Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2

Chapter #1

Chapter title: Be a witness not a judge

25 March 1973 pm in Bombay, India

Archive code: 7303255

ShortTitle: VBT201

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 91 mins

AT THE START OF SNEEZING, DURING FRIGHT, IN ANXIETY, ABOVE A CHASM, FLYING IN BATTLE, IN EXTREME CURIOSITY, AT THE BEGINNING OF HUNGER, AT THE END OF HUNGER, BE UNINTERRUPTEDLY AWARE.

THE PURITY OF OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US. IN REALITY, KNOW NOTHING AS PURE OR IMPURE.

Life is a paradox. To reach near you have to travel far, and that which is already achieved you have to achieve again. Nothing is lost. Man remains natural, man remains pure, man remains innocent; it is only that he forgets it. The purity is not disturbed, the innocence is not destroyed. Only a deep forgetfulness is there.

That which is to be achieved you are already. In essence, nothing new is to be achieved. You have only to discover, uncover, unfold that which is already the case; hence, both the difficulty of spiritual endeavor and the simplicity. I say "both".... It is very simple if you can understand, but it is very difficult because you have to understand that which you have completely forgotten, that which is so obvious that you never become aware of it, that which is just like your breathing. It goes on continuously, uninterruptedly, but because it goes on continuously, uninterruptedly, you need not be aware of it. Your awareness is not needed; it is not a basic requirement. You can forget it or you can remember it: it is a choice.

SANSARA and NIRVANA, the world and the liberated state of consciousness, are not two things -- just two attitudes, just two choices. You can choose either. You can be in the world because of a certain attitude, and the same world becomes NIRVANA, the same world becomes absolute bliss, just by changing the attitude. You remain the same, everything remains the same; just a change of focus, a change of emphasis, a change of choice, is required. It is easy. Once absolute bliss is achieved, you will laugh about it. Once it is known, you will not be able to understand why you were missing it, how you could miss it. It was there always just waiting to be looked at, and it was yours.

A buddha laughs. Anyone who achieves it laughs because the whole thing seems to be ridiculous. You were searching for something which was never lost. The whole effort was absurd. But this happens only when you have achieved it, so those who have achieved it say it is very simple. But those who have not achieved it, they say it is the most arduous thing, the most difficult -- really, not simply difficult, but the most impossible thing.

These methods which we will be discussing are told by someone who has achieved -- remember this. They will look too simple, and they are. To our minds things so simple cannot be appealing -- because if techniques are so simple and the abode is so near, if you are already in it, if techniques are so simple and the home is so near, you will look ridiculous to yourself. Then why are you missing it? Rather than feel the ridiculousness of your own ego, you will think that such simple methods cannot help.

That is a deception. Your mind will tell you that these simple methods cannot be of any help -- that they are so simple, they cannot achieve anything. To achieve divine existence, to achieve the absolute and the ultimate, how can such simple methods be used? How can they be of any help? Your ego will say that they cannot be of any help.

Remember another thing: ego is always interested in something which is difficult, because when something is difficult there is a challenge, and if you can overcome the difficulty your ego will feel fulfilled. The ego is never attracted towards anything which is simple -- never! If you want to give your ego a challenge, then you have to have something difficult devised. If something is simple there is no appeal, because even if you can conquer it there will be no fulfillment of the ego. In the first place, there was nothing to be conquered, the thing was so simple. Ego asks for difficulties -- some hurdles to be crossed, some peaks to be conquered. And the more difficult the peak, the more at ease your ego will feel.

Because these techniques are so simple, they will not have any appeal to your mind. Remember, that which appeals to the ego cannot help your spiritual growth. Only that which has no appeal to your ego can be a help towards transformation. But this is what happens: if some teacher says that this or that is very difficult, very arduous, that only after lives and lives and lives will you have any possibility for any glimpse, your ego will feel good.

These techniques are so simple that right now, here and now, the thing is possible. But then there is no contact with your ego. If I say that right now, here, this very moment you can achieve all that is possible to man, that you can become a Buddha or a Christ or a Krishna in this very moment here and now without losing a single instant, then there will be no contact with your ego. You will say, "This is not possible. I must go somewhere else to search for it." And these techniques are so simple that you can achieve all that is possible to human consciousness at any moment that you decide to achieve it.

When I say that these techniques are simple, I mean many things. First, spiritual explosion is not caused by anything; it is not a causal phenomenon. If it were caused by something, then time would be needed, because time is necessary for the cause to take place. And if time is needed, then it cannot be the case, it cannot happen this very moment. Then you will have to wait for tomorrow or for another life. The next moment will be needed. If anything is causal, then the cause has to take place, and then after the cause the effect will follow,.and you cannot produce the effect right now without the cause; time will be needed. But a spiritual happening is not a causal phenomenon. You are already in that state; just a remembering is needed. It is not a causal phenomenon.

It is just like this: in the morning somebody has suddenly awakened you, and you cannot recognize where you are. For a moment you may not even recognize who you are. In a sudden awakening from deep sleep, you may not be able to recognize the place, the time, but within a moment you will recognize. The more alert you will become, the more you will recognize who you are, where you are and what has happened. This is not a causal thing -- just a question of alertness. With a growing alertness, you will recognize.

All these techniques are for a growing alertness. You are already the person you long to be, you are already where you want to reach. You have reached your home already. You have never left it really. You have always been there, but dreaming, asleep. You can fall asleep here and then you can dream, and in your dream you can move anywhere; you can go to hell or to heaven or anywhere.

Have you ever observed that whenever you are in your dream, one thing is certain? -- that you are never in the room in which you are asleep. Have you observed that fact? You can be anywhere, but you will never be in the same room, on the same cot where you are. Because you are already there, there is no need to dream about it. Dream means you have to trek away.

You may be sleeping in this room, but you will never dream of this room. There is no need, you are already there. The mind desires something which is not, so the mind moves. It may go to London, to New York, to Calcutta, to the Himalayas, to Tibet, to anywhere. It may go anywhere, but it will never be here. It can be anywhere, but never here -- and you are here. This is the case. You are dreaming. Your divine existence is here; you are THAT. But you have been trekking long.... And each dream creates a new sequence of dreaming. Each dream creates new dreams, and you go on dreaming and dreaming and dreaming.

All these techniques are just to make you alert so that you can come out of your dreams back to the place where you have always been, to the state which you have never missed. And you cannot miss it, it is your nature -- it is SWABHAV. It is your very being, so how can you miss it? These techniques are just to help your alertness to grow more, to help it become more intense. With the intensity of awareness, everything changes. The more intense the awareness, the less the possibility for dreaming; you become more and more alert about the real. The less intense the awareness, the more you drift into dreaming. So the whole phenomenon is that a non-alert state of mind is the world, and an alert state of mind is NIRVANA. Non-alert, you are what you appear to be. Alert, you are what you are.

So the whole question is one of how to change your non-alert state of mind into an alert state of mind, how to become more aware, how to get out of sleep and dreaming. That is why techniques can be of help. Even an alarm clock can be of help -- just an artificial device, just an alarm clock. But if the alarm goes on, it can help to bring you out of your dreaming. But you can deceive it also; you can even dream about it, and then the whole thing is falsified. When the alarm goes, you can dream, you can make a dream around the alarm also. You can dream that you have entered a temple and the bells are going on. Now you have deceived the alarm. It could have broken your sleep, but you can change it into dream itself; you can make it part of your dreaming.

If you can make it part of your dreaming, if it can be absorbed into a dreaming process, then it cannot help you. You can dream anything, and then it will not look like an alarm. It will have become something else. You have entered a temple and the bells are....; now there is no need to wake up. You have changed the alarm, the real thing, into a dream, and a dream cannot be disturbed by another dream, it can only be helped.

These techniques are all artificial in a way. They are just devices to help bring you out of your dreaming state, but you can make them also part of your dream. Then you miss the point. Then you MISS the point! Try to understand this because this is very basic. And once understood, it will be helpful; otherwise you can go on deceiving yourself.

For example, I say, "Take a jump into sannyas." That is just a device. Your old identity is broken; your old name becomes as if it belongs to someone else. You can look at your past more detachedly. You can be a witness. You are aloof, a distance is created. I give you a new name and a new robe just to create the distance. But you can make it part of your dreaming; then you will miss the whole point. You can still think in terms of the old -- that the old man, A, has taken sannyas. You feel, "I have taken sannyas. " "I" remain the old. "I" have changed my robe, my name, but "I" remain the old,.and the old continues. Now this sannyas is just something added to the old. It is not discontinuous, it is continuous. If it is continuous, if YOU have taken sannyas, you the old one, if YOU have changed your robe and name, you have missed the point.

You must be dead, you must not be the old now. You must feel that the old has died, that this is a new entity which you never knew, that this is not a growth out of the old. This is discontinuous with the old. Then the device will have helped. Then the alarm will have worked and the technique is useful. You are not missing the point. All these techniques are such that you can miss or you can use them; it depends. But remember well, the techniques are just techniques. If you understand the spirit, you may become alert even without any technique.

For example, the alarm clock may not be needed. Go deeply into it. Why do you need an alarm clock? If you want to get up early in the morning at three, why do you need an alarm clock? Deep down you know that you can deceive yourself, and deep down you know that if you really want to get up at three, you will get up at three and no clock is needed. But with the clock, the responsibility is put off. Now you will not be responsible. Now if something goes wrong, the clock is responsible. You can sleep with ease now. Now the clock is there; you can sleep without any disturbance.

But if you really want to get up early at three, you will get up early at three. No clock is needed. This very intensity to get up will bring the happening. This will to get up at three may be so intense, you may not be able to sleep at all, and there will be no need to get up; you will already be awake the whole night. But to sleep well the clock is needed. Then you can go to sleep. But you can deceive. When the alarm goes off, you can deceive; you can dream about it.

These techniques are helpful only because your intensity is low. If you are really intense, there is no need of any technique; you can be alert. But your intensity is not such. Even with the technique you may start dreaming, and many possibilities are there. The first possibility is that you will not believe that such simple techniques can be of any help. This is the first thing. Then there is no contact. Secondly, you may think that a very, very long process is needed, that it will come gradually. But there are certain things that only happen suddenly, they never come gradually.

I am reminded that Mulla Nasruddin was asked to give his blessings to one of his neighbor's sons on his birthday. So he said, "Son, I hope you live One hundred and twenty years plus three months." Everyone was wondering at this "plus three months."

The son asked, "But why? It is okay -- one hundred and twenty years. Why plus three months?"

So Mulla Nasrudin said, "I would not like you to die so suddenly. Just one hundred and twenty years, and suddenly you die? I would not like you to die so suddenly; that is why plus three months."

But even with "plus three months" you will die suddenly anyway. Whenever you are going to die, you will die suddenly. Every death is a sudden death. No death is gradual because either you are alive or dead. There is no gradual process. One moment you are alive and the next moment you are dead. There is no time process.

Death is sudden; SAMADHI is also sudden. Spiritual explosion is also sudden. It is like death. It is more like death than it is like life; it is sudden. It can happen at any moment. If you are ready, these techniques can be of help. They will not bring it gradually; really, they will gradually bring you to be ready for the sudden happening. Remember this distinction: they are preparing you so that the sudden SAMADHI happens.

These techniques are not techniques for SAMADHI; they are techniques to prepare you, and then SAMADHI happens. So how you use these techniques depends on you. So don't think that a very long process is needed, because that may be just a trick. The mind says a very long process is needed so that you can postpone. You can say, "Tomorrow I will do it or the day after tomorrow," and you can go on postponing forever. A postponing mind goes on always postponing. It is not a question of whether you are going to do it tomorrow; there is only a question because you are not going to do it today, that is all. Tomorrow will again be a today, and the same mind will say, "Okay, I am going to do it tomorrow."

And, remember, you never postpone for years. You postpone for one day because if you postpone for years you cannot deceive yourself. You say, "It is only a question of one day. Just today I am not doing it; tomorrow I will do it." And the gap is so small that you never feel you are postponing it forever.

Tomorrow never comes, it is always today. And this mind which thinks in terms of tomorrow will ALWAYS think in terms of tomorrow. And it never comes, it has never been, it will never be. All that you have is this very moment, so don't go on postponing. Now we will enter the techniques.

The first technique:

"AT THE START OF SNEEZING, DURING FRIGHT, IN ANXIETY, ABOVE A CHASM, FLYING IN BATTLE, IN EXTREME CURIOSITY, AT THE BEGINNING OF HUNGER, AT THE END OF HUNGER, BE UNINTERRUPTEDLY AWARE."

It looks so simple: at the start of sneezing, during fright, in anxiety or before hunger or after hunger, "BE UNINTERRUPTEDLY AWARE." Many things have to be understood. Very simple acts like sneezing can be used as devices, because howsoever simple they look, they are very complex, and the inner mechanism is a very delicate thing. Whenever you feel that a sneeze is coming become alert, and the sneeze may not come at all. It may simply disappear, because a sneeze is a non-voluntary thing -- unconscious, non-voluntary.

You cannot sneeze voluntarily; you cannot "will" it. How can you? How helpless man is! You cannot "will" a single sneeze. Howsoever you may try, you cannot bring it out. A single sneeze -- such a small thing, but you cannot will it. It is non-voluntary; volition is not needed. It does not happen because of your mind; it is because of your total organism, your total body.

And the second thing: when you become alert, when the sneeze is coming -- you cannot bring it, but when it is coming -- if you become alert, it may not come, because you are bringing something new to the process: the alertness. It may disappear, but when the sneeze disappears and you are alert, there is a third thing. First, a sneeze is non-voluntary. You bring in a new thing -- alertness. When the alertness comes, the sneeze may not come. If really you are alert, it will not; it may not happen at all. Then a third thing happens. The energy that was going to be released through a sneeze, where does it move? It moves to your alertness. Suddenly there is a flash, a lightning. You become more alert. The energy, that was going to be thrown by the sneeze moves into alertness. Suddenly you become more alert.

In that flash, in that lightning, even enlightenment is possible. That is why I say that these matters are so simple, they look absurd. Their promise seems to be too much. Just through sneezing, how can one become enlightened? But sneezing is not just sneezing; you are totally involved in it. Whatsoever you do or whatsoever happens to you is a total involvement. Observe again: whenever a sneeze happens, you are totally in it with the whole body, the whole mind. It is not just your nose in which the sneeze is happening; every fiber, every cell of your body is involved in it. A subtle trembling, a subtle wavering goes all over the body, and with it the whole body becomes concentrated. And when the sneeze has happened, the whole body relaxes. But it is difficult to bring alertness to it. If you bring alertness to it, it will not happen, and if it happens you can know that the alertness was not there. That is why you should be alert.

"AT THE START OF SNEEZING...", because if it has started, nothing can be done. The arrow has gone; you cannot change it now. The mechanism has started. The energy is on its way to being released, it cannot be stopped. Can you stop a sneeze in the middle? How can you stop it in the middle? By the time you are ready, it has already happened. You cannot stop it in the middle.

Just at the beginning, become alert. The moment you feel the sensation that it is coming, become alert. Close your eyes and be meditative. Bring your total consciousness to the focus just where you are feeling the sensation of an oncoming sneeze. Just at the beginning, remain alert. The sneeze will disappear, and the energy will be transformed into more alertness. And because in the sneeze the whole body is involved, the whole mechanism is involved -- it is a release mechanism and you are alert at this moment -- there will be no mind, there will be no thought, no meditation.

In a sneeze, thinking stops. That is why so many people like snuff. It unburdens them, their minds feel more relaxed because for a moment thinking stops. Snuff gives them a glimpse of no-thinking. Through snuff, when the sneeze comes, they are not minds, they become bodies. The head disappears for a single moment, but it feels good.

If you become habituated to snuff, it is very difficult to leave it. It is more penetrating a habit than smoking; smoking is nothing before it. It penetrates more deeply, because smoking is conscious and sneezing is unconscious. To leave snuff is more difficult than to leave smoking. And smoking can be changed, substitutes can be found -- but there is no substitute for snuff, because, really, sneezing is a very unique phenomenon in the body.

The only other thing that can be compared and which has been compared is the sex act. Those who think in terms of physiology, they say that the sex act is just sneezing through the sex organ -- and the similarity is there. It is not one hundred percent right because much more is involved in sex, greater things are involved in it. But in the beginning, just in the beginning, the similarity is there.

Something is thrown out from the nose and you feel relieved, and something is thrown out from the sex organ and you feel relieved. And both are non-voluntary. You cannot move into sex with will. If you try, you will be a failure -- particularly men, because man's sex organ has to do something. It is active. You cannot "will" its act, and if you try, then the more you try, the more it will be impossible. It can happen, but you cannot make it happen. Because of this, in the West sex has become a problem. This half century in the West sex knowledge has developed, and everyone has become so conscious about it that the sex act is becoming more and more impossible.

If you are alert, sex will be impossible. If a man is alert while making love, the more he is alert, the more it will be difficult. He will not be able to get an erection. It cannot be willed, and if you will it you will lose it. The same method, the same technique, can be used in sex. Just in the beginning, when you feel the sensation of an erection just coming to you but it has not yet come, you just feel the vibration, become alert. The vibration will be lost, and the same energy will move into alertness.

Tantra has used this. It has tried in many ways. A beautiful naked woman will be there just as an object for meditation, and the seeker, the meditator, will sit before the nude woman meditating on her body, her form, her proportions, just waiting for the first sensation in his sex center. The moment the sensation is there, be will close his eyes. He will forget the woman. He will close his eyes, and he will become alert of the sensation. Then sex energy is being transformed into alertness.

He is allowed to meditate on the nude woman only up to the point when the sensation is felt. When he has to close his eyes and move to his own sensation and become alert there, the same as is done in sneezing. And why does this flash happen? Because mind is not there. The basic thing is that if the mind is not there and you are alert, you will have SATORI, you will have the first glimpse of SAMADHI.

Thought is the barrier. So if thought disappears in any way, the thing will happen. But thought must disappear; only then is alertness there. Thought can disappear even in sleep; thought can disappear when you go unconscious; thought can disappear when you take some drug. Thought disappears, but then there is no alertness to be aware of the phenomenon that is hidden behind thought. So I define meditation as thoughtless consciousness. You can become thoughtless and unconscious; then there is no meaning. You can be conscious with thought; you are already that.

Bring these two things together -- consciousness and thoughtlessness. When they meet, meditation happens, meditation is born. And you can try with very small things because nothing is really small. Even a sneeze is a cosmic phenomenon. In existence, nothing is great and nothing is small. Even a minute atom can destroy the whole world, and even a sneeze, a very atomic phenomenon, can transform you.

So don't see things as small or big. There is nothing small and nothing big. If you have the penetrating eye, then very small things are vital. Between atoms universes are hidden, and between the universe and an atom you cannot say which is great and which is small. Even a single atom is a universe in itself, and the greatest universe is nothing but atoms. So don't think in terms of great and small. Just try. Don't say, "What can happen in a sneeze? I have been sneezing the whole life, and nothing has happened."

Bring in this technique: JUST "AT THE START OF SNEEZING, DURING FRIGHT...", when you feel afraid and fear enters, just when you feel the fear enter, become aware and fear will disappear. With alertness, there can be no fear. How can, you be afraid when you are alert? You can be afraid only when you lose alertness. Really, a coward is not a person who is afraid; a coward is a person who is asleep, and a brave man is a person who can bring his alertness to the moments of fear. So fear disappears.

In Japan, they train their warriors for alertness. The basic training is for alertness, and everything else is secondary: swordsmanship, archery, everything is secondary. It is known, it is said about the great Zen master Rinzai that he never succeeded -- never succeeded in his archery -- to get to the right point, to the right aim. His arrow always missed; it never reached to the right point. And he is known as one of the greatest archers, so it is asked, "How is Rinzai known as the greatest archer when he never succeeded in any aim and the point was always missed? His arrow never reached to the right point, so how is he known as one of the greatest archers?"

The followers of Rinzai say, "It is not the end, it is the beginning. We are not concerned with the arrow reaching to the end, we are concerned with when the arrow starts its journey. We are concerned with Rinzai. When the arrow leaves the bow, he is alert; that is all. It is not the result, that is irrelevant."

One man was a disciple to Rinzai. He was a great archer himself, he never missed his aim, and then he came to Rinzai to learn, so someone said, "To whom are you going to learn? He is not a master; he is not even a disciple. He is a failure, and you are a great master and you are going to Rinzai to learn?"

So that archer said, "Yes, because I have succeeded technically. But as far as my consciousness is concerned, I am a failure. He is technically a failure, but as far as his consciousness is concerned he is the archer and the master -- because when the arrow leaves he is alert, and that is the point."

This archer who was a master technically had to learn, for years under Rinzai, and every day he was one hundred percent accurate in his aiming. Rinzai would say, "No, you are a failure. Technically the arrow leaves rightly. But you are not there, you are not alert. You loose it in your sleep."

In Japan they have been training their warriors to be alert first, and everything else is secondary. A warrior is a brave man if he can be alert. And it was felt in the Second World War that you cannot match Japan's warriors; their bravery is incomparable. From where does it come? Physically they are not so strong, but in consciousness, in alertness, fear cannot enter. They are not afraid, and whenever fear comes they will try Zen methods.

This sutra says, "DURING FRIGHT, IN ANXIETY..." When you feel anxious, much anxiety-ridden, try it. What is one to do? What do you ordinarily do when anxiety is there? What do you do? You try to solve it. You try alternatives, and you get more and more into it. You will create a bigger mess because anxiety cannot be solved through thinking. It cannot be dissolved through thinking because thinking itself is a sort of anxiety. So you help it to grow more. Through thinking, you cannot come out of it; you will go deeper into it. This technique says don't do anything with anxiety. Just be alert. Just be alert!

I will tell you one old anecdote about Bokuju, another Zen master. He lived alone in a cave, all alone, but during the day, or even in the night, he would sometimes say loudly, "Bokuju" -- his own name, and then he would say, "Yes, I am here." And no one else was there.

Then his disciples used to ask him, "Why are you calling `Bokuju', your own name, and then saying, `Yes sir, I am here'?"

He said, "Whenever I get into thinking, I have to remember to be alert, and so I call my own name, `Bokuju.' The moment I call `Bokuju' and I say, `Yes sir, I am here,' the thinking, the anxiety disappears."

Then, in his last days, for two or three years, he never called "Bokuju," his name, and never had to reply, "Yes sir, I am here."

The disciples asked, "Master, now you never do this."

So he said, "But now Bokuju is always there. He is ALWAYS there, and there is no need. Before I used to miss him. Sometimes the anxiety would take me, cloud me all over, and Bokuju was not there. So I had to remember `Bokuju,' and the anxiety would disappear." Try your name. When you feel deep anxiety, just call Try this. This is a beautiful thing. Try your name. When you feel deep anxiety, just call your name -- "Bokuju" or any name, but your name -- and then reply to it, "Yes sir, I am here," and feel the difference. Anxiety will not be there. At least for a single moment you will have a glimpse beyond the clouds, and that glimpse can be deepened. Once you know that if you become alert anxiety is not there, it disappears; you have come to a deep knowing of your own self and the mechanism of inner working.

"... Above a chasm, flying in battle, in extreme curiosity, at the beginning of hunger, at the end of hunger, be uninterruptedly aware."

You can use anything. Hunger is there, become alert. What to do when you feel hunger is there? What has happened? When you feel hunger you never see it as something happening to you. You become the hunger. You feel, "I am hungry." The real feeling is that "I am hunger," but you are NOT hunger; you are only conscious of it. It is something happening on the boundary. You are the center, you have become aware of it. It is an object. You remain the subject, you are a witness. You are not hunger; hunger is happening to you. You were there when hunger was not and you will be there when hunger will have gone. So hunger is an accident; it happens to you.

Become alert, then you will not be identified with it. If you feel hunger, become alert that hunger is there. Look at it, encounter it, face it. What will happen? The more you become alert, the farther away will the hunger be felt; the less alert, the nearer. If you are not alert, exactly at the center you will feel, "I am hunger." If you become alert, hunger is thrown away. Hunger is there, you are here. Hunger is an object, you are a witness.

Fasting has been used only because of this, for this technique. Fasting in itself is of no use. If you are not doing this technique with the hunger, fasting is foolish -- just foolish, of no use. Mahavira used fasting with this technique, and Jainas have been simply using fasting without this technique. Then it is foolish. You are just destructive, and it cannot be of any help. You can be hungry for months and identified with hunger, feeling that "I am hungry." It is useless, harmful. There is no need to go on a fast. Every day you can feel it, but there are problems. That is why fasting may be helpful.

Ordinarily, we stuff ourselves with food before we feel hunger. In the modern world there is no need to feel hunger. You have a time fixed for your meals, and you take them. You never ask whether the body is feeling hungry or not; at a fixed hour you take your meals. Hunger is not felt. You may say, "No, when it is one o'clock I feel hungry." That may be a false hunger; you feel it because it is one o'clock, your time. Someday you can play a trick. Tell your wife or your husband to change the clock. It is twelve, and the clock will show that it is one. You will feel hunger. Or it is already one hour fast: it is two exactly, and the clock shows one; then you will feel hunger. You look at the clock, and you feel hunger. This is artificial, false, it is not real.

So fasting may be helpful. If you fast, then for two or three days you will feel a false hunger. Only after the third or fourth day will real hunger be felt; your body will demand, not the mind. When mind demands, it is false. When the body demands, it is real. And when it is real and you become alert, you become totally different from your body. Hunger is a body phenomenon. Once you can feel that hunger is different from you and you are a witness to it, you have transcended the body.

But you can use anything, these are just examples. This technique can be used in many ways; you can devise your own way. But insist on one thing: if you are trying with hunger, then go on at least for three months with hunger. Then only will you be disidentified with your body someday. Don't change the device every day because a deepening is needed with any technique.

So choose anything for three months. Stick to it, apply the technique, go on working with it, and always remember to be aware in the beginning. In the middle it will be very difficult, because once the identity is felt that YOU are hungry, you cannot change it. You can get changed mentally. You can say, "No, I am not hunger, I am a witness." That is false. This is the mind talking, this is not a feeling experience. Just try to be aware in the beginning, and, remember, you are not to say that "I am not hunger." This is how mind can deceive. You can say, "The hunger is there, but I am not hunger. I am not body, I am the BRAHMAN." You are not to say anything. Whatsoever you say will be false because you are false.

This chanting that "I am not the body" will not help. You go on saying "I am not the body" because you know that you are body. If you really know that you are not the body, what is the use of saying "I am not the body"? There is no use, it will look stupid. Be aware, and then the feeling that "I am not the body" will be there. This will not be a thought, this will be a feeling. This will not be felt in the head, this will be felt all over your being. You will feel the distance -- that the body is far away, that "I am absolutely different." And there is not even a possibility of mixing both. You cannot. The body is the body; it is matter, and you are consciousness. They can live together, but they never mix. They cannot become mixed.

The second technique:

"THE PURITY OF OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US. IN REALITY, KNOW NOTHING AS PURE OR IMPURE.

This is one of the basic messages of tantra. It is very difficult to conceive of it because it is absolutely non-ethical, non-moral. I will not say immoral because tantra is not concerned with morality or immorality. Tantra says it is irrelevant. This message is to help you to grow beyond purity and impurity, beyond division really, beyond dichotomy, duality. Tantra says, existence is non-dual, it is one, and all distinctions are man-created -- all distinctions, remember. Distinctions as such are man-created. Good-bad, pure-impure, moral-immoral, virtue-sin: all these concepts are man-created. They are attitudes of man; they are not real. What is impure and what is pure? It depends on your interpretation. What is immoral and what is moral? It depends on your interpretation.

Nietzsche has said somewhere that all morality is interpretation. So something can be moral in this country and immoral in the neighboring country, something can be moral to a Mohammedan and immoral to a Hindu, moral to a Christian and immoral to a Jaina. Or something can even be moral to the older generation and immoral to the younger generation. It depends; it is an attitude. Basically, it is a fiction. The fact is simply the fact. The naked fact is simply the fact; it is neither moral nor immoral, pure nor impure.

Think of the earth without human beings. Then what will be pure and what will be impure? Everything will be -- simply "be." Nothing will be pure and nothing will be impure; nothing will be good and nothing will be bad. With man, mind comes in. Mind divides. It says "this" is good and "that" is bad. This division not only creates a division in the world; this division creates a division in the divider also. If you divide, you are also divided in that division, and you cannot transcend your inner division unless you forget outer divisions. Whatsoever you do to the world, you have done to yourself also.

Naropa, one of the greatest masters of Siddha Yoga, says, "An inch division, and hell and heaven are set apart" -- an inch division! But we go on dividing; we go on labeling, condemning, justifying. Look at the bare fact of existence and don't label it. Only then can tantra's teachings be understood. Don't say good or bad; don't bring your mind to the fact. The moment you bring your mind to the fact, you have created a fiction. Now it is not a fact, it is not a reality: it is your projection. This sutra says, "THE PURITY OF OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US. IN REALITY, KNOW NOTHING AS PURE OR IMPURE."

"THE PURITY OF OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US:" Tantra says, "What is very pure for other teachings, a virtue, is a sin for us, because their concept of purity divides. For them something becomes impure."

If you call a man a saint, you have created the sinner. Now you will have to condemn someone somewhere because the saint cannot exist without the sinner. And look now at the absurdity of our efforts: we go on trying to destroy sinners, and we conceive of and hope for a world where there will be no sinners -- only saints. This is nonsense because saints cannot exist without sinners. They are the other aspect of the same coin. You cannot destroy one aspect of the coin, they both will exist. Sinners and saints are both part and parcel of one thing. If you destroy the sinners, saints will disappear from the world. But don't be afraid; let them disappear because they have not proved to be of any worth.

Sinners and saints are both part of one interpretation, of one attitude towards the world, in which one says, "This is good and that is bad." And you cannot say that "This is good" unless you say that "That is bad." The bad is needed to define the good. So the good depends on the bad, your virtue depends on sin, and your saints are impossible; they cannot exist without the sinners. So they must be grateful to the sinners; they cannot exist without them. In relation to them, in comparison to them, howsoever much they condemn the sinners, they are part and parcel of the same phenomenon. Sinners can disappear from the world only when saints disappear -- not before that; and sin will not be there when there is no concept of virtue.

Tantra says that the fact is real and the interpretation is unreal. Don't interpret. "IN REALITY, KNOW NOTHING AS PURE OR IMPURE." Why? Because purity and impurity are OUR attitudes imposed on reality. Try this. This technique is arduous, not simple -- because we are so much oriented towards dual thinking, based, rooted in dual thinking, that we are not even aware of our condemnations and justifications. If someone starts smoking here, you may not have consciously felt anything, but you have condemned. Deep down within you, you have condemned. Your look may have condemned or no look may have condemned. You may not have looked at the person, and you have condemned.

This is going to be difficult because the habit has become so deep-rooted. You go on -- just by your gestures, your sitting, your standing -- you go on condemning, justifying, not even aware of what you are doing. When you smile at a person or when you don't smile at a person, when you look at someone or you don't look, you just ignore someone, what are you doing? You are imposing your attitudes. You say something is beautiful; then you will have to condemn something as ugly. And this dual attitude is simultaneously dividing you, so within you there will be two persons.

If you say that someone is angry and anger is bad, what will you do when you will feel angry? You will say that this is bad, then there will be problems because you say that "This is bad: this anger in me is bad." Then you have started to divide yourself into two persons -- a bad person, an evil person within, and a good person, a saint. Of course, you are bound to be identified with the saint within, so the devil, Satan, the evil within you is to be condemned. You are divided in two. Now there will be a constant fight, a conflict. Now you cannot be an individual; you will be a crowd, a house divided against itself. Now there will be no peace, no silence. You will feel only tensions and anguish. This is what you are feeling, but you don't know why.

A divided person cannot be at peace. How can he be? Where to put your devil? You have to destroy it, and it is you; you cannot destroy it. You are not two. The reality is one, but because of your divisive attitude you have divided the outer reality. Now the inner is also divided accordingly -- so everyone is fighting with himself. It is as if you are fighting against one hand -- fighting the right hand with the left hand -- and the energy is one. In my right hand and left hand, I am; I am flowing in both. But I can oppose one against the other, my right hand against my left hand, and I can create a conflict, a bogus fight. Sometimes I can deceive myself that the right hand has won, and now the left is down. But this is a deception, because I know that it is me in both and any moment I can put the left up and the right down. I am in both; both the hands are mine.

So howsoever much you think you have put your saint above and crushed the devil down, know that at any moment you can change the positions, and the saint will be down and the devil will be up. That creates fear, insecurity, because you know that nothing is certain. You know you are so loving this moment and you have crushed your hatred down, but you are afraid because at any moment the hatred can come up and the love will be just crushed down. And it can happen at any moment because you are within both.

Tantra says don't divide, be undivided; only then will you be victorious. How to be undivided? You don't condemn, don't say "this" is good and "that" is bad. Just withdraw all conceptions of purity and impurity. Look at the world, but don't say what it is. Be ignorant, don't be too much wise. Don't label, remain silent, non-condemnatory, non-justifying. If you can remain silent about the world, by and by this silence will penetrate within. And if the division is not there outwardly, the division will disappear from the inner consciousness, because both CAN exist together.

But this is dangerous for society. That is why tantra was suppressed. This is dangerous! Nothing is immoral, nothing is moral; nothing is pure, nothing is impure. Things are as they are. A real tantric will not say that a thief is bad; he will say that he is a thief; that is all. And by using the word `thief' there is no condemnation in his mind. This "thief" is just a fact, not a condemnation. If someone says that "Here is a man who is a great saint," he will say, "Okay! He is a saint." But there is no evaluation in it. He will not say, "He is good", he will say, "Okay! He is a saint and that man is a thief," just like this is a rose and that is not a rose, this tree is high and that tree is low, night is dark and day is light -- but without comparison.

But this is dangerous. Society cannot exist without condemning one thing and without appreciating the other -- society cannot exist! Society exists on duality. That is why tantra was suppressed. It was thought to be anti-social, but it is not. It is not! But that very attitude of non-duality is transcendental. It is not anti-society, it is transcendental; it is beyond society.

Try this. Just move in the world without any values, just with natural facts: someone is this, someone is that. And then, by and by, you will feel a non-division within yourself. Your polarities will be coming together, your "bad" and your "good" will be coming together. They will merge into one, and you will become one unity. There will be nothing as pure, nothing as impure. Know the reality.

"THE PURITY OF OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US:" Tantra says that "What is basic for others is poisonous for us." For example, there are teachings which are based on non-violence. They say violence is bad, non-violence is good. Tantra says that non-violence is non-violence, violence is violence; nothing is good and nothing is bad.

There are teachings which are based on celibacy -- BRAHMACHARYA. They say that BRAHMACHARYA is good, sex is bad. Tantra says sex is sex, BRAHMACHARYA is BRAHMACHARYA. One is a BRAHMACHARI and one is not. But these are simple facts, no values are attached to them. And tantra will never say that BRAHMACHARYA is good -- the celibate is good -- and that the one who is in sex is bad. Tantra will not say that. Tantra accepts things as they are. And why? Just to create a unity within you.

This is a technique to create a unity within you, to have a total existence within, undivided, non-conflicting, not opposed. Only then is silence possible. One who is trying to move to some place against something can never be at peace. How can he be? And one who is divided within himself, fighting with himself, how can he win? It is impossible. You are both, so who is going to win? No one is going to win, and you will be at loss because you will dissipate your energy in fighting unnecessarily. This is a technique to create a unity in yourself. Allow valleys to disappear; don't judge.

Jesus says somewhere, "Judge ye not so that ye may not be judged." But this was impossible for the Jews to understand, because the whole Jewish conception is morality oriented: "This is good and that is not good." Jesus in his teaching, "Judge ye not," is talking in terms of tantra. If he was murdered, crucified, it is because of this. He had a tantra attitude -- "Judge ye not."

So don't say that a prostitute is bad -- who knows? and don't say that a puritan is good. Who knows? And ultimately they both are part of one game. They are based on each other -- on a mutual existence. So Jesus says, "Judge ye not," and this is what this sutra means: "Judge ye not so that ye may not be judged."

If you are non-judging, not taking any moral standpoint, simply observing facts as they are, not interpreting them according to yourself, then you cannot be judged. You are transformed completely. Now there is no need for YOU to be judged by any divine power -- there is no need! You have become divine yourself; you have become God yourself. Be a witness, not a judge.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2

Chapter #2

Chapter title: Alertness through tantra -- not principles

26 March 1973 pm in Bombay, India

Archive code: 7303265

ShortTitle: VBT202

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 84 mins

The first question:

Question 1

"IS IT NOT TRUE THAT AN IMMORAL LIFE CREATES HINDRANCES IN MEDITATION?"

What is meditation? It is not your character, it is not what you do. It is what you are. It is not the character, it is the consciousness that you bring to whatsoever you do. The doing is irrelevant. Whether you are doing it consciously or not is the question, whether moral or immoral. Are you alert? If you are alert, meditation happens. If you are not alert, you live in sleep.

You can be moral while fully asleep, there is no problem. Rather, it is better to be moral if you want to be fully asleep because then society will not disturb you. Then no one will be against you. You can sleep conveniently. The society will help you.

You can be moral without being meditative, but the immorality will always be just behind you. Just like a shadow it will follow, and your morality will be just skin deep because your morality can only be imposed from without when you are asleep. It can only be pseudo, false, a facade, it cannot become your being. You will become moral outwardly, but inwardly you will remain immoral. And the more moral you become outwardly, the more immoral you will be within -- in the same proportion, because your morality is bound to be nothing but a deep suppression. You cannot do anything else while asleep; you can only suppress.

And through this morality you will also become false. You will not be a person, but simply a "persona" -- just a pseudo entity. Misery will follow, and you will consequently be on the verge of explosion -- explosion of all that you have suppressed. It is there waiting for you. And if you are really honest in being moral while asleep, you will go mad. Only a dishonest person can remain moral without being mad. That is what hypocrisy means. Hypocrites just show that they are moral, that they are not, and they find ways and means to be immoral, constantly remaining moral on the surface or pretending to be moral. Then only can you remain sane; otherwise you will go insane.

This so-called morality leaves only two alternatives. If honest, you will become insane; if dishonest, you will become a hypocrite. So those who are clever, cunning, they are hypocrites. Those who are simple, innocent, who become victims of such teachings, go mad.

While asleep, real morality cannot happen to you. And what do you mean by "real morality"? Something which is a spontaneous flowering out of your being, not imposed from without. And real morality is not in opposition to immorality; a real morality is just an absence of immorality, it is not in opposition. For example, you can be taught to love your neighbors, to love everyone, to be loving. It can become a moral attitude, but the hate remains within. You force yourself to be loving, and a forced love cannot be real, cannot be authentic. It is not going to fulfill either you or the other person whom you love. No one is to be fulfilled by this false love.

It is just like false water. No one's thirst can be quenched by it. The hatred is there, and the hatred is trying to assert. And a false love cannot be a real hindrance to it. Rather, the hatred will penetrate the false love and will even poison it, and your loving will become just a sort of hatred. It is very tricky and cunning.

A real morality happens to a person who has gone deep within himself -- and the deeper you move, the more loving you become. It is not something forced against hatred; it is not something antagonistic to hatred. The deeper you move, the more love flows out of you. It has nothing to do with hatred at all; it is not concerned with hatred at all. The moment you reach to your center, you are loving without any moral imposition. You may not even be aware that you are loving. How you can be aware? This love will just be so natural that it will be just like breathing, just like your shadow following you. You will simply be loving.

Tantra teaches the inner journey. Morality will happen, but that will be a consequence, not a prerequisite. Be clear about this distinction. Tantra says don't be entangled with moral and immoral concepts. They are outer. Rather, move within. So the techniques are there for how to move within. And don't be concerned with moral and immoral, pure and impure; don't be concerned with distinctions. Just move within. Forget the outer -- the outer world, the society and whatsoever the society has taught you. All that society teaches is bound to be dualistic, it is bound to be suppressive; it is bound to be a conflict within you. And if the conflict is there, you cannot move within.

So forget the conflict and forget all that creates conflict. Simply move within. The deeper you go, the more moral you will become, but that morality will not be the morality of the society. You will be moral without "being moral" -- without being conscious that you are moral, because there is nothing opposed to it within you. You are simply loving because you feel blissful when you are loving. It is a bliss in itself. There is no end to it; no result is needed. It is not that you will get into the kingdom of God if you love. It is not a bargain. The morality that society preaches and so-called religions preach is a bargain: "Do this and you will get that. If you don't do this you will not get that. You will even be punished."It is a bargain.

Tantric morality is not a bargain, it is a happening. The deeper you move, the more you start living in the moment. You feel that to love is bliss. It is not a step, a condition, a bargain towards something else; it is enough unto itself. You love because you feel blissful in loving. You are not doing anything for your neighbor; you are not obliging anyone else. It is a pleasure to be loving. It is good for you right here and now. There is no future heaven or hell. Just now it creates the heaven, and the kingdom of God enters you. And this happens with all the virtues; they flower spontaneously.

Now look at the question: "IS IS NOT TRUE THAT AN IMMORAL LIFE CREATES HINDRANCES IN MEDITATION?" Really, the contrary is the truth. A meditative life creates hindrances in immoral life. Immoral life cannot create any hindrances. Immoral life means that you are non-meditative -- nothing else; you are fast asleep. That is why you are doing harm to yourself.

For tantra, the basic thing is meditation, alertness, awareness. Nothing else is more basic than that. When someone is immoral, it shows that he is not alert. It is just a symptom. The immoral life is just a symptom that he is not alert. What is ordinary teaching doing? Ordinary teachers will tell to this sleeping man who is immoral to be moral. He may change from immorality to morality, but the sleep continues.

So the whole effort is wasted because the real disease was not immorality; immorality was just a symptom. The disease was non-alertness, non-meditativeness. That is why he was immoral. You can convert him to morality. You can create fear, and you can make afraid only that person who is asleep; otherwise you cannot create fear. You can create a fear about hell and you can create a profit motive for heaven. Both of these things are possible only while you are asleep. If you are not asleep, you cannot be threatened and you cannot be motivated because of profit. Those two things are meaningful only to the mind that is asleep.

So create the fear of punishment, and a person will move from immorality to morality -- but he will move because of fear. Create a profit motive, and then he can move from immorality to morality -- but he will move because of lust, greed, profit motivation. Greed and fear are part of the sleeping mind. He remains asleep, nothing basic is changed.

