Heaven And Hell

By Karl Renz

‘You don’t need this book!’ Karl would say, ‘You stand to gain absolutely nothing from it.’ He would probably add he hopes nobody gains or understands anything from him. What’s more, he would mean it!

In Karl you encounter Advaita in its rawest form – undiluted, uncooked, unconditioned by thought and untainted by frills or more concepts. It’s bang-in-your-face, inescapable Advaita... ‘What-you-cannot-not-be!’

Jean-Paul Sartre said, ‘The Other is hell’. How does one define ‘The Other’? Are the people around us ‘The Others’? Is the little echo in the mind also ‘The Other’? Who sees when the eyes open? Who defines? And then who defines the definer? Questions, questions.

As Karl eloquently describes it, ‘You realize yourself in the comfort in the absence and in the discomfort in the presence. Because the presence is always the experience of separation, from the beginning. Even Awareness needs an experience. The presence – separation, absence – no separation. Heaven and hell. And in both you realize yourself.’
He then takes even that away as well by saying ‘If there would be a reality in the presence or in the absence, then it will be hell again because it would be two.’

In his irreverent, uncompromising style Karl presents the abject futility of any and every endeavour towards finding ‘a way out’. Many newcomers scurry for cover when they encounter this ‘disheartening and cold’ approach. Some come back later, on the rare apperception of the absurdity of any ‘one’ wanting a ‘way out’! But the ones who do return, stay on to enjoy the Karl Renz circus of irrelevance: irrelevance of what is spoken, irrelevance of the listener and irrelevance of the speaker. Grace in action!

Karl Renz, now based in Mallorca, Spain, travels throughout the world simply responding to few of the numerous invitations to hold meetings. He has no agenda, no teaching, no techniques, and no desire for whatever gets said to be understood. To him, his talks have no special significance as being different from, say, the barking of a dog or the gibberish sounds that he sometimes makes during the talks – not different than the next sip of coffee! The next (moment), for him is simply the next, an embrace of helplessness!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karl Renz
• Release date: Jan 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9789384363468

Karl Renz

Karl Renz was born in Germany in 1953, and, after some years of rather unorthodox "seeking" (including time spent in Mexico looking for Don Juan), experienced an Awakening in the late 1970s. He travels around the world talking about, well, what can't be talked about -- and does pretty well at it. He's visited Santa Fe each fall the last five years or so, offering evening "Self-Talks" ("the self talking to the self", as he puts it) at the home of a friend.

Book preview

KARL RENZ

Heaven

and

Hell

Edited By

Manjit Achhra

Master Zen Logo_150512.jpg

Heaven And Hell

Copyright © 2011 Karl Renz

First Edition: July 2012

PUBLISHED BY

ZEN PUBLICATIONS

60, Juhu Supreme Shopping Centre,

Gulmohar Cross Road No. 9, JVPD Scheme,

Juhu, Mumbai 400 049. India.

Tel: [phone]

eMail: [e-mail]

Website: www.zenpublications.com

Book Design: Red Sky Designs, Mumbai

Cover Image: Detail of one of Karl Renz’s paintings

ISBN 978-81-88071-96-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author or his agents, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Contents

Introduction

Praise The Lord – Just-In-Case

It Starts False And It Ends False

Neti-Neti is Neti presence, Neti Absence

You Are In An Infinite Roulette, Playing With Yourself

Acknowledgement

The Publishers wish to thank

Sanjay Inamdar, Hemant Nadkarni and Amrita Hinduja

for their invaluable help in making this book possible.

Only in hell is there an idea of heaven, so where there is hell there is an idea of heaven. Where there is an idea of heaven, there is hell. Both come together.

Karl Renz

Heaven and Hell_1.jpg

Introduction

The moment I started writing this Introduction, I knew that it would be far more difficult than transcribing conversations for an entire book. How does one describe careless or irrelevance? The question that popped up was: why am I short of words in describing a man who can talk on non-duality endlessly at a stretch without tiring or getting bored?

Karl’s rendezvous with Mumbai, for the conversations recorded in Heaven And Hell, started at the beginning of March 2012 after his long tour to Koh Samui. The talks were hosted at Chetana Book Centre, publishers of Nisargadatta Maharaj’s classic I Am That also a prime location in the heart of the city…just the perfect venue.

