Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 3

Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, During the early 1980’s it was planned to publish the

”Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega” volumes as ”Yoga: The Science of the Soul”. Only the first three volumes were actually published, the title stayed as ”Alpha and Omega” for the other seven volumes.

Talks given from 01/03/75 am to 10/03/75 am

English Discourse series

CHAPTER 1

Dropping out of the wheel

1 March 1975 am in Buddha Hall

ALSO, MEDITATE ON KNOWLEDGE THAT COMES DURING SLEEP.

ALSO, MEDITATE ON ANYTHING THAT APPEALS TO YOU.

THUS, THE YOGI BECOMES MASTER OF ALL, FROM THE INFINITESIMAL TO THE INFINITE.

MAN SLEEPS almost one-third of his life, twenty years approximately.

But sleep has been

neglected, terribly neglected. Nobody thinks about it, nobody meditates on it. This has happened because man has paid too much attention to the conscious mind.

Mind has three dimensions. Just as matter has three dimensions, mind also has three dimensions.

Only one dimension is conscious, another dimension is unconscious, and still another dimension is there which is superconscious. These three dimensions are of the mind – just like the matter, because deep down mind is also matter. Or, you can say it otherwise, that matter is also mind. It has to be so, because only one exists.

Mind is subtle matter; matter is gross mind. But ordinarily man lives only in one dimension, the conscious. Sleep belongs to the unconscious; dreaming belongs to the unconscious. Meditation, ecstasy, belong to the superconscious, just like waking and thinking belong to the conscious. So, we have to go slowly into this phenomenon of mind.

The first thing about mind to be remembered is, it is just like an iceberg – the topmost part is on the surface; you can see it, but it is only one-tenth of the whole. Nine-tenths is hidden underneath. You cannot see it ordinarily unless you move in the depth. But these are only two dimensions. There is a third dimension – as if a part of the iceberg has evaporated and has become a small cloud and hovers in the sky. It is difficult to reach to the unconscious; it is almost impossible to reach to that cloud – of course, part of the same iceberg, but evaporated.

That’s why meditation is so difficult, samadhi so arduous. It takes one’s total energy. It demands one’s total devotion. Only then does the vertical movement into the cloud-like phenomenon of the superconscious become possible. The conscious is there; you are listening to me from the conscious. If you are thinking what I am saying, if you are inside making a sort of dialogue with whatsoever I am saying, a sort of commentary goes on inside, this is the conscious mind.

But you can listen to me without thinking – in deep love, heart-to-heart, not in any way verbalizing what I am saying, judging what I am saying, right or wrong, no. No valuation – you simply listen in deep love, as if the mind has passed, and the heart listens and beats with joy. Then the unconscious is listening. Then whatsoever I say will go very deep to your roots.

But the third possibility is also there, that you can listen through the superconscious. Then even love is a disturbance – very subtle, but even love is a disturbance. Then there is nothing, no thought, no feeling. You simply become a void, an emptiness, end to end. And into that emptiness falls whatsoever I say and whatsoever I am. Then you are listening from the super-conscious.

These are the three dimensions. While you are awake, you live in the conscious – you work, you think, you do this and that. When you fall into sleep, the conscious is no more functioning, it is resting. Another dimension starts working, the unconscious. Then you cannot think, but you can dream. And the whole night there are almost eight cycles of dreaming continuously. Only for a few moments you are not dreaming, otherwise you are dreaming.

Patanjali says:

ALSO, MEDITATE ON KNOWLEDGE THAT COMES DURING SLEEP

You simply fall into sleep as if it is a sort of absence. It is not – it has its own presence. Sleep is not only negation of waking. If it was, then there was nothing to meditate. Sleep is not like darkness, absence of light, no. Sleep has its own positivity. It exists, and it exists as much as your waking time.

And when you will meditate and the mysteries of sleep will be revealed to you, then you will see that there is no distinction between waking and sleeping. They both exist in their own right. Sleep is not just rest from waking, it is a different kind of activity, hence dreams.

Dream is a tremendous activity, more powerful than your thinking, more meaningful also, because it belongs to the deeper part of your being than your thinking. When you fall into sleep, the mind that was functioning the whole day is tired, exhausted. It is a very tiny mind, one-tenth compared to the unconscious, which is nine times bigger and greater and powerful. And if you compare it with the superconscious, comparison is not possible, because superconscious is infinite, superconscious is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. Superconscious is what God is. Even compared to the unconscious, the conscious is very small. It gets tired, it needs rest to be recharged. The conscious goes off; tremendous activity starts in sleep, which is dreaming.

And why it has been neglected? – because mind has been trained to be identified with the conscious, so you think that you are no more in sleep. That’s why sleep looks just like a small death. You simply never think about what is going on. Patanjali says, ”Meditate on it and many things will be uncovered within your being.”

It will take a little time to move into sleep with awareness because you are not even aware when you are awake. You move, in fact, in your waking also as if you are deep asleep, a somnambulist, a sleepwalkernot very awake really. Just because the eyes are open don’t think that you are awake.

Awakening means that whatsoever you are doing or whatsoever is happening moment to moment, you are doing it in full mindfulness. Even if I raise my hand to make a gesture to you, I am making it in full consciousness. It can be made in a robot-like way, mechanical; you are not aware of what is happening in the hand. In fact, you have not moved it at all; it has moved on its own, it is unconscious.

That’s why it is so difficult to penetrate your own sleep.

But if one tries... The first effort to be made is: while you are awake be more awake, because from there the effort has to be started. Walking on the street, walk mindfully, as if you are doing something very important. It is very significant. Each step should be taken in full awareness. If you can do that, only then you can enter into sleep. Right now you have a very faint awareness. The moment your conscious mind goes off, that faint awareness disappears like a small ripple. It has no energy; it is very, very faint, just a flicker, just a zero-voltage phenomenon. You have to bring more energy to it, so much energy that when the conscious mind goes off, awareness continues on its own – and you fall asleep with awareness. This can happen if you do other activities with awareness – walking, eating, sleeping, taking your bath. The whole day, whatsoever you are doing, it becomes just an excuse for the inner training of mindfulness. So the activity becomes secondary; awareness through that activity becomes primary. When by the night you drop all activity and you go to sleep, that awareness continues. Even while you are falling asleep the awareness becomes a watcher that, yes, the body is falling asleep. By and by, the body is relaxing. Not that you verbalize, you simply watch. By and by, thoughts are disappearing. You watch the gaps. By and by, the world is very, very distant. You are moving into the basement of your being, the unconscious. If you can fall down asleep with awareness, only then the continuity will be there in the night. That is what Patanjali means, ”Meditate on the knowledge that sleep brings.”

And much knowledge sleep can bring because it is your treasure-house, your basement of many, many lives. And you have been treasuring many things there. First try to be aware while awaking, while you are in the waking state, and then, by itself, the awareness becomes so powerful that it doesn’t matter what activity you are doing – really walking, or walking in a dream makes no difference. And when for the first time you will fall asleep with awareness, you will see how gears change. You will even feel the click that the wakefulness disappears, mind is off, another realm starts. The gears of the being have changed. And between these two gears there is a small gap of neutral gear. Because whenever the gear changes, it has to pass from the neutral passage. By and by, you will become aware not only of the change of gear, but the gap between the two, and in that gap you will have your first glimpse of the superconscious.

When the conscious mind changes into unconscious, just for a very minute part of a moment, you will be able to see the superconscious. But that is a later chapter in the story; I mention just by the way. First, you will become conscious of the unconscious, and that will bring tremendous change in your life.

When you start watching your dreams, you will find five types of dreams happening. First type of dream is just rubbish. And many thousands of psychoanalysts are just working on that rubbish. It is simply useless. It happens because in the whole day, working the whole day, you gather much rubbish. Just like the body gathers dust and you need a bath, you need a cleaning, in the same way the mind gathers dust. And there is no way how to give a bath to the mind, so the mind has an automatic mechanism to throw all dust, rubbish. The dream is nothing but the raising of the dust that mind is throwing – the first type of dream – and this is the biggest portion of dreams, almost ninety percent. Almost ninety percent dreams are simply dust being thrown; don’t pay much attention to them. And by and by, as your awareness will grow, you will be able to see what is dust.

The second type of dream is a sort of wish-fulfillment. There are many needs, natural needs, but the priests and the so-called religious teachers have poisoned your mind. They won’t allow you even to fulfill your basic needs. They have condemned them completely and the condemnation has entered in you, so you hunger for many of your needs. Those hungry needs demand fulfillment. And the second type of dreaming is nothing but wish-fulfillment. Whatsoever – because of the priests and the poisoners – you have denied to your being in dreams the mind tries to fulfill it in some way or other.

Just the other day a young man came – very sensible very sensitive – and he asked me that ”I have come to ask a very significant question – because my whole life depends on it. My parents are forcing me to get married, and I don’t see any meaning in it so I have come to ask you: Is marriage meaningful or not? Should I move into marriage or not?” I told him that ”When you feel thirsty, do you ask whether drinking is meaningful or not? Should I drink water or not? The question of meaning doesn’t arise. It is a question of whether you are thirsty or not. Maybe there is no meaning in water and no meaning in drinking, but that is irrelevant. The relevant thing is whether you are thirsty or not. And I know that even if you drink again and again, you will become thirsty. So the mind can say: What is the meaning in it, what is the purpose of it – drinking again and again, and again becoming thirsty? – it seems to be just a rut. There seems to be no meaning in it.’ ”

This is how the conscious mind has been trying to dominate your whole being, because meaning belongs to conscious mind. The unconscious knows no meaning. It knows hunger, it knows thirst, it knows needs; it knows no meaning. In fact, life has no meaning. If you ask, you are asking for suicide. Life has no meaning; it simply exists, and exists so beautifully without meaning that there is no need. What is the meaning of a tree existing, or the sun rising every day in the morning, or the moon in the night? What is the meaning when a tree comes to bloom? And what is the meaning when the birds sing in the morning, and the stream goes on flowing, and the waves, tremendous waves of the ocean go on shattering on the rocks again and again and again? What is the meaning?

Meaning is not of the whole. The whole exists so beautifully without meaning. In fact, if there was any meaning the whole would not have been so beautiful. Because with meaning comes calculation, with meaning comes cunningness, with meaning comes reason, with meaning comes division: this is meaningful, that is meaningless, this is more meaningful, that is less meaningful. The whole exists without any distinctions. Everything is absolutely beautiful not because of any meaning, but just by being there. There is no purpose.

So I told to the young man that ”If you ask about meaning, you are asking a wrong question, and you will be led in a wrong way.” That’s how priests became so powerful: you asked wrong questions, they supplied wrong answers. I told him, ”You just watch your own being. Do you need a woman to fulfill you? Does your whole being hanker for love? Because love is a hunger, a thirst. When you see a beautiful woman passing by, does something suddenly happen in you? – a wave, something invisible, a change? Or happens nothing?you go on moving the same way as you were moving as if the woman had not passed. If you move on a road and a beautiful woman passes, and you go on moving the same way as you were moving before she came, nothing has happened, no wave in your being, not even a ripple, then there is no need for marriage. But don’t ask about the meaning.

If something happens, you start walking a little faster, or you start humming a tune, or you start looking at the beautiful woman, or you start avoiding her... if something happens this way or that – I am not concerned whether you start moving in the same direction the woman is going, or you start running into the opposite direction, it is not relevant – if something happens then you have a need, and that need is to be fulfilled. Because a need exists to be fulfilled. There may come some day when you will pass on the road and a woman makes no difference. That too is good, but this too is good. Everything is holy and sacred. There is a time to be in love and there is a time to move beyond it. There is a time to be related and enjoy the relationship, and there is a time to be alone and to enjoy the beauty of being alone. And everything is beautiful.”

But one should look to the need, not to the meaning. Meaning is of the conscious mind, need is of the unconscious, and that’s how the second type of dream comes into existence: you go on cutting your needs, then the mind fulfills them in dream. You may not get married because you have read great books and you are poisoned by thinkers, and they have molded your mind in certain patterns.

And you are no more open to existence itself; philosophies have blinded you. Then you will start cutting your needs. Then those needs will bubble up, surface in the dream, because the unconscious knows no philosophies; the unconscious knows no meaning, no purpose. The unconscious knows only one thing: what is needed for your being to become fulfilled.

Then the unconscious forces its own dreaming. This is the second type of dream; very meaningful to understand it and meditate on it. Because the unconscious is trying to communicate to you that

”Don’t be a fool! You will suffer for it. And don’t starve your being. Don’t be suicidal, and don’t go on committing a slow suicide by killing your needs.”

Remember: desires are of the conscious mind, need of the unconscious. And the distinction is very very meaningful, very significant to be understood.

Desires are of the conscious mind. The unconscious knows no desires, the unconscious is not worried about desires. What is a desire? A desire comes out of your thinking, training, conditioning.

You would like to be the president of the country; the unconscious does not bother about it. The unconscious is not interested in being the president of the country, the unconscious is interested only how to be a fulfilled organic unity. But the conscious mind says, ”Become a president, and if in becoming the president you have to sacrifice your woman, then sacrifice. If you have to sacrifice your body – sacrifice. If you have to sacrifice rest – sacrifice. First become the president of the country.” Or gather too much wealth; that is of the conscious mind. The unconscious knows no wealth. The unconscious knows only the natural. It is untouched by the society. It is like animals or the birds, or like the trees. The unconscious has not been conditioned by the society, by the politicians. It remains yet pure.

Listen to the second type of the dream and meditate on it, and it will communicate you what is your need. Fulfill the needs and don’t bother about the desires. If you really want to be blissful, fulfill the needs and don’t bother about desires. If you want to be miserable, cut the needs and follow the desires.

That’s how you have become miserable. Simple is the phenomenon, whether you are miserable or blissful; very simple is the phenomenon. A man who listens to his needs and follows them, just like a river flows to the ocean... The river doesn’t say whether to flow to the east or to the west, it simply seeks the way. East or west makes no difference. The river flowing to the ocean knows no desires; it knows only its needs. That’s why animals look so happy – having nothing, and so happy? – and you having so many things and so miserable? Even animals surpass you in their beauty, in their bliss. What is happening? The animals don’t have a conscious mind to control and manipulate the unconscious; they remain undivided.

Second type of dream has much to reveal to you. With the second type you start changing your consciousness, you start changing your behavior, you start changing your life pattern. Listen to your needs, whatsoever unconscious is saying. Always remember: unconscious is right, because it has the wisdom of the ages. Millions of lives you have existed. The conscious belongs to this life; it has been trained in the schools and the universities, and the family and this society in which you are born, coincidentally born. But the unconscious carries all the experiences of all your lives. It carries the experience when you were a rock, it carries the experience when you were a tree, it carries the experience when you were animals – it carries all, the whole past. Unconscious is tremendously wise and conscious is tremendously foolish – has to be so because conscious is just of this life, very small, with no experience; it is very childish. Unconscious is eternal wisdom. Listen to it.

Now the whole psychoanalysis in the West is doing only this and nothing else: listening to the second type of dreaming and changing your life pattern accordingly. And psychoanalysis has helped many people. It has its own limitations, but it has helped because at least this part, listening to the second type of dreaming, makes your life more relaxed, less tense.

Then there is a third type of dream.

This third type of dream is a communication from the

superconscious. The second type of dream is a communication from the unconscious. The third type of dream is very rare, because we have lost all contact with the superconscious. But still it comes because the superconscious is yours. Maybe it has become a cloud and moved into the sky, evaporated, maybe the distance is very far, but it is anchored still in you.

The communication from the superconscious is very rare. When you become very, very alert, only then you will start feeling it. Otherwise, it will be lost in the dust that the mind throws in dreams, and the wish-fulfillment that the mind goes on dreaming about – things incomplete, suppressed. It will be lost. But when you become aware, it is just like a diamond shining – absolutely different from all the stones around.

When you can feel and find a dream which is coming from the superconscious, watch it, meditate on it, because that will become your guidance, that will lead to your Master, that will lead you to the way of life that can suit you, that will lead you to the right discipline. That dream will become a deep guide inside. With the conscious you can find a Master, but the Master will be nothing more than a teacher. With the unconscious you can find a Master, but the Master will not be more than a lover –

you will fall in love with a certain personality, with a certain type. But only the superconscious can lead you to the right Master. Then he is not a teacher; you are not infatuated with what he says, you are not infatuated with what he is. Rather, on the contrary, you are guided by your superconscious that this man will suit you, that this man will be the right possibility for you to grow with, that this man can become your soil.

Then there is a fourth type of dream which comes from the past lives. Not very rare – many times it comes, but everything is a mess inside you; you cannot make any distinctions. You are not there to make distinctions.

In the East we have worked very hard on this fourth type of dream. Because of this dream we stumbled upon the phenomenon of reincarnation. From this dream, you become by and by aware of your past lives. You move backwards, backwards in time. Then many things start changing in you, because if you can remember, even in a dream, who you were in your past life, many things will become meaningless, and many new things will become meaningful. The whole pattern will change, your gestalt will change.

Because you accumulated too much wealth in a past life, you died the richest man in the country and deep down a beggar, and again you are doing the same in this life... Suddenly the gestalt will change. If you can remember what you did and how it all came to nothing, if you can remember many lives, many times you have been doing the same again and again – you are like a stuck gramophone record, a vicious circle: again you start the same and you end the same – if you can remember a few of your lives you will be suddenly surprised that you have never done a single thing new. Again and again you accumulated wealth; again and again you tried to be powerful politically; again and again you became too much knowledgeable; again and again you fell in love, and again and again the same misery that love brings. When you see this repetition, how can you remain the same? Then this life suddenly is transfigured. You cannot remain in the same rut anymore.

That’s why in the East people again and again have been asking, for millennia, ”How to get out of this wheel of life and death?” It seems the same wheel. It seems to be the same story again and again a repetition. If you don’t know it, then you think you are doing new things, and you are so much excited. And I can see you have been doing these same things again and again.

Nothing is new in life; it is a wheel; it moves on the same route. Because you go on forgetting about the past, that’s why you feel so much excitement. Once you remember, the whole excitement drops.

In that remembrance happens sannyas.

Sannyas is an effort to get out of the rut of sansar. It is an effort to jump out of the wheel. It is to say to yourself that ”Enough is enough! Now I am not going to participate anymore in the same old nonsense. I am getting out of it.” Sannyas is a perfect dropping out of the wheel – not out of the society, but out of your own inner wheel of life and death. This is the fourth type of dream.

And then there is a fifth type of dream, and the last type. The fourth type is going backwards into your past, the fifth type is going forwards into the future. Rare, very rare – it happens only sometimes; when you are very very vulnerable, open, flexible, the past gives a shadow and the future gives a shadow, reflects in you. If you can become aware of your dreams, someday you will become aware of this possibility also: that future looks into you. Just suddenly a door opens and the future has a communication with you.

These are the five types of dreams. The modern psychology understands only the second type.

Russian psychology understands only the first type. The three types, the other three types are almost unknown, but yoga understands them all.

If you meditate and become aware of your inner being in dreams, many more things will happen.

The first: by and by, the more you become aware of your dreams, you will be less and less convinced of the reality of your waking hours. Hence, Hindus say that the world is like a dream. Right now just the opposite is the case: because you are so much convinced of the reality of the world in your waking hours, you think while you dream that those dreams are also real. Nobody feels while dreaming that the dream is unreal. While dreaming it looks perfect, it looks absolutely real. In the morning of course you may say it was just a dream, but that is not the point because now another mind is functioning. This mind was not a witness at all; this mind has only heard the rumor. This conscious mind that wakes in the morning and says it was all dream, this mind was not a witness at all. So how this mind can say anything? – he has simply heard a rumor. As if you are asleep and two persons are talking, and you just – in your sleep, because they are talking so loudly – hear some words from here and there and just a hodge-podge impression is left.

This is happening: while the unconscious creates dreams and tremendous activity goes in, the conscious is asleep and just hears the rumor, and in the morning says, ”It is all false. It was just a dream.” Right now, whenever you dream you feel it is absolutely real. Even absurd things look real, illogical things look real, because the unconscious knows no logic. You are walking on a road in a dream, a horse you see coming, and suddenly the horse is no more horse, the horse has become your wife. And nothing happens to your mind, that ”How it can be possible? The horse has so suddenly become my wife?” No problem arises, no doubt arises. The unconscious knows no doubt.

Even such an absurd phenomenon is believed; you are convinced of the reality.

Just the opposite happens when you become aware of the dreams and you feel they are really dreams – nothing is real, just mind-drama, a psycho-drama. You are the stage, and you are the actors, and you are the story-writer, and you are the director, and you are the producer, and you are the spectator – nobody else there, just a mind creation. When you become aware of this, then this whole world while you will be waking will change its quality. Then you will see here also, same is the case-on a wider stage, but the dream is the same.

Hindus call this world also maya, illusory, dreamlike, mind-stuff. What do they mean? Do they mean that it is unreal? No, it is not unreal. But when your mind gets mixed into it, you create an unreal world of your own. We don’t live in the same world; everybody lives in his own world. There are as many worlds as there are minds. When Hindus say that these worlds are maya, they mean the reality plus mind is maya. Reality, that which is, we don’t know. Reality plus mind is illusion, maya.

When somebody becomes totally awakened, a Buddha, then he knows reality minus mind. Then it is the truth, the brahman, the ultimate. Plus mind, and everything becomes dream, because mind is the stuff that creates dreams. Minus mind, nothing can be a dream; only reality remains in its crystal purity. Mind is just like a mirror. In the mirror the world reflects. That reflection cannot be real, that reflection is just a reflection. When the mirror is no more there, the reflection disappears. Now you can see the real.

A full-moon night and the lake is silent and the moon is reflected in the lake and you try to catch the moon. This is all that everybody has been doing for many lives – trying to catch the moon in the mirror of the lake. And of course you never succeed – you cannot succeed – it is not possible. One has to forget about the lake and look exactly in the opposite direction. There is the moon.

Mind is the lake in which the world becomes illusory. Whether you dream with closed eyes or you dream with open eyes makes no difference. If the mind is there, all that happens is dream. This will be the first realization if you meditate on dreams.

And the second realization will be that you are a witness: dream is there but you are not part of it.

You are not part of your mind, you are a transcendence. You are in the mind but you are not the mind. You look through the mind but you are not the mind. You use the mind but you are not the mind. Suddenly you are a witness – no more a mind. And this witnessing is the final, the ultimate realization. Then, whether dream while asleep or whether dream while awake makes no difference, you remain a witness. You remain in the world, but the world cannot enter in you anymore. Things are there but the mind is not in the things, and the things are not in the mind. Suddenly the witness comes in and everything changes.

It is very, very simple once you know the knack of it. Otherwise, it looks very very difficult, almost impossible – how to awake while dreaming? Looks impossible but it is not: three to nine months it will take if you every night go to sleep – while falling into sleep, trying to be alert and watching it.

But remember, don’t try to be alert in an active sense, otherwise you will not be able to fall asleep.

Passive alertness: loose, natural relaxed, just looking by the corner, not too much active about it, just passive awareness, not too much concerned. Sitting by the side and the river flows by and you are just watching.

Three to nine months this takes. Then someday, suddenly the sleep is falling on you like a dark screen, like a dark curtain, as if the sun has set and the night is descending. It settles all around you, but deep inside a flame goes on burning. You are watching – silent, passive. Then the world of dream starts. Then many plays happen, many psychodramas, and you go on watching. By and by, the distinction comes into existence – now you can see what type of dream. Then suddenly, one day you realize that this is the same as while waking. There is no difference of quality. The whole world has become illusory. And when the world is illusory, only the witness is real.

This is what Patanjali means when he says, ALSO MEDITATE ON KNOWLEDGE THAT COMES

DURING SLEEP – and that will make you a realized man.

ALSO, MEDITATE ON ANYTHING THAT APPEALS TO YOU.

Meditate on the face of your beloved meditate. If you love flowers, meditate on a rose. Meditate on the moon, or whatsoever you like. If you love food, meditate on food. Why Patanjali says ”...

whatsoever appeals to you”? Because meditation should not be a forced effort. If it is forced, it is doomed from the very beginning. A forced thing will never make you natural. So from the very beginning, find out something which appeals to you. There is no need to create unnecessary conflict.

And this is to be understood, because mind has a natural capacity to meditate if you give it objects which are appealing to it.

In a small school, a child is listening: the birds are chirping in the trees and he is listening, and he is raptly listening – he is in rapport. He has forgotten the teacher, he has forgotten the class. He is no more there; he is rapt attention. Meditation has happened. And then the teacher says, ”What are you doing? Are you asleep? Concentrate here on the board!” Now the child has to try, make effort. Those birds never said anything to the child that, ”Look we are singing here. Be attentive!”

Simply it happened because it had a deep appeal for the child. This blackboard looks so ugly and this teacher looks so murderous, and the whole thing is forced. He will try, but by effort nobody can meditate. Again and again the mind will slip. So many things are happening outside the room: suddenly a dog starts barking or a beggar passes by singing, or somebody is playing on a guitar.

So many millions of things are happening outside, and he has to bring his attention again and again to the blackboard, to the ugly schoolroom.

We have made schools just like prisons. In India, the school building and the prison building has the same color, red. Schoolrooms are ugly. Nothing is appealing there: no toys, no music, no trees, no birds – nothing. The schoolroom is meant to force your attention. You have to learn to concentrate.

And this is the difference between concentration and meditation: concentration is a forced thing, meditation is natural. Says Patanjali,

ALSO, MEDITATE ON ANYTHING THAT APPEALS TO YOU

– then spontaneously your whole being starts flowing. Just look at the face of your beloved. In her eyes, meditate.

Ordinary religious teachers will say, ”What are you doing? Is this meditation?” They teach not to think of your beloved while you are meditating. They think that is a distraction. And this is a subtle point to be understood: there are no distractions in the world. If you make unnatural efforts, then there are distractions – you create them. Your whole being would like to watch the face of your wife, husband, your child, and the religious teacher says, ”These are allurements, these are the distractors. You go to the temple, to the church; meditate on the cross.” You meditate on the cross: again and again you remember your beloved. Now the face of the beloved becomes a distraction. Not that it is distraction

– there is nothing special in meditating on the cross; you are simply stupid. What is the need to go and meditate on the cross? If it appeals you it is good, but there is no necessity. There is no special quality in a cross.

In fact, wherever meditation happens, there is the special quality. Meditation brings the special quality. It is not in the objects, it is in you. When you meditate on something, you give your inner being to it. Suddenly it becomes sacred, holy. Things are not holy; meditation makes them holy.

You can meditate on a rock, and suddenly the rock becomes the temple. No Buddha is so beautiful like that rock when you meditate on it. What is meditation? It is showering the rock with your consciousness. It is moving around the rock, so absorbed, so deep in rapport, that the bridge is there between you and the rock. The gap disappears you are bridged. In fact, you don’t know now who is the observer and who is the observed. The observer becomes the observed, the observed becomes the observer. Now you don’t know who is the rock and who is the meditator. Suddenly, the energies meet and mingle, and there is the temple. Don’t unnecessarily create distractions – then you become miserable.

Somebody was here and he is doing a certain type of mantra for many years, and he says,

”Distraction comes again and again.” I asked, ”What is the distraction?” His wife has died and he loved her very much. And I used to know that woman; she was really a beautiful person. He has never remarried. He really loved her. No other woman ever attracted him. Now she is dead and the vacuum is there, and he feels the loneliness. Because of this loneliness he went to some teacher, that ”How to get rid of the memory of my wife?” So he gave him a mantra. Now, he has been chanting the mantra for at least three years, and suddenly again and again while he is chanting the mantra like a robot, the wife comes, the face appears. He has not been able to forget the wife. The mantra has not proved strong enough, so he was here, very miserable. He said, ”Three years have passed and I am always haunted by her memory, and it seems that I cannot get out of it. And even this mantra has not helped. And three years, really and religiously I have been doing it.” I said, ”You are a fool. There is no need to do this mantra. Repeat your wife’s name; make it a mantra. Keep her photo before you: look at the photo make it the image of the divine.” He said, ”What are you saying?

She is my distraction.” So I said, ”Make the distraction your meditation. Why create conflict?”

Distraction can be made the very object of meditation. And it is distraction because there is some appeal deep down, some harmony. That’s why the mantra proved impotent, futile because the mantra is just overimposed. Somebody says some word and you repeat it, and the word has no appeal for you. It never existed for you before, it has no roots in you. The wife is very deep. Love is deeper than any mantra, so why waste your time? He said, ”I will try.” And just after few days he wrote a letter, that ”This is tremendous! I am feeling so calm and so peaceful. And really, my wife is so beautiful. There is no need to think that she is distracting me.”

Remember this, because you may be doing many things like that. Whenever you feel something is distracting, that simply shows that you are naturally attracted towards that, nothing else. So why create conflict1 – move into the same direction; make it an object of meditation. Be natural, don’t be suppressive and don’t create conflict, and you will attain.

Nobody ever attains through conflict. Conflict will create a split personality. Move to the natural attraction; then you are one, then you are whole, then you are together. Then you are one piece, not a house divided against itself. And when you move as one piece there is dance in your step and there is nothing which is not divine.

You may be surprised – it happened: one great Buddhist monk, Nagarjuna, was staying in a small village. Somebody came... somebody became very attracted to him. But the man said that ”Your style of life, the way you move like an emperor in the robes of a beggar, appeals deeply. I would also like to become a religious man, but there is a trouble. I have a cow, and I love her too much.

And she is so beautiful. And I cannot leave her.” Just a cow... He had no wife, no children, he got never married, but he loves the cow. And he felt a little foolish while he was saying this. He said,

”Because I know you will understand, that’s why I am saying. But this is my whole trouble: so much attachment with this cow. And I have brought her up and she has become so much one with me and she loves me. So what to do1 So Nagarjuna said, ”There is no need to go anywhere. If somebody loves someone so deeply, then there is no need to move anywhere. Make this love your meditation.

Meditate on the cow.”

Don’t create any conflict. Remember, if love and meditation are in conflict, meditation will be defeated. Love will be victorious because love is so beautiful. Meditation can be victorious only on the wings of love. Use love as a vehicle.

This is what Patanjali means:

ALSO, MEDITATE ON ANYTHING THAT APPEALS TO YOU

– whatsoever it is; I make no distinction. And there is no need to cling to one object, because objects may change. This morning you may feel like you love your child, and tomorrow you may not feel.

Then don’t create any conflict. Always find wherever your love is flowing; ride on your love. Today it is a flower, tomorrow it is a child, the day after tomorrow it is the moon – that’s not the problem; every object is beautiful – wherever your appeal, flow naturally, ride on it, meditate on it. The emphasis is on being whole, undivided. In your undivided being, meditation blooms.

THUS, THE YOGI BECOMES MASTER OF ALL, FROM THE INFINITESIMAL TO THE INFINITE.

From the smallest to the greatest, he becomes master of all. Meditation is the door to the infinite power. Meditation is the door to the superconscious.

Conscious you are: move into the depths of the unconscious. It is going into the basement of your being. Gather more and more awareness so you can move into sleep, into dream. Start by gathering awareness in your waking hours; that will help you to move into the unconscious. Then gather more awareness into the unconscious; that will help you to move into the superconscious. Energy will be needed. Your energy right now is just like a flicker – not enough. Create more energy through awareness.

It is just like you heat water, or you heat ice. If you heat ice it melts. On a certain degree of heat it becomes water. Then you have to heat it more if you want it to evaporate. Then go on heating

– then on a certain degree, a hundred degrees, suddenly it takes a jump and evaporates. Quantity changes into quality. Quantitative change becomes qualitative. Below a certain degree it is ice, beyond that degree it becomes water. Below a certain degree, again it remains water; beyond that degree it evaporates, becomes vapor. When it is ice, it is almost dead and closed-cold, not warm enough to be alive. When it is water, it is more flowing, more alive, not closed. It has melted, it is warmer. But water moves downwards. When it evaporates, the dimension has changed; it is no more horizontal, it becomes vertical; it goes upwards.

First become more and more alert in waking hours. That will bring you to a certain degree of heat. It is really a certain degree of inner heat, a certain temperature of your consciousness. That will help you to move into the unconscious. Then become more and more conscious into the unconscious.

More effort will be needed, more energy will be created. Then suddenly one day you will find you are moving upwards; you have become weightless. Now the gravitation doesn’t affect you. You are becoming superconscious.

Superconscious has all power: it is omnipotent, it is omniscient, it is omnipresent. Superconscious is everywhere. Superconscious has every power that is possible, and superconscious sees everything

– it has become absolute clarity of vision.

That’s what Patanjali says:

THUS, THE YOGI BECOMES MASTER OF ALL, FROM THE INFINITESIMAL TO THE INFINITE.

CHAPTER 2

Ego’s attraction

2 March 1975 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

Question 1

I FEEL A CONFLICT BETWEEN BEING LOOSE AND NATURAL AND BEING AWARE.

THERE IS NO conflict, but you can create a conflict. Even where no conflict exists the mind creates the conflict, because the mind cannot exist without being in conflict.

Being loose and natural will give you a spontaneous awareness. There is no need to make any effort for awareness; it will follow like a shadow. If you are loose and natural, it will come. There is no need to make any other effort for it because being loose and natural automatically flowers in being aware. Or, if you are aware, then you will become loose and natural. They both go together.

But if you try for both, then you will create the conflict. There is no need to try for both together.

What does it mean when I say: Be loose and natural? It means: make no effort. Just be whatsoever you are. If you are unaware, then be unaware because that is what you are in your loose and natural state. Be unaware. If you make any effort, then how can you be loose and natural? Simply relax, and accept whatsoever is the case, and accept your acceptance also. Don’t move from there. A time will pass before things settle down. In that transitory period, you may not be aware because things are settling. Once things are settled and the flow is natural, you will be suddenly surprised.

Unexpectedly, one morning you find you are aware – no need to make any effort.

Or, if you are working through awareness – and both the methods are different, they start from different standpoints – then don’t think of being loose and natural. You simply work it out through your effort to be aware. It will take a long time... when awareness becomes natural and no effort is needed. Unless this point comes where no effort is needed, awareness has not been attained yet.

When you can forget about all efforts and simply be aware, then only have you achieved it. Then, just by the side, you will find the phyenomenon of being loose and natural. They come together.

They always happen together. They are two aspects of the same phenomenon, but you cannot work them out together.

It is just like one is climbing up a mountain. There are many paths; they all reach to the top, they all culminate in the top. But you cannot walk on two paths together. If you try, you will go mad and you will never reach to the top. How can you walk on two paths together and knowing well that they all lead to the same top? But one has to walk only one. Finally, when one reaches to the top, he will find all the paths have culminated in it. For walking choose always one path. Of course, when you reach, all the paths will reach to the4 same point, to the same peak.

To be aware is a different type of process. Buddha followed it. He called it self-remembering or right-mindfulness. In this age another Buddha, George Gurdjieff, followed it; he called it self-remembering. Another Buddha, Krishnamurti, goes on talking about awareness, alertness. This is one path. Tilopa belongs to another path, the path of being loose and natural – not even bothering about awareness – just being whatsoever you are, not making any effort for any improvement. And I tell you, Tilopa’s standpoint is higher than Buddha, Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti, because he creates no conflict. He simply says,’first be whatsoever you are.” Not even spiritual effort... because that too is part of the ego. Who is trying to improve? Who is trying to be aware? Who is trying to attain enlightenment? Who is this inside you? – it is again the same ego. The same ego which was trying to become the president of a country or the prime minister, now is trying to attain buddhahood.

Buddha himself has called enlightenment ”the last nightmare”. Enlightenment, the last nightmare, because it is again a dream... And not only is it a dream but a nightmare, because you suffer through it. Tilopa’s standpoint is the ultimate standpoint. If you can understand it, then no effort is needed of any sort. You simply relax and be, and everything follows on its own accord. One has simply to be non-doing: sitting quietly, and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

The second question:

Question 2

IT IS UNDERSTOOD THAT IN THE PAST, MANY SCHOOLS OF YOGA TAUGHT MAINLY

THROUGH SUPPRESSION. AND QUITE A FEW DID ATTAIN THROUGH IT. IS IT NOT POSSIBLE

THAT EVEN TODAY, THE TECHNIQUE OF SUPPRESSION MAY SUIT A CERTAIN TYPE OF

PERSON?

First thing: never! – nobody who knows has ever taught suppression.

Second: never anybody has attained through it.

But everywhere false coins exist. The way of being natural is very simple, but looks very difficult for you because the ego wants something difficult to struggle with, to be challenged by, to conquer it.

The ego exists through constant challenge. If something is absolutely simple, the ego flops down. If you have nothing to do but sit quietly and silently and let things be, and let things move where they are moving, no activity on your part, then when and how the ego will exist? There is no possibility.

In being loose and natural, the ego flops down completely, immediately. It disappears because ego needs constant activity. Ego is just like going on a bicycle: you have to pedal it continuously. If you stop pedaling, it may go for few feet or few yards because of the past momentum, but it has to fall down. The cycle and the rider both will fall down. The cycle needs constant pedaling. Even if you pedal very slowly, you will fall down. It needs a certain continuous feeding of energy.

Ego is just like cycling – you have to feed it continuously: this challenge, that challenge, this activity, that activity – something has to be attained. The Everest has to be conquered, you have to reach to the moon – something always in the future. You have to pedal, and then the ego exists. The ego exists in activity... Inactivity, simply the cycle falls down, and the rider also. Immediately the whole activity disappears and with it the ego.

That’s why simple things look difficult for the ego, and difficult things look simple. If I tell you that the path is very, very arduous, you will be immediately ready to follow. If I say it is very simple, it is so simple that you need not even take a single step, it is so simple that you need not go anywhere, just sit in your house and it will haD en. You will simply forget about me and what I am saying. You will simply move away from me as if you have not listened at all. You will go to somebody who is talking some nonsense and creating some difficulty for you. That’s why suppression came into existence, because that is the most difficult thing in the world, to suppress -almost impossible because it never succeeds, it is always a failure.

How can you suppress a part of your being by another part? It is just like trying to win by your right hand trying to defeat your left hand. You can pretend. After a little activity you can pretend that the right is on top and the left is suppressed. But do you think it is suppressed or it is conquered? How can you conquer a part of your own being by another part? – just pretensions. If you suppress sex, the brahmacharya will be a pretension, a hypocrisy. It is just the right hand Lying and waiting there, helping you to pretend. Any moment it can upset everything again – and it will upset. That which you have conquered has to be conquered again and again, because it is never a real victory. And in the end, you find that you have been fighting the whole life and nothing has been achieved. In fact, only you will be defeated, nothing else. Your whole life will be defeated.

No Master who knows, no Master who is enlightened has ever preached suppression. But they have preached something which can look like suppression to people who don’t know, so let me make the distinction clear. For example – the distinction is very subtle – Buddha and Mahavira both have taught about fasting, both have taught about brahmacharya, celibacy. Are they teaching suppression? They cannot, and they are not teaching.

When Buddha says, ”Go on a fast,” what he means? Suppress your hunger? – no. He says, ”Watch your hunger.” The body will say, ”I am hungry.” You simply sit inside your being and watch. Don’t do anything either to feed the body or to suppress the hunger. You simply watch the hunger. No activity is needed on your part, and suppression is an activity. When you suppress the hunger, what you will do? You will not be able to watch it. In fact, that is the only thing that you will avoid.

A person who wants to suppress the hunger and who has gone on a fast, as Jains go every year, what they will do? They will try to distract the mind somewhere else so that the hunger is not felt. They will chant mantras, or they will go to the temple and recite sutras, or they will go to their religious leader to listen him, so that the mind is engaged, and they need not pay attention to the hunger which is there. This is suppression. Suppression means: something is there and you don’t look at it and you pretend as if it is not there. So if you are occupied deeply in the mind, then the hunger cannot penetrate and cannot bring your attention to itself. The hunger will go on knocking on the door but you are reciting a mantra so loudly that you don’t hear the knock. Suppression means distracting your mind from the reality of your being.

You have taken a vow of celibacy or you have taken the life of a brahmachari; now what you will do when the sex desire arises and a beautiful woman passes by? You will start chanting the mantra: Ram, Ram, Ram. You are avoiding. You are pulling a curtain over your eyes. You are pretending as if the woman is not there. But the woman is there and that’s why you are chanting the name of Rama, and so loudly.

In India, people have to take a morning bath. In my village there is a very beautiful lake, a river, and people go there to take their morning bath. There, in my childhood, for the first time I became aware of the trick of suppression. The river is cold – particularly in winter – people go to take their bath...

In summer also I watched them taking their bath, and they will not chant: Rama, Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna. But in winter, because the river is so cold, and they chant so loudly they forget the river.

They take a dip and they are out. Their mind is engaged in chanting. Colder the morning, greater will be the chanting on the God.

In my childhood, watching people there, for the first time I became aware of the trick – what they are doing. I see the same persons taking their baths in summer and they don’t bother about Rama, Hari Krishna, or anybody. But in winter suddenly they become religious? They have learned a trick

– how to avoid a fact, and the fact is there knocking and kicking and alive.

Turn your mind somewhere else: have you seen people going through a lonely street in the night when it is dark? They start singing a song, or whistling, or humming. What they are doing? – the same trick. Humming, they forget the darkness. Loudly singing a song they listen to their own voice and feel that they are not alone. The voice gives a feeling that they are not alone Surrounded by their own voice, the darkness has disappeared for them. Otherwise, if they move silently into a lonely street in the night, their own footsteps create fear, as if somebody is following. This is a simple trick Mahavira and Buddha cannot talk and cannot teach such deceptions. They teach about fasting, but their fasting is totally, qualitatively different. On the surface both the fasters will be the same, but deep down the difference exists. Deep down, a person who is following Mahavira or Buddha will fast and will not do any activity in the mind. He will watch and he will pay all attention to hunger. And then arises a very, very beautiful phenomenon: if you pay attention to hunger, it disappears. Without any food, it disappears. Why? What happens in paying attention to hunger?

When sex desire arises, one simply pays total attention to it, not judging, not saying this is good or bad not saying this is evil, not saying that this is a provocation from the devil. No – no evaluation at all because all valuation belongs to the mind and witnessing is not of the mind. Good, bad –

distinctions all belong to the mind, and the witnessing is undivided, one. It is neither good nor bad, it simply is. One pays attention to hunger or to the sex desire, total attention – and total attention is such an energy, it is fire-the hunger simply is burned, the sex desire is simply burned. What happens? What is the mechanism inside?

You feel hunger. In fact, you have never been hungry. The body has been hungry, you have never been hungry. But you are identified with the body that, ”I am the body.” That’s why you feel you are hungry. When you pay attention to hunger a distance is created, the identity breaks down. The identification is no more there. You are no more the body; the body is hungry and you are the watcher. And suddenly a blissful freedom arises in you that ”I am not the body, I have never been the body. The body is hungry; I am not hungry.”

The bridge is broken – you are separate.

The body has a desire for sex because the body has come out of sex. The body has a desire for sex because every cell of the body is sexual. Your mother and your father, in a deep sexual activity, have created your body. The first cells of your body came out of deep sexual passion; they carry the quality of it. And those cells have been multiplying themselves; that’s how your whole body is created. Your whole body is sex passion. The desire arises. It is natural for the body, nothing is wrong in it. The body is sexual energy and nothing else.

Brahmacharya is not possible for the body. Sexuality is natural for the body. Sexuality is natural for the body, and for you, only brahmacharya is natural; sex is unnatural, absolutely unnatural. That’s why we call celibacy brahmacharya. The English word celibacy is not very good. It is very ordinary, cheap. It doesn’t carry the sense of brahmacharya. Brahmacharya is derived from the root brahma.

The word brahmacharya means that you have come to attain, you have come to know that you are the brahma, the ultimate, the divine – God himself you are.

When one starts feeling this, that one is God himself then there is real celibacy. Because then there is no problem. And what happens, what is miraculous... when you are separate, when the bridge is broken, you are not identified with the body, you don’t say, ”I am the body,” you say, ”I am in the body, but not the body. I live in this house but I am not the house. I am in these clothes but the clothes are not me.” When you have come to attain this – and I say attain because intellectually you know it already, that is not the point; you have not realized it. When you realize in deep attention to hunger, or to sex, or anything – you realize, suddenly the bridge disappears between the body and the embodied soul. When the gap is there and you have become a witness, then the body lives through your cooperation.

