Question: You speak of our underlying nature. What do you mean by that?
Josan: We experience the world, think and feel. We know a great deal about ourselves—and can still ask: am I really what I know about myself?
By our underlying nature, I mean what we already are before describing ourselves through our history, qualities, experiences and ideas about ourselves.
All this belongs to our human life and shapes our personal identity. But does it already answer the question of what we are—or, more directly still: who am I, really?
Question: But how can I tell whether what I think about myself is really true?
Josan: First, I want to stress that a question as deep as this should not be treated superficially—by you or by me. It touches on an age-old problem and calls for a distinction that can ultimately become truly clear only through deep personal experience. The kind of questioning we are practising in this conversation can help us approach it, but we cannot simply think our way to a solution.
Still, I would like to offer you something to take with you.
Even in ordinary experience, you can distinguish between what you think about yourself and what you already are. Someone might say: “I am in a good mood.” Someone else says: “I am generally a cheerful person.” These are not the same. One describes a passing state; the other something a person experiences as an existing quality of their own.
What you think about yourself may describe many things accurately: your history, your character, your experiences or the way you experience yourself in the world. But none of this yet answers the question of what you are.
You cannot get to the heart of this question through thought alone. It calls for another kind of depth—a direct inquiry into your own being.
When you say: my thoughts, my feelings, my experiences—you can ask: who or what is this “my”? But this question, too, should not remain something you merely think about in your head.
For a moment, do not try to find an answer.
Be still, deep, spacious.
The answer does not have to appear as a thought, be heard in your head or even arise as a feeling. There does not have to be an answer at all.
In this way, you can explore for yourself whether what you have taken yourself to be until now can really be the whole of what you are.
Question: What changes through this?
Josan: Outwardly, nothing has to change at first. Thoughts and feelings are still there. But they no longer have to determine what we take ourselves to be.
A freedom can open here, a spaciousness in which the personal still has its place without having to determine everything.
Question: Do thoughts have to disappear for this to happen?
Josan: No. Thinking is not an obstacle in itself. Things become confined when we confuse its contents with ourselves. Thoughts and feelings, too, can be experienced freely.
Question: You speak of peace. Is that not simply a feeling that passes again?
Josan: A peaceful feeling comes and goes. The peace I am speaking of does not depend on how the moment happens to feel.
Question: And what is that like in the middle of a conflict—for you, too?
Josan: Sometimes it is difficult, just as it is for anyone else. But if you want to know what this freedom means, comparing yourself with me will not help. You can explore it only in your own experience.
Question: How does this search begin?
Josan: Just as it is beginning now. You are right in the middle of it.
Question: And how can I tell that this Self is not just another idea arising from my experiences?
Josan: Now we have reached the real question.
For the word “Self”, too, can become another idea if we believe that knowing the term means we have already understood what it points to.
How deeply someone explores this question is up to them. I do not want to say any more about it at this moment.