There is no direction in our meeting, so any question is welcome. 

Q.:The love of an object or a man or a physical phenomenon is a fantasy, a psychosis or a fanatism? How can you overcome it ?

E.: As long you feel it like that, is should be like that. One day you love something more serious than men and objects.

If you like men, dogs, home and travel - if it is there - it is a good reason. But of course it is a fantasy. The man you say you love now, in a few years you’ll have another idea. There is nothing wrong with loving a man, a camel or a car. But, slowly, life brings maturity: you realize you never loved any man or any camel. You have only projected onto them.

The man you say you love, if he sleeps with your sister, you say you don’t love him. That is not love.

So that kind of love is of the world.

You say you love your father. If he rapes you, you don’t love him anymore. That is not love.

Love is not something that comes and goes.

There is nothing wrong with feeling attracted to a man, woman, dog or a beautiful car, but it must be clear that it is just something you want.

If I want a piece of cheese, I don’t need to say I am in love with the piece of cheese. There is no need to make a story about a desire, and desire changes with age and maturity. But the word love has no place beside the word desire.

When you say you love a man, it is because you like the sound of his voice or his smell. You like the way he moves, the way he wears his clothes, you like his money, his sense of humor, his intelligence, his beauty, he reminds you of some old memory from youth or infancy. So you say " I love you. You are the man of my life. " This is a very sweet fantasy, but it has nothing to do with love. It is purely a chemical reaction - and that is fine. There is no problem with that, but you don’t need to pretend it is love.

Personalities cannot love — they want something. When you give, it is to get something. I am faithful if you are faithful. This is business — it is not love. And it is fine. It is the way the society works. But there is no need to be hypocritical about it.

Human relations are very easy. There is no problem to human relations. Human beings are quite simple. It is very easy to make them happy... But you must see clearly how the human mind works.

At some point in your life, you stop asking anything from human relations. Only then you can have a deep relationship with another human being. As long as you are in asking, you are living on a very superficial level and you will be unsatisfied.

To ask something is a lack of clarity.

But you should not accept what is said here. You should challenge it. Otherwise it remains just a story.
 

Q.: Eric, how come feelings arise in life interactions? What is the mechanism that makes you feel a special way for a special friend or a special man ?

E.: It’s an old chemical reaction. According to the childhood you had, the violence or the kindness, depending upon what you have eaten, smelled or encountered - when you meet a man with that same shape or a certain smell, with that kind of ideas, that kind of mind or money or that kind of poverty, you say he is really an attractive or an unattractive man. There is nothing personal about it.

It can even be taken to the racial level. There are certain races to which we feel attracted or repulsed, depending on our past.

It is the same with animals. They carry the same patterns. Generally dogs like me, but there is one breed of dog that hates me. It is biological. They see me and they begin shaking. If I don’t respond up, to a certain point it can be reduced, but I know the dog will need some special attention on my part to be able to relate with me in a non-violent way.

So it is not psychological: it is only in the biology.

When you see a man with a certain kind of face or shoulder or leg, you say you are attracted. His face has nothing to do with it, but rather with what you were fed in early life. Even when you’re 90, a certain food can be counted on to ring a bell for you, like a certain type of music and so on. That’s why most people are psychologically depended upon their biology.

Most old folk like to eat the same foods and listen to the same music as in the place they were born. It takes a certain maturity to live abroad and not be missing the smells and sounds of your childhood. It runs very deep. Some people from Italy or from Spain move to Russia, live there for twenty years and one day they hear a Spanish song on the radio and they get all excited. It’s the same: biology.

When your friend Catherine finds koulourakia (Greek cookies) like her mother’s, she gets all happy.

One can go beyond that, but for most people it remains very deep. So the attraction for a red car, a tall man, young or old, is the same thing. And it is not a problem. 

Q.: So true love cannot be personal ?

E.: What is true love ?

True love is to give.

You cannot give in one direction. You cannot give to your child and the neighbor’s child dies of starvation. Love cannot be restricted. Love can never be personal.

What is personal is relations. You can only have one, two or three husbands, one, two or three lovers, one, two or three children.

Of course, you cannot sleep with all the men you meet — but love is not exclusive.

It’s your body that is exclusive. You touch this body and not that one.

But love doesn’t function like that. When you say to a man " I am in love with you ", it just means he reminds you of someone who once gave you a feeling of security. And when you say " I really cannot stand him ", it means he reminds you of total insecurity from the past - and that is fine.

But there is no need to use the word love for a chemical relation. 

Q.: We just observe chemical reactions impartially ?

E.: We cannot change them. We cannot decide to like tall men or small men, red cars or big or small cars, just as we cannot decide if we will end up living our lives in Russia, Brazil, Spain or Germany.

