SAMADHI.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1

Chapter #35

Chapter title: Turning inward toward the real

24 February 1973 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7302245

ShortTitle: VBT135

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 99 mins

OH LOTUS-EYED ONE, SWEET OF TOUCH, WHEN SINGING, SEEING, TASTING, BE AWARE YOU ARE AND DISCOVER THE EVER-LIVING.

WHEREVER SATISFACTION IS FOUND, IN WHATEVER ACT, ACTUALIZE THIS.

AT THE POINT OF SLEEP, WHEN THE SLEEP HAS NOT YET COME AND THE EXTERNAL WAKEFULNESS VANISHES, AT THIS POINT BEING IS REVEALED.

ILLUSIONS DECEIVE, COLORS CIRCUMSCRIBE, EVEN DIVISIBLES ARE INDIVISIBLE.

Civilization is a training in how to become unreal. Tantra is the reverse process -- how to prevent yourself from becoming unreal, and if you have already become unreal, how to touch the reality which is hidden within you, how to contact it again, how to be again real. The first thing to be understood is how we go on becoming unreal, and once this process is understood many things change immediately. The very understanding becomes mutation.

Man is born undivided. He is neither a body nor a mind. He is born undivided, as one individual. He is both body and mind. Even to say that he is both is wrong. He is body-mind. Body and mind are two aspects of his being, not two divisions -- two polarities of something which we may call life, energy or anything -- X,Y,Z -- but body and mind are not two things.

The very process of civilization, education, culture, conditioning, starts with the division. Everyone is taught that he is two, not one, and then, of course, one begins to be identified with the mind and not with the body. The very thinking process becomes your center and the thinking process is just a periphery. It is not the center because you can exist without thinking. Once you existed without thinking: thinking is not a necessity to exist. If you go deep in meditation YOU will be, and there will be no thinking. If you become unconscious YOU will be, but there will be no thinking. Moving into deep sleep YOU will be, but there will be no thinking. Thinking is just on the periphery; your being is somewhere else -- deeper than thinking. But you are being taught continuously that you are two, body and mind, and that, really, you are the mind and you possess the body. The mind becomes the master and body becomes the slave, and you go on struggling against the body. This creates a rift, a gap, and that gap is the problem. All neurosis is born out of that gap; all anxiety is born out of that gap.

Your being is rooted in your body, and your body is not just something separate from existence. It is part of it. Your body is the whole universe. It is not something limited, finite. You may not have observed it, but try to observe where your body really ends -- where! Do you think that your body ends where your skin ends?

If the sun which is so far away just goes dead, instantly you will be dead here. If the sun rays stop coming, you will be no more here. Your body cannot exist without the sun being there so far away. The sun and you are somehow deeply related. The sun must be included in your body; otherwise you cannot exist. You are part of its rays.

In the morning you see flowers open: their opening is really the rising of the sun. In the night they will close: their closing is the setting of the sun. They are just rays that are spread out. You exist here because there, so far away, the sun exists. Your skin is not really your skin. Your skin goes on spreading; even the sun is included. You are breathing: you can breathe because the air is there, the atmosphere is there. Each moment you exhale and inhale the atmosphere in and out.

If for a single moment there were no air, you would be dead. Your breath is your life. If your breath is your life, then the whole atmosphere is part of you. You cannot exist without it. So where does your body really end? Where is the limit? There is no limit! If you observe, if you go deep, you will find there is no limit. Or, the limit of the universe is your body limit. The whole universe is involved in you, so your body is not just your body; it is your universe and you are grounded in it. Your mind too cannot exist without the body. It is part of it, a process of it.

Division is destructive, and with the division you are bound to become identified with the mind. You think, and without thinking there is no division. You think, and you become identified with your thinking. Then you feel as if you possess the body. This is a complete reversal of the truth. You do not possess the body; neither is the body possessing you. They are not two things. Your existence is one, a deep harmony of opposite poles. But opposite poles are not divided, they are joined together. Only then can they become opposite poles. And the opposition is good. It gives challenge, it gives stamina, it creates energy. It is dialectical.

If you were really one, without opposite poles within, you would be dull and dead. These two opposite poles, body and mind, give you life. They are opposite and at the same time complementary -- and basically and ultimately one. One current of energy runs in both. But once we get identified with the thinking process, we think that we are centered in the head. If your legs are cut, you will not feel that YOU are cut. You will say, "My legs are cut." But if your head is cut, YOU are cut. You are murdered.

If you close your eyes to feel where you are, immediately you will feel you are in your head. You are not there -- because when for the first moment you entered life in your mother's womb, when the male and female atoms met, there was no head. But life was started. You were there, and there was no head. In that first meeting of two alive cells, you were created. The head came later on, but your being was there. Where is that being? It is not in your head. Really, it is nowhere -- or everywhere in your body. It is nowhere; you cannot pinpoint where it is. And the moment you pinpoint it you miss the whole thing. It is everywhere. Your life is everywhere, it is spread out all over you. And not only all over you; if you follow it, you will have to go to the very ends of the universe. It is everywhere!

With the identification that "I am my mind," everything becomes false. You become unreal because this identity is false. This has to be broken. Tantra techniques are to break down this identity. The effort of tantra is to make you headless, uncentered, everywhere or nowhere. And why does humanity, why do human beings become false and unreal with the mind? Because mind is an epiphenomenon -- a process which is necessary, useful, but secondary; a process which consists of words, not of realities. The word `love' is not love, the word `god' is not God. But mind consists of words, of a verbal process, and then love itself becomes less significant than the word `love'. For the mind, the word is more significant. God becomes less significant than the word `God'. For the mind it is so. Words become more meaningful, significant. They become primary, and we start living in words. And the more you live in words the more shallow you become, and you will go on missing the reality which is not words. Reality is existence.

Living in the mind is as if someone is living in a mirror. In the night, if you go to a lake and the lake is silent and there are no ripples, the lake becomes a mirror. You can look at the moon in the lake, but that moon is false -- just a reflection. The reflection comes from the real, but the reflection is not real. Mind is just a reflecting phenomenon. The reality is reflected in it, but reflections are not real. And if you get caught in reflections, you will miss reality completely. That is why, with the mind, with mind reflections, everything wavers. A slight wave, a slight wind, will disturb your mind. Reality is not disturbed, but the mind is disturbed by anything. Mind is a reflecting phenomenon, and we are living in mind.

Tantra says come down. Descend from your thrones, come down from your heads. Forget the reflections and move towards the reality. All the techniques which we are discussing are concerned with this: how to be away from the mind so that you can move into reality. Now we will discuss the techniques.

The first technique:

"OH LOTUS-EYED ONE, SWEET OF TOUCH, WHEN SINGING, SEEING, TASTING, BE AWARE YOU ARE AND DISCOVER THE EVERLIVING."

We are living, but we are not aware that we are or that we are living. There is no self-remembering. You are eating or you are taking a bath or you are taking a walk: you are not aware that you are while walking. Everything is, only you are not. The trees, the houses, the traffic, everything is. You are aware of everything around you, but you are not aware of your own being -- that you are. You may be aware of the whole world, but if you are not aware of yourself that awareness is false. Why? Because your mind can reflect everything, but your mind cannot reflect you. If you are aware of yourself, then you have transcended the mind.

Your self-remembering cannot be reflected in your mind because you are behind the mind. It can reflect only things which are in front of it. You can just see others, but you cannot see yourself. Your eyes can see everyone, but your eyes cannot see themselves. If you want to see yourself you will need a mirror. Only in the mirror can you see yourself, but then you will have to stand in front of the mirror. If your mind is a mirror, it can reflect the whole world. It cannot reflect you because you cannot stand before it. You are always behind, hidden behind the mirror.

This technique says while doing anything -- singing, seeing, tasting -- be aware that you are and discover the ever-living, and discover within yourself the current, the energy, the life, the ever-living. But we are not aware of ourselves.

Gurdjieff used self-remembering as a basic technique in the West. The self-remembering is derived from this sutra. The whole Gurdjieffian system is based on this one sutra. Remember yourself, whatsoever you are doing. It is very difficult. It looks very easy, but you will go on forgetting. Even for three or four seconds you cannot remember yourself. You will have a feeling that you are remembering, and suddenly you will have moved to some other thought. Even with this thought that "Okay, I am remembering myself," you will have missed, because this thought is not self-remembering. In self-remembering there will be no thought; you will be completely empty. And self-remembering is not a mental process. It is not that you say, "Yes, I am." Saying "Yes, I am," you have missed. This is a mind thing, this is a mental process: "I am."

Feel "I am," not the words "I am." Don't verbalize, just feel that you are. Don't think, FEEL! Try it. It is difficult, but if you go on insisting it happens. While walking, remember you are, and have the feeling of your being, not of any thought, not of any idea. Just feel. I touch your hand or I put my hand on your head: don't verbalize. Just feel the touch, and in that feeling feel not only the touch, but feel also the touched one. Then your consciousness becomes double-arrowed.

You are walking under trees: the trees are there, the breeze is there, the sun is rising. This is the world all around you; you are aware of it. Stand for a moment and suddenly remember that you are, but don't verbalize. Just feel that you are. This nonverbal feeling, even if for only a single moment, will give you a glimpse -- a glimpse which no LSD can give you, a glimpse which is of the real. For a single moment you are thrown back to the center of your being. You are behind the mirror; you have transcended the world of reflections; you are existential. And you can do it at any time. It doesn't need any special place or any special time. And you cannot say, "I have no time." When eating you can do it, when taking a bath you can do it, when moving or sitting you can do it -- anytime. No matter what you are doing, you can suddenly remember yourself, and then try to continue that glimpse of your being.

It will be difficult. One moment you will feel it is there, the next moment you will have moved away. Some thought will have entered, some reflection will have come to you, and you will have become involved in the reflection. But don't be sad and don't be disappointed. This is so because for lives together we have been concerned with the reflections. This has become a robot-like mechanism. Instantly, automatically, we are thrown to the reflection. But if even for a single moment you have the glimpse, it is enough for the beginning. And why is it enough? Because you will never get two moments together. Only one moment is with you always. And if you can have the glimpse for a single moment, you can remain in it. Only effort is needed -- a continuous effort is needed.

A single moment is given to you. You cannot have two moments together, so don't worry about two moments. You will always get only one moment. And if you can be aware in one moment, you can be aware for your whole life. Now only effort is needed, and this can be done the whole day. Whenever you remember, remember yourself.

"OH LOTUS-EYED ONE, SWEET OF TOUCH, WHEN SINGING, SEEING, TASTING, BE AWARE YOU ARE, AND DISCOVER THE EVER-LIVING:" When the sutra says "Be aware you are", what will you do? Will you remember that, "My name is Ram" or "Jesus" or something else? Will you remember that you belong to such and such a family, to such and such a religion and tradition? To such and such a country and caste and creed? Will you remember that you are a communist or a Hindu or a Christian? What will you remember?

The sutra says be aware you are; it simply says "You are". No name is needed, no country is needed. Let there be simple existence: you are! So don't say to yourself who you are. Don't answer that, "I am this and that." Let there be simple existence, that you are.

But it becomes difficult because we never remember simple existence. We always remember something which is just a label, not existence itself. Whenever you think about yourself, you think about your name, religion, country, many things, but never the simple existence that you are.

You can practice this: relaxing in a chair or just sitting under a tree, forget everything and feel this "you-areness." No Christian, no Hindu, no Buddhist, no Indian, no Englishman, no German -- simply, you are. Have the feeling of it, and then it will be easy for you to remember what this sutra says: "BE AWARE YOU ARE, AND DISCOVER THE EVER-LIVING." And the moment you are aware that you are, you are thrown into the current of the ever-living. The false is going to die; only the real will remain.

That is why we are so much afraid of death: because the unreal is going to die. The unreal cannot be forever, and we are attached to the unreal, identified with the unreal. You as a Hindu will have to die; you as Ram or Krishna will have to die; you as a communist, as an atheist, as a theist, will have to die; you as a name and form will have to die. And if you are attached to name and form, obviously the fear of death will come to you, but the real, the existential, the basic in you, is deathless. Once the forms and names are forgotten, once you have a look within to the nameless and the formless, you have moved into the eternal.

"BE AWARE YOU ARE AND DISCOVER THE EVER-LIVING": This technique is one of the most helpful, and it has been used for millennia by many teachers, masters. Buddha used it, Mahavira used it, Jesus used it, and in modern times Gurdjieff used it. Among all the techniques, this is one of the most potential. Try it. It will take time; months will pass.

When Ouspensky was learning with Gurdjieff, for three months he had to make much effort, arduous effort, in order to have a glimpse of what self-remembering is. So continuously, for three months, Ouspensky lived in a secluded house just doing only one thing -- self-remembering. Thirty persons started that experiment, and by the end of the first week twenty-seven had escaped; only three remained. The whole day they were trying to remember -- not doing anything else, just remembering that "I am." Twenty-seven felt they were going crazy. They felt that now madness was just near, so they escaped. They never turned back; they never met Gurdjieff again.

Why? As we are, really, we are mad. Not remembering who we are, what we are, we are mad, but this madness is taken as sanity. Once you try to go back, once you try to contact the real, it will look like craziness, it will look like madness. Compared to what we are, it is just the reverse, the opposite. If you feel that this is sanity, that will look like madness.

But three persisted. One of the three was P. D. Ouspensky. For three months they persisted. Only after the first month did they start having glimpses of simply being -- of "I am." After the second month, even the "I" dropped, and they started having the glimpses of "am-ness" -- of just being, not even of "I", because "I" is also a label. The pure being is not "I" and "thou"; it just is.

And by the third month even the feeling of "am-ness" dissolved because that feeling of am-ness is still a word. Even that word dissolves. Then you are, and then you know what you are. Before that point comes you cannot ask, "Who am I?" Or you can go on asking continuously, "Who am I?", just continuously inquiring, "Who am I ? Who am I?", and all the answers that will be provided by the mind will be found false, irrelevant. You go on asking, "Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?" and a point comes where you can no more ask the question. All the answers fall down, and then the question itself falls down and disappears. And when even the question, "Who am I?" disappears, you know who you are.

Gurdjieff tried from one corner: just try to remember you are. Raman Maharshi tried from another corner. He made it a meditation to ask, to inquire, "Who am I?" And don't believe in any answers that the mind can supply. The mind will say, "What nonsense are you asking? You are this, you are that, you are a man, you are a woman, you are educated or uneducated, rich or poor." The mind will supply answers, but go on asking. Don't accept any answer because all the answers given by the mind are false. They are from the unreal part of you. They are coming from words, they are coming from scriptures, they are coming from conditioning, they are coming from society, they are coming from others. Go on asking. Let this arrow of "Who am I?" penetrate deeper and deeper. A moment will come when no answer will come.

That is the right moment. Now you are nearing the answer. When no answer comes, you are near the answer because mind is becoming silent -- or you have gone far away from the mind. When there will be no answer and a vacuum will be created all around you, your questioning will look absurd. Whom are you questioning? There is no one to answer you. Suddenly, even your questioning will stop. With the questioning, the last part of the mind has dissolved because this question was also of the mind. Those answers were of the mind and this question was also of the mind. Both have dissolved, so now YOU ARE.

