[The Full Audio of the Following Dialogue Is Available 
RW: I imagine that the people that you’re speaking about, I mean the exemplars, great teachers, roshis and so forth who can listen to people and they are not going to get caught in the emotions and so forth, that they are—clearly they’re not in a position of not caring. It’s not like I don’t give a damn.
JN: Not at all.
RW: That isn’t what it is. If anything these are people very aware on pretty much all the levels as complete people. But I’m speculating that there’s a kind of stability that some people reach where this kind of attention that you speak of is free enough. It’s not getting trapped in this emotional layer, which we all tend to get trapped i—except sometimes we don’t. If one can hold on to a kind of inner presence to the situation without being caught in it and have some kind of compassion, this is a different level—and who wouldn’t feel something about that. As I said, I’m speculating. One doesn’t want to lose a certain kind of…
JN: Humanity.
RW: Yes.
JN: I think that it would be wrong to think that these great teachers don’t have the same emotions. It’s just that they are probably not swept away by them so much as we are. But how can I be compassionate towards another unless I experience the same thing in myself? That reminds me of that story about Moses. There’s a king who lives far away from where Moses is. He hears these stories of this great spiritual man and sends his portrait painter a thousand miles or whatever, a hundred miles away, to paint a picture of this great man, a portrait. The artist goes there and comes back with the picture and the king looks at it and says, “This cannot be the picture of the man I heard about! This man is full of vice in his eyes, and is full of sin.” And he’s very angry at the portrait painter. And he goes to visit Moses himself. He speaks to Moses about this painting that was so awful and Moses says to him, “This is a very exact picture of me. I have all that within me. But I struggle to separate myself from that in myself. It’s a very exact portrait.”
RW: That’s a very interesting story. I was told a story by someone who came to paint my house. His name is Hari. He’s a remarkable man himself. His teacher was a Hindu guru. His guru was giving a talk and with a lot of people there and Hari, noticed two men come in the door. He sensed right away that these men were trouble. So he went to the guru and pointed them out and whispered, “They could cause some trouble.” The guru saw them and said to Hari something like, “When are you going to learn?” Hari told me his guru went to these two men and talked to them, and even stroked their heads. They just turned into these lambs. Hari said he just couldn’t believe it.
JN: It’s a good story.
RW: Something was demonstrated.
JN: But you have to be careful sometimes. I remember, I may have told this story before, but I remember standing in a neighborhood that I knew very well and a dog started barking ferociously from across the street and started running at me. I had heard somewhere or believed somewhere that if I just went quiet and was present, the dog wouldn’t bother anything. And the dog came over and bit me!
RW: Oh, my gosh.
JN: Not seriously, but it made me realize you’ve got to discriminate. But nevertheless, to be able to relate personal emotional problems of a human being to the great teaching that perhaps they are involved in, to make the connection so that a person can turn towards that part of the self in moments of emotional difficulty—that must be another kind of transcendent therapy, in a way. It’s not that the psychotherapist, the psychiatrist needs to help the person see themselves. But the spiritual therapist probably can help the person become aware of the seer, that which is seeing, and deepen their contact with that which becomes quite another force in one’s inner life.
RW: I’m sure that there are amazing things that can happen, especially if the person who is witnessing, who is present to the other, can bring a certain quality of presence and attention, too. We both know this story from a psychiatrist who had a schizophrenic man living in his basement. One day the schizophrenic man pretty much went off the deep end and came upstairs and was very threatening right there in his home. The psychiatrist didn’t know what to do. So he simply stood there and looked at this man in a way that was simply seeing him. Something happened there. You know this story.
JN: Yes, I do.
RW: Something was transformed in this troubled man from being seen in this objective way. In fact, there was a profound healing that took place out of this episode. I’m sure there are stories like that, that illustrate, as I say again, that it’s really a mysterious thing.
JN: The whole spectrum of therapy, spiritual work from listening as a healing force therapeutically, to listening as a transforming force spiritually. To go from healing the ego enough so that it can submit to another influence. There must be a spectrum of relationship between this quality of attention. In other words, often one needs to have therapy. There are people who need it. I need it. We need it to get through the night and so the ego can function in one’s everyday life. The next step is to attend to the seer, because the seer, that which sees can be deepened and deepened and deepened until it becomes a transforming force. And the person goes from being a normal—as Freud said, “All we can do is make a person normally neurotic.” That’s because he was very realistic about that. It would take us to the question of what is it when spiritual traditions, real spiritual traditions, real ones, speak of transformation, or of a new birth. It has to do a lot with this, doesn’t it? It has to do with this quality of attention being more deep, more involved in one’s inner life than one’s outer behavior. I am just talking about this whole thing of metanoia and the Christian tradition. You know, the change of consciousness, which is transformation.