For Karl, this Mumbai sojourn was almost akin to a pit stop on his way back to Berlin. And Behold! So many new visitors with new questions! Karl is delighted…new ducks to shoot! As he puts it, ‘There is no shortage of ducks and I can shoot forever.’ He proves his point. After a long and arduous retreat from Koh Samui, which would have burnt out anyone concerned with what he is talking about, Karl has longer and denser talks with the ‘fresh meats’, in a country which has no paucity of spiritual concepts.

Welcome to the fireworks of carelessness where age-old concepts are shot down by fresh pointers with utter nonchalance. The visitors at these meetings vary from newcomers to veteran seekers, spiritual voyagers, spiritual window shoppers, people with half- or partly-baked ‘understanding’, but mostly the dissatisfied souls who are fed up with what they’ve got elsewhere – ‘The leftovers’. A shadow dance of creation and destruction of the concepts seems to happen at these meetings leading to a feeling of emptiness – where people cry and laugh at their most profoundly held concepts being blown to bits.

The closest analogy to what happens here is the Buddhist process of creation and destruction of Mandala. The monks bend over the piece for hours on end, dropping one grain of sand after another into intricate symbolic patterns. When the Mandala is finally completed, however long it takes for the monks to deal in this divine geometry of the heavens, they destroy it. They sweep it up, every last grain of sand and give handfuls of it away to those who participate in the closing ceremony as a final memory of sublime possibility. Then they throw the rest of the sand into the nearest living stream to be swept into the ocean. And that’s it. It’s gone. In an instant, after all that artistry, all that work... it’s all over.

Why?! Because the underlying message of the Mandala ceremony is that nothing is permanent. Nothing. All things are in flux, it says, beautiful but ephemeral, moving but temporary, more a plateau than the summit.

With Karl, there is no ‘before’ and ‘after’, no careful deliberation of words and no decoration. There is no story worth telling because any story is still a story of an imaginary ‘me’. For any of such things, there is still a caretaker who takes care about trying to be accurate or is trying to describe things to the best possible extent. This is contradicting to the basis of carelessness and irrelevance that is so apparent in these talks.

Then again one is left with the question – Who cares about the carelessness? With this perspective, one wonders how Karl can talk for hours on that which cannot be talked about or why he travels so much when he knows there is no ‘one’ who will get it!

So, relax, take your popcorn and buckle up for the joyride of irrelevance!

Manjit Singh Achhra

Mumbai, July 2012

Praise The Lord – Just-In-Case

Q: When you use the phrase ‘Realization of the Self’, would it be the same as maya?

K: Maya is only when you want to realize yourself in that realization – that’s the maya. The dream is only when you set to find yourself in the realization – that’s the maya.

Q: When the Self is realizing itself...that’s not maya?

K: No. Maya is the illusion that you can find yourself in that realization – that you are something that can be found in that realization. That is what I would call as maya. That you are the realizer different from what is realized – that is maya.

So when you found yourself in realization, if you are an object of realization, that’s the maya. Otherwise there is no maya, there is only the Self.

Q: In that sense, you are what is the maya...

K: You are That what is the maya but not knowing any maya. That what is ignorance not knowing any ignorance. But when you are in the maya then you are someone who knows maya and then there is maya. It needs one who defines maya.

Q: Knowing maya is maya...

K: Yeah. And there is a knower, knowing or not knowing – that’s maya. When the definer is there defining something – that’s maya. Otherwise there is no maya. There’s not even Self.

Q: In that sense, there is no realizing of the Self other than the Self...

K: There is not even realization.

Q: Does not need to realize...

K: In that absence of anyone who defines anything, there is no real and no realization.

Q: Neither knowing nor not knowing...

K: Neither-neither. Neti-neti.

Q: [Another visitor]: Being what-you-cannot-not-be, is that a technique or a koan?

K: Both! [Laughing] It’s a koan and a technique. It’s an absolute technique, something what cannot be done. So it’s an absolute technique. It’s like – try not to be. And that you do as a seeker, you try not to be. And you never succeed. Or did you succeed? [Laughing]

No, it’s just a pointer to that what you are which never needs to know what-it-is. Because it’s in nature: what-it-is. And what you now believe to be will never become That.

So, I’m not talking to the one who now tries to make a technique out of it. But for sure, you will try to make a technique out of it. What can you do? You make it a concept again. And then you would ask ‘How can I really be what can I not not be?’ Comes again and again. So what to do?

You will survive!

Q: [Another visitor]: You stripped me yesterday...

K: [Laughing]: That sounds good, this is a strip tease here. [Laughter]

Q: You’re the owner of a strip tease bar... [Laughter]

K: This is a night bar. This is a deep-deep sleep bar.