He is good for the society; that is okay. For the society the immoral person is a problem, but the moral person is not a problem. So society has solved its problems, but the man remains asleep. For himself, nothing is solved; he is now more convenient for the society. Previously, he was inconvenient. Try to observe the fact: an immoral person is inconvenient to the society, but he is convenient for himself. A moral person becomes convenient to the society, but he becomes inconvenient to himself.

So it is only that the coin is put upside down. That is why immoral persons look more happy and gay, and a moral person is serious, sad, burdened. The immoral person is fighting with the society and the moral person is fighting with himself. The immoral person feels worried only because there is always a fear of being caught. He is afraid of being caught, but he is enjoying. If no one catches him, if there is no fear of being caught, he is okay.

The moral person is caught in a struggle with himself. Nothing is okay with him; he is only okay with the society. Morality is a lubricant, it helps you to move easily with others. But then you become uneasy with yourself. Uneasiness remains either with the society or with yourself. Only when you become awakened does uneasiness leave you.

Tantra is concerned with the basic disease, not with the symptoms. Morality is removing symptoms. So tantra says don't be concerned with moral or immoral concepts. It does not mean that tantra says become immoral. How can tantra tell you to become immoral when tantra cannot even tell you to become moral? Tantra says the whole thing is irrelevant: don't talk about morality and immorality; come to the root. You can be moral or immoral, but that is only the symptom. Come to the root! The root is that you are asleep -- fast asleep.

How to break this sleeping pattern? How to be aware and how not to fall again and again into sleep? That is what tantra is concerned with -- and once you become alert your character will change. But that is a consequence. Tantra says you need not worry about it.; that is a consequence. Inevitably, it happens, so you need not worry about it. You are not to bring it, it will happen. You simply become more and more alert, and you will be less and less immoral. But this morality that will happen to you is not forced; it is not something done by you on your part. You are just trying to be alert, and it happens.

How can an alert man be violent? How can an alert man feel hatred and anger? It may look paradoxical, but it is so. One who is asleep cannot be without hatred. It is impossible. He can only pretend that there is no anger, no hatred. He can only pretend that there is love, compassion, kindness, sympathy. Those are all pretensions. Quite the contrary happens to the one who has awakened. If anger is needed, he can only pretend. He cannot be angry.; he can only pretend! If anger is needed -- and sometimes it is needed -- he can only pretend. He cannot be sad, but if it is needed he can pretend that he is sad. Now these are impossible.

Love is natural now, as hatred was before. Love was a pretension before. Now hatred can only be a pretension -- if it is needed. Jesus fighting with the moneychangers in the great temple was pretending. He cannot be angry, but he has chosen to pretend. He cannot be really angry. He cannot be angry, but he can use anger -- as you use love and cannot be loving.

You use love for certain purposes. Your love is just to get something else; it is never simply love. You may be trying to get money, you may be trying to get sex, you may be trying to get something -- ego fulfillment, a victory, a feeling that you are very powerful. You may be trying to get anything else, but it is never love.

A buddha can be angry if he thinks that it is going to help. Because of his love sometimes he may be angry, but that is only a pretension and only fools are befooled by it. Those who know, they will simply laugh. As meditation deepens, says tantra, you start changing. And it is beautiful when change happens to you. If you "do" it, it can never be something very deep because doing is just on the surface. So tantra says, allow it to happen from the being, from the very center. Let it flow from the center towards the periphery; don't force it from the periphery to the center. That is impossible.

Tantra will not say moral or immoral. The only thing is if you are asleep try to change it. Allow yourself to become more and more alert, wherever you are. If you are immoral, tantra says, "It is okay. We are not concerned with your immorality, we are concerned with your sleep and with how to transform it into alertness." Don't fight with the immorality. Just try to transform your sleep.

If you are moral it is okay. Tantra is not going to tell you first to become immoral and then to try. Neither does the immoral one have any need to transform himself into a moral person, nor does the moral person have to transform himself into an immoral one in order to get into meditation. All that they need is to change their quality of consciousness. So wherever you are, a sinner or a saint, for tantra there is no distinction. If you are asleep, then try the techniques for alertness. And don't try to change symptoms. The sinner is ill and the so-called saint is also ill because both are asleep.

The illness is the sleep, not your character. Your character is just a by-product. And whatsoever you do while remaining asleep will not make any basic change. Only one thing can change you and create a mutation and that is alertness. The question is one of how to become more and more alert. So whatsoever you do, make it an object of alertness. If you do some immoral act, do it meditatively. It will not be long before the act will dissolve by itself and disappear. Then you will not be able to do it -- not because you have created an armor against it, but because now you are more alert. And how can you do a thing which needs sleep as a requisite? You cannot do it.

Understand well this basic distinction between tantra and what others teach. Tantra is more scientific. It goes to the very root of the problem, transforms you from the very being -- not from your outer sheath of character, of morality and immorality, of acts and doings. Whatsoever you do is just on the periphery; whatsoever you are is never on the periphery. The quality of the act, not the act itself, is meaningful for tantra.

For example, one butcher came to Nan-in. He was a butcher and Nan-in was a Buddhist monk who believed in non-violence. His whole profession was of violence. The whole day he was killing animals. But when the butcher came to Nan-in, he asked him, "What am I to do? My profession is one of violence. So am I to leave my profession first and is it that only then I can be a new man, or is there some other way?"

Nan-in said, "We are not concerned with what you do. We are concerned with what you are. So you go on doing whatsoever you are doing, but be more alert. While killing, remain alert, meditative, and go on doing whatsoever you are doing. We are not concerned."

Nan-in's followers became disturbed -- because here was a person who was a follower of Buddha, a believer in non-violence, allowing a butcher to continue. One disciple said, "This is not good. And we never expected that a person like you would allow a butcher to remain a butcher. And when he was asking, you should have told him to drop this. He himself was ready."

Nan-in is reported to have said, "You can change the butcher's profession easily; he was himself ready. But in that way you cannot change his quality of consciousness. He will remain a butcher."

He may become a saint, but the quality of the mind will remain that of a butcher. That will be a deception for others and for himself also. Go and look at your so-called saints. Many of them remain butchers. The quality, the attitude, the violence, their very look towards you, is condemning, violent. You are a sinner and they are saints. When they see you, the very look is such that you are condemned, you are thrown into hell.

Nan-in said, "So it is not good to change his outer life; it is better to bring a new quality to his mind. And it is good to let him remain a butcher, because he is disturbed by his butchery and violence. If he becomes a saint he will remain a butcher, but then he will not be disturbed. His ego will be strengthened. So this is good. He is disturbed that violence is there, and he has become at least this much aware -- that this is not good. He is ready to change, but just readiness to change will not help. A new quality of the mind has to be developed. Let him meditate."

After one year had passed, the man came. He had become a different man. He was still a killer, but the man had changed although the doing remained the same. He came to Nan-in again and he said, "Now I am a different man. I meditated and meditated and meditated, and my whole life has become a meditation because you told me to meditate in whatsoever I am doing. I am butchering animals, but the whole day I am meditating. Now what do you tell me to do?"

So Nan-in said, "Now do not come to me. Allow your awareness to make a path for you. You need not come to me."

So the butcher said, "Now, only if you say remain in the profession will I pretend to be there. But as far as I am concerned, I am no more there. So if you allow me, I am not going back. But if you say to go, then it is okay. I will go and pretend, and I will continue."

This is how, when your quality changes -- your quality of consciousness -- you become a different person altogether. And tantra is concerned with you, not with what you do.

The second question:

Question 2

"IF ONE FOLLOWS CERTAIN LAWS OF LIFE AND CALLS THIS MORAL, THEN IS THERE ANY OBJECTION FROM A TANTRIC?"

Tantra has no objections, but this having no objection is the problem. Tantra has no objection whatsoever; tantra is not in any way condemning. It is not concerned to tell you, "Do this," or "Don't do that." If you feel good, if you feel happy following certain principles, then follow them. But following certain principles can never lead you to happiness because you are not going to change through principles and through following them. You will remain the same.

Principles are always borrowed, ideals are always borrowed. Someone else has given them to you. They are not your own; they have not grown out of your own experience. They are without roots. The society, the religion to which you are born, the teachers you happened to be near, they have given them to you. You can follow them and you can force yourself accordingly, but then you will be a dead person -- not alive. You may create a certain peace around yourself, but that will be the peace of the cemetery -- dead. You may be less vulnerable to disturbances, more closed in because of the principles, but then you will become less sensitive and less alive. So so-called principled men are always dead.

Look at them: they look silent, still, peaceful, at ease, but a certain deadness is always around them. The aura of death is always there. You cannot feel the feast of life around them, the festivity of being alive, the celebration of being alive. You can never feel that around them. They have created an armor around them -- a safety armor. Nothing can penetrate them. The walls of their principles and character stop everything, but then they are behind the walls, imprisoned, and they are their own prisoners. If you choose this, tantra has no objection. You are free to choose a life which is not a life at all.

Once Mulla Nasruddin visited a cemetery, and he saw a very beautiful marble mausoleum. Inscribed on it was the name "Rothschild." Mulla is reported to have said, "Aha! Ahhh! This is what I call life. This is what I called living -- a beautiful marble mausoleum." But howsoever beautiful it is, it is not life. It is marble -- beautiful, rich -- but not life. You can create a mausoleum out of your life through principles, ideals, impositions, but then you will be dead, although less vulnerable because death is not vulnerable.

Death is a security; life is always insecure. Anything can happen to a live person; nothing can happen to a dead person. He is secure. There is no future, no possibility for change. The last thing has happened to him -- death. Now nothing can happen.

Principled personalities are dead personalities. Tantra is not interested in them. Tantra has no objection -- if you feel good being dead, it is your choice. You can commit suicide, and this is a suicide. But tantra is for those who want to be more alive, and the truth, the ultimate, is not death, it is life. Remember that: the ultimate is not death. It is life -- more life. Jesus has said, "Abundant life, infinite life."

So by being dead you can never reach to the ultimate. If it is life, and "abundant life," then by being dead you will never be in contact with it. Just by being more alive, more vulnerable, more sensitive, less principled and more alert, you will reach it. Why do you seek principles? You may not have observed why. It is because with principles you need not be alert. You need not be alert! If you live through principles you need not be alert.

Suppose I make a principle out of non-violence and then I stick to it, or I make it a principle to be truthful and I stick to it; then it becomes a habit. I create a habit of being truthful, of always speaking the truth. It becomes a mechanical habit; now there is no need to be alert. I cannot speak lies because a principle, a habit, will always create a barrier. The society depends on principles, on inculcating and educating the children with principles. Then they become incapable, really, of being otherwise. If a person becomes incapable, he is dead.

Your truth can be alive only if it comes through alertness, not through principle. Each moment you have to be alert in order to be true. Truth is not a principle; it is something born out of your alertness. Non-violence is not a principle; if you are alert you cannot be violent. But that is difficult and arduous. You will have to transform yourself totally. It is easy to create a life according to principles, rules and regulations. Then you need not worry. You need not worry about being more alert and aware; you can follow the principles.

Then you are just like a railway train running on the tracks. Those tracks are your principles. You are not afraid because you cannot miss the path. Really, you don't have any path.; you have just mechanical rails on which your train is running. You will reach the destination, you need not be afraid. You will be asleep and the train will reach. It is running on dead paths; they are not alive.

But tantra says that life is not like that, it is more like a river. It is not running on iron rails, on tracks; really, it is like a river. The path has not even been charted before. As the river flows, the path is created. As the river moves, the path is created. The river will reach to the sea, and this is how life should be if you understand the tantra way.

Life is like a river. There is no precharted way; there are no maps to be given to you which are to be followed. Just be alive and alert, and then wheresoever life leads you go with full confidence in it. Tantra is a trust -- a trust in the life force. Allow it to lead you, don't force it. Surrender to it and allow it to lead you towards the sea. Just be alert, that is all. While life leads you towards the sea just be alert so that you don't miss anything.

It is very important to remember that tantra is not simply concerned with the end; it is also concerned with the means. It is also concerned with the path, not only the destination. If you are alert, even this life will be a bliss. The very movement of the river is a bliss in itself. Passing through the valleys, through the rocks, falling down from the hills, moving into the unknown is itself a bliss.

Be alert here also, because the ocean, the ultimate, cannot just be a happening in the end. It cannot be. It is a growth. The river is "growing" to be the sea. It is not simply going to meet the sea, it is "growing" to be the sea, and this is possible only through rich experience, alert experiences, moving, trusting. This is how tantra looks at the search -- at the human search. Of course, it is dangerous. If rivers can be run through predetermined paths, there would be less danger, fewer errors. But the whole beauty of aliveness would be lost.

So don't be a follower of principles. Just be a creator of more and more consciousness. Those principles will happen to you, but you will never feel imprisoned in them.

The third question:

Question 3

"THE SECOND SUTRA DISCUSSED YESTERDAY SAYS, `THE PURITY OF OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US. IN REALITY, KNOW NOTHING AS PURE OR IMPURE.' IF NOTHING IS IMPURE, THEN HOW CAN THE TEACHINGS OF OTHERS BE IMPURE?"

Really, nothing is impure, but the teaching that something is pure and something is impure has to be discarded. Only in that sense does the sutra mean, "The purity of other teachings is an impurity to us." Nothing is pure and nothing is impure, but if someone teaches that something is pure and something is impure, tantra says that this has to be discarded. Only in this sense does the sutra say that "The purity of other teachings is an impurity to us." This is just a discarding. It is just saying don't make any distinctions, remain innocent.

But look at the complexity of life. If I say remain innocent, and if you then try innocence, that innocence will not be innocent. How can it be? If you have "tried" it, it has become a calculated thing. Then it cannot be innocent. If you try it, it cannot be! So what is to be done? Just discard those things which create cunningness. Don't try to create any innocence; you cannot. Just discard those things which create cunningness in your mind. This is negative. When you have discarded the root causes of cunningness, innocence will have happened to you. Nothing is pure or impure. But what is to be done then? Your mind is filled with distinctions: "This is pure and That is impure." So tantra says, "For us this is the only impurity. This mind filled with concepts of purity and impurity is the only impurity. If you can discard it, you have become pure."

This sutra is meaningful in another sense also. There are teachings with very fixed rules. For example, Catholic Christian teachings or Jaina teachings in India are against sex.; they say that sex is impure, ugly, sin. Tantra says that nothing is ugly, nothing is impure, nothing is sin. Even sex can become a path; even sex can become a path toward salvation. It depends on you. It is not sex, it is you who determines the quality of it.

Even prayer can become a sin -- and sex can become a virtue. It depends on you. The value is not in the object, the value is brought to it by you. Look at it -- at this phenomenon -- in a different way. Tantra says that even sex can become salvation, but then come to sex without any notions of purity and impurity, good or bad, morality and immorality. Come to sex as pure energy, just energy. Move in that energy as if you are moving into the unknown. Don't fall asleep: be alert! When sex brings you to the very root of your being, be alert. Don't fall asleep, on the path. Be alert and experience everything, whatsoever is happening -- the relaxation that comes, the tension that happens, the peak that comes, and the valley in which you are thrown back.

Your ego dissolves for a moment; you become one with your beloved or with your partner. For a moment, the two are not there. The bodies are two, but deep down there is a communion and they have become one. Be alert! Don't miss this moment in sleep. Be alert; see what is happening. This oneness is what was hidden in the sex act. The sex was just the outer core. Now this is the meaning -- the central point. This is what you were longing for, this is what the hankering was for. This was for what there was the search -- this unity, this dissolving of the ego, this feeling of oneness, this ecstasy of non-tension, this ecstasy of relaxation. This was the meaning, the goal, and this is what you were searching for through this woman and that, through this man and that. You were searching and searching, but no woman can fulfill it, no man can give it.

Only through a deep tantric awareness does the sex act completely disappear, and a deep ecstasy is revealed. So tantra says it is you: if you can bring meditation to your love, to your sex, the sex is transformed. So tantra doesn't say that this is pure or that is impure -- and if you want to use the old terminology of purity and impurity, then I will say that for tantra sleep is impure, alertness is pure, and all else is just meaningless.

The fourth question:

Question 4

"IF AN EMOTIONAL DESIRE OR MOOD BECOMES EXHILARATING FOR US, AND IF WE DO NOT EXPRESS IT OUTWARDLY, DOES THIS ENERGY NECESSARILY GO BACK TO THE SOURCE AND MAKE THE PERSON FRESH AND ENERGETIC?"

Not necessarily! But if you are aware, then it is so, necessarily. Any energy, any energy, needs roots to move, and no energy can be destroyed. Energy is indestructible. It can only change into different forms; it can never become nothing. So when you try to suppress any energy, you are doing absolute nonsense with yourself. Energy cannot be suppressed: it can only be transformed. A suppressed energy will become a cancer. If you feel anger, two ordinary routes are available: either express it or suppress it. If you express it, then it becomes a chain, because then you create anger in the other person and he will express it -- and there is no end to it. Then you will express it, and it can continue for years. It continues! That is how everyone is living. It goes on and on.

Those who know deeply, they say that for lives also, for lives together, it goes on and on. You have been angry with a person in your past life, and still in this life you are repeating the same pattern with the same person. You are not aware, you are blissfully unaware. So it is good if you think something new is happening. Ninety-nine percent of the time nothing new is happening; old patterns are just being repeated again and again.

Sometimes you suddenly see a stranger, and you become angry. He has not done anything -- you have not even met him before -- but you feel depressed or angry or violent, or you want just to escape from this person. You feel bad. Why? It is some old pattern. Energy never dies, it remains, so if you express it, you are falling into an eternal chain. Someday you will have to come out of it. And the whole thing is useless, it is just wastage. Don't start the chain.

Then the other ordinary alternative is to suppress it, and when you suppress it you are creating a wound within yourself. That will be a suffering. That will create problems. And the anger will go on being suppressed, and you will become a volcano of anger.

So it may be that you are not now expressing your anger, but now your whole personality will become angry. There will be no eruptions, no one will see you beating someone and being violent, but now your whole personality will become angry because so much anger within poisons you. Now whatsoever you do the angry part is there. Even while you are loving someone, the angry part is there -- in everything. If you are eating your food, the angry part will be there. You will be violent with your food, you will not be loving. If you are opening a door, the angry part will be there. You will be violent with the door.

One day in the morning, Mulla Nasruddin was passing down a street shouting oaths and saying very angrily, "The devil will take possession of your spirit and beets will grow in your belly" -- and so it went on and on.

One man looked at him and said, "Mulla, whom are you cursing so much so early in the morning?"

Mulla said, "Who? I don't know. But don't worry, someone will turn up sooner or later."

If you are filled with anger, this happens: you are just waiting, and sooner or later someone will turn up. Inside you are bubbling with fire, just waiting for some objects, some medium, someone who should help you to unburden yourself. Then your whole personality becomes angry or violent or sexual. You can suppress sex, and then the suppressed sex becomes your whole personality. Then wherever you look you will see sex, in whatsoever you touch you will see sex, whatsoever you do will be a sexual act. You can suppress sex very easily; it is not difficult. But then sex will spread all over you. Your every fiber, every cell will become sexual.

Look at the celibates. Their minds become totally sexual; they dream about sex, they fight with sex; constantly they fantasize about sex. They are obsessed. That which could have been natural has become perverted. If you express it you create a chain, if you suppress you create a wound, and both are not good. So tantra says that whatsoever you do -- for example, if you are angry, when you feel that anger is coming -- be uninterruptedly aware. Don't suppress it and don't express it. Do a third thing, take the third alternative: be suddenly aware that anger is coming. This awareness changes the energy that is moving as anger into a different energy. The very energy that is known as anger becomes compassion. Through alertness there is the transmutation.

The same energy which is known as sex becomes BRAHMACHARYA, spirituality, through awareness. Alertness is the alchemy. Through it everything changes. Try it, and you will come to know. When you bring alertness, awareness, to any mood, any feeling, any energy, it changes its nature and quality. It is never the same again, and a new route opens. It is not going back again to the same place where it was, from where it came; it is not moving outwards The horizontal movement has stopped. With alertness it becomes vertical, it moves upwards. That is a different dimension. A bullock cart moves horizontally; an airplane moves vertically -- upwards.

I would like to tell you one parable. One fakir, a Sufi, used to say that someone was presented an airplane, a very small aircraft, by a friend, who was a great king. But the man was poor. He had heard about airplanes, but he had never seen one. He knew only bullock carts, so he thought that this was a new device -- a new type of bullock cart. He used his two bullocks to bring the airplane home, and then he used the airplane as a bullock cart. He was very happy. Of course, the small aircraft worked as a bullock cart. But then, by and by, just from being curious he started studying it. Then he came to understand that bullocks were not needed. It had a motor and it was able to go by itself, so he fueled it and used it as a motor car.

But then by and by, he became aware of the wings, and he thought "Why are they there?" And it seemed to him that the man who had devised this machine must have been very intelligent, a genius; thus, he could not have added something unnecessarily. The wings showed that the machine could fly also. So he tried. Then the airplane came to its own; it became vertical.

You are using the mind that you have as a bullock cart. The same mind can become a motor car; then bullocks will not be needed. It has an inbuilt mechanism, but then too it will be moving horizontally. However, the same mind has wings. You have not observed, that is why you don't know that it has wings. It can fly! It can move upwards! And once it moves upwards, once your energies start moving upwards, the whole world is different. Your old questions simply fall down and your old problems are no more there, because you are now moving vertically.

All those problems were there because you were moving horizontally. The problems of a bullock cart are not problems for an airplane. The road was not good, so there was a problem. The road was blocked, so there was a problem. Now this is not a problem because the road is not used at all. Whether blocked or not, whether good or not, it is irrelevant.

Moral teachings are bullock-cart teachings; tantra's teaching is vertical. That's why all those problems are irrelevant for tantra. The energy that you know as anger, sex, greed or whatsoever, is moving horizontally. Once you bring your alertness to it, you have brought a new dimension. Just by being alert, you move upwards.

Why? Observe the fact: when you are alert, you are always above the fact. Become alert about anything, and you are always above the fact. The fact is somewhere below, down, and you are looking from above, from a peak. Whenever you have witnessed something you have moved upwards, and the thing has remained below. If this attention is really authentic and you can be uninterruptedly aware, then the energy that was moving horizontally as anger, as sex, will move into this new dimension. It will come near to you, to the witness. Then you have started flying. And for lives and lives you have been using the device which is meant for flying as a bullock cart, unnecessarily creating problems because you were just not knowing what is possible for you.

The fifth question:

Question 5

"YOU SAID THAT ONE SHOULD NEITHER SUPPRESS NOR INDULGE IN ANGER, BUT THAT ONE SHOULD REMAIN PASSIVELY ALERT AND MEDITATIVE. OBVIOUSLY, IT WILL NEED A SORT OF INNER EFFORT TO AVOID SUPPRESSION OR INDULGENCE, BUT THEN IS THIS NOT ALSO A SORT OF SUPPRESSION?"

No! It is an effort, but not."a sort of suppression." Every effort is not suppression. There are three types of effort. One is the effort which is expression. When you express your anger, it is an effort. Then the second type of effort is when you suppress it. When you express what you are doing, you are forcing your energy outwards to the person, to the object; you are throwing out your energy, the other is the target. Energy moves to the other; it is an effort. When you suppress, you return the energy back to the original source, to your own heart. You force it back. It is an effort, but the direction is different. In expression it moves away from you; in suppression it again moves near you.

The third thing, alertness, passive alertness, is also an effort, but the dimension is different. The energy moves upwards. In the beginning it is an effort. When I say be passively alert, in the beginning even passivity is bound to be an effort. Only by and by, as you become more acquainted with it, will it not be an effort. And when it is not an effort, it becomes more passive -- and the more passive, the more magnetic. It pulls the energy upwards.

But in the beginning everything is going to be an effort, so don't become a victim of words. It creates problems. Mystics have always been talking about effortlessness. They say don't make any effort. But in the beginning even this is going to be an effort. When we say be effortless we only mean don't force the effort. Allow it to come through awareness. If you force it, you will become tense. If you become tense, anger cannot move upwards. Tension is horizontal; only a non-tense mind can be above, hovering like a cloud.

Look at the clouds floating with no effort. Just bring your witnessing in like a floating cloud. In the beginning it is going to be an effort, but remember only that it is going to become effortless. You will be forcing it and allowing it more and more.

This is difficult because language creates the difficulty. If I tell you to relax, what will you do? You will make a sort of effort. But then I tell you don't make any effort, because if you make any effort that will create tension and you will not be able to relax. I tell you to simply relax. Then you are at a loss, and you are bound to ask, "Then what do you mean? If I am not going to make any effort then what am I supposed to do?"

You are not supposed to do anything, but in the beginning that non-doing will look like a doing. So I will say, "Okay! Make a little effort, but remember that the effort is to be left behind. Use it as a starter just in the beginning. You cannot understand non-doing; you can only understand doing. So use the language of doing and action. Start, but use effort only as a starter. And remember, the sooner you leave it behind, the better.

I have heard that when Mulla Nasruddin became very old, he became a victim of insomnia, he couldn't sleep. Everything was tried -- hot baths, pills, tranquilizers, syrups -- but nothing was of any help. Everything was of no avail. And the children were disturbed because Mulla would not sleep himself, and he would not allow anyone in the house to sleep. So the whole night had become a nightmare for the whole family.

They searched desperately for any method, any medicine that would help Mulla to sleep, because the whole family was going crazy. So finally they brought a hypnotist. The children came very happily, and they told old Mulla, "Now you need not be worried, papa. This is a miracle man. He creates sleep within minutes. He knows the very magic of it, so don't be worried. Now there is no fear, and you will sleep."

The hypnotist showed a watch with a chain to Nasruddin and said, "Only very little faith will do the miracle. You need a little trust towards me. Just trust me, and you will fall like a small babe into deep sleep. Look at this watch."

He started moving that watch left and right. Nasruddin looked at it, and the hypnotist said, "Left-right, left-right. Your eyes are becoming tired, tired, tired. You are falling asleep, asleep, asleep, asleep."

Everyone was in joy -- happy. Mulla's eyes closed, his head moved down, and he felt like a small babe going into deep sleep. A very rhythmic breathing came. The hypnotist took his fee, and he put his finger on his lips, just to indicate to the children not to be disturbed now. Then he sneaked out. The moment he was out, Mulla opened one eye and said, "That nut! Has he gone yet?"

He was making an effort to relax, so he relaxed "like a babe." He had started breathing rhythmically and closed his eyes, but it was all an effort. He was helping the hypnotist. He thought that he was helping the hypnotist. But it was effort on his part, so nothing happened. Nothing could happen. He was awake. If he could have just been passive, if he could have heard what was being said, looked at what was being shown, the sleep would have happened. No effort on his part was necessary; only passive acceptance was necessary. But even for you to bring your mind to that passive acceptance, in the beginning you will need effort.

So don't be afraid of effort. Start with effort, and just remember that effort has to be left behind and you have to move beyond effort. Only when you have moved beyond will you be passive, and that passive awareness brings the miracle.

With passive awareness, mind is no more there. For the first time your inner center of being is revealed, and there is a reason. Effort is needed for anything that is to be done in the world. If you want to do something in the world, anything, effort is needed. But if you want to do something in the inner, no effort is needed. Just relaxation is needed. Non-doing is the art there just as doing is the art in the outward, the outside world.

This passive alertness is the key. But don't become disturbed by language. Start with effort. Just keep in mind that you have to leave it, and go on leaving it. Even leaving will be an effort -- but a moment comes when everything has gone. Then you are there, simply there not doing anything -- just there, being. That "beingness" is SAMADHI, and all that is worth knowing, worth having, worth being, happens to you in that state.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2

Chapter #3

Chapter title: Finding the changeless through the changing

27 March 1973 pm in Bombay, India

Archive code: 7303275

ShortTitle: VBT203

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 92 mins

BE THE UNSAME SAME TO FRIEND AS TO STRANGER, IN HONOR AND DISHONOR.

HERE IS THE SPHERE OF CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE. THROUGH CHANGE CONSUME CHANGE.

Northrope says somewhere that the Western mind has been continuously searching for the theoretical component of existence -- the causal link for how things happen, what is the cause, how the effect can be controlled, how man can manipulate nature. And the Eastern mind, says Northrope, has been on a different adventure. The search has been to find the aesthetic component of reality -- not the theoretical, but the aesthetic.

The Eastern mind has not been much involved with the search to know how to manipulate nature, but it has been interested in how to be one with nature -- not in how to conquer it, but in how to be in a deep friendship, a deep participation with it. The Western mind has been in a conflict, a struggle; the Eastern mind has been in a mystique, a love relationship. I don't know whether Northrope will agree with me or not, but my feeling is that science is a hatred, a relationship of hatred with nature; hence, struggle, fight, conquering, the language of victory.

Religion is a love relationship; hence, no conflict, no struggle. In another way, science is a male attitude and religion a female attitude. Science is aggressive, religion is receptive. The Eastern mind is religious. Or, if you allow me, I will say that wherever a religious mind is, it is Eastern. The scientific mind is Western. It makes no difference whether a man is born in the East or the West. I am using East and West as two attitudes, two approaches, not as two geographical denominations. You can be born in the West, but you may not belong there; you may be Eastern through and through. You may be born in the East, but you may not belong; you may be scientific, the approach may be mathematical, intellectual.

Tantra is absolutely Eastern. It is a way of participating with reality -- a way how to be one with it, how to dissolve boundaries, how to move in an undifferentiated realm. Mind differentiates, creates boundaries, definitions, because mind cannot work without definitions, without boundaries. The more clear-cut the boundaries, the better the possibility for the mind to work. So mind cuts, divides, chops everything.

Religion is a dissolving of boundaries in order to move to the undifferentiated where there is no definition, where there is no limit to anything, where everything moves into everything else, where everything is everything else. You cannot cut, you cannot chop existence. The consequences are bound to be very different in each approach. By the scientific approach, by dividing, chopping, you can come only to dead particles, atoms, because life is something which cannot be cut into divisions. And the moment you cut it, it is no more there. It is as if someone goes to study a symphony by studying each single note. Each single note is part of the symphony, but it is not the symphony. The symphony is created by many notes dissolving into each other. You cannot study a symphony by studying notes.

I cannot study you by studying your parts, You are not just a total of parts, you are more than that. When you divide and cut and analyze, life disappears; only dead parts are left. That is why science will never be capable of knowing what life is, and whatsoever is known through science will be about death -- matter -- it will never be about life. Science may become capable of manipulating life, of knowing the parts, the dead parts. It may be capable of manipulating life, but, still LIFE is not known, not even touched. Life remains unknowable for science. By the very method of its technology, its methodology, by the very approach, life cannot be known through it.

That is why science goes on denying -- denying anything else other than matter. The very approach debars any contact with that which is life. And the vice versa happens also: if you move deeply into religion, you will start denying matter. Shankara says that matter is illusion, it is not there; it simply appears to be. The whole Eastern approach has been to deny the world, matter, anything material. Why? Science goes on denying life, the divine, consciousness. Deeper religious experiences go on denying matter -- all that is material. Why? Because of the very approach. If you look at life without differentiation, matter disappears. Matter is life divided, differentiated. Matter means life defined, analyzed into parts.

So, of course, if you look at life undifferentiatedly and become part of it, in a deep participation, if you become one with existence as two lovers become one, matter disappears. That is why Shankara says that matter is illusion. If you participate in existence, it is. But Marx says that consciousness is just a by-product, it is not substantial; it is just a function of matter. If you divide life, then consciousness disappears, becomes illusory. Then only matter is.

What I am intending to say to you is this: Existence is one. If you approach it through analysis, it appears material, dead. If you approach it through participation, it appears as life, as divine, as consciousness. If you approach it through science there is no possibility of any deep bliss happening to you, because with dead matter bliss is impossible. At the most it can only be illusory. Only with a deep participation is bliss possible.

Tantra is a love technique. The effort is to make you one with existence. So you will have to lose many things before you can enter. You will have to lose your habitual pattern of analyzing things; you will have to lose the deep-rooted attitude of fighting, of thinking in terms of conquering.

When Hillary reached to the highest peak of the Himalayas, Mount Everest, all of the Western world reported it as a conquering -- a conquering of Everest. Only in a Zen monastery in Japan, on a wall newspaper, it was written, "Everest has been befriended" -- not conquered! This is the difference -- "Everest has been befriended"; now humanity has become friendly with it. Everest has allowed Hillary to come to it. It was not a conquering. The very word `conquer' is vulgar, violent. To think in terms of conquering shows aggressiveness. Everest has received Hillary, welcomed him, and now humanity has become friendly; now the chasm is bridged. Now we are not unacquainted. One of us has been received by Everest. Now Everest has become part of human consciousness. This is a bridging.

Then the whole thing becomes totally different. It depends on how you look at it. Remember this before we enter the techniques. Remember this: tantra is a love effort towards existence. That is why so much of sex has been used by tantra: because it is a love technique. It is not only love between man and woman; it is love between you and existence, and for the first time existence becomes meaningful to you through a woman. If you are a woman, then existence becomes for the first time meaningful to you through a man.

That is why sex has been so much discussed and used by tantra. Think of yourself as absolutely asexual -- as if all sex were removed from you the day you were born. Just think: all sex was completely removed from you the day you were born. You will be unable to love; you will be unable to feel any affinity with anyone. It will be difficult to get out of yourself. You will remain enclosed, you will not be able to approach, to go out to meet someone. There in existence, you will be a dead thing, closed from everywhere.

Sex is your effort to reach out. You move from yourself; someone else becomes the center. You leave your ego behind, you go away from it to meet someone. If you really want to meet you will have to surrender, and if the other also wants to meet you he will also have to move out. Look at the miracle in love -- at what happens. You move to the other and the other moves to you. He comes into you and you go into him or into her. You have changed places. Now he becomes your soul and you become her soul or his soul. This is a participation. Now you are meeting. Now you have become a circle. This is the first meeting where you are not enclosed in the ego. This meeting can become just a stepping stone toward a greater meeting with universe, with existence, with reality.

Tantra is based not on intellect, but on heart. It is not an intellectual effort, it is a feeling effort. Remember this, because that will help you to understand the techniques. Now we will enter the techniques.

The first technique:

"BE THE UNSAME SAME TO FRIEND AS TO STRANGER, IN HONOR AND DISHONOR."

"BE THE UNSAME SAME" -- this is the base. What is happening in you? Two things are happening. Something in you remains continuously the same, it never changes. You may not have observed it, you may not have encountered it yet, but if you observe you will come to know that something in you remains constantly the same. Because of that sameness, you can have an identity. Because of that sameness, you feel yourself centered; otherwise you will be a chaos. You say, "My childhood." Now what has remained of it? WHO says, "My childhood"? Who is this "my, me, I"?

Nothing has remained of your childhood. If your pictures of your childhood are shown to you for the first time, you will not be able to recognize them. Everything has changed. Your body is no more the same; not a single cell has remained the same. Physiologists says that the body is a flux, it is river-like. Every moment many cells are dying and many new ones are born. Within seven years your body will have changed completely. So if you are going to live seventy years, ten times over your body has renewed itself completely.

Every moment your body is changing, and your mind. You cannot recognize a photograph of your childhood, and if it were possible to give you a photograph of your mind, of your childhood mind, it would be impossible to recognize it. Your mind is even more of a flux than your body. Every moment everything changes. Even for a single moment nothing remains the same. In the morning you were different as far as your mind is concerned. In the evening you are totally a different person.

When someone would come to meet Buddha, before the person would depart, take leave of him, Buddha would say, "Remember, the man who has come to meet me is not the man who is going back. You are totally different now. Your mind has changed." Meeting with a buddha is, of course, bound to change your mind for better or worse, but you cannot be the same.

You came here with a different mind; you will go with a different mind. Something has changed. Something new has been added, something has been deleted. And even if you are not meeting anyone, if you are just remaining by yourself, then too you cannot remain the same. Every moment the river is moving.

Heraclitus has said, "You cannot step twice in the same river." The same can be said about man: you cannot meet the same man again -- impossible! And because of this fact, and because of our ignorance of it, life becomes a misery -- because you go on expecting the other to be the same. You marry a girl and you expect her to be the same. She cannot be! Unmarried, she was different; married, she is completely different. A lover is something else, a husband is something totally different. You cannot expect your lover to meet you through your husband. That is impossible. A lover is a lover; a husband is a husband. The moment a lover becomes a husband, everything has changed. But you go on expecting. That creates misery -- unnecessary misery. If we can recognize this fact that mind goes on moving and changing continuously, we will escape many, many miseries without any cost. All you need is simple awareness that mind changes.

Someone loves you and then you go on expecting love. But the next moment he hates you; then you are disturbed -- not because of his hate, but only because of your expectation. He has changed. He is alive, so he is bound to change. But if you can see the reality as it is you will not be disturbed. The one who was in love a moment before can be in hate a moment later, but wait! One moment later he will be in love again. So don't be in a hurry, just be patient. And if the other can also see this changing pattern, then he will not be fighting for changing patterns. They change; that is natural.

So if you look at your body, it changes. If you try to understand your mind, it changes. It is never the same. Even for two consecutive moments, nothing is the same. Your personality goes on like a flux. If this is all and there is nothing which remains the same continuously, eternally, timelessly, then who will remember that this was "my childhood"? Childhood has changed, the body has changed, the mind has changed. Then who remembers? Then who knows about childhood and about youth and about old age? Who knows?

This knower must remain the same; this witness must remain the same. Only then can the witness have a perspective. The witness can say, "This was my childhood, this was my young age, this was my old age. This moment I was in love, and this moment the love changed into hatred." This witnessing consciousness, this knower, is always the same.

So you have two realms or two dimensions existing together in you. You are both -- the changing which is always changing and the non-changing which is always remaining non-changing. If you become aware of these two realms, then this technique will be helpful: "BE THE UNSAME SAME." Remember this: "BE THE UNSAME SAME." You are bound to be "unsame" on the periphery, but at the center remain the same.

Remember that which is the same. Just remembering will be enough; you need not do anything else. It is non-changing. You cannot change it, but you can forget it. You can be so engrossed, obsessed with the changing world around you -- with your body, with your mind -- that you may completely forget the center. The center is so much clouded by the changing flux -- and, of course, there are problems: that which is constantly the same is difficult to remember because change creates problems.

For example, if a constant noise goes on around you, you will not be aware of it. If a clock on the wall goes on, tick-tock, tick-tock the whole day, you are never aware of it. But if suddenly it stops, you will immediately become aware. If something is constantly the same, there is no need to take any notice. When something changes, the mind has to take notice. It creates a gap, and the pattern vibrates. You were hearing it continuously, so there was no need to hear it. It was there, it became part of the background. But if now suddenly the clock stops, you will become aware. Your consciousness will suddenly come to the gap.

It is just as if one of your teeth falls out; then your tongue goes continuously to the place. When the tooth was there the tongue never tried to touch it. Now the tooth is not there -- just a gap is there -- then the whole day, howsoever you try, you cannot help it: the tongue goes to the gap. Why? Because something is missing and the background has changed. Something new has entered.

Whenever something new enters, you become conscious -- for many reasons. It is a safety measure. It is needed for your life -- to survive. When something changes you have to become aware. It may be dangerous. You have to take notice, and you have to adjust again to the new situation that has come into being. But if everything is as it was, there is no need. You need not be aware. And this same element in you, what Hindus have called ATMAN, the soul, has been there always from the very beginning, if there was any beginning. And it is going to the very end, if there is going to be any end. It has been eternally the same, so how can you be aware of it?

Because it is so permanently the same, eternally the same, you are missing it. You take notice of the body, you take notice of the mind because they are changing. And because you take notice of them, you start thinking that you are them. You know only them; you become identified.

The whole spiritual effort is to find the same amidst the unsame -- to find the eternal in the changing, to find that which is always the same. That is your center, and if you can remember that center, only then will this technique be easy -- or if you can do this technique, remembering will become easy. From both the ends you can travel.

Try this technique. The technique is to "BE THE UNSAME SAME TO FRIEND AS TO STRANGER." To the friend and to the enemy, or to the stranger, be the "unsame same." What does it mean? It seems contradictory. In a way you will have to change, because if your friend comes to meet you, you will have to meet him differently, and if a stranger comes you will have to meet him differently. How can you meet a stranger as if you know him already? You cannot. The difference will be there, but still, deep down remain the same. The attitude must remain the same, but the behavior will be "unsame." You cannot meet an unknown person as if you know him already. How can you? You can pretend at the most, but pretensions will not do. The difference will be there.

There is no need to pretend with a friend that he is a friend. With a stranger, even if you try to act as if he is a friend, it will be pretension -- something new. You cannot be the same; unsameness will be necessary. As far as behavior is concerned you will be different, but as far as your consciousness is concerned you can be the same. You can look at the friend as at the stranger.

It is difficult. You may have heard, "Look at the stranger as if he is a friend," but that is not possible if what I am saying is not possible. First look at your friend as the stranger; only then you can look at the stranger as at the friend. They are correlated.

Have you ever looked at your friends as if they are strangers? If you have not, then you have not looked at all. Look at your wife: do you really know her? You may have lived with her for twenty years or even more, and the more you live with her, the more is the possibility that you will go on forgetting that she is a stranger -- and she remains a stranger. Howsoever you love her, it will not make any difference.

Really, if you love her more, the more strange she will look -- because the more you love, the deeper you penetrate and the more you know how river-like she is, moving, changing, alive, every moment different. If you don't look deeply, if you just stick to the level that she is your wife, that this is her name or that, then you have chosen a particular fragment, and you go on thinking of that particular fragment as your wife. And whenever she has to change, she has to hide her changes. She may not be in a loving mood, but she has to pretend because you expect love from your wife.

Then everything becomes false. She is not allowed to change; she is not allowed to be herself. Then something is being forced. Then the whole relationship goes dead. The more you love, the more you will feel the changing pattern. Then each moment you are a stranger. You cannot predict; you cannot say how your husband is going to behave tomorrow morning. You can predict only if you have a dead husband: then you can predict. Predictions are possible only about things, never about persons. If some person is predictable, know well he is dead; he has died. His living is just false, so you can predict. Nothing is predictable about persons because of the change.

Look at your friend as at a stranger; he is one! Don't be afraid. We are afraid of strangers, so we go on forgetting that even a friend is a stranger. If you can look at the stranger in your friend also, you will never get frustrated because you cannot expect anything from a stranger. You take your friends for granted; hence, expectations and then frustrations -- because no one can fulfill your expectations, no one is here to fulfill your expectations. Everyone is here to fulfill his own expectations; no one is here to fulfill you. Everyone is here to fulfill himself or herself, but you expect others to fulfill you and others expect you to fulfill them. Then there is conflict, violence, struggle and misery.