Try this. There is every possibility, if you persist, that this technique can give you a glimpse of the real -- and the real is ever-living.

The second technique:

"WHEREVER SATISFACTION IS FOUND, IN WHATEVER ACT, ACTUALIZE THIS."

You feel thirsty, so you drink water. A subtle satisfaction is attained. Forget the water, forget the thirst. Remain with the subtle satisfaction that you are feeling. Be filled with it; simply feel satisfied.

But the human mind is mischievous. It only feels dissatisfactions, discontent. It never feels satisfaction; it never feels content. If you are dissatisfied, you will feel it and you will be filled by it. When you are thirsty, you feel it: you are filled with thirst; you feel it in the throat. If it grows you feel it all over your body, and a moment will come when it is not that YOU are thirsty, you will feel that you have become the thirst. If you are in a desert and there is no hope of getting water, you will not feel that YOU are thirsty; you will feel that you have become the thirst.

Dissatisfactions are felt, miseries are felt, pains are felt. Whenever you suffer, you become the suffering. That is why the whole life becomes a hell. You have never felt the positive; you have always felt the negative. Life is not such a misery as we have made it; misery is just our interpretation. A Buddha is happy here and now, in this very life. A Krishna is dancing and playing on a flute. In this very life here and now, where we are in misery, Krishna is dancing. Life is neither misery, nor is life bliss. Bliss and misery are our interpretations, our attitudes, our approaches, how we look at it. It is your mind -- how it takes it.***************

Remember, and analyze your own life. Have you ever taken account of happy moments, of contents, of satisfactions, of blissful glimpses? You have not taken any account, but you have taken every account of your pain, suffering, misery, and you go on accumulating. You are an accumulated hell, and this is your own choice. No one else is forcing you into this hell; this is your own choice. The mind takes the negative, accumulates it and becomes negative itself. And then this is a self-perpetuating misery. The more negatives you have within the mind, the more negative you become, the more negatives are accumulated. The similar attracts the similar, and this has been for lives and lives. You miss everything because of your negative approach.

This technique gives you a positive approach, a total reversal to the ordinary mind and its process. Wherever satisfaction is found, in whatever act, actualize this, feel it, become one with it. Don't take it just as a passing phase. The satisfaction can become a glimpse of a greater positive existence.

Everything is just a window. If you become identified with a pain, you are looking from a window, and the window of pain, of suffering, opens only towards hell. If you are one with a satisfactory moment, a blissful moment, an ecstatic moment, you are opening another window. The existence is the same, but your windows are different.

Wherever satisfaction is found, in whatsoever act, actualize it -- wherever! No conditions: wherever! You see a friend and you feel happy; you meet your lover or beloved and you feel happy: actualize this. Be happiness in that moment, and make that happiness a door. Then you are changing the mind, and you will start accumulating happiness. Your mind will turn positive, and the same world will look different.

One Zen monk, Bokuju, is reported to have said, "The world is the same, but nothing is the same because the mind changes. Everything remains the same, but nothing is the same because I am not the same."

You go on trying to change the world, and no matter what you do the world will remain the same because you remain the same. You can get a bigger house, you can get a bigger car, you can get a more beautiful wife or a husband, but nothing will change. The bigger house will not be bigger. The beautiful wife or husband will not be more beautiful. The bigger car will remain the smaller one because you are the same. Your mind, your approach, your ways of seeing are the same. You go on changing things without changing yourself. So only a miserable person leaves a hut and moves to a palace, but the miserable person remains the same. He was miserable in a hut; now he will be miserable in a palace. This misery may be palatial, but he will be miserable.

You go on carrying your misery with you, and wherever you move you will be with yourself. So no outer change is basically a change; it is just an appearance. You simply feel that there has been a change, but there is no change. Only one change, only one revolution, only one mutation can be there, and that is if your mind changes from negative to the positive. If your outlook is focused on misery, you live in hell; if your outlook is focused on happiness, the very hell becomes the heaven. Try this! This will change your very quality of life.

But you are interested in quantity. You are interested in how to get more rich -- in quantity, not in quality. You can have two houses and two cars, a bigger bank account, many things. Quantity changes: it becomes more and more. But your quality remains the same, and richness is not of things. Richness is of the quality of your mind, of your life. Even a poor man can be a rich man as far as quality is concerned, and even a rich man can be a poor man. Almost always this is the case, because a person concerned with things and quantity is totally unaware that a different dimension is there within him -- the dimension of quality. And that dimension changes only when your mind is positive.

From tomorrow morning, for the whole day, remember this: whenever you feel something beautiful, satisfactory, something blissful -- and there are many moments in a twenty-four-hour day -- be aware of it. There are many moments when heaven is just near you, but you are so attached and involved with the hell that you go on missing it. The sun rises, the flowers open, the birds sing and the breeze blows through the trees. It is happening! A small child looks at you with innocent eyes, and a subtle feeling of bliss enters into you.; or someone smiles and you feel blissful.

Look all around, and try to find the blissful; be filled with it. In that moment forget everything. Be filled with it, taste it, and allow it to happen to your whole being. Be one with it. The fragrance of it will follow you. It will go on resounding within you the whole day, and the resounding, the echoing feeling, will help you to be more positive.

This is accumulative. If you start in the morning, in the evening you will be more open to the stars, to the moon, to the night, to the darkness. Do it for twenty-four hours experimentally, just to have a feeling of what it is. Once you can feel that the positive leads you to a different world because you become different, you are not going to leave it. The whole emphasis will have changed from negative to positive. Then you look at the world in a different, a new way.

I am reminded of one anecdote. One of Buddha's disciples was taking leave from his master. The disciple's name was Purnakashyapa. He asked Buddha, "Where am I to go? Where am I to go to preach your message?"

Buddha said, "You yourself can choose where "

So he said, "I will go to a far corner of Bihar" -- It was known as Sukha -- "I will move to Sukha province."

Buddha said, "It is better if you change your choice because the people of that province are very cruel, violent, mischievous, and no one has yet dared to go there to teach them non-violence, love, compassion. So please change your choice."

But Purnakashyapa said, "Allow me to go there BECAUSE no one has gone there, and someone has to be there."

Buddha said, "Then I will ask you three questions before I allow you to go. If the people of that province insult you, humiliate you, how will you feel it?"

Purnakashyapa said, "I will feel they are very good if they simply insult me. Then they are not beating me. They are good people; they could have beaten me."

Buddha said, "Then the second question: if they start beating you, how will you feel?"

Purnakashyapa said, "I will feel they are very good people. They could have killed me, but they are simply beating me."

Then Buddha said, "Now the third question: if they really kill you and murder you, then at the moment when you are dying how will you feel?"

Purnakashyapa said, "I will thank you and them. If they kill me, they will have freed me of a life where many errors were possible. They will have freed me so I will feel thankful."

So Buddha said, "Now you can go anywhere. The whole world is heaven for you. Now there is no problem. The world is a heaven, so you can go anywhere."

With this mind, nothing is wrong with the world. With your mind, nothing can be right. With a negative mind, everything is wrong -- not that it is wrong; it is wrong because a negative mind can see only what is wrong.

"WHEREVER THE SATISFACTION IS FOUND, IN WHATEVER ACT, ACTUALIZE THIS:" This is a very delicate process, but very sweet also, and the more you proceed in it, the sweeter it becomes. You will be filled with a new sweetness and fragrance. Just look for the beautiful; forget the ugly. Then a moment comes when the ugly also becomes the beautiful. Just look to the happy moment, and a moment comes when there is nothing which you can call unhappy. There is no unhappy moment then. Be concerned with the blissful, and sooner or later there will be no misery. Everything is beautified by a positive mind.

The third technique:

"AT THE POINT OF SLEEP, WHEN THE SLEEP HAS NOT YET COME AND EXTERNAL WAKEFULNESS VANISHES, AT THIS POINT BEING IS REVEALED."

There are some turning points in your consciousness. At these turning points you are nearer to your center than at other times. You change gears, and whenever you change a gear you pass through the neutral gear. That neutral gear is nearer. In the morning, when sleep is going, vanishing, and you are feeling awake but not yet awake, just at the midpoint, you are in a neutral gear. There is a point when you are not asleep and not awake, just in the middle. There you are in a neutral gear. From sleep to waking, your consciousness changes the whole mechanism. It jumps from one mechanism to another. Between the two mechanisms, there is no mechanism; there is a gap. Through that gap you can have a glimpse of your being. The same happens in the night when you are again jumping from your waking mechanism to your sleeping mechanism, from your consciousness to the unconscious. For a single moment there is no mechanism, no grip of the mechanism on you, because you have to take a jump from one to another. Between the two if you can be awake, between the two if you can become aware, between the two if you can remember yourself, you will have a glimpse of your real being.

How to do it? While going to sleep, relax. Close your eyes, make the room dark. Just close your eyes and start waiting. The sleep is coming; just wait, don't do anything, just wait! Your body is relaxing, the body is becoming heavy: feel it. Have the feeling of it. Sleep has its own mechanism, it starts working. Your waking consciousness is vanishing. Remember, because the moment will be very subtle and the moment will be atomic. If you miss, you miss. It is not a very long period -- a single moment, a very small gap, and you will change from waking to sleep. Just wait, fully aware. Go on waiting. This will take time. It takes at least three months. Only then can you have the glimpse one day of the moment which is just in the middle. So don't be in a hurry. You cannot do it just now; you cannot do it tonight. But you have to start and you may have to wait for months.

Ordinarily, within three months, one day it happens. It is happening every day, but your awareness and the meeting of the gap cannot be planned. It is a happening. You just go on waiting, and someday it happens. Someday, suddenly you become aware that you are neither awake nor asleep -- a very weird phenomenon. You may even become afraid because you have known only the two: you know when you are asleep, you know when you are awake. But you don't know a third point in your being when you are neither. At the first impact of it you may become afraid and scared. Don't get scared and don't be afraid. Anything which is so new, unknown previously, is bound to give a certain fear because this moment, when you will have experienced it again and again, will give you another feeling also: that you are neither alive nor dead, neither this nor that. This is an abyss.

These two mechanisms are like two hills; you jump from one peak to another. If you remain in the middle you fall into an abyss, and the abyss is bottomless: you go on falling, you go on falling. Sufis have used this technique, and before they give this technique to a seeker, they give another practice also just to safeguard. Whenever this technique is given in Sufi systems, before it another practice is given, and that is to imagine with closed eyes that you are falling into a deep well -- dark, deep and bottomless. Just imagine falling into a deep well -- falling and falling and falling, eternally falling. There is no bottom, you cannot reach to the bottom. Now this fall cannot stop anywhere. You can stop; you can open your eyes and say no more, but this fall in itself cannot stop. If you continue, the well is bottomless, and it gets more and more dark.

In Sufi systems, this well exercise -- this bottomless, dark well exercise -- is to be practiced first. It is good, helpful. If you have practiced it and you have realized the beauty of it, the silence, then the deeper you go into the well, the more silent you become. The world is left far away, and you feel that you have gone far away, far away, far away. Silence grows with darkness, and deep down there is no bottom. Fear comes to your mind, but you know that this is just imagination so you can continue.

Through this exercise, you become capable of this technique, and then, when you fall into the well between waking and sleeping, it is not imagination; it is a real fact. And it is bottomless, the abyss is bottomless. That is why Buddha has called this nothingness emptiness -- SHUNYA. There is no end to it. Once you know it, you also have become endless. It is difficult to have this glimpse while awake. Then it is impossible, of course, while you are asleep because then the mechanism is functioning, and it is difficult to detach yourself from the mechanism. But there is a moment in the night and in the morning another moment -- in twenty-four hours there are these two moments -- when it is very easy, but one has to wait.

"AT THE POINT OF SLEEP, WHEN SLEEP HAS NOT YET COME AND EXTERNAL WAKEFULNESS VANISHES, AT THIS POINT BEING IS REVEALED:" Then you know who you are, what is your real being, what is your authentic existence. We are false while we are awake, and you know it well. You are false while you are awake. You smile when tears would have been more real. Your tears are also not believable. They may be just a facade, ceremonial, a duty. Your smile is false, and those who study faces can say that your smile is just a painted smile. There are no roots within; the smile is just on your face, just on your lips. It is nowhere else in your being. There are no roots, there are no limbs. It is imposed. The smile is not coming from within to without; the smile has been forced from without.

Whatsoever you say and whatsoever you act is false, and it is not necessarily the case that you are doing this false business of life knowingly -- not necessarily! You may be totally unaware -- and you are! Otherwise it will be very difficult to carry such false nonsense continuously. It is automatic. This falseness continues while you are awake, and it continues even while you are asleep -- in a different way, of course. Your dreams are symbolic, not real. It is surprising that even in your dreams you are not real, even in your dreams you are afraid, and you create symbols.

Now psychoanalysis goes on doing this business of analyzing your dreams. They have a big business because you cannot analyze your own dreams. They are symbolic, they are not real. They say something only in metaphors. If you want to kill your mother and get rid of her, you are not going to kill her even in your dream. You will kill someone else who looks like your mother. You will kill your aunt or someone else, but not your mother. Even in dreams you cannot be real. Then psychoanalysis is needed; a professional is needed to interpret -- but you may describe the whole thing in such a way that even psychoanalysis is deceived.

Your dreams are also totally false. If you are real while you are awake, your dreams will be real. They will not be symbolic. If you want to kill your mother you will see a dream in which you kill your mother, and no interpreter will be needed to show you what your dream means. But we are so false. In dream you are alone, still afraid of the world and the society.

To kill a mother is the greatest sin, and I wonder whether you have ever thought about why to kill a mother is the greatest sin. It is the greatest sin because everyone feels a deep enmity toward his mother. It is the greatest sin, and it is taught, your mind is conditioned, that even to think of harming your mother is a sin. She has given birth to you. All over the world, in all societies, the same is taught. There is not a single society on the earth which will not agree to this, that to kill a mother is the greatest sin. She has given you birth and you are killing her?

But why this teaching? Deep down there is the possibility that everyone goes against his mother of necessity -- because the mother has not only given birth to you, she has been the instrument of falsifying you; she has been the instrument of forcing you to be unreal. She has made you whatsoever you are. If you are a hell, she has a part in it, the greatest part. If you are miserable, your mother is there somewhere, hidden in you because the mother has given you birth, she has brought you up -- or, really, she has brought you "down" from your reality. She has falsified you. The first untruth happened between you and your mother; the first lie happened between you and your mother -- the first lie!

Even when there is no language and the child cannot speak, he can lie. The child sooner or later becomes aware that many of his feelings are not approved by his mother. Her face, her eyes, her behavior, her mood, everything shows that something in him is not accepted, appreciated. Then he starts suppressing. Something is wrong. There is no language yet; his mind is not functioning. But his whole body starts suppressing. Then be begins to feel that sometimes something is appreciated by the mother. He depends on the mother, his life depends on the mother. If the mother leaves him, he will be no more. His whole existence is centered on the mother.

