Heaven And Hell

‘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!