Q: First the outer garment, then the underwear, then whatever was leftover that also... [Laughter]

K: Stripped away. Even the naked one gets stripped away. Even the stripper gets stripped. The strip tease of the stripper – stripping the stripper away. Devoting the devoter. You’re right, it’s all a strip, substrating what can be substrated. And the final is substrating the substrator, in being that what is with and without the substrator. You may call it substratum but it doesn’t know any substratum, or the absolute abstract.

So, the last is you abstract the abstracter, by being what-you-cannot-not-be. This is like an exercise of taking, taking, taking. And in the last moment, you even take the taker away. The taker gets taken away by – you don’t know what.

In that sense, you are the absolute undertaker. [Laughter] The last you kill is the killer. You’re right, taking whatever can be taken away. Someone wants to have another strip tease? Some need cocktails before, some drinks. But this is sober.

Q: [Another visitor]: Could you tell us how the thought formation takes place? What is the source of the thoughts? From where do they appear?

K: Maybe it’s never forming. Maybe it’s always there.

Q: Where does it come from?

K: Maybe it doesn’t come.

Q: We cannot communicate if the thoughts are not there...

K: We can, but maybe the thoughts are always there. Maybe the next word, the next listening is already there, it’s not coming. It doesn’t have to come.

Q: Do you believe that thoughts are there...

K: No. I don’t believe in thoughts. For me all of that is a reaction of you don’t know what. And I don’t have to know where it comes from because for me nothing ever comes and nothing ever happens.

Why should I know where it comes from? What would be the use of it? What would I gain if I know where it comes from? And who would be the gainer of knowing where it comes from? Who needs that advantage? Questions after questions.

The answer is always – ‘me’. And that’s already an idea!

Q: If you know where it comes from, we can be a bit more alert...

K: Where does the ‘me’ comes from? And who wants to know where does the ‘me’ comes from? Only me!

Q: The Self...

K: The Self doesn’t need to know anything, only the ‘me’ needs to know. So the ‘me’ creates the problems which would not be there without the ‘me’. Now you create the problem because you would not exist without the problem.

An idea creates the idea that the idea needs to know the idea and where it comes from. But without the idea of ‘me’ there would not even be an idea. A concept needs to know where the concept comes from.

Q: My approach is to eradicate the root itself...

K: But who needs to out root the root?

Q: That’s why I wanted to know the root...

K: But who knows the root? And who is root? I always say that what you believe to be – the ‘me’ – creates problems which would not be there without you. And only you want to know something. And by you creating problems, you survive – that’s all.

Q: For functional purpose, it’s required to know... [phone rings]

K: Who is calling now? [Laughing] Where does it come from?

Q: The entity needs to know for the functional purpose...

K: But I have no functional purpose. I’m not a mechanic. I don’t want to repair an automobile. I’m not here for repairing something. And I don’t need to know why the car is driving, I just drive the car. I don’t need to know who was the mechanic and who is driving and where do I go and who made the car? Volkswagen!

What was Ramesh referring to when he said – why should a little screw know the whole machine? And how can he know who is driving this machine and where does this machine come from? Everyone has a different idea. But what would you do with it if you know it?

Q: I can be a bit alert, I can be a bit careful...

K: And then?

Q: I can avoid problems...

K: Then you have a different problem. Then you have a careful problem. You’re always a caretaker about something. Taking care about and then you want to control. But what you control controls you – that’s the whole business.

You want to control the ideas, so the ideas control you. What an idea! Then you control all the ideas and you have a peaceful mind, but then the peaceful mind controls you! It always needs two for control. So, whatever you control, controls you. It’s not one side only. If you control the whole universe, the universe controls you. You are imprisoned by control. Prison, prison, prison.

But actually you are longing for moksha and you think for moksha, I have to control the mind. [mockingly laughing] What an idea! And as much you control the mind, the mind controls you. Crazy!

What an idea that you have to control something for freedom! What kind of freedom would it be – that needs control? What kind of knowledge would it be that needs to know something? Or Understand something?

Only relative knowledge, a relative knower or a relative what you call – maya. There is a need, a little ‘me’ who out of fear wants to control his surrounding. The basic is always fear – control. And this little ‘me’ will always try to control the ‘me’ – himself and the surrounding.

So by fearing that he will be controlled by the circumstance, he tries to control the circumstance. And then really the circumstance controls him. Just by being afraid, by being controlled, you’re controlled – already.

Q: My way of controlling is to not respond...