More and more you will become clear with the way you function. When there is no judgment involved, nothing will seem better than something else. You will begin to discover how the body functions. It is time to really listen to your body’s feelings.

It is not a matter of morality. It is no more spiritual to love a poor man than a rich man. It is no more spiritual to prefer ugly men to handsome ones. It is really according to our biology.

So you stop functioning with common sense in society — and some clarity comes about.

You don’t need to justify your attraction. You live with the feeling.

It doesn’t mean you have to be bound by it. You can meet a man and think it would be great to sleep with him, but you dont’ need to sleep with him. The circumstances must be right.

You can meet a man who would be a good husband for you, but you already have one quiet husband and there is no room for him in your live right now, so you say " yes, the possibility is there " - you do not deny your feeling.

You could meet someone you know you should never work with - he makes you reactive - but if life makes you work with him, you can, because you are totally aware of your tendency to overreact to whatever he says or does ; but you are so aware of it that it is OK to work with him. It will not be a problem.

You can spend a lovely evening with people you cannot stand on your biological level. You will be at ease. Be aware of all your bodily reactions.

You don’t always need to be with people just like you, but you do need to be very familiar with your body sensitivity. It gives clarity.

There are people you shouldn’t lend money to, but if you feel like it you can give them a gift.

There are some people you cannot touch, some you shouldn’t travel with.

Feeling at one with your biology creates easiness in relationships. Then judgment gets eliminated. You don’t expect people to be like this or like that to be better. You realize that people are exactly as they should be. People who love you or who hate you are perfect for you. You need them for you to mature.

So life with human relationship is very easy. You don’t ask them for anything because you are aware that the only joy in life is giving. When you start asking, you live in misery.

Love comes from feeling your biology. There is no comment.

As long as there is judgment, as long as you force yourself to like what you don’t like and to deny that you like certain things because it is not proper in your mind — ‘’I should do that but in fact I don’t want to’’ — you get confused and cannot feel bodily life.

You have to be totally honest.

If I take pleasure in beating my dog, I deeply acknowledge it. I don’t pretend I should not do it.

Whatever I do, I live clearly in my doing. Only then can clarity come.

But if I hate myself for doing this or that, things that don’t correspond to the grotesque standards of society, I will always live in conflict.

First I take a good look at myself. I see that I enjoy making my husband suffer, creating trouble, inflicting pain, having power over certain people, whatever- and it’s OK.

Can I be different ? No.

First I must acknowledge my being, in all its so-called directions or expressions. Only then a kind of balance come about. And if I want to deny myself my limitations or my problems, and if I pretend I am not attracted to my secretary because I have a very nice wife, I cannot live in peace, and it will be hell for my wife as well as for my secretary.

First you must see how you function - that you are living according to your biology. It doesn’t mean that you follow every feeling you have. It means you are totally aware of them. No justification, no critique, just very clearly see what is. In a way, it is a beginning. 

Q.: A beginning of what?

E.: In a way, a beginning of peace.

One must deal with the facts.

To think you should be like this or that only creates agitation. But relationships are beautiful when they happen in clarity, when you ask for nothing.

You have a child, you give everything - you ask for nothing. This makes you happy.

Asking is really misery.

People who want to be loved live in misery.

Happy people love.

I love you — I don’t need for you to love me back. If you don’t love me, that is your problem. I love you. I feel happy.

It is the only way to live.

If I need your love to be happy, I’ll be miserable all my life.

My happiness doesn’t depend on you loving me or not. From our education or whatever, we have it the other way around. We think that to be happy we need to be loved, and it is just the opposite. Simply wrong education. 

Q.: How did this wrong education happen?

E.: Out of fear. Because we want to own things — and this is not possible.

There is nothing we could call ours. It’s only pretension. In the worst case, we realize it on our deathbed. What do we do with our child, our money, our car, when we cannot move from our deathbed ? Are they really ours ? They are not.

As long as we want something, we live in misery. We always feel very deeply that we have nothing. And the more we feel the need to own things, the more we feel we have nothing. It is very funny to see it.

If life makes you rich, it’s perfect, although you don’t need money to feel rich. If you have money, you don’t think it’s your own money. You take care of it for the whole society. It is not your own.

If you have a child, it is not your child. It is a child. You do the best you can — there is nothing personal.

It really comes out of fear.

I want to know something, and there is nothing I can know in life. I can only pretend. The need to know comes out of fear.

How beautiful it is to feel you know nothing and that there is nothing you need to know. What you need to know comes in the moment. If you don’t know it, you don’t need it.