RW: Well, I adhere to these ideas that you are expressing. And I still feel myself on this side…
JN: On this side of the river. Me, too.
RW: You know? There’s a fellow I interviewed, Jim Barton, an interesting artist. He talked about his demons. He certainly has been through some difficulties. And at some point in the interview, from the way he was speaking, I was beginning to think he was saying that he had gotten beyond his demons. So I said, “It sounds like some of these demons have been vanquished.” And he said, “Oh no. Not at all.” So I asked him what he did about it when he ran up against one of these demons of rage or jealousy or some incredibly powerful emotion. He said, “What I’ve learned to do is I just go back to work.”
He’s a wood carver. I mean this is on a lower level, but I certainly experience art making as a therapeutic process or practice. I find that rather than dwelling on being upset, it’s very helpful to get back to work, somehow. So I think what we were talking about is a bit beyond the realm of art per se.
I remember this lecture by Laurens van der Post maybe 35 years ago, an incredible lecture. Laurens van der Post was a wonderful writer and speaker. He was talking about having directed Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest. He said that in his opinion, the theme of Shakespeare’s last play was that art could take you only so far. And to go further you have to turn to religion. I know religion nowadays is a word that as soon as people hear it, it’s like “Get away from me!” But religion has, in its pure forms, tremendous things to offer us.
Van der Post thought it was interesting that this was Shakespeare’s last play. He didn’t just die right after he wrote it. He lived a few years afterwards. And I’ve always pondered that idea, that art can take you so far and if you want to go further, you have to turn to, let’s just call it, a spiritual practice. Certainly the things that we were talking about belong in the realm of spiritual practice. I don’t want to insist on these categories. Things are fluid and they move and shift around. At one moment something is possible and in another moment that same thing is not possible.
JN: Well, I think it’s very right to stay, get back to sea level, as it were—come down from the mountain and see who we really are. If we were to apply the therapy of the artist to get back to work when we are troubled, what would be the equivalent of that? I don’t know. Some kind of listening, perhaps even to myself might be the most therapeutic step we could take or listening to another. Sometimes when things are difficult, I turn—sometimes I almost have to force myself—but I’ve turned to try to see what help I could be to another person.
RW: That’s interesting.
JN: That turns, very often that turns the whole thing around.
RW: I am sure that that is an absolutely authentic principle. It’s spoken of all the time by people with wisdom. And as you said also, there’s something that might come from listening to oneself. I think a basic principle of Buddhism is that our problems stem from ignorance about our true nature.
I had an interesting experience a couple of years ago. I had a beautiful condominium on the coast in Oregon gifted to me for a week. I was going to do some writing and was looking forward to that as an experiment to see if I would come up with anything worthwhile. On the way out of town, about 100 miles up the coast, I got a phone call about a very disturbing problem involving a rental property I own. So I got up to this condominium and found that the owner had these calendars from the Dalai Lama inscribed with pieces of wisdom. One of them said that if someone has done you wrong and behaved in ways that seem completely indefensible, consider that person your great spiritual teacher. This was actually the situation I was in, without going into the details. And I really tried to take that to heart. So then the question is, can I listen to myself deeply enough—because I’m caught up in this intense emotion—is it true that ultimately there is something deeper than this emotion? I mean, basically, the Buddhists are saying that the suffering is due to an ignorance involved there.
JN: Yes, I think there is. That’s very beautiful interpretation of the Buddhist idea—to be ignorant of that self inside you in that situation.
RW: It was helpful, even though it wasn’t like I was suddenly free from all that.
JN: Not at all. Not at all.
RW: It was very helpful.
JN: It’s actually helpful. It’s a good note to end on.
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Here is a direct link to the audio page: http://www.jacobneedleman.c...
I'd suggest you put a link to the audio at the top of this as it is likely I think that many people won't have or take the time to read the lengthy text, but they might listen while riding to work or cooking breakfast.