The body cannot live without your cooperation. That is what happens when the body dies: the body is absolutely the same, only your cooperation is no more there. You have gone out of the house, that’s why the body is dead. Otherwise, nobody is ever dead. The body is the same, but the body depended on your energy. Continuously, you have to feed energy to the body. It exists with your cooperation; it has no existence of its own. It is through you it is together. Otherwise it will fall apart.

You are the center and the crystallizing factor in it.

When in hunger, one watches the hunger, the cooperation is not there. It is a temporary death. You are not supporting the body. When you are not supporting the body, how the body can feel hunger?

– because the body cannot feel anything; the feeling is of your being. Hunger may be there in the body but the body cannot feel, it has no feelers.

Now, just within this decade, brain surgeons have become aware of a certain very mysterious phenomenon: that the brain, which feels everything, has no feeling in its own nervous system.

You can be lying completely awake on the brain surgeon’s table, and your head can be opened and he can cut your brain tissues – you will not feel. No need for any anesthesia. He can make a window in the head, he can drill a hole in the head; you will feel the drilling just on the skull, but once he reaches the inside there is no feeling at all. If he cuts your whole brain completely you would not know, and you are perfectly aware.

Many people in the West are moving with many parts cut – they don’t know. Many people are moving with certain electrodes fixed in their brain – they don’t know and they cannot feel... A stone can be put in your head, inside, and you will never feel that it is there, because in the brain there is no feeling. From where the feeling comes then?

The brain is the subtlest part of the body, the most delicate; even that has no feeling. The feeling comes from your being. It is borrowed by the body. The body has no feeling of its own. Once you watch hunger – and if the watching is real, authentic, and you don’t avoid – hunger disappears.

The fasting of a Mahavira or a Buddha is a totally different fasting from the fasting of Jains and Buddhists. The brahmacharya of Mahavira is totally different than the brahmacharya of Jain monks.

Mahavira is not avoiding it, he is simply watching it. Watching, it disappears. Witnessing, it is not found there. Avoiding, it follows you. In fact, not only follows you, it haunts you. No yoga teaches suppression – cannot teach – but there are yogis who teach. They are teachers; they have not realized their innermost being. So there exists not even a single person who can attain to buddhahood through suppression. It is not possible, it is simply not possible. Through awareness one achieves, not through suppression.

The third question:

Question 3

IN MEDITATION THE DISTRACTION IS OFTEN PHYSICAL PAIN. WOULD YOU TALK ABOUT

MEDITATING ON PAIN WHILE PAIN IS HAPPENING?

This is what I was talking about. If you feel pain, be attentive to it, don’t do anything. Attention is the great sword – it cuts everything. You simply pay attention to the pain.

For example, you are sitting in the last part of the meditation silently, unmoving, and you feel many problems in the body. You feel the leg is going dead, there is some itching in the hand, you feel ants are creeping on the body and many times you have looked – there are no ants. The creeping is inside, not outside. What you should do? You feel the leg is going dead – be watchful just give your total attention to it. You feel itching – don’t itch. That will not help. You just pay your attention.

Don’t open even your eyes. Just pay your attention inwardly, and just wait and watch, and within seconds the itching has disappeared. Whatsoever happens – even if you feel pain, severe pain in the stomach or in the head, it is possible because in meditation the whole body changes. It changes its chemistry. New things start happening; the body is in a chaos. Sometimes the stomach will be affected, because in the stomach you have suppressed many emotions, and they are all stirred. Sometimes you will feel like vomiting, nausea. Sometimes you will feel a severe pain in the head because the meditation is changing the inner structure of your brain. You are really in a chaos passing through meditation. Soon things will settle. But for the time being, everything will be unsettled.

So what are you to do? You simply see the pain in the head; watch it. You be a watcher. You just forget that you are a doer, and by and by, everything subsides and subsides so beautifully and so gracefully that you cannot believe unless you know it. And not only that the pain disappears from the head – because the energy which was creating pain, if it is watched... pain disappears and the same energy becomes pleasure. The energy is the same.

Pain or pleasure are two dimensions of the same energy. And if you can remain silently sitting and paying attention to distractions, all distractions disappear. And when all distractions disappear, you will suddenly become aware that the whole body has disappeared.

In fact, what was happening? Why these things were happening? – and when you don’t meditate they don’t happen. The whole day you are there and the hand never itches, the head has no pain, and the stomach is perfect, and the legs are okay. Everything is okay. What was really happening?

Why in meditation these things start suddenly?

The body has remained the master for long, and in meditation you are throwing the body out of its mastery. You are dethroning it. It clings; it tries in every way to remain the master. It will create many things to distract you so the meditation is lost. You are thrown off balance and the body is again on the throne. Up to now, the body has remained the master and you have been a slave. Through meditation, you are changing the whole thing; it is a great revolution. And of course, no ruler wants to be thrown out of his power. The body plays politics – that’s what is happening. When she creates imaginary pain, itching, ants creeping, the body is trying to distract you. And it is natural, because the body has remained in rule for so long; for many lives it has been the emperor and you have been the slave. Now you are changing everything upside down. You are reclaiming your throne, and it is natural the body will try whatsoever it can do to disturb you. If you get disturbed, you are lost.

Ordinarily, people suppress these things. They will start chanting a mantra; they will not look at the body.

I am not teaching you any sort of suppression. Only awareness I teach. You just watch, pay attention, and because it is false, immediately it will disappear. When all the pains and itches and ants have disappeared and the body has settled in its right place of being a slave, suddenly arises so much bliss you cannot contain it. Suddenly arises so much celebration in the being, you cannot express it; you are overflowing with a peace that passeth understanding, a bliss which is not of this world.

The fourth question:

Question 4

IN SPEAKING ABOUT LOVE YESTERDAY, YOU SAID IT IS A BASIC NEED WE SHOULD TRY

AND FULFILL. YOU ALSO SAID THAT IT BRINGS REPEATED MISERY. HOW THEN CAN ONE

LIVE MEANINGFULLY IF OUR ATTEMPTS TO FULFILL LOVE ALWAYS END IN MISERY?

All your attempts always end in misery. Not only attempts made towards love – all your attempts, unconditionally, end in misery, because all attempts come out of the ego. No effort is going to succeed because the doer is the cause of all misery. If you can be in love without the lover being there, then there will be no misery.

Very very difficult it seems: how to be in love without the lover being there? The lover causes misery, not love. The lover starts things which end into a hell. All lovers fail, and I make no exception, but love never fails. So you have to understand: you should not be there in your love. Love should be there, but without any ego in it. You should walk, but the walker should not be there. You should eat, but the eater should not be there. You should do whatsoever is required, but the doer should not be there.

This is the whole discipline. This is the only discipline of religion. A religious man is not one who belongs to any religion. In fact, a religious man never belongs to any religion. A religious man is one who has dropped the doer and lives naturally, and is just there.

Then love has a different quality – it is not possessive, it is not jealous. It simply gives. It is not a bargain; you don’t trade in it. It is not a commodity, it is an overflowing of your being. You share it.

In fact, in that state of being where love exists and not the lover, it is not that you are in love with someone and not in love with someone else, you are simply in love. It is not a question of objects.

It is just like breathing. With whom you breathe you simply breathe. Whosoever is with you is not the case, and just like that, with whom you are in love becomes irrelevant, you are simply in love –

whosoever is with you! Or, there may be nobody. You may be sitting in an empty room, but the love goes on flowing. Now love is not an activity, it is your being. You cannot put it on and off – it is you.

This is the paradox.

When you disappear, then love is you; when you are not, then only love is. Finally, you completely forget about love, because who is there to remember it? Then love is just like a flower blooms, the sun rises, the stars fill the night sky – just it happens. Even if you touch a rock, you touch it lovingly.

That has become your being.

That is the meaning of Jesus’ saying, ”Love your enemies.” It is not a question of loving the enemies, it is becoming love. Then you cannot do anything else. Even if the enemy comes, you have to love.

There is nothing else to do. Hate is so foolish that it can exist only with the ego. Hate is foolish because you are harming the other, and harming yourself more than the other. It is foolish because all the harm that you do will come to you back. Many times more it will come back to you. You will be crushed under the fallout. It is simply foolish, idiotic. All sins are foolish and idiotic.

That’s why in the East we know only one sin, and that is ignorance. All else is just a by-product.

When I speak about love, I speak about that love where the lover is not. And if your love is bringing you misery, know well it is not love. It is your ego that brings the misery. Ego poisons everything, whatsoever you touch. It is just like King Midas: whatsoever he touches becomes gold. Ego is just like King Midas – whatsoever it touches becomes poison. And you know in what difficulties and trouble Midas fell! And things were turning into gold, and even then he became miserable, as miserable as any man has ever been on this earth. He touched his daughter whom he loved, and she became gold. He touched his wife and she became gold. He will touch the food and the food will become gold. He couldn’t drink, he couldn’t eat, he couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t love, he couldn’t move. His own relatives escaped. Servants will stand far away, because if they come near and by chance he touches, they will be gold. King Midas must have gone absolutely crazy.

So what about you? Whatsoever you touch becomes poison. Even when everything turns into gold a hell is created. What about you? – you touch and things become poisonous. You live in misery, but you have to find the cause. The cause is within you: the doer, the ego, the ”I”. But you will have to pass through it. You cannot learn out of my experience.

In Zen they say that whether the water is hot or cold, only if you drink then you know. My saying that the ego transforms everything into poison will not be of much help. You have to watch. You have to be on lookout. You have to feel and understand your own ego – what it has done to you.

But ego is very tricky. It always says... whenever you are in misery it always says somebody else has caused it. That’s the trick how ego protects itself. If you are in misery, you never think that it is you – it is always somebody else. Husband is in misery because the wife is creating; the wife is in misery because the husband is creating the misery – ego always throws the responsibility on the other – the father is in misery because of the son.

I have seen people who are in misery because they have children, and I have seen people – they are in misery because they don’t have children. I see people in misery who are in love – their relationship is causing them much trouble, turmoil, anguish – and I see people in misery who are not in love, because without love they are miserable. It seems you are absolutely determined to be in misery. Whatsoever the case, you create misery. But you never look within. Something must be inside which causes it – that ego that you think you are, the idea of the self. Greater the idea of the self, the greater will be the misery.

Children are less in misery because their egos are yet not developed, and then, their whole life people go on thinking that life was a paradise in childhood. The only reason is simple: that the ego needs time to develop. Children don’t have much egos. If you try to remember your past you will find a barrier somewhere. At the age of four or at the age of three suddenly memory stops there. Why?

Psychoanalysts have been probing the mystery and now they have come to a conclusion. They say because the ego was not there, so who will collect the memories The collector was not there.

Things happened, experience happened, because a child is not a blank sheet up to the age of three.

Millions of things have happened. And for a child, more things happen than for an old man, because the child is more curious, and each small thing is a great thing. Millions of things have happened in those three years, but because the ego was not there, there is no trace left. If the child is hypnotized, he can remember. He can go beyond the barrier.

In many experiments, hypnotized persons have remembered not only things that happened after birth, but things that happened before birth, when they were in the womb of the mother. The mother was ill, or had a severe stomach-ache, and the child suffered. Or, when the child was in the mother’s womb, grown seven months or eight months and the mother had made love, the child remembers it.

Because when a woman makes love, the child suffocates inside.

So in the East it has been completely prohibited. When the mother is pregnant love should not be made – any sexual activity is dangerous for the child, because the child depends for his breathing on the mother. The oxygen is supplied by the mother, and when the mother is in sexual activity, her rhythm of breathing is lost. The continuous rhythm is no more there; the child suffocates, not knowing what is happening. While making sex, more oxygen is absorbed by the mother – now these are scientific facts – and when more oxygen is absorbed by the mother, the child cannot get the oxygen. Sometimes even death is possible; the child may die. The child remembers all these things. You also remember all these things; they are there, but because the ego was not there, they have not become a burden on you.

An enlightened person remembers things just like this. He has no center to remember. He has accumulated memory but it is not a burden. If he wants, he can look in the memory and find a thing out of it, but he is not burdened. Memories don’t come by themselves to him. He can check, he can find, but normally he remains like an empty sky. Nothing comes by itself.

You will be held by your own experience, not by what I say. Look at the misery and always try to find out the cause, and you will find the cause within yourself. Once you find the cause is inside, the point of transformation has reached to its maturity. Now you can turn over, now you can change –

you are ready. While you go on throwing responsibility on others no change is possible. Once you realize that you are responsible for all the misery that you have created – you are your own hell –

that every moment a great turning happens. Immediately, you become your own heaven.

That’s why I tell you to move into relationship, into the world; to experience, to become mature, to ripen, to become seasoned. Only then whatsoever I am saying will be meaningful to you. Otherwise, intellectually you will understand but existentially you will miss.

The fifth question:

Question 5

I CANNOT SEEM TO FEEL FOR YOU AS A LOVER. IT JUST FEELS THAT YOU ARE RIGHT FOR

ME. IS THIS BECAUSE OF MY HANG-UPS ABOUT MEN? DOES ONE HAVE TO BE IN LOVE

WITH YOU AS A PREREQUISITE TO THE NEXT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP?

You don’t understand me at all. You are not required to be a lover to me. I am not required to be a lover to you. But I understand your difficulty. You cannot understand that love is possible without being a lover. You can love me without being a lover to me; that is the highest kind of love, the purest love.

And this has to be understood, because between a Master and a disciple the relationship is not of this world. He is neither your father nor your brother, neither your husband nor your wife, neither your child. No, all the relationships that exist in the world are irrelevant between a Master and disciple. In a sense he is all, and in a sense none. In a certain sense he may be fatherly. In a certain sense he may be just like a child to you. When I say in a certain sense he will be fatherly to you, he may not be older than you; he may be very young, but in a certain sense he will be fatherly to you because he gives and you receive. And because he lives on a hilltop and you live in the valley, he may not be older than you in time, but he is infinitely older than you in eternity. And in a certain sense he will be just like a child to you, because he has become again a child. The relationship is very complicated, very complex. He cannot be a husband to you because he cannot possess you and he cannot be possessed by you. But in a certain sense, he is like a husband. Without his possessing you, you are possessed. Without any effort on his part, your attitude towards him is bound to be like that of a beloved. Because the relationship between a Master and a disciple is bound to be in such a way that the disciple has to be feminine, because he is the receiver and he has to be open. In fact, he has to become pregnant with the Master. Only then rebirth will be possible.

In a certain other sense a Master is like a wife because he is so soft. All corners have disappeared in his life. He has become more and more round, and round, and round. Even in his body, in his being, he is more feminine. That’s why Buddha looks more feminine.

Nietzsche criticized Buddha only because of this: that he is a feminine man. Nietzsche said that he created the whole feminity of India, because for Nietzsche, the male is the powerful element –

feminine means weak. And in a certain sense he is right, because Buddha is feminine, but he is not weak. Or, weakness has its own power which no power can ever have. A child is weak, but a child has power no old man can have.

A stone is very strong, and just by the side of the rock is a flower – very weak. But a flower has a power which no rock can ever have. The flower is certainly weak: in the morning it comes, by the evening it is gone. It is so transitory, it is so temporal, so momentary. But a flower has a power of a different dimension, of a different quality because it is so alive. In fact, it dies so soon because it lives so intensely. The very intensity of life in a flower exhausts it by the evening. The rock goes on living because it lives so lukewarm. The life is not intense: very sluggish, lazy, sleepy. The rock sleeps, the flower lives.

A Master is weak in a certain sense because his weakness is his own power. He is feminine in a certain sense because all aggression is gone, all violence disappeared. He is more like a mother than like a father. The thing is very complex and nobody is required to be a lover, but everybody is required to be in love.

I CANNOT SEEM TO FEEL FOR YOU AS A LOVER. IT JUST FEELS THAT YOU ARE RIGHT FOR

ME.

How cold! Just right? Just right is not enough. Unless I am more than right for you, nothing will happen. Just right is too calculated; just right is less than enough. Just right means only on the periphery I meet with you, not on the center. And when you say, ”You are just right for me,N this relationship cannot be of the heart. It is just of the mind – calculating, clever, cunning, safeguarding, side by side, not moving in the dangerous heart relationship, remaining on the periphery always ready to escape. That’s what it means: ”just right” – and just right has no energy in it, it is cold.

So if you cannot grow out of this, then it is better to leave me, because nothing will happen. You don’t have enough energy. And if you are not moving fast towards me I cannot move towards you.

That is not possible; you have to move. The relationship between a disciple and Master is not a calculated relationship. When the Master becomes the only Master for you – not that he is the only Master, there are many, but that is not the point – when for a disciple the Master becomes the ONLY

Master, when the whole history, past and future, becomes pale before this man, everything fades away and only this man remains in your heart, only then something is possible.

Because of this, many problems arise. Somebody falls in love with Buddha. Then he says Buddha is the only enlightened man. Then he says, ”Okay – Jesus is there, Krishna is there, but not like Buddha.” Then Jesus and Krishna are thrown on the periphery. In the center, in the very heart of the shrine, or, in the shrine of the heart, only Buddha exists. For the disciple it is perfectly true.

Then somebody falls in love with Jesus, then Jesus comes to the center; Buddha, Mahavira and Mohammed all are on the periphery. When a Master becomes like a sun and you move around him like an earth, like a planet, he becomes your center, the very center of your life. Only then something is possible, never before it.

Just right is not right at all. Just right means almost wrong. Try to get out of the trap of just right.

Overflowing, if you come to me, only then will you find me. Running, if you come to me, running as fast as you can, only then will you find me. Headlong, if you jump into me, only then will you find me.

It is too businesslike when you say, ”Just right”. Either grow out of it or move away from me. Maybe somewhere else with somebody else, you can fall in love. Because it is not a question of whether you fall in love with Master A or Master B or Master C – it is not a question. The question is you fall in love. Wheresoever it happens, move there. If the relationship is just right, then I am not your Master, then you are not my disciple.

IS THIS BECAUSE OF MY HANG-UPS ABOUT MEN?

No, it is not because of your hang-ups about men. It is because of you, your ego, and your hang-ups about men are because of your ego also; they too are because of that. If a woman cannot surrender to any man, it is not because men are lacking or men are not there. It is only because the woman has not grown, because only a grown-up can surrender because only a grown-up can be courageous enough to surrender. The woman has remained childish, retarded. Then with every man there will be problem.

And if you cannot surrender in love, it will be very difficult for you to surrender at all. With a Master also there is a surrender, and a greater surrender than any man can ever demand or any woman can ever demand. Because a man demands the surrender of your body, if he is only related to you because of sex. If he loves you also, then he demands the surrender of your mind. But a Master demands you – mind, body, soul – your total being. Less than that will not do.

There are three possibilities. Whenever you come to a Master, the first possibility is to be related with him intellectually, through the head. That is not much. You may like his ideas but that doesn’t mean that you like him. Liking the ideas, his attitudes, is not liking him. You can take the ideas separate. There is no need to fall in any relationship with the Master. This is what is happening to the questioner: the relationship is intellectual; that’s why it is ”just right”.

There is another possibility: you fall in love with the heart. Then there is no question what he says; the question is he himself. If you are intellectually related to me, sooner or later you will have to go away. Because I will go on contradicting myself – one idea suits you, another may not suit.

This idea you like, that idea you don’t like – and I will go on contradicting. And I contradict for a particular reason: because I want only those people around me who are in love, not those who are intellectually convinced by me. To throw them away I have to remain continuously paradoxical.

This is a screening, a very subtle screening. I never say to you that ”Go away.” You simply go on your own. And you feel good because this man was contradictory so you have left. Only those who are related to me with their heart will not bother about the contradictions. They will not bother what I say; they look directly to me. They know me, so I cannot deceive them. They know me directly, not through what I say – saying is not very important.

Look at the distinction: a person who is convinced by my ideas is related to me through the ideas; a person who is in love with me may be related to my ideas, but through me, and that makes a great difference.

Then there is a third type of relationship which is possible only after the second type of relationship has happened. When you are really in love, love becomes so natural, it disappears. When I say

”disappears” I don’t mean that it disappears, I only mean that you are no more aware that it is there.

Are you aware of your breathing? When something goes wrong, yes – when you are running fast and breathing is hard and you are out of breath, yes. But when you are resting in your chair and everything is good, are you aware of the breathing? No, there is no need. When there is a headache only then you become aware of head, something goes wrong. When the head is perfectly healthy, you are headless. This is the definition of health: when the body is perfectly healthy, you don’t know it... as if it is not there; you become bodiless. And this is the definition of perfect love also. Love is the ultimate, the highest health, because love makes one whole. When you love a Master, by and by, you completely forget about love. It has become so natural, like breathing.

Then a third type of relationship comes into being which is neither of the head nor of the heart, but of the being itself. Heart and head are two layers; hidden behind them is the center of your being. You may call it the atma, the self, the soul or whatsoever you like. Because there, no distinction of words is anymore meaningful. You can call it no-self, anatma – that will also do. Head is the beginning; don’t get stuck there. Heart is the passage – pass through it, but don’t make a house there also.

Being to being – there are no boundaries then. Then in fact, the disciple and the Master are not two.

They exist as two, but one consciousness flows from one shore to another.

The sixth question:

Question 6

YOU SAID THAT WHEN THE SCHOOL-CHILD LOOKS OUT OF THE WINDOW, HE IS IN

MEDITATION. I ALWAYS THOUGHT I WAS DAYDREAMING WHEN I DID THAT, AND FAR FROM

MEDITATION. HAVE I BEEN IN MEDITATION ALL THIS TIME WITHOUT KNOWING?

Yes, a child is in meditation. But this meditation is because of ignorance; it will have to go. That which you have not earned cannot remain with you. Only that which you have earned becomes yours. The child is meditative because he is ignorant. He has not many thoughts to distract. The child is meditative because naturally, wherever the mind finds pleasure, he allows the mind to move.

In fact, the child is still not part of the society. The child is still primitive, animal-like. But the seed is growing. Sooner or later he will be in the society. And then, all meditation will be lost, the innocence of childhood will be lost. The child is in the garden of Eden just like Adam and Eve. They will have to fall. They will have to commit sin. They will have to be thrown into the world, because only out of the experience of the world a meditation arises which is seasoned, which cannot be lost.

So there are two types of innocence: one because of ignorance, another because of awareness.

Buddha is childlike, and all children are Buddha-like, but a vast difference exists. All children will be lost into the world. They need experience, they need being thrown into the world. And through their experience if they attain to meditation, innocence and childhood again, then nobody can throw them. Now it is out of experience they have learned it. It is no more through ignorance, it is through their own experiencing. Now it is their own treasure.

If everything goes right, then you will become children again at the end of your life. And that is the goal of all religions. And that is the meaning of rebirth; that is the meaning of Christian resurrection.

Resurrection is not of the body, it is of the soul. Again one becomes like a child; again one is innocent, but this innocence is based, rooted in experience. If you die without becoming a child again, you lived your life in a futile way; you lived uselessly. You simply wasted the opportunity. And you will have to come back again – the whole will go on throwing again and again...

This is the whole doctrine of reincarnation: that unless you learn it by yourself, the whole is not satisfied with you. Unless you become a child in your own right – not because of your body but because of your being: if the innocence is attained by you, and the innocence is attained in spite of all distractions, in spite of all that was there to destroy it – you will have to be thrown back again and again and again.

Life is a learning; it is a discipline. So not only you, but every child has been meditative, and then it is lost. And a child is not lost because of others, but there is an intrinsic necessity; he has to lose that innocence. That is not deep enough. It cannot pass through distractions. It is shallow.

You just think about it: a child is innocent but very shallow. He has no depth. All his emotions are shallow. This moment he loves, next moment he hates. This moment he is angry, next moment he is forgiving, completely has forgotten. He lives very shallow life, uprooted – he has no depth. Depth comes through experience.

A Buddha has a depth, infinite depth. On the surface just like the child, but in the depth of his being not at all like a child. All the experience of many lives has seasoned him. Nothing can distract him, nothing can destroy his innocence – nothing, absolutely nothing. Now his innocence is so deep-rooted that storms may come – in fact, they are welcome-and the tree will not be uprooted. It will enjoy the coming of the storm. It will enjoy the very effort of the storm to uproot it, and when the storm has passed, it will be stronger for that, not weaker.

This is the difference: a childhood innocence is a gift of nature; the innocence that you attain through your own effort is not a gift of nature, you have earned it. And always remember that whatsoever you have earned is yours. No theft is possible in existence, no robbery, no stealing. And you cannot borrow it from anybody else.

The seventh question:

Many questions have been asked about dreams. Somebody has asked, Question 7

ARE VISIONS ALSO DREAMS? HOW TO BE ALERT IN SLEEP AND DREAM? SOMETIMES I FEEL THAT YOU COME IN MY DREAMS. WHAT AM I TO THINK ABOUT SUCH DREAMS?

Yes, visions are dreams, not of this world, but of the other world. Sometimes you have visions, and if you meditate, you will have more and more. They will become, for the time being, the very usual phenomenon.

So, somebody has asked:

Question 8

ARE VISIONS ALSO DREAMS?

Yes, they are dreams not of this world but of the other world; they are higher dreams. They are concerned not with things, but your inner phenomena. But still they are dreams so don’t cling to them. One has to go beyond them also. If you see a Buddha in your vision, remember that this Buddha is also part of the dream – of course, beautiful, spiritual, very, very helpful in your search –

but don’t cling to it.

Zen Masters have been saying for centuries that if you meet a Buddha kill him immediately! Don’t wait for a single moment. If you don’t kill him, he will kill you. And they are right.

Visions are beautiful, but if you start enjoying them too much they can be dangerous. Then you are again stuck with some experience. And when you see Buddha it is really beautiful and it looks more real than the real, and has such grace. Just by seeing the vision you feel so silent and peaceful within. When you see Krishna with his flute, singing a song, who would like not to cling? One would like to cling. One would like this vision to be repeated again and again. Then the Buddha has killed you.

Remember, this is the criterion, that whatsoever is seen has to be treated as a dream; only the seer is real. All that is seen is dream – good, bad, religious, irreligious, sexual, spiritual – it makes no difference. There is a sexual pornography in dreams, and there is a spiritual pornography in dreams also, but both are pornographic. One has to drop all. All experience is dream; only the experiencer is true. And you have to come to a point where there is nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard, nothing to be smelled, nothing to be touched – just vast space and you alone. Only the seer is left.

All the visitors have gone; guests gone, only the host has remained. When this moment comes, then only is the real happening. Before it, all else is a dream.

A second question has been asked that,

Question 9

HOW TO BE ALERT IN SLEEP AND DREAM?

The person who has asked says that whenever he tries to be aware, he cannot sleep. Or, if sleep is coming and suddenly he remembers that he has to be alert, the sleep is broken, and then he cannot sleep – it is difficult.

Awareness with sleep cannot be worked out directly. First you have to work with the waking. Don’t try that, otherwise your sleep will be disturbed and your whole day will be disturbed and you will feel depressed, lazy, sleepy. Don’t do that.

Remember always there is a chain and one has to move from step to step. The first step is to be aware while waking. Don’t think about the sleep at all. First you be awake while waking in the day.

And when you will gather enough energy of awareness, then only the second step can be taken.

Then there will be no effort really. The very energy that you have gathered through the day will remain alert inside. There will be no effort needed. If effort is needed, then sleep will be disturbed because effort is against sleep.

This happens all over the world: millions of people suffer from insomnia. And out of one hundred, ninety-nine cases are such that they are suffering because they make some effort to go to sleep.

Effort is against sleep. They try many ways how to go into sleep and the very effort is against sleep.

The effort makes you alert, and the effort makes you tense, and sleep is a no-effort phenomenon.

You simply go into sleep. You need not do anything. If you do, sleep will not be possible. You simply put your head on the pillow and just don’t do anything, not even wait for the sleep, because if you are waiting for the sleep you are doing something – the waiting. You simply lie down on the bed, put the light off, close your eyes and sleep comes. You cannot bring it, it happens; it is not an action.

And to understand the nature of sleep is to understand many things. Samadhi also is just like that.

That’s why Patanjali will say later on that sleep and samadhi have something common. This is their commonness: sleep comes, satori also; samadhi also comes, you cannot do anything to bring it. If you try, you will miss. If you don’t want to miss, you simply be and it comes.

So don’t make any effort to be aware while going into sleep. You will disturb the sleep and you will not gain awareness. You just work out in the day. When in the day you are more and more alert, the very current of alertness passes into sleep by its own energy. You fall asleep and still you feel a center within you, watching. A light – a small light in the beginning – burning inside, and you can watch. But don’t start it. You do while waking, and it will happen while you go into sleep.

The last question:

Question 10

MANY PEOPLE FEEL SOMETIMES THAT YOU COME IN THEIR DREAMS, SO WHAT TO THINK

ABOUT SUCH DREAMS?

They are not of the same type. It depends on you. Sometimes it may be just the first type of dream I call rubbish. Because you listen to me so attentively, an imprint is left in the mind. And you listen to me continuously every day and you meditate, and an imprint is left in the mind. It can become heavy. Sometimes the mind has to release it; it is rubbish.

But it can be of the second type also: that you would like me to be more closer. And I have created so many barriers; you are not allowed to be so much c oser. In the morning you can see me; that too, from a distance. In the evening you can come, and that too with difficulty. So you have to suppress.

That suppression can cause the second type of dream. You may dream that I have come to you, or you have come to me and you are talking to me.

It can be of a third type: it may be a communication from the unconscious. If it is of the third type, then it is meaningful. It simply shows to you that you are trying to escape from me. Come closer.

The unconscious is simply saying that, ”Don’t try to escape and don’t remain on the periphery; come closer.”

It can be of the fourth type: something from your past life, because many of you have lived with me; it may be a fragment of the past. Your mind is moving on the past track.

It can be of the fifth type also: a possibility of the future. All types are possible. These are five types of dreams. It can be a vision also, which is also a type of dream. I didn’t talk about it because it has a different quality. It has the quality of the waking life; that too is a dream. The waking life is too a vast dream. But vision has the quality of the waking life. Sometimes I come to you, but rarely, because you have to earn it. If you see me a hundred times, ninety-nine times it will be something of the five types of dreams. But the hundredth time, I come to you when you have earned it. Then it is a vision.

But by and by, you will have to become aware what is what. Right now I cannot give you criteria how to judge what is what. You will have to taste them yourself.

So first become aware while you are awake, in the day. Gather more and more energy of awareness.

Make it such an overflowing stream that when you fall asleep, your body falls asleep, your mind falls asleep, but the energy, the current of awareness is so forceful it continues. Then you will be able to make distinctions. And when one becomes able to make distinctions in dreams, it is a great achievement.

And then, by and by, rubbish drops. First type of dream disappears, because a man of awareness lives so completely in the day that he doesn’t gather rubbish. Rubbish is incomplete experiences.

You were eating; the food was delicious, but you couldn’t eat it too much because you were a guest

– what would people think? Incomplete experience has become rubbish now. Now, in the night you will again eat. You will have to complete the experience, otherwise the mind will go on and on.

Something incomplete mind does not like. The mind is a perfectionist: anything incomplete it doesn’t like. Your one tooth falls, and then the tongue goes again and again there because something is incomplete. Now the mind continuously... absurd, because just by touching by the tongue nothing is going to happen, but the mind again and again... it never tried before when the tooth was there.

Now something is incomplete.

Psychologists say that even monkeys – because they also have minds just like you – if you draw a half circle and leave the chalk there, they will complete it. Monkeys! – because they cannot tolerate an incomplete circle, they will complete it immediately.

Mind always trying to complete things... First type of dream disappears when you become aware.

You live life so completely there is no need. And then, the second type of dream disappears by and by, because you don’t live in desires. A man who is aware lives in needs, not in desires, so there is no need to wish-fulfill anything. He has nothing, so he never becomes a president of a country in the dream. He has no desires, no ambitions. He lives very ordinarily. The natural flow of life is enough. Eating food, feeling satiated, drinking water, feeling satiated, getting a good sleep – it is enough. More is not asked.

Then the third type of dream disappears. With the disappearance of the first two types, the conscious and unconscious have come so closer there is no need to communicate anything in the dream. In fact, the unconscious starts communicating while you are fully awake. Then things become simple, communication becomes exact. Then the fourth type of dream disappears. When you are so at ease with your life, aware perfectly satiated, the past drops completely. There is no need for it to go into the past. You live in the moment; the past disappears, and then the fifth type of dream disappears.

You live so totally in the moment, so aware, so utterly aware, there is no future for you.

And when all the five types of dream disappear, the unreality has disappeared, the illusion has disappeared. Now for the first time, you attain to the realization of the real, the brahma.

CHAPTER 3

Periphery and center

3 March 1975 am in Buddha Hall

WHEN THE ACTIVITY OF THE MIND IS UNDER CONTROL, THE MIND BECOMES LIKE

PURE CRYSTAL, REFLECTING EQUALLY, WITHOUT DISTORTION, THE PERCEIVER, THE

PERCEPTION AND THE PERCEIVED.

SAVITARKA SAMADHI IS THE SAMADHI IN WHICH THE YOGI IS STILL UNABLE TO

DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE REAL KNOWLEDGE, KNOWLEDGE BASED ON WORDS AND

KNOWLEDGE BASED ON REASONING OR SENSE PERCEPTIONS, WHICH ALL REMAIN IN

THE MIND IN A MIXED STATE.

WHAT IS MIND? Mind is not a thing, but an event. A thing has substance in it, an event is just a process. A thing is like the rock; an event is like the wave: it exists, but is not substantial. It is just the event between the wind and the ocean; a process, a phenomenon.

This is the first thing to be understood: that mind is a process, like a wave or like a river, but it has no substance in it. If it has substance, then it can not be dissolved. If it has no substance it can disappear without leaving a single trace behind. When a wave disappears into the ocean, what is left behind? Nothing, not even a trace. So those who have known, they say mind is like a bird flying into the sky – no footprints are left behind, not even a trace. The bird flies but leaves no path, no footprints.

The mind is just a process. In fact, mind doesn’t exist, only thoughts, thoughts moving so fast that you think and feel that something is existing there in continuity. One thought comes, another thought comes, another, and they go on. The gap is so small you cannot see the gap between one thought and another. So two thoughts become joined, they become a continuity, and because of that continuity you think there is a mind. There are thoughts – no mind – just as there are electrons, no matter. Thought is the electron of the mind. Just like a crowd... a crowd exists in a sense, doesn’t exist in another; only individuals exist. But many individuals together give the feeling as if they are one. A nation exists and exists not; only individuals are there. Individuals are the electrons of a nation, of a community, of a crowd.

Thoughts exist, mind doesn’t exist. Mind is just the appearance. And when you look into the mind deeper, it disappears. Then there are thoughts, but when the mind has disappeared and individual thoughts exist, many things are immediately solved. First thing: immediately you come to know that thoughts are like clouds – they come and go – and you are the sky. When there is no mind, immediately the perception comes that you are no more involved in the thoughts. Thoughts are there, passing through you like clouds passing through the sky, or the wind passing through the trees. Thoughts are passing through you, and they can pass because you are a vast emptiness.

There is no hindrance, no obstacle. No wall exists to prevent them.

You are not a walled pheneomenon. Your sky is the infinitely open; thoughts come and go. And once you start feeling taht thoughts come and go and you are the watcher, the witness, the mind is in control.

Mind cannot be controlled. In the first place, because it is not, how can you control it? In the second place, who will control the mind? Because nobody exists beyond the mind. and when I say nobody exists, I mean that nobody exists beyond the mind – a nothingness. Who will control the mind? If somebody is controlling the mind, then it will be only a part, fragment of the mind controlling another fragment of the mind. That is what the ego is.

Mind cannot be controlled in that way. It is not, and there is nobody to control it. The inner emptiness can see, but cannot control. It can look, but cannot control. But the very look is the control, the very phenomenon of observation, of witnessing, becomes the control because the mind disappears. It is just like in a dark night, you are running fast because you have become afraid of somebody following you, and that somebody is nobody but your own shadow. and the more you run, the more the shadow is closer to you. Howsoever fast you run makes no difference; the shadow is there.

whenever you look back, the shadow is there. That is not the way to escape from it, and that is not the way to control it. You will have to look deeper into the shadow. Stand still and look deeper into the shadow; the shadow disappears because the shadow is not; it is just an absence of light. Mind is nothing but the absence of your presence. When you sit silently, when you look deep in the mind, mind simply disappears. Thoughts will remain, they are existential, but mind will not be found.

But when the mind is gone then a second perception becomes possible: you can see thoughts are not yours. Of course they come, and sometimes they rest a little while in you, and then they go. You may be a resting place, but they don’t originate in you. Have you ever watched that not even a single thought has arisen out of you? Not a single thought has come through your being. They always come from the outside. They don’t belong to you. Rootless, homeless they hover. Sometimes they rest in you, that’s all; a cloud resting on top of a hill. Then they will move on their own; you need not do anything. If you simply watch, control is attained.

The word control is not very good, because words cannot be very good. Words belong to the mind, to the world of thoughts. Words cannot be very, very penetrating; they are shallow. The word control is not good because there is nobody to control and there is nobody to be controlled. But tentatively, it helps to understand a certain thing which happens. When you look deeply, mind is controlled.

Suddenly you have become the master. Thoughts are there but they are no more masters of you, they cannot do anything to you; they simply come and go. You remain untouched just like a lotus flower amidst rainfall: drops of water fall on the petals but they go on slipping, they don’t even touch.

The lotus remains untouched.

That’s why in the East lotus became so much significant, became so much symbolic. The greatest symbol that has come out of the East is the lotus. It carries the whole meaning of the eastern consciousness. It says, ”Be like a lotus, that’s all. Remain untouched, and you are in control.

Remain untouched and you are the master.”

Few things more about the mind before we can enter Patanjali’s sutras. From one standpoint, mind is like waves – a disturbance. When the ocean is calm and quiet, undisturbed, the waves are not there. When the ocean is disturbed in a tide or strong wind, when tremendous waves arise and whole surface is just a chaos, mind from one standpoint... These are all metaphors just to help you to understand certain quality inside which cannot be said through words. These metaphors are poetic. If you try to understand them with sympathy, you will attain to an understanding. But if you try to understand them logically, you will miss the point. They are metaphors.

Mind is a disturbance of consciousness, just like an ocean with waves is a disturbance. Something foreign has entered – the wind. Something from the outside has happened to the ocean, or to the consciousness – the thoughts, or the wind, and there is a chaos. But the chaos is always on the surface. The waves are always on the surface. There are no waves in the depth – cannot be because in the depth the wind cannot enter. So everything is just on the surface. If you move inwards, control is attained. If you move inwards from the surface you go to the center; suddenly, the surface may still be disturbed but you are not disturbed.

The whole yoga is nothing but centering, moving towards the center, getting rooted there, abiding there. And from there the whole perspective changes. Now still the waves may be there, but they don’t reach you. And now you can see they don’t belong to you, just a conflict on the surface with something foreign. And from the center, when you look, by and by, the conflict ceases. By and by, you relax. By and by, you accept that of course there is strong wind and waves will arise; you are not worried, and when you are not worried even waves can be enjoyed. Nothing is wrong in them.

The problem arises because you are also on the surface. You are in a small boat on the surface and strong wind comes and it is tide, and the whole ocean goes mad. Of course, you are worried; you are scared to death. You are in danger. Any moment the waves can throw your small boat; any moment death can occur. What you can do with your small boat? How can you control? If you start fighting with the waves you will be defeated. Fight won’t help. You will have to accept the waves. In fact, if you can accept the waves and let your boat, howsoever small, move with them not against them, then there is no danger.

That is the meaning of Tilopa – ”loose and natural”. Waves are there; you simply allow. You simply allow yourself to move with them, not against them. You become part of them. Then tremendous happiness happens. That is the whole art of surfing: moving with the waves – not against, with them

– so much so that you are not different from them. Surfing can become a great meditation. It can give you glimpses of the inner because it is not a fight, it is a let-go. Once you know that even waves can be enjoyed – and that can be known when you look the whole phenomenon from the center.

Just like you are a traveler and clouds have gathered, and there is much lightning, and you have forgotten where you are moving; you have forgotten the path and you are hurrying towards home.

This is what is happening on the surface: a traveler lost; many clouds, much lightning... Soon, there will be tremendous rain. You are seeking home, the safety of the home. Then suddenly you reach home. Now you sit inside, now you wait for the rains, now you can enjoy. Now the lightning has a beauty of its own. It was not so when you were outside, lost in a forest. But now, sitting inside the house the whole phenomenon is tremendously beautiful. Now the rain comes and you enjoy. Now the lightning is there and you enjoy, and great thunder in the clouds, and you enjoy, because now you are safe inside. Once you reach to the center, you start enjoying whatsoever happens on the surface. So the whole thing is not to fight on the surface, but rather slip into the center. Then there is a control, and a control which has not been forced, a control which happens spontaneously when you are centered.

Centering in consciousness is the control of the mind. So don’t try to control the mind. The language can mislead you. Nobody can control, and those who try to control, they will go mad; they will simply go neurotic, because trying to control the mind is nothing but a part of the mind trying to control another part of the mind.

Who are you who is trying to control? You are also a wave, a religious wave of course, trying to control. And there are irreligious waves. There is sex and there is anger and there is jealousy and possessiveness and hatred, and millions of waves, irreligious. And then there are religious waves: meditation, love, compassion. But these are all on the surface of the surface. And on the surface, religious, irreligious doesn’t make any difference.

Religion is at the center and in the perspective that happens through the center. Sitting inside your horn you look at your own surface. Everything changes b cause your perspective is new. Suddenly you are control. In fact, you are so much in control that you c leave the surface uncontrolled. This is subtle. You are much in control, so much rooted, not worried about I surface... In fact you would like the waves and I tides and the storm – it is beautiful, it gives energy, it a strength – there is nothing to be worried about it; on weaklings worry about thoughts. Only weaklings worry about the mind.

Stronger people simply absorb, the whole, and they are richer for it. Stronger people simply never reject anything. Rejection is out of weakness – you are afraid. Stronger people would like to ab sorb everything that life gives. Religious, irreligious moral, immoral, divine, devil – makes no difference; stronger person absorbs everything, and he is richer fo it. He has a totally different depth Ordinary religious people cannot have; they are poor and shallow.

Watch ordinary religious people going to the temple and to the mosque and to the church. You will always find very, very shallow people with no depth. Because they have rejected parts of themselves, they have be come crippled. They are in a certain way paralyzed.

Nothing is wrong in the mind, nothing is wrong the thoughts. If anything is wrong, it is remaining on the surface, because then you don’t know the whole and unnecessarily suffer because of the part and the part perception. A whole perception is needed, and that possible only from the center, because from the center you can look all around in all dimensions, all direction the whole periphery of your being. And it is vast. I] fact, it is the same as the periphery of existence. Once you are centered, by and by you become wider and wider and bigger and bigger, and you end with being brahman, not less than that.

From another standpoint, mind is like dust a traveller gathers on his clothes. And you have been traveling, and traveling and traveling for millions of lives and never taken a bath. Much dust has collected, naturally – nothing wrong in it; has to be so – layers of dust and you think those layers are your personality. You have become so much identified with them, you have lived with those layers of dust so long they look like your skin. You have become identified.

Mind is the past, the memory, the dust. Everybody has to gather it. If you travel you will gather dust. But no need to be identified with it, no need to become one with it, because if you become one, then you will be in trouble because you are not the dust, you are consciousness. Says Omar Khayyam, ”Dust unto dust”. When a man dies, what happens? – dust returns unto dust. If you are just dust, then everything will return to the dust, nothing will be left behind. But are you just dust, layers of dust, or is something inside you which is not dust at all, not of the earth at all? That’s your consciousness, your awareness.

Awareness is your being, consciousness is your being, and the dust that awareness collects around it is your mind. There are two ways to deal with this dust. The ordinary religious way is to clean the clothes, rub your body hard. But those methods cannot help much. Howsoever you clean your clothes, the clothes have become so dirty they are beyond redemption; you cannot clean them. On the contrary, whatsoever you do may make them more unclean.

It happened: Mulla Nasruddin came once to me, and he is a drunkard. His hands shake eating, drinking tea; everything falls on his clothes, so all his clothes were stained with tea and pan, and this and that. So I told Nasruddin, ”Why don’t you go to the chemist and find something? There are solutions and these stains can be washed.”

