Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6

Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Talks given from 01/09/75 am to 10/09/75 am

English Discourse series

10 Chapters

Year published:

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.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6

Chapter #1

Chapter title: A Life is a Mirror

1 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

35. WHEN THE YOGI IS FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN NONVIOLENCE, THERE

IS AN ABANDONMENT OF ENMITY BY THOSE WHO ARE IN HIS

PRESENCE.

36. WHEN THE YOGI IS FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN TRUTHFULNESS, HE

ATTAINS THE FRUIT OF ACTION WITHOUT ACTING.

37. WHEN THE YOGI IS FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN HONESTY, INNER

RICHES PRESENT THEMSELVES.

38. WHEN THE YOGI IS FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN SEXUAL CONTINENCE, VIGOR IS GAINED.

39. WHEN THE YOGI IS FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN NONPOSSESSIVENESS, THERE ARISES KNOWLEDGE OF THE "HOW" AND "WHEREFORE" OF

EXISTENCE.

Once it happened, I was in the mountains with a few friends. We went to see a point known as the echo point; it was a beautiful spot, very silent, surrounded by hills. One of the friends started barking like a dog. All the hills echoed it -- the whole place appeared as if full of thousands of dogs. Then, somebody else started chanting a Buddhist mantra: "Sabbe sanghar anichcha. Sabbe dhamma anatta. Gate, gate, para gate, para sangate. Bodhi swaha." The hills became Buddhist; they reechoed it. The mantra means: "All is impermanent, nothing is permanent; all is flux, nothing is substantial. Everything is without a self. Gone, gone, finally gone, everything gone -- the word, the knowledge, the enlightenment too."

I told the friends who were with me that life is also like this echo point: you bark at it, it barks at you; you chant a beautiful mantra, life becomes a reflection of that beautiful chanting. A life is a mirror. Millions of mirrors around you -- every face is a mirror; every rock is a mirror; every cloud is a mirror. All relationships are mirrors. In whatsoever way you are related with life, it reflects you. Don't be angry at life if it starts barking at you. You must have started the chain. You must have done something in the beginning to cause it. Don't try to change life; just change yourself, and life changes.

These are the two standpoints: one I call the communistic which says, "Change life, only then can you be happy"; the other I call religious which says, "Change yourself, and life suddenly becomes beautiful." There is no need to change the society, the world. If you move in that direction you are moving in a false direction which will not lead you anywhere. In the first place, you cannot change it -- it is so vast. It is simply impossible. It is so complex and you are here only for a while; and life is very ancient and life is going to be for ever and ever. You are just a guest; an overnight stay and you are gone: gate, gate -- gone, gone forever.

How can you imagine to change it?

Sheer stupidity, which says life can be changed, but there is much appeal in it.

The communistic standpoint has a deep appeal in it. Not because it is true -- the appeal comes from some other source: because it does not make you responsible, that is the appeal. Everything else is responsible except you; you are a victim.

"The whole of life is responsible. Change life" -- this is appealing for the ordinary mind because no mind wants to feel responsible.

Whenever you are in misery you like to throw the responsibility on somebody.

Anybody will do, any excuse will do, but then you are unburdened. Now you know you are miserable because of this man or that woman, or this type of society, this government, this social structure, this economy -- something -- or, finally, God is responsible or fate. These are all communistic standpoints. The moment you throw the responsibility on others, you have become a communist; you are no longer religious.

Even if you throw the responsibility on God, you have become a communist. Try to understand me, because communists don't believe in God, but the whole standpoint of throwing responsibility on somebody else is communistic -- then God has to be changed.

That's what people go on doing in temples: they go and pray to change God.

Those people are all communists. They may be hiding in religious garbs; they are communist. What are you praying? You are saying to God, "Do this, don't do that"; "My wife is ill, make her healthy." You are telling the whole, "You are responsible." You are complaining; deep down your prayer is a complaint. You may be talking very politely, but your politeness is false. You may even be buttering him up, but deep down you are saying, "You are responsible -- do something!"

This attitude I call the communist attitude; by it I mean the attitude that "I am not responsible; I am a victim. The whole of life is responsible." The religious attitude says, "Life simply reflects."

Life is not a doer; it is a mirror. It is not doing anything to you, because the same life behaves with Buddha in a different way. The life is the same; it behaves with you in a different way. The mirror is the same, but when you come before the mirror it reflects your face. And if your face is not that of a Buddha, what can the mirror do? When Buddha comes before the mirror, it reflects Buddhahood.

When I say this to you I say so because that's how I have experienced. Once your face changes, the mirror changes; because a mirror has no fixed standpoint. The mirror is just echoing, reflecting. It does not say anything. It simply shows -- it shows you. If life is miserable you must have started the chain. If everybody is against you, you must have started the chain. If everybody feels enmity, you must have started the chain.

Change the cause. And you are the cause. Religion makes you responsible -- and that's how religion makes you free because then it is your freedom to choose. To be miserable or to be happy -- it is up to you. Nobody else has anything to do with it. The world will remain the same; you can start dancing, and the whole world dances with you.

They say when you cry you cry alone, when you laugh the whole world laughs with you. No, that is also not true. When you cry the whole world reflects that; when you laugh then too the whole world reflects that. When you cry the whole world feels like crying. When you are sad, look at the moon -- the moon looks sad; look at the stars -- they look like very great pessimists; look at the river -- it doesn't seem to flow, gloomy, dark. When you are happy then look at the same moon -- it is smiling; and the same stars -- dancing; and the same river -- flowing with a song, all gloom has disappeared.

There are no hells and no heavens. When you have a heaven within you, this world.... And this is the only world there is! Remember, there is no other. When you are filled with heaven within, the world reflects it. When you are filled with hell, the world can't help, it reflects it.

If you feel responsible yourself, you have started moving in a religious direction.

Religion believes in individual revolution. There is no other -- all others are false, pseudo-revolutions. They look like they are changing; they change nothing. They create much fuss about changing -- nothing changes. It is not possible to change anything unless you have changed.

These are the sutras about this responsibility: individual responsibility. In the beginning you will feel a little burdened: that "I am responsible," and you cannot throw the burden on anybody else. But know well, if you are responsible, then there is hope; you can do something. If others are responsible then there is no hope, because what can you do? You may be meditating, but others are creating trouble; you will suffer. You may become a Buddha, but the whole world remains a hell. You will suffer. In the beginning every freedom is felt as a burden

-- that's why people are afraid of freedom.

Erich Fromm has written a beautiful book, THE FEAR OF FREEDOM. I love the title. Why are people so much afraid of freedom? One should think otherwise; they should not be afraid of freedom. On the contrary, we think everybody wants freedom, but this is my observation also: deep down nobody wants freedom -- because freedom is a great responsibility. Then only you are responsible. Then you cannot throw responsibility on somebody else's shoulders.

Then you don't have any consolation -- if you suffer you suffer for your own causes, for your own self; you have caused it.

But through that burden opens a new door: you can throw it. If I have been causing my miseries I can drop causing them. I have been pedalling the cycle and I am feeling miserable on the cycle and I am tired, and I go on saying, "Stop it,"

and I go on pedalling.... It is for me to stop pedalling, and the cycle stops.

Nobody else is pedalling it.

This is the deepest meaning of the theory of karma: that you are responsible.

Once you understand it deeply, that "I am responsible," already half the work is done. In fact, the moment you realize, "I have been responsible for all that I have been suffering or enjoying," you have become free, free from the society, free from the world. Now you can choose your own world to live in. This is the only world! -- remember. But you can choose now. You can dance, and the whole dances with you.

These sutras of Patanjali are very significant.

WHEN THE YOGI IS FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN NONVIOLENCE, THERE IS

AN ABANDONMENT OF ENMITY BY THOSE WHO ARE IN HIS PRESENCE.

Many things are implied. First, in India we have never used the word "love." We always use "nonviolence" -- "ahimsa" pratishthayam. Jesus uses "love"; Mahavir, Patanjali, Buddha, they never use "love" -- they use "nonviolence." Why? "Love"

seems to be a better word, more positive, more poetic. "Nonviolence" looks like an ugly word, negative. But there is something to it. When you say "love," you have moved in a subtle aggression. When I say, "I love you," I have moved from my center towards you. The aggression is beautiful, but it is aggression. Patanjali says "nonviolence." It is a negative state, a passive state: I only say, "I won't hurt you," that's all.

Love says, "I will make you happy" -- which is impossible. Who can make anybody happy? Love promises. All promises are false. How can you make anybody happy? If everybody is responsible for his own self, how is it possible even to think that you can make somebody be happy? When I say, "I love you," I am creating so many promises, I am showing you so many beautiful gardens... I am calling you towards dreams. No, Patanjali will not use the word, because deep down I am saying, "I will make you happy. Come near me; come close to me. I am ready to make you happy" -- which is impossible. Nobody can make anybody happy. At the most I can say, "I will not hurt you." That is for me, not to hurt, but how can I say, "I will make you happy"?

That's why all love leads to frustration. Lovers promise each other -- knowingly, unknowingly -- beautiful roses, paradise; and each one thinking about the promise -- and then it is never fulfilled. Nobody can make you happy -- except yourself. If you fall in love: the man is thinking the woman is going to give him a beautiful life, an enchanted, a magical world; and the woman is also thinking that the man is going to lead her towards the last paradise. Nobody can lead anybody. That's why lovers feel frustrated: the promise was false. Not that they were deceiving each other, they were deceived themselves. Not that they were deliberately deceiving each other, they didn't know. They were not aware what they were saying.

Mahavir, Buddha, Patanjali, they use an ugly word: nonviolence, ahimsa. Does not look good, is simply negative -- it says "no violence," that's all. "I will not hurt you" -- that much can be fulfilled. Even then, there is no absolute guarantee that you will not feel hurt. "I will not hurt you," that's all; then too there is no absolute necessity that you will not feel hurt. Still you can feel hurt because you create your own wounds, you create your own misery. "I will not be a party to it," that's all Patanjali can say -- "I will not participate in it. I will not hurt you."

"When the yogi is firmly established..." in this attitude of nonviolence, that he will not hurt anybody, "... there is an abandonment of enmity by those who are in his presence." Such a man, who is not in any way thinking, dreaming consciously, unconsciously, has no desire to hurt anybody -- in his presence, abandonment of enmity happens. But before you conclude it, many more problems arise.

Jesus was crucified; enmity was not abandoned. That's why if you ask Jains they will not say that he was enlightened, because people could crucify him. But the same has happened to Mahavir. After his enlightenment he was stoned. To Buddha the same has happened -- not crucified, but stoned, insulted. People tried to kill him. Then how to understand it? Jains, Buddhists, they have explanations. If it is a question of Jesus, they will say he is not enlightened --

simple explanation, finished -- but if it is a question of Mahavir they say that he is closing his accounts of his past lives. Both are wrong. Both are wrong because when one becomes enlightened he has closed all accounts. He has finished all karmas; now nothing is there.

Still, there have been cases: Jesus has been crucified; Socrates poisoned; Al-hillaj Mansoor killed, murdered very brutally; Mahavir stoned many times, insulted, thrown out of villages; Buddha, many times murder was attempted. Then how to explain Patanjali's sutra? If the sutra is true then these things should not happen.

If these things happen then there are only two possibilities: either all these persons -- Al-hillaj Mansoor, Jesus, Mahavir, Buddha -- are not enlightened, are not really established in nonviolence, or there are some exceptions to the rule.

There are a few exceptions.

In fact whenever a man is established in nonviolence, life -- except human beings

-- becomes absolutely nonviolent towards him. Man is a perverted being. The mirror is not clear. Life... trees are nonviolent towards a Buddha, animals are nonviolent.

It happened that one of Buddha's cousin-brothers, who was in deep competition with him -- unnecessarily, because a Buddha is nobody's competitor -- was continuously thinking, "Buddha has become so great a man, and I am left behind.

I am nobody." He tried in every way to gather disciples and declare himself, that he is a Buddha, but nobody would listen to him. Of course, a few fools gathered.

Then he became very antagonistic towards Buddha; he tried to kill him.

It is said Buddha was meditating under a tree near a hill, and Devadutta, Buddha's cousin-brother, rolled a big rock from the hill. There was every possibility that Buddha would have been crushed, but somehow the rock changed its path. Buddha remained untouched. Somebody asked, "What happened?" Buddha said, "A rock feels more than does Devadutta, my brother.

She changed the route."

A mad elephant was released against Buddha by Devadutta. The elephant was mad; he rushed. Disciples escaped, they forgot completely, and Buddha remained silent sitting under the tree. The elephant came near... something happened -- he bowed down at Buddha's feet. People asked, "What happened?"

He said, "A mad elephant, also, is not so mad as Devadutta. Even this mad elephant has some sanity left in him."

One of the greatest psychologists working and doing deep research on the human brain is Delgado. He has tried an experiment with electrodes. Something like that must have happened when the elephant stopped and bowed down.

Delgado placed electrodes in the brain of a bull. Those electrodes could be manipulated from anywhere by radio, wireless. Then, he pushed the button; thousands of people had gathered to see. He pushed the button and pressed the center in the brain from where anger arises: the bull became angry and mad. He came in a rage; he rushed towards Delgado. People stopped breathing, because this was certain death. Just a foot away, Delgado pushed another button, and suddenly something happened inside and the bull stopped -- just a foot away, death just a foot away.

Delgado has done it with electric instruments, but the same is the possibility: Buddha has not done anything, but it happened -- a deep nonviolence, and something triggered in the brain of the elephant. He was no longer mad; he understood. He felt; he bowed down.

Humanity is no longer a right mirror. Humanity is not so pure as echoing hills.

Humanity is perverted, so it is possible. I don't find any explanation in past lives.

I don't find any explanation in denying that Jesus was an enlightened man, no.

The explanation is this: that life can reflect only when life is alive. Man has become so dead. You don't feel. Even you, if you come to meet a Buddha -- you don't feel much. You say he is just a man as any other. Of course the bones are the same and the skin the same and the body the same -- the boundary is the same -- but who is in the boundary, that flame?

But you can feel it only if you have felt it already within yourself. Otherwise how can you feel it? You can recognize a Buddha only when you have recognized a certain quality of Buddhahood in you; from there is the bridge. If you have not realized any Buddhahood within you, any divineness in you, it is impossible for you to recognize a Buddha, to recognize his nonviolence, to recognize that he has transcended, he is no longer part of your madness.

That's why Mahavir was stoned: by humans who had gone completely perverted. A natural law didn't function with them; otherwise the law is absolutely perfect. If you are silent and you come near a Buddha, suddenly you will feel a great change happening within you. You cannot feel enmity.

That's why there is a fear of coming near a Buddha. You can feel enmity when you are far away from him. If you come face to face with him it becomes difficult, more and more difficult. If you are in his presence, even if you are mad, the possibility exists that his presence may work as a magnetic force; the possibility exists that even you in all your madness may be changed and transformed.

That's why people have always been avoiding Buddhas -- Mahavir, Patanjali, Jesus, Lao Tzu. They don't come near them. They gather things about them in the marketplace and they start believing in rumors, but they won't come near. They won't come to see what has happened.

And by the time they come they have gathered so much rubbish, so much rot around them, that they are already dead. They have so many fixed attitudes that their mirror functions no more. Their mirror is covered with dust. Of course a mirror mirrors, but if it is covered with dust then you can go on looking and your face will not be reflected.

Animals, trees, birds, even they have understood. It is said that when Buddha became enlightened flowers bloomed out of season. And it has not happened only with Buddha; it has happened many times. It is not a myth. The trees became so happy.... That's why Buddhists have been preserving the tree, the Bodhi Tree, under which Buddha became enlightened. It carries something -- it has witnessed one of the greatest happenings in the world. It is the only witness left. It carries the real history, what happened in that night when Buddha became enlightened.

Now scientists say that the bodhi tree is the most intelligent tree in the world. It has some chemicals which are absolutely necessary for intelligence, without which the mind cannot be intelligent. Other trees are there, but nothing like the bodhi tree, the bo tree. It has the greatest quantity of those chemicals which make the mind intelligent. Maybe it is the most intelligent tree in the world. It has witnessed Buddha flowering into a different dimension. It has known one of the greatest peak hours of the whole of existence.

But man's mirror is covered with dust -- dust of beliefs, ideologies.

Just two, three days before, a family took sannyas. The small boy of the family also took sannyas. I gave him one of the very beautiful names, Swami Krishna Bharti, but he said, "No. This name is girlish." Krishna: the family is Jain; they don't feel for Krishna. The name looks girlish. Krishna must look girlish to all the Jains -- the way of his clothing, dancing, the face, the long hair. It is good he was born in olden days. If he was born now any government would have cut his hair.

He would have looked like a hippy with long hair and with flute. The boy said,

"The name is girlish. Give me something else, some other name."

If a Jain comes to meet Krishna, he won't realize. If a Hindu comes to see Mahavir, he won't recognize. Beliefs are dust gathered around -- you cannot see rightly; your vision is lost. If you are a Mohammedan you cannot read the Geeta.

If you are a Hindu you cannot read the Koran -- impossible -- because your Hinduism will always be coming in between. Even Gandhi who used to say that all religions are the same has chosen passages from the Koran which are absolute translations -- look like translations -- of the Geeta; other passages he has left. He has read the Geeta and the Koran and chosen those passages which can fit with his ideology, and then he says everything is okay. But real passages which go against the Geeta, that make the Koran a Koran -- those are left out.

Mind, with beliefs, ideas, concepts, systems, philosophies, is a paralyzed mind --

no longer free to move, too much fettered, too much in bondage, a slave. And to look at a Buddha you need freedom -- a mind moving absolutely in freedom, with no bondage, no prejudice, with no beliefs around it.

The sutra is perfect: "When the yogi is firmly established in nonviolence, there is an abandonment of enmity by those who are in his presence." Suddenly, a love arises... for no visible cause. Just his presence functions, just the way he is -- you move under his energy field, and you are no longer the same.

That's why before such people masses have always felt that they somehow hypnotize. Nobody is hypnotizing you, but hypnosis happens. Their very quality of being is soothing. Their very quality of being silences you; your inner talk stops in their presence. You don't feel yourself; you feel somehow changed.

When you go back home, again you are the same, the old one. Then you look back retrospectively and you feel you were hypnotized, or what? Nobody is hypnotizing, but this has always been -- that Buddha hypnotizes, that Jesus hypnotizes. Nobody is hypnotizing you, but their very being is so soothing that you feel sleepy. You have not slept well; their being relaxes you.

Under their energy field, something which has been hidden comes up and something which has been up goes down. You are no longer the same; your very structure changes. If you can understand the process then you can understand the word Hindus have been using; the word is satsang: just to be in the presence of the enlightened ones. Nothing else is needed. The West is almost incapable of understanding it, that just the presence is enough. Satsang means just to be in the presence of one who has attained to truth -- to be with him, to be in his energy field, to feed on his energy.

In the last night, when Jesus was departing from his friends, he broke bread and gave it to his disciples and said, "Eat it; this is me." It is possible. When a man like Jesus takes the bread in his hand, the bread is no longer the same; it has become sacred. And when Jesus says, "It is me," he means it literally. To be in the presence of a Master is to eat him, literally. To be with him is to be in him.

In fact, old Hindu scriptures say that to be with a Master is to be in his womb.

That energy field is his womb, and when you are in his womb you are being transmuted, transformed, transfigured; a new being is born. Through the Master, one attains to a new birth -- one becomes dwij, twice-born. One birth is attained through the father and the mother, the parents -- that is the birth of the body.

Another birth is attained through the Master -- that is the birth of the spirit, the soul.

To be in the presence of a Buddha is to be on the way to becoming a Buddha.

Nothing else is needed. If you can imbibe the presence, if you can allow the presence to work, if you can remain passive in the presence, feeding on it, receptive, everything will happen.

Hindus have two words. One is satsang, which is impossible for the Westerners to understand because they say some teaching should be given. Hindus say presence is enough, no other teaching is needed. Another word is darshan. That too is difficult to understand: just to see a Master is enough; just to look into his eyes is enough; just to see is enough. Darshan means to see. Westerners come to me; they come for questions. When they remain here for a few more days then they understand; then they start feeling that questions are useless. Then they start coming and they say, "I have nothing to say... just to be here." It takes time for them to feel that just to be with me is enough.

To bring a question is to bring a barrier; to come with questions is to come with a barrier. Just to come with no questions -- nothing to ask, just to be -- is to come without barriers. Then energy floats, meets, merges -- you can become a part of my womb; I can float in you. But if you have a question then the mind is upper.

When you don't have a question your being is there, open, vulnerable.

WHEN THE YOGI IS FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN TRUTHFULNESS, HE

ATTAINS THE FRUIT OF ACTION WITHOUT ACTING.

This is even more difficult. When the yogi is established in truth: satya pratishthayam. You have to be alert from the very beginning that when Eastern scriptures say "truth" they don't mean just speaking the true, no. "Established in truth" means to be authentic, to be oneself -- not a single iota of falseness inside.

Of course such a person speaks truth, but that is not the point. Such a person lives in truth -- that is the point. In the West truth means truthfulness, to speak the true, that's all. In the East it means to be the truth. Speaking will follow by itself, that is not the point at all -- it is a shadow -- but to be in the truth means to be absolutely oneself, with no mask, with no personality, just to be the essence.

The word "personality" is meaningful. It comes from a Greek root, persona: persona means mask. In Greek drama actors used masks; those were called personas. The real is hidden behind and persona is all that is known to the world

-- the face.

Without any personality, just the essence.... Zen people say, "Find out your face --

the original face." That is all meditation is all about. They said to their disciples,

"Move back, and find out the face that you had before you were born. That is truth." Before you were born: because the moment you are born, falsity starts.

The moment you become part of a family, you have become part of a lie. The moment you become part of a society, you have become a part of a greater lie.

All societies are lies -- beautifully decorated, but lies. You have to seek the face that you had before you entered into the world, the original virginity.

One has to move back and in. One has to come to feel the center, the essence of your being, beyond which there is no possibility to go. One has to go on eliminating: the body you are not, the body goes on changing; mind you are not, mind is always in a flux -- thoughts and thoughts and thoughts -- it is a process; emotions you are not, they come and go. You are that which remains and remains and remains. The body comes and goes, the mind comes and goes. That which remains always hidden behind, that is the truth. To be that is the meaning: satya pratishthayam, one who is established in truth.

"... he attains to the fruit of action without acting." Here you can understand what Lao Tzu has been saying. If you become attuned to the truth of your being, you need not do anything -- things happen. Not that you just lie down on your bed and sleep, no, but you are not the doer. You do things, but you are not the doer: the whole starts functioning from you. You become a function of the whole, instrumental; what Krishna calls nimitta: just an instrument of the whole -- he flows through you and works. You need not worry about the results; you need not worry about planning. You live moment to moment and the whole takes care, and everything fits well.

Once you are established in your being you are established in the whole, because your being is part of the whole. Your face is part of the society, your personality is part of the world; your being, your essence, is part of the whole. You are deep-hidden gods. On the surface you may be a thief, on the surface you may be a monk, a good man, a bad man, a criminal, a judge -- a thousand and one plays, games -- but deep down you are a god. Once you are established into that godliness, the whole starts functioning through you.

Can't you see? No tree is worried about the flowers, they come. No river is worried about reaching the ocean, never goes neurotic and never goes to consult a psychoanalyst, but simply reaches to the ocean. Stars go on moving. Everything is moving so smoothly, there is no disturbance and the target is never missed.

Only man carries so much burden of worries: what to do, what not to do; what is good and what is bad; how to reach the goal, how to compete -- how not to allow others to reach, how to reach first of all. "How to become": Buddha has called this the disease of tanha, the disease of becoming.

One who is established in truth has become. Now there is no disease of becoming; he has attained to being. Becoming is disease; being is health. And being is available right now if you move withinwards. Only a look is needed.

I have heard about a Zen monk. He was a minor officer in the government service before he became enlightened. He came to his Master and he wanted to become a monk, he wanted to renounce the world. The Master said, "There is no need, because the being can be attained anywhere. There is no necessity to come to the monastery. It can be attained wherever you are. Remain, just allow it to happen."

The man started meditating, and meditation was nothing but just sitting silently, not doing anything. Thoughts come and go. One just witnesses, does not condemn, does not appreciate -- no valuation -- simply looks at them, aloof, indifferent.

Years passed. One day he was sitting in his office doing some official work.

Suddenly -- it was just the beginning of the rains -- a sudden clash of thunder, and he was shocked and thrown into his being: and he started laughing. And it is said then he never stopped laughing. He went laughing to the Master and he said, "A sudden clash of thunder, and I awoke, and I looked within... and the old man was there in all his at-homeness. And I have been seeking and seeking this old man, this ancient one, and he was just sitting there within me completely at home, at ease."

A sudden clash of thunder.... You just have to be in a receptive mood, then anything can trigger it. Just a shout from the Master, a hit from the Master, a look from the Master -- sudden clash of thunder -- and something.... You are that which you are seeking. The only thing needed is a look within. One becomes established, and then one becomes a function of the whole -- and to become the function of the whole is all. Nothing else remains then. Then your river flows towards the ocean, your tree goes on blooming, flowering.

"When the yogi is firmly established in truthfulness, he attains the fruit of action without acting." Then there is nothing to be done; everything happens. Not that you don't do -- remember it -- but the whole does it; you are not the doer.

WHEN THE YOGI IS FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN HONESTY, INNER RICHES

PRESENT THEMSELVES.

You have always been seeking and seeking treasures, and they elude, and they are mirages, and they appear and when you reach after long journeys they are not there -- because the real treasure is hidden behind you. It is you! There is no other treasure; you are the treasure.

When one is established in honesty: asteya pratishthayam. The word asteya literally means "no-theft." That has to be understood. "Honesty" doesn't carry that meaning. Of course honesty is part of it, one of the components, but no-theft is very different.

You may not be a thief, but if you are jealous of others' possessions you are a thief. If you see somebody's car passing and envy arises, jealousy arises, or ambition -- a desire to possess that car -- you have committed a theft. No court can catch you, but in the court of the whole, you are caught: theft has been committed. No-theft means a nondesiring mind, because how can you be a nonthief with desiring? The mind goes on trying to possess more and more --

and whenever you want to possess you have to take it from someone else. It is a theft. You may not commit it, but the mind has already committed it.

No-theft means a mind who is not jealous, not competitive. And a great revolution happens: when this no-theft is there in your being, suddenly you fall to your own treasure, because when you are a thief -- competitive, ambitious, jealous -- you are always looking to others' treasures. That's how you are missing your own treasure. The eyes are always moving and looking at others' treasures: who is carrying what, who is having what. When you are trying to have more you are missing that which you have already. Because of that "more" you are always on the move and never in a rest where you can discover your own being.

Your own treasure can be discovered only in a certain space, and that certain space is available when you are not jealous, when you are not bothering about what others are having. You close your eyes; the world doesn't matter. Having, having more, is no longer meaningful: then being is revealed.

And there are two types of persons: people interested in having more, and people interested in being more. If you are interested in having more, whatsoever the object of having more, it makes no difference -- you can go on collecting money, you can go on collecting knowledge, you can go on collecting prestige, power, you can go on collecting whatsoever you want -- but if you are interested in having, you will miss; because there is no need for this continuous effort to have. You already have the treasure within you. When the yogi is firmly established in nontheft, inner riches present themselves.

Brahmacharya pratishthayam veerya labha.

WHEN THE YOGI IS FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN SEXUAL CONTINENCE, VIGOR IS GAINED.

To translate Sanskrit is almost impossible. After centuries and centuries of refinement, of spiritual inquiry, meditation, Sanskrit has attained a flavor of its own which no other language has. For example, it is impossible to translate the word brahmacharya. Literally it means "behaving like a god," being like a god.

Ordinarily it is translated as "sexual continence." A vast difference -- it is not just celibacy -- has to be understood: you can be celibate and you may not attain to brahmacharya, but if you attain to brahmacharya you will be celibate.

Celibacy is repressive -- you suppress your sex energy -- and that suppression never leads to transformation. But there are ways in which your godliness is revealed to you: suddenly, sex disappears. Not that it is suppressed. In that godliness the energy takes a totally different form. You become celibate, with no effort on your part; if there is effort then it is going to be a suppression. Celibacy is a consequence of brahmacharya.

Then how to attain to brahmacharya -- "When the yogi is firmly established in brahmacharya..."? If you are firmly established in ahimsa, nonviolence, if you are firmly established in truth, if you are firmly established in nontheft, it is simple to be established like a god. You are a god. When you are not hurting others, you are not creating chains. You are cutting your fetters; you are becoming free.

When you are not trying to pose and you are authentic, when you are not trying to have masks around you -- you are true to your very core -- already sex energy will be changing.

Have you watched that when you are violent there is more sex energy? In fact, husbands and wives know well that if they fight, that night they can make love better. Why it happens? Violence creates sex energy. The more violent a person is, the more sexual he will be. Nonviolence transforms sex energy. If you are not trying to hurt anybody, if you are not interested in hurting anybody, if you have a deep love, affection, compassion towards others, you will find your sex desire is subsiding.

Sex can exist in a certain company: anger, violence, hatred, jealousy, competition, ambition. These all have to be there; sex can exist as part of the company. If you drop other things, by and by you find sex has lost that urge; it is becoming more and more affection than sex, more and more love than sex, more and more compassion -- the same energy moving higher, on a higher plane.

One becomes established in brahmacharya not by celibacy -- because, if you go and watch people who have suppressed their sex, you will find that they have become more angry, they have become more violent. That's why all over human history armies have been forced to remain celibate, because once armies are forced to remain celibate, they become more violent: the energy that can be released through sex is not released.

In fact psychologists have found a deep association between violence and suppressed sex energy. All violent arms -- you push a knife or a dagger or a sword into somebody: it is just like sex energy penetrating the woman. The other's body becomes the woman and your arms become just phallic symbols. It may be a bullet from a machine gun and you may be far away, but it is the same.

Whenever your sex energy is suppressed, you will find ways and means how to penetrate others' bodies. Armies have not been allowed girlfriends. Only the American army is allowed -- they will be defeated, and everywhere. They cannot fight in the world. American soldiers cannot fight. If you are sexually satisfied, the desire to fight disappears. They are connected.

That's why it happens that whenever a culture is very developed it is always defeated by a culture which is not very developed. India was defeated by Huns, Turks, Mohammedans -- they came from a very undeveloped world and they defeated a very developed culture. Whenever a culture is very developed, it is very satisfied, content. Everything is going so good, who wants to fight? When everything is so peaceful, who bothers to kill and be killed? And those who came were just barbarians, absolutely uncultured, and sexually very frustrated. If you want an army to fight well, make the army sexually frustrated. Then they will fight, because then the fight has become a symbolic sexuality.

This has happened just now in Vietnam. It is not that communists have won and America has been defeated; it is simply that a higher culture is always defeated.

A lower culture, a poor country, in every way unsatisfied -- sexually in a very deep repressive state -- is bound to win. Whenever a poor country gets in a fight with a rich country, the rich country will be defeated finally. You can see it easily: if a rich family starts fighting with a poor family, the rich family will be defeated -- because when you are rich, satisfied, the very urge to fight disappears; and in fighting you are going to lose, so you avoid fighting. And the poor has nothing to lose -- why should he avoid fighting? In fact he enjoys it. He has everything to gain, nothing to lose.

And the same happens in individuals' lives. If you become nonviolent, if you become established in truth, if you become established in nontheft, suddenly you find sex has lost the lust. It is no longer a mad passion. You can enjoy it if you like it, but the passion is no longer mad. It has become softer, and finally it disappears.

And when it disappears, the energy that was encaged in sex is released. That energy becomes your reservoir. That's why Patanjali says, "When the yogi is firmly established in sexual continence, vigor is gained." Tremendous energy is gained. Not that you become a great athlete or you become a boxer, no. That energy has a totally different dimension. That energy is not to fight. That energy is not of this world. That energy is not really male; that energy is feminine. All yogis who have attained to it become more feminine. Look at Buddha: his face, the body -- the roundness of it, the softness of it -- looks feminine.

Hindus have done well -- they have never painted Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna, Ram, with moustaches, beards, no. Not that they were in any way lacking in hormones and they didn't have any moustache and beard -- they must have had beautiful beards and moustaches -- but Hindus have dropped the idea because with moustaches and beards they look more male, and the whole idea has to be expressed in a feminine way: the roundness of Buddha's body, the softness. And the marble helped tremendously; the marble gives it a feminine quality.

Nietzsche criticizing Buddha and Jesus has called them "womanish." His criticism is absolutely absurd, but he has hit a right point at least in calling them womanish -- they are.

When the sex energy disappears, where does it go? It does not move out; it becomes an inner pool. One simply feels full of power and energy. Not that he uses it and goes fighting with it; now there is no urge to fight. One is so strong that in fact to fight is not possible. Only weaklings fight. Those who are afraid of their strength -- they fight to prove that they are strong. Really strong people don't fight. They look at the whole thing as a game, childish.

WHEN THE YOGI IS FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN NONPOSSESSIVENESS, THERE ARISES KNOWLEDGE OF THE "HOW" AND "WHEREFORE" OF

EXISTENCE.

When the yogi is established in nonpossessiveness, when he possesses nothing except himself; he may be a king, he may live in a palace, but he does not possess it. If it is lost, not a ripple will arise in his mind.

There is a story of a great yogi; his name was Janak. India has worshipped him for centuries, and India has not worshipped anybody else like him because he is unique in one way. Buddha left his palace, kingdom; Mahavir left his palace and kingdom; Janak never left. Buddha and Mahavir are in the thousands, the whole history is full of them -- Janak seems to be unique. He did not follow the pattern.

He remained in the palace; he remained a king.

It happened that a young seeker was told by his Master, "Now, you go to Janak.

Your last initiation will be done by him. Whatsoever I could teach I have taught you, but I am a beggar. I don't know anything about the world; I have renounced it. You must go to a man who knows about the world. This is going to be your last initiation. Before you renounce you must ask somebody who knows the world. I don't know it, so go to Janak the king."

The disciple was a little hesitant because he was ready to renounce and he didn't believe that this Janak can be an enlightened man. If he is enlightened, then why is he in the palace? Ordinary logic: he should renounce everything. He should not possess anything because that is one of the basic things -- to become nonpossessive, to remain in nonpossessiveness, in pure austerity of nonpossessiveness. One becomes so simple, so innocent, why is he living as a king? But when the Master said, he had to go. Hesitantly, reluctantly, he reached.

The evening he reached, Janak invited him to the court. There was much jubilation. Beautiful girls were dancing, wine and women, and everybody was almost drunk. This young man from an ashram could not believe his eyes, and he could not believe his old Master -- why that fool has sent him here. For what?

He was disturbed so much that he wanted to leave immediately, but Janak said,

"That will be insulting. You have come; be here at least one night. Tomorrow morning you can leave. And why are you so disturbed? Rest a little while. In the morning I will ask you for what purpose you have come."

The young man said, "Now there is no need to ask anything. I have seen with my own eyes what is happening here."

Janak laughed. The young man was taken care of -- fed well, given a good massage and a bath, given a beautiful room, very costly bed. He was tired, coming on foot from the jungle monastery to the capital, and he wanted to rest.

The moment he lay down on the bed, he saw a sword hanging just above him by a very thin thread. He could not believe what was the point of it all, and he has been received so well and now why this joke. He could not sleep the whole night

-- continuously the fear. He could not enjoy the bed, he could not enjoy the palace -- the sword was hanging on top of him.

In the morning the king inquired, "Did you sleep well?"

He said, "How could I sleep? What nonsense are you talking to me? Everything was okay, but that sword just hanging by a thin thread -- any moment it can fall.

Just a breeze, and I will be killed."

So the king said, "You couldn't enjoy the bed? It is the most beautiful we have in this palace, and the room that I have given to you is the most luxurious."

He said, "I don't even remember that room and that bed. I have never been in such suffering -- because of that sword."

The king said, "Then it is better you don't go. I am in this palace, but the sword is hanging on me -- the sword of death. And the thread is thinner than this, and any moment I can die."

When one remembers death, how can one possess anything? The place is there, the palace is there, the kingdom is there -- but death is more there than anything else. How can one possess? When death is there, and one remembers it, one becomes nonpossessive. Then one knows, "I can possess only myself. Death will take everything else."

"When the yogi is firmly established in nonpossessiveness, there arises knowledge of the 'how' and 'wherefore' of existence." When one becomes nonpossessive, the energy is no longer moving outward. It is moving because of the desire to possess. When you are aware that nothing can be possessed -- you come in the world and you go out of it; the world was there before you, it will be there after you.... Nothing can be possessed; the very idea to possess is stupid.

The moment you are aware of it, suddenly, the whole of your energy that had been moving in a thousand and one directions to possess the world moves inwards, and, Patanjali says, "... there arises knowledge of the 'how' and

'wherefore' of existence." And then you know from where you have come, who you are. Then you come to face the original source of life, existence. Then you are face to face with the source, the very source. That source is God: the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6

Chapter #2

Chapter title: Discrimination in all Things

2 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1

YOU TALK A LOT TO US ABOUT HOW IMPORTANT SATSANG IS, BEING

IN THE PRESENCE OF AN ENLIGHTENED, LIBERATED MAN. YET A LOT

OF YOUR SANNYASINS SPEND MOST OF THEIR LIVES AWAY FROM YOU.

IF IT WAS UP TO YOU WOULD YOU HAVE ALL OF US LIVE HERE IN

POONA WITH YOU ALL THE TIME?

No. Because to be in the presence too much can be an overdose. Rather than helping it can hinder you. Everything should always be in proportion and in balance. It is possible when something is sweet that you can eat more of it than you should. You can forget your need; you can overstuff yourself. And satsang is sweet it is the sweetest thing in the world. In fact it is alcoholic... you can become a drunkard. That will not liberate you; that will create a new bondage.

Being near a Master can either become a bondage or a liberation, it depends. Just by being near, there is no necessity that you will be liberated: you can get indigestion; and you can become addicted to the presence. No, that is not good.

Whenever I feel that somebody needs a space of his own, whenever I feel that somebody needs to go away from me, I send him away. It is good to create hunger, then satiety goes deep. And if you are with me too much you may become even oblivious of me. Not only indigestion, you may completely forget me.

Just the other day Sheela was saying that when she was in America she was closer to me. Now that she is here she feels thrown far away. How it happens?

She was much troubled, puzzled. It is simple. When she was in America she was constantly thinking about me, of coming here to be near me. She was living in a dream. In that dream she felt close to me. Now that she is here, how can she dream? I am there in reality; dreams are no longer needed. And I am so much here that she has started forgetting about me -- that's why she is feeling so far away.

Things are complex. Sometimes I send you away to feel me more. It is needed. A separation is needed so that you can come close again. There must be a rhythm of being with the Master and not being with the Master. In that rhythm many possibilities open because, finally, you have to be on your own. The Master cannot be with you forever and forever. One day suddenly I will disappear --

"dust unto dust." You will not be able to grope for me. Then, if you have become too addicted to me and you cannot be without me you will suffer, unnecessarily suffer. And I am here not to give you suffering; I am here to make you capable of more and more bliss. It is good sometimes that you go far away in the world, have your own space, move in it, live in it.

And whatsoever you have gained here with me, test it in life, because an ashram is not in life. An ashram at the most can be a discipline; it is not an alternative life. At the most it can be a school where you have a few glimpses. Then you carry those glimpses in the world -- there is the criterion, the test. If they prove real there, only then were they real.

Living in an ashram, living with a liberated man, living in his energy field, you may many times be deceived that you have attained something. It may not be your attainment; it may be just because of the magnetism that you touch new dimensions. But when I am not there and the atmosphere of the ashram is not there and you move in the ordinary day-to-day world, the world of the market, the office, the factory -- if you can carry the goal that you have attained here and it is not disturbed, then really you have attained something. Otherwise you can live here in a dream, in an illusion.

No, if it were possible for me to have you all here, then too I would have sent you. I would have actually done as I am doing now; there would have been no change. This exactly is helpful as it is.

Don't feel hurt when I send you away -- you need it. And don't feel too elated when I tell you to be here -- that too is a need. Both are needs. And don't make a fixed principle, because things are very complex, and every individual is unique.

Sometimes I allow somebody to be here because he is so dead he takes a long time to evolve. Somebody evolves so soon -- then within weeks I say, "Go." So just being here don't feel elated, and don't feel hurt if I send you away.

Sometimes I retain somebody because he is very balanced and there is no fear yet that he will eat too much, fall the victim of the disease of overdose; then I allow him.

Sometimes when somebody, I feel, has attained something, then too I send him away; because only the world can be the proof of whether you have attained or not. In the isolation of an ashram, in a different atmosphere, you may have glimpses because you become part of the collective mind that exists here. You start riding on my waves; they may not be yours. But when you go home you have to ride on your own waves -- may be small, but better because they are your own, truer to you, and finally they alone have to take you to the other shore. I can only indicate the way.

A Master should not become a bondage; and it is very easy for a Master to become a bondage. Love can always be converted into bondage. It can always become an imprisonment. Love should be a freedom; it should help you to be liberated from all fetters and bondages. So I have to keep myself continuously alert: who has to be sent, who has to be allowed to stay here, and how much.

A rhythm is needed -- sometimes being with me and sometimes not being with me. A day will come, you will feel the same. Then I will be happy with you.

Whether with me or not with me you remain the same; whether here in the ashram, meditating, or working in the marketplace you remain the same --

nothing touches you; you are in the world but the world is not in you: then you make me happy. Then you are fulfilled.

Question 2

WHY DO YOU APPEAR TO PUT DOWN MARRIAGE AND YET TELL PEOPLE

TO GET MARRIED?

This is from Anurag.

To me, marriage is a dead thing. It is an institution, and you cannot live in an institution; only mad people live in institutions. It is a substitute for love. Love is dangerous: to be in love is to be in a storm, constantly. You need courage and you need awareness, and you are to be ready for anything. There is no security in love; love is insecure. Marriage is a security: the registry office, the police, the court are behind it. The state, the society, the religion -- they are all behind it.

Marriage is a social phenomenon. Love is individual, personal, intimate.

Because love is dangerous, insecure.... And nobody knows where love will lead.

It is just like a cloud -- moving with no destination. Love is a hidden cloud, whereabouts unknown. Nobody knows where it is at any moment of time.

Unpredictable -- no astrologer can predict anything about love. About marriage?

-- astrologers are very, very helpful; they can predict.

Man has to create marriage because man is afraid of the unknown. On all levels of life and existence, man has created substitutes: for love there is marriage; for real religion there are sects -- they are like marriages. Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Jainism -- they are not real religion. Real religion has no name; it is like love. But because love is dangerous and you are so afraid of the future, you would like to have some security. You believe more in insurance companies than in life. That's why you have created marriage.

Marriage is more permanent than love. Love may be eternal, but it is not permanent. It may continue forever and forever, but there is no inner necessity for it to continue. It is like a flower: bloomed in the morning, by the evening gone. It is not like the rock. Marriage is more permanent; you can rely on it. In old age it will be helpful.

It is a way to avoid difficulties, but whenever you avoid difficulties and challenges you have avoided growth also. Married people never grow. Lovers grow, because they have to meet the challenge every moment -- and with no security. They have to create an inner phenomenon. With security you need not bother to create anything; the society helps.

Marriage is a formality, a legal bondage. Love is of the heart; marriage is of the mind. That's why I am never in favor of marriage.

But the question is pertinent, relevant, because sometimes I tell people to get married. Marriage is a hell, but sometimes people need it. What to do? So I have to tell them to get into marriage. They need to pass through the hell of it, and they cannot understand the hell of it unless they pass through it. I am not saying that in marriage love cannot grow; it can grow, but there is no necessity for it. I am not saying that in love marriage cannot grow; it can grow, but there is no necessity, no logical necessity in it.

Love can become marriage, but then it is a totally different kind of marriage: it is not a social formality, it is not an institution, it is not a bondage. When love becomes marriage it means two individuals decide to live together -- but in absolute freedom, nonpossessive of each other. Love is nonpossessive; it gives freedom. When love grows into marriage, marriage is not an ordinary thing. It is absolutely extraordinary. It has nothing to do with the registry office. You may need the registry office also, the social sanction may be needed, but those are just on the periphery; they are not the central core of it. In the center is the heart, in the center is freedom.

And sometimes out of marriage also love can grow, but it rarely happens. Out of marriage love rarely happens. At the most, familiarity. At the most, a certain kind of sympathy, not love. Love is passionate; sympathy is dull. Love is alive; sympathy is just so-so, lukewarm.

But why do I tell people to get married? When I see that they are after security, when I see that they are after social sanction, when I see they are afraid, when I see that they cannot move into love if marriage is not there, then I tell them to go into it -- but I will go on helping them to go beyond it. I will go on helping them to transcend it. Marriage should be transcended; only then real marriage happens. Marriage should be forgotten completely. In fact the other person you have been in love with should always remain a stranger and never should be taken for granted. When two persons live as strangers, there is a beauty to it, a very simple, innocent beauty to it. And when you live with somebody as a stranger....

