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Am I: I Am
Am I: I Am
Am I: I Am
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Am I: I Am

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Am I – I Am is an assortment of delectable snippets from various talks of Karl Renz – talks which Karl often refers to as ‘Living Words’.
These ‘Living Words’ are best described in Karl’s own words as those “without a speaker, having no direction, are not teaching, give no advice and do not want anything from you.”
This, simply put, is the heart of the book.
All you can say about the phenomenon named ‘Karl’ is that the words that emanate from him are a relentless destroyer of all concepts – from the cosy to the profound. Using his livewire humour and trademark wordplay, Karl edges you so far beyond your pet concepts that at some point you may just find that ‘you’ have fallen off into the void.
An enigmatic feature of Karl’s words is that they are utterly bereft of intent or strategy. And surprise! Something which otherwise would have been deemed fit to be dismissed as mindless prattle, has quite the opposite effect in this case – of making one want for more and never having enough of it!
This spontaneous barrage of Karl’s words, steeped in carefree-ness and intentionless-ness, can be more destructive to ‘whatever that can be destroyed’ than any conceivable tool of destruction. So, go ahead and enter this vortex of Absolute churning at your own risk – ‘you’ may or may not get out!

LanguageEnglish
PublisherKarl Renz
Release dateJan 29, 2015
ISBN9789384363499
Am I: I Am
Author

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.

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    Am I - Karl Renz

    You Are Boxing Against Yourself

    Q: All one knows is really a shadow because you are constantly playing in the shadow. You cannot not play in the shadow either…

    K: No, you experience yourself as a shadow.

    Q: In the experiencing of the shadow, all is coming and going. You cannot not play it.

    K: But even the shadow is coming and going.

    Q: Yes but the shadow thinks that he is ‘That’ which is…

    K: No, You fall in love with that shadow and then you identify yourself with the shadow and you believe that you are the shadow beyond shadows. But it never happened. You never left ‘What you are’. You fall in love with this very first idea of ‘I’. That already is a false idea. Then starts the whole shadow boxing, you are boxing against yourself, one shadow against another shadow. Even awareness is a shadow of ‘What you are’. Shadows! Shadows! Beyond, prior, with and without! Wherever you land is a false landing. It’s all false! false! false!

    Q: And yet landing will continue happening…

    K: Obviously. Every morning you wake up landing in this body. Then it’s too late. And every night you depart again.

    Q: When we spoke last time about ‘Dwaita’, the shadow part and all that is happening to yourself and whatever you do to get away from pain and suffering is all in the ‘Shadow Dwaita’.

    K: The shadow feels sick and the shadow needs to be healthy. It’s a shadow disease. That’s how it works. Being between healthy and sick. Then you always try to be healthy for sure. You like to be more in comfort than in discomfort. Your intention is always comfort, always good. And because you want to be in comfort, you make yourself uncomfortable. One comes with the other. As much comfort, as much discomfort. You will never be comfortable enough. No place, not even awareness is comfortable enough for what you are. The beauty of it is, what you are never needs any comfort. What you are doesn’t need any place or has no place. There is no ‘between something’. It doesn’t even know itself.

    Q: So what you are is playing with itself?

    K: It is experiencing itself as a player, playing and what is played with. But it’s not the player and not the play. It is that which is realizing itself as a player, playing what can be played with. It’s not playing with itself. It cannot play with itself, so it plays with ideas.

    Q: So all the seeking in the world, all the different paths are a‥?

    K: Play

    Q: And it is not necessary anyways and yet it is there?

    K: It is a realization of Reality. There is no question of need or no need. That is the way Reality is realizing itself. As the realizer-realizing what can be realized. But only the realizer is a lie. Real-lie-zer.

    Q: But the shadow realizes the lie in the seeking K: The one recognizing the lie is itself a lie. Only a lie recognizes another lie. Only a lie understands that everything is a lie. That’s why it is called lai-la. Whatever you can blah, blah, blah whatever you can imagine, this is the way you realize yourself. You are already ‘That what you are’ and this is your realization and all of that is what you are. You cannot avoid what you are, that’s all. No way out. You are That!

    Q: It’s also very relieving to the shadow and sometimes it’s very claustrophobic. Sometimes the shadow, the lie is leaving and you feel it is let to leave and nothing ever happened and then comes the…

    K: The next. No safe place. You always think there is a safe place in understanding or realization or in awareness. You are always looking for a comfortable place where you can rest. There is no comfortable place at all. That what needs a comforted place is already a shadow, a ghost. Because what you are never needs to rest. What is there to rest for?

    Q: Can one say Ramana is in complete rest since he is not looking for comfort?