So he went. After seven days he came back; his clothes were in a worse condition, worse than before. I asked, ’What is the matter? Didn’t you go to the chemist?” He said, ”I went. And that chemical solution wonderful – it works. All the stains of tea and pan gone. Now I need another solution because that solution has left its own stains.”

Religious people supply you soaps and chemical solutions how to wipe, how to wash the dirt, but then those solutions leave their own stains. That’s why an immoral person can become moral, but remains dirty, now in moral way, but remains dirty. Even sometimes the situation is worse than before.

An immoral man is in many ways innocent, less egoistic. A moral man has all the immorality inside the mind. And new things that he has gathered: those are the moralistic, the puritan, egoistic attitudes. He feels superior. He feels he is the chosen one and everybody else is condemned to hell. Only he is going to heaven. And all the immorality remains inside, because you cannot control mind from the surface – there is no way. It simply doesn’t happen that way. Only one control exists, and that is the perception from the center.

Mind is like a dust gathered through millions journeys. The real religious standpoint, the radical religious standpoint against the ordinary, is to simply throw the clothes. Don’t bother to wash them, the cannot be washed. Simply move like a snake out of his old skin and don’t even look back. This is what exactly yoga is: how to get rid of your personalities. Those personalities are the clothes.

This word ”personality” is very interesting. It come from a Greek root persona. It means the mask that actors used in ancient Greece, in drama, to hide the face. That mask is called persona, and you have personality out of it. Personality is the mask, not you. Personality a false face, to show it to others. And through man lives and many experiences you have created many personalities, clothes; they have all become dirty. You have used them too much, and because of them the original face is completely lost.

You don’t know what is your original face. You are deceiving others and you have become a victim of your own deceptions. Drop all personalities, because if you cling to the personality you will remain on the surface. Drop all personalities and be just natural, and then you can flow towards the center.

And once from the center you look then there is no mind. In the beginning thoughts continue, but by and by, without your cooperation, they come less and less. And when your all cooperation is lost, when you simply don’t cooperate with them, they stop coming to you. Not that they are no more; they are there, but they don’t come to you.

Thoughts come only as invited guests. They never come uninvited, remember this. Sometimes you think, ”This thought I never invited,” but you must be wrong. In some way, sometime – you may have forgotten about it completely – you must have invited it. Thoughts never come uninvited. You first invite them; only then they come. When you don’t invite, sometimes just because of old habit, because you have been an old friend, they may knock at your door. But if you don’t cooperate, by and by they forget about you, they don’t come to you. And when thoughts stop coming on their own, this is the control. Not that you control thoughts – simply you reach to an inner shrine of your being, and thoughts are controlled by themselves.

From still another standpoint, mind is the past, the memory, all the experiences accumulated, in a sense: all that you have done, all that you have thought, all that you desired, all that you dreamed –

everything, your total past, your memory. Memory is mind. And unless you get rid of memory, you will not be able to control mind.

How to get rid of memory? It is always there following you. In fact, you are the memory, so how to get rid of it? Who are you except your memories? When I ask, ”Who are you?” you tell me your name. That is your memory. Your parents gave you that name some time back. I ask you, ”Who are you?” and you tell about your family: your father, your mother. That is a memory. I ask you, ”Who are you?” and you tell me about your education, your degrees: that you have done the degree of Master of Arts, or you are a Ph.D., or you are an engineer or an architect. That is a memory.

When I ask you, ”Who are you?” if really you look inside, your only answer can be, ”I don’t know.”

Whatsoever you will say will be the memory, not you. The only real authentic answer can be, ”I don’t know,” because to know oneself is the last thing. I can answer who I am, but I will not answer. You cannot answer, ”Who are you?” but you are ready with the answer.

Those who know, they keep silent about this. Because if all the memory is discarded, and all the language is discarded, then who I am cannot be said. I can look into you, I can give you a gesture; I can be with you with my total being – that is my answer. But the answer cannot be given in words because whatsoever is given in words will be part of memory, part of mind, not of consciousness.

How to get rid of the memories? Watch them, witness them. And always remember that, ”This has happened to me, but this is not me. Of course you were born in a certain family, but this is not you; it has happened to you, an event outside of you. Of course somebody has given a name to you. It has its utility but the name is not you. Of course, you have a form, but the form is not you. The form is just the house you happen to be in. The form is just the body that you happen to be in. And the body is given to you by your parents. It is a gift, but not you.

Watch and discriminate. This is what in the East they call vivek, discrimination: you discriminate continuously. Keep on discriminating – a moment comes when you have eliminated all that you are not. Suddenly, in that state, you for the first time face yourself, you encounter your own being. Go on cutting all identities that you are not: the family, the body, the mind. In that emptiness, when everything that was not you has been thrown out, suddenly your being surfaces. For the first time you encounter yourself, and that encounter becomes the control.

The ”control” word is really ugly. I would not like to use it, but I cannot do anything because Patanjali uses it – because in the very word it seems somebody is controlling somebody else. Patanjali knows, and later on he will say that you attain to real samadhi only when there is no control and no controller. Now we should enter into the sutras.

WHEN THE ACTIVITY OF THE MIND IS UNDER CONTROL, THE MIND BECOMES LIKE

PURE CRYSTAL, REFLECTING EQUALLY, WITHOUT DISTORTION, THE PERCEIVER, THE

PERCEPTION, AND THE PERCEIVED.

When the activity of the mind is under control... Now you understand what I mean by ”under control”: that you are at the center and you look at the mind from there; that you are sitting inside the house and you look at the clouds, and the thunder, and the lightning and the rain from there; that you have dropped all your clothes – dusty clothes and dirty clothes – because in fact there are no clothes, only layers of dirt, so you cannot clean them. You have thrown them out, thrown them away. You are simply naked and nude in your being. Or, you have eliminated all that with which you have become identified. Now you don’t say who you are: form, name, family, body, mind, everything has been eliminated. Only that is there which cannot be eliminated.

That is the method of the Upanishads. They call it neti-neti. They say, ”I am not this, nor that,” and they go on and on and on... A moment comes when only the witness has remained, and the witness cannot be denied. That is the last stratum of your being, the very core of it. You cannot deny it because who will deny i Now two doesn’t exist, only one. Then there is control Then the activity of the mind is under control.

So it is not like a small child forced by the parents i the corner and they have told, ”Sit there silently”

– looks under control, but he is not. He looks under control, but he is restless, forced, but inside –

great turmoil.

A small child was forced by the mother. He was running all around, and then three times she told him to sit silently. Then for the fourth time – the last ultimate – she said, ”Now you sit silently or should I come and beat you?” – and children understand when the mother really means. So he understood. He sat there, but he told her that, ”I am sitting outsidedly, but inside I am still running.”

You can force your mind to sit outwardly; inside it will go on running. In fact, it will run faster because mind resists control. Everybody resists control. No, that is not the way. You can kill yourself in that way but you cannot attain to the eternal life. That is a sort of crippling. When Buddha is sitting silently there is no inward running, no. In fact, inside he has become silent, and that silence has overflown to his outside, not the reverse.

You try to force yourself to be silent on the outside, and you think that by silencing the outside, the inner will become silent. You simply don’t understand the science of silence. Inside if you are silent, the outside will be overflowed by it. It simply follows the inside. The periphery follows the center, but you cannot make th center follow the periphery – that is impossible. So always remember the whole religious search is from the inside towards the outside, and not vice-versa.

WHEN THE ACTIVITY OF THE MIND IS UNDER CONTROL, THE MIND BECOMES LIKE PURE

CRYSTAL.

When there is perfect silence, you are rooted and centered inside, just watching whatsoever is happening. The birds are singing, the noise will be heard; the traffic is there on the road, the noise will be heard. And just the same, your inner traffic of the mind is there – words, thoughts, an inner talk. The traffic will be heard but you sit silently, not doing anything – a subtle indifference. You just look indifferently. You don’t bother this way or that; whether thoughts come or not, it is the same for you. You are neither interested for nor interested against. You simply sit and the traffic of the mind goes on. If you can sit indifferently... will be difficult, will take time – but once you know the knack of being indifferent... It is not a technique, it is a knack. A technique can be learned, a knack cannot be learned. You have simply to sit and feel it. A technique can be taught, a knack cannot be taught; you have simply to sit and feel. Someday in the right moment when you are silent, suddenly you know how it happened, how you became indifferent. Even for a single moment the traffic was there and you were indifferent, and suddenly the distance was vast between you and your mind. The mind was at the other end of the world. That distance shows that you were at the center at that moment. If you have come to feel the knack, then anytime, anywhere, you can simply slip out to the center. You can drop in and immediately an indifference, a vast indifference surrounds you. In that indifference you remain untouched by the mind. You become the master.

Indifference is the way to become the master, and the mind is controlled. Then what happens?

When you are at the center, the confusion of the mind disappears. The confusion is because you are at the periphery. Mind is not really the confusion; mind plus you at the periphery is the confusion.

When you move inwards, by and by, you see that mind is losing its confusion. Things are settling, things are falling in line. A certain order arises.

THE MIND BECOMES LIKE PURE CRYSTAL.

All the disturbance, confusion, criss-crossing thought currents, they all settle. This is very difficult to understand that because of you at the periphery is the whole confusion. And you, in your wisdom, are trying to settle the confusion by remaining there at the periphery.

I have been talking about a small story many times: Buddha is moving on a road and it is noon and it is very hot and he feels thirsty. And he says to his disciple Ananda that, ”You go back. We crossed a small stream just two, three miles back. You bring some water for me.” So Buddha rests under a tree, Ananda goes to the stream. But now it is difficult because just when he was reaching near it, few bullock carts passed across the stream. The stream is very shallow and small. Because of the bullock carts passing it, it has become dirty. All the dirt that was settled underneath has surfaced –

old dry leaves, and every type of dirt is there. The water is not drinkable. Ananda tries the same as you would try – he entered the stream and tried to settle things so that the water can become clean again. He dirtied it more. What to do? He came back and he said, ”That water is not drinkable, and I know a certain river ahead. I will go and fetch water from there.” But Buddha insisted; he said, ”You go back. I want the water from that stream.” When Buddha insists, what Ananda can do?

Reluctantly he went again. Suddenly he understood the point, because by the time he reached half the dirt has settled again. Without anybody trying to settle it, on its own accord it has settled. He understood the point.

Then he sat under a tree and watched the stream flow by because half the dirt is still there, few dry leaves are still on the surface. He waited. He waited and watched and he did nothing, and soon the water was crystal clear, the dead leaves have gone and the dirt has gone back to the bottom. He came running and dancing. He fell in Buddha’s feet and he said, ”I understood – and that’s what I have been doing with my mind my whole life. Now I will just sit under a tree and let the stream of mind pass by, let it settle itself. Now I will not jump in the stream and try to make things... try to bring an order.”

Nobody can bring order to the mind. The very bringing of the order creates chaos. If you can watch and wait, and you can look indifferently, things settle by themselves. There is a certain law: things cannot remain unsettled for a long time. This law you have to remember. It is one of the foundations, very fundamental, that things cannot remain unsettled in a state for long because unsettled state is not natural. It is unnatural. A settled state of things is natural; an unsettled state of things is not natural. So the unnatural can happen for a time being, but it cannot remain forever. In your hurry, in your impatience, you may make things worse.

In Japan they have a certain method, in Zen monasteries, for treating mad people. In the West they have not yet been able to find anything. They are still groping in the dark. Even ordinary crazy people seem to be beyond help. And psychoanalysis takes three years, five years, seven years.

And then too, nothing much comes out of it. You dig the whole Himalaya and you don’t find even a mouse coming out of it. So only very rich people can afford it, as a luxury. Psychoanalysis is a luxury. People brag about it, that they have been psychoanalyzed by a very great psychoanalyst –

for five years continuously they were psychoanalyzed, as if it is something of an attainment – and nothing happens. People go from one psychoanalyst to another.

In Japan they have a very simple method. If somebody goes mad he is brought to the monastery.

They have a very small cottage separate from the monastery, in a corner. The man is left there.

Nobody takes much interest in him – never take much interest in a madman, because interest becomes the food – a madman wants the attention of the whole world; that’s why he is mad. In the first place, he is mad because he demands attention. That has led him to madness.

So nobody takes much... They care, but they don’t give attention. They give him food and they make him comfortable, but nobody goes to talk to him. Even the people who will bring food and other needs will not talk to him. He is not allowed to talk because mad people like talking. In fact, too much talking has led them to this state.

It is just the opposite of psychoanalysis: psychoanalyst goes on talking and he allows the patient to talk for hours, and the mad people enjoy it very much – and somebody so attentively listening – it is beautiful!

Nobody talks in the Zen monastery to the madman. Nobody pays any attention, any special attention. In a subtle indifference, they take care, that’s all. For three weeks nobody talks to him, and because nobody talks he can talk to himself, that’s all. And he relaxes, sits or silently lies down on the bed, and does nothing – no treatment in fact – and within three weeks he is completely okay.

Now the western psychoanalysts have become interested, because this is impossible – just leaving the madman to himself. But this is the Buddhist attitude, the attitude of the yogis: to leave things, because nothing can remain unsettled for long if you leave it to itself. If you don’t leave it, it can remain unsettled for long because you will be continuously unsettling it again and again.

Nature abhors chaos. Nature loves order. Nature is all for order, so chaos can only be a temporary state. If you can understand this, then don’t do anything with the mind. Let this mad mind be left to itself. You simply watch. Don’t pay any attention. Remember: in watching and in paying attention there is a difference. When you pay attention, you are too much interested. When you simply watch, you are indifferent.

Upeksha, Buddha calls: indifference – absolute total indifference. Just sitting by the side, and the river flows by and things settle and dirt goes back to the bottom i, and the dry leaves have flown.

Suddenly, the stream is crystal clear.

This is what Patanjali says:

WHEN THE ACTIVITY OF THE MIND IS UNDER CONTROL, THE MIND BECOMES LIKE PURE

CRYSTAL...

And when the mind becomes like pure crystal, three things are reflected in it.

... REFLECTING EQUALLY, WITHOUT DISTORTION, THE PERCEIVER, THE PERCEPTION, AND THE PERCEIVED

... the object, the subject, and the relation between the two.

When the mind is perfectly clear, has become an order, is no more a confusion, things have settled, three things are reflected in it. It becomes a mirror, a three dimensional mirror. The outside world, the world of objects is reflected. The inside world, the world of subjectivity, consciousness, is reflected.

And the relationship – and between the two, the perception... and without distortion.

It is because of you meddling too much in the mind the distortion comes in. What is the distortion?

Mind is a simple mechanism, just like the eyes; you look through the eyes and the world is reflected.

But the eyes have only one dimension: they can reflect only the world, they cannot reflect you. The mind is a very three dimensional phenomenon, very deep. It reflects all, and without distortion.

Ordinarily it distorts. Whenever you see a thing, if you are not different from the mind the thing will be distorted. You will see something else. You will mix your perception in it, your ideas. You will not look at it in a purity of vision. You will look with the ideas, and your ideas will become projected on it.

In an African tribe if you are born, you think that thin lips are not beautiful; thick... In many African tribes they go on making lips thicker and thicker. They make all devices to make the lips thicker and thicker, particularly women, because thick lips are beautiful that is the idea. In the whole history of the race they have maintained it. If a girl is born with a thin lip, she feels inferior.

In India they love thin lips. If they are a little thicker you are thought ugly. And these ideas go inside the mind, and these ideas become so deep-rooted that they distort your vision. Neither thin lips nor thick lips are beautiful nor ugly. Beautiful and ugly are in fact distortions. They are your ideas, and then you mix them in the reality.

There have existed tribes which don’t value gold at all. When they don’t value gold at all, they are not gold-obsessed. Then the whole world is there, gold-obsessed: just the idea and the gold becomes very valuable

In the world of things, reality, nothing is more valuable or less valuable. Valuation is brought by the mind, by you. Nothing is beautiful, nothing is ugly. Things are as they are. In their suchness they exist. But when you are on the surface and get mixed with the ideas, and you start saying, This is my idea of beauty. This is my idea of truth” – then everything is distorted.

When you move to the center and the mind is left alone, and you watch from the center at the mind, you are no more identified with it. By and by, all ideas disappear. Mind becomes crystal clear. And in the mirror three dimensional mirror of the mind, the whole is reflected: the object, the subject, and the perception, the perceiver, the perception, and the perceived.

SAVITARKA SAMADHI IS THE SAMADHI IN WHICH THE YOGI IS STILT UNABLE TO

DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE

REAL KNOWLEDGE, KNOWLEDGE BASED ON WORDS, AND KNOWLEDGE BASED ON

REASONING OR SENSE PERCEPTIONS, WHICH ALL REMAIN IN THE MIND IN A MIXED

STATE.

There are two types of samadhis: one Patanjali calls savitarka, the other he calls nirvikalpa, or nirvitarka. These are two states. First one achieves savitarka samadhi, that is, the logical mind is still functioning – samadhi, yet based on the rational attitude – the reason is still functioning, you are making discriminations. This is not the highest samadhi, just the first step. But that too is very, very difficult because that too will need a little going towards the center.

Just for example: the periphery is there, where you are right now, and the center is there, where I am right now, and between the two, just in the middle, is savitarka samadhi. It means you have moved away from the surface, but you have not reached the center yet. You have moved away from the surface, but still the center is far away. Just in the middle you are; still something of the old is functioning, and something of the new has entered – halfway. And what will be the situation of this halfway state of consciousness?

SAVITARKA SAMADHI IS THE SAMADHI IN WHICH THE YOGI IS STILL UNABLE TO

DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE REAL KNOWLEDGE...

He will not be able yet to differentiate what is real because the real can be known only from the center. There is no other way to know it. He cannot know what is real knowledge. Something of the real is filtering in, because he has moved from the surface, has come closer to the center, not yet centered, yet has come closer. Something of the center is filtering in – some perceptions, some glimpses of the center, but the old mind still is there, not completely gone. A distance is there but the old mind still goes on functioning. The yogi is still unable to differentiate between the real knowledge...

Real knowledge is that knowledge when the mind does not distort at all, when the mind has completely disappeared in a sense. It has become so transparent that whether it is there or not makes no difference. Ir t e mid-state, the yogi is in a very deep confusion. The confusion comes: something from the real, something from his knowledge that he has gathered in the past from words, scriptures, teachers – that too there. Something from his own reasoning what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false, and something from his sense perceptions – eyes, ears, nose

– everything Is there, mixed.

This is the state where the yogi can go mad. If there is nobody to take care in this state, the yogi can go mad because so many dimensions meeting and such a great confusion and chaos... It is a greater chaos than he was ever in when he was on the surface, because something new has come in.

From the center now some glimpses are coming towards him, and he cannot know whether it is coming from the knowledge that he has gathered from the scriptures. Sometimes he suddenly feels aham brahamasmi ”I am God.” Now he is unable to differentiate whether this is coming from the Upanishad that he has been reading, or he himself has reasoned it out. It is a rational conclusion that, ”I am part of the whole and the whole is God, so of course I am God”... whether it is a logical syllogism or it is coming from sense perceptions.

Because sometimes, when you are very quiet and the doors of the senses are clear, this feeling arises of being a go. Listening to music, suddenly you are no more a human being. If your ears are ready and if you have the musical perception, suddenly you are elevated to a different plane. Making love to a woman you love – suddenly, in the peak of the orgasm, you feel you have become a god. It can happen through sense perceptions It can happen through reasoning. It may be coming from the Upanishads, from the scriptures you have been reading, or it may be coming from the center. And the man who is in the middle doesn’t know from where it is coming. From all the directions millions of things are happening – strange, unknown, known. One can be in a real mess.

That’s why schools are needed where many people are working. Because these are not the only three points. Between the periphery and the center, there are many. A school means where many people of many categories live together. Just a school: the first grade people are there, the second grade people are there, the third grade people are there; the primary school, the middle school, the high school, then the university. A perfect school is from the kindergarten to the university.

Somebody exists there at the very end, on the center, who becomes the center of the school.

And then many people, because they can be helpful... you can help somebody who is just behind you. A person from the high school can come to the primary school and teach. A small boy from the primary school can go to the kindergarten and help. A school means: from the periphery to the center, there are many stages, many points. A school means: where all types of people exist together in a deep harmony, as a family from the very first to the very last, from the beginning to the very end, from the alpha to the omega. Much help is possible that way, because you can help somebody who is behind you. You can say to him, ”Don’t be worried. Just go on. This comes and settles by itself. Don’t get too much involved in it. Remain indifferent. It comes and it goes

– somebody to stretch a hand to help you. And a Master is needed who can look through all the stages, from the very top to the very valley, who can have a total perception of all the possibilities.

Otherwise, in this stage of savitarka samadhi, many become mad. Or, many become so scared they run away from the center and start clinging to the periphery, because there is at least some type of order. At least the unknown doesn’t enter there, the strange doesn’t come there. You are familiar; strangers don’t knock at your door.

But one who has reached to savitarka samadhi if he goes back to the periphery, nothing will be solved never he can be the same again; never he can belong to the periphery now, so that is not of much help. He will never be a part of the periphery. And he will be there more and more confused, because once you have known something, how can you help yourself not to know it? Once you have known, you have known. You can avoid, you can close your eyes, but it is still there and it will haunt you your whole life.

If the school is not there and a Master is not there you will become a very problematic case. In the world you cannot belong, the market doesn’t make any sense to you; and beyond the world you are afraid to move.

SAVITARKA SAMADHI IS THE SAMADHI IN WHICH THE YOGI IS STILL UNABLE TO

DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE REAL KNOWLEDGE, KNOWLEDGE BASED ON WORDS, AND

KNOWLEDGE BASED ON REASONING OR SENSE PERCEPTIONS, WHICH ALL REMAIN IN

THE MIND IN A MIXED STATE.

Nirvitarka samadhi is reaching to the center: logic disappears, scriptures are no more meaningful, sense perceptions cannot deceive you. When you are at the center, suddenly everything is self-evidently true. This word has to be understood – ”self-evidently true”. Truths are there on the periphery, but they are never self-evident. Some proof is needed, some reasoning is needed. If you say something, you have to prove it. If on the periphery you say ”God is,” you will have to prove it, to yourself, to others. On the center God is, self-evidently. You don’t need any proof. What proof is needed when your eyes are open and you can see the sun rising? But for a man who is blind, proof is needed. What proof is needed when you are in love? You know it is there; it is self-evident.

Others may demand proof. How can you give them any proof? The man at the center becomes the proof; he doesn’t give any proof. Whatsoever he knows is self-evident. It is so. He has not reached towards it as a conclusion of a reasoning. It is not a syllogism, he has not concluded; simply it is so.

He has known.

That’s why in Upanishads there are no proofs, in Patanjali there are no proofs. Patanjali simply describes, gives no proof. This is the difference: when a man knows, he simply describes; when a man doesn’t know, first he proves that it is so. Those who have known, they simply give the description of that unknown. They don’t give any proofs.

In the West, Christian saints have given proofs for God. In the East, we laugh about it because it is ridiculous. Man trying to prove God is ridiculous. How can you prove? And when you prove something like God, you invite people to disprove it. And because of these Christian saints who try to prove God, the whole West became by and by anti-God, because people always can disprove.

Logic is a double-edged sword; it cuts both the ways. If you prove anything, it can be disproved, it can be argued against. Because of Christian saints who try to prove God, the whole West has become atheistic. In the East, we have never tried, we have never given any proof. Look at the Upanishads – not a single proof exists. They simply say, ”God is.” If you want to know, you can know. If you don’t want to know, it is your choice. But there is no proof for it.

That state is nirvitarka samadhi, samadhi without any reasoning. That samadhi becomes for the first time existential. But that also is not the last. One more final step exists. We will be talking about it later on.

CHAPTER 4

The un-minding of being

4 March 1975 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

Question 1

YOU SAID THAT NATURE ABHORS DISORDER, AND DISORDER SETTLES ITSELF

AUTOMATICALLY IN DUE TIME.

THEN WHY HAS THE WORLD ALWAYS BEEN IN CHAOS AND DISORDER?

THE WORLD has never been in chaos and disorder, only the mind. The world is absolutely orderly.

It is not a chaos, it is a cosmos. Only the mind is always in chaos, and will always be in chaos.

Something has to be understood: the very nature of the mind is to be in chaos because it is a transitory stage. From nature to supernature mind is just a transition. No transitory stage can be in order. How it can be in order? When you move from one stage to another, the inbetween is bound to be in chaos.

There is no way to put the mind in order. When you are transcending nature and moving into supernature, changing from the outer to the inner, changing from the material to the spiritual, there is bound to be a gap between the two when you are nowhere, when you don’t belong to this world and you yet don’t belong to the other. This is the chaos – this has been left, and death has not been achieved yet. In the middle, everything is a disorder. And if you remain in the middle, then you will be always in chaos. Mind has to be transcended. It is not something to live with.

It is like a bridge: it has to be crossed, the other shore has to be attained. And you have made a house on the bridge. You have started to live on the bridge. You have become attached to the mind.

You are in a trap because you are nowhere. And how can you settle in the land of nowhere?

The past will go on inviting you, ”Come back, come back to the shore you have left.” And there is no going back because you cannot move in time backwards. There is only one going, and that is forward, ahead. The past goes on having deep influence on you because you are on the bridge, and even the past seems to be better than to be on the bridge. Even a small hut is better than to be on the bridge. At least it is a house; you are not on the road.

Continuously the past of human beings, the animalhood, has an appeal. It says, ”Regress back.” It says, ”There is no going away.” The animal within you goes on calling you, ”Come back.” And it has appeal, because compared to the bridge it is better. But you cannot go back. Once a step has been taken it cannot be undone. Once you move ahead, you cannot go back. You can cherish the dream and you can waste your energy, the same energy which would have led you ahead.

But going back is not possible. How can a young man become a child again? And how an old man can become a young man again? That’s not possible, even if biologically some day it becomes feasible that science helps your body to become young again. That’s possible because man is very cunning, and it can deceive the cells of the body. It can give them a new program and they can regress, but your mind will remain old. Your body may become young, but how you can become young? All that you have experienced will be with you. It cannot be thrown back.

One cannot regress. The shore that is left is left forever. You cannot become an animal again. It is better to drop that appeal and infatuation of going back. The sooner you drop it, the better. Man enjoys things which give him a feeling of the past, of animal-hood. That’s why sex has so much appeal. That’s why people become food addicts, go on eating, obsessed with food. That’s why greed, anger, jealousy, hate have appeal: they belong to the animal kingdom. There is the shore that you have left, the shore of the animal kingdom, and there is another shore that you have not yet reached, not even in your dreams – the kingdom of God. And between these two, you stand in the mind. You cannot go back. It is difficult to move ahead because the past goes on pulling you and the future remains unknown, vague, like a mist. The other shore you cannot see; it is not visible not that it is very far away. The shore that you have left is visible. The other shore that you are approaching is invisible by its very nature – not that it is very far away; that’s why it is invisible. Even when you have attained to it, it will remain invisible. That is its nature.

The animal is too much visible. Where is God? Has anybody ever seen God? – nobody. Because it is not a question of your seeing or not seeing. God is invisibility, the very unknowability, the very incomprehensibility. Those who have attained they also say they have not seen, and they have attained!

Because God cannot be an object. It is the deepest depth of your own being. How can you see it?

The shore that you have left is in the outside world, and the shore that you are approaching is in the inside world. The shore that you have left was objective; the shore that you are approaching is subjective. It is the very subjectivity of your being. You cannot objectify it. You cannot see it. It is nothing which can be reduced to an object and you can see it. It is the seer, not the seen. It is the knower, not the known. It is you in your deepest core of being.

The mind cannot go back, and cannot comprehend where to go ahead. It remains in chaos, always uprooted, always moving, not knowing where, always ongoing. The mind is a search. When the goal is attained only then the search disappears.

Remember: look at the world; it is a cosmos. The sun rises every morning without fault, infallibly.

And the night follows day, and again day follows night. And in the night sky, millions and millions of stars move on their path. Seasons follow each other. If man is not there, where is chaos? Everything is as it should be: the ocean will go on roaring and the sky will go on again and again being filled by clouds, and the rain will come, and the winter, and the summer, and everything moves in a perfect wheel. There is no chaos anywhere except within you, because the nature is settled wherever it is.

The nature is not progressing anywhere. In nature there is no evolution. In God also, there is no evolution. The nature is happy in its unconsciousness, and God is blissful in his consciousness.

You are in trouble between the two. You are tense. Neither are you unconscious, nor are you conscious – just hovering like a ghost. You are not anchored anywhere. Without any roots, without any home, how the mind can be at ease? It seeks, gropes – finds nothing. Then more and more you get worked up, more and more frustrated, more and more irritated. What is happening to you?

You are in a rut. This will continue unless you learn something which can un-mind you, which can void the mind.

That is what meditation is all about. Meditation is a way of un-minding your being, of dropping the mind, of moving from the bridge, moving into the unknown, taking a jump into the mysterious. That’s why I say don’t calculate, because calculation is of the mind. That’s why I say the spiritual search is not step by step; spiritual search is a sudden jump. It is courage, it is not calculation. It is not of the intellect, because intellect is part of the mind. It is more of the heart.

But deeper you go, the more you will feel it is even beyond the heart. It is neither of thinking nor of feeling. It is deeper and total, more existential than both. Once you start working how to attain no-mind, only then, by and by, peace will settle on you. By and by a silence will descend, and a music will be heard – the music of the unknown, the music of the unuttered. Then everything is in order again. It is the passage of the mind, and it has to be so because you drop the past where you were settled and rooted, and you move into a new future where you will be again settled and rooted.

But in the middle is man. Man is not a being, man is a passage. Man is not something; man is only a journey, a rope stretched between nature and supernature. That’s why he is tense. If you remain human, you will remain tense. Either you have to fall to the level of below human, or you have to raise yourself to the level of the beyond human.

Only humanity is in chaos. Look at the nature – the crows caw, the sparrows twitter, and everything is perfect. There is no problem in nature. Problem comes into existence with human mind, and problem dissolves when the human mind dissolves. So don’t try to solve the problem of life by the mind itself. It cannot be done. That is the most foolish thing one can do. Understand that mind is a bridge – watch it. It is not eternal, it is momentary.

It is just like when you change a house: the old house was settled; everything was in its place. Then you change the house, then the furniture, then the clothes then the things that... Everything that was settled is unsettled, and you move into a new house. Everything is a chaos. You have to fix it again. When you are changing a house, the one house you lived always, and the other house you have not reached; you are just on the way in a lorry with all your luggage.

This is what mind is: it is not a house, it is just a passage to be passed. And once you understand this something of the beyond has penetrated in you. Understanding is of the beyond; it is not of the mind. Knowledge is of the mind. Understanding is not of the mind. Watch why you are in a chaos and an understanding will start dawning upon you.

The second question:

Question 2

AFTER WORKING WITH THE CATHARTIC TECHNIQUES FOR A FEW YEARS, I FEEL THAT A DEEP INNER HARMONY, BALANCE AND CENTERING IS HAPPENING TO ME. BUT YOU SAID

THAT BEFORE ENTERING INTO THE FINAL STAGE OF SAMADHI, ONE PASSES THROUGH A GREAT CHAOS.

HOW DO I KNOW IF I AM FINISHED WITH THE CHAOTIC STAGE?

First: hundreds of lives you have lived in a chaos. It is nothing new. It is very old. Secondly, the dynamic methods of meditation which have catharsis as their foundation allow all chaos within you to be thrown out. That’s the beauty of these techniques. You cannot sit silently, but you can do the dynamic or the chaotic meditations very easily. Once the chaos is thrown out, a silence starts happening to you. Then you can sit silently. If rightly done, continuously done, then the cathartic techniques of meditation will simply dissolve all your chaos into the outside world. You will not need to pass through a mad stage. That’s the beauty of these techniques. The madness is being thrown out already. It is in-built in the technique.

But if you sit silently as Patanjali will suggest... Patanjali has no cathartic methods; it seems they were not needed in his time. People were naturally very silent, peaceful, primitive. The mind was yet not functioning too much. People slept well, lived like animals. They were not very much thinking, logical, rational... more centered in the heart, as even now primitive people are. And life was such that it allowed many catharses automatically.

For example a woodcutter: he need not have any catharsis because just by cutting the wood, all his murderous instincts are thrown out. Cutting wood is like murdering a tree. A stone breaker need not do cathartic meditation. The whole day he is doing it. But for the modern man things have changed.

Now you live in such comfort that there is no possibility of any catharsis in your life, except you can drive in a mad way.

That’s why in the West more people die every year through car accidents than by anything else.

That is the greatest disease. Neither by cancer nor by tuberculosis... no other disease takes such a toll of lives as car driving. In the Second World War, in one year millions of people died. More people die every year around the earth just by mad car drivers.

You may have observed if you are a driver, that whenever you are angry you go fast. You go on pushing the accelerator, you simply forget about the brake. When you are very hateful, irritated, the car becomes a medium of expression. Otherwise you live in such a comfort, doing less and less anything with the body, living more and more in the mind.

Those who know about the deeper centers of brain say that people who work with their hands have less anxiety, less tension, they sleep well. Because your hands are connected with the deepest mind, the deepest center of the brain... your right hand with the left brain, your left hand with the right brain. When you work with the hands, the energy is flowing from the head into the hands and being released. People who are working with their hands don’t need catharsis. But people who work with their heads need much catarsis because they accumulate much energy, and there is no way in their body, no opening for it to go out. It goes on and on inside the mind; the mind goes mad.

But in our culture and society – in the office, in the factory, in the market – people who work with heads are known as heads: head-clerk, or head-superintendent, and people who work with hands are known as hands, condemnatory. The very word ”hands” has become condemnatory.

When Patanjali was working on these sutras, the world was totally different. People were hands.

There was no need for catharsis specifically. Life was itself a catharsis. Then they could sit silently very easily. But you cannot sit. Hence, I have been inventing cathartic methods. Only after them can you sit silently, not before.

AFTER WORKING WITH THE CATHARTIC TECHNIQUES FOR A FEW YEARS, I FEEL THAT A DEEP INNER HARMONY, BALANCE, AND CENTERING IS HAPPENING TO ME.

Now don’t create a trouble; let it happen. Now the mind is poking its nose. The mind says, ”How it can happen? First I must pass through chaos.” This idea can create chaos. This has been my observation: that people hanker for silence, and when it starts happening, they can’t believe it. It is too good to be true. And particularly people who have condemned themselves always cannot believe that it is happening to them: ”Impossible! It may have happened to a Buddha or to a Jesus, but to me? No, it is not possible.” They come to me; they are so much disturbed by silence, that it is happening: ”Is it true, or I am imagining it?” Why bother? Even if it is an imagination, it is better than imagining anger, it is better than imagining sex, lust.

And I tell you, nobody can imagine silence. Imagination needs some form; silence has no form.

Imagination means thinking in images, and silence has no image. You cannot imagine it. There is no possibility. You cannot imagine enlightenment, you cannot imagine satori, samadhi, silence, no.

Imagination needs some base, some form, and silence is formless, indefinable. Nobody has ever painted a picture of it; nobody can paint. Nobody has carved an image of it; nobody can do it.

You cannot imagine silence. The mind is playing tricks. The mind will say, ”It must be imagination.

How can it be possible for you, such a stupid man that you are, and silence happening to you? –

must be you are imagining.” Or, ”This guy Rajneesh has hypnotized you. You must be somewhere deceived.” Don’t create such problems. Life has enough problems. When silence is happening, enjoy it, celebrate it. It means the chaotic forces have been thrown out. The mind is playing its last game. It plays to the very end; to the very, very end it goes on playing. At the last moment of enlightenment, when it is just going to happen, then too the mind plays the last, because it is the last battle.

Don’t worry about it, whether it is real or unreal, or whether chaos will come after it or not. Because by thinking in this way you have already brought the chaos, and it is your idea which can create chaos. And when it is created, the mind will say, ”Now listen, I had told you before.”

Mind is very self-fulfilling. First it gives you a seed and when it sprouts the mind says, ”Look, I was telling you beforehand that you are deceived.” The chaos has come, and it has been brought by the idea. So why bother about the future, whether the chaos is still to come or not, or whether it has passed or not? Right this moment, you are silent – why not celebrate it? And I tell you, if you celebrate, it grows.

In this world of consciousness, nothing is so helpful as celebration. Celebration is like watering a plant. Worry is just the opposite of celebration; it is just like cutting the roots. Feel happy! Dance with your silence. This moment it is there – enough. Why ask for more? Tomorrow will take care of itself. This moment is too much; why not live it, celebrate it, share it, enjoy it? Let it become a song, a dance, a poetry; let it be creative. Let your silence be creative; do something with it.

Millions of things are possible because nothing is more creative than silence. No need to become a very great painter, world-famous, a Picasso. No need to become a Henry Moore; no need to become a great poet. Those ambitions of being great are of the mind, not of the silence. In your own way, howsoever small, paint. In your own way, howsoever small, make a haiku. In your own way, howsoever small, sing a song, dance a little, celebrate, and you will find the next moment brings more silence. And once you know that the more you celebrate, the more is given to you, the more you share – the more you become capable of receiving it. Each moment it goes on growing, growing. And the next moment is always born out of this moment, so why worry about it? If this moment is silent, how the next moment can be chaos? From where will it come? It is going to be born out of this moment. If I am happy this moment, how in the next moment I can be unhappy?

If you want the next moment to be unhappy, you will have to become unhappy in this moment, because out of unhappiness, unhappiness is born; out of happiness, happiness is born. Whatsoever you want to reap in the next moment, you will have to sow right now. Once the worry is allowed and you start thinking that chaos will come, it will come; you have already brought it. Now you will have to crop it; it has already come. No need to wait for the next moment; it is already there.

Remember this, and this is really something strange: when you are sad you never think that it may be imaginary. Never I have come across a man who is sad and who says to me that maybe it is just imaginary. Sadness is perfectly real. But happiness? – immediately something goes wrong and you start thinking, ”Maybe it is imaginary.” Whenever you are tense, you never think it is imaginary. If you can think that your tension and anguish is imaginary, it will disappear. And if you think your silence and happiness is imaginary, it will disappear.

Whatsoever is taken as real, becomes real. Whatsoever is taken as unreal, becomes unreal. You are the creator of your whole world around you; remember this. So rare it is to achieve a moment of happiness, bliss – don’t waste it in thinking. But if you don’t do anything, the possibility of worry is there. If you don’t do anything... if you don’t dance, if you don’t sing, if you don’t share, the possibility is there. The very energy that could have been creative will create the worry. It will start creating new tensions inside.

Energy has to be creative. If you don’t use it for happiness, the same energy will be used for unhappiness. And for unhappiness you have so deep-rooted habits the energy flow is very loose and natural. For happiness it is an uphill task.

So for few days you will have to be constantly aware, and whenever there is a moment, let it grip you, possess you, and enjoy it in such a totality... how the next moment can be different? From where it will be different? From where it will come?

Your time is created within you. Your time is not my time. There exist as many times parallel as there are minds. There is not one time. If there is one time, then there will be difficulty. Then amidst the whole miserable human-kind, nobody can become a Buddha because we belong to the same time.

No, it is not the same. My time comes from me – it is my creativity. If this moment is beautiful, the next moment is born more beautiful – this is my time. If this moment is sad for you, then a sadder moment is born out of you – that is your time. Parallel millions of lines of time exist. And there are few people who exist without time – those who have attained to no-mind. They have no time because they don’t think about past; it is gone, so only fools think about it. When something is gone, it is gone.

There is a Buddhist mantra: gate, gate, paragate – swaha, ”Gone, gone, absolutely gone; let it go to the fire.” The past is gone, the future has not come yet. Why worry about it? When it comes, we will see. You will be there to encounter it, so why worry about it? The gone Is gone, the not-come has not come yet. Only this moment is left, pure, intense with energy. Live it! If it is silence, be grateful.

If it is blissful, thank God, trust it. And if you can trust, it will grow. If you distrust, you have already poisoned it.

The third question:

Question 3

YOU SAID THAT ALL DOINGS ON OUR PART WILL CREATE MORE PROBLEMS, AND WE

SHOULD WATCH AND WAIT AND RELAX AND LET THINGS SETTLE BY THEMSELVES.

THEN HOW IS IT THAT YOGA IS FULL OF HUNDREDS OF TECHNIQUES AND EXERCISES?

Because of you! It is not because of Patanjali, it is because of you. You cannot believe that the ultimate can’t happen to you without any doing on your part – you cannot believe! You need something to do. Just like children need toys to play with, you need techniques to play with. And because you cannot believe that God is so easy and so immediately possible, techniques have to be devised. Those techniques will not lead you to God. Those techniques will not help you to reach to the ultimate. Then what they will do? – they will simply show your foolishness to you and one day, suddenly realizing what you are doing, techniques drop, and God is there. The God has always been there. It is because of you; you demand.

People come to me, and if I say to them that there is no need to do anything, they say, ”Still...

something. At least some mantra you can give so we can chant it.” They say, ”Just sitting silently is impossible – we have to do something.” So what to do with these people? If I say to them, ”Sit silently,” they cannot sit. Then something arbitrary has to be devised. I give them something to do.

Doing it, at least they will be occupied for few hours. They will be sitting doing Ram, Ram, Ram.

At least by the help of this mantra, they will not do any harm to anybody. They will be sitting; they cannot do harm. And doing this Ram, Ram, Ram continuously, some day they will realize what they are doing.

One Zen Master went to his disciple. The disciple was a real authentic seeker, and he was continuously doing meditation and he has attained to the last point where meditation has to be dropped. All techniques have to be dropped. They are just toys, because you cannot be without toys. They are supplied in the hope that someday you will realize they are just toys. You yourself will throw them and sit silently.

The Master went because now the right moment has arrived, and the disciple still goes on continuing his chanting of the mantra. He has become addicted. Now he is obsessed. He could not leave it. It is just like sometimes you find a certain line of a song goes on and on in the mind. Even if you want to drop it, you cannot drop. It haunts inside; again and again it comes. This is nothing you don’t know. When a person does a mantra for years, it is almost impossible to drop it – it becomes his very marrow – he cannot even in sleep. While he is asleep his lips you can watch doing Ram, Ram, Ram. It becomes an undercurrent. It is a toy of course, a teddy bear, but becomes so much closer that the child cannot go to sleep without it.

The Master went and just sat before the disciple, and he was sitting Buddha-like, doing his mantra.

The Master took a brick with him and started rubbing the brick on a stone: grrr, grrr, grrr. He went on and on just like a mantra. First the disciple resisted the temptation to look who is doing this disturbance, but then he went on and on; hours passed. The disciple opened his eyes and said

”What are you doing?” The Master says, ”I am trying to polish this brick, to make a mirror out of it.”

The disciple said, ”You are stupid. I never thought that you, a man who has a reputation of being enlightened, should do such a foolish thing. The brick will never become a mirror, howsoever hard you may rub it on the stone. It may disappear completely, but it will not become a mirror. You stop this nonsense!” The Master laughed and said, ”You also stop, because howsoever you rub the brick of the mind, it will never become the innermost self. It may get polished and polished and polished, but still it will not become your inner reality.”

Mind has to be dropped. Meditation, techniques, are a trick to help that dropping, and then meditation also has to be dropped. Otherwise, that becomes your mind. It is just like there is a thorn in your feet, and you get another thorn to take the first thorn out of your feet. The second thorn helps, but the second thorn is as much a thorn as the first. The second is not a flower. And when the first has been taken out by the help of the second, what you will do? Will you put the second in the wound because this helped so much and this thorn was so great you have to worship it? Will you worship the second thorn? No, you will throw them both together.

This has to be remembered: mind is a thorn; all techniques are thorns to bring the first thorn out.

Meditation is also a thorn. When the first thorn is out, then both have to be thrown together. Even if for a single moment you miss, then the second thorn will be in the place of the first thorn, and you will be in the same trouble.

That’s why a Master is needed who can tell you, ”Now is the right moment. Drop this meditation and this foolish business.” Unless meditation disappears, meditation has not been attained. When meditation becomes useless, only then for the first time you have become a meditator. Techniques have been invented for you because you already had a thorn. Already the thorn is there. Some device is needed to bring it out. But always remember, never forget: the second thorn is as much a thorn as the first, and both have to be thrown.