And everybody is a stranger. You cannot know a person. Knowledge is very superficial; a person is very profound. A person is an infinite mystery. That's why we say everybody carries a god within. How can you know a god? At the most you can touch the periphery. And the more you know about a person, the more humble you will become -- the more you will feel that the mystery is untouched. In fact the mystery becomes more and more deep. The more you know, the less you feel that you know.

If lovers are really in love, they will never reduce the other person to a known entity; because only things can be known -- persons never. Only things can become part of knowledge. A person is a mystery -- the greatest mystery there is.

Transcend marriage. It is not a question of legality, formality, family -- all that nonsense. Needed, because you live in a society, but transcend; don't be finished at that. And don't try to possess a person. Don't start feeling that the other is the husband -- you have reduced the beauty of the person into an ugly thing: husband. Never say that this woman is your wife -- the stranger is no longer there; you have reduced it to a very profane level, to a very ordinary level of things. Wives and husbands belong to the world. Lovers belong to the other shore.

Remember the sacredness and holiness of the other. Never impinge on it; never trespass it. A lover is always hesitant. He always gives you space to be yourself.

He is grateful; he never feels that you are his possession. He is thankful that sometimes in rare moments you allow him your innermost shrine to enter and to be with you. He is always thankful.

But husbands and wives are always complaining, never thankful -- always fighting. And if you watch their fight it is ugly. The whole beauty of love disappears. Only a very ordinary reality exists: the wife, the husband, the children, and the day-to-day routine. The unknown no longer touches it. That's why you will see dust gathers around -- a wife looks dull, a husband looks dull.

Life has lost meaning, vibrancy, significance. It is no longer a poetry; it has become gross.

Love is poetry. Marriage is ordinary prose, good for ordinary communication. If you are purchasing vegetables, good; but if you are looking at the sky and talking to God, not enough -- poetry is needed. Ordinary life is proselike. A religious life is poetrylike: a different rhythm, a different meter, something of the unknown and the mysterious.

I am not in favor of marriage. Don't misunderstand me -- I am not saying to live with people unmarried. Do whatsoever the society wants to be done, but don't take it as the whole. That is just the periphery; go beyond it. And I tell you to get married if I feel that this is what you need.

In fact if I feel that you need to go in hell I would allow you -- and push you -- to go in hell, because that is what you need, and that is how you will grow.

Question 3

I HAVE BEEN HERE FOUR WEEKS NOW AND I STILL CANNOT COPE WITH

THE MISERY ON THE STREET OTHER THAN BY CLOSING MYSELF OFF. SO

WHATSOEVER I LOOSEN UP IN THE ASHRAM SEEMS TO GET LOST WHEN

I CYCLE HOME. PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.

I have said already, and I have answered this question. If you are here for some inner search then, please, for a few days while you are here with me forget the world. But it seems that it is difficult. So now there is only one way -- get miserable, as miserable as you want. Go and sit with the beggars on the streets and cry and weep and be miserable, and be finished with it. If you want hell, go into hell. This is a very egoistic attitude. You must be thinking that this is compassion. This is foolishness -- because just by your getting miserable, no beggar is helped on the street. If there were a hundred miserable people, your getting miserable makes them one hundred one. How can you help by being miserable? But this is some deep ego which feels good: "I am so kind, so compassionate. I am not like other hard people, stony; I have a heart. When I pass through the streets I get miserable because I see so much poverty around."

This is pious egoism -- looks very holy but is deep down very unholy.

But if you have to pass through it, pass through it. What can I do?

You are here to seek your own self. Don't miss the opportunity. Beggars will always be there; you can get miserable later on. They are not going to leave the world so soon -- don't be afraid. You will always find them. If nowhere else, in India you will always find them. Don't be worried: you can always come to India and get miserable; there is no hurry about it. But I will not be here forever, remember.

Next time you come, beggars will be there -- I may not be here. So if you are a little alert, use this opportunity to be with me. Don't waste it foolishly. But if you feel that you cannot get out of it, then the only way is forget me and go and be with the beggars and get miserable -- as much as you can. Maybe that's how you may come out of it. You need help; go into it. I will be waiting. When you are finished with it, come on.

Question 4

WHAT IS THE SECRET OF HOW YOU CAN WORK ON SO MANY OF US AT

THE SAME TIME?

There is no secret to it. Because I love you, you are not so many. My love surrounds you, you become one. I am not working really on individuals, then it would have been difficult. When I see you I don't see you at all. I see you as just a fragment of the whole. In my love you are one. The moment you surrender --

you disappear as an ego -- you become part of a vast phenomenon. You are like a drop: when you surrender you become part of the ocean. I work on the ocean, not on drops. There is no secret to it.

And, really, to say that I work is not good. This is the way I am. It is not a work; it is simply the way I am. It is happening. I cannot do otherwise. Once you allow your heart to throb with me, it starts working. In fact it is a question for you to decide. If you want me to work, simply allow. I am working already.

You may be twenty-five thousand all around the world -- you can become twenty-five lakhs, that will not make any difference. My work remains the same.

Even if the whole world is converted to sannyas, my work remains the same. It is just like a light burning in a room: one person enters -- the light functions for one; then, ten persons enter into the room. Not that the light is more burdened --

when there was nobody then too the light was burning, in absolute silence and loneliness. One entered: he could see. Now ten enter: they can see. Millions enter and they can see. The light is always burning there; when there is nobody, then too it burns.

If nobody is there I will go on functioning in the same way. It is not a question of numbers, and there is no secret to it. And, in fact, it is not a work. It is simply love. When you have attained to a state of love, you have attained to a state of light. It goes on burning. The flame is there: anybody who is ready to open his eyes can be benefited.

Question 5

I WOULD HAVE LEFT YOU HAD I NOT TAKEN SANNYAS FROM YOU.

MOREOVER, MY PREVIOUS MASTER NOW WOULD NOT ACCEPT ME, PERHAPS, BECAUSE I BETRAYED HIM AND LOST MY FAITH. ANYWAY I DON'T WISH TO LOSE FAITH IN YOU. NOW I DON'T HANKER AFTER

ENLIGHTENMENT. IF YOU CAN KEEP ME BOUND TO YOUR FEET, THEN I THINK YOU HAVE DONE YOUR DUTY AS A GURU.

Many things have to be understood; they will be helpful.

The first thing: I have no duty to fulfill towards anybody. Duty is a dirty word, a four-letter word to me, the dirtiest. Love is not a duty. You enjoy, when you love helping people. It is not a duty, not a burden. Nobody is forcing me to do anything. I am not obliged in any way to do it -- just love functioning.

When love dies, duty enters. You say to people, "It is my duty to go and work in the office because I got married and I have children and the duty has to be fulfilled." You don't love your wife, you don't love your children -- hence the word "duty" becomes meaningful. Your old mother is dying and you say, "This is a duty, to go and serve her." You don't love her. If you love, how can you use the word "duty"?

A policeman standing on the road is fulfilling his duty. Right, he does not love the people who are creating chaos in the traffic. When you go to your office, you are doing a duty, a job, but if you say that you are fulfilling your duty towards your children, you are committing a sin by using the word. You don't love the children; you are already burdened.

No, I have no duty to fulfill. I love you, hence many things happen. There is nothing even to be thankful towards me for because I am not doing any duty.

When I am doing a duty, you will have to be thankful towards me. This is simply love.

In fact, I am thankful to you that you allowed my love to shower on you. You could have rejected. And this is the secret of love: the more you love, the more it grows. The more you share it, more and vital springs are opening and more is flowing and is ready to be shared. The more you give, the more you have. I am not tired. I am not in any way weighed down by it. It's beautiful.

The first thing: I have no duty to fulfill towards you. If you want a guru who has a duty to fulfill, you have come to a wrong person. Go somewhere else. There are many gurus who are fulfilling great duties. I am simply enjoying myself. Why should I fulfill any duty? I delight in myself, and whatsoever I do is a delight, a celebration.

"I would have left you had I not taken sannyas from you." If the idea has come, you have already left. Physically you may be hanging around here, that is meaningless. If you say, "I would have left you had I not taken sannyas from you," you have already left and the sannyas is worthless. Please return it back --

because that is a bondage. You say, "I would have left" -- now, that sannyas is creating fetters on you. Drop it. I am here to liberate you, not to fetter you. Forget about it.

"Moreover, my previous Master now would not accept me, perhaps, because I betrayed him and lost my faith." That is for you to decide. You can go to a new Master if the old will not accept you, or you can go and try again. If the old was really a Master he will accept a thousand and one times, because when a disciple betrays, it is nothing much to fuss about. It is almost natural. More cannot be expected from ignorant persons. Go and try the old Master. Maybe he is waiting for you. And if he cannot forgive he is not a Master; then find one somewhere else.

And, "anyway I don't wish to lose faith in you." You have already lost it. In fact you never had it, because once you have faith how can you lose it? Difficult to understand, but once you have faith you cannot lose it. It is nothing which can be taken back. Who will take it back? Faith means you surrender the ego. This can be the last act of the ego. Surrendered, how can you take it back? If you can take it back, the surrender was not surrender at all -- you were playing with the word, but you don't know what it means. If you surrender, to be a surrender it has to be total and final -- utterly final. There is no way going back.

"Anyway I don't wish to lose faith in you." Why is this idea arising? You don't have faith; you have already lost it. In fact you never had it. This will look like a paradox, but this is true: Only that faith can be lost which was never there in the first place. If you don't have faith you can lose it; if you have, there is no possibility. It is utterly impossible to lose it, because in faith you have lost yourself -- now nobody is standing behind who can take it back and go home.

"Now I don't hanker after enlightenment." You are hanker ing; otherwise what is the need to cling to my feet? My feet are worthless. Why cling to them? What are they going to give to you? Deep down a hankering... maybe now more subtle, more garbed, not so gross, but it is still there. "If you can keep me bound to your feet...." But why? What have my feet done to you? What wrong? Why should you be so against my feet? What is the need? What is the point?

Just two days before, one very stupid woman came to see me. Stupid because she said, "I am in search of God." I asked her why she is searching for God, what wrong has God done to her. I asked her, "You must be searching for something else -- happiness, bliss, ecstasy...?" She said, "No. I am not interested in happiness, bliss, et cetera. I am searching for God." "But for what?" She got so angry because I asked "for what," she left immediately. Why should one search for God? What is the point? Looks absolutely stupid. One searches for God to be blissful. One searches for self realization to be ecstatic, to not be miserable. One searches for truth to be eternally in bliss.

In fact everybody is a hedonist and cannot be otherwise -- there is no possibility.

And people who say that they are not hedonists are stupid some way or other.

They don't understand what they are saying. Your hedonism may be this-worldly, your hedonism may be other worldly -- that doesn't matter -- but everybody is a hedonist. Everybody is seeking his happiness, and everybody is selfish deep down. Otherwise is not possible. I am not condemning it --

remember it. It is how it should be.

People come to me and they say they want to serve people. For what? If somebody is drowning in the river and you jump in the river and risk your life and help the man to come out, what do you think? You helped the man? If you think that you helped the man and you served the man and you risked your life and you are a great altruist, you are not going very deep. Helping the man you felt very happy. Not helping him you would have felt guilty. If you had gone, indifferent, your heart would have carried a guilt forever and forever. You would have felt miserable. Again and again in your dreams you would have seen that man drowning and you couldn't save him -- and you could have saved him.

When you save a man from the river you feel happy. Really you should be thankful to the man: "You are really wonderful. You were drowning in the right moment, when I passed by. You gave me such happiness, such deep happiness, such deep satiety that I could help a man. I could be of some use; I am not a useless garbage on the earth. I feel good." Your steps would have a dance after it, your eyes would have more light. You would feel more centered. You would feel more enhanced in your own eyes. It is simply hedonism.

Nobody helps anybody else -- cannot. Everybody is searching for his own happiness. Enlightenment is nothing but absolute happiness which once attained cannot be lost. To attain to that state, how can you drop the hankering? It is there; otherwise why should you cling to my feet?

Be alert. Learn alertness about your own desires because when you are alert, only then can you understand; and through understanding there is mutation.

I know until all hankering drops, enlightenment is not possible. And I have been telling you so -- so now you say you don't hanker. Then what are you doing here? If you understand you will not say, "I don't hanker"; you will not say, "I hanker." If you understand, hankering disappears -- without any trace. It does not leave the opposite behind; you don't say, "I don't hanker." Simply, hankering disappears... you are full of light, full of bliss, uncontaminated by any desire.

But for that you have to be continuously alert because desire will take many shapes and will deceive you in many, many ways, and desire can become so subtle that you can almost forget that it is desire. It can pretend to be something else. Desire can even pretend desirelessness, but you can understand: when somebody is not in any desire, there is nothing to ask. One simply is, and allows existence to take him wherever it wills. When you drop desire, then the whole takes you; you float with the river. Then you don't have a private goal.

Just a few days before, I was telling you the meaning of the word "idiot." It comes from a Greek root; the Greek word is "IDIOTIKI."It means"a private goal."A man who has a private goal, a man who has a private world -- against the whole -- is

"idiot."

When you are with the whole -- not even swimming in the river but just floating with the river wherever it leads -- then each moment you live in enlightenment.

When the hankering for enlightenment disappears, enlightenment appears. It has not appeared to the questioner yet. Hankering must be there; be watchful.

Question 6

HOW IS ONE TO STOP WORRYING?

This is from "Pathik the Pathetic." He unnecessarily goes on becoming pathetic.

Now, "how to stop worrying?" What is the need to stop worrying? If you start trying to stop worrying, you create a new worry: how to stop worry. Then you start worrying about the worries; then you double them. There is no way.

And if somebody says, as there are people.... Dale Carnegie has written a book HOW TO STOP WORRYING AND START LIVING. These people create more worries because they give you a desire that worries can be stopped. They cannot be stopped, but they disappear -- that I know. They cannot be stopped, but they disappear! You cannot do anything about them. If you simply allow them and don't bother a bit, they disappear. Worries disappear, they cannot be stopped --

because when you try to stop them, who are you? The mind which is creating worries is creating a new worry: how to stop. Now you will go crazy, mad; now you are like a dog chasing its own tail.

Watch a dog; it is a beautiful phenomenon. In winter in India you can watch anywhere dogs sitting in the morning sunning themselves, enjoying. Then they suddenly become aware of their tail just by the side. Such temptation, they jump.

But then the tail jumps farther back. Of course this is too much for a dog to tolerate, this is impossible. It hurts: this ordinary tail, and playing games -- with such a great dog? He goes mad -- round and round he goes. You will see him panting, tired, and he cannot believe what is happening. He cannot catch this tail?

Don't be a dog chasing your own tail, and don't listen to Dale Carnegies. That is the only method they can teach you: chase your own tail and go mad. There is a way -- not a method -- a way worries disappear: when you simply look at them indifferently, aloof; you watch them as if they don't belong to you. They are there; you accept them. Just like clouds moving in the sky: thoughts moving in the mind, in the inner sky. Traffic moving on the road: thoughts moving on the inner road. You just watch them.

What do you do when you stand by the side of the road waiting for a bus? You simply watch. The traffic goes on; you are not concerned. When you are not concerned, worries start dropping. Your concern gives them energy. You feed them, you vitalize them, and then you ask how to stop them. And when you ask how to stop them, they have already overpowered you.

Don't ask a wrong question. Worries are there, naturally; life is such a vast and complicated phenomenon, worries are bound to be there. Watch. Be a watcher and don't be a doer. Don't ask how to stop. When you ask how to stop, you are asking what to do. No, nothing can be done. Accept them -- they are. In fact look at them, watch them from every angle, what they are. Forget about stopping, and one day suddenly you realize just by watching, looking, a gap arises. The worries are no longer there, the traffic has stopped, the road is empty, nobody passing....

In that emptiness, God passes by. In that emptiness, suddenly you have a glimpse of your Buddha nature, of your inner plenitude, and everything becomes a benediction.

But you cannot stop it. You can accept it, allow it, watch it, with a very indifferent, unconcerned look as if they don't matter. And they are simply bubbles of thought; they really don't matter. The more you become concerned with them, the more they matter. The more they matter, the more you become concerned. Now you create a vicious circle. Jump out of the circle.

Question 7

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JUDGEMENT AND DISCRIMINATION?

Yes, a vast difference. A judgement comes out of your beliefs, ideologies, concepts; judgement comes out of your past, out of your knowledge.

Discrimination comes out of your present, responding alertness.

For example, you see a drunkard. Immediately there is a judgement: this man is not doing good -- a "drunkard." Immediately a condemnation -- this is judgement. If you don't have any beliefs, what is good and what is wrong, how can you judge so immediately -- not knowing the man at all, not knowing his situation, not knowing his problems, not knowing his miseries? How can you judge not knowing the whole life of the man? How can you judge by a fragment?

How can you say this man is bad? If he had not been a drunkard do you think he would have been a better man? It is possible he would have been worse.

This has been my experience with many drunkards: they are good people, very delicate, very trusting, not cunning, simple -- a childlike innocence. Why are they drinking then? The world is too much for them; they cannot cope with it. They are not made for this world; it is too cunning. They want to forget it, and they don't know what to do -- and alcohol comes in handy; meditation, one has to seek.

This is my observation: all people who are alcoholics need meditation. They are in search of meditation -- in deep search for ecstasy, but they cannot find the door. Groping in the dark they stumble upon alcohol. Alcohol, easily available in the market; meditation, not so easily available. But their deep search is of meditation.

People who are taking drugs all over the world are in search of inner ecstasy.

They are trying to create the feeling heart and they cannot find the right way, the right path. The right path is not so easily available, and drugs are available. And drugs give false glimpses: they create a chemical situation in your mind in which you start feeling more acutely, more sensitively. They cannot give you real meditation, but they can give you a false impression of it.

But this is my understanding: that one who is in search may have fallen a victim of a false phenomenon, but he is in search. Someday he will get out of it, because it cannot be a real thing and it cannot deceive him forever and forever. One day or other he will see that he has been befooling himself through chemicals; but the search is there. People who have never taken alcohol, people who have never taken any drug, people who, in a way, are not bad -- good people, respectable people -- they are not in search of meditation at all.

So how to judge? How to call the man "bad" who is in search, and how to call the man "good" who is not in search at all? The drunkard may someday find the divine because he is in search of it. And, in fact, unless he finds the divine he cannot go beyond his alcoholism -- because only that can satisfy. Then the false will disappear. But the respectable man who goes to the church every Sunday, does not drink. does not even smoke, reads the Bible, the Koran, the Geeta -- this man is not in search at all. Who is bad? How to discriminate?

Now all over the world there is much concern about drugs, about the new generation. The younger generation -- they have all become interested in drugs.

What is happening? How to judge? What to say about it? If you are aware, judgement will not be so easy. If you are not aware, you can simply judge that they are wrong or they are not wrong. Then there are people who are for drugs, Timothy Leary and others, who say, "This is ecstasy." And then there are people -

- all the establishments in the world -- who are against; they say, "This is simply destructive."

But what is the actual situation? People who are taking drugs are not creating Vietnams, are not creating Kashmirs, are not creating Middle Easts. People who are taking drugs are not creating any war anywhere. They have not killed Mujibur Rahman; they are not killing anybody. Even if you think they are destructive: they may be destructive to themselves, but not to anybody else. They are not interfering in anybody's life; and these respectable people, they are responsible for tremendous violence all over the world. They are respectable.

Now the people who have killed Mujibur Rahman and his whole family -- now they have become the presidents and this and that, and they are respectable people.

Who are the real criminals? Richard Nixon has not taken drugs. Do you know?

Adolf Hitler never touched alcohol, never smoked, was a total vegetarian. Now can you find anybody more criminal? He was a perfect Jain -- vegetarian, nonsmoking, nonalcoholic, and lived a very disciplined life, moved according to the clock -- and created hell on earth. Sometimes I think had he taken a little alcohol, would it not have been better? The man would not have been so violent then. Had he smoked a little -- a very stupid but innocent game of smoking -- he would not have been so cruel, because smoking is a catharsis.

That's why whenever you feel angry you would like to smoke; whenever you feel irritated you would like to smoke; whenever you feel in some inner turmoil, nervous, you would like to smoke. It helps. There are better things to do: you can use a mantra. Smoking is a subtle mantra. You can say, "Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram...."

Smoking is a subtle mantra: you smoke in you smoke out, you smoke in, you smoke out.... A repetition, a chanting through smoking. You can do "Ram, Ram, Ram" -- that will also help. If you are angry just try: chant "Ram, Ram, Ram.... "

That is a better way, but the same -- not much different.

Had this man Adolf Hitler fallen in love with somebody's wife, he would have been condemned as a bad man, but he would not have been so violent. Released, relaxed... the world would have been better.

So what to say? How to judge? Things are complicated. I am not saying, "Go and become alcoholics," and I am not saying, "Go and take drugs." I am saying the complexity of life is such that one should not judge. Judgement belongs to stupid minds; they are always ready to judge. Your judgements are like if you come across a small piece of paper which is part of a big novel and you read a few lines

-- those too not full -- just a few, a part of a page: and you judge. That's how you are doing it. A fragment of a man's life comes to your eyes and you judge the whole man -- that he is bad, and he is good. No, judgement is not for the wise.

That happened with Jesus. A woman was brought to him; and the whole town was mad. Foolish people are always mad, the crowd is always mad -- for small things, for nothings really. They said, "This woman has committed sin. She has been in a love affair with a man -- illegal. So what should we do with her? The old scripture says stone her to death."

They wanted to kill two birds with one stone -- that woman, and Jesus also.

Because if Jesus says, "Yes, the old scripture is right. Kill her," then they were going to ask, "What about your teachings -- Love the enemy? What about your teachings -- Give the other cheek; if somebody hits you on your cheek give him the other? What about forgiveness? Have you forgotten about it completely?"

And if Jesus is going to say that the old scriptures are wrong, then he is a heretic, a rebel -- he is against religion! He should be killed. The people were ready. In fact, they were not much concerned with the woman; they were more concerned with Jesus. The woman was just an excuse to trap Jesus.

Jesus thought for a while. Judgement is always immediate, in a way, because it is ready made. It looks immediate; it is not immediate. It is ready made: you have already got it. A man of awareness hesitates, looks around, feels, sends his feelers around -- what is the situation? He looked at the poor woman sitting there, tears flowing down. He looked at these angry people. He felt the whole situation, then he said, "Yes, the scripture says stone the woman to death, but the first stone should be thrown by a man who has never committed a sin. If you have not indulged in sexual affairs with women, if you have not indulged in your minds, then take the stones."

They were sitting near a river; many stones were Lying around. People who were just standing in front -- respectable people of the town -- they started moving backwards. They became afraid; now this is too much. By and by people disappeared. Only Jesus was left with the woman. The woman felt Jesus very deeply.

Look at the situation: those respectable people could not feel Jesus, and the sinner felt.

She fell at his feet, and she said, "I have committed sin. Forgive me." Jesus said,

"That is between you and your God. Who am I to judge? If you think you have committed something wrong then remember not to commit it again, that's all.

But who am I to judge and say that you are a sinner? That is between you and your God."

A man of understanding responds -- not with judgement, but with discrimination. Jesus did a great deed of discrimination. He said, "Yes, it is right; the scripture is right. Kill this woman." Then he created the discrimination,

"Now, those who are not sinners themselves, they should take the stones in their hands and kill her." This is discrimination. It came out of awareness; it was not a dead judgement. He didn't follow the scripture -- he created his own scripture in that moment of awareness! A man of awareness follows no guidebooks; a man of awareness has his own awareness as the guide. And it never fails, I tell you. It never fails. And it is always true, true to the moment.

Question 8

PADMASAMBHAVA SAYS, "WHEN THE IRON BIRD FLIES, THE DHARMA WILL COME TO THE LAND OF THE RED MAN." IS IT PART OF YOUR

WORK TO FULFILL THE PROPHECY?

I am not here to fulfill anybody's prophecy. And why should I? It may be Padmasambhava's trip, but why should he force his trip on me? I am here to be myself. I am not a prophet, and I am not here to deliver somebody from their sins. I am not here to bring an age of religion. All these things are mediocre and stupid.

I enjoy myself. If you want to enjoy yourself you can share my delight, that's all.

To me, life is not a very serious affair. Prophets take life very seriously. Saints are innocent! Prophets? -- always dangerous. Buddha is not a prophet; in fact India has not produced prophets. Prophets are a particular phenomenon of Judaism.

Saints we have produced -- millions -but they are innocent people. Like flowers you delight in -- not of much use. Prophets are in fact politicians in religion. They are to change the whole world; they have a mission to fulfill and do this and that.

I have no mission; I am not a missionary. I would like a world without missionaries and without prophets, so that people can be left to live their own lives. Prophets never allow. They are always after you -- with judgement. They are always after you -- with ideas to be followed, comparison. They are always there to throw you in hell or award you by heaven.

I have nothing -- no hell to throw you in and no heaven to give you -- just a delight of being. And that is possible, simply possible. If you allow it to happen it is possible.

To me, life is not a serious affair. In fact life is nothing but a gossip in the eternity of existence, a gossip. I am gossiping here; you are listening, that's all. If you enjoy you are here. If I enjoy I am here. If it becomes difficult to enjoy each other, we separate -- no other bondage.

And I don't allow anybody -- he may even be a Padmasambhava -- to lay his trap on me.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6

Chapter #3

Chapter title: The Shadow of Religion

3 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

40. WHEN PURITY IS ATTAINED THERE ARISES IN THE YOGI A DISGUST

FOR HIS OWN BODY AND A DISINCLINATION TO COME IN PHYSICAL

CONTACT WITH OTHERS.

41. FROM MENTAL PURITY THERE ARISES CHEERFULNESS, POWER OF

CONCENTRATION, CONTROL OF THE SENSES, AND A FITNESS FOR SELF-REALIZATION.

42. CONTENTMENT BRINGS SUPREME HAPPINESS.

Nonviolence, nonpossessiveness, no-theft, and authenticity in being give purity.

These are not moralistic concepts for Patanjali; this has to be always kept in mind. In the West they have been taught as morals; in the East as inner hygiene, not as morals.In the West they have been taught as altruistic goals; in the East there is nothing of altruism in them -- it is absolutely selfish. It is your inner hygiene. They give purity to you, and through purity the impossible becomes possible, the unattainable is attained. Through purity your grossness of being is lost. You become delicate, subtle, and soft. Through purity you become a temple of the divine. Through purity an invitation is sent to the whole to come, and drop in you... and the ocean comes one day, and drops into the drop.

When they are taught as moralistic concepts, as in the West -- or in India also, as Mahatma Gandhi has been teaching -- their total quality changes. When you say,

"You have to be nonviolent because violence hurts others. Don't hurt anybody.

Humanity is one family, and to hurt is to sin," you have diverted the whole thing to a totally different dimension. Patanjali says, "Be nonviolent: it purifies you.

Don't hurt anybody -- don't even think of hurting anybody, because the moment you start thinking that way you are falling into impurity inside." The question is not the other, the question is you. Of course, when one is nonviolent others are benefited, but that is not the goal of being nonviolent. That is just a by product, just a shadow.

If you are nonviolent because others should not be hurt, then you are not really nonviolent. Then, you are a good social citizen, civilized, but nothing of religion has happened within your being. Your nonviolence will work as a lubricant between you and others. Your life will be smoother, but not purer, because the goal changes the whole quality. The goal is not to protect the other -- the other is protected, that's another thing -- the goal is to become pure so that you can know the ultimate purity.

Eastern religions remain selfish because they know there is no other way to be; and when somebody is selfish others are benefited immensely. In fact all altruism, real authentic altruism, flowers out of deep selfishness. They are not contraries, they are not opposites: the flowers of altruism bloom only in a being who has been deeply selfish. To be selfish is just natural. To force people to be otherwise is to make them unnatural, and whatsoever is unnatural is not the way of God. Whatsoever is unnatural is going to be a suppression; it will not bring purity to you.

So this has to be remembered: these are not moralistic goals. In fact in the East morality has never been taught as a goal; it is a shadow of religion. When religion happens, morality happens automatically -- one need not bother about it.

One need not be concerned; it comes on its own accord. In the West morality has been taught as the goal -- in fact, as the religion. There exists nothing in the Eastern scriptures like the Ten Commandments, nothing like it.

A life should not be a life following commandments, otherwise you will become a slave. And even if you reach paradise through slavery, your paradise is not going to be enough of a paradise -- slavery will remain a part of it.

Independence, freedom, should be an intrinsic part of your growth.

So these are hygienic measures. They purify you; they give you inner health.

WHEN PURITY IS ATTAINED, SAYS PATANJALI, THERE ARISES IN THE

YOGI A DISGUST FOR HIS OWN BODY AND A DISINCLINATION TO COME

IN PHYSICAL CONTACT WITH OTHERS.

There is some difficulty with the word jugupsa. It has been translated in all the translations as "disgust" because no equivalent word exists in English. It is not disgust, not at all; the very word is wrong. The very word "disgust" is disgusting.

And to think of a yogi, that disgust arises in him for his own body, is simply unbelievable because yogis have cared for their bodies as nobody else has ever cared. They look after their bodies as nobody looks after their bodies; they have beautiful bodies. Look at Mahavir or Buddha -- beautiful bodies, very proportionate, like symphonies in matter. No, it is not possible. "Disgust" is a wrong word; first, it has to be understood.

Jugupsa does not mean disgust. The meaning is very difficult; I will have to explain to you. There are three types of people. One, who are madly in love with their bodies; in fact obsessed. Particularly women -- absolutely body-oriented.

Look at a woman: she is never happier than when she is facing a mirror.

Narcissistic -- hours and hours they can devote before the mirror... obsessed.

Nothing is wrong in being in front of a mirror, but just being there, for hours, looks like an obsession. This is the first type, who is continuously obsessed with the body -- so much so that he forgets that he exists beyond the body. The transcendental is forgotten; he becomes only the body. He does not possess the body; the body possesses him. This is the first type of man.

The second type of man is just the opposite of the first: he is also obsessed -- in the reverse direction. He is against the body, disgusted with it: he has broken the mirror. He goes on hurting his own body in millions of ways; he hates it. The first loves it as an obsession; the other moves to the other extreme -- he hates it.

He wants to commit suicide.

You can find the second type; they may be pretending to be yogis, but they are not. The yogi cannot hate. It is not a question of any object: the yogi simply cannot hate because hate creates impurity. It is not a question of hating somebody else or something or one's own body: whatsoever the object of hate, hate brings impurity. The yogi cannot hate his own body. But you can find this type of perverted yogi in the streets of Benares Lying on thorns or pointed steel nails, torturing his own body. This is just the opposite of a woman enjoying a narcissistic indulgence before a mirror.

Fasting: fasting in itself can be good, can be bad. It depends. Fasting can be just a way of torturing the body; then it is bad, then it is violence. And this is my observation: people who are not violent towards others, who have suppressed their violence towards others and have become nonviolent -- their violence starts a new way: as a release they start becoming violent towards their own bodies.

There are stories of perverted people who destroyed their own eyes so that they could not see a beautiful woman. Stories of people -- and not exceptional, in thousands.

In Russia there existed a sect before the revolution, thousands of followers, who had cut off their genital organs -- just to be in deep hate with the body. They could not produce children. But then how to increase the number of the followers -- because every organization is interested? So they were in a difficulty.

They would adopt children and cut off their genital organs -- a criminal act against one's own body.

In Christianity there have been sects whose only prayer was to flog their own body every morning. And the greatest saint was thought to be one who flogged his body so much that it became blue -- all over the body, skin broken and blood flowing. It used to be written in the biographies of great saints how many times he hits his body in the morning with a whip -- one hundred times, two hundred times, three hundred times; just as in India Jain monks go on counting their days, how many days they have fasted in the year -- one hundred days, fifty days, how many days. The greater one is who has been fasting, almost starving, his own body.

In Christianity there have been monks who had nails in their shoes intruding in their bodies; and they would walk on those shoes and they would carry continuous wounds in their feet. Blood flowing, puss accumulating -- they were great saints.

If one looks at religion scientifically then ninety per cent of it will prove to be pathological. These people needed mental treatment. These people were not religious, not at all. To call them religious is simply foolish: they were not even normal; they were mad.

These are the two types, and then between these two -- just exactly in the middle

-- is the third, for whom Patanjali uses the word jugupsa: he is not disgusted with his own body, he is not obsessed either. He is in a deep balance. He takes care of the body because the body is a vehicle. He even treats the body as a holy thing. It is -- God created it; and whatsoever God creates, how can it be unholy? It is a temple. It has not to be condemned. It has not to be indulged so madly that you are lost in it.

The temple should not become the image; the temple should not become the shrine. The shrine is the innermost core for which the temple exists. You should not start worshipping the walls of the temple, but there is no need to move to the opposite -- that you start destroying the temple.

Just a deep nonidentification is needed. One has to know: "I am in the body, but transcendental to the body. I am in the body, but not the body. I am in the body, but not confined to it. I am in the body, but also beyond it." The body should not be a limitation -- a shelter, of course, and a beautiful shelter at that. One has to be grateful to it; there is no need to fight with it. It is simply foolish and childish to fight with it. It has to be used -- and used rightly.

Jugupsa says... if I have to translate it somehow then I will say: the yogi is disillusioned with the body. Not disgusted -- simply disillusioned. He does not think that through the body the bliss that the soul is seeking is possible, no. But he does not think the contrary also: that through destroying the body that bliss can be attained. No, he drops the duality. He lives in the body as a guest, and he treats the body as a temple.

"WHEN PURITY IS ATTAINED THERE ARISES IN THE YOGI JUGUPSA FOR

HIS OWN BODY AND A DISINCLINATION TO COME IN PHYSICAL

CONTACT WITH OTHERS."

When you are in the body too much you are always hankering for contact with other bodies, a lust to be in contact with other bodies -- which you call love, which is not love, which is just a lust -- because the body cannot exist alone. It exists in a network of other bodies.

The child is borne in the mother's womb; for nine months the mother's body feeds the child's body. The child's body grows out of the mother's body, just like branches grow out of a tree. When the child is ready, of course, he moves out of the womb, but still remains deeply in contact: on mother's breast the child goes on -- not only taking milk -- goes on taking the warmth of the body, which is a physical need.

And if a child misses the warmth of the mother, he can never be healthy; the body will always suffer. He may be given every thing that is needed -- food, milk, vitamins -- but if the warmth of the woman is not given to him.... And that too in a very loving way because if you are not loving towards a person then heat is possible, may pass from your body to the other person, but not warmth. Heat becomes warmth through love. It has a qualitatively different dimension. It is not just heat; otherwise you can give the heat to the child. Now many experiments have been done: the child is in a centrally heated room -- that doesn't help. The mother's body is giving some subtle vibration of love: of being accepted, of being loved, of being needed. That gives roots.

That's why, continuously, the man will be after -- seeking, searching -- a woman's body the whole life; and the woman will be seeking a man's body the whole life.

The opposite sex is attractive because the polarity of the bodies helps; it gives energy. The very polarity gives a tension and energy. You feed through it; you become strong through it.

This is natural, nothing is wrong in it, but when one becomes pure -- through nonviolence, nonpossessiveness, authenticity -- when one becomes more and more pure, the focus of consciousness shifts from the body to the being. The being can remain absolutely alone.

That's why a man deeply attached to the body can never become free. The very attachment will lead him into many types of bondages, imprisonments. You may love a woman, you may love a man, but deep down you resist also -- because the lover is also the bondage. It cripples you, the relationship: feeds you also, imprisons you also. You cannot live without it, and you cannot live with it. This is the problem of all the lovers. They cannot live separately and they cannot live together. When separate they think of each other; when together they fight each other.

Why this happens? The mechanism is simple. When you are not with a woman whom you can love and who loves you, you start feeling starved of the warmth that flows from a woman's body. When you are with the woman you are no longer starved, you are no longer hungry, you are well fed. And soon you be come fed up. Soon you have taken too much: now you would like to separate and be aloof and alone. All lovers, when together, think, "How beautiful it will be to be alone." And when they are alone, then sooner or later they start feeling the need of the other and they start imagining and dreaming, "How beautiful it will be to be together."

The body needs togetherness; and your innermost soul needs aloneness. That is the problem. Your innermost soul can remain alone -- it is a Himalayan peak standing alone against the sky. Your innermost soul grows when it is alone, but your body needs relatedness. The body needs crowds, warmth, clubs, societies, organizations; wherever you are with many people the body feels good. In a crowd your soul may feel starved because it feeds on aloneness, but your body feels good. In aloneness your soul feels perfect, but the body starts feeling hungry for relationship.

And in life, if you don't understand this, you become very, very miserable, unnecessarily. If you understand it you create a rhythm: you fulfill the bodily need and you fulfill the soul need also. Sometimes you move in relationship, sometimes you move out of it. Sometimes you live together, sometimes you live alone. Sometimes you become peaks -- so absolutely alone that even the idea of the other is absent. This is the rhythm.

But when somebody has attained to aloneness and the focus of consciousness has changed.... That's what yoga is all about: how to change the focus from the body to the soul, from matter to nonmatter, from the visible to the invisible, from the known to the unknown -- from the world to God. Howsoever you phrase it is immaterial. It is a change of focus. When the focus has completely changed, the yogi is so happy in his aloneness, so blissful, that that ordinary hankering of the body to be with others by and by disappears.

When the purity is attained there arises in the yogi a disillusionment for his own body: now he knows that the paradise that he has been seeking cannot be attained through the body, the bliss that he has been dreaming about is not possible through the body. It is impossible for the body: through the limited you are trying to reach the unlimited. Through matter you are trying to reach the eternal, the immortal. Nothing is wrong in the body: your effort is absurd. Don't be angry with the body; the body has not done anything to you. It is just as if someone is trying to listen through the eyes -- now nothing is wrong with the eyes: eyes are made to see, not to listen. The body is made of matter; it is not made of the immaterial. It is made of death. It cannot be immortal. You are asking the impossible. Don't ask that.

That is the point of disillusionment: the yogi simply understands what is possible and what is not possible with the body. That which is possible is okay; that which is not possible he does not ask. He is not angry. He doesn't hate the body.

He takes every care of it because the body can become a ladder; it can become a door, It cannot become the goal, but it can become the door.

A disillusionment for his own body -- and when this disillusionment happens:

"... a disinclination to come in physical contact with others." Then the need to be in physical contact with others, by and by, withers away. In fact this is the right moment when you can say the man has come out of the womb, not before it.

Some people never come out of the womb. Even when they are dying, their need for others' presence, their need for contact, relationship, continues. They have not come out of the womb. Physically they have come out many, many years before -

- the man may be eighty, ninety. Ninety years before, he had come out of the womb, but all these ninety years also he has been living in contact -- seeking, always greedy for body contact. He has lived in a lost womb again and again in his dreams.

It is said that whenever a man falls in love with a woman -- whatsoever he thinks, that is not the point -- he is again falling in the womb. And maybe, it is almost certain -- I say "maybe" because it is not yet a scientifically proved hypothesis -- that the urge to enter the woman's body, the sexual urge, may be nothing but a substitute for entering the womb again. All sexuality may be a search how to enter the womb again. And in all the ways that man has invented to make his body comfortable, psychologists say he is trying to create a womb outside. Look at a comfortable room: if it is really comfortable it must have something in common with the womb -- the warmth, the coziness, the silk, the velvet -- the inner touch of the mother's skin. The pillows, the bed -- everything gives you a feeling of comfort only when somehow it is related with the womb.

Now in the West they have made small tanks, womblike. In those tanks lukewarm water is filled, exactly of the same temperature as the mother's womb.

In deep darkness the man floats in the tank, absolutely comfortable -- in darkness, just as in the womb. They call them meditation tanks. It helps: one feels very, very silent, an inner happiness arising -- you have again become a child. A child in the womb floats on liquid of a certain temperature. The liquid has all the ingredients of the sea, the same salty water with the same ingredients. Because of that scientists have come to realize that man must have evolved from fishes --

because still in the womb the atmosphere of the sea has to be maintained.

All comfort is, deep down, womblike. And whenever you are Lying with a woman, curled up, you feel good. Every man, howsoever old, becomes a child again; and every woman, howsoever young, becomes a mother again. Whenever they are in love the woman starts playing the role of the mother and the man starts playing the role of the baby. Even a young woman becomes a mother and an old man becomes a child.

In a yogi this urge disappears -- and with this urge, he is really born. We in India have called him "twice-born," dwij. This is his second birth, the real birth. Now he is no longer in need of anybody; he has become a transcendental light. Now he can float above the earth; now he can fly in the sky. He is not earth-rooted now. He has become a flower -- not a flower, because even a flower is earth-rooted... he has become the fragrance of the flower. Completely free. Moves into the sky with no roots in the earth. His desire to come in contact with others'

bodies disappears.

FROM MENTAL PURITY THERE ARISES CHEERFULNESS, POWER OF

CONCENTRATION, CONTROL OF THE SENSES, AND A FITNESS FOR SELF

REALIZATION.

This man is so blissful, this man who has now no need to be in contact with others is so blissful in his freedom, so cheerful, celebrating -- his every moment is an intense delight. The more you are rooted in the body, the more sad you will be, because body is gross. It is matter, heavy. The more you go beyond body, you become lighter. Jesus has said to his followers, "Come, follow me. My burden is light. All those who are heavily loaded, come, follow me. My burden is light, weightless."

"From mental purity there arises cheerfulness.... " If you are sad, if you are always depressed, if you are always miserable, nothing can be done directly to your misery. And whatsoever should be done will prove to be in vain. The East has come to know that if you are sad, miserable, depressed, always moving heavily burdened -- this is not the disease; this is just the symptom of the disease.

The disease is that you must be deep down bodily oriented. So the question is not how to dispel your darkness and how to make you happy; that is not the question. The question is how to help you to become unengaged with the body; how to help you so that your entanglement with the body is less and less and less.

People come to me every day. They say, "We are sad, miserable. Every day in the morning it seems again a hopeless day is going to be faced. Somehow we carry ourselves out of the bed -- with no hope. We know, we have lived long... the same repetition of sad days. So what to do? Can you give us something so that we can pull ourselves out, out of sadness?" Directly, nothing can be done; only indirectly can something be done. This is symptomatic; this is not the cause. And if you treat the symptom, the disease will not disappear.

The Western psychology has been treating the symptoms, and yoga is the psychology which treats the cause. Western psychology goes on: whatsoever you say is your symptom, they take it for granted and they start removing it. They have not been successful. Western psychology has proved to be a hoax, a complete failure, but now it is such a great establishment that psychologists cannot say it. Their whole life depends on it -- their big salaries... and they are one of the most highly paid professions. They cannot accept the fact: now they have become aware that they have not been helping anybody. At the most they prolong, at the most they give hope, at the most they help you to adjust with your miseries, but no transformation happens through it. As time passes one becomes attuned to the misery, one becomes accepting of the fact that it is there.

One is not much worried about it, but nothing has changed.

Now they know, but now psychology is such a growing profession, and thousands of people live on it -- and really live luxurious lives; much is invented in it -- that who will say it, that this whole thing is just a hoax, a fraud, nobody's helped? It has to be so, because symptoms cannot be changed. You can paint them, but deep down they remain the same. You can give them new names, new labels; that makes no difference.

The cause has to be changed, and the cause is: you will be sad in the same proportion in which you are rooted in the body. You will be cheerful in the same proportion as you are not rooted in the body. Freer from the body... cheerfulness, more cheerfulness. When you are completely free from the body you become a fragrance floating in the sky. You become blissful -- the blessedness that Jesus talks of, the benediction that Jesus goes on talking about; the nirvana of Buddha.

Mahavir has given it the exactly right word; he calls it kaivalya, aloneness. You have become totally independent and alone. Now nothing is needed; you are enough unto yourself. This is the goal, but the goal can be reached only if you move very cautiously and you don't get entangled with symptoms.

Somebody has a fever, the body is hot, the temperature has gone high -- this is a symptom. The temperature may be a hundred three, a hundred four, five. This is a symptom; don't start curing the body of the temperature. You can cure it: you can put the man under a cold shower, ice cold. In the beginning it may even appear that things are being helped, but remember, you will not be able to cure him of the disease -- you may cure him of life itself. He will die -- because the fever is a symptom. The fever simply shows that inside the body there is a great war, an elemental war. Elements of the body are in conflict, that's why heat is created. That's why there is a fever. The body is not at ease. A civil war has broken out inside the body. Some elements of the body are fighting other elements, maybe foreign elements. They are in a conflict; because of the conflict the heat has come out.

The heat is just an indication that the war has broken out. The war has to be treated, not the temperature. The temperature is just to give you a message:

"Now you should do something; things have gone beyond me." The body is giving you an indication: "Things are now beyond me; I cannot do anything. Do something. Go to the doctor, to the physician. Take help; now it is beyond me.

Whatsoever could be done I have done, but now no more can be done. The war has broken out."

Never treat the symptom, and don't waste time in treating the symptom; always go to the cause.

