— Dear Tarika, how was the birth of the Transessence Technique?
I developed the technique years ago because I needed something that could bridge my experience in meditation with my daily life. I have been meditating for nearly 40 years and at the same time I work as a therapist. For some time these two things were different aspects of my reality but when I met Osho I understood, slowly, slowly, that actually he really wanted those experiences to come together: living in the world with the understanding that we are not our personality and also going deeper into meditation.
So, I know my life history to certain extent, I know how it takes over, I also found out that if you know too much of it nothing changes so I had to stop saying I know, I know. At that time I had a private practice working and I had a supervisor, Charlie, who was an alternative psychiatrist. I loved Charlie dearly because he had a different understanding about working with people than the traditional psychiatrists.
Somewhere during the time that we were working together I wanted to see what would happen if I would not be living through my personal history, what would that mean? what would be there? to be just humming and meditating and not talking to anybody?. He was interested enough in what character means, as he was doing a lot of work on character disorders, to start to play around with what would happen if there would be a very clear way of seeing the difference between one’s own personality and the being place, the place in our human experience that is not conditioned.
During that experiment I was my own guinea pig, I was the one that was being worked on. So as we were working I started seeing many things of myself that I would not have considered possible to let go. Things that I would feel: that is me, that is who I am, that is how it is and that is how it is going to be.
Slowly I started to notice through the way that we were setting up the personality in our work together, how a lot of what I was calling my being was actually not, was in fact a full pile of old conditioned stuff that I had neatly packaged and was living through.
That became interesting, I was really turned on by the idea that what I was experiencing in meditation on a daily basis, that sensation, I could have it not just when I meditated but actually when I was doing ordinary things.
— How did the work evolved from being only an experiment into a solid technique?
What actually really established the idea that we have come into something very important was when I worked on a horrifying experience in my life at that time.
I came very much in touch with how much fear I was living with through getting divorced and a whole bunch of other things. I was constantly in terror. I looked perfectly all right, I did my job, I was great at what I was doing and really loved what I was doing but at night I was living in this terror, so much so that I would hardly sleep. I did not know myself that way so in one of my sessions with Charlie I decided to do a set up with this situation and what happened was that I was able to recognize the conflict I was living in, because we were dealing very clearly with the duality of the mind.
During that session I was able to see the struggle that kept getting stimulated every evening. Following the Transessence Technique structure, I put it out, and I connected with what I was calling the Neutral Place at that moment. I felt a completely different experience of my life.
Suddenly, I could see that this conflict, actually, doesn˜t exist, it is only an old, old, repetitive program. It was beautiful, I felt great, I was happy, I was relieved from something that I have been carrying around and I had not realized. Then I actually said to Charlie: we will have to do this session one hundred times more because this fear is a core program of my life but surprisingly, it did not come back, next night and next night and next night and thirty or more years later it never came back. I never activated that old program again. Then I realized, wow, we had really created something that is a wonderful tool to recognizing present time. That it was when Charlie got uninterested as he wanted only to deal with how to make the personality look better once we understood what it was the dynamic. Then I said, I am not at all interested in making any personality look better, I am going home now with my technique. Bye, bye Charlie…
I felt I needed then to really continue to work with myself with this understanding that when I dis-identify, when I release myself from the grip of that old conditioned stuff called history, I have an opportunity to be in present moment and things are totally different. The Transessence Technique grew from that understanding.
For the first couple of years I was essentially using it with myself, just going deeper into the concept of what is the personality and how it feels and looks like and then slowly, I started inviting some friends who were doing other type of work with people, to look at it. We played with it and I used it in my private practice. It took quite a few years before I started to present it more publicly. And only five or six years ago, after it grew up as it is now, that I am enjoying thoroughly to actually pass it on and train people to work with it.
— How does the Transessence Technique works?
It works simple, because for me simple is the only thing that works. I have an incredible capacity to understand but basically I only do simple. What happens through the Transessence Technique is that you create an understanding, first of all about what you carry at your personality level, how identification actually lives inside, what identification is, and what it feels like when you step out of the identification. Then it is possible to experience the sensations of being in this present moment. There is a big difference from what the habitual, conditioned sense of yourself is and what is basically being in present time. That is what the work is about.
The set up is very simple. There is the guide giving you the opportunity to look at issues that are going on in your life. The guidance helps to bring realization on how the issue is held together by a duality, as the mind works that way, the mind is never singular, it always has two things binding: good or bad, right or wrong, yes or no, because that is how we are conditioned, is never just experience and move on, is collecting information, understanding it, making it fit somehow in your reality and then living it, that way, always and forever.
With the Transessence Technique we really learn what the parts of the personality are, how do they interact with each other and how to get the opportunity to have a distance. We experience how is possible not to be part of the reaction and then, finally, sense what is the action, what can we do in present moment that is different than our historical habit, seeing which options are available in the given situation.
The work is very much focused on the Neutral Place, how I called it when I was doing the work on myself and now called Present Time, the unconditioned, natural experience of this moment.
— What do you mean by action? Isn’t witnessing the conflict enough?
During the session the client realizes which action is available, which is not witnessing because witnessing is a meta position, witnessing is a place that is above all of what is happening and does not have any connection to it but sees it. With the Transessence Technique it is very much about recognizing once you create a space, how do you move through it. When we are no longer bound to historical reactions, what kind of action can been done in this present moment, which brings a totally new set of possibilities. So that is what the Transesence Technique is about.
— How did it get the name Transessence Technique?
At some point it named itself because for quite a few years it was just known as the work that Tarika was interested in. Some people knew about it but when I started to share it with people more they kept on saying how do you call this and I kept saying I do not know. I meant it, until one morning, as phenomenal as it is, just like a tape across my head, I saw the name Transessence, with an S. This was quite interesting, that is the transit to essence, the way to essence, and I thought wow! So the technique must have named itself and then I asked a few people who were playing around with it: What do you think of the name transessence and yes, it makes sense.It was also very touching because the technique has a very clear base somewhere inside of me, and I needed to follow it, to find out how to give it life, make it available and actually teach it so people can use it and that is what is the most important for me. That whether people use it with other people, as some people do now as it is actually part of their package of professional techniques, or whether they use it just for themselves, I am really interested in teaching it so people can use it.
Then you have fully available the experience of what that Neutral Place is that we all know, since when we meditate we all go there. Whether you like it or not, at some point you go there, most people do not like it because it is not all that exciting. But at the same time it allows you to go through conflicts in a much more direct and easy way, recognizing what is actually important in this present moment in your life. It is also a very simple way to find what is your action, more about what do you need to do in order to feel complete and whole and connected to yourself.