That’s why so much importance is given to a Master and to live with a Master, because you will not be able to know. When the mind drops, immediately the meditation becomes the mind and you are again occupied. In an unoccupied state when there is neither mind nor meditation, in that total unoccupied state of mind, the ultimate happens – never before.

It happened that a great Zen Master, before he was enlightened and has not become a Zen Master and was seeking and searching, went to his Master, and the Master was always saying to people,

”Meditate more, meditate more.” Whosoever will come will get the same advice, ”Meditate more, bring more energy to it.” So this disciple has done whatsoever he could do. He was really doing meditation as totally as a human being can do. He went to see the Master; the Master shrugged his shoulders seeing him, his face was not happy. The disciple asked, ”What is the matter? If you say to do more, I will try. But why you are so sad looking at me? Do you feel I am a hopeless case?”

The Master says, ”No, just the reverse – you are doing too much. Do a little less. You are altogether too filled with meditation and Zen. Just a little less will do.”

One can be obsessed with meditation, and obsession is the problem. You were obsessed with money, now you are obsessed with meditation. Money is not the problem, obsession is the problem.

You were obsessed with the market, now you are obsessed with God. Market is not the problem...

obsession. One should be loose and natural and not obsessed with anything neither mind nor meditation. Only then, unoccupied unobsessed, when you are simply flowing, the ultimate happens to you.

The fourth question:

Question 4

YOU TALK ABOUT LOVE AND HOW GOOD IT IS TO MEDITATE UPON IT, BUT FEAR IS MUCH

CLOSER TO MY REALITY. WOULD YOU TALK TO US ABOUT FEAR AND WHAT ATTITUDE

SHOULD WE HAVE TOWARDS IT?

The first thing: fear is the other side of love. If you are in love, fear disappears. If you are not in love, fear arises, tremendous fear. Only lovers are fearless. Only in a deep moment of love there is no fear. In a deep moment of love, existence becomes a home – you are not a stranger, you are not an outsider, you are accepted. Even by a single human being you are accepted, something in the depth opens – a flower-like phenomenon in the innermost being. You are accepted by someone, you are valued; you are not futile. You have a significance, a meaning. If in your life there is no love, then you will become afraid. Then there will be fear everywhere because everywhere there are enemies, no friends, and the whole existence seems to be alien; you seem to be accidental, not rooted, not at home. Even a single human being can give you such deep at-homeness in love, what to think about when a person achieves to prayer?

Prayer is the highest love; love with the total, with the whole. And those who have not loved cannot attain to prayer. Love is the first step and prayer is the last. Prayer means you love the whole and the whole loves you. When even by a single individual such deep flowering can happen within you, what to think about when the whole is felt as loving you? Prayer is you love God and God loves you.

And if love and prayer are not in your life, then only fear...

So fear in fact is the absence of love. And if fear is a problem for you, that shows to me that you are looking at the wrong side. Love should be the problem, not fear. If fear is the problem, that means you should seek love. If fear is the problem, the problem in fact is you should be more loving so somebody can be more loving to you. You should be more open towards love.

But this is the trouble: when you are in fear you are closed. You start feeling so fearful that you stop moving towards a human being. You would like to be alone. Whenever there is somebody you feel nervous, because the other looks like an enemy. And if you are so much fear-obsessed, it is a vicious circle. Absence of love creates fear in you, and now, because of fear you become closed. You become like a closed cell with no windows, because afraid anybody can come through the windows, and there are all over enemies... afraid to open the door, because when you open the door anything is possible. So even when love knocks at your door, you don’t trust.

A man or a woman who is so deep-rooted in fear is always afraid to fall in love, because then the doors will be open of the heart and the other will enter you, and the other is the enemy. Says Sartre,

”The other is hell.”

Lovers have known another reality: the other is heaven, the very paradise. Sartre must be living in a deep-rooted fear, anguish, anxiety. And Sartre has become very, very influential in the West. In fact, he should be avoided like a disease, dangerous disease. But he appeals because whatsoever he is saying, many people feel the same in their own life. That is his appeal. Depression, sadness, anguish, fear: these are the themes of Sartre, the themes of the whole movement of existentialism.

And people feel that these are their problems. And when I talk about love, of course you feel that it is not your problem; fear is your problem. But I would like to tell you love is your problem, not fear.

It is just like this: the house is dark and I talk about light, and you say, ”You go on talking about light.

Better it will be if you talk about darkness, because darkness is our problem. The house is filled with darkness. Light is not our problem.” But do you understand what you are saying? If darkness is your problem, talking about darkness won’t help. If darkness is your problem, nothing can be done about darkness directly. You cannot throw it out, you cannot push it out, you cannot put it off. Darkness is an absence. Nothing can be done about it directly. If you have to do anything, you have to do something with the light, not with darkness.

Pay more attention to light-how to find light, how to create light, how to enkindle a candle in the house. And then suddenly there is no darkness.

Remember: love is the problem, never fear. You are looking at the wrong side. And you can look at the wrong side for many lives and you will not be able to solve. Always remember absence should not be made a problem, because nothing can be done about it. Only presence should be made a problem, because then something can be done and it can be solved If fear is felt, then love is the problem. Become more loving. Take few steps towards the other.

Because everybody is in fear, not only you. You wait somebody should come to you and love you.

You can wait forever because the other is also afraid. And people who are afraid they become afraid of one thing absolutely, and that is the fear of being rejected.

If I go and knock at your door, the possibility is you may reject. That rejection will become a wound, so it is better not to go. It is better to remain alone. It is better to move on your own, not to get involved with the other because the other can reject. The moment you approach and take initiative towards love, the first fear comes whether the other will accept you or reject. The possibility is there he may reject, or she may reject.

That’s why women never take a step; they are more fearful. They always wait for the man – he should come. They always keep the possibility of rejecting or accepting with themselves. They never give the possibility to the other because they are more afraid than men. Then many women simply wait for their whole life. Nobody comes to knock at their door, because a person who is afraid becomes, in a certain way, so closed that he puts off people. Just reaching nearer, and the afraid person throws such vibrations all around that anybody who is coming closer is put off. The fearful person starts moving; even in the movements...

You talk to a woman – if you are in a certain way feeling love and affection for her, you would like to be closer and closer. You would like to stand closer and talk. But see the body, because body has its own language: the woman will be leaning backwards, not knowingly, or she may simply back. You are closing, you are coming closer and she is backing. Or if there is no possibility, there is a wall, she will lean against the wall. Not leaning forward, she is showing, ”Go away.” She is saying, ”Don’t come near me.”

People sitting, people walking – you watch. There are people who simply put off anybody; anybody who comes closer, they become afraid. And fear iS energy just like love, a negative energy. A man who is feeling love bubbles up with a positive energy. When you come closer, as if a magnet is attracting you, you would like to be with this person.

If fear is your problem, then think about your personality, watch it. You must have closed your doors for love, that’s all. Open those doors. Of course there is the possibility of being rejected. But why be afraid? The other can only say no. Fifty percent possibility of no is there, but just because of fifty percent possibility of no, you choose a hundred percent life of no love.

The possibility is there, but why worry? There are so many people. If one says no, don’t take it as a hurt don’t take it as a wound. Simply take it – it didn’t happen. Simply take it – the other person didn’t feel like moving with you. You didn’t suit to each other. You are different types. He has or she has not said no to you really; it is not personal. You didn’t fit, move ahead And it is good because the person has said no, because if you don’t fit with a person and the person says yes, then you will be in real trouble. You don’t know – the other has saved you a whole life of trouble! Thank him or her and move ahead, because all cannot suit to all.

Every individual is so unique that in fact it is so difficult to find the right person to fit with you. In a better world, sometime in the future, people will have more moveability, so people can go and find the right woman and the right man for themselves. Don’t be afraid of making errors, because if you are afraid of making errors you will not move at all, and you will miss the whole life. It is better to err than not to do. It is better to be rejected than simply remaining with yourself, afraid and not taking any initiative – because the rejection brings the possibility of acceptance; it is the other side of acceptance.

If somebody rejects, somebody will accept. One has to go on moving and finding the right person.

When right persons meet, something clicks. They are made for each other. They fit together. Not that there will not be conflicts, not that there will not be moments of anger and fight, no. If love is alive, there will be conflict also. Sometimes there will be moments of anger also. That simply shows that love is an alive phenomenon. Sometimes sadness... because wherever happiness exists, sadness is bound to be there.

Only in a marriage there is no sadness, because there is no happiness. One simply tolerates – it is an arrangement, it is a managed phenomenon. When you really move into life, then anger is also there. But when you love a person you accept the anger. When you love a person you accept his or her sadness also. Sometimes you go away just to come closer again. In fact, there is a deep mechanism: lovers fight to fall in love again and again, so they can have small honeymoons again and again and again.

Don’t be afraid of love. There is only one thing one should be afraid, and that is fear. Be afraid of fear and never be afraid of anything else, because fear cripples. It is poisonous, it is suicidal. Move!

Jump out of it! Do whatsoever you would like, but don’t get settled with the fear because that is a negative situation. And if you miss love...

To me, love is not a great problem because I look farther ahead than you. If you miss love you will miss prayer, and that is the real problem for me. To you it may not be yet a problem, because if fear is the problem, then to you even love is not yet a problem, how can you think about prayer? But I see the whole sequence of life, how it moves. If love is missed you can never pray, because prayer is cosmic love. You cannot bypass love and reach to prayer. Many people have tried, they are dead in the monasteries. All over the world many people have tried. Because of the fear, they have tried to avoid love completely, and they have been trying to find a short-cut direct from their fear to prayer.

That is what the monks have been doing all over the centuries. Christian and Hindu and Buddhist –

all monks have been doing that. They have been trying to bypass love completely. Their prayer will be false. Their prayer will have no life. Their prayer will not be heard anywhere, and the cosmos is not going to answer their prayer. They are trying to deceive the whole cosmos.

No, one has to pass through love. From fear, move into love. From love, you will move into prayer, and from prayer arises fearlessness. Without love fear; with love fearlessness, and the final fearlessness is in prayer because then even death is not a fear at all, because then there is no death. You are so deeply in tune with existence – how can fear exist?

So please don’t get obsessed with fear. Just jump out of it and take a move towards love. And don’t wait because nobody is interested in you; if you are waiting you can go on waiting. This is my observation: you cannot bypass love, otherwise, you will be committing suicide. But the love can bypass you if you are simply waiting. Move! Love should be a passion. It should be passionate, alive, vital. Only then you attract somebody to fall towards you. Dead, who bothers with you? Dead, people would like to get rid of you. Dead, you become a boring phenomenon, a boredom. All around you, you carry such dirt of boredom, that anybody who comes across you will feel that it is a misfortune.

Be loving, vital, unafraid – and move. Life has much to give to you if you are unafraid. And love has to give you more than life can give, because love is the very center of this life, and from that very center you can pass to the other shore.

I call these three steps: life, love and light. Life is already there. Love you have to attain. You can miss it because it is not given; one has to create. Life is a given phenomenon; you are already alive.

There stops natural evolution. Love you have to find. Of course there are dangers, hazards, but they all make it beautiful.

You have to find love. And when you find love, only then you can find light. Then the prayer arises.

In fact, deeply in love, the persons, the lovers, by and by start moving unconsciously towards prayer.

Because the highest moments of love are the lowest moments of prayer. Just near the boundary is prayer.

It has happened to many lovers. But lovers are very rare that while they are deep in love, suddenly they have started praying. Just sitting by each other’s side in silence, holding each other’s hand, or lying together on a beach, suddenly they have felt an urge, an urge to move beyond.

So don’t pay much attention to fear, because that is dangerous. If you pay much attention to fear you are feeding it, and it will grow. Turn your back to the fear and move towards love.

The fifth question:

Question 5

WE ARE TO STAND AND LET THE WATERS SETTLE ON THEIR OWN, WHY ALL THE ACTIVE

MEDITATIONS?

If you can sit, there is no need for meditations. In Japan, for meditation they have the word ”zazen”. It means just sitting, doing nothing. If you can sit, not doing anything, this is the ultimate in meditations.

There is no need for any other thing.

But can you sit? There is the crux of the whole problem. Can you sit? Can you just sit doing nothing?

If that is possible – just sit, do nothing – everything settles by itself, everything simply flows by itself.

You are not needed to do anything. But the problem is – can you sit?

It happened on a small hillock near a village, a man was standing. Just it was morning and the sun has arisen, and three persons had gone just for a morning walk and they looked at the man. And, as minds go, they started talking about what this man was doing there. One man suggested that he must be there looking for his cow. ”Sometimes his cow gets lost. Then he goes to the hilltop and looks for it. From there you can look on all sides.” The other man said, ”But he is not looking on all sides. He is simply standing, so that cannot be the cause. I feel he must have come for a morning walk with a friend, and the friend has been left behind, so he’s waiting for him.” The third one said,

”This is not right. Because if you are waiting for someone, sometimes you look back. He’s not looking back at all.” The third said ”I think he is meditating. And look at his robes; he is a sannyasin.

He must be meditating.” Their discussion become so hot that they said, ”Now we will have to go to the hilltop and ask this man himself, ’What are you doing here?’ ”

They walked miles to reach to the hilltop. The first man asked, ”What are you doing here? I think you have lost your cow and you are looking for it.” The man opened his eyes and he said, ”No.” The second man stepped forward and asked, ”Then I must be right. Are you waiting for somebody who has been left behind?” He said, ”No.” Then the third was happy. He said ”Then I was absolutely right. Are you meditating?” The man said, ”No.” All the three were at a loss, and they all three said,

”What are you saying? You say ’no’ to everything. Then what are you doing?” The man said, ”I am just standing here doing nothing.”

If it is possible, this is the ultimate in meditation. If it is not possible, then you will have to use techniques because through techniques only this will become possible. Through techniques, one day you will realize the whole absurdity. All techniques of meditation are just like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Meditation is absurd but one has to realize it. It is a great realization. When one realizes that his meditation is absurd, then it simply drops.

There is Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: technique-oriented, as if technique is all.

And there is

Krishnamurti, absolutely against techniques. And here I am – for techniques, and against also.

A technique leads you to a point where you can drop it. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is dangerous. He will start many people on the path, but they will never reach the goal because the path is thought to be so important. He will start millions of people on technique, and then the technique becomes so important, and there is no way how to drop it. Then there is Krishnamurti-harmless, but useless also. He can never harm anybody. Because how can he harm? – he never starts anybody on the path; he talks about the goal, and you are very, very far away from the goal. You will fall in the trap of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Krishnamurti may appeal to you intellectually, but will not be of any help.

He cannot harm. He’s the most harmless man in the world.

And then I am here. I give you a path just to take it away. I give you a technique – not a technique, many techniques – like toys to play with. And I wait for a moment when you will say to all the techniques, ”swaha, go to the fire!”

CHAPTER 5

The pure look

5 March 1975 am in Buddha Hall

NIRVITARKA SAMADHI IS ATTAINED WHEN THE MEMORY IS PURIFIED, AND THE MIND IS

ABLE TO SEE THE TRUE NATURE OF THINGS WITHOUT OBSTRUCTION.

THE EXPLANATIONS GIVEN FOR THE SAMADHIS OF SAVITARKA AND NIRVITARKA, ALSO

EXPLAIN THE HIGHER STATES OF SAMADHI, BUT IN THESE HIGHER STATES OF SAVICHARA AND NIRVICHARA SAMADHIS, THE OBJECTS OF MEDITATION ARE MORE SUBTLE

THE PROVINCE OF SAMADHI THAT IS CONNECTED WITH THESE FINER OBJECTS EXTENDS

UP TO THE FORMLESS STAGE OF THE SUBTLE ENERGIES.

MIND IS MEMORY; it is like a computer. To be exact, it is a biocomputer. It accumulates all that is experienced, known. Through many lives, through millions of experiences the mind gathers memory.

It is a vast phenomenon. Millions and millions of memories are stored in it. It is a great storehouse.

All your past lives are stored in it. Scientists say even in a single moment thousands of memories are being collected continuously – without your knowing, the mind goes on functioning. Even while you are asleep, memories are being formed. Even while you are asleep... somebody cries and weeps, your senses are functioning and collecting the experience. You may not be able to recall it in the morning because you were not conscious, but in deep hypnosis it can be recalled. In deep hypnosis, everything that knowingly and unknowingly you have experienced ever, can all be recalled back – your past lives also. The simple expanse of mind is really vast. These memories are good if you can use them, but these memories are dangerous if they start using you.

A pure mind is that mind who is master of its own memories. An impure mind is that mind who is continuously impressed by the memories. When you look at a fact, you can look without interpreting it. Then the consciousness is in direct touch with reality. Or, you can look through the mind, through interpretations. Then you are not in touch with reality. The mind is good as an instrument, but if the mind becomes an obsession and the consciousness is suppressed by the mind, then the reality will also be suppressed by the mind. Then you live in a maya; then you live in illusion.

Whenever you see a fact, if you see it directly, immediately, without the mind and the memory coming in, only then it is a fact. Otherwise, it becomes an interpretation. And all interpretations are false because all interpretations are loaded by your past experience. You can see only things which are in tune with your past experience. You cannot see things which are not in tune with your past experience, and your past experience is not all. Life is bigger than your past experience. Howsoever big the mind may be, it is just a tiny part if you consider the whole existence – so small. The known is very little; the unknown is vast and infinite. When you try to know the unknown through the known, then you miss the point. This is the impurity. When you try to know the unknown by the unknown inside you, then there is revelation.

It happened: Mulla Nasruddin caught a very, very big fish in the river. A crowd gathered, because nobody has ever seen such a big fish. Mulla Nasruddin looked at the fish, couldn’t believe that it is possible – such a big fish! With bulging eyes he moved around the fish but still couldn’t believe.

He touched the fish but still couldn’t believe, because he had heard about such a big fish only in fishermen’s tall tales. The crowd was also standing there with unbelieving eyes. Then Mulla Nasruddin said, ”Please help me to throw this fish back into the river. It is no fish, it is a lie.”

Anything is true if it fits with your past experience. If it doesn’t fit, it is a lie. You cannot believe in God because it doesn’t fit with your past experience. You cannot believe in meditation because you have always lived in the market, and you only know the reality of the market, of the calculating mind, of the business mind. You don’t know anything about celebration – pure, simple, with no reason at all, uncaused. If you have lived in a scientist’s world, you cannot believe that there can be anything spontaneous because the scientist lives in the world of cause and effect. Everything is caused; nothing is spontaneous. So when the scientist hears that something is possible which is spontaneous – when we say spontaneous we mean that it has no cause, suddenly out of the blue –

the scientist cannot believe. He will say, ”It is no fish at all, it is a lie. Throw it back into the river.”

But those who have worked in the inner world know that there are phenomena which are uncaused.

Not only that, that they know this, they know that the whole existence is uncaused. It is a different, totally different world from the scientific mind.

Whatsoever you see, even before you have seen it, the interpretation has entered. Continuously I watch people; I am talking to them – if it fits, even they have not said anything, they have given me an inner nod, ”Yes.” They are saying, ”Right.” If it doesn’t fit with their attitudes, they have not said anything, the ”no” is written on their face. Deep down they have started saying, ”No, it is not true.”

Just the other night I was talking with a friend. He has come just few days before, very new. He believes in fasting, and when I was talking to him, that ”Fasting can be dangerous. And you should not go on your own; you should ask an expert. And if you listen to me, I’m not for fasting at all, because fasting is a sort of suppression. The body is real. The body’s hunger is real; the body’s need is real. Don’t eat too much, because that too is against the body and a sort of suppression.

And don’t go on a fast, because that too is unreal and that too is suppressing. That too is not in accord with nature. That’s why I call it unreal.”

Somebody is obsessed with eating food – he is mad, and somebody is obsessed with not eating food – he is also mad. Both are destroying their body – enemies – and the fasting has been used as a trick.

Whenever you go on a fast your energy becomes low, has to become because the food is needed to keep it constantly flowing. After three, four days of fasting, your energy is so low that the mind cannot get any quota out of it, because mind is a luxury. When the body has too much, then it gives to the mind. Mind is a later, very late arrival in the world. Body is basic and primary. First, body needs should be fulfilled – only then mind.

It is just like when you are hungry; you cannot support a philosopher in the town. When you are hungry the philosopher has to move from there; he cannot live there. Philosophy comes only when the society is affluent, rich. Religion comes only when the society is rich, when the basic needs are fulfilled. And the same is the economy in the body: first the body, second comes the mind. If the body is in trouble and is not getting the necessary quota for it, then the quota for the mind will be immediately cut.

And this is the trick that people have been playing with their own bodies: when the quota with the mind is cut, the mind cannot think because thinking needs energy. And people think they have become meditative because the mind has no more thoughts. It is not true. Give them food and thoughts will come back. When the energy is not flowing, the mind becomes like a summer river bed – the river is not flowing but the banks are there, everything is ready. Whenever there will be rain, again the river will flow. Whenever there will be energy, again the serpent will raise its head.

The serpent is not dead – simply in a coma because the energy is not being supplied.

Fasting is a trick to create a false meditative state. And fasting is also a trick to create a bogus brahmacharya, celibacy – because when you fast, energy is not high, and the sex center cannot get energy.

There is again a question of economy: the individual lives through food; the society lives through sex, the race lives through sex. You are here because your parents loved each other, moved into sex. Your children will be here, you will be gone, if you move into sex. If you don’t move into sex then no more future. You don’t help the race to be here. If everybody becomes a brahmachari, a celibate, then the society will disappear.

Through food the individual body survives; through sex the body of the race. But the first is individual, because if the individual is not there, then how can the race survive? So individual is primary, race is secondary. When you are full of energy and the body is feeling good, then immediately the energy is supplied to the sex center. Now you have enough and you can share with the race. When the energy is flowing low, sex disappears. Just go on a fast of ten days, and by the tenth day you will feel that you are not interested in women. If you go on a longer fast of fifteen days, by the fifteenth day, even very beautiful playboy and playgirl magazines are there, you will not be able even to open them.

They will lie there and dust will collect on them. You will not be tempted. By the twenty-first day, if you continue fasting, even nude women may be dancing there, and you will sit Buddha-like. Not that you have become Buddha-like... just good food for one day, and the next day you are interested in the playboy and the playgirl. And by the third day energy is flowing again; you are interested in women.

In fact, psychologists have made it a criterion: if a man is not interested in woman, then something is wrong. If a woman is not interested in man, then something is wrong; energy is flowing low. And out of hundred cases, ninety-nine cases – they are true, they are right. Only with the hundredth case they will not be right, because he will be a Buddha – not that energy is flowing low; energy is the highest, at its peak, at its greatest. But now he is a different man moving in a different dimension where he is not interested in the other because he has become so satiated with himself. There is no movement for the other – not that the energy is lacking.

When I was talking to this newcomer, I could see on his face that he is nodding ”no”. He has not said a single word but I know that he is saying that ”I cannot trust this.” And then he said, ”But I am a believer in fasting, and I have come here because I believe in fasting. And whatsoever you are saying, I cannot feel in tune with it.”

You cannot listen because of the memory; you cannot see because of the memory; you cannot look at the facticity of the world because of the memory. Memory comes in – your past, your knowledge, your learning, your experiences – and they color reality. The world is not illusory, but when interpreted, you live in an illusory world. Remember this.

Hindus say the world is maya, illusory. When they say it, they don’t mean the world that is there, they simply mean the world that is inside you, the world of your interpretations. The world of facticity is not unreal; it is the brahma itself. It is supreme reality. But the world that you have created through your mind and memory and in which you live, which surrounds you, like an atmosphere around you...

and you move with it and in it. Wherever you go you take it around you. It is your aura, and through it you look at the world. Then whatsoever you are looking at is not a fact, it is an interpretation.

Patanjali says:

NIRVITARKA SAMADHI IS ATTAINED WHEN THE MEMORY IS PURIFIED, AND THE MIND IS

ABLE TO SEE THE TRUE NATURE OF THINGS WITHOUT OBSTRUCTION.

Interpretation is the obstruction. Interpret, and the reality is lost. Look without interpretation and the reality is there, and always has been there. The reality is every moment there. How it can be otherwise? Reality means that which is real. It has not moved from its place even for a single moment. Just you live in your interpretations and you create a world of your own. The reality is common, illusion is private.

You must have heard the story, very old, ancient Indian story. Five blind men came to see an elephant. They had never seen it; it was absolutely new in the town. Elephants didn’t exist in their part of the country. They all touched, they all felt the elephant, and they all interpreted whatsoever they felt. They interpreted through their experience. One man said, ”An elephant is like a pillar,”

because he was touching the legs of the elephant – and he was true. He touched, himself, by his own hands, and then he remembered the pillars – and exactly like the pillars. And so on, so forth, they all interpreted.

It happened in a primary school in America: a teacher told this story to the boys and girls without telling them that the five persons who came to the elephant were blind. And the story is so well known, and she expected that the children will understand. Then she asked, ”Now tell me, who were those five persons who came to see the elephant?” One small boy raised his hand and said,

”Experts.”

Experts are always blind. That boy was really a discoverer. This is the essence of the whole story.

In fact, they were experts because an expert knows too much about too little. He becomes more and more narrow, narrow, narrow – almost blind to the whole world. Only in a particular direction he is with eyes; otherwise, he is blind. His vision becomes narrower and narrower and narrower. The greater an expert, narrower the vision. An absolute expert must be completely blind. They say that an expert is a man who knows more and more about little and little.

Few centuries before there were physicians, doctors, who knew everything about the body. There were no experts. Now, if you have something wrong with your heart then you go to an expert, something wrong with your teeth, you go to another expert. And I have heard a story that a man came to a doctor and he said that ”I am in much difficulty. I cannot see properly. Everything seems to be misty.” The doctor said, ”First things first. First you tell me which eye is in difficulty, because I am the expert only of the right eye. If your left eye is in trouble, you go to another expert just in front of me.” Soon, the left eye experts and the right eye experts will be separate. It has to be so because expertise becomes narrower, and narrower, and narrower. All experts are blind, and experience makes you an expert.

To know reality you don’t have to be an expert. To know reality you don’t have to be narrow, exclusive.

To be in tune with reality you have to put down all your knowledge, put it aside and look at it with the eyes of a child, not with the eyes of an expert-because those eyes are always blind. Only a child has real eyes wide looking, looking everywhere, all around in all directions – because he doesn’t know anything. He is moving in all directions all the time. The moment you know, and you are hooked somewhere. If you can become a child again and can look at reality without any obstruction, interpretation, experience, knowledge, expertise, then Patanjali says, nirvitarka samadhi is attained Because when there is no interpretation, memory is purified and the mind is able to see the true nature of things.

Patanjali divides samadhi into many layers. First he talks about savitarka samadhi. It means samadhi with reasoning. You are still a reasoning person, logical. Then he calls second samadhi nirvitarka, samadhi without reasoning. Now, you are not arguing about reality. You are not even looking at reality with your knowledge. You are simply looking at reality.

The man who looks at reality with logic, reasoning never looks at reality. He projects his own mind on the reality. The reality works like a screen for him to project himself. And whatsoever you project, you will find there. First you put it there, and then you find it there. It is a deception because you yourself put it there, and then you find it there. It is not real.

Nasruddin once told me that ”My wife is the most beautiful woman in the world.” I asked him, ”Mulla, how you came to know about it?” He said, ”How? – simple. My wife told me!” This is how it goes on in the mind: you put it in the reality, and then you find it there. This is the attitude of the savitarka mind. Nirvikalpa mind, nirvitarka mind, puts nothing; it simply looks at whatsoever is the case.

Why you go on putting into reality something from your mind? – because you are afraid of reality.

A deep fear of reality is there. It may be that it is not of your liking. It may be that it is against you, your mind. Because the reality is natural; it doesn’t bother who you are. You are afraid: the reality may not be your wish-fulfillment, so it is better not to see it; go on seeing whatsoever you desire.

This is how you have lost many lives – fooling around. And you are not fooling anybody else, you are fooling yourself, because by your interpretations and projections the reality cannot be changed.

Only you suffer unnecessarily. You think there is a door and there is no door; it is a wall and you try to pass through it. Then you suffer, then you are shocked.

Unless you see the reality, you will never be able to find the door out of the prison in which you are.

The door exists, but the door cannot exist according to your desires. The door exists; if you drop the desires you will be able to see it. And this is the trouble: you go on wish-fulfilling; you just go on believing and projecting, and every time, a belief is shattered and a projection falls. Because it will happen many times, because your daydreams cannot be fulfilled by reality. Whenever a dream is shattered, a rainbow falls down, a desire dies, you suffer. But immediately you start creating another desire, another rainbow of your wishes. Again you start making a new rainbow bridge between you and reality.

Nobody can walk on a rainbow bridge. It looks like a bridge; it is not a bridge. In fact, a rainbow doesn’t exist; it only appears. If you go there you will not find any rainbow. It is a dreamlike phenomenon. The maturity consists in to have come to the realization that ”Now no more projections, interpretations. Now I am ready to see whatsoever is the case.”

Wittgenstein, one of the very keen intellects of this age, starts his tremendously valuable book TRACTATUS with the sentence, ”The world is all that is the case. You can go on dreaming around it; it will not help. You stop dreaming and see. The world is all that is the case.” You unnecessarily don’t waste your life and time and energy in trying to see something that is not there. Stop dreaming and look at reality. p

That is the meaning of nirvitarka samadhi, samadhi without any reasoning. It is just a pure look. You don’t reason about it, you simply look at it. You don’t do anything about it, you simply allow it to be there and penetrate you. In savitarka samadhi you try to penetrate into reality. In nirvitarka samadhi you allow the reality to penetrate you. In savitarka samadhi you try the reality to be according to you. In nirvitarka samadhi you try yourself to be according to the reality.

THE EXPLANATION GIVEN FOR THE SAMADHIS OF SAVITARKA AND NIRVITARKA ALSO

EXPLAINS THE HIGHER STATES OF SAMADHI, BUT IN THE HIGHER STATES OF SAVICHARA AND NIRVICHARA SAMADHI, THE OBJECTS OF MEDITATION ARE MORE SUBTLE.

Then, Patanjali brings two other words, savichara and nirvichara.

Savichara means with

contemplation, and nirvichara means without contemplation. They are the higher states of the same phenomenon he calls savitarka and nirvitarka. Savitarka samadhi, if followed, will become savichara.

If you think about logically, and go on thinking, and go on thinking, logic has a boundary to it. It is not infinite. Logic cannot be infinite. In fact, logic denies all infinities. Logic is always in a boundary.

Only then it can remain logical, because with the infinite enters the illogical; with the infinite enters the mysterious, with the infinite enters the miraculous. With the entry, the Pandora’s box is open.

So logic never talks about the infinite. Logic says everything is finite, can be defined. Everything is within boundaries, can be understood. Logic is always afraid of the infinite. It looks like a vast darkness; logic trembles to move into it. Logic keeps itself on the highway, it never moves into the wild. On the highway everything is safe and you know where you are going. Once you step aside and move into the wild, you don’t know where you are going. Logic is a very deep fear.

If you ask me, logic is the greatest coward. People who are courageous always go beyond logic.

People who are coward always remain within the confinements of logic. Logic is a prison, beautifully decorated, but it is not like a vast sky. The sky is not decorated at all. It is undecorated, but it is vast. It is freedom, and freedom has its own beauty; it needs no decorations. The sky is enough unto itself. It needs no painter to paint it, no decorator to decorate it. The very vastness is its beauty.

But vastness is terrific also, because it is so tremendous. The mind simply boggles before it; the mind seems so puny. The ego gets shattered before it, so the ego creates a beautiful prison of logic, definitions – everything clean-cut, everything known, of the experience – and closes its doors to the unknown, makes a world of itself, a separate world, a private world. That world doesn’t belong to the whole; it has been cut. All the relationships with the whole have been cut.

That’s why logic will never lead anybody to the divine, because logic is human, and it has broken all the bridges with the divine. Divine is wild; it is mysterium and tremendum. It is a great mystery that cannot be solved. It is not a riddle that you can solve, it is a mystery. Its nature is such that it cannot be solved. But if you go on continuing logically thinking, there comes a moment when you reach to the boundary of logic. If you go on thinking more and more, then logical thinking changes into contemplation, into vichar.

The first step is logical thinking and, if you continue, the last step will be contemplation. If a philosopher continues, goes on moving, is not stuck somewhere, he is bound to become a poet someday, because when the boundary is crossed, suddenly there is poetry. Poetry is contemplation; it is vichar.

Think it this way: a logical philosopher is sitting in the garden and looking at a rose flower. He interprets it. He classifies it – he knows what type of rose is this, from where it comes, the physiology of the rose, the chemistry of the rose: everything logically he thinks about. He classifies it, defines it, works around and around – in fact, never touching the rose at all – moves just around and around, around and around, beating the bush around, leaving the rose there.

Because logic cannot touch a rose. It can cut it, it can put it into pigeonholes, it can classify, it can label it – but it cannot touch it. The rose won’t allow logic to touch it. And even if logic wants, it is not possible. Logic has no heart, and only the heart can touch the rose. Logic is just a head affair.

The head cannot touch the rose. The rose will not allow its mystery for the head because the head is just like a rape. And the rose opens itself only for love, not for a rape.

Science is rape; poetry is love. If somebody continues, like Einstein, then the philosopher or the scientist or the logician becomes a poet. Einstein became a poet in his last days. Eddington became a poet in his last days. They started talking about the mysterious. They had come to the boundary of the logic. People who always remain logical are people who have not gone to the very extent, to the very end of their logical reasoning. They are not really logical. If they really go, then a moment is bound to come where logic ends and poetry starts.

Vichar is contemplation. What a poet does? – he contemplates. He just looks at the flower, he doesn’t think about it. This is the distinction, very subtle: the logician thinks about the flower, the poet thinks the flower, not about it. And ”about it” is not the flower. You may talk and talk about it, but it is not the flower. The logician goes round and round, a poet goes direct and hits the very reality of flower. For a poet, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose – not ”about”. He moves inwards, into the flower. Now the memory is not brought in. The mind is put aside; it is a direct contact.

This is a higher stage of the same phenomenon.

The quality has become refined but the

phenomenon is the same.

That’s why Patanjali says,

THE EXPLANATION GIVEN FOR THE SAMADHIS OF SAVITARKA AND NIRVITARKA ALSO

EXPLAIN THE HIGHER STATES OF SAMADHI, BUT IN THE HIGHER STATES OF SAVICHARA AND NIRVICHARA SAMADHIS, THE OBJECTS OF MEDITATION ARE MORE SUBTLE.

In savichara, the poet – and anybody who enters savichara becomes a poet – thinks the flower, not about it, but immediate and direct, but there is still division. The poet is separate from the flower. The poet is the subject and the flower is the object. The duality exists. The duality is not transcended: the poet has not become the flower, the flower has not become the poet. The observer is the observer, and the observed is still the observed. The observer has not become the observed; the observed has not become the observer. Duality exists.

In savichara samadhi logic has been dropped, but not duality. In nirvichara samadhi even duality is dropped. One simply looks at the flower, not thinking of himself and not thinking of the flower; not thinking at all. That is nirvichara: without contemplating, beyond contemplation. One simply is being with the flower, not thinking about, not thinking – neither like the logician nor like the poet.

Now comes the mystic, the sage, who is simply with the flower. You cannot say that he thinks about, or he thinks. No, he is simply with. He allows the flower to be there and allows himself to be there.

In that moment of allowing, there comes suddenly a unity. The flower is no more the flower, and the observer is no more the observer. Suddenly energies meet and mingle and become one. Now the duality is transcended. The sage doesn’t know who is the flower and who is watching it. If you ask the sage, the mystic, he will say, ”I don’t know. It may be the flower who is watching me. It may be I who is watching the flower. It changes,” he will say, ”it depends. And sometimes, there is neither I nor the flower. Both disappear. Only a unified energy remains. I become the flower and the flower becomes me.” This is the state of nirvichara, of no contemplation but of being.

Savitarka is the first step, nirvitarka is the last step in the same direction. Savichara is the first step, nirvichara is the last step in the same direction, on two planes. But Patanjali says the same explanation applies. The highest, up to now, is nirvichara.

Patanjali will come to higher stages also, because few more things have to be explained, and he moves very slowly – because if he moves very fast it will not be possible for you to understand. He is going deeper and deeper every moment. He is leading you, by and by, to the infinite ocean, step by step. He is not a believer of sudden enlightenment – gradual, that’s why his appeal is so great.

Many people have existed who have talked about sudden enlightenment, but they have not appealed to the masses because it is simply unbelievable that sudden enlightenment is possible. Tilopa may say, but that is not the point – that Tilopa says. The point is: does anybody understand it? – that’s why many Tilopas have disappeared. Patanjali’s appeal continues, because nobody can understand those wild flowers like Tilopa. They suddenly appear just out of the blue and they say, ”Suddenly, you can also become like us.” This is incomprehensible. Under their magnetic personality you may listen to them, but you cannot believe them. The moment you leave them you will say, ”This man is saying something which is beyond me. It goes over my head.”

Tilopas have lived, talked, tried, but they have not been able to help many people. Rarely somebody will understand them. That’s why Tilopa had to go to Tibet to find a disciple – this vast country, and he couldn’t find a single disciple – and Bodhidharma had to go to China to find a disciple. This ancient country, for thousands of years working on the religious dimension, and he couldn’t find a single disciple. Yes... difficult for Tilopa, difficult for Bodhidharma to find a single disciple.

To find someone who can understand Tilopa is difficult because he talks of the goal, and he says,

”There is no path and no method.” He is standing on the hilltop and he says, ”There is no path,” and you are standing in the valley, dark, damp, in your misery. You look at Tilopa and you say, ”Maybe...

but how, how one reaches?” You go on asking, ”How?”

Krishnamurti goes on telling people there is no method, and after each talk people ask, ”Then how?

Then how to reach?” And he simply shrugs his shoulders and becomes angry that ”I have told you there is no method, so don’t ask how, because how is again asking for the method.” And these are not new people who ask. Krishnamurti has people who have been listening to him for thirty, forty years. Very old, ancient people you will find in his talks. They have been listening him continuously; religiously they listen to him. They come always – whenever he is there, they come always and they listen. You will find almost the same faces for years and years and years, and again and again they ask from their valleys, ”But how?n – and Krishnamurti simply shrugs his shoulders and says, ”There is no how. You simply understand, and you reach. There is no path.”

Tilopa, Bodhidharma, Krishnamurti, they come and go; they are not much help. The people who listen to them enjoy listening to them – even come to a certain intellectual understanding – but they remain in the valley. I myself have come across many people who listen to Krishnamurti, but I have never seen a single person who has gone beyond his valley by listening to him. He remains in the valley, starts talking like Krishnamurti, that’s all; starts telling to other people that there is no way and no path, and remains in the valley.

Patanjali has been a tremendous help, incomparable. Millions have passed through this world by the help of Patanjali because he doesn’t talk according to his understanding, he moves with you. And as your understanding grows, he goes deeper and deeper and deeper. Patanjali follows the disciple; Tilopa would like the disciple to follow him. Patanjali comes to you; Tilopa would like you to come to him. And of course, Patanjali takes your hand and, by and by, he takes you to the highest peak possible, of which Tilopa talks but cannot lead because he will never come to your valley. He will remain on his hilltop and will go on shouting from there. In fact he will irritate many people because he will not stop; he will go on shouting from the top that ”This is possible! And there is no way, and there is no method. You can simply come. It happens; you cannot dol” He irritates.

When there is no method, people get irritated and they would like him to stop, not to shout. Because if there is no way, then how to move from the valley to the top? You are talking nonsense. But Patanjali is very sensible, very sane, he moves step by step, takes you from where you are, comes to the valley, takes your hand and says, ”One by one, take steps.”

Patanjali said, ”There is a path. There are methods.” And he is really very, very wise. By and by, he will persuade you in the end that drop the method and drop the path – there are none – but only at the end, at the very peak, just when you have reached, when even Patanjali leaves you, there is no trouble; you will reach by yourself. At the last moment he becomes nonsensical. Otherwise, he is sensible. And he has remained so sensible the whole way that when he becomes nonsensical, then too he appeals, then too he looks very sensible. Because a man like Patanjali cannot talk nonsense.

He is reliable.

THE EXPLANATION GIVEN FOR THE SAMADHIS OF SAVITARKA AND NIRVITARKA ALSO

EXPLAINS THE HIGHER STATES OF SAMADHI, BUT IN THE HIGHER STATES OF SAVICHARA AND NIRVICHARA, THE OBJECTS OF MEDITATION ARE MORE SUBTLE.

By and by, the object of meditation has to be made more and more subtle. For example, you can meditate on a rock, or you can meditate on a flower, or you can meditate on the fragrance of the flower, or you can meditate on the meditator. And then things go subtle and subtle and subtle and subtle. For example, you can meditate on the sound aum. The first meditation is to say it loudly so it resounds all around you. It becomes a temple of sound all around you: aum, aum, aum. You create vibrations all around you – gross, the first step. Then you close your mouth. Now you don’t say it loudly. Inside you say, aum, aum, aum. Lips are not allowed to move, not even the tongue. Without the tongue and without the lips you say, aum. Now you create an inner atmosphere, inner climate of aum. The object has become subtle. Then the third step: you don’t even recite it, you simply listen to it. You change the position – from the doer, you move to a passivity of a listener. In the third state you don’t pronounce the aum inside also. You simply sit and you hear the sound. It comes because it is there. You are not silent; that’s why you cannot hear it.

Aum is not a word of any human language. It doesn’t mean anything. That’s why Hindus don’t write it in the usual alphabetical order. No, they have made a separate form for it just to distinguish it, that this is not part of the alphabet. It exists on its own, separate, and it means nothing. It is not a word of human language. It is the sound of the very existence itself; the sound of the soundless, the sound of the silence. When everything is silent then it is heard. So you become the hearer. It goes on and on, more and more subtle. And in the fourth stage you simply forget about everything: the doer, and the hearer, and the sound – everything. In the fourth stage there is nothing.

You must have seen ten oxherding pictures of Zen. In the first picture a man is looking for his ox –

the ox has gone somewhere in the wild forest, no sign, no footprints – just looking all around, trees and trees and trees. In the second picture he looks happier – footprints have been found. In the third he seems a little bewildered – just the back of the ox is seen near a tree, but difficult to distinguish.

The forest is wild, thick. Maybe it is just a hallucination that he is seeing the back of the ox; it may be just a part of the tree, and he may be projecting. Then in the fourth, he has caught hold of the tail. In the fifth, he has controlled by the whip; now the ox is in his power. In the sixth, he is riding on the ox. In the seventh, he is coming back towards the home with a flute, singing a song, riding on the ox. In the seventh, the ox in the stable, he is in the home, happy; the ox has been found. In the eighth, there is nothing; the ox has been found, and the ox and the seeker, the seeker and the sought, both have disappeared. The search is over.

In the ancient days these were the eight pictures. It was a complete set. The emptiness is the last.

But then a great Master added two more pictures. The ninth – the man is back, again there. And in the tenth not only the man is back, he has gone to purchase few things to the market, and not only things, he is carrying a bottle of wine. This is really beautiful. This is complete. If it ends on emptiness, something is incomplete. The man is back again, and not only back, he is in the market.

Not only in the market, he has purchased a bottle of wine.

The whole becomes more and more subtle, more and more subtle. A moment comes when you will feel it is the perfect, the most subtle. When everything becomes empty and there is no picture, the seeker and the sought both have disappeared. But this is not really the end. There is still a subtleness. The man comes back to the world totally transformed. He is no more the old self –

reborn, and when you are reborn, the world is also not the same. The wine is wine no more, the poison is no more poison, the market is no more market. Now everything is accepted. It is beautiful.

Now he is celebrating. That is the symbol: the wine.

More and more subtle becomes the search, and more and more stronger becomes the consciousness. And a moment comes when the consciousness is so strong that you live like an ordinary being in the world, without fear. But move with Patanjali step by step. The objects of meditation are more and more subtle.

THE PROVINCE OF SAMADHI THAT IS CONNECTED WITH THESE FINER OBJECTS EXTENDS

UP TO THE FORMLESS STAGE OF THE SUBTLE ENERGIES.