Go on always remembering the stranger. Don't forget, even your closest friend is a stranger -- as far removed from you as possible. If this feeling happens to you, this knowing, then you can look at the stranger and you can find a friend there also. If a friend can be a stranger, then a stranger can be a friend. Look at a stranger: he doesn't know your language, he doesn't belong to your country, he doesn't belong to your religion, he doesn't belong to your color. You are white and he is black or you are black and he is white. You cannot communicate through language; you don't belong to the same church. So there is no common ground in nation, religion, race or color -- no common ground! He is totally a stranger. But look into his eyes, and the same humanity is there, that is the common ground; and the same life, that is the common ground; and the same existence, that is the root of your being friends.

You may not understand his language, but you can understand him. Even silence can be communicative. Just by your looking deep down into his eyes, the friend will be revealed. And if you know how to look, then even an enemy cannot deceive you. You can look at the friend in him. He cannot prove that he is not your friend. Howsoever far removed, he is near you because you belong to the same existential current, to the same river to which he belongs. You belong to the same earth of being.

If this happens, then even a tree is not far away from you, then even a stone is not far away from you. A stone is very strange. There is no meeting ground, no possibility of any communication -- but the same existence is there. The stone also exists, the stone also participates in being. He is there -- I call it "he" -- he also takes up space, he also exists in time. The sun also rises for him -- as it rises for you. One day he was not, as you were not, and one day you will die and he will also die. The stone will disappear. In existence we meet. The meeting is the friendship. In personality we differ, in manifestation we differ; in essence we are one.

In manifestations we are strangers, so howsoever close we come we remain far away. You can sit close, you can embrace each other, but there is no possibility to come more close. As far as your changing personality is concerned, you are never the same. You are never similar; you are always strangers. You cannot meet there because before you can meet you have changed. There is no possibility of meeting. As far as bodies are concerned and minds are concerned there can be no meeting, because before you can meet you are no more the same.

Have you ever observed? You feel love for someone -- a very deep upsurge. You are filled with it, and the moment you go and say, "I love you," it has disappeared. Have you observed? It may not be there now, it may be just a memory. It was there, but it is not there now. The very fact that you asserted it, made it manifest, has made it enter into the realm of change. When you felt it, it may have been deep in the essence, but when you bring it out you are bringing it into the pattern of time and change, it is entering into the river. When you say, "I love you," by then it may have disappeared completely. It is so difficult, but if you observe, it will become a fact. Then you can look. In the friend there is the stranger and in the stranger the friend. Then you can remain "THE UNSAME SAME." You change peripherally; you remain the same in the essence, in the center.

"IN HONOR AND DISHONOR..." Who is honored and who is dishonored? You? Never! Only that which is changing, and that you are not. Someone honors you; if you take it that he is honoring YOU, you will be in difficulty. He honors a particular manifestation in you, not you. How can he know you? You don't even know yourself. He honors a particular manifestation; he honors something which has come into your changing personality. You are kind, loving; he honors it. But this kindness and this love are just on the periphery. The next moment you will not be loving, you may be filled with hate. There may be no flowers -- only thorns. You may not be so happy. You may be just sad, depressed. You may be cruel, angry. Then he will dishonor you. Then again the loving manifestation. Others come in contact not with you, but with your manifestations.

Remember this, they are not honoring and dishonoring YOU. They cannot do either because they don't know you; they cannot know you. If even you are not aware of yourself, how can they be? They have their own formulas, they have their theories, they have their measurements and criteria. They have their touchstones and they say, "If a man is such and such we will honor him, and if a man is such and such we will dishonor him." So they act according to their criteria, and you are never near their touchstones -- only your manifestations.

They can call you a sinner one day and a saint another. They can call you a saint today, and the next day they may go against you, stone you to death. What is happening? They come in contact with your periphery, they never come in contact with you. Remember this, that whatsoever they are saying, it is not about you. You remain beyond; you remain outside. Their condemnations, their appreciations, whatsoever they do is not really concerned with you, just with your manifestations in time.

I will tell you one Zen anecdote. One young monk lived near Kyoto. He was beautiful, young, and the whole town was pleased. They honored him. They believed him to be a great saint. Then one day everything turned upside down. One girl became pregnant, and she told her parents that this monk was responsible. So the whole town turned against him. They came, and they burned his cottage. It was morning, and a very cold morning, a winter morning, and they threw the child onto the monk.

The father of the girl told him, "This is your child, so take the responsibility."

The monk simply said, "Is it so?" And then the child started weeping, so he forgot about the crowd and began caring for the child.

The crowd went and destroyed the whole cottage, burned it down. Then the child was hungry and the monk was without any money, so he had to go to beg in the city for the child. Who will give him anything now? Just a few moments before he was a great saint, and now he is a great sinner. Who will give him anything now? Wherever he tried, they closed their doors in his face. They condemned him completely.

Then he reached to the same house -- to the house of the girl. The girl was very much distressed, and then she heard the child weeping and screaming, and the monk standing there just saying, "Don't give anything to me, I am a sinner. But the child is not a sinner; you can give milk to this child." Then the girl confessed that just to hide the real father of the child, she had taken the name of the monk. He was absolutely innocent.

So the whole town turned around again. They fell at his feet, started asking his forgiveness. And the father of the girl came, took the child back with weeping eyes, tears rolling down, and he said, "But why did you not say so before? Why did you not refuse in the morning? The child does not belong to you."

The monk is reported to have said again, "Is it so?" In the morning he had said, "Is it so? This child belongs to me?" And in the afternoon he said, "Is it so? This child doesn't belong to me?"

This is how this sutra has to be applied in life. In honor and dishonor, you must remain "THE UNSAME SAME." The innermost center must remain the same, whatsoever happens to the periphery. The periphery is bound to change, but you must not change. And because you are two, the periphery and the center, that is why opposite, contradictory terms have been used: "BE THE UNSAME SAME..." And you can apply this technique to all opposites: in love and hate, poverty and richness, comfort and uncomfort, or in anything, remain "THE UNSAME SAME."

Just know that the change is happening only to your periphery; it cannot happen to you, it is impossible. So you can remain detached, and this detachment is not forced. You simply know it is so. This is not a forced detachment; this is not any effort on your part to remain detached. If you TRY to remain detached, you are still on the periphery; you have not known the center. The center is detached; it has always been so. It is transcendental. It is always the beyond. Whatsoever happens below never happens to it.

Try this in polar situations. Go on feeling something in you which is the same. When someone is insulting you, focus yourself to the point where you are just listening to him -- not doing anything, not reacting -- just listening. He is insulting you, and then someone is praising you. Just listen. Insult-praise, honor-dishonor: just listen. Your periphery will get disturbed. Look at it also; don't change it. Look at it; remain deep in your center, looking from there. You will have a detachment which is not forced, which is spontaneous, which is natural.

And once you have the feeling of the natural detachment, nothing can disturb you. You will remain silent. Whatsoever happens in the world, you will remain unmoved. Even if someone is killing you, only the body will be touched -- not you. You will remain beyond. This "beyondness" leads you into existence, into that which is bliss, eternal, into that which is true, which is always, into that which is deathless, into life itself. You may call it God or you can choose your term. You can call it NIRVANA, whatsoever you like, but unless you move from the periphery to the center and unless you become aware of the eternal in you, religion has not happened to you, neither has life happened to you. You are missing, simply missing all. That is possible -- to miss the ecstasy of living.

Shankara says that "I call the man a SANNYASIN who knows what is changing and what is non- changing, who knows what is moving and what is non-moving." This, in Indian philosophy, is known as discrimination -- VIVEK. To discriminate between these two, the realm of the change and the realm of the unchanging -- this is called VIVEK, discrimination, awareness.

This sutra can be used very, very deeply and very easily with whatsoever you are doing. You feel hunger? Remember the two realms. Hunger can only be felt by the periphery because the periphery needs food, needs fuel. You don't need food, you don't need any fuel, but the body needs them. Remember, when hunger happens it is happening to the periphery; you are just the knower of it. If you were not there, it would not be known. If the body were not there, it would not happen. By your absence only knowledge will not be there because the body cannot know. The body can have it, but it cannot know it. You know it; you cannot have it.

So never say that "I am hungry." Always say within, "I know that my body is hungry." Give emphasis to your knowing. Then the discrimination is there. You are becoming old: never say, "I am becoming old." Just say, "My body is becoming old." Then in the moment of death also you will know, "I am not dying; my body is dying. I am changing bodies, just changing the house." If this discrimination deepens, one day, suddenly, there will be enlightenment.

The second sutra:

"HERE IS THE SPHERE OF CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE. THROUGH CHANGE CONSUME CHANGE."

The first thing to understand is that everything you know about is change; except for you, the knower, everything is change. Have you seen anything which is not change? This whole world is a phenomenon of change. Even the Himalayas are changing. They say -- the scientists who work on it -- that they are growing; these Himalayas are the youngest mountains in the world, still a child, really, still growing. They have not yet become mature; they have not reached to the point from where something begins to decline. They are still rising.

If you compare them with Vindhyachal, another mountain, they are just children. Vindhyachal is one of the oldest -- and some say the oldest mountain in the world. It is so old, it is decreasing -- coming down. For centuries, it is coming down -- just dying, in its old age. So even a Himalaya which looks so stable, unchanging, unmoving, is changing. It is just a river of stones. Stones make no difference; they are also river-like, floating. Comparatively everything is changing. Something looks more changing, something looks less changing, but that is only relative.

Nothing is unchanging that you can know. Remember my point: nothing that you can know is unchanging. Nothing is unchanging except the knower. But that is always behind. It always "knows"; it is really never known. It can never become the object; it is always the subject. Whatsoever you do or know, it is always behind. You cannot know it. When I say this, don't get disturbed. When I say that you cannot know it, I mean you cannot know it as an object. I can look at you, but how can I look at myself in the same way? It is impossible because to be in a relationship of knowledge two things are needed -- the knower and the known.

So when I look at you, you are the known and I am the knower, and the knowledge can exist as a bridge. But where to make the bridge when I look at myself, when I am trying to know myself? There only I am, alone -- totally alone. The other bank is missing, so where to create the bridge? How to know myself?

So self-knowledge is a negative process. You cannot know yourself directly; you can simply go on eliminating objects of knowledge. Go on eliminating the objects of knowledge. When there is no object of knowledge, when you cannot know anything, when there is nothing but the vacuum, the emptiness -- and this is what meditation is: just eliminating all objects of knowledge -- then a moment comes when consciousness is, but there is nothing to be conscious of; knowing is, but there is nothing to know. The simple, pure energy of knowing remains and nothing is left to be known. There is no object.

In that state when there is nothing to be known, it is said that you know yourself in a certain sense. But that KNOWLEDGE is totally different from all other knowledge. It is misleading to use the same word for both. There have been mystics who have said that self-knowledge is contradictory, the very term is contradictory. Knowledge is always of the other; self-knowledge is not possible. But when the other is not, something happens. You may call it "self-knowledge," but the word is misleading.

So whatsoever you know is change. Everywhere, even these walls, are constantly changing. Now physics supports this. Even the wall which looks so stationary, non-changing, is changing every moment. A great flux is on. Every atom is moving, every electron is moving. Everything is moving fast, and the movement is so fast that you cannot detect it. That is why the wall looks so permanent. In the morning it was like this, in the afternoon it was like that, in the evening it was like this, yesterday it was like this and tomorrow it will be like this. You look at it as if it is the same, but it is not. Your eyes are not capable of detecting such great movement.

The fan is there. If the fan is moving very fast, you will not be able to see the space, it will look like just one circle. Space cannot be seen because the movement is fast, and if the movement is so fast -- just as fast as electrons are moving -- you will not see that the fan is moving at all. You will not be able to detect the movement. The fan will look stationary; you will even be able to touch it. It will be stationary, and your hand will not even be able to enter into the gaps, because your hand cannot move so fast as to go into the gaps. Before you move, another blade will have come. Before you move, still another blade will have come. You will always touch the blade, and the movement will be so fast that the fan will look like it is non-moving. So things that are non-moving are very fast moving: that is why there is the appearance that they are stationary.

This sutra says that everything is change: "HERE IS THE SPHERE OF CHANGE..." On this sutra Buddha's whole philosophy stands. Buddha says that everything is a flux, changing, non-permanent, and that one should know this. Buddha's emphasis is so much on this point. His whole standpoint is based on it. He says, "change, change, change: remember this continuously." Why? If you can remember change, detachment will happen. How can you be attached when everything is changing?

You look at a face; it is very beautiful. When you look at a face that is very beautiful, there is a feeling that this is going to remain. Understand it deeply. Never expect that this is going to remain. But if you know that this is changing fast, that this is beautiful this moment and it may be ugly the next, how can you feel any attachment? It is impossible. Look at a body: it is alive; the next moment it will be dead. All is futile, if you feel the change.

Buddha left his palace, his family -- his beautiful wife, his child -- and when someone asked him, "Why?" he said, "Where there is nothing permanent, what is the use? The child will die." And the night Buddha left, the child was born. He was just a few hours old. Buddha went into his wife's room to have a last look. The wife's back was towards the door. She was holding the child in her arms in sleep. Buddha wanted to say goodbye, but then he resisted. He said, "What is the use?"

A moment came in his mind when a thought flashed that "The child is just one day old, a few hours old, and I must have a look." But then he said, "What is the use? Everything is changing. This day the child is born, and the next day the child will die. And one day before he was not here. Now he is here, and one day again he will not be here. So what is the use? Everything is changing." He left -- turned back and left.

When someone asked, "Why have you left all that?" he said, "I am in search of that which never changes, because if I stick to that which changes there is going to be frustration. If I cling to that which is changing, I am stupid, because it will change, it will not remain the same. Then I will be frustrated. So I am in search of that which never changes. If there is anything which never changes, only then does life have any worth and meaning. Otherwise everything is futile." He based his whole teaching on change.

This sutra is beautiful. This sutra says, "THROUGH CHANGE CONSUME CHANGE." Buddha would never say the second part. The second part is basically tantric. Buddha will say that everything is change; feel it, and then you will not cling to it. And when you don't cling to it, by and by, by leaving everything that changes, you will fall into yourself to the center where there is no change. Just go on eliminating change, and you will come to the unmoving, to the center -- the center of the wheel. That is why Buddha has chosen the wheel as the symbol of his religion: because the wheel moves, but the center on which it moves remains unmoving. So the SANSARA -- the world -- moves like a wheel. Your personality moves like a wheel, and your innermost essence remains the center on which the wheel moves. It remains unmoving.

Buddha will say life is change. He will agree with the first part. The next -- the second part -- is typically tantric: "THROUGH CHANGE CONSUME CHANGE." Tantra says don't leave that which is changing; move into it. Don't cling, but move. Why be afraid? Move into it, live it out. Allow it to happen, and you move into it. Consume it through itself. Don't be afraid, don't escape. Where will you escape? How can you escape? Everywhere there is change. Tantra says everywhere is change. Where will you escape? Where can you go?

Wherever you go the change will be there. All escape is futile, so don't try to escape. Then what to do? Don't cling. Live the change, be the change. Don't create any struggle with it. Move with it. The river is flowing; you flow with it. Don't even swim; allow the river to take you. Don't fight with it, don't waste your energy by fighting with it; just relax. Be in a let-go and move with the river.

What will happen? If you can move with a river without any conflict, without any direction of your own, if the river's direction is your direction, suddenly you will become aware that you are not the river. You will become aware that you are not the river! Feel it. Some day try it in a river. Go there, relax, and allow the river to take you. Don't fight; become the river. Suddenly you will feel that the river is all around, but you are not the river.

In fighting you may forget this. That is why tantra says, "THROUGH CHANGE CONSUME CHANGE." Don't fight. There is no need because in you the change cannot enter. So don't be afraid. Live in the world. Don't be afraid because in you the world cannot enter. Live it. Don't choose this way or that.

There are two types of people: one that will cling to the world of change and one that will escape. But tantra says it is change, so to cling is futile and to escape also. What is the use? Buddha says, "What is the use of remaining in the world of change?" Tantra says, "What is the use of escaping from it?"

Both are futile. Rather, allow it to happen. You are not concerned with it; it is happening, you are not even needed for it. You were not and the world was changing, and you will not be and the world will go on changing -- so why create any fuss about it?

"CONSUME CHANGE THROUGH CHANGE." This is a very deep message. Consume anger through anger, consume sex through sex, consume greed through greed, consume the SANSARA through the sansara. Don't fight with it, be relaxed, because fight creates tensions and fight creates anxiety, anguish, and you will be unnecessarily disturbed. Allow the world to be as it is.

There are two types of persons. One type is those persons who cannot allow the world to be as it is. They are called revolutionaries. They will change it, they will struggle to change it. They will destroy their whole life in changing it, and it is already changing. They are not needed, they will only consume themselves. They will burn out in changing the world, and it is already changing. No revolution is really needed. The world is a revolution; it is changing.

You may wonder why India has not created great revolutionaries. It is because of this insight that everything is already changing. Why are you disturbed to change it? You can neither change it nor stop the change. It IS changing. Why waste yourself?

One type of personality always tries to change the world. In religion's eyes he is neurotic. Really, he is afraid of coming to himself, so he goes on and becomes obsessed with the world. The state has to be changed, the government has to be changed, the society, the structure, the economics, everything has to be changed, and he will die, and he will never have a moment of ecstasy in which he could know what he was, and the world will continue and the wheel will go on moving. It has seen many revolutionaries, and it goes on moving. Neither can you stop it nor can you accelerate the change.

This is a mystic's attitude: mystics say there is no need to change the world. But mystics are also of two types. One will say there is no need to change the world, but there is a need to change oneself. He also believes in changing -- not in changing the world, but himself.

But tantra says there is no need to change anyone -- neither the world nor yourself. That is the deepest core of mysticism. You need not change the world and you need not change yourself. You are just to know that everything is changing, and to float in the change and relax in the change.

And the moment there is no effort to create any change, you can relax totally -- because if the effort is there you cannot relax. Then tension will be there because in the future something of value is going to happen: the world is going to change. The world is going to become communistic, or the earthly paradise is to come, or some utopia in the future, or you are going to enter into the Kingdom of God, or into MOKSHA. Somewhere in paradise the angels are waiting to welcome you -- but "somewhere" is the future. With this attitude you are going to be tense.

Tantra says forget it. The world is already changing and you are also already changing. Change is existence, so don't become worried about it. It is already happening without you; you are not needed. You just float in it with no anxiety for the future, and suddenly amidst change you will become aware of a center within you which never changes, which has remained always as it is -- the same.

Why does it happen? Because if you are relaxed, then the changing background gives you the contrast, and through it you can feel the non-changing. If you are in any effort to change the world or yourself, you cannot look at the small unmoving center within you. You are so much obsessed with change, you are not able to have a look at what is the case.

The change is all around. The change becomes the background, the contrast, and you are relaxed. So there is no future in your mind -- no future thoughts. You are here now; this moment is all. Everything is changing, and suddenly you become aware of a point within you which has never changed. "THROUGH CHANGE CONSUME CHANGE." This is what is meant by "THROUGH CHANGE CONSUME CHANGE."

Don't fight. Through death become deathless; through death allow the death to die. Don't fight with it. The tantra attitude is difficult to conceive of, because our minds want to do something and this is a non-doing. It is just relaxing, not doing, but this is one of the most hidden secrets. If you can feel this, you need not bother about anything else. This one technique can give you all.

Then you need not do anything because you have come to know the secret that through change, change can be consumed, and through death, death can be consumed, and through sex, sex can be consumed, and through anger, anger can be consumed. Now you have come to know the secret that through poison, poison can be consumed.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2

Chapter #4

Chapter title: Tantra's secrets of love and liberation

28 March 1973 pm in Bombay, India

Archive code: 7303285

ShortTitle: VBT204

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 90 mins

The first question:

Question 1

"IN REFERENCE TO YOUR STATEMENT THAT TANTRA IS A LOVE TECHNIQUE, PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY MODERN MAN AND WOMAN HAVE BECOME INCAPABLE OF LOVE."

Love is spontaneous. It cannot be controlled. You cannot "make" love; you cannot do anything about it. And the more you do, the more you will miss it. You have to allow it to happen. You are not needed for it. Your presence is the hindrance. The more you are absent, the better. When you are not, love happens. Because of their inability to be absent, modern man and woman have become incapable of love.

They are capable of doing things. The whole modern mind is based on doing. Whatsoever can be done, modern man can do more efficiently than any man that has ever existed. Whatsoever can be done, we can do more efficiently. We are the most efficient century; we have turned everything into technology -- into a problem of how to "do" it. We have developed one dimension and that is the dimension of doing, but in developing this dimension we have lost much.

At the loss of being we have learned how to do things, so that which can be done we do better than anyone -- better than any society that ever existed on earth. But when the question of love comes, a problem arises because love cannot be done. And not only is this so with love; we have become incapable of all that cannot be done.

For example, meditation: we have become incapable of it; it cannot be done. Or play: we have become incapable of it; it cannot be done. Or joy, happiness: we have become incapable of them because they cannot be done. They are not acts; you cannot manipulate them. On the contrary, you have to let yourself go. Then joy happens to you, then happiness comes to you, then love enters you, then love takes possession. And because of this possession we have become afraid.

Modern man, the modern mind, wants to possess everything and not be possessed by anything. Modern man wants to be the master of everything, and you can only be the master of things -- not of happenings. You can be the master of a house, you can be the master of a mechanical device; you cannot be the master of anything which is alive. Life cannot be mastered; you cannot possess it. On the contrary, you have to be possessed by it. Only then is there contact with it.

Love is life, and it is greater than you. You cannot possess it. I would like to repeat it: love is greater than you; you cannot possess it. You can only allow yourself to be possessed by it; it cannot be controlled. The modern ego wants to control everything, and you become scared of whatsoever you cannot control. You become afraid; you close the door. You close that dimension completely because fear enters. You will not be in control. With love you cannot be in control, and the whole trend which has led to this century was one of how to control. All over the world, and particularly in the West, the trend is for how to control nature, how to control everything, how to control energies.

Man must become the master, and you have become the master -- of course, only of those things which are possible to possess, and side by side you have been developing an incapacity for those things which cannot be possessed. You can possess money; you cannot possess love. And because of this we have been turning everything into a thing. You even go on turning persons into things because then you can possess them. If you love a person, you are not the master; no one is the master. Two persons love each other, and no one is the master -- neither the lover nor the beloved. Rather, love is the master and both are possessed by a greater force than themselves, encircled by a greater force -- a whirlwind. If they try to possess each other, they will miss. Then they can possess each other. Then the lover will become the husband and the beloved will become the wife. Then they can possess, but a husband is a thing and a wife is a thing. They are not persons. You can possess them. They are dead entities, legal labels -- not alive.

We go on turning persons into things just to possess them, and then we feel frustrated -- because we wanted to possess the person and the person cannot be possessed. When you possess a person, he is no more a person; he is a dead thing, and you cannot be fulfilled by a dead thing. Look at this contradiction: you can be fulfilled only by persons, never by things, but your mind desires possessions -- so you turn them into things. Then you cannot be fulfilled. Then frustration sets in.

Possessiveness, the attitude to possess, has killed the capacity to love. Don't think in terms of possession. Rather, think in terms of being possessed. That is what surrender means -- being possessed: you allow yourself to be possessed by something greater than you. Then you will not be in control. Then a greater force will take you. Then the direction will not be yours. Then you cannot choose the goal. Then the future is unknown; you cannot be secure now. Moving with a greater force than yourself, you are insecure, afraid.

If you are afraid and insecure, it is better not to move with great forces. Just work with lower forces than you; then you can be the master, and you can decide the goal beforehand. Then you will achieve the goal, but you will not get anything out of it. You will have just wasted your life.

The secret of love and the secret of prayer and the secret of anything that can make you fulfilled is surrender -- the capacity to be possessed. The problem with love exists because this capacity is not there. There are other reasons also, but this is the base. The first reason is too much emphasis on intellect, reason. So man is lopsided. Your head has grown and your heart has remained absolutely neglected. And love is not a capacity of the intellect. It has a different center; it has a different focus, source. It is in your heart, it is your feeling; it is not reasoning. But the whole modern education consists of reasoning, logic, intellect, mind. The heart is not even talked about. It is denied, really; it is just "a poetic fiction."

It is not! It is a reality! Just look at it in this way: if from the very beginning a child is brought up without any training of the mind or the reasoning, without any intellectual training, will he have an intellect? He cannot!

There have been such cases. Sometimes it has happened that wolves have brought up a human child. Just ten years before, one child was caught in a forest. The wolves had brought him up. He was fourteen years of age. He couldn't even stand on two legs; he would run on all fours. He couldn't speak a single word; he would roar like a wolf. He was in every way a wolf, and fourteen years of age. Those who caught him named him Ram. The child took six months to learn the name. Within a year the child died, and the psychologists who worked on him suspected that he died because of too much strain on the intellect. This forcing, this training to get him to stand on two feet, this memory training to get him to remember the name, the effort to make him a human being, killed him.

He was robust in health when he was caught -- more healthy than any human being ever is. He was just like an animal. But this training killed him. Every effort was made so that if you could have asked him, "What is your name?" he would be able to say "Ram." This was his whole intellect. After six months of constant training, punishment, creating a profit motive in him, the only proof that the child could give of his intellect was this much: he would be able to say "Ram." What happened? If someone from Mars could get hold of this child, he would think that humanity has no mind, no intellect, no reason.

The same has happened to the heart. Without training it is as if it is not. It has been completely neglected, so your whole life energy has been forced towards the head, not towards the heart, and love is a functioning of the heart center. This is why modern man has become incapable of love: modern man has become incapable of the heart. He calculates, and love is not a calculation. He knows arithmetic and love is not arithmetic. He thinks in terms of logic and love is illogical. He always tries to rationalize everything. Whatsoever he is doing reason must support it, and love is not supported by reason.

Really, when you fall in love you throw your reason completely. That is why we say man "falls" in love. Falls from where? Falls from the head down into the heart. We use this term of condemnation, "falling in love," because the head, the reason, cannot look at it without condemning it. It is a fall. Is love really a fall or a rising? Do you become more with it or do you become less? Do you expand or do you shrink? With love you become more! Your consciousness is more, your feeling is more; your ecstatic sensation is more, your sensitivity is more. You are more alive, but one thing is less: reasoning is less. You cannot reason it out; it is blind. As far as reason is concerned it is blind. The heart has its own reason -- that is another thing -- and the heart has its own eyes, but that is another thing. The eyes of reason are not there, so reason says it is a fall; you have fallen.

Unless the heart center starts functioning again man will not be capable of love, and the whole misery of modern life is because unless he loves he cannot feel any meaning in his life. Life looks meaningless. Love gives it meaning; love is the only meaning. Unless you are capable of love you will be meaningless, and you will feel that you are existing without any meaning, futilely, and suicide will become attractive. Then you will like to kill yourself, to finish with yourself, to end, because what is the use of existing?

Mere existing cannot be tolerated. Existence must have a meaning; otherwise, what is the use? Why go on prolonging yourself unnecessarily? Why go on repeating the same pattern every day? Getting out of the bed and doing the same thing, and again falling asleep and the next day the same pattern: why?

You have done it so far, and what has happened? And you will do it unless death comes and relieves of you of your body. So what is the use? Love gives meaning. It is not that through love any result comes into being or any goal -- no! Through love every moment becomes of value in itself. Then you never ask this. If someone asks what is the meaning of life, know well that love is lacking. Whenever someone asks what is the meaning of life, he is asking because he has not been able to flower in a love experience. Whenever someone is in love, he never asks what is the meaning of life. He knows the meaning; there is no need to ask. He knows the meaning! The meaning is there: love is the meaning in life.

And through love prayer is possible because prayer is again a love relationship -- not between two individuals, but between one individual and existence itself. Then the whole existence becomes your beloved or lover. But it is possible only through love experience that you can grow into prayer or into meditation, and the ultimate ecstasy is just like love. That is why Jesus says that "God is love," not that "God is loving."

Christians have been interpreting it in this way -- that God is kind, loving. That is not the meaning. Jesus says that God is love. He simply equates God and love. You can say "love" or you can say "God"; they both mean the same. God is not loving; God is love itself. If you can love, you have entered the divine. And when your love grows to such an infinity that it is not concerned with anyone in particular -- rather, it has become a diffused phenomenon; when there is no lover for you -- rather, the whole existence, all that is, has become the lover or beloved -- then it has become prayer.

And tantra is a love method. So the first thing is how to love, and then the second thing is how to grow in love so that love becomes prayer. But one must start from love. And don't be afraid of love because that fear shows you are afraid of the heart. The head is cunning; the heart is innocent. With the head you feel protected; with the heart you become vulnerable, open. Anything can happen.

That is why we have become closed. The fear is there: if you are vulnerable, anything can happen to you; someone can deceive you. With the mind no one can deceive you; you can deceive others. But I tell you be ready to be deceived, but don't close the heart. Be ready to be deceived, but don't close the heart! That vulnerability to be deceived is of worth because you will not lose anything by it. And if you are ready to be deceived infinitely, only then can you believe in the heart. If you are calculative, cunning, clever, too much clever, then you will miss the heart, and modern man is so educated, so sophisticated, so clever; that is why he has become incapable of love.

Women were not like this, but they are following modern man fast, they are copying modern man fast. Sooner or later they will become just like man, or they may even overtake him. Now they are also becoming incapable because the same head orientation, the same effort to be cunning and clever, is there now. They may form a "Women's Liberation Movement" or anything like it, but it is not heart oriented. It is just a copy of the same stupidity that man has been doing with himself. You may go to the other extreme, but if you react, even in your reaction you are following.

A great crisis is there. It is difficult now to prevent women all over the world from copying man and his nonsense because man seems to be so successful. He is successful in a way; he has become the master of things. Now he possesses the whole world. Now he feels he has conquered nature, and "success succeeds; nothing succeeds like success."

Now women feel that man has succeeded and has become the master, so they must copy him. But look also at the thing in which man has failed completely. He has lost his heart; he cannot love. Reason alone is not enough, and reason in control is dangerous. The heart must be higher than reason because reason is just an instrument and the heart is you. The heart must be allowed to use reason -- not vice versa. But you have been doing that. The head is allowed to dominate; in its domination, the head has killed the heart.

And thirdly, one thing more has to be remembered as to why modern man has become incapable of love. Love is basically a sort of madness, a sort of deep participation with nature, a sort of dissolving of the ego. It is primal. You are born out of love; your every cell of the body is a love cell. Your very energy, your life energy, is a love energy. You exist in it, but there is no ego in that energy. You cannot feel "I." That energy is unconscious, and when you move in love YOU become unconscious. Only a fragment of your mind is conscious, and in that fragment of the mind exists the ego.

The mind has three layers. First is the unconscious: when you are deeply asleep with no dreams, you are in it. The child in the mother's womb is absolutely unconscious, he is just part of the mother. The child is not aware that "I am separate"; he is just part of the mother. There is no separation, no defined existence. He is undifferentiated from the mother and from the existence itself. There is no fear because fear comes only when you become aware of yourself. The child is totally at ease; he is unconscious.

And the second layer is of consciousness. It is a very small fragment. One tenth part of the unconscious has become conscious in you through training, education, society, family. It was needed for survival, so a part of you has become conscious. But that part also gets tired very soon; that is why you need sleep. In sleep you become again a child in the womb. You have fallen back, the conscious is no more there. It has become part of the unconscious. That is why sleep is so refreshing. In the morning you feel alive again, fresh, because you have fallen back into the mother's womb.

You may not have observed this.... Observe someone who is deeply asleep. More or less, he will be in the same posture in which he was in his mother's womb. And if you can be in the right posture, sleep will follow more easily. If you feel any difficulty in falling asleep, just feel your mother's womb, as if you are in it. Imagine it, and take the posture in which you would have been in your mother's womb. In that posture you will fall deeply asleep. You need the same warmth; otherwise the sleep will be disturbed. You need the same warmth as there was in your mother's womb.

That is why hot milk is good. If you sip hot milk before you go to sleep it will be good, because that again makes you a child. Milk is child's food, and if it is hot you are again at your mother's breast. Hot milk is good for sleep only because of this reason: you fall back into childhood, you are reduced into a child. Sleep refreshes you. Why? Because the conscious mind gets tired. It is just a part, and the whole is unconscious. It has to fall back to the whole to become revived. It is again resurrected. That is why in the morning you feel good and morning looks beautiful -- not only because morning is beautiful, but because again you have a child's eyes. The afternoon is not so beautiful. The world is the same, but you have lost those innocent eyes again. And the evening becomes ugly because you are tired.

You have lived too much in the conscious. This conscious has ego as the center. These are two ordinary states which we know. The third state, that with which tantra and yoga are concerned, is the superconscious. "Superconscious" means that your whole unconscious has become conscious. In the unconscious there is no ego; you are total. In the superconscious, again there is no ego; you are total. But in between the two the conscious mind has a center -- the ego. This ego is the problem, this ego creates problems. You cannot fall in love because then you will have to become unconscious, just as unconscious as you become in sleep. Or, if you want to rise to prayer, you have to become totally conscious like a Buddha or like a Meera. So love becomes impossible, prayer becomes impossible.

The ego creates the barrier. You cannot lose yourself, and love is losing, dispersing, dissolving, melting. If you melt into the unconscious, it is love; if you melt into the superconscious it is prayer -- but both are a melting. So what is to be done? Remember this: you cannot do anything about it. Let it be deeply noted: you cannot do anything about love, about prayer. Your conscious mind is impotent; it cannot do anything. It has to be lost, it has to be put aside. And then remember surrender: whenever you want to move beyond yourself, surrender is the way -- either in love or in prayer.

Whenever you long to move beyond, somewhere else where you are not, then surrender, let-go is the path. Allow something to happen to you; don't manipulate. And once you know how to allow, many things will start happening. You may not be even aware of what is possible for you, of what a great, tremendous energy you have closed within yourself which can explode and then become an ecstasy. Your whole life will be filled with consciousness, light and bliss, but you don't know it. It is just as if every atom is an atom bomb: if one atom explodes, tremendous energy is released. And every heart is also an atom bomb. If it explodes in love or prayer, tremendous energy is released.

But you have to explode and lose yourself. The seed has to lose itself; only then is the tree born. And if the seed resists and says, "No, I must survive," then the seed can survive, but the tree will never be born. And unless the tree is born the seed will feel frustrated, because the tree is the meaning. The seed will feel frustrated! The seed can feel fulfilled only when the tree is there flowering. But then the seed has to lose itself, die.

Modern man has become incapable of love because he has become incapable of death. He cannot die to anything. He clings to life; he cannot die to anything.

In old English, three or four hundred years ago, this was a usual expression. The lover would say to the beloved, "I want to die in you." This was a love expression. It is beautiful! "I want to die in you." Love is a death -- a death of the ego. Only then is your real self born, and modern man is very, very afraid of death. In every way, surrender is death, love is death, and life also is a continuous death. If you are afraid, you will miss life itself.

Be ready to die every moment. Die to the past, die to the future, and die in the present moment. Don't cling and don't resist. Don't make any effort for life, and you will have abundant life. Life will happen to you if you are ready to die. This looks paradoxical, but this is the law. Jesus says that one who is ready to lose will gain, and one who clings will lose everything.

The second question:

Question 2

"YOU SAID LAST NIGHT THAT THE PERIPHERY IS ALWAYS CHANGING, WHEREAS THE INNERMOST CENTER IS ETERNALLY UNMOVING. TO REALIZE THE CENTER IS IT NECESSARY THAT THE PERIPHERAL MOVEMENT MUST CEASE? CAN THAT BE? HOW AND WHEN?"

You have missed the whole point. The whole point was not to make any effort to change the periphery. Allow the periphery to be as it is. And you cannot change it. It is the nature of the periphery to move and change. You cannot make it static. Nature is a flux. It is so; you cannot make it static. And don't waste your time and opportunity of life trying to make it static. Just know it as change. Be the witness of it, and you will come to feel the innermost center which is not change. The world is change, your personality is change, your body-mind is change, but you are not; you are not the change. What is the use of struggling with change? No need!

Tantra says please be reestablished in your center, be aware of the center which is unmoving, and allow the whole existence to move. It is not a disturbance at all. It becomes a disturbance only if you cling to it or if you try to make it unmoving. Then you are falling into absurdities, foolish efforts. They will not succeed; you will be a failure. Know well that life is a change, but somewhere within this change there is an unmoving center also. Just become aware of it. That very awareness is enough to liberate you. That very feeling that "I am unmoving" liberates. That is the truth. You know it, and you are different.

Don't fight with shadows! And the whole life is a shadow because change is nothing but a shadow. The unchanging is the real; the changing is the unreal. So don't ask whether the peripheral change and movement has to be forced to cease in order to realize the center. There is no need, and you cannot force it. It cannot cease! The world goes on; only it will not go on in you. You can remain in the world, and there is no need for the world to be in you. The world is not the disturbance. When you get involved in it, when you become the change, when you feel that you have become the change, then it creates problems.

Problems are created not by the changing periphery. They are created by the identification that "I am this change." You have fallen ill; illness is not really the disturbance. When you feel that "I have fallen ill," it is a disturbance. If you can be a witness to that illness, if you can feel that illness is a happening somewhere on the periphery -- that it is not happening to you, it is happening to someone else and you are just the witness -- then death also can happen and you will be just a witness.

Alexander was returning from India. Some friends had requested him to bring back a sannyasin from India. They said, "When you come with conquered possessions, don't forget: bring a sannyasin also. We want to see what a sannyasin is -- what type of a man renounces the world. We want to know what has happened to one who has renounced all desires, what type of bliss comes to one who leaves all hankering, thirst or hunger for the future, for possessions and things."

Just at the last moment Alexander remembered. In the last town from where he was to leave India to go back to his country, he told his soldiers to go and find a sannyasin. They went to the town, and they asked an old man of the town. He said, "Yes there is a sannyasin, a great sannyasin, but it will be difficult. It will be very difficult to persuade him to go with Alexander to Athens."

But the soldiers were soldiers, so they said, "Don't you be worried about it. We can force anyone. Just tell us where he is. We know how to force him, so there is no need to persuade. If Alexander tells even the whole town to follow him, you will have to follow, so what of a single sannyasin?"

But the old man laughed, and the soldiers couldn't understand because they had never encountered a sannyasin. They reached the sannyasin. He was standing naked on the bank of the river, and they told him, "Alexander orders that you have to come with us. Every care will be taken, there will be no inconvenience for you; you will be the royal guest. But you have to come with us to Athens."

The sannyasin laughed and he said, "It will be very difficult for your Alexander to take me with him. No force in this world can force me to follow. You will not be able to understand, but it is better that you bring your Alexander."

Alexander was disturbed. He felt insulted, but he wanted to see this man. He came with a naked sword and he said, "If you say no, then immediately you lose your life. I will cut your head." The name of the sannyasin was -- as it is reported in Alexander's records -- Dandami.

The sannyasin laughed and said, "You came a little late. You cannot kill me now because I have killed myself already. You are a little late. You can cut my head, but you cannot cut me because I have become a witness. So when this head will fall down on the earth, you will see it falling down and I will also see it falling down. But you cannot cut me; you cannot even touch me. So don't waste time, you can cut! Raise your sword and cut my head."

Alexander couldn't kill that man. It was impossible because it was useless. The man was so beyond death, it was impossible to kill him. You can only be killed if you cling to life. That clinging to the changing pattern makes you a mortal. If you don't cling, you are as you have always been -- immortal. Immortality is your birthright; it has always been there. You become a mortal only if you cling. So there is no question, there is no need to force the changing periphery to be static. There is no need, and you CANNOT make it static. It will go on, the wheel will go on. All that you can do is to know that you are not the wheel. You are the axis, not the wheel.

The third question:

Question 3

"MAN BEING AS HE IS, IS IT NOT DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO DISSOLVE CHANGE THROUGH CHANGE, SEX THROUGH SEX, ETCETERA, WITHOUT ATTACHMENTS AND WITH THEIR CONSEQUENT ANXIETY AND DISAPPOINTMENT?"

Man as he is CAN do this, and this is suggested ONLY for man as he is. Tantra is a medicine for YOU -- for those who are ill. So don't think that it is not for you. It is for you and you can do it, but you will have to understand what is meant when you say that there is the possibility of falling into attachments, and then the consequences will be there and frustration. You have not understood. "Consume change through change" means that even if there is attachment don't fight with it. Be attached, but be a witness also.

Let the attachment be there; don't fight with it. Tantra is a non-fighting process. Don't fight! Frustration will come, of course, so be frustrated. But be a witness also. You were attached, and you were a witness. Now the frustration has come, and you know well that it had to come. Now be frustrated, but be a witness. Then through attachment, attachment is consumed, and through frustration, frustration is consumed.

Try this when you feel miserable. Be miserable; don't fight with it. Try this, it is wonderful. When there is misery and you feel miserable, close your doors and be miserable. Now what can you do? You are miserable, so you are miserable. Now be totally miserable. Suddenly you will become aware of the misery. And if you try to change it you will never become aware, because your effort, your energy, your consciousness is directed towards change, towards how to change this misery. Then you start thinking about how it came, and what to do now to change it. Then you are missing a very beautiful experience -- the misery itself.

Now you are thinking about the causes and you are thinking about the consequences and you are thinking about the method for how to forget it, how to go beyond it, and you are missing misery itself, and misery is there and that can be liberating. Just don't do anything. Don't analyze how the misery is created; don't think about what consequences are going to follow. They will follow, so you can see later on. There is no haste. Be miserable, simply miserable, and don't try to change it.

Try this: see for how many minutes you can remain miserable. You will start laughing about the whole thing; the whole thing will look stupid, because if you are totally miserable, suddenly your center is beyond misery. That center can never be miserable, it is impossible! If you remain with the misery, the misery becomes the background, and your center which can never be miserable suddenly rises above, and then you are miserable and you are not miserable: the "same unsame." Now you are consuming misery through misery. This is what is meant. You are not doing anything; you are simply consuming misery through misery. Misery will disappear as clouds disappear, and the sky will be open and you will be laughing, and you have not done anything. And you cannot do anything; all that you can do will create more confusion and more misery.