Everything the mother shows, does, speaks, behaves, is significant. If the child smiles, and the mother loves him and gives him warmth and milk and hugs him, he is learning politics. He will smile while there is no smile in him because now he knows he can persuade the mother. He will smile a false smile. Then the liar is born; the politician has come into existence. Now he knows how to falsify, and this he learns in his relationship with his mother. This is the first relationship with the world. When he will become aware of his misery, of his hell, of his confusions, he will find that his mother is hidden somewhere.

There is every possibility that you may feel inimical towards your mother. That is why every culture insists that it is the greatest sin to kill your mother. Even in thought, even in dream, you cannot kill your mother. I am not saying that you SHOULD kill her, I am simply saying that your dreams are also false -- symbolic, not real. You are so false that you cannot even dream a real dream.

These are our two false faces: one is there while you are awake, one is there while you are asleep. Between these two false faces there is a very small door, an interval. In that interval you can have a glimpse of your original face when you were not related to your mother, and through the mother to the society; when you were alone with yourself; when YOU WERE -- not this and that, there was no division. Only the real was; there was no unreal. You can have a glimpse of that face, that innocent face between these two mechanisms.

Ordinarily we are not concerned with dreams, we are concerned with our waking hours. But psychoanalysis is more concerned with your dreams, not with your waking hours, because it feels that in waking hours you are a greater liar. In dreams something can be caught. You are less aware when you are asleep, and you are not forcing things, you are not manipulating. Then something real can be caught. You may be a celibate, a monk in your waking hours, but you have suppressed the sex urge. Then it will force itself into your dreams; your dreams are going to be sexual. It is very difficult to find a monk who is without sexual dreams -- rather, impossible. You can find a criminal without sexual dreams, but you cannot find a religious man without sexual dreams. A debauchee may be without sexual dreams, but not so-called saints, because whatsoever you force down while you are awake will erupt in your dreams and will color your dreams.

Psychoanalysts are not concerned with your waking life because they know it is totally false. If something of the real can be glimpsed, it can be glimpsed only through your dreams. But tantra says that even dreams are not so real. They are more real -- and this will look paradoxical because we think that dreams are unreal -- they are more real than your waking hours because then you are less on guard. The censor is asleep, and things can come up, and the suppressed can express itself -- of course symbolically, but symbols can be analyzed.

And all over the world human symbols are the same. You may speak a different language while awake, but while dreaming you speak the same language. All over the world the dream language is one. If sex is repressed, then the same symbols will come up. If the urge for food, the urge to eat, hunger, is repressed, then the same symbols will come -- or similar ones. The dream language is one, but in dreams there are still problems because they are symbolic. And a Freud may interpret them in a different way, a Jung in a different way and an Adler still in a different way. And if you are analyzed by a hundred psychoanalysts, there will be a hundred interpretations. You will be still more confused than you were before, more confused with a hundred interpretations of one thing.

Tantra says in neither waking nor sleeping are you real. You are real only in between. So don't be concerned with the waking, and don't be concerned with dreaming and sleep. Be concerned with the gap; be aware of the gap. While passing from one state to another have a glimpse. And once you know when the gap comes, you become the master of it. You have the key; you can open that gap anytime and enter into it. A different dimension of being, the real dimension, opens.

The fourth technique, and the last:

"ILLUSIONS DECEIVE, COLORS CIRCUMSCRIBE, EVEN DIVISIBLES ARE INDIVISIBLE."

This is a rare technique, one not much used, but one of the greatest teachers in India, Shankara, has used it, and Shankara has based his whole philosophy on this technique. You know his philosophy of MAYA -- illusion. Shankara says everything is illusory. Whatsoever you are seeing, hearing, feeling, all is illusion. It is not real because the real cannot be contacted by senses. You are hearing me and I am seeing you hearing me: it may be just a dream, and there is no way how to judge whether it is a dream or not. I may be just dreaming that you are here listening to me. How am I to know that this is real and not a dream? There is no way.

Chuang Tzu is reported to have said that one night he dreamt that he had become a butterfly. In the morning he was very sad -- and he was not a man to have sadness, he was never known to be sad. His disciples gathered and said, "Chuang Tzu, Master, why are you so sad?"

Chuang Tzu said, "Because of a dream."

The disciples laughed and said, "Because of a dream you are sad -- you who have been always teaching us not to be sad even if the whole world causes you sadness? And just a dream has caused you sadness? What are you talking about?"

Chuang Tzu said, "It is such a dream that it causes me very, very deep confusion, sadness, misery. I dreamt in my dream that I had become a butterfly."

The disciples said, "What is so puzzling in it?"

Chuang Tzu said, "Now this is the puzzle: if Chuang Tzu can dream that he can become a butterfly, why not the reverse? The butterfly may dream that it has become a Chuang Tzu. So now I am disturbed. What is right and what is wrong? What is real and what is unreal? Was it Chuang Tzu who was dreaming of becoming a butterfly or has the butterfly now gone to sleep and dreamt that it has become a Chuang Tzu? If one is possible, then the other is possible." And it is said that Chuang Tzu never could get over this puzzle. This remained for his whole life.

How to decide that I am not in a dream talking to you? How to decide that you are not dreaming I am talking? With senses no decision is possible, because while dreaming, dreams look real -- as real as anything. When you dream, you always feel it is real. When dreams can be felt as real, why can reality not be felt as dream?

Shankara says with senses there is no possibility to know whether the thing confronting you is real or unreal. And if there is no possibility to know whether it is real or unreal, Shankara calls it MAYA: it is illusion. Illusion doesn't mean unreal. Illusion means an impossibility to decide whether it is real or unreal -- remember this.

In Western languages MAYA has been translated very wrongly, and it gives the feeling in Western terms that "illusion" means "unreal." It does not! "Illusion" means the inability to decide whether the thing is real or unreal. This confusion is MAYA.

This whole world is MAYA, a confusion. You cannot decide; you cannot be decisive about it. It is always escaping you, always changing, turning into something else. It is fantasy, a dreamlike thing. This technique is concerned with this philosophy. "ILLUSIONS DECEIVE:" or, that which deceives is illusion -- "COLORS CIRCUMSCRIBE, EVEN DIVISIBLES ARE INDIVISIBLE:" In this world of illusion nothing is certain. This whole world is like rainbows. They appear to be, but they are not. If you are far away they are, but if you come nearer they dissolve. The nearer you come, the more they are not. If you reach to a point where you were seeing a rainbow, it is no more there.

The whole world is like rainbow colors, and it is so. When you are far away everything is hopeful; when you come nearer the hope disappears. And when you reach the goal, only ashes are there -- just a dead rainbow. The colors have disappeared, and things as they appeared are not. As you feel them to be, they are not.

"EVEN DIVISIBLES ARE INDIVISIBLE:" Your whole mathematics, your whole calculating system, all your concepts, all your philosophy, just become futile. If you try to understand this illusion, your very effort confuses you more. Nothing is certain there; everything is uncertain -- a flux, a flux of change, with no possibility for you to decide whether this or that is true or false. What will happen? If you take this attitude, what will happen? If you really go deep in this attitude that everything which cannot be decided is illusory, you will automatically, spontaneously turn to yourself. Then the only point where you can have a center is in your own being. That is certain.

Try to understand this: I may dream in the night that I have become a butterfly, and I cannot decide in that dream whether this is real or unreal. In the morning I may be puzzled like Chuang Tzu whether instead the butterfly may have been dreaming. These are two dreams, and there is no way to compare which is real and which is unreal.

But Chuang Tzu is missing one thing -- the dreamer. He is thinking only of dreams, comparing dreams and missing the dreamer -- the one who dreams that Chuang Tzu has become a butterfly, the one who is thinking that it may be quite the reverse: that the butterfly is dreaming that she has become Chuang Tzu. Who is this observer? Who was asleep and is now awake? You may be unreal, you may be a dream to me, but "I" cannot be a dream to myself, because even for a dream to exist a real dreamer is needed. Even for a false dream a real dreamer is needed. Even a dream cannot exist without a real dreamer. So forget dream. This technique says forget dream. The whole world is illusion, you are not. So don't go after the world, there is no possibility to gain certainty there. And now this appears to be proven even by scientific research.

For the last three centuries science was certain, and Shankara looked to be just a philosophical mind, poetic. For three centuries science was certain, but now, during these two last decades, science has become uncertain. Now the greatest scientists say nothing is certain, and with matter we will never be certain. Everything has again become uncertain. Everything looks like a flux, changing. Only appearance looks certain. The deeper you go, the more everything becomes uncertain, indefinite. Shankara says, and tantra has always been saying, that the world is illusory. Even before Shankara was born, tantra was preaching one technique -- that the whole world is illusory, so think of it as a dream. If you can think of it as a dream -- and if you think at all, you will come to realize it as a dream -- then your whole focus of consciousness will turn inwards, because there is a deep urge to find the truth, the real.

If the whole world is unreal, then there is no shelter in it. Then you are moving after, following shadows, and wasting time and life and energy. Then move inward.s One thing is certain: "I am." Even if the whole world is illusory, one thing is certain: there is someone who knows this is illusory. The knowledge may be illusory, the known may be illusory, but the knower cannot be. This is the only certainty, the only rock on which you can stand.

This technique says look at the world: it is a dream, illusory, and nothing is as it appears. It is just a rainbow. Go deep in this feeling. You will be thrown to yourself. With that coming to one's own self, you come to a certain truth, to something which is indubitable, which is absolute.

Science can never be absolute. It is going to be relative. Only religion can be absolute because it searches not the dream, it searches for the dreamer; not for the observed, but for the observer, the seer, the one who is aware.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1

Chapter #36

Chapter title: From maya (illusion) to reality

25 February 1973 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7302255

ShortTitle: VBT136

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 82 mins

The first question:

Question 1

"IN WHICH WAY CAN THE PRACTICE OF SELF-REMEMBERING TRANSFORM THE HUMAN MIND?"

Man is not centered in himself. He is born centered, but the society, the family, the education, the culture, they push him off-center, and they put him off-center in a very cunning way, knowingly or unknowingly. So everyone becomes, in a sense, "eccentric" -- off the center. There are reasons, survival reasons for it.

When a child is born he has to be forced into a certain discipline. He cannot be allowed freedom. If he is allowed total freedom, he will remain with the center -- spontaneous, living with himself, living himself. He will be original as he is. He will be authentic, and then there will be no need to practice any self-remembering. There will be no need to practice any meditation because he will never go off the center. He will remain with himself -- centered, rooted, grounded in his own being. But this has not yet been possible. Meditation is, therefore, medicinal. The society creates the disease, and then the disease has to be treated.

Religion is medicinal. If really a human society based in freedom can be evolved, there would be no need of religion. Because we are ill medicine is needed, and because we are off-center methods of centering are needed. If someday it becomes possible on earth to create a healthy society, healthy in the inner sense, there will be no religion. But it seems difficult to create such a society.

The child has to be disciplined. What are you doing when you are disciplining a child? You are forcing something which is not natural to him. You are asking and demanding something which he will never do spontaneously. You will punish him, you will appreciate, you will bribe him, you will do everything to make him social -- to take him away from his natural being. You will create a new center in his mind which was never there, and this center will grow and the natural center will go into oblivion, into the unconscious.

Your natural center has moved into the unconscious, into the dark, and your unnatural center has become your conscious. There is really no division between unconscious and conscious; the division is created. You are one consciousness. This division comes because your own center has been forced to some dark corner. Even you are not in contact with it; you are not allowed to be in contact with it. You yourself have become unconscious that you have a center. You live what the society, the culture, the family have taught you to live.

You live a false life. For this false life a false center is needed. That center is your ego, your conscious mind. That is why, no matter what you do, you will never be blissful -- because only the real center can happen, only the real center can explode, can come to the climax, the optimum, of the possibility of bliss. The false center is a shadow game. You can play with it, you can hope with it, but ultimately nothing but frustration comes out of it. With a false anxiety that is bound to be so.

In a way everything is forcing you not to be yourself, and this cannot be changed just by saying that this is wrong, because society has its own needs. A child, when born, is just like an animal -- spontaneous, centered, grounded, but so independent. He cannot become part of an organization. He is disturbing. He has to be forced, cultivated and changed. In this cultivation he has to be pushed off-center.

We live on the periphery and we live only to the extent that the society allows us. Our freedom is false because the rules of the game, of the social game, are so deeply fixed that you may feel that you are choosing this and that, but you are not choosing. The choice comes from your cultivated mind, and this goes on in a mechanical way.

I am reminded of a man who married eight women in his life. He married one woman, then divorced her, then married another -- very cautiously, very carefully, very carefully, in order not to fall into the old trap again. In every way he calculated, and he was thinking that this new woman was going to be totally different than the first one. But within a few days, with the honeymoon not yet even over, the new woman started to prove herself to be just the same as the old one, the first one. Within six months the marriage was shattered again. He married a third woman and now he was still more cautious, but again the same thing happened.

He married eight women, and every time the woman turned out to be the same as the old one. What was happening? And he was choosing very cautiously now, very carefully. What was happening? The chooser was unconscious. He couldn't change the chooser, and the chooser was always the same so the choice was going to be the same. And the chooser works unconsciously.

You go on doing this and that, and you go on changing outward things, but you remain the same. You remain off-center. Whatsoever you do, howsoever it is apparently different, it ultimately proves to be the same. The results are always the same; the outcome is always the same; the consequence is always the same.

Whenever you feel you are choosing and you are free, then too you are not free and you are not choosing. The choice is also a mechanical thing. Scientists say, biologists particularly, that the mind becomes imprinted, and that happens very early. The first two or three years are the years for imprinting, and things become fixed in the mind. Then you go on doing the same; you go on repeating in a mechanical way. You are moving in a vicious circle.

The child is forced to be off-center. He has to be disciplined; he has to learn obedience. That is why we give so much value to obedience. And obedience destroys everyone, because obedience means now you are not the center: the other is the center; you are just to follow him.

Education is a necessity in order to survive, but we make this necessity to survive an excuse for submitting. We force everyone to be obedient. What does it mean? Obedient to whom? Always someone else -- the father, the mother, someone else is there, and you have to be obedient to him. Why so much insistence for obedience? Because your father was forced to be obedient when he was a child; your mother was forced to be obedient when she was a child. They were forced off their centers; now they are doing the same. They are doing the same with their children, and these children will do the same again. This is how the vicious circle moves on.

Freedom is killed, and with freedom you lose your center. Not that the center is destroyed; it cannot be destroyed while you are alive. It would be good if it was destroyed; you would be more at ease with yourself. If you were totally false and there was no real center hidden within you, you would be at ease. There would be no conflict, no anxiety, no struggle.

The conflict comes into existence because the real remains there. It remains in the center, and just on the periphery an unreal center is created. Between these two centers a constant struggle, a constant anxiety, tension, is created. This must be transformed, and there is only one way: the false must disappear and the real must be given its place. You must be regrounded into your center, into your being; otherwise you will be in anguish.