This is the eighth picture. The province of samadhi that is connected with these finer objects becomes more and more finer, and a moment comes when the form disappears and it is formless.

... EXTENDS UP TO THE FORMLESS STAGE OF THE SUBTLE ENERGIES.

The energies are so subtle you cannot make a picture out of them, you cannot carve them; only the emptiness can show them: a zero – eighth picture. By and by you will understand how these two other remaining pictures come in.

Patanjali – I call him the scientist of the religious world, the mathematician of mysticism, the logician of the illogical. Two opposites meet in him. If a scientist reads Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras he will understand immediately. A Wittgenstein, a logical mind, will feel immediately an affinity with Patanjali. He’s absolutely logical. And if he leads you towards the illogical, he leads you in such logical steps you never know when he has left the logic and taken you beyond it. He moves like a philosopher, a thinker, and makes so subtle distinctions that the moment he takes you into nirvichara, into no-contemplation, you will not be able to watch when the jump has been taken. He has cut the jump into many small steps. With Patanjali you will never feel fear, because he knows where you will feel fear. He cuts the steps smaller and smaller, almost as if you move on the plain ground. He takes you so slowly that you cannot observe when the jump has happened, when you have crossed the boundary. And he is also a poet, a mystic – a very rare combination. Mystics are there, like Tilopa; great poets are there like the rishis of Upanishads, great logicians are there like Aristotle, but you cannot find a Patanjali. He is such a combination that since him there has been no one who can be compared to him. It is very easy to be a poet because you are out of one piece. It is very easy to be a logician – you are made of one piece. It is almost impossible to be a Patanjali because you comprehend so many opposites, and in such a beautiful harmony he combines them all. That’s why he has become the alpha and the omega of the whole tradition of yoga.

In fact, it was not he who invented yoga; yoga is far ancient. Yoga had been there for many centuries before Patanjali. He is not the discoverer, but he almost became the discoverer and founder just because of this rare combination of his personality. Many people had worked before him and almost everything was known, but yoga was waiting for a Patanjali. And suddenly, when Patanjali spoke about it, everything fell in line and he became the founder. He was not the founder, but his personality is such a combination of opposites, he comprehends in himself such incomprehensible elements, he became the founder – almost the founder. Now yoga will always be known with Patanjali. Since Patanjali, many have again worked and many have reached new corners of the world of yoga, but Patanjali towers like an Everest. It seems almost impossible anybody ever will be able to tower higher than Patanjali – almost impossible. This rare combination is impossible. To be a logician and to be a poet and to be a mystic, and not of ordinary talents... It is possible: you can be a logician, a great logician, and a very ordinary poet. You can be a great poet and a very ordinary logician, third-rate – that’s possible, that’s not very difficult. Patanjali is a genius logician, a genius poet, and a genius mystic; Aristotle, Kalidas and Tilopa all rolled in one – hence the appeal.

Try to understand Patanjali as deeply as possible, because he will help you. Zen Masters won’t be of much help. You can enjoy them – beautiful phenomena. You can be awe-struck, you can be filled with wonder, but they won’t help you. Rarely somebody will be able within you who can take the courage and jump into the abyss. Patanjali will be of much help. He can become the very foundation of your being, and he can lead you, by and by. He understands you more than anybody else. He looks at you and he tries to speak the language that the last amongst you will be able to understand.

He is not only a Master, he is a great teacher also.

Educationists know that a great teacher is not one who can be understood only by the topmost few students in the class, just the first benchers, four or five in a class of fifty. He is not a great teacher.

A great teacher is one who can be understood by the last benchers. Patanjali is not only a Master, he is a teacher also. Krishnamurti is a Master, Tilopa is a Master – but not teachers. They can be understood only by the topmost. This is the problem – the topmost need not understand. They can go by their own. Even without Krishnamurti they will move into the ocean and reach to the other shore; a few days sooner or later, that’s all. The last benchers who cannot move on their own, Patanjali is for them. He starts from the lowest and he reaches to the highest. His help is for all. He is not for the chosen few.

CHAPTER 6

Mind in a hurry

6 March 1975 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

Question 1

WHEN YOU SPEAK ON PATANJALI, I FEEL THAT HE IS THE PATH FOR ME. WHEN YOU SPEAK

ON ZEN, THEN ZEN IS THE PATH FOR ME. WHEN YOU SPEAK ON TANTRA, THEN IT IS

TANTRA FOR ME. HOW DO I KNOW WHICH IS THE PATH FOR ME?

IT IS VERY SIMPLE – if when I speak on Patanjali and you feel that Patanjali is the path for you, and when I speak on Zen, you feel Zen is the path for you, and when I speak on Tantra, you feel ”Tantra is the path for me,” then the problem doesn’t exist – I am the path for you!

The second question:

Question 2

IS IT ESSENTIAL FOR A SEEKER TO PASS THROUGH ALL THE STAGES OF SAMADHI? CAN

BEING WITH A MASTER HELP TO SHOOT THROUGH A FEW?

No, it is not essential. All the stages are described by Patanjali because all the stages are possible, but not essential. You can bypass many. You can even go from the first step to the last; the whole path in between simply can be bypassed. It depends on you, your intensity, your passionate search, your total involvement. The speed depends on you.

That’s why it is possible to attain a sudden enlightenment also. The whole gradual process can be dropped. Right this very moment, you can become enlightened. That’s possible, but it will depend on how intense is your search, how much you are in it. If only a part of you is in it, then you will attain to a fragment, a step. If half of you is in it, then you will reach half the journey immediately, and there you will be stuck. But if your total being is in it and you are not withholding anything, you are simply allowing the whole thing to happen right now, immediately it can happen. Time is not needed.

Time is needed because your effort is part, fragmental; you do it half-heartedly. You do it, and you don’t also do it. You move one step forward and one step backward simultaneously. By the right hand you do, by the left hand you undo. Then there will be many, many stages, more than Patanjali can describe. He has described all the possible stages. Many can be dropped, all can be dropped

– the whole path can be dropped. Bring your total being to your effort.

And being near with a Master can be a tremendous help, but that too depends on you. You can live physically near a Master and you may not be near him at all, because to be with a Master is not a question of physical closeness; it is a question how much you are open towards him, how much you trust, how much is your love for him, how much you can give of your being to him. If you are really close, that means if you trust and love, then there is no other closeness. It is not a question of space, it is a question of love. If you are really close to a Master, all the paths, all the methods can be dropped because being close to a Master is the ultimate method. Nothing like it exists. Nothing is comparable to it. Then you can simply forget about all the methods, all the Patanjalis; you can simply forget about them. Just being close to a Master and allowing the Master to enter your being, you become just a receptivity, no choice on your part, just an opening, then this very moment the phenomenon is possible.

And I would like to remind you that by all the methods that exist in the world, many people have not reached. Greater number of people have reached through being near a Master – that is the greatest technique. But finally, everything depends on you.

That is the problem, that is the very crux of the problem: it doesn’t depend on me. Otherwise I would have given you already; then there would have been no problem. One Buddha would have been enough, and he would have given to all because he has infinity in his hands; you cannot exhaust it. He can go on giving and giving and giving, and he is always ready to give because the more he gives, the more he gets. The more he shares, the more unknown sources open, unknown streams start flowing towards him. One Buddha would have given enlightenment to all the beings if it was dependent on a Master. It is not. In your ignorance, in your egoistic state of mind, in your closed imprisoned being, you will reject even if a Buddha wants to give it to you. Unless you want it you will reject; it cannot be given to you against you. You have to receive it, and you have to receive it very consciously, alert and aware. Only in deep awareness and deep receptivity it can be received.

Being near with a Master, close in love and trust, and allowing the Master to do whatsoever he would like to do, with no choice of your own, then there is no need to do anything. But then, don’t expect; then don’t even in a deeper part of your mind demand, because the very expectation and demand will become the barrier. Then you simply wait. Even if it is going to happen after many, many lives, even if you have to wait unto eternity, wait. And this waiting should not be a sad, depressed waiting.

It should be a celebrating waiting; it should be festive; it should be full of joy.

So these are the things: then you can become closer and closer and closer, and suddenly one day comes – the flame of the Master and the flame of your being become one. Suddenly there is a jump: you are no more there, and no more is the Master; you have become one. In that oneness, all that the Master can give to you, he has given it to you. He has poured himself into you.

So it is not essential for a seeker to pass through all the stages of samadhi. It becomes essential only because you are not enough of a seeker... Then many stages. If you are really intense, sincere, authentic, if you are ready to die this very moment, it can happen.

The third question:

Question 3

YOU SAID THAT PATANJALI IS THE PERFECT COMBINATION OF POETRY, MYSTICISM, AND

LOGIC. DON’T YOU ALSO HAVE THIS PERFECT BALANCE?

No, I am just the opposite of Patanjali. Patanjali has a perfect combination of poetry, mysticism, and logic. I am just a neti, neti – neither this nor that. I don’t have a perfect balance of poetry, mysticism and logic. In fact, I have neither balance nor imbalance, because a perfectly balanced man also has imbalance just by the side. Because the balance can exist only when the imbalance exists. The harmony can exist only when there is discord just by the side. I am just like a vast emptiness with no harmony, no discord, no balance, no imbalance, no perfection, no imperfection – just an emptiness.

If you come in me you will not find me at all there. I myself have not found, so how can you find it?

It happened: in a house of a Sufi mystic, Bayazid, a thief entered. The night was dark and Bayazid’s house was absolutely in darkness, because he was so poor he couldn’t afford even a single candle.

And then there was no need also because he never did anything in the night, he simply slept. When the thief entered – and there was no difficulty, because the doors were always open... The thief entered; Bayazid feeling the presence of someone said, ”Friend, what are you seeking here?” Just by the nearness of a Master like Bayazid, even the thief could not lie – the very presence was such; he felt the love. And when Bayazid said, ”Friend, what are you seeking here?” the man said, ”I am sorry to say, but I must say – and I cannot lie to you – that I am a thief and I have come to find something.” Bayazid said, ”The effort is useless because I have been living in this house for thirty years, and I have not found anything. But if you can find anything, just let me know.”

If you come in me, you will not find me there at all, because I myself have been living in this house for many, many years and I have not found anybody there. That is my finding; that is what I have found

– that there is nobody inside. The inside being is a non-being. The deeper you go, the less you will find anything like the self. And when you reach to the deepest core of it, it is just emptiness, pure emptiness, just a vast sky of nothingness. So how can balance exist there, and how can imbalance exist there?

Patanjali is one of the most extraordinary men; I am not. Patanjali is just the opposite. If you tell Patanjali to speak on me, he will not be able; he is too full of himself. But if you ask me to speak on Patanjali, on Tilopa, on Bodhidharma, on Buddha, on Mahavira, Jesus Christ – simple, very simple.

Because I am absolutely empty, I can become available to anybody; I can allow anybody to speak through me. Just a hollow bamboo – anybody can sing a song through it; it can become a flute.

So I am not a combination of poetry, mysticism, or logic or anything. I am not a balance at all. But remember, I am not an imbalance also; I am a neti neti – what the Upanishads call ”neither this nor that”. That’s why I am available to anybody. If Patanjali insists he can speak through me; there is no trouble, there is no resistance.

That’s why you are always puzzled when I speak on Patanjali. He becomes the very climax of all existence. Then I forget about Buddha and Mahavira and Jesus and Mohammed, as if they never existed, as if only Patanjali has existed, because in that moment I am available to Patanjali in my totality. Nothingness only can do that. So this is for the first time it is happening. Otherwise, you can not find Jesus to speak on Krishna, or Krishna to speak on Buddha.

Mahavira and Buddha lived in the same time, in the same country, in the same part of the country.

They moved in a small territory in Bihar continuously for forty years. Contemporaries, sometimes they were together in the same village. Once they stayed in the same dharamsala but never spoke to each other. They have something within them. They have to say something of their own; they are not available to others.

I have nothing to say of my own just a hollow bamboo. If you ever want to make statues of me, there is a very simple process: you put a hollow bamboo. That will be my statue; you can remember me through it. No need to make anything of it – just an emptiness, just a vast sky. Any bird can fly and the sky has no conditions that: only swans from Manasarovar will be allowed, and crows? – no, they are not allowed. The sky is available to everybody, swan or crow. A beautiful bird or an ugly bird –

the sky makes no conditions.

Patanjali has a message; I have none. Or you can say nothingness is my message, and in being nothing you will be closer to me. And in being nothing, you will attain to me. And in being nothing you will be able to understand me.

The fourth question:

Question 4

MANY PEOPLE FEEL QUITE HOPELESS ABOUT LOVE. IS THERE NOT ANOTHER WAY TO

REACH PRAYER?

No. If you feel quite hopeless about love, you should have to feel absolutely hopeless about prayer, because prayer is nothing but the very essence of love. Love is like a flower and prayer is like a fragrance. If you cannot attain to the flower, how can you attain to the fragrance? Nobody can bypass love. And nobody should try, because there awaits failure and nothing else.

Why you are so hopeless about love? The same problem will come with prayer because prayer means love with the whole, the cosmos. So go deeper in the problem of love, and solve it before you think about prayer. Otherwise your prayer will be false; it will be a deception. Of course only you are deceived, nobody else. There is no God listening to your prayer. Unless your prayer is love, the whole will remain deaf. It cannot open in any other way – love is the key.

So what is the problem? Why one feels so hopeless about love? Too much ego will not allow you to love anybody. Too much egocentric, too much selfish, self-oriented, self-obsessed – then love will not be possible because one has to bend a little, and one has to lose one’s territory a little. One has to surrender a little in love. Howsoever little, but one has to surrender a part. And in certain moments one has to surrender completely.

To surrender to the other is the problem. You would like the other to surrender to you, but the other is also in the same plight. Two egos when they meet, try that the other should surrender, and both are trying the same. Love becomes a hopeless thing.

Love is not to force the other to surrender to you. It is hate that forces the other to surrender to you: that is the nature of hate, because to force the other to surrender to you is to destroy the other. It is a sort of murder. Love is to surrender yourself to the other not because you are forced to surrender, no; it is a voluntary thing – you simply enjoy it – not that you are forced. Never surrender to anybody who is forcing you to surrender, because that will be suicide. Never surrender to anybody who is manipulating you, because that will be slavery, not love. Surrender on your own, and the quality immediately changes.

When you surrender on your own it is a gift, gift of the heart. And when you surrender on your own, voluntarily, simply you give yourself to the other; something for the first time opens in your heart. For the first time you have the glimpse of love. You have only heard the word, you don’t know what it means. Love is one of those words everybody uses and nobody knows what it means.

There are a few words, like ”prayer”, ”love”, ”God”, ”meditation”: these words you can use, but you don’t know what is their meaning because their meaning is not in the dictionary. Otherwise, you can consult a dictionary; that is not difficult. Their meaning is in a certain way of life. Their meaning is in a certain transformation within you. Their meaning is not linguistic; their meaning is existential.

Unless you know by experience, you don’t know – and there is no other way to know it. When you surrender on your own, unconditionally... because if there is any condition it is not a surrender at all; then it is a bargain. Even if this condition is there, that ”I will surrender to you if you surrender to me,” then too it is not a surrender. It may be business, bargain, but not surrender.

Surrender doesn’t belong to the market. It is not part of the economics at all. Surrender means unconditional: ”I surrender because I enjoy; I surrender because it is so beautiful, I surrender because in surrendering, suddenly my misery disappears.” When you surrender, the misery disappears because the misery is the shadow of the ego. When you surrender, the ego is not there. How the misery can exist? That’s why love is so happy.

Whenever somebody is in love, suddenly, as if spring has come within the heart, the birds have started singing which were silent and you have never heard them. And suddenly everything within has bloomed and you are full of a fragrance which doesn’t belong to this earth. Love is the only ray on this earth which belongs to the beyond.

So you cannot avoid love and reach to prayer, because love is the beginning of the prayer. It is as if you are asking, ”Can we avoid the beginning and reach the end?” It is not possible. It has never happened and never will happen.

What is the problem in love? First, you cannot surrender. If you cannot surrender in love, how you will surrender in prayer? – because prayer demands total surrender. Love is not so demanding.

Love demands, but even a partial surrender will do. Even if you can surrender part, even if you can surrender sometimes, that will also do. Even for few seconds you can surrender – in those few seconds a door will open and you will have a glimpse of the other world. Love is not so demanding.

And if you cannot fulfill the demands of love how you will fulfill the demands of prayer? Prayer is absolutely demanding. It will not accept you if you surrender part. It will not accept you if you surrender sometimes and sometimes not. Prayer is very much demanding. One has to go through love. If you ask me, love is a school for prayer – the training, the discipline, getting ready for the higher jump. I am absolutely for love.

People have tried: what you are asking, people have tried through the centuries. People who couldn’t love tried to pray. All the monasteries are full of those people – failures in love, feeling hopeless in love, they thought they could at least try towards prayer. But if you are a failure in love, how can you pray? In the monasteries, thousands of people all over the world are doing their prayer, but they don’t know what love is. Then prayer becomes just verbal chattering. Then they simply from the head go on talking to God. With God, communication is of the heart. With God, you cannot talk through the head because the God doesn’t know any language that your head knows. He knows only one language, and that is love.

That’s why Jesus says, ”Love is God,” because love is the only way to reach him, and love is the only language he understands. If you speak in English, he will not understand. If you speak in German, absolutely not... no language of the earth.

Why I say, ”If you speak German, absolutely not”? – because German is more male-oriented language.

The Germans call their country ”fatherland”.

The whole world calls their country

”motherland”. The more male-oriented a language, the less God can understand it. In fact, God understands the feminine mind more than the male mind, because feminine mind is nearer the heart than the male mind. Poetry he understands more than prose. In fact, he understands emotions more than thoughts. He understands tears more, smiles more than concepts. If you can weep wholeheartedly, he will understand. If you can dance he will understand. But if you go on talking in words, they are just being thrown into emptiness – nobody understands.

God understands silence, and love is very silent. In fact, whenever two persons are in love, they would like to sit silently together. When the love disappears, then only language comes in. Husbands and wives continuously talk because love has disappeared; the bridge is no more there. Somehow they create a bridge of language. They talk about anything – rumors, gossips – because they cannot tolerate silence. Whenever they are silent, suddenly they are alone. The wife is not there, the husband is not there – there exists a vast gap. Through language they deceive that the gap is not there. In deep love, people are silent. There is no need to talk. They understand without talking to each other. They can hold each other’s hands and sit silently. Prayer is also silent, but if you have never been silent in love, how you will be silent in prayer? It is a silence between you and the whole.

Love is silence between two persons; prayer is silence between one person and the whole. That whole is God. Love is a training; it is a school. I will never suggest you to avoid it. If you avoid it, you will never reach prayer. And while you will pray you will talk too much, but the heart will not be able to communicate, to commune. So howsoever hard the lesson, howsoever difficult to break the ice...

but don’t try to avoid love. Prayer is not an escape from love; don’t make it an escape – many have done that and failed. You can go to the monasteries anywhere in the world and look at those fools who have failed, failed because they tried to avoid love.

One has to go through love, otherwise you will remain angry at life. How you will be able to pray?

You will remain in deep rejection of life. How will you accept and pray? You will remain a condemner; acceptance will not be possible. In love, for the first time you accept. In love, for the first time you understand that meaning is there and life is meaningful. In love, for the first time you feel that you are at home in the world, not a stranger, not an outsider. In love, for the first time a small home is created. In love, for the first time you feel peace and somebody loves you and somebody feels happy with you; for the first time you accept yourself also. Otherwise, how will you accept yourself? In life, from the very childhood you have been trained to condemn yourself, to reject. ”Don’t do this, don’t be like that” – and everybody is preaching at you and everybody is trying that you are absolutely wrong and you have to improve yourself.

It happened: Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was very ill. She was in the hospital. Mulla used to go every day, and he will ask the doctors and the nurses and they will say, ”She is improving.” And her condition was getting worse and worse every day, but the doctors continued and the nurses continued, that

”She is improving, she is improving.” And I used to ask Mulla Nasruddin, ”How is your wife?” He said, ”The doctors say, ’Perfect! – she is improving.’ The nurses say she is improving, so she must be coming back home soon.” Then one day she suddenly died. So I asked him, ”What happened, Nasruddin?” He shrugged his shoulders and said, ”I think she couldn’t stand all that improvement.

It was too much.”

Everybody is improving you: the parents, the teachers, the priests, the society, the civilization.

Everybody is improving, and nobody can stand that much improvement. And the total result is that you never attain to be the ideal man, you simply become a condemner of yourself. The ideal is impossible, the ideal is imaginary. The ideal is simply not possible, abstract, not natural. And everybody is being forced, pulled and pushed from every direction to improve. From everywhere comes the message that whatsoever you are, you are wrong – improve. That creates a self-condemnation; you reject yourself, you are not worthy – worthless, rubbish, rot. That is in the mind.

Only love never tries to improve you, accepts you as you are. When somebody loves you, you are simply perfect, the ideal, as you are. And if lovers are also trying to improve each other, they are not lovers. Again the whole game is there. Love accepts you as you are, and through this acceptance happens a transformation. For the first time you are at ease and you can relax, and this is going to be the prayer finally.

Then only, when you are at ease and relaxed, a gratitude arises. A gratitude just to be is so beautiful and ecstatic. You don’t demand anything in prayer, you simply are thankful. Prayer is a thanksgiving; it is not begging something from the God. Beggars are never people who can pray.

It is a thankfulness, a deep gratitude, that ”Whatsoever you have given is too much. In fact I never deserved it.” The whole life, through love, becomes a gift of the divine, and then you feel grateful.

And out of gratitude arises the fragrance of prayer.

It is a very subtle process: from love, acceptance of yourself and the other; through love’s acceptance, a transformation, and a vision that howsoever, whatsoever you are, you are perfect and the whole accepts you. Then a gratitude; then arises a prayer. It is not verbal; simply the whole heart is filled with gratitude. Prayer is not an act, prayer is a way of being. When there is really prayer, you are not praying, you are the prayer. You sit in prayer, you stand in prayer, you move in prayer, you breathe in prayer.

The glimpse will come from love. Have you ever been in love? – then you breathe in love, then you walk in love. Then your step has a quality of dance in it even visible to others. Then your eyes have a light, a different light to them. Then your face has a glow. Then your voice has a song in it.

A man who has never loved walks as if he is dragging himself. A man who has loved floats as if on the wings of the wind. A man who has never loved cannot dance because he doesn’t know what dance is, in his inside being. He can never be ecstatic-sad, closed, almost dead, almost living in a grave. Love allows you to move to the other, and when the energy moves to the other you become dynamic. When the energy moves to the other, from the other to you, suddenly you create a bridge between you and the other. And this bridge will give you the first glimpse, the first blueprint of what prayer is. It is a bridge between you and the whole.

I cannot conceive how it is possible for anybody to go to the prayer without going through love, so don’t be scared of love. Die into love so that you can be reborn. Lose yourself into love so that you can become again fresh and young. Otherwise there is no possibility of prayer. And don’t feel hopeless about love, because that is the only hope. Says Jesus, ”If the salt loses its saltiness, then how it can be salted again?” And I say unto you, if love becomes hopeless, then there is no hope, because love is the only hope. Then where you will get the hope again?

Don’t drop the effort, don’t accept the failure. There exists somebody for you; you exist for somebody.

If the thirst is there, there must be water. If the hunger is there, there must be food. If the desire is there, there must be a way to fulfill it. Don’t feel hopeless. Revive your hope again, because only a hopeless person is irreligious; only a hopeless person is atheistic. Love is the only hope. Through love, many new hopes will arise, because love is the seed of the ultimate hope – that is God. Make every effort; don’t settle in that hopelessness. It may be arduous but it is worth, because without it you are stuck, and you will be thrown back and back again into life unless you learn the lesson of love. And once love is learned, prayer is so easy. In fact, there is no need to learn prayer; it comes by itself if you love.

The fifth question:

Question 5

HOW WOULD PATANJALI WORK WITH THE INCREDIBLE NEUROSIS OF THE MODERN MIND?

Just like me! What I am doing here? fighting with your neurosis. The ego is the source of all neurosis, because the ego is the center of all falsity, of all perversions. The whole problem is with the ego. If you live with the ego, sooner or later you will become neurotic. You will have to become, because ego is the basic neurosis. Ego says, ”I am the center of the world,” which is false, mad.

Only if there is a God, he can say ”I”. We are only parts, we cannot say ”I”. The very assertion ”I”, is neurotic. Drop the I and all neurosis disappears.

In between you and the mad people in the madhouses there is not vast difference – only a difference of degrees, not of any quality, quantity. You may be ninety-eight degrees, and they have gone beyond hundred. You can go any time; the difference is not vast.

In the madhouses sometimes, go and watch, because that can become your future also.

Watch a madman. What has happened to him? That has happened to you in part. What happens to a madman? – his ego becomes so real that everything else becomes false. The whole world is illusory; only his inner world, the ego and its world, is true. You may go to visit a friend in the madhouse, and he may not look at you; he will not even recognize you, but he is talking to his invisible friend – to you – who is sitting by his side. You are not recognized, but a figment of his mind is recognized as the friend, and he is talking and he is answering.

A madman is a man whose ego has taken total possession. And just the opposite is the case with an enlightened man who has dropped the ego completely. Then he is natural. Without ego you are natural, like a river flowing to the ocean, or the wind passing through the pines, or the cloud floating in the sky. Without the ego you are again part of this vast nature, loose and natural. With the ego there is tension. With the ego you are separate. With the ego you have cut yourself from all relationships. Even if you make a move in a relationship, you make it very guardedly. The ego will not allow you to move in anything totally. It is always withholding itself.

If you think you are the center of existence, then you are mad. If you think you are just a wave in the ocean, part of the whole, one with the whole, then you can never get mad. If Patanjali was here, he will do the same that I am doing. And remember well that situations differ, but man is almost the same.

Now new technology is there. They were not in the days of Patanjali – new houses, new gadgets.

Everything has changed around man, but man remains the same. In the days of Patanjali also, man was the same, almost the same. Nothing much has changed in man. This has to be remembered, otherwise one starts feeling that the modern man is some way condemned-no. It may be that you are mad after a car; you would like a sports car and you are very tense and much anxiety is created by it. Of course, there were no cars in Patanjali’s days, but people were mad after bullock-carts.

Even now if you go to an Indian village, the man who has a fast bullock-cart is just like a man who has a Rolls Royce in London: bullock-cart or Rolls Royce makes no difference; the ego is fulfilled the same way. In a village, the bullock-cart will do the same. Objects don’t make much difference.

The mind of man, if egocentric, will find something or other always, so that is not the problem.

Modern man is not modern. Only the modern world is modern. Man remains very ancient and old.

You think you are modern? When I look at your faces I recognize ancient faces. You have been here many many lives and you have remained almost the same. You have not learned anything because you are doing again the same – again and again the same rut. Objects have changed but the man remains just the same. Nothing much has changed. Nothing much can change unless you take the step to change it. Unless transformation becomes your heart, unless transformation becomes your very throbbing of the heart and you understand the stupidity of the mind and you understand the misery of it... and then you take a jump out of it.

Mind is very old. Mind is very, very ancient. In fact, mind can never be new, it can never be modern.

Only a no-mind can be new and modern because only no-mind can be fresh every moment fresh.

No-mind never accumulates. The mirror is always clean; no dust accumulates on it. Mind is an accumulator; it goes on accumulating. Mind is always old; mind can never be new. Mind is never original; only no-mind is original.

That’s why even scientists feel that when a certain discovery is made, it is not made by the mind but only in the gaps where mind doesn’t exist – in sleep sometimes.

Just like Archimedes who was trying and trying to solve a particular mathematical problem and couldn’t solve it – he tried and tried, with the mind of course, but the mind can give you only answers which the mind knows. It cannot give you anything unknown. It is a computer: whatsoever you have fed to it, it can reply. You cannot ask anything new. How the poor mind is expected to reply something new? It is simply not possible! If I know your name, I can remember it, because mind is memory and remembrance. But if I don’t know your name and I try and try, how can I remember which is not there?

Then suddenly it happened. Archimedes worked and worked, and hard, because the king was waiting for him. And one morning he was taking his bath, naked, relaxing in the water, and suddenly it bubbled up, surfaced as if from nowhere. He jumped out of the bath. He was in a state of no-mind.

He couldn’t even think that he is naked because that is part of the mind. He couldn’t think that going naked on the street people will think him mad. That mind which is given by the society was not there, it was not functioning. He was in a state of no-mind, a sort of satori. He ran into the street shouting ”Eureka, eureka!” – shouting, ”I have found it!” – and people of course thought that he has gone mad:’What you have found, naked, running into the street?” He was caught hold because he was trying to enter the palace of the king shouting, ”Eureka!” He would have been imprisoned.

Friends got hold of him, brought him home and said, ”What are you doing? Even if you have found something, then go in proper dress, otherwise you will be in trouble.”

Between two moments of mind there is always a gap of no-mind. Between two thoughts there is a gap, an interval of no-thought. Between two clouds you can see the blue sky. Your nature is no-mind; there is no thought, nothing... vast emptiness, the blueness of the sky. Mind is just floating on the surface.

And this has been happening to many people: it happened to Madame Curie, she got the Nobel Prize for a moment of no-mind. She was working, again on a mathematical problem – worked hard.

Nothing was coming out; months passed. Then one night, suddenly she got up in sleep, went to the table, wrote the answer went back to her bed, forgot everything about it. In the morning when she came to the table she could not believe: the answer was there. Who has written it? Then by and by she remembered, as if like a dream: ”It happened in the night...” She had come and the handwriting was hers.

In deep sleep the mind drops; the no-mind functions. Mind is always old; no-mind is always fresh, young, original. No-mind is always like the dewdrop in the morning absolutely fresh, clean. Mind is always dirty. It has to be, it collects dirt. The dirt is the memory.

When I look at you, I see your mind is very ancient, many past lives collected there. But I can see deeper also. There is your no-mind, which doesn’t belong to time at all, so neither it is ancient nor modern. Man is always old, but something exists in man – the consciousness – which is neither old nor new, or, it is absolutely always new.

The sixth question – and very important:

Question 6

A LOT OF US FALL OFF TO SLEEP DURING YOUR DISCOURSES OR GO INTO A DOZY STATE.

YOU MUST SEE IT HAPPEN. IS THIS DOZING PART OF ANY CREATIVE POSITIVE PROCESS?

SHOULD WE ALLOW IT TO HAPPEN WITHOUT FEELING GUILTY ABOUT IT, OR SHOULD WE

MAKE A GREATER EFFORT TO STAY AWARE?

It is a little complicated. First, there are many types. There is a sort of doziness which comes if you listen to me very attentively. Then it is not like a sleep, it is more like hypnosis. You are in such deep tune with me that your mind starts non-functioning. You simply listen to me, and just listening to me becomes like a lullaby. A certain doziness is there if this is the case, but this will come only when you listen to me very attentively. Then it is not a sleep. It is beautiful and you should not feel guilty about it. If it is created by listening to me then there is no problem. In fact, this should be the case, because then you are listening deeper and deeper. Then I am penetrating you very, very deep, and you are feeling like a doze because the mind is not functioning. You are relaxed. It is a state of let-go. You are allowing me to penetrate you deeper and deeper. This is good; nothing is wrong in it. You feel it like dozy because it is a passivity; you are not active, and there is no need.

While you are listening to me, there is no need to be active, because if you are active your mind will go on interpreting. This is beautiful and no need to feel guilty – allow it – and no need to make any effort to disturb it. I will be planted deep inside you. This is helpful.

In India we have a special term for it. Patanjali calls it ”yoga tandra” – sleep that comes by yoga. In anything, if you do it very totally, you feel very relaxed, and that relaxation feels like sleep. It is not sleep; it is more akin to hypnosis. The word hypnosis also means sleep, but a different type of sleep in which two persons are in such a deep tune... If I hypnotize you, you will be able to listen to me, not to anything else. The hypnotized person listens to the hypnotizer only, nobody else. Exclusively he is focused. In this exclusive focusedness, the conscious drops and the unconscious functions. Your depth listens to my depth; it is a communication from depth to depth. The mind is not needed. But the point to remember is that you should be listening to me very attentively; then only will it happen.

Then there is a second type of sleep: you are not listening to me, and just by sitting here for so long you feel sleepy, not listening to me, or whatsoever I am saying is too much for you; you feel a little bored. Or whatsoever I am saying feels so monotonous – it is, because whatsoever I say is a single note. I am singing the single note in millions of ways: Patanjali, Buddha, Jesus are just excuses.

I am singing a single note. It is monotonous. If you feel that it is monotonous and you feel a little bored or you cannot understand it, it is too much for you, or it goes above your head, then too you can feel sleepy, but that sleep is not good. Then there is no need to come to listen to me because in fact you are not listening, you are asleep. So why be physically here? – there is no need.

There is a third type also. The second type you must really feel guilty and make more effort to be aware and listening to me. Then it is possible the first type may happen. Then there is a third type that is not related either with-listening or your being in a state of monotony. It comes from your physiology. You may not be sleeping well in the night. Very few people are sleeping well, so when you have not slept well in the night you are a little tired. You are hungry for sleep, and sitting here in one posture with the same man again and again, listening to the same voice again and again, your body starts feeling sleepy. That comes from your body.

If that is the case, then do something with your sleep. It should be made deeper. Time is not much of a question – you can sleep for eight hours, and if it is not deep you will feel hungry for sleep, starved – depth is the question.

Every night before you go to sleep do a small technique, and that will help tremendously. Put the lights off, sit in your bed ready to sleep, but sit for fifteen minutes. Close your eyes and then start any monotonous nonsense sound, for example: la, la, la – and wait for the mind to supply new sounds.

The only thing to be remembered is those sounds or words should not be of any language that you know. If you know English, German, Italian, then they should not be of Italian, German, English.

Any other language is allowed that you don’t know – Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese. But if you know Japanese then it is not allowed, then Italian is wonderful. Speak any language that you don’t know.

You will be in a difficulty for few seconds only for the first day, because how do you speak a language you don’t know? It can be spoken, and once it starts, any sounds, nonsense words, just to put the conscious off and allow the unconscious to speak...

When the unconscious speaks, the unconscious knows no language. It is a very, very old method. It comes from the Old Testament. It was called in those days glossolalia, and few churches in America still use it. They call it ”talking in tongues”. And it is a wonderful method, one of the most deep and penetrating into the unconscious. You start by la, la, la, and then anything that comes you go on.

Just for the first day you will feel a little difficult. Once it comes, you know the knack of it. Then for fifteen minutes, use the language that is coming to you, and use it as a language; in fact you are talking in it. This will relax the conscious so deeply; fifteen minutes and you then just simply lie down and go to sleep. Your sleep will become deeper. Within weeks you will feel a depth in your sleep, and in the morning you will feel completely fresh. Then, even if I try, I cannot put you to sleep.

The first type is beautiful; the third type is a sort of physiological starvation – it is ill. The third type has to be treated; the first type has to be allowed. The second type you must feel guilty about it and make every effort to get out of it.

The last question:

Question 7

AS THE MODERN MAN IS IN SUCH A HURRY, AND PATANJALI’S METHODS SEEM TO TAKE

SO LONG, TO WHOM ARE YOU ADDRESSING THESE LECTURES?

Yes, the modern man is in a hurry, and just the opposite will be helpful. If you are in a hurry, then Patanjali will be helpful because he is not in a hurry. He is the antidote. Your mind needs an antidote.

Look at it this way: because the western mind particularly – and now no other mind exists, only the western mind less or more everywhere, even in the East – is in a hurry. That’s why it has become interested in Zen, because Zen gives the promise of sudden enlightenment. Zen looks like instant coffee, and it has an appeal. But I know Zen won’t help because the appeal is not because of Zen, the appeal is because of hurry. And then you don’t understand Zen.

In the West, whatsoever is rumored about Zen is almost false; it fulfills a need of the mind who is in a hurry, but it is not true to Zen. If you go to Japan and ask Zen people, they wait for thirty years, forty years for the first satori to happen. Even for sudden enlightenment one has to work hard. The enlightenment is sudden, but the preparation is very long. It is just like you boil water: you heat the water; at a certain degree, hundred degrees, the water evaporates suddenly. Right – evaporation is sudden, but heating you have to bring it up to hundred degrees. The heating will take time, and heating depends on your intensity.

And if you are in a hurry you don’t have any heat, because in a hurry you would have to have Zen satori, or enlightenment, just by the way, if it can be attained, if it can be purchased. Running, you would like to snatch it from somebody’s hands. It cannot be done that way. There are flowers, seasonal flowers: you sow the seeds and within three weeks the plants are getting ready, but within three months the plants have blossomed, gone, disappeared. If you are in a hurry, then it will be better to be interested in drugs than into meditation, yoga, Zen, because drugs can give you dreams – instant dreams – sometimes of hell, sometimes of heaven. Then marijuana is better than meditation. If you are in a hurry, then nothing eternal can happen to you because the eternal needs eternal waiting. If you are asking for eternity to happen to you, you have to be ready for it. Hurry won’t help.

There is a Zen saying: If you are in a hurry, you will never reach. You can even reach just by sitting, but in a hurry you can never reach. The very impatience is a barrier.

If you are in a hurry then Patanjali is the antidote. If you are not in any hurry then Zen is also possible. This statement will look contradictory, but this is so. This is how reality is, contradictory.

If you are in a hurry, then you will have to wait for many lives before the enlightenment happens to you. If you are not in a hurry, then right now it can happen.

I will tell you one story that I like very much. It is one of the old Indian stories. Narada, a messenger between earth and heaven, a mythological figure, was going to heaven. He is just like a postman; he goes up and down continuously, bringing messages from above, bringing messages from down.

He continues his work. He was going to heaven and just he passed one very, very old monk sitting under a tree with his mala, his beads, chanting the name of Rama. He looked at Narada and said,

”Where are you going? Are you going to heaven? Then do me a favor. Ask God how much more I have to wait” – even in the very question, the impatience is there – ”and remind him also,” said the old monk, ”that for three lives I have been doing meditation and austerities, and everything that can be done I have done, there is a limit to everything.” A demand, expectation, impatience... Narada said, ”I am going and I will ask.”

And just by the side of the old monk, under another tree there is a young man dancing and singing the name of God. Just as a joke Narada asked the young man, ”Would you also like that I should ask about you, how much time it will take?” But the young man was so much in his ecstasy that he didn’t bother, he didn’t answer.

Then after few days, Narada came back. He told the old man that ”I asked God, and he laughed and he said, ’At least three lives more.”” The old man threw his mala and said, ”This is injustice!

And whosoever says God is just is wrong!” He was very angry. Then Narada went to the young man who was still dancing and said, ”Even if you have not asked, I asked, but I am afraid to tell you now, because that old man has got into such an anger he would have even hit me.” But the young man was still dancing, not interested. Narada told him that ”I asked him, and God said that tell that young man that he should count the leaves of the tree under which he is dancing; the same number he will have to be born again before he attains.’ ” The young man listened, went into such ecstasy, laughed and jumped and celebrated. He said, ”So soon? Because the earth is full of trees, millions and millions. And just these leaves, and the same number? So soon? God is infinite compassion, and I am not worthy of it! – and it is said immediately he attained. That very moment the body fell.

That very moment he became enlightened.

If you are in a hurry, it will take time. If you are not in a hurry, it is possible right this moment.

Patanjali is the antidote for those who are in a hurry, and Zen is for those who are not in a hurry. And just the opposite happens: people who are in hurry, they become interested in Zen, and people who are not in any hurry, they become interested in Patanjali. This is wrong. If you are in a hurry, then Patanjali... because he will pull you down and bring you to your senses, and he will talk of a path so long he will be a shock to you. And if you allow him to enter you, your hurry will disappear.

That’s why I am talking; I am talking on Patanjali because of you. You are in a hurry and I hope Patanjali will bring down your impatience; he will pull you down, back to the reality. He will bring you to your senses.

CHAPTER 7

The thought of no-thought

7 March 1975 am in Buddha Hall

THESE SAMADHIS THAT RESULT FROM MEDITATION ON AN OBJECT ARE SAMADHIS WITH

SEED, AND DO NOT GIVE FREEDOM FROM THE CYCLE OF REBIRTH.

ON ATTAINING THE UTMOST PURITY OF THE NIRVICHARA STAGE OF SAMADHI, THERE IS

A DAWNING OF THE SPIRITUAL LIGHT.

IN NIRVICHARA SAMADHI, THE CONSCIOUSNESS IS FILLED WITH TRUTH.

CONTEMPLATION is not meditation. There is a vast difference, and not only of quantity but of quality. They exist on different planes. Their dimensions are altogether different; not only different, but diametrically opposite.

This is the first thing to be understood. Contemplation is concerned with some object; it is a movement of consciousness towards the other. Contemplation is outgoing attention, moving towards the periphery, going away from the center. Meditation is moving towards the center, away from the periphery, away from the other. Contemplation is arrowed towards the other, meditation towards oneself. In contemplation, duality exists. There are two, the contemplator and the contemplated. In meditation there is only one.

The English word ”meditation” is not very good, does not give the real sense of dhyana or samadhi, because in the very word meditation, it appears that you are meditating upon something. So try to understand: contemplation is meditating upon something; meditation is not meditating upon something, just being oneself, no movement away from the center, no movement at all... just being yourself so totally that there is not even a flickering; the inner flame remains unmoving. The other has disappeared; only you are. Not a single thought is there. The whole world has disappeared. The mind is no more there; only you are, in your absolute purity. Contemplation is like a mirror mirroring something; meditation is simply mirroring, not mirroring anything – just a pure capacity to mirror but not actually mirroring anything.

With contemplation you can attain up to nirvichara samadhi – samadhi with no thought – but in nirvichara one thought remains, and that is the thought of no-thought. That too is a thought, the last, the very last, but it remains. One is aware that there is no thought, one knows that there is no thought. But what is this knowing of no-thought? Vast change has happened, thoughts have disappeared, but now, no-thought itself has become an object. If you say that ”I know emptiness,”

then it is not enough emptiness; the thought of emptiness is there. The mind is still functioning, functioning in a very, very passive, negative way – but still functioning. You are aware that there is emptiness. Now what is this emptiness you are aware of? It is very subtle thought, the most subtle, the last beyond which the object completely disappears.

So whenever a disciple comes to a Zen Master very happy with his attainment and says that ”I have attained emptiness,” the Master says, ”Go and throw this emptiness away. Don’t bring it to me again.

If you are really empty then there is no thought of emptiness also.”

This is what happened in the famous story of Subhuti. He was sitting under a tree with no thought, not even the thought of no-thought. Suddenly, flowers showered. He was amazed – ”What is happening?” He looked all around; flowers and flowers from the sky. Seeing that he was amazed, gods told him that ”Don’t be amazed. We have heard the greatest sermon on emptiness today.

You have delivered it. Celebration we are making, and we are throwing these flowers on you as a symbol, appreciating and celebrating your sermon on emptiness.” Subhuti must have shrugged his shoulders and said, ”But I have not spoken.” The gods said, ”Yes, you have not spoken, neither have we heard – that is the greatest sermon on emptiness.”

If you speak, if you say ”I am empty,” you have missed the point. Up to the thought of no-thought it is nirvichara samadhi, with no contemplation. But still the last part... the elephant has passed; the tail has remained – the last part – and sometimes the tail proves bigger than the elephant because it is so subtle. To throw away thoughts is easy. How to throw emptiness? – how to throw no-thought? It is very, very subtle; how to grasp it? That’s what happened when the Zen Master said to the disciple,

”Go and throw this emptiness!” The disciple said, ”But how to throw emptiness?” Then the Master said, ”Then carry it away; go throw it, but don’t stand before me with emptiness in your head. Do something!”

It is very subtle. One can cling to it, but then the mind has deceived you at the last point. Ninety-nine point nine you had reached; just the last step, and hundred degrees would have been complete and you would have evaporated.

Up to this point, Patanjali says it is samadhi without contemplation – nirvichara samadhi. If you attain to this samadhi you will become very, very happy, silent, serene. You will always be collected inside, together. You will have a crystallization; you will not be an ordinary man. You will look almost superhuman, but you will have to come back again and again. You will be born, you will die.

The wheel of reincarnation will not stop because the no-thought is just like a subtle seed; many lives will come out of it. The seed is very subtle, the tree is big, but the whole tree is hidden in the seed.