There is nothing you need to have in life. What you need to have, you have.

And contrary to what it may seem, this understanding is the only ground for Real Action.

The inner passivity is over expressive (le non-agir est tout action). When you know there is nothing you have, nothing you can have and nothing you can lose, then you can really dance with life - there is no more fear.

You can make money and loose money. You are open to both.

You can get married, you can get divorced, it’s OK. You don’t feel that one is a success and the other a failure. Whatever happens is a success.

Free action comes only from a feeling there is nothing to do in life.

Your duty is to be happy. This is the only thing that can help your surrounding. And that comes from seeing that you are nothing and there is nothing you have to be. There is nothing you have to achieve in life.

When you come to this feeling, it’s a beautiful life. Psychological sadness is impossible. 

Q.: In that state of acceptance, how does the next action occur ?

E.: Life is only action. Your body is constantly in action. You cannot not act.

You have nothing to do to act.

You don’t need any ideology to take care of your child, your husband, your lover.

You don’t need any ideology to feed yourself, to rest, to wash, dress, go out dancing or to the opera or whatever you like.

Life is action.

If there is a war, you go and fight. If there is peace, you enjoy your life. You don’t need any intention for that, purely functioning.

When you are young, you do violent sports — when you are older, you play golf. You don’t need any knowledge for that — purely following your feeling.

I don’t see the need for any thinking in life.

You don’t need to think to love someone.

Forget all about what we said that you cannot love somebody.

Love is natural. It is not something you do. It is there when you stop pretending "I love this, I love that".

Our nature is to love. You don’t need any action for that.

To love, to listen, to respect — that is all in our biology.

So to respect nature, to understand the need of your surroundings, the need of nature, you don’t need any thinking - you just need to be open.

If you see a sick dog, you take care of the sick dog — you don’t need any thinking for that.

You meet somebody, you get married. You live with someone, you get divorced - you don’t need to think. There is a deep call in you and you marry somebody because you already feel married to him. So you concretize the evidence. You divorce him because you already feel divorced. You concretize what is already there.

You don’t need any decision. Decisions and intentions block action, you will hesitate to get divorced, out of fear, out of calculation.

In feeling, there is no fear. What can you loose ? Nobody can threaten you.

Action can only come when you are free of thinking and ideology. Only then can you take risk. Otherwise you will never take a risk in your life — when you are afraid. It’s good to take risks with your body. With thinking you never take risks.

Of course you never take any risk anyway.

Action only comes from non-intention. People who act out of intention, they are not acting — they are just repeating pattern. Every time you have a relationship, there is always the same thing, the same pattern.

Without intention, every relationship is ever anew and there is no more relationship, nothing like that, nothing separate.

You are with the policeman on the street. It is your relationship — totally — total intimacy. Nothing foreign.

When I feel something is foreign, I live in fear. Nothing is foreign. What comes to me is my nearest.

It’s beautiful to feel nothing as foreign. It’s difficult to explain. It is in your easiness to be with whatever comes. You are happy with dying people - you are happy with living people.

It cannot be understood.

What a deep step to take is: ‘’I cannot understand and there is nothing to understand.’’

To understand just means pretension. Life is not there to be understood. You cannot understand love, beauty, spring, space. Nothing can be understood.

Life is a feeling. When I feel, when I live in feeling, I go beyond the usual category of life.

In my wife, my children, my husband, my lover, my teacher, my student, there are many other levels I cannot discover, I cannot feel as long as I live in one kind of category.

So, to come back to the second question, yes, action takes place in not wanting anything. 

Q.: Can I ever have a real power with a goal or a project, or it is just an illusion ?

E.: The goal is impossible.

You can feel within yourself some rhythm.

You can feel within yourself some capacity, which hasn’t been actualized yet, and by being present to this feeling, this present feeling reduces your trying... and you may make it to the Olympic games. But in being present to your inner capacity now, the intelligence and the training will come, and you will not try to go to the Olympics. You will go to the Olympics because you have trained. You train for the joy of training.

You may book a flight for five years down the line. Now you feel like that I book a flight now for the 20th of January 2005 because it resonates for me now. It is not the future - it is a cross on the calendar. I don’t expect anything from it. The neighbor may think that I am making a plan but I don’t. I am just booking a flight now.

The present contains all the futures and all the pasts, not in a psychological way but naturally - in a purely mathematical way. But this must be experienced, not thought.

You don’t make psychological plans.