The false can disappear. The real cannot disappear unless you die. While you are alive the real will be there. The society can do only one thing: it can push it deep down and it can create a barrier so that even you become unconscious of it. Can you remember any moment in your life when you were spontaneous, when you just lived in the moment -- when you were living yourself and you were not following someone else?

I was reading one memoir of a poet. His father had died, and the dead body was put in a coffin. The poet, the son, was weeping, crying, and then suddenly he kissed the forehead of his father's dead body and said, "There, now that you are dead, I can do this. I always wanted to kiss you on your forehead, but while you were alive it was impossible. I was so afraid of you."

You can kiss only a dead father -- and even if the alive father allows you to kiss, the kiss is going to be false; it cannot be spontaneous. A young boy cannot even kiss his mother spontaneously because always the fear of sex is there; the bodies must not come too closely in contact, even with the mother. Everything becomes false. There is fear and falsity -- no freedom, no spontaneousness, and the real center can function only when you are spontaneous and free.

Now you will be able to understand what is my attitude towards this question: "IN WHICH WAY CAN THE PRACTICE OF SELF-REMEMBERING TRANSFORM THE HUMAN MIND?" It will reground you; it will give you again roots into your own center. By self-remembering, you are forgetting everything other than yourself: the society, the mad world around you, the family, the relationships, everything, you are forgetting. You are simply remembering that you are.

This remembrance is not given by the society to you. This self-remembrance will detach you from all that is peripheral. And if you can remember, you will fall back to your own being, to your own center. The ego will be there just on the periphery, but you will be able to see it now. Like any other object, you will be able to observe it. And once you become capable of observing your ego, your false center, you will never be false again.

You may need your false center because you have to live in a society which is false. You will be able to use it now, but you will never be identified with it. It will be instrumental now. You will live on your center, in your center. You will be able to use the false as a social convenience, a convention, but you will not be identified with it. Now you know you can be spontaneous, free. Self-remembering transforms you because it gives you the opportunity to be yourself again -- and to be oneself is the ultimate and to be oneself is the absolute.

The peak of all the possibilities, of all the potentialities, is the divine -- or whatsoever you want to call it. God is not somewhere in the past; he is your future. You have heard it said again and again that God is the father. More significantly, he is going to be your son, not the father, because he is going to evolve out of you. So I say, "God the son," because the father is in the past and the son is in the future.

You can become divine, God can be born out of you; if you are authentically yourself, you have taken the basic step. You are going towards divinity, towards total freedom. As a slave you cannot move to that. As a slave, as a false person, there is no path leading towards the divine, to the ultimate possibility, the ultimate flowering of your being. First you must be centered in yourself. Self-remembering helps and only self-remembering helps; nothing else can transform you. With the false center there is no growth -- only accumulation -- and remember the distinction between accumulation and growth. With the false center you can accumulate: you can accumulate wealth, you can accumulate knowledge, you can accumulate anything, without any growth. Growth happens only to the real center. Growth is not an accumulation; you are not burdened by growth. Accumulation is a burden.

You can know many things without knowing anything. You can know much about love without knowing love. Then it is an accumulation. If you know love, then it is growth. You can know much about love with the false center; you can love only with the real center. Real centers can mature. The false can only get bigger and bigger without any growth, without any maturity. The false is just a cancerous growth, an accumulation, burdening you like a disease.

But you can do one thing: you can change your focus totally. From the false, you can move your eyes to the real. This is what is meant by self-remembering: whatsoever you are doing, remember yourself -- that you are. Don't forget it. The very remembering will give an authentic reality to whatsoever you are doing. If you are loving, first remember that you are; otherwise you will be loving from the false center. And from the false center you can only pretend; you cannot love. If you are praying, first remember that you are; otherwise the prayer is going to be just nonsense, just a deception. And you are not deceiving anyone else; you are deceiving yourself.

First remember that you are, and this remembering that "I am" must become so basic that it follows you like a shadow. Then even while asleep it will enter, and you will remember. If you can remember the whole day, by and by it enters even in your dreams, even in your sleep, and you will know that "I am."

The day you can know even in your sleep that you are, you are grounded in your center. Now the false is no more; it is not a burden to you. You can use it now, it is instrumental. You are not a slave to it, you have become the master.

Krishna says in the Gita that while everyone is asleep, the yogi is not: he is awake. It is not meant that the yogi lives without sleep, because sleep is a biological, bodily necessity. What is meant is that he remembers even in his sleep that he is -- that "I am." Sleep is just on the periphery. In the center the remembrance is there.

The yogi remembers even while he is asleep, and you are not remembering yourself while you are even awake. You are walking on the street, but you are not remembering that you are. Try, and you will feel a change of quality. Try to remember that you are. Suddenly a new lightness comes to you, the heaviness disappears; you become weightless. You are thrown off the false center to the real one again, but it is difficult and arduous because we are so much grounded in the false. It will take time, but no transformation is possible without self-remembering becoming effortless for you. You simply start remembering yourself; otherwise no transformation is possible.

The second question:

Question 2

"LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT ONE SHOULD ALWAYS SEE LIFE IN ITS POSITIVE DIMENSIONS AND ONE SHOULD NOT GIVE EMPHASIS TO THE NEGATIVE. IS THIS NOT A CHOICE? AND IS THIS NOT AGAINST ENCOUNTERING THE TOTAL REALITY -- THAT WHICH IS?"

It is a choice, but one who is negative cannot take a jump towards choicelessness. If he can take it, it is good, but it is impossible. From the negative, it is impossible to take a jump towards choicelessness because the negative mind means that you can see only the ugly, you can see only death, you can see only misery. You cannot see any positive elements in life. And, remember, it is difficult to lose misery.

It may look very strange when I say this, but it is difficult to take a jump from misery; it is easier to take a jump from happiness. It is easier to take a jump when you are happy because with happiness courage comes, with happiness the possibility of a higher bliss opens, with happiness the whole world looks like a home. With misery the world is like a hell, and there is no hope; everything is just hopeless. Then you cannot take any jump. In misery one becomes a coward, and one clings to misery because at least this misery is known.

You cannot be adventurous when you are unhappy. Adventure needs a subtle happiness in you. Then you can leave the known. You are so happy that you are not afraid of the unknown. And the happiness has become such a deep phenomenon to you that you know that wherever you will be you will be happy. With the positive mind you know there is no hell, and wherever you are the heaven will be. You can move into the unknown because now you know that heaven moves with you.

You have heard that you enter heaven or hell. This is nonsense. No one enters heaven, no one enters hell. You carry your own hell and heaven with you, and wherever you enter, you enter with your hell or heaven. Heaven and hell are not doors. They are burdens; you carry them with you.

Only with a dancing heart -- happy, blissful, positive -- can you take a jump into the uncharted. That is why I say that from the negative you cannot be choiceless. You cling to your misery. It is known. You are acquainted with it, you are related to it, and it is better to remain with the known misery than with the unknown. At least you have become accustomed to it, and you know its ways. You have created certain defense mechanisms, an armor around you to be safe from this misery. An unknown misery will create new defense mechanisms. It is always better to be with the known misery than with an unknown misery.

With happiness, quite the reverse is the case. With happiness, one wants to move into the unknown happiness because the known gets boring. You never get bored with the known misery; you enjoy it. Look at people talking about their misery: they enjoy it, they magnify their misery; they have a subtle happiness.

With happiness you get bored. You can move into the unknown. The unknown is alluring, and the choiceless is the door for the unknown. This is how one has to move: from the negative to the positive and from the positive to the choiceless. First make your mind positive. From hell move to heaven, and from heaven you can move to moksha -- to the ultimate which is neither. From misery move to bliss, and only then you can move to the beyond which is beyond both. That is why the sutra said first to transform your mind from negative to positive, and this change is just a change of focusing.

Life is both or neither. It IS both or neither; it depends on you, on how you see it. You can look at it with a negative mind, and then it looks like hell. It is not hell; this is only your interpretation.

You change your outlook: look positively. And this is what is meant by the attitude of the atheist. I don't call a man an atheist or theist because he believes in God or not. I call a man a theist if he has a positive attitude and an atheist if he has a negative attitude. It is not a question of saying no to God; it is a question of saying no to life. The theist is one who says yes and looks always from a yea-saying mind. Then everything changes totally.

If a negative mind comes to a rose, to a garden, many roses may be there, but he will count only the thorns. The first thing for the negative mind is the thorns; that is significant. Flowers are just illusory; only thorns are real. He will count, and, of course, for each flower a thousand thorns exist. And once he has counted a thousand thorns he cannot believe in one flower. He will say this one flower is just illusory. How can such a beautiful flower exist with such ugly thorns, violent thorns? It is impossible, it is unbelievable. And even if it exists, it means nothing now. One thousand thorns have been counted, and the flower disappears.

A positive mind will start with the rose, with the flower. And once you are in a communion with the rose, once you know the beauty, the life, the unearthly flowering, thorns disappear. And one who has known the rose in its beauty, in its highest possibility, one who has looked deep into it, for him now even thorns will not look like thorns. The eyes filled with the rose are different now. Now the thorns will look just like a protection for this flower. They will not be enemies; they will look just like part of the happening of flowers.

Now this mind will know that this flower happens and these thorns are needed, they protect. Because of these thorns this flower could happen. This positive mind will feel grateful even to thorns. And if this approach deepens, a moment comes when thorns become flowers. With the first approach the flower disappears -- or the flower even becomes a thorn. Only with a positive mind can you get the state of a non-tense mind. With a negative mind you will remain tense, with so many miseries all around. Such a negative, inventive mind goes on revealing miseries and miseries and hells and hells.

In Buddha's time, there was one really famous teacher. His name was Sanjaya Vilethiputta. He was an absolutely negative thinker. Buddha thought of seven hells, so someone came to Sanjaya Vilethiputta and told him that Buddha said there are seven hells. Sanjaya Vilethiputta said, "Go and tell your Buddha he doesn't know anything. There are seven hundred hells. He doesn't know anything! Only seven? There are seven hundred hells, and I have counted all of them."

If you have a negative mind, even seven hundred are not much. You will find more; there is no end to it. The positive mind can be non-tense. Really, if you are positive how can you be tense and if you are negative how you can be non-tense? With a negative mind there can be no association with meditation. The negative mind is anti-meditative; it cannot meditate. A single mosquito is enough to destroy all meditation. With a negative mind, the door is closed for tranquility, for stillness, for silence. The negative mind is self-perpetuating for misery. How can it take a jump toward choicelessness?

Krishnamurti goes on talking about choicelessness, and the audience is negative. They listen, but they never understand. And when they are not understanding, Krishnamurti gets disturbed because they are not understanding him. Only a positive mind can understand what he is saying, but a positive mind need not go anywhere -- neither to any Krishnamurti nor to any Rajneesh, nowhere. Only a negative mind is in search of a teacher, of a master.

To talk to the negative mind about choicelessness, about going beyond duality, about living both negative and positive, is meaningless. Not that this is untrue -- it is true, but meaningless. The one who is listening must be taken into account. He is more important than the one who is talking. As I see it, you are negative. First you need a transformation towards positivity. From your "no-saying" you must become a yea-sayer. You must look at life with a "yes" attitude, and with a "yes" attitude this very earth is totally transformed. Only then, when you have attained a positive attitude, can you take a jump towards choicelessness -- and that will be easy, very easy!

Misery cannot be renounced. It is difficult; you cling to it. Only happiness can be renounced because then you know that when you renounce the negative you gain the positive and a positive happiness. You renounce the negative and you gain happiness: just by renouncing the negative you attain to happiness. If you now renounce this happiness, this positive mind also, you open the doors for the infinite. But you must first have a feel of the positive. Only then, only then, can you take a jump.

The third question:

Question 3

"IN THE LAST TECHNIQUE YESTERDAY, YOU EXPLAINED THAT IN THIS WORLD OF MAYA, THE INNER CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SEEKER IS THE ONLY REAL CENTER FOR HIM. IN THIS REFERENCE, PLEASE EXPLAIN THE SIGNIFICANCE AND ROLE OF THE GURU IN THIS WORLD OF MAYA."

This world of MAYA is not a world of MAYA for you; it is very real, and the role of the guru is to show you that it is not real. It is real for you, so how can you think that it is unreal? You can think about unreality only if you have a glimpse of the real; only then can you compare. This world is not MAYA illusory, for you. You have heard, you have read that this world is MAYA, and you may have memorized it just like a parrot, so you also call this world illusory.

Everyday someone comes to me who calls this world illusory and then he says, "My mind is very much bothered. I am very tense, so tell me how to attain peace?" And this world is "illusory"! If this world is illusory, how can your mind be tense? If you have known that this world is illusory, the world will have disappeared, and with the world all its misery. But the mind still is. You don't "know" that this world is illusory.

In the morning when the sleep has disappeared, and with it the dream, are you worried about the dream? Are you worried that in the dream you felt ill or that you were even dead? While the dream was there, you were worried, you were ill, you were asking for a doctor, for some medicine. But in the morning, the moment you are not asleep and the dream has disappeared, you are not worried. Now you know it was a dream, and you are not ill.

If someone comes to me and says, "I know that it was a dream that I was ill, but now tell me something: where am I to get the medicine to get over that illness?" what will it show? It will show he is still asleep; it will show that he is still dreaming. The dream is still there.

In India, this parrot-like speech that "the whole world is illusory" has gone deep into the mind, but in the false center. It is not a growth. We have heard, the Upanishads, the Vedas and the RISHIS have been saying for centuries, that the world is illusory. They have propagated the idea so strongly that those who are asleep and dreaming, they think they are awake. The whole world is asleep, but their misery shows that the world is real, their anguish shows that the world is real.

The role of the guru is to give you a glimpse of the real -- not a teaching, but an awakening. The guru is not a teacher: the guru is an awakener. He has not to give you doctrines. If he gives you doctrines, he is a philosopher. If he talks about the world as illusory and argues and proves that the world is illusory, if he discusses, debates, if he intellectually gives you a doctrine, he is not a guru, he is not a master. He may be a teacher, a teacher of a particular doctrine, but he is not a master, not a guru.

A guru is not a giver of doctrines. He is a giver of methods -- of methods which can help you to come out of your sleep. That is why a guru is always a disturber of your dreams, and it is difficult to live with a guru. It is very easy to live with a teacher because he never disturbs you. Rather, he goes on increasing your accumulation of knowledge. He helps you to be more egoist; he makes you more knowledgeable. Your ego is more fulfilled. Now you know more, you can argue more. You can teach yourself, but a guru is always a disturber. He will disturb your dream and your sleep, and you may have been dreaming a very beautiful dream. You may have been on a trip, a beautiful trip. He will disturb it, and you will get angry.