The seed may be a mustard seed, so small, but it carries it within it. It is loaded, it has a blueprint; it can bring the whole tree again and again and again. And from one seed millions of seeds can come out. One small mustard seed can fill the whole earth with vegetation.

No-thought is the most subtle seed. And if you have it, Patanjali calls this ”samadhi with seed”, sabeej samadhi. You will continue coming, the wheel will continue moving – birth and death, birth and death. It will be repeated. Still you have not burned the seed.

If you can burn this thought of no-thought, if you can burn this thought of no-self, if you can burn this thought of no-ego, only then nirbeej samadhi happens, samadhi with no seed. Then there is no birth, no death. You have transcended the whole wheel, you have gone beyond. Now you are pure consciousness. The duality has dropped; you have become one. This oneness, this dropping of duality is the dropping of life, death. The whole wheel suddenly stops – you are out of the nightmare.

Now we will enter into the sutras. They are very, very beautiful. Try to understand them. Deep is their significance. You will have to be very, very aware to understand the subtle nuances.

THESE SAMADHIS THAT RESULT FROM MEDITATION ON AN OBJECT ARE SAMADHIS WITH

SEED, AND DO NOT GIVE FREEDOM FROM THE CYCLE OF REBIRTH.

THESE SAMADHIS THAT RESULT FROM MEDITATION ON AN OBJECT... You can meditate on any object, whether material or sacred. The object may be money, or the object may be moksha, the final attainment. The object may be a stone or the object may be the kohinoor diamond; it makes no difference. If the object is there, mind is there; with object, mind continues. Mind has a continuity through the object. Through the other, the mind is fed continuously. And when the other is there you cannot know yourself; the whole mind is focused on the other. The other has to be removed, utterly removed, so there is nothing for you to think, there is nothing for you to give your attention to, there is nowhere you can move.

With the object, Patanjali says there are many possibilities: you can be in relationship with the object as a reasoning being; you can think about the object logically – then Patanjali gives it the name of savitarka samadhi. It happens many times: when a scientist is observing an object he becomes completely silent; no thoughts move in the sky, in his being, he is so much absorbed with the object. Or sometimes a child playing with his toy is so absorbed that the mind has completely, almost completely, stopped. A very deep serenity exists. The object takes all your attention; nothing is left behind. No anxiety is possible, no tension is possible, no anguish is possible, because you are totally absorbed in the object, you have moved in the object.

A scientist, a great philosopher... It happened to Socrates: he was standing one night; it was a full moon night and he was looking at the moon, and he became so absorbed... He must have been in what Patanjali calls savitarka samadhi, because he was one of the most logical men ever born, one of the most rational minds, the very peak of rationality. He was thinking about the moon, about the stars and the night and the sky, and he forgot himself completely. And the snow started falling, and by the morning he was found almost dead, half his body covered with snow, frozen, and still he was looking at the sky. He was alive but frozen. People came to search where he has gone, and then they have found him standing; the whole night he was standing under the tree. And when they asked, ”Why didn’t you come home back? – and the snow is falling and one can die,” he said, ”I completely forgot about it. For me, it has not fallen. For me, time has not passed. I was so much absorbed with the beauty of the night, and the stars and the order of existence and the cosmos.”

Logic always is absorbed with the order, with the harmony that exists in the universe. Logic moves around an object – goes on moving around and around and around – and the whole energy is taken by the object. This is samadhi with reason, savitarka, but the object is there. The scientific, the rational, the philosophical mind attains to it.

Then Patanjali says that there is another samadhi, nirvitarka, the aesthetic mind – the poet, the painter, the musician attains to it. The pc et goes directly into the object, not around and around, but still the object is there. He may not be thinking about it, but his attention is focused on it. It may not be the head functioning, it may be the heart, but still the object is there, the other is there. A poet can attain to very deep, blissful states, but the cycle of rebirth will not stop, neither for the scientist nor for the poet.

Then, Patanjali comes to savichara samadhi: logic has been dropped, just pure contemplation – not about it – just looking at it, watching at it, witnessing it. Deeper realms open but the object remains there, and you remain obsessed with the object. You are yet not in your own self – the other is there.

Then Patanjali comes to nirvichara.

In nirvichara, by and by, the object is made subtle. This is the most important point to be understood: in nirvichara, the object is made more and more subtle. From gross objects you move to subtle objects – from a rock to the flower, from the flower to the fragrance. You move towards subtle. By and by, a moment comes the object becomes so subtle, almost as if it is not.

For example if you contemplate on emptiness; the object is almost not, if you meditate on nothingness. There are Buddhist schools which emphasize only one meditation, and that is on nothingness. One has to think, one has to meditate, one has to imbibe the idea that nothing exists.

Continuously meditating on nothingness, a moment comes when the object becomes so subtle that it cannot withhold your attention; it is so subtle that there is nothing to contemplate, and one goes on and on and on. Suddenly, one day the consciousness bounces upon oneself. Not finding any standing ground there in the object, not finding any foothold, not finding anything to cling to, the consciousness bounces upon itself. It returns, comes back to its own center. Then it becomes the highest, the purest, nirvichara.

The highest, nirvichara, is when the consciousness bounces upon oneself. If you start thinking that

”I have attained to no-thought, and I have attained to nothingness,” again you have created an object and the consciousness has moved away. This happens many times for a seeker. Not knowing the inner mysteries, many times you bounce upon yourself. Sometimes you touch your center, and again you have gone out. Suddenly, the idea arises, ”Yes, I have attained.” Suddenly, you start feeling ”Yes, here it is. satori has happened, samadhi has been attained.” You feel so blissful it is natural for the idea to arise. But if the idea arises, again you have become a victim of something which is objective. Subjectivity is lost again; oneness has become two. Duality again is there.

One has to be aware not to allow the idea of no-thought. Don’t try – whenever something like this happens, remain into it. Don’t try to think about it, don’t make any notion about it; enjoy it. You can dance, there will be no trouble, but don’t allow verbalization, don’t allow language. Dancing won’t disturb because in dancing you remain one.

In Sufi tradition, dance is used to avoid mind. In the last stage, Sufi Masters say that ”Whenever you come to a point where object has disappeared, immediately start dancing so that the energy moves into the body and not in the mind. Immediately do something; anything will help.”

Zen Masters when they attain start laughing a real belly laugh, roar-like, a lion’s roar. What are they doing? Energy is there and for the first time energy has become one. If you allow anything else in the mind, immediately the division is again there, and division is your old habit. It will persist for few days. Jump, run, dance, give a good belly laugh, do something so that the energy moves into the body and not into the head. Because energy is there and the old pattern is there, it can move again...

Many people come to me, and whenever it happens, the greatest problem arises – the greatest I say, because it is no ordinary problem. The mind immediately grabs hold of it and says, ”Yes, you have attained.” The ego has entered, the mind has entered, everything is lost. A single idea and a vast division immediately is there. Dancing is good. You can dance – there will be no trouble about it. You can be ecstatic, you can celebrate. Hence I emphasize on celebration.

After each meditation celebrate, so celebration becomes part of you, and when the final happens, immediately you will be able to celebrate.

THESE SAMADHIS THAT RESULT FROM MEDITATION ON AN OBJECT ARE SAMADHIS WITH

SEED, AND DO NOT GIVE FREEDOM FROM THE CYCLE OF REBIRTH.

The whole problem is how to be freed from the other, the object. The object is the whole world.

You will come again and again if the object is there, because with the object exists desire, with the object exists thought, with the object exists ego, with the object you exist. If the object falls, you will suddenly fall, because object and subject can exist together. They are parts of each other; one cannot exist. It is just like a coin: the head and tail exist together. You cannot save one and throw the other. You cannot save the head and throw the tail – they are together. Either you keep them both or you throw them both. If you throw one, the other is thrown. Subject and object are together; they are one, aspects of one thing. Object drops, the whole house of subjectivity immediately collapses; then you are no more the old. Then you are the beyond, and only the beyond is beyond life and death.

You will have to die, you will have to be reborn. While dying, just like a tree, you gather all your desires again in a seed. You don’t go into another birth; the seed flies and goes into another birth.

All you have lived desired – your frustrations, your failures, your successes, your loves, your hates –

while you are dying, the whole energy gathers into a seed. That seed is of energy; that seed jumps from you, moves into a womb. Again that seed recreates you, just like a seed in the tree. When the tree is going to die, it preserves itself into the seed. Through the seeds the tree persists; through the seed you persist. That’s why Patanjali calls it sabeej samadhi. If the object is there, you will have to be born again and again, you will have to pass through the same misery, the same hell that is life, unless you become seedless.

And what is seedlessness? If the object is not there, there is no seed. Then all your past karmas simply disappear, because in fact you have never done anything. Everything has been done by the mind – but you are identified, you think you are the mind. Everything has been done by the body –

but you are identified, you think you are the body.

In a seedless samadhi, in nirvichara samadhi, when only consciousness exists in its utter purity, for the first time you understand the whole thing: that you have never been the doer. You have never desired a single thing. There is no need to desire because everything is in you. You are the ultimate.

It was foolish on your part to desire, and because you desired you became a beggar.

Ordinarily you think otherwise – you think because you are a beggar, that’s why you desire. But in seedless samadhi dawns this understanding: that it is just the otherwise – because you desire, you are a beggar. You are completely upside down. If desire disappears, you simply suddenly become the emperor. The beggar has never been there. It was because you were desiring, it was because you were too much thinking of the object, and you were so much obsessed with the object and the objects, that you had no time and no opportunity and no space to look within. You had completely forgotten that who is within. Within is the divine, within is God himself.

That’s why Hindus go on saying, ”Aham brahmasmi.” They say, ”I am the ultimate.” But just by saying, it cannot be attained. One has to reach to the nirvichara samadhi. Only then Upanishads become true, only then Buddhas become true. You become a witness. You say, ”Yes, they are right,” because now it has become your own experience.

ON ATTAINING THE UTMOST PURITY OF THE NIRVICHARA STAGE OF SAMADHI, THERE IS

A DAWNING OF THE SPIRITUAL LIGHT.

NIRVICHARA VAISHARADYE ADHYATMA PRASADAH. This word prasad is very, very beautiful. It means grace. When one is in his own being settled, come home, suddenly a benediction... all that he always desired is suddenly fulfilled. All that you wanted to be, suddenly you are, and you have not done anything for it, you have not made any effort for it. In nirvichara samadhi one comes to know that in one’s very nature, deepest nature, one is always fulfilled – a fulfillment dance!

ON ATTAINING THE UTMOST PURITY...

And what is the utmost purity? – where not even the thought of no-thought exists. That is the utmost purity: where the mirror is simply the mirror, nothing is reflected in it – because even a reflection is an impurity. It does not do to the mirror anything in fact, but still the mirror is not pure. The reflection cannot do anything to the mirror. It will not leave any footprints, it will not leave any traces on the mirror, but while it is there the mirror is filled with something else. Something foreign is there: mirror is not in its uttermost purity, in its uttermost loneliness; mirror is not innocent – something is there.

When the mind has completely gone and even there is no-mind, there is not a single thought of anything whatsoever, not even about your state of being in such a blissful moment – you are simply this utmost purity of nirvichara stage of samadhi – there is a dawning of the spiritual light: many things happen.

That is what happened to Subhuti: suddenly flowers showered for no known reason at all, and he has not done anything. He was not even aware of his emptiness. If he was, then flowers were not going to shower. He was simply oblivious of anything, he was so in himself – not even a ripple on the surface of the consciousness, not even a reflection in the mirror, not even a white cloud in the sky – nothing.

Flowers showered...

that is what Patanjali says: NIRVICHARA VAISHARADYE ADHYATMA PRASADAH – suddenly grace descends. In fact, it has been always descending.

You are not aware: right now flowers are showering on you, but you are not empty so you cannot see them. Only through the eyes of emptiness they can be seen, because they are not flowers of this world, they are flowers from the other world.

All those who have attained, they agree on one point: that in that final attainment one feels that for no reason at all, everything is fulfilled. One feels so blessed, and one has not done anything for it. You have done something about meditation, you have done something about contemplation, you have done something about how not to cling with the object, you have done something on these lines, but you have not done anything for sudden blessings to shower on you. You have not done anything to fulfill your desires.

With the object, misery exists; with the desire, the miserable mind; with the demand, with the complaining mind, the hell. Suddenly when the object has gone, the hell has also disappeared and heaven is showering on you. It is a moment of grace. You cannot say that you have attained it.

You can simply say you have not done anything. That is the meaning of grace, prasadah: without doing anything on your part it is happening. In fact it has always been happening, but you are missing somehow. You are so much engrossed with the object, that’s why you cannot look within, what is happening there. Your eyes are not withinwards, your eyes are moving outwards. You are born already fulfilled. You need not do anything, you need not move a single step. This is the meaning of prasad.

THERE IS A DAWNING OF THE SPIRITUAL LIGHT.

Always, you have been surrounded with darkness. With the awareness moving inwards, there is light, and in that light you come to know there has been no darkness. Just you were not in tune with yourself; that was the only darkness.

If you understand this, just sitting silently everything is possible. You don’t make a journey and you reach the goal. You don’t do anything and everything happens. Difficult to understand it, because the mind says, ”How is it possible? And I have been doing so much. Even then bliss has not happened, so how it can happen without doing anything?” Everybody is seeking happiness and everybody is missing it, and the mind says, and of course logically, that if with so much seeking it doesn’t happen, how it can happen without seeking? And people who are talking about these things must have gone mad: ”One has to seek hard, then only is it possible.” And the mind goes on saying, ”Seek hard, make more effort, run fast, gain speed, because the goal is so far away.”

The goal is within you. There is no need for any speed and there is no need to go anywhere. There is no need to do anything whatsoever. The only thing needed is to sit silently in a non-doing state, without any object, just being yourself so completely, so utterly centered, that not even a ripple arises on the surface. And then there is prasad; then grace descends on you, blessings shower, your whole being is filled with an unknown benediction. Then this very world becomes a heaven.

Then this very life becomes divine. Then there is nothing wrong. Then everything is as it should be.

With your inner bliss you feel the bliss everywhere. With a new perception, a new clarity, there is no other world, there is no other life, there is no other time. This moment, this very existence is the only case.

But unless you feel yourself, you will go on missing all the blessings that existence gives just as gifts.

Prasad means it is a gift from the existence. You have not earned it, you cannot claim it. In fact, when the claimer goes, suddenly it is there.

ON ATTAINING THE UTMOST PURITY OF THE NIRVICHARA STAGE OF SAMADHI, THERE IS

A DAWNING OF THE SPIRITUAL LIGHT.

... and your innermost being is of the nature of light. Consciousness is light, consciousness is the only light. You are existing very unconsciously: doing things, not knowing why; desiring things, not knowing why; asking things, not knowing why; drifting in an unconscious sleep. You are all sleepwalkers. Somnambulism is the only spiritual disease – walking and living in sleep.

Become more conscious. Start being conscious with objects. Look at things with more alertness.

You pass by a tree; look at the tree with more alertness. Stop for a while, look at the tree; rub your eyes, look at the tree with more alertness. Collect your awareness, look at the tree, and watch the difference. Suddenly when you are alert, the tree is different: it is more green, it is more alive, it is more beautiful. The tree is the same, only you have changed. Look at a flower as if your whole existence depends on this look. Bring all your awareness to the flower and suddenly the flower is transfigured – it is more radiant, it is more luminous. It has something of the glory of the eternal, as if the eternal has come into the temporal in the shape of a flower.

Look at the face of your husband, your wife, your friend, your beloved, with alertness; meditate on it, and suddenly you see not only the body, but that which is beyond the body, which is coming out of the body. There is an aura around the body, of the spiritual. The face of the beloved is no more the face of your beloved; the face of the beloved has become the face of the divine. Look at your child.

Watch him playing with full alertness, awareness, and suddenly the object is transfigured.

First start working with objects. That’s why Patanjali talks about other samadhis before he talks about nirvichara samadhi, the samadhi without seed. Start with objects and move towards more subtle objects.

For example, a bird sings in the tree: be alert, as if in that moment you exist and the song of the bird-the whole doesn’t exist, doesn’t matter. Focus your being towards the song of the bird and you will see the difference. The traffic noise no more exists, or exists at the very periphery of existence, far away, distant, and the small bird and its song fills your being completely – only you and the bird exist. And then when the song has stopped, listen to the absence of the song. Then the object becomes subtle, because...

Remember always: when a song stops it leaves a certain quality to the atmosphere – of the absence.

It is no more the same. The atmosphere has changed completely because the song existed and then the song disappears... now the absence of the song. Watch it – the whole existence is filled by the absence of the song. And it is more beautiful than any song because it is the song of the silence.

A song uses sound, and when the sound disappears the absence uses the silence. And after a bird has sung, the silence is deeper. If you can watch it, if you can be alert, you are now meditating on a very subtle object, a very subtle object. A person moves, a beautiful person moves – watch the person. And when he has left, now watch the absence; he has left something. His energy has changed the room; it is no more the same room.

When Buddha was dying, Ananda asked him... he was crying and weeping, and he said, ”What will happen to us now? You were here and we couldn’t attain. Now you will be no more here; what we will do?” Buddha is reported to have said, ”Now love my absence, be attentive to my absence.” For five hundred years no statues were made so that the absence can be felt. And instead of statues only the bodhi tree was depicted. Temples existed, but not with a Buddha statue; just a bodhi tree, a stone bodhi tree, an absent Buddha underneath, and people will go and sit and watch the tree, and try to watch the absence of the Buddha under the tree. And many attained to very deep silence and meditation. Then, by and by, the subtle object was lost and people started talking: ”What is there to meditate? Only a tree is there, but where is Buddha?” Because to feel a Buddha in his absence needs very, very deep clarity and attentiveness. Then, feeling that now people cannot meditate on the subtle absence, statues were created.

This you can do with any of your senses because people have different capacities and sensibilities.

For example, if you have a musical ear, then it is good to watch and to be attentive to a song of a bird. For few seconds it is there, and then it is gone. Then watch the absence. And you will be thrilled if you can watch the absence. Suddenly the object has become very subtle. It will require more attention and more awareness than the actual song of the bird.

If you have a good nose... very few people have it; almost humanity has lost the nose completely.

Animals are better; their smell is far sensitive, capable, than man. Something has happened to man’s nose, something has gone wrong; very few people have a capable nose, but if you have –

then be near a flower, let the smell fill you. Then, by and by, you move away from the flower, very slowly, but continue being attentive to the smell, the fragrance. As you move away, the fragrance will become more and more subtle, and you will need more awareness to feel it. Become the nose.

Forget about the whole body; bring all your energy to the nose, as if only the nose exists. And by and by, if you lose track of the smell, go few steps further ahead; again catch hold of the smell, then back, move backwards. By and by, you will be able to smell a flower from a very, very great distance

– nobody will be able to smell that flower from there. And then you go on moving. In a very simple way you are making the object subtle. And then a moment will come when you will not be able to smell the smell: now smell the absence. Now smell the absence where the fragrance was just a moment before, and it is no more there. That is the other part of its being, the absent part, the dark part. If you can smell the absence of the smell, if you can feel it, that it makes a difference, it makes a difference; then the object has become very subtle. Now it is reaching nearly the nirvichara state, the no-thought state of samadhi.

Mohammed has used – only one enlightened person – perfume as an object of meditation. Islam has made it an object of meditation. It is beautiful.

And why smell has disappeared from man? There are many complex things involved in it, but I would like to tell you just by the way so you can remember them. And if you cross those barriers, suddenly your smell capacity will be back. It is suppressed.

You must be knowing that smell is deeply concerned with sex. Sex suppression has become the suppression of smell. Animals first smell the body before they make love. In fact they smell the sex center before they make love. If the sex center is giving them signals, that ”Yes, you are accepted, allowed” – only then they make love, otherwise not.

The human body also gives smells – of invitation, of repulsion, attraction. The body has its own language and symbols, but in a society it will be very difficult if you can smell. If you are talking to a friend and his wife starts smelling and gives you invitation of sex, what you will do? – it will be dangerous. So the only way civilization can cope with it is to destroy smell completely, because it is a sex-related phenomenon. You are passing by the road and a woman passes by: she may not be interested consciously in you, but she gives the smell, the invitation smell. What to do? You want to make love to your wife. She is your wife, so of course when you want to make love she has to make love, but her body gives you the signal of no love, no invitation, repulsion – what you will do?

And bodies are uncontrollable; you cannot control them just by mind. Smell became dangerous; it became sexual. It is sexual.

That’s why on perfume the names are all sexual. Go to a store and look at the labels of perfumes-all are sexual. Perfume is sexual, and the nose is completely closed. Because Islam doesn’t suppress sex, accepts it, and Islam doesn’t deny sex, accepts it, and Islam is not for renouncing the world of sex, that’s why Islam could give a little freedom to the sensibility of smell. No other religion in the world could do that.

But smell can become very, very beautiful if you make it an object of meditation. And it is a very subtle phenomenon, and, by and by, you can go to the subtlest.

Hindus have also used certain types of perfumes, particularly incense in the temples, but their incense is different. Just as there are sexual smells, there are spiritual, and both are related together.

After a very long search Hindus discovered particular smells which are not sexual. Rather on the contrary, the energy moves upwards not downwards. Incense became very, very significant. In the temple they have been using it; it helps, just as there are musics which can make you sexual, and there are musics which can make you spiritual. Particularly modern music is very sexual; classical music is very spiritual. The same exists about all senses: there are paintings which can be spiritual, sexual; sounds, smells, which can be sexual, spiritual. Each sense has two possibilities: if the energy falls through it, downwards, then it is sexual; if the energy rises upwards, then it is spiritual.

You can do it with incense. Burn incense, meditate on it, feel it, smell it, be filled with it, and then move backwards, away from it. And go on, go on meditating on it; let it become more and more subtle. A moment comes when you can feel the absence of a certain thing. Then you have come to a very deep awareness.

ON ATTAINING THE UTMOST PURITY OF THE NIRVICHARA STAGE OF SAMADHI, THERE IS

A DAWNING OF THE SPIRITUAL LIGHT.

But when the object completely disappears, the presence of the object disappears and the absence of the object disappears, thought disappears and no-thought disappears, mind disappears and the idea of no-mind disappears, only then you have attained to the utmost. Now this is the moment when suddenly grace descends on you. This is the moment when flowers shower. This is the moment when you are connected with the source of life and being. This is the moment when you are no more a beggar; you have become the emperor. This is the moment when you are crowned. Before it you were on a cross; this is the moment the cross disappears and you are crowned.

... IN NIRVICHARA SAMADHI THE CONSCIOUSNESS IS FILLED WITH TRUTH.

So truth is not a conclusion to be reached; truth is an experience to be attained. Truth is not something that you can think about; it is something that you can be. Truth is the experience of oneself being totally alone, without any object. Truth is you in your uttermost purity. Truth is not a philosophical conclusion. No syllogism can give you truth. No theory, no hypothesis can give you truth. Truth comes to you when mind disappears. Truth is already there hidden in the mind, and the mind won’t allow you to look at it because mind is outgoing and helps you to look at objects.

IN NIRVICHARA SAMADHI THE CONSCIOUSNESS IS FILLED WITH TRUTH.

Ritambhara is a very beautiful word; it is just like Tao. The word truth cannot explain it completely.

In the Vedas it is called rit. Rit means the very foundation of the cosmos. Rit means the very law of existence. Rit is not just truth; truth is too dry a word and carries much of the logical quality in it. We say, ”This is true and that is untrue,” and we decide which theory is true and which theory is untrue.

Truth carries much of the logic in it. It is a logical word. Rit means the law of the cosmic harmony, the law which moves the stars, the law through which seasons come and go, the sun rises and sets, and night follows day, and death follows birth. And mind creates the world and no-mind allows you to know that which is. Rit means the cosmic law, the very innermost core of existence.

Rather than calling it truth, it will be better to call i the very ground of being. Truth seems to be a distant thing, something that exists separate from you. Rit is your innermost being, and not only your innermost being, the innermost being of all, ritambhara. In nirvichara samadhi the consciousness is filled with ritambhara, the cosmic harmony. There is no discord, no conflict; everything has fallen in line. Even the wrong is absorbed, it is not discarded; even the bad is absorbed, it is not discarded; even the poison is absorbed, it is not discarded; nothing is discarded.

In truth, the untruth is discarded. In ritambhara, the whole is accepted, and the whole is such a harmonious phenomenon that even the poison plays its own part. Not only life but death also –

everything is seen in a new light. Even the misery, the dukkha, takes a new quality to it. Even the ugly becomes beautiful because in the moment of the dawning of ritambhara, you understand for the first time why the opposites exist. And opposites are no more opposites; they have all become complementaries, they help each other.

Now you don’t have any complaint, no complaint against existence. Now you understand why things are as they are, why death exists. Now you know life cannot exist without death. And what life will be without death?-life will be simply unbearable without death; and life would be simply ugly without death – just think!

There is a story about Alexander the Great, that he was in search to find something which can make him immortal. Everybody is in search of something like that, and when Alexander is in search, he will find it – he was such a powerful man. He searched and searched, and once he reached to the cave where some wise man has told him that, ”If you drink the water of that cave – there is a stream in the cave – you will become immortal.” Alexander must have been foolish. All Alexanders are foolish, otherwise he should have asked the wise man whether he had drunk from that stream or not. He didn’t ask; he was in such a hurry. And who knows? – he may not be able to reach the cave, and before he dies... so he rushed.

He reached to the cave. Inside it, he was very happy: crystal clear the water was there; he had never seen such a water. And he was going to drink the water... suddenly a crow who was sitting in the cave said, ”Stop! Don’t do it. I have done and I am suffering.” Alexander looked at the crow and said, ”What are you saying? You have drunk, and what is the suffering?” He said, ”Now I cannot die and I want to die. Everything is finished. I have known everything that life can give. I have known love and I have grown out of it. And I have known success; I was a king of crows, and now I am fed up, and I have known everything that can be known. And everybody I knew has died; they have gone back to rest, and I cannot rest. I have tried all efforts to commit suicide, but everything fails. I cannot die because I have drunk from this condemned cave. It is better that nobody knows about it. Before you drink, you meditate on my condition – and then you can drink.” It is said Alexander for the first time thought about it, and came back without drinking from that cave and that stream.

Life will be simply unbearable if there is no death. Love will be unbearable if there is no opposite to it. If you cannot separate from your beloved it will be unbearable; the whole thing will become so monotonous, it will create boredom. Life exists with the opposites – that’s why it is so interesting.

Coming together and getting away, again coming together and getting away; rising and falling. Just think of a wave in the ocean which has risen and cannot fall, just think of a sun who has risen and cannot set. Movement from one polarity to another is the secret that life continues to be interesting.

When one comes to know the ritambhara, the basic law of all, the very foundation of all, everything falls in line and one understands. Then one has no complaint. One accepts: whatsoever is, is beautiful.

That’s why all those who have known they say life is perfect; you cannot improve upon it.

IN NIRVICHARA SAMADHI THE CONSCIOUSNESS IS FILLED WITH TRUTH.

Call it Tao... Tao gives the meaning of ritambhara more correctly; but still if you can remain with the word ritambhara, it will be more beautiful. Let it remain there. Even the sound of it – ritambhara has some quality of harmony. Truth is too much dry, a logical concept. If you can make something out of truth plus love, it will be nearer to ritambhara. It is the hidden harmony of Heraclitus, but this happens only when the object has completely disappeared. You are alone with your consciousness and there is nobody else. The mirror without reflection...

CHAPTER 8

The Master appears

8 March 1975 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

Question 1

HOW IS IT THAT AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON LIKE KRISHNAMURTI CANNOT SEE THAT HE

IS NOT HELPING PEOPLE? IF HE IS ENLIGHTENED SHOULD NOT HE BE ABLE TO SEE ALL?

AND YOU SAY THAT YOU ARE ABLE TO HELP ALL TYPES BUT YOU ALSO SAY THAT YOU ARE

CONTRADICTORY ON PURPOSE, SO THAT SOME PEOPLE WILL GO AWAY. IF YOU ARE ABLE

TO HELP ALL, WHY SHOULD SOME NEED TO GO AWAY?

A PERSON LIKE Krishnamurti can see. There is no hindrance, no obstacle, and he sees everything that is happening around him. But an enlightened person cannot do anything. He has to be as he is, loose and natural. Doing brings tension, and doing makes you unnatural. Then you are floating against the current.

Krishnamurti knows what is happening but he cannot do anything. He has to allow it to happen. It is how the whole wills it. Nothing can be done about it. The doer is always in ignorance. The doer is never found when one is awakened. When one is awakened one accepts whatsoever is the case.

So don’t think that Krishnamurti does not know. He knows perfectly, but this is how it has happened.

This is how it is happening. And there is nobody inside to judge whether it should happen like this or otherwise. Nothing can be done. A rose flower is a rose flower, and a mango tree is a mango tree.

The mango tree cannot bring roses, the rose plant cannot bring mangos. This is how it is – a total acceptance.

And when I say ”total acceptance,” it is just to explain to you.

Otherwise, in an enlightened

consciousness there is no acceptance because there is no rejection. That’s why I call it total. It is utmost surrender to the whole. Everything is good. Whether I can help you or not, that is not for me to decide. The whole decides, and the whole uses me. It is up to him. If it is good that people should not be helped, then the whole will not allow me to help people, but I am nowhere in it. This is the state of enlightenment. You cannot understand it because you always think in terms of the doer.

An enlightened person in fact does not exist; he is not there. It is a vast emptiness, so whatsoever happens, happens; whatsoever doesn’t happen, doesn’t happen.

And you ask me:

AND YOU SAY THAT YOU ARE ABLE TO HELP ALL TYPES, BUT YOU ALSO SAY THAT YOU

ARE CONTRADICTORY ON PURPOSE, SO THAT SOME PEOPLE WILL GO AWAY. IF YOU ARE

ABLE TO HELP ALL, WHY SHOULD SOME NEED TO GO AWAY?

Yes, it is how it is. All can be helped through me. When I say all can be helped through me, I don’t mean that all should be helped, because it is not just on my part. It depends on the person who is going to be helped also. It is fifty-fifty. A river flows and I can drink out of it, but should all drink?

– that is not certain; a few will go away. It may not be the right time for them and nobody can be helped when it is not right time. Everything happens in its own time.

Some may not be helped because they are closed. And you cannot force, and you cannot be violent. Spiritual phenomenon happens in a deep passivity; when a disciple is passive, only then does it happen. If I find that you are too active on your part, or if I find you are too much closed, or I find that this is not the right time for you, the best that can happen is to go away from me... because otherwise you will simply be wasting your time – not mine, because I have no time – simply your time you will be wasting.

Meanwhile, you are being distracted. You should have been somewhere else in the world, in the market. You should have been somewhere else, because there your maturity would have happened.

Here you are wasting your time if it is not the right time for you. It is better you go away. You have to move in the world a little while more. You have to live through suffering a little while more. You are not yet ready, not yet ripe, and ripeness is all because a Master cannot do anything; he is not a doer. If you are ripe and the Master is present, something from the whole flows through the Master and reaches you, and the ripe fruit falls to the earth. But the unripe fruit will not fall, and it is good that it should not fall.

So when I say I am contradictory, I mean that a certain type of situation is always created, not by me, but by the whole through me. So the people who are not ready should not be in any way allowed to waste their time. They have to go and learn the lesson, pass through the suffering of life, attain to a certain maturity, and then come to me. I may not be here – then somebody else will be here.

Because it is not a question of me and somebody else; all enlightened persons are the same. If I am not here, if this body is not here, some other body may be functioning for the whole, so there is no hurry. The existence can wait for eternity. But unripe, you cannot be helped.

There are teachers – I don’t call them Masters because they are not awakened, they are teachers

– they will not allow even an unripe person to go away. They will create all sorts of situations in which the person cannot escape. They are dangerous, because if the person is not ripe they are distracting the person. And if a person is not mature and something is given out of season, it will not be creative, it will be destructive.

It is just like a small child and you start teaching him about sex, and he doesn’t know what it is, and he has no urge yet arisen: you are destroying his mind. Let the thirst arise, let the urge be there; then he will be open, ready to understand.

Spirituality is just like sex. Sex needs a certain maturity; by the fourteenth year of age the child will be ready. His own urge will be there. He will start asking, and he would like to know more and more about it. Then only there is a possibility to explain him certain things.

The same happens with spirituality: at a certain maturity the urge arises; you are looking after God.

The world is already finished; you lived it through and through, you saw it through and through. It is finished; it has no attraction, it has no meaning. Now an urge has arisen to know the meaning of existence itself. You played all the games, and now you know they are games. Now no game attracts you, the world has lost its meaning – then you are mature.

Now you will need a Master, and Masters are always there, so there is no hurry. The Master may not be in this form, in this body – another body – forms don’t matter, bodies are irrelevant. The inner quality of the Master is always the same, the same, the same. Buddha says again and again, ”You taste the sea water from anywhere; it is always salty.” Just like that, the Master is always of the same taste. The taste is of awareness. And always there are Masters; they will always be there, so there is no hurry.

And if you are not finished with the world, if a lingering desire is there to know sex, to know what money can bring, to know what power can give you, then you are not ready. The spiritual urge is not one urge in many urges, no. When all the urges have lost their meaning then it arises. The spiritual urge cannot exist with other urges – that’s not possible. It takes possession of your complete being, utterly. It becomes the only one desire. Only then a Master can be of any help to you.

But teachers are there. They would like you to cling to them and they will cling to you, and they will create such a situation in which if you escape you will feel always guilty. A Master has a milieu around him in which, if you live there, you live by your own decision. If you leave, you leave by your own decision. And when you leave, a Master would not like you to feel guilty about it, so he gives such a color to the situation that you feel, ”This Master is not a Master,” or, ”This Master is not for us,” or ”He is so contradictory that he is absurd.” He takes the whole responsibility so you don’t feel guilty. You simply go away from him, completely clean and washed of him.

That’s why I am contradictory. And when I say ”on purpose”, that doesn’t mean that I am doing it; it is just how I am. But ”on purpose” has a meaning into it, and the meaning is: I would not like you, whenever you leave me, to feel guilty about it. I would like to take the whole responsibility. I would like you to feel that ”This man is wrong,” and that’s why you are leaving. Not that you are wrong, because if that feeling goes in your being, that you are wrong and it was not good, then it will be again destructive, a destructive seed within you.

A Master never possesses you.

You can be with him, you can go away, but there is no

possessiveness in it. He allows you total freedom of being with or going away. That’s what I mean that here you are: celebrate with me; whatsoever I am, share with me. But if you feel in a certain moment to go away, then turn your back and never look again towards me, and don’t think about me, and don’t feel guilty.

There are deep problems involved in it. If you feel guilty, you may go away from me, but just to balance the guilt you will go on talking against me. Otherwise how you will balance the guilt? You will go on condemning me. That means you have gone and not yet gone. Negatively you are with me, and that is more dangerous. If you have to be with me, be positively with me. Otherwise, simply forget me, that ”This man doesn’t exist” – why go on condemning? But if you feel guilty, you will have to balance. If you feel guilty, guilt is heavy and you would like to condemn me. If you condemn then there is a balance, and then negatively you will remain with me. With my shadow you will move. That’s again wasting your time and your life, your energy. So when I say on purpose I create situations... whenever I feel a certain person is not ready, a certain person is not ripe, a certain person needs a little more ripening in the world, or a certain person is too intellectual and cannot fall into trust, needs a teacher and not a Master, or a certain person has come to me not with any decisiveness on his part, but has just drifted as an accident...

You can drift. A friend is coming to see me, and by the way you also followed. Then you got caught and hooked – and you never meant to be here; you were going somewhere else – accidentally.

When I feel that you are here accidentally, I would like you to go away because this is not the right place for you. I would not like anybody to be distracted from his path. If on your path you can meet me, good. If the meeting is natural, it was going to happen, it was destined, you were getting ready and ready and ready and it was going to happen, then it is beautiful. Otherwise I would not like to waste your time. Meanwhile, you could have learned many things.

Or when I feel that somebody has come to me for some reason which is not the right reason... many people come for wrong reasons. Somebody may have come just to feel a new ego arising in him, the ego that religion can give, the ego that sannyas can give. You can feel very special, extraordinary, through religion. If I feel that somebody has come for that, then that is not the right reason to be near with me, because the egos cannot be closer to me.

Somebody may have got attracted with my ideas – that too is a wrong reason. My ideas may be appealing to your intellect, but intellect is nothing. It remains a foreign element to your whole being.

Unless you are attracted towards me, not what I say, you are here for wrong reasons. I am not a philosopher and I am not teaching any doctrine.

That’s why I have such freedom to be inconsistent, because if you are preaching a doctrine you cannot afford to be inconsistent. I am not preaching anything. I have no doctrine to force upon you. My talking to you is not an indoctrination. That’s why I am free, completely free to contradict myself. Whatsoever I have said yesterday, I can contradict tomorrow. Whatsoever I am saying today, tomorrow I can contradict. I am like a poet, and if you understand my song then you are for the right reason here. If you understand my rhythm, then you are for the right reason here. If you understand me, not what I say – my presence – then only it is good to be here.

Otherwise move: the world is wide; why get hooked? And remember always: if you are for wrong reasons here, in any way, you will always feel hooked, as if something has happened that should not have happened. You will always feel ill at ease. I will not be coming home to you. I will become an imprisonment, and I would not like to become imprisonment for anybody. If I can give you anything, anything that is worth, it is freedom; that’s why ”on purpose”, I say. But don’t misunderstand me; it is not that something I am doing, it is the way I am. I cannot stop it even if I want to, and Krishnamurti cannot do it even if he wants to. He is, in his own way, a flowering – I am, in my own way.

It happened once: a message came from a common friend, who is my friend also and Krishnamurti’s friend also... A message came from Krishnamurti that he would like to meet me. I told the messenger that it will be completely absurd; we are poles apart. Either we can sit silently – that will be okay –

or we can go on discussing for eternity without reaching to any conclusion. Not that we are against each other, we are simply different. And I say Krishnamurti is one of the greatest enlightened men ever born. He has his own uniqueness.

This point has to be understood very deeply. It will be a little difficult. Unenlightened people are always almost the same. There is not much difference, cannot be. The darkness makes them same, the ignorance makes them almost the same. They are each other’s copies and you cannot find the original; all are carbon copies. In ignorance persons are not much different, cannot be.

Ignorance is like a black blanket that covers all. What differences are there? – maybe differences of degree, but not differences of uniqueness. Ordinarily ignorant people exist as a common crowd.

Once somebody becomes enlightened he is absolutely unique. Then you cannot find another like him, not at this moment of history, ever. Not in past, not in the future, never will there be a man like Krishnamurti again, never there was. I will not be repeated again. Buddha is Buddha Mahavira is Mahavira – unique flowerings.

Enlightened persons are like peaks of mountains. Ordinary ignorant persons are like plain ground; everything is just the same. Even if differences exist they are just like this: that you have a small car and somebody has a big car, and you are uneducated and somebody is educated; you are poor, somebody is rich... These are nothing; they are not differences really. You may be in power and somebody is poor and a beggar on the street, but these are not differences, these are not uniquenesses. If all your things are taken away, and your education and your power, then your presidents and your beggars will look just alike.

One of the great psychoanalysts in the West is Victor Frankl. He has developed a new trend in psychoanalysis: he calls it logotherapy. He was in Adolf Hitler’s concentration camps, and he remembers in one of his books that when they were entering into a concentration camp with hundreds of people, everything was to be taken at the gate, everything – your watch, everything.

Suddenly, rich people, poor people, all became alike. And when you entered the gate you had to pass through an examination and everybody has to be completely naked. And not only that, but they shaved everybody’s head and hairs. Frankl remembered that thousand people shaved, naked

– suddenly all differences disappeared; it was a common mass. Your hairstyle, your car, your costly clothes, or your hippie-like dress: these are the differences.

Common humanity exists as a crowd. In fact, you don’t have souls, you are just part of the crowd, a fragment of it, carbon copy of carbon copies, imitating each other. You imitate the neighbor and the neighbor imitates you, and this goes on.

Now people who have been studying trees and insects and butterflies, they say that a continuous copying is happening in nature. Butterflies copy the flower, and then the flower copies the butterfly.

Insects copy the tree, and then the tree copies the insects. So there are insects which can hide in the trees of the same color, and when the tree changes its color they also change their color. Now they say there is a continuous imitation of each other in the whole of nature.

A man who becomes enlightened is like a peak, Everest. Another enlightenment is also like a peak, another Everest. They are deep inside attained to the same, but they are unique. Nothing common exists between enlightened people – this is the paradox. They are vehicles of the same whole, but nothing common exists; they are unique vehicles.

That has created a deep problem for religious people, because Jesus is Jesus and doesn’t look like Buddha at all. Buddha is Buddha and doesn’t look like Krishna at all. People who are impressed by Krishna will think that Buddha is somehow lacking. People who are impressed by Buddha will always think that Krishna is somehow wrong. Because then you have an ideal and you judge by the ideal, and enlightened persons are simply individuals. You cannot make any standard; you cannot judge them by any ideals – there exists no ideal. They have a common thing within them: that is divineness, that is being a medium for the whole, but that’s all. They sing their different songs.

But if you can remember this, you will be more able to understand the highest climax of evolution which an enlightened man is. And don’t expect anything from him; he cannot do anything. He simply is that way. Loose and natural he lives his being. If you feel some affinity with him, move towards him and celebrate with his being, be with him. If you don’t feel any affinity, don’t create any antagonism; you simply move somewhere else. Somewhere else somebody must be existing for you. With someone you will feel in tune.

Then don’t be bothered if you don’t feel in tune with Mohammed. Why create unnecessary worries?

Let Mohammed be Mohammed and let him do his thing. You don’t worry about it. If you feel in tune with Buddha, Buddha is for you; drop all considerations. If you feel in tune with me then I am the only enlightened person for you. Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna... throw them into the wastepaper basket.

If you don’t feel in tune with me, then throw me into the wastepaper basket and move according to your nature. Somewhere, some Master must be existing for you. When one is thirsty the water exists. When one is hungry the food exists. When one has a deep urge of love, the beloved exists.

When the spiritual desire arises – it cannot arise really if there is not somebody who can fulfill it.

This is the deep harmony, the ritambhara. This is the hidden harmony. In fact – if you allow me to say, because that will look absurd – if there is not an enlightened man who can fulfill your desire, the desire cannot come to you. Because the whole is one: on one part the desire arises; on another part somewhere the fulfillment is waiting. They come up together; simultaneous is the growth of the disciple and the Master... but this will be too much. When I was seeking my enlightenment, you were seeking your discipleship. Nothing can happen without the whole creating the situation for its fulfillment simultaneously. Everything is related. It is so deeply related that one can relax, there is no need to bother. If really your urge has arisen, you need not go even to seek the Master, the Master will have to come to you. Either the disciple goes or the Master comes.

Mohammed has said, ”If the mountain cannot come to Mohammed, then Mohammed will have to go to the mountain.” But the meeting is a must; it is destined.

In Koran it is said that a fakir, a sannyasin, a man who has renounced the world, should not go the palaces of the kings, and the powerful, and the rich. But it happened that one of the greatest Sufis, Jalaludin Rumi, used to go to the emperor’s palace. Suspicion arose. People gathered and they said, ”This is not good, and you are an enlightened man. Why do you go to the palace of the emperor, and while it is written in the Koran...?” And Mohammedans are just Koran addicts; you cannot find any other people so obsessed with a book. ”It is written in the Koran this is wrong. You are not a Moslem. What have you to answer? What answer have you got? The Koran says a man who has renounced the world should not go to the people who are rich and powerful. If they want, they should come.” Jalaludin laughed and he said, ”If you can understand, then this is my answer: that whether I go to the palace or to the king, or the king comes to me, whatsoever happens, it is always the king who comes to me. Even if I go to the palace, it is always the king who comes to me.

This is my answer. If you can understand, you understand. Otherwise, forget about it. And I am not here to follow the Koran, but I tell you that whatsoever is the case, whether Rumi goes to the palace or the king comes to Rumi, always it is the king who comes to Rumi, because he is thirsty and I am the water which will quench his thirst.” And then he said, ”Sometimes it happens the patient is so ill that the doctor has to go – and of course, kings are very, very ill, almost on their dying beds.”

