CHAPTER ONE
PRESENCE AND ESSENCE
N GENERAL, PEOPLE RARELY have, and never recognize as such, the experience of essence. So we will begin by looking at a related quality of experience that is more commonly felt and talked about: the quality of presence. The expression “I am present” is often used in spiritual and psychological circles, with an assumption that its meaning is understood. We ask: what does this expression mean? What does being present actually signify? Most of the time the expression is not used in a very definite or clear way; most people, if asked, are unable to explain what they mean by “present.”
But there must be an actual condition that warrants using the expression “I am present.” What is that condition? The expression literally means that there is an “I” that is present at the time. Is this literal meaning accurate?
Obviously, when we say “I am present,” we don't mean exactly that we are aware, otherwise we would say so. There is a difference between the meaning of “I am present” and the meaning of “I am aware,” although the two can and frequently do coincide. What is the difference? What makes us say “present” instead of “aware?” What is in the experience of “I am present” that is different from the experience of “I am aware?” What is the element that accounts for presence?
We want to inquire into the meaning of presence by contemplating and analyzing the actual experience of presence. Let us examine a familiar situation, the aesthetic experience. My eyes catch the sight of a beautiful red rose. Suddenly, my sight is clearer, my smelling is keener. I seem to be in my seeing, I seem to be in my smelling. There is more of me here, seeing, smelling, and appreciating the rose.
This phenomenon is not simply one of increased awareness, so that more of the rose is experienced through my eyes and nostrils, so that more of the rose is experienced through my perceptual system.
In the experience of increased presence, it is as if I meet my perceptions midway. It is as if something of me, something more or less palpable, is present in my eyes and in my nose. Something in me besides my perceptual channels is participating in the experience of the rose. And this something is not memory, not past associations with roses.
In a sense, my greater awareness actually enhances the presence of the rose, or of any aesthetic object, such as a piece of music or a painting. Sometimes greater awareness enhances only a certain quality of an object—the beauty of the rose, its color, its smell, or its freshness. But sometimes the rose as a rose, as a presence in itself, is felt. If that experience is deep enough, our own presence is enhanced. “I seem to be more here,” the expression goes. But what is this presence? Is there really an “I” that is more present, or what exactly is it?
Of course, the aesthetic experience is not restricted to a response to beauty alone. It might be the experience of awe when confronted by the immensity of the ocean or the grandeur of a mountain range. It can be the experience of admiration when one witnesses heroism in an individual or a group, or the courage or boldness of an explorer.
We are considering the moments, however rare they are, when we feel as if there is somehow more of us partaking of the experience. We want to understand what “more of us” means. More of what? What is the element that gives our experience this taste of presence?
We are also aware that some individuals have greater presence than others. We say, “He has more presence,” or “He's an imposing presence.” But can we say what is really being referred to here? We are not referring to the quality of presence of mind, which is greater awareness. “Presence” itself is more than that.
Presence also can be sensed at times of intense and deep emotion, when a person is fully feeling an emotional state, not controlling or inhibiting it, when he is involved wholeheartedly in the feeling, totally immersed in it in a free and spontaneous way without judgment or holding back. This usually happens only when the person feels totally justified in feeling the emotions.
For example, an individual might experience a great loss, like the death of a loved one, and so feels justified in feeling the grief and the sadness. He might get so involved in the sadness, so immersed in it, that the feeling deepens as if it were miles deep, going to greater depths and profundity. This state might become so deep and profound that it feels thicker and denser as he gets more deeply immersed in it, so deep and profound that he experiences himself permeated by a kind of presence. It is as if the profundity and the depth are an actual presence, palpable and quite clearly there.
Another example: A person might feel justified in feeling angry and indignant about being insulted or unjustly treated. The anger becomes so powerful that at some point, if he goes goes unreservedly with the feeling, the person will experience in the anger some kind of force powering it. This force or power is so clearly manifest that it assumes a palpable presence. It is as if the mounting power of the unrestricted emotion evokes more of the person. He feels himself so present in the emotion, so at its center, that a clearly sensed and substantial presence seems to infuse the emotion and fill the body. His body feels packed with power, so densely that power becomes a presence. This presence seems to be the source of the emotion and power, both in it and behind or under it. At such times, the person experiences intense contact with the body, along with an astonishing capacity to use and direct it. It is as if at that moment the individual actually exists in his arms, for instance, and hence can use them with an unusual amount of control, efficiency, and immediacy.