    K: No. There was never any Ramana. Ramana says there was never any Ramana. Buddha said there was no Buddha. It’s always the same. They repeat it. As Maharaj said there was never any Maharaj. This paradox is a living paradox! The ‘living word’ which is a paradox in itself. Pointing to that what never needs to be pointed to.

    Q: I guess the best one can do is let life flow…

    K: You cannot do anything. [laughter]. Life flows by itself. It doesn’t need your acceptance. As if it asked you, Can I flow today? [laughter]. And it sounds always good, I let the life flow

    Q: [laughing] What to do, there is nothing to say!

    K: Just listen to the joke one is pronouncing. It’s a comedy, one thinks I allow life to flow. Imagine! Poor life! You blocked it before, now you opened it.

    Every State Is A State Of Mind

    Q: That what is called enlightenment, is that another state of mind?

    K: It has to be mind because it’s different. Whatever is different is mind, enlightenment is different from non-enlightenment. Unenlightened-enlightened : that’s mind.

    Q: Love and peace are another state of mind?

    K: Every state is a state of mind. Whatever you come to, the state of awareness, the state of whatever, is all state of mind. It’s a United States of Mind. [laughter]

    Q: So, it doesn’t matter this state or that state. One state is less suffering….

    K: It’s more or less suffering, more or less discomfort. Comfort is your nature and comfort means that there is no one who needs anything. There is a satisfaction itself, Sat itself. There is satisfaction by nature that can never be reached. That is not a state. That is ‘what you are’. But every state that you can experience is an experience of discomfort. Comfort can never be experienced and can never be reached, all you can reach is discomfort. That’s wonderful! All of that is discomfort and more or less discomfort is still discomfort. You have to be what you are in more discomfortable as in less discomfortable as you are anyway. In hell and heaven you are, but that, That you are, you don’t become in heaven or hell. None of that can make you less or more what you are. You’re not less in hell or more in heaven. Hell-alujah. Both are there because ‘you are’ but you are not because of heaven or hell. Even heaven is discomfort.

    Q: But discomfort is also a comfort zone…

    K: Comfort knows itself only in discomfort. Knowledge only knows itself in ignorance. How else to know yourself? You can say the nature of ignorance is knowledge, but knowledge only knows itself in ignorance as peace knows itself in war. It’s all war! Everywhere!

    Q: And both are illusion?

    K: No. Where is the illusion? It’s all ‘what you are’.

    Q: There is something that knows itself in something and not in something as part of the illusion.

    K: No. It’s realization of ‘what you are’. The one who says all is an illusion, you can call it illusion. But for ‘what you are’ there is no illusion. You are the Reality and that is the realization, there is no difference. Reality would never call this illusion.

    Q: So, what are you pointing at, this knowingness?

    K: I’m not pointing at the knowingness, I’m pointing at the knowledge. Knowingness is ignorance. It’s a realization, but realization is not the Reality. The aspects of realizations are aspects of realizations, not of Reality. It’s not different from Reality, but That what is Reality you cannot find in realization because it was never lost. There is no between. The illusion is that you call something illusion. You make yourself apart from something else. Then you become bonaparte. [laughter].

    [teasing] I’m the goodness and that all is bad. I’m the Reality and that all is illusion. And by that you suffer - Me and That. I’m real and that is all illusion.

    Q: When knowledge is there, you are not there…

    K: Who?

    Q: Me.

    K: When you are there, you are not there. When you are not there, you are not there. So you are neither there or not there. [laughter]. There is only a there or not there, because you are, but that what is there and not there is not there. So, where are you?

    Q: Everywhere…

    K: That’s not enough. And where is everywhere?

    Q: Nowhere

    K: Everything or nothing. You are neither everything nor nothing and you are everything and nothing. Now you’re totally Ga-Ga.

    Whatever one says what one is, is bullshit. What you are will never be known by yourself or by anybody else because for ‘what you are’, there is no second. There are no others. So as there are no others, who can know you? You cannot even know yourself.

    You Are The Pre-Sense

    Not The Presence

    Q: I keep oscillating between… the ‘Me’ comes back very soon…

    K: The ‘Me’ is never gone. You’re digging a grave for the shadow and when it’s dark you think you really buried your shadow. And when the sun arises, what is there? You and your shadow.

    [Teasing] At night I do not have any shadow. The dark night of the soul, there is no shadow. No soul, no shadow. But then awareness rises, and what’s there? Me and my shadow. SHIT! And I thought I was beyond it. Me! [laughter]

    Q: Then what about the deep sleep when there is nothing. Even that’s a state of mind?