A guru is always in danger from his disciples. Any moment they can kill him because he is going to disturb; that is what his work is. He cannot help you to be yourself as you are because you are false. He has to destroy your false identity. It is painful. That is why, unless there is a very deep love, the work is impossible. A very deep intimacy is needed; otherwise hate will be there. So a guru cannot allow you to be near him unless you have surrendered; otherwise you are going to be an enemy. Only with your total surrender can a guru work, because it is a spiritual surgery.

Of necessity, much suffering will be there for the disciple, and if he is not in deep intimacy with the guru it is impossible. He will not be ready to suffer so much. He has come in search of bliss and the guru gives him suffering. He has come to feel euphoria, and the guru creates a hell for him. In the beginning hell will be there because your image will be shattered, your expectations will be shattered. Whatsoever you have known, you will have to throw it. Whatsoever you are, he will undo it. Really, you are passing through a death.

In India, in the old days, we said, "ACHARYA MRITYUH." It means that the master, the guru, is a death. He is! And unless you trust him so totally, this surgical operation is impossible because in the beginning there will be suffering. Your anguish will come up; all your suppressed hells will be revealed. And only if you believe, if you have deep faith and trust in him, can you remain with him; otherwise you will escape, because this man is disturbing you completely.

So, remember, the guru's work is, his role is, to make you aware of your falsity, and because of your false center your world is false. The world is not really illusory, it is not MAYA. It is maya because your eyes are illusory. They are dream-filled. You project your dreams all around, and the reality is falsified. The same world will become real when your eyes are real. When the false center is broken and you are again rooted in your real center, in your being, this world will become the NIRVANA.

Zen Masters have been continuously saying that this world is NIRVANA, this very world is MOKSHA, liberation. It is only a question of eyes. With false eyes everything is falsified; with real eyes everything is real. Your false entity creates a false world around you. And don't think that you all live in one world. You cannot! Each one lives in his own world, and there are as many worlds as there are minds because each mind creates its own world, its own milieu. Even if you are living in a family, the husband lives in his own world and the wife in her own world, and there are collisions every day between these two worlds. They never meet; they collide. Meeting is impossible.

With mind there can be no meeting -- only collision, conflict. When mind is not, there can be a meeting. The wife lives in her own world, in her own expectations. The husband for her is not the real husband that is there in the world, he is just her own image. The husband lives in his own world, and the real wife is not his wife. He has an image of a wife, and whenever this wife falls short of his image there is struggle, conflict, anger, hatred. He loves his own image of a wife and the wife loves her own image of a husband, and these both are illusory; they exist nowhere. This real wife is there and this real husband is there, but they cannot meet because between these two real things are the unreal wife and the unreal husband. They are always there; they won't allow a meeting of the real ones.

Everyone is living in his own world, in his own dreams, expectations, projections. There are as many worlds as there are minds. Those worlds are illusory, MAYA. When your false center disappears, the whole world changes. Then it is a real world. Then for the first time you see things as they are. Then there is no misery because with illusion expectation disappears, and with reality there can be no misery. Then one comes to feel, "It is so! Fact is fact!" Only with fictions are there problems, and fictions never allow you to know fact. These fictions of the mind are MAYA.

The role of the guru is to shatter the fictions so that the fact becomes available to you and you become available to the fact. That "facticity" is truth. Once you know that facticity, even the guru will be different. If you come to a guru now, you come with your own image of him. Someone comes to me: he comes with his own image of me. And then, if I am not following his image, he is in difficulty. But how am I to follow his image? And if I try to follow everyone's image, I will be in a mess. And every disciple thinks I should be like this or that; he has his own concept of a guru. If I am not fulfilling his concepts he becomes frustrated, but this is how it is going to be. A disciple comes with a mind, and this is the problem. I have to change his mind, to destroy it. He comes with a mind and he looks at me also with his mind.

I was staying in a home with a family. The family was Jaina, so they wouldn't eat in the night. The old man of the family, the grandfather, he was a lover of my books. He had never seen me, and it is easy to love a book: a book is a dead thing. He came to meet me. He was very old, and even to come from his room was difficult for him. He was ninety-two, and he came to meet me. I told him I would come to his room, but he said, "No! I respect you so much, I will come." So he came, and he was praising me very much.

He said, "You are just like a TIRTHANKARA, like the highest in Jaina mythology, Mahavira." The greatest teachers are known as TIRTHANKARAS, so he said, "You are just like a TIRTHANKARA." He was praising and praising me, and then evening came and darkness descended.

Someone from the house came and said, "Now it is getting late. You come for your evening meal."

So I said, "Wait a little because of this old man. Let him say whatsoever he wants to say; then I will come."

The old man said, "What are you saying? Are you going to eat in the night?"

I said, "It is okay with me."

So he said, "I take my words back. You are no TIRTHANKARA. A person who doesn't even know that to eat in the night is the greatest sin, what else can he know?"

Now this man cannot have any meeting with me. Impossible! If I was not eating in the night, I was a TIRTHANKARA, a great master. I had not eaten yet. I had just said that I would eat in the night, and suddenly I am no more a TIRTHANKARA. The old man said to me, "I have come to learn something from you, but now that is impossible. Now I feel I must teach you something."

When this world becomes an illusion, your guru will also be part of it and will disappear. That is why, when the disciple awakens, there is no guru. This will seem very paradoxical: when the disciple REALLY awakens, there is no guru.

There are beautiful songs of Saraha, a Buddhist mystic. With every song the last ending line is "and Saraha disappeared." He teaches something; he gives some teachings. He says, "Neither the world is nor the NIRVANA is, neither the good nor the bad. Go beyond, and Saraha disappears." It has been a puzzle. Why does Saraha go on saying "and Saraha disappears"?

If you really attain to the song, to whatsoever he has said -- "There is neither good nor bad, nor the world nor the NIRVANA" -- if the disciple really awakens to this, Saraha will disappear. Where will be the guru? The guru was part of the disciple's world. Now there will be no entities like the guru and the disciple; they will have become one. When the disciple awakens, he becomes the guru, and Saraha disappears. Then the guru is no more there. Even the guru is part of your dream, of your illusioned world. But because of this many problems arise.

Krishnamurti goes on saying there is no teacher -- and he is right. This is the ultimate truth. When you have awakened, you are the teacher and there is no other teacher. But this is the ultimate truth, and before this happens the teacher is because the disciple is. The disciple creates the teacher; it is the disciple's need.

So remember this: if you meet a wrong teacher, you deserve a wrong teacher; that is why you meet a wrong teacher. A wrong disciple cannot meet a right teacher. You create your teacher, your master. A small teacher or a great teacher depends on you; you will meet the person you deserve. If you meet a wrong person it is because of you. You are responsible for it, not the wrong person. The guru also is part of your mind, it is part of the dreamworld. But unless you become awakened, you will need someone to disturb you, someone to help. This someone is a guru if he gives you methods. He is simply a teacher if he gives you only doctrines, principles, teachings, but you may need him right now.

Think of it in this way: even in a dream there is something which can help you to come out of it. Even in a dream something can help you to come out of it. You can try it just while falling asleep. Go on repeating in the mind, "Whenever there is a dream, my eyes will open." For three weeks go on continuously repeating it just when you are falling asleep: "Whenever there is a dream, my eyes will open; suddenly I will be awakened." And you will be awakened. Even from a dream you can be awakened by a certain method. Just when falling asleep, say to yourself -- if your name is Ram, say -- "Ram, awaken me at five o'clock in the morning." Repeat it twice, and then silently fall asleep. Sooner or later you will get the trick. Exactly at 5:00 someone will awaken you. Even in dream, even in sleep, methods can be used which will awaken you. The same is the case for the spiritual sleep you are in.

A master can give you methods which will be helpful for this. Then whenever you are falling into a dream, the methods will not allow you to fall, or whenever you have fallen into a dream suddenly you will be awakened. When this awakening becomes natural to you there is no need for the guru. When you have awakened the guru disappears, but you will still feel gratitude for the guru because he helped you.

Sariputta was one of the greatest disciples of Buddha. He became enlightened in his own right; he became a buddha himself. Then Buddha said to Sariputta, "Now you can go and move; now my presence is not needed for you. You yourself have become a master in your own right, so you can go and help others to come out of their sleep."

Sariputta, when leaving Buddha, touched his feet. Someone asked Sariputta, "You yourself have become enlightened, so why are you touching Buddha's feet?"

Sariputta said, "Now there is no need to touch his feet, but this situation could happen only because of him. Now there is no need, but this could happen only because of him."

Sariputta moved away, but wherever he was, in the morning he would prostrate himself in the direction where Buddha was; in the evening he would prostrate himself and everyone would ask, "What are you doing? To whom you are prostrating yourself?" because Buddha was far away, miles away.

He would say, "To my teacher who has disappeared. I am myself now the guru, but it was not possible before him. It became possible only because of him." So even when the teacher disappears, when the guru disappears, the disciple will feel a deep gratitude, the greatest gratitude that is possible.

There is a need while you are asleep for someone to disturb you. And if you allow someone, that is what surrender means. If you say, "Okay, I allow you to disturb me," that is what surrender means -- a trust. Trust means that now even if this man leads you towards misery, you will be ready to move. You will not question him anymore. Wherever he leads you, you trust in him. He is not going to harm you.

If you don't trust, then no progress is possible because you feel he is going to harm you. You feel, in your terms, that he is going to harm you in many ways, and if you think, "I am to protect myself," then no further work is possible. If you mistrust your surgeon, you will not allow him to make you unconscious. You don't know what he is going to do, and you will say, "Do the operation, but allow me to be conscious so I can go on seeing what you are doing. I cannot trust you."

You trust your surgeon. He makes you unconscious because things are such that in your conscious state surgery would be impossible to do; your consciousness would interfere. That is why trust is blind. It means you are ready even to become unconscious, even to become blind. You are ready to follow him wherever he leads. Only then does a deeper, inner surgery become possible. And it is not only a physical, physiological surgery; it is psychological. Much pain will be felt, much anguish, because catharsis is needed and you have to be thrown back to your own center which you have forgotten completely, pulled back to your roots again which you have left behind miles away.

This is going to be arduous and difficult; it even takes years. But if the disciple is ready to surrender, it can even happen in seconds. It depends on the intensity of surrender. Unnecessary time is wasted because the guru has to go slowly -- slowly so that you are prepared to trust more, and he has to do many things unnecessarily just to create trust. Just to do the surgery he has to create many things unnecessarily which can be discarded. No need to waste time and energy on them, but they are needed just to create trust.

I quoted Saraha; Saraha is one of the eighty-four SIDDHAS -- one of the eighty-four Buddhist mystics -- who attained. Saraha says to those disciples who have become masters, "Behave in such a way that others can trust you. I know now that you need no morality; I know now that you need no rules. You have gone beyond, and you can do whatsoever you like and you can be whatsoever you like. Now, no system, no morality exists for you. But behave in such a way so that disciples can trust you." So great masters have behaved in such a way that the society approves. It is not because they need to behave in that way; it is only an unnecessary thing to create trust. So if Mahavira behaves in the pattern that Jainas have set, it is not because there is any inner necessity. He behaves that way only so that Jainas can follow and become disciples, so that they can trust.

That is why many problems arise whenever a teacher starts behaving in a new way. Jesus behaved in a new way which was not known to the Jewish community. There was nothing wrong in it, but this became the problem. Jews couldn't trust him. Their masters of old had behaved differently and this man was behaving differently. He was not following the rules of the game, so they couldn't trust him. Thus, they had to crucify him.

And why did Jesus behave in such a way? India was behind it. He was here for many years before he appeared in Jerusalem. He was taught here in a Buddhist monastery, and he tried to follow Buddhist rules there where no Buddhist society existed. In a Jewish community he was behaving as if he was living in a Buddhist community, and that created the whole problem. He was killed, misunderstood, murdered, and the reason was only this -- that Jews couldn't trust him.

A teacher, a guru, has unnecessarily to create many things around him, to do many things, just to create trust. But even then, problems arise because everyone comes with his own expectations: "The guru must be like this or like that."

Surrender means you leave your expectations, you allow the guru to be as he is and you allow him to do whatsoever he wants to do. Even if pain results, you are ready for it. Even if he leads you towards death you are ready for it, because ultimately he will lead you to a deep death. Only after it is rebirth possible. Resurrection is possible only when your old identity has been crucified.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1

Chapter #37

Chapter title: Techniques to witness the flux-like film of life

26 February 1973 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7302265

ShortTitle: VBT137

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 95 mins

IN MOODS OF EXTREME DESIRE, BE UNDISTURBED.

THIS SO-CALLED UNIVERSE APPEARS AS A JUGGLING, A PICTURE SHOW. TO BE HAPPY, LOOK UPON IT SO.

OH BELOVED, PUT ATTENTION NEITHER ON PLEASURE NOR ON PAIN, BUT BETWEEN THESE.

OBJECTS AND DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS. SO ACCEPTING, LET THEM BE TRANSFORMED.

The original mind is like a mirror: it is pure, and it remains pure, but dust can gather upon it. The purity is not lost, the dust cannot destroy the purity -- but the purity can be covered up. This is the condition of the ordinary mind -- covered with dust. Hidden behind the dust, the original mind remains pure. It cannot become impure; that is impossible. And if it was possible for it to become impure, then there would be no way to regain the purity again. In itself it remains pure, just covered by dust.

Our mind is the original mind plus dust, the buddha-mind plus dust, the divine mind plus dust. Once you know how to uncover it, how to reclaim it from the dust, you have known all that is worth knowing and you have attained all that is worth attaining. All these techniques are concerned with how to free your mind from the day-to-day dust that is bound to gather upon it. Dust is but natural. Just like with a traveler passing from many, many roads, dust is gathered -- and for many, many lives you have been a traveler. You have traveled long distances, and much dust has gathered.

Many points have to be understood before we enter the techniques. One, the East is basically different from the West in its attitude towards inner transformation. Christianity thinks that something has happened to man's being itself -- the sin. The East thinks that nothing has happened to the being itself; nothing can happen. The being remains in its absolute purity; there has been no sin. So man is not condemned in the East, he is not something degraded. On the contrary, he remains the divine that he is, that he has always been, and it is natural that dust will gather. Dust is bound to gather.

So there is no sin, just a false identification.

We become identified with the mind, with the dust. Our experience, our knowledge, our memories, all are dust. Whatsoever you have known, whatsoever you have experienced, whatsoever has been your past, is all dust. Regaining the original mind means regaining the purity -- without experiences, without knowledge, without memories, without the past.

The whole past is dust, but we are identified with the past and not with the consciousness that is always present. Think of it in this way: whatsoever you know is always of the past, and you are here and now in the present. All your knowledge is dust. "Knowing" is your purity, knowledge is dust. The capacity to know, the energy to know, knowing, is your original nature. Through that knowing you gather knowledge. That knowledge is dust-like. Here and now, this very moment, you are absolutely pure, but you are not identified with this purity, you are identified with the past, the accumulated past. So all meditative techniques are basically methods to remove yourself from the past and to allow you to plunge into the here and now.