If you cannot come, I will come to you, but it will happen. It cannot be avoided because we both have been growing together in a subtle hidden harmony. But when it happens, when a disciple and a Master meet and they feel the tuning, it is one of the most musical moments in the whole of existence. Then their hearts beat in the same rhythm; then their consciousness flows in the same rhythm; then they become part of each other, members of each other.

Unless this happens, don’t stay. Forget about me. Think of it as a dream. Escape from me as soon as you can. And I will help you in every way to escape, because then I am not for you. Somebody else somewhere is waiting for you, and you should go to him, or he will come to you. Old Egyptian tradition says: When the disciple is ready the Master appears.

One of the great Sufi mystics, Zunun, used to say that ”When I achieved to the ultimate, I told the divine that ’I have been seeking for you so long, so long, for eternity.’ ” And the divine answered that

”Before you started your search you had already achieved me, because unless you have achieved me you can not start the search.”

These things look paradoxical, but if you go deeper you will find a very deep hidden truth in them.

Right it is: even before you heard about me, I had reached you – not that I am trying to reach; this is how it happens. You are here not only because of yourself, I am here not only because of myself.

A certain togetherness happens. A certain togetherness is there. And once you understand that togetherness, then only one Master is THE Master. Because of this, much fanaticism is created unnecessarily.

A Christian says, ”Jesus is the only begotten son of God.” It is perfectly true; if the tuning has happened then Jesus is the only begotten son of God – for you, not for everybody.

Ananda says again and again about Buddha, that nobody has ever attained such utter, utmost enlightenment as Buddha – anuttar samyak sambodhi – never attained before by anybody else. It is perfectly true. Not that it has not been attained by anybody else before; millions have attained before, but for Ananda it is perfectly true. For Ananda no other Master exists, only this Buddha.

In love, one woman becomes the whole of womanhood, one man becomes the whole of mankind.

And in surrender, which is the highest form of love, one Master becomes the only God. That’s why disciples cannot be understood by those who are outsiders. They talk in different tongues, they have different languages. If you call me ”Bhagwan”, it cannot be understood by those who are outsiders; they will simply laugh. For them I am not a Bhagwan, and they are perfectly true; and you are also perfectly true. If you have felt the tuning with me, in that tuning I have become a Bhagwan for you. It is a love relationship, and the deepest in-tuning.

The second question:

Question 2

SOME BHAKTI SECTS TEACH MEDITATION ON HIGHER ASPECTS OF LOVE: FIRST TO LOVE

AN ORDINARY PERSON, THEN THE GURU, THEN A GOD, ET CETERA. WOULD YOU TALK TO

US ABOUT THIS METHOD?

Love is not a method. That is the difference between all other techniques and the path of bhakti, the path of devotion. The path of devotion has no methods. Yoga has methods; bhakti has none. Love is not a method – to call it a method is to misname it.

Love is natural; it is already there in your heart, ready to burst. The only thing that has to be done is to allow it. You are creating all sorts of hindrances and obstacles. You are not allowing it. It is already there – you simply relax a little and it will come, it will burst, it will bloom. And when it blooms for an ordinary person, immediately the ordinary has become the extraordinary. Love makes everybody extraordinary; it is such an alchemy. An ordinary woman suddenly is transfigured when you love her. She is no more ordinary; she is the most extraordinary woman that ever existed. It is not that you are blind, as others will say. In fact, you have seen the extraordinary which is always hidden in every ordinariness. Love is the only eye, the only vision, the only clarity. You have seen in the ordinary woman the whole womanhood – past, present, future – all women combined together.

When you love a woman, you have realized the very feminine soul in her. Suddenly she becomes extraordinary. Love makes everybody extraordinary.

If you go deeper into your love... because there are difficulties to go deeper in love, because the more you go deeper, the more you lose yourself, a fear arises, a trembling grips you. You start avoiding the depth of love because the depth of love is just like death. You create barriers between you and your beloved, because the woman seems like an abyss – and can be absorbed into it – and she is. You come out of a woman; she can absorb you: that is the fear. She is the womb, the abyss, and when she can give birth to you, why not death? In fact, only that which gives you birth can give you death, so the fear is there. A woman is dangerous, very mysterious. You cannot live without her and you cannot live with her. You cannot go very far away from her because suddenly, the further you go the more ordinary you become. And you cannot come very close, because the closer you come... You disappear.

This is the conflict in every love. So one has to make a compromise; you don’t go very far away, you don’t come very close. You stand just in the middle somewhere, balancing yourself. But then love cannot go deep. Depth is attained only when you drop all fears and you jump headlong. The danger is there, and the danger is true: that love will kill your ego. Love is poison to the ego – life to you, but death to the ego. One has to take the jump. If you allow intimacy to grow, if you come closer and closer and closer and dissolve into the being of a woman, now she will not only be extraordinary, she will become divine because she will become a door to eternity. The closer you come to a woman, the more you feel she is a door of something beyond.

And the same happens to the woman with the man. She has her own problems. The problem is that if she comes closer to the man, the closer she comes, the man starts escaping. Because the closer the woman comes, the man becomes more and more afraid. The closer a woman comes, the man starts escaping her, finding a thousand and one excuses to be away. So a woman has to wait; and if she waits then again there is a problem: if she takes no initiative it looks like indifference, and indifference can kill love. Nothing is more dangerous to love than indifference. Even hatred is good, because at least you have certain type of relationship with the person you hate. Love can survive hate, but love cannot survive indifference. And the woman always in a difficulty... if she takes the initiative the man simply escapes. No man can tolerate a woman who takes initiative. That means that the abyss is coming on her own near you! – before it is too late, you escape.

That’s how Don Juans are created. Then from one woman to another they go on. They live in a hit-and-run affair, because if you are too much there, then the abyss will absorb you. Don Juans are not lovers, not at all. They look like lovers because continuously they are on move – every day a new woman. But they are people deep in fear, because if they remain with one woman for long, then intimacy will grow, and they will come closer, and who knows what will happen? So they just live for a certain amount of time; before it is too late, they escape.

Byron loved almost hundreds of women in his small span of life. He is the archetype, the Don Juan.

He never knew love. How can you know love when you move from one to another, and another, and another? Love needs seasoning; it needs time to settle; it needs intimacy; it needs deep trust; it needs faith. The woman is always in trouble – ”What to do?” If she takes initiative, the man escapes.

If she remains as if not interested, then too the man escapes because the woman is not interested.

So she has to choose a mid-ground: a little initiative and a little indifference together, a mixture. And both are in a bad shape, because these compromises will not allow you to grow.

Compromise never allows anybody to grow. Compromise is a calculating, cunning thing; it is businesslike, not love-like. When lovers are really unafraid of each other and the dropping of the ego, they jump into each other headlong. They jump so deeply that they become each other. They become in fact one, and when this oneness happens then love transforms into prayer. When this oneness happens, then suddenly a religious quality comes to love.

First love has the quality of sex. If it is shallow, it will be reduced to sex; in fact it will not be love. If love becomes deeper, then it will have the quality of spirituality, the quality of divineness. So love is just a bridge between this world and that, sex and samadhi. That’s why I go on calling the journey, from sex to superconsciousness. Love is just a bridge. If you don’t move on the bridge, sex will be your life, your whole life, very ordinary, very ugly. Sex can be beautiful, but only with love and as part of love. Alone in itself it is ugly. It is just like this: your eyes are beautiful, but if the eyes are taken out of your sockets they will become ugly. The most beautiful eyes will become ugly if they are cut from the body.

It happened to Van Gogh: nobody loved him because he had a little ugly body. Then a prostitute, just to cheer him up, not finding anything else how to appreciate his body, appreciated his ear, that ”You have most beautiful ears.” Lovers never talk of ears because there are many other things to appreciate. But there was nothing – the body was very, very ugly, and so the prostitute said,

”You have very beautiful ears.” He came home. Nobody has ever appreciated anything in his body, nobody has ever accepted his body; this was for the first time, and he was so thrilled that he cut his own ear, and went back to the prostitute and presented the ear. Now the ear is absolutely ugly.

Sex is a part of love, of a greater whole. Love gives it the beauty, otherwise it is one of the most ugliest actions. That’s why people move into sex in darkness: even they don’t like themselves to see the act being performed in the night. You see all animals make love in the day, except man. No animal bothers in the night – night is for rest. All animals love in the day; only man loves in the night.

A certain fear that the act of love is a little ugly... And no woman ever makes love with open eyes because they have a more aesthetic sense than man. They always love with closed eyes so nothing is seen. Women are not pornographic, only man is.

That’s why so many nude pictures, paintings, of women exist: only man is interested in to see the body. Woman are not interested; they have a more aesthetic sense because body is of the animal.

Unless it becomes of the divine, there is nothing to see in it. Love can give a new soul to sex. Then the sex is transfigured – it becomes beautiful; it is no more sex – it has something of the beyond in it. It has become a bridge. You can love a person because the person satisfies your sex. This is not love, just a bargain. You can make sex with a person because you love; then sex follows just like a shadow, part of love. Then it is beautiful; then it is no more of the animal world. Then something of the beyond has already entered, and if you go on loving a person deeply, by and by sex disappears.

Intimacy becomes so fulfilling, then there is no need for sex; love is enough unto itself. When that moment comes then there is the possibility of prayer dawning upon you.

When two lovers are in such a deep love that love suffices and sex has simply dropped – not that it has been dropped, not that it has been suppressed, no; it has simply disappeared from your consciousness, not leaving even a scar behind – then two lovers are in such total unity... Because sex divides. The very word ”sex comes from a root which means division. Love unites, sex divides.

Sex is the root cause of division.

When you make sex to a person, woman or man, you think it unites you. For a moment it gives you the illusion of unity, and then a vast division suddenly comes in. That’s why after every sex act, a frustration, a depression sets in. One feels that one is so far away from the beloved. Sex divides, and when love goes deeper and deeper and unites more and more, there is no need for sex. Your inner energies can meet without sex, and you live in such a unity.

You can see two lovers when their sex disappears: you can see the glow that comes to two lovers when sex disappears: they exist as two bodies in one soul. The soul surrounds them; it becomes a glow all around their bodies. But it rarely happens.

People end with sex. At the most, with living together they start being affectionate towards each other – at the most. But love is not simple affection; it is a unity of souls – two energies meeting and becoming whole. When this happens, only then is prayer possible. Then both lovers in their unity feel so fulfilled, so perfect, that a gratitude arises; they start humming prayer.

Love is the greatest thing in the whole existence. In fact, everything is in love with everything else.

Whenever you will come to the peak, you will be able to see that everything loves everything else.

Even when you cannot find anything like love, you feel hate – hate simply means love gone wrong, nothing else – when you feel indifference... indifference only means love has not been courageous enough to burst. When you feel a closed person, it only means so much fear, so much insecurity he feels, that he has not been able to take the first step. But everything is love.

Even when an animal jumps on another animal and eats it – a lion jumps on a deer and eats it – it is love. It looks like violence because you don’t know. It is love. The animal, the lion is absorbing deer into himself... very crude of course, very, very crude and primitive, animal-like, but still it is love.

Lovers eat each other, they absorb each other. The animal is doing in a very crude way, that’s all.

The whole existence is in love: trees love the earth, the earth loves the trees – otherwise, how they can exist together? Who will withhold them? There must be a common link. It is not only the roots, because if the earth is not in deep love with the tree, even roots won’t help. A deep invisible love exists. The whole existence, the whole cosmos moves around love. Love is the ritambhara. That’s why I said yesterday: Truth plus love is ritambhara. Truth alone is too dry.

If you can understand... Right now it can only be an intellectual understanding, but keep it in your memory. Some day it can become an existential experience. It is how I feel.

Enemies love each other, otherwise why they should bother about each other? Even a man who says there is no God loves God, because he continuously says that there is no God. He is obsessed, fascinated, otherwise why bother? An atheist his whole life tries to prove there is no God. He is in such a love, and so much afraid of God, that if he is then there will be tremendous transformation in his being. So afraid, he goes on trying – ”There is no God.” In his effort to prove there is no God, he is showing a deep fear that the God is calling. And if God is there, then he cannot remain the same.

It is just like a monk who moves on the street of a town with closed or half closed eyes so that he cannot see a woman. He goes on saying to himself, ”There is no woman. This is all maya, illusory.

This is just like a dream.” But why go on trying this is just like a dream, trying to prove that there exists no love object? – otherwise the monastery will disappear, the monkhood will disappear; his whole pattern of life will be shattered.

All is love, and love is all. From the crudest to the supreme-most, from the rock to the God, it is love... many layers, many steps, many degrees, but it is love. If you can love a woman you will be able to love a Master. If you can love a Master you will be able to love God. Loving a woman is loving the body. Body is beautiful – nothing is wrong in it – a miracle really. But if you can love, then love can grow.

It happened that one of the great devotees of India, Ramanuja, was passing through a town. A man came, and the man must have been the type that ordinarily is attracted towards religion: the ascetic type, the man who tries to live without love. Nobody has ever succeeded. Nobody will ever succeed, because love is the basic energy of life and existence. Nobody can succeed against it.

The man asked Ramanuja that ”I would like to be initiated by you. How I can find God? I would like to be accepted as a disciple.” Ramanuja looked at the man, and you can see when a man is against love; he is like a dead rock, completely dried, with no heart. Ramanuja said, ”First tell me few things: have you ever loved anybody?” The man was shocked because a person like Ramanuja talking about love? – such ordinary worldly things? He said, ”What are you saying? I am a religious man. I have never loved anybody.” Ramanuja persisted. He said, ”You just close your eyes and think a little. You may have loved, even if you are against. You may not have loved in reality, but in imagination...” The man said, ”I am absolutely against love, because love is the whole pattern of maya and illusion, and I want to get out of this world, and love is the cause people cannot get out of it. No, not even in imagination!” Ramanuja persisted. He said, ”Just look within. Sometimes in dream a love object may have appeared.” The man said, ”That’s why I don’t sleep much! But I am not here to be taught love, I am here to be taught prayer.” Ramanuja became sad, and he said, ”I cannot help you, because a man who has not known love, how can he know prayer?”

Because prayer is the most refined love, the essential love – as if the body has disappeared, only the spirit of love has remained; as if the lamp is no more there, just the flame; as if the flower has disappeared into the earth, but the fragrance is lingering in the air – that is prayer. Sex is the body of love, love is the spirit; then, love is the body of prayer, prayer is the spirit. You can draw concentric circles: first circle sex, second circle love, and the third circle, which is the center, is prayer. Through sex you discover the body of the other, and through discovering the body of the other you discover your own body.

A man who has never been in sexual relationship with someone has no sense of His own body, because who will give you the sense? Nobody touched your body with loving hands, nobody caressed your body with loving hands, nobody embraced your body; how can you feel your body?

You exist like a ghost. You don’t know where your body ends and the other’s body starts.

Only in a loving embrace for the first time the body takes shape; the beloved gives you the shape of your body. She shapes you, she forms you, she surrounds you all around and gives you the definition of your body. Without a beloved you don’t know what type of body you have got, where the oases are in your body desert, where are the flowers, where your body is most alive and where dead. You don’t know; you remain unacquainted. Who will give you the acquaintance? In fact when you fall in love and somebody loves your body, for the first time you become aware of your body, that you have a body.

Lovers help each other to know their bodies. Sex helps you to understand the body of the other, and via the other to have a feeling and definition of your own body. Sex makes you embodied, rooted in the body, and then love makes you feel yourself, soul, spirit, atma – the second circle. And then prayer helps you to feel the no-self, or the brahma, or the God.

These are the three steps: from sex to love, from love to prayer. And there are many dimensions of love, because if the whole energy is love then there are going to be many dimensions of love.

You love a woman or a man – you become acquainted with your body. You love a Master – you become acquainted with your self, your being, and through that acquaintance, suddenly you fall in love with the whole. The woman becomes the door for the Master, the Master becomes the door for the divine. Suddenly you fall into the whole, and you come to know the innermost core of all existence.

Jesus says rightly, ”Love is God,” because love is the energy that moves the stars, that moves the clouds, that allows the seeds to sprout, that allows the birds to sing, that allows you to be here. Love is the most mysterious phenomenon. It is ritambhara.

The last question:

Question 3

DO MASTERS EVER YAWN?

Yes, they yawn, but they yawn totally. And that is the difference between an enlightened person and an unenlightened person. The difference is only of totality.

You do whatsoever you do partially. You love – only part of you loves; you sleep – only part of you sleeps; you eat – only part of you eats; you yawn – only part of you yawns, another part against it, controlling it. A Master lives totally, whatsoever. If he is eating, he is totally eating; there is nobody else than eating. He walks... he walks; the walker is not there. The walker doesn’t exist because where the walker will exist? – the walking is so total. When you yawn, you are there. When a Master yawns only the yawn is there.

And if you are not convinced, you can ask Vivek; that will be the proof. You can ask a witness.

CHAPTER 9

The fall of the idiots

9 March 1975 am in Buddha Hall

IN THE STATE OF NIRVICHARA SAMADHI, AN OBJECT IS EXPERIENCED IN ITS FULL

PERSPECTIVE, BECAUSE IN THIS STATE KNOWLEDGE IS GAINED DIRECT, WITHOUT THE

USE OF THE SENSES.

THE PERCEPTION GAINED IN NIRVICHARA SAMADHI TRANSCENDS ALL NORMAL

PERCEPTIONS BOTH IN EXTENT AND INTENSITY.

WHEN THIS CONTROLLING OF ALL OTHER CONTROLS IS TRANSCENDED, THE SEEDLESS

SAMADHI IS ATTAINED, AND WITH IT, FREEDOM FROM LIFE AND DEATH.

KNOWLEDGE IS indirect, knowing is direct. Knowledge is through many mediums; it is not reliable.

Knowing is immediate, without any medium. Only knowing can be reliable.

This distinction has to be remembered. Knowledge is like a messenger comes and tells something to you: the messenger may have misunderstood the message; the messenger may have added something of his own into the message; the messenger may have dropped something from the message; the messenger may have forgotten something from the message; the messenger may have added his own interpretations into it, or the messenger may be simply cunning and deceptive.

And you have to rely on the messenger. You don’t have any direct approach to the source of the message – this is knowledge.

Knowledge is not reliable, and not only one messenger is involved in knowledge, but four. Man is behind many closed doors, imprisoned. First knowledge comes to the senses; then the senses carry it through the nervous system, it reaches to the brain, and then the brain delivers it to the mind, and then the mind delivers it to you, to the consciousness. It is a vast process, and you don’t have any direct approach to the source of knowledge.

It happened in the Second World War: a soldier was hurt very deeply in his toe and the leg, and the toe was in severe pain. The pain was so much the soldier became unconscious. The surgeons decided to operate the whole leg. It could not be saved it was so damaged, so they cut it. The soldier was unconscious so he never knew what happened.

Next morning when the soldier came back to consciousness, he again complained about the pain in his toe. Now this is ridiculous: when the leg doesn’t exist, toe and all the leg has been completely removed, how pain can exist in a toe which doesn’t exist? The nurse laughed and she said, ”You are imagining, or you are in a hallucination.” She uncovered the blanket and showed to the soldier that ”Your whole leg is removed, so in the toe no pain can exist now, because the toe doesn’t exist.”

But the soldier persisted. He said, ”I can see that the leg is not there and I can understand your viewpoint, and I am ridiculous – but I still say the pain is severe and unbearable.”

Doctors were called; surgeons consulted amongst themselves. This was absolutely absurd! – the mind is playing some trick – but they tried to understand what is happening. Then the whole body was X-rayed, and this was the thing they came upon: the nerve that was carrying the message of the pain in the toe was still carrying it. It was trembling in the same way as it should tremble if there was a toe and there was pain in it.

And when the nerve is bringing the message, of course the brain has to decode it. The brain has no way to check whether the nerve is carrying a right message, a wrong message, real, unreal. The brain cannot come out and check the nerve. The brain has to depend on the nerve, and the brain decodes it to the mind. Now the mind has no way to check the brain – one has simply to believe it

– and the mind delivers the knowledge to the consciousness. Now the consciousness suffers for a toe which doesn’t exist.

This is what Hindus call MAYA. ”The world doesn’t exist,” Hindus say, ”and you are suffering terribly, suffering for something which doesn’t exist.” This is how the mechanism functions of knowledge. It is very difficult in this process to check anywhere unless you can come out of yourself. Mind cannot do that because the mind cannot exist outside the body. It has to depend on the brain, it is rooted in the brain. The brain cannot do it because the brain is rooted in the whole nervous system; it cannot come out. Only at one point the possibility exists to check, and that is at consciousness.

Consciousness is not rooted in the body; the body is just an abode. As you come out of your house and go in, consciousness can come out of the house and go in. Only consciousness can come out of this whole mechanism and look at things, what is happening.

In nirvichara samadhi this happens – thoughts cease. The connection between the mind and the consciousness is cut, because thought is the connection. Without thought you don’t have any mind, and when you don’t have any mind the connection with the brain is broken. And when you don’t have any mind and the connection with the brain is broken, the connection with the nervous system is broken. Your consciousness now can float out and in; all doors are open. In nirvichara samadhi, when thoughts cease, consciousness is free to move and float. It becomes like a cloud without any roots, without any home. It becomes free of the mechanism you have lived with. It can come out, it can go in; there is no hindrance on its path.

Now direct knowledge is possible. Direct knowledge is knowing. Now you can see immediately, without any messengers between you and the source of know!edge. It is a tremendous phenomenon when your consciousness comes out and looks at a flower. You cannot imagine because it is not part of imagination; you cannot believe what happens! When the consciousness can look direct to the flower, for the first time the flower is known, and not only the flower, through the flower the whole existence. In a small pebble, the all is hidden; in a small leaf dancing in the wind, the whole dances.

In a small flower by the side of the road, the whole has a smile.

When you come out of your prison of senses, nervous system, brain, mind, layers and layers of walls, suddenly individuals disappear. A vast energy in millions of forms... and every form indicating towards the formless, and every form melting and merging into other forms – a vast ocean of formless beauty, truth, goodness. Hindus call it sat-chit-ananda: that which is, that which is beautiful, that which is good, that which is blissful. This is direct perception, aprokshanubhuti, immediate knowing.

Otherwise, all your knowing is indirect, depends on messengers which are not very reliable –

cannot be. Their very nature is unreliable. Why? Your hand touches something; now the hand is an unconscious thing. From the very beginning an unconscious part of you takes the message.

Intelligence is hidden behind, and on the door an idiot is sitting, and the idiot takes the message.

The idiot is the receptionist. Hand is not conscious, and the hand touches something and receives the message. Now through the nerves the message travels. Nerves are not conscious; they don’t have any intelligence – so from one idiot to another now the message is given. From the first idiot to the second much must have changed.

In the first place, the idiot cannot be hundred percent true because he cannot understand; understanding is not there. The hand is dull, very dull. It carries the work in a mechanical way, robot-like. The message is delivered much has changed already. The nerves take it to the brain and brain decodes it. And brain is not also very much intelligent, because brain is part of the body, it is the other end of the hand.

If you know something of physiology, you must be knowing that the right hand is connected to the left hemisphere of the brain and the left hand to the right hemisphere of the brain. Your two hands are two receiving ends of the brain. They function for the brain; they are extended brain. Your right hand carries message to the left brain, your left hand to the right brain. Brain is also not alert; brain is just like a computer – something is fed to it, it decodes, it is a mechanism. Sooner or later we will be able to make plastic brains, because they will be cheap and they will endure more and they will create less trouble. And they can be operated very easily and the parts can be changed: you can even have spare parts always with you.

Brain is a mechanism, and by the discovery of computers it has become perfectly clear that brain is a mechanism; it has no intelligence in it. Then the brain accumulates whole information, decodes it, gives the message to the mind. Your mind has a little intelligence; very little that, too... because your mind is not alert. Your hand is mechanical; your brain is mechanical; your nervous system mechanical, and your mind is asleep, as if drunk. So from one idiot to another idiot then finally to a drunkard the message reaches!

Gurdjieff used to give vast big dinners for his disciples, and the first toast was always for the idiots.

These are the idiots.

And then this drunkard, half asleep, half awake, interprets it according to the past, because there is no other way. According to the past the mind interprets the present. Everything is going wrong because the present is always new and the mind is always old. But there is no other way; the mind cannot do anything else. It has accumulated much knowledge in the past through these same idiots, as unreliable as anything, and that past is brought to the present, and the present is understood through the past. Everything goes wrong. It is almost impossible to know anything through this process.

That’s why Hindus call the whole world that is known through this process maya, illusion, dreamlike; it is. You have not known the reality yet. These four messengers won’t allow you, and you don’t know how to avoid these messengers or how to come out into the open. The situation is as if you are closed in a dark cell, and just through the keyhole you are looking out, and the keyhole is not passive, the keyhole-is active – it interprets, it says, ”No, you are wrong; this is not so, this is like this.” Your hand interprets, your nervous system interprets, your brain interprets, and finally the drunkard interprets. And that interpretation is given to you and you live through that interpretation.

This is the state of the ignorant mind, the state of the unenlightened.

In nirvichara samadhi, this whole state is shattered.

You suddenly come out of this whole

mechanism. You don’t rely on it, you simply drop the whole mechanism. You come directly to the source of knowledge; you look immediately to the flower.

This is possible. This is possible only in the highest state of meditation, nirvichara, when thoughts cease. Thought is the link. When thoughts cease, the whole mechanism ceases, and you are separate. Suddenly you are no more imprisoned. You are not looking through the keyhole. You have come out into the world under the sky, open. You look at things as they are, and you will see that things don’t exist; they were your interpretations. Only beings exist; there are no things in the world. Even a rock is a being, howsoever fast asleep, snoring; a rock is a being because the ultimate source is a being. All its parts are beings, souls. A tree is a being a bird is a being, a rock is a being. Suddenly, the world of things disappears. ”Thing” is the interpretation of these idiots and the drunkard mind. Because of this process everything becomes dull. Because of this process only the surface is touched. Because of this process you miss the reality; you live in a dream.

You can create a dream in this way. Just try someday: your wife is sleeping, or your husband, or your child – just rub a cube of ice on the feet of the sleeping person. Do it just a little, not too much, otherwise he will be awakened – just a little and put it away. Immediately you will see the eyes under the lids are moving fast, what psychologists call REM, rapid eye movement. When the eyes are moving rapid, a dream has started. Because the person is seeing something, that’s why the eyes are moving so fast. Then just in the middle of the dream, you wake the person and ask what he saw. Either he would have seen that he is passing through a river which is very cold, ice cold, or he is walking on snow, or he has reached on the Gourishankar: something like this he will dream. You created a dream because you deceived the first idiot, you touched at the feet, ice. Immediately the idiot started working, the second idiot was given the message, the third idiot decoded; the fourth, drunkard – which is also asleep now – immediately started a dream.

You can create dreams; you create many times, unknowingly. Your both hands are on your chest and you are Lying on your bed, and you feel that somebody is sitting on your chest, a monster. And when you open your eyes, nobody is there – your own hands, or a pillow.

The same is happening while you are awake. It makes no difference because the whole mechanism is the same; whether the eyes are opened or closed makes not much difference, because there can be no check on the process. Even if you want to check, you will have to go through the whole process itself. How can you check unless you can come out and see what is happening?

This possibility is the whole world of spirituality: that the final consciousness can come out. Drop the whole mechanism, look at the thing directly: ”things” disappear. That’s why Hindus say this world is not real, and for the real knower it disappears. Not that rocks will not be there and trees will not be there they will be there even more so, but they will be no more trees, no more rocks; they will be beings. Your mind turns beings into things: your wife is a thing to be used; your husband is a thing to be possessed; your servant is a thing to be exploited; your boss is a thing to be deceived.

The mind, because of this whole idiotic process, turns every being into a thing. When you come out of the mind and have a look under the open sky, suddenly there is nothing at all. ”Thingness”

disappears.

When thoughts drop, the second thing to drop is the thing. Suddenly the whole world is full of beings, beautiful beings, supreme beings, because they all participate into the ultimate being of God.

Definitions disappear – you cannot separate. All separation existed because of the mechanism.

Suddenly you see a tree moving out of the earth, not separate – meeting with the sky, not separate, everything joined together; everybody is a member of everybody else. The whole world becomes a net of consciousness, millions and millions of consciousnesses, luminous, kindled from within, every house lighted. Bodies disappear because bodies belong to the world of things. Forms are there but they are no more material; they are forms of moving, dynamic energy, and they go on changing.

That is what is happening.

You were a child, now you are young, now you are old. What is happening? – you don’t have a fixed form. The form is continuously flowing and changing. A child is becoming a young man, the young man is becoming old, the old is moving into death.

Then you suddenly see: birth is not birth, death is not death. There are changing forms, and the formless remains the same. You can see that luminous formlessness always remaining the same, moving amidst millions of forms, changing, yet not changing; moving, yet not moving; becoming everything else and yet remaining the same. And that’s the beauty and the mystery; then life is one

– a vast ocean of life. Then you don’t see alive beings and dead beings, no, because death doesn’t exist. It is because of the mechanism, wrong interpretation.

Neither exists birth nor death. That which exists is birthless and deathless, eternal. But this is how it looks when you come out of the mind.

Now try to penetrate the sutras of Patanjali.

IN THE STATE OF NIRVICHARA SAMADHI, AN OBJECT IS EXPERIENCED IN ITS FULL

PERSPECTIVE, BECAUSE IN THIS STATE KNOWLEDGE IS GAINED DIRECT WITHOUT THE

USE OF THE SENSES.

When senses are not used, when the keyhole is not used to look at the sky – because the keyhole will give its own frame to the sky and destroy everything the sky will not be bigger than the keyhole, cannot be. How can be your perspective bigger than your eyes? How can be your touch bigger than your hands, and how can be a sound deeper than your ears? – impossible! The eyes, ears, nose are keyholes: through them you are looking at reality. And suddenly you jump out of yourself, in nirvichara; for the first time the vastness, the infinity is known. Now the full perspective is attained. The beginning is not there, the end is not there. There are no boundaries in existence. It is unbounded; there are no limitations. All limitations belong to your senses; they were given by the senses. Existence itself is infinite; in all directions you go on and on and on. There is no end to it.

When the full perspective is attained, then for the first time the subtlest ego that was still clinging to you disappears. Because the existence is so vast – how can you cling to a small puny ego?

It happened: a very great egoist, a very rich man, a politician, came to Socrates. He had the biggest, most beautiful palace in Athens, in fact, in all of Greece. And you can see when an egoist walks, you can see when an egoist says something, the ego is always there, mixed in everything. He walked in a haughty way. He came to Socrates, talked to Socrates in a haughty way. Socrates talked for few minutes and he said, ”Wait. Now there is an urgency first that has to be solved, then we will talk”

– and he asked a disciple to bring the map of the world. The rich man, the politician, the egoist, couldn’t understand what type of urgency has so suddenly arisen, and he couldn’t see the point of bringing a map of the world. But soon he realized the point was there. Socrates asked, ”Where is Greece in this big map of the world? – a small place. Where is Athens? – just a point.” And then Socrates asked, ”Where is your palace? Athens is a point. Where is your palace and where are you? And this map is only of the earth, and the earth is nothing. The sun is sixty thousand times bigger and our sun is a mediocre sun. Millions times bigger suns are there in the universe. Where will be our earth if we make a map of the solar system? – and our solar system is a very mediocre solar system. There are millions of solar systems. In one galaxy millions of suns and millions of solar systems. Where will be our earth if we make a map of the galaxy to which we belong? There are many millions of galaxies. Where will be our solar system? Where will be our sun?”

And now scientists say there is no end – galaxies upon galaxies continue. Wherever we move, there seems to be no end to it. With such vastness, how can you cling to the ego? It simply disappears like a dewdrop in the morning when the sun rises. When the vastness rises and the perspective is total, your ego simply disappears like a dewdrop. It is not even that big. It is a misconception given by the idiot messengers. Because of the tiny hole of senses, you seem to be too big, comparatively. When you come under the sky, suddenly the ego disappears. It was a creation of the keyhole, because the keyhole was so small, and through the keyhole the whole world was so small, you are so big behind it. Under the sky it simply disappears.

Socrates said, ”Where is your palace on this map? Where are you?” The man could understand the point, but he asked, ”What was the urgency in it?” Socrates says, ”Urgency was there, because without understanding this there is no possibility of any dialogue; you waste my time and your time.

Now if you have understood the point, then there is a possibility of dialogue. You can put aside this ego; it doesn’t matter.

Under the vast sky your ego becomes simply irrelevant. It drops on its own accord. Even to drop it looks foolish; it is not even worth that. When the perspective is full, you disappear: this is the point to be understood. You are because the perspective is narrow. Narrower the perspective, the bigger the ego; blinder the person, the bigger the ego... No perspective, there exists perfect ego. When the perspective grows, ego gets smaller and smaller. When the perspective is perfect, ego simply is not found.

This is my whole effort here – to make the perspective so full that the ego disappears. That’s why from many directions I go on hitting the wall of your mind, so at least few more keyholes in the beginning can be made. Through Buddha a new keyhole opens, through Patanjali another, through Tilopa still another. That is what I am doing. I don’t want you to become a follower of Buddha, Tilopa or Patanjali, no, because a follower can never have a bigger perspective – his doctrine is his keyhole.

Talking about so many standpoints, what I am trying to do? – I am trying to do only this: to give you a bigger perspective. Many keyholes in the walls and you can look at the east and you can look at the west, you can look at the south and you can look at the north; and looking at the east you don’t say, ”This is the only direction,” you know other directions are there. Looking at the east, you don’t say that ”This is the only true doctrine,” because then the perspective becomes narrow. I am talking about so many doctrines so that you can be freed of all directions and all doctrines.

Freedom comes through understanding. The more you understand, the more you become free. And by and by, when you come to know that through so many holes your old keyhole has just become out of date, doesn’t mean much, then an urge arises in you: what will happen if you break down all these walls and just simply run out? Even a single new hole and the whole perspective changes, and you come to know things which you have never known, not even imagined, not even dreamed.

What will happen when all the walls disappear and you are direct face to face with reality under the open sky?

And when I say under the open sky, remember that the sky is not a thing, it is a nothingness. It is everywhere, but you cannot find it anywhere; it is a nothingness. It is simply a vastness. So I never say God is vast – God is vastness. Existence is not vast, because even a vast existence will have limitations. Howsoever vast, somewhere the boundary must be there. Existence is vastness.

That is the Hindu conception of brahma. Brahma means: that which goes on expanding. The very word brahma means that which goes on expanding. The expanse is brahma. In English there is no word; you cannot call brahma God because God is very limited, a concept. Brahma is not God.

That’s why in India we don’t have a conception of one God, but many gods. Gods are many; brahma is one. And by brahma... the very word simply means the vastness, the expanse; you cannot exhaust it.

That is the meaning when I say under the sky, open sky: with no walls around it, no doctrines, no senses, no thoughts, no mind; you are simply out of the mechanism, for the first time naked, face to face with reality. Then its full perspective... an object is experienced in its full perspective, and to experience an object in its full perspective means that the object simply disappears and becomes the vastness. It may be a focusing of energy.

It is just like, go and look at a well. A quantity of water is there in the well; if you draw the water out, more water is supplied through the hidden springs. You don’t see the springs. You go on taking the water out and new water is continuously flowing. The well is just a hole to the ocean. Many hidden springs are bringing water from all around. If you enter into the well, the well is nothing; really those springs are the things, the real things. The well is not a storage, because in a storage there are no springs. A storage is dead; a well is alive. A storage is a thing; a well is a person. Move now with the springs, go deeper into the springs, and finally you will reach to the ocean. And if you move through all the springs, then from all directions ocean is flowing in the well: it is all one.

If you look at an object with full perspective, the object is joined from every part of it with the infinity; it cannot exist without that. No object exists independent. There is no individuality. Individuality is just an interpretation. Everywhere the whole exists. If you make the part the whole, you are misguided.

That is the standpoint of ignorance – then you make the part as if it is the whole. When you look at the part and the whole appears in it, this is the standpoint of an awakened consciousness.

AN OBJECT IS EXPERIENCED IN ITS FULL PERSPECTIVE IN THE STATE OF NIRVICHARA SAMADHI, BECAUSE IN THIS STATE KNOWLEDGE IS GAINED DIRECT, WITHOUT THE USE

OF THE SENSES.

No mediums are used; then many new things suddenly become possible. These new things are the siddhis, the powers. When you have no dependence on the senses, telepathy becomes simply possible. It is because of the senses telepathy is not possible. Clairvoyance becomes simply possible. It is because of the senses clairvoyance is not possible. Miracles become ordinary things.

You can read anybody’s thought; there is no need for him to say, no need for him to communicate it.

With full perspective, everything becomes revealed, all the veils are taken up. Now there are no more veils; the whole reality is before you. Materialization of things becomes possible. Just whatsoever you want to do, immediately it happens; action is not needed. Action was needed because of the body.

That’s what Lao Tzu means when he says, ”The sage lives in inactivity and everything happens.”

Millions of things happen around a sage without his doing anything. He looks at you and suddenly there is a transformation – suddenly you are no longer the body; while he looks you have become a consciousness.

Of course this cannot be permanent with you, because when his look has moved you are again the body. Just by being near him you become citizens of some unknown world. You have a taste of the unknown through him because he is now the vast sky himself. Not doing anything, many things happen. But when these things become possible... the desires of the sage have disappeared before these things become possible, so a sage never does any miracle. And those who do miracles are not sages, because the doer is not there, and their miracles cannot be miracles; they are ordinary magical tricks. They are fooling people and deceiving them.

A miracle happens – cannot be done. It happens near the sage. Not that he produces Swiss-made watches... a sage producing Swiss-made watches is a fool. What you are doing? – and there is no miracle in fact, because no Satya Sai Baba is ready to do his miracles under scientific observation.

He cannot do, because Swiss-made watches have to be purchased from the market, have to be hidden in the long robe or the Negro-style hairdo! Under scientific observation no Satya Sai Baba is ready to do anything, and if these people are really true, they should do first before scientific observation. These are just ordinary magical tricks. When a magician does it you think, ”Just a trick, and when a Baba does it, suddenly it becomes a miracle. The trick is the same.

Miracles happen only when nirvichara samadhi is attained and you come out of your body, but they are never done. That is the basic quality of a miracle – it is never done, it happens, and when it happens, it never produces Swiss-made watches. To attain to nirvichara samadhi and then to produce Swiss-made watches does not make sense! It transforms beings; it helps others to attain to the highest.

Through a sage you can become more watchful, but you will not get a Swiss-made watch!

Watchfulness happens; he makes you more aware, alert. He does not give you time, he gives you timelessness. But these things happen, nobody does them, because the door is gone. Only then the nirvichara samadhi is possible. With the doer, how can you cease thinking? – doer is the thinker. In fact, before you do anything you have to think; thinker comes first, doer follows. When the thinker and the doer both are gone and only a witnessing, only a consciousness has remained, then many things simply become possible, they happen.

When Buddha moves, many things happen, but they are not so visible. Only few people will be able to understand what is happening because they belong to a very unknown world. You don’t have any language for it, no concepts for it, and you cannot see it unless it happens to you.

... IN THIS STATE KNOWLEDGE IS GAINED DIRECT, WITHOUT THE USE OF THE SENSES.

The mind has gone, and with the mind all the assistants, all the idiots. They are not functioning, they don’t distract you, they don’t disturb your perception, they don’t create any types of hindrances, they don’t project, they don’t interpret. That whole thing is no more there. Simply consciousness is there before reality. And when this happens, consciousness faces consciousness, because there is no matter.

The most beautiful metaphor that I have come across is a mirror facing another mirror. What will happen when a mirror faces another mirror? One mirror mirrors another mirror; the other mirrors this mirror, and there is nothing in the mirror, only mirroring reflected millions of times into each other.

The whole world becomes millions of mirrors – and you are also a mirror – and all mirrors empty, because nothing else is there to reflect, not even the frame of the mirror. There is just the mirror –

two mirrors facing each other. That is the most graceful moment, the most blissful; grace descends, flowers shower, the whole celebrates that one more has attained, one more traveler has reached home.

THE PERCEPTION GAINED IN NIRVICHARA SAMADHI TRANSCENDS ALL NORMAL

PERCEPTIONS, BOTH IN EXTENT AND INTENSITY.

These two words are very meaningful: ”extent” and ”intensity”. When you see the world through the senses, brain and the mind, the world is very dull. It has no luminosity in it, dusty, and soon it becomes boring, and one feels fed up: the same trees, the same people, the same actions –

everything just a rut. It is not so.

Sometimes in LSD, or marijuana or hashish, suddenly the tree becomes more green. You have never known it, that the tree was so green or the rose was so rosy.

When Aldous Huxley first took LSD, he was sitting before a chair. Suddenly, the chair became one of the most beautiful things in the world, and that chair has remained in his room for years and he had never looked at it. It was like a prism, many shades, many colors coming out of it; it was like a diamond. The chair was no more the same chair. Huxley was fascinated with the chair. He couldn’t believe what happens when somebody takes a drug.

Drug is a violent effort to awake the idiots. So you shock them, and just they open their eyes a little, and just they look... ”Yes!” And yet, the world become so beautiful, unbelievably beautiful, and then you are hooked, because then you think that it is because of the drug that the world is so beautiful.

Now, when you are back and the trip is over, the world will look even more dirtier and more dull than ever, because now you have a comparison in the mind. For certain moments it had become a beautiful phenomenon; it was paradise itself. Even a person like Aldous Huxley got mixed up, and he started thinking that this was the samadhi Patanjali is talking about, and Kabir attained, and Buddha, and all the mystics of the world this is the samadhi.

Drugs can give you a false sense of samadhi, but you are still in the prison. Only because of the drug shock your mechanism functions with alertness, but this alertness will not be for long. More and more if you use it, then the quantity of the drug has to be raised higher and higher, because with the same amount you cannot shock the idiots again. They become attuned to it, then more and more quantities are needed. Drugs work only just like this.

Once Mulla Nasruddin purchased a mule, and he will not move, and he did everything... And the man from whom he has purchased has told him not to beat the mule because he is very sensitive.

So he prayed, pursued and did everything, whatsoever he could do: it would not move, it would not listen. So he called the man: he said, ”What type of mule you have given to me?” The man came with a stick and hit the mule hard on the head. Nasruddin said, ”This is too much! – and you had told me not to hit him.” The man said, ”I am not hitting. Just to get his attention...” and immediately the mule started.

The idiots are there: LSD hits like a stick. For a few moments you get their attention, you have shocked them. The whole world becomes beautiful. But this is nothing, absolutely nothing. If you can attain to a single moment of nirvichara, then you will be able to know. The world becomes millions times more beautiful than any LSD can give you a glimpse. And it is not because you are hitting the mules on the head, it is simply you are no more inside the mules, you have come out, you have dropped the idiots. You face reality with your total nudity.

With no thoughts, you are nude. With no thoughts who are you? – a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian, a communist? Who are you without thoughts? – a man, a woman? Who are you without thoughts? – religious, irreligious? You are nobody without thoughts. All clothes have dropped. You are simply a nudity, a purity, an emptiness. Then the perception is clear, and with that clarity comes extent and intensity. Now you can look at the vast expanse of existence. Now there is no barrier to your perception; your eyes have become infinite.

And intensity: you can look into any event, any person, because things are no more there. Even flowers are persons now, and trees are friends, and rocks sleeping souls. Now intensity happens; you can look through and through. When you can look through and through to a flower, then you will be able to understand what mystics have been saying, and poets.

Tennyson says that ”If I can understand a flower, a small flower in its totality, I would have understood all.” Right, absolutely right! If you can understand the part you will understand the whole, because the part is the whole. And when you try to understand the part, by and by, unknowingly, you will have moved to the whole, because the part is organic to the whole.

Once a great mystic, Eckhart, was asked that, ”Why don’t you write your biography?

Your

autobiography will be very, very helpful to people.” He said, ”Difficult, impossible – because if I write my autobiography it will be the autobiography of the whole, because everything is related. And that will be too much, and how one can write the autobiography of the whole?”

That’s why those who have known have always resisted; they have never written autobiographies

– except this man Paramahansa Yogananda, who has written AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI.