Now, what is this presence that exists in the arms, in the body, that seems to bring with it power, energy, contact, and awareness? We are seeing that presence is more of an actuality than an idea or a metaphor. We are getting a sense that presence is much more profound, more real than feeling or emotion. We are approaching, although still vaguely, an appreciation of what presence is.
The presence one experiences does not have to be one's own, and does not have to be individual. One can experience the presence of another. A whole group can be aware of a presence. Even one who is not particularly attuned to the quality of presence cannot but contact presence is some unusual and unique circumstances. One such situation is that of a mother giving birth to a baby.
At times, when the mother is not under medication, when she is fully participating in the birth, her presence may be elicited. The mother may feel a fullness, a strength, a solid determination, an unmistakable sense that she is present in the experience, fully involved in it.
The situation of giving birth is real; it is not social, and it cannot be faked. For a woman to do it in full consciousness, without the aid of mind-dulling medications, she might have to pull out all of her resources, pool all of her strength and determination, and be genuinely present.
This full presence of the woman also may be sensed by others. One may see it as the presence of intensity, of intense feeling and sensation, or of intense energy and attention. One also may be aware that the woman is present in a way unusual for her. She seems to have a fullness. She seems to have a glow, a radiance. The presence is unmistakable, beautiful and powerful.
The experience of presence in this situation may be seen, if one is sensitive and aware, not to reside only in the mother. If all present are fully participating—and this often happens in such situations because of their dramatic intensity—then the presence is seen to pervade the room, to fill it and impregnate it. There is an intensity in the room, a palpable aliveness, the sense of a living presence.
The experience of presence is most clearly felt when the baby is born, when it is out into the world. One may then experience a shift, an expansion in the energy of the room. One feels that the room definitely has a new presence, a fresh presence. The baby is experienced not only as a body but something much more, something much more alive and much more profound. One may, if sensitively attentive, behold the newcomer as a clear and definite presence. The baby is a being. A being is present, with no name, no history, no extras. And there is blessing.
One may in fact observe that different babies have different qualities of presence. The quality of presence is not just a matter of their size, how they look, or what sex they are. Each seems to have its own unique quality of presence, which is quite obvious at birth and which continues to be the mode of being for the particular baby. One may behold the emerging presence of the baby as a sweetness, a fluffiness, a tenderness. Or the presence is felt as a peacefulness, a quietness, a stillness. Yet another baby confronts us with a presence of clarity, lightness, and joy. Another might fill the room with strength, solidity, and immovability.
This experience of a situation being filled with a certain presence also may be felt in the purity and aloneness of nature. In moments of quietness and solitude in nature, a person becomes aware that the natural environment itself has a presence that profoundly affects his mind and heart. It is not uncommon, when one is not occupied with the concerns of the world, when the mind is empty and still, that nature presents itself not only as the objects constituting it but as a living presence.
A range of high, rocky mountains can then be felt as an immensity, a solidity, an immovability, that is alive, that is there. This immensity and immovability seems sometimes to confront us, to affect us, not as an inanimate object but as a clear and pure presence. It seems to contact us, to touch us. And if we are open and sensitive, we may participate in this immensity. We may then feel ourselves as one with the immensity, the immovability, the vastness.
Just as mountains have their particular presence, so do forests, oceans, rivers, and meadows. One may even sense the presence of a tree, as Krishnamurti relates in one of his solitary contemplations:
“There was an intensity about the tree—not the terrible intensity of reaching, of succeeding, but the intensity of being complete, simple, alone and yet part of the earth. The colours of the leaves, of the few flowers, of the dark trunk, were intensified a thousandfold. . . .”1
We can expand our inquiry by considering presence in situations of stress or danger. Sometimes, a person under extraordinary duress, when his ability to function might be expected to be reduced, will be saved by a surprising power or capacity surging from within.
His perception will suddenly become acute, his mind lucid, his body agile and responsive. He will experience a level of courage and intelligence not normally available to him, an extraordinary strength and will, an unusual command over his mind, emotions, and movements.