Buddha was searching for how to regain this purity of consciousness, how to be free from the past, because unless you are free from the past you will remain in bondage, you will be a slave. The past is heavy on you, and because of the past the present is never known. The past is known; the present is a very minute atomic moment. You go on missing it because of the past, and because of the past you go on projecting into the future. The past is projected into the future, and both are false. The past is no more, the future is yet to be. Both are not, and that which is, is hidden between these two which are not.

Buddha was in search; he went from one teacher to another. He searched, and he went to many teachers, all of the known teachers. He consulted them, he allowed them to work upon him, he cooperated. He disciplined himself in many ways, but he was not fulfilled, and the difficulty was this: the teachers were interested in the future, in some liberated state somewhere beyond death, after the life is over. They were interested in some God, some nirvana, some moksha -some liberated state -- somewhere in the future, and Buddha was interested in the here and now, so there was really no meeting. He said to every teacher, "I am interested in the here and now, in how to be total, complete and pure here and now." And they would say, "Apply this method, do this, and if you do it rightly, someday in the future, in some future life, in some future state, you will attain."

Sooner or later he left every teacher, and then he tried by himself alone. What did he do? He did a very simple thing. Once you know it, it is very simple and obvious, but when you don't know it, it is so arduous and so difficult, it seems impossible. He did only one thing: he remained with the present moment. He forgot his past and he forgot his future. He said, "I will be here and now. I will simply exist." If you can exist even for a single moment, you have known the taste -- the taste of your pure consciousness. And once it is tasted you can never forget it. Then the taste, the flavor, remains with you, and that flavor becomes a transformation.

Many are the ways how to uncover yourself from your past, how to throw the dust and have a look into the mirror of your own mind. All these techniques are different ways, but with every technique a deep understanding is needed: remember that. These techniques are not mechanical because they are to uncover consciousness. They are not mechanical things. You can use these techniques mechanically, and if you use them as mechanical techniques you may gain a certain stillness of mind, but that won't be the original purity. You may gain a certain silence, but that silence will he cultivated. That too belongs to the dust part of the mind, not to the original layer. Don't use them mechanically. A deep understanding is needed, and with understanding they can be helpful to uncover your being.

The first technique:

"IN MOODS OF EXTREME DESIRE, BE UNDISTURBED."

"IN MOODS OF EXTREME DESIRE, BE UNDISTURBED": When desire grips you, you are disturbed. Of course, that is natural. Desire grips you, then your mind starts wavering and many ripples go on, on the surface. The desire pulls you somewhere into the future; the past pushes you somewhere in the future. You are disturbed, you are not at ease. Desire is, therefore, a "dis-ease."

This sutra says, "IN MOODS OF EXTREME DESIRE, BE UNDISTURBED." But how to be undisturbed? Desire means disturbance, so how to be undisturbed -- and in extreme moments of desire? You will have to do certain experiments; only then will you understand what it means. You are in anger, anger grips you, you are temporarily mad, possessed, you are no more in your senses. Suddenly remember to be undisturbed -- as if you are undressing. Inside, become naked, naked from the anger, undressed. Anger will be there, but now you have a point within you which is not disturbed.

You will know that anger is there on the periphery. Like fever, it is there. The periphery is wavering; the periphery is disturbed. But you can look at it. If you can look at it, you will be undisturbed. Become a witness to it, and you will be undisturbed. This undisturbed point is your original mind. The original mind cannot be disturbed; it is never disturbed -- but you have never looked at it. When anger is there, you become identified with the anger. You forget that anger is something other than you. You become one with it, and you start acting through it, you start doing something through it.

Two things can be done. In anger you will be violent to someone, to the object of your anger. Then you have moved to the other. Anger is just in between you and the other. Here I am, then there is anger, and there you are -- the object of my anger. From anger I can travel in two dimensions: either I can travel to you; then you become my center of consciousness, the object of my anger. Then my mind becomes focused on you, the one who has insulted me. This is one way how you can travel from anger. There is another way: you can travel to yourself. You don't move to the person whom you feel has caused the anger. You move to the person who feels to be angry; you move to the subject and not to the object.

Ordinarily, we go on moving to the object. If you move to the object, the dust part of your mind is disturbed, and you will feel, "'l' am disturbed." If you move within to the center of your own being, you will be able to witness the dust part; you will be able to see that the dust part of the mind is disturbed, but "I am not disturbed." And you can experiment upon this with any desire, any disturbance.

A sexual desire comes to your mind; your whole body is taken by it. You can move to the sexual object, the object of your desire. The object may be there, it may not be there. You can move to the object in imagination also. But then you will get more and more disturbed. The further you go away from your center, the more you will be disturbed. Really, the distance and disturbance are always in proportion. The more distant you are from your center, the more you are disturbed; the nearer you are to the center, the less you are disturbed. If you are just at the center, there is no disturbance.

In a cyclone, there is a center which is undisturbed -- in the cyclone of anger, the cyclone of sex, the cyclone of any desire. Just in the center there is no cyclone, and a cyclone cannot exist without a silent center. The anger also cannot exist without something within you which is beyond anger.

Remember this: nothing can exist without its opposite. The opposite is needed there. Without it, there is no possibility of it existing. If there were no center within you which remains unmoved, no movement would be possible there. If there were no center within you which remains undisturbed, no disturbance could happen to you. Analyze this and observe this. If there were no center of absolute undisturbance in you, how could you feel that you are disturbed? You need a comparison. You need two points to compare.

Suppose a person is ill: he feels illness because somewhere within him, a point, a center of absolute health exists. That is why he can compare. You say that your head is aching. How is it that you know about this ache, this headache? If you were the headache, you could not know it. You must be someone else, something else -- the observer, the witness, who can say, "My head is aching."

This ache can be felt only by something which is not the ache. If you are ill, you are feverish, you can feel it because you are not the fever. The fever cannot feel that there is fever; someone is needed who is beyond it. A polarity is needed. When you are in anger, and if you feel you are in anger, it means that a point exists within you which is still undisturbed and which can be a witness. You may not look at that point, that is another thing. You may not see yourself at that point, that is another thing. But it is there always in its pristine purity; it is there.

This sutra says, "IN MOODS OF EXTREME DESIRE, BE UNDISTURBED." What can you do? This technique is not for suppression. This technique is not saying that when there is anger suppress it and remain undisturbed -- no! If you suppress, you will create more disturbance. If the anger is there and an effort to suppress is there, it will double the disturbance. When anger is there, close your doors, meditate on the anger, allow the anger to be. You remain undisturbed, and don't suppress it.

It is easy to suppress; it is easy to express. We do both. We express if the situation allows, and if it is convenient and not dangerous for you. If you can harm the other and the other cannot harm you, you will express the anger. If it is dangerous, if the other can harm you more, if your boss or whoever you are angry at is more strong, you will suppress it.

Expression and suppression are easy, witnessing is difficult. Witnessing is neither; it is not suppressing, it is not expressing. It is not expressing because you are not expressing it to the object of anger. It is not being suppressed either. You are allowing it to be expressed -- expressed in a vacuum. You are meditating on it.

Stand before a mirror and express your anger -- and be a witness to it. You are alone, so you can meditate on it. Do whatsoever you want to do, but in a vacuum. If you want to beat someone, beat the empty sky. If you want to be angry, be angry; if you want to scream, scream. But do it alone, and remember yourself as a point which is seeing all this, this drama. Then it becomes a psychodrama, and you can laugh at it and it will be a deep catharsis for you. Afterwards you will feel relieved of it -- and not only relieved of it, you will have gained something through it. You will have matured; a growth will have come to you. And now you will know that even while you were in anger there was a center within you which was undisturbed. Now try to uncover this center more and more, and it is easy to uncover it in desire.

That is why tantra is not against desire. It says be in desire, but remember the center which is undisturbed. So tantra says that even sex can be used. Move in sex, but remain undisturbed. Be a witness. Go on being a deep observer. Whatsoever is happening, is happening on the periphery; you are just an onlooker, a spectator.

This technique can be very useful, and much benefit can happen to you through it. But it will be difficult because when you become disturbed, you forget everything. You may forget that you have to meditate. Then try it in this way: don't wait for the moment when anger happens to you. Don't wait for the moment! Just close your room, and think of some past experience of anger when you went mad. Remember it, and re-enact it. That will be easy for you. Re-enact it again, do it again, relive it. Do not just remember it, relive it. Remember that someone had insulted you and what was said and how you reacted to him. React again, replay it.

You may not know that mind is just a tape-recording device. And now scientists say, now it is a scientific fact, that if your memory centers are touched with electrodes, they start replaying. For example, you were once angry: the incident is recorded, in the same sequence as it happened, just as if on a tape-recording in your brain. If it is touched by an electrode, it mill start replaying. You will have the same feeling again. Your eyes will go red, your body will start trembling and will become feverish, the whole thing will be re-enacted. The moment the electrode is put away, it stops. If you give it energy again, it starts from the very beginning again.

Now they say that mind is a recording machine, and you can re-enact anything. But don't just remember: relive. Start feeling the experience again, and the mind will get the idea. The incident will come to you; you will relive it. In reliving it, remain undisturbed. Start from the past. This is easy because now it is a play, the actual situation is not there. And if you become capable of doing this, then you will be able to do it when the situation for anger is really there, when a real situation is there. And this can be done with every desire, and it is to be done with every desire.

This re-enacting something from the past will do much. Everyone has scars in his mind; unhealed wounds are there. If you re-enact them, you will be unburdened. If you can go to your past and do something which has remained incomplete, you will be unburdened from your past. Your mind will become fresher; the dust will be thrown away. Remember in your past something which you feel has remained suspended. You wanted to kill someone, you wanted to love someone, you wanted this and that, and that has remained incomplete.

That incomplete thing goes on hovering on the mind like a cloud. It influences everything that you are and that you are doing. That cloud has to be dispersed. Move back on the time track and bring back desires which have remained incomplete, and relive the wounds which are still green. They will be healed. You will become more whole, and through this you will have the knack of how to remain undisturbed in a situation which is disturbed.

"IN MOODS OF EXTREME DESIRE, BE UNDISTURBED." Gurdjieff used this technique very much. He created situations, but to create situations a school is needed. You cannot do that alone. Gurdjieff had a small school in Fontainebleau, and he was a taskmaster. He knew how to create situations. You would enter the room, and a group would be sitting there. You would enter the room where a group was sitting, and something would be done so that you would get angry. And it would be done so naturally that you could never imagine that some situation was being created for you. But it was a device. Someone would insult you by saying something, and you would get disturbed. Then everyone would help the disturbance and you would become mad. And when you were right at the point where you could explode, Gurdjieff would shout, "Remember! Remain undisturbed!"

A situation can be created, but only in a school where many persons are working on themselves. And when Gurdjieff would shout, "Remember! Remain undisturbed," now you would know that this was a created situation. The disturbance cannot disappear so suddenly, so immediately, because it has physical roots. Your glands had thrown poison in the blood; your body had become affected.

Anger cannot disappear so immediately. Even now that you had come to know that you had been deceived, that no one was insulting you and no one meant anything by it, it would be difficult to do anything. The anger is there, your body is filled with it -- but suddenly your temperature cools down. Only on the body, on the periphery, does the anger remain. At the center you suddenly cool down, and you know that a point exists within you which is undisturbed. You start laughing. Your eyes are red with anger; your face is violent, animal-like, but you start laughing. You know two things now -- a point which is undisturbed and a periphery which is disturbed.

You can help. Your family can become a school; you can help each other. Friends can become a school and they can help each other. You can decide with your family... the whole family can decide that now a situation has to be created for the father or for the mother, and then the whole family works to create the situation. When the father or mother goes completely mad, then everyone starts laughing and says, "Remain completely undisturbed." You can help each other, and the experience is simply wonderful. Once you know a cool center within you in a hot situation, you cannot forget it, and then in any hot situation you can remember it, reclaim it, regain it.

In the West now one technique, a therapeutic technique, is used; it is called psychodrama. It helps, and it is also based on techniques like this. In psychodrama you just enact, you just play a game. In the beginning it is a game, but sooner or later you become possessed. And when you become possessed your mind starts functioning, because your mind and your body function automatically. They function automatically!

So if you see an actor acting in a psychodrama who, in a situation of anger, really becomes angry, you may think that he is simply acting, but it is not so. He might have really become angry; it may not be acting at all now. He is possessed by the desire, by the disturbance, by the feeling, by the mood, and if he is really possessed, only then does his acting look real.

Your body cannot know whether you are playing or whether you are doing it for real. You may have observed yourself at some time in your life that you were just playing at being angry, and you didn't know when the anger became real, or you were just playing and you were not feeling sexual. You were playing with your wife or with your girlfriend, or with your husband, and then suddenly it became real. The body takes it, and the body can be deceived. The body cannot know whether it is real or unreal, particularly with sex. If you imagine it your body thinks it is real.

Sex is one of the most imaginary centers in the body, so just by imagining, you can have a sexual orgasm. You can deceive the body. In dream, you can have a sexual release; even in dream, the body is deceived. You are not making love to anyone; just in dream, in fantasy, in imagination, you are making love. But the body can release sexual energy, and even a deep orgasm can be felt. What is happening? How is the body deceived? The body cannot know what is real and what is unreal. Once you start doing something, the body thinks it is real and it starts behaving in a real way.

Psychodrama is a technique based on such methods. You are not angry, you are simply acting angry -- and then you get into it. But psychodrama is beautiful because you know that you are simply acting, and then on the periphery anger becomes real, and just behind it you are hidden and looking at it. Now you know that you are not disturbed, but the anger is there, the disturbance is there. The disturbance is there, and yet the disturbance is not.

This feeling of two forces working simultaneously gives you a transcendence, and then in real anger also you can feel it. Once you know how to feel it, you can feel it in real situations also. Use this technique; this will change your total life. Once you know how to remain undisturbed, the world is not misery for you. Then nothing can create any confusion in you, really,.nothing can hurt you. Now there is no suffering for you, and once you know it you can do another thing.

Gurdjieff used to do it. He was able to change his face at any moment. He would be laughing, he would be smiling, he would be looking happy with you, and suddenly he would become angry without any cause. And it is reported about him that he became so proficient at this art that if two persons were sitting near him, one on each side, he could be angry with half of his face and he could be smiling with the other half of his face. Then one person would report, "What a beautiful man Gurdjieff is," and the other would say, "What an ugly man! " He would look at one person from one side smiling, and he would look at the other side angrily.

Once you can detach your center from the periphery, you can do it. Once the center is detached completely, if you can remain undisturbed in anger, in desire, you can play with desires, with anger, with disturbances.

This technique is to create a feeling of two extremes within you. They are there, two polar opposites are there. Once you become aware of this polarity, you become for the first time a master of yourself. Otherwise others are your masters; you are just a slave. Your wife knows, your son knows, your father knows, your friends know, that you can be pushed and pulled. You can be disturbed, you can be made happy and unhappy. If someone else can make you happy and unhappy, you are not a master, you are just a slave. The other has a hold. Just by a single gesture he can make you unhappy; just by a small smile be can make you happy.