And this is not a hypothesis, and this is not a theory -- yoga does not believe in theories and Patanjali is not a philosopher. He is absolutely a scientist of the inner world, and whatsoever he is saying he is saying because millions of yogis have experienced it. Without any exception this is so. In ordinary life also have you watched? When you feel cheerful: in ordinary life also if you remain watchful you will become aware that whenever you feel cheerful you forget the body. Whenever somebody is cheerful he forgets his body, and whenever somebody is sad he cannot forget the body.

In fact in ayurveda the definition of health is one of the most significant; no other medical science anywhere in the world has given such a definition. In fact Western medicine has no definition of health. At the most they can say: When there are no diseases, then you are healthy. But this is not a definition of health.

What type of definition, when you bring diseases in to define health? You say,

"When there are no diseases you are healthy." It is a negative definition, not positive. Ayurveda says that when you are bodiless you are healthy. This is really tremendously beautiful. Videha: when you don't feel the body -- you are almost no body.

You can watch it: the head comes in only when the headache comes. Otherwise who knows about the head? You are never aware of the head. Headache brings awareness; otherwise you are headless. And if you continuously remember your head, there must be something wrong. When breathing is healthy you are not aware at all, but when something goes wrong -- asthma, bronchitis, something goes wrong -- then you are aware. The breathing is there with much sound, noise and everything, and you cannot forget it. When your legs are tired then you know they are. When something goes wrong, only then you become conscious. If everything is functioning perfectly, you forget it.

This is the definition of health: when you forget the body completely you are healthy. And who can forget the body completely? Only a yogi.

We have three words: rogi, bhogi, yogi. The rogi: one who is ill; the bhogi: one who is indulging in the body; and the yogi: one who has gone beyond the body.

The bhogi rarely will attain to some moments of yoga, some moments when he will forget the body. Ninety-nine percent of his life he will belong to the world of the rogi, the ill; only one percent of his life will be moments, rare moments, when he will become a yogi. Sometimes everything is functioning well, humming --

just like a beautiful, perfectly functioning car hums, sings; your whole mechanism is humming beautifully, well: rarely with a bhogi, never with a rogi, always with a yogi. The rogi is the ill person; the bhogi is one who is indulging in the body too much and falling towards the rogi, will sooner or later become ill and die; and the yogi: the yogi is one who has transcended the body, lives beyond -- then he is cheerful.

The rogi is never cheerful, the bhogi rarely, the yogi always. Cheerfulness is his nature. For no visible cause he remains happy.

With you the case is just the opposite: for no visible cause you remain unhappy.

If somebody asks you, "Why are you so miserable?" you shrug your shoulders.

You don't know why. You have taken it for granted as your way of life, to be miserable. In fact if you see a miserable man you never ask, "Why are you miserable?" You accept it. When you see somebody happy, very happy, you ask,

"What is the matter? Why are you so happy? What has happened?" Misery has been taken for granted, accepted. Happiness has become so rare, so exceptional, that it is almost too good to be true.

It happens, people come to me: when they start meditating, and if they really move in it, things start changing. When they had come they were miserable, sad; then something bursts open -- a cheerfulness starts. They cannot believe it. They come running to me and they say, "What has happened? Suddenly I am feeling very happy. Am I imagining?" They cannot believe that this can be true. The mind says, "You must be imagining. You, such a miserable man, and you can be happy? Impossible." They come to me and they say, "Are we imagining, or have you hypnotized us?"

They never thought when they were miserable that somebody may have hypnotized them. They never thought when they were miserable that maybe they are imagining it, but when they feel happiness, happiness has become so rare a thing, so unbelievably rare that they ask, "Is it true?"

In English you have the phrase "too good to be true"; you don't have the phrase

"too bad to be true." The other should be more prevalent, more common, but

"good" cannot be believed; that's why the phrase "too good to be true." That phrase should be destroyed, completely forgotten. When somebody says something bad you should say, "Too bad to be true, cannot be believed. You must have imagined." But no, it is not so. Misery seems to be the natural thing; happiness, something unnatural.

"From mental purity there arises cheerfulness, POWER OF

CONCENTRATION...." People try to concentrate remaining rooted in the body; then concentration is very difficult, almost impossible. You cannot concentrate for a single minute. The mind wavers, a thousand and one thoughts arise, and before you know, you have moved somewhere else: a daydream starts.

Whenever you want to concentrate on something... almost impossible. But the reason is that you are much too rooted in the body. If you look through the body, concentration is not possible. If you look beyond the body, concentration is so easy....

It happened, Vivekanand was staying with a great scholar. His name was Deussen, one of the great scholars, who translated Sanskrit scriptures into Western languages. Particularly, Deussen was working on the Upanishads, and he was one of the most penetrating translators. A new book had arrived.

Vivekanand asked, "Can I go through it? Can I have it to read?" Deussen said,

"Yes, you can have it. I have not read it at all." After half an hour Vivekanand returned the book. Deussen could not believe it; such a big book will need at least one week to read, and if you want to digest it, then even more. If you really want to understand it, it is a difficult book, then even more. He said, "Have you gone through it? Have you really read it, or just looked here and there?"

Vivekanand said, "I have studied it." Deussen said, "Then I cannot believe it.

Then you will have to do me a favor. Let me read the book, and I will ask you a few questions about the book."

Deussen had to read the book for seven days, study it; and then he asked a few questions, and Vivekanand replied so exactly, as if he had been reading that book for the whole of his life. Deussen has written in his memoirs: "It was impossible for me, and I asked,'How is it possible?' Vivekanand said,'When you study through the body, concentration is not possible. When you are not rooted in the body, you hover on the book directly -- -your consciousness directly in touch. No body between the book and you standing like a barrier: then even half an hour is enough. You imbibe the spirit of it.' "

It is just like: a small child reads -- he cannot read a big word; he has to cut words into small pieces. He cannot read the whole sentence. When you read you read the whole sentence. If you are really a good reader you can read the whole paragraph -- just a glimpse, it passes. There is a possibility, if the body is not interfering, you can read the whole book just by passing. And if you read with the body you may forget. If you read without the body there is no need to memorize it; you will not forget it -- because you have understood it.

Power of concentration arises in a man of pure body, of pure consciousness, of purity.

"... CONTROL OF THE SENSES...." These are consequences, remember. They cannot be practiced; if you practice you will never attain to them. They just happen. If the basic cause has been removed, if you are no longer identified with the body, then, "control of the senses." Then it is within your control. Then if you want to think you think; if you don't want to think you just say to the mind,

"Stop." It is a mechanism you can put on and off, but mastery is needed; and if you are not a master and you try to become a master, you will create more confusion and trouble for yourself and you will be defeated again and again, and the senses will remain the boss. That's not the way to win over them. The way to win over them is to disidentify yourself with the body. You have to come to know that you are not the body; and then you have to come to know that you are not the mind.

You have to become the witness to all that is around you. The body is there, the first circle; then the mind is there, the second circle; then the heart is there, the third circle. And then just behind these three circles is the center -- you. If you are centered in yourself, all these three layers will follow you. If you are not centered there then you will have to follow them.

"... CONTROL OF THE SENSES, AND A FITNESS FOR SELF-REALIZATION."

And this is how one becomes fit, capable of realizing oneself. Everybody wants to realize oneself, but nobody wants to pass through the discipline -- nobody wants to mature. Everybody wants it as a magic thing. People come to me and they say, "Can't you bless us so that we can become self-realized?" If it were just that easy, that my blessing will do, then I would have blessed the whole world.

Why bother to bless each individual? Bless wholesale, and let the whole world be enlightened. Then Buddha would have done so already, Mahavir would have done so -- finished. All would have become enlightened.

It cannot be done that way. Nobody can bless you; you have to earn that blessing. You have to pass through a deep discipline, you have to change your focus of being, you have to become capable, you have to become a right vehicle; otherwise sometimes it has happened that accidentally someone has stumbled upon the self, but that has been a shock and that has not helped anybody. That has cracked down your whole personality -- you may go mad. It is just like: a strong current passes through you for which you are not ready -- everything will go wrong. Even, the fuse may blow -- you may die.

You have to attain purity, attain nonidentification with the body, with the mind; you have to attain a certain quantity of witnessing. Only then, in that proportion only, self knowledge becomes possible. You cannot get it free. You have to pay for it -- and pay in terms of being. Not that you can pay for it with money, nothing else will be helpful: you have to pay for it in terms of being. "... and a fitness for self-realization."

CONTENTMENT BRINGS SUPREME HAPPINESS

And this purity, finally, brings contentment. This word is one of the most profound; you have to understand it, feel it, imbibe it. "Contentment" means whatsoever the situation is, you accept it without any complaint. In fact you not only accept it without complaint, you rejoice in it with deep gratefulness. This moment is perfect. When your mind doesn't move from it, when you don't ask for any other time, when you don't ask for any other space, when you don't ask for any other way of being, when you don't ask anything, when the asking has dropped, you are simply here-now, rejoicing, like birds singing in the trees, flowers blooming on the trees, stars moving, everything is taken as "this is the all, the whole, the perfect, no improvement is possible in it" -- when the future is dropped, when the tomorrow disappears... there is contentment. When now is the only time, the eternity, there is contentment, and in that contentment, says Patanjali, "... supreme happiness."

"Contentment brings supreme happiness." So contentment is the discipline of the yogi; he has to be contented. If nothing can create discontent in you, if nothing can create restlessness in you -- if nothing can push you off your center -- there arises supreme happiness.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6

Chapter #4

Chapter title: Selfishness: The only Unselfishness 4 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1

HOW CAN A MAN WITH LOVE IN HIS HEART BE SELFISH?

Love is the most selfish thing in the world. Love is basically love of oneself. If you love yourself, only then can you love somebody else. If you don't love yourself, to love anybody else is almost impossible. The quality of love has to grow within you, only then can the fragrance reach to somebody else. If you don't love yourself you can only pretend that you love others. Your love will be pseudo, false, a deception. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this is what is happening -- because humanity has been debarred, conditioned. Every child has been conditioned not to love himself but to love others. That is impossible. That cannot happen; that is not the way things are. Every child has been taught not to be selfish, and that's the only way of being.

If you are not selfish you will not be altruistic, remember. If you are not selfish you will not be unselfish, remember. Only a very deeply selfish person can be unselfish. But this has to be understood because it looks like a paradox.

What is the meaning of being selfish? The first basic thing is to be self-centered.

The second basic thing is always to look for one's blissfulness. If you are self-centered you will be selfish whatsoever you do. You may go and serve people, but you will do it only because you enjoy it, because you love doing it, you feel happy and blissful doing it. You feel yourself doing it. You are not doing any duty; you are not serving humanity. You are not a great martyr; you are not sacrificing. These are all nonsensical terms. You are simply being happy in your own way. It feels good to you: you go to the hospital and serve the ill people there, or you go to the poor and serve them. But you love it. It is how you grow.

Deep down you feel blissful and silent, happy about yourself.

A self-centered person is always seeking his happiness. And this is the beauty of it: that the more you seek your happiness, the more you will help others to be happy. Because that is the only way to be happy in the world. If everybody else around you is unhappy, you cannot be happy, because man is not an island. He is part of the vast continent. If you want to be happy you will have to help others who surround you to be happy. Only then -- and only then -- can you be happy.

You have to create the atmosphere of happiness around you. If everybody is miserable, how can you be happy? You will be affected. You are not a stone. You are a very delicate being, very sensitive. If everybody is miserable around you, their misery will affect you. Misery is as infectious as any disease. Blissfulness is also infectious as any disease. If you help others to be happy, in the end you help yourself to be happy. A person who is deeply interested in his happiness is always interested in others' happiness also -- but not for them. Deep down he is interested in himself, that's why he helps. If in the world everybody is taught to be selfish, the whole world will be happy. There will be no possibility for misery.

If you want to be healthy you cannot live amongst people who are ill. How can you be healthy? It will be impossible. It is against the law. You have to help others to be healthy. In health your health becomes possible.

Teach everybody to be selfish; unselfishness grows out of it. Unselfishness is ultimately selfishness. It may look unselfish in the beginning, but finally it fulfills you. And then happiness can be multiplied: as many as are the people around you that are happy, that much happiness goes on falling on you. You can become superbly happy.

But never forget about yourself -- you have been taught.... Politicians, priests have been doing that, because that is the only way in the world for politicians and priests to be. If you are miserable, priests will be needed. If you are ill, unhappy, politicians will be needed. If you are unruly, only then rulers are needed. If you are ill, only then doctors are needed. Politicians want you to be disorderly; otherwise on whom will they impose the order? Through your disorder they become the rulers; and they teach you to be unselfish. They teach you to sacrifice yourself for the country, for the god, for the religion -- Islam, Hinduism -- for the Koran, the Geeta, for the Bible -- any word will do -- but sacrifice yourself. If you are sacrificed, the priest remains happy, the politician remains happy.

Priests and politicians are in a deep conspiracy -- maybe they are unconscious, not aware what they are doing, but they don't want you to be happy. One thing, they don't want you to be happy. Whenever they see that you are becoming happy, they become alert. Then you are a danger to them, their society, their established world -- you are dangerous. A happy person is the most dangerous person in the world. He can prove to be subversive -- because a happy person is a free person, and a happy person doesn't bother about wars, Vietnams, Israel.

For a happy person these things look neurotic, foolish.

A happy person is so happy, he wants to be left alone to be happy. He wants his own privacy to be preserved. He wants to live with the flowers and the poetry and the music. Why should he bother to go to the wars, be killed and kill others?

Why should he be murderous and suicidal? Only unselfish people can do that, because they have never known the bliss that is possible to them. They have never had any experience: what it is to be, what it is to celebrate. They have never danced. They have never breathed life. They have not known any divine glimpse; all those glimpses come from deep happiness, from deep satiety, contentment.

An unselfish person is uprooted, uncentered. He is in deep neurosis. He is against nature; he cannot be healthy and whole. He is fighting against the current of life, being, existence: he is trying to be unselfish. He cannot be unselfish --

because only a selfish person can be unselfish. When you have happiness you can share it; when you don't have, how can you share it? To share, in the first place one must have it. An unselfish person is always serious, deep down ill, in anguish. He has missed his own life.

And remember, whenever you miss your life you become murderous, suicidal.

Whenever a person lives in misery, he would like to destroy. Misery is destructive; happiness creative. There is only one creativity, and that is of blissfulness, cheerfulness, delight. When you are delighted you want to create something, maybe a toy for children, maybe a poem, maybe a painting --

something. Whenever you are too delighted in life, how to express it? You create something -- something or other. But when you are miserable you want to crush and destroy something. You would like to become a politician, you would like to become a soldier -- you would like to create some situation in which you can be destructive.

That's why every now and then war erupts somewhere on the earth. It is a great disease. And all politicians go on talking about peace. They prepare for war; they talk for peace. In fact they say, "We are preparing for war to preserve peace."

Most irrational. If you are preparing for war, how can you preserve peace? To preserve peace one should prepare for peace.

That's why the new generation all over the world is a great danger to the establishment. They are interested only in being happy. They are interested in love, they are interested in meditation, they are interested in music, dance....

Politicians have become very alert all over the world. The new generation is not interested in politics -- rightist or leftist. No, they are not interested at all. They are not communists; they don't belong to any ism.

A happy person belongs to himself. Why should he belong to any organization?

That is the way of an unhappy person: to belong to some organization, to belong to some crowd. Because he has no roots within himself, he does not belong -- and that gives him a very, very deep anxiety: he should belong. He creates a substitute belonging. He goes and becomes part of a political party, of a revolutionary party, or anything -- a religion. Now he feels he belongs: a crowd is there in which he is rooted.

One should be rooted in oneself because the way from oneself moves deep down to God, to existence. If you belong to a crowd you belong to an impasse; from there no further growth is possible. There comes the end, a cul-de-sac.

But politicians depend on your sacrifice. They don't want you to be happy; they don't want your smiles, your laughter. They want you to be miserable, so miserable that you become destructive, angry, in a rage. Then you can be used; for their ends you can be used. They teach you to be unselfish, they teach you to be martyrs, they teach you, "Sacrifice your life for others" -- and they are teaching the same thing to others also. It seems a big, foolish, game.

I don't teach you to be unselfish because I know if you are selfish you will be unselfish automatically, spontaneously. If you are not selfish you have missed yourself; now you cannot be in contact with anybody else -- the basic contact is missing. The first step has been missed.

Forget about the world and the society and the utopias and Karl Marx. Forget about all this. You are just here for a few years to be. Enjoy, delight, be happy, dance, and love; and out of your love and dancing, out of your deep selfishness will start an overflowing of energy. You will be able to share with others.

Love, I say, is one of the most selfish things. If you want a still deeper selfish thing then comes meditation, prayer. If you want a still more selfish thing then comes God. You cannot be related to God through somebody else; there is no via media. With God you have to be face to face, immediate, without any media. You alone in your superb aloneness will encounter that supreme experience.

I teach selfishness, but if you understand my selfishness you will understand all that is beautiful, all that is unselfish.

Question 2

IN BEING SELFISH DOES ONE STILL REMAIN AWARE OF OTHERS OR

NOT?

If you are aware of yourself you become aware of others. How can it be otherwise? If you are not aware of yourself, how can you be aware of others?

Awareness first must happen within you. The light must be lighted there first.

The flame must arise within you; only then can the light spread and envelop others. You live in darkness, unawareness -- how can you be aware of others?

You go on thinking, you dream -- you are not aware of others.

The husband may say, "I am aware of my wife and her feelings." Simply not possible, because the husband is not aware of himself. He lives in deep darkness and unconsciousness. He does not know from where his anger comes, he does not know from where love arises, he does not know from where comes this existence, flowing. He is not aware of himself -- and that is the closest thing you can be aware of -- and he says, "I am aware of my wife and her feelings."

Foolishness. He may be thinking, dreaming that he is aware. Everybody lives surrounded in his own dreams; and hidden behind the dreams, one's own projections, one goes on thinking: "I am aware."

Ask the wife; she says, "He is never aware of me." The wife thinks she is aware of her husband, his needs; but those needs that she thinks she is aware of are not her husband's needs. That's what she thinks are his needs. The conflict continues, and both are aware and both feel for each other and both are careful about each other.

Nobody can be careful about anybody else unless one has learned the lesson first in the deeper, inner core of his being. First be careful about yourself. That is the nearest, closest point. Learn awareness there; then you will be aware of others.

Then for the first time you will not project. You will not interpret; you will look directly. You will look at the other as he is, not as you would like him to be or as you think him to be. Then you will look at reality.

When dreams drop from your eyes and your eyes are not full of dreams, only then can you be aware. Otherwise your eyes are cloudy; many clouds and much smoke exist there. You look, but you look from behind screens, and those screens pervert everything that you see. They distort. They don't mirror; they project.

When your dreams have disappeared and you are alert -- alert, aware, mindful --

then your eyes become like the eyes of a camera. You simply see that which is; you don't project. You don't do anything to the reality; you simply allow the reality to be revealed. Your eyes are simple, innocent passages. They simply look.

Right now, as you are, you can't look. Your eyes are filled already with prejudice, ideas, conceptions, beliefs. You cannot look. Your eyes are not empty enough to Look.

How can you be aware of others? Only a Buddha is aware, one who has awakened within himself. But a Buddha is a very selfish man, a Mahavir is a selfish man, a Patanjali, absolutely selfish -- but they help millions. They become a benediction to millions. All those who are in need and in search can use their light. But they are lighted. That is the meaning of enlightenment: their flame is burning. You can partake of it. You can light your own inner flame through it.

You can become a participant.

Awareness has to be learned within. When you awake inside yourself you awake to the whole world, to the whole existence. Suddenly shrouds fall. Suddenly your eyes are no longer filled... empty, receptive, naked. You see. You don't project, you don't interpret. You have nothing to project. You have become just space, an inner emptiness.

Question 3

DOES TO BE HOPELESS INCLUDE BEING HOPELESS ABOUT YOU. HOW IS

GROWTH POSSIBLE WITHOUT THIS HOPE?

Hope is one of the greatest barriers because through hope dreams are created, through hope future is created, through hope time exists. When I say become hopeless, I mean be here and now. If you hope, you have moved away from the herenow.

You postpone life through hope: you say, "Tomorrow I will live, when everything is put right." When everything exists as you would like it to exist, when you have enough riches, power, money, prestige -- then you will live. And you hope tomorrow it is going to be there. If not tomorrow then the day after tomorrow. If not this year then next year. And if not in this life then in the next life. In the East hope has been extended to its very logical end: thousands of lives waiting for you in the future. This is a trick of the mind. Once you allow the mind to hope, he has tripped you.

Life is only in this moment. Life has no other tense -- it has only one tense: the present. Past is memory; it is not part of existence. It has gone; it is no longer there. Just imprints on the mind are carried, scratches in memory. Future does not exist; it has not come yet. Only this moment, this narrow moment, this small, atomic moment exists. If you have to live you have to live in this. If you want to miss life then you can live in hope.

When I say "hopeless" you can misunderstand me, because by "hopeless" you always mean: when some hope fails, you become hopeless. But when I use the word "hopeless" I am not meaning that some hope has failed: I am saying all hope, hope as such, has failed. Then you become really hopeless, and that is a beautiful moment. It is not a depressed state of affairs. It is not that you are sad.

You have felt hopeless many times -- one hope fails. You were in love and the woman betrayed, or the man betrayed -- one hope failed. But there are other women, other men; the hope can exist. It can search, seek; it can create new illusions. One illusion has failed -- but you have not become disillusioned. You move on one path. There comes an end to it, there is nothing further, an abyss faces you: one path has failed, but there are millions of paths. Life is a labyrinth; you can move in other paths. You have not really become hopeless.

A man becomes hopeless when he faces the whole life in its totality and sees that there is nowhere to go, nothing to dream, nothing to hope for. In that hopelessness there is no sadness. One simply realizes the truth of life as it is. Not that life has failed! One simply realizes: "My hoping has failed." And life does not allow anybody's hopes. It does not follow anybody's hopes; it does not fulfill anybody's dreams. Life has not failed; only your hoping mind has failed. The mind stops functioning. For a moment it seems a disaster, everything collapses; but if you can live with this disaster, suddenly a new life arises in you -- fresh, young, of this moment.

That life belongs to here-now. It does not move anywhere else. It has no motivation in it; it is, in a way, desireless. Not that it doesn't enjoy -- only it enjoys. When there is no desire, your whole energy becomes delight. You throb with happiness. You start participating in the celebration that is continuously going on; it is a continuum.

You were missing it only because you were dreaming. You were not part of it because you had created your private hopes. You had become an "idiot": "idiot"

means one who has private hopes. One who is not moving with the whole, who is trying to move alone in his own way, who is trying to put his will against the whole -- he is the idiot. The root of the word "idiot" means private. Hopes are private; life is universal. Hopes are individual. Existence does not belong to any individual. All individuals belong to existence.

Have you observed that your dreams are the most private things in the world?

You cannot even invite a friend. You cannot even invite your beloved in your dreams. You have to be alone there. Why are dreams thought to be unreal?

Because they are private. You cannot call anybody else to become a witness to your dreams, that is impossible.

I have heard that one Pharaoh of Egypt, who was a little eccentric, as kings are almost always, a little neurotic -- one day he dreamed and he saw one of his ministers in his dream. He was very angry. The next day he had an order proclaimed all over the kingdom that nobody is allowed to enter in his dreams.

This is trespassing; and if somebody is found trespassing, entering in his dreams, he will be immediately killed. And many persons were killed later on because they entered in his dreams.

Your dreams are yours -- nobody can enter. And if somebody enters, it is you dreaming; not that he has entered. Dreams are private, absolutely private. That's why they are unreal. Anything private is going to be unreal. The reality is universal. I can see the trees, you can also see the trees, but my dream-trees only I can see. I cannot ask you to come and become a witness. That's why in the morning I myself feel it was just a dream, not real.

Your hopes are your hopes. When you become hopeless.... When I say "become hopeless," "drop all hopes," what I am saying is: let the whole hope; don't create private desires. Otherwise you will always be in misery, always be in frustration.

Your hopes will never be fulfilled, because the whole has its own design. The whole has its own planning; the whole has its own destiny. The river is going towards the sea: and every drop in the river dreaming of going somewhere else.

How can that be fulfilled? The river will reach to the ocean. Those drops will suffer frustration because they will not reach to the destination that they were dreaming of.

A wise man is nothing but the drop who does not dream a private dream. An enlightened man is the man who flows with the whole, with the river. He says,

"Wherever you are going, I am also going there. And why should I worry? The river is flowing; it must be going somewhere. That is not my worry." The drop drops its worry: that is the moment of hopelessness, desirelessness. In that moment the drop has become the river. In that moment, basically, the drop has become the ocean. In that moment the drop has become the whole.

"Does to be hopeless include being hopeless about you?" Yes. If you hope, if you create hopes around me, you are creating your dreams. I am not a party to them.

It has to be remembered: I am not a party to them. You may be creating your dreams and desires, that is for you to decide. If you create you will be frustrated.

If you don't create you start floating with me. That's what surrender means, that's what to be a disciple means: to float with the Master. If I say, "Drop hopes,"

you drop; you float with me. If you have your private hopes then remember --

when you are frustrated don't blame me. I am not responsible.

Otherwise this seems to be very easy: you come hoping from the world where you have been frustrated, then you start hoping around me -- desiring, dreaming, around me. I become an excuse for you to hope again. Then you start desiring again the same desires -- now, with my help. No, I don't help in that way. I help only if you want to become desireless, if you want to drop all hopes, if you want to drop yourself, the ego. That's the only way I can help. I am not here to fulfill anybody's desires and hopes. Drop them before frustration takes over; otherwise you will be unnecessarily angry at me. Remain alert about it; otherwise you will feel that I wasted your time, I destroyed your energy. If you don't reach your private goals, of course, you will never be able to forgive me; but I am not a party to it.

If you are ready to float with me.... I am floating with the whole. If you are ready to float with me you will learn the way how to float with the whole. Then you can forget about me. A Master has to be dropped, finally. A Master, at the most, can be a door; he is not the goal. You pass through him, and you forgive and forget him. You move with the whole. Near a Master, in the presence of a Master, you learn the knack of floating with the whole.

Yes, I am included. When I teach you hopelessness I am included in it. Don't hope about me, around me. I will never be a party to your private dreams, to your idiotikis.

"How is growth possible without this hope?" Growth is possible only without hope. You have not grown up because you have been hoping. You have remained children, childish. A child is allowed to dream -- he is ignorant -- to hope, to create future. He is foolish. When maturity happens dreams have to be dropped; or, you drop the dreams, and maturity happens. What is maturity?

Maturity is to see the reality. Do not live in wish fulfillments.

Even religious, so-called religious, people live in dreams: they think of paradise for themselves and hell for others. Dreams... good dreams for themselves and nightmares for others. They are also childish.

Growth is possible only when there is no hope. Why? Because the same energy that moves in hopes has to be converted. The same energy has to be released for growth. That's why all Buddhas say, "Don't desire." Not because they are against desiring, no -- because they are for growth and the energy has to be released, freed from desires. Only then can it become inner growth.

Growth is in the present and desiring is in the future -- they never meet. You grow here and now, never tomorrow. The trees are growing now and you are thinking to grow tomorrow. The growth is always here-now. At this very moment growth is happening if it is happening at all. If it is not happening at this moment, how can it happen the next moment? From where will it come? Out of the blue? This moment will become the foundation for the next. Today will become the foundation for tomorrow. This life will become the foundation for the next life. If growth has been happening this moment, the next moment will take over; and you will start the next moment from that point, from that stage, that state and plane where this moment leaves you. That is the only way to grow.

This moment is the only moment to grow.

Have you watched that in the whole world -- plants, birds, animals, mountains --

only one moment, this moment, exists; and they are growing? Only man thinks of the future, and that's how growth stops. The more you think of the future, the less is the possibility to grow. Growth is coming to terms with the reality that is happening this moment. And there is no other reality.

"How is growth possible without this hope?" Growth is possible only without hope.

I understand your problem. You are saying, "If we don't hope then we will not hope about growth also. Then how will growth happen if we don't hope and don't desire?" Growth does not need your hoping, your desiring. Growth needs your understanding; growth needs your awareness. Awareness is enough. If you are aware in this moment to whatsoever is happening, that awareness becomes the sun, and the tree of your being grows. That awareness becomes the water, the rain; and the tree of your being grows. That awareness becomes the food, the nutrition. That awareness is all that is needed for growth. A man grows because of awareness, not because of hopes.

Question 4

YOU SAID THAT YOU DON'T "WORK" ON PEOPLE, SO WHAT IS THE

MEANING OF HAVING DISCIPLES?

A Master is a catalytic agent: he does not work, but the work happens through him. He's not the doer but just the situation where things happen. Do you think the sun rises and starts working on so many millions of trees?... comes to every flower, persuades it to open?... comes to every bud and forces it to open?... comes to every root, nourishes it? No. The sun may not even be aware, but trees grow, buds open, flowers start throwing their fragrance, the birds start singing -- the whole world is awake. How does the sun function? Is the sun a doer?

I have heard a very old story that once Darkness went to God and said, "Enough is enough. I have not committed any crime -- not that I know -- so why does your Sun go on chasing me? Continuously, day after day, for millions of years it has been happening. I have come to complain. And I have not done anything wrong to the Sun. Why is he so against me?"

Even God had to concede: "This is true. Why should he be after you?" The Sun was called, and God inquired, "Why are you so much against Darkness? What do you go on chasing her for?"

The Sun said, "I never heard anything about Darkness. What do you mean? I have never encountered her. I don't even know her! Chasing is out of the question. I am not even acquainted. Nobody has even introduced me. Please call her before me so I can see who this person Darkness is, and then I will remember and will not chase her."

It is said even the omnipotent God could not do that, to bring Darkness before the Sun. So the case is pending in the files, and God is brooding over a way so that Sun and Darkness can be face to face in the court. But it doesn't seem that he will be able to find a way because when the Sun is there, Darkness is not there. It is not that the Sun is chasing or doing something: the very presence.

A Master is a catalytic agent. This word "catalytic" has to be understood very deeply. In science they have discovered catalytic agents. A catalytic agent is an agent which is absolutely needed for some change, chemical change for example, but the catalytic agent itself is not an ingredient in the change. Just the presence is needed. For example, oxygen and hydrogen meet and water is created, but electricity is needed just as a catalytic agent. If electricity is not present then hydrogen and oxygen don't meet; and electricity plays no part -- just the presence. Without the presence it doesn't happen; and electricity plays no part in it. It doesn't enter in any way into the new combination. It simply remains there.

A catalytic agent is a scientific term, but beautiful.

A Master does not have to do anything; he is not a doer. Just his presence -- if you allow his presence. That depends on the disciple. And to be a disciple only means this much: that you allow, that you let go, that you become receptive --

that you no longer create any obstacles for the presence to function. It doesn't work anything. The very presence functions... something starts happening. If the disciple allows, something starts happening.

The disciple will feel grateful towards the Master because without him it was almost impossible, but the Master always knows that he has not done anything.

So if you go to the Master and say, "You have done so much," he will say, "It is God's grace. I have not done anything." If a Master says, "I have done something," he is not a Master at all, because the very "I" shows that he is not a Master. He cannot be a catalytic agent to you. He thinks he is a doer; and a doer cannot be a catalytic agent.

A Master is just a presence, an encompassing present... Like a cloud he surrounds you. If you allow him, he enters to the deepest core of your being. Not that he enters! You simply allow... it happens. And in that moment when the disciple is allowing and the Master is present: a chemical change, better to call it alchemical, mutation -- the disciple also disappears, the same way as the Master has disappeared. The ego is no longer there. The disciple has also become a nondoer. Now he can function as a presence to others. He can be a Master.

Sariputta, one of Buddha's disciples, one day entered into Buddha and allowed Buddha to enter in him. He became enlightened. Immediately, Buddha said,

"Now, Sariputta, no need to hang around me. Now go. Go to the farthest corners of the country. Many people are thirsty. Now you have the water to quench their thirst." Sariputta looked around. What has happened? He said, "What are you talking about? Don't send me anywhere." Buddha said, "You are not aware what has happened. Now you don't need my presence. Now you yourself can become a presence to others: the thing has happened. I have not done it, you have not done it, and the thing has happened."

If the disciple is too much of a doer it will not happen. If the Master is too much of a doer he is not a Master. When the disciple is ready to open -- and the Master is a Master -- the thing happens. It is grace. It simply happens without anybody's doings. That's why we in India have called it prasad, grace. Suddenly, God becomes available; suddenly, God functions.

That's why I say that I do not work on people, and still I accept disciples.

Question 5

TO FEEL GOOD, HUMAN BEINGS LOOK ALWAYS FOR A WOMB. WE ALL

FEEL GOOD WITH YOU; DID WE FIND A WOMB?

Of course. A Master is nothing but a womb: through him you are reborn. You die in him; you die with him. The Master is the cross and the resurrection. That is the meaning of Jesus' story: in him you die, and through him you are reborn. The Master is a womb.

One womb is the mother's womb; another womb is the Master's womb. The mother sends you into the world, the Master sends you beyond it. The Master is a mother.

Question 6

WHY DO YOU ALWAYS CARRY A NAPKIN WITH YOU, EVEN WHEN

THERE IS NO USE FOR IT?

It is symbolic: that I am useless like my napkin. I don't believe in utility. Utility belongs to the world, to the marketplace. I believe in nonutilitarian things: a flower. What is the utility of a flower? What is the use? It is absolutely useless; and hence beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

Life to me is not purposive; there is no purpose in it. If there was purpose life could not be so beautiful. Purpose always creates ugliness. Purpose gives you commodities, not ecstasies. Purpose gives you factories, not temples. Life is not a factory; it is a temple. What is the use of a temple?

In the East, every village has a temple, at least one. More, then it is too good; otherwise one. Even a very, very poor village. When Westerners came for the first time to the East they could not believe the phenomenon, because the villages are so poor. They don't have proper houses, just huts, you can call them houses in name only; but they have a beautiful temple in their town. Their homes don't have stone walls, just bamboo, but their god has beautiful marble walls, marble floors. A small temple, but beautiful. They couldn't believe -- when you live in such poverty, what is the use of making such a beautiful temple?

In the East we have always believed in uselessness. One can live in a house; it is a utility. God is not living there; he can live without the temple. Even if the temple is not existing, nothing will be lacking in the world. The world is not enriched by the temple. It is enriched by a factory, by a hospital, by a school -- not by a temple. A temple is simply useless. So when communists took over in Russia, they destroyed all the temples, all the churches -- they converted them into factories, schools, hospitals, this and that -- because a communist believes in utility. He does not believe in flowers. He does not believe in stars. He does not believe in poetries. He believes in prose, logical syllogisms.

I believe in poetry. I don't bother a bit about logic; I'm absolutely illogical. And I have known life's beauty through illogic, through irrationality. Through the heart, I have seen the temple of life; and I tell you, if you go on searching for God in your factories you will never find him. If you go on searching for your God in the hospitals and schools you will miss him for ever and ever, because God is not a purpose. In India we don't even call this world his creation -- we call it his leela, play. Play is purposeless; it is not even a game. He simply goes on playing hide-and-seek with himself, with no purpose to attain. It is sheer delight to be. The value is intrinsic. The value is not in the end; the value is in you.

You are right: why do I always carry a napkin with me, absolutely purposeless?

Even I don't know why, but I carry it. It is a symbol... illogical.

Question 7

I HAVE BECOME QUITE USELESS. NOW WHAT DO I DO ABOUT MY

FINANCIAL SITUATION? SHALL I JUST LIVE ON OTHER PEOPLE'S

EXPENSES?

If you have really become quite useless, you have attained; now there is nothing to attain. And if you have really become quite useless, you will not bother about your financial situation. Whenever somebody becomes quite useless, the whole takes care. Still, something of the world of utility must be clinging to your mind; hence the question arises. If you have really become useless then you don't worry about it: whether the next moment you exist or not can't be a worry to you if you have really become useless.

Why do you bother? If the whole needs you for his hide-and-seek, for his play, he will take care. That's why Jesus goes on saying to his disciples, "Look at the lilies in the field: they toil not, they are not worried about the morrow -- and they are more beautiful than King Solomon ever was in all his glory." He goes on saying, "Think not of the morrow."

Once you are really useless you surrender to the divine; and if you are surrendered you will not ask, "Shall I just live on other people's expenses?" Then who is the other? Then there is nobody who is the other. Then your pockets are others' pockets and others' pockets are your pockets. The other exists because of the ego -- because I exist, that's why the other exists. If I am not there then who is the other?

I have been living on other people's expenses for years; and I don't even thank them. Because what is the point to thank oneself? It will look foolish. This is the way I am enjoying, and if the whole wills me to be here I will be here. If he does not will me, that I am not needed at all, he will take me away. It is his worry.

And if he wants me to be here he will put in somebody's mind the idea to donate something to me. That's for him to decide. And if you give something to me, he has to thank you. Why should I thank you? I don't come in between. I have never thanked anybody, because that looks foolish.

I go on doing whatsoever I enjoy. If they are benefited by it, they need not feel obligated. This is my joy. I go on talking to you; this is my joy. Not that I am trying to help you -- this is the way I enjoy myself. If you go on helping me that is your joy. Somehow I fulfill your need; you fulfill my needs. Finished. There is no point in talking about who is grateful to whom.

It is one whole. The feeling that the other exists is because you exist. If you disappear, the other disappears.

And, then, the next moment is not the point to be worried about. This moment is enough. This moment is enough unto itself.

Question 8

BEFORE COMING TO YOU, WHEN TAKING DRUGS I ALWAYS FELT MORE

ONE WITH THE WHOLE. AFTER SIX MONTHS WITH YOU I HAD A FEW

SMOKES AND EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE HAPPENED: STONED, I FELT

MORE SPLIT. CAN YOU EXPLAIN THIS?

There is no need. It is self-explanatory. If you are neurotic, drugs will give you a glimpse of health, of oneness. If you are split then drugs will give you a dream of being one, undivided. But if you meditate you really become one; then to take drugs won't help. If you meditate then the reality of oneness is realized; then the dream will not be of any use. In fact, then to take drugs will be destructive: through them you will feel split.

That's why I go on saying: people who are in search of drugs are really in search of meditation -- searching for something in a wrong direction. Their search is perfectly right, their direction wrong. I am not against them, because they are the seekers. The urge has arisen in them, but they are moving in a wrong direction.

They can be brought to the right direction.

More people are needed to help them to meditate. No government, no state can suppress them, that's impossible. The more they will be suppressed, the more they will feel attracted towards drugs. The more they will become neurotic, the more there will be need for drugs. Only more temples, more meditations around the world, more people meditating will be of help. Once you meditate you have moved in the right direction -- sooner or later, drugs will fall by themselves. No need to drop them; they will drop.

It is just as if you are carrying stones, colored stones, and then suddenly I give you real diamonds. Will you go on carrying those colored stones in your hands?

Will there be any effort on your part to drop them? You will simply drop them: hands will open and they will drop because now diamonds are available. And now if you want to carry those stones you will have to drop the diamonds.

No need to explain. It is self-explanatory.

Question 9

YOU SAID: "LIFE IS A GOSSIP IN THE ETERNITY OF SILENCE AND

EXISTENCE." SO WHAT IS A HUMAN BEING?

A gossip-creating animal.

Aristotle has defined man as a rational being. Man is not rational; and it is good that he is not. Man is ninety-nine per cent irrational; and it is good that he is because through irrationality all that is beautiful and lovely exists. Through reason, mathematics; through irreason, poetry. Through reason, science; through irreason, religion. Through reason the market, the money, the rupees, the dollars; through irreason love, singing, dancing. No, it is good that man is not a rational being. Man is irrational.

Many definitions have been tried. I would like to say man is a gossip-creating animal. He creates myths -- all myths are gossips, puranas. He creates religions, myths, stories about existence. Since the very beginning of humanity man has been creating beautiful mythology. He creates God. He creates that God created the world; and he creates beautiful myths. He weaves, goes on weaving newer and newer myths around and around. Man is a myth-creating animal; and life will be absolutely boring if there is no myth around it.

That is the trouble for the modern age: all the old myths have been dropped.

Foolish rationalists argued too much against them. They have been dropped because if you argue against a myth, the myth is indefensible. It cannot defend itself. It is very vulnerable; it is very delicate. If you start fighting with it you will destroy it, but by destroying it you will destroy something beautiful in the human heart. It is not the myth, myth is just symbolic -- deep are the roots in the heart. If you kill the myth you kill the heart.

Now, all over the world, those same rationalists who killed all the myths feel that now there is no meaning in life, no poetry, no reason to be happy, no cause to celebrate. All festivity has disappeared. Without a myth the world will be just a marketplace; all temples will disappear. Without myth all relationships will be bargains; there will be no love in them. Without myth you will be alone in vast emptiness.

Unless you are enlightened you cannot live that way; otherwise you will feel meaningless, and deep anxiety will arise and anguish will enter into your being.

You will start committing suicide. You will start finding some way or other --

drugs, alcohol, sex, anything -- to drown yourself so you can forget yourself because life seems to be meaningless.

Myth gives meaning. Myth is nothing but a beautiful gossip, but it helps you to live. Unless you become so capable of living without any gossiping, it helps you to travel, to journey in the world. It gives a human atmosphere around you; otherwise the world is very stony. Just think: Indians go to the rivers, to the Ganges -- they worship. That is a myth; otherwise the Ganges is just a river. But through a myth the Ganges becomes the mother, and when a Hindu goes to the Ganges it is a tremendous delight to him.

The stone in Mecca, the stone of Kaaba, is nothing but a stone. It is a cube stone, that's why it is called ka'bah: ka'bah means cube. But you cannot know how a Muslim feels when he goes to Kaaba. Tremendous energy arises. Not that Kaaba is doing something -- nothing, just a myth. When he kisses the stone, he is not walking on the earth; he has moved in another world, of poetry. When he walks around the Kaaba, he is walking around God himself. All over the world Muslims pray; their direction is towards the Kaaba. The direction differs: somebody praying in England will be looking at Kaaba; somebody praying in India will be looking at Kaaba; somebody praying in Egypt will be looking at Kaaba. Five times a day the Mohammedans pray all over the world, encircle the whole world, and they look at the Kaaba -- the Kaaba becomes the very center of the world. A myth, a beautiful myth. In that moment the whole world is surrounded by a poetry.

Man gives meaning to existence; that's what a myth is all about. Man is a gossip-creating animal. Small gossips, just about the neighborhood, about the neighbor's wife; and big gossips, cosmic, about God. But man enjoys it.

I love one story; I must have told it many times. It is a Jewish story: In a certain town, many years ago, many centuries ago, one rabbi existed.

Whenever there was some difficulty in the town, he would go to the forest, do some sacrifice, pray, follow a ritual, and tell God, "Avert that calamity. Save us."

And the town was always saved.

The rabbi died; another man became the rabbi. The town was in difficulty; the people gathered. The rabbi went to the forest, but he could not find the place. He did not know it. So he said to God, "I don't know the exact place where the old rabbi used to pray to you, but that doesn't matter. You know the place, so I will pray from here." The trouble never came to the town. People were happy.

Then this rabbi died; another rabbi followed. Again the town was in some trouble, some calamity. People gathered. He went to the forest, but he said to God, "I don't know exactly where the place is, I don't know the ritual. I only know the prayer. So please, you are all-knowing, so don't stick to the details.

Listen to me...." And he said whatsoever he wanted to say. The calamity was avoided.

Then he also died; another rabbi followed. The town gathered, there was some trouble, some disease was spreading, and they said, "Go to the forest; it has always been done. Ancient rabbis have always been going there."

He was sitting in his armchair. He said, "What is the need to go there? He can hear from here. And I don't know." So he looked at the skies and said, "Listen. I don't know the place, I don't know the ritual -- I don't even know the prayer. I know the whole story: how the first rabbi used to go, how the second rabbi used to go, how the third, how the fourth.... I will tell you the story -- and I know you love stories. Please, listen to the story and avoid the trouble."

And he told the whole story about the ancient rabbis. And it is said God loved the story so much that the town was saved.

He must love stories so much; he is a creator of myths himself. He must love stories. He is the first, who created the whole gossip.

Yes, life is a gossip, a momentary gossip in the eternal silence of existence, and man is a gossip-creating animal. Unless you become a god you will have to love gossiping: you will love stories of Rama and Seeta, of the mahabharata; you will love Greek, Roman, Chinese stories. Millions of them exist -- all beautiful.

If you don't bring logic to them, they can reveal inner doors; they can open inner mysteries. If you bring logic to them, doors are closed; then that temple is not for you. Love stories. When you love them they open their mysteries. And much is hidden in them: all that humanity has found has been hidden in the parables.

That's why Jesus goes on talking in parables, Buddha goes on talking in stories.

They all loved gossiping.

Question 10

YOU SAID THAT A MASTER SOMETIMES HAS TO BE ANGRY WITH THE

DISCIPLE AND IN THAT CASE HE IS ACTING. IS HE ACTING ALSO WHEN

HE LAUGHS OR SMILES AT HIM?

