The appreciation of objects and subjects is the same for an enlightened as for an unenlightened person. The former has one greatness: he remains in the subjective mood, not lost in things.
- The instruction: throughout the day, whenever something impresses or drags you outward, exhale fully — and if no gap opens, stop the breath at the empty point (don’t inhale) — then look at the attracting thing as a pure witness. Breath is the bridge between you and the world; suspend it and the bridge breaks. One such moment gives the taste of witnessing; repeated, it brings a subtle joy of being — for the first time you feel that you ARE, a center crystallizing that you can move into at will while the world goes powerless.
- Nothing attracts you — YOU get attracted. Bharthruhari meditating in the forest: a huge diamond catches his eye, two riders arrive, fight, die — the diamond simply lies there throughout. Objects are innocent; it is your inner weakness that lends them power. The more alert you become, the more powerless things grow.
- Three grades: (1) Unenlightened — situations are master, you are dragged, you have no real ‘I’ yet; (2) the SADHAK — alert but fighting, one lapse and you fall back under the object’s spell; (3) the SIDDHA — alertness is natural as breathing, situations transform around him by mere presence. This practice is the move from grade 1 toward 2 and 3.
- Detachment is NOT renunciation. Renouncing the world changes the situation, not yourself — the response of a weak personality. The strong, alert person changes themselves within the same world. The enlightened and the unenlightened walk the same streets; only the inner subjectivity differs.
- [Q&A fold-in] Deeper meditation produces MORE sensitivity AND more detachment simultaneously — they are not opposites, awareness is their shared root. What feels like ‘sensitivity creating subtle attachment’ is actually sentimentalism (animal inheritance, reactive, automatic) being mistaken for sensitivity. Buddha sending the grieving mother to find a house where no one had died — his disciples wept (sentimentalism); he played the trick knowing she’d return empty-handed and mature (true sensitivity). Criterion: if attachment is growing with meditation, the meditation is erring somewhere. You cannot practise detachment directly; practise meditation and detachment follows as by-product.
- [Q&A fold-in] Attachment means the center of being has migrated out of you into the other (Majnun cannot live without Laila — his center is outside himself). Awareness keeps you whole; wholeness means you don’t need anyone to complete you. From that wholeness, love becomes a free overflowing gift with no condition and no need of return — not the bargaining born of dependency.