So you are just at the mercy of someone else; the other can do anything to you. And if this is the situation, then all your reactions are simply reactions, not actions. You simply react. If someone insults you and you become angry, your anger is not an action, it is a reaction. If someone appreciates you and you start smiling and feeling good, great, this is a reaction, not an action.

Buddha was passing by a village, and some persons gathered there. They were against him, and they insulted him. Buddha listened, and then he said, "I am to reach to the other village in time, so can I go now? If you have said whatsoever you have come to say, if it is finished, then I can move. Or, if you have to say something more to me, while returning I will wait here. You can come and tell me."

Those persons were just surprised. They couldn't understand. They had been insulting him, using bad words, abusing him, so they said, "But we are not saying something to you, we are abusing and insulting you.

" Buddha said, "You can do that, but if you want any reaction from me you have come late. Ten years before, if you had come with such words, I would have reacted. But now I have learned how to act, I am a master of myself now; you cannot force me to do anything. So you will have to go back. You cannot disturb me; nothing can disturb me now because I have known my own center."

This knowledge of the center or this grounding in the center makes you a master. Otherwise you are a slave, and a slave of so many -- not only of one master, but of many. Everything is a master, and you are a slave to the whole universe. Obviously, you will be in trouble. With so many masters pulling you in so many directions and dimensions, you are never together; you are not in a unity, and pulled in so many dimensions, you are in anguish. Only a master of oneself can transcend anguish.

The second technique:

"THIS SO-CALLED UNIVERSE APPEARS AS A JUGGLING, A PICTURE SHOW. TO BE HAPPY LOOK UPON IT SO."

This whole world is just like a drama, so don't be too serious about it. Seriousness will force you into trouble, you will get into trouble. Don't be serious about it. Nothing is serious; this whole world is just a drama.

If you can look to the whole world as a drama you will regain your original consciousness. The dust gathers because you are so serious. That seriousness creates problems, and we are so serious that even while seeing a drama we gather dust. Go to a picture house and look at the spectators. Don't look at the screen, forget the picture; don't look at the screen; just look at the spectators in the hall. Someone will be weeping and tears will be rolling down, someone will be laughing, someone will become sexually excited. Just look at people. What are they doing? What is happening to them? And there is nothing on the screen, just pictures -- pictures of light and shadow. The screen is vacant.

But how are they getting excited? They are weeping, crying, laughing. The picture is not just a picture; the film is not just a film. They have forgotten that it is just a story. They have taken it seriously. It has "become alive"! It is "real"! And this is happening everywhere, not only in a picture house. Look at the life that is all around you. What is it?

Many people have lived on this earth. Where you are sitting, at least ten dead bodies are buried in that place, and they too were serious like you. Now they are no more. Where have their lives gone? Where have their problems gone? They were fighting -- fighting for a single inch of earth, and the earth is there and they are no more.

And I am not saying that their problems were not problems. They were -- as your problems are problems. They were "serious" -- problems of life and death. But where are their problems? And if the whole humanity should disappear anyday, the earth will be there, the trees will grow, the rivers will flow and the sun will rise, and the earth will not feel any absence or wonder where humanity is.

Look at the expanse: look backwards, look forwards, look to all dimensions at what you are, what your life is. It looks like a long dream, and everything that you take so seriously this moment becomes useless the next moment. You may not even remember it.

Remember your first love, how serious it was. Life depended on it. Now you don't remember it at all, it is forgotten. And whatsoever you are thinking that your life depends on today will be forgotten. Life is a flux, nothing remains. It is like a moving film, everything changing into everything else. But in the moment you feel it is very serious, and you get disturbed. This technique says, "THIS SO-CALLED UNIVERSE APPEARS AS A JUGGLING, A PICTURE SHOW. TO BE HAPPY, LOOK UPON IT SO."

In India, we have called this world not a creation of God, but a play, a game, a LEELA. This concept of LEELA is beautiful, because creation seems serious. The Christian, the Jewish God is very serious. Even for a single disobedience, Adam was thrown out of the Garden of Eden -- and not only was he thrown out, because of him, the whole humanity. He was our father, and we are suffering because of him. God seems to be so serious. He should not be disobeyed. And if he is disobeyed, he is going to take revenge, and the revenge has been so long.

The sin doesn't seem to be so serious. Really, Adam committed it because of God's own foolishness. God the Father said to Adam, "Don't go near the tree, the Tree of Knowledge, and don't eat its fruit." This prohibition becomes an invitation, and this is psychological. In that big garden, only that Tree of Knowledge became attractive. It was prohibited. Any psychologist can say, God committed an error. If the fruit of that tree was not to be eaten, it was good not to talk about it at all. There was no possibility of Adam reaching to that tree, and the whole humanity would have been in the garden. But this saying, this order, "Don't eat," created the trouble; this "don't" created the whole trouble.

Because Adam disobeyed he was thrown out of heaven, and the revenge seems so long. And Christians say Jesus was crucified just to redeem us -- to redeem us from that sin that Adam committed. So the whole Christian concept of history hangs on two persons -- Adam and Jesus. Adam committed the sin, and Jesus suffered to redeem us from it and allowed himself to be crucified. He suffered so that Adam's sin may be forgiven. But it doesn't seem that God has forgiven yet. Jesus was crucified, but humanity goes on suffering in the same way.

The very concept of God as a father is ugly, serious. The Indian concept is not of a creator. God is just a player; he is not serious. This is just a game. Rules are there, but rules of a game. You need not be serious about them. Nothing is sin -- only error, and you suffer because of error, not because God punishes you. You suffer because of the rules you don't follow. God is not punishing you. The whole concept of LEELA gives life a dramatic color; it becomes a long drama. And this technique is based on this concept: "THIS SO-CALLED UNIVERSE APPEARS AS A JUGGLING, A PICTURE SHOW. TO BE HAPPY, LOOK UPON IT SO."

If you are unhappy, you have taken it too seriously. And don't try to find any way how to be happy. Just change your attitude. You cannot be happy with a serious mind. With a festive mind, you can be happy. Take this whole life as a myth, as a story. It is one, but once you take it this way you will not be unhappy. Unhappiness comes out of too much seriousness. Try for seven days; for seven days remember only one thing -- that the whole world is just a drama -- and you will not be the same again. Just for seven days! You are not going to lose much because you don't have anything to lose.

You can try it. For seven days take everything as a drama, just as a show. These seven days will give you many glimpses of your buddha nature, of your inner purity. And once you have the glimpse you cannot be the same again. You will be happy, and you cannot conceive of what type of happiness can happen to you because you have not known any happiness. You have known only degrees of unhappiness: sometimes you were more unhappy, sometimes less unhappy, and when you were less unhappy you called it happiness. You don't know what happiness is because you cannot know. When you have a concept of the world in which you are taking it very seriously, you cannot know what happiness is. Happiness happens only when you are grounded in this attitude, that the world is just a play.

So try this, and do everything in a very festive way, celebrating, doing an "act" -- not a real thing. If you are a husband, play, be a play husband; if you are a wife, be a play wife. Make it just a game. And there are rules, of course; any game to be played needs rules. Marriage is a rule and divorce is a rule, but don't be serious about them. They are rules, and one rule begets another. Divorce is bad; because marriage is bad: one rule begets another! But don't take them seriously, and then look how the quality of your life immediately changes.

Go to your home this night, and behave with your wife or husband or your children as if you are doing a part in a drama, and see the beauty of it. If you are playing a part you will try to be efficient, but you will not get disturbed. There is no need. You will do the part and go to sleep. But remember, it is a part, and for seven days continuously follow this attitude. Then happiness can happen to you, and once you know what happiness is you need not move into unhappiness, because it is your choice.

You are unhappy because you have chosen a wrong attitude towards life. You can be happy if you choose a right attitude. Buddha pays so much attention to "right attitude." He makes it a base, a foundation -- "right attitude." What is right attitude? What is the criterion? To me this is the criterion: the attitude that makes you happy is the right attitude, and there is no objective criterion. The attitude that makes you unhappy and miserable is the wrong attitude. The criterion is subjective; your happiness is the criterion.

The third technique:

"OH BELOVED, PUT ATTENTION NEITHER ON PLEASURE NOR ON PAIN, BUT BETWEEN THESE."

Everything is polar, and mind moves from one polarity to another, never staying in between. Have you known any moment when you were neither happy nor unhappy? Have you known any moment when you were neither healthy nor sick? Have you known any moment when you were neither this nor that, when you were just in between, just in the middle, right in the middle? Mind moves from one pole to another immediately. If you are happy, sooner or later you will move to unhappiness, and you will move immediately: the happiness will disappear and you will be unhappy.

If you are feeling good, sooner or later you will feel bad, and there is no point where you stay in between. You move immediately from this to that. Just like the pendulum of an old clock, you move from left to right, from right to left, and the pendulum goes on moving. There is a secret law: when the pendulum is going to the left, it appears to be going to the left, but it is gathering momentum to go right. When it is going to the left, it is gathering energy, momentum, to go right; when it is going right, it is gathering momentum to go left. So what appears is not the whole. When you are becoming happy, you are gathering momentum to be unhappy. So whenever I see you laughing, the moment is not far away when you will be weeping.

In Indian villages, the mothers know this, so when a child starts laughing too much they say, "Stop him; otherwise he will weep." It is bound to be so. If a child is so much happy, the next step can be nothing but unhappiness. Thus, they stop him. Otherwise he will be unhappy. But the same applies to the reverse, and that is not known. When a child is weeping and you try to stop him, you are not only stopping his weeping; you are stopping his next step. He cannot be happy now. When a child is weeping, allow him. Help him to weep more so that when weeping is finished he has gathered momentum. Now he can move to the right, he can be happy.

Now psychoanalysts say that when a child is weeping and screaming, don't stop him, don't try to persuade him, don't distract him. Don't try to focus his mind somewhere else; don't bribe him to stop. Don't do anything. Just remain silent near him, and allow him to weep and cry and scream so that he can move easily to happiness. Otherwise, neither will he be able to weep nor will he be able to be happy. That is how we all have become. We cannot do anything. The smile is half-hearted, the tear is also half-hearted; everything is confusion.

But this is the natural law of mind. It moves from one pole to another. This technique is to change this natural law: "OH BELOVED, PUT ATTENTION NEITHER ON PLEASURE NOR ON PAIN, BUT BETWEEN THESE." Any of the polarities can be chosen, and try to be just in between. What can you do to be in between? How will you be in between? One thing: when pain is there, what can you do? When pain is there, you want to escape from it. You don't want it; you try to go away from it. Your effort is to go to the opposite -- to be happy, to be joyful.

When there is happiness, what do you do? Your effort is to cling to it so that the other pole may not enter -- to CLING to it! When happiness is there you cling; when pain is there you escape. This is the natural attitude. If you want to change this natural law and transcend it, when pain is there don't try to escape. Remain with it. You will disturb the whole natural mechanism. You have a headache: remain with it. Close your eyes, meditate on the headache; remain with it. Don't do anything. Just be a witness; don't try to escape.

When happiness is there and you are feeling especially blissful in any particular moment, don't cling to it. Close your eyes and remain a witness to it all. Clinging or escaping are natural for the dust-covered mind. If you remain a witness, sooner or later you will fall in between because the natural law is to move to the polarity, to the polar opposite. If you remain a witness, you are in between.

Buddha has called his whole philosophy MAJJHIM NIKAYA -- the middle way, because of this technique. He says remain in the middle always; no matter what the polarity, remain always in the middle. By witnessing one remains in the middle. The moment you lose your witnessing you either become attached or repulsed. If you are repulsed you will go to the other extreme; if you are attached you will try to remain at this extreme, but you will never be in between. Just be a witness. Don't be attracted, don't be repulsed. The headache is there; accept it. It is there as a fact. As a tree is there, as the house is there, as the night is there, the headache is there. Accept it and close your eyes. Don't try to escape from it.

You are happy; accept the fact. Don't cling to it, and don't try not to become unhappy; don't try anything. If unhappiness comes, allow it. If happiness comes, allow it. Just remain a watcher on the hill, just seeing things. The morning comes, and then evening comes, and then the sun rises, and then the sun sets and there are stars and darkness, and again the sun rises -- and you are just a watcher on the hill. You cannot do anything. You simply see. The morning has come; you note the fact, and you know that now the evening will come because the evening follows the morning. And when the evening comes you note the fact, and you know that now the morning will be coming because the morning follows the evening.

When pain is there, you are just a watcher. You know that pain has come, and sooner or later it will go, and the polar opposite will come. And when happiness has come, you know that it is not going to remain always. Unhappiness will be just hidden somewhere, it will be coming. You remain a watcher. If you can watch without attraction and without repulsion you will fall in the middle, and once the pendulum stops in the middle you can look for the first time at what the world is.

While you are moving, you cannot know what the world is; your movement confuses everything. Once you are not moving, you can look at the world. For the first time you know what reality is. A non-moving mind knows what reality is; a moving mind cannot know what reality is. Your mind is just like a camera: you go on moving and taking shots, but whatsoever comes is just a confusion because the camera must not move. If the camera is moving, the pictures are going to be just a confusion.

Your consciousness is moving from one pendulum to another, and whatsoever you know of reality is just a confusion, a nightmare. You don't know what is what; everything is confused, missed. If you remain in the middle and the pendulum has stopped, if your consciousness is focused now, centered, then you know what reality is. Only a mind that is unmoving can know what the truth is. "OH BELOVED, PUT ATTENTION NEITHER ON PLEASURE NOR ON PAIN, BUT BETWEEN THESE."

The fourth technique:

"OBJECTS AND DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS. SO ACCEPTING, LET THEM BE TRANSFORMED."

This technique can be very helpful. When you are angry, you always justify your anger, but when someone else gets angry you always criticize. Your madness is natural, but others' madness is just "perversion." Whatsoever you do is good -- or even if it was not good, it was "necessary to do." You always find some rationalization for it.

The same is done by others, but then the same rationalization is not given. If you are angry, you say it was necessary to help the other. If you were not angry, the other would have been destroyed., he would have got a wrong habit, so it was good to give him punishment. It was just for his "good". But when someone gets angry at you, the same rationalization is not applicable. Then he is "mad," he is "evil."

We have double standards -- one standard for one oneself and another standard for everyone else. This double-standard mind is going to be in deep misery always. This mind is not just, and unless your mind is just you cannot have a glimpse of the truth. Only a just mind can leave this double standard.

Jesus says, "Don't do to others what you would not like done to you." This means a similar standard is needed. This technique is based on the idea of a single standard: "OBJECTS AND DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS...." You are not exceptional, although everyone thinks he is exceptional. If you think you are exceptional, know well this is how every ordinary mind thinks. To know that one is ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in this world.

Someone asked Suzuki about his teacher: "What was exceptional in your teacher, Suzuki?" Suzuki was a Zen master, so he said, "The only thing I will never forget is this, that I have never seen a man who thought himself so ordinary. He was just ordinary, and that is the most extraordinary thing, because every ordinary mind thinks he is exceptional, extraordinary."