A Master is always acting; a Master is a perfect actor. He does not take life seriously. He does not take life as a worry, anxiety. It is a play. He is angry... he is acting. He is laughing... he is acting. A Master can only act, because he is not a doer. Whatsoever he does should be taken as acting; and if you cling too much to the acting you will miss the Master.

Forget his anger and forget his laughter. Look behind the anger and the laughter, and there you will find the old man. Neither laughing nor angry nor crying nor talking -- there you will find him in total silence. There you will find the Buddha: in deep tranquillity, in infinite calmness, not even a flicker of thought. Otherwise the Master is always on the stage.

But don't be deceived by the Master. Go on watching. Don't listen to his words; otherwise you will never be able to see him. Listen to his silence. Listen when there is a gap between two words. Read him between two lines. Don't pay much attention to what he says, what he does; only pay attention to what he is.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6

Chapter #5

Chapter title: Purity and Power

5 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

43. AUSTERITIES DESTROY IMPURITIES, AND WITH THE ENSUING

PERFECTION IN THE BODY AND SENSE ORGANS, PHYSICAL AND

MENTAL POWERS AWAKEN.

44. UNION WITH THE DIVINE HAPPENS THROUGH SELF STUDY.

45. TOTAL ILLUMINATION CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED BY SURRENDERING

TO GOD.

Man is like an iceberg: only a part, a minor part, is visible on the surface; the major part of the whole is hidden beneath. Or, man is like a tree: the real life is in the roots, hidden underground; only branches are visible. If you cut the branches, new branches will come up because branches are not the source; but if you cut the roots the tree is destroyed. Only a part of man is visible on the surface; the major part is hidden behind. And if you think that the visible man is all, then you commit a great mistake. Then you miss the whole mystery of man; and then you miss the doors within yourself which can lead you towards the divine.

If you think that by knowing the name of a person, by knowing from which family he comes, by knowing his profession, that he is a doctor or an engineer or a professor, or by knowing his face, his picture, you have known him; you are in great illusion. These are just the appearances on the surface. The real man is far, far away from all these. This way you may be acquainted, but you never know the man. It is enough as far as society is concerned; more is not needed. This skin-deep knowledge is enough for the marketplace, but if you really want to know the man then you have to go deep. And the only way to go deep is to go within yourself first.

Unless you know the unknown within you, you will never be able to know anybody else. The only way to know the mystery that man is, is to know the mystery that you are. There are hidden layers behind hidden layers. Man is infinity.

If you go on diving deep in man you will reach to God. Man is just the surface of the ocean, waves. If you dive deep you reach to the very center of existence.

Those who have known God -- they have not known him as an object. They have known him as their innermost subjectivity. Those who have known God have not encountered him. They have not seen him as an object; they have seen him as the very seer, as their own consciousness. You cannot encounter God anywhere except within yourself. He is your depth; you are his surface. You are his periphery; he is your center.

And the deeper you move within yourself, the deeper you are moving in the whole existence, in others also, because the center is one. Peripheries are millions, but the center is one. The whole existence is centered on one point --

that one point is God. God: that is the deepest depth of being.

It is a great journey, a great pilgrimage to know man. Patanjali's sutras give you clues how to enter.

The first sutra:

Kayendriya siddhih ashuddhih ksyayat tapasah.

AUSTERITIES DESTROY IMPURITIES, AND WITH THE ENSUING

PERFECTION IN THE BODY AND SENSE ORGANS, PHYSICAL AND

MENTAL POWERS AWAKEN.

Before you can understand this sutra, many more things have to be understood.

The body has been very much misused. You have mistreated your own body.

You don't know the mystery of the body itself. It is not just the skin; it is not just the bones; it is not just the blood. It is a great organic unity, a great dynamism.

For centuries man thought that blood filled the body as water fills a container.

Only just three centuries ago, we came to know that blood does not fill the body, that it is not a stagnant thing -- blood circulates. Only just three centuries ago, we came to know that blood circulates, it is a dynamic force. It does not fill the body, but it circulates -- so silently and so continuously, and the movement is so graceful, without any noise, that we have lived with bodies for millions of lives and we have never come to encounter the reality of the blood, that it circulates.

There are many more mysteries which are hidden. This body is just the first layer of many bodies -- in all, seven bodies. If you move deep in this body you will come across new phenomena. Behind this gross body is hidden the subtle body.

Once that subtle body awakes, you become very powerful because you attain to certain new dimensional forces. This body can lie down in your bed, and your subtle body can move. For it there is no barrier. The gravitation of the earth does not affect it; there is no barrier of time and space for it. It can move... it can move anywhere. The whole world is open for it. For the gross body that is not possible.

In some of your dreams the subtle body actually leaves your physical body. In some of your deep meditations your subtle body leaves your physical body.

Many of you, deeply meditating, sometimes have become aware that it feels as if you have risen above the earth, a few inches, a few feet. When you open your eyes you are sitting on the earth. You think you have imagined it. It is not so. The subtle body, in deep meditation, can go a little higher than your gross body.

Sometimes that, too, happens -- that the gross body also follows the subtle body.

There is a woman in Europe; she has been investigated by all the scientific methods. In deep meditation she rises four feet above the earth; not only in the subtle body, but the gross body also. It has been found to be a fact. This is said in the oldest yoga treatises: that in deep meditation it happens that with the subtle body the gross body can go above the ground -- and, exactly, it says it can go four feet very easily.

And the gross body is just the surface body, the skin of other bodies. Then behind the subtle there are subtler bodies -- in all, seven bodies. They all belong to seven different planes of being. The more you enter in your own being, the more you become aware that this body is not the all. But you will encounter the second body only if this body has become pure.

Yoga does not believe in torturing the body, it is not a masochistic affair -- but it believes in purifying it. And, sometimes, purifying it and torturing it may look alike. A distinction has to be made. A man can fast, and he may be only torturing. He may be just against his own body, suicidal, masochistic. But then another man can fast and he may not be a torturer, and he may not be a masochist, and he may not be trying to destroy the body in any way. Rather, he may be trying to purify it. Because in deep fasting, body attains to certain purities.

You continuously go on eating every day; you never give any holiday to the body. The body goes on accumulating many dead cells -- they become a load.

Not only are they a load and a burden, they are toxins, they are poisonous. They make the body impure. When the body is impure you cannot see the hidden body behind it. This body needs to be clean, transparent, pure; then suddenly you become aware of the second layer, the subtle body. When the subtle body is pure then you become aware of the third body, and the fourth, and so on.

Fasting helps tremendously, but one needs to be very much aware that one is not destroying the body. No condemnation should be in the mind; and there is the problem because almost all religions have condemned the body. Their original founders were not condemners; they were not poisoners. They loved their bodies. They loved the body so much that they always tried to purify it. Their fasting was a purification.

Then came blind followers, unaware of the deep science of fasting. They started fasting, blindly. They enjoyed, because mind is violent. It enjoys being violent with others, it enjoys a power, because whenever you are violent with others you feel powerful; but to be violent with others is risky because the other will retaliate. Then there is a simple way: to be violent with your own body. Then there is no risk. The body cannot retaliate. The body cannot harm you. You can go on harming your own body; there is nobody to react. This is simple. You can torture and enjoy power -- that now you control your body; the body doesn't control you.

If this fasting is aggressive, violent, if there is anger and destructiveness; then you miss the point. You are not purifying the body; you are in fact destroying it.

And to clean a mirror is one thing and to destroy the mirror is another. To clean the mirror is totally different, because when the mirror is clean of all dust, pure, you will be able to look into it -- it will reflect you. But if you destroy the mirror, then there is no possibility to look into it. If you destroy the gross body you lose all possibility of contact with the second, the subtle body. Purify it, but don't be destructive.

And how does fasting purify? Because whenever you are on a fast the body has no more work of digestion. In that period the body can work in throwing out dead cells, toxins. It is just as one day, Sunday or Saturday, you are on a holiday and you come home and you clean the whole day. The whole week you were so engaged and so busy you couldn't clean the house. When the body has nothing to digest, you have not eaten anything, the body starts a self cleaning. A process starts spontaneously and the body starts throwing out all that is not needed, which is like a load. Fasting is a method of purification. Once in a while, a fast is beautiful -- not doing anything, not eating, just resting. Take as much liquid as possible and just rest, and the body will be cleaned.

Sometimes, if you feel that a longer fast is needed, you can do a longer fast also --

but be deep in love with the body. And if you feel the fast is harming the body in any way, stop it. If the fast is helping the body, you will feel more energetic; you will feel more alive; you will feel rejuvenated, vitalized. This should be the criterion: if you start feeling that you are getting weaker, if you start feeling that a subtle trembling is coming into the body, then be aware -- now the thing is no longer a purification. It has become destructive. Stop it.

But one should learn the whole science of it. In fact one should do fasting near somebody who has been fasting for long and who knows the whole path very well, who knows all the symptoms: if it becomes destructive what will start happening; if it is not destructive then what will happen. After a real, purifying fast you will feel new, younger, cleaner, weightless, happier; and the body will be functioning better because now it is unloaded. But fasting comes only if you have been eating wrongly. If you have not been eating wrongly there is no need for fasting. Fasting is needed only when you have already done the wrong with the body -- and we all have been eating wrongly.

Man has lost the path. No animal eats like man; every animal has its chosen food.

If you bring buffaloes in the garden and leave them, they will eat only a particular grass. They will not go on eating everything and anything -- they are very choosey. They have a certain feeling about their food. Man is completely lost, has no feeling about his food. He goes on eating everything and anything. In fact you cannot find anything which is not eaten somewhere or other by man. In some places, ants are eaten. In some places, snakes are eaten. In some places, dogs are eaten. Man has eaten everything. Man is simply mad. He does not know what is in resonance with his body and what is not. He is completely confused.

Man, naturally, should be a vegetarian, because the whole body is made for vegetarian food. Even scientists concede to the fact that the whole structure of the human body shows that man should not be a nonvegetarian. Man comes from the monkeys. Monkeys are vegetarians -- absolute vegetarians. If Darwin is true then man should be a vegetarian. Now there are ways to judge whether a certain species of animal is vegetarian or nonvegetarian: it depends on the intestine, the length of the intestine. Nonvegetarian animals have a very small intestine. Tigers, lions -- they have a very small intestine, because meat is already a digested food. It does not need a long intestine to digest it. The work of digestion has been done by the animal. Now you are eating the animal's meat. It is already digested -- no long intestine is needed. Man has one of the longest intestines: that means man is a vegetarian. A long digestion is needed, and much excreta will be there which has to be thrown out.

If man is not a nonvegetarian and he goes on eating meat, the body is burdened.

In the East, all the great meditators -- Buddha, Mahavir -- they have emphasized the fact. Not because of any concept of nonviolence -- that is a secondary thing --

but because if you really want to move in deep meditation your body needs to be weightless, natural, flowing. Your body needs to be unloaded; and a nonvegetarian's body is very much loaded.

Just watch what happens when you eat meat: when you kill an animal what happens to the animal when he is killed? Of course, nobody wants to be killed.

Life wants to prolong itself; the animal is not dying willingly. If somebody kills you, you will not die willingly. If a lion jumps on you and kills you, what will happen to your mind? The same happens when you kill a lion. Agony, fear, death, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness -- all these things happen to the animal. All over his body -- violence, anguish, agony spreads. The whole body becomes full of toxins, poisons. All the body glands release poisons because the animal is dying very unwillingly. And then you eat the meat -- that meat carries all the poisons that the animal has released. The whole energy is poisonous. Then those poisons are carried in your body.

And that meat which you are eating belonged to an animal body. It had a specific purpose there. A specific type of consciousness existed in the animal's body. You are on a higher plane than the animal's consciousness, and when you eat the animal's meat your body goes to the lowest plane, to the lower plane of the animal. Then there exists a gap between your consciousness and your body, and a tension arises, and anxiety arises.

One should eat things which are natural -- natural for you. Fruits, nuts, vegetables -- eat as much as you can. And the beauty is that you cannot eat these things more than is needed. Whatsoever is natural always gives you a satisfaction, because it satiates your body, saturates you. You feel fulfilled. If some thing is unnatural it never gives you a feeling of fulfillment. Go on eating ice cream: you never feel that you are satiated. In fact the more you eat, the more you feel like eating. It is not a food. Your mind is being tricked. Now you are not eating according to the body need; you are eating just to taste it. The tongue has become the controller.

The tongue should not be the controller. It does not know anything about the stomach. It does not know anything about the body. The tongue has a specific purpose to fulfill: to taste food. Naturally, the tongue has to judge, that is the only thing, which food is for the body -- for my body -- and which food is not for my body. It is just a watchman on the door; it is not the master. And if the watchman on the door becomes the master, then everything will be confused.

Now advertisers know well that the tongue can be tricked, the nose can be tricked. And they are not the masters. You may not be aware: much food research goes on in the world, and they say if your nose is closed completely, and your eyes closed, and then you are given an onion to eat, you cannot tell what you are eating. You cannot tell onion from apple if the nose is closed completely because half of the taste comes from the smell, is decided by the nose, and half is decided by the tongue -- and these two have become the controllers. Now they know: whether ice cream is nutritious or not is not the point. It can carry a flavor, it can carry some chemicals which fulfill the tongue but are not needed for the body.

Man is confused -- more confused than buffaloes. You cannot convince buffaloes to eat ice cream. Try!

A natural food... and when I say "natural" I mean that which your body needs.

The need of a tiger is different; he has to be very violent. If you eat the meat of a tiger you will be violent, but where will your violence be expressed? You have to live in human society, not in a jungle. Then you will have to suppress the violence. Then a vicious circle starts.

When you suppress violence, what happens? When you feel angry, violent, a certain poisonous energy is released, because that poison creates a situation where you can be really violent and kill somebody. The energy moves towards your hands; the energy moves towards your teeth -- these are the two places from where animals become violent. Man is part of the animal kingdom.

When you are angry, energy is released -- it comes to the hands and to the teeth, to the jaw -- but you live in a human society and it is not always profitable to be angry. You live in a civilized world, and you cannot behave like an animal. If you behave like an animal, you will have to pay too much for it -- and you are not ready to pay that much. Then what do you do? You suppress the anger in the hand; you suppress the anger in your teeth -- you go on smiling a false smile, and your teeth go on accumulating anger.

I have rarely come to see people with a natural jaw. It is not natural -- blocked, stiff -- because too much anger is there. If you press the jaw of a person, the anger can be released. Hands become ugly. They lose grace, they lose flexibility, because too much anger is suppressed there. People who have been working on deep massage, they have come to know that when you touch the hands deeply, massage the hands, the person starts becoming angry. There is no reason. You are massaging the man and suddenly he starts feeling angry. If you press the jaw, persons become angry again. They carry accumulated anger.

These are the impurities in the body: they have to be released. If you don't release them the body will remain heavy. Yoga exercises exist to release all sorts of accumulated poisons in the body. Yoga movements release them; and a yogi's body has a suppleness of its own. Yoga exercises are totally different from other exercises. They don't make your body strong; they make your body more flexible. And when your body is more flexible, you are strong in a very different sense: you are younger. They make your body more liquid, more flowing -- no blocks in the body. The whole body exists as an organic unity, in a deep rhythm of its own. It is not Like noise in the market; it is like an orchestra. A deep rhythm inside, no blocks, then the body is pure. Yoga exercises can be tremendously helpful.

Everybody is carrying much rubbish in the stomach, because that is the only space in the body where you can suppress things. There is no other space. If you want to suppress anything it has to be suppressed in the stomach. If you want to cry -- your wife has died, your beloved has died, your friend has died -- but it doesn't look good, looks as if you are a weakling, crying for a woman, you suppress it: where will you put that crying? Naturally, you have to suppress it in the stomach. That is the only space available in the body, the only hollow place, where you can force.

If you suppress in the stomach.... And everybody has suppressed many sorts of emotions: of love, of sexuality, of anger, of sadness, of weeping -- even of laughter. You cannot laugh a belly laugh. It looks rude, looks vulgar -- you are not cultured then. You have suppressed everything. Because of this suppression, you cannot breathe deeply, you have to breathe shallowly. Because if you breathe deeply then those wounds of suppression, they would release their energy. You are afraid. Every body is afraid to move in the stomach.

Every child, when born, breathes through the belly. Look at a child sleeping: the belly goes up and down -- never the chest. No child breathes from the chest; they breathe from the belly. They are completely free now, nothing is suppressed.

Their stomachs are empty, and that emptiness has a beauty in the body.

Once the stomach has too much suppression in it, the body is divided in two parts, the lower and the higher. Then you are not one; you are two. The lower part is the discarded part. The unity is lost; a duality has entered into your being.

Now you cannot be beautiful, you cannot be graceful. You are carrying two bodies instead of one -- and there will always remain a gap between the two. You cannot walk beautifully. Somehow you have to carry your legs. In fact if the body is one, your legs will carry you. If the body is divided in two then you have to carry your legs.

You have to drag your body. It is like a burden. You cannot enjoy it. You cannot enjoy a good walk, you cannot enjoy a good swim, you cannot enjoy a fast run --

because the body is not one. For all these movements, and to enjoy them, the body needs to be reunited. A unison has to be created again: the stomach will have to be cleansed completely.

For the cleansing of the stomach, very deep breathing is needed, because when you inhale deeply and exhale deeply, the stomach throws all that it is carrying. In exhalations, the stomach releases itself. Hence the importance of pranayam, of deep rhythmic breathing. The emphasis should be on the exhalation so that everything that the stomach has been unnecessarily carrying is released.

And when the stomach is not carrying emotions inside, if you have constipation it will suddenly disappear. When you are suppressing emotions in the stomach there will be constipation because the stomach is not free to have its movements.

You are deeply controlling it; you can't allow it freedom. So if emotions are suppressed, there will be constipation. Constipation is more a mental disease than a physical one. It belongs to the mind more than it belongs to the body.

But remember, I am not dividing mind and body in two. They are two aspects of the same phenomenon. Mind and body are not two things. In fact to say "mind and body" is not good: "mind-body" will be the right expression. Your body is a psychosomatic phenomenon. Mind is the subtlest part of the body, and body is the grossest part of the mind. And they both affect each other; they run parallel.

If you are suppressing something in the mind, the body will start a suppressing journey. If the mind releases everything, the body also releases everything. That's why I emphasize catharsis very much. Catharsis is a cleansing process.

These are all austerities: fasting; natural eating; deep, rhythmic breathing; yoga exercises; living a more and more natural, flexible, supple life; creating less and less suppressed attitudes; allowing the body to have its own say, following the wisdom of the body. "Austerities destroy impurities...." These I call austerities.

"Austerities" does not mean to torture the body. It means to create a living fire in the body so that the body is cleansed. As if you have thrown gold into the fire --

all that was not gold is burned. Only pure gold comes out.

"Austerities destroy impurities, AND WITH THE ENSUING PERFECTION IN

THE BODY AND SENSE ORGANS, PHYSICAL AND MENTAL POWERS

AWAKEN."

When the body is pure, you will see tremendous new energies arising, new dimensions opening before you, new doors suddenly opening, new possibilities.

Body has much hidden power. Once it is released, you will not be able to believe it, that the body carried so many things in it, and so close.

And every sense has a hidden sense behind it. Eyes have a hidden eyesight, an insight behind them. When the eyes are pure, clean, then you don't see things only as they are on the surface. You start seeing their depth. A new dimension opens. Right now when you see a person you don't see his aura; you just see his physical body. The physical body is surrounded by a very subtle aura. A diffused light surrounds the body. And everybody's body is surrounded by a different color aura. The moment your eyes are clean you can see the aura; and by seeing the aura you know many things about the man that you cannot know in any other way. And the man cannot deceive you, it is impossible, because his aura reveals his being.

Somebody comes with an aura of dishonesty and he tries to convince you that he is a very honest man: the aura cannot deceive, because that man cannot control the aura. That is not possible. The dishonest aura has a different color. The aura of an honest man has a different color. The aura of a pure man is pure white. The more impure a man, the more white moves towards gray. The more impure, it moves still more towards black. The aura of a man who is absolutely dishonest is absolutely black. The aura of a confused man changes; it is never the same. Even if you go on looking for just a few minutes, you will see the aura is changing. The man is confused. He himself is not settled in what he is. He is a changing aura.

A man who is meditative has a very silent quality to the aura, a calmness, a coolness around him. The man who is in deep anxiety, turmoil, tension, has the same quality to the aura also. The man who is very tense may try smiling, may create a face, may have a mask, but when he comes to you his aura will show the reality.

And the same happens with the ears also. Just as eyes have a deep insight, the ears have a deep hearing quality. Then you don't hear what the man is saying, but rather, you hear the music. You don't bother about the words that he is using, but the tone, but the rhythm of his voice... an inner quality of the voice which says many things which words cannot deceive, cannot change. The man may be trying to be very polite, but his rudeness will be in his sound. The man may be trying to be very graceful, but his sound will show his ungracefulness.

The man may be trying to show his certainty, but his sound will show the... the hesitant quality.

And if you can hear the very sound, and if you can see the aura, and if you can feel the quality of the being that is near you, you become capable of many things.

And these are very simple things. They start happening once the austerity starts.

Then there are deeper powers which yoga calls siddhis -- magical powers, miraculous powers. They look like miracles because we don't understand their mechanism, how they function. Once you know the mechanism they are not miracles. In fact a miracle is not possible. All that happens, happens according to a law. The law may not be known: then you call it a miracle. When the law is known the miracle disappears.

Just now in India they have introduced television in the villages. For the first time, villagers have watched Indira Gandhi in the television boxes, as the villagers call them -- "picture boxes." They could not believe. Impossible. They went around the boxes, they looked from everywhere. How is Indira Gandhi hidden in the box? A miracle, unbelievably miraculous, but once you know the law the thing is simple.

All miracles are according to hidden laws. Yoga says there is no miracle in the world because "miracle" means something against the law, which is not possible.

How is there any possibility to go against the universal law? There is no possibility. It may be people don't know.

Siddhis become possible as you go deeper into purities and perfection. For example, if you can move your astral body out of the gross body you can do many things which will be miraculous. You can visit people. They can see you but they cannot touch you. You can even talk to them by your astral projection.

You can heal people. If you are really pure, just your touch, laying on of the hands, and there will be a miracle. Just surrounding you will be the healing power -- wherever you will move, healing will happen automatically. Not that you do it. The very purity... you have become a vehicle of the infinite forces.

But one has to move withinwards, one has to search one's own innermost core.

"Austerities destroy impurities, and with the ensuing perfection in the body and sense organs, physical and mental powers awaken." And the greatest power that awakens in you is the feeling of deathlessness. Not that you have a theory, a system, a philosophy that you are immortal, no. Now you have a feeling, now you are grounded in it -- now you know it. It is not a question of any theory: it has become your knowing that there is no death. This body will disappear into its elements, but your consciousness cannot disappear. The mind will disintegrate, the thoughts will be released, the body will go into the elements --

but you, the witnessing self, will remain.

You know it because now you can see your body from the far, faraway space.

You can see your body separate from you. You can come out of the body and look at it. You can move around your own body. Now you know that the body will be left when you will die, but not you. Now you can see the mind functioning as a mechanism, as a biocomputer. You are the seer, not the mind.

Now the body and mind go on functioning, but you are not identified.

This is the greatest miracle that can happen to a man: that he comes to know that he is deathless. Then the fear of death disappears, and with the fear of death all fears disappear.

And when fears disappear, love arises. When there is no fear, love arises; only then love arises. How can love arise in a fear ridden mind? You may seek friendship, you may seek a relationship, but you seek it out of fear -- to forget yourself, to drown yourself in the relationship. It is not love. Love arises only when you have transcended death. They both cannot exist together: if you are afraid of death, how can you love? Out of this fear you may try to find company, but the relationship will remain of fear.

That's why ninety nine per cent of religious people pray, but their prayer is not real prayer. It is not out of love; it is out of fear. Their God is out of the fear. Only rarely, one per cent of religious persons come to realize deathlessness. Then a prayer arises which is not out of fear, which is out of love, sheer gratitude, a thankfulness.

Swadhyayat istadevata samprayogah.

UNION WITH THE DIVINE HAPPENS THROUGH SELF STUDY --

SWADHYAYA.

This is a very important sutra: "Union with the divine happens through self study." One has to study oneself -- that is the only way to reach the divine.

Patanjali does not say, "Go to the temple." He does not say, "Go to the church."

He does not say, "Do the rituals." No, that is not the way to be one with the divine. Go into yourself -- swadhyaya, self study -- because he is hidden behind you, within you. He is your withinmost core. You are the temple; go within.

Study yourself. You are a tremendous phenomenon -- study yourself. Study all that you are. And the day you have studied yourself completely, he will be revealed. He is hidden behind you, within you. He is you in your deepest being.

So study yourself.

This "study" means actually what Gurdjieff means by "self-remembering."

Patanjali's swadhyaya is exactly what Gurdjieff means by "self-remembering."

Remember yourself and just go on watching. How you relate with people --

watch. Relationship is a mirror. How you relate with strangers, how you relate with people who are known to you, how you relate with your servant, how you relate with your boss -- just go on watching. Let every relationship be a mirror, a reflection, and watch how you change your mask. Look at your greed, look at your jealousies, look at your fear, look at your anxieties, possessiveness -- go on looking and watching.

There is no need to do anything! That's the beauty of the sutra. Patanjali does not say, "Do something!" He says, "Study yourself." The very study, the very awareness will do. A transformation will happen when you come face to face to know your whole being.

In different moods: when you are sad -- watch; when you are happy -- watch; when you are indifferent -- watch; when you are feeling hopeless -- watch; when you are filled with hope so much -- watch; in desire, in frustration.... There are millions of moods around you -- go on watching. Let every mood be a window to look within yourself. From all colors of the rainbow, watch yourself. When you are alone -- watch. When you are not alone -- watch. Move to the mountains, isolated -- watch. Go to the factory, to the office -- watch how you change, where you change.

If you go on watching.... Never relax this watching for a single moment. Buddha has said, "Then when you go to your bed -- go on watching. When you go on, falling into sleep -- go on watching how you fall asleep." Go on watching. Don't allow anything to pass without watching. Just this self remembering, this self-study, will do all. You need not ask, "What do I do after I have watched" Nothing is needed. Once you watch your hatred totally, it disappears.

And this is the criterion: that which disappears by watching is sin, and that which grows by watching is virtue. That's the only definition I can give to you. I don't say that "this is sin and that is virtue." No, sin and virtue cannot be objectified. That which grows by watching is virtue; that which disappears by watching is sin. Anger will disappear by watching; love will grow. Hatred will disappear; compassion will grow. Violence will disappear; prayer will grow, gratitude will grow. So whatsoever disappears through watching is sin. Nothing else is needed to be done with it. Just watch it and it disappears. It disappears just as when you bring light to a dark room the darkness disappears. The room does not disappear; the darkness disappears.

You will not disappear by watching. In fact by watching, you will be revealed.

Only darkness will disappear: the darkness of anger, the darkness of possessiveness, the darkness of jealousy -- all that will disappear. Only you will be left in your pristine purity. Only your inner space will be left -- empty, void.

"Union with the divine happens through self-study." Nothing else is needed --

awareness.

Samadhi siddha Ishwar pranidhanat.

TOTAL ILLUMINATION CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED BY SURRENDERING TO

GOD.

And when you have studied yourself, when you have come to know yourself...

surrender. That becomes very simple. It is not an effort then. Now if you want to surrender, it will kc a tremendous effort; and then too it will never be total. If right now you want to surrender, how can you surrender with hatred inside?

How can you surrender with jealousy inside? How can you surrender with violence inside? Surrender is possible only when you are absolutely pure.

How can you go to God and put your hatred, violence, jealousies at his feet? No, only when you are pure, a flower of purity -- then you enter the temple and surrender it.

To surrender, one should become worthy of it, because surrender is the greatest act. Nothing is beyond it. You cannot surrender by your will and effort, because will and effort belong to the ego. The ego cannot surrender. When you go on studying yourself, watching yourself, the ego disappears. You remain, but there is no longer the "I." You are a vast emptiness -- with no "I" in it. You are a vast amness, but no "I" in it. Being exists, ego no more -- then it is possible to surrender.

"Total illumination can be accomplished by surrendering to God." Total illumination, samadhi: you become light itself. Everything disappears. You remain as energy; and the purest energy is light. Now scientists, physicists, say that if anything is moved at the speed of light it will become light. If a stone brick is thrown at the speed of light, the brick will disappear. It will become light itself because at that speed things disappear; only energy remains. They have discovered it just now, within this century, that there is a possibility that all matter is convertible into light, into energy. Matter is a slow-speed energy; light is a high-speed energy.

Ego is a material thing; it is a slow-speed energy. When you surrender it, you attain to the speed of light. Then you are no longer a solid thing: then you are weightless energy. And weightless energy has no limitation; it is unlimited. And weightless energy cannot be defined in any other way -- the only way is to say that it is light. The Bible says, "God is light." The Koran says, "God is light." The Upanishads say, "God is light." You become light.

"Total illumination can be accomplished by surrendering to God." First, move through self-study so you can encounter God within. Then surrender to it. All and all that you are -- surrender to it. And remember, that surrendering is not an effort, so don't be bothered about how to surrender. Just first remember yourself; surrendering comes as a shadow. There is no technique to surrender. Once you know yourself, you know now how to bow down and surrender yourself.

Surrendered, you become God himself. Fighting with the whole, you remain an ugly ego. Surrendered with the whole, you become the whole. Let-go is the ultimate mantra.

But the greed may arise in your mind: "Then why wait? Why should I not surrender now?" You cannot. You are the barrier, so how can you surrender?

When you are not, surrender will be. If you are, surrender is not possible. You will not surrender; your disappearance will be the surrender. You go out of one door; from another door enters surrender. You and surrender cannot exist together.

So remember, you cannot surrender. Watch yourself, so you become purer and purer and purer -- so pure that almost nothing is left, only a purity, a fragrance --

then surrender happens.

In this sutra Patanjali is simply saying that total illumination can be accomplished by surrendering to God. He is not saying how to surrender. He is not saying that surrender has to be done. He is simply indicating a phenomenon.

Self-study has to be done; you will come face to face with God. If you have done self-study you enter the temple, you face God, and then there is no problem. The moment you face him surrender happens. It is not a doing; it is a happening.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6

Chapter #6

Chapter title: Mind: THE Stupidity

6 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1

ARE SOME PEOPLE MORE STUPID THAN OTHERS?

Mind is stupid. Unless you go beyond mind you don't go beyond stupidity; mind, as such, is stupid.

And minds are of two types: knowledgeable and not knowledgeable. But both are stupid. The knowledgeable mind is thought to be intelligent. It is not. The less knowledgeable mind is thought to be stupid, but both are stupid.

In your stupidity you can know much -- you can gather much information; you can carry loads of scripture with you; you can train the mind, condition the mind; you can memorize; you can almost become an ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA -- but that doesn't make any difference in your stupidity. In fact if you come across a man who has no longer any mind, your stupidity will be more than the stupidity of those who have no information, who are simply ignorant.

To know more is not to become knowing, and to know less is not to be stupid.

Stupidity is a sort of sleep, a deep unawareness. You go on doing things not knowing why. You go on being involved in a thousand and one situations not knowing why. You move through life fast asleep. That sleepiness is stupidity.

Being identified with the mind is stupidity. If you remember, if you become aware and the identity is lost with the mind, if you are no longer mind, if you feel a transcendence to the mind; intelligence arises. Intelligence is a sort of awakening. Asleep, you are stupid. Awake, stupidity has disappeared: for the first time, intelligence enters in.

It is possible to know much without knowing yourself; then it is all stupidity.

Just the reverse is also possible: to know oneself -- and without knowing anything else. But to know oneself is enough to be intelligent; and a man who knows himself will behave intelligently in any and every situation. He will respond intelligently. His response will not be a reaction; he will not act out of the past. He will act in the present; he will be here-now.

Stupid mind always acts out of the past. Intelligence need not be concerned with the past. Intelligence is always in the present: I ask you a question -- your intelligence answers it, not your memory. Then you are not stupid. But if only the memory answers it, not intelligence -- then you don't look at the question. In fact you don't bother about the question; you simply carry a ready-made answer.

It is related about Mulla Nasrudin that the emperor was going to visit his town.

The villagers were very much afraid to face the emperor, so they all asked Nasrudin, "Please, represent us. We are foolish people, ignorant. You are the only wise one here, so please tackle the situation because we don't know the ways of the court, and the emperor is coming for the first time."

Nasrudin said, "Of course. I have seen many emperors and I have visited many courts. Don't be worried."

But the people of the court were themselves worried about the village, so they came just to prepare the whole situation. When they asked who is going to represent them, the villagers said, "Mulla Nasrudin is going to represent us. He is our leader, our guide, our philosopher."

So they trained Mulla Nasrudin, saying, "You need not be worried too much. The king is going to ask only three questions. The first question will be about your age. How old are you?"

Nasrudin said, "Seventy."

"So remember it. Don't be dazzled too much by the emperor and the court. When he asks how old you are, say, 'Seventy' -- not a single word more nor less; otherwise you can be in difficulty. Then he will ask how long you have been serving in the village mosque, how long you have been a religious teacher here.

So exactly tell the years. How long have you been serving?"

He said, "For thirty years."

Questions like this. Then the emperor came. The people who had trained Nasrudin, they had trained the emperor also, saying, "The people of this village are very simple, and their leader looks a little stupid, so please, be kind and don't ask anything else. These are the questions...."

But the king forgot. So before asking, "How old are you?" he asked, "How long have you been the spiritual guide of this town?"

Now, Nasrudin had fixed answers. He said, "Seventy years."

The king looked a little puzzled because the man looks not more than seventy, so has he been a religious teacher from his very birth? Then he said, "I am surprised.

Then how old are you?"

Nasrudin said, "Thirty years." Because this was the fixed thing: that first he has to say "seventy years," then he has to say "thirty years."

The king said, "Are you mad?"

Nasrudin said, "Sir, we both are mad -- in our own ways! You are asking wrong questions -- and I have to answer right answers! This is the problem. I cannot change, because those people are here, those who have trained me. They are looking at me. I cannot change, and you are asking wrong questions. We both are mad in our own ways. I am forced to answer the right answer -- that is my madness. Had there been no ready-made answers I would have answered you rightly, but now there is trouble. And you are asking a wrong question, in a wrong sequence."

This happens to the stupid mind. Continuously, watch in yourself: the Mulla Nasrudin is part of you. Whenever you answer a question because you have a ready-made answer, you are behaving stupidly. The situation may have changed, the reference may have changed, the context may have changed -- and you are acting out of the past.

Act out of the present. Act out of unpreparedness. Act out of the present's awareness; don't act out of the past. Then you are not stupid.

Now you can understand why I say mind is stupid: because mind is only past.

Mind is accumulated past, all that you have known in the past. Life is continuously changing. The mind remains the same -- it carries dead memories, dead information. The context changing every moment, the question changing every moment, the emperor changing every moment -- and you carry fixed answers. You will always be in trouble. A stupid mind is always in trouble, suffers. For nothing. Only for this reason: that he is too ready, too prepared.

Every moment remain unprepared. Then you remain innocent. Then you are not carrying something. Whenever you have a ready-made answer you don't listen to the question exactly as it is. Before you have listened to the question, the answer has already popped up in the mind; the answer is already standing between you and the question. Before you have looked around and watched the situation, you are already reacting.

Mind is the past, mind is the memory -- -that's why mind is stupid, all minds.

You may be a villager, not knowing much about the world. You may be a professor in the University of Poona, knowing much. That doesn't make any difference. In fact sometimes it happens that villagers are more intelligent --

because they know nothing. They have to rely on intelligence. They cannot rely on their information, they have none. If you are alert you can see the quality of innocence in a villager. He is like a child.

Children are more intelligent than adults, more intelligent than old people. That's why children can learn so easily. They are more intelligent. The mind is not yet there. They are mindless. They don't carry any past; they have none. They are moving, wondering, surprised at everything. They always look to the situation.

In fact they have nothing else to look to -- no ready-made answers. Sometimes children answer in such a beautiful and alive way as old people cannot. Old people always have the mind there to answer for them. They have a servant, a mechanism, a biocomputer; and they rely on it. The more you become old, the more you become stupid.

Of course, old people think they have become very wise, because they know many answers. If this is wisdom then computers will be the most wise people.

Then there is no need for you to think about Buddha and Jesus and Zarathustra, no. Computers will be wiser because they will know more. They can know all; they can be fed every information. And they will function better because they are mechanisms.

No, wisdom is not concerned at all with knowledge. It is concerned with awareness, intelligence, understanding. Be more alert. Then you are not in the grip of the mind. Then you can use the mind whenever needed but you are not used by the mind. Then the mind is no longer the master -- you are the master and the mind is the servant. Whenever you need the servant you ask, but you are not ruled by, you are not manipulated by, the mind.

The ordinary situation of mind is such as if the car is manipulating the driver.

The car says, "Go this way," and the driver has to follow. Sometimes it happens: brakes fail, the wheel is not functioning well, you wanted to go to the south and the car moves to the north. The mechanism has failed; it is an accident. But that accident has become normal with human mind. Continuously you want to go somewhere and the mind wants to go somewhere else. You wanted to go to the temple and the mind was thinking to go to the theater, and you find yourself in the theater. Maybe you had come out of your house to go to the temple to pray...

you are sitting in a theater -- because the car wanted to move that way and you are incapable.

Intelligence is a mastery -- mastery of all the mechanisms within you. The body is a mechanism, the mind is a mechanism: you become the master. Nobody is manipulating you; the mind simply receives your orders. This is intelligence.

So if you ask, "Are some people more stupid than others?" -- it depends. As I see, people are knowledgeable stupids, not-knowledgeable stupids. These are the ordinary two categories, because the third category is so unique you cannot make it a category. Rarely, sometimes, a Buddha happens: a Buddha is intelligent. But then he looks rebellious because he does not give your pat answers, fixed answers. He moves away from the superhighway; he has his own path. He makes his own path. Intelligence always follows itself. It does not follow anybody. Intelligence makes its own path. Only stupid people follow.

If you are here with me you can be here in two ways. You can be intelligently here with me: then you will learn from me, but you will not follow. You will follow your own intelligence. But if you are stupid you don't bother about learning: you simply follow me. That looks simple, less risky, less dangerous, more secure, safe, because you can always throw the responsibility on me; but if you choose a secure safety-way, you have chosen death. You have not chosen life. Life is dangerous and risky. Intelligence will always choose life -- at any cost, whatsoever the risk -- because that's the only way to be alive.

Intelligence is a quality of awareness. Intelligent people are not stupid.

Question 2

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INTROSPECTION AND SELF-REMEMBERING?

A lot of difference. Introspection is thinking about yourself. Self-remembering is not thinking at all: it is becoming aware about yourself. The difference is subtle, but very great.

The Western psychology insists on introspection, and the Eastern psychology insists on self-remembering. When you introspect, what do you do? For example, you are angry: you start thinking about anger -- how it is caused. You start analyzing why it is caused. You start judging whether it is good or bad. You start rationalizing that you had been angry because the situation was such. You brood about anger, you analyze anger, but the focus of attention is on the anger, not on the self. Your whole consciousness is focused on the anger -- you are watching, analyzing, associating, thinking about it, trying to figure out how to avoid, how to get rid of it, how not to do it again. This is a thinking process. You will judge it

"bad" because it is destructive. You will take a vow that "I will never commit the same mistake again." You will try to control this anger through will. That's why the Western psychology has become analytical... analysis, dissection.

The Eastern emphasis is not on the anger. The Eastern emphasis is on the self. To be aware when you are angry, to be so aware.... Not to think, because thinking is a sleeping thing. You can think while you are fast asleep; there is no need for awareness. In fact you continuously think without being at all aware. The thinking goes on and on and on. Even when you are fast asleep in the night, the thinking continues, the mind goes on continuing its inner chatter. It is a mechanical thing.

The Eastern psychology says, "Be aware. Don't try to analyze anger, there is no need. Just look at it, but look with awareness. Don't start thinking." In fact if you start thinking then thinking will become a barrier to looking at anger. Then thinking will garb it. Then thinking will be like a cloud surrounding it; the clarity will be lost. Don't think at all. Be in a state of no-thought, and look.

When there is not even a ripple of thinking between you and the anger, the anger is faced, encountered. You don't dissect it. You don't bother to go to its source, because the source is in the past. You don't judge it, because the moment you judge, thinking starts. You don't take any vow that "I will not do it," because that vow leads you into the future. In awareness you remain with the feeling of anger

-- exactly here-now. You are not interested in changing it, you are not interested in thinking about it: you are interested to look at it directly, face to face, immediate. Then it is self-remembering.

And this is the beauty of it: that if you can look at anger it disappears. It not only disappears at this moment: the very disappearance of it by your deep look gives you the key that there is no need to use will, there is no need to make any decision for the future, and there is no need to go to the original source from where it comes. It is unnecessary. You have the key now: look at anger, and anger disappears. And this look is available forever. Whenever anger will be there you can look; then this look grows deeper.

There are three stages of the look. First, when the anger has already happened and gone. Almost, you look at the tail disappearing -- the elephant has gone, only the tail is there -- because when the anger was there, really, you were so deeply involved in it you could not be aware. When the anger has almost disappeared, ninety-nine per cent -- only one per cent, the last part of it is going, disappearing into the farther horizon -- then you become aware: this is the first state of awareness. Good, but not enough.

The second state is when the elephant is there, not the tail: when the situation is ripe, you are really angry to the peak -- boiling, burning -- then you become aware.

Then there is still a third stage: the anger has not come, is still coming -- not the tail but the head. It is just entering your area of consciousness and you become aware -- then the elephant never materializes. You killed the animal before it was born. That is birth control. The phenomenon has not happened; then it leaves no trace.

If you stop it in the middle, half the head has happened, it will leave something on you -- -a trace, a load, a small wound. You will feel scratched. Even if you don't allow it now to have its full sway, it has entered. If you look at the tail, the whole thing has already happened. You can at the most repent; and repentance is a thinking. Again you become a victim of the thinking mind.

A man of awareness never repents. There is no point in repenting because the more awareness goes deep, he can stop a process even before it has begun. Then what is the point of repenting? And not that he tries to stop it -- that's the beauty of it. He simply looks at it. When you look at a mood, at a situation, at an emotion, feeling, thought -- when you bring the quality of look -- the look is like light: darkness disappears.

There is a vast difference between introspection and self-remembering. I am not in favor of introspection. In fact, introspection is a little pathological: it is playing with your own wound. It won't help. It won't help the wound to heal. In fact it will do just the reverse: if you go on fingering your wound you will keep it fresh.

Introspection is not good. Introspective people are always morbid, ill. They think too much. Introspective people are closed. They just go on playing with their wounds and their anguish and their anxiety -- and the whole life seems then too much of a problem; it cannot be solved. Everything looks like a problem for an introspective man. Whatsoever happens becomes a problem.

And, then, he is inside too much; he cannot move out. The balance is lost.

Introspective people escape from life and go to the Himalayas. They are morbid, ill, pathological. A healthy person has a healthy swing: he can move in, he can move out. For him there is no problem for in and out. In fact he doesn't divide the inner life and the outer life. He has a free flow, a free swing. Whenever it is needed he simply moves in. Whenever it is needed he simply moves out. He is not against the outside world; he is not for the inside world. In and out should be just like in-breathing and out-breathing: both are needed.

Introspectives become too brooding, too inside. They become afraid to go out because whenever they go out, there are problems, so they close up. They become monads with no windows. And then problems and problems -- the mind goes on creating problems and they go on trying to solve.

An introspective person is more prone to become mad. Introverts become mad more than extroverts. If you go to the madhouses you will find ninety-nine per cent of the people there are introverts, introspective, and only one per cent, at the most, extroverts. They don't bother about the inner side of things. They go on living on the surface. They don't think that there are problems. They think there is only life to be enjoyed. Eat, drink, be merry is their whole religion, nothing else.

You will always find extroverts more healthy than introverts because at least they are in contact with the whole. The introvert loses all contact with the whole.

He lives in his dreams. He has no outgoing breath. Just think: if you don't allow the breath to go out, you will become ill because the breath that has gone in will not remain fresh always. Within seconds it will become stale, within seconds it will lose the oxygen, the life, within seconds it is finished -- and then you are living in stale air, dead. You have to go out to seek new sources of life, to seek fresh air. You have to be continuously moving.

To me, if you want to choose between the extrovert and introvert, I will say to you, "Choose the extrovert." He is less ill -- lives on the surface, can never come to know the truth, but at least never goes mad. The introvert can come to know the truth, but that is one possibility out of a hundred. Ninety-nine per cent is the possibility he will go mad.

I am in favor of a flowing life. Life should be a rhythm: you go out, you go in, and don't cling to anything. Just remain alert. Remember. Go on remembering: when you are in the world, then too remember; and when you are inside yourself, then too remember. Always keep awareness alert, burning, alive. The flame of awareness should not be lost, that's all. Then live in the market or live in the monastery -- you will never be a loser in life. You will attain to the profoundest depth that life can give. That profoundest depth is God. God is a swinger: out and in, introvert and extrovert both -- but aware.