Who has created this misery? You, and now you are trying to change it. It will get worse. You are the creator of the misery. You have created it, you are the source, and now the source itself is trying. What can you do? Now the patient is treating himself, and he has created the whole thing. Now he is thinking of surgery. It is suicidal. Don't do anything. The inside is very deep. You have tried so many times to stop misery, to stop depression, to stop this and that, and nothing has happened. Now try this: don't do anything; allow the misery to be there in its totality. Allow it to happen in its full intensity, and remain non-doing. Just be with it and see what happens.

Life is change. Even the Himalayas are changing, so your misery cannot be unchanging. It will change by itself, and you will see that it is changing -- that it is disappearing and it is going away, and you feel unburdened and you have not done anything.

Once you know the secret you can consume anything through itself, but the secret is to be silently without doing anything. Anger is there, so be, just BE. Don't do anything. If you can do this much, this "non-doing," if you can just be there -- present, witnessing, but making no effort to change anything -- allowing things to have their own way, you will consume anything. You CAN consume anything.

The last question:

Question 4

"TANTRA SAYS DO NOT STRUGGLE OR SWIM, BUT LET GO AND FLOAT IN THE RIVER OF LIFE. BUT EXPERIENCE SHOWS THAT THE MODERN CITY LIFE OF SPEED AND HEAVY TECHNOLOGY CREATES CONSTANT TENSIONS AND EXERTIONS PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY. WHAT WILL BE TANTRA'S ATTITUDE ABOUT IT? IS IT NOT GOOD TO AVOID UNNECESSARY EXERTIONS?"

Life has always been so, modern or primitive. Tensions are there, anxieties are there. Objects change, but man remains the same. Two thousand years back you were driving a bullock cart; now you are driving a car -- but the driver remains the same. The bullock cart has changed -- things are different now, you are driving a car -- but the driver remains the same. He was anxious about his cart, tense about his cart; now you are tense and anxious about your car. Objects change, but the mind remains the same.

So don't think that because of the modern life you are so much in anxiety. It is because of you, not because of modern life, and you will be in anxiety anywhere, in any type of civilization. Go to a village for a few days -- two or three days -- and you will feel good for a while because even diseases need readjustment. But within three days you will be adjusted to the village, and then anxieties will start coming, disturbances will be felt again. Now the causes will not be the same, but you are the same.

Sometimes it happens that you may be disturbed because of city traffic and noise, and you may be saying that you cannot sleep at night because there is so much traffic and noise. Then go to a village, and you will not be able to sleep because there is no traffic and no noise. You will have to come back because the village looks dead, dull -- because there is no life.

People go on reporting such feelings to me. I told one friend to go to Kashmir, to Pahalgam. He came back and said that life is dull there, that there is no life. You can enjoy for one or two days valleys and hills, and then one gets bored. He had been telling me here that city life was getting on his nerves, and now he said that those hills were getting boring and he began longing to come back home.

You are the problem; Kashmir will not be of any help. It is not Bombay that disturbs you or London or New York; it is YOU! And it is not that London has created you: you have created London. It is not the traffic and the noise and the mad rush: you have created this -- you and others like you. Look! The cause is within you. It is not that you are tense because of noise. The noise is there because you are tense, and you cannot live without it. That is why it is there. You need it, you cannot live without it. And in villages people are suffering. They want to come to Bombay or to New York or to London, and the moment they get the opportunity they run. And I have been listening to people who go on talking about the beautiful village life, but they never go to live there. They NEVER go to live there, they simply talk about it.

Who prevents you? Why not go? Go to the forest -- who prevents you? You will not like it, you cannot like it. Right now you will like it for a few days because it is a change, and then? Then you will get bored. You will find it dull, and you will like to escape from there.

This city life is created by your mad mind. You are not becoming mad because of these cities; these cities are built because of your mad mind. They are built for you and by you, and they exist for you. And unless this mad mind changes, these cities cannot disappear, they will have to remain. They are your by-product.

Remember one thing: whenever you feel that something is wrong, first find out the cause in yourself. Don't go anywhere. Out of a hundred times, ninety-nine times you will find the cause within yourself. And if you find the cause within you, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the hundredth cause will disappear by itself.

You are the cause of whatsoever is happening to you. YOU are the cause, and the world is just a mirror. But it is consolatory always to find the cause somewhere else. Then you never feel guilt, you never feel self-condemned. You can always point out that here is the cause, and unless this cause changes, "How can I change?" You can escape into it; this is a trick. So your mind always goes on projecting causes somewhere else. The wife is disturbed because of the husband; the mother is disturbed because of the children; the children are disturbed because of the father. Everyone is disturbed because of someone else, and everyone always thinks that the cause exists outside.

Mulla Nasruddin was passing down a street. It was evening, and the darkness was descending. Suddenly he became aware that the street was empty with no traffic, and he became afraid. A group of people were coming toward him, and he was reading about DACOITS, robbers, murderers. So he created fear, he started trembling. He thought, he projected, that now these murderers and dacoits were coming, and they were bound to kill him, so how to escape them? He looked all around.

There was a cemetery, so he jumped over the wall of the cemetery. There was a ready-made grave for someone, so he thought that it would be good to be dead in this grave. They will feel that he is dead, so there won't be any need to murder him.

So Mulla lay down. The group was just a marriage procession, but they saw this man trembling and jumping. Then they became afraid and wondered what was the matter and who this man was. They thought, "He seems to be up to some mischief. He is hiding there." So the whole procession stopped, and they jumped over the wall. Mulla became more afraid. Now they came near and they asked, "What are you doing here? Why are you here in this grave?"

So Mulla said, "You are asking a very difficult question. I am here because of you and you are here because of me."

And this is happening everywhere. You are disturbed because of someone else; he is disturbed because of you. And you are just creating everything around you, projecting, and then becoming afraid, scared, and making efforts to defend. And then there is misery and frustration and conflict and depression and fighting.

The whole thing is stupid, and it will remain unless you change your attitude. And always try first to find the cause within you. How can the traffic noise disturb you? How? If you are against it, it will disturb. If you have the attitude that it disturbs, it will disturb. But if you accept it, if you allow it to happen without any reaction, then you may even start enjoying it. It has its own melody, its own music. You have not heard it, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have its own music. Someday forget yourself and listen to the traffic noise. Just listen, and don't bring in your attitudes that this is disturbing, that this is not good. Don't bring in your attitudes, just listen to the melody! In the beginning it will look chaotic. That too is because of the mind. If you relax totally, sooner or later everything will fit into a harmonious whole and even the traffic noise will become music. You can enjoy it and you can dance to its tune. It depends on you.

Nothing disturbs unless you think that it disturbs. For example I will tell you that many things have disturbed humanity because there was a certain concept that they disturb. When the concept changes the things remain the same, but they don't disturb. For example, masturbation disturbed the whole world. Just half a century before, the whole world was disturbed by masturbation. Every teacher, every father, every mother was disturbed, and every child was disturbed. And still in the larger, ignorant world, the disturbance remains. And then physiologists and psychologists discovered that masturbation cannot disturb anyone; it is natural, and nothing is wrong with it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but the old teaching was that if you become mad, it was because of masturbation.

Everything was forced down, reduced to masturbation. And more or less every child was doing it, every boy was doing it, so every boy was afraid. He was doing it, and he was afraid that now he was going to be mad, inferior, crazy, eccentric, ill, and his life would be wasted. But he couldn't resist. He had to do it, and these ideas entered into the mind and had effects. They affected him, and many went mad, many remained inferior, many remained stupid because of it, and it has no relationship at all.

Modern science, modern research says that rather it is healthy. Medical science says that it is good because a boy at the age of thirteen or fourteen or a girl at the age of twelve or thirteen becomes sexually mature. If nature were allowed they would have to get married immediately. They are ready to reproduce, but civilization of necessity forces that they will have to remain unmarried for ten years at least or even more. But medicine says that fourteen to twenty, these six years, are the most sexually potent. A boy is never so potent again as he is then. The energy is bubbling up; the whole body is ready to burst into sex. But the society says no, the energy should not be allowed to move. However, the energy is moving and the child cannot do anything, and whatsoever he is going to do will have effects because of the philosophy around him. He will feel he is doing something wrong, he will feel guilt, and that guilt will follow like a shadow. And many diseases will happen because of the idea, not because of the act.

Medicine says that it is healthy because he is relieved of unnecessary energy. That unnecessary energy would create problems otherwise, so it is healthy. Now, particularly in America and England and other Western developed countries who know much more about physiology, masturbation is being propagated. Now there are films on how to masturbate to show to the children, and every teacher will be teaching sooner or later how to masturbate rightly. They say it is healthy, and now those who think it is healthy feel very healthy about it.

I don't think it is either -- it is neither healthy nor unhealthy. The idea is the thing. If it is healthy and the concept is stretched, it will become healthy. Now in the West they say not only that masturbation never affected anyone's intelligence adversely, but that the better the intelligence, the more masturbation will be there. So a boy who is masturbating more will be of higher I.Q. than the boy who is not masturbating. And they have reasons for saying this, because even for a boy to discover masturbation is a sign of intelligence: he is finding out a way.

The society has closed the door for marriage, and the nature is forcing the energy. The intelligent one will find a way and the non-intelligent one will just be blocked, he will not be able to find the way. Now the studies show that those boys who masturbate are more intelligent. If this idea is spread, and it is bound to be there, sooner or later the whole world will be having this idea. Then masturbation will be healthy, and you will feel a well-being from it.

Now every parent is afraid because the parent knows what he did when he was young. When his boy comes to the same age, he becomes afraid and he starts looking around at what the boy is doing. He is afraid, and if he catches the boy he will punish him. But the new knowledge says don't punish the boy -- no! Rather, teach him. If he is not masturbating, then go to the doctor and find out what is wrong. If this knowledge becomes well spread, then this will happen.

But both are positions. BOTH are positions! And when some boy masturbates, he is very suggestive in that moment -- because when sexual energy is being released, he becomes vulnerable, open, flexible, and his mind is silent. Any idea put in at that moment will have its effects -- so if you tell him, "You are going to be ill because of it," he will feel ill. If you tell him, "You are going to be healthy because of it," he will become healthy. If you say to him, "You will be stupid for your whole life if you do this," he will remain a dunce. If you say, "Now this is a good sign of intelligence," he may develop a higher I.Q. You are simply suggesting something to him in a very vulnerable moment. Whatsoever you think starts happening.

Buddha is reported to have said that every thought will become actual, so be aware. If you think that the traffic noise disturbs you, it will disturb you: you are ready for disturbance. If you think that a family life is a bondage, it will be a bondage for you: you are ready for this. If you think that poverty will help to make you liberated, it will help. Ultimately it is you who is creating a world around you, and whatsoever you think becomes the noosphere, the milieu, and you exist in it.

Tantra says remember this causality, it is always within you. And if you know this, then you will not cause anything. If you know this, you will not cause anything for yourself. And when someone is not causing anything, he is liberated. Then he is not in misery and not in bliss. Bliss is your creation and misery is also your creation. You can change your misery into bliss because it is your creation.

The liberated one, the enlightened one, is really in neither because he has ceased to cause anything around him. He simply is! That is why Buddha never says that the enlightened one is blissful. Whenever someone asked him, "Tell us something about someone who has gone beyond -- whether he is in perfect bliss," Buddha laughed and said, "Don't ask. I can say only this much, that he is not in misery. I cannot say anything more. He is not in misery; that is all I can say."

Why so much insistence on the negative? Because Buddha knows. When you have come to know that you were the cause of your misery, then you know well that the bliss also was caused by you. Then one ceases to cause anything. That is what NIRVANA is: a cessation of causing anything around you. Then you are, simply -- no misery, no bliss. If you can understand, only this is bliss. There is no misery and no bliss, because if there is bliss then misery is there; you are still causing something. And if you can cause bliss, then you can cause misery, and you will become bored of the bliss also.

How much can you stand it -- how much? Have you ever thought about it? Twenty-four hours in bliss: will you be able to stand it? You will become bored, and you will go on seeking teachers who can teach you how to become miserable again. If the world becomes blissful, I cannot conceive that there won't be any teachers. There will be teachers, because then people will need misery. Someone will be needed to tell them how to become miserable again, just for a change. Then you can go back to your bliss, and you will feel it more -- because only then can you feel it more, when you have missed it.

Teachers will be there! Now they are teaching how to become blissful; then they will teach how to become miserable, how to have a taste of hell. A little change will be helpful, healthy.

But you are the cause, and you will become enlightened the moment you have known that the world you are living in was caused by you. When you will not cause it, it will have disappeared. The traffic will go on, the noise will be there, and everything will be there as it is, but you will not be there because you will have disappeared with the cause.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2

Chapter #5

Chapter title: Remaining with the real

29 March 1973 pm in Bombay, India

Archive code: 7303295

ShortTitle: VBT205

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 87 mins

AS A HEN MOTHERS HER CHICKS, MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS, PARTICULAR DOINGS, IN REALITY.

SINCE, IN TRUTH, BONDAGE AND FREEDOM ARE RELATIVE, THESE WORDS ARE ONLY FOR THOSE TERRIFIED WITH THE UNIVERSE. THIS UNIVERSE IS A REFLECTION OF MINDS. AS YOU SEE MANY SUNS IN WATER FROM ONE SUN, SO SEE BONDAGE AND LIBERATION.

Hui-neng had asked a person, "What is the problem? What are the roots so that man can be solved and man can make some efforts to know who he is?"

Why shouldn't he know without any effort? Why should there be any problem at all? You are, you know you are -- so why can't you know who you are? Where do you miss? You are conscious. You are conscious that you are conscious. A life is there; you are alive. Why are you not aware who you are? What becomes the barrier? What prevents you from this basic self-knowledge? If you can understand the barrier, the barrier can be dissolved very easily.

So the real question is not how to know oneself. The real question is to know how you are not knowing yourself, how you are missing such an obvious reality, such a basic truth which is so near to you, how you go on not seeing. You must have created a device; otherwise it is difficult to escape from oneself. You must have created walls; you must, in some sense, be deceiving yourself.

So what is that trick of escaping from oneself, of not knowing oneself? If you don't understand that trick, whatsoever you do will not be of any help -- because the trick remains, and you go on asking how to know oneself, how to know the truth, how to know the reality, and consequently you go on helping the barrier. You go on creating it also, so whatsoever you do will be of no use.

Really, nothing positive is needed to know oneself, only something negative. In a way, you have only to destroy the barrier that you yourself have constructed, and the moment that barrier is not there you will know. Knowing happens when the barrier is not; you cannot make any positive effort for it. You have just to be aware of how you are missing it.

So a few things have to be understood as to how you are missing it. One: you live in your dreams, and then dreams become barriers. Reality is not a dream. It is there, you are surrounded by it everywhere. Inside and outside, it is there -- you cannot miss it -- but you are dreaming. Then you move in a different dimension which is not a reality. Then you go on moving in a dreamworld. Then dreams become like clouds around you, and they create the barrier. Unless mind ceases dreaming, the truth cannot be known. And when you see through dreams the reality is distorted, and your eyes are filled with dreams, and your ears are filled with dreams, and your hands are filled with dreams.

So whatsoever you touch is touched through the dreams, and whatsoever you see is seen through dreams, and whatsoever you hear is heard through the dreams, and you distort everything. Whatsoever reaches you, reaches through dreams, and they change everything, they color everything. Because of the dreaming mind you are missing the reality outside and the reality inside. You can go on finding ways and means how to come to reality, but you will be trying that too through your dreaming mind. So you can dream religious dreams -- you can dream dreams about reality, about truth, about God, about Christ and Buddha -- but that too will be dreaming. Dreaming must cease, and dreaming cannot be used to know reality.

What do I mean when I say "dreaming"? You are hearing right now, but a dream is there, and that dream is constantly interpreting what is being said. You are not hearing me; you are hearing yourself, because simultaneously you are interpreting -- are you not? You are thinking about what is being said. What is the need to think? Just hear, don't think, because if you think you cannot hear, and if you go on thinking and hearing, then whatsoever you hear is your own noise. Then it is not what is being said. Stop thinking; let the passage of hearing be clear of thoughts. Then that which is said will be heard.

When looking at the flower, stop dreaming. Don't allow your eyes to be filled with thoughts and dreams about the past and future, with what you know about flowers. Don't even say that "This flower is beautiful," because then you are missing the reality. These words will become a barrier. You say, "This flower is beautiful," and words have come in: the reality is interpreted through the words. Don't allow words to gather around you. Look directly, hear directly and touch directly.

When you touch someone, just touch; don't say that the skin is beautiful, smooth. Then you are missing, you have moved in dream. Whatsoever the skin is, it is here now. Touch it and allow the skin itself to be revealed to you. You look at a beautiful face. Look at it, and allow the face to enter itself. Don't interpret it, don't say anything. Don't bring your past mind in.

The first thing: dreams are created by your past mind. It is the past mind continuously moving around you. Don't allow the past to come in and then don't allow the future. The moment you see a beautiful face, a beautiful body, immediately desire arises. You want to possess. You see a beautiful flower and you want to pluck it. Then you have moved. The flower is there, but you have moved into desire, into the future. Now you are not here. So either you are in the past which is not, or you are in the future which has not come yet, and you are missing that which is there right now.

So the first thing to remember: words should not be allowed to exist between you and reality. With less words there are less barriers; with no words there are no barriers. And then you face reality directly; immediately you are face to face. Words destroy everything because they change the very meaning.

I was reading someone's biography. She was describing one day after just coming out of her bed. The woman writes that "One day, in the morning, I opened my eyes." Then immediately, she says, "But it is not right to say that I opened my eyes. `I' didn't do anything. The eyes opened by themselves." She changes the sentence and she writes, "No, it is not good to say that I opened my eyes. I did not do anything. There was no effort on my part; it was not an action at all." Then she writes, "The eyes opened by themselves." But then she feels this is too absurd because the eyes belong to her, so how can they open themselves? So what to do?

Language never says what is. If you say, "I opened my eyes," it is a lie. If you say, "The eyes opened by themselves," it is a lie again, because eyes are just fragments. They cannot open themselves. The whole organism is involved. And whatsoever we say is like that. If you go to aboriginal societies in India -- and there are many aboriginal tribes -- they have a different language structure. Their language structure is more basic and more real, but they cannot create much poetry. Their language structure cannot be helpful for dreaming.

If it is raining, we say, "It is raining." They ask, "What do you mean by `it'? What do you mean by `it'?" They have simply the word rain. What do you mean by "it"? What is raining? They just say "rain." Rain is the reality, but we go on adding things -- and the more words are added, the more we are lost, far away, thrown far away from reality.

Buddha used to say, "When you say, `A man is walking,' what do you mean? Where is the man? Only the walking is. What do you mean by `the man'?" When we say, "A man is walking," it appears that there is something like a man and something like walking -- two things added together. Buddha says there is walking.

When you say, "The river is flowing," what do you mean? There is just flowing, and that flowing is the river. The walking is the man, the seeing is the man, standing and sitting is the man. If you eliminate all these -- walking, sitting, standing, thinking, dreaming -- will there be a man left behind? There will be no man behind. But language creates a different world, and by constantly moving into words we go on moving away.

So the first thing to remember is how not to allow words unnecessarily. When there is a need, you can use them, but when there is no need remain empty, remain non-verbal, MOUNA, remain silent. There is no need to be constantly verbalizing things.

Secondly, don't project. Don't verbalize, don't project. Look at what is there. Don't add things and then look. You see a face. When you say, "It is beautiful," you are putting something into it, or if you say, "It is ugly," you are again putting something into it. A face is a face. Beauty and ugliness are your interpretations. They are not there, because the same face may be beautiful to someone and ugly to someone else, and to a third it may be neither. He may be indifferent; he may not even look at it -- at the same face. The face is simply a face. Don't put things into it; don't project. Your projections are your dreams, and if you project then you miss. And this is happening every day.

You see that a face is beautiful; then desire is created. The desire is not for that face or that body; it is for your own interpretation, your own projection. The person that is there, the real person, has been used as a screen, and you have projected yourself. And then disillusion is bound to be there because the real face cannot be forced into unreality by your projection. Sooner or later the projection will have to be dropped, and the real face will come out, and then you will feel that you have been cheated. You will say, "What has happened to this face? This face was so beautiful and this person was so beautiful, and now everything has gone ugly." Again you are interpreting. The person remains whatsoever he is, but your interpretations and projections go on, and you are never allowing energy to assert itself. You go on suppressing it. You are suppressing inwardly and outwardly also. You never allow the reality to assert itself.

I am reminded that one day a neighbor asked Mulla Nasruddin whether he could have his horse for a few hours. The Mulla said, "I would gladly give my horse to you, but my wife has gone with the horse and they will be out for the whole day." Just at this moment the neigh of the horse was heard from the stable, so the man looked at Mulla Nasruddin. Nasruddin said, "Okay, whom do you believe -- me or the horse? And the horse is a notorious liar to boot. Whom do you believe?"

We create an untrue world around us because of our projections, but if the reality asserts and the horse neighs from the stable, we ask, "Whom do you believe?" We always believe ourselves, not the reality that goes on asserting. It is asserting every moment, but we go on forcing our illusions. That is why every man feels disillusioned in the end. It is not because of reality. Every man and woman feels disillusioned in the end, as if the whole life has been a waste. But now you cannot do anything, you cannot undo it. Time is no more with you. Time has flown and death is near and you are disillusioned, and now the opportunity is lost.

Why does everyone feel disillusioned? Not only those who are unsuccessful in life, but those who are successful in life, they also feel the same. It is okay if unsuccessfuls feel disillusioned, but even those who succeed feel this way. Napoleons and Hitlers and Alexanders, they also feel disillusioned. The whole life has been a waste. Why? Is the cause really in reality, or is the cause in the dreams which you were projecting? And then you could not project them and the reality asserted itself, and ultimately reality wins and you are defeated. You can win only if you are not projecting.

So remember the second thing: look directly at things as they are. Don't project, don't interpret, don't force your mind upon things. Allow the reality to assert itself, whatsoever it is. This is always good, and howsoever beautiful your dreams they are bad, because you are bound on a journey of disillusion. And the sooner you are disillusioned, the better, but once one illusion is gone, immediately you start creating another to replace it.

Allow a gap. Between two illusions, allow a gap. Allow an interval so the reality can be seen. This is very arduous -- to look at the reality as it is. It may not be according to your desires. There is no need for it to be according to your desires. But then you have to live with reality, to live in it -- and you ARE in it! It is better to come to terms with reality than to go on deceiving yourself, and you are not aware how you go on projecting. Someone says something, and you understand something else. And you base things on your understanding, and then you make a house of cards out of it, you create a palace of cards. It was never said! Something else was meant!

Always see what is there. Don't be in a haste. It is better not to understand something than to misunderstand. It is better to remain ignorant consciously than to think that you know. Look into your relationships -- at the husband, the wife, the friend, the teacher, the master, the servant -- look! Everyone is thinking in his own ways, interpreting the other, and there is no meeting, no communication. Then they are fighting, in constant conflict. The conflict is not between two persons, the conflict is between false images. Be alert so that you don't have any false image of anyone else. Remain with the real, howsoever hard, howsoever arduous and difficult, even if sometimes it seems impossible. But once you know the beauty of remaining with the real, you will never be a victim of dreaming.

And thirdly, why do you dream? It is a substitute. Dreaming is a substitute. If you cannot get whatsoever you desire in reality, then you start dreaming. For example, if you have fasted the whole day, in the night. You will dream: you will dream about food, of being invited by a great emperor, or some such thing. You will be eating and eating and eating in your dreaming. The whole day you were fasting, and now in the night you are eating. If you are sexually suppressive, then your dreams will become sexual. Through your dreams it can be known what you are suppressing in the day. Your daytime fast will be shown by your dream. Dreams are substitutes, and psychologists say that it will be difficult for man as he is to live without dreams. And they are right in a way. As man is it will be difficult to live without dreams, but if you want a transformation, then you have to live without dreams. Why are dreams created? Because of desires. Unfulfilled desires become dreams.

Study your desiring; be aware and observe it. The more you observe it, the more it will disappear. And then you will not create webs in the mind, and you will not move in a private world of your own. Dreams cannot be shared; even two intimate friends cannot share their dreams. You cannot invite anyone into your dreams. Why? You and your lover cannot both be in the same dream. Your dream is yours; another's dream is another's. They are private. Reality is not so private, only madness is private. Reality is universal, you can share it; you cannot share dreams. They are your private madness -- fictions. So what is to be done?

One can, in the day, live so totally that nothing is left suspended. If you are eating, eat totally. Enjoy it so totally that you don't need any dream in the night. If you are loving someone, love so totally that no love enters into your dreams. Whatsoever you do in the day, do it so totally that nothing is suspended on the mind, nothing is incomplete which has to be completed in dreams. Try this, and within a few months you will have a different quality of sleep. Dreams will go on becoming less and less, and deep sleep will deepen. And when in the night dreams are less, in the day projections will be less because, really, your sleep continues and your dream continues. With closed eyes in the night and with opened eyes in the day, they continue. Inside a current goes on.

Any moment, close your eyes and wait, and you will see that the film has come back; the dream is running. It is always there, just waiting for you. It is just like the stars in the day. They have not disappeared, but only because of the sunlight you cannot see them. They are there waiting, and when the sun will set they will start appearing.

Your dreams are just that way -- moving within you even while you are awake. They are just waiting. Close your eyes, and they start functioning. When dreams are less in the night, in the day you will have a different quality of waking. If your night changes, your day changes; if your sleep changes, your waking changes. You will be more alert. With less dreams running within, you will be less asleep. You will look more directly.

So don't leave anything suspended, that is one thing. And whatsoever you are doing, remain with the act. Don't move anywhere else. If you are taking a shower, be there. Forget the whole world. Now this shower is the whole universe. Everything has ceased; the world has disappeared. There is only you and the shower. Remain there. Move with each act so totally that you are neither lagging behind nor jumping ahead; you are with the act. Then dreams will disappear, and with less dreaming you will be more able to penetrate the reality.

Now the technique. The technique is concerned with this.

"AS A HEN MOTHERS HER CHICKS, MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS, PARTICULAR DOINGS, IN REALITY."

The key term is "IN REALITY." You are also mothering many things, but in dreams -- not in reality. You are also doing many things, but in dream -- not in reality. Don't mother dreams, don't help dreaming to grow more in you; don't give your energy to dreaming. Withdraw yourself from all dreams. It will be difficult because you have invested so much in your dreaming. If you suddenly withdraw yourself totally from dreaming, you will feel as if you are sinking and dying, because you have always lived in a postponed dream. You have never been here and now, you are always somewhere else. You have been hoping.

Have you heard the Greek parable of Pandora's box? To revenge a certain deed on the part of a man, Pandora was sent a box, and the box had all the diseases that are now rampant in humanity. They were not there before, and when the box was opened the diseases were released. Pandora, being afraid after seeing the diseases, closed the box. Only one disease remained there and that was hope; otherwise man would have dissipated, all these diseases would have killed him -- but because of hope he continued.

Why are you living? Have you ever asked? There is nothing to live for here and now. There is just hope. You are carrying a Pandora's box. Why are you living right now? Why do you get up every morning? Why do you start the whole day again -- again and again? Why this repetition? What is the reason? You cannot find any reason right now for why you are living, and if you find something it will be something in the future -- a hope that something is going to happen: someday "something" is going to happen. You don't know when that day will come; you even don't know what it is that is going to happen -- but someday "something is going to happen," and so you go on prolonging yourself, you go on carrying yourself.

Man lives just in hope, and this is not life because hope means dream. Unless you live here and now, you are not alive. You are a dead weight, and that tomorrow which will fulfill all your hopes is never to come. When death will come, then only will you realize that now there is no tomorrow, and now you cannot postpone. Then you will feel disillusioned, cheated -- but no one has cheated you; you are the master of the whole mess.

Try to live in the moment, in the present, and don't cherish hopes, whatsoever their nature. They may be worldly, they may be other-worldly; it makes no difference. They may be religious -- somewhere in future, in the other world, in heaven, in the NIRVANA, after death -- but it makes no difference. Don't hope. Even if you feel a subtle hopelessness here, remain here. Don't move from the moment here and now. Don't move! Suffer it, but don't allow the hope to enter in.

Through hope dreaming enters. Be hopeless. If life is hopeless, be hopeless. Accept it, but don't cling to any future event. Then suddenly there will be a change. Once you remain in the present moment, dreams stop -- because then they cannot arise. The source has been withdrawn. You cooperate with them, you mother them; that is why they arise. Don't cooperate with them, don't mother them.

This sutra says "... MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS." Why particular knowings? You also mother, but you mother particular theories, not knowings; particular scriptures, not knowings; particular hypotheses, systems, philosophies, world views -- but never particular knowings. This sutra says throw them away. Scriptures, theories, they are of no use. Have your own experience which is real, your own knowings, and mother them. Howsoever trivial, a real knowing is something. You can base your life upon it. Whatsoever they are, always think of real, particular knowings that YOU have known.

Have you known anything? You know many things, but everything is borrowed. Someone has said them, someone has given them to you. Teachers, parents, society, they have conditioned your mind. You "know" about God, you "know" about love, you "know" about meditation. You don't know anything really! You have not tasted anything, this all is borrowed. Someone else has tasted, the taste is not your own. Someone else has seen, but you have your eyes and you have not used them. Someone else has experienced -- a Buddha has experienced, a Jesus has experienced -- and you just go on borrowing their knowings. They are false! For you, they are of no use. They are more dangerous than ignorance, because ignorance is yours and the knowledge is borrowed.

It is better to be ignorant; at least the ignorance is yours. It is authentic, it is real, sincere and honest! Don't go on with borrowed knowledge. Otherwise you will forget that you are ignorant, and you will remain ignorant.

This sutra says "... MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS." Always try to know something in a way that is fresh, direct, immediate. Don't believe in anyone. Your belief will lead you astray. Trust yourself -- and if you cannot trust yourself, how can you trust anybody else?

Sariputta came to Buddha, and he said, "I have come to believe in you. I have come! Help me to build faith in you."

Buddha is reported to have said, "If you don't believe in yourself, how can you believe in me? So forget me. First have trust in yourself, believe in yourself. Only then can you have trust in someone else."

So remember this: you cannot trust anybody if you cannot even trust yourself. The first trust is always within. Only then can it flow; only then can it overflow, it can reach to others. But how can you trust if you don't know anything? How can you trust in yourself if you don't have any experience? Try to trust in yourself. Don't think that this experience of looking through others' eyes is only with the absolute. It is with ordinary experiences also. But let them be your own. They will help you to grow, they will make you mature, they will make you ripened.

This is really strange: you look with others' eyes, you live with others' lives. You call a rose beautiful. Really, is it your feeling or just a teaching that is spread around you that a rose is beautiful? Is this your knowing? Have you known it? You say that moonlight is good, beautiful. Is it your knowing, or is it just that poets have been singing about it and you are repeating it? If you are like a parrot, you cannot live your life authentically. Whenever you assert anything and whenever you say anything, first check within whether it is your knowledge and your experience.

Throw out all that is not yours -- it is of no use -- and cherish and mother all that is yours, because only through that will you grow. "MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS, PARTICULAR DOINGS, IN REALITY." Always remember "in reality." Do something. Have you done anything ever, or have you been just following others, just following orders? "Love your wife": have you really loved her? Or are you just doing a duty because it has been said, because it has been taught, "Love your wife -- or love your mother, love your father, love your brother," so you are loving and you are following! Have YOU really loved any time when you were there? Was it ever the case that no teaching was working and no other was being followed? Were you ever authentically in love? You can deceive yourself; you can say, "Yes!" But find out before you say anything. If you have loved, you would be transformed; the particular act of love would have changed you. But it has not changed you because your love is false. And the whole life has become false. You go on doing things that are not your own. Do your own thing and mother it.

Buddha is good, but you cannot follow him. Jesus is good, beautiful, but you cannot follow him. And if you will follow, you will become ugly. You will be a carbon copy. You will be false, and you will not be accepted by the existence. Nothing false is accepted. Love a Buddha, love a Jesus, but don't be their carbon copies. Don't imitate. Always allow your own self to move in its own way. You will become Buddha-like one day, but the path will be basically your own. One day you will become a Jesus, but you will have traveled along a different route, you will have experienced different things. One thing is certain: whatsoever may be the route and whatsoever may be the experience, it must be authentic, real, and your own. Then you will reach one day. Through falsity you cannot reach the truth; falsity will lead to more falsity.

Do something, remembering well that it is you who are doing it without following anybody. Then even a very small act, just a smile, may become a source of SATORI, a source of SAMADHI, cosmic consciousness. You come back to your home and smile at your children. That smile is false; you are pretending. You are smiling because a smile is expected. It is a painted smile. Nothing else is smiling in you but the lips. They are manipulated; the smile is mechanical. And you can become so habituated in this that you may completely forget how to smile. You may laugh, but the laughter may not be coming from your center.

Always remember, no matter what you are doing, observe whether your center is involved in it or not, because if it is not involved it is better not to do a thing. Don't do it! No one is forcing you to do anything. Don't do it! Preserve your energy for the moment when something real happens to you; then do it. Don't smile, preserve the energy. The smile will come, and then it will change you completely. Then it will be total. Then every cell of your body will smile. Then it will be an explosion -- nothing painted.

And children know, you cannot deceive them. The moment you can deceive them, they are no more children. They know when your smile is false, they can detect it; anyone who is real will detect it. Your tears are false, your smile is false. These are small acts, but you are made up of small acts. So don't think to do something big -- that then you will do this. If you are false in small things you will always be false.

It is easy to be false in big things. If you are false in small things, it is very easy to be false in big things, because big things because big things are always on exhibition. They are for others to see, so you can very easily be false. You can be a saint if saintliness is respected. Then you are on exhibition -- just an exhibition piece. You can be a saint because it is respected and ego-fulfilling, but everything will be false. Just think, if a society changes its attitudes as they have been changed in Soviet Russia or in China, immediately, saints disappear -- because there is no respect for them.

I remember one of my friends, a Buddhist BHIKKHU who went to Soviet Russia in Stalin's days. He told me that whenever somebody would shake hands with him, suddenly the man would shrink and would say, "You have the hands of a bourgeois." He had very beautiful hands. As a BHIKKHU he had never done anything; he was a beggar, a royal beggar, so there had been no labor. His hands were very smooth, beautiful, feminine. In India, whenever someone touched his hands he would say, "So beautiful!" In Russia, whenever someone would touch his hands, he would shrink away, and the condemnation would come into his eyes and he would say, "So you have bourgeois hands, the hands of an exploiter." He came back and told me, "I felt so condemned there that I longed to be a laborer."

Saints disappeared from Russia because now there is no respect. All that saintliness which was there was only on exhibition; it was a showpiece, painted. Only real saints can exist now in Russia. For unreal ones there is no possibility because you will have to struggle there to be a saint, and the whole society will be against you. In India, the easiest way to survive and exist is to be a saint. Everyone respects you. You can be false, and falsity pays.

Remember this: from the very morning, when you open your eyes, try to be real and authentic. Don't do anything which is false. Only for seven days, go on remembering. Don't do anything which is false. Whatsoever is lost, let it be lost. Whatsoever you lose, lose it. But remain real, and within seven days a new life will be felt within you. The dead layers will be broken and a new living current will come to you. You will feel alive again for the first time -- a resurrection.

"MOTHER DOINGS... MOTHER KNOWINGS.... IN REALITY" -- not in dream. Do whatsoever you like to do, but think -- really, are you doing it, or is your mother doing it through you or your father doing it through you? Because dead men, dead parents, societies, old generations gone long ago are still functioning within you. They have created such conditionings that you go on fulfilling THEM -- and they were fulfilling their dead fathers and mothers, and you are fulfilling your dead fathers and mothers, and no one is fulfilled. How can you fulfill someone who is dead? But the dead are living through you.

Always observe when you do something, whether your father is doing it through you or you are doing it. When you get angry, is it your anger or is it the way your father used to be angry? You are just imitating. I have seen patterns going on, being repeated. If you marry, your marriage is going to be just approximately the same as your father's and your mother's. You will act like your father, your wife will act like her mother, and you will create the same mess again. When you get angry, observe: are you there or someone else? When you love, remember, are you there or someone else? When you speak something, remember, are you speaking or your teacher? When you make a gesture, remember, is it yours or is someone else present in your hand? It will be difficult, but this is SADHANA. This is what spiritual effort means.

And leave all falsities. You may feel a certain dullness for a time being, because all your falsities will drop and the real will take time to come and assert itself. There will be a period of a gap. Allow that period, and don't be afraid and don't become scared. Sooner or later your false selves will drop, masks will drop, and your real face will come into being. Only through that real face can you encounter God. That is why this sutra says, "AS A HEN MOTHERS HER CHICKS, MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS, PARTICULARS DOINGS, IN REALITY."

The second sutra:

"SINCE, IN TRUTH, BONDAGE AND FREEDOM ARE RELATED, THESE WORDS ARE ONLY FOR THOSE TERRIFIED WITH THE UNIVERSE. THIS UNIVERSE IS A REFLECTION OF MINDS. AS YOU SEE MANY SUNS IN THE WATER FROM ONE SUN, SO SEE BONDAGE AND LIBERATION."

This is a very deep technique, one of the deepest, and only very rare minds have tried it. Zen is based on this technique. This technique is saying a very difficult thing -- difficult to comprehend, not difficult to experience. But first comprehension is needed.

This sutra says that the world and NIRVANA are not two things, they are one; that heaven and hell are not two things, they are one; and that bondage and liberation are not two things, they are one. It is difficult because we can only conceive of something easily if it is in terms of polar opposites.

We say that this world is bondage, so how to get out of this world and be liberated? Then liberation is something which is opposite, which is not bondage. But this sutra says that both are the same -- liberation and bondage -- and unless you are freed from both you are not freed. Bondage binds, and liberation also. Bondage is a slavery, and liberation is also.

Try to understand this. Look at a person who is trying to go beyond bondage. What is he doing? He leaves his home, he leaves his family, he leaves the riches, he leaves the things of the world, he leaves society just to get out of bondage, out of the fetters of the world. Then he creates new fetters for himself. Those fetters are negative.

I have seen one saint who cannot touch money. He is respected -- he is bound to be respected by those who are mad after money. He has moved to the other pole. If you put money in his hand, he will throw it as if there were some poison or as if you have put some scorpion in his hand. He will throw it and he will become scared. A subtle trembling comes to his body. What is happening? He has been fighting with money. He must have been a greedy man -- too much greed. Only then can he move to this extreme. He may have been too much obsessed with money. He is still obsessed, but now in the reverse direction. However, the obsession is still there.

I have seen one sannyasin who cannot look at any female face. He becomes afraid. He will always look down, he will never look up if some woman is there. What is the problem? He must have been too much sexual, obsessed with sex. He is still obsessed, but then he was running after this woman or that and now he is running from women -- from this one and that. But he is still obsessed with women. Whether he is running after or running from, his obsession remains. He thinks that now he is liberated from women, but this is a new bondage. You cannot become liberated by reaction. The thing you go against will bind you negatively; you cannot escape it. If someone is against the world and for liberation, he cannot be liberated; he will remain in the world. The attitude of being against is a bondage.

This sutra is very deep, it says "SINCE IN TRUTH, BONDAGE AND FREEDOM ARE RELATED..." They are not opposite, they are relative. What is freedom? You say, "Not bondage." And what is bondage? You say, "Not freedom." You can define them by each other. They are just like hot and cold, not opposite. What is hot and what is cold? They are just degrees of the same phenomenon -- degrees of temperature -- but the phenomenon is the same, and they are relative. If there is in one bucket cold water and in another there is hot water and you put in both your hands -- one hand in the hot and one in the cold -- what will you feel? A difference of degrees.

And if at first you cool down both your hands on ice and then you put both your hands into the hot and the cold water, what will happen? Now again you will feel a difference. Your cold hand will now feel more hot in the hot water than it felt before. And if your other hand has become cold, much colder than the cold water, then that water will now look hot; you will not feel it as cool. It is relative. There are only degrees of difference, but the phenomenon is the same.

Tantra says that bondage and liberation, SANSARA and MOKSHA, are not two things, but a relative phenomenon -- of the same thing. So tantra is unique. Tantra says that you have to be liberated not only from bondage; you have to be liberated from MOKSHA also. Unless you are liberated from both, you are not Liberated.

So the first thing: don't try to go against anything because you will move to something which belongs to it. It looks opposite, but it is not. Don't move from sex to BRAHMACHARYA. If you are trying to move from sex to BRAHMACHARYA, your BRAHMACHARYA will be nothing but sexuality. Don't move from greed to no-greed because that no-greed will again be a subtle greed. That is why if a tradition teaches to be non- greedy, it gives you some profit motive in it.

I was staying with a saint, and he told his followers, "If you leave greed you will get much in the other world. If you leave greed, you will gain much in the other world!" Those who are greedy, greedy for the other world, will be influenced by this. They may be motivated, and they will be ready to leave many things to gain. But the motive to gain remains; otherwise how can a greedy man move toward non-greed? Some motive must be there which fulfills his greed deeply.

So don't create opposite poles. All opposites are related; they are degrees of the same phenomenon. If you become aware of this, you will say that both poles are the same. If you can feel this, that both poles are the same, and if this feeling deepens, you will be liberated from both. Then you are neither for SANSARA nor for MOKSHA. Really, then you are not asking for anything; you have stopped asking. In that stopping, you are liberated. In that feeling that everything is the same, the future will have dropped. Where can you move now? Sex and BRAHMACHARYA both are the same, so where is one to move? And if greed and non-greed are the same and violence and nonviolence are the same, where has one to move?

There is nowhere to move. Then movement ceases; there is no future. You cannot desire anything because all desires will be the same; the difference will be just of degrees. What can you desire? Sometimes I ask people -- when they come to me, I ask them -- "What do you really desire?" Their desire is based in them as they are. If they are greedy, they desire nongreed; if they are sexual, obsessed with sex, they desire BRAHMACHARYA, how to be beyond sex, because they are miserable in their sex.

But this desire for BRAHMACHARYA is based, rooted, in their sexuality. They ask, "How to get out of this world?" The world is too much on them, they are too much burdened and they are clinging too much, because the world cannot burden you unless you cling to it. The burden is in your head -- not because of the burden, but because of you, you are carrying it. And they are carrying the whole world; then they get burdened. And in this experience of misery there arises a new desire for the opposite, so then they start hankering for the opposite.