K: Then you control the response. Then you are imprisoned by not responding. It’s another prison – just another name. Responding or not responding, it needs one who responds or doesn’t respond, that’s already one too many. He even wants to even control his responding, it’s getting worse and worse.

Then you do vipassana exercises, just for being more aware. Then you become a watch dog of yourself. Then you become like Bombay, everywhere there are watchmen watching everybody. And then there is one watchman watching the other watchman. [Laughter] Watching, watching, watching...

When you go somewhere, you have to sign-in and one watchman is watching the other watchman if he asked you to sign. Because everyone wants to control and wants to have the position of the other one. Watching the watchman. It’s so obvious in Bombay, how many watchmen does the city need? [Laughter]

Maybe someone would do what one doesn’t like, so I need a watchman. In America too, it’s all paranoia. Homeland security everywhere. Then you are really afraid who is controlling the homeland security? God! Oh God! It gets absurd. It’s like a jealous husband being afraid that the wife goes with the neighbour all the time. He cannot sleep anymore. [Laughter]

This is like inside when you are afraid that you may do something you don’t like. You become a watchdog of yourself. Because you have so many experiences that something went wrong. You promised yourself many times and you actually did the opposite. Then you drink again, then you smoke again, you do something you don’t like. Then you have to watch yourself. Then you create an inner detective.

Q: The idea of watching or controlling also emanates from the nature...

K: I don’t know if it’s nature, it’s just fear.

Q: Fear is part of the nature...

K: Fear is the whole universe. It’s not part of nature, the whole universe is run by fear. Wherever there is two, there is fear. Fear, fear, fear... everywhere!

The whole maya is fear.

Q: [Another visitor]: Can you explain this term, the whole maya is fear?

K: Because maya means two. There is you and someone else. There is God and the devil and God and himself. There are two Gods, then one God fears the other God. Then he wants to control the God. Then he builds an armor and a defence system against the other God – out of fear.

So, God knowing God, there are two Gods and then the relative God fears the Absolute God – instantly. If Shiva knows Shiva, he fears Shiva. Then he becomes a jiva. The big Shiva is that Shiva who doesn’t know Shiva. But when Shiva knows Shiva, he even fears himself. Fantastic! Instantly!

So what to do? If even the highest almighty knowing himself becomes impotent. Then he wants to control himself. Crazy! Absolutely crazy!

No. That’s the basic of maya. God knowing God, there are two Gods. And then there is maya, there is illusion. Then there is fear – instantly. The Gnostic’s have this snake sign where the head is looking at its own tail. And the head thinks that the tail is a different snake. So it fears himself because the tail is moving and the head is not moving. And then the head fears the tail. So it becomes a fairy tale – the whole thing. [Laughter] Then he wants to control his own tail – the other snake. Then he asks, where does the movement come from? You are the movement and you are asking where does the movement comes from? What an idea!

Your tail is moving and you ask why is the tail moving? And who is moving here? Can that be me? No! It’s very instant fear. You cannot avoid it. There is a lover and the beloved in the best form because there is loving and caring. With love-caring, becomes love-hating. Both come together. Loving and hating comes together as one side of... caretaking.

[interruption] There is a big movement. The tail is moving everywhere. Then they say, you better be the witness and not what is witnessed, because the witness has no tail. He believes in having no tail.

You cannot escape it. It seems like the whole realization is the experience of fear, the experience of misery. And you cannot stop it. The whole realization seems to be the realization of separation of misery and fear. The whole presence is the presence of fear of separation. And every experience is an experience of separation and fear and misery. And it will never end. [Laughing mockingly].

You become a seeker, trying to find a way out. By trying to find a way out, you confirm that you fear to be in. Crazy! The trap is so perfect, you cannot imagine how perfect it is.

Q: [Another visitor]: Then what is the use of senses? We can make use of senses which have been given to us by nature. I have eyes, I cannot close the eyes and walk. In the same way I’m taking care...

K: It’s all too late. You’re like a little child in the dark.

Q: It’s too late, but still the time is there...

K: Where? No one could ever prove time. You repeat something what you heard about but no one could ever prove time. Time just means two – separation. But no one could ever prove it. The whole quantum physics, the whole scientists could not even find matter. It may not matter. Maybe there is not even two.

Where is the movement? They can only say sometimes it’s a particle, sometimes it’s a wave. But they cannot find the movement. Where is the movement? What is moving? And where? And who is observing it? And who is witnessing? If you really look for it, you cannot find anything.

Where is something? The moment you look for it, it’s gone. Only when you not look at it,