Question 3

SOMETIMES, NOW, YOU CHUCKLE IN THE DISCOURSE.

I must be becoming holier, godlier, because the more holy you are, the more you take life nonseriously. You chuckle, you laugh; then it is not a burden. Your whole life becomes a smile; it is not a serious affair then.

But religious people all over the world have been teaching people to be very serious -- long faces. This is illness, not health. Make laughter your prayer. Laugh more. Nothing releases your blocked energies as does laughter. Nothing makes you innocent as does laughter. Nothing makes you childlike as does laughter.

Children chuckle and laugh and smile. Of course they cry also, but their crying is beautiful.

Cry and weep and laugh, and let these be your prayers. Go to the temple -- don't verbalize. Go to the church -- don't bother about the authorized version of the prayer. There is none; no version is authorized. Create your own prayer. If you feel like weeping, weep. Tears are more meaningful than any words; they bring your heart. They are more prayerful, more beautiful, more significant. Words are dead. Tears are alive, fresh -- coming from you, from your depth. Or laugh: have a good laugh with the god of the temple.

In the Talmud it is said.... And the Talmud is a rare book. The Geeta, the Bible, the Koran -- all look serious. The Talmud is simply unbelievably rare. In the Talmud it is said, "God loves those people who make others laugh." You cannot conceive a religious scripture saying this: "God loves those who make others laugh." Those are the real saints.

If you make people serious you are a sinner. The world is already much too burdened; please, don't burden it anymore. Give a little laughter. Create a ripple of laughter wherever you are. Smile a little more and help others to smile. If the whole world can laugh loudly, wars will disappear, because wars are managed by serious people. Courts will disappear, because courts are managed by serious people.

That's why if you laugh in any court it is a crime. No court allows it -- you are insulting the court. Everyone should be serious. Look at the judges sitting in the courts: how foolishly serious they look. A little laughter will help them to be more just, will help them to understand human beings more deeply. Their coldness cannot do justice, because coldness is inhuman. A little warmth....

But the judge is afraid. If the thief standing in the court starts laughing, and the judge also joins him, and the whole court laughs -- then the judge is afraid. Then it will become too human; and it will be difficult to throw this laughing thief into jail for three or four or five years. For nothing much -- he has stolen a few rupees.

He has stolen a little maya, and the judge may be a Vedantin. He has stolen a little illusion -- rupees, diamonds -- and he has to be thrown: for dead diamonds an alive being is to be thrown for five years to rot. Or in deep anger, in a rage, in some mad moment he may have killed. Even the judges go on thinking sometimes to kill. It is difficult to find a human being who has not thought many times in his life to kill somebody. It seems human, the idea.

I'm not saying go and kill, and I'm not saying that judges should forgive those who are murderers, no. But a little laughter will help. One man has been murdered: if the judge can laugh a little and the court also can chuckle a little with the judge, it will be difficult for him to send this man to the gallows.

Because that is again another murder; and how can you put things right when for one murder the court decides for another murder? Maybe this man needs psychoanalytical treatment. Maybe this man needs to be sent to a monastery to meditate for two years. But not death -- because death.... If it is bad to commit murder, to commit murder in the name of justice is also bad; it cannot become good.

But judges are very serious people, politicians are very serious people -- the whole burden of the world on their shoulders. They always go on thinking all over the world: "What after Mao Tse-tung?" As if there was no world before Mao Tse-tung. The world has been happy. In fact it will be happier if all Mao Tse-tungs disappear.

I was just reading a book, a very rare book. The man says India would have become independent sooner if Gandhi had not been there. I was a little surprised, but then I looked into his argument and I felt he is right. Gandhi created much trouble -- stubborn, all politicians are. He created much trouble: he wouldn't compromise for anything. He had his own ways, Jinnah had his own ways. They wouldn't compromise. They both were stubborn, stonelike. It seems the man has an insight who says that India would have become independent sooner if there had been no Gandhi and no Jinnah.

And if there were no churches India would never have been dependent. If politicians disappear from the world, the world will be free. There will be no need to fight for it: it will be simply free. If priests disappear and serious churches, which look more like death than life, disappear and temples arise to dance, to enjoy, to be blissful, to be ecstatic; the world will be more religious.

So when you say, "Sometimes, now, you chuckle in the discourse," I hope I must be becoming holier. Otherwise. there seems to be no other reason.

Question 4

VIJAY ANAND WAS A HUNDRED PER CENT SURE THAT HIS FILM 'JAAN

HAZIR HAI' WOULD BE A HIT... BECAUSE HIS 'GURU' HAD PREDICTED ITS

SUPER SUCCESS.... THE FILM FLOPPED. WILL THE 'GURUJI' PLEASE

EXPLAIN?" -- FROM STARDUST MAGAZINE.

The first thing: Vijay Anand is not so foolish as to ask me such things. He never mentions anything about his business. He never asked anything about the film

"Jaan Hazir Hai" and I never answered him. I don't even know that he has made a film named "Jaan Hazir Hai."

But these people, editors of STARDUST, must have dreamt something. They must have seen a dream, and maybe in their dream they heard me saying, "Your film, Vijay, will be a super success." Then they misunderstood the point. I must have told them in their dreams "super success" in Lao-tzian terms. Lao Tzu says,

"Because few people understand me, I am dignified." So, if you translate it, super success means: if nobody goes to see the film. Because masses are so foolish they cannot understand it, it is dignified: it is a super success. When the masses go to see a film it is a failure, flopped. It must be stupid; otherwise how does it attract so many stupid people?

I have not said anything, but if they have heard something in their dreams, they have wrongly interpreted me. If it has flopped, it is a super success. It must be something which goes beyond ordinary mind. That's what a super success is. A Hitler is not a super success; masses worshipped him. That shows he belonged to the masses. He was an ordinary, stupid man. Lao Tzu is a super success: nobody knows, nobody heard about him -- not even a rumor. He comes and moves silently. He was a super success, and he knew it. He says in his TAO TE CHING,

"I am dignified, because very few people can understand me. The whole world misunderstands me; that's why I am dignified." Rarer the understanding, rarer will it be understood, more possibility to be misunderstood.

I used to know a very rare man. He was a sannyasin. When I was a child he used to visit my village and he used to stay with my family. I loved that man for only one single cause: whenever he would give a lecture and people would clap, he would look at me and say, "Rajneesh, something must be wrong. Otherwise why are people clapping? They clap only when something is wrong, because they are wrong." When nobody would clap, and nobody would understand what he was saying, when everybody looked just as if they were wasting their time, he would come home and he would say, "Rajneesh, I must have said something. You saw?

Nobody could understand." With the masses, success is a failure.

Question 5

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SELF-REMEMBERING AND

WITNESSING?

Just now I told you the difference between introspection and self-remembering.

Now, the difference between self-remembering and witnessing.

Yes, there is a lot of difference again: because in self-remembering the emphasis is on the self. Just as in introspection the emphasis is on the thought, the feeling, the emotion, the mood, anger, sexuality, or anything, and the self is forgotten; in self-remembering the self is remembered and the whole energy is centered on the self, and you just look at the mood, at the situation, at the feeling -- you don't think about it, because in the thinking the look is lost, the purity of the look is lost.

Witnessing is a step further ahead. In witnessing, even the self is dropped; only remembering remains. Not that I remember. The "I" is no longer part of witnessing. Just remembering.... Witnessing is a witnessing of the self. Self-remembering is the beginning; witnessing is the end. By self-remembering you start looking at anger, keeping yourself centered at the self, crystallized at the self, looking at the ripples around you in the mind. But when you look at the mind, by and by, the mind disappears. When the mind disappears and there is void, then a new step can be taken: now, you look at yourself. Now the very energy that was looking at anger, sex, jealousy is free -- because the jealousy, anger, and sex have disappeared. Now that same energy turns around to look at yourself.

When the same energy looks at the self, the self also disappears; then there is only remembering. That remembering is witnessing. In witnessing there is no self. You look at the anger, but when you look at yourself, you are no longer you: just a vast, infinite, unbound witnessing. Just consciousness -- infinite and vast, but with no crystallization. This has to be understood.

Gurdjieff worked his whole life on the method of self-remembering because in the West to introduce witnessing would have been almost impossible, because the West has been living with introspection. All the Christian monasteries, they have been teaching introspection. Gurdjieff introduced something beyond introspection: he called it "self-remembering." He was always thinking to introduce witnessing, but he could not because witnessing can be introduced only when self-remembering is settled; before it, it cannot be introduced. To talk about it before the ripeness of self-remembering will not reach anywhere; it will be useless. He waited long, but he couldn't introduce it.

In the East we have used both. In fact we have used all the three: introspection was for very ordinary religious people, those who don't want to go deep; those who want to go deep, for them, self-remembering; and those who want to go so deep that they disappear in the depth, for them, witnessing. Witnessing is the last. Beyond that, nothing exists. You cannot be a witness to the witness --

because that too will be witnessing. So beyond witnessing there is no possibility to go: you have come to the very end. The end of the world is witnessing.

Move from introspection to self-remembering, and from self-remembering hope some day to move to witnessing. But keep it in mind that self-remembering is not the goal. It is good just as a bridge, but one has to cross, one has to go beyond it.

Question 6

IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE IN A STATE OF PURE CONSCIOUSNESS FOR A WHILE AND TO FALL OUT AGAIN?

No, it is not possible. But something like it happens: you have a glimpse of pure consciousness; you have not entered. It is just as if you look from hundreds of miles' distance towards the Himalayan peaks. You have not reached them, but you can look from a vast distance. You can look at the peaks; you can have a feeling. You can open a window and look at the moon far away, and the rays will touch you and you will be illumined, you will have a certain experience, but from this window-experience you will fall again and again.

When pure consciousness is achieved -- not a glimpse from a distance, but you have entered into it -- then you cannot lose it again. Once achieved it is achieved forever. You cannot fall out of it. Why? Because the moment you enter it you disappear. Who can fall out of it? To fall out at least you have to remain as yourself. But to enter pure consciousness, the ego disappears completely, the self disappears completely. Then who will come back?

In a glimpse you are not disappeared; you are there. You can have a glimpse and close the eyes. You can have a glimpse and close the window. It will become a memory; it will haunt you; it will become a nostalgia. It will come in your dreams. Sometimes, suddenly, you will feel again a deep urge to have that glimpse, but it cannot be a phenomenon forever and forever. Glimpses are only glimpses. Good, beautiful, but don't cling to them; because they are not permanent. You will fall out of them again and again -- because you are still there.

When there is a glimpse, move towards the peaks, move towards the moon...

become one with the moon. Unless you disappear completely you will fall. You will have to come back to the world because that ego will feel suffocated with the glimpse. The ego will feel deathlike panic. It will say, "Close the window!

Enough you have looked at the moon. Now don't be foolish. Don't be a lunatic."

The word "lunatic" means moonstruck. The word comes from "lunar" -- of the moon. All mad people are called lunatics, moonstruck -- thinking of distant dreams.

The mind, the ego, will say, "Don't be a lunatic. It is okay to have, sometimes, the window open and look at the moon, but don't be obsessed. The world is waiting for you. You have responsibilities to fulfill in the world." And the ego will bring you and persuade you, seduce you, towards the world; because the ego can exist only in the world. Whenever something of the other world penetrates into your mind, the ego becomes afraid, panicky, scared. It looks like death.

If that glimpse is to become a permanent life-style, your very being, then you have to bridge the distance, bridge the gap. You have to move. When you become pure consciousness then there is no falling out again. It is a point of no return. One only goes in; one never comes out. It has no exit, only one door... the entrance.

Question 7

YOU SAID THAT BUDDHA WAS ESSENTIALLY SELFISH. WAS JESUS THE

SAME? IF SO WHAT DID HE MEAN BY: "IF ANY MAN COME AFTER ME

LET HIM DENY HIMSELF AND TAKE UP HIS CROSS AND FOLLOW ME."

Yes, Jesus is also selfish; otherwise it is not possible. Jesus, Krishna, Zarathustra, Buddha -- all selfish people: because so much compassion arises out of them.

That is not possible if they are not self-centered. That is not possible if they have not attained to their own bliss. First, one has to attain; only then can one share...

and they shared so much that even centuries have passed, but they go on sharing still.

If you love Jesus, suddenly you are filled with his compassion. His love still flows. The body has disappeared, but his love has not disappeared. It has become a permanent phenomenon in the world. It will always be there.

Whenever there will be somebody ready, receptive, his love will flow. But this is possible only because he attained to his original source: he must have been selfish.

Then what is the meaning?, because these words seem to be contradictory? "If any man come after me let him deny himself...." Yes, they look paradoxical: if I am true then they contradict me. I am true, and they don't contradict me. It is only appearance, because Jesus is saying, "If you want to attain to yourself you will have to lose yourself, that is the way." So when Jesus says, "If any man come after me let him deny himself..." it is because that is the only way to be himself.

You can attain to the self only when you deny your ego. You can attain to yourself when you completely disappear.

Jesus says, "If you cling to life, you will lose it. If you are ready to lose it, it will be forever and forever with you. You will attain to life abundant, infinite." When a water drop falls in the ocean, it loses itself -- denies itself -- and becomes the ocean. It pays nothing and attains to the ocean: it simply loses its own boundaries. When Jesus is saying, "If any man come after me let him deny himself..." it is the ocean saying to the drop, "Come, deny yourself! -- so that you can become the ocean also." And this is the most selfish thing: to become the ocean.

A drop is very altruistic, but he remains a drop -- finite, limited, miserable. Looks as if he is selfish; he is not. If you go and look at the selfish people in the world, you will not find them really selfish. They are simply foolish, not selfish.

Really selfish people become wise. Really selfish people are those who try to attain nirvana, who try to attain God, who try to attain moksha -- liberty, freedom. They are the really selfish people, not those people which are known as selfish in the world because they are trying to accumulate riches. They are simply foolish, not selfish. Don't use that beautiful word for them. They are simply foolish.

Why do you call them selfish? They go on accumulating riches and go on selling their self for them. They make a big house and they themselves become hollow, empty. They have a big car and no soul within. And you call them selfish? They are the most unselfish people. They have given their self -- for nothing, actually.

It happened: One man came to Ramkrishna with many gold coins, and he wanted to give them to him. Ramkrishna said, "I don't touch gold. Take them away."

The man was very impressed. He said, "How unselfish you are."

Ramkrishna laughed and he said, "Unselfish and me? I am a selfish man. That's why I don't touch this gold. I am not so foolish. Unselfish you are: you have sold yourself for gold coins."

Who is unselfish? One who gives his soul for gold coins is unselfish?... or one who leaves everything of the world to attain to his soul, he is selfish? In the world people lose themselves and attain to nothing, and you call them selfish.

They are unselfish people, foolish. Buddha, Jesus, Krishna -- they attained to the utmost glory, to the utter blissfulness. Buddha has said: "I have attained to the unexcelled SAMADHI." And you call them unselfish? Those who live in perfect bliss, you call them unselfish? You have destroyed a beautiful word.

Jesus is right, "If any man come after me let him deny himself..." because that is the only way to attain to oneself. He is teaching selfishness.

"... and take up his cross and follow me," because that is the only way to be resurrected. If you want a new life you will have to die. If you want to be resurrected you will have to carry your own cross. Be crucified in the material world and you will be resurrected in the spiritual. Die moment to moment to the past so that you are resurrected every moment into the present. Dying is an art, one of the most basic. And those who know how to die, only they know how to live. People who are afraid of dying become afraid of living. People who are too afraid of death and dying become incapable of living, because life has death as part of it.

When Jesus says, "Pick up your cross and follow me," he is saying, "Be ready to die if you really want to attain to the eternal life." This is selfishness.

And when people like Jesus say, "Follow me," you will misunderstand them.

When Krishna says in the Geeta to Arjuna, "Drop everything -- all your religions.

Surrender to me. Come, and follow me," what is he saying exactly? Are these people very egoistic? They say, "Come, follow me." In fact, when Jesus says,

"Come, follow me," he is saying: "I am your innermost soul." When Krishna says,

"Surrender to me," he is not saying surrender to this outer Krishna. He is saying:

"Deep down, I am hidden in you. When you surrender to me, I am just an excuse to surrender. You will reach to your innermost core of being. Follow me so that you can follow your innermost core of being. I have attained to that innermost core."

They are not saying to follow Jesus or Krishna. They are saying, "Surrender,"

because in surrender you will become a Krishna, a Jesus yourself. And this is utterly selfish.

But the very word has taken a quality of condemnation. When somebody says,

"Don't be selfish," immediately, he has condemned. I am trying to purify that beautiful word again. I am trying to bring it to its real stature. That word has fallen into the mud, but that word is like a diamond. It may be in the mud: it can be cleaned and washed. And if you understand me you will see that if you are really selfish, only then can you be unselfish. I teach you selfishness because I would like you to be unselfish.

Question 8

HOW MUCH OF WHAT OCCURS EXTERNALLY, SUCH AS DEATH,

BETRAYAL, ET CETERA, IS MY MIND? HOW AM I RESPONSIBLE FOR

THESE THINGS?

You are not responsible for these things. If somebody dies you are not responsible for his death, but the way you interpret the death, for that you are responsible. When somebody betrays you, you are not responsible for his betrayal. How can you be? But you call it a betrayal; it may not be. It is your interpretation. and for the interpretation you are responsible.

You call it death: if your mother dies, you call it death and you suffer. You don't suffer because the mother has died. You suffer because you think it is death. If you understand life you will know that there is no death. Then the mother will die -- mothers will always die -- but you will not be suffering. She has simply changed an old body. In fact it is a moment to rejoice. Hmm?... she was having a cancer or tuberculosis, old age, and a thousand and one illnesses, and she was dragging. You call it death? I call it just dropping the old body to enter into a new. Why should I be suffering over it? I should be happy and rejoice in it. It depends on the interpretation, and the interpretation is your responsibility.

Somebody betrays you: but who is saying that it is a betrayal? For instance, your lover, your husband, your wife, moves away from you. You say it is a betrayal?

It is your interpretation. It may be that you were too possessive. He has not betrayed you; he is simply trying to save himself. You were too possessive. You were too clinging. You were suffocating his being. You were killing his freedom.

He has simply tried to save his life -- not betrayed you. He may have moved to some other woman in search that, maybe, somewhere else the flower of love can bloom. But you forced him; and now you say it is a betrayal. You managed the whole thing so that it happens, and now you call it a betrayal?

Just watch, become alert, look what has happened. If you were not so nagging he may not have gone. Your nagging was driving him mad. Or, your nagging was driving him insensitive.

There are only two ways to live with a nagging wife or a nagging husband. One, which almost all husbands do, is to become insensitive. You enter the house; you make your skin hard. She goes on nagging, you don't bother. You go on reading your newspaper. You don't listen to what she says. But then you are betraying your own self, because the more insensitive you become, the less loving you will be. The more insensitive you become, the less possibility for prayer, the less possibility of life happening to you. You are already a dead thing. You are betraying your own life. It is better to escape from the woman to save yourself and give her also an opportunity to understand -- the other way is to escape.

If the husband goes on betraying his own life, then the wife says he is very faithful. He betrays his own life -- and nobody is responsible for anybody else's life. You are here for your own self; I am here for myself. Nobody is here to fulfill anybody else's expectations. I have to live my life; you have to live your life. If it is good, that I grow with you; if it is good, if you grow with me -- beautiful, we can be together. But if you start killing me and I start poisoning you, it is better we should separate, because separation will save two lives, will make two prisoners free. It is not a betrayal.

There is only one betrayal: and that is to betray one's own life. There is no other betrayal. If you continue to live with a nagging, possessive wife, a husband, without any love, you are destroying your own opportunity. In the Talmud, again, there is a saying that "God will ask you. 'I had given you so many opportunities to be happy. Why did you miss?' " He will not ask, "What sins have you committed?" He will ask, "What opportunities for happiness have you missed? You will be responsible for those." This is really tremendously beautiful:

"You will be responsible only for those opportunities that were available to you and you missed." Remain faithful to yourself -- that is the only faith that is needed -- and everything will be good.

If you are faithful to yourself you will always find a partner, a life-partner, with whom you grow. Otherwise change. There is nothing wrong in it. And it is good for the partner also, because if you are not growing you will take revenge. That's what every husband and every wife is doing.

If you are not growing and you feel confined, imprisoned, then you start taking revenge on the other -- because it is because of the other that the prison exists. It is because of the other that you are caught. Then you will be angry, continuously angry. Anger will become your whole life. And you cannot love in such a situation. How can one love one's own imprisonment? Maybe that imprisonment is your wife, your husband, your father, mother, your guru -- it makes no difference.

If you are here and you feel imprisoned, escape -- as soon as you can -- with all my blessings. Because that way it is dangerous to be here. You are not to be faithful towards me. The first faithfulness is towards yourself; everything comes next. If you feel confined, crippled -- escape! Don't wait a single moment, and never look back. Seek somewhere else. Life is infinite. You may have somebody else who suits you better and who doesn't become an imprisonment to you, who becomes a freedom. Go there. Seek. Always be in search.

Otherwise, if you are here hanging around, thinking you are imprisoned, you will start taking revenge on me. You will become angry with me. You will pose as if you are a disciple, but you will become an enemy. And some day or other you are going to explode.

In all relationships it should be remembered that in this life you are to learn and grow, become more intelligent and aware. If something cripples, it is a sin to remain in that situation. Move away. You will create a more loving world that way. But just the opposite has been taught: even if you don't love your wife, love her. And nobody asks, "How can one love somebody if one is not in love?"

Maybe the love was there in the beginning, then it disappeared. Then, you have been taught that love never disappears. That too is absolutely stupid. Everything that comes can disappear. Everything that is born can die. Everything that starts can stop. Remain true and alert.

If the love has disappeared then to live with that woman is sin. Then if you sleep with that woman you are a sinner. Then it is a sort of prostitution. The woman goes on living with you because she has nowhere to go. She goes on living with you now because financially she is dependent on you. But then what is prostitution? It is a financial arrangement. Now there is no more love. If you go to a prostitute and she falls in love with you and refuses to take money, she is no longer a prostitute. Prostitution comes only with the money. When instead of love money bridges two persons, it is prostitution.

If you live with a woman with no love and the woman lives with you with no love, only a financial arrangement -- now it will be difficult, where to go, what to do, it seems too insecure so you have to cling and be angry and nag and continuously fight but be together, it is your duty to be together -- you are very dangerous... and out of these prostitutions, what type of children will be born?

You are not only destroying yourself, you are destroying future generations.

Those children will be brought up by you -- two persons continuously fighting, continuously in conflict. And those children which will be born to you will always be in conflict. A part of them will belong to the mother, a part to the father, and deep inside there will be a civil war, continuously. They will always be confused.

When you come to me and say, "I am confused".... Just a few days before, one sannyasin came and he said, "I want to surrender, but I don't want to surrender also." Now what to do with this man? And he says, "Help me." He wants to surrender. He does not want to surrender also. A part says, "Surrender"; a part says, "No." This is schizophrenia, split personality, but this is how almost everybody is. From where does this split come? This split comes from a father and mother always in conflict.

The child sometimes feels for the mother because he feels for both. He has been brought into the world by both. Half of his body cells belong to the father; half of his body cells belong to the mother. Now they are in conflict. He will be constantly in civil war; he will never be at ease, relaxed. Whatsoever he will do, one part will go on saying, "Nonsense. Don't do it." If the mother part says, "Do,"

the father part will say, "No." May not say very loudly, fathers never say very loudly, but the father part will nod no. If the father part says, "Yes," then the mother part goes on saying, of course very loudly, "No!"

Mulla Nasrudin's son fell in love with a girl. He came home. He asked Nasrudin, confided in him, what to do. The father whispered in his ear, "If you really want the girl, go and say to your mother that 'Father prohibits,' that 'My father is against it.' And before your mother I will say, 'I will never allow you!' Then it is certain your marriage will happen."

A great politics goes on. And every sensitive child learns the tricks of the trade, and then he will relay them all his life. He will remain divided, and whenever he will bring a woman home, he will start playing the role of the father and the woman will start playing the role of her mother. And the whole story continues...

and the world goes on moving deeper and deeper into madness.

This whole nonsense has happened because you have been wrongly taught. I teach you only one fidelity: that is fidelity to your own life. It will look very dangerous. It will look as if I am trying to create a chaos, anarchy. I am not.

Anarchy you have already created -- it cannot be improved upon. I am trying to create order, but order out of freedom; order as an inner discipline, not as a forced thing from the outside.

Question 9

DO BABIES SEE AURAS?

Yes, but only up to the time when they start talking. When a baby starts talking everything disappears. By talking a child becomes part of the society. When the baby is silent, nontalking, then the baby sees the same things that a saint sees, that an enlightened man sees exactly the same thing. The baby is almost a saint.

But it remains only up to a point. If the baby is silent for six months, nine months, one year -- then up to that time, the baby will see the auras, will feel deeply. Once the baby starts talking, the baby is no longer there. The baby has entered into the world, the world of language, reason, mind. Then, by and by, those qualities disappear.

In India we have a myth, and a very true thing is hidden in it. In India it is said that up to the sixth month the baby remembers his past life. It is true, because up to the sixth month the baby is so silent and the clarity is so penetrating. Then, every day, the more and more the world is there with him, the more and more we teach, condition, and the baby becomes more a part of the society and less a part of existence -- the baby is lost. This is the fall of Adam: the tree of knowledge has been tasted. The fruit of the tree of knowledge is tasted when the baby starts talking.

Then again if you want to regain it, recover it, you will have to learn silence --

that's why so much insistence for silence, meditation. You will have to drop language again. All inner chatter has to stop; the inner talk has to be stopped.

You have to become innocent again, without language, no verbalization within, just a pure being: a baby again. Remember, Jesus goes on saying again and again,

"Only those who are like children will enter my kingdom of God."

Question 10

WHY IS IT THAT WE HEAR OF FEWER ENLIGHTENED WOMEN THAN

MEN?

The basic reason is that man is an expert in bragging; women are not. Many women have attained to enlightenment. The number is exactly the same as men -

- cannot be otherwise, because existence goes on balancing itself -- but women are not braggards. They don't brag much. If they attain they enjoy it. They don't make much fuss about it.

Men are totally different. If they attain to something they create much noise about it; they fuss about it. And the society is controlled by man. When a man becomes enlightened, all other men advertise the whole thing. When a woman becomes enlightened nobody bothers, because the society doesn't belong to women. They are not the rulers.

A man is basically more social than a woman. The woman is confined to herself, or at the most, her family. She does not bother about Vietnam, she doesn't bother about Richard Nixon -- so far off... doesn't matter. She does not bother about coming generations, this and that. She is happy in her home, a small world of her own. In fact she doesn't want anybody to interfere. She wants to keep to herself.

When a woman becomes enlightened, then again the same thing remains: she does not go preaching all over the world. That is not in her elements. She does not go out making disciples, creating organized religions. That is not in her elements. She enjoys it; she is happy with it. She can dance. She can sing. In her home, sitting silently, she will not bother. A woman does not become a Master.

As many women become enlightened as men, but a woman has no qualities to become a Master. This has to be understood.

A woman has perfect qualities to become a disciple. Surrender is easy for her. It is natural, part of the feminine being. Surrender is easy; surrender comes easily.

A woman becomes a good disciple. And you will always find: wherever you will find four disciples, three will be women. This will be the proportion all over the world. Mahavir had forty thousand sannyasins -- thirty thousand were women.

The same proportion with Buddha. You go in any church, any temple and just count -- you will always find the proportion three to one. In fact all the religions are supported, fed, by women; but they are disciples.

Surrender is easy to them because surrendering is passive. If you go and surrender to a woman she will feel embarrassed and awkward. If a man comes and falls at her feet, she will never be able to love this man. He is not manly. Go and chase a woman: the more you chase and the more you pray and the more you fall at her feet, the more it will be impossible for her to surrender to you. A woman needs somebody to whom she can surrender, somebody manly enough.

A woman has a passive being, man has an active being: yin and yang. They are complementary.

To woman, surrender is very easy. It is absolutely to her way of being. But to accept surrender is very difficult -- and a Master has to accept surrender. A few women have become Masters, very rarely, but I always suspect those women must have more male hormones. They must not be really women.

In Indian history there is a case: in the twenty-four teerthankeras of the Jains there was one woman, Mallibai was her name. But one of the orthodoxmost sects of Jains, Digamberas, they don't call her a woman. They don't write her name

"Mallibai"; they write her name "Mallinatha." It becomes a male name; it is no longer female. I have pondered over it much, why. Then I felt Digamberas are right: the woman may have been a woman only in name's sake; otherwise she was a man. To become a teerthanker, it is so unwomanly. To accept millions of people and their surrender is so unwomanly that the woman was only bodily a woman. Her inner being was of a man.

So Digamberas are right. Swethamberas go on saying that she was a woman: they are more realistic but not right, more factual but not more right. They relayed just a fact, and sometimes facts are not real. Sometimes facts are very fictitious; and sometimes facts can lie so much that fictions will feel ashamed.

This is a fact -- that this Mallibai was a woman -- but this is not reality.

Digamberas have the right source. They have forgotten about the fact that she was a woman; they have taken her as man. Her whole being must have been manly.

Rarely it happens. In politics, in religion, whenever a woman succeeds she is more manly than feminine. A Lakshmibai or a Joan of Arc, they don't look feminine. Just the body, the outer garb is feminine. Inside is a man.

That's why they are not known much, because unless you become a Master, how will you be known? Your enlightenment remains your inner light. You don't guide others; others never come to know about it. But this is my feeling: that nature always has a deep balance.

In the world the same number of women exists as men. Biologists even wonder how it happens, how nature manages it, how nature knows that the same proportion is needed -- almost the same. Man and woman are always in equal numbers. To somebody only girls are born. To somebody else only boys are born.

But if you look at the whole earth, the total number of women is almost the same as the number of men.

When children are born, for a hundred girls there are a hundred fifteen boys.

Because nature knows boys are weaker; more will die. So by the time they come of age for marriage, the number will be equal. Girls are more stubborn. Girls are stronger; they fall ill less. They have more tolerance of many things; they can tolerate hardships. It is just male ego which Goes on saying, "We are stronger."

Muscular power may be Greater in man, but strength is not greater -- because fifteen boys per hundred fifteen die, and by the age of fourteen the number is equal: a hundred girls to a hundred boys.

Nature somehow manages. When there is a war: after the war more boys are born, less girls, because in war more men die. It seems really a tremendous phenomenon, unbelievable. How does it happen? In war -- the Second World War, the First World War -- both the wars have been watched, analyzed: more men are born after the war, the number increases, and less girls are born. Because in war more men have died and the number has to be replaced.

The same is in the spiritual enlightenment also: the same number of women become enlightened as men. There is a balance, but women are not known so much because they never become Masters; or if sometimes they become, then only rarely it happens.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6

Chapter #7

Chapter title: Death to The Limited

7 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

46. POSTURE SHOULD BE STEADY AND COMFORTABLE.

47. POSTURE IS MASTERED BY RELAXATION OF EFFORT AND

MEDITATION ON THE UNLIMITED.

48. WHEN POSTURE IS MASTERED THERE IS A CESSATION OF THE

DISTURBANCES CAUSED BY DUALITIES.

49. THE NEXT STEP AFTER THE PERFECTION OF POSTURE IS BREATH

CONTROL, WHICH IS ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH HOLDING THE

BREATH ON INHALATION AND EXHALATION, OR STOPPING THE

BREATH SUDDENLY.

50. THE DURATION AND FREQUENCY OF THE CONTROLLED BREATHS

ARE CONDITIONED BY TIME AND PLACE, AND BECOME MORE

PROLONGED AND SUBTLE.

51. THERE IS A FOURTH SPHERE OF BREATH CONTROL, WHICH IS

INTERNAL, AND IT GOES BEYOND THE OTHER THREE.

JUST the other day, I was reading an old Indian fable, the fable of the woodcutter. The story goes this way: An old woodcutter was coming back from the forest carrying a big, heavy load of wood on his head. He was very old, tired

-- not only tired of the day's routine work, tired of life itself. Life had not been much to him, just a weary round. Every day the same: going to the forest early in the morning, the whole day cutting the wood, then carrying the load back to the town by the evening. He could not remember anything else, only this. And only this had been the whole of his life. He was bored. Life had not been a meaningful thing to him; it carried no significance. Particularly on that day, he was very tired, perspiring. It was hard to breathe, carrying the load and himself.

Suddenly, as a symbolic act, he threw the load. That moment comes to everybody's life, when one wants to throw the load. Not only that wood bundle on his head, it had become a symbolic act: he throws with it the whole life. He fell to the ground on his knees, looked at the sky and said, "Ah, Death. You come to everybody, but why don't you come to me? What more suffering have I to see?

What more burdens have I to carry still? Am I not punished enough? And what wrong have I committed?"

He could not believe his eyes -- suddenly, Death appeared. He could not believe.

He looked around, very much shocked. Whatsoever he was saying, he had never meant it. And he had never heard of anything like this, that you call Death, and Death comes.

And Death said, "Did you call me?"

The old man suddenly forgot all weariness, all tiredness, the whole life of dead routine. He jumped up and he said, "Yes... yes, I called you. Please, could you help me to put the load, the burden, back on my head? Seeing nobody here, I called you."

There are moments when you are tired of life. There are moments when you would like to die. But dying is an art; it has to be learned. And to be weary of life does not really mean that deep down the lust for life has disappeared. You may be weary of a particular life, but you are not weary of life as such. Everybody becomes tired of a particular life the dead routine, the weary round, the same thing again and again, a repetition -- but you are not weary of life itself. And if Death comes you will do the same as the woodcutter did. He behaved perfectly humanly. Don't laugh at him. Many times you have also thought to be finished with all this nonsense that goes on. For what to continue it? But if Death suddenly appears? You will not be ready.

Only a yogi can be ready to die, because only a yogi knows that through a voluntary death, a willing death, the infinite life is attained. Only a yogi knows that death is a door; it is not the end. In fact it is the beginning. In fact beyond it open the infinities of God. In fact beyond it you are for the first time really, authentically alive. Not only your physical part of the heart throbs, you throb.

Not only are you excited by outer things, you are made ecstatic by the inner being. The life abundant, the life eternal, is entered through the door of death.

Everybody dies, but then death is not voluntary; then death is forced on you.

You are unwilling: you resist, you cry, you weep; you would like to linger a little longer on this earth in this body. You are afraid. You can't see anything except darkness, except the end. Everybody dies unwillingly, but then death is not a door. Then you close your eyes in fear.

For the people who are on the path of yoga, death is a willing phenomenon; they will it. They are not suicidal. They are not against life: they are for greater life.

They sacrifice their life for a greater life. They sacrifice their ego for a greater self.

They sacrifice their self, also, for the supreme self. They go on sacrificing the limited for the unlimited. And this is what growth is all about: to go on sacrificing that which you have for that which becomes possible only when you are empty, when you don't have anything.

Patanjali's whole art is of how to attain to the state where you can die willingly, surrender willingly, with no resistance. These sutras are a preparation, a preparation to die and a preparation to a greater life.

Sthir sukham asanam.

POSTURE SHOULD BE STEADY AND COMFORTABLE.

Patanjali's yoga has been very much misunderstood, misinterpreted. Patanjali is not a gymnast, but yoga looks like it is a gymnastics of the body. Patanjali is not against the body. He is not a teacher to teach you contortions of the body. He teaches you the grace of the body, because he knows only in a graceful body a graceful mind exists; and only in a graceful mind a graceful self becomes possible; and only in a graceful self, the God.

Step by step, deeper and higher grace has to be attained. Grace of the body is what he calls asan, posture. He's not a masochist. He is not teaching you to torture your body. He is not a bit against the body. How can he be? He knows the body is going to be the very foundation-stone. He knows if you miss the body, if you don't train the body, then higher training will not be possible.

The body is just like a musical instrument. It has to be rightly tuned; only then will the higher music arise out of it. If the very instrument is somehow not in right shape and order, then how can you imagine, hope, that the great harmony will arise out of it? Only discordance will arise. Body is a veena, a musical instrument.

"STHIR SUKHAM ASANAM" -- the posture should be steady and should be very, very blissful, comfortable. So never try to distort your body, and never try to achieve postures which are uncomfortable.

For the Westerners, sitting on the ground, sitting in padmasan, lotus posture, is difficult; their bodies have not been trained for it. There is no need to bother about it. Patanjali will not force that posture on you. In the East people are sitting from their very birth, small children sitting on the ground. In the West, in all cold countries, chairs are needed; the ground is too cold. But there is no need to be worried about it. If you look at Patanjali's definition, what a posture is, you will understand: it should be steady and comfortable.

If you can be steady and comfortable in a chair, it is perfectly okay -- no need to try a lotus posture and force your body unnecessarily. In fact, if a Western person tries to attain to lotus posture it takes six months to force the body; and it is a torture. There is no need. Patanjali is not in any way helping you, in any way persuading you, to torture the body. You can sit in a tortured posture, but then it will not be a posture according to Patanjali.

A posture should be such that you can forget your body. What is comfort? When you forget your body, you are comfortable. When you are reminded continuously of the body, you are uncomfortable. So whether you sit in a chair or you sit on the ground, that's not the point. Be comfortable, because if you are not comfortable in the body you cannot long for other blessings which belong to deeper layers: the first layer missed, all other layers closed. If you really want to be happy, blissful, then start from the very beginning to be blissful. Comfort of the body is a basic need for anybody who is trying to reach inner ecstasies.

"Posture should be steady and comfortable." And whenever a posture is comfortable it is bound to be steady. You fidget if the posture is uncomfortable.

You go on changing sides if the posture is uncomfortable. If the posture is really comfortable, what is the need to fidget and feel restless and go on changing again and again?

And remember, the posture that is comfortable to you may not be comfortable to your neighbor; so please, never teach your posture to anybody. Every body is unique. Something that is comfortable to you may be uncomfortable to somebody else.

Everybody has to be unique because every body is carrying a unique soul. Your thumbprints are unique. You cannot find anybody else all over the world whose thumbprints are just like yours. And not only today: you cannot find anybody in the whole past history whose thumbprints will be like yours, and those who know, they say even in the future there will never be a person whose thumbprint will be like yours. A thumbprint is nothing, insignificant, but that too is unique.

That shows that every body carries a unique being. If your thumbprint is so different from others', your body, the whole body, has to be different.

So never listen to anybody's advice. You have to find your own posture. There is no need to go to any teacher to learn it; your own feeling of comfort should be the teacher. And if you try -- within a few days try all the postures that you know, all the ways that you can sit -- one day you will fall upon, stumble upon, the right posture. And the moment you feel the right posture, everything will become silent and calm within you. And nobody else can teach you, because nobody can know how your body harmony, in what posture, will exactly be steady, comfortable.

Try to find your own posture. Try to find your own yoga, and never follow a rule, because rules are averages. They are just like, in Poona there are one million people: somebody is five feet tall, somebody five five, somebody five six, somebody six feet, somebody six and a half feet. One million people: you calculate their heights and then you divided the total height of one million people by one million; then you will come to an average height. It may be four feet eight inches or something. Then you go and search for the average person --

you will never find. Average person never exists. Average is the most false thing in the world. Nobody is an average. Everybody is himself; nobody is an average.

Average is a mathematical thing -- it is not real, it is not actual.

All rules exist for averages. They are good to understand a certain thing, but never follow them. Otherwise you will feel uncomfortable. Four feet eight inches is the average height! Now you are five feet, four inches longer -- cut it.

Uncomfortable... walk in such a way so you look like the average: you will become an ugly phenomenon, an ashtha walker. You will be like a camel, crooked everywhere. One who tries to follow the average will miss.

Average is a mathematical phenomenon, and mathematics does not exist in existence. It exists only in man's mind. If you go and try to find mathematics in existence you will not find. That's why mathematics is the only perfect science: because it is absolutely unreal. Only with unreality can you be perfect. Reality does not bother about your rules, regulations; reality moves on its own.

Mathematics is a perfect science because it is mental, it is human. If man disappears from the earth, mathematics will be the first thing to disappear. Other things may continue, but mathematics cannot be here.

Always remember, all rules, disciplines, are average; and average is nonexistential. And don't try to become the average; nobody can become. One has to find his own way. Learn the average, that will be helpful, but don't make it a rule. Let it be just a tacit understanding. Just understand it, and forget about it.

It will be helpful as a vague guide, not as an absolutely certain teacher. It will be just like a vague map, not perfect. That vague map will give you certain hints, but you have to find out your own inner comfort, steadiness. How you feel should be the determining factor. That's why Patanjali gives this definition, so that you can find out your own feeling.

"STHIR SUKHAM ASANAM." There cannot be any better definition of posture: Posture should be steady and comfortable.

In fact I would like to say it the other way, and the Sanskrit definition can be translated in the other way: Posture is that which is steady and comfortable.

STHIR SUKHAM ASANAM: That which is steady and comfortable is posture.

And that will be a more accurate translation. The moment you bring "should,"

things become difficult. In the Sanskrit definition there is no "should," but in the English it enters. I have looked into many translations of Patanjali. They always say, "Posture should be steady and comfortable." In the Sanskrit definition --

STHIR SUKHAM ASANAM -- there is no "should." STHIR means steady, SUKHAM means comfortable, ASANAM means posture -- that's all. "Steady, comfortable: that is the posture."

Why does this "should" come in? Because we would like to make a rule out of it.

It is a simple definition, an indicator, a pointer. It is not a rule. And remember it always: that people like Patanjali never give rules; they are not so foolish. They simply give pointers, hints. You have to decode the hint into your own being.

You have to feel it, work it out; then you will come to the rule, but that rule will be only for you, for nobody else.

If people can stick to it, the world will be a very beautiful world -- nobody trying to force anybody to do something, nobody trying to discipline anybody else.

Because, your discipline may have proved good for you, it may be poisonous for somebody else. Your medicine is not necessarily a medicine for all. Don't go on giving it to others.

But foolish people always live by rules.

I have heard that Mulla Nasrudin was learning medicine with a great physician.

He watched his master to find out hints. When the master would go for his rounds to see the patients, Mulla would follow. One day Mulla was surprised.

The master took the pulse of the patient, closed his eyes, meditated and said,

"You have been eating too many mangoes."

Mulla was surprised. How could he find out through the pulse? He never heard that anybody could find through the pulse beat: you have been eating mangoes.

He was puzzled. On the way back home he asked, "Master, please give me a little hint. How could you...?"

The master laughed; he said, "The pulse cannot show, but I looked under the bed of the patient. There were many mangoes -- uneaten and a few eaten. So I just inferred; it was an inference."

The master was ill one day, so Mulla had to go for the daily rounds. He went to see a new patient. He took the pulse in his hand, closed his eyes, brooded a little

-- just exactly like the master -- and then he said, "You have been eating too many horses."

The patient said, "What! Are you mad?"

Mulla was very much puzzled. He came home very disturbed and sad. The master asked, "What happened?"

He said, "I also looked under the bed. The saddle and other things were there --

the horse was not there -- so I thought, 'He has eaten too many horses.' "

This is how stupid mind goes on following. Don't be stupid. Take these definitions, sayings, sutras, in a very vague way. Let them become part of your understanding, but don't try exactly to follow them. Let them go deep in you, they become your intelligence; and then you seek your path. All great teaching is indirect.

How to attain to this posture? How to attain this steadiness? First look at the comfort. If your body is exactly in deep comfort, in deep rest, feeling good, a certain well-being surrounds you: that should be the criterion with which to judge. That should become the touchstone. And this is possible while you are standing; this is possible while you are Lying down; this is possible while you are sitting on the ground or sitting on a chair. It is possible anywhere, because it is an inner feeling of comfort. And whenever it is attained you will not like to continue moving again and again, because the more you move, the more you will miss it. It happens in a certain state. If you move, you move away; you disturb it.

And that's the natural desire in everybody, and yoga is the most natural thing: natural desire is to be comfortable, and whenever you are in discomfort you will like to change it. That is natural. Always listen to the natural, instinctive mechanism within you. It is almost always correct.

POSTURE IS MASTERED BY RELAXATION OF EFFORT AND MEDITATION

ON THE UNLIMITED.

Beautiful words, great indicators and pointers: prayatna shaithilya -- relaxation of effort -- the first thing, if you want to attain to the posture, what Patanjali calls a posture: comfortable, steady, the body in such deep stillness that nothing moves, the body so comfortable that the desire to move it disappears, you start enjoying the feeling of comfort, it becomes steady.

And, with the change of your mood, the body changes; with the change of the body, your mood changes. Have you ever watched? You go to a theater, a movie: have you watched how many times you change your posture? Have you tried to correlate it? If there is something very sensational going on on the screen, you cannot sit leaning against the chair. You sit up; your spine becomes straight. If something boring is going on and you are not excited, you relax. Now your spine is no longer straight. If something very uncomfortable is going on, you go on changing your posture. If something is really beautiful there, even your eye-blinking stops; even that much movement will be a disturbance... no movement, you become completely steady, restful, as if the body has disappeared.