They were running after money, so now they run after meditation. They were running after something in this world; now they are running after something in that world. But the running remains, and the running is the problem. The object is irrelevant. Desire is the problem. What you desire is meaningless. You desire, that is the problem, and you go on changing objects. Today you desire A, tomorrow you desire B, and you think you are changing. Then the day after tomorrow you desire C, and you think you are transformed. BUT you are the same. You desired A, you desired B, you desired C, and A-B-C are not you. You desire -- that is you, and that remains the same. You desire bondage, then you get frustrated, fed up; then you desire liberation. You desire, and desire is the bondage.

So you cannot desire liberation. Desire is bondage, so you cannot desire liberation. When desire ceases, liberation is. That is why this sutra says, "IN TRUTH, BONDAGE AND FREEDOM ARE RELATIVE." So don't become obsessed with the opposite.

"These words are only for those terrified with the universe." These words of bondage and freedom are for those who are terrified with the universe.

"THIS UNIVERSE IS THE REFLECTION OF MINDS." Whatsoever you see in this universe is a reflection. If it looks like bondage, it means it is your reflection. If it looks like liberation, again it is your reflection.

"AS YOU SEE MANY SUNS IN WATER FROM ONE SUN, SO SEE BONDAGE AND LIBERATION." The sun rises, and there are many ponds -- dirty and pure, big and small, beautiful and ugly -- and one sun reflects in many ponds. One who goes on counting the reflections will think that there are many, many suns. One who looks not into the reflections but to the reality will see one. The world, as you look at it, reflects you. If you are sexual, the whole world seems sexual. If you are a thief, the whole world seems to be in the same profession.

Once Mulla Nasruddin and his wife were fishing, and the place was restricted; only license holders could fish there. Suddenly a policeman appeared, so Mulla's wife said, "Mulla, you have the license so you run away. Meanwhile, I will escape."

So Mulla started running. He ran and ran and ran, and the policeman followed. Of course, Mulla left the wife there, and the policeman followed him. Mulla ran and ran until he felt that now his heart would explode. But by that time the policeman caught hold of him. The policeman was also perspiring, and he said, "Where is your license?" So Mulla produced his papers. The policeman looked at them and they were okay. So he said, "Why are you running, Nasruddin? Why did you run away?"

Nasruddin said, "I am going to a doctor, and he says after every meal to run for half a mile."

The policeman said, "Okay, but you saw me running after you, chasing you, yelling, so why didn't you stop?"

Nasruddin said, "I thought that maybe you go to the same doctor."

It is logical; it is what is happening. Whatsoever you see all around you is more a reflection of you than of any real thing there. You look at yourself mirrored everywhere. The moment you change, the reflection changes. The moment you become totally silent, the whole world becomes silent. The world is not a bondage: bondage is a reflection. And the world is not liberation; liberation is again a reflection.

A Buddha finds the whole world in NIRVANA. A Krishna finds the whole world celebrating in ecstasy, in bliss; there is no misery. But tantra says that whatsoever you see is a reflection unless all seeing disappears and only the mirror is seen with nothing reflected in it. That is the truth.

If something is seen, it is just a reflection. Truth is one; many can only be reflections. Once this is understood -- not theoretically, but existentially, through experience -- you are liberated, liberated from both bondage and liberation.

Naropa, when he became enlightened, was asked by someone, "Have you achieved liberation now?"

Naropa said, "Yes and no both. Yes, I am not in bondage, and no because that liberation was also a reflection of bondage. I thought about it because of bondage."

Look at it in this way: you are ill then you long for health. That longing for health is part of your illness. If you are really healthy, you will not long for health. How will you? If you are really healthy, where is the longing? What is the need? If you are really healthy, you never feel that you are healthy. Only ill, diseased persons feel that they are healthy. What is the need? How can you feel that you are healthy? If you are born healthy and you have never been ill, will you be able to feel your health? Health is there, but it cannot be felt. It can be felt only through contrast, through the opposite. Only through the opposite are things felt. If you are ill, you can feel health -- and if you are feeling health, remember, you are still ill.

So Naropa says, "Yes and no both. `Yes' because there is no bondage now, but with the bondage liberation has also disappeared; that is why `No'. It was part of it. Now I am beyond both -- neither in bondage nor in liberation."

Don't make religion a search, a desire. Don't make MOKSHA, Liberation, NIRVANA, an object of desiring. It happens when there is no desiring.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2

Chapter #6

Chapter title: The tantric way to freedom from desires

30 March 1973 pm in Bombay, India

Archive code: 7303305

ShortTitle: VBT206

Audio: Yes

Video: No

The first question:

Question 1

"YOU SAID YESTERDAY THAT THE MOTIVATION TOWARDS LIBERATION OR SAMADHI IS ALSO A TENSION AND A BARRIER, BUT IS IT NOT CORRECT THAT IT IS NOT A DESIRE BUT AN ASPIRATION -- THE INTRINSIC THIRST OF THE HUMAN BEING?"

You must understand what desire means, and religions have confused you much about it. If you desire something of the world, they call it desire. If you desire something of the other world, they call it by a different name. This is absurd. Desire is desire! It makes no difference what the object of desire is. The object may be anything -- of this world, material, or of another world, spiritual -- but desiring remains the same.

Every desire is a bondage. Even if you desire God, it is a bondage; even if you desire liberation it is a bondage. And liberation cannot happen unless this desiring goes away totally. So remember, you cannot desire liberation, that is impossible; that is contradictory. You can become desireless, and then liberation happens. But that is not a result of your desire. Rather, it is a consequence of no-desire.

So try to understand what desire is. Desire means that right now you are not okay, you are not at ease. This very moment you are not at ease with yourself, and something else in the future, if fulfilled, will bring you peace. The fulfillment is always in the future; it is never here and now. This tension of the mind for the future is desire. Desire means you are not in the present moment, and all that is there is only the present moment. You are somewhere in the future, and the future is not. It never has been, it will never be. All that is, is always the present -- this moment.

This projection of your fulfillment somewhere in the future is desire. So what that future fulfillment is, is irrelevant. It may be the kingdom of God, heaven, NIRVANA, it may be anything, but if it is in the future, it is desire. And you cannot desire in the present, remember; that is not possible. In the present you can only be, you cannot desire. How can you desire in the present?

Desire leads into the future, into fantasy, dreaming. That is why so much insistence by Buddha for no-desire -- because only in no-desire do you move into reality. With desire you move into dreams. The future is a dream, and when you project into the future you are going to be frustrated. You are destroying reality right now for future dreams, and this habit of the mind will remain with you. It is being strengthened every day. So when your future comes it will come in the form of the present, and your mind will again move to some other future. Even if you could reach God, you will not be satisfied. The way you are, it is impossible. Even in the presence of the divine, you will have moved away into the future.

Your mind is always moving into the future. This movement of the mind in the future is desire. Desire is not concerned with any object, with whether you desire sex or you desire meditation -- it makes no difference. Desiring is the thing -- that you desire. It means you are not here. It means you are not in the real moment, and the present moment is the only door into existence. The past and future are not doors, they are walls.

So I cannot call any desire spiritual. Desire as such is worldly. Desire is the world. There is no spiritual desire; there cannot be. That is a trick of the mind, a deception. You don't want to leave desiring, so you change the objects. First you were desiring wealth, prestige, power. Now you say you don't desire and that these are worldly things. You condemn them, and those who desire them are condemned in your eyes. Now you desire God, the kingdom of God, NIRVANA, MOKSHA, the eternal, SATCHITANANDA, the brahman. Now you desire these, and you feel very good. You think you are transformed, but you have not done anything. You remain the same.

You are just playing tricks with yourself, and now you are in a greater mess because you think that this is not desiring. You remain the same. The mind remains the same; the functioning of the mind remains the same. You are not yet here. The objects of desire have changed, but the running, the dreaming, remains, and the dreaming is the desire -- not the object.

So try to understand me. I say that every desire is worldly because desire is the world. So it is not a question of changing the desire, it is not a question of changing objects. It is a question of a mutation, of a revolution from desire to no-desire; from desire to no-desire, not from old desires to new desires, from worldly desire to otherworldly desires, from material desires to spiritual desires -- no! From desire to no-desire is the revolution!

But how to move from desire to no-desire? You can move only if there is some desire. If some profit motive, some greed, some gain is there, only then can you move from desire to no-desire. But then you are not moving at all. I say that with no-desire you will attain eternal bliss. This is right -- that with no-desire eternal bliss happens -- but if I say to you that with no-desire you will gain eternal happiness, you will make it an object of the desire and then you will have missed the point completely.

It is not a result, it is a consequence of deep understanding. So try to understand that with desire there is misery, and don't think that you know it already. You don't know; otherwise how can you move into desire? You have not yet become aware that desire is misery, desire is hell. Be aware When you desire something be aware. Then move with the desire in full alertness, and then you will reach hell.

Every desire leads to misery, whether fulfilled or not. If fulfilled, it leads sooner; unfulfilled it takes time -- but every desire leads to misery. Be alert of the whole process, and move with it. There is no hurry because nothing can be done in a hurry, and spiritual growth is not possible in a hurry. Move slowly, patiently. Watch every desire and then watch how every desire becomes a door to hell. If you are watchful, sooner or later you will realize that desiring is hell. The moment that realization happens, there will be no desire. Suddenly desires will disappear, and you will be in a state of no-desire. I don't say desirelessness, I simply say "no-desire."

You cannot practice it, remember; only desires can be practiced. How can you practice no-desire? You cannot practice it, you can only practice desires. But if you are alert, you will become aware that they lead to misery. And when each desire leads to misery, when this becomes a realization to you -- not mere opinion and knowledge, but a realized fact -- desiring disappears, it becomes impossible. How can you lead yourself into misery? You are always "leading yourself to happiness" -- thinking that you are -- and always moving into misery. This has been happening for lives and lives. You always think this or that is the door of heaven, and when you have entered you always realize that this is hell. And this has been without any exception; it is always the case.

Move with mindfulness in every desire, and allow every desire to lead you to misery. Then, suddenly, one day the maturity will happen to you, this ripeness will happen to you: you will realize that every desire is misery.

The moment you realize it, desiring disappears. There is no need to do anything now; desiring simply falls away, withers away, and you are in a state of no-desire. In that no-desire NIRVANA is, the perfect, the absolute bliss is. You may call it God, the kingdom of God or whatsoever you choose to call it, but remember well that it is not a result of your desiring. It is a consequence of non-desiring, and non-desiring cannot be practiced.

Those who "practice" non-desiring, they are deluding themselves. There are many all over the world -- BHIKKHUS, sannyasins -- who are practicing non-desiring. You cannot practice non-desiring; no negative thing can be practiced. Underneath they are desiring, they are hankering after God, the peace that will happen, the bliss that is waiting for them somewhere in the future beyond death. They are desiring, and they call only their desiring "spiritual desire."

You can deceive yourself very easily. Words are very deceptive and you can rationalize. You call a poison "ambrosia," and when you call it ambrosia it appears as ambrosia. Words hypnotize; that is one thing. But this feeling, this realization that desire is misery, must be yours.

Mary Stevens has written somewhere that she was visiting a friend's home, and her friend's daughter was blind. Mary Stevens was very puzzled because the girl would say, "He is ugly, I don't like him"; and "The color of this dress is beautiful."

As she was blind, Mary Stevens asked, "How do you feel that someone is ugly and that a color is beautiful?"

The girl said, "My sisters say this to me." This is knowledge.

Buddha has said that desire is misery and you go on repeating. This is knowledge. You are desiring, and you have never seen that desire is misery. You have simply heard Buddha. This will not do. You are simply wasting your life and opportunity. Your own experience can change you; nothing else changes. Knowledge cannot be borrowed. If borrowed, it is just a fake. It looks like knowledge, but it is not. But why do we follow a Buddha or a Jesus -- why? Because of our greed. We look at Buddha's eyes, and they are so peaceful that greed arises, desire arises for how to attain this. Buddha is so blissful -- every moment in ecstasy. A desire arises for how to be Buddhalike. We also desire such states.

Then we go on asking how Buddha achieved this, how it happens. The "how" creates many problems because then Buddha will say that in "no-desire" it happens. And he is right, it HAS happened in no-desire. But when we hear that in no-desire it happens, we start practicing no-desire, we start leaving desires, and the whole effort is a desire to be Buddha-like.

Buddha was not trying to be like someone else; he was not asking to be a buddha. He was simply trying to understand his own misery -- and the more understanding dawned upon him, the more misery disappeared. Then one day he came to understand that desire is poison. If you have desire you have fallen a victim; now there is no possibility of your ever being happy. You can only hope -- have hope and frustration, then more hope and more frustration: this will be your circle. And when you become more frustrated you hope more, because that is the only consolation. You go on moving in the future because in the present you always have frustration, and the frustration is coming because of your past.

In the past this present was the future, and you hoped for it. Now it is a frustration. Then you hope again for the future, and when it will become the present you will again become frustrated. Then you will hope again. Then more frustration, more hope, and with more hope, still more frustration. This is a vicious circle. This is what the wheel of SANSARA is.

But no buddha can give you his own eyes. And it is good that be cannot give them to you; otherwise you will remain a fake always, eternally. Then you will never become authentic. It is good to suffer because only through suffering will you become authentic and real. So the first thing: move with your desires so that you can understand what they really are. Experience whatever suffering is hidden there. Let it be revealed to you. Only that is austerity -- only that is TAPASCHARYA.

Naropa has said that if you can be alert every desire leads you to NIRVANA, and this is the meaning, because if you are alert, you know that every desire is misery. And when you have searched every nook and corner of desiring, suddenly you stop. In that stopping is the happening, and it is always there. That happening is always waiting for you, just waiting to meet you in the present. But you are never in the present, you are always dreaming. Reality sustains you. Because of the real you are alive; because of the real you exist. But you go on moving in the unreal. The unreal is very hypnotizing.

I have heard one Jewish joke. Two old friends met after many, many years. Then one friend said to the other, "I have not seen you in twenty-five years. How is your son, your boy Harry?"

The other said, "There is a son; he is a great poet. All over the land his voice is heard, his songs are sung, and those who know poetry say that sooner or later he is going to become a Nobel laureate."

The other friend said, "Marvelous! And tell me about your second son, Benny. How is he?"

The friend said, "I am so happy about my second son. He is a leader, a great political leader. Thousands and thousands follow him, and I am sure that sooner or later he is going to be the prime minister of this land."

Then the friend said, "My! So fortunate you are! And what about your third son Izzie?"

The father became very sad and said, "Izzie? He is still Izzie. He is a tailor. But I tell you that if it was not for Izzie we would all be starving."

But the father was sad because Izzie is just a tailor. And the poet and the great politician, the great leader -- they are dreams. Izzie is the reality -- the tailor. "But if not for Izzie, we would all be starving," he said.

You could not exist were it not for this moment. THAT is real. But you are never happy about it. You are happy in your dreams for the future about Nobel laureates, prime ministers. Right now, "Izzie is just a tailor." Your reality is where you are grounded; your dreams are not your ground. They are false. Come to terms with your reality in the present moment. Encounter it, face it whatsoever it is, and don't allow the mind to move into the future. The future is desire. If you can be here and now, you are a buddha. If you cannot be here and now, then everything is just dream stuff.

And you will have to come back because dreams cannot lead you anywhere. They can only lead you to hope and frustration, but nothing real happens through them. But remember my point that you cannot imitate. You will have to pass through suffering. Suffering is the path. It purifies you, it makes you alert, it makes you aware. The more you are aware, the less you are desire-filled. If you are perfectly aware, no-desire happens, and meditation means nothing else but perfect awareness.

The second question:

Question 2

"PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW IT IS POSSIBLE THAT ONE CAN BE SPIRITUALLY TRANSFORMED BY BEING TOTAL IN ACTIONS THAT ARE OF ANGER, HATRED AND VIOLENCE."

Yes, you can be totally transformed through anger, through hatred, through violence. And there is no other way -- because you exist in violence, in anger, in greed, in passion. From where you exist, ONLY from there, does the way start. I will not tell you to create non-greed against your greed; I will tell you to be greedy totally, but with a fully alert mind -- to be violent, to be angry, but be total so that you suffer totally, so that you can feel the whole poison of it. You must pass through this fire. No one else can pass for you; no proxy is possible. You will have to pass through it, and you always think that someone else will do it.

Christians go on thinking that through Jesus there is salvation. It has not happened yet. The world remains the same. Two thousand years have passed since Jesus was crucified, but we go on hoping that someone else will suffer and we will reach to bliss. No! Everyone has to carry his own cross. Jesus was crucified; he reached the goal. You cannot reach. You will have to pass through that crucifixion yourself. And this is the crucifixion -- that anger is there, passion is there, violence is there, greed is there, jealousy is there.

What are you doing with them? The society teaches to create the anti pole. Greed is there, so suppress it and create a non-greedy mind. Anger is there, so suppress it. Don't be angry. Push the energy back and smile. What happens? Anger goes on being accumulated within, and you go on becoming more and more angry, because more and more energy is accumulated within as anger -- suppressed. It becomes your unconscious reservoir, and against this anger you go on smiling. That smile becomes false, because while anger is knocking within how can you smile? You can smile, but then it will be just a false thing.

So you are divided into two -- a false smile and a real anger. The false smile becomes your personality and the real anger remains your soul. You are divided against yourself, and a constant fight will be there. And you cannot be happy with the false smile. No one else is deceived. You cannot be happy with a real anger hidden behind always trying to come out. A false smile and a real anger -- this is the situation. All that is good is false and all that is bad is real. The real you carry within and the false you show outside. This is schizophrenic, and every man has become schizophrenic, divided -- not only divided, but constantly fighting with himself. The whole life and energy is wasted and dissipated in this fight. And the fight is stupid, but this is happening.

What I am suggesting is, don't create any falsity around you. The false will never lead you to the real; the false will lead you to more that is false. Don't do the false, and allow the real total expression. When I say this you may become scared, because violence is there and you may want to kill someone. So do I mean to go and kill? No! Meditate on it. Close your room and allow your violence. You can express it on a pillow, on a picture, on anything. There is no need to go and kill someone, because that is not going to help. That will create more problems and a chain.

On the pillow, write the name of your enemy or your friend -- and remember, we are more angry at our friends than at our enemies. Just put a picture of your wife or husband on a pillow, and bring your violence out. Beat the pillow, kill the pillow, and do whatsoever you feel. And don't feel that you are doing a stupid thing. This is what you want to do with the real object, and that will be more stupid. Don't think that this is silly. This is how you are: you are silly, and you cannot change by just repressing it. Look at this silliness: see that this is how you are. Allow yourself full expression; act it out. And if you can be real, you will realize for the first time what anger, what violence is hidden within you. You are a volcano, and this can erupt from you at any moment.

In any situation, the volcano may erupt. It is erupting every day. Someone kills someone, and just a day before he was as normal as you. No one ever suspected that he was going to be a murderer. No one suspects about you, and you have so many thoughts in your mind to murder. You have thought, you have planned it many times. The idea to murder someone else or yourself has come to you. It has happened to you if you are not absolutely idiotic. Psychologists say that an intelligent man is bound to think of suicide at least ten times in his life -- at least ten times! -- and ten thousand times you think to murder someone. You never do it, that is another thing. But you can do it; the possibility is always there.

Make your anger a total act in meditation, and then see what happens. You will feel it coming from your whole body. If you allow it, then every cell of your body will be in it. Every pore, every fiber of the body will become violent. Your whole body will be in a mad situation. It will go mad, but allow it, and don't withhold. Move with the river, and after the cyclone is over, you will feel for the first time a deep center within you. A subtle calmness will happen. When the anger has gone, there will be no repentance because you have not done it to anyone. There will be no guilt. You will be unburdened. When this anger is thrown out and silence comes, that silence is real -- not forced.

You can sit down like a buddha in PADMASANA, in a yogic posture. You can force yourself, but the monkey within you goes on jumping. Now only the body is static. The mind is more mad than it ever was before. Whenever you sit for meditation, you feel what is happening. You are never so noisy within when you are not meditating, so why does so much noise happen whenever you meditate? Why does the mind go so vagrant? Why do so many thoughts come in a cloud? It is because your body is static, and through this staticness of your body you can feel the monkeyness of the mind more. The contrast is there.

But forced silence is of no use. Either you will not succeed in it or if you will succeed you will move into sleep. A forced silence, if successful, becomes sleep. It is good as far as sleep is concerned; otherwise it is useless. A real silence always happens only when some pent-up energy is released totally. The disturbance was because of that pent-up energy. That forced energy was trying to erupt, that was the problem, that was the disturbance within. When it is released, you are unburdened.

Then every fiber in your being is relaxed. In that relaxedness you can say that you are in a state of no-anger. It is not against anger; it is simply absence of anger. Remember, the real is always the absence, not the opposite -- NOT the opposite! It is always the absence -- an absence of greed, an absence of sex, an absence of jealousy -- but in that absence, your reality flowers because the diseases have gone. Now your inner health can flower. And once it starts flowering you will not accumulate anger. You accumulate anger only because you are missing yourself.

Really, you are not angry at anyone else, you are angry within yourself. But you go on projecting that anger onto others; otherwise you will go mad, so you go on finding excuses. Really, you are angry because you are missing yourself, you are missing your destiny. That which is possible for you is not happening, and that is why you are angry. Nothing is happening to you, and time goes on flowing. Death is coming nearer, and you remain as unfulfilled as ever, and there seems to be no possibility to be fulfilled. Because of this, because you are not realizing your potentialities, because you have not become that which you can become, you are angry, violent. And then you go on finding excuses.

You throw your anger on this, on that. Really, it is not a question of anger, and if you make it a question of anger, your diagnosis is wrong. It is a question of self-realization. Why is one violent? Why is one destructive? Because he is angry against himself, against his very being -- because he is. And then he feels to be against the whole world.

A buddha is silent, non-violent, not because he has practiced it, but because now he has realized himself. Now the flower has come to its total flowering, so nothing is there to release. He is fulfilled. Simple gratefulness to the existence remains. Now there is no complaint; nothing is wrong. When you really flower, everything is okay; all is good. Because of this Buddha couldn't see problems. All is good! That is why Buddha is not a revolutionary. To be a revolutionary, you must be able to see misery, you must be able to feel the whole mess around, the hell. To be a revolutionary, you must have a feeling that everything is wrong. Only then are you a revolutionary. Buddha was here in this land, Mahavira was here in this land, but they were not revolutionaries. Why? This question arises: why?

When one is at ease with oneself, all is good. He cannot be destructive, he can only be creative. His revolution can only be a creative one, and you cannot see anything creative. When someone destroys something, only then does it become news; only then can you see it.

A Lenin is seen as a revolutionary, not as a buddha. All over the world now there are revolutionaries, and they go on growing. And the reason? It is because fewer and fewer persons are realizing their potentiality. They are violent and they want to destroy -- because if there is no meaning in their lives how can they feel that there can be meaning in others' lives? A Mahavira is even aware not to kill an insect, not even to kill a mosquito, because he has realized himself. Now he knows what is possible even for a mosquito. A mosquito is not just a mosquito; this is a possibility. An infinite possibility is there: this mosquito can become divine. He cannot destroy it, it is impossible. He can only help. He is only concerned with how to help so that the potential becomes the actual.

You are just seeds. A great destiny is hidden, but nothing is being realized. The potential is wasted; the seed remains the seed. You feel anger. The modern generation is much angrier than older generations because there is more awareness of the possibility and less fulfillment. Now the new generation knows what is possible much more than the older generation. This generation is alive to the fact that much is possible. But nothing is happening and nothing is becoming actual, so there is more frustration. If you cannot be creative, at least you can be destructive; you feel your power in being destructive. Anger, violence, are destructive forces. They are there because creativity is not there.

Don't go against them. Rather, help them to be released. Don't suppress them; allow them to evaporate from you. Then that which you think is opposite is absent. When they have evaporated, you will suddenly realize that silence is there, that love is there, compassion is there. They are not to be cultivated. They are just like a stream hidden in rocks. You remove the rocks and the stream starts flowing. The stream is not against the rocks, not the opposite of the rocks. Just the absence of the rocks, and an opening happens and the stream starts flowing.

Love is in you like a stream, anger is in you like a rock. Remove it. But you go on forcing it inside, more inside. Then you are forcing the stream as well to go more inside. Throw this rock. There is no need to hit someone with it. You want to hit someone because you don't know how to throw it without hitting anyone. That is what I am teaching: to throw it without hitting anyone. There is no need to hit anyone. And if you can throw this rock without hitting anyone, everyone will profit out of it. You may not be throwing it on others' heads, but it was always there and others feel it.

When you are angry, howsoever you suppress it your anger is felt. You vibrate it; around you a subtle sadness happens. Everyone becomes alert that some disease has entered. Everyone wants to leave you; you become repulsive. Your very attitude gives a bad odor to you.

You may not be aware, but biochemists say that when someone is in love or in anger or in sex, different odors are released from the body -- actually, not metaphorically. When you are in anger, a bad odor is released from your body. When you are in love, the quality is different. In sexual passion, a different odor is released.

Animals are attracted by odor -- because when the female is ready, a subtle odor is released from her sex glands and the male is attracted. Without that odor the female is not ready. That is why you see dogs smelling: they can smell sex. If you are sexual, you are also releasing a subtle odor. If you are angry, then too -- because different chemicals are released in the blood system. Consciously no one may notice, but unconsciously everyone notices it. You are a burden -- repulsive, destructive. Throw this poison out of your system.

So remember this: it is good to release in the vacuum. And the sky is big enough, it will not return it back to you. It will simply absorb it, and you will be released. So do anything meditatively and totally, even anger, even violence, even sex. It is easy to conceive of how to be angry alone, but you can also create a sexual orgy alone meditatively. And you will have a different quality after that.

While all alone, just close your room and move as if in the sex act. Allow your whole body to move. Jump and scream; do whatsoever you feel like doing. Do it totally. Forget everything -- societal inhibitions, etcetera. Move in the sex act alone meditatively, but bring your total sexuality to it.

With the other, the society is always present because the other is present. And it is so difficult to be in such a deep love that you can feel as if the other is not present. Only in a very deep love, in a very deep intimacy, is it possible to be with your lover or beloved as if he is not or she is not.

This is what intimacy means: if you are as if alone with your lover or beloved or your spouse in the room with no fear of the other, then you can move in the sex act totally; otherwise the other is always an inhibiting presence. The other is looking at you: "What will she think? What will be think? What are you doing? Behaving like an animal?"

One lady was here just a few days before. She came to complain against her husband. She said, "I cannot tolerate it. Whenever he loves me, he starts behaving like an animal."

When the other is present, the other is looking at you: "What are you doing?" And you have been taught that there are some things which you can do and some things which you are not to do. It inhibits; you cannot move totally.

If love is really there, then you can move as if you are alone. And when two bodies become one, they have a single rhythm. Then the two-ness is lost, and sex can be released totally. And it is not like in anger; anger is always ugly, but sex is not always ugly. Sometimes it is the most beautiful thing possible -- but only sometimes. When the meeting is perfect, when the two become one rhythm, when their breaths have become one and their PRANA, energy, flows in a circle, when the two have disappeared completely and the two bodies have become one whole, when the negative and positive, the male and female, are no more there, then sex is the most beautiful thing possible. But that is not always the case.

If it is not possible, you can bring your sex act to a climax of frenzy and madness while alone, in a meditative mood. Close the room, meditate in it, and allow your body to move as if you are not controlling it. Lose all control!

Spouses can be very helpful, and particularly in tantra: your wife, your husband or your friend can be very helpful if you both are experimenting deeply. Then allow each total uncontrol. Forget civilization as if it never existed; move back into the Garden of Eden. Throw that apple -- the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Be Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before they were expelled. Move back! Just be like innocent animals, and act out your sexuality in its totality. You will never be the same again.

Two things will happen. Sexuality will disappear. Sex may remain, but sexuality will disappear completely. And when there is no sexuality, sex is divine. When the cerebral hankering is not there, when you are not thinking about it, when it has become a simple involvement -- a total act, a movement of your whole being, not only of the mind -- it is divine. Sexuality will disappear first, and then sex may also disappear, because once you know the deeper core of it, you can achieve that core without sex.

But you have not known that deeper core, so how can you achieve it? The first glimpse comes through total sex. Once known, the path can be traveled in other ways also. Just looking at a flower, you can be in the same ecstasy in which you are when you meet with your spouse in a climax. Just watching the stars, you can move in it.

Once you know the path, you know it is within you. The spouse only helps you to know it, and you help your spouse to know it. It is within you! The other was just a provocation. The other was just a challenge to help you know something which was always within you.

And this is what is happening between a master and a disciple. The master can become only a challenge to you to show that which has always been hidden in you. The master is not giving you anything. He CANNOT give; there is nothing to give. And all that can be given is worthless because it will only be a thing.

That which cannot be given but which can only be provoked is worthwhile. A master is just provoking you. He challenges you to help you to come to a point where you can realize something which is already there. Once you know it, there is no need of a master.

Sex may disappear, but first sexuality disappears. Then sex becomes a pure, innocent act; then sex also disappears. Then there is BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy. It is not opposite to sex; it is just its absence. And remember this difference. This is not in your awareness.

Old religions go on condemning anger and sex as if both are the same or as if both belong to the same category. They do not! Anger is destructive; sex is creative. All old religions go on condemning them in a similar way, as if anger and sex, greed and sex, jealousy and sex are similar. They are not! Jealousy is destructive -- ALWAYS! It is never creative; nothing can come out of it. Anger is always destructive, but not so with sex! Sex is the source of creativity. The divine has used it for creation. Sexuality is just like jealousy, anger and greed: it is always destructive. Sex is not -- but we don't know pure sex, we know only sexuality.

A person who is looking at a pornographic picture or one who is going to see a film, a movie of sexual orgies, is not seeking sex; he is seeking sexuality. There are persons I know who cannot make love to their wives unless they first go through some dirty magazines or books or pictures. When they see these pictures, then they are excited. The real wife is nothing to them. A picture, a nude picture, is more exciting to them. That excitement is not in the gut; that excitement is in the mind, in the head.

Sex transferred to the head is sexuality; thinking about it is sexuality. Living it is a different thing, and if you can live it you can go beyond it. Anything lived totally leads you beyond. So don't be afraid of anything. LIVE IT! If you think it is destructive to others, move in it alone, do not do it with others. If you think it is creative, then find a partner, find a friend. Become a couple, a tantric couple, and move in it totally. If you still feel that the other's presence is inhibiting, then you can do it alone.

The last question:

Question 3

"DOES AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON EVER DREAM? CAN YOU TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT THE QUALITY AND NATURE OF AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON'S SLEEP?"

No, an enlightened person cannot dream. And if you like dreams very much, never become enlightened. Beware! Dreaming is part of sleep. The first thing is that for dreaming to happen you have to move into sleep. For ordinary dreams you have to move into sleep. In sleep you become unconscious. When you are unconscious, dreams can happen. They happen only in your unconsciousness.

An enlightened person is conscious even while asleep. He cannot become unconscious. Even if you give him an anaesthetic -- chloroform or something like that -- only his periphery goes to sleep. He remains conscious; his consciousness cannot be disturbed.

Krishna says in the Gita that while everyone is asleep the yogi is awake. It is not that yogis are not going to sleep in the night; they also sleep, but their sleep has a different quality. Only their bodies sleep, and then their sleep is beautiful. It is a rest.

Your sleep is not a rest. It may even be an exertion, and in the morning you may feel more exhausted than you ever felt in the evening. A whole night's sleep, and in the morning you feel more exhausted -- what is happening? You are a miracle!

The whole night was an inner turmoil. Your body was not at rest because the mind was so active. And the activity of the mind is bound to be an exertion for the body, because without the body the mind cannot act. The activity of the mind means parallel activity of the body, so the whole night your body is moving and is active. That is why in the morning you feel more exhausted.

What does it mean for someone to become enlightened? It means one thing: now he is perfectly conscious. Whatsoever goes on in his mind, he is aware. And the moment you are aware, certain things completely stop. Just through awareness they stop. It is just like this room is dark and you bring a candle: the darkness will disappear. Everything will not disappear. These bookcases will be here, and if we are sitting here we will be here. By bringing the candle only darkness disappears.

When someone becomes enlightened, now he has an inner light. That inner light is awareness. Through that awareness sleep disappears -- nothing else. But because sleep disappears, the quality of everything changes. Now whatsoever he is going to do will be in his perfect alertness, and that which needs unconsciousness as a prerequisite now becomes impossible.

He cannot be angry -- not because it is a decision not to be angry; he CANNOT be angry. Anger can exist only when you are unconscious. Now unconsciousness is not there, so the base is not there and anger is not possible. He cannot hate: hate exists only when you are unconscious. He becomes love -- not because of any decision on his part. When light is there, when consciousness is there, love flows; it is natural. Dreaming becomes impossible because dream needs, first of all, unconsciousness, and he is not unconscious.

Buddha's disciple, Ananda, said to him, after sleeping and living in the same room, in the same place with Buddha, "This is a miracle; this is very strange. You never move in your sleep." Buddha always remained in one posture the whole night. The way he would sleep in the beginning, that would be the way he would come out of it, and his hand would remain in the exact place where it was put.

You might have seen Buddha's picture showing him sleeping. His posture is called "the lying posture." He would remain in this same posture the whole night. Ananda watched him for years. Whenever he would look at Buddha sleeping, he would be the same the whole night. So Ananda asked, "Tell me, what are you doing the whole night? You remain in one posture."

Buddha is reported to have said, "Only once did I move in my sleep, but then I was not a buddha. Just before, just a few days before the enlightenment happened, I moved in my sleep. But then suddenly I became aware and I wondered, 'Why am I moving?' I moved unconsciously without any knowing on my part. But after enlightenment there is no need. If I want I can move, but there is no need. And the body is so relaxed..."

Consciousness penetrates even in sleep. But you can have a fixed posture the whole night and you will not be enlightened. You can practice it; it is not difficult. You can force yourself; then within a few days you will be able to do this. But that is not the point. If you look at a Jesus moving, do not think, "Why is he moving?" It depends. If Jesus moves in his sleep, he is conscious. If he wants to move, he moves.

For me, it happens quite the reverse. Before coming to awareness I slept always in one posture the whole night. I do not remember ever moving. But since then I have been moving the whole night. Even five minutes are enough for me in one posture. I have to move again and again. I am so aware that it is not a sleep at all really. So it depends. But you can never deduce anything from the outside. Always, this is only possible from the inside.

For an enlightened one, awareness will remain there even in his sleep, and then dreams are not possible. They require unconsciousness -- that is one thing -- and they require suspended experiences: that is the second thing. And for an enlightened one there is no suspended experience -- no incomplete experience. Everything is complete. He has eaten his food; now he is not thinking about eating again. When he feels hungry he will eat again, but meanwhile there is no thought of eating.

He has taken his bath; now he is not thinking of the bath tomorrow. When the time comes, if he is alive, he will take it. If the situation permits it will happen, but there is no thinking. Acts are there, but not any thinking about them.

What are you doing? You are constantly rehearsing -- constantly rehearsing for tomorrow as if you are an actor and you are to show someone. Why are you rehearsing? When the time comes, you will be there.

The enlightened person lives in the moment, in the act, and he lives so totally that it is not incomplete. If something is incomplete, then it will be completed in a dream. Dream is a completion. It happens because the mind cannot allow anything to be incomplete. If something is incomplete, there is an inner uneasiness. It wonders how to complete it. Then in a dream you complete it, and you are at ease. Even if it is completed in a dream, for the mind it is a relaxation.

What are you dreaming? You are just completing your incomplete acts which you could not complete in the day. In the day you may have wanted to kiss a woman, and you could not kiss. Now you will kiss her in your dream, and your mind will feel relaxed; a tension is released.

Your dreaming is nothing but your incompleteness, and an enlightened person is complete. Whatsoever he is doing, he is doing it so wholly, so totally, that nothing remains suspended. There is no need for any dreaming. Dreaming in the night will cease and thinking in the day will cease.

It is not that he will become unable to think. He can think if he needs. If you ask him a question he will think immediately, but no rehearsal is needed. First you think and then you reply, but his reply is his thinking. He thinks and replies. That is also not good to say, because actually there is no gap. It is simultaneous. He thinks out loud, but there is no rehearsal, no thinking, no dreaming. He lives life. With thinking and dreaming you miss life.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2

Chapter #7

Chapter title: Tantric meditation with light techniques

31 March 1973 pm in Bombay, India

Archive code: 7303315

ShortTitle: VBT207

Audio: Yes

Video: No

CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES "LIVINGNESS" IN YOU.

OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING.

FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE.

Man can be considered in three ways: in terms of the normal, the abnormal and the supernormal. Western psychology is basically concerned with the abnormal, the pathological, with the man who has fallen down from the normal, who has fallen down from the norm. Eastern psychology, tantra and yoga, consider man from the standpoint of the supernormal -- of the one who has gone beyond the norm. Both are abnormal. One who is pathological is abnormal because he is not healthy, and one who is supernormal is abnormal because he is MORE healthy than any normal human being. The difference is of negative and positive.

Western psychology developed as part of psychotherapy. Freud, Jung, Adler and other psychologists were treating the abnormal man, the man who is mentally ill. Because of this the whole Western attitude towards man has become erroneous. Freud was studying pathological cases. Of course, no healthy man would go to him -- only those who were mentally ill. They were studied by him, and because of that study he thought that now he understood man. Pathological men are not really men, they are ill, and anything based on a study of them is bound to be deeply erroneous and harmful. This has proved harmful because man is looked at from a pathological standpoint. If a particular state of mind is chosen and that state is ill, pathological, then the whole image of man becomes disease-based. Because of this attitude, the whole Western society has fallen down -- because the ill man is the base, the perverted has become the foundation.

And if you study only the abnormal, you cannot conceive of any possibility of supernormal beings. A buddha is impossible for Freud, not conceivable. He must be fictitious, mythological. A buddha cannot be a reality. Freud has only come in contact with ill men who are not even normal, and whatsoever he says about normal man is based on the study of abnormal man. It is just like a physician who is doing a study. No healthy man will go to him, there is no need. Only unhealthy people will go. By studying so many unhealthy people, he creates a picture in his mind of man, but that picture cannot be of man. It cannot be because man is not only illnesses. And if you base your concept of man on illnesses, the whole society will suffer.

Eastern psychology, particularly tantra and yoga, also has a concept of man, but that concept is based on the study of the supernormal -- Buddha, Patanjali, Shankara, Nagarjuna, Kabir, Nanak -- on persons who have reached to the peak of human potentiality and possibility. The lowest has not been considered, only the highest. If you consider the highest your mind becomes an opening; you can grow because now you know higher reaches are possible. If you consider the lowest, no growth is possible. There is no challenge. If you are normal you feel happy. It is enough that you are not perverted, that you are not in a mental asylum. You can feel good, but there is no challenge.

But if you seek the supernormal, the highest possibility that you can become, if someone has become that possibility, if that possibility has become actual in someone, then a possibility for growth opens. You can grow. A challenge comes to you, and you need not be satisfied with yourself. Higher reaches are possible and they are calling you. This must be understood deeply. Only then will the psychology of tantra be conceivable. Whatsoever you are is not the end. You are just in the middle. You can fall down, you can rise up. Your growth has not finished. You are not the end product; you are just a passage. Something is constantly growing in you.

Tantra conceives of and bases its whole technique on this possibility of growth. And remember, unless you become that which you can become, you will not be fulfilled. You MUST become that which you can become -- it is a must! Otherwise you will be frustrated, you will feel meaningless, you will feel that there is no purpose in life. You can carry on, but there can be no joy in it. And you may succeed in many other things, but you will fail with yourself. And this is happening. Someone becomes very rich and everyone thinks that now he has succeeded. Everyone except himself thinks that he has succeeded. He knows his failure. Wealth is there, but he has failed. You are a great man, a leader, a politician. Everyone thinks that they have succeeded, but they have failed. This world is strange: you succeed in everyone's eyes except your own.

People come to me daily. They say they have everything, but now what? They are failures, but where have they failed? As far as outward things are concerned they have not failed, so why do they feel this failure? Their inner potentiality has remained potent. They have not flowered. They have not achieved what Maslow calls "self-actualization." They are failures -- inner failures, and ultimately, what others say is meaningless. What you feel is meaningful. If you feel that you are a failure, others may think that you are a Napoleon or an Alexander the Great, but it makes no difference. Rather, it depresses you more. Everyone thinks that you are a success, and now you cannot say that you are not -- but you know you are not. You cannot deceive yourself. As far as self-actualization is concerned you cannot deceive. Sooner or later you will have to call upon yourself and look deeply into yourself at what has happened. The life is wasted. You have given up an opportunity and gathered things which mean nothing.

Self-actualization refers to the highest peak of your growth, where you can feel a deep content, where you can say, "This is my destiny, this is for what I was meant, this is why I am here on earth." Tantra is concerned with that self-actualization -- with how to help you grow more. And remember, tantra is concerned with you, not with ideals. Tantra is not concerned with ideals; it is concerned with you as you are and as you can become. The difference is great. All teachings are concerned with ideals. They say become like Buddha, become like Jesus, become like this or that. They have ideals, and you have to become like those ideals. Tantra has no ideal for you. Your unknown ideal is hidden within you; it cannot be given to you. You are not to become Buddha, there is no need. One Buddha is enough, and no repetition is of any value. Existence is always unique, it never repeats; repetition is boredom. Existence is always new, eternally new, so even a Buddha is not repeated -- such a beautiful phenomenon left unrepeated.

Why? Because even if a Buddha is repeated it will create boredom. What is the use? Only the unique is meaningful; copies are not meaningful. Only if you are firsthand is your destiny fulfilled. If you are secondhand, you have missed.

So tantra never says be like this or that; there is no ideal. Tantra never talks about ideals; hence, the name "tantra." Tantra talks about techniques -- never about ideals. It talks of HOW you can become; it never says what. It exists because of that how. Tantra means technique; the very word tantra means technique. It is concerned with "how" you can become, it is not concerned with what. That "what" will be supplied by your growth. Just use the technique, and by and by your inner potentiality will become actual. The uncharted possibility will become opened, and as it opens you will realize what it is. And no one can say what it is. Unless you become it, no one can predict what you can become.

