J: Know that your question is never "your" question. It's always the question that occurs in consciousness now, like a mantra going on, a resonance. You just pick it up and you think "it is my question, maybe it's stupid, I don't ask it.” But it is not so. That is a mistake. So if there are questions, please... come forward with them.

Are there questions for the satsang?

Q: To heal a pain, I must be whole, but with the pain, I cannot be whole. What can I do?

J: With pain, do you mean a pain in the heart or do you mean a broken leg?

Q: A pain in the heart.

J: Yes. A French lady, on Place du Tertre in Paris, said once to me: "Je pleure dedans." (I'm crying inside). I thought this was wonderful, in French it sounds even more dramatic... you know. How did that pain come about?

Q: In the relationship with my father. He could not express his tenderness and his feelings (weeping).

J: I understand, I understand the question. You keep breathing now. So we are in satsang to bring light, clarity. We do not go into the stories, because for her it is the pain with the father now, but for you it can be with your ex-lover, or for you it can be because you broke your cup this afternoon, or you want to be thin and you are fat, or the other way around. The pain can feel the same. Pain is pain, you know, fear is fear. You can be fearful of a mouse, you can be fearful of lightning, but fear is fear. You understand this point?

So we are talking about pain now. The first thing to do is to keep breathing. When we get stuck in pain, we go like rhhhh!!! (Jivanjili breathes in and holds her breath).

The universe is one heartbeat, one coming and going, an in-breath and an out-breath - eternal. Napoleon came... and he went! But the essence never changes. The essence is still and unmoving, therein appears this universe in a endless coming and going; appearing in many forms, transparent and changing, in a constant flow of coming and going; breathing in and breathing out. One Breath, One Verse, Uni-Verse.

You have the choice now either to think of the story or to focus on the breathing. The more still, the deeper the breathing, from the belly, from the toes, in all the cells.

And here the glue is loosening: the story seems to become less personal. Then it is not "your" story and then you can start to see the relativity; like when you climb a little bit up the mountain and you overlook the valley; your view is widening.

You don't have pain in your heart; you have ideas you are holding on to. Is it so? We have these ideas... I am the daughter, he is my father, it is my past, I have to heal my past, I have to think of tomorrow and we always miss the breathing. There is only one way out to be whole and holy, healed and that is to realize that you are already whole in the heart. Stop going around in thinking-circles. This doesn't work.

What is the name of your father?

Q: Henri.

J. : I suggest from now on you call him "Henri" instead of "Daddy". Then you see him a bit more as he is, his constrictions, the bounds he has, the frames he lives in. This already brings more distance and impersonalises the way you experience him. You can start chanting Gayatri Mantra for your father and yourself and all therein. If you want to be healed, there is really one way out: this is through awareness. And I think you don't want to wander around in the psychology anymore. You are mature enough now to step out of therapy and talking about your daddy and crying and throwing pillows and paying a lot of money for it: 20 years! Do you want to take Freud as your Guru or do you want to get out? So start looking at it from a distance. You understand?

Q: Yes.

J.: So we have to say farewell and goodbye to our drama, and we have to say farewell and goodbye to who we had wished he should have been and get over it and love yourself. And loving yourself is starting to take a breath.

So now, from now on, you start to really give attention to your breathing. You are an universal appearance and so is your father. In fact there is no father and daughter, there is not a man, nor a woman. This appears only to be so when we look on the surface of appearances, in duality. Duality connotes two. You can surpass it very quickly by observing. The breathing is the breathing in the heartbeat of the universe and observed silently reveals a subtle undercurrent.  I cannot say male silence and female silence. In silence I cannot even say anything, yet all passes as it does; thoughts, season’s, forms…. there and gone, there and gone.

So dare to be still. When you are completely still and in the moment, in the breathing, you will observe that pain is in the past, and the future is not there! And the breathing is now. And when you get the skill, the know-how to just rest here, you slowly get a clear view, a free view. This needs to be practiced.

You will remember the stories, but the identification will not be there, you are free of it. It is just another story, just another drama in duality, and duality is drama.

When you look in nature, you see a lion jumping on an antelope, completely natural and it is a drama. It is the drama of life and death in its full circle, completely impersonal. Looking with those eyes diminishes the ego-sense to less than a grain of sand in the desert.

And then there is a second answer, much shorter. One of my daughters asked her Master ShantiMayi once: "What can a daughter learn from her father?" It struck me that she asked the question form an impersonal angle, the question was already less identified. It was asked from pain without suffering. ShantiMayi answered: "The father can learn from the daughter to open his heart." This is a short answer, but it applies for every situation.

From the heart all expressions are spontaneous, sensitive and naturally in harmony. 

Don’t cling to tenderness or missing tenderness.

Q: Thank you.

Toulouse, France, August 4, 2001