This means you can plan a trip, you can make college plans for you daughter - because it resonates for you now - but you don’t make up a story that any of those plans need to happen, that it is better if they happen as planned, that is a drama if they don’t. You don’t think about it. You just make the plan, you make the reservation. No psychology is needed, no intention. You look at your daughter: you observe the way she walks, the way she thinks, and you know if you should buy her a butcher shop, enroll her in university in America, or send her to a dance club. She may do boxing. No choice. Just being present to the facts when you set the plan in motion. There is really no intention. If you had an intention, you might put her in jail because you wanted her to be what you wanted her to be and couldn’t or whatever the last book you read said that young girls should be.

How does all this fantasy come about ? It is the result of intention. If you have no intention for your children, if you totally respect their abilities, you don’t need to make plans for them. They get made by themselves. 

Q.: Eric, may I ask if you have any children ?

E.: I don’t 

Q.: You don’t have ?

E.: No. 

Q.: You don’t have or I cannot ask ?

E.: I don’t have any children. 

Q.: Things are easier in theory, from a philosophical level.

E.: It is true. It is very easy.

What is difficult is to think for your children. When you don’t think for them, you can listen to them.

Anyway, for me everybody I meet is a child, so I listen.

I also listen to myself in the same way. In listening there is clarity.

I can’t see what it could mean to have children. For me it is a concept. It is like having parents, like belonging to a country — it is a concept.

I face what is there. I respect it, of course, if somebody feels French, freak or ferman or feels he has children or parents, but I don’t experience that. It must be very worrisome, very frightening to feel you have children or that you belong to a country.

When you do bodywork as we do, you will see that sometimes, after playing with the body, you find a moment when you no longer feel the shape of the body — really, you feel it expanded everywhere into the room. In that moment, if somebody come into the room and asks if you have any children, if you are young or old, French or freak, rich or poor, it would be difficult for you to answer.

Not that you don’t live with the surroundings. More exactly: you feel that the surroundings live in you.

But you can’t pretend any more that you own something, and you can’t say ‘’I have a child, I have parents, I have a country.’’ You feel it totally different.

But it must come from experience.

Playing with these sensations of body feeling is the easiest way for us not to remain in a beautiful story but come to feel it.

When you see that you are not really Greek, even if you have a Greek passport, you see what is Greek, what it may mean, if in fact it has any meaning at all and, eventually, what should be done in peace time or in war time.

When you don’t feel you have children any more, you find yourself with a young person that you don’t pretend to be yours.

In the same way, you will see very clearly what is there, in front of you, and you spontaneously do what is needed. No expectation, no intention. They live or they die - you are ready to accompany what is there.

But this must come from experience. It should not be just an idea. 

Q.: Eric you said earlier that when one is in feeling there is no fear.

E.: There is no fear of fear. 

Q.: There is a feeling of fear sometimes?

E.: There is fear — and it’s OK. You are not afraid of being afraid any more.

Fear is perfect. The body needs fear. It’s what makes you jump faster, what makes you run faster — it’s needed.

What reduces you is psychological fear — it freezes you.

I’ve spent many years with people who do very violent martial arts. In some competitions there is real danger, yet I’ve never seen anyone succeed in competition without fear. Before fighting, it is fear that makes them clearer.

Psychological fear makes you loose your ability — it’s only that. One fear makes you jump faster. The other makes you freeze - you cannot jump. The fear that makes you jump is free in the present and the fear that prevents you from jumping is thinking of the future.

There are experiences of fear that free your body. This is not just a story.

When I was young, I saw a bike — it run me down. I saw it coming from far away. I had plenty of time to move, but fear blocked me… I learned a good lesson from that. Later on, in martial arts, I discovered the fear that makes me go faster. The word is the same, but the experience is different.

It’s OK to have fear. It’s even beautiful to have fear. People pay to go to horror movies or to the roller coaster to feel fear. Others jump out of aeroplanes to feel fear. Fear is an exhilarating experience. It frees you from you limitations.

It is wonderful to be open to fear. It’s like being open to pain. When I was training in martial arts I learned to love pain. You may be kicked very hard and it’s OK. There is no problem to feel pain. It’s beautiful to have this openness in life too.

You must open yourself to feeling. Softness is beautiful, but violence is beautiful too. We contain both. 

Q.: You say there is no way out of psychological fear through psychology but through feeling?

E.: First we have this fear. This fear always comes when we think we know better.

On a very deep level, fear always arises from thinking that death is bad and life is good. It is the root of all judgments.

At one moment in life you ask yourself: do I really know this is true ? Do I know that life is better than death ? There is no need to answer, but one should live with the question.

Many people feel differently.

A twelve-year-old boy in Tsetsenia would prefer to die right now than go and let the Russians win. Some want to go and some decide not to go. Some people join the Russians forces and many die very young. They do it willingly. Some people risk their lives to save the lives of others. These people feel there is something higher than this life. In a way, it’s not an absolute knowledge.