The first thing to attain to this posture is relaxation of effort, which is one of the most difficult things in the world -- most simple, yet most difficult. Simple to attain, if you understand; very difficult to attain if you don't understand. It is not a question of practice; it is a question of understanding.

In the West, Emile Coue has discovered a particular law he calls the law of the reverse effect. It is one of the most fundamental things in human mind. There are things, if you want to do them, please, don't try to do them; otherwise, reverse will be the effect.

For example, you are not falling asleep: don't try. If you try, sleep will be farther and farther away. If you try too much it will be impossible to sleep, because every effort goes against sleep. Sleep comes only when there is no effort. When you are not bothered about sleep, you are just lying down on your pillow, just enjoying the coolness of the pillow, or the warmth of the blanket, the dark, velvety surrounding encompassing you, you are just enjoying it... nothing, you are not even thinking about sleep. Some dreams pass through the mind: you look at them in a very, very sleepy way, not interested too much even in them, because if interest arises sleep disappears. You just, somehow, remain aloof, just enjoying, resting, not seeking any end -- sleep comes.

If you start trying so that sleep should come, once the "should" enters it is almost impossible. Then you can remain awake the whole night; and if you fall asleep that may be only because you get tired of the effort, and when effort is no longer there -- because you have done everything and you give up -- sleep comes in.

Emile Coue discovered, just in this century, the law of reverse effect. Patanjali must have known it, almost five thousand years before. He says prayatna shaithilya, relaxation of the effort. You should have assumed just the reverse: that very much effort should be made to attain to the posture. And Patanjali says,

"If you make too much effort it will not be possible. No-effort allows it to happen."

Effort should be relaxed completely, because effort is part of the will and will is against surrender. If you try to do something, you are not allowing God to do it.

When you give up, when you say, "Okay, let thy will be done. If you are sending sleep, perfectly good. If you are not sending sleep, that too is perfectly good. I have no complaints to make; I am not grumbling about it. You know better. If it is needful to send sleep for me, send. If it is not needful, perfectly good -- don't send it. Please, don't listen to me! Your will should be done": this is how one relaxes effort.

Effortlessness is a great phenomenon. Once you know it, many millions of things become possible to you. Through effort the market; through effortlessness the God. Through effort you can never reach to nirvana -- you can reach lo New Delhi, but not to nirvana.

Through effort you can attain things of the world; they are never attained without effort, remember. So if you want to attain more riches, don't listen to me, because then you will be very, very angry with me, that this man disturbed your whole life: "He was saying, 'Stop making efforts, and many things will become possible,' and I have been sitting and waiting, and the money is not coming, and nobody is coming with an invitation to 'Come, and please, become the president of the country.' " Nobody is going to come. These foolish things are attained by effort.

If you want to become a president you have to make a mad effort for it. Unless you go completely mad you will never become a president of a country. You have to be more mad than other competitors, remember, because you are not alone there. Great competition exists; many others are trying also. In fact everybody else is trying to reach the same place. Much effort is needed. And don't try in a gentlemanly way; otherwise you will be defeated. No gentlemanliness is needed there. Be rude, violent, aggressive. Don't bother about what you are doing to others. Stick to your program. Even if others are killed for your power politics, let them be killed. Make everybody a ladder, a step. Go on walking on people's heads; only then do you become a president or a prime minister. There is no other way.

The ways of the world are the ways of violence and will. If you relax will, you will be thrown out; somebody will jump on you. You will be made a means. If you want to succeed in the ways of the world, never listen to people like Patanjali; then it is better to read Machiavelli, Chanakya -- cunning, most cunning people of the world. They give you advice how to exploit everybody and not allow anybody to exploit you, how to be ruthless, without any compassion, just violent. Then, only, can you reach to power, prestige, money, things of the world. But if you want to attain to things of God, just the opposite is needed: no-effort. Effortlessness is needed, relaxation is needed.

It has happened many times.... I have many friends in the world of politics, in the world of money, market. They come to me and they say, "Teach us, somehow, to relax. We cannot relax." A minister used to come to me, and he always came with the same problem: "I cannot relax. Help me."

I told him, "If you really want to relax you will have to leave politics. This ministership cannot go with relaxation. If you relax, you lose. So you decide. I can teach you relaxation, but don't be angry then, because these two things cannot be possible together. So first be finished with your politics; then come to me."

He said, "That is not possible. I have come to learn relaxation so that I can work hard and become chief minister. Because of these tensions in the mind and continuous worries, I cannot work hard. And others -- they go on working. They are great competitors, and I am losing the battle. I have not come to leave politics."

Then I said, "Then, please, don't come to me. Forget about me. Just be in politics, get really tired, bored, be finished with it; then come to me." Relaxation is a totally different dimension, just the contrary.

You move in the world with will. Nietzsche has written a book, THE WILL TO

POWER. That is the right scripture to read: THE WILL TO POWER. Patanjali is not "will to power"; it is surrender to the whole. The first thing: prayatna shaithilya -- effortlessness. You should simply feel comfortable. Don't make much effort about it; let the feeling do the work. Don't bring the will in. How can you force comfort on yourself? It is impossible. You can be comfortable if you allow comfort to happen. You cannot force it.

How can you force love? If you don't love a person, you don't love a person.

What can you do? You can try, pretend, force yourself, but just the reverse will be the result: if you try to love a person you will hate him more. The only result will be, after your efforts, that you will hate the person, because you will take revenge. You will say, "What type of ugly person is he, because I am trying so much to love and nothing happens?" You will make him responsible. You will make him feel guilty, as if he is doing something. He is not doing something.

Love cannot be willed, prayer cannot be willed, posture cannot be willed. You have to feel. Feeling is a totally different thing than willing.

Buddha becomes a Buddha not by will. He tried for six years continuously through will. He was a man of the world, trained as a prince, trained to become a king of a kingdom. He must have been taught all that Chanakya had said.

Chanakya is the Indian Machiavelli, and even a little more cunning than Machiavelli because Indians have a quality of mind to go to the very roots. If they become Buddha they really become Buddha. If they become Chanakya you cannot compete with them. Wherever they go they go to the very root. Even Machiavelli is a little immature before Chanakya. Chanakya is absolute.

Buddha must have been taught; every prince has to be taught -- Machiavelli's greatest book's name is THE PRINCE. He must have been taught all the ways of the world; he was to tackle with people in the world. He has to cling to his power. And then he left. But it is easy to leave the palace; it is easy to leave the kingdom. It is difficult to leave the training of the mind.

For six years he tried through the will to attain to God. He did whatsoever is humanly possible -- even inhumanly possible. He did everything; he left nothing undone. Nothing happened. The more he tried, the more he felt himself far away. In fact the more he made the will and the efforts through it, the more he felt that he was deserted -- "God is nowhere." Nothing was happening.

Then one evening he gave up. That very night he became enlightened. That very night prayatna shaithilya, relaxation of the effort, happened. He became a Buddha not by willpower, he became a Buddha when he surrendered, when he gave up.

I teach you meditations and I go on telling you, "Make every effort that you can make," but always remember, this emphasis to make all the efforts is just so that your will is torn apart, so that your will is finished and the dream with the will is finished: you are so fed up with will that one day, you simply give up. That very day you become enlightened.

But don't be in a hurry, because you can give up right now without making the effort -- that will not help. That won't help. That will be a cunning thing, and you cannot win with God by being cunning. You have to be very innocent. The thing has to happen.

These are simply definitions. Patanjali is not saying, "Do it!" He is simply defining the path. If you understand it, it will start affecting you, your way, your being. Absorb it. Let it be saturated deep in you. Let it flow with your blood. Let it become your very marrow. That's all. Forget Patanjali. These sutras are not to be crammed. They should not be made part of your memory; they should become part of you. Your total being should have the understanding, that's all.

Then forget about them. They start functioning.

"Posture is mastered by relaxation of effort and meditation on the unlimited."

Two points. Relax effort: don't force it, allow it to happen. It is like sleep; allow it to happen. It is a deep let-go; allow it to happen. Don't try to force it; otherwise you will kill it. And the second thing is: while the body is allowing itself to be comfortable, to settle in a deep rest, your mind should be focused on the unlimited.

The mind is very clever with the limited. If you think about money, mind is clever; if you think about power, politics, mind is clever; if you think about words, philosophies, systems, beliefs, mind is clever -- these are all limited. If you think about God, suddenly a vacuum.... What can you think about God? If you can think, then that God is no longer God; it has become limited. If you can think of God as Krishna, it is no longer God; then Krishna may be standing there singing on his flute, but there is a limitation. If you think of God as Christ --

finished. God is no longer there; you have made a limited being out of it.

Beautiful, but nothing to be compared with the beauty of the unlimited.

There are two types of God. One, the God of belief: Christian God, Hindu God, Mohammedan God. And the God of reality, not of belief: that is unlimited. If you think about the Mohammedan God you will be a Mohammedan, but not a religious man. If you think about the Christian God you will be a Christian, but not a religious man. If you just bring your mind to God himself you will be religious -- no longer Hindu, no longer Mohammedan, no longer Christian.

And that God is not a concept! A concept is a toy your mind can play with. The real God is so vast... the God plays with your mind, not your mind playing with God. Then God is no longer a toy in your hands; you are a toy in the hands of the divine. The whole thing has totally changed. Now you are no longer controlling -

- you are no longer in control: God has taken possession of you. The right word is "to be possessed," to be possessed by the infinite.

It is no longer a picture before your mind's eye. No, there is no picture. Vast emptiness... and in that vast emptiness you are dissolving. Not only God's definition is lost, boundaries are lost; when you come in contact with the infinite you start losing your boundaries. Your boundaries become vague. Your boundaries become less and less certain, more flexible; you are disappearing like smoke in the sky. A moment comes, you took at yourself... you are not there.

So Patanjali says two things: no effort, and consciousness focused on the infinite.

That's how you attain to asan. And this is only the beginning; this is only the body. One has to go deeper.

Tato dwandwa anabhighatah.

WHEN POSTURE IS MASTERED THERE IS A CESSATION OF THE

DISTURBANCES CAUSED BY DUALITIES.

When the body is really in comfort, restful, the flame of the body is not wavering

-- it has become steady, there is no movement -- suddenly, as if time has stopped, no winds blowing, everything still and calm and the body has no urge to move --

settled, deeply balanced, tranquil, quiet, collected: in that state, dualities and the disturbances caused by dualities disappear.

Have you observed that whenever your mind is disturbed your body fidgets more, you cannot sit silently?... or, when ever your body is fidgeting your mind cannot be silent? They are together. Patanjali knows well that body and mind are not two things; you are not divided in two, body and mind. Body and mind are one thing. You are psychosomatic: you are bodymind. The body is just the beginning of your mind and the mind is nothing but the end of the body. Both are two aspects of one phenomenon; they are not two. So whatsoever happens in the body affects the mind and whatsoever happens in the mind affects the body.

They run parallel. That's why so much emphasis on the body, because if your body is not in deep rest your mind cannot be.

And it is easier to start with the body because that is the outermost layer. It is difficult to start with the mind. Many people try to start with the mind, and fail, because their body will not cooperate. It is always best to begin from A, B, C, and go slowly, in the right sequence. Body is the first, the beginning: one should start with the body. If you can attain to tranquility of the body, suddenly you will see the mind is falling in order.

Mind moves to the left and to the right, goes on like a pendulum of an old granddad's clock: continuously, right to left, left to right. And if you observe a pendulum you will know something about your mind. When the pendulum is moving towards the left, visibly it is going to the left, but invisibly it is gaining momentum to go to the right. When the eyes say that the pendulum is going to the left, that very movement towards the left creates the momentum, the energy, for the pendulum to go to the right again. When it is going to the right it is again earning energy, gaining energy to go to the left.

So whenever you are in love, you are gaining energy to hate. Whenever you are in hate, you are gaining energy to love. Whenever you are feeling happy, you are gaining energy to feel unhappy. Whenever you are feeling unhappy, you are gaining energy to feel happy. This is how the momentum continues.

I have heard that when India became independent in 1947, there was a beautiful elephant in Delhi. Before independence the elephant was used in wedding processions and other things like that, but after the independence even political parties started using the elephant in their rallies, processions, protests. The elephant had something like a flaw. The legs on his left side were a little shorter, so when the elephant walked he would lean towards the left.

Communists were very happy, socialists were very happy -- the elephant was leftist. So they paid money to the owner to borrow the elephant; and they clapped, and their followers threw flowers on the elephant. Really, this is how an elephant should be -- leftist. Of course, it was very difficult for the elephant to walk, but who bothers about the elephant? It was difficult because two legs were small, and the whole burden was falling on the left legs. An elephant has much weight; it was difficult. Tons of weight have to be carried. But flowers, garlands...

and he was received, and photographs were published in newspapers: that this is a communist elephant.

Seeing that, that communists and socialists and other leftists have a beautiful elephant, even rightists, when their time of procession and rally came, they also borrowed the same elephant -- not knowing that the elephant is a leftist elephant.

When the elephant went with the rightists they were very angry. This elephant was against them: he should lean towards the right. They started throwing old shoes, tomatoes, banana peels, and all rotten things. In short, they gave him a VIP treatment. They were very angry. They were angry at the owner also, and they told the owner, "Next time we take it, you make arrangements."

So the owner had to make arrangements because he lived on the elephant; that was his only earning. So he made big shoes. Then whenever it w as a rightist procession he would put on the big shoes, and the animal would lean towards the right; and whenever it was a leftist procession, he would remove the shoes.

Nobody bothered about the elephant. One day the elephant fell, just in Connaught Place, because it was too much to carry that big load with shoes. And it was so uncomfortable -- it was not an asan. It was really uncomfortable. He fell and died.

This is the situation of your mind also: continuously moving from one extreme to another -- leftist, rightist, leftist, rightist -- never in the middle. And to be in the middle is really to be. Both extremes are burdensome, because you cannot be comfortable. In the middle is comfort, because in the middle the weight disappears. Exactly to be in the middle -- and you become weightless. Move to the left and the weight enters; move to the right and the weight enters. And go on moving... the farther away you move from the middle, the more weight you will have to carry. You will die someday in some Connaught Place.

Be in the middle. A religious man is neither leftist nor rightist. A religious man does not follow the extremes. He is a man of no extreme. And when you are exactly in the middle -- your body and your mind both -- all dualities disappear, because all dualities are because you are dual, because you go on leaning from this side to that.

"TATO DWANDWA ANABHIGHATAH" -- "When posture is mastered there is a cessation of the disturbances caused by dualities." And when there is no duality, how can you be tense? how can you be in agony? how can you be in conflict? When there are two within you, there is conflict. They go on fighting, and they will never leave you in rest. Your home is divided; you are always in a civil war. You live in a fever. When this duality disappears you become silent, centered, in the middle. Buddha has called his way "MAJJHIM NIKAYA" -- the middle way. He used to tell his disciples, "The only thing to be followed is: Always be in the middle; don't go to the extremes."

There are extremists all over the world. Somebody is chasing women continuously -- a Romeo, a Majanu -- continuously chasing women. And then, someday he becomes frustrated with all the chasing. Then he leaves the world; then he becomes a sannyasin. And then he teaches everybody to be against woman, and then he goes on saying, "Woman is hell. Be alert! Only woman is the trap." Whenever you find a sannyasin talking against women you can know he must have been a Romeo before. He is not saying anything about women; he is saying something about his past. Now one extreme finished, he has moved to another extreme.

Somebody is mad after money. And many are mad, just obsessed, as if their whole life is to make bigger and bigger piles of rupees. That seems to be their only meaning to be here, that when they go to death they will leave big piles --

bigger than others'. That seems to be their whole significance. When such a man becomes frustrated he will go on teaching, "Money is the enemy." Whenever you find somebody teaching that money is the enemy, you can know that this man must have been a money-mad man. Still he is mad -- on the opposite extreme.

A really balanced man is not against anything, because he is not for anything. If you come and ask me, "Are you against money?" I can only shrug my shoulders.

I am not against, because I have never been for it. Money is something, a utility, a medium of exchange -- no need to be mad about it either way. Use it if you have it. If you don't have it, enjoy the nonhaving of it. If you have it use it. If you don't have it then enjoy that state. That's all a man of understanding will do. If he lives in a palace he enjoys; if the palace is not there then he enjoys the hut. Whatsoever is the case he is happy and balanced. He is neither for the palace nor against it. A man who is for and against is lopsided; he is not balanced.

Buddha used to say to his disciples, "Just be balanced, and everything else will become possible of its own accord. Just be in the middle." And that is what Patanjali says when he is talking about the posture. The outer posture is of the body, the inner posture is of the mind; both are connected. When the body is in the middle -- restful, steady -- the mind is also in the middle -- restful, steady.

When the body is in rest, body-feeling disappears; when the mind is in rest, mind feeling disappears. Then you are only the soul, the transcendental, which is neither the body nor the mind.

THE NEXT STEP AFTER THE PERFECTION OF POSTURE IS BREATH

CONTROL, WHICH IS ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH HOLDING THE

BREATH ON INHALATION AND EXHALATION, OR STOPPING THE

BREATH SUDDENLY.

Between body and mind, breath is the bridge -- these three things have to be understood. Body posture, mind merging into the infinite, and the bridge that joins them together have to be in a right rhythm. Have you observed? If not, then observe that whenever your mind changes, the breathing changes. The reverse is also true: change your breathing, and mind changes.

When you are deep in sexual passion have you watched how you breathe? --

very nonrhythmic, feverish, excited. If you continue breathing that way you will be tired soon, exhausted. It will not give you life; in fact, in that way you are losing some life. When you are calm and quiet, feeling happy, suddenly one morning or evening looking at the stars, nothing to do, a holiday, just resting --

look, watch the breathing. The breathing is so peaceful. You cannot even feel it, whether it is moving or not. When you are angry, watch. The breathing changes immediately. When you feel love, watch. When you are sad, watch. With every mood the breathing has a different rhythm: it is a bridge.

When your body is healthy, breathing has a different quality. When your body is ill the breathing is ill. When you are perfectly in health you completely forget about breathing. When you are not in perfect health the breathing comes again and again to your notice; something is wrong.

"The next step after the perfection of posture is breath control...." This word

"breath control" is not good; it is not a right rendering of the word "pranayam."

Pranayam never means breath control. It simply means the expansion of the vital energy. Prana-ayam: prana means the vital energy hidden in breath, and ayam means infinite expansion. It is not "breath control." The very word "control" is a little ugly, because the very word "control" gives you a feeling of the controller --

the will enters. Pranayam is totally different: expansion of vitality breathing in such a way that you become one with the whole's breathing; breathing in such a way that you are not breathing in your own individual way, you are breathing with the whole.

Try this, sometimes it happens: two lovers sitting by each other's side holding hands -- if they are really in love they will suddenly become aware that they are breathing simultaneously, they are breathing together. They are not breathing separately. When the woman inhales, the man inhales. When the man exhales, the woman exhales. Try it. Sometime, suddenly become aware. If you are sitting with a friend, you will be breathing together. If the enemy is sitting there and you want to get rid of him, or some bore is there and you want to get rid of him, you will be breathing separately; you will never breathe in rhythm.

Sit with a tree. If you are silent, enjoying, delighting, suddenly you will become aware that the tree, somehow, is breathing the same way you are breathing.

And there comes a moment when one feels that one is breathing together with the whole, one becomes the breath of the whole, one is no longer fighting, struggling, one is surrendered. One is with the whole -- so much so, that there is no need to breathe separately.

In deep love people breathe together; in hatred never. I have a feeling that if you are inimical to somebody, he may be a thousand miles away.... This is just a feeling because no scientific research exists for it, but someday the scientific research is possible. But I have a very deep feeling that if you are inimical to somebody, he may be in America and you may be in India, you will breathe separately, you cannot breathe together. And your lover may be in China, you may be here in Poona -- you may not even have the address with you where your lover is -- but you will breathe together. This is how it should be, and I know it is that way, but no scientific proof exists. That's why I say this is just my feeling.

Someday, somebody will prove the scientific thing also.

There are a few proofs which suggest.... For example, in Russia there have been a few experiments about telepathy. Two persons, separate, far away, hundreds of miles away: one person is the broadcaster, another is the receiver in telepathy. At a fixed time, twelve in the afternoon, one starts sending messages. He makes a copy of a triangle, concentrates on it, and sends the message that "I have made a triangle." And the other person tries to receive, just remains open, feeling, groping -- what message is coming. And scientists have observed that if he receives the triangle then they both are breathing in the same way; if he misses the triangle then they are not breathing in the same way.

In deep breathing together, something of deep empathy arises; you become one -

- because breath is life. Then feeling can be transferred, thoughts can be transferred.

If you go to meet a saint always watch his breathing. And if you feel sympathetic, in deep love with him, watch your breathing also. You will suddenly feel that the nearer you come to him, your feeling, your breathing, fall with his system of breathing. Aware, unaware, that is not the point; but it happens.

This has been my observation: if I see that somebody has come and not knowing anything at all about breathing he starts breathing with me, I know he is going to become a sannyasin, and I ask him. If I feel that he is not breathing with me I forget about asking; I will have to wait. And sometimes I have tried, just for an experiment I have asked, and he will say, "No, I am not ready." I knew it, that he is not ready -- just to test whether my feeling is going right, whether he is in sympathy with me. When you are in sympathy you breathe together. It simply happens by itself; some unknown law functions.

Pranayam means: to breathe with the whole. That is my translation, not "control of breath": to breathe with the whole. It is absolutely uncontrolled! If you control how can you breathe with the whole? So to translate pranayam as "breath control" is a misnomer. It is not only incorrect, inadequate, it is certainly wrong.

Just the opposite is the case.

To breathe with the whole, to become the breath of the eternal and the whole is pranayam. Then you expand. Then your life energy goes on expanding with trees and mountains and sky and stars. Then a moment comes, the day you become Buddha... you have completely disappeared. Now you no longer breathe, the whole breathes in you. Now your breathing and the whole's breathing are never apart; they are always together. So much so that it is now useless to say that "this is my breath."

"The next step after the perfection of posture is breath control -- PRANAYAM --

WHICH IS ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH HOLDING THE BREATH ON

INHALATION AND EXHALATION, OR STOPPING THE BREATH

SUDDENLY."

When you breathe in, there comes a moment when the breath has completely gone in -- for a certain second breathing stops. The same happens when you exhale. You breathe out: when the breath is completely released, for a certain second, again, breathing stops. In those moments you face death, and to face death is to face God. To face death is to face God -- I repeat it -- because when you die, God lives in you. Only after the crucifixion is there resurrection. That's why I say Patanjali is teaching the art of dying.

When the breathing stops, when there is no breathing, you are exactly in the same stage as you will be in when you will die. For a second you are in tune with death -- breathing has stopped. The whole of THE BOOK OF THE SECRETS, VIGYAN BHAIRAV TANTRA, is concerned with it -- emphatically concerned with it -- because if you can enter into that stoppage, there is the door.

It is very subtle and narrow. Jesus has said again and again, "Narrow is my way -

- straight, but narrow, very narrow." Kabir has said, "Two cannot pass together, only one." So narrow that if you are a crowd inside, you cannot pass. If you are even divided in two -- left and right -- you cannot pass. If you become one, a unison, a harmony, then you can pass.

Narrow is the way. Straight, of course; it is not a crooked thing. It goes directly to the temple of the divine, but very narrow. You cannot take anybody with you.

You cannot take your things with you. You cannot take your knowledge. You cannot take your sacrifices. You cannot take your woman, your children. You cannot take anybody. In fact you cannot take even your ego, even yourself. You will pass through it, but everything else other than your purest being has to be left at the door. Yes, narrow is the way. Straight, but narrow.

And these are the moments to find the way: when the breath goes in and stops for a second; when the breath goes out and stops for a second. Attune yourself to become more and more aware of these stops, these gaps. Through these gaps, God enters you like death.

Somebody was telling me, "In the West, we don't have any parallel like Yama, the god of death." And he was asking me, "Why do you call death a god? Death is the enemy. Why should death be called a god? If you call death the devil it is okay, but why do you call it a god?" I said we call it a god very consideredly: because death is the door to God. In fact death is deeper than life -- life that you know. Not the life that I know. Your death is deeper than your life, and when you move through that death you will come to a life which doesn't belong to you or me or to anybody. It is the life of the whole. Death is the God.

A whole Upanishad exists, kathopanishad: the whole story, the whole parable is that a small child is sent to Death to learn the secret of life. Absurd, patently absurd. Why go to Death to learn the secret of life? Looks like a paradox, but it is reality. If you want to know life -- real life -- you will have to ask Death, because when your so-called life stops, only then real life functions.

"The next step after the perfection of posture is pranayam, which is accomplished through holding the breath...." So when you inhale, hold it a little longer so that the gate can be felt. When you exhale it, hold it outside a little longer so that you can feel the gap a little more easily; you have a little more time. "... or stopping the breath suddenly." Or, anytime, stop the breath suddenly. Walking on the road: stop it -- just a sudden jerk, and death enters. Anytime you can stop the breath suddenly, anywhere, in that stopping, death enters.

THE DURATION AND FREQUENCY OF THE CONTROLLED BREATHS ARE

CONDITIONED BY TIME AND PLACE, AND BECOME MORE PROLONGED

AND SUBTLE.

The more you do these stoppages, the gaps, the more the gate becomes a little wider; you can feel it more. Try it. Make it a part of your life. Whenever you are not doing anything, let the breath go in... stop it. Feel there; somewhere there is the door. It is dark; you will have to grope. The door is not immediately available. You will have to grope... but you will find.

And whenever you will stop the breath, thoughts will stop immediately. Try it.

Suddenly stop the breath: and immediately there is a break and thoughts stop, because thoughts and breaths both belong to life -- this so-called life. In the other life, the divine life, breathing is not needed. You live; there is no need to breathe.

And thoughts are not needed. You live; thoughts are not needed. Thoughts and breath are part of the physical world. No-thought, no-breath, are part of the eternal world.

THERE IS A FOURTH SPHERE OF BREATH CONTROL, WHICH IS

INTERNAL, AND IT GOES BEYOND THE OTHER THREE.

Patanjali says these three -- stopping inside, stopping outside, stopping suddenly

-- and there is a fourth which is internal. That fourth has been emphasized by Buddha very much; he calls it "anapana sata yoga." He says, "Don't try to stop anywhere. Simply watch the whole process of breath." The breath coming in --

you watch, don't miss a single point. The breath is coming in -- you go on watching. Then there is a stop, automatic stop, when the breath has entered you -

- watch the stop. Don't do anything; simply be a watcher. Then the breath starts for the outer journey -- go on watching. When the breath is completely out, stops

-- watch that stop also. Then the breath goes on coming in, going out, coming in, going out -- you simply watch. This is the fourth: just by watching you become separate from the breath.

When you are separate from the breath you are separate from the thoughts. In fact breath is the parallel process in the body to thoughts in the mind. Thoughts move in the mind; breath moves in the body. They are parallel forces, two aspects of the same coin. Patanjali also refers to it, although he has not emphasized the fourth. He simply refers to it, but Buddha has completely focused his whole attention on the fourth; he never talks about the three. The whole Buddhist meditation is the fourth.

"There is a fourth sphere of PRANAYAM" -- that is of witnessing -- "which is internal, and it goes beyond the other three." But Patanjali is really very scientific.

He never uses the fourth, but he says that it is beyond the three. Must be Patanjali didn't have as beautiful a group of disciples as Buddha had. Patanjali must have been working with more body oriented people, and Buddha was working with more mind oriented people. He says that the fourth goes beyond the three, but he himself never uses it -- he goes on saying all that can be said about yoga. That's why I say he is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end: he has not left out a single point. Patanjali's YOGA SUTRAS cannot be improved.

There are only two persons in the world who created a whole science alone. One is Aristotle, in the West, who created the science of logic -- alone, with nobody's cooperation. And for these two thousand years nothing has been improved; it remains the same. It remains perfect. Another is Patanjali, who created the whole science of yoga -- which is many times, a million times greater than logic -- alone.

And it could not be improved; it has not been improved; and I don't see any point how it can be improved any day. The whole science is there, perfect, absolutely perfect.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6

Chapter #8

Chapter title: Beyond The Rhythms of The Mind to Being 8 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1

SOMETIMES AT YOUR LECTURES I CAN'T KEEP MY EYES OPEN OR

CONCENTRATE, AND KEEP FALLING SOMEWHERE AND COMING BACK

WITH A JERK. THERE IS NO MEMORY OF WHERE I HAVE BEEN. AM I GOING DEEP, OR JUST FALLING ASLEEP?

Mind functions through very subtle electric waves. That mechanism has to be understood. Now researchers say that mind functions in four states. The ordinary awake mind functions at eighteen to thirty cycles per second -- this is the "beta" state of mind. Right now you are in that state, while awake, doing your things.

Deeper than that is the "alpha" rhythm. Sometimes, when you are not active, but passive -- just relaxing on the beach, not doing anything, listening to music, or deep in prayer or in meditation -- then the activity of the mind is lowered: from eighteen to thirty cycles per second it becomes nearabout fourteen to eighteen cycles per second. You are aware, but not very alert. You are awake, but passive.

A certain kind of deep relaxation surrounds you.

All meditators fall into this second, alpha rhythm, when they meditate or pray.

Listening to music also that can happen. Just looking at trees, the expanse of greenery, it can happen. Not doing anything particularly, just sitting silently, it can happen. And once you know the knack of it, you can slow down the activity of the mind; then thoughts are not rushing. They move, they are there, but they move at a very slow pace, as if clouds floating in the sky -- in fact, not going somewhere, just floating. This second state, alpha, is very valuable.

Below the second there is a third state; the activity falls even lower. That state is called "theta": from eight to fourteen cycles per second. This is the state you pass through in the night when you are falling asleep, the drowsiness. When you take alcohol you pass through that drowsiness. Watch a drunkard walking: he is in the third state. He is walking not aware. Where he is going, he does not know.

What he is doing.... The body goes on functioning as a robot. The mind activity has slowed down so much that it is almost just on the verge of falling asleep.

In very deep meditation also this will happen -- you will fall from alpha to theta.

But it happens only in very deep states. Ordinary meditators don't touch it.

When you start touching this third state you will feel very blissful.

And all drunkards are trying to reach this blissfulness, but they miss; because the blissfulness is possible only if you go into this third state fully alert -- passive, but alert. A drunkard reaches into it, but he is unconscious; by the time he reaches he is unconscious. The state is there but he cannot enjoy it, he cannot delight in it, he cannot grow through it. The appeal all over the world of all sorts of intoxicants is because of the appeal of the theta. But you have chosen a wrong means if you are trying to reach it through chemicals. One should reach it just by slowing down the activity of the mind and remaining fully alert.

Then there is the fourth state; it is called "delta." The activity falls lower still: from zero to four cycles per second. The mind is almost nonfunctioning. There are moments when it touches the zero point, absolutely still. This is where you go in deep sleep, when even dreams have stopped; and this is what Hindus, Patanjali, Buddhists, have called samadhi. Patanjali, in fact, defines samadhi as deep sleep with awareness -- with only one condition: that awareness should be there.

In the West, much research has been done lately about these four states. They think it is impossible to be aware in the fourth, because they think it is contradictory -- to be aware and fast asleep. It is not. And one man, a very exceptional yogi, has proved it now scientifically. His name is Swami Ram. In 1970, in an American lab, in Menninger Institute, he told the researchers that he would go into the fourth state of mind willfully. They said, "That is impossible, because the fourth comes only when you are fast asleep and the will cannot function and you are not aware." But the swami said, "I will do it." The researchers were unwilling to believe, they were suspicious, but they tried.

The swami started meditating. By and by, within a few minutes, he was almost asleep. The EEG records which were tracing the waves of his mind showed that he was in the fourth state, the mind activity had almost ceased. Still, the researchers didn't believe because, he may have fallen asleep, that is not the point: the point is whether he is aware. Then the swami came back from his meditation, and he reported all the conversation that was going on around him --

better than those who were fully alert.

For the first time in a scientific lab, Krishna's famous sentence has been proved.

Krishna says in the Geeta, "Ya nisha sarva bhutayam tasyam jagrati samyami" --

"That which is a deep sleep to all, even there the yogi is awake." For the first time it has been proved as a scientific theory. It is possible to be fast asleep and aware, because sleep happens in the body, sleep happens in the mind, but the witnessing soul is never asleep. Once you have become unidentified with the body-mind mechanism, once you have become capable of watching what goes on in the body, in the mind, you cannot fall asleep: the body will go to sleep, you will remain alert. Somewhere deep within you a center will remain perfectly aware.

Now, the question: "Sometimes at your lectures I can't keep my eyes open...."

Don't try to keep them open. If you are falling in a deep rhythm allow it, because when you are listening to me, if you try to concentrate, you will remain in the first state, the beta, because the mind has to function. Don't be bothered. What I am saying is not so important as to realize that which is going to happen to you.

In fact whatsoever I am saying is nothing but to prepare you to fall deeper into your inner states of mind. So if you miss something don't bother -- you can listen to the tape later on. And even if you don't listen it doesn't matter.

If the eyes are closing, allow them. The only thing to remember is: be alert. Allow the eyes to close.... In fact become more alert, because the deeper you go in the mind, more alertness will be needed. You are diving deep in consciousness. You can fall asleep: then you have missed the lecture and you have missed the inner state also. Then it has been futile to be here. "Sometimes at your lectures I can't keep my eyes open...." No need. Close the eyes. Just remain alert inside -- become more alert.

"... and keep falling somewhere and coming back with a jerk." That somewhere is the third state, the theta. If you fall to the second, alpha, you will know where you had gone and there will be no jerk. Smoothly one can move from the first to the second, from the beta to the alpha, very smoothly, because the difference is only of activity and passivity -- you remain alert. But when you move from the second to the third, then the difference is very deep. Now you are moving, ordinarily, from awakeness to sleepiness. Then if you come back you will come with a jerk, and consciousness is lost -- that's why you don't know where you have been.

"There is no memory of where I have been." If you had just simply fallen asleep you would have the memory. If you were dreaming, you would have the memory of the dream. If you were nondreaming, you would have the memory that you fell asleep and there was no dream. Either, positively, you will remember a dream or, negatively, you will remember there was no dream and the sleep was deep; but you will remember if it is a sleep.

That's how in the morning you remember that in the night there were so many dreams, or on some day you say, "I slept very deeply; there were no dreams."

These are both memories -- one positive, one negative. If dream happens there will be a positive memory -- something was happening, certain activity going on.

If there is no dream you will have just a peaceful remembrance of nothing, that nothing happened. But this you will remember: that nothing happened and no dream crossed my mind and sleep was really deep, very deep, not a single ripple. But you will remember and you will say, "I was very blissful."

But if you fall not asleep but into the meditative state -- they are similar, almost similar -- than you will not be able to remember anything. Because when you fall into a meditative state, theta, or sometimes you can move into the fourth also, the delta, then there will be no memory at all because you are going somewhere which is not part of the mind, somewhere where memory does not function, somewhere off the track. You are not on the superhighway, you are moving in the forest of your unconscious being: uncharted, no maps, thinking doesn't function -- -no ideas can be applied to it. Then you will come back with a jerk as if you had been lost. You will come back with a jerk to the superhighway again, where milestones exist and everything is clean and the map exists -- and you can understand where you are.

You are not just falling asleep; otherwise you will know, because you know sleep. For many lives you have been sleeping; you are perfectly acquainted with the phenomenon. If you live sixty years, twenty years are passed in sleep. It is not an ordinary phenomenon. Sixty years' life, twenty years are passed in sleep: every day, one third of your time is sleep time. You know it; you know it well.

And this is not only for one life -- for millions of lives you have been sleeping, one third every life. In fact there is no other activity which takes so much time.

No other single activity takes so much time. You neither love for eight hours nor do you eat for eight hours nor do you meditate for eight hours. Sleep is the most significant thing. How can you be unaware of it? Maybe dimly aware, but you are aware: memory will function.

But you are falling off the track, where you have never been. That's why you come with a jerk. Something unknown touches your being. That's why you cannot decide "whether I am going deep or just asleep." Be happy. If you can decide, then it is sleep; if you can recognize, then it is sleep. If you cannot recognize, then something from the beyond is penetrating you and you are penetrating into the beyond. Be happy. Delight in it, and allow it. One day it becomes possible, when you go again and again and again into the unknown, then you become acquainted with the territory. Then there may be no common map, but you have your own private map of it. At least you know where you are going.

So the only thing to be done is: when you close your eyes be come more alert, because more alertness will be needed. Into the deeper darkness more light will be needed. Become alert, and as you start falling into somewhere -- the unknown

-- try to keep alertness. By and by, one learns the knack of it. And then every night when you are falling asleep, again try it -- just to give it practice. When you start feeling drowsy, inside remain alert and go on seeing what is happening.

One day you will see: drowsiness has come, sleep has entered, and alertness is still there. That day is the most beautiful day of any life. When you can remain alert and move into deep sleep you have moved into the fourth, the delta. That is the deepest center of your being.

Of course one has to earn it, one has to learn it, one has to become capable of it. It does not happen, ordinarily. It is not an ordinary state of mind; it is a very extraordinary state of mind. That's why Krishna declared it five thousand years before, and for five thousand years there existed no scientific proof for it -- it appeared to be just a philosophical theory: "YA NISHA SARVA BHUTAYAM

TASYAM JAGRATI SAMYAMI." After five thousand years, now, a few scientific proofs are arising. You can also move into it, and when it becomes a scientific proof of your own understanding it is a revelation.

Question 2

YOU HAVE SAID THAT PATANJALI'S YOGA IS A COMPLETE SYSTEM. YET

NOWHERE DOES HE SEEM TO TALK ABOUT THE YOGA OF KISSING. CAN

YOU EXPLAIN THIS?

For that, Patanjali will have to be born as an American. Only then can he write the yoga of kissing. Such foolish things exist only in America, nowhere else: yoga of sex, yoga of kissing, yoga of anything -- cooking. But you will have to wait a little -- some fool is bound to.

Question 3

HOW CAN ONE BE TOTAL YET NOT EXTREME IN ALL THAT ONE

EXPERIENCES?

Don't be worried. Just be total, and you will never be extreme. Ordinarily, if you think about it, it appears that if you become total you will become extreme --

because you don't know what totality is. Totality always happens in the middle.

It is a phenomenon of the middle, because totality is balance. On the extreme it never happens; on the extreme you can never be total. Try to understand it.

You love someone: you can be extreme in love, but that will not be totality because love has another part to it, that is hate. So you can move to one extreme, that is love; it will be one extreme. Sometimes you can hate the same person. You can move to another extreme and you can hate completely -- or it appears to you that you are in complete hate -- but that too is part. The whole phenomenon is love-hate, together.

If you choose one you have chosen one extreme. My left hand and my right hand

-- they both belong to me. If I choose the left I lean towards the left, if I choose the right I lean towards the right, and when I don't choose any I stand in the middle.

Then both hands belong to me, but I don't belong to them. If you choose hate you have chosen one part. If you choose love you have chosen another part.

And this is the trouble: if you choose hate, sooner or later you will fall in love. If you go on hating the enemy long enough you will fall in love. If you go on loving the friend long enough you will hate. Because one cannot remain on one extreme for long. That's why lovers fight and enemies are also deep down lovers. They cannot be without the enemy; they cling. Love in reverse -- but it is love.

What happens when one is total? Love and hate, both, are there. And when love and hate both are there, they cancel each other, and a different phenomenon arises that Buddha has called compassion. Compassion has no opposite to it. Or, you can say, "Only when there is no hate part, love becomes perfect"; but then love is in the middle. Whatsoever you want to call it is not the point, but a deep balance happens. Opposites cancel each other; they are of the same weight. They cancel each other and you remain in balance. Balance is totality. Then the whole of you is involved in it.

When a Buddha has compassion nothing is left behind. He moves totally in it.

When a Jesus loves he moves totally in it. When you love, a part of you is getting ready to hate. When you hate, a part of you is getting ready to love. You are divided -- a divided personality always moves to the extremes. Totality belongs to an undivided mind, nonsplit: one stands erect, in the middle, so balanced --

not leaning to this or that. In that moment of neither this nor that, one attains to totality.

The Upanishads have a particular word for it. They call it "NETI-NETI." They say

"neither this nor that" -- don't choose between the opposites. Let the opposites come together and become complementary. Let them dissolve into each other. Be choiceless. That's why Krishnamurti goes on emphasizing one word continuously -- "choiceless awareness" -- because the moment you choose you have chosen the extreme.

All choice is of the extreme. You choose something against something. Whenever you say, "This is beautiful," you have already condemned something as ugly.

Otherwise how can you say this is beautiful? In the assertion, in the statement, that this is beautiful, is hidden the statement: "Something is ugly, condemned."

The moment you say, "This man is a saint," you have condemned somebody as a sinner.

Saints will disappear if sinners disappear. How can there be saints if there are no sinners? Sinners are needed for saints to be. Sinners will also disappear if saints are no longer there. Who will call them sinners? How will you judge that somebody is a sinner? In a perfect humanity there will be no saint, no sinner, because the whole thing will balance deeply. Sinners and saints are opposites to each other; they exist together.

Sometimes, while I was travelling in India, in many places many people asked me one question again and again. The question seems to be very pertinent and relevant. They have asked me, "Why is it so, that in India there have been so many saints, and yet the country is so immoral?" I have told them it is natural.

When a country produces so many saints it has to produce the same number of sinners; otherwise the balance will be lost. When the country produces all the teerthankeras, twentyfour; all the avataras, twenty four; all the Buddhas, twentyfour; then where will the sinners go? And how can a Buddha exist if all the sinners are not here?

A Buddha exists in an ocean of sinners; there is no other way. For one Buddha to exist millions of sinners are needed. In fact, because of those sinners he looks so enlightened: contrast. Against a blackboard you write with white chalk: it looks so white, more white than white -- whiter than white. Write on a white wall with the white chalk -- nothing appears. When the humanity will really be perfect, balanced, there will be no Buddha: it will be writing on a white wall with white chalk. A very dark humanity is needed. So, if you ask me, I hope for a world where there will be no need for a Buddha... things will be so balanced.

That's what Lao Tzu says again and again, "There was a time in the past there were no saints -- because there were no sinners." There was a time in the past when things were so natural and so balanced that there was not even a concept of what is wrong and what is right. Lao Tzu says, "Bring the concept of right, and wrong enters immediately." Opposites are together. They come together; they go together. They are aspects of the same coin, two aspects of the same thing.

If you choose you choose the extreme. Balance cannot be chosen. You have to become choiceless; then there is balance, neither this nor that -- neti-neti.

Suddenly you balance in the middle, and all the glory of existence becomes yours. You are fulfilled.

The question seems to be meaningful, but is not: "How can one be total yet not extreme in all that one experiences?" If you are total then you will not be extreme; if you are extreme you will not be total. Try to be total and balanced, and extremes will disappear by themselves. They exist with your support.

Because you choose, that's why they exist.

Don't choose. Don't say this is good and don't say that is bad. Remain alert, that's all. Don't say this is a saint and that is a sinner. Remain alert, that's all -- and accept the total. The sinner exists, the saint exists: the total accepts both. You also accept both. With no condemnation of the sinner, with no appreciation of the saint, you become choiceless. In that choicelessness you will be balanced, and you will be total.

Question 4

DO YOU SMILE -- WHEN WE ARE SERIOUS AND LONG-FACED IN YOUR

AUDIENCE?

What else can I do?

Question 5

YOU ONCE SAID THAT DRUGS CREATE CHEMICAL DREAMS --

IMAGINARY EXPERIENCES. AND KRISHNAMURTI SAYS THAT ALL YOGA PRACTICES, ALL MEDITATION TECHNIQUES, ARE JUST LIKE DRUGS --

THEY PRODUCE CHEMICAL CHANGE AND, HENCE, THE EXPERIENCES.

PLEASE COMMENT.

Krishnamurti is right. Very difficult to understand, but he is right. All experiences are through chemical change -- all, without any exception. Whether you take LSD or you fast, in both the ways body goes through chemical change.

Whether you take marijuana or you do a certain pranayam, a breathing exercise, in both the ways body goes through chemical change. Try to understand it.

When you fast what happens? Your body loses a few chemicals because they have to be supplied every day by the food. If you don't supply those chemicals, the body loses those chemicals. Then the ordinary balance of the chemicals is lost; and because fasting creates an imbalance you can start feeling a few things.

If you fast long enough you will have hallucinations. If you fast for twenty-one days or more you will become incapable of judging whether what you are seeing is real or unreal, because for it a particular chemical is needed and that is lost.

Ordinarily, if suddenly Krishna meets you on the road, the first idea to arise will be that you must be seeing some hallucination, some illusion, some dream. You will rub your eyes and you will look around, or you will ask somebody else,

"Come here. Please, see. Can you see somebody standing just in front of me, Krishna-like?" But if you fast for twenty-one days, the distinction between reality and dream is lost. Then if Krishna is standing, you believe that he is there.