At such a time, great feats can be accomplished in response to vital needs. A person might feel, dimly or lucidly, that a power has awakened in him. It is as if the whole being has gathered in one integrated intensity, which makes possible the emergence of a calm strength, a poignant presence that deliberately and knowingly acts according to the needs of such a moment. Excitement is gone, emotions are absent, and thoughts are stilled. What remains is exactly what is needed to meet the emergency.
What matters for our discussion of presence is that in those rare crises of life and death, when our ordinary capacities for perception and action fail us, there can emerge in us a power hitherto unknown: a calm and collected presence that can take charge and act unhampered by our thoughts and emotional states. This condition is not experienced simply as the absence of hampering thoughts and emotional conflicts. There is, rather, a positive presence of a power, of a superior intelligence that is not physical, emotional, or mental.
This potential increase of presence in dangerous situations is utilized by some people, adventurous or athletic types, in the form of seeking or arranging situations that make it necessary for them to be intensely present. We are not speaking of the person who looks for emotional excitement by getting involved in dangerous situations, but rather of the individual who, knowingly or unknowingly, seeks situations of danger where excitement and emotionality are an impediment, where instead, calm strength and intelligent presence are required.
This potential of situations of extraordinary duress is recognized and utilized by some systems of self-development. The disciple is encouraged to stay awake and present in situations of extreme emotional difficulty or physical fatigue. At such times the usual everyday mind cannot function. The individual will tend to discharge emotionally or go to sleep if the fatigue is the result of prolonged lack of sleep. But if he is kept awake, and willingly attempts to be present in this situation, there might emerge within him an intelligence or a strength that would change his whole situation.
In Zen Buddhism, this is accomplished by giving the disciple a koan, an enigmatic phrase or question that cannot be understood by the discursive mind. The person goes over it in all ways possible for him, mentally and emotionally, until he reaches mental and emotional exhaustion. If he is ready, and if the situation is ripe, then a momentary silence and stillness in him will bring a flash of satori, an emotionless and wordless realization. Inexperienced followers usually assume that the realization must be some kind of insight. However, the deeper realizations in Zen are glimpses of beingness, of being-as-such, of the presence of reality. The deep realization is the experience of presence.
G. I. Gurdjieff, the Russian teacher, used the method of subjecting students to extreme duress. He frequently put his disciples into situations so difficult that most of them believed they would be impossible to tolerate. The students might walk long distances for days, beyond their ordinary endurance level, or they might perform menial tasks for days without sleep.
Some thought that the purpose of these efforts was to build a certain kind of strength and endurance, which is partially true. The real significance of those situations emerges when we understand that at the same time the students are supposed to practice “self-remembering.” Self-remembering is defined here as paying attention to both inner and outer environments. Some of his students assert that self-remembering also means maintaining the awareness that one is paying attention.
In fact, this practice is only an exercise that will lead in time to actual self-remembering, which cannot be explained to a person who has never experienced it. If Gurdjieff had meant by self-remembering splitting the attention in two—one part directed inward and one part directed outward—he would have just said: pay attention inside and outside. Why bring in the word self and the word remembering?
One might argue that self means what we experience inside, plus our awareness or attention. This would include our emotions, sensations, and thoughts, plus our awareness of them, but this perspective is limited. It is due to not knowing that our inner experience doesn't actually include other categories of experience.
We see the Gurdjieffian practice of self-remembering as the first step, the initial effort needed for real self-remembering to happen. However, if we limit ourselves to this understanding, we might never recognize the experience of true self-remembering because our preconceptions will function as barriers to our experience.
Gurdjieff insisted that usual efforts are useless for self-development. He talked about super-efforts, efforts that transcend the usual limits of the personality and are not directed toward satisfying its usual small needs. “Man must understand,” he said, “that ordinary efforts do not count. Only super-efforts count. And so it is always and in everything. Those who do not wish to make super-efforts had better give up everything and take care of their health.”2 Super-effort “means an effort beyond the effort that's necessary to achieve a given purpose,” said Gurdjieff.