So tantra gives you only techniques -- never ideals. This is how it is different from all moral teachings. Moral teachings always give ideals. Even if they talk about techniques, those techniques are always for particular ideals. Tantra gives no ideal to you; you ARE the ideal, and your future is unknown. No ideal from the past can be of any help because nothing can be repeated, and if it is repeated it is meaningless.

Zen monks say to remember and be alert. If you meet Buddha in your meditation, kill him immediately; don't allow him to stand there. Zen monks are Buddha's followers, and yet they say kill Buddha immediately if you meet him in your meditation, because the personality, the ideal of Buddha may become so hypnotizing that you may forget yourself, and if you forget yourself you have missed the path. Buddha is not the ideal; you are the ideal, your unknown future. That has to be discovered.

Tantra gives you techniques of discovery. The treasure is within you. So remember this second thing: it is very difficult to believe that you are the ideal -- difficult for you to believe because everyone is condemning you. No one accepts you, not even you yourself. You go on condemning yourself. You always think in terms of being like someone else, and that is false, dangerous. If you go on thinking like that you will become a fake and everything will be phoney. Do you know from where the word `phoney' comes? It comes from telephone. In the early days of the telephone, the transmission was so false, so unreal, that a real voice and a phoney voice were heard from the telephone -- a phoney voice that was mechanical. The real voice was lost -- just in those beginning days. From there comes the word phoney. If you are imitating someone else, you will become phoney, you will not be real. A mechanical device will be there all around you, and your reality, your real voice, will be lost. So don't be phoney, be real,

Tantra believes in you. That is why there are so few believers in tantra -- because no one believes in himself. Tantra believes in you and says that you are the ideal, so don't imitate anyone. Imitation will create a pseudo personality around you. You can go on moving with that pseudo personality thinking it is yourself, but it is not. So the second thing to remember is that there is no fixed ideal. You cannot think in terms of the future; you can only think in terms of the present -- just the immediate future in which you can grow. No fixed future is there, and it is good that there is no fixed future; otherwise there would be no freedom. If there were a fixed future, man would be a robot.

You have no fixed future. You have multi possibilities; you can grow in many ways. But the only thing that will give you ultimate contentment is that you grow -- that you grow in such a way that every growth produces further growth. Techniques are helpful because they are scientific. You are saved from unnecessary wandering, unnecessary groping. If you don't know any techniques, you will take many lives. You will reach the goal because the life energy within you will move unless it comes to the point where no movement is possible. It will go on moving to the highest peak, and that is the reason why one goes on being born again and again. Left to yourself you will reach -- but you will have to travel very, very long, and the journey will be very tedious and boring.

With a master, with scientific techniques, you can save much time, opportunity and energy. And sometimes within seconds you can grow so much that within lives even you will not be able to grow that much. If a right technique is used growth explodes, and these techniques have been used in millions of years of experiments. They were not devised by one man; they were devised by many, many seekers, and only the essence is given here. In these one hundred and twelve techniques, all techniques from all over the world have been covered. Nowhere does there exist any technique which has not been covered in this one hundred and twelve; they are the whole spiritual search in essence. But all the techniques are not for everyone, so you will have to try them out. Only certain techniques will be helpful to you, and you will have to find them out. There are two ways: either by your own trial and error, until you stumble upon something which starts working and you start growing, and then you move in it; or you surrender to some teacher and he finds out what will suit you. These are the two ways. You can choose. Now the technique.

The first technique:

"CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS RISING FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES `LIVINGNESS' IN YOU."

Many yoga methods are based on this. First understand what it is; then the application. The vertebrae, the spine, is the base of both your body and mind. Your mind, your head, is the end part of your spine. The whole body is rooted in the spine. If the spine is young, you are young. If the spine is old, you are old. If you can keep your spine young, it is difficult to become old. Everything depends on your spine. If your spine is alive, you will have a very brilliant mind. If the spine is dull and dead, you will have a very dull mind. The whole yoga tries in many ways to make your spine alive, brilliant, filled with light, young and fresh.

The spine has two ends: the beginning is the sex center and the end is SAHASRARA, the seventh center at the top of the head. The beginning of the spine is attached to the earth, and sex is the most earthly thing in you. From the beginning center in your spine you are in contact with nature, with what Sankhya has called PRAKRATI -- the earth, the material. From the last center, or the second pole, SAHASRAR, in the head, you are in contact with the divine. These are the two poles of your existence. First is sex and second is the SAHASRAR. There is no word for SAHASRAR in English. These are the two poles. Either your life will be sex oriented or SAHASRAR oriented. Either your energy will be flowing down from the sex center back to the earth, or your energy will be released from the SAHASRAR into the cosmos. From the SAHASRAR you flow into the BRAHMAN, into the absolute Existence. From sex you flow down into the relative existence. These are the two flows, the two possibilities. Unless you start flowing upwards, your misery will never end. You may have glimpses of happiness, but only glimpses -- and very illusory ones.

When the energy starts moving upwards you will have more and more real glimpses. And once it reaches the SAHASRAR and is released from there, you will have the absolute bliss with you. That is NIRVANA. Then there is no glimpse; you become the bliss itself. So the whole thing for yoga and tantra is how to move energy upwards through the vertebrae, through the spinal column, how to help it move against gravity. Sex is very easy because it follows gravitation. The earth is pulling everything down, back; your sex energy is pulled by the earth. You may not have heard it, but astronauts have felt this -- that the moment they move beyond the earth's gravity they don't feel much sexuality. As the body loses weight, sexuality dissolves, disappears.

The earth is pulling your life energy down and this is natural, because the life energy comes from the earth. You eat food and you are creating life energy within you; it comes from the earth, and the earth is pulling it back. Everything goes to its source. And if it continues to move in this way, life energy going back again and again, and you are moving in a circle, you will go on moving for lives and lives. You can go on moving this way infinitely unless you take a jump just like the astronauts. Like the astronauts, you have to take a jump and move beyond the circle. Then the pattern of earth's gravitation is broken. It can be broken!

The techniques for how it can be broken are here -- for how the energy can move vertically and rise up within you, reaching new centers; for how new energies can be revealed within you, making you a new person with every move. And the moment the energy is released from your SAHASRAR, the opposite pole of sex, you are no more man. Then you don't belong to this earth; you have become divine. That is what is meant when we say Krishna is God or Buddha is God. Their bodies are just like yours -- their bodies will have to fall ill and they will have to die -- everything happens in their bodies as it happens to you. Only one thing is not happening in their bodies which is happening to you: the energy has broken the gravitation pattern.

But that you cannot see, it is not visible to your eyes. But sometimes when you are sitting by the side of a Buddha, you can feel this. Suddenly you feel an upsurge of energy within you, and your energy starts moving upwards. Only then do you know that something has happened. Just by being in contact with a buddha your energy begins to move upwards towards the SAHASRAR. A buddha is so powerful that even the earth is less powerful; it cannot pull your energy downwards. Those who have felt this around a Jesus, a Buddha, a Krishna, have called them God. They have a different source of energy which is stronger than the earth.

How can the pattern be broken? This technique is very useful for breaking the pattern. First understand something basic. One, if you have observed at all you must have observed that your sex energy moves with imagination. Just through imagination your sex center starts functioning. Really, without imagination it cannot function. That is why if you are in love with someone it functions better -- because with love imagination enters. If you are not in love it is very difficult. It will not function.

This is the reason why male prostitutes were not found in the old days, only women prostitutes. It is difficult for a male prostitute if he has no love, and how can he have love just because of money? You can pay a man to have intercourse with you, but if he has no imagination for you he cannot function. Women can function because their sex is passive. Really, their functioning is not needed. They can be totally detached; they may not be feeling anything at all. Their bodies can just be there like corpses. With a prostitute you are not making love with a real body -- only with a dead corpse. But women can easily be prostitutes because their sex is passive.

The sex center functions through imagination. That is why even in dreams you can get erections and ejaculations. They are actual. Dreams are just imagination. It has been observed that every man, if physically fit, will have at least ten erections in the night. With every movement of the mind, with only a slight thought of sex, the erection will come. Your mind has many energies, many faculties, and one is will. But you cannot will sex. For sex will is impotent. If you try to love someone, you will feel you have gone impotent. So never try. Will never functions with sex; only imagination will function. Imagine, and the center will start to function. Why am I emphasizing this fact? Because if imagination helps the energy to move, then you can move it upwards or downwards just by imagination. You cannot move your blood by imagination; you cannot do anything else in the body by imagination. But sex energy can be moved by imagination. You can change its direction.

This sutra says, "CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS" -- think of yourself, your being, as light rays -- "FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE VERTEBRAE" -- up your spine -- "AND SO RISES `LIVINGNESS' IN YOU." Yoga has divided your spine into seven centers. The first is the sex center and the last is SAHASRAR, and between these two there are five centers. Some systems divide into nine, some into three, some into four. Division is not very meaningful, you can make your own division. Just five centers are enough to work with; the first is the sex center, the second is just behind the navel, the third is just behind the heart, the fourth is behind your two eyebrows, just in between, in the middle of the forehead. And the fifth, SAHASRAR, is just on the peak of your head. These five will do.

This sutra says, "CONSIDER YOURSELF...", which means imagine yourself -- close your eyes and imagine yourself just as if you are light. This is not just imagination. In the beginning it is, but it is reality also because everything consists of light. Now science says that everything consists of electricity, and tantra has always said that everything consists of light particles -- and you also. That is why the Koran says that God is light. YOU are light! Imagine first that you are just light rays; then move your imagination to the sex center. Concentrate your attention there and feel that light rays are rising upwards from the sex center, as if the sex center has become a source of light and light rays are moving in an upsurge -- upwards towards the navel center. Division is needed because it will be difficult for you to connect your sex center with the SAHASRAR. So smaller divisions will be of help. If you can connect, no divisions are needed. You can just drop all divisions from your sex center onwards, and the energy, the life force will rise up as light towards the SAHASRAR. But divisions will be more helpful because your mind can conceive of smaller fragments more easily.

So just feel that the energy -- just the light rays -- is rising up from your sex center to your navel like a river of light. Immediately you will feel a warmth rising in you. Soon your navel will become hot. You can feel the hotness; even others can feel that hotness. Through your imagination the sex energy will have started to rise. When you feel that now the second center at the navel has become a source of light, that the rays are coming and being collected there, then start to move to the heart center. As the light reaches the heart center, as the rays are coming, your heartbeat will be changed. Your breathing will become deeper, and a warmth will come to your heart. Go on upwards.

"CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES `LIVINGNESS' IN YOU." And as you will feel warmth, just side by side you will feel a "livingness," a new life coming to you, an inward light rising up. Sex energy has two parts: one is physical and one is psychic. In your body everything has two parts. Just like your body and mind, everything within you has two parts -- one material and the other spiritual. Sex energy has two parts. The material part is semen; it cannot rise upwards, there is no passage for it. Because of this, many physiologists of the West say that tantra and yoga methods are nonsense and they deny them completely. How can sex energy rise up? There is no passage and sex energy cannot rise. They are right and still wrong. Semen, the material part, cannot rise -- but that is not the whole of it. Really, it is only the body of sex energy, it is not the sex energy. The sex energy is the psychic part of it, and the psychic part can rise. And for that psychic part, the spinal passage is used -- the spinal passage and its centers. But that has to be felt and your feelings have gone dead.

I remember somewhere that a certain psychotherapist wrote about a patient, a woman. He was telling her to feel something, but the psychotherapist felt that whatever she did she was not feeling, but thinking about feeling -- and that is a different thing. So the therapist put his hand on the woman's hand and pressed it, telling her to close her eyes and relate what she felt. She said immediately, "I feel your hand."

But the therapist said, "No, this is not your feeling. This is just your thinking, your inference. I have put my hand in your hand; you say you are feeling my hand. But you are not. This is inference. What do you feel?"

So she said, "I feel your fingers."

The therapist again said, "No, this is not feeling. Don't infer anything. Just close your eyes and move to the place where my hand is; then tell me what you feel."

Then she said, "Oh! I was missing the whole thing. I feel pressure and warmth."

When a hand touches you, a hand is not felt. Pressure and warmth are felt. The hand is just inference, it is intellect, not feeling. Warmth and pressure, that is feeling. Now she was feeling. We have lost feeling completely. You will have to develop feeling; only then can you do such techniques. Otherwise, they will not function. You will just intellectualize, you will just think that you are feeling, and nothing will happen. That is why people come to me and say, "You tell us this technique is so significant, but nothing happens." They have tried, but they are missing a dimension -- the feeling dimension. So first you will have to develop that, and there are some methods which you can try.

You can do one thing. If you have a small child in your house, follow the child around for one hour every day. It will be better and more fulfilling than following a buddha. Allow the child to move on all fours, and you also move on all fours. Just follow the child moving on all fours, and you will feel for the first time a new life energy coming to you. You will again become a child. Look at the child and just follow. He will go to every corner; he will touch everything -- not only touch, he will taste everything, he will smell everything. Just follow, and do whatsoever he is doing.

You were also a child once; you have done this. The child is feeling. He is not intellectualizing, he is not thinking. He feels a smell, so he moves to that corner from where it is coming. He sees an apple, so he tastes it. Just taste like a child. Watch when he is eating the apple, look at him: he is totally absorbed in it. The whole world has dropped, the world is no more there -- only the apple. Even the apple is not and the child is not -- only the eating. Just follow a small child for one hour. That hour will be so enriching, you will become again a child.

Your defense mechanisms will drop, your armor will drop, and you will start looking at the world as a child looks -- from the feeling dimension. When you feel that now you can feel, not think, you will enjoy the texture of the carpet on which you are moving like a child, the pressure, the warmth -- and just by innocently following a child. Man can learn much from children, and sooner or later your real innocence will erupt. You were once a child and you know what it means to be one. You have simply forgotten.

The feeling center must start functioning; only then will these techniques be of any help. Otherwise you will go on thinking that energy is rising, but there will be no feeling. And if there is no feeling, imagination is impotent, futile. Only a feeling imagination will give you a result. You can do many other things and there is no need to make a specific effort to do them. When you go to sleep just feel your bed, feel the pillow -- the coldness. Just turn onto it; play with the pillow.

Close your eyes and listen to the noise of the air conditioner, or of the traffic or of the clock or anything. Just listen. Don't label, don't say anything. Don't use the mind. Just live in the sensation. In the morning, in the first moment of waking, when you feel that now sleep has gone, don't start thinking. For a few moments you can again be a child -- innocent, fresh. Don't start thinking. Don't think about what you are going to do and when you are starting for the office and what train you are going to catch. Don't start thinking. You will have enough time for all that nonsense. Just wait. For a few moments just listen to the noise. A bird is singing or the wind is passing through the trees or a child is crying or the milkman has come and is making sounds or the milk is being poured. With anything that happens, feel it. Be sensitive to it, open to it. Allow it to happen to you, and your sensitivity will grow.

When taking a shower, feel it all over the body -- every drop of water touching you. Feel the touch, the coldness, the warmth! Try this the whole day whenever you have the chance, and everywhere there is a chance -- everywhere! When just breathing, feel the breath -- its movement within and its going out -- just feel it! Just feel your own body. You have not felt it.

We are so afraid of our own bodies. No one touches his own body in a loving way. Have you ever given any love to your own body? The whole civilization is afraid of anyone touching himself because from childhood touching has been denied. It appears to be masturbatory to touch oneself in a loving way. But if you cannot touch yourself in a loving way your body will go dull and dead. It has gone so. Touch your eyes with your palms. Feel the touch, and your eyes will feel fresh and alive immediately. Feel your body all over. Feel your lover's body, your friend's body. Massage is good. Two friends can massage each other and feel each other's bodies. You will become more sensitive.

Create sensitivity and feeling. Then it will be easy for you to do these techniques, and then you will feel "livingness" arising in you. Don't leave this energy anywhere. Allow it to come to the SAHASRAR. Remember this: whenever you do this experiment, don't leave it in the middle. You have to complete it. Take care that no one disturbs you. If you leave this energy somewhere in the middle, it can be harmful. It has to be released. So bring it to the head and feel as if your head has become an opening.

In India we have pictured SAHASRAR as a lotus -- as a thousand- petalled lotus. `SAHASRAR' means a thousandpetalled -- an opening of a thousand petals. Just conceive of the lotus with a thousand petals, opened, and from every petal this light energy is moving into the cosmos. Again, this is a love act -- not with nature now, but with the ultimate. Again, it is an orgasm.

There are two types of orgasms: one is sexual and the other spiritual. The sexual comes from the lowest center and the spiritual from the highest center. From the highest you meet the highest and from the lowest you meet the lowest. Even while actually in the sex act, you can do this exercise; both the partners can do this. Move the energy upwards, and then the sex act becomes tantra SADHANA; it becomes meditation.

But don't leave the energy somewhere in the body at some center. Someone may come and you will have some business, or some phone call will come and you will have to stop. So do it at such a time that no one will disturb you, and don't leave the energy in any center. Otherwise that center where you leave the energy will become a wound, and you may create many mental illnesses. So be aware; otherwise don't do this. This method needs absolute privacy and no disturbance, and it must be done completely. The energy must come to the head, and it should be released from there.

You will have various experiences. When you will feel that the rays are starting to come up from the sex center, there will be erections or sensations at the sex center. Many, many people come to me very afraid and scared. They say that whenever they start meditation, when they start to move deep, there is an erection. They wonder, "What is this?" They are afraid because they think that in meditation sex should not be there. But you don't know life's functioning. It is a good sign. It shows that energy is now there alive. Now it needs movement. So don't become scared and don't think that something is wrong. It is a good sign. When you start meditation the sex center will become more sensitive, alive, excited, and in the beginning the excitement will be just the same as any sexual excitement -- but only in the beginning. As your meditation becomes deeper, you will feel energy flowing up. As the energy flows, the sex center becomes silent, less excited.

When the energy will really move to the SAHASRAR, there will be no sensation at the sex center. It will be totally still and silent. It will have become completely cool, and the warmth will have come to the head. And this is physical. When the sex center is excited, it becomes hot; you can feel that hotness, it is physical. When the energy will move, the sex center will become cooler and cooler and cooler, and the hotness will come to the head.

You will feel dizzy. When the energy comes to the head, you will feel dizzy. Sometimes you may even feel nausea because for the first time energy has come to the head and your head is not acquainted with it. It has to become tuned. So don't become afraid. Sometimes you may immediately become unconscious, but don't be afraid. This happens. If so much energy moves suddenly and explodes in the head, you may become unconscious. But that unconsciousness cannot remain for more than one hour. Within one hour the energy automatically falls back or is released. You cannot remain that way for more than one hour. I say one hour, but in fact it is exactly forty-eight minutes. It cannot be more than that. It never has been in millions of years of experiments, so don't be afraid. If you do become unconscious, it is okay. After that unconsciousness you will feel so fresh that it is as if you have been in sleep for the first time, in the deepest sleep.

Yoga calls it by a special name -- YOGA TANDRA: yogic sleep. It is very deep; you move to your deepest center. But don't be afraid. And if your head becomes hot, it is a good sign. Release the energy. Feel as if your head is opening like a lotus flower -- as if energy is being released into the cosmos. As the energy is released, you will feel a coldness coming to you. You have never felt the coldness that comes after this hotness. But do the technique completely; never do it incompletely.

The second technique:

"OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING."

This is a very similar method with a slight difference: "OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING." Between one center and another, as rays are coming, you can feel it like lightning -- just a jump of light. For some people the second will be more suitable and for others the first. This is why there is a modification. There are people who cannot imagine things gradually and there are people who cannot imagine in jumps. If you can think and imagine gradually, then the first method is good. But if you try the first method and you suddenly feel that from one center the rays jump directly to the second, then don't do the first method. The second is better for you. "FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING" -- like a spark of light jumping from one center to the next. And the second is more real because, really, light jumps. There is no gradual step-by-step growth. Light is a jump.

Look at the electric light. You think it is constant, but that is illusory. There are gaps, but the gaps are so small that you cannot detect them. Electricity comes in jumps. One jump, and then there is a gap of darkness. Another jump, and then there is a gap of darkness. But you never feel the gap because the jump is so fast. Otherwise, every moment there is darkness. Again there is a jump, light comes, then again darkness. Light jumps, it never travels. For those who can conceive of jumps, the second modification is best. "OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING." Just try it. If you feel good with the rays coming gradually, it is okay. If you don't feel good and rays are jumping, then forget about rays. Think of this as lightning in the sky, in the clouds, just jumping from one place to another.

For women the first technique will be easier and for men the second. The feminine mind can conceive of gradualness more easily and the male jumps more easily. The male mind is "jumpy"; it jumps from one thing to another. There is a subtle uneasiness in the male mind. The female mind has a gradual process, it is not jumpy. That is why female and male logic are very different. A man goes on jumping from one thing to another, and for women this is inconceivable. For them there must be growth -- gradual growth. But choose. Try these, and choose whichever you feel is good for you.

Two or three things more about this method. With lightning you may feel such hotness that it may seem unbearable. If you feel that, don't try it. Lightning can give you much heat. If you feel this, that it is unbearable, then don't try this. Then with the first method, if you are at ease, then it is good. Otherwise with uneasiness don't try it. Sometimes the explosion can be so great that you may become afraid of it, and once afraid you will never be able to do it again. Then fear enters.

So one has to be aware always not to become afraid of anything. If you feel that fear will come and it is too much for you, don't try it. Then the first method with light rays is best. If you feel that even with light rays too much hotness is coming to you -- and it depends because people differ -- then conceive of the rays as cool, imagine them as cool. Then instead of feeling warmth you will feel a coldness with everything. That too will be effective. So you can decide; try and decide. Remember, with this technique, and with others also, if you feel very uneasy or anything unbearable, don't do it. There are other methods, and this one may not be for you. With unnecessary disturbance inside, you will create more problems than you will solve.

In India, because of this, we have developed a particular yoga which we call SAHAJ YOGA. SAHAJ means spontaneous, easy, natural. Always remember SAHAJ. If you feel any technique spontaneously coming to you, if you feel more affinity with it, if you feel better with it -- more healthy, more alive, more at home -- then that is the method for you. Move with it; you can trust it. Don't create unnecessary problems. And the inner mechanism is very complex. If you do something which is too much for you, you may destroy many things. So it is better to move with something which feels harmonious to you.

The third technique:

"FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE."

This again is concerned with light: "FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE." If you have taken any drugs such as LSD or some such thing, the whole world around you becomes a light phenomenon of colors that are translucent, alive. This is not because of LSD. The world is such, but your eyes have become dull. The LSD is not creating a colorful world around you; the world is already colorful, nothing is wrong with the world. It is a rainbow of colors -- a mystery of colors and translucent light. But your eyes have become dull. That is why you can never feel it in such colorfulness.

LSD is just clearing your eyes. It is not making the world colorful; it is just helping your dullness to go chemically, and then the whole world erupts before you. It is a new thing. Even an ordinary chair becomes a marvelous phenomenon. Just a shoe on the floor takes on new colors, a new youth. Ordinary traffic noise becomes musical. Trees you have always seen but never looked at are born anew though you have always passed them by and you know you have seen them. Every leaf of a tree is a miracle.

And this is how reality is. It is not LSD which is creating this reality. LSD is just destroying your dullness, your insensitivity, and you look at the world as one should really look. But LSD can give you only a glimpse, and if you depend on it, sooner or later even LSD will not be able to remove your dullness. Then you will need greater doses, and then you will become immune to greater doses. And, really, if you then leave LSD or other drugs, the world will be duller than it has ever been. Then you will become even more insensitive.

Just a few days ago a girl came to see me. She said she could not feel any orgasm in the love act. She has tried many men, but she cannot feel any orgasm. The peak never comes, and she has become frustrated. So I asked her to tell me her whole love and sex life -- the whole story. Then I discovered that she had been using an electric vibrator. Now in the West they are using these. Once you use an electric vibrator as a male penis, then no male can satisfy you because an electric vibrator is, after all, an electric vibrator. Then your vagina and clitoris will go dead, dull, and then orgasm will become impossible. Then there won't be any possibility of any orgasm. You will now need a more powerful electric vibrator, and this can go to such an extreme that your total sexual mechanism will become stony. And this is happening to our every sense. If you use any outer device, you will become dull.

LSD will make you dull ultimately because with it you are not growing. If YOU grow, then it is a different process. Then you become more sensitive, and as you become more sensitive the world becomes different. Now you can sense many things you never sensed before because you were not sensitive.

This technique is based on inner sensitivity. First grow in sensitivity. Just close your doors, make the room dark and light a small candle. Sit near the candle with a very loving attitude -- rather, with a prayerful attitude. Just pray to the candle, "Reveal yourself to me." Take a bath, throw cold water on your eyes, then sit in a very prayerful mood before the candle. Look at it and forget everything else. Just look at the small candle -- the flame and the candle. Go on looking at it. After five minutes you will feel that many things are changing in the candle. They are not changing in the candle, remember; your eyes are changing.

With a loving attitude, with the whole world closed out, with total concentration, with a feeling heart, just go on looking at the candle and the flame. Then you will discover new colors around the flame, new shades which you were never aware were there. They are there; the whole rainbow is there. Wherever light is, the rainbow is there because light is all color. You need a subtle sensitivity. Just feel it and go on looking at it. Even if tears start flowing, go on looking at it. Those tears will help your eyes to be more fresh.

Sometimes you may feel that the flame, the candle, has become mysterious. It is not the ordinary candle you brought with you; it has taken on a new glamor, a subtle divineness has come into it. Go on doing this. You can also do this with many other things.

One of my friends was telling me that a group of five or six persons had been experimenting with rocks. I had told them how to experiment, and then they reported to me. They were experimenting with rocks on the bank of a lonely river. They were trying to feel them with their hands, with their faces, touching the rocks with their tongues, smelling the rocks. In every way possible they were feeling the rocks -- just ordinary rocks which they found on the bank.

They tried this for a whole hour, everyone with a rock. And then, my friend reported, there was a miracle. Everyone said, "Could I keep this rock? I have fallen in love with it!" An ordinary rock! If you have a sympathetic relationship with it, you will fall in love. And if you don't have that sensitivity, then even with a very beautiful person you are with a rock; you cannot fall in love.

Sensitivity must grow. Your every sense must become more alive. Then you can experiment with this technique. "FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE." Everywhere light is -- in many, many shapes, forms, light is happening everywhere. Look at it! And everywhere light is because the whole phenomenon is based on the foundation of light. Look at a leaf or a flower or a rock, and sooner or later you will feel rays coming out of it. Just wait patiently. Don't be in a hurry because nothing is revealed when you are in a hurry. In a hurry you are dull. Wait silently with anything, and you will discover a new phenomenon which was always there, but of which you were not alert -- not aware of it.

"FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE," and your mind will become completely silent as you feel the presence of the ever-living existence. You will be just a part in it, just a note in the great symphony. No burden, no tension... the drop has fallen into the ocean. But great imagination will be needed in the beginning, and if you are also trying with other sensitivity training it will be helpful.

You can try many ways. Just take someone's hand into your hand. Close your eyes and feel the life in the other. Feel it, and allow it to move towards you. Feel your own life and allow it to move towards the other. Sit near a tree and touch the bark of the tree. Close your eyes and feel the life arising in the tree, and you change immediately.

I have heard about one experiment. A doctor was experimenting with people to see whether their feelings changed their biochemistry. Now he has reported that feeling changes biochemistry immediately. He experimented with a group of twelve persons. He collected their urine before the experiment, and the urine was ordinary, normal.

Each person was put under a different stress. One was shown a film of horror, anger, violence, cruelty -- it was just a film -- for thirty minutes he was shown a film of horror. Of course, with the film his emotions changed. He felt stress. To another a very joyful film was shown. He felt happy. And so on went the experiment for twelve persons. Then their urine was taken again and the urine analysis showed that everyone's urine was different now. The chemicals had changed in the body. The person who felt horror was ill now; the person who felt hope, happiness, joy, was healthy now. His urine was different, the chemicals of the body were different.

You are not aware of what you are doing with yourself. When you go to see a murder film, you don't know what you are doing. You are changing your body chemistry. If you are reading a detective novel, you don't know what you are doing. You are killing yourself. You will become excited, you will become afraid, a tension will come to you. That is how you enjoy the detective novel. The more tense you become, the more you enjoy it. The more the suspense over what is going to happen, the more you get excited -- and you are changing your body chemistry.

All these techniques also change your body chemistry. If you feel the whole world as filled with life, light, then you are changing your body chemistry. And this is a chain reaction. When your body chemistry changes, you can look at the world and it will look more alive. And if it looks more alive, your body chemistry will change again, and then it becomes a chain.

If this method is done for three months, you will be living in a different world because you will be different now.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2

Chapter #8

Chapter title: The potentiality of the seed

1 April 1973 pm in Bombay, India

Archive code: 7304015

ShortTitle: VBT208

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 80 mins

The first question:

Question 1

"LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT A KRISHNA, A CHRIST, A BUDDHA, THEY ARE THE CLIMAX OF HUMAN POSSIBILITY AND GROWTH, AND THEN YOU SAID THAT YOGIC AND TANTRIC PSYCHOLOGY PUT NO IDEAL BEFORE MAN AND THAT TO HAVE AN IDEAL IS A MISTAKE ACCORDING TO TANTRA. IN THIS REFERENCE PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN INSPIRATION AND AN IDEAL. WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INSPIRATION IN A SEEKER'S LIFE? PLEASE TELL WHETHER EVEN BEING INSPIRED BY A GREAT MAN IS A MISTAKE ON THE PATH OF A MEDITATOR."

A Buddha, a Krishna or a Christ, they are not ideals for YOU; you are not to follow them. If you follow them you will miss them, and your own buddhahood will never be achieved. Buddhahood is the ideal, not Buddha. Christhood is the ideal, not Jesus. Buddhahood is different from Gautam Buddha; christhood is different from Jesus. Jesus is only one of the christs. You can become a christ, but you can never become a Jesus. You can become a buddha, but you can never become Gautam. Gautam became a buddha and YOU can become a buddha. Buddhahood is a quality, it is an experience! Of course, when Gautam became a buddha, Gautam had his own individuality. You have your own individuality. When you will become a buddha, these two buddhas will not be the same. The inner most experience will be the same, but the expression will be different -- absolutely different. No comparison is possible. Only at the innermost core will you be the same.

Why? Because at the innermost core there is no individuality. The individual is on the periphery. The deeper you move, the more the individual dissolves. At the innermost core you are as if no one. At the innermost core you are just a deep void, a nothingness -- a SHUNYA, a zero. And because of this nothingness there is no difference, because two nothings cannot be different. But two somethings are bound to be different. Two "somethings" can never be the same and two "nothings" can never be different. When one becomes just absolutely nothing, a zero point, that is similar in a Jesus, in a Krishna, in a Buddha. When you will reach to the ultimate, you will reach to this SHUNYA -- this nothingness.

But your personality, your expression of that ecstasy, is bound to be different. A Meera will dance; a Buddha can never dance. It is impossible to conceive of Buddha dancing, it looks absurd. But Meera sitting under a bodhi tree like a Buddha also looks absurd. She will lose everything, she will not be a Meera at all; she will be imitation. The real Meera can only be conceived of as dancing in ecstasy in her own love madness. That is her expression. The innermost core is the same. With Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree and Meera dancing in mad ecstasy, the innermost core is the same. In the dancing Meera and in the silently sitting Buddha who is just like a statue, the innermost core is the same but the periphery is different. The dancing and the silent sitting are just on the periphery. If you move within Meera, as you go deeper the dance will cease, the Meera will cease. If you go deep into Buddha, the sitting will cease, the Buddha will cease as an individual.

You can become a buddha, but you can never become a Gautam buddha: that is what is meant. Don't make them your ideals; otherwise you will start imitating them. And what can you do if you imitate? You can force something from without, but that will be a fake phenomenon. You will become pseudo -- just painted. You will look Buddha-like -- more than Buddha. You can look, but that will be just a look, an appearance; deep down you will remain the same -- and this will create a duality, a conflict, an inner anguish, and you will be in suffering.

You can be in bliss only where you are authentically yourself. You can never feel any happiness when you are acting as someone else. So remember tantra's message: YOU are the ideal. You are not to imitate anyone; you are to discover yourself. Looking at a buddha, there is no need to imitate him. When you are looking at a buddha, the possibility hits deep in you that something of the beyond can happen. Buddha is just a symbol that something has happened to this man -- and if it can happen to this man, it can happen to EVERY man. Then the whole possibility of humanity is revealed.

In a Jesus, in a Meera, in Chaitanya, just a possibility is revealed, the future is revealed. You need not be whatsoever you are. Something more is possible. So Buddha is just a symbol of the future. Don't imitate him; rather, let his life, his being, the phenomenon that is happening, become a new thirst in you, that is all. You must not be content with yourself as you are right now. Let Buddha become a discontent in you, a thirst to transcend, to go beyond, to move into the unknown. When you reach to the peak of your own being, you will know what happened to Buddha under the bodhi tree or what happened to Jesus on the cross or what happened to Meera when she was dancing in the streets. You will know, but your expression will be your own. You are not going to be a Meera or a Buddha or a Jesus. You are going to be yourself, and you have never been before. You are unique.

So nothing can be said; you are not predictable. No one can say what will happen, how you will manifest it. Whether you will sing, dance, paint or remain silent no one can say. And it is good that nothing can be said, nothing can be predicted. That is the beauty. If it is predictable that you will be like this or that, then you will become a mechanical thing.

Predictions are possible only about mechanical devices. Human consciousness is unpredictable; that is its freedom. So when tantra says don't follow ideals, it doesn't mean to deny Buddha. No, it is not a denial. Really, it is how you can find your own buddhahood. Following another, you will miss it. Following your own path, you can gain it, you can achieve it.

Someone came to a Zen master, Bokuju. Bokuju's master was very famous, well known, a very great man, so someone asked "Are you really following your master?"

Bokuju said, "Yes, I am following him."

But the man who asked the question was disturbed because it was well known all over the country that Bokuju was not following his master at all. So the man said, "Are you trying to deceive me? Everyone knows and you are also aware that you are not following your master at all, and still you say that you are following. What do you mean?"

Bokuju said, "I am following my master -- because my master never followed his master. This is what I have learned from him. He was himself!"

This is how a Buddha, a Jesus is to be followed. This is how! They are unique! If you are really following them, YOU must be unique.

Buddha never followed anyone, and he achieved enlightenment only in that moment when he had completely stopped following. When he became himself, when he left all paths, all teachings, all doctrines, then he could achieve. If you follow him, you are not following him. It is not paradoxical, it only looks so. If you follow him as a dead routine, if you imitate him, you are not following him. He never followed anyone, and only then could he become the peak. Understand him, don't follow him; and then a subtle following will happen. But that is inner -- not an imitation.

In Nietzsche's great work THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA, the last message of Zarathustra to his disciple is "Beware of me. Now I have told everything that was to be told to you. Now beware of me. Don't follow me; just forget me. Leave me and go away."

This is the last message of all the great masters. No great master would like to make you a puppet because then he is killing you. He is a murderer then. He will help you to be yourself. And if you cannot be yourself in the intimacy and communication with your master, then where will you be yourself?

The master means an opportunity for you to be yourself. Only small minds, narrow minds who pretend to be masters and who are not masters, will try to impose themselves on you. Great masters will help you to grow on your own path, and great masters will create every barrier so that you don't become a victim of following. They will create every barrier! They will not allow it because your tendency will be to follow. It is easy, imitation is easy; to be authentic is arduous. And when you imitate you don't feel responsible for it, the master is responsible. No great master has ever allowed anyone to imitate. He will create every hindrance so that you cannot imitate him. He will throw you by every means to yourself.

I am reminded of one Chinese saint who was celebrating his master's enlightenment day. Many followers had come. They said, "But we never heard that this man was your master. We never knew that you belonged to this man." That old man was dead. They said, "Only today did we come to hear and know that you are celebrating your master's enlightenment day. This man was your master? But how? We never saw you with him!"

The saint replied, "I had been with him, but he had refused. He had refused to become my master, and because of his refusal I could become myself. Now, whatsoever I am is because of his refusal. I am his disciple. He could have accepted me; then I would have thrown all responsibility on his shoulders. But he refused, and he was the last man. There was no comparison. When he refused, I could not go to anyone else because he was the only shelter. If he had refused, then there was no meaning, no purpose in going anywhere. I left going to anyone. He was the last. If he would have accepted me, I would have forgotten myself. But he refused, and he refused very rudely. The refusal became a shock and a challenge, and I decided that now I would not go to anyone. If this man had refused, then there was no one worth going to. Then I started working on my own, and only then did I realize by and by why he had refused. He had thrown me to myself, and only then did I know that he had accepted me. Otherwise why should he refuse?"

This looks contradictory, but this is how the deeper dynamism of consciousness works. Masters are mysterious. You cannot judge them; you cannot be sure what they are doing unless the whole thing happens. Then only retrospectively will you be able to know what they were doing. Now it is impossible. On the middle path you cannot judge what is happening, what is being done. But one thing is certain: imitation cannot be allowed.

Inspiration is a different thing. Through inspiration you start on the journey, not on any effort of copying. You move on your own path. Inspiration is just a challenge. A thirst arises, and then you move.

Tantra says be inspired, but don't become imitators. Always remember that you are your own goal. No one else can be, and unless you achieve that point from where you can say, "I have achieved my destiny and now I am fulfilled," don't stop. Go on transcending, go on being in discontent, go on moving. And if you don't make any ideal, then you can be enriched by everyone. The moment you become obsessed with an ideal, you are closed. If you become obsessed with Buddha, then Jesus is not for you, then how can Mohammed be for you? Then you are obsessed with an ideal; then you are trying to copy it. Then all the contrary ones, all the different ones are inimical in your mind. How can a follower of Mahavira conceive of being open to Mohammed? It is impossible. He is totally different. Not only different, they are contraries. They look like polar opposites. If you put both in your mind you will be in deep conflict, so you cannot put both.

That is why followers are always enemies of others' followers. They create enmity in the world. A Hindu cannot conceive that Mohammed can be enlightened; a Mohammedan cannot conceive that Mahavira can be enlightened; a follower of Krishna cannot conceive that Mahavira can be enlightened, that Jesus can be enlightened. Jesus looks so sad and Krishna looks so blissful. Krishna's bliss and Jesus' sadness are total opposite poles. Jesus' followers cannot conceive of Krishna being enlightened. So much misery in the world and he is playing on his flute? It looks to be too selfish. The whole world is suffering, and he goes on dancing with his GOPIS?

The followers of Jesus will think this to be profane -- but I say "followers." A Jesus and a Buddha and a Krishna can exist together without any problem, without any conflict. Rather, they will enjoy each other very much -- but not the followers. Why? Why is this so? This will be so because there is a deep psychological reason. The follower is not concerned with Mohammed or Mahavira; he is concerned with himself. If he thinks both are good, he will be in difficulty. Then whom to follow and what to do? Mohammed is with his sword in his hand and Mahavira says that even to kill an insect means that for lives you will suffer. Mohammed is with his sword, so what to do? Mohammed goes to war, and Mahavira escapes from life completely. He escapes so much that he is afraid even to breathe, because while you breathe, many lives -- many, many lives -- are killed through it. He is afraid to breathe and Mohammed goes to war.

How can a follower of either make accommodations for the opposite? Then his heart will be divided and he will be in constant conflict. To avoid this, he says that everyone else is wrong and only this is right. But this is his problem. This is created because he is trying to imitate. There is no need. If you are not an imitator, then you can taste the water of many rivers and many wells, and there is no problem if the taste differs. Rather, it is beautiful. You are enriched by this. Then you are open to Mohammed and Mahavira and Christ and Zarathustra and everyone. They all inspire you towards yourself. They are not ideals; they all help you to be yourself. They are not pointing towards themselves, they are pointing towards you in different ways, in different methods. They are pointing to one goal, and that is YOU

Laura Huxley has written a book. The name of the book is YOU ARE NOT THE TARGET. But I tell you, you ARE the target of all these -- of Buddha, of Mahavira, of Krishna, of Christ. They all indicate towards you. You are the target, you are the goal. Through you life is trying, striving, to achieve a unique peak. Be happy about it! Be grateful about it! Life is trying to achieve a unique goal through you, and that goal can be achieved only through you. No one else can achieve it. You are meant for it, you are destined for it. So don't waste time following others. But that doesn't mean not to get inspired. Really, if you are not following anyone you can become inspired easily. If you are following, you have become dead. You will not get inspired. Inspiration is an openness; following is being closed.

The second question:

Question 2

"YOU SPOKE OF WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY BEING ROOTED IN FREUDIAN CONCEPTS OF PATHOLOGY AND OF EASTERN PSYCHOLOGY USING THE SUPERNORMAL AS THE BASE FROM WHICH TO EVALUATE A MAN. BUT AS I LOOK AROUND ME IN THE MODERN WORLD, I SEE THAT MOST PEOPLE FIT FREUD'S CATEGORIES OF PATHOLOGY. ONE IN A MILLION FITS THE CATEGORY OF SUPERNORMAL AND A SMALL NUMBER ACTUALLY FIT THE SOCIETAL IDEAL OF NORMAL. WHY IS THERE SO MUCH PATHOLOGY NOWADAYS AND WHAT WOULD YOU CONSIDER TO BE THE DEFINITION OF NORMAL?"

Many things will have to be understood. It is not so -- it is not that very few are there who achieve their peaks. Many are there, but you don't have the eyes to see them. Whenever you look around you, you see that which you can see. How can you see that which you cannot see? Your capacity to see determines many things. You hear that which you can hear, not that which is there. If a buddha passes, you may not be able to recognize. And you really were there when Buddha passed, but you missed him. You were there! You were there when Jesus was alive, but you crucified him. It is difficult to see because you see in your own ways. You have concepts, you have categories, you have attitudes. Through them you look at a Buddha and a Jesus.

Jesus looked like a criminal to you. When Jesus was crucified he was crucified with two other criminals; on each side there was a thief. Three persons were crucified together, and Jesus was just between two thieves. Why? He was considered to be an immoral criminal somehow and you were there to judge. Even if Jesus comes right now, you will judge again in the same way because your judgment, your criteria, have not changed.

Jesus lived and stayed with anyone and everyone. He stayed in a prostitute's house, and the whole village went against him. But his values were different. The prostitute came, washed his feet with her tears and said, "I am guilty. I am a sinner and you are my only hope. If you come to my home, I will be relieved of my guilt. I will become alive again. If Jesus could come to my house, then I am accepted."

