is considered exceptional. The spiritual is nothing more than a different way of inhabiting the same. To be without hardening, to resist the temptation to turn the other into a function and the self into a shield. To know that the body, time, even what we think we have understood, are not properties that belong to us, but realities entrusted to us for a time. And responding to that with an ethic of care, not with possessive attachment.
There are no predetermined routes, predetermined paths, or pre-established trails. Not because of a lack of directions, but because the itinerary is drawn as we go along; “the path is made by walking,” said the poet. The signs and signals, far from being spectacular, are subtle. A slight interruption in the continuity of discourse. A note that breaks the predictability. A sense of presence that cannot be articulated. They are not external: they arise from the transformation of the way of being. The world does not change; what changes is the willingness to receive it.
To seek, then, is not to be lost. It is to remain faithful to what has not yet been achieved. The impossibility of determining or naming what is desired does not mean that it is absent. Sometimes, the absence of definitions and nomenclatures preserves the possibility of encounter. Because faith—if one still accepts the use of that term—is not adherence to an immutable answer, but the decision to remain with the question without betraying it. To search without pretense, without shortcuts, without protective formulas: that is, perhaps, the most rigorous form of inner integrity.”
Prabhuji
Are you enlightened?’

Are you enlightened?’

by | May 21, 2025

“Sometimes I am asked a question that, although understandable, rests on a fundamental misunderstanding: ‘Are you enlightened?’ or ‘Are you an enlightened person?’ The question presupposes that enlightenment is a state that can be possessed by a subject, like someone who obtains a merit or reaches a higher category. However, if we accept the term “enlightenment,” it should be understood not as a personal achievement, but as radical disillusionment. It is not an inner achievement that the “separate self” can display, but the collapse of the very idea of an “autonomous self” that must or can achieve something.
When someone declares themselves enlightened, they have not awakened: they have constructed a new fiction around their ideal image. It is the ego that utters the phrase “I have awakened,” but genuine awakening consists precisely in seeing that this “I” was an illusory structure, sustained by the habit of self-assertion and the fear of dissolution. At the moment of awakening—if such a moment is possible—the urgency to define oneself, to defend oneself, to validate oneself vanishes. What once seemed essential loses all weight, as when at dawn the contours of dreams dissolve and there is no longer any need to flee or hold on. It is not a matter of denying subjective experience or rejecting ordinary forms of identity. It is about understanding that suffering finds its most constant root in the assumption that there is an autonomous, fixed, and central self. Enlightenment, in this sense, is not an extraordinary experience, but a lucid perception of what has always been so. It does not burst in with fanfare. It arrives without an owner, without an argument, without affirmation.
When that structure falls, an idealized version of oneself does not emerge. The real appears, in its elemental nakedness. Air, light, and minimal gestures appear, without the need to attribute transcendent meaning to them. The one who has awakened is not the one who accumulates answers. It is the one who no longer needs to hide behind justifications. Language ceases to be a shield. It becomes seeing silence.
The question is not who has awakened, but how much illusion remains to be let go. To seek enlightenment as a form of exceptionality is to remain trapped in the logic of the self. Awakening, if it occurs, does not confer superiority. It frees one from the suffering that arises from identifying with an image that was never stable. No one awakens to become something different. One awakens to stop fearing what one is when one has stopped pretending.
Like bamboo, which does not know it is hollow, but allows the wind to pass through. Like the mountain, which does not know it is high, but transforms with its presence. So too, consciousness does not need to proclaim itself enlightened. It is enough that it stops casting a shadow.
Rūmī, in his luminous poetry, whispers it with the sweetness of one who has seen:
“Come out of yourself, as water comes out of a spring. What you seek, you already are.”
The essential is not in achieving something. Nothing needs to be added to what already is. There is no further state to which we must ascend. What we are does not need to be perfected: it only needs to be remembered. When the representation of a self that acts to assert itself ceases, there is no superior individual left. What remains is life, as it is: open, silent, irreducible.
And that, without embellishment, is enough.”
Prabhuji