Imagine that I have been walking all day and am very tired. The weather is bad, it's raining and cold. In the evening I arrive home. I have walked, perhaps twenty-five miles. In the house there is supper; it's warm and pleasant. But, instead of sitting down to supper, I go out into the rain again and decide to walk another two miles along the road and then return home. This would be a super-effort. While I was going home it was simply an effort and this does not count. I was on my way home, the cold, hunger, the rain—all this made me walk. In the other case I walk because I myself decide to do so. This kind of super-effort becomes still more difficult when I do not decide upon it myself but obey a teacher who at an unexpected moment required from me to make fresh efforts when I have decided the efforts for the day are over.3
Of course, such super-efforts will develop strength and will, but Gurdjieff is more interested in self-remembering than in strengthening a person's capacity to endure. Certainly, part of the purpose lies in developing this capacity, but it is not the main purpose. An individual needs only to join the army to learn endurance; he doesn't need to work with Gurdjieff.
Gurdjieff's method is to cause a friction between the consciousness of the individual and his habitual manifestations, so that in time, and under the right circumstances, there will emerge in him a taste of self-remembering. In writing about considering how to accomplish certain tasks that he set for himself, he describes how the totality of his mentations lead, at some point, to the conviction of the possibility of attaining all of his tasks as a result of the forces arising from the friction of his consciousness with the automatic manifestations. He describes how at the end of this perception “my whole being was filled as if by some singular, never till now experienced feeling of joy. . . . Simultaneously with this, in and of itself, and without any manipulation on my part, there appeared the sensation of so to say ‘self-remembering,’ also of a never-before-experienced vigor.”4
It is obvious that here Gurdjieff refers to self-remembering as a sensation and not as an activity or an insight. But we ask, sensation of what? He says it is the sensation of self-remembering. But we are attempting to understand what self-remembering means. At this point we understand only that self-remembering is a sensation of something.
Our understanding here is that this sensation is nothing else but the sensation of presence. It is the awareness of presence in oneself. Gurdjieff's methods were designed to help the person be so present in those situations of stress that presence becomes a palpable, definite experience. Anyone who has an impression of Gurdjieff, through personal experience or though his writings and work, will undoubtedly experience Gurdjieff as a presence. We can call it power, we can call it will, or we can call it strength. Nonetheless, the impression is very definitely of an impressive and powerful presence. This is a presence that confronts us. It is a presence that is beyond the words and the specific actions, a presence that is Gurdjieff.
And Gurdjieff's presence is Gurdjieff. That is why he uses the term self. It is he who is present as an actual palpable presence, beyond his words, ideas, and actions. So we can say that what is meant by self-remembering is just that. It is the remembering of self.
Gurdjieff meant the phrase literally and simply. People who don't understand make this sound quite complicated, but when self-remembering happens, it is seen to be literal and simple; what is real in the person is present, remembered after being forgotten. Gurdjieff's called his last book Life Is Real Only Then, When “I Am.” There is reality only when I remember myself, when I experience that “I am.” He also asserts in the same book that a person can do—that is, act consciously, intentionally, and without conditioning—only if he is present, if he exists consciously.
Here we remember those situations of extraordinary duress where an individual can act unhampered by the usual ordinary states of consciousness. So, according to Gurdjieff, these situations involve states of self-remembering. What we called presence is here seen as the presence of what is real in a person. “I am present” means “What is real in me is here.” It is the conscious experience of existence. It is the experience of “I am.”
Although we have made the connection between presence, self-remembering, and the experience of “I am,” a person might object that it is very vague and nothing has been proved so far. This is true. We are not trying to prove anything. This is not a logical argument. We are only seeking an appreciation, a taste, for a realm of experience that the mind cannot grasp directly. It is a realm that cannot be reached by logic and argument. It can only be experienced directly, and that is why there are schools and systems devoted just to engendering and developing this experience.
In discussing Gurdjieff's usage of the concept of self-remembering, we have been able to connect the experience of presence and the experience of existence. “I am present” is the conscious experience of “I exist.” It is the awareness of a living presence existing, being. It is not simply the awareness of the many thoughts, feelings, and emotions, which awareness is the preliminary requirement for self-remembering, and not self-remembering as yet.
Gurdjieff called the real part of us, the part that can experience “I am,” our essence. He defined essence as the part of us we are born with and that is not a product of our upbringing or education.