So Jesus went. He stayed there, but the whole town went against him. What type of man is he, staying with a prostitute? But for Jesus love is the value, and no one has given such a loving invitation ever. He couldn't say no. And if Jesus had said no, he could not have been an enlightened man. Then he would have just been seeking after social respectability. He was NOT seeking after respectability.

In another village, the whole town came to Jesus with a woman who had sinned. In the Old Testament it is written that if someone sins she should be stoned to death. It is not that HE should be, it is that SHE should be stoned to death, because only women sin; man never sins -- because all these scriptures are written by men. And this was a great problem, so they asked Jesus about it. They were playing a trick, because if Jesus would have said, "No, don't kill this woman, don't be the judges," then they could say, "You are against the scriptures." And if Jesus would have said, "Yes, kill this woman, stone her to death," then they would say, "Where has gone your message `Love your enemy' and where has gone your message `Judge ye not that ye should be not judged'?"

So they were playing a trick. They were creating a dilemma -- a logical dilemma. Whatsoever Jesus would have said, he would be trapped. But you cannot trap an enlightened man, it is impossible. It is impossible, and the more you try to trap him you will get trapped with him. So Jesus said, "The scripture is absolutely correct. But come forwards only those who have never sinned. Take these stones in your hands and murder this woman, but only those who have never sinned." The crowd started disappearing. Those who were standing in front went back -- because who will stone this woman?

But they became enemies of Jesus. And when I say "they," I mean you. You have always been here. You cannot recognize, you cannot see. You are blind! That is why you always feel that the world is bad and there is no enlightenment -- that everyone is pathological. It is not so, but you can only see pathology because you are pathological. You can understand illness because you are ill. You cannot understand health because you have never been healthy. The language of health simply escapes you.

I have heard about one Jewish mystic, Baal Shem. Someone came and asked Baal Shem, "Which is more significant, which is more valuable -- wealth or wisdom?"

The man was asking the question for a reason, so Baal Shem laughed and said, "Of course, wisdom is more significant, more valuable."

Then the man said, "Then, Baal Shem, the second question: I always see you, the wise man, waiting on the wealthy. You always go to rich people's houses. I have never seen any wealthy man waiting on you, the wise one, and you say that wisdom is more valuable than wealth. Then explain this phenomenon to me."

Baal Shem laughed and said, "Yes, wise men go to the wealthy ones because they are wise and they know the value of wealth, and the wealthy ones are just wealthy -- simply wealthy and nothing else -- and they cannot understand the value of wisdom. Of course, I go -- because I understand the value of wealth. And those poor idiots? They are just wealthy -- nothing else. They cannot understand the value of wisdom, so they never come to me."

If you see a saint going to a palace, you will say, "Okay! This man is not the saint." It is finished because you look through your own eyes. Wealth has meaning for you. You can only follow a saint who renounces wealth because you are wealth obsessed. You look through you, and whatsoever you say is more about you than about anyone else. It is always about you; you are the reference. When you say that Buddha is not enlightened, you don't mean that. You simply mean, "For me he does not look enlightened."

But who are you? And does his enlightenment depend in any way on your attitude, your approach, your standpoint? You have fixed categories of thought and you go on using them. To you pathology is recognizable, but enlightenment is not. And you cannot understand that which is higher than you -- remember. You can only understand that which is lower than you or at the most on the same level. You cannot understand the higher, that is impossible. To understand the higher you will have to move higher. You can understand the lower.

Look at it in this way: a madman cannot understand you. It is impossible for a madman to understand you; he looks through his madness. But you can understand a madman. He is lower than you. The normal human being can understand abnormals who have gone below, pathological, but he cannot understand higher ones. Even a Freud is afraid.

Jung has written in his memoirs that once it happened to him that he wanted to analyze Freud's dreams. He was one of Freud's greatest disciples. They were traveling to the United States on a ship, so for many days they were together. One day Jung gathered courage. He was the most intimate disciple in those days, and he asked Freud, "I would like to analyze your dreams, so just tell me any dream. For many, many days we will be together, so I will analyze it."

What did Freud say? Freud said, "What do you mean? If you analyze my dreams I will lose my authority. I cannot tell you my dreams."He was so afraid because in his dreams the same pathology, the same illnesses will be revealed as he is revealing in others' dreams. He said, "I cannot lose my authority. I cannot tell you about my dreams."

Freud, the greatest psychologist of this age, is prone to all the illnesses that anyone else is. When Jung said that "I am going to leave you," he fell from his chair and became unconscious. He swooned. For hours he was unconscious because he was so shocked just by the idea of a disciple leaving him, just by a disciple saying, "I am going to leave you."

If you say to a buddha, "I am going to leave you," can you conceive of him falling down and becoming unconscious? Even with all of the ten thousand disciples leaving him, he will be happy -- so happy that he will feel it will be good if you go. Why? Your psychologists are also like you. They are not from above. They have the same problems, so one psychologist goes to another psychologist to be analyzed. It is not like one doctor going to another doctor to be treated. For doctors it is okay; they can be forgiven. But for psychologists it seems absurd. One psychologist going to another to be analyzed? What does it mean? He is an ordinary man. Psychology is just a profession.

Buddha is not in any profession, he is not an ordinary man. He has awakened to a new reality; he has reached to a new state of being. Now he can look from a peak. He can understand you, but you cannot understand him. And howsoever he tries, it is really impossible to make you understand him. You will go on misunderstanding him unless you are caught not by his words, but by his personality -- unless you are caught by his magnetism, not by his words. Unless you become just like an iron piece and you are caught by his magnetism, you will not be able to understand him; you will misunderstand. That is why you cannot see. But the world always has its enlightened persons. Pathology is recognized because we are pathological, so we can see and understand it.

Secondly, even if there is only one -- only a single human being who has ever achieved enlightenment throughout human history, even if there is only one buddha, he is enough to show you the possibility. If it can happen to one human being, why can it not happen to you? If one seed can become a flower, then every seed has the potentiality to become a flower. You may be just a seed, but now you know your future. Now you are aware that much more is possible.

But with the human mind the reverse is happening. It has been happening always. You see a cocoon and then it breaks, and then the butterfly moves. With man it seems to be quite the reverse. Man is born as the butterfly, and then he enters the cocoon. Every child is more buddha-like than he will ever be again. Look at a child, look at the eyes. They are more buddha-like than any adult's eyes. The way he sits, the way he moves -- the grace, the beauty, the living in the moment, even his anger is beautiful. It is so total, and whenever anything is total it is beautiful.

Look at a child in anger jumping and screaming. Just look! Don't be concerned with yourself, that he is disturbing you. Just look at the phenomenon. The anger is beautiful -- because the child is so totally in it that nothing is left behind. He IS the anger, and he is so authentic that nothing is being suppressed. He is not withholding, he has moved and become anger. Look at the child when he loves, when he welcomes you, when he comes near to you: he is like a buddha. But soon you will help him, the society will help him to enter the cocoon, and then he will die in it.

From the cradle we enter into the grave immediately. That is why so much pathology is there -- because no one is allowed to be natural. The pathology is forced. You are caged, imprisoned in a dead pattern, and then your spontaneous being suffers and you cannot come out of it. That is why so much pathology is there. This pathology is man-created -- and the more man becomes civilized, the more pathological he becomes. So now this is a criterion: if in your country there are less madmen, know well that you are less civilized. If in your country the madmen are growing, and everyone is going insane and everyone is going to the psychoanalyst, know well you are the most civilized country in the world.

When any country achieves the optimum, everyone will have become mad. Civilization drives you mad because it is not allowing you to be your natural self. Everything is suppressed, and with suppression everything is disturbed. You cannot even breathe naturally; anything else is out of the question. Even your breath is unnatural. You cannot breathe deeply because the society does not allow you deep breathing.

Breathe deeply, because if you take deep breaths you cannot suppress your instincts. If you want to suppress anything, you can observe the changes in breathing in yourself. If you are angry and you want to suppress it, what will you do? Immediately you will stop breathing. With anger breathing goes deep, because anger will need a hot flow of blood in you, anger will need more oxygen. Anger will need some chemical changes within you, and through breathing those changes happen. So whenever you feel angry and you want to repress it, you will not be able to breathe naturally. You will take shallow breaths.

Look at a child and tell him not to do something. Immediately his breathing will be shallow. Then he will not be able to breathe deeply, because if he takes deep breaths he cannot follow your commands. Then he will do whatsoever he likes to do. So no one is even taking deep breaths. If you take deep breaths, your sex center is massaged from within and the society is against this. Take slow breaths, shallow breaths. Don't go deep, then the sex center is not hit!

Really, civilized man has become incapable of deep sexual orgasm because he cannot take deep breaths. In the love act your breathing must be so deep that your whole body becomes involved. Otherwise you will not achieve orgasm, and then you will feel frustrated. So many people come to me and they say, "There is no pleasure in sex. We go on doing it like a mechanical act, and energy is only lost. After it we feel frustrated, depressed." The reason is not sex, the reason is only that they are not getting into it totally. It becomes local, so only semen is released. Then they feel weak, and nothing is gained through it.

If the whole body is involved like an animal, if every cell of the body is excited and starts shaking, if the whole body becomes like an electric force and feeling moves, if you become egoless, headless, and thinking is not there, if you are the body moving in a rhythm, vibrating in a rhythm, then you will have a deep pleasure out of it. You will feel relaxed -- in a certain sense, fulfilled.

But this cannot happen because you cannot take deep breaths. You are so afraid... Look at the body. The body has two poles. One pole is for intake -- your head is for intake. The upper pole is for intake of food, air, impressions, thoughts, anything. You take in from the upper part; this is one pole. The lower body is for release. It is not for intake, you cannot take anything in from the lower. The lower body is to release, to relax. You take from the upper, and from the lower you release it.

But the civilized man only takes in -- never releases. That creates pathology. You go mad. It is just like eating food and then continuing to store it, never defecating. You will go mad. The other pole has to be used. If someone is a miser, automatically he becomes constipated. Look at any miser: he will be suffering from constipation. Miserliness is a sort of spiritual constipation. So go on hoarding, don't leave anything.

Those who are against sex without knowing what they are doing are misers. They go on taking in food, but they will not release the sex energy. Then they will go mad. There is no need to release it only from the sex center. There is another possibility -- to release it from SAHASRAR, the highest center at the top of the head. That is what tantra teaches. But it must be released, you cannot hoard it. Nothing can be hoarded in the world. The world is a movement, it is a river. Take in and give out. If you take in and never give out, you will become mad.

That is what is happening: everyone is taking and no one is giving. You become afraid when a moment of giving comes. You want just to take -- even with love. You want that someone should love you. The basic need is that you should love someone, then you will be released. If someone loves you that will not help, because then you are taking in again. Both of these poles must be balanced; then health happens. And that is what I call a normal being. A normal being is one whose taking in and giving out is parallel, balanced. He is normal.

I call that man abnormal whose taking in is too much and whose giving out is unbalanced. He is not giving out at all. Even if he gives sometimes, it has to be forced. It is not his own. You can snatch something from him, you can force him to give, but he will not give. His giving out is just like an enema, it is not natural. You can force, so he will defecate. But HE is not defecating, he is not ready. It is abnormal to just go on hoarding everything. Then he will go mad, because the whole system is disturbed. This is abnormal, and supernormal is the one who gives and never takes in.

These are three things -- the abnormal one who takes in and never gives out, the normal one whose give and take are balanced, and the supernormal who never takes in and only gives. A buddha is a giver; a madman is a taker. He is at the opposite pole of a buddha. If both poles are balanced, you are a normal man. At least be normal, because if you cannot be normal you will fall down and you will become abnormal.

That is why DANA -- giving -- is so much emphasized in all religions. Give! Whatsoever it is, give, and don't think in terms of taking. Then you will become supernormal. But that is a very far-off thing. First be normal, be balanced. Whatsoever you take in, give it back to the world. You just be the passage. Don't hoard. Then you will never become mad, you will never be neurotic, schizophrenic, psychotic or whatsoever you may call it.

My definition of a normal man is one who is balanced -- absolutely balanced. Nothing is retained. He takes the breath in and then he allows it to move out. The incoming breath and the outgoing breath are just the same -- balanced. Try to be balanced, and always remember that you must give back that which you have received. You will be alive, healthy, silent, peaceful, happy. A deep rhythm will happen to you, and this rhythm happens through a balance of give and take.

But we go on thinking in terms of taking in more and more. Whatsoever you take in without giving it out again will create disturbance, tension, suffering. You will become a hell. Before you take something in, always think to release something out. Have you observed that you always emphasize the breath that goes in? You never emphasize the breath that goes out. You take the breath in, and then the body throws the breath out. Reverse it: you will be more normal. Emphasize the outgoing breath. Throw the breath out as much as you can, and let the body take in.

When you take in and you have not released, your lungs become filled with carbon dioxide. Then you go on taking in, and you never release the entire lungs. You go on forcing the carbon dioxide inwards. Then your breathing becomes shallow, and the entire lungs are filled with carbon dioxide. First throw it out, and forget about taking in. The body will take care of that itself. The body has its own wisdom, and it is more wise than you. Throw the breath out and forget taking in. Don't be afraid, you are not going to die. The body will take in, and it will take in as much as is needed. As much as you have thrown out it will take in, and the balance will be there. If you take in, then you will disturb the balance because the hoarding mind is there.

I have stayed in many, many houses and I see that people have collected so many things that they cannot live, there is no space to live -- and they go on hoarding. They go on hoarding, and they think that someday the things will be needed. Whatsoever is not needed, don't hoard it. And if something is needed more by someone else than you, it is better to give it. Be a giver, and you will never be pathological. All the old civilizations were based on DANA -- on giving, and this modern civilization is based on hoarding. That is why more people are going abnormal, neurotic. Everyone is asking from where to get, and no one is asking where to go and give, to whom to give.

The last question:

Question 3

"DAILY IN EACH OF YOUR TALKS, YOU SPEAK OF AWARENESS -- TOTAL AWARENESS, UNINTERRUPTED AWARENESS, ETCETERA. YOU ALSO SAID THAT IT CANNOT BE ACHIEVED BY THE MIND, BY REPEATING A THOUGHT -- THAT IT IS TO BE FELT. BUT HOW CAN ONE FEEL UNLESS ONE ACHIEVES IT? WHAT IS THAT FEELING WHICH IS THE PRECURSOR OF ACHIEVEMENT? HOW TO IMAGINE OR PROJECT THAT WHICH HAS NOT YET HAPPENED? DOES THAT TOO HAPPEN BY EXCLUDING MIND? WHAT IS THE WHOLE PROCESS? HOW CAN IT BE MADE FEASIBLE?"

When I say that awareness cannot be attained by mind, I mean that you cannot attain it by thinking about it. You can go on thinking about and about, but you will be moving in a circle. When I say that it cannot be attained by the mind, I mean that it cannot be attained by thinking. You have to practice it, you have to DO it. It can be attained only by doing, not by thinking; that is the first thing. So don't go on thinking about what awareness is, how to achieve it or what will be the result. Don't go on thinking; start doing it.

When walking on the street, walk with awareness. It is difficult and you go on forgetting, but don't be afraid. Whenever you remember again, be alert. Take every step with full alertness, knowingly, remaining with the step, not allowing the mind to move somewhere else. While eating, eat; chew with awareness. Whatsoever you are doing, don't do it mechanically -- and that is different. And when I say that it can be felt only, the meaning is this: for example, I can raise my hand mechanically, but then I can also raise my hand with full alertness. My mind is conscious that my hand is being raised. Do it, try it -- once mechanically and then with alertness. You will feel the change. The quality changes immediately.

Walk with alertness, and you walk differently; a different grace comes to your walking. You move more slowly, more beautifully. If you walk mechanically -- only because you know how to walk and there is no need to be alert, then the walking is ugly, there is no grace in it. Do whatsoever you are doing with alertness, and feel the difference. When I say "feel," I mean observe. First do it mechanically and then with awareness, and feel the difference. And you will be able to feel the difference.

For example, if you eat with awareness, then you cannot eat more than is needed by the body. People go on coming to me and they say, "Put us on a diet. My weight is constantly increasing, the body is constantly hoarding. Put us on a diet."

I tell them, "Don't think of diet, think of consciousness. By dieting nothing will happen. You cannot do it. You will do it one day and the next day it will go. You cannot continue it. Rather, eat with awareness."

The quality changes. If you eat with awareness, you will chew more. With unconscious, mechanical habits, you simply go on pushing things into your stomach. You are not chewing at all, you are just stuffing. Then there is no pleasure, and because there is no pleasure you need more food in order to get the pleasure. There is no taste, so you need more food.

Just be alert and see what happens. If you are alert, you will chew more, you will feel the taste more, you will feel the pleasure of eating, and much more time will be taken. If you take half an hour to eat your meal, then by taking the same quantity of a meal with full awareness you will need one and a half hours -- thrice the time. In half an hour you will have eaten only one-third of the quantity, and you will feel more fulfilled; you will have enjoyed the meal more. And when the body enjoys, it tells you when to stop. When the body has not enjoyed at all, it never says when to stop, so you go on. Then the body becomes dull. You never hear what the body is saying.

You are eating without being there; that creates the problem. Be there, and every process will be slowed down. The body will itself say, "No more!" And when the body says it, that is the right moment. If you are aware, you cannot trespass the body's order. You will stop. So allow your body to say something. The body is saying things every moment, but you are not there to hear it. Be alert and you will hear it.

And when I say, "feel it," I know it is difficult. How can you feel awareness without being aware? I am not saying that you can feel Buddha's enlightenment right now, but one has to start somewhere. You may not get the whole ocean, but a drop -- just a drop -- will give you the taste, and the taste is the same. If even for a single moment you become aware, you have tasted buddhahood. It is momentary, a glimpse of it, but now you know more. And this will never happen to you through thinking; it will happen only through feeling.

The emphasis is on feeling because the emphasis is on a "lived" experience. Thinking is false, you can go on thinking about love and creating theories. You can even get a doctorate on the thesis of love, on what love is, and without ever being in love. You may not know what love is; you may have never felt it. You can grow in knowledge without in any way growing in being. And these are two different dimensions. You can go on growing in knowledge. Your head will go on growing bigger and bigger, but you will remain the same tiny self.

Then nothing is growing really -- only accumulation. When you start feeling things, you grow, your being grows. And one has to start somewhere, so start! There will be errors, there are bound to be. You will go on forgetting, it is natural. But don't get frustrated, don't throw the effort away saying, "I cannot do it." You CAN do it! The same possibility exists in you that existed in Jesus or Buddha. You are the seed; you are not lacking anything at all. You are just an arrangement, you are just a chaotic whole; everything is there. You can become a buddha, but a reorganization of your qualities is needed.

Right now you are chaotic because there is no arrangement. The arrangement comes in when you start being aware. Just by your being aware things start falling in line, and this chaos that you are becomes a symphony.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2

Chapter #9

Chapter title: Conscious doing

22 May 1973 pm in Bombay, India

Archive code: 7305225

ShortTitle: VBT209

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 93 mins

IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE THE ENTIRE SKY

ENDLESSLY CLEAR ENTER SUCH CLARITY.

SHAKTI,

SEE ALL SPACE AS IF ALREADY ABSORBED IN YOUR OWN HEAD

IN THE BRILLIANCE.

WAKING, SLEEPING, DREAMING, KNOW YOU AS LIGHT.

AS I LOOK IN YOUR EYES I never see you there -- as if you are absent. You exist absently, and this is the core of all suffering. You can be alive without being at all present, and if you are not present your existence will become a boredom. And this is what has happened. So when I look in your eyes I don't find you there. You have yet to come, you have yet to be. The situation is there, and the possibility is there -- you can be there any moment -- but yet you are not.

To become aware of this absence is to begin the journey towards meditation, towards transcendent. If you are aware that somehow you are missing... you exist but you don't know why, you don't know how, you don't know even who exists within you. This unawareness creates all suffering, because, unknowingly, whatsoever you do will bring suffering. It is not what you do that is basic; it is whether you do it with your presence or with your absence that is significant.

Whatsoever you do, if you can do it with your total presence, your life will become ecstatic; it will be a bliss. If you do something without your presence there, absently, your life will be a suffering -- bound to be. Hell means your absence.

So there are two types of seekers: one type of seeker is always in search of what to do. That seeker is on a wrong path, because the question is not of doing at all. The question is of being -- what to be, how to be. So never think in terms of action and doing, because whatsoever you do, if you are absent it will be meaningless.

Whether you move in the world or you live in a monastery; whether you function in the crowd or you move to an isolated spot in the Himalayas will make no difference. You will be absent here and you will be absent there, and whatsoever you do -- in the crowd or in the isolation -- will bring suffering. If you are not there, then whatsoever you do is wrong.

The second type, and the right type of seeker, is not in search of what to do, he is in search of how to be. The first thing is how to be.

One man came to Gautam Buddha. He was filled with much compassion, with much sympathy, and he asked Gautam Buddha, `What can I do to help the world?'

Buddha is reported to have laughed and said to the man, `You cannot do anything because you are not. How can you do anything when you are not? So don't think of the world. Don't think of how to serve the world, how to help others.' Buddha said, `First be -- and if you are, then whatsoever you do becomes a service, it becomes a prayer, it becomes compassion. Your presence is the turning point. Your being is the revolution.'

So these are the two paths: the path of action and the path of meditation. They are diametrically opposite. The path of action is basically concerned with you as a doer. It will try to change your actions; it will try to change your character, your morals, your relationships, but never you. The path of meditation is diametrically opposite. It is not concerned with your actions; it is directly and immediately concerned with you. What you do is irrelevant. What you are is relevant. And that is basic and primary, because all action springs from you.

Remember, your actions can be changed and modified, can even be replaced by diametrically opposite actions, but they are not going to change you. Any outward change will not bring the inner revolution, because the outward is superficial and the innermost core remains untouched; by what you do it remains untouched. But the vice versa brings the revolution: if the innermost core is different, the surface automatically changes. So think a basic question; only then can we enter these techniques of meditation.

Don't be concerned with what you are doing. That may be a trick, that maya be a device to escape from the real problem. For example, you are violent. You can make every effort to be non-violent, thinking that by being non-violent you will become religious; by becoming non-violent you will come closer to the divine. You are cruel, and you may make every effort to be compassionate.

You can do it, and nothing will change and you will remain the same. Your cruelty will become a part of your compassion -- and that is more dangerous. Your violence will become a part of your non-violence -- that is more subtle. You will be violently non-v iolent. Your non-violence will have all the madness of violence, and through your compassion you will be cruel.

You can even kill through your compassion; people have killed. There are so many religious wars -- they are fought in the mood of compassion. You can kill very compassionately, very non-violently; lovingly you can kill and murder, because you are killing for the sake of the person you are killing. You are killing him for himself, for his own sake, to help him.

You can change your actions, and this effort to change the actions may be just a device to escape the basic change. The basic change is this -- first you must be. You must become more alert, more conscious of your being, only then a presence comes to you.

You never feel yourself, and even sometimes when you feel, you feel through others -- through excitement, through stimulation, through reaction. Someone else is needed, and via someone else you can feel yourself. This is absurd. Alone, without excitement, with no one there to become a mirror, you fall in sleep, you get bored. You never feel yourself. There is no presence. You live absently.

This absent existence is the non-religious mind. To become filled with your own presence, with the light of your own being, is to become religious. So remember this as a basic point: that my concern is not with your actions. What you do is irrelevant. What you are -- absent, present, aware, unaware -- that's my concern. And these techniques we will enter are techniques to make you more present, to bring you here and now.

Either someone else is needed for you to feel yourself, or the past is needed -- through the past, through past memories, you can feel your identity. Or the future is needed -- you can project in your dreams. You can project your ideals, future lives, moksha. Either you need past memories to feel that you are, or you need a future projection, or someone else, but you alone are never enough. This is the disease, and unless you alone become enough, nothing will be enough for you. And once you alone have become enough unto yourself, you have become victorious, the struggle is over. Now there will be no suffering any more. A point of no return has come.

Beyond this point there is beatitude, eternal bliss. Before this point you are bound to suffer, but the whole suffering, strangely, is your own doing. It is a miracle that you create your own suffering. No one else is creating it. If someone else is creating it then it is difficult to go beyond it. If the world is creating it then what can you do? But because you can do, it means no one else is creating your suffering -- it is your own nightmare. And these are the basic elements of it.

The first thing: you go on thinking that you are, you believe that you are. This is simply a belief. You have never encountered yourself, you have never come face to face with yourself; you have never met yourself, there has been no meeting. You simply believe that you are. Throw this belief totally. Know well that you are yet to be, that you are not, because with this false belief you will never be able to transform. On this false belief your whole life will become false.

Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, `Don't ask me what to do. You cannot do anything, because to do something first you will be needed. And you are not there, so who will do it? You can think about doing, but you cannot do anything.'

These techniques are to help you, to bring you back; to help you to create a situation in which you can meet yourself. Much will have to be destroyed -- all that is wrong, all that is false. Before the real arises the false will have to leave; it must cease. And these are the false notions -- that you are. These are the false notions -- that you are a soul, atma, you are Brahma. Not that you are not, but these notions are false.

Gurdjieff had to insist that there is no soul in you. Against all the traditions he insisted, `Man has no soul. Soul is simply a possibility -- it can be, it may not be. It has to be achieved. You are simply a seed.'

And this emphasis is good. The possibility is there, the potentiality is there, but it is not yet actual. And we go on reading the Gita and the Upanishads and the Bible, and we go on feeling that we are the soul -- the seed thinking that it is the tree. The tree is hidden there, but it is yet to be uncovered. And it is good to remember that you may remain a seed, and you may die a seed -- because the tree cannot come, the tree cannot sprout by itself. You have to do something consciously about it, because only through consciousness it grows.

There are two types of growth. One is unconscious, natural growth: if the situation is there, the thing will grow. But the soul, the atma, the innermost being, the divine within you, is a different type of growth altogether. It is only through consciousness that it grows. It is not natural, it is supernatural.

Left to nature itself it will not grow; just left to evolution it will never evolve. You have to do something consciously, you have to make a conscious effort about it, because only through consciousness it grows. Once the consciousness is focused there, the growth happens. These techniques are to make you more conscious.

Now we will enter the techniques.

The first technique:

IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE

THE ENTIRE SKY

ENDLESSLY CLEAR,

ENTER SUCH CLARITY.

IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE THE ENTIRE SKY ENDLESSLY CLEAR, ENTER SUCH CLARITY.

Mind is confusion; there is no clarity. And mind is always crowded, always cloudy; never the open sky, cloudless, empty. Mind cannot be that. You cannot make your mind clear; it is not the nature of the mind to be so. Mind will remain unclear. If you can leave the mind behind, if you can suddenly transcend the mind and come out of it, clarity will happen to you. You can be clear, but not the mind. There is not such a thing as a clear mind; never has been and never will be. Mind means the unclarity, the confusion.

Try to understand the structure of the mind, and then this technique will be clear to you. What is mind? A continuous process of thought, a continuous procession of thoughts -- associated, non-associated, relevant, irrelevant -- many multi-dimensional impressions gathered from everywhere. The whole life is a gathering, a gathering of the dust. And this goes on and on.

A child is born. A child is clear because the mind is not there. The moment mind appears, the unclarity, the confusion enters. A child is clear, a clarity, but he will have to gather knowledge, information, culture, religion, conditionings -- necessary, useful. He will have to gather many things from everywhere, from many sources -- opposite, contradictory sources. From thousands and thousands of sources he will gather. Then the mind will become a market-place, a crowd, and because of so many sources, confusion is bound to be there. And whatsoever you gather, nothing is certain, because knowledge is always a growing affair.

I remember, someone related an anecdote to me. He was a great searcher, and he told me this about his professor who taught him for five years in a medical college. The professor was a great scholar of his subject. The last thing he did was to gather his students and tell them, `One thing more I have to teach you. Whatsoever I have taught you is only fifty percent correct, and the remaining fifty percent is absolutely wrong. But the trouble, is, I don't know which fifty percent is correct and which fifty percent is incorrect -- I don't know.'

The whole edifice of knowledge is such. Nothing is certain, no one knows, everyone is groping. Through groping we create systems, and there are thousands and thousands of systems. Hindus say something, Christians say something else, Mohammedans still something else -- all contradictory, all contradicting each other; no agreement, no certainty -- and all these sources are the sources for your mind. You collect: your mind becomes a junk-yard; confusion is bound to be there. Only a person who doesn't know much can be certain. The more you know, the more uncertain you will become.

People, primitive people, were more certain and apparently appeared to be more clear. There was no clarity -- simply unawareness of facts which could contradict them. If the modern mind is more confused, the reason is that the modern knows more. If you know more you will be more confused, because now you have more knowledge, and the more you know, the more uncertain you become. Only idiots can be certain, only idiots can be dogmatic, only idiots will never hesitate. The more you know, the more the earth is taken away from your feet, the more hesitant you become. What I mean to say is, the more the mind grows, the more you will know the nature of the mind is confusion.

When I say only idiots can be certain, I don't mean that a Buddha is an idiot -- because he is not uncertain. Remember the difference. He is not certain, he is not uncertain -- he is simply clear. With the mind, uncertainty; with the idiotic mind, certainty. With no mind both disappear -- certainty and uncertainty.

Buddha is a clarity, a space, open space. He is not certain -- there is nothing to be certain. He is not uncertain, because there is nothing to be uncertain. Only one who is seeking certainty can be uncertain. Mind is always uncertain and always seeking certainty; always confused and always seeking clarity. A Buddha is one who has dropped the mind; and with the mind all confusion, all certainty, all uncertainty, everything is dropped.

Look at it in this way: your consciousness is just like the sky and your mind is just like the clouds. The sky remains untouched by the clouds. They come and go; no scar is left behind. The sky remains virgin: no record, no footprints, nothing of the clouds, no memory. They come and they go; the sky remains undisturbed. This is the case within you also: the consciousness remains undisturbed. Thoughts come and go, minds evolve and disappear. And don't think that you have one mind; you have many minds, it is a crowd. Your minds go on changing.

You are a communist, so you have a certain type of mind. You can leave it and you can become anti-communist. Then you have a different mind; not only different, quite the opposite. You can go on changing your minds just like your dress. And you go on changing. You may not be aware of it -- these clouds come and go. Clarity can be achieved if you become aware of the sky; if your focus changes. You are focused on the clouds if you are unfocused on the sky. Unfocus on the clouds and focus on the sky.

This technique says:

IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE

THE ENTIRE SKY

ENDLESSLY CLEAR,

ENTER SUCH CLARITY.

Meditate on the sky; a summer sky with no clouds, endlessly empty and clear, nothing moving in it, in its total virginity. Contemplate on it, meditate on it, and enter this clarity. Become this clarity, this space-like clarity.

If you meditate on open unclouded sky, suddenly you will feel that the mind is disappearing, the mind is dropping away. There will be gaps. Suddenly you will become aware that it is as if the clear sky has entered in you also. There will be intervals. For a time being, thoughts will cease -- as if the traffic has ceased and there is no one moving.

In the beginning it will be only for moments, but even those moments are transforming. By and by the mind will slow down, bigger gaps will appear. For minutes together there will be no thought, no cloud. And when there IS no thought, no cloud, the outer sky and the inner become one, because only the thought is the barrier, only the thought creates the wall; only because of the thought the outer is outer and the inner is inner. When the thought is not there, the outer and the inner lose their boundaries, they become one. Really, boundaries never existed there. They appeared only because of the thought, the barrier.

To meditate on the sky is beautiful. Just lie down so you forget the earth; just lie down on your back on any lonely beach, on any ground, and just look at the sky. But a clear sky will be helpful -- unclouded, endless. And just looking, staring at the sky, feel the clarity of it -- the uncloudedness, the boundless expanse -- and then enter that clarity, become one with it. Feel as if you have become the sky, the space.

In the beginning, if you only meditate on the open sky, not doing anything else, intervals will start appearing, because whatsoever you see enters you. Whatsoever you see stirs you within; whatsoever you see is pictured, reflected.

You see a building. You cannot simply see it; something immediately starts happening within you. You see a man, a woman; you see a car -- you see anything. It is not just outside, something has started within, the reflection, and you have started reacting to it. So everything you see moulds you, makes you, modifies you, creates you. The without is constantly related with the within.

To look into the open sky is good. Just the expanse is beautiful, with no boundaries there. Your own boundaries will disappear, because the no-boundary sky will reflect within you. And if you can stare without blinking your eyes it will be good. If you stare without blinking your eyes... because if you blink your eyes your thought-process will continue. Stare without blinking the eyes. Stare in the emptiness, move into that emptiness, feel that you have become one with it, and any moment the sky will enter within you.

First you enter into the sky and then the sky enters you. And there is a meeting: the inner sky meeting the outer sky. In that meeting is realization. In that meeting there is no mind, because the meeting can happen only when the mind is not there. In that meeting you are for the first time not your mind. There is no confusion. Confusion cannot exist without the mind. There is no misery, because misery also cannot exist without the mind.

Have you observed this fact anytime or not -- that misery cannot exist without your mind? You cannot be miserable without your mind. The very source is not there. Who will supply you with this misery? Who will make you miserable? And the same is true from the opposite direction also: you cannot be miserable without your mind and you cannot be blissful with your mind. The mind can never be the source of bliss.

So if the inner and outer sky meet and mind disappears, even for a moment, you will be filled with a new life. The quality of that life is absolutely different. It is life eternal, uncontaminated by death, uncontaminated by any fear. In that meeting you will be here and now, in the present -- because past belongs to thoughts, future belongs to thoughts. Past and future are part of your mind. Present is existence -- it is not part of your mind.

This moment doesn't belong to your mind. The moment that has gone belongs; the moment that has to come belongs to your mind. This moment never belongs to you. Rather, you belong to this moment. You exist here, right now here. Your mind exists somewhere else, always somewhere else.

Unload yourself.

I was reading one Sufi mystic. He was travelling on a lonely path, the way was deserted, and he saw a farmer with his bullock-cart. The cart was stuck in mud. The road was rough. The farmer was carrying a big load of apples in his bullock-cart, but somewhere on the rough road the tailboard of the wagon became unfastened and the apples were scattered. But he was not aware of it; the farmer was not aware of it.

When the cart got stuck in the mud, first he tried to bring it out somehow, but all efforts were in vain, so he thought, `Now I must unload my cart, then maybe I can pull it out.' He looked back. Hardly a dozen apples were left -- the load was already unloaded. You can feel his misery. The Sufi reports in his memoirs that that exasperated farmer made a remark. He said, `Stuck, by heck! Stuck! -- and not a damn thing to unload!' The only possibility was that if he could unload the cart it could come out; but now -- nothing to unload!

Fortunately you are not stuck in such a way. You can unload -- your cart is too much loaded. You can unload the mind, and the moment the mind is not there, you fly; you become capable of flying.

This technique -- to look into the clarity of the sky and to become one with it -- is one of the most practised. Many traditions have used this. And particularly for the modern mind it will be very useful, because on earth nothing is left. On earth nothing is left to meditate on -- only the sky. If you look all around, everything is man-made, everything is limited, with a boundary, a limitation. Only the sky is still, fortunately, open to meditate on.

Try this technique, it will be helpful, but remember three things. One: don't blink -- stare. Even if your eyes start to feel pain and tears come down, don't be worried. Even those tears will be a part of unloading; they will be helpful. Those tears will make your eyes more innocent and fresh -- bathed. You just go on staring.

The second point: don't think about the sky, remember. You can start thinking about the sky. You can remember many poems, beautiful poems about the sky -- then you will miss the point. You are not to think `about' it -- you are to enter it, you are to be one with it -- because if you start thinking about it, again a barrier is created. You are missing the sky again, and you are again enclosed in your own mind. Don't think about the sky. Be the sky. Just stare and move into the sky, and allow the sky to move in you. If you move into the sky, the sky will move into you immediately.

How can you do it? How will you do it -- this moving into the sky? Just go on staring further away and further away. Go on staring -- as if you are trying to find the boundary. Move deep. Move as much as you can. That very movement will break the barrier. And this method should be practised for at least forty minutes; less than that will not do, will not be of much help.

When you really feel that you have become one, then you can close the eyes. When the sky has entered in you, you can close the eyes. You will be able to see it within also. Then there is no need. So only after forty minutes, when you feel that the oneness has happened and there is a communion and you have become part of it and the mind is no more, close the eyes and remain in the sky within.

The clarity will help the third point: ENTER SUCH CLARITY. The clarity will help -- the uncontaminated, unclouded sky. Just be aware of the clarity that is all around you. Don't think about it; just be aware of the clarity, the purity, the innocence. These words are not to be repeated. You have to feel them rather than think. And once you stare into the sky the feeling will come, because it is not on your part to imagine these things -- they are there. If you stare they will start happening to you.

The sky is pure, the purest thing in existence. Nothing makes it impure. Worlds come and go, earths are there and then disappear, and the sky remains pure. The purity is there. You need not project it; you are simply to feel it -- to be vulnerable to it so you can feel it -- and the clarity is there. Allow the sky to happen to you. You cannot force it; you can only allow it to happen.

All meditations are really allowing something to happen. Never think in terms of aggression, never think in terms of forcing something. You cannot force anything. Really, because you have been trying to force, you have created all misery. Nothing can be forced, but you can allow things to happen. Be feminine. Allow things to happen. Be passive. The sky is absolutely passive: not doing anything at all, just remaining there. Just be passive and remain under the sky -- vulnerable, open, feminine, with no aggression on your part -- and then the sky will penetrate you.

IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE

THE ENTIRE SKY

ENDLESSLY CLEAR,

ENTER SUCH CLARITY.

But if it is not summer what will you do? If the sky is clouded, not clear, then close your eyes and just enter the inner sky. Just close your eyes, and if you see some thoughts, just see them as if they are floating clouds in the sky. Be aware of the background, the sky, and be indifferent to thoughts.

We are too much concerned with thoughts and never aware of the gaps. One thought passes, and before another enters there is a gap -- in that gap the sky is there. Then, whenever there is no thought, what is there? The emptiness is there. So if the sky is clouded -- it is not summer-time and the sky is not clear -- close your eyes, focus your mind on the background, the inner sky in which thoughts come and go. Don't pay much attention to thoughts; pay attention to the space in which they move.

For example, we are sitting in this room. I can look at this room in two ways. Either I can look at you, so that I am indifferent to the space you are in, the roominess, the room you are in -- I look at you, I focus my mind on you who are here, and not on the room in which you are -- or, I can change my focus: I can look into the room, and I become indifferent to you. You are there, but my emphasis, my focus, is on the room. Then the total perspective changes.

Just do this in the inner world. Look at the space. Thoughts are moving in it: be indifferent to them, don't pay any attention to them. They are there; note it down that they are there, moving. The traffic is moving in the street. Look at the street and be indifferent to the traffic. Don't look to see who is passing; just know that something is passing and be aware of the space in which it is passing. Then the summer sky happens within.

There is no need to wait for the summer, because our minds are such that they can find any excuse. They will say, `Summer is not here, and even if it is summer, the sky is not clear.'

The second technique:

SHAKTI,

SEE ALL SPACE AS IF

ALREADY ABSORBED IN YOUR OWN HEAD

IN THE BRILLIANCE.

SEE ALL SPACE AS IF ALREADY ABSORBED IN YOUR OWN HEAD IN THE BRILLIANCE. Close your eyes for this technique. When you do it, close your eyes and feel as if the whole space is absorbed in your own head. It will be difficult in the beginning. It is one of the advanced techniques, so it will be good to proceed towards it in steps. Do one thing. If you want to do this technique, start in steps.

First: while going to sleep, when just ready to sleep, lie down on your bed, close your eyes and feel where your feet are. If you are six feet tall, or five feet tall, just feel where your feet are, the demarcation. Then just imagine one thing: you have become six inches longer. Your height has lengthened, it has become six inches more. Just with closed eyes feel this. In imagination, feel that your height has become six inches more.

Then the second step: feel your head, where it is, just inside, and then feel that your head has also become six inches longer. When you can feel this, everything will be easy. Then you make it more. You feel that you have become twelve feet all; or, that you have filled the whole room. Now in your imagination you are touching the walls -- you have filled the whole room. Then, by steps, feel that the whole house has come within you. And once you know the feel, it is very easy. If you can grow six inches taller, everything is easy then. If you can feel that you are not five foot, but you are five foot six, then nothing is difficult; this technique will be easy.

For three days go on feeling that; then for three days more, feel that you have filled the whole room. It is just a training of imagination. Then for three days the whole house is within you; then for three days you have become the sky. Then this technique will be very easy.

SHAKTI,

SEE ALL SPACE AS IF

ALREADY ABSORBED IN YOUR OWN HEAD

IN THE BRILLIANCE.

Then you can close your eyes and feel that the whole sky, the whole space, is absorbed by your head. The moment you can feel this, the mind disappears, because the mind needs a very narrow space. With such vastness the mind cannot exist; it simply disappears. In such vastness mind is impossible. Mind can only be narrow, limited. In such infinite space there is no place for the mind to exist.

This technique is good. Suddenly the mind explodes and the space is there. Within a three month period you can feel this. Your whole life will be different. But grow towards it in steps, because sometimes through this technique people become crazy, they lose balance. It is so tremendous, the impact is so tremendous -- suddenly if you become aware that your head has absorbed the whole space, and then you see stars and moons moving within you, the whole universe, you may become dizzy. In many traditions this technique is used very cautiously.

One of the Indian mystics of this century, Ramteerth, used this technique, and many suspect, many of those who know suspect that because of this technique he committed suicide. For him it was not a suicide, because for him -- one who has known that the whole space has come within him -- suicide is impossible, it cannot happen. No one is there to commit suicide. But for others, for those who were watching from outside, it was a suicide.

He started feeling that the whole universe was moving within him, within his head. His disciples thought that he was talking poetry. Then they started feeling that he had gone mad, because he started claiming that he was the universe and everything was within him. And then one day he just jumped from a mountain cliff into a river. Before jumping he wrote a beautiful poem saying, `I have become the universe. Now I feel this body as a burden, unnecessary, so I give it back. Now no boundary is needed. I have become the unbounded Brahma.'

Someone with a psychiatric training will think that he has gone mad, it is just neurosis, but one who knows deeper dimensions of human consciousness will say he has become a mukta, an enlightened one. But to the ordinary mind it is a suicide.

With such techniques there is danger. That's why I say grow towards them gradually, because you don't know -- anything is possible. Sometimes you are not aware of your own potentiality, sometimes you don't know how ready you are, and something can happen. So do it in steps.