Have you watched small children? They cannot make a distinction between reality and dream. In the night they dreamed about a toy, and in the morning they are weeping and crying -- "Where has the toy gone?" That particular chemical which helps you to judge has still to be created, only then will the child be able to make the distinction between real and unreal.

When you take alcohol that chemical is destroyed.

Mulla Nasrudin was teaching his son. Sitting in a pub, he was telling him when to stop. So he said, "Look. Look in that corner. When you start seeing four people instead of two, know well this is the time to stop drinking and go home."

But the son said, "Dad, there are not two people -- only one is sitting!" The dad is already drunk.

When you take alcohol what happens? Some chemical change. When you take LSD what happens? -- or marijuana or other things? Some chemical change, and you start seeing things which you had never seen. You start feeling things; you become very sensitive.

And that is the trouble: you cannot persuade an alcoholic to drop his drinks, because the real reality seems so flat, boring. Once he has seen the reality through his chemicals, through chemical changes.... The trees were more green and the flowers had more fragrance because he could project, he could create an illusory world: now you tell him, "Stop. Your children are suffering, your wife is suffering, your job is going to the dogs -- stop!" but he cannot stop, because he had a glimpse of an unreal world, but beautiful. Now if he stops, the world seems to be too rough, ordinary. The trees don't look so green and the flowers don't smell so beautiful; even the wife -- for whom to save you are teaching him -

- looks very ordinary, dead, a routine affair. When he is under the influence of the drug his own wife becomes a Cleopatra, the most beautiful woman in the world. He lives a dream life.

All experiences are chemical -- without any exception. When you breathe very much you create very much oxygen inside the body; the quantity of nitrogen falls. More oxygen changes inner chemicals. You start feeling things which you never felt. If you whirl around as in dervish dances, fast spin, the body changes; the chemicals change through spinning. You feel dizzy; a new world opens. All experiences are chemical.

When you are hungry the world looks different. When you are satisfied, satiated, the world looks different. A poor man has a different world, and a rich man has a different world. Their chemicals differ. An intelligent man has a different world, and a stupid man has a different world. Their chemicals differ. A woman has a different world; a man has a different world. Their chemicals differ.

When one becomes sexually mature, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, a different world arises because new chemicals are flowing in the bloodstream. For a child of seven, if you talk about sex and sexual orgasm, he will think you are foolish --

"What nonsense are you talking?" -- because those chemicals are not flowing, those hormones are not in the bloodstream. But at the moment of the age of fourteen, fifteen, the eyes are full of new chemicals -- an ordinary woman suddenly is transformed.

Mulla Nasrudin used to go to the hills on holidays. Sometimes he would go for fifteen days and would be back by the tenth. The boss asked him, "What is the matter? You asked for fifteen days' leave, and you are back five days before?"

And sometimes he would ask for two weeks' leave and he would come after four weeks. "So what is the matter?" the boss asked.

The Mulla said, "There is a certain mathematics in it. In the hills I have a bungalow, and the bungalow is kept by an old, very ugly woman. So this is my criterion: when I start seeing that ugly woman as a beautiful woman, I run away.

So sometimes it happens after eight days, sometimes ten days.... She is ugly and horrible. You cannot think that she can be beautiful. But when I start thinking about her and she starts coming into my dreams and I feel that she is beautiful, then I know that now this is the time to go back home; otherwise there is danger.

So nobody knows. If I am healthy enough then it comes sooner, within seven days. If I am not so healthy then it takes two weeks. If I am very weak it takes three weeks. It depends on chemicals."

All experiences are chemical -- but one distinction has to be made. There are two ways. One is to put the chemicals in -- inject, smoke, or throw in the body. They come from the outside; they are intruders. That's what all drug people are doing around the world. The other way is to change the body by fasting, breathing....

That's what all the yogis have been doing in the East. They belong to the same path; the difference is very little. The difference is that drug people take drugs from the outside, they intrude in the biochemistry of the body, and the yogis try to change the balance of their own body, not to intrude from the outside. But as far as I am concerned, both are the same.

But if you have any urge to experience, I will tell you to choose the path of the yogis, because that way you will not be dependent, you will be more independent. And that way you will never become an addict, and that way your body will retain its purity, its organic unity. And that way, at least, you will not be an offense to the law -- no police raid possible. And that way you can go beyond easily. Hmm?... that is the most important thing.

If you take chemicals from the outside into the body, you will remain with them.

It will be difficult, more and more difficult every day to go beyond. In fact you will become more and more dependent, so dependent that you will lose all life, all charm of life, and the drug experience alone will become your whole life, the whole center of it.

If you move through yoga, through the inner changes in the chemistry of the body, you will never be dependent, and you will be able to go beyond. Because the whole point of religion is to go beyond experiences. Whether you experience beautiful colors -- rainbow all around through LSD -- or you experience heaven through yoga exercises, basically there is no difference. In fact until you go beyond all experiences, all objective experiences, until you come to the point where only the witness remains and no experience to be experienced, only the experiencer remains, you have not touched the boundary of religion.

Krishnamurti is right. But the people who are listening to him are misunderstanding him. Thinking that all experiences are futile, they have remained ordinary; they have not made any effort. I know all experiences are futile, finally one has to Leave them, but before you can leave them you will have to have them. They are like the staircase: it has to be left behind, hut one has to go upwards. One can leave it only when one has crossed it. All experiences are childish, but one has to go through them to become mature.

The real religious experience is not an experience at all. Religious experience is not experience: it is to come to the experiencer where everything known/unknown, knowable/ unknowable, disappears. Only the witnessing self remains, only a pure consciousness, with no experience to contaminate it -- you don't see Jesus, you don't see Buddha, you don't see Krishna standing there.

That's why the Zen Masters say, "If you meet the Buddha on the path, kill him immediately." Followers of Buddha say, "If you meet Buddha on the path, kill him immediately." A great teaching. Hmm?... because Buddha is so beautiful you can be allured to the dream, and then you can go on with closed eyes seeing Buddha or Krishna playing on the flute. You may be seeing a very religious dream, but it is still a dream, not reality.

The reality is your consciousness. Everything else has to be transcended. If you can remember that, then one has to pass through all experiences, but one has to pass through.

If you are after experiences too much, as everyone is -- -- that is part of the growth -- it is better to choose yoga exercises than drugs. They are more subtle, yoga exercises, more refined. You must be aware of the fact that India has tried with all the drugs. America is just a newcomer in that world. From somarasa in the Rig-vedas to ganja, India has tried everything and came to understand that this is just wasting time. Then India tried yoga exercises. Then, many times, persons like Buddha, Mahavir, reached a stage where they found that even yoga exercises are useless; they have to be dropped.

Krishnamurti is not saying something new. It is the experience of all the Buddhas. But, remember, an experience can become an experience to you only when you attain to it. Nobody can give it to you; it cannot be borrowed. If you are still childish and you feel that you need some experiences, it is better to have them through yoga exercises. Finally, that too has to be dropped.

But if you choose between LSD and pranayam, it is better to choose pranayam.

You will be less dependent and you will be more capable of transcending, because the awareness will not be lost in it. In LSD the awareness will be lost completely.

Always choose a higher thing. Whenever there is a possibility, and you want to choose, choose a higher thing. A moment will come when you will not like to choose anything... then choicelessness.

Question 6

I AM CONFUSED BETWEEN THE FEELING OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, WHICH YOU SAY IS A DISEASE, AND THE FEELINGS OF SELF-AWARENESS, SELF-REMEMBERING, AND BEING A WITNESS.

Yes, self-consciousness is a disease, and self-awareness is health. So what is the difference, because the words seem to mean the same thing? The words may mean the same thing, but when I use them or Patanjali uses them, we don't mean the same thing.

In self-consciousness the emphasis is on the self. In self-awareness the emphasis is on the awareness. You can use the same word, self-consciousness, for both. If the emphasis is on the self it is a disease. If the emphasis is on the consciousness it is health. Very subtle, but a very great difference.

Self-consciousness is disease because you are continuously conscious about the self -- how people are feeling about me, how they are judging me, what is their opinion: whether they like me or not, they accept me or reject me, they love me or not. Always the "me," the "I," the ego remains the center. This is a disease. Ego is the greatest disease there is.

And if you change the focus, emphasis -- -from self the focus goes to consciousness: now you are not worried "whether people reject me or accept me."

What their opinion is, that doesn't matter. Now you want to be aware in every situation. Whether they reject or they accept, whether they love or hate, whether they call you a saint or a sinner, that doesn't matter. What they say, what their opinion is, that is their business and their problem to decide for themselves. You are simply trying to be aware in every situation.

Somebody comes, bows down to you, he believes you are a saint: you don't bother about what he says, what he believes. You simply remain alert, you remain aware, so that he cannot drag you into unawareness, that's all. And somebody comes and insults you and throws an old shoe at you: you don't bother about what he is doing. You simply try to be alert, so that you remain untouched -- he cannot drag you.

In appreciation or condemnation, in failure or success, you remain the same.

Through your awareness you attain to a tranquility which cannot be disturbed in either way. You become free of people's opinions.

That's the difference between a religious person and a political person. A political person is self-conscious -- emphasis on self, always worried about the opinion of the people. He depends on people's opinions, their votes. Finally, they are the masters and deciders. A religious man is a master of his ownself; nobody can decide for him. He does not depend on your votes or on your opinions. If you come to him, okay. If you don't come to him, that too is okay. It creates no problem. He is himself.

Now, I would like to say a very paradoxical thing to you -- paradoxical it appears, it is a simple truth: People who are self-conscious -- emphasis on the self

-- have no self. That's why they are so self-conscious: afraid -- anybody can take their self away. They don't have their self. They are not masters. Their self is borrowed, borrowed from you. Somebody smiles: their self is given support.

Somebody insults: a prop has been taken away; their structure shakes. Somebody is angry: they are afraid. If everybody gets angry, where will they be, who will they be? Their identity is broken. If everybody smiles and says, "You are great,"

they are great.

People who are self-conscious, the political people.... And when I say political persons I don't mean only those who are really in politics: all those who in any way are dependent on others are political. They don't have any self; inside is empty. They are always afraid of their emptiness. Anybody can throw them to their emptiness -- anybody! Even a barking dog can throw them to their emptiness.

A man who is religious, self-conscious -- emphasis on consciousness -- has a self, an authentic self. You cannot take that self away from him. You cannot give it to him; you cannot take it from him. He has attained to it. If the whole world goes against him, his self will be with him. If the whole world follows him, his self will not be in any way added to, increased, no. He has really some authentic reality -- a center exists in him.

The political man has no center. He tries to create a false center. He borrows something from you, something from somebody else, something from somebody else.... That's how he manages. A false identity, a composition from many people's opinions: that is his identity. If people forget about him he will be lost, he will be nowhere; in fact, he will be nobody.

Do you see? A person is a president: suddenly he becomes somebody. Then he is no longer a president: then he is nobody. Then all the newspapers forget about him. They will remember only when he will die -- that too in a small corner. They will remember him as an ex-president, not as a person -- as an ex-post-holder.

Have you not seen this happen with Radhakrishnan? Can't you see this happening with V.V. Giri? Where is Giri? What happened? Simply a man disappears. When you are on the post, you are on all the front pages of the newspapers. You are not important -- the post.

Hence, all those who are poor deep inside are always in search of a post, in search of people's votes, opinions. That is the way they attain to a soul -- a false soul, of course.

Psychologists have reached to a very deep core of the problem. They say people who try to become superior are suffering from an inferiority complex, and people who are really superior -- they don't bother a bit. They are so superior that they are not even aware that they are superior. Only an inferior person can be aware that he is superior -- and he is very touchy about it. If you give him even a hint that "you are not so great as you think," he will be angry. Only a superior man can stand at the back as the last man. All inferiors are rushing towards the front, because if they stand at the back they are nobodies. They have to stand in the front. They have to be in the capital. They have to be with great money. They have to move in a big car. They have to be this and that. People who are inferior always try to prove their superiority by their possessions.

Let me summarize it: people who don't have a being try to gain a being through having things -- posts, names, fame.

Even sometimes it happens: one man in America killed seven persons. All those seven persons were unknown to him. He was asked in the court, "Why?" He said, "I could not become famous, so I thought at least I can become notorious, but I must be somebody. And I am happy that my photo is on the front pages as a murderer. Now you can do whatsoever you want to do. I have a feeling, now, that I am somebody. And the court is worried, the government is worried, and the people are worried, and the newspapers talking about me -- I can visualize in every hotel, restaurant, everywhere, people will be talking about me. At least for one day I have become the famous, the known."

All politicians are murderers. You can't see because you are also a politician deep inside. Just now, Mujibur Rahman has been killed. Just a few days before, he was the father of the nation. And to become the father of the nation he committed so much nuisance. He killed many -- or, he created the situation in which many were killed. Now he is killed by his own colleagues. His whole cabinet is again in power, and the people who had designed to kill him -- now they have become the president and the prime minister and minister. And they were all his colleagues, and nobody is saying anything against them. Nobody is saying anything against them. The world seems to be simply unbelievable. Now they are great people. And somebody in their own cabinet may be trying to kill Mushtaque Ahmed.

All politicians are murderers, because they are not worried about you. They are worried about their feeling: they should be somebody. If murder can give them that feeling, then okay. If violence can give them that feeling, then it is okay.

I was reading a few days before. I couldn't believe it, but it is a fact. I was reading a book about Lenin. Somebody invited him to listen to Beethoven's symphonies.

He said no, and he said no very emphatically. In fact he became almost aggressive in saying no. The man who had invited him couldn't believe why he was so angry. He said, "But why? Beethoven's symphonies are one of the greatest creations in the world." Lenin said, "Maybe, but all good music is against revolution because it gives you such deep contentment, it pacifies you. I am against all music."

If great music spreads in the world, revolutions will disappear. The logic is relevant. Lenin is saying something true about all politicians. They will not like great music in the world, they will not like great poetry in the world, they will not like great meditators in the world, they will not like people in ecstasy, euphoria, no -- because then what will happen to revolutions? What will happen to wars? What will happen to all sorts of foolishnesses that go on in the world?

People need to remain always in fever; only then they help politicians. If people are satisfied, content, happy, who bothers about capitals? People will forget all about them. They will dance and they will listen to music and they will meditate.

Why should they bother about President Ford and this and that? There is nothing to it. But people, when they are not satisfied, not relaxed, people who don't have their selfs: they go on supporting other selfs because that is the only way they can get others' support for their own selfs.

Remember this: self-consciousness -- emphasis on self -- is deep disease, disease in depth. One should get rid of it. Self-consciousness -- emphasis on consciousness -- is one of the most holy things in the world, because it belongs to healthy people, those who have attained to their center. They are conscious, aware. They are not empty; they are fulfilled.

Question 7

HOW IS ONE TO WATCH BREATH WHEN IT IS NOT SEEN BUT FELT?

Watching need not be a seeing, it can be a feeling. In fact it has to be a feeling because how can you see your breath? You feel it, the touch of it. When the breath moves through the passage, you feel the touch of it.

The whole thing is not a question of seeing. The thing is to be alert that it is going in, that it has reached to the very innermost core of your being, that now it has stopped; that now it is coming back. The ebb and the tide: now it has gone out, moved completely out, stopped; then again moving back. The whole circle of it --

coming in, going out, coming in, going out -- one has to be aware. If you feel it, that is awareness -- but one should not miss feeling it. If you can do it every day for one hour, your whole life will be changed.

And remember, if you don't change your breathing there is no chemical change happening in you. That's the difference between Patanjali and Buddha.

Patanjali's techniques will change your chemistry; Buddha's technique will not touch your chemistry at all. Normal breathing -- as it is: you simply watch, feel, see. Don't let it go in and out without awareness, that's all. Don't change it. Let it be as it is. Just add one thing: that you remain a witness to it.

Even if you can do it for one hour, your whole life will be transfigured -- and without any chemical change. You will simply become a transcendental experience, a transcendental consciousness. You will not see Buddhas, you will become a Buddha. And that's the point to be remembered: seeing Buddhas does not matter... unless you become a Buddha.

Question 8

NEED WITNESSING BE A COLD PHENOMENON?

No, but it has to be cool -- not cold, but cool. And the difference is vast. When something is cold you are indifferently looking at it, not caring, indifferent. A cool phenomenon is different: you care, you are not indifferent. But you are not attached, also. You are not obsessed; you are not feverish about it. You are not excited. If you can avoid two extremes -- indifference and excitement -- there will be coolness, a calm, cool, collected feeling.

Witnessing need not be cold. In fact if it is cold it is no longer witnessing; you have become indifferent. You are not watching. And you know well either you can be cold or you can be hot. Coolness exists just in the middle. Coolness is neither hot nor cold; it is just the midpoint between the two. You are interested but not excited: you are watching with care, not with indifference, but you are not affected.

Difficult... because you know two feelings -- cold and hot. You don't know the third feeling at all because you move from one extreme to another. Either you hate somebody or you love. Compassion: you don't know what it is. Compassion is just a word, seems to be meaningless. It is a cool word.

If you come to a Buddha he will welcome you, but it will not be a warm welcome

-- it will not be cold, also. It will be a cool welcome. He will welcome you with his whole heart, but he will not be excited. It is not that if you were not there he would have been sad because of your absence, no. He would have been as happy as ever. If you are there he is happy; if you are not there he is happy. His happiness is unaltered, that's why it is cool.

When your friend comes to see you, you are excited -- -you become hot. And remember, you cannot remain hot for long, because heat is tiring. Soon you start thinking, "When will this man leave?" First, you become hot; then you become cold. First, you become happy because a friend has come; and then you become happy when he has left. A Buddha just remains happy, whether a friend comes or not does not matter. His happiness remains unaltered. He is cool.

And to understand a cool love is really a great experience -- difficult, because your mind will interpret the cool love as cold. You don't know the cool term; you know only cold. You will see that Buddha is cold. He is not. All enlightened people are cool. Cool, because you cannot disturb them -- either way; you cannot make them more happy; you cannot make them unhappy. They are cool because they are centered.

Question 9

WHY CAN'T YOU GIVE US SOMETHING THAT WILL KILL US

INSTANTANEOUSLY AND PAINLESSLY INSTEAD OF US HAVING TO GO

THROUGH ALL THIS SEEMINGLY ENDLESS SUFFERING?

I am giving it to you, but you don't listen. It is not a question that I am not giving it to you. I am giving you absolute poison. It will kill you instantaneously, but you don't listen to me.

You go on thinking that something is wrong, you go on thinking that you are wrong, and sometimes, you even desire, "How to destroy this state of affairs?

How to go beyond it?" but you have invested in it too much. You think, "How to go beyond it?" but you don't want to go beyond.

Poison I can give you. The whole of what I am giving you is nothing but an art of dying. But I cannot force the poison on you; otherwise the court will see to it -- -I will be in trouble. I can simply offer you; then you have to take it. And there you miss.

You want it to be forced on you. You want it to be spoon-fed. And this death cannot be forced by anybody else. The death I am talking about has to be a voluntary death. It has to be a willing death. It has to be with your total heart. I cannot force on you. If you are ready it will happen; if you are not ready it will not happen.

On my part I am always ready. If you are ready to die I am ready to help you.

But you are not ready to die. Deep down you go on thinking that even after death you will survive.

You meditate, but you meditate in such a way so that you call survive it also: you use it as a technique. Your basic reality is not touched; you are always careful about it. But if you do it as a death -- meditation as death -- then you cannot survive it. Somebody else will come out of it, not you. You will be gone. A new being will come out of you -- fresh, young, virgin. You will not even be able to recognize it. There will be a discontinuity: you dropped completely, something new popped up -- and they both are not related to each other.

This is very difficult to understand. That new being is hidden behind you, but the shell that is covering you is too hard. You are like a seed: deep inside all is hidden, the whole tree -- the flowers and fruits and all -- but the shell is very hard. The shell is not ready to die. If the shell dies the tree will be born. And the tree is something absolutely different from the shell; it has nothing to do with it.

The shell is just a protection -- but the protection has become the whole.

Your ego is just like a shell. If the ego dies you will grow -- you will become a god! With the ego you will remain a sufferer. With no ego you will become absolutely blissful. But you don't know about it; the shell has never heard about it. And you go on listening to me through the shell. That's why you go on asking me, "Give us something to die," but you don't want it.

I am giving something to die, every moment. In fact I am not giving anything else: the whole science of religion is the science of death. It is to teach you how to die perfectly, so nothing is left. The whole shell disappears in the earth, dissolves, and the tree sprouts.

But, you think that somebody will do it for you? That is not possible. You have to commit suicide; you cannot be murdered. Remember that. The word "suicide" is very beautiful. I'm not talking about committing a suicide in the body; I am talking about committing a suicide in the mind, in the ego. Become a no-mind, a no-ego, and the whole existence becomes possible. You are carrying it for millions of lives. It is just there within you. It is already there, just a right soil and the shell disappearing... and the tree will be there in all its glory and beauty.

Question 10

WHERE DO YOUR WORDS COME FROM AND HOW DO YOU RELATE TO

THEM?

There is nobody to relate to them. They come out of the blue -- nobody is managing. I am not there to manage them. You ask a question and out of the blue comes the response. They are not my words. The question is yours; the answer is not mine. The question comes from your mind; the answer is not coming from any mind. The mind is being used to deliver it, but it is not coming from there.

The medium is not the source.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6

Chapter #9

Chapter title: Returning to The Source

9 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

52. THEN COMES THE DISPERSION OF THE COVER THAT HIDES THE

LIGHT.

53. AND THEN THE MIND BECOMES FIT FOR CONCENTRATION.

54. THE FIFTH CONSTITUENT OF YOGA, pratyahar -- RETURNING TO THE

SOURCE -- IS THE RESTORATION OF THE MIND'S ABILITY TO CONTROL

THE SENSES BY RENOUNCING THE DISTRACTIONS OF OUTSIDE OBJECTS.

55. THEN COMES THE COMPLETE MASTERY OVER ALL THE SENSES.

"Man is being abolished," says C. S. Lewis. "Good riddance," says B. F. Skinner.

"How like a god," says Shakespeare's Hamlet about man. "How like a dog," says Pavlov. The trouble is that man is both -- godlike, doglike, both. If man was a unity -- doglike or godlike -- there would have been no problem. The problem arises because man is a paradox: on the surface, worse than any dog; at the center, glorious, more glorious than any god.

If you look at man just from the outside, you cannot say that if man is being abolished there is some harm -- "It is good, good riddance. Skinner is right. The earth will be better; at least, more silent. Nature will be happier." But if you look at man deep, in his infinite depth, then without man the earth may be silent, but that silence will be dead. It will not have any music in it. It will not have any depth in it. Flowers will be there, but they will not be beautiful anymore. Who will feel their beauty? Who will know their beauty? Birds will go on singing, but who will call the singing poetic, mysterious? Trees will be green, but will not be green at the same time, because that greenery has to be recognized by a deep resonance of the human heart.

With man, appreciation will disappear. With man, prayer will disappear. With man, God will disappear. The earth will be there, but ungodly. The silence, but the silence of the cemetery. The silence will not be throbbing with the heart. It may be spread all over the earth, it may have expansion, but it will miss depth --

and a silence without depth is no longer silence. The world will be profane; it won't be sacred anymore.

Man creates the holy, because deep hidden behind man is the holy. Man cannot live without temples, without churches, without mosques, because man himself is a temple. He goes on creating temples -- even atheists create temples. Look at the temple of the Kremlin. Communists passing before the Kremlin or before the mausoleum of Lenin are as worshipful as any theist worshipping any other god.

Man cannot live without a god because deep down he is a god.

The problem, the trouble, arises because man is both: a bridge stretched between two eternities -- between matter and mind, between this world and that, between the profane and the sacred, between life and death. That's the beauty also: with the mystery, with the paradox, man is not only a puzzle, he also becomes a mystery.

What to do? If you settle with Pavlov and his disciple B.F. Skinner, you have settled without knowing man, without understanding man, without even making an effort to know him. If you settle too soon with Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna, Christ, Patanjali, if your acceptance is immature, then "that man is a god" will remain a belief; it can never become a faith. If you are in a hurry to be settled with anything, then you will miss. A deep patience is needed to know man.

And there is no way to know man objectively. If you try to know man objectively, as a scientist is tempted to, you will commit the mistake of Pavlov --

man will look like a dog. The only way to know man is to know the man who is within you. The only way to come face to face with man is to encounter yourself.

You are carrying a tremendous energy within you. Unless you are acquainted with it you will not be able to see and know it outside in others. Remember this as a criterion: that as much as you know yourself, only that much can you know the other. Not a bit more, no -- impossible. The knower must be known first; only then can the mystery of the known be penetrated. You must know your depth; only then your eyes become attuned to know the depth of the others.

If you remain on the surface of your being then the whole existence will remain just the surface. If you think that you are only a wave on the ocean, and you have not known the ocean at all, all other waves will remain waves. Once you have a look within your being and you become the ocean -- you have been the ocean, you come to know it -- all other waves have disappeared: now it is only the ocean waving. Now behind every wave -- beautiful, ugly, small, big -- it doesn't matter; the same ocean exists.

Yoga is a method to come to terms with the innermost depth of your own being, the subjectivity of your soul. It is infinite: you enter into it, but you never come to a point where you can say, "I have known all." You go on and on and on.... It is infinite. You can be deeply in it, but still, much always remains. That point never comes when you can say, "Now I have come to the boundary." In fact, boundaries don't exist. They don't exist in the universe. Outside there are no boundaries; existence is infinite. They don't exist within your subjectivity.

Boundaries are always false. Deeper you go, the unboundage opens more and more.

But once you have fallen in it, once you have flown in it... now you know. Now the small disappears, the bounded disappears, the limited disappears. Now you look into anybody's eyes and you know the infinite waiting there. Love, for the first time, becomes possible. Love is possible only when you have known your depth. Only gods love, and only gods can love. Dogs can only fight; even in the name of love they will fight. And if gods fight, even in their fight they love; otherwise is not possible.

When you have come to know your being as divine, the whole existence immediately is transfigured. It is no longer the old existence, the stale, the day-to-day, the ordinary. No, nothing ordinary exists after that; everything takes the color of extraordinariness, of a superb glory. Ordinary pebbles become diamonds

-- they are. Every leaf becomes alive with tremendous life hidden behind it, within it, below it, beyond it. The whole existence becomes divine. The moment you know your god, you only know God everywhere. That is the only way to know.

The whole yoga is a methodology: how to uncover it which is so hidden, how to open the doors within yourself, how to enter the temple that you are, how to discover yourself. You are there, you have been there from the very beginning, but you have not discovered it. The treasure is carried by you every moment.

Every breath you take in or out, the treasure is there. You may not be aware, but you have never missed it. You may be completely oblivious, but you have never lost it. You may have forgotten it completely, but there is no way to lose it --

because you are it.

So the only question is: how to discover it. It is covered; many layers of ignorance cover it. Yoga tries step by step, slowly, to penetrate the inner mystery. In eight steps yoga completes the discovery. The beginning steps are called bahirang yoga, the yoga of the outside. yam, niyam, asan, pranayam, pratyahar -- these five steps are known as the yoga of the outside. The following three, the last three -- dharana, dhyan, samadhi -- are known as antarang, the yoga of the inside.

Now, the sutra:

Tatah kshiyate prakashavaranam.

THEN COMES THE DISPERSION OF THE COVER THAT HIDES THE LIGHT.

The four steps have been taken. The fifth works as a bridge between the four, the yoga of the outside, and the last three, the yoga of the inside. The fifth, which is part of the yoga of the outside, also functions as a bridge. pratyahar: the word means "returning to the source" -- not reaching to the source, just returning to the source. The process of return has started: now the energy is no longer moving outwardly, the energy is no longer interested in objects -- the energy has taken a turn, an about turn. It is turning inwards -- this is what Jesus calls conversion, coming back.

Ordinarily, the energy is moving outward. You want to see, you want to smell, you want to touch, you want to feel: the energy is moving out. You have completely forgotten who is hidden within you. You have become eyes, ears, nose, hands, and you have forgotten who is hidden behind these senses, who looks through your eyes. You are not the eyes. You have the eyes, right, but you are not the eyes. Eyes are only windows. Who is standing behind the windows?

Who looks through the eyes? I look at you; eyes are not looking at you. Eyes cannot look by themselves. Unless I am standing near the window, looking out, eyes by themselves cannot look.

It happens many times to you also: you go on reading a book, you have read pages, and suddenly you become aware that you have not read a single word.

Eyes were there, but you were not there. Eyes went on moving from one word to another, from one sentence to another, from one paragraph to another, from one page to another, but you were not there. Suddenly you become mindful that

"Only eyes were moving; I was not there." You are in deep pain, suffering: then eyes are open, but you don't see; they are much too filled with tears. Or you are very happy, so happy that you don't care: suddenly your eyes are filled with so much cheerfulness they don't see.

You are in the market and somebody tells you, "Your house has caught fire" --

you start running. You see many people on the street. A few people say, "Good morning. Where are you going? Why are you in such a hurry? What has happened?" Your eyes go on seeing, your ears go on hearing, but you are not there. Your house has caught fire... your presence is not there, no more. If afterwards you are asked, "Can you remember who had asked you,'Where are you going? Why are you in such a hurry?' " you will not be able to remember.

You had seen the man, you have heard what he said, but you were not there.

Ears by themselves cannot hear. Eyes by themselves cannot see. Your presence is needed. You may be on the playground playing football, hockey, or volleyball or something: when the play is at the peak you are hit in your feet, blood starts flowing... but you are so deeply involved in the game, you are not aware. It hurts, but you are not there to feel. After half an hour the game stops; suddenly your attention moves to the feet, blood is flowing -- now it hurts. For half an hour the blood was flowing but it was not hurting -- you were not there.

This has to be deeply understood: that senses by themselves are impotent --

unless you cooperate. That's the whole art of yoga. If you don't cooperate senses close. If you don't cooperate conversion starts. If you don't cooperate pratyahar comes in. That's what people who are sitting silently for hours, for years, are doing -- they are trying to drop the cooperation between themselves and their senses. When the energy is not obsessed to see, to hear, to touch; the energy starts moving inwards. That is pratyahar: movement towards the source, movement towards the place from where you have come, movement to the center. Now you are no longer moving to the periphery.

This is just the beginning. The end will be in samadhi. Pratyahar is just a beginning of the energy moving towards home. Samadhi is when you have reached home, arrived. The four -- yam, niyam, asan, pranayam -- are the preparation for pratyahar, the fifth. And pratyahar is the beginning, the turning; samadhi is the end.

"Then comes the dispersion of the cover that hides the light." The last sutra was about pranayam. Pranayam is a way of getting in rhythm with the universe, but you remain outside. You start breathing in such a way, in such a rhythm, that you fall in tune with the whole. Then you are not fighting the whole; you have surrendered. You are no longer an enemy of the whole; you have become a lover.

That's what it means to be a religious man: now he is not in conflict; now he has no private goals to achieve; now he is flowing with existence; now he is in tune with the goal of the whole, if there is any; now he has no individual destiny, the whole's destiny is his. He is floating with the river, not fighting up current.

When you really float you disappear, because the ego can exist only when it fights. The ego can exist only when there is resistance. The ego can exist only when you have some private goal against the whole. Try to understand this, how the ego exists. People come to me and they say, "We would like to drop the ego,"

and I tell them, "If you like to drop the ego you cannot drop it, because who are you to drop? Who is this who is saying,'I would like to drop?' This is the ego.

Now you are fighting with your ego also."

You may pretend to become humble, you may force humility on yourself, but the ego will exist. You may have been a king, now you may become a beggar, but the ego will exist. It existed as a king: now it will exist as a humble beggar. Your very way of walking -- seeing will show it. The way you will move -- you will announce it. The way you will talk -- you will announce it. You may say, " I am the most humble man in the world," that makes no difference. Before, you were the greatest man in the world, now you are the humblest -- but you are extraordinary. You are there.

If you start fighting with the ego you will create a subtler ego which is more dangerous, because that subtler ego will be a pious ego. It will pretend to be religious. In the beginning it was at least this-worldly, now it will be that-worldly -- greater, powerful, subtle -- and the grip will be more dangerous, and it will be difficult to come out of it. You have moved from a smaller danger to a greater one. You are more in the trap. The prison has closed upon you, even in a stronger way.

Pranayam, what has been continuously and wrongly translated as "breath control," is not control at all. Pranayam is a way of being spontaneous with the universe. It is not a control at all. All control belongs to the ego; otherwise who will control? Ego is the controller, the manipulator. If you understand this, ego will disappear -- there is no need to drop it.

You cannot drop an illusion, you can only drop a reality -- and ego is not real.

You cannot drop maya. Illusions cannot be dropped because, in the first place, they are not. You have only to understand, and then they disappear. A dream cannot be dropped. You have just to become aware that this is a dream, and the dream disappears. The ego is the subtlest dream: the dream that I am separate from existence, the dream that I have to achieve some goals against the whole, the dream that I am an individual. The moment you become alert, the dream disappears.

You cannot be against the whole, because you are part of the whole. You cannot float against the whole, because how can you float? It is just as foolish as my own hand trying to go against me. There is no way to go against the whole. There is only one way: to be with the whole.

Even when you are fighting you cannot go against -- that is just your imagination. Even when you think that you are moving against the whole or separate from the whole or you have a different dimension of your own, that is just a dream; you cannot do that. It is just like a ripple on the lake thinking to go against the lake: absolutely stupid -- not the least possibility there of it ever happening. How can a ripple on the lake move somewhere on its own? It will remain part of the lake. If it is moving somewhere it must be the will of the lake, that's how it is moving.

When one understands, one knows. One starts laughing that "I was in a great dream -- now the dream has disappeared. I am no more. I was the dream and the dreamer, both. Now the whole exists."

Pranayam creates the situation in which return becomes possible, because now there is nowhere to go. The fight has stopped. The enemy disappears. Now you start floating towards your own being -- and that is not a going, really, that is a floating. If you stop fighting, if you stop going outward, you will start floating inward. That's natural.

After pranayam, Patanjali says, "Then comes the dispersion of the cover that hides the light." This sutra has to be dissected, analyzed, and understood, because many things will depend on this sutra.

Patanjali is not saying that after pranayam the inner light is achieved. Many commentators on Patanjali have taken the wrong attitude. They think that this sutra says that the cover drops and one attains to light. That's not possible. If it happens then what about dharana, dhyan, samadhi? If it happens in pratyahar that you have attained to the goal, reached to your innermost being, known the inner light, then what is the point of dharana, dhyan, samadhi? Then what will you do? No, Patanjali cannot mean it, and the sutra is clear. Patanjali says

"dispersion of the cover," not the attainment of light -- these are two things.

Dispersion of the cover is a negative achievement -- it creates the possibility to attain to the light -- but dispersion Of the cover in itself is not the attainment of light. Many more things are still there to be done. For example, you have remained with closed eyes; your eyelids have functioned as a cover on the sunlight. After millions of lives you open your eyes: the cover is no longer there, but you will not be able to see the light -- you have become attuned to darkness.

The sun will be there in front of you and the cover no more hiding it, but you will not be able to see it.

The cover has disappeared, but the long habit of darkness has become a part of your eyes. The gross cover of the eyelids is no longer there, but a subtle cover of darkness is still there... and if you have lived so many lives in darkness, the sun will be much too dazzling for your eyes. Your eyes will be so weak that they will not be able to tolerate so much light. And when there is more light than you can tolerate, it becomes darkness again. Try to look at the sun for a few moments: you will see darkness falling on your eyes. If you try too much you can even go blind. Too much light can even become darkness.

And you don't know for how many lives you have lived in darkness. You have not known any light, not even a ray has penetrated into your being. Darkness has been the only experience. The light will be so unknown that it will be impossible to recognize it. Just by the dispersion of the cover, you will not be able to recognize it.

Patanjali knows it well. That's why he formulates the sutra in such a way: "tatah kshiyate prakashavaranam" -- then the dispersion of the cover which hides the light. But not the attainment of light. This is a negative attainment.

Let me try to explain it to you in some other way. You are ill: medicine can help -

- the illness can disappear through medicine -- but that doesn't mean that you have attained to health. Illness may disappear, now there is no longer any illness in the body, but health has not appeared yet. You will have to rest to recoup.

Disappearance of illness is not necessarily attainment of health. Health is a positive phenomenon; disease is a negative phenomenon. It may be possible that you go to the doctor and he cannot find any disease -- that does not mean that you are healthy. You may go on saying, "I don't feel healthy. I don't feel a well-being arising in me. I don't feel the zest of life, I don't feel that I am alive."

The doctor can only detect disease, he cannot detect health. There is no way for him to detect whether you are healthy or not. The doctor cannot give you a certificate that you are healthy; he can only give you a certificate that you are not ill. Not to be ill is not necessarily to be healthy. Of course, not to be ill is a basic condition to be healthy -- if you are ill you cannot be healthy -- but if you are not ill it is not necessary that you are healthy. Health is something positive.

It happens in many cases. A person -- old, ill, weary of life -- loses the lust for life, what Buddha calls tanha. He loses interest in life. You can go on treating him --

you may help him to become completely okay as far as medicine can help, he is no longer ill -- but you are worried: he is no longer ill, but he is not healthy. The desire to live has disappeared. Illness is not there, the hospital is ready to discharge him, but he has no desire to live. He will not be healthy; he will die.

Nobody can help him. To be healthy is a positive phenomenon; to be ill is a negative phenomenon.

Patanjali says the cover is no longer there. That does not mean that you have known the light -- three more steps still wait. By and by you will have to train your eyes in your being to feel, to know, to imbibe light. Sometimes it can take years.

"Then comes the dispersion of the cover that hides the light." So I disagree with all those commentators who say that the inner light is attained -- that is not the meaning. Now, the hindrance no longer exists, the barrier disappears, but the distance is still there. You will have to walk a little more, now even more carefully than before because you can also fall in the same error: you may think,

"Now everything is attained; the barrier has broken, disappeared. Now I am back home." Then you will settle before the goal has been achieved.

There are many yogis who have settled with the fifth. Then they cannot understand what is happening. The barrier is no longer there, but they are not deeply content also. In fact if you are very egoistic you will stop here, with this sutra, because with the barrier, the ego has something to fight. The cover: you go on trying to penetrate it, to disperse it. When it disperses then there is nothing. It is just like you were fighting with something that suddenly disappears -- your whole meaning of life disappears with it. Now you don't know what to do.

There are people in the world who are fighting with others in deep competition -

- in business, in politics, this and that. Then they become tired. If they are a little intelligent, they are bound to become tired. Then they start fighting with their own ego, which is the cover. One day that cover also disappears, then there is nothing to fight. Once there is nothing to fight, it becomes impossible for the ego to move even an inch, because the whole training of the ego is to fight with somebody -- either somebody else or your own ego, but fight. When there is nothing to fight, the hindrance no more, one stops. There is nowhere to go now...

but three steps are still waiting.

Dharanasu cha yojnata manasah.

AND THEN THE MIND BECOMES FIT FOR CONCENTRATION.

Dharana is not only concentration. "Concentration" gives a little glimpse into the nature of dharana, but dharana is a bigger concept than concentration. So let me explain it to you.

The Indian word dharma also comes from dharana. Dharana means: the capacity to contain, the capacity to become a womb. When, after pranayam, you have become in tune with the whole, you become a womb -- a great capacity to contain. You can contain the whole. You become so vast that anything can be contained. But why has dharana been continuously translated as

"concentration"? Because "concentration" gives a little glimpse into it. What is concentration? To remain with a single idea for a long time is concentration, to contain a single idea for a long time.

If I tell you to just concentrate on a picture with a monkey inside, try so that you remain with the concept of the monkey, the picture of the monkey and nothing else -- -it will be very difficult for you. A thousand and one things will interfere.

In fact, only the monkey will not be there and everything else will be there, the monkey will disappear again and again and again.

It becomes so difficult for the mind to contain anything. Mind is very narrow. It can contain something only for a few seconds, then it loses it. It is not vast; it cannot remain with one thing for long. That is one of the deepest problems of humanity. You fall in love with a woman or a man; then the next day the mind is moving to somebody else. One day, and you cannot contain. You cannot be in love with the same person for long; even hours is too much. Your mind goes on wandering all over the world.

You were hankering for a car for many days. You struggled; somehow you managed. Now the car is there in your drive -- but finished. Now the mind is moving somewhere else again -- the neighbor's car. And the same will happen with that car also. The same has been happening for ever and ever: you cannot contain. Even if you reach to a point, soon you lose it.

Dharana means the capacity to contain -- because if you want to know God you will have to become capable to contain him. If you want to know your innermost being you will have to create the capacity to become the womb for it. You will have to give a rebirth to yourself. Concentration is only a fragment of it. Dharana is a very wide word; it is very, very comprehensive. It contains more than concentration; concentration is only one part of it.

"And then the mind becomes fit for concentration." I would like to translate it:

"And then the mind becomes a womb." When I say "a womb" I mean: a woman contains a child for nine months in her own being, like a seed she carries it.

Hindus have called woman the earth, because she carries the child, the seed of the child, just as the earth carries a seed of a great oak tree, for months together.

When the seed settles deep into the soil, loses all fear, is no longer a stranger in the earth, starts feeling at home.... Remember, a seed has first to feel at home, only then the shell breaks; otherwise the shell will not break. When the seed starts feeling that this earth is motherly -- now there is no need to protect oneself, there is no need to carry the armor of the shell around -- it becomes loose. By and by, the shell breaks and disappears into the earth. Now the seed is no longer a stranger; he has found the mother. And then the sprout comes up.

In India we have called woman the earth element and man the sky element --

because man is a wanderer. He cannot contain much. And it happens every day: if a woman falls in love with a man, she can remain in love for her whole life.

That is easier for her -- she knows how to contain one idea deep, and remain with it. Man is a vagabond, a wanderer. If there were no women there would have been no homes in the world -- at the most, tents -- because man is a wanderer. He would not like to live in the same place for ever and ever. He would not create stone palaces and marble palaces, no; that is too static. He will have a vagabond's tent so any moment he can remove it, move somewhere else.

There would have been no men if there were no women. Home exists because of the women. In fact the whole civilization exists because of the women. Man would have remained a nomad, moving. And that remains his mind still: even though he lives in the home, his being goes on moving. He cannot contain; he has no capacity to become a womb.

That's why this has been my feeling: that women can move in meditation more easily than men. It is difficult for a man; his mind wavers more, tricks him into new traps, always is on the move, always thinking of going to the Himalayas, to Goa, to Nepal, to Kabul -- somewhere. A woman can settle down; she can remain in one place. There is no inner urgency to move.

And then the mind becomes fit to become a womb -- because only through that womb a new being is to be born to you. You are going to be born to yourself; you have to carry yourself in your womb. Concentration is part of it. It is beautiful to learn concentration. If you can remain with one idea for long, you become capable of the higher possibility of remaining one and the same for a long period

-- because if you cannot remain one and the same for a long period, you will be distracted by the objects: one car, then another car; one house, then another house; one woman, then another woman; this post, then another post. You will be distracted by objects. You will not be able to come back home.

When no object distracts you, only then is the return possible. A mind which can remain in deep patience, like a mother, can wait, can remain unmoving, only that mind can come to know one's own divinity.

THE FIFTH CONSTITUENT OF YOGA, PRATYAHAR -- RETURNING TO THE

SOURCE -- IS THE RESTORATION OF THE MIND'S ABILITY TO CONTROL

THE SENSES BY RENOUNCING THE DISTRACTIONS OF OUTSIDE OBJECTS.

Unless you can renounce the distractions of the outside objects, you cannot move withinward, because they will go on calling you again and again and again. It is just like you are meditating, but in the meditation room you are keeping your phone also. It goes on ringing again and again and again -- how can you meditate? You have to put your phone off the hook.

And it is not a question of one telephone. There are millions of objects around you -- millions of telephones ringing continuously when you are trying to meditate. A part of your mind says, "What are you doing? This is the time to go to the market, because this is the time the richest customer is to come. Why are you wasting your time sitting here doing nothing?" Another part of the mind says something else -- and there are a thousand and one pieces and fragments in the mind. They all go on ringing continuously to attract your attention. If this continues, pratyahar is not possible. How will you be able to go withinwards?

One has to drop the periphery interests, the distractions, only then return becomes possible.

"The fifth constituent of yoga, pratyahar -- returning to the source -- is the restoration of the mind's ability to control the senses by renouncing the distractions of outside objects." "By renouncing the distractions": how does one renounce the distractions? Can you simply take a vow that "Now I renounce my interest in riches," or, "my interest in women," "men"? Just by taking a vow it is not possible. In fact just the opposite will happen if you take a vow. If you say, "I renounce all my interest in women," then your mind will be much too filled with the pictures of women; you will visualize more. In fact, if you renounce by the will, you will be more in the mess. Many people have been doing that.