So in the experience of presence, what is present is essence, our true nature, which is independent of conditioning. Presence and essence are the same. We have discussed presence to give a taste of what essence is. As we see, essence is the part of us that is the experience of “I am.” Essence is the direct experience of existence. Of course, essence can be experienced as other things, such as love, truth, peace, and the like. But the sense of existence is its most basic characteristic. It is the clearest, most definitive aspect that sets it apart from other categories of experience. Essence is, and that is what is most basic to its experience.
This experience of “I am,” of direct apprehension of existence, is not a mental or emotional experience and cannot be understood from the perspective of the usual categories of experience. The mind can think about existence, but it cannot reach it. We have seen this in discussing presence. The answer to the question: “What is essence?” is “what is in us that can experience ‘I am.’” Essence is the only thing in us that is directly aware of its own existence. Awareness of its existence is an intrinsic quality of essence. A Tibetan author puts it, “Hence (experientially) a founding stratum or existentiality (sku), and a founded pristine cognitiveness (ye-shes), having been such from the very beginning that the one cannot be added or subtracted from the other, are present like the very nature of the sun (and its light).”5
One might argue that all people know that they exist, although they might not know their essence. This is both true and false. They know that they exist, but they do not know it directly. The usual knowledge of existence is through inference; it is not a direct knowledge. This point has been discussed extensively by philosophers. The usual mode of knowledge of existence is epitomized by Descartes' Cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I exist”). We can infer existence only from various kinds of experience. Usually, we think that we exist because we can see our bodies, hear our voices, feel our sensations, and so on. Descartes was more refined in saying that we know we exist because we know that we think.
So there is always an inference from some perception. And the inference is of something that we are very vague about. When somebody says, “I think, therefore I exist,” what does this person mean by “I”? Is he clear about what he means?
And because there is inference, there is no total certainty. There might be logical certainty. There might be commonsense certainty. But there is no real, deeply felt, existential certainty. The certainty doesn't exist in inference because experiential existential certainty needs direct experience, in fact, the most direct perception and experience.
The most direct perception and experience is the one of identity, when we are what we experience, when the perception is so direct that what perceives and what is perceived are the same thing. This is exactly the experience of essence.
Here there is no inference from something else. It is the most direct experience. The experiencer and the experienced are the same thing. There is no separation between subject and object. The subject and the object are the same: essence.
It is not only that there is no inference. There is also no intermediate medium for the perception. Usually there is an intermediate medium that enables a subject to experience an object. When the eye sees an object, the intermediate medium is light, but when essence is aware of itself, there is no intermediary. The object, the subject, and the medium of perception are all the same: essence. Also, the organ of perception is essence itself. There is in the experience only essence. Essence is the subject. Essence is the object. Essence is the medium of perception. Essence is the organ of perception. Essence is the experience. There is no separation whatsoever, no duality and no differentiation.
The experience of essence as existence, the experience of “I am,” is not as if there is a subject that is the actor of existence. The “I” and the “am” are not separate. The “I am” is a unitary experience. The nature of the essence, of the real self, is existence. The “I” itself is existence.
So it is more accurate to say that the part of me that is existence is present. Essence is the only part of me that actually exists, in the sense of experiencing itself as pure existence, pure presence.
We have investigated the question of presence, and we have seen that presence is the presence of our essence. It is the real part in us, the part not conditioned or produced by the environment. It is our intrinsic nature. We have seen that essence is the only part that is aware of its own existence directly, intimately, and with certainty.
Essence is not simply the only part of us that is aware of its existence. It is what exists. It is not only what exists, but it is also existence. This existence is not only the nature of man but the nature of everything. It is the unity of all, or as Shabistari, the fourteenth-century Sufi, puts it:
There is one atom greater than the whole—
Existence; for behold the universe
Is, yet that universe itself is being.
Being is various in outward form,
But in its being bears inward unity.6
In experiential terms, presence and existence are somewhat different but only in degree. Presence is the presence of essence, of that which is existence. However, we must go very deep into this experience of presence to experience the most basic nature of essence, which is existence. So presence is the presence of essence. Existence is the inmost nature of essence, which sets it apart from all other categories of experience. When this experience occurs, it is not vague, unclear, or undefined; it is not an intuition or a fleeting insight. It is a very definite, clear, precise experience of “I am,” There is definiteness and there is certainty.