    K: That is the other side of the coin, your absence. You experience yourself as absence and by waking up, there is an experience of presence. So you are in the presence and in the absence, but you are not the presence and not the absence. The absence is deep-deep-sleep. But even in the absence there has to be That what you are that is what is omnipresence. That is what is pre-sense. The pre-sense has to be there so that there has to be a sense of absence. The pre-sense has to be there so that there is a sense of pre-sense. The presence and the absence. But what you are is ‘pre-sense’ not presence.

    Q: It doesn’t matter its presence or absence…

    K: Your nature is in the absence as what it is in the presence. The presence and the absence does not make you more or less.

    Q: So, what am I seeking?

    K: I don’t know. [laughter]

    Q: It’s no more or less in anything. Usually we want more.

    K: You’re seeking peace, you are seeking comfort. What are you seeking? Always happiness! You want to have uninterrupted comfort and forever. That’s what you are seeking. But that is already what you are. That’s the joke. You’re seeking your nature.You’re seeking what is comfort itself which is happiness itself - never needs to be happy, never needs to experience itself to be what it is.

    But now you try to experience that happiness, so you depart by imagining yourself from what you are to know yourself. Then you seek yourself by taking yourself to be real. Then you are in this divine hypnosis.

    You are fascinated by the idea of happiness - that makes you unhappy. You imagine that you need happiness, that makes you unhappy because you are always missing happiness and you will never find it. And I’m sitting here telling you that be happy that you will never find it. Whatever you can find is unhappiness. Be happy that happiness, which is ‘what you are’ cannot be found in any circumstance, in any state, nowhere.

    But that happiness you are has to be there so that even the unhappiness can be there. You have to be ‘That what you are’ in the presence of unhappiness. And then you are in the presence of absence of unhappiness. Then you call it happiness, but that is not the happiness. This is just the absence of unhappiness.

    Q: So that is not it?

    K: No. How can that be it and that not. But everyone seems to be enjoying the deep-deep sleep, the absence of the ‘me’, the sufferer and then you call it happiness, the absence of the me. So you want to get rid of me because the me knows that without the me, the me would be better off. I’m better off without me, says the me because in deep-deep-sleep, I don’t complain. The complainer is not there, there is peace without me, yes. But there is even peace with you. The peace which is real is in the presence and the absence of me and the peace that needs the absence of me is a piece of shit.

    It’s a dependency, and what is a dependen-scheise[german:shit]? A piece of shit. Peace-off shit! What kind of peace would that be which needs an absence of you? Relative peace. And that you can reach by relative effort. You try very hard to overcome the ego and you rest in Samadhi, the absence of me. You just don’t move any more. You really be quiet forever and then one day you are back again, the ego returns!

    It Is Not Your Story, It Is His-Story

    Q: Can’t there be a movement without that me?

    K: It needs a me, it needs someone who calls something movement. It needs a story of coming and going and that’s me. Coming and going is suffering, the story. And the story needs a me. That is why it’s called His-Story. It’s his-story not your story. Maybe in your case it is her-story not his-story.

    What would be there without that definer that defines coming and going and birth and death? Changes. That is called the devil, the master of time, the master of hell, of differences. Without the me there are no differences. It needs a definer of a ‘tree’ to differentiate between ‘water’ and other things. As a baby you don’t know these differences. It’s a conditioning of the me that came to you to make differences between things and you learnt it and what you learnt will be gone one day and again you will be without that system of differences.

    It came and it will be gone sooner or later. As it will be gone, it’s already not there. Why do you care about something that will be gone by itself? It came by itself it will be gone by itself. Why do you worry about it? You want to make it earlier? That you seek to make it earlier?

    In Taoism, there is a farmer that goes out to the farm early and pulls the grass to make it grow faster. That’s the seeker. Try to pull the seed before even it’s sprouted. Crazy! You cannot wait, that is the whole problem.

    Q: So as conception, as a baby when you arrive, you are already totally ‘who you are’, completely…

    K: Blank. You are blanketi-blank. The zero of the zero. And then comes the first awareness I. The one who looks in to your eyes and says ‘Hey you’

    Q: The first I arrives after baby is born or it’s in the womb?

    K: In the womb there is the potential I. Awareness I is already there but the conditioned I comes later. The gestalt is already there and out of the gestalt comes a me-the conditioned me. The Consciousness is already there as awareness. Then comes I Amness and then comes the rest of the me.

    Any Experience That Can Be Given

    Is Not Worth Taking

    Q: Do you try to be happy?

    K: I try and try. It’s fun. It’s like, not it, not it… Neti-Neti is the best. You try and you enjoy that it

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