When old sannyasins come to me they always say, "What to do with sex? It goes on hammering in the mind, and it hammers more than before. And we have renounced, so what to do now?" The more you renounce, without understanding, just by the willpower, the more you will be in trouble.

Understanding is needed; will is not needed. Will is part of the ego.

And if you try to will something, you are already divided in two -- you start fighting. If you say,"I will not be interested in women," why are you saying it? If you are not really interested -- finished. What is the point of saying it? Why do you go in public to take a vow in some temple before some guru in a public ceremony? What is the point? If you are no longer interested you are no longer interested. Finished. Why make a show of it? Why be an exhibitionist? No, the need is different. You are not finished yet; in fact, you are deeply attracted.

But you are frustrated also. Every time you were in relationship you were frustrated. Frustration is there, attraction is there -- both are there, that is the misery. Now you are seeking some shelter where you can renounce it: you seek the society. If you renounce the interest in women before a big crowd, then your ego will say,"Now it is not good to move in that direction," because the whole society knows that you have taken a vow of brahmacharya. Now it is against your ego; now you have to fight for it.

And with whom are you fighting? -- your own sex, your will against your own sex. It is as if your left hand is fighting with your right hand. It is foolish; it is stupid. You will never be able to be victorious.

Then how does one renounce? One renounces by understanding, one renounces by experiencing, one renounces by maturity -- not by a vow. If you want to renounce anything, live it through and through. Don't be afraid and scared.

Move to the deepest point in it, so that you understand. Once a thing is understood, it can be dropped without any effort on the part of the will. If will is involved you will be in trouble. Never renounce anything willfully, with will.

Never use willpower to do anything; otherwise you will be in trouble. Will is one of the most misery-creating phenomenon in you.

Just by a tacit understanding know well that life is a school to be passed through, and don't be in a hurry. If still you feel that a lingering desire is there for money, it is better not to pray. Go, and accumulate money and be finished with it. It is nonsense, so if you have intelligence you will be finished soon. If you don't have intelligence enough then you will take a little more time: experience will give you intelligence. Experience is the only way; there is no other shortcut. It may take a long time, but nothing can be done -- man is helpless. He has to attain to intelligence through experience. And all that you know well can be dropped. In fact to say that it is dropped is not right: it drops by itself.

By renouncing the distractions of outside objects one becomes capable of pratyahar, returning home. Now there is no longer any interest in the outside world, so you don't move in a thousand and one directions. Now you would like to know yourself; the desire to know oneself replaces all other desires. Only one desire is left now: to know oneself.

Tatah parama vashyate indriyanam.

THEN COMES THE COMPLETE MASTERY OVER ALL THE SENSES.

When you are returning home, inwards, suddenly you become the master. This is the beauty of the process. If you are moving outwards you remain a slave --

and a slave to millions of things. Your slavery is infinite, because infinite are the objects of your desire.

It happened: I was a teacher in a university. Just next to me a professor used to live. I have never come across such a miserly man; he was really extraordinary.

He had enough money; his father had left much. He and his wife lived alone.

Enough money, a big house, everything -- but he used such a bicycle that it was known all over the town.

That bicycle was something of a miracle. Nobody else could use it: it was in such a ruin it was impossible to use it. It was known all over the town that he never locked the bicycle, because there was no need -- nobody could steal it. People had tried, and returned it. He would go to the theater; he would leave the bicycle outside. He would not put it on the stand, because one anna would have to be paid. He would leave it anywhere, and after three hours when he would come, he would always find it there. It had no mudguards, no horn, no chain cover, and it made such a noise that you could hear from one mile that that professor was coming.

By and by, he became friendly with me. I suggested to him, "This is too much, and everybody laughs about your cycle. Why don't you get rid of it?"

He said, "What to do? I have been trying to sell it, but nobody is ready to purchase it."

"Nobody is ready to purchase it because it is not worth anything. You simply go and throw it in the river -- and thank God if somebody doesn't bring it back!"

He said, "I will think about it." But he couldn't.

So, his next birthday was coming and I purchased a new cycle, the best that was available, and presented it to him. He was very happy. The next day I was waiting to see him on the new bicycle but he was again on the old. So I asked,

"What is the matter?"

He said, "The cycle you have given to me is so beautiful, I cannot use it."

It became a worship object. He would clean it every day; I would see that he was cleaning it. He would clean it and polish it and do and.... Always it was there in his house as a showpiece, and he was running on his bicycle -- four, five miles going to the college; four, five miles coming to the market -- the whole day. It was impossible to persuade him to use it. He would say, "Today it is raining,"

"Today it is too hot," and, "I have just polished it. And you know how the students are -- they are mischievous -- somebody may scratch it. I will have to leave it outside the college, and somebody may scratch it and destroy it."

He never used it, and as far as I know he must be still worshipping it. There are people who are worshipping objects. I told that professor, "You are not the master of the cycle, the cycle has become master of you. In fact, I was thinking that I have given you a present of a cycle -- now I can say to the cycle,'I have given you the present of this professor.' " The cycle is the master.

If you desire things you are never the master, and that is the difference: you can be in a palace, but if you use it, it doesn't matter. You may be in a hut, but if you don't use it and the hut uses you, you may look poor to the people from the outside, but you are not: you are obsessed with possessions. A man can live in a palace and be a hermit; and a man can live in a hut and not be a hermit. The quality of being a hermit depends on the quality of your mastery. If you use things, it is good; but if you are used, you are behaving very stupidly.

Patanjali says, "Then comes the complete mastery over all the senses" -- and the objects of senses... only through pratyahar, when you become the most important thing in your life. Nothing is comparable to it. When everything can be sacrificed to your own self-knowledge, your being, when kingdoms are worthless -- if you have to choose between your inner kingdom and the kingdom of the outside you will choose your inner kingdom -- at that moment, for the first time, you are no longer a slave: you have become a master. In India for sannyasins, we have been using the word swami -- swami means "the master," the master of the senses.

Otherwise, you are all slaves -- and slaves of dead things, slaves of the material world.

And unless you become a master, you will not be beautiful. You will be ugly, you will remain ugly. Unless you become a master you will remain in hell. To be master of oneself is to enter heaven. That is the only paradise there is.

Pratyahar makes you that master. Pratyahar means: now you are not moving after the things, not chasing, hunting things. The same energy that was moving in the world is now moving towards the center. When the energy falls to the center, revelations upon revelations reveal. You become for the first time manifested to yourself -- you know who you are. And that knowledge, who I am, makes you a god.

Shakespeare's Hamlet is right when he says about man, "How godlike." Pavlov is wrong when he says about man, "How doglike." But, if you are chasing things, Pavlov is true, Hamlet wrong. If you are chasing things then Skinner is true, Lewis is wrong.

Let me repeat: "Man is being abolished," says C. S. Lewis. "Good riddance," says B. F. Skinner. "How like a god," says Shakespeare's Hamlet. "How like a dog,"

says Pavlov. It is for you to choose what you would like to be. If you go inward, you become a god. If you go outwards, Pavlov is true.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6

Chapter #10

Chapter title: All Problems are Unreal

10 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1

YOU SAID MAN IS A BRIDGE BETWEEN THE ANIMAL AND THE DIVINE.

WHERE ARE WE ON THIS BRIDGE?

You are not on the bridge, you are the bridge. This has to be understood. If you think that you are on the bridge, you have missed the point -- this is the ego misinterpreting the whole thing. You are the bridge. You have to be surpassed, transcended. You, as you are, are the bridge. You have to be left behind; you have to go beyond yourself.

If you understand this rightly then one thing can become very clear: if you are too much, you will become the animal; then too the bridge disappears. If the ego is crystallized too much, then too you are not a bridge, the bridge is no more --

you have become the animal. If you are not at all, the bridge again disappears --

then you are the divine. If only ego is left, you are a dog; the ego is the dog. If you have completely disappeared, then the remaining silence is divine, is God.

The remaining emptiness, the remaining void, the remaining space, infinite, with no boundaries -- that's what Buddha has called nirvana. The word "nirvana"

means: when you have ceased to be. Literally the word "nirvana" means: when you extinguish a flame -- the flame has disappeared, vast darkness, no light.

When the flame of the ego has disappeared -- you have become infinite, you cannot find yourself anywhere now -- then you have become the divine.

Between these two points -- the ego and the egolessness -- is the bridge. You are that bridge. It will depend on how much ego you have: if you have too much you are leaning towards the animal; if you have not too much you are leaning towards the divine. A rope stretched between the animal and the divine -- but you are the rope. So don't ask where you are on the bridge, because that is the ego asking. Just try to understand that you are the bridge. It has to be transcended, surpassed; you have to go beyond yourself.

Don't try to be free, because that may be a subtle ego motivation. Try to be free from the ego -- because even freedom can become a motivation for the ego, but then you will never be free because the ego is the bondage. The freedom is not going to be yours; the freedom will be there only when you are not.

Allow this feeling of "I" to disappear, and you need not do anything else. Just allow it to disappear... because it is such a false thing it has to be continuously created, only then it remains. You have to cooperate with it every moment. It is just like a cyclist goes on pedalling the bicycle: if he stops, the cycle will stop. The cycle needs continuous pedalling. The ego needs continuous cooperation. You need not do anything against it; you simply become alert and don't cooperate. Be alert, go on watching how the ego arises, how subtle are its ways. Just watch, don't cooperate -- that's enough: ego dies of starvation, the cycle stops. Without your pedalling, it cannot continue.

When you come to me and ask how to stop the ego you are like the cyclist who goes on pedalling and goes on screaming and asking people on the road, "How to stop!" and goes on pedalling. Don't pedal. The cycle cannot continue on its own; your help is needed.

Your misery exists because you help it. Your suffering exists because you are behind it, feeding it. Your hell exists with your cooperation. Once you understand it, the cooperation dissolves; you are no longer part of the whole miserable game; you stand aside and watch. Sudden explosion -- there is no longer any ego, no longer any cycle, nothing to pedal. That is the moment when the bridge has been crossed.

Question 2

SOMETIMES YOU SAY THAT IT IS POSSIBLE FOR A MASTER AND

DISCIPLE, FOR TWO LOVERS, TO MEET BEING TO BEING. AND

SOMETIMES YOU SAY THAT WE ARE TOTALLY ALONE AND IT IS

IMPOSSIBLE TO EVER BE TOGETHER. IS WANTING TO MEET ANOTHER --

BEING TO BEING -- A DESIRE, A FICTION OF THE MIND THAT HAS TO BE

DROPPED? PLEASE EXPLAIN IF YOU CAN.

Yes, it is difficult to explain. All explanations are difficult, because in the first place the problems are false. How to explain a problem when it is false? You are asking something absurd; the explanation becomes difficult. So it is right -- all problems are difficult to explain. In fact, when you understand, there is no problem; when you don't understand, there is a problem. So a problem cannot be solved,;and I am not trying to solve your problems here; I am not a party at all to your foolishness. I am trying to impart understanding to you, not trying to solve your problems. They cannot be solved, because they are absolutely absurd.

All your problems are like a person who has a high fever -- one hundred seven degrees -- and goes on asking foolish things. He says, "Why is this chair flying in the sky?" How to explain it? His fever can be brought down, that's the only way.

That's what I am doing; that's what my whole effort is about: to bring your fever a little down. If you understand, when the fever comes down, the chair flies no more. Then you start laughing at yourself, at how foolish you were.

It is difficult, it is almost impossible to explain, because in the first place whatsoever you ask is going to be something absurd. You cannot ask a right question, because if you can ask a right question there is no need to ask it. A right question is always carrying the right answer in it -- because the real thing is to be right. If you can be right in your question you have already understood. But, still, I will try; I will try to bring your fever a little down. It is not an explanation.

"Sometimes you say that it is possible for a Master and disciple, for two lovers, to meet being to being. And sometimes you say that we are totally alone and it is impossible to ever be together." Both are true. We are absolutely alone and it is impossible to be together -- this is absolutely true. And the other statement is also as absolutely true as this: that two lovers can meet being to being, Master and disciple can meet being to being. The contradiction arises because you don't have any experience of it.

When two lovers meet there are not two lovers -- only love exists. The two have disappeared, lovers have disappeared, because if lovers are there love cannot be.

When two lovers are there, there are not two and there are no longer lovers: only love exists. The two have become just like two banks of a river: in fact the river flows and touches both the banks. Without the river the banks are alone, separate, cannot meet. When the river flows the banks are meeting through the river, in the river.

When Master and disciple meet there is no Master, no disciple. There are not two; the duality is no longer there. Again one exists in its total loneliness, in its total aloneness. Two cannot meet, but if the two disappear then there exists that moment.

It is difficult, what to call it. If I call it a moment of meeting, you will misunderstand, because all meeting presupposes the existence of two. If I don't call it a meeting then it will be impossible for me to call it anything else. This is the trouble with language. But you can understand: if you listen to me sympathetically -- and there is no other way to listen -- if you are in deep sympathy with me, not trying to discuss a problem with me but rather trying to feel my difficulty in expressing that which cannot be expressed, a deep sympathy, that's what trust is, then you can understand. Then words won't betray, then they don't become a hindrance. Then they can become pointers, then they can have a certain significance -- not meaning, significance -- because you can have a glimpse through them.

You know they are gross, all words are gross, language is gross -- silence is subtle -- but if you understand sympathetically, in deep trust, in deep faith, then words also carry something of the quality of silence.

Listen to me: two cannot meet -- that is impossible; and, two can meet, but then the quality of twoness has disappeared. When I say a meeting being to being, I mean now there is neither the lover nor the beloved... they are lost, disappeared, something else as a oneness has penetrated into their beings. In that deep silence love exists, not lovers.

When a disciple and Master are together, if the disciple is ready to be lost....

Because the Master is that who is lost already, who is an emptiness. If the disciple is also ready to float with the emptiness of the Master -- with no demand, with no desire, because they won't allow you to disappear; with no doubt, no uncertainty -- if the disciple is ready to become part of this emptiness, the emptiness surrounds both. It becomes encompassing. In the cloud of that emptiness both are lost: that is the meeting between being to being. It is a meeting, in a sense, the greatest meeting; it is not a meeting at all because there are not two to meet.

It looks contradictory that one time I say you are totally alone, another time I say there is a possibility to meet. When will that possibility open? When you are not trying to meet the other, only then. If you are trying to meet the other being to being, the very effort will spoil the whole thing -- because who will make the effort? If you are making the effort to meet somebody being to being, to dissolve, the very effort to dissolve will be the barrier; the very effort to meet, the desire to meet, will create the discordance.

That's why I say you are absolutely alone. Don't try to meet the other. Just be totally alone, and if the other is also totally alone there will be a meeting -- not that you prepared for it, not that you made any effort, not that you manipulated it. It is so vast you cannot manipulate it. It is so great you cannot catch hold of it.

You can only allow it to catch hold of you. You can only allow it to possess you.

God cannot be searched for. You can only allow God to possess you. You can only allow him to seek and search for you. Love or God are very great phenomena. You are very small. If you try you will fail, in your very effort is the failure. Don't try.

Just be crystal clear in your aloneness, pure in your aloneness, silent, settled, rooted, centered. Suddenly something jumps in you and you are there no more.

The bridge has disappeared; the ego is there no more. For the first time, it always takes you unawares. When the Master jumps into the disciple, or the lover into the beloved, or the beloved into the friend -- whenever this happens you are taken unawares. It is always a surprise. You cannot believe it, that it has happened. It is the most unbelievable, the most impossible thing, but it happens.

Question 3

IF LIFE IS A BLISSFUL COSMIC PLAY, THEN WHY ARE ALL BEINGS

SUFFERING?

You, please, forget about all beings. You don't know. I'm not suffering. You may be suffering; don't talk about all beings. You don't even know yourself. How can you know the other? Just talk about yourself, because things are already much too complicated. When you start talking about all, you will make it almost impossible for yourself to understand the thing. Just you will do. Say only this:

"Why am I suffering? If life is a blissful cosmic play, then why am I suffering?" --

only this much will do. Forget about all beings -- that is none of your business. If they want to suffer let them suffer. You, please, decide only for yourself. Even that is too much, not easy.

Why are you suffering? Because you are. To be is to suffer; not to be is not to suffer. The ego suffers. The whole is a cosmic play; it is beautiful. It is a tremendous celebration -- moment to moment, moving to higher and higher peaks. You are suffering because you are not part of it. The ego is never part of the whole; the ego tries to be separate. The ego tries to have its own plans, to have its own ideas, to have its own goals. That's why you are suffering.

If you become part of the whole there is no suffering. Suddenly you start floating with the stream. You are no longer moving upstream. You are no longer even swimming, because then too there is effort. You are just floating with the stream: wheresoever it leads, there is the goal. You have dropped private goals; you have accepted the destiny of the whole. Then you live easily, you die easily. There is no resistance.

Resistance is suffering -- and you cannot win against the whole. So every moment you resist you fail, you suffer. It is frustration of failure, and then you become helpless and hopeless and everywhere you feel, there is a saying, that

"man proposes and God disposes." You cannot find more stupid a saying anywhere else.

God never disposes, but the moment you propose you have created trouble for yourself because all propositions are private. That means the Ganges wants to fall not in the Bay of Bengal but in the Arabian Sea. It will have to fall into the Bay of Bengal, that is how the whole has proposed it already. Now the Ganges proposes, "I would like to fall into the Arabian Sea," and when it is not succeeding to move towards the west and it goes on feeling that all efforts are futile and she is moving towards the east, the idea arises in the mind that man proposes and God disposes. Why should God bother to dispose? God has never disposed anything, but the moment you propose, you have created the possibility to be disposed.

Try to live without a goal, and then see: suffering disappears. Try to live without your ego, and there is no more suffering. Suffering is an attitude; it is not an actuality. You fall ill: you immediately start fighting with illness; suffering arises.

If you accept it, suffering disappears. Then you know that God wills this; there must be some point in it. It must be needed for your growth. That's what happened on the cross with Jesus: just a moment before he was killed, the whole human mind arose in his being. He looked at the sky and said, "What is this?

What are you trying to do? Why have you left me alone?" The human mind.

Jesus is beautiful. He is man, he is God, both -- with all the frailties of humanity and with all the perfection of God: a meeting point, where the bridge disappears and the goal appears, the last point where the bridge drops. He was angry. He complained. He was saying, "You have betrayed me." At this last moment everybody was waiting for a miracle -- even Jesus deep down must have been waiting for a miracle-that the cross will disappear, angels will descend, and the whole world will know that he is the only begotten son of God. The ego: "Why have you betrayed me? Why are you forcing me to see this? Your son is being crucified -- where are you?"

In that moment, a disbelief must have entered in his mind. And I say this is beautiful -- this shows that Jesus is both son of man and son of God. And that's the beauty of Jesus and the appeal. Why has so great a part of humanity become Christian? If you look at Buddha, he looks to be simply a god, without any frailty of human beings. If you look at Mahavir, he looks superb, absolutely perfect. If you look at Krishna, you cannot find a single thing that can create disbelief in you. But Christ? -- frail, weak, trembling, with all the doubts, uncertainties, hesitations, with all the darkness that human mind is prone to. And then a sudden burst and he is no longer the ordinary human being.

At the last moment he was still Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary; all doubts arose -- naturally. I don't say anything against him -- natural, absolutely natural, it should be so. But then he understood the point: "What am I doing? It is not God who has denied me, it is I who am denying him. My expectations are not fulfilled." In a flash of light he suddenly understood, "I am clinging to my ego. I am asking for miracles. I am asking to be saved! Who am I, and why should the whole bother about met" A smile must have come on his face, the clouds disappeared, he relaxed. And he said, "Thy will be done. Please, don't bother about me. Don't listen to my foolish mind. Who am I to suggest what should be done? Who am I to expect? And when you are there, why should I bother about it?"

In that relaxation of resistance, Jesus became Christ. He is no longer the son of Miryam, Joseph, he has become the son of God. Transfigured, transformed, a new being is born who accepts totally. Now there is no problem. If God wants him to be crucified, that is the way things are going to be -- and that is the miracle! And, in fact, the cross proved the miracle. Christianity exists because of the cross, not because of Christ. If he was saved on that day we would have remembered him as a great magician or something like that. But in that deep surrender, where all complaints disappear, the meeting from being to being happened: he allowed God to take possession. That's how -- through death, through surrender -- he is resurrected. He is no longer the same being -- totally new, a virgin quality has entered. The old is gone, the new is born, and there is no continuity between the two.

You ask me if life is a blissful cosmic play, then WHY... then why is there suffering. There is suffering because you are still not part of the cosmic play. You have your own small drama, and you want to play it. You are not part of the whole; you are trying to create a small world of your own. Every ego creates its own world, that's the problem.

Float with the whole, and suffering disappears. Suffering is symptomatic: it shows you must be fighting the whole, that's all. You are not suffering for your sins committed in the past; you are suffering for the sin that you are continuing right now, committing right now. The sin is simple: to fight, not to accept.

The word "sin" is beautiful. It comes from a root which means "to separate." The word "sin" itself comes from a root which means to separate: you are separated, that is the only sin. Once you are joined the sin disappears. The whole of Christianity depends on the concept of sin -- that man is separated from God, then he is a sinner. Just the opposite is the concept of Patanjali -- opposite, but complementary. He insists on "yoga," to be joined together. Sin and yoga: sin means to be separate; yoga means to be joined together again. If you are joined together again with the whole, there is no suffering. The more you go far away from the whole, the more you suffer. The more you are, the more you will suffer.

Question 4

SOMETIMES IT FEELS LIKE YOU ARE JUST A DREAM....

That's true. Now you have to deepen the feeling so sometimes you can feel that you yourself are a dream. Go on deepening the feeling. A moment comes when you know that everything that is, is a dream. Once you know that everything that exists is a dream, you are freed.

That's the meaning of the Hindu concept of maya. It does not say that everything is unreal; it simply says everything is a dream. It is not a question of real or unreal. How will you define a dream -- real or unreal? If it is unreal then how can it exist? If it is real then how can it disappear so easily -- you open your eyes and it is no longer there? A dream must be somewhere in between reality and unreality. It must have something of the reality and it must have something of the unreality also. Because it exists it has to be real. A dream is a bridge -- neither on this bank nor on that bank, neither here nor there.

If you take the dream as real you will become worldly. If you take the dream as unreal you will start escaping towards the Himalayas, you will become unworldly. And both viewpoints are extreme. Dream is just in the middle: it is real and unreal, both. There is no need to escape from it -- it is unreal. And there is no need to cling to it -- it is unreal. There is no need to devote your whole life to dreams -- they are unreal. And there is no need to renounce them -- because how can you renounce an unreality? They are not worth that.

And that's how my concept of sannyas arises: you live in the dream knowing it, that it is a dream. You live in the world knowing it, that it is a dream. Then you live, but the world doesn't live in you. You move into the world, but the world doesn't move within you. You remain part. In fact, you enjoy it more -- because it is a dream, you have nothing to lose. Then you are not guilt-ridden. In fact you start playing like children -- because it is a dream! You can enjoy it; you can delight in it. There is nothing to feel guilty about. A life of celebration, a life of renouncement in the world, living and yet aloof; because when you know something is a dream you can enjoy it with no guilt, and you can move away from it with no problem.

You go to a theater, you go to see a movie: it is all a dream. For three hours you enjoy it. Then, lights are on -- you remember that it was just a play, a game of light and shadow on the screen. Now the screen is empty. You come home; you forget about it. The whole world is a movie on a vast screen. When you understand, your eyes are opened. You know that it is a dream -- nothing wrong in enjoying it, a beautiful dream at that, but now you are at home.

This is difficult. To be worldly is easy, because you take it as real. To be unworldly, become a hermit in the Himalayas, is also easy because you leave it as unreal. But to live in the reality, knowing it well, that it is unreal, knowing it, that it is a dream, is the most difficult thing in the world -- and to pass through that most difficult thing helps you to grow.

Worldly people are cunning, but not intelligent; unworldly people are simple, but not intelligent. Those people who live in the market are very cunning but not intelligent, and those people who have left the world and moved to the temples and the Himalayas -- they are simple, not cunning, but they are also not intelligent, because intelligence grows only when you move in all sorts of situations -- but aware. You go through hell, but with a fully aware mind, then intelligence grows. Intelligence needs challenge to grow. If you leave the challenge, you simply rot, you don't grow. That's why I insist: be in the world, and don't be of the world.

Question 5

HOW IS IT THAT I AM STILL LOST?

Nobody can answer that question for you. You are lost; you must be knowing.

You must be playing hide-and-seek. I know that you know. You want to be lost, that's why you are lost. The moment you decide not to be lost, nobody is hindering you, nobody is blocking the way. But you would like to have a little more of the dream: your whole prayer is, "God, let me be enlightened, but not right now." That is your prayer: "Let me be awakened, but wait a little more."

It happened in Ceylon: A great mystic was dying; he was a Master to millions of people. Knowing that he was dying, they all gathered. His whole life -- and it was a long life, he lived almost a hundred years -- he had been teaching about enlightenment. The day he was to depart, he came out of his hut for his last darshan, and he said, "Now I am leaving. Is there somebody who is ready to go with me? Today I will not teach; today I am ready to take you with me. If somebody is ready, he should stand."

People started to look at each other... thousands and thousands of people, but nobody standing. The Master waited and he said, "It is getting late and I have to leave. Should I think that my whole life has been a wastage talking to you about enlightenment? And now I am giving it to you! You need not make any effort; I can take you with me. Anybody ready?"

One man stood halfheartedly and he said, "Wait! Please, tell me how to be enlightened, because you are leaving and I am not yet ready to follow you. There are many things to be done in the world. My son has just gone to the university, my daughter has to be married, my wife is ill and somebody has to take care....

When everything is finished, I will also come. So, please, just give me the method."

The Master laughed and he said, "The whole life I have been giving methods."

Why do you hide behind methods? People always ask for methods because in a method you can postpone easily, because a method has to be done -- it will take time. And it is up to you to do or not to do, or do halfheartedly or postpone. A method is a trick. When you ask about a method you are asking for something to hang on to so you can postpone, because the method has to be done.

There have been two schools all over the world. One school says enlightenment is sudden; another school says enlightenment is gradual. The people who have said enlightenment is sudden have never been listened to much. They don't have much following because how can you be with these people? They say it can happen right now if you are ready. People have always been following the other way, the gradual, because with the gradual you have enough space to postpone, enough time. There is no emergency and there is no urgency. It is not a question of here-now. Tomorrow, tomorrow will take care, and the other life, next life...

you can go on.

That Master was ready to take somebody, but nobody was ready to go. And you ask me, "How is it that I am still lost?" You know. If I tell you that right now there is the possibility -- you can jump out of your being lost -- you will immediately ask me how. You will ask about a method.

It is just like your house is on fire and somebody tells you, "Come out of it; the house is on fire. You will be burned." If really you see that the house is on fire, if the flames are visible to you, you will not ask how. Will you ask how to come out? You will jump. You will jump from the balcony, you will jump from the window, you will jump from anywhere -- you will find the way. Because it is not a question now to find the right way -- any way is right. It is not a question of etiquette, that one should come out of the front door. When the house is on fire, you jump from the window. You risk your life because one moment more in the house and you will be burned. It is better to jump from the third story and be crippled for life than to be burned. You will jump out of it.

But if you say, "Yes, I know the house is on fire, but I will consult the scriptures and I will ask the gurus and I will seek and find a methodology how to come out," what will this show? This will show that you are not aware that the house is on fire. You may be agreeing with the person that the house is on fire, but deep down you don't see any fire anywhere. You are comfortable in this house; the fire is not yet an experience to you.

Buddha left his palace. His old servant, very faithful to him, his name was Chhanna, drove him out of the town, out of the capital, not knowing where he was going. Then, out of the kingdom, Buddha said, "Take my ornaments, my valuable clothes." He cut his hair, beautiful curls, and he said, "Take all these.

Give all these to my wife. I am renouncing the world."

Chhanna started crying and weeping, and he said, "What are you doing? You are young. You don't know the world as much as I know it. Everybody desires to have a palace, everybody desires to become a king, and you have a kingdom and you are leaving! Don't take it wrongly, but I feel that you are behaving stupidly. I am an old man, older than your father. Listen to me! Come back. Are you mad?

What are you doing?"

Buddha said, "Chhanna, you can't see that that palace is nothing but flames, and you can't see that the whole kingdom is on fire. I am not leaving it, I am escaping! I am not renouncing it, I am just saving myself, that's all."

Chhanna looked back. He couldn't see the fire anywhere -- the kingdom is absolutely silent. It was midnight, full moon night, everybody fast asleep...

where is the fire? In sleep you cannot see it, only when you start awakening a little.

So don't ask me why you are still lost. This is how you want it to be. You want to be lost, that's why you are lost. If you don't want it to be, there is no question --

immediately, this very moment, you can be out of it. But nobody else can bring you out of it. I cannot bring you out of it. And it is good that nobody can bring you out of it, that's why your freedom is intact. You want to continue the game? -

- continue. If you don't want to continue the game, you will jump out of it.

Nobody is hindering the path; nobody is blocking the way.

The moment you decide, the moment the decision matures, the moment you become ripe in awareness and you see the whole falsity of it, you will be out of it

-- the very same moment. Not even a single moment more will be needed. It is not a question of time; it is a question of understanding.

Question 6

I FEEL I AM IN A LIMBO: NEITHER IN THIS WORLD NOR IN THAT, NEITHER A DOG NOR A GOD. HOW TO STEP OUT OF IT?

If you step out of it you will become a dog. If you are lost, completely lost --

nobody is left who can step out of it -- you will become a god. So don't ask me how to step out of it. This is the ego asking how to step out of it. You are in a limbo? Beautiful, good. Get a little more lost -- become the limbo. Get a little more lost! You are lost a little: the half of the dog is lost.

In India we have beautiful parables about the whole path of humanity. One of the most symbolic and meaningful stories is of the incarnation of God known as Narsiha -- half man/ half lion. One of the incarnations of the Hindu gods is Narsiha -- half-man/half-lion. This is the state of limbo. When you start feeling that you are half-dog/half-god; when you start feeling that you are neither god nor dog, everything is lost, boundaries blurred; when you feel yourself in the middle of the bridge; this is a Narsiha state: half-man/half-lion.

If you try to get out of it, you will be fully lion, because you will be more condensed then. You will fall back. Getting out of it means falling out of it, falling back. That will not be a progress, growth. No need. Get more and more lost. Why are you so afraid of the limbo? Because you are feeling a little lost, the identity is no longer clear; you cannot see your own image perfectly, the boundaries blurred; your face is no longer fixed. Your life has become more fluid. It is no longer like a stone. It is more like a water, without any shape, formless. You are afraid.

The one who is afraid within you is the dog, because if you go a few steps more the dog will be lost completely.

First, when one starts on the journey, one is like frozen water, ice, cold, stonelike.

When one moves, the frozenness melts, the ice becomes water. This is the state of the limbo, the state of Narsiha, half way. If you go further ahead you will evaporate. Not only that you will be liquid water, you will become evaporation.

You will be seen no more; you will simply disappear. If you become afraid of the disappearance, you will fall back. You will try to get frozen again so that you can get a shape, a form, a name -- nama-rupa: name and form. Hindus have called this world the world of nama-rupa, name and form. Then you will have an identity; you will know who you are.

Only a dog knows who he is -- everything settled, relaxed. If you move on the path, everything is unhinged -- mountains are no longer mountains, rivers no longer rivers. Great confusion arises, chaos; but remember, only out of chaos, dancing stars are born. Remember, only out of chaos God is found. Then, the third stage is: evaporate, disappear completely without leaving a trace behind.

Not even a footprint is left. You are nowhere. You have become a nowhere -- and this is the state I call the state of God.

That's why you cannot see God. You go on searching and searching: you will be lost one day, and that will be how God is found. God will not be found. You will not encounter God standing somewhere, because who will encounter? If you are still there to encounter, God is not possible. When you are no longer there who will encounter? You will not encounter God as an object. You will encounter him as your innermost core. But that is possible only when you melt, you become fluid like water, then you evaporate -- you become a cloud moving in the sky, with no address, no name, no form, a hidden cloud, whereabouts unknown.

That is the fear: because it is a great death. It is dying to the whole past. All that you are has to be left, crucified. Die before death, that's the only way to become a god. Don't be afraid of the state of limbo; otherwise you can fall back. You will crystallize again like ice. You will have a nama-rupa, a name-form, identity, but you have missed.

Question 7

IF THERE IS POSITIVE BECAUSE OF NEGATIVE AND LIGHT BECAUSE OF

DARKNESS, HOW IS ONE TO BE A MASTER AND, ABOVE ALL, REMAIN SO

WITHOUT HAVING A SLAVE?

There is a way: you become master of yourself. Then you are the slave and you are the master. Then in a certain sense you are the slave -- your body, your senses, your mind -- and in a certain sense you are the master -- your consciousness, awareness. Wherever a master exists the slave has to exist.

Up to now you have tried to become a master and create slaves around you.

Everybody is trying that, to become a master and to create somebody as a slave.

The husband tries to become the master and to force the wife to become a slave, and the wife is also trying in her own subtle, feminine ways to become the master and force the husband to become a slave. A subtle politics continues. All your relationships are subtle maneuvers: how to force the other to become the slave so that you can become the master. The whole effort is politics. I call a mind political who's trying to become the master himself and trying to force others to become slaves.

Religion is a totally different dimension: you don't force anybody else to become a slave; still, you become a master. You become both. Your body, your gross parts, your earth element, becomes the slave; your sky element becomes the master. A Buddha is both: master -- superb; and slave -- also superb. It is a meeting of your own slave and your own master, and then there is no conflict, because the body is your shadow. Once you say, "I am the master," the body follows you. It has to follow; it is natural for it to follow.

In fact, when the body is allowed to become the master and you become the slave, it is a very unnatural state of affairs. It is as if the shadow is leading you.

You will fall in a ditch because the shadow has no consciousness; the shadow cannot be aware. The shadow is nonexistential, really. Your body is leading you: this is suffering. When you lead your body, suffering disappears; you start feeling blissful, at home, at ease.

Yes, the opposite is everywhere. If light is there darkness is there. If love is there hate is there. If a master exists a slave has to exist; otherwise how is the master possible? So the greatest thing that can happen to a man is: he becomes both --

master and slave together. It is the greatest harmony possible.

Question 8

IS THE DESIRE TO STAY NEAR YOU, NOT GOING AWAY, ALSO A BONDAGE?

It depends, because bondage is never in a situation, it is in the attitude. If you want to go away and cannot, then it is a bondage. If you don't want to go away, the question doesn't arise. The reverse is also true: you want to be here near me and you cannot, then going away is also a bondage. If you want to be near me and you can be easily, there is no problem; the question doesn't arise. Bondage or freedom are attitudes. They are not in situations.

Do you follow me? If you want to be near me and some inner obsession goes on forcing, "Go away! Don't be here," you would like to be here but some demon inside goes on forcing, "Go away!" -- that's a bondage, going away is a bondage.

If you want to go away and some fear within you goes on insisting, "Don't go away! If you go away you will lose the contact, you will lose the Master, the contact with the Master... don't go away!" -- a certain fear goes on forcing you to be here, and you want to go away -- then it is a bondage.

So what is a bondage? Bondage is something which you have to do as an obsession, as a compulsion: you never wanted to do it and you have to do it. You have to go against your self, then it is a bondage -- whatsoever it is. If you are just floating, it is what you always wanted to do and you are doing it with your total heart, your total being, it is freedom. Now let me state it as a paradox: if you are free as an obsession, in your freedom is bondage; if you are a slave with total acceptance, in your bondage is freedom. It depends. It is the attitude, not the situation. So only you can know about it, what it is.

If you want to go away, simply go away, float away. Don't create any trouble. If you want to be here, be here. Then don't create any trouble. But you are confused; you are always in conflict. You are not one, you are a crowd -- that is the trouble. One part of you wants to be here; another part of you wants to go away. And when you are away, one part would again want to come back. And this goes on.

You have to decide something within you. You have to drop the conflict, the crowd. You have to be one. In your oneness is freedom; in your split state is bondage. When you are one, nobody can make you a slave -- nobody! You can be thrown in an imprisonment, you can be chained, but you cannot be made unfree.

Your body may be chained: your soul will soar high. There will be no problem for it. How can your prayer be in bondage? How can your meditation be in a bondage? How can your love be in a bondage? How can your spirit be in bondage? In fact the very definition of the spirit is that which cannot be forced to be a slave.

But you don't have any spirit. You are just a crowd, so many people inside with no unity. That's the trouble. If you are here you will feel in bondage; if you go away you will feel in bondage. Wherever you go you will carry your inner conflict with you. So the question is not of being near me or away from me, that is not the question at all. The question is: to be here as a unity, or, to be away as a unity.

And I don't say anything, that you should be here or you should go away -- I have no "shoulds." It is for you. If you can float with me, float. If you feel floating away from me will be beautiful, float away. Don't pay any attention to me, just pay your whole attention to your inner being. Wherever it can float easily, wherever it can have its movement without any hindrance, let that be your goal.

Question 9

HOW CAN ONE LEARN TO RECOGNIZE UNREAL PROBLEMS AS UNREAL?

There is no need to learn recognition, because all problems are unreal. Problems as such are unreal. When you are real, all problems disappear. When you are unreal, a thousand and one problems arise.

It used to always be the case that whenever a man would come to Buddha he would say, "Please, for one year don't ask any questions. One year remain silent with me, flow with me. Allow me to work within you. Just open your doors and let the sun rays go in. For one year no problems, no questions; remain silent, meditate. After one year, you can ask."

A certain man, a great seeker, had come one day. His name was Malingputta, a great brahmin scholar; with five hundred disciples he had come to Buddha. He had many questions, of course. A great scholar has to have many questions, problems and problems. Buddha looked at his face and said, "Malingputta, this is the condition -- if you can fulfill it, only then can I answer. I can see layers and layers of questions all around your head. Wait for one year. Meditate, be silent.

When your inner talk stops, when you are no longer chattering in the head, then you ask anything and I will answer. This is a promise."

Malingputta was a little worried -- one year, just to be silent, and then this man is going to answer; and who knows if those answers are right or not? So one year may be wasted completely. His answers may be just absurd. What to do? He was puzzled. He was hesitant to make the contract; it was risky.

And then, another disciple of Buddha, Sariputta, he started laughing (he was just sitting by the side) -- a loud, mad laugh. Malingputta became more puzzled; he said, "What is the matter? Why is he laughing?"

Sariputta said, "Don't listen to this man. He is a deceiver. He deceived me also.

When I had come -- you have only five hundred disciples -- I had five thousand."

He was a great brahmin, well known all over the country, a great teacher in his own name. "You may have a few thousand questions -- I had millions. This man tripped me; this man said,'Wait for one year. Be silent, meditate, and then ask and I will answer.' And after one year there was no question left, so I never asked, and he never answered. If you want to ask, ask right now! I have been in the same game. He befooled me."

Buddha said, "I will stick to my promise. If you ask I will answer. If you don't ask, what can I do?"

After one year, Malingputta meditated, meditated... became silent and silent and silent... inner talk disappeared, the inner chattering no more. He forgot completely about the year, that the year was finished. Who bothers? When the questions are not there, who bothers about the answers? One day, suddenly, Buddha asked, "Malingputta, this is the last day of the year. This is the day you had come here one year ago. And I had promised you that after one year whatsoever you ask I will be ready to answer. Now I am ready! Are you ready?"

Malingputta started laughing, and he said, "You befooled me also. That Sariputta was right. Now there are no questions; I cannot find any. The more I go in, the more I find there are no questions. So what can I ask? I have nothing to ask."

In fact, if you are unreal there are questions and problems. They come out of your unreality -- your dream, your sleep, creates them. When you become real, authentic, silent, total, they disappear.

This is my conclusion: that there is a state of mind, only questions exist, and there is a state of mind, only answers exist -- and they never exist together. If you are still asking, you cannot receive the answer. I may go on giving it, but you cannot receive it. If the question has dropped within you, no need for me to give it: you have already received it. No question can be answered. A state of mind has to be achieved which is without questions. A nonquestioning state of mind is the only answer.

That's what meditation is all about: to drop the questions, to drop the inner chattering. When the inner talk stops, infinite silence.... In that infinite silence, everything is answered, solved -- not verbalized, simply solved. No problem exists. Problem was the attitude of a neurotic mind. Now the mind is no longer there, the neurosis gone... there are no questions. Everything is simple. There is mystery, but there is no problem. Nothing is solved, but nothing remains to be solved also. Everything is a mystery, a great wonder surrounds you; wherever you look, depth upon depth open in mystery. Not that you have the answer! No, you don't have the question, that's all. When you don't have the question, the whole of life is available in its total mystery -- and that is the answer.

Don't ask how one can learn to recognize unreal problems as unreal. How can you recognize unreal problems? You are unreal. As it is, you are not yet. In your absence, all sorts of problems arise. When you become present they disappear.

Awareness is without problems and without questions. Unawareness is with questions and problems -- and infinite questions, infinite problems. Nobody can solve them. Even if I answer you, you will create more questions out of the answer. It won't be an answer, it will be simply an excuse to ask more questions.

Drop the inner chattering, and then see. In Zen they have a saying that nothing is hidden from the very beginning, everything is clear, but your eyes are closed.

Question 10

YOU ARE CRAZY! AND YOU ARE DRIVING ME CRAZY.

The first part of the statement is absolutely true, I am crazy, but the second is not true yet. I may be driving you crazy, but you are not being driven, because you are much too sane -- that's your trouble. A little more insane, and things will be different. You are much too fixed in the so-called sanity. You have to be unhinged from it.

Look. Jesus looked crazy to people when he was alive. Buddha looked crazy.

They were crazy in the sense that they denied the sanity of the society. It is simply craziness to leave a kingdom and escape from it -- everybody is going towards the palace and Buddha is leaving. Crazy. And he drove many people crazy.

That has always been the work of a Buddha -- to drive people crazy -- because the society has made you so much sane that in your sanity you are almost insane.

You have become so ordinary, so rotten, routine, stale, and you only think of such foolish things; but because the whole society thinks they are sane efforts....

For example, a man continuously thinks of money and you call him sane. He is insane, because how can a really sane person think about money continuously?

There are greater things to think about. Somebody else continuously thinks about prestige, power, always looking for people's approval: insane -- because a sane person is so happy with himself, why should he bother about what others say about him? He lives his own life and he lets others live their own lives. He does not interfere in anybody's life. He does not allow anybody else to interfere in his life.

Great things are possible, and you go on collecting stones. Great things are possible -- God is possible -- and you go on thinking in terms of money, power, prestige. You waste your whole life for absolutely nonsense things, and you think you are sane. You are not sane. In fact the whole society is so insane that to be sane you have to be insane; otherwise you will go away from the society.

All Buddhas, Christs, have been trying to drive you crazy. They are trying to make you really sane, but it looks like craziness. When Jesus said to his disciples,

"When somebody slaps you on the face, give him the other cheek also," it is perfectly crazy. Who will listen to this man? What is he saying? He says, "If somebody takes your coat, give him your shirt also." Crazy. But he is saying it is not worth bothering about. He takes your coat: maybe he is not very rude -- he wanted your shirt also but couldn't take it -- a polite man. Give him your shirt also, so let it be finished. Somebody slaps you on the face: maybe some little violence is still lingering in him; let him be freed from it. Give him the other cheek also so he is finished and free -- and you are also free. Otherwise he will come back. So let it be finished and closed. He's talking absolute sense but looks insane.

Yes, I am driving you crazy. I am crazy -- that is certain -- but the other part is uncertain. You are still clinging to your sanity, but I will go on making all the efforts possible. And if you go on hanging around me, some day or other, you will fall. You will have to surrender to craziness, that's all religion is about. To become insane in this so-called sane world is the only way to become sane, because the world is insane.

Question 11

WHY DO MAHAVIR, BUDDHA, AND RAJNEESH NOT SING AND DANCE

PHYSICALLY?

They are doing so all the time, but you need some deeper eyes to see it.

You never ask the real question. People go on asking, "Where is God hidden?"

They never ask whether their eyes are open or not. They ask, "Where should I seek him?" They never ask, "How should I become available to him so that he can seek me?"

You ask why Buddha, Mahavir, Rajneesh are not dancing. They are dancing all the time. Their whole being is a dance, but you need some other eyes to see it.

You don't have the right eyes. Create them.

Question 12

WOULD YOU LIKE TO CHANGE YOUR OLD PROMISE TO SOMETHING

LIKE THIS: "I HAVE COME NOT TO TEACH BUT TO MAKE YOU LAUGH.

LAUGH, AND SURRENDER WILL HAPPEN... AND THERE IS NO NEED OF

ANY PROMISE NOW."

I can sign this easily. This is perfectly true -- and better than the first.

Table of Contents

Chapter title: Discrimination in all Things

Chapter title: The Shadow of Religion

Chapter title: Purity and Power

Chapter title: Mind: THE Stupidity

Chapter title: Death to The Limited

Chapter title: Returning to The Source

Chapter title: All Problems are Unreal