Many people at some point feel there is something more important than their own lives. When you begin to challenge certain ideas, eventually fear reduces in the body-mind and of course you realize you are going to die anyway sooner or later. This again reduces a lot of your fear.

So, in a second way, by challenging your notions of death, it clears the mind for feeling. When fear arises, you can easily be open to it. You allow the fear experience to totally expand in your body, so it doesn’t remain localized in the throat. Really feel that the fear is not fixed. Fear is a vibration and as a vibration it will expand just as we do in bodywork.

At some point fear is no longer fearful. There may be a different kind of feeling, and the experience looks like fear is in me. I am not in fear. I feel the fear but, very deeply, I am not afraid — like I can say I feel sadness.

This morning when I wake up I looked at the clouds and I felt loneliness and sadness — but I am not sad. I feel the sadness. I acknowledge this sadness in my body, this fear, this anger, this jealousy. At some point, I don’t pretend I am in fear — and this emotion reintegrates in my clarity.

That is why Indian music has a raga of fear, a raga of separation, a raga of terror and a raga of peace. The ragas of peace are not considered to be higher than the ragas of terror. The raga of fear makes you feel the fear. The emotion is beautiful. At the end of the music, the fear is reduced into clarity.

When you go to see Regoleto and you see the poor little girl killed, the father crying, you feel very sad, but still you leave the theatre and say you had a beautiful evening. The sadness was a very deep sadness.

So in a way, we know that sadness and fear - all these emotions - are very beautiful if they are approached in the right way.

The tantric way of life is to allow all these beautiful emotions to live in us.

But we don’t look for ourselves in these emotions.

It becomes very plastic. You are open to courage and you are open to fear. You don’t choose. Sometimes fear goes to you, sometimes courage — it’s OK. You are not courageous, you are not coward. You are nothing — but life is playing in you. Fear is like any other emotion.

Of course, some emotions are deeply rooted, according to our biology. If I had a deep contact with fear at an intense level when I was very young, or loneliness, or sadness, of course it would need special care to let these emotions become plastic again.

But it is the only way.

At a certain moment, I must welcome fear.

There is only one fear. All the fears are expression of that fear. It is the fear of being nothing.

Even when you are afraid that somebody will beat you up, this fear runs very deep.

In martial arts school, when the guys get beaten up during commando training, they don’t feel destroyed - only their bodies. The fear of physical violence comes from somewhere else. It is not the fear of physical violence. What we call fear is only a symbol. I am afraid of my father, of my past, my future, my health, of people in the street — whatever — it’s something else lurking in the back.

But it’s an art to live with fear.

Psychological fear will always remain.

I have never been in a life or death violent situation, but I have friends from the war in the French foreign legion. Old ones and young ones alike, all have the same experience: at the moment of battle they all felt fear — and that’s OK. Not a fear that blocks them: a fear that makes them clear — not thinking, but being present. That is possible. 

Q.: Eric, does this happen when you forget the symbol of fear?

E.: When I say I am afraid, I feel peace come and go, fear come and go — there is something beyond that. But as long as I say I am afraid, I must work with psychology. I am not afraid. I feel the fear. When I feel fear, fear is my teacher. I welcome it as I welcome my teacher — it’s not a mistake.

I see a black cat and I am full of fear. I leave aside the black cat and live the fear. I don’t pretend I should not have fear, that it is stupid to have fear, there is no need to fear because I’ve seen a black cat… The mind shuts up and fear speaks. Fear is hot, or cold, expanding or contracting — we know the game — it’s the way we approach it.

Maybe you cannot do it in the actual moment. Somebody beats you up, you function according to your knowledge of fighting. But when it’s finished, when you are home or at the hospital, shaking is still there. Put aside the comments that they should not have attacked me, why did they attack me ? they don’t have the right to attack me… and I live with the feeling of shaking. I shut up, I let my body speak — and marvels will come up.

That is why we do body work — to prepare for the next beating in the street. As we have learned to let the shoulders speak, the neck speaks after a posture, that will transpose in more complex situations.

For me, it is the only reason for bodywork. So you see how good you are in bodywork after a beating. It has nothing to do with putting your head on the floor — only to be able to face the vibration of fear when you, your wife or your daughter are beaten. That is Yoga.

Things are very simple. There is little to talk about or explain.

The more we listen to life, the more we listen to our fear, the more we discover creativity.

There is much more to live than what seems to be at first glance. The body, the emotions, the mind are infinite. One must give oneself the possibility to explore the beauty. There is nothing else to do in life.

I hope this was not too long a day for you.

Thank you.