First try your imagination with small things: just that the body has become bigger or has become smaller. You can go both the ways. You are five feet six: feel you have become four feet, three feet, two feet, one foot; you have become just a seed. This is just a training; just a training so that you can feel whatsoever you want to feel. Your inner mind is absolutely free to feel; nothing can hinder it from feeling anything. It is your feeling. You can grow and you can be small. Suddenly you become aware that it is you.

And if you can work well through this, you can come out of your body very easily. If you can grow and become small through imagination, you are capable of coming out of your body. You simply imagine that you are standing outside of your body and you will stand -- but not immediately.

First work with small steps, and then when you feel that you are at ease and you don't become scared, then feel that you have filled the whole room -- actually you will feel the touch of the walls. And then feel that the whole house has come within you -- you will feel it within you. And then go on. Then, by and by, let the sky be felt in the head. And once you feel the sky in your head, absorbed there, the mind simply disappears. It has no business to do there.

For this technique it is good to be with someone: to be with a teacher, or to be with a friend. Don't do it alone. Someone must be there to take care of you, to watch you. This is a school method. Where many people are working in a school, it is very easy, less harmful, less dangerous -- because sometimes when the sky explodes within, for many days you may not become aware of your body. You may not come out, you may be so absorbed in the feeling, because time disappears; you cannot feel how much time has elapsed. The body disappears, you cannot feel the body. You become the sky. Someone must take care of your body; very loving care will be needed.

So with a master, or with a group, this technique is less harmful and less dangerous. And with a group that knows what is possible -- what can happen and what should be done... because if in such a state of mind you are suddenly awakened, you may go mad, because time will be needed for your mind to come back. If suddenly brought back to the body, your nervous system cannot bear it. It is not made for that. It has to be trained. So don't do it alone. You can do it in a group, with a few friends, in a lonely place. And do it in steps, not suddenly.

The third technique:

WAKING,

SLEEPING,

DREAMING,

KNOW YOU AS LIGHT.

WAKING, SLEEPING, DREAMING, KNOW YOU AS LIGHT. First start with waking. Yoga and Tantra divide the life of man's mind into three divisions -- the life of the mind, remember. They divide mind into three divisions: waking, sleeping, dreaming. These are not the divisions of your consciousness, these are the divisions of your mind, and the consciousness is the fourth.

They have not given any name to it in the east; they call it simply the fourth, turiya. These three have names. These are the clouds, they can be named -- a waking cloud, a sleeping cloud, a dreaming cloud. They are all clouds, and the space in which they move -- the sky -- in unnamed, left simply as the fourth.

Western psychology has only recently become aware of the dreaming dimension. Really, only with Freud, dreaming became important. But with Hindus, this is one of the most ancient concepts: that you cannot really know a man unless you know what he is doing in his dreams. Because whatsoever he is doing in his waking hours is more or less bound to be acting, false, because in the waking state of his mind he is forced to do many things.

He is not free. The society is there, rules are there, moralities are there. He is constantly struggling with his own desires: suppressing them, modifying them, moulding them in the mould the society allows. And the society never allows you to be your total being; it chooses. That is what a culture means -- culture means a choice.

Every culture is a conditioning: a choice of certain things and a denial of certain things. Your total being is not accepted anywhere; it is not -- nowhere. Certain aspects are accepted here, certain aspects are accepted there, in this country or that, but nowhere is the total human being accepted. So the waking consciousness is bound to be false, pseudo, artificial, forced. You are not real there -- just actors; not spontaneous -- manipulated. ONly in dreams are you free; only in dreams are you authentically yourself.

You can do whatsoever you like in your dreams. No one is concerned; you are alone. No one can penetrate, no one can look into your dreams. And no one is bothered: what you do in your dreams is your business, no one is concerned. They are absolutely private. Because they are absolutely private and related to no one, you can be free. So unless your dreams are known, your real face cannot be known. Hindus have been aware of it: dreams must be penetrated. But they are still clouds -- private of course, freer, but still clouds, and one has to go beyond them also.

These are the three states: waking and sleeping and dreaming. Dreaming became very primary with Freud. Now sleeping has been touched. Now many sleep labs are working in the west to know what sleep is, because it seems to be very strange that we don't know what sleep is. What really happens to you in sleep is not yet known scientifically.

And if we cannot know what sleep is, it will be difficult to know what man is, because for one third of his life he will be sleeping. One third of your life! If you are going to live for sixty years, for twenty years you will be sleeping. It is such a major part. What are you doing while you are asleep? Something mysterious is going on, and it is so essential that life is not possible without it. Something deep is happening, but you are not aware.

Waking, you are a different person; dreaming, you are again a different person. In deep sleep, you are again a different person. You can't remember even your name while deep asleep. You don't know whether you are a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Hindu. Out of your deep sleep you can't answer who you are; rich or poor -- no identity, no image.

In the waking layer you exist with the society. In the dreaming layer you exist with your own desires. In deep sleep you exist with nature, deep in the womb of nature. And yoga and Tantra say that only beyond these three you exist in Brahma, in the cosmic whole. So these three must be crossed, passed, transcended.

There is one difference. The western psychology is now interested in studying these states. Eastern seekers were interested in these states, but not in studying them. They were interested only in how to transcend them. This technique is a transcendental technique.

WAKING,

SLEEPING,

DREAMING,

KNOW YOU AS LIGHT.

Very difficult. You have to start with waking. How can you remember in dreams? Can you create a dream consciously? Can you manipulate a dream? Can you have your own dreams of your own wishes? You cannot. How impotent man is! You cannot even create a dream of your own. They too happen to you; you are helpless. But there are certain techniques through which dreams can be created, and those techniques are very helpful in transcending, because if you can create, then you can transcend. But one has to start with waking.

While waking -- moving, eating, working -- remember yourself as light. As if in your heart a flame is burning, and your body is nothing but the aura around the flame. Imagine it. In your heart a flame is burning, and your body is nothing but a light aura around the flame; your body is just a light around the flame. Allow it to go deep within your mind and your consciousness. Imbibe it.

It will take time, but if you go on thinking about it, feeling it, imagining it, within a certain period you will be able to remember it the whole day. While awake, moving on the street, you are a flame moving. No one else will be aware of it in the beginning, but if you continue it, after three months others will also become aware. And only when others become aware can you then be at ease. Don't say to anyone. Simply imagine a flame, and your body as just the aura around it. Not a physical body, but an electric body. Go on doing it.

If you persist, within three months, or somewhere near about then, others will become aware that something has happened to you. They will feel a subtle light around you. When you come near them, they will feel a different warmth. If you touch them, they will feel a fiery touch. They will become aware that something strange is happening to you. Don't say to anyone. When others become aware, then you can feel at ease, and then you can enter the second step, not before it.

The second step is to take it into dreaming. Now you can take it into dreaming. It has become a reality. Now it is not an imagination. Through imagination you have uncovered a reality. It is real. Everything consists of light. You are light -- unaware of the fact -- because every particle of matter is light.

The scientists say it consists of electrons. It is the same thing. Light is the source of all. You are also condensed light: through imagination you are simply uncovering a reality. Imbibe it -- and when you have become so filled with it, you can carry it into dreams, not before.

Then, while falling asleep, go on thinking of the flame, go on seeing it, feeling you are the light. Remembering it... remembering... remembering... you fall down asleep. And the remembrance continues. In the beginning you will start having some dreams in which you will feel you have a flame within, you are light. By and by, in the dreams also you will move with the same feeling. And once this feeling enters the dreams, dreams will start disappearing. Dreams will start disappearing: there will be less and less dreams and more and more deep sleep.

When in all your dreaming this reality is revealed -- that you are light, a flame, a burning flame -- all dreams will disappear. Only when dreams disappear can you carry this feeling into sleep, never before. Now you are at the door. When dreams have disappeared and you remember yourself as a flame, you are at the door of sleep. Now you can enter with the feeling. And once you enter sleep with the feeling that you are a flame, you will be aware in it -- the sleep will now happen only to your body, not to you.

This technique is to help you go beyond these three states. If you can be aware that you are a flame, a light, that sleep is not happening to you, you are conscious. You are carrying a conscious effort. Now you are crystallized around that flame. The body is asleep, you are not.

This is what Krishna says in Gita: that yogis never sleep. While others are asleep, they are awake. Not that their bodies never sleep. Their bodies sleep -- but only bodies. Bodies need rest, consciousness needs no rest; because bodies are mechanisms, consciousness is not a mechanism. Bodies need fuel, they need rest. That's why they are born, they are young, then they become old, and then they die. Consciousness is never born, never becomes old, never dies. It needs no fuel, it needs no rest. It is pure energy, perpetual eternal energy.

If you can carry this image of flame and light through the doors of sleep, you will never sleep again, only the body will rest. And while the body is sleeping, you will know it. Once this happens, you have become the fourth. Now the waking and the dreaming and the sleeping are parts of the mind. They are parts, and you have become the fourth -- one who goes through all of them and is none of them.

Really, this is so simple. If you are in the waking state, and then you move into dreams, you cannot be either. If you are the waking state, then how can you dream? And if you are the dreaming state, how can you fall into sleep where there is no dream? You must be a traveller, and these states must be stations, so you can move from here and there and come back again. Again in the morning you will move into the waking state.

These are states, and the one who moves within these states is you. But that you is the fourth -- and that fourth is what you call the soul. That fourth is what you call divine, that fourth is what you call the immortal element, the life eternal.

WAKING

SLEEPING,

DREAMING,

KNOW YOU AS LIGHT.

This is a very beautiful technique. But try it first in the waking. And remember, when others become aware, then only have you succeeded in it. They will become aware. Then you can enter into dream, and then into sleep, and then you can awaken to that which you are -- the fourth.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2

Chapter #10

Chapter title: Moving to the roots

23 May 1973 pm in Bombay, India

Archive code: 7305235

ShortTitle: VBT210

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 85 mins

Question 1

LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT BY CHANGING THE OUTER, THE INNER REMAINS UNCHANGED, UNTRANSFORMED. BUT IS IT NOT TRUE THAT THE RIGHT FOOD, RIGHT LABOUR, RIGHT SLEEP, RIGHT ACTIONS AND BEHAVIORS ARE ALSO IMPORTANT FACTORS FOR INNER TRANSFORMATION? ISN'T IT A MISTAKE TO IGNORE THE OUTER COMPLETELY?

THE OUTER CANNOT CHANGE THE INNER, but the outer can help, or it can hinder. The outer can create a situation in which the inner can explode more easily. The thing to be remembered is this: that the outer transformation is not the inner. Even if you have done everything and the situation is there, the inner is not going to explode. The situation is necessary, it is helpful, but it is not the transformation. And those who get involved with the outer....

The outer is a vast phenomenon. You can go on changing for lives and you will never be satisfied, and something or other will remain to be changed, because unless the inner changes, the outer can never be perfect. You can go on changing it and polishing it and conditioning it. You will never feel satisfied. You will never come to a situation where you can feel, `Now, the field is ready.' So many have wasted their lives.

If your mind becomes obsessed with the outer -- with the food, with the clothes, with the behavior... I am not saying to neglect them. No, what I am saying is, don't get obsessed with them. They can be helpful, but they can become great hindrances if your mind becomes obsessed. Then it becomes an escape, then you are just postponing the inner change. And you can go on changing the outer. The inner is not even touched by it, the inner remains the same.

You might have heard one old Indian fable. In `Panchtantra' it is said that a mouse was very much afraid of a cat; constantly in fear, anxiety. He couldn't sleep: he would dream about the cat and he would tremble. A magician, just out of pity, transformed the mouse into a cat. The outer was changed, but immediately the mouse within the cat now became afraid of a dog. The anxiety was the same; only the object had changed. Previously it was the cat, now it was the dog. The trembling continued, the anguish remained, the dreams were still of fear.

So the magician changed the cat into a dog. Immediately the dog became afraid of the tiger, because the mouse within remained the same. The mouse was not changed; only bodies, the outer. The same anxiety, the same disease, the same fear remained. The magician changed the dog into a tiger. Immediately the mouse within the tiger became afraid of a hunter. So the magician said to the mouse, `Now be a mouse again, because I can change your bodies, I cannot change you. You have the heart of a mouse, so what can I do?' The heart of a mouse.

You can go on changing the outer, but the heart of the mouse remains the same. And that heart creates the problems. The shape will change, the form will change, but the substance will remain the same. And it makes no difference whether you are afraid of a cat, or of a dog, or of a tiger. The question is not of whom you are afraid; the question is that you are afraid.

The emphasis is -- my emphasis is -- that you must remain aware that your outer effort should not become a substitute for the inner transformation. One thing. Take every help that can be taken. It is good to have right food, but it is nonsense and madness to become obsessed with food. It is good to have right behavior, but it is neurotic to become obsessed with it. You should not become mad about anything.

In India there are many sects of sannyasins who are obsessed with food. The whole day they are thinking only of food: what to eat and what not to eat; who should prepare the food and who should not prepare the food. Once I was travelling with a sannyasin. He would take only milk, and only cow's milk, and only from those cows which were white; otherwise he would go without food. This man is mad.

Remember this: that the inner is important, significant. The outer is helpful, it is good, but you must not become focused with it. It must not become so important that the inner is forgotten. The inner must remain the inner and the central, and the outer, if possible, should be changed just as a help.

Don't ignore it completely. There is no need to ignore it, because really the outer is also part of the inner. It is not something opposite to it, it is not something contrary to it, it is not something imposed upon you -- it is you. But the inner is the central, and the outer is the periphery. So give as much importance as a periphery needs, as a circumference needs, as a boundary needs -- but the boundary is not the house. So take care of it, but don't become mad after it.

Our mind is always trying to find escapes. If you can become involved with food, with sex, with clothes, with the body, your mind will be at ease, because now you are not going towards the inner. Now there is no need to change the mind. Now there is no need to destroy the mind, to go beyond the mind. With the change of food, the same mind can exist. You may eat this or that -- the same mind can exist. Only when you move inwards... the more inner you reach, the more this mind which you have has to cease. The inward path is the path towards no-mind.

The mind becomes afraid. It will try to find some escape -- something to do with the outer. Then the mind can exist as it is. Whatsoever you do makes no difference. It is irrelevant what you do -- this mind can exist, and this mind can find ways for how to remain the same. And sometimes, when you struggle with the natural outlet, your mind will find some perverted outlets which are more dangerous. Rather than being a help, they will become hindrances.

I have heard that Mulla Nasrudin fell down his stairs. His leg was fractured, so it was put in a plaster cast, and he was told that for three months he was not to go up and down the stairs. After three months he came to the doctor and the plaster was removed. Mulla asked, `Now can I go up and down the stairs?'

The doctor said, `Now you can go. You are absolutely okay.'

Mulla said, `Now I am so happy, doctor. You cannot believe how happy I am. It was so awkward to go up and down the drain-pipe the whole day. For three months, every day going up and down the drain-pipe -- it was so awkward, and the whole neighborhood was laughing at me. But you had told me not to go up and down the stairs, so I had to find a way.'

This is what everyone is doing. If one outlet is blocked, then a perversion is bound to happen. And you don't know the ways of the mind -- =they are very cunning and very subtle. People come to me with their problems. The problem seems to be obvious -- it is not. All problems seem to be obvious, clear -- it is not so. Deep down something else is hidden, and unless that something else is known, discarded, gone beyond, the problem will remain. It will change its shape.

Someone is smoking too much and he wants to stop it. But smoking in itself is not a problem; the problem is something else. You can stop smoking, but the problem will remain, and it will have to come out in something else. When do you smoke? When you are anxious, nervous, you start smoking, and smoking helps you. You feel more confident, you feel more relaxed.

Just by stopping the smoking, your nervousness is not going to change. You will feel nervous, you will feel anxious; the anxiety will come. Then you will do something else. And you can find something which is a beautiful substitute; it looks so different. You can do anything. You can just use a mantra instead of smoking, and whenever you feel nervous you can say, RAM, RAM, RAM -- anything continuously.

What are you doing with smoke? It is a mantra. You smoke in and out, you smoke in and out -- it becomes a repetitive thing. Because of the repetition you feel relaxed. Repeat anything and the same will happen. But if you are using a mantra and saying, RAM, RAM, RAM, no one is going to say that you are doing something wrong. And the problem is the same.

The problem has not changed; only you have changed the trick. Previously you were doing it with smoke; now you are doing it with a word. Repetition helps; any nonsense thing will help. You just have to repeat it continuously. When you repeat a thing it gives relaxation, because it creates a sort of boredom. Boredom is relaxing. You can do anything that creates a sort of boredom. Boredom is relaxing. You can do anything that creates boredom.

If you are smoking, everyone will say that it is wrong. And if you are chanting a mantra, no one is going to say that it is wrong. But if the problem is the same, I am saying that it is also wrong -- rather, more dangerous than the previous one, because with smoking you were aware that it was wrong. Now, with this chanting of the mantra you are not aware, and this disease that you are unaware is more dangerous and more harmful.

You can do anything on the surface, but unless deeper roots are changed, nothing happens. So with the outer remember this: be aware of it, and move from the surface towards the roots and find the root -- why are you nervous? Someone is eating too much food. It can be stopped. You can force yourself to not eat too much. But why is one eating too much food? Why? Because this is not a bodily need, so somewhere the mind is interfering. Something has to be done with the mind; it is not a question of the body. Why do you go on stuffing yourself?

Too much obsession with food is a love need. If you are not loved well, you will eat more. If you are loved and you can love, you will eat less. Whenever someone loves you, you cannot eat more. Love fills you so much, you don't feel empty. When there is not love, you feel empty; something has to be stuffed in -- you go on forcing food.

And there are reasons, root reasons, for it, because the first encounter of the child with love and food is simultaneous. From the same breast, from the same mother, he gets food and love -- food and love become associated. If the mother is loving, the child will never take too much mild. There is no need. He is always secure in his love; he knows that whenever there is a need the food will come, the milk will be there, the mother will be there. He feels secure. But if the mother is non-loving, then he is insecure. Then he doesn't know whether, when he feels hungry, food will come, because there is no love. He will eat more. And this will continue. It will become an unconscious root.

So you can go on changing your food -- eat this, eat that, don't eat this -- but it makes no difference, because the basic root remains there. Then if you stop stuffing yourself with food, you will start stuffing with something else. And there are many ways. If you stop eating too much you may start accumulating money. Then again you have to be filled by something; then you go on accumulating money.

Observe deeply, and you will see that a person who accumulates money is never in love, cannot be, because the money accumulation is really a substitute. With money he will feel secure now. When you are loved there is no insecurity; in love all fears disappear. In love there is no future, no past. This moment is enough, this very moment is eternity. You are accepted. There is no anxiety for the future, for what will happen tomorrow -- there is no tomorrow in love.

But if love is not there, then the tomorrow is there. What will happen? Accumulate money, because you cannot rely on any person. So rely on things, rely on money and wealth. There are people who say, `Donate your money. Don't accumulate money. Be non-attached to money.' But these are superficial things, because the inner need will remain the same -- then he will start accumulating something else.

Stop one outlet and you will have to create another -- unless roots are destroyed. So don't be too much concerned with the outer. Be aware of whatsoever your outer personality is. Be aware of it, be alert, and from the periphery always move towards the roots to find what the cause is there. Howsoever disturbing, move to the roots. Once you come to know the roots, once the roots are exposed.... Remember this law: the roots can exist only in darkness -- not only the roots of trees, but the roots of anything. They can exist only in darkness. Once they are brought to light, they die.

So move with your periphery; dig it deep and go to the roots, and bring the roots to consciousness, to light. Once you have come to the root, it simply disappears. You have not to do anything about it. You have to do something only because you don't know what the problem is. A problem rightly understood disappears. Right understanding of a problem, a root understanding of the problem, becomes the disappearance of it. The first thing.

The second thing: whatsoever you do is superficial; it is not you in your totality. So don't judge a man by his actions, because action is very atomic. You see a person in anger, and you can judge that this man is filled with hatred, violence, vengeance. But a moment later the anger disappears; the man becomes as loving as possible, and a different perfume, a different flowering, comes to his face. The anger was atomic. Don't judge the whole man. But this love is also atomic. Don't judge the whole man by this love.

Whatsoever you have done is not your total sum. Your actions remain just atomic -- part of you of course, but your totality transcends them. You can be different immediately. And whatsoever is known about you by your behavior, by your actions, by your doings, you can contradict. You may have been a saint: you can become a sinner this very moment. No one could imagine that you, a saint, could do this. You can do it. It is not inconceivable. You may have been a sinner up to this moment, and the next moment you can jump out of it.

What I am saying is, your inner is so vast and so great that by your outer it cannot be judged. Your outer remains superficial, accidental. I will repeat it. Your outer remains accidental, your inner is the essence. So remember to uncover the inner, and don't get entangled with the outer.

One thing more: outer is always of the past. It is always dead, because whatsoever you have done, you have done. It is always of the past, it is never alive. The inner is always alive, it is here and now, and the outer is always dead. If you know me -- whatsoever I have done and said -- you know my past, you don't know me. I am here, the living. That is my inner point, and whatsoever you know about me is just the outer. It is dead, it is no more there.

Observe it in your own consciousness. Whatsoever you have done is not a bondage on you. It is no more really; it is just a memory. And you are greater than that. Your infinite possibilities are there. It was only accidental that you are a sinner or you are a saint. It was only accidental that you are a Christian or a Hindu. But your innermost being is not accidental; it is essential.

The emphasis on the inner is the emphasis on the essential. And that inner remains free, it is freedom. The outer is a slavery, because you can know the outer only when it has happened; then you cannot do anything about it. What can you do about your past? It cannot be undone, you cannot move backwards. You cannot do anything with the past; it is a slavery.

If you understand it rightly, then you can understand the theory of karma, the theory of actions. This theory -- one of the most essential parts of Hindu realization -- is that unless you go beyond karmas, you are not free; unless you have gone beyond all actions, you will remain in bondage. Don't pay much attention to the outer, don't get obsessed with it. Use it as a help, but continuously remembering that the inner has to be discovered.

These techniques we are discussing here are for the inner, for how to discover it. I will tell you one thing. There have been traditions.... For example, one of the most important religious traditions has been Jainism. But Jainism pays too much attention to the outer; too much, so much so that they completely forget that there is anything like meditation, that there is anything like a science of yoga. They forget it completely.

They are obsessed with food, with clothes, with sleep, with everything -- but with no effort towards meditation. Not that in their tradition originally there was no meditation, because no religion can be born without it, but they got obsessed somewhere with the outer. It became so important that they forgot completely that this whole situation is just a help; it is not the goal.

What you eat is not the goal. What you are is the goal. It is good if your eating habits help you to uncover the being. It is good. But if you become just obsessed with eating, continuously thinking about it, then you have missed the point. Then you are a food-addict. You are mad, neurotic.

Question 2

ISN'T IT TRUE THAT ALL MEDITATION TECHNIQUES ARE REALLY DOINGS WHICH LEAD THE SEEKER TO HIS BEING?

In a way, yes; and in a deeper way, no. Meditation techniques are doings, because you are advised to do something. Even to meditate is to do something, even to sit silently is to do something, even to not do anything is a sort of doing. So in a superficial way, all meditation techniques are doings. But in a deeper way they are not, because if you succeed in them, the doing disappears.

Only in the beginning it appears like an effort. If you succeed in it, the effort disappears and the whole thing becomes spontaneous and effortless. If you succeed in it, it is not a doing. No effort on your part is needed then. It becomes just like breathing -- it is there. But in the beginning the effort is bound to be, because the mind cannot do anything which is not an effort. If you tell it to be effortless, the whole thing seems absurd.

In Zen, where much emphasis is paid to effortlessness, the masters say to the disciples, `Just sit. Don't do anything.' And the disciple tries. Of course, what can you do other than trying? The disciple tries to just sit, and he tries to just sit, and he tries to not do anything, and then the master hits him on his head with his staff and he says, `Don't do this! I have not told you to try to sit, because that becomes an effort. And don't try not to do anything, because that is a sort of doing. Simply sit!'

If I tell you to simply sit, what will you do? You will do something, which will make it not a simple sitting; an effort will enter. You will be sitting with an effort; a strain will be there. You cannot simply sit. It looks strange, but the moment you try to sit simply, it has become complex. The very effort to simply sit makes it complex. So what to do?

Years pass, and the disciple goes on sitting and being blamed, condemned by the master that he is missing the point. But he simply goes on, goes on, goes on, and every day he is a failure, because the effort is there. And he cannot deceive the master. But one day, just patiently sitting, even this consciousness to sit simply disappears. One day suddenly he is sitting -- like a tree or like a rock -- not doing anything. And then the master says, `This is the right posture. Now you have attained it. Now remember this. This is the way to sit.' But it takes patience and long effort to achieve effortlessness.

In the beginning, effort will be there, doing will be there, but only in the beginning as a necessary evil. But you have to remember constantly that you have to go beyond it. A moment must come when you are not doing anything about meditation -- just being there and it happens; just sitting or standing and it happens; not doing anything, just being aware, it happens.

All these techniques are just to help you to come to an effortless moment. The inner transformation, the inner realization, cannot happen through effort, because effort is a sort of tension. With effort you cannot be relaxed totally; the effort will become a barrier. With this background in mind, if you make effort, by and by you will become capable of leaving it also.

It is just like swimming. If you know about swimming, you know that in the beginning you have to make effort -- but only in the beginning. Once you know the feel of it, once you know what it is, the effort has gone; you can swim effortlessly. And even a good swimmer cannot say what swimming is, what exactly he is doing. He cannot explain to you what he is doing. Really, he is not doing anything. He is simply allowing himself to be in a deep responsive relationship with the water, with the river. He is not doing anything really. And if he is still doing, he is still not an expert swimmer -- he is still amateur, still learning.

I will tell you one anecdote. In Burma, one Buddhist monk was ordered to make a design for the new temple, particularly for the gate. So he was making many designs. He had one very talented disciple, so he told that disciple to be near him. While he made the design the disciple was simply to watch, and if he liked it he had to say that it was okay, it was right. If he didn't like it then he had to say no. And the master said, `When you say yes, only then will I send the design. If you go on saying no, I will discard the design and will create a new one.'

Hundreds of designs were discarded in this way. Three months passed. Even the master became afraid, but he had given his word so he had to keep it. The disciple was there, the master would make the design, and then the disciple would say no. The master would start another one.

One day the ink was just about to be finished, so the master said, `Go out and find more ink.' The disciple went out. The master forgot him, his presence, and became effortless. His presence was the problem. The idea was constantly in his mind that the disciple was there, judging. He was constantly wondering whether he was going to like it or not, whether he would discard it again. This created an inner anxiety and the master could not be spontaneous.

The disciple went out. The design was completed. The disciple came in and he said `Wonderful! But why couldn't you do it before?'

The master said, `Now I understand why -- because you were here. Because of you -- I was making an effort to get your approval. The effort destroyed the whole thing. I couldn't be natural, I couldn't flow, I couldn't forget myself because of you.'

Whenever you are doing meditation, the very effort that you are doing it, the very idea of succeeding in it, is the barrier. Be conscious of it. Go on doing, and be conscious of it. A day will come... just through patience a day comes when effort is not there. Really, you are not there, only meditation is. It may take a long time. It cannot be predicted, no one can say when it will happen. Because if something is to be achieved by effort, it can be predicted -- that if you do this much effort you will succeed -- but meditation is going to succeed only when you become effortless. That's why nothing can be predicted. Nothing can be said about when you will succeed. You may succeed this very moment, and you may not succeed for lives.

The whole thing hinges on one thing -- when your effort drops and you become spontaneous, when your meditation is not an act but becomes your being, when your meditation is just like love....

You cannot do anything about love, or can you? If you do anything, you falsify it. It will become artificial. It will not go deep. You will not be in it. It will become an acting. Love IS -- you cannot do anything about it.

You cannot do anything about meditation also. But I don't mean don't do anything, because then you will remain whatsoever you are. You have to do something, perfectly conscious that by only doing you will not achieve. Doing will be needed in the beginning. One cannot leave it; one has to go through it. But one has to go through it, one has to transcend it, and an effortless floating has to be achieved.

The path is arduous and very contradictory. You cannot find anything more contradictory than meditation. Contradictory because it has to be started as an effort and it has to end as effortlessness. But it happens. You may not be able to conceive logically hot it happens, but in experience it happens. A day comes when you just get fed up with your effort. It falls.

It happened to Buddha this way. For six years he was making every effort possible. No human being has been so obsessed with becoming enlightened. He did everything that he could do. He moved from one teacher to another, and whatsoever he was taught, he did it perfectly. That was the problem, because no teacher could say to him, `You are not doing well, that's why you are not achieving.' That was impossible. He was doing better than any master, so the masters had to confess. They said, `This much we have to teach. Beyond this we don't know, so you go somewhere else.'

He was a dangerous disciple -- and only dangerous disciples achieve. He studied everything that was possible. Whatsoever he was told, he would do it -- absolutely as it was told. And then he would come to the master and say, `I have done it, but nothing has happened. So what next?'

The teachers would say, `You go somewhere else. There is one teacher in the Himalayas -- go there.' Or, `There is one teacher in some forest -- go there. We don't know more than this.'

He went around and around for six years. He did all that can be done, all that is humanly possible, and then he got fed up. The whole thing appeared futile, fruitless, meaningless. One night he relaxed all efforts. He was sitting under the Bodhi tree, and he said, `Now everything is finished. In the world there is nothing, and in this spiritual search also there is nothing. Now there is nothing for me to do. Everything is finished. Not only this world, but the other world also. Suddenly all efforts dropped. He was empty. Because when there is nothing to do, the mind cannot move. The mind moves only because there is something to do -- some motivation, some goal. The mind moves because something is possible, something can be achieved, the future. If not today then tomorrow, but the possibility is there that one can achieve it -- the mind moves.

That night Buddha came to a dead point. Really, he died that very moment, because there was no future. Nothing was to be achieved, and nothing could be achieved -- `I have done everything. The whole world is futile and this whole existence is a nightmare.' Not only the material world became futile, but the spiritual also. He relaxed. Not that he did something to relax. This is the point to understand: there was nothing to be tense, therefore he relaxed. There was no effort on his part to relax.

Under the Bodhi tree he was not trying relaxation. There was nothing to do, nothing to be tense, nothing to desire, no future, no hope. He was absolutely hopeless that night -- relaxed. Relaxation happened. You cannot relax, because something or other is still there to be achieved. That goes on stirring your mind; you go on spinning and spinning around and around. Suddenly the spinning stopped, the wheel stopped -- Buddha relaxed and fell asleep.

In the morning when he awoke, the last star was setting. He looked at the last star disappear, and with that last star disappearing, he disappeared completely, he became an enlightened one. Then people started asking, `How did you achieve this? How? What was the method?'

Now you can understand Buddha's difficulty. If he said that he had achieved through some methods, then he was wrong, because he achieved only when there was no method. If he said that he had achieved through effort, then he was wrong, because he achieved only when there was no effort. But if he said, `Don't make any effort and you will achieve,' then too he was wrong, because to his no-effort those six years of effort were the background. Without that effort, that six years' arduous effort, this state of no-effort could not have been achieved. Only because of that mad effort he came to a peak and there was nowhere further to go; he relaxed and fell down in the valley.

This has to be remembered for many reasons. Spiritual effort is the most contradictory phenomenon. Effort has to be made, with full consciousness that nothing can be achieved through effort. Effort has to be made only to achieve no-effort, only to achieve effortlessness. But don't relax your effort, because if you relax you will never achieve that relaxation which came to Buddha. You go on doing every effort, so automatically a moment comes when just by sheer effort you reach a point where relaxation happens to you.

For example, you may take it in a different way. As I see it, in the west, ego has been the central point: the fulfillment of the ego, the development of the ego, the achievement of a strong ego, has been the whole western effort. In the east, it has been how to achieve egolessness, how to be a non-ego, how to forget, surrender, dissolve yourself completely so that you are not. The east has been trying for egolessness. The west has been trying for the perfect ego.

But this is the contradictoriness of things: if you don't have a very developed ego, you cannot surrender. You can surrender only if you have a perfectly clearcut ego. Otherwise you cannot surrender, because who will surrender? So to me, both are half and both are in misery -- east and west both. Because the east has taken egolessness, which is the end part, and the beginning part is missing.

Who will surrender the ego? The peak is not there, so who will create the valley? The valley is created only around a peak. The greater the peak, the deeper the valley. If you don't have an ego, or a very lukewarm one, surrender is not possible. Or, your surrender will be a lukewarm surrender, just so-so. Nothing will happen out of it; there will be no explosion.

In the west, the beginning part has been emphasized. So you can go on growing with your ego. It will create more and more anxiety. And when you have really created it, you don't know what to do with it, because the end part is not there.

To me, the spiritual search is both. Create a very great peak, create a perfect ego, just to dissolve it. That seems absurd -- just to dissolve it, just to achieve a deep surrender, just to lose it somewhere. And you cannot lose something which you don't have. So in my view, humanity has to be trained for these two things together: help everyone to create a perfect ego, a fulfilled ego -- but this is only half the journey -- and then, help them to surrender it.

The greater the peak, the deeper will be the valley. The higher the ego, the deeper you will move in your surrender. And this is for everything. On the spiritual path, remember this continuous contradictoriness. Don't forget it even for a single moment. Become perfect egoists so that you can surrender, so that you can dissolve, melt. Do every effort that you can do, just to reach a point where effort leaves you and you are totally effortless.

Question 3

YOU SAID LAST NIGHT THAT THE MORE THE MIND GROWS, THE MORE WE KNOW THAT THE NATURE OF THE MIND IS CONFUSION. BUT ISN'T IT TRUE THAT THIS GROWTH OF THE MIND ALSO LEADS TO CLARITY?

Whatsoever I was just saying is related to this.

Yes, it leads to clarity, because only when you have a very mature mind do you become aware that you are confused. Even to become aware that mind is confusion, a very developed mind is needed. Those who are not aware that their mind is confusion are really not mature minds. They are childish, juvenile, still developing. Only a very mature mind can become aware of the quality of the mind, that it is confusion. And when you have developed the mind, only then is meditation possible, because meditation is the opposite goal.

Meditation means no-mind. But how can you achieve a no-mind if you have not achieved a mind? So achieve a mind just to lose it. And don't think that if ultimately one has to reach the state of no-mind, then what is the use of achieving a mind? -- because if you don't achieve a mind, the ultimate is not going to happen to you. It can happen only if the mind is there. So I am not against mind, I am not against intellect. Really, I am not against anything. I am for everything, because everything can be used to reach the opposite pole.

There is a polarity, and the opposite pole cannot be reached if the polarity is not there. A madman cannot meditate. Why? Because he has no mind. But this no-mind is not the no-mind of Buddha. No-mind can have two dimensions: below mind and above mind. The above mind is also no-mind, and the below mind is also no-mind. You can fall down from the mind: the mind is not there, but it is not meditation. You have to go beyond mind, only then is the Buddha's no-mind achieved. And always remember it, because they are so similar you can misunderstand the whole thing. They are so similar.

For example, a child is innocent. A saint is also innocent -- a Jesus or a Krishna -- but their innocence is not childish. It is childlike, not childish; because a child is innocent only because he is ignorant. He is innocent only as a negative thing, just the absence. Sooner or later everything will erupt; he is a volcano waiting to erupt. The innocence is just the silence before the volcano erupts.

A saint is one who has gone beyond. The eruption has happened; the volcano is silent again. But this silence is different. The first silence was very pregnant; something was present there. The silence was just on the surface; deep down that child was getting ready to be disturbed. The saint has passed the disturbance. The cyclone has gone. This silence, the innocence, appears similar, but there is a deep difference.

So sometimes an idiot can also appear to be saint-like. And idiots are saint-like. They are not cunning; to be cunning, intelligence is needed. They are not calculating; to be calculating, mind is needed. Idiots are simple, innocent, non-cunning, non-calculating. They cannot deceive anyone. Not that they would not like to; they cannot. The very capacity is not there. They look like saints, and sometimes saints look like idiots, because the same thing has happened again, in a different, altogether different, dimension.

You can fall down below the mind: then too a no-mind happens, but it is not meditation. You have simply lost even that mind which was going to become a step towards meditation. So I am not against mind. Develop mind, develop intellect, but remember well -- this is just a means, and a means which has to be forsaken, thrown away. It has to be used like a boat. You reach the other shore, you leave the boat. You forget about the boat completely.

Question 4

WE VERY OFTEN FEEL THAT WE CREATE OUR OWN SUFFERINGS. IN SPITE OF THIS, WHY DO WE CONTINUE CREATING THEM? AND WHEN AND HOW DOES ONE STOP CREATING ONE'S OWN SUFFERING?

The first thing, and very basic to be understood, is that whenever you say WE VERY OFTEN FEEL THAT WE CREATE OUR OWN SUFFERING, this is not the case. You never really feel that you are the creator of your own suffering. You may think so, because you have been taught so; because for centuries and centuries teachers have been teaching that you are the creator of your own suffering and no one else is responsible.

You have heard these things, you have read these things. They have become your blood and bone, they have become your unconscious conditionings, so sometimes you repeat like a parrot WE CREATE OUR OWN SUFFERING. But this is not your feeling, this is not your realization, because if you realize it, then the other thing is impossible. Then you cannot say, IN SPITE OF THIS, WHY DO WE CONTINUE CREATING IT?

If you really feel, and if it is your own feeling that you are the creator of your own suffering, any moment you can stop -- unless you want to create it, unless you enjoy it, unless you are a masochist. Then everything is okay, then there is no question. If you say, `I enjoy my suffering,' then it is okay; you can go on creating it. But if you say, `I suffer and I want to go beyond it. I want to stop it completely -- and I understand that I am the creator,' then you are wrong. You don't understand it.

Socrates is reported to have said that knowledge is virtue. And there has been a long discussion for these two thousand years over whether Socrates is right or wrong -- knowledge is virtue. Socrates says that once you know something, you cannot do contrary to it. If you know that anger is suffering, you cannot be angry. This is what Socrates means -- knowledge is virtue. You cannot say, `I know anger is bad; still I move in it. What to do about it now?' Socrates says that the first thing is wrong. You don't know that anger is bad; that's why you go on moving in it. If you know, you cannot move in it. How can you move against your own knowledge?

I know that if I put my hand in the fire it is going to be painful. If I know, I cannot put my hand in. But if somebody else has told me, if I have heard through the tradition, if I have read in the scriptures that fire burns, and I have not known fire, and I have not known any similar experience, only then can I put my hand into fire -- and that too only once.

Can you conceive it? That you have put your hand into fire and you have been burned and you have suffered, and again you go and ask, `I know that fire burns, but in spite of it I go on putting my hand into the fire. What to do about it?' Who will believe that you know? And what type of knowledge is this? If your own experience of suffering and burning cannot stop you, nothing is going to stop you. Now there is no possibility, because the last possibility has been missed. But no one can miss it; that is impossible.

Socrates is right, and all those who have know, they will agree with Socrates -- that agreement has a very deep point in it. Once you know.... But remember -- the knowledge must be yours. A borrowed knowledge won't do; borrowed knowledge is useless. Unless it is your own experience, it is not going to change you. Others' experiences are of no help.

You have heard that you are the creator of your own suffering, but this is just in the mind. It has not entered your being, it is not your own knowledge. So when you are discussing, you can discuss about it cerebrally, but when the actual phenomenon happens, you will forget, and you will behave in the way you know, not in the way others know.

When you are at ease, cool, collected, silently discussing anger, you can say it is poison, it is a disease, evil. But when someone makes you angry then a complete change occurs. Not it is not an intellectual discussion, now you are involved. And the moment you are involved, you become angry. Later on again, retrospectively, when you again get cool, the memory will come back, your mind will again start functioning, and you will say, `That was wrong. It was not good of me to do that. I know anger is wrong.'

Who is this `I'? -- just intellect, just the superficial mind. You don't know -- because when someone pushes you into anger, you throw this mind away. It is useful as far as discussion is concerned, but when a real situation arises, only the real knowledge will help. When there is no situation, you can go on. Even in a discussion the real situation can arise. The other can go on contradicting you so much that you become angry and then you will forget.

Real knowledge means that which has happened to you. You have not heard about it, not read about it, you have not collected information about it -- it is your own experience. And then there is no question, because after that you cannot go against it. Not that you will have to make an effort not to go against it; simply you cannot go against it.

How can I? When I know this is a wall and I want to go out of this room, how can I try to pass through the wall? I know this is a wall, so I will search for the door. Only a blink man will try to go out through the wall. I have got eyes. I see what is a wall and what is a door.

But if I try to enter the wall and tell you, `I know very well where the door is, and I know this to be a wall, but in spite of this, how can I stop myself from trying to enter the wall?' then that means that as far as I am concerned that door looks false. Others have told me that it is the door, but as far as I am concerned, I know that door is false. And others have told me that this is a wall, but as far as I see, I see the door here in this wall, and that is why I try.

In this situation you have to make a clearcut distinction between what you know and what you have gathered as knowledge. Don't rely on information. From the greatest source -- even if you collect from the greatest source -- information is information. Even if a Buddha says it to you, it is not your own, and it is not going to help you in any way. But you can remain thinking that it is your knowledge, and this misunderstanding will waste your energy, time and life.

The basic thing is not to ask what to do so that suffering is not created. The basic thing is to know that you are the creator of your suffering. Next time whenever a real situation arises and you are in suffering, remember to find out whether you are the cause of it. And if you can find out that you are the cause of it, the suffering will disappear, and the same suffering will not appear again -- impossible.

But don't deceive yourself. You can -- that's why I say it. When you are suffering you can say, `Yes, I know I have created this suffering,' but deep down you know that someone else has created it. Your wife has created it, your husband has created it, someone else has created it, and this is simply a consolation because you cannot do anything. You console yourself: `No one has created it, I have created it myself, and by and by I will stop it.'

But knowledge is instant transformation; there is no `by and by.' If you understand that you have created it, it will drop immediately. And it is not going to come up again. If it comes again, it means the understanding has not gone deep.

So there is no need to find out what to do, and how to stop. The only need is to go deep and to find out who is really the cause of it. If others are the cause then it cannot be stopped, because you cannot change the whole world. If you are the cause, only then can it be stopped.

That's why I insist that only religion can lead humanity towards non-suffering. Nothing else can lead, because everyone else believes that the suffering is caused by others; only religion says that suffering is cau