He is not a yogi at all. Otherwise a yogi cannot write the autobiography – it is impossible, simply impossible, because when somebody has attained to nirvichara samadhi, then he is a yogi, and then, the sheer vastness... Now he has become all. If you really want to write the autobiography, it will be the autobiography of the whole from the beginning – and there is no beginning – to the end –

and there is no end.

In me, if I have become aware, the whole culminates. I don’t start with my birth, I start from the very beginning, and there is no beginning, and I will go on to the very end, and there is no end. I am deeply involved with the whole. These few years that I am here are not the whole. I was before I was born, and I will be there after I am dead, so how to write? It will be a fragment, a page, not an autobiography, and a page absolutely absurd and out of context because other pages will be missing.

Few friends come to me and they also say, ”Why not? You should write something about you,” and I know the difficulty of Meister Eckhart. It is not possible, because from where to begin? – every beginning will be arbitrary and false; and where to end?-every ending will be arbitrary and false. And between two false things – the false beginning and the false end – how can real be managed? – not possible. Yogananda has done something which is not possible. He has done something which a politician can do, but not a yogi.

Intensity becomes so much that you look at a pebble, and through the pebble roads are moving into the whole, and through the pebble you can enter into the highest of mysteries. Everywhere is a door; and you knock, and everywhere you are accepted, welcome. From wherever you enter, you enter into the infinity because all the doors are of the whole. Individuals may be there like doors.

Love a person and you enter infinity. Look at a flower and the temple has opened. Lie down on the sand, and every particle of sand is as vast as the whole. This is the higher mathematics of religion.

Ordinary mathematics says the part can never be the whole. This is one of the maxims of ordinary mathematics that start in the universities: the part can never be the whole, and the part is always smaller than the whole, and the part can never be bigger than the whole. These are simple maxims of mathematics, and everybody will agree this is so.

But then there is a higher mathematics. When you have come out of the senses – the world of higher mathematics, and these are the maxims: the part is always the whole; the part is never, never smaller than the whole, and-the absurdity of absurdities – sometimes the part is bigger than the whole.

Now I cannot explain it to you. Nobody can explain, but these are the maxims. Once you are out of your prison you will see that this is how things are. A pebble is part, a very small part, but if you look at it with a thoughtless mind, with simple consciousness, direct, suddenly the pebble becomes the whole – because only one exists. Because no part is in fact a part, or separate: the part depends on the whole, the whole depends on the part. It is not only that when the sun rises, flowers open; the other way is also true – when the flowers open, the sun rises. If there were no flowers, for whom the sun will rise? It is not only that the sun rises, the birds sing; the other way is as true as this-because the birds sing, the sun rises. Otherwise, for whom... ? Everything is interdependent; everything is related to everything else; everything is intertwined with everything else. Even if a leaf disappears, the whole will miss it; the whole will not be the whole then.

In one of his prayers, Meister Eckhart has said... and this is one of the rarest men that Christianity has produced. In fact, he looks a stranger in the world of Christians. He should have been born in Japan as a Zen Master, his insight is so clear, so deep, so beyond dogma.

He says in one of his prayers, ”Yes, I depend on you, God, but you also depend on me. If I were not here, who will worship and who will pray? and you would have missed me.” And he is true: it is not out of any ego, it is a simple fact. I know God must have nodded at that moment, ”You are true, Eckhart, because if you were not there, I would not have been here.”

The worshipper and the worshipped exist together; the lover and the beloved exist together. One cannot exist without the other, and this is the mystery of existence: everything exists together. This togetherness is God. God is not a person; this very togetherness of all, is God.

THE PERCEPTION GAINED IN NIRVICHARA SAMADHI TRANSCENDS ALL NORMAL

PERCEPTIONS BOTH IN EXTENT AND INTENSITY.

From everywhere vastness opens, and from everywhere, the depth... Look into a flower, and there is abyss. You can fall into a flower and disappear. It has happened. It will be absurd but it is true. It is up to you to believe it or not.

It happened in China that the Emperor asked a great painter to come and do some painting in the palace. The painter came and he painted a view of Himalayas, very beautiful. Years he took, and he won’t allow anybody to see unless it is complete. Then one day he told the Emperor that, ”Now it is ready and you can come.”

And the Emperor came with his ministers and generals and the court, and they were simply wonderstruck. They had never seen anything like that – it was so true. The peaks were exactly real, and there was a winding path around the peaks and the path disappeared somewhere. The Emperor asked, ”Where this path leads?” The painter said, ”I have not traveled on it, so how I should know?” But the Emperor insisted that it was not at all a question of traveling: ”You have painted it!”

So the painter said, ”You wait. Let me go and see.” And it is said that he went and disappeared into the picture, and never came back to tell the story where it leads.

It cannot happen, that I know; but in nirvichara it happens. In a flower is the abyss. Because of your intensity, you look into the flower and there is the depth, and you can fall into a flower and disappear forever. You look at a beautiful face with nirvichara and there is abyss in beauty, and you can be forever and forever lost; you can fall into it. Everything becomes a door, everything! With your intensity of look, all the doors are open for you.

WHEN THIS CONTROLLING OF ALL OTHER CONTROLS IS TRANSCENDED, THE SEEDLESS

SAMADHI IS ATTAINED, AND WITH IT, FREEDOM FROM LIFE AND DEATH.

This is where all the paths culminate, all the Buddhas meet: Tantra and Yoga, Zen and Hassid, Sufi and Baul – all the paths. Paths may be different – they are – but now this comes, the peak; here paths disappear. WHEN THIS CONTROLLING OF ALL OTHER CONTROLS IS TRANSCENDED...

because Patanjali says that it is still a controlled state. Thoughts have disappeared: you can perceive now the existence, but still the perceiver and the perception, the object and the subject... With the body, the knowledge was indirect. Now it is direct, but still the knower is different from the known.

The last barrier exists, the division. When even this is dropped, when this control is transcended, and the painter disappears in the painting and the lover disappears in the love, object and subject disappear. There is no knower and no known.

WHEN THIS CONTROLLING OF ALL OTHER CONTROLS IS TRANSCENDED...

This is the last control, the nirvichara samadhi, samadhi where thoughts have ceased. This is the last control. Still you are, not as an ego, but as a self. Still you are separate from the known – just a very transparent veil, but it is there – and if you cling to this you will be born, because the division has not been transcended; you have not attained to non-duality yet. The seed of duality is still there, and that seed will sprout into new lives and the wheel of life and death will go on moving.

WHEN THIS CONTROLLING OF ALL OTHER CONTROLS IS TRANSCENDED, THE SEEDLESS

SAMADHI IS ATTAINED – THEN YOU ATTAIN THE NIRVICHARA SAMADHI, SEEDLESS – AND

WITH IT, FREEDOM FROM LIFE AND DEATH.

Then the wheel stops for you. Then there is no time, no space. Life and death have both disappeared like a dream. How to transcend this last control? – it is the most difficult. To attain to nirvichara is very arduous, but nothing compared to the dropping of the last control, because it is very subtle.

How to do it? ”How” is not relevant at that stage. One has simply to live watch, enjoy, be loose and natural. This is where Tilopa becomes meaningful.

Because these people like Tilopa are Zen Masters they talk about the goal: loose and natural one lives, doing nothing, doing nothing to transcend the control. Because if you do something, that will again be a control. Your doing will be undoing. Loose and natural – that is the point where the tenth picture of the ten oxherding series becomes meaningful: back again into the world, and not only back again into the world... carrying a bottle of wine. Enjoying, celebrating, being ordinary – that is the meaning. Nothing can be done now. All that could be done you have done. Now you simply become loose and natural and forget everything about yoga, control, sadhana, seeking, search.

Forget everything about it, because now, if you do something, then the control will continue, and with control there is no freedom. You have to wait, and just being loose and natural.

Somebody asked Lin Chi, ”What you are doing nowadays?” He said, ”Chopping wood, carrying water from the well – nothing else.” Chopping wood, carrying water from the well...

Lin Chi must have been at this stage when he answered this. He has come to the last control. Now there remains nothing to be done, so he chops wood. Winter is coming and wood will be needed, and people say it is going to be very cold this winter, so he chops wood; and of course he feels thirsty, so he carries water, waters the garden, vegetables. Absolutely ordinary... no seeking, no search, going nowhere.

This is the state where Zenerin says, ”Sitting quietly, sitting silently, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.” Beyond this, words cannot explain. One has to reach to nirvichara and then wait for the seedless samadhi. It comes on its own, just like the grass grows by itself. Then the last control is transcended, and there is no one who transcends it. It is simply transcended. There is no one who transcends it, because if someone is there to transcend it, again the control is there.

So you cannot do anything about it.

That’s why Patanjali simply ends: it is samadhi both.

Here ends the chapter on samadhis – nothing more to say. He doesn’t say anything how to do it. There is no how to it. This is the point where Krishnamurti gets very angry, when people ask,

”How?” There is no point, no method, no technique, because if any technique is possible here, then the control will remain. The control is transcended, but there is no one who transcends. Remaining loose and natural, chopping wood and carrying water, sitting silently, the spring comes, the grass grows by itself.

So you don’t bother about seedless samadhi. You simply think Of nirvichara samadhi, samadhi where thoughts cease. Up to there, search continues. Beyond that is the land of no-search. When you have become nirvichara, then, then only you will understand now what to do. All that could be done you have done.

The last barrier is there. That last barrier is created by your doing. The last barrier is created; it is very transparent. It is as if you are sitting behind a glass wall, very beautiful and pure glass, and you can see everything as clearly as without the wall, but the wall is there, and if you try to cross it you will be hit hard and thrown back.

So nirvichara samadhi is not the last thing, it is the last but one. And that ”last but one” is the goal.

Beyond that, read Zenerin, Tilopa, Lin Chi; sit silently and let the grass grow by itself. Beyond that you can live in the market, because the market is as beautiful as the monastery. Beyond that you can do whatsoever you feel like doing – you can do your own thing – but not before that. You can relax; the search is over. In that relaxation comes the moment of inner tuning with the cosmos, and the wall disappears. Because it is created by your doing; when you don’t do, it disappears. It is fed by your doing. When you don’t do, it disappears, and when the doing has disappeared and you have transcended all control, then there is no life and no death, because life is of the doer, death is of the doer.

Now you are no more; you have dissolved. You have dissolved like a piece of salt thrown into the ocean dissolves, and you cannot find where it has gone. Can you find a piece of salt which has dissolved into the ocean? It has become one with the ocean. You can taste the ocean, but you cannot find the piece.

That’s why, when again and again people ask Buddha, ’What will happen when a Buddha dies?

What happens when a Buddha dies?” – Buddha remains silent; he never answers about it. It was a very persistent question ”What happens to a Buddha?” Buddha remains silent because Buddha appears to be to you – for himself, he is no more. Inside, he is no more. Inside, outside have become one; the part and the whole has become one; the devotee and the God have become one; the lover is dissolved into the beloved.

Then what remains? – love remains: the lover no more, the beloved no more, the knower no more, the known no more – knowing remains. Simple consciousness remains, with no center to it, vast as existence, deep as existence, mysterious as existence. But nothing can be done.

When you come to this point someday – if you seek hard you will come; if you seek hard you will come to nirvichara samadhi – then don’t carry the old habit of doing, then don’t carry the old pattern of doing, then don’t ask ”How?” Then simply be loose and natural and let things be. Accept whatsoever happens; celebrate whatsoever happens. Chop wood, carry water, sit silently and let the grass grow.

CHAPTER 10

The consistency of being

10 March 1975 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

Question 1

WHAT HAPPENED TO RAJNEESH ON MARCH 21ST? DID HE ATTAIN SAMADHI WITH OR

WITHOUT SEED?

THIS IS NOT ONLY your question, this is mine also! Ever since, I have also been wondering what happened to this guy Rajneesh. On that night, one moment he was there, and next moment he was not there.

And since then I have been looking for him within and without: not even a trace has been left behind, no footprints. If ever I get him, I will remember your question. Or, if it happens that you come across him somewhere, you can ask the question from my side also.

It is just like a dream. In the morning you are awake, you look around, you search for the dream in the sheets of the bed, under the bed, and it is not there. You cannot believe – just a moment before it was there, so colorful, so real, and suddenly it is not found at all, and there is no way to find it. It only appeared; it was not a reality, it was just a dream. One is awake and the dream has disappeared.

Nothing happens to the dream.

To Rajneesh also, nothing happened; it was never there in the first place. I was asleep, that’s why he was there. I awoke and I couldn’t find him, and it happened so unexpectedly there was no time to ask the question. Simply the guy disappeared, and there seems to be no possibility to find him again, because there is only one possibility: if I fall asleep again, only then I can find him – and that is impossible.

Once you are totally conscious, the very root of being unconscious is cut. The seed is burned. Again you cannot fall into the unconscious.

Every day you can fall into the unconscious in the night, because the unconscious is there. But then your whole being becomes conscious; there is no place inside you, no dark corner, where you can go and sleep-and without sleep, no dream.

Rajneesh was a dream that happened to me. Nothing can happen to Rajneesh. What can happen to a dream? Either it is there if you are asleep, or it is not there when you are awake. Nothing can happen to a dream. Dream can happen to reality; reality cannot happen to a dream. Rajneesh happened to me as a dream.

So this is my question also. If you have ears, listen, and if you have eyes you can see. One day suddenly the old man is no longer found inside the house – just emptiness, nobody there. You move, you search: nobody is there, only a vast expanse of consciousness with no center, with no boundary.

And when the personality disappears – and all names belong to personality – then for the first time the universal has arisen in you. The world of nam-roop, the name and the forms, disappears, and the formless is there suddenly.

This is going to happen to you also. Before it happens, if you have any questions to ask, ask your personality. Because once it happens, then you cannot ask. There is nobody to ask. Someday, suddenly you will disappear. Before it happens you can ask, but that too is difficult because before it happens, you are so fast asleep – who will ask? Before it happens there is nobody to ask, and when it has happened there is nobody to be asked.

The second question:

Question 2

PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW THE SEED IS BURNED IN FINAL SAMADHI.

You always cling to words! – and I know that is natural. When you hear the words ”samadhi”,

”seedless samadhi”, ”the seed has burned; now there is no more seed,” you hear words, and then questions arise in your mind. But if you understand me, then these questions will become irrelevant.

”The seed is burned”, does not mean that actually something like that happens. What happens is simple, simply this: that when nirvichara samadhi is attained, thoughts cease. Suddenly there is no seed to be burned. It has never been there; you were in a hallucination.

This is a metaphor, and religion talks in metaphors because there is no other way to talk about things which belong to the unknown. It is a metaphor. When it is said the seed is burned, the only meaning is: now there is no desire to be born, no desire to die, no desire not to die; simply there is no desire.

Desire is the seed, and how desire can exist when thoughts have ceased? Desire can exist only through thinking, in the form of thought. When thoughts are not there you are desireless. When you are desireless, birth and death disappear. With your desire the seed is burned. Not that there is a fire in which you burn the seed... Don’t be foolish. Many have become victims of metaphors. These are poetic ways of saying certain things, through the metaphor.

And just understand the essential. The essential is that desire leads you into time, into this world.

You would like to be this and that, you would like to attain this and that; future is created. Time is created by desire. Time is nothing but a shadow of the desire. There is no time in existence.

Existence is eternal; it has never known any time. Time is created by your desire, because desire needs space to move. Otherwise, if there is no future where the desire will move? You will be always against a wall, so you create future. Your mind creates a dimension of time, and then the horses of desire can gallop fast. Because of desire you create future, not only in this life but in other lives also, because you know desires are so many... And desires are such they cannot be fulfilled: this life won’t be enough – more lives are needed. If only this is the life, then too short is the time, too many things to do, and such a short time – nothing can be done. Then you create future lives.

It is your desire that becomes the seed, and through the desire you move and move, from one dream to another. From one life to another when you move it is nothing but moving from one dream to another. When you become thoughtless, when you drop all thinking and simply remain in the present moment, suddenly time has disappeared.

The present moment is not part of time at all. You divide time in three tenses: past, present, future.

That is wrong. Past and future are time, but the present is not part of time, the present is part of existence. Past is in the mind: if your memory is vast, where will be the past? Future is in the mind: if your imagination is dropped, where will be the future? But the present will be there. It does not depend on you and your mind. The present is existential. Only this moment is true; all other moments either belong to the past or to the future. The past has gone, is no more, and the future has not come yet. Both are non-existential. Only the present is real, only one moment of present.

When the desires cease and thinking ceases, suddenly you are thrown to the present moment, and from the present moment opens the door to eternity. The seed is burned. With the dropping of the desire the seed disappears of its own accord – it was created by the desire.

The third question:

Question 3

AS A COMPARATIVELY NEW SANNYASIN I AM A LITTLE WORRIED ABOUT THE NUMBER OF

VERY SERIOUS, WORRIED LOOKING SANNYASINS AROUND YOU. COULD YOU REASSURE

ME ABOUT THIS PLEASE?

Yes, many things have to be understood. First, religious people are always serious. I am not a religious person, but many religious persons, misunderstanding me, come to me. Religious persons are always serious; they are ill. They are frustrated with life, so much frustrated, failed completely, that they have lost the quality to enjoy. In life nothing but anguish they have come across. In life they have never been able to celebrate. They become religious out of the frustration of life; then they are serious, and they have the attitude that they are doing something very great. They are trying to console their egos, that you may have failed in life, but you are succeeding in religion; you may have failed in the outer world, but in the inner you have become a paragon. In the world of things you may have failed, but your kundalini is rising, chakras are opening. And then they compensate: they start looking at others with a condemnatory eye. ”Holier than thou” is their attitude; all are sinners. Only they are going to be saved, everybody else is going to be thrown into hell. These religious people have created hell for others, created even for themselves. They are living a compensatory life – not real, but of imagination. These people will be serious.

I have nothing to do with them. But thinking that I am also that sort of religious man, sometimes they become hooked with me. I am a totally different type of religious man, if at all you can call me religious. To me, religion is fun. To me, religiousness is celebration. To me, religion is festive. I call religion ”the festive dimension”. It is not for religious people, for serious people. For serious people there is psychotherapy; they are ill, and they are deceiving nobody but themselves.

To me, religion has totally a different quality. Not that you have failed in life, that’s why you have come to religion, but because you have become matured through life. Even your failures... There are failures, but the failures are not because of life; the failures are because of your desires. You have become frustrated-not that life is frustrating, but because you hoped too much. Life is beautiful; your mind created the trouble. Your ambition was too much. Even this beautiful and vast life could not fulfill it.

The ordinary religious man leaves the world; the really religious man leaves ambition, leaves hoping, leaves imagination. Knowing through experience that every hope comes to a point where it becomes hopelessness, and every dream comes to a point where it becomes a nightmare, and every desire comes to a point where nothing but discontent is left by it in you – knowing this through experience, one becomes seasoned, mature. A growth happens into consciousness. Out of this growth one drops ambition, or the ambition drops by itself out of this growth. Then a person becomes religious.

Not that he renounces the world the world is beautiful! There is nothing to renounce – but he renounces all expectations. And when there is no expectation, how can there be frustration? And when there is no demand, how can there be unfulfillment? And when there is no ambition, how can be there any nightmare? One simply becomes loose and natural. One lives the moment and does not worry for the tomorrow. One lives the moment, and lives it so totally because there is no hope and no desire in the future. One brings his whole being to the moment, and then the whole life is transformed. It is fun, it is a feast, it is a celebration. Then you can dance and you can laugh and you can sing, and to me this is how a religious consciousness should be – a dancing consciousness, more like children, less like dead corpses. Your churches, your temples, your mosques are just like graveyards – too much serious.

So of course there are many people around me who are serious; they have not understood me at all. They may be projecting their minds on me, they may be interpreting whatsoever I am saying according to their own minds, but they have not understood me. They are wrong people. Either they will have to change or they will have to leave. Finally, only those people will be with me who can celebrate life so totally, with no complaint, with no grudge. Others will go; sooner they go, the better.

But this happens: thinking that I am religious, old religious-type people also sometimes come to me, and once they come they bring their own minds with them and they try to be serious here also.

One man came to me, old man. He was a very famous Indian leader. Once he attended a camp, and he saw a few sannyasins playing cards. Immediately he came to me and he said, ”This is too much!

Sannyasins playing cards?” I said, ”What is wrong in it? Cards are beautiful, and they are not doing anybody any harm – just enjoying playing cards.” And this man was a politician, and he is playing cards in politics and gambling, but that he cannot understand. Just people playing cards is simple

– just celebrating the moment. And this man in his whole life was playing cards, very dangerous cards, violent, stepping on people’s heads, doing everything that a politician has to do. But he was thinking himself religious. And poor sannyasins, just playing cards, they are condemned. He said, ”I never expected.” I told him that to me there is nothing wrong in it.

There is nothing wrong when you are not harming anybody. When you harm somebody, then it is wrong. Sometimes things which have been thought to be wrong are not so wrong. For example: you are talking nonsense to a person and throwing rubbish in his head – and only rubbish you can throw; you don’t have anything else – that’s okay. But a person sitting in the corner and smoking a cigarette

– that is wrong? He is at least not throwing rubbish on anybody’s head or in anybody’s head. He has found a substitute for the lips: he doesn’t talk, he smokes. He may be harming himself, but he is not harming anybody. He may be a fool, but he is not a sinner.

Always try to think on the lines that if you are harming somebody, only then is something wrong. If you are not harming anybody and if you are a little aware-in the ”anybody”, you will also be included

– if you are not harming anybody, included you, everything is beautiful. Then you can do your thing.

Sannyas to me is not a serious thing. In fact it is just the opposite: it is a jump into non-seriousness.

Seriously you have lived for many lives. What you have gained? The whole world teaches you to be serious, to do your duty, to be moral, to be this and that. I teach you fun; I teach you being festive.

I teach you nothing but celebration. Just remember only one thing: your celebration should not be harmful to anybody else, that’s all.

But the ego is the problem. If you take life as fun, and you celebrate it like a feast, then your ego will disappear. The ego can exist only when you are serious. childlike, then the ego disappears. So you have a haughty look, you walk uptight; you are doing something very serious nobody else is doing: you are trying to help the whole world and reform. You take on your shoulders the burden of the whole world. Everybody is immoral; only you are moral. And everybody is committing sin; only you are virtuous. Then the ego feels very good.

In a celebrating mood, ego cannot exist. If celebration becomes your very climate of being, ego will disappear. How can you maintain your ego laughing, dancing, enjoying? – it is difficult. You can maintain your ego when you are doing shirshasan, standing on your head, or doing difficult, foolish postures. Then you can maintain the ego: you are a great yogi! Or sitting in a temple or in the church with all other dead bodies around you, you can feel very, very big, great, super.

Remember, my sannyas is not for this type of people, but they come. Nothing is wrong in coming.

Either they will change, or they will have to leave. You don’t be worried about them. I assure you that I am not serious.

I am sincere, but not serious, and sincerity is a totally different quality. Seriousness is the disease of the ego, and sincerity is a quality of the heart. To be sincere means to be true, not serious.

To be sincere means to be authentic. Whatsoever you are doing, you are doing full of your heart.

Whatsoever you are doing, you are doing it not as a duty but as your love. Sannyas is not a duty, it is your love. If you take the jump, you take out of your love, out of your authenticity. You will be sincere to it, but not serious. Seriousness is sad, sincerity is gay. A sincere person is always gay. Only a false person becomes sad, because he gets into a mess. If you are false, each falsehood will lead you into another falsehood. If you depend on lies, you will have to depend on more lies. By and by, a crowd of lies is around you. You are suffocated with your own false faces: then you become sad.

Then life looks like a mess. Then you cannot enjoy it because you have destroyed the whole beauty of it. Except your false mind, nothing is ugly in the existence; everything is beautiful.

Be sincere, be authentic and true, and whatsoever you do, do it out of love. Otherwise, don’t do it.

If you want to be a sannyasin, be out of love. Otherwise, don’t take the jump – wait, let the right moment come. But don’t get serious about it. It is nothing; it is nothing like seriousness. To me, seriousness is a disease, a disease of the mediocre mind who has failed in life. And he has failed because he is mediocre. Sannyas should be the culmination of your maturity: of failures, successes, everything that you have seen and lived and you have grown through it. Now you understand more, and when you understand more you can enjoy more.

Jesus is religious; Christians, no. Jesus can be festive; Christians, they cannot be. In the church you have to carry a very serious face, gloomy. Why? because the cross has become the symbol of the religion. Cross should not be the symbol; death should not be the concern. A religious person lives so deeply that he knows no death: there is no energy left to know death; there is nobody to know death. When you live life so deeply, death disappears. Death exists only if you live on the surface.

When you live deeply, even death becomes life. When you live on the surface, even life becomes death. Cross should not be a symbol.

In India we have never made cross-like things symbols. We have Krishna’s flute or Shiva’s dance as symbols. If ever you want to understand how a religious consciousness should grow, then try to understand Krishna. He is festive, celebrating, dancing. He is a lover of life, with the flute on his lips and a song. Christ was really a man like Krishna. In fact, the very word Christ comes from Krishna.

Jesus is his name: Jesus the Krishna, Jesus the Christ. Krishna has many forms. In Bengal, in India, it has a form which is christo. From Christo, in Greek it becomes christos, and from there it moves and becomes Christ. Jesus must have been a man like Krishna, but Christians say he never laughed. This seems absurd. If Jesus cannot laugh, then who will laugh? They have painted him in such seriousness. He must have laughed! In fact he loved women, wine: that was the problem; that’s why Jews crucified him. He loved women, Mary Magdalene and others, and Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. He must have been a rare man, a very rarely religious man. He loved eating; he always enjoyed feasts. And eating with Christ must have been something of the other world.

It happened: Christ died on the cross. Then it is said that after three days he resurrected – and a very beautiful story. He resurrected: Mary Magdalene saw him first. Why? – because only the eyes of love can understand resurrection, because the eyes of love can see the inner, the immortal. Men followers passed by the side of Jesus who was standing there, and they won’t see. The symbol is beautiful: only love can see that innermost deathless. And when Mary Magdalene came into the town and told people, they thought she has gone mad. Who believes a woman? – people say love is mad, love is blind – nobody will believe. Even the apostles, Jesus’ closest disciples, even they laughed and said, ”Have you gone mad? We will believe only when we see.”

And then it happened that two disciples were going to another town and Jesus followed them, with them talked, and they talked about Jesus’ crucifixion and what has happened. And they were very much troubled, and Jesus is walking with them and talking with them, and they didn’t recognize.

Then they reached the town. They invited the stranger to take food with them, and when Jesus was breaking the bread then suddenly they recognized him, because nobody could have broken the bread that way – only Jesus.

This story I have loved tremendously. They talked and couldn’t recognize; they walked for miles together and couldn’t recognize, but the very gesture of Jesus breaking the bread, suddenly...

because they had never known any man to break bread with such a festive mood, to celebrate food – they had never known any man. Suddenly, they recognized and said, ”Why didn’t you say that you are Jesus resurrected?” The gesture...

And Christians say this man never laughed. Christians have completely destroyed Jesus, distorted, and if he ever comes back – and I am afraid he will not come because of these Christians – they won’t allow him in the churches.

The same is possible around me also. Once I am gone, the serious people are dangerous. They can take possession, because they are always in search of taking possession of things. They can become my successors, and then they will destroy. So remember this: even an ignorant person can become my successor, but he must be able to laugh and celebrate. Even if somebody claims that he is enlightened, just see his face: if he is serious, he is not going to be successor to me! Let this be the criterion: even a fool will do, but he should be able to laugh and enjoy and celebrate life. But serious people are always in search of power. People who can laugh are not worried about power –

that is the problem. Life is so good, who bothers to become a pope? Simple people, happy in their simple ways, don’t bother about politics.

Immediately, when an enlightened person disappears from the body, the people who are serious are fighting to become the successors. And they have always destroyed, because they are the wrong people, but the wrong people are always ambitious. Only right people are not ambitious, because life is giving so much, there is no need for ambition to become a successor, or to become a pope, or to become this and that. Life is so beautiful that more is not asked. But people who have no enjoyment, they enjoy power; people who have missed love, they enjoy prestige; people who have somehow missed the celebration of life and the dance, they would like to be popes – high powered, controlling people. Beware of them; they have been always the destroyers, the poisoners. They destroyed Buddha, they destroyed Christ, they destroyed Mohammed. And they are always around, and it is difficult to get rid of them, very, very difficult, because they are so seriously there... you cannot get rid of them.

But I assure you that I am always for happiness, joy, a life of dance and song, enjoyment, because to me that is the only prayer. When you are happy, overflowing with happiness, there is prayer.

And there is no other prayer. Existence listens only to your existential response, not your verbal communication. What you say doesn’t matter: what you are... If you really feel that God is, then celebrate. Then there is no point in losing a single moment. Dance if you feel God is, with your whole being, because only when you dance and sing and you are happy – or even if you sit silently

– the very climate of your being gives such a peaceful, deep contentment with life. That is prayer; you are thanking. Your thankfulness is your prayer. Serious people? – I have never heard that serious people ever enter heaven. They cannot.

Once it happened that a sinner died and reached heaven. A saint died on the same day, and the messengers started taking him towards hell. The saint said, ”Wait! Something has gone somewhere wrong. You are taking that sinner, and I know him well! And I have been twenty-four hours meditating and praying to God, and I am taken to the hell? I would like to ask God himself. What is this? Is this justice?” So he was brought to God himself, and the man complained and said, ”This is simply unbelievable! – that this sinner... I know him well; he has been my neighbor. He has never prayed; he has never taken your name once in life, and I have been twenty-four hours praying... Even in my sleep I go on repeating, Ram, Ram, Ram – and what is happening?n It is said God said, ”Because you killed me with your boring continuous Ram. You almost killed me, and I would not like you to be nearabout. Just think, twenty-four hours! You won’t give me a single moment of rest. This man is good. At least he never troubled me, and I know he never prayed, because his whole life was a prayer. He looks like a sinner to you because you think just in praying and verbal nonsense there is virtue. He lived and lived happily. He may not have been always good, but he was always happy and he was always blissful. He may have erred here and there, because it is human to err, but he was not an egotist. He never prayed, but from his deepest core of being there was always a thankfulness.

He enjoyed life and he thanked for it.”

Remember: serious people are all in hell; devil loves seriousness very much. Heaven is not like a church, and if it is, then nobody who has any senses will ever go to heaven. Then it is better to go to hell. Heaven is life, life millionfold.

Jesus says to his disciples, ”Come to me and I will give you life in abundance.” Heaven is a poetry, a continuous song, like a river flowing, a continuous celebration with no break. When you are here with me, remember, you will miss me if you are serious, because there will be no contact. Only when you are happy you can be near me. Through happiness a bridge is built. Through seriousness all bridges are broken; you become like an island, unapproachable.

The fourth question:

Question 4

SOMETIMES I FEEL AWARE AND SOMETIMES NOT. AWARENESS SEEMS TO PULSATE.

DOES THIS PULSATING SLOWLY DISAPPEAR OR DOES IT GO SUDDENLY?

In life everything is a rhythm. You are happy and then follows unhappiness. Night and day, summer and winter; life is a rhythm between two opposites. When you try to become aware the same rhythm will be there: sometimes you are aware and sometimes not.

So don’t create a problem, because you are such experts in creating problems that out of the blue you can create a problem. And once you have created a problem then you want to solve it. And then there are people who will supply you with answers. A wrong problem is always answered by a wrong answer. And then it can go on ad infinitum; then a wrong answer again creates questions.

From the very beginning one has to be aware not to create a wrong problem. Otherwise the whole of life goes on and on in the wrong direction. Always try to understand not to create a problem.

Everything pulsates into a rhythm, and when I say everything, I mean everything. Love, and there is hate; awareness, and there is unawareness. Don’t create any problem: enjoy both.

While aware enjoy awareness, and while unaware enjoy unawareness – nothing is wrong, because unawareness is like a rest. Otherwise, awareness will become a tension. If you are awake twenty-four hours, how many days you think you can be alive? Without food a man can live for three months; without sleep, within three weeks he will go mad, and he will try to commit suicide. In the day you are alert; in the night you relax, and that relaxation helps you in the day again to be more alert, fresh.

Energies have passed through a rest period; they are more alive in the morning again.

The same will happen in meditation: few moments you are perfectly aware, at the peak; few moments you are in the valley, resting – awareness has disappeared, you have forgotten. But what is wrong in it? It is simple. Through unawareness will arise again awareness, fresh, young, and this will go on. And if you can enjoy both you become the third, and that is the point to be understood.

If you can enjoy both it means you are neither – neither awareness nor unawareness, you are the one who enjoys both. Something of the beyond enters. In fact, this is the real witness. Happiness you enjoy – what is wrong when happiness has gone and you have become sad? What is wrong in sadness? Enjoy it. And once you become capable of enjoying sadness, then you are neither.

And this I tell you: that if you enjoy, sadness has its own beauties. Happiness is a little shallow; sadness is very deep, it has a depth into it. A man who has never been sad will be shallow, just on the surface. Sadness is like a dark night – very deep. Darkness has a silence into it, sadness also.

Happiness bubbles, there is a sound in it. It is like a river in the mountains; sound is created. But in the mountains, river can never be very deep; it is always shallow. When the river comes to the plain it becomes deep, but the sound stops. It moves as if not moving. Sadness has a depth.

Why create trouble? While happy, be happy, enjoy it. Don’t get identified with it. When I say be happy, I mean enjoy it. Let it be a climate which will move and change. The morning changes into the noon, the noon changes into the evening, and then comes night. Let happiness be a climate around you. Enjoy it, and then comes sadness... enjoy that too. I teach you enjoyment, whatsoever the case. Sit silently and enjoy sadness, and suddenly sadness is no more sadness; it has become a silent peaceful moment, beautiful in itself, nothing wrong in it.

And then comes the ultimate alchemy, the point where suddenly you realize you are neither – neither happiness nor sadness. You are the watcher – you watch peaks, you watch valleys; you are neither.

Once this point is attained, you can go on celebrating everything. You celebrate life and you celebrate death. You celebrate happiness, you celebrate unhappiness. You celebrate everything.

Then you are not identified with any polarity. Both the polarities have become available to you together, and you can move from one to the other easily. You have become liquid-like, you flow.

Then you can use both, and both can become a help into your growth.

Remember this: don’t create problems. Try to understand the situation, try to understand the polarity of life. In summer it is hot, in winter it is cold – so where is the problem? In winter enjoy cold, in summer enjoy heat. In summer enjoy the sun; in the night enjoy the stars and the darkness, in the day the sun and the light. You make enjoyment your continuity, whatsoever happens. In spite of it you go on enjoying. You try it, and suddenly everything is transfigured and transformed.

The fifth question:

Question 5

ONLY RECENTLY YOU SAID THAT IF ONE COULD NOT LOVE, THEN MEDITATION WOULD

TAKE YOU TO LOVE, AND IF ONE COULD NOT MEDITATE, THEN LOVE WILL TAKE YOU TO

MEDITATION. YOU SEEM TO HAVE CHANGED YOUR MIND.

I have none to change. You can change if you have it; how can you change it if you don’t have it?

And never try to compare two moments, because each moment is unique in itself. Yes, some days I am like winter and some days I am like summer, but I have not changed my mind – I have none.

It is how it happens: you ask a question, I have no ready-made answers for it. You ask the question and I respond. I don’t think whether I am consistent with my past sayings or not. I don’t live in the past and I don’t think of future – that whatsoever I am saying, may I be able in the future also to say the same thing. No, there is no past and no future.

Right this moment you ask a question and whatsoever happens, happens: I respond. It is a simple response, it is not an answer. Next day you again ask the same question but I will not respond in the same way. I cannot do anything about it. I have no ready-made questions. I am like a mirror: whatsoever face you bring, it reflects. If you are angry it reflects anger, if you are happy it reflects happiness. You cannot say to the mirror that ”What is the matter? Yesterday I was here and you reflected an angry face; and today I am here and you are reflecting a very happy face. What is the matter with you? Have you changed your mind?” The mirror has no mind; the mirror simply reflects you.

Your question is more important than my answer. In fact, your question creates the answer in me.

Half is supplied by you, the other half is just an echo. So it depends – it will depend on you, it will depend on the trees surrounding you, it will depend on the climate here, it will depend on existence in its totality. You ask a question, and I am nothing here, just a vehicle – as if the whole answers you. Whatsoever is your need, the answer comes to you. And you don’t try to compare, otherwise you will get into a mess.

Never try to compare. Whenever you feel that something suits you, you simply follow it, do it. And if you do it you will be able to understand whatsoever comes later on. Your doing will help, comparison won’t help. You will go completely mad if you go on comparing. Every moment I go on saying things.

Later on, when I have spoken my whole life, those who will study them, and those who will try to sort out what I meant will go simply mad; they will not be able. Because that is now how it is happening... They are philosophers; I am not a philosopher. They have a particular idea to impose on you; they go on insisting the same idea again and again. They have something which they would like to indoctrinate you. They would like to condition your mind into a certain philosophy. They are teaching you something.

I am not a teacher. I am not teaching anything to you. Rather, just on the contrary, I am trying to help you to unlearn.

Whatsoever suits you, follow it. Don’t think whether it is consistent or not. If it suits you it is good for you, and if you follow it, soon you will be able to understand the inner consistency of my all inconsistencies. I am consistent; my sayings may not be. Because they come from the same source, they come from me, so they must be consistent. How otherwise it is possible? – they come from the same source. Their shapes may differ, words may differ: deep down there must be a consistency running, but that you will be able only when you go deep down within yourself...

So whatsoever suits you, you simply don’t bother whether I have said something against it or not.

You simply move, do it. If you do it you will feel my consistency. If you simply think, you will never be able to take any step because every day I will go on changing. I cannot do anything else, because I don’t have a solid mind, rock-like, which is always the same.

I am like the climate, not like a rock. But your mind will again and again think I said this, and then I said that – what is right? Right is that which is easy to you. Easy is right; what fits you is right, always.

Always try to think in terms of your being and my saying, whether they fit. If they don’t fit, don’t bother. Don’t think about them, don’t waste time; move ahead. Something will be coming which will fit you.

And you are many, so I have to speak for many. Their needs are different, their requirements are different, their personalities are different, their past karma is different. I have to speak for many. Not only for you I am speaking; you are just an excuse. Through you I am speaking to the whole world.

So I will speak in many colors, and I will paint in many ways, and I will sing many songs. You simply think about yourself – whatsoever suits you, you hum that song and forget others. By humming that song, by and by, something will settle within you; a harmony will arise, and through that harmony you will be able to understand my consistency through all the inconsistencies.

Inconsistencies can only be on the surface, but my consistency is of a different quality. A philosopher is consistent on the surface. Whatsoever he says – he looks into the past, connects it with his sayings, looks into the future, connects it with the future – he creates a chain on the surface. That type of consistency you will not find in me. A different quality of consistency which is difficult to understand unless you live it...

Then, by and by, waves disappear which were inconsistent, and you come to the depth of the ocean where a silence resides, consistent always, whether on the surface there is a storm or not, big waves, great turmoil, or silence, no waves, not even a ripple. Whether it is tide or ebb makes no difference; deep down the ocean is consistent.

My consistency is that of being, not of words. But when you will descend into your own ocean inside, then you will be able to understand it. Right now, you don’t bother.

When a certain shoe fits you, purchase it and wear it. You don’t bother about other shoes in the shop. They don’t fit you: no need to bother about them. They are not meant for you, but there are other people; please remember them also. To somebody those shoes will fit. You just look for your own feet and for your own shoe. And feel, because it is a question of feeling, not of intellect.

When you go to the shoe shop, what you do? There are two ways: you can measure your feet and you can measure the shoe – that will be an intellectual effort, a mathematical effort whether it fits or not. The second is: you simply put the shoe on your foot, you walk and feel whether or not it fits. If it fits, it fits. Everything is okay; you can forget about it. Mathematical measurement may be perfect and shoe may not fit, because shoes know no mathematics. They are completely uneducated. Don’t bother about it.

I remember it happened: the man who found the law of average, a great mathematician – he was a Greek, and he was so filled with his own discovery of the law of average, that one day he was going for a picnic... his wife and seven children. They had to cross a river, so he said, ”Wait.” He went into the river; at four, five places he measured the depth of the river: somewhere it was one foot, somewhere it was three, somewhere it was only six inches. Rivers are not consistent with mathematics. He calculated on the sand, found the average: one and a half feet. He measured all his children, found the average: two feet. He said, ”Don’t worry, let them go. The river is one and a half feet, the children are two feet.” Perfect as far as mathematics goes, but neither children nor the river, nobody bothers about mathematics.

The wife was a little afraid, because women are never mathematical. And it is good that they are not because they give a balance – otherwise, the man will go mad. She was a little apprehensive. She said, ”I don’t understand your law of averages, but to me, it seems that few children are very small and the river seems to be deep.” He said, ”You don’t worry. I have proved the law of average to great mathematicians. Who are you to create a suspicion about it, a doubt? You just see how it works.”

The mathematician walked ahead. The woman, afraid, walked at the back so she can look what happens to the children because she was worried about... And few children, small ones, started going underwater. She cried, ”Look! The child is drowning!” But the mathematician ran to the sand on the other bank; he said, ”Then there must have been something wrong in my calculation.” Not to the child who was drowning... she ran to the other bank: ”Don’t be mathematical with me! I am not a mathematician and I don’t believe in any law of averages.”

Each individual is individual, and there exists no average man. And I am talking to many, and through you, to millions. I can do two things: either I can find an average principle, then I will be always consistent, I will always talk about two feet. But I see few are seven feet, few are only four feet, and I have to manage many types of shoes and many types of techniques. You simply look for your own feet; find the shoe and forget about the whole shop. Only then you will be able to understand someday the consistency that exists within me. Otherwise, I am the most inconsistent man on the earth.

The last question:

Question 6

ONCE YOU SAID THAT IF IT IS NEEDED, THEN YOU WILL TAKE ONE MORE BIRTH. BUT IF

YOU HAVE ALREADY ATTAINED TO SAMADHI WITHOUT SEED, HOW CAN YOU TAKE ONE

MORE BIRTH? YOU MAY NOT THINK THIS A RELEVANT PERSONAL QUESTION, BUT AT THE

RATE MY SPIRITUAL GROWTH SEEMS TO BE GOING, IT IS!

Yes; once I said that if it is needed I will come back. But now I say it is impossible. So please speed up a little. Don’t wait for my coming again. I am here only for a little while more. If you are really sincere then speed up, don’t postpone. Once I said... I said to people who were not ready at that moment. I am always responding; I said it to people who were not ready. If I had said to them that I am not coming, they would have simply dropped the whole project. They would have thought, ”Then it is not feasible.” They cannot do in one life and I am not coming next, so it is better not to begin. It is too big a thing to attain in one life. But now, to you I say I am not coming any more, because that is not possible – hoping that you are now ready to understand it and speed up.

You have already started the journey; you are just... Any moment, if you speed up, you can reach to the ultimate. Any moment it is possible. Now postponement will be dangerous. Thinking that I will come again, your mind can relax and postpone. Now I say I am not coming.

I will tell you one story: once it happened Mulla Nasruddin was telling to his son that ”I had gone for a hunt in the forest and ten lions, not only one, suddenly jumped on me.” The boy said, ”Wait papa.

Last year you said five lions, and this year you say ten lions.” Mulla Nasruddin said, ”Yes, last year you were not mature enough, and you would have got very much afraid – ten lions. Now I tell you the truth. You have grown up and this is what I say to you.”

At first I said to you that I will be coming – you were not grown up enough. But now you have grown up a little, and I can say you the truth. Many times I have to say lies because of you, because you will not understand the truth. The more you grow, the more I can drop lies and the more I can be true. When you have really grown up, then I will tell you simply the truth: then there is no need. If you are not grown up, then the truth will be destructive.

You need lies just like children need toys. Toys are lies. You need lies if you are not grown up. And if there is compassion, then the person who has deep compassion is not bothered about whether he says a lie or a truth. His whole being is to help you, to be beneficial, to be a benediction to you.

All the Buddhas have lied; they have to, because they are so compassionate. And no Buddha can say the absolute truth, because to whom he will say? Only to another Buddha it can be said, but another Buddha will not need it.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10