But no one is extraordinary, and if you know this you become extraordinary. Everyone is just like everyone else. The same desires that hover around you hover around everyone else. But you call your sex love; others' love you call sex. Whatsoever you do, you protect it. You say it is good. That is why you are doing it, and the same thing done by others is "not the same." And this happens not only to persons; it happens to races, nations. This is why the whole world has become a mess, because of this.

If India goes on strengthening its army it is "for defense," and if China goes on strengthening its army it is "for attack." Every government in the world calls its military organization "defense." Then who attacks? If everyone is defending, who is the aggressor? If you move into history, you cannot find anyone who is an aggressor. Of course, the defeated ones prove to be aggressors. The defeated ones always prove to be aggressors because they cannot write history. The victorious ones write history.

If Hitler could have won, then the history would have been different. Then he would have been the savior of the world, not the aggressor. Then Churchill and Roosevelt and the other allies would have been the aggressors, and it would have been good if they were destroyed. But because Hitler couldn't win he was the aggressor, and Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin and the other allies saved humanity. Not only with persons, but with everything we do -- as nations, as races -- the same logic moves. We are something different and the other is different.

No one is different! A religious mind knows that everyone is the same, so if you give rationalizations for yourself, please give the same rationalizations to others also. If you criticize others, then apply that same criticism to yourself. Don't create two standards. One standard will transform your being totally because with one standard you become just and for the first time you can look straight into reality, as it is. "OBJECTS AND DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS. SO ACCEPTING, LET THEM BE TRANSFORMED": ACCEPT THEM AND THEY WILL BE TRANSFORMED."

What are we doing? We accept that they exist in others. Whatsoever is wrong exists in others; whatsoever is right exists in you. Then how can you be transformed? You are already transformed. You think that you are already good and everyone else is bad; the world needs a transformation, not you. That is why there are always leaders, movements, prophets. They go on crying from the rooftops to change the world, to create a revolution, and we have been making revolutions and revolutions and nothing changes.

Man remains the same and the earth remains in the same misery. Only faces and labels change, but misery continues. It is not a question of how to change the world. The world is not wrong; you are wrong. The question is how to change yourself: "How to change myself?" is the religious quest. "How to change everyone else?" is political. But the politician thinks he is okay; really, he is the model of how the whole world should be. He is the model, he is the ideal, and it is up to him to change the whole.

Whatsoever the religious man sees in everyone else he sees in himself also. If there is violence, he immediately wonders whether the violence exists in him or not. If there is greed, if he sees greed somewhere, his first reflection is over whether the same greed is in him or not. And the more he searches the more he finds that he is the source of all evil. Then it is not a question of how to change the world; it is a question of how to change oneself. And the change starts the moment you accept one standard. Then you are already changing.

Don't condemn others. I don't mean condemn yourself -- no! Just don't condemn others. And if you are not condemning others, you will have a deep compassion for them, because the same problems are there. If someone commits a sin, a sin in the eyes of the society, you start condemning him, never thinking that you also have the seed to commit that sin within you. If someone commits a murder you condemn him, but have you not always been thinking to kill someone, to murder? Is not the potential seed there always? The man who has committed murder was not a murderer a moment before, but the seed was there. And the seed is with you also. A moment later, who knows? You may be a murderer. So don't condemn him. Rather, accept. Then you will feel a deep compassion for him because whatsoever he has done any man is capable of doing; you are capable of doing it.

A non-condemning mind will have compassion; a non-condemning mind will have a deep acceptance. He knows that this is how humanity is and that "this is how I am." Then the whole world will become just a reflection of your own self. It will become a mirror. Then every face becomes a mirror for you; you look at yourself in every face.

"OBJECTS AND DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS. SO ACCEPTING, LET THEM BE TRANSFORMED." Acceptance becomes transformation. This is difficult to understand because we always reject, and then too we cannot transform anything. You have greed, but you reject it. No one wants to think of himself as greedy. You are sexual, but you reject it. No one wants to feel oneself as sexual. You are angry, you have anger, but you reject it. You create a facade, and you try to justify it. You never feel that you are angry or that you are anger.

But rejection never transforms anything. It simply suppresses, and that which is suppressed becomes more powerful. It moves to your roots, to your unconscious deep down within you, and it begins functioning from there. And from that darkness of the unconscious it becomes more powerful. You cannot accept it now because you are not even conscious of it. Acceptance brings everything up. There is no need to suppress.

You know you are greedy, you know you have anger, you know you are sexual, and you accept them as natural facts without any condemnation. There is no need to suppress them. They come to the surface of the mind, and from the surface of the mind they can be thrown very easily. From the deep center they cannot be thrown. And when they are on the surface you are always aware of them, but when they are in the unconscious you become unaware. And a disease of which you are aware can be cured; a disease of which you are unaware cannot be cured.

Bring everything up to the surface. Accept your humanity, your animality. Whatsoever is there, accept it without any condemnation. It is there, and be aware of it. Greed is there; don't try to make it non-greed. You cannot. And if you try to make it non-greed, you will simply suppress it. Your non-greed will simply be another form of greed and nothing else. Don't try to change it into the other; you cannot change it. If you want to try to change greed, what will you do? And a greedy mind can be attracted only towards the ideal of non-greed if some further greed is possible through it.

If someone says that "If you leave all your riches you will be allowed in my Kingdom of God," then you can even renounce. A further greed becomes possible. This is a bargain. Greed has not to become non-greed; greed is to be transcended. You cannot change it.

How can a violent mind become non-violent? If you force yourself to be non-violent, this will be a violence to yourself. You cannot change one into another, you can simply be aware and accepting. Accept greed as it is. By acceptance is not meant that there is no need to transform it. By acceptance is meant only that you accept the fact, the natural fact, as it is. Then move in life knowing well that greed is there. Do whatsoever you are doing, remembering well that greed is there. This awareness will transform you. It transforms because knowingly you cannot be greedy, knowingly you cannot be angry.

For anger, for greed, for violence, unawareness is a basic requirement, just as you cannot knowingly take poison, just as knowingly you cannot put your hand into a flame. Unknowingly you can put it. If you don't know what a flame is, what fire is, you can put your hand in it. But if you know that fire burns, you cannot put your hand in it.

The more your "knowingness" grows, the more greed becomes a fire and anger becomes poison. They simply become impossible. Without any suppression, they disappear. And when greed disappears without any ideal of non-greed, it has a beauty of its own. When violence disappears without making you non-violent, it has a beauty of its own.

Otherwise a non-violent man is deeply violent. That violence is there hidden, and you can have a glimpse of it from his non-violence also. He will force his non-violence upon himself and upon others in a very violent way. That violence has become subtle.

This sutra says that acceptance is transformation, because through acceptance awareness becomes possible.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1

Chapter #38

Chapter title: Toward the authentic being

27 February 1973 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7302275

ShortTitle: VBT138

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 86 mins

The first question:

Question 1

"IN WHICH WAY DOES THE MODERNIZED ORIGINAL MIND BECOME IDENTIFIED WITH THE DUST OF THE PAST KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE?"

Mind is pure, and no impurity can enter it. That is impossible. The mind is just the buddha-nature -- the ultimate. And when I say "mind," I don't mean your mind, I simply mean the mind where no I and you exist. You are the impurity. Just behind you is the original mind. You are the dust. So first try to analyze what you are, and then you will be able to understand how the original mind becomes identified with the past, with memories, with dust.

What are you? Right now, if I ask you what you are, you can answer in two ways. One will be a verbal answer, and in that verbal answer you will relate your past. You will say, "My name is this. I belong to this family or that, to this religion or that, to this country or that. I am educated or uneducated, rich or poor." These are all past experiences, they are not you. You have been through them, you have passed through them, they have been the passage, but your past goes on accumulating.

This will be the verbal answer, but this is not the real answer. This is your mind arguing, the false ego. Right now, if you leave all of your past -- if you forget your father, your parents, your family, your religion, your country, all which is accidental -- if you forget all that is accidental and just remain with yourself here and now, then who are you? No name will come to your consciousness, no form -- just a simple awareness that you are. You won't be able to say who you are. You will simply say, "I am." The moment you answer the "who," you move into the past.

You are a simple consciousness, a pure mind, an innocent mirror. Right now, this very moment, you are. Who are you? Just a simple awareness that "I am." Even the "I" is not needed. The deeper you move, the more you will feel just "am-ness," existence. This existence is the pure mind, but this existence has no form; this is formless -- NIRAKAR. This existence has no name; it is nameless -- ANAM.

It will be difficult for you to be introduced by this which you really are. In the society, relating with others, you will need some name, some form. Your past supplies you name and form. That name and form are useful. Without them it will be difficult to survive. They are needed, but they are not you; they are just labels. Because of this utilitarian need, the original mind becomes identified with name and form.

A child is born. He is a simple consciousness, but you have to call him, you have to give him a name. In the beginning, the child will use his own name. He will not say, "I am feeling hungry"; he will say, "Ram is feeling hungry." "Ram "is his name. He will say, "Ram is feeling very angry." Only later on will he learn that this cannot be used in this way; he cannot call himself "Ram". Ram is the name that he is to be called by others. Then he will learn the use of "I."

First he will become identified with "Ram," the name that others call him; then he will become identified with "I." This is utilitarian. You need it. Without it survival will be difficult. Because of this utilitarian necessity, one becomes identified. You can go beyond this identification, and the moment you start going beyond and reclaiming your original consciousness, you have started meditation, and you can start meditation only when you become frustrated with your name and form and the world that belongs to it.

Religion starts when you become frustrated, totally frustrated, with the world of name and form and when the whole thing looks meaningless. It is! Ultimately it IS meaningless. This feeling of meaninglessness of the world that is created around name and form makes you uneasy. That uneasiness is the beginning of a religious search. You become uneasy because with this label you cannot become totally identified. The label remains a label; you remain what you are. This label covers you a little, but it cannot become your totality. And sooner or later you become fed up with this label. You want to know who you really are. And the moment you ask sincerely, "Who am I?" you are on a different journey; you are transcending.

This identification is natural. There is another reason why it is so easy to become identified. This is a room. If I say to you, "Look at the room," where will you look? You will look at the walls. The walls are not the room: the room is just "roominess"; it is not the walls, the walls are just the boundaries of the space that we call "room." But if I tell you to look at the room, you will look at the walls because the "roominess" cannot be looked at.

You are just inner space; your name and form are the walls. They give you a boundary, they give you a definition, they give you a definite place. You can be identified with that definiteness; otherwise you are just a zero, SHUNYA -- a nothingness. That nothingness is there, that inner space is there.

Look at it in this way. You breathe in, you breathe out. If you breathe in and breathe out silently and there is no thinking in the mind, if you are simply sitting under a tree breathing in and breathing out, what will you feel? You will feel that there is outer space, there is inner space. The breath comes into the inner space, the breath moves out to the outer space, but where are you? There are simply two spaces. Your throat is just a door, a swinging door. When the breath comes in, the breath forces the door and moves in. When the breath goes out, it again forces the door and goes out. Your throat is just a swinging door, and there are two spaces -- the outer and the inner. And if this door is broken, then there are not even two spaces -- just one space.

You will become afraid if you feel a nothingness within. You want to be something definable, definite. There is no one who is definite inside; the outer space is infinite and the inner space is also infinite. That is why Buddha insisted that there is no soul, no ATMAN. You are just a vacant space -- infinite.

It is difficult to feel oneself as this infinite space unless you make an arduous effort. One becomes identified with the boundaries. It is easier to feel oneself that way -- with the boundaries. Your name is just a boundary, your body is just a boundary, your thoughts are just a boundary. For outer utility, for your own convenience also, you become identified. Then, once you become identified, accumulation goes on and on and on, and with accumulation you feel a fulfillment of the ego. You are identified with your riches, then you go on accumulating. You have a feeling you are growing greater, bigger. You have a big house, then a bigger house, then a still bigger house, so you feel that you are getting bigger and bigger, and that is how greed is born.

Greed is nothing but an expansion, an effort to expand the ego. But howsoever great you become in your ego, you can never become infinite, and you ARE infinite within. If you can look into the nothingness you are infinite within. That is why ego is never satisfied. Ultimately it is frustrating. It cannot become infinite; it will remain finite.

This is how one always has a spiritual discontent. You are infinite. Nothing less will be helpful for you and nothing less will ever satisfy you. But every boundary is going to be finite. It is needed, it is necessary in a way, useful, but it is not true, it is not the truth. This inner mirror, this inner mind, is pure consciousness -- just consciousness.

Just look at the light. You say the room is filled with light, but how do you see the light? You have never seen light itself, you cannot see it; you always see something lighted. Light falls on the walls, light falls on the books, light falls on other persons. It is reflected on those objects. Because you can see objects, you say light is there. When you cannot see objects, you say there is darkness. You have never seen light pure in itself. It is always seen reflected on some object.

Consciousness is even purer than light. It is the purest possibility in existence. If you become totally silent, all boundaries disappear and you will not be able to say who you are. You simply are, because there is no object you can feel yourself to be in contrast with. You cannot say that you are a subject, soul, or even a consciousness. Because of this purity of consciousness, you always know yourself through something else; you cannot know yourself directly. So when you create boundaries, you feel that you know yourself. With a name you feel you know yourself; with your riches you feel you know yourself. Something around you becomes the boundary and the pure consciousness is reflected back.

When Buddha attained enlightenment he said, "I am no more." When you attain to that state you will also say, "I am no more," because without a boundary how can you be? When Shankara attained, he said, "I am all." Both mean the same. If you are the "all," you are no more. All or nothing -- only two possibilities are there, but in both the possibilities you are not. If you are all, the BRAHMAN, then you are not. If you are not, totally a nothingness, then too you are not. Because of this, it is a necessary part of life to become identified. And it is good, because unless you become identified you cannot become unidentified. Unless you become identified, you cannot become unidentified! At least once, one has to become identified.

It is like this: if you are born healthy and have never been ill, you will never be aware of your health. You cannot be, because awareness of health needs a background of disease and illness. You will have to fall ill to know that you were healthy or what health is. The other pole will be needed. Eastern esoteric science says this is why the world is, so that you can experience that you are divine. The world gives a contrast.

Go into a school, and you will see that the teacher is writing on a blackboard with white chalk. He can write on a white board too, but then it will be meaningless because it will be invisible, it won't be seen. Only on a blackboard can one write with white chalk so that it is seen. The blackboard is a necessity for the white writing to become visible.

The world is just a blackboard, and you become visible because of it. This is an inherent polarity, and it is good. That is why in the East we have never said that the world is bad; we take it just as a school, a training. It is good because only in contrast will you be able to know your purity. When you come into the world you become identified. With identification you enter; the world starts. So you will have to fall ill to know your inner health.

This has been a basic question all over the world: Why is this world there? Why is it at all? Many answers have been given, but those answers are just superfluous. Only this attitude seems to be very deep and meaningful -- that the world is just a background; without it you cannot become aware of your inner consciousness.

I will tell you one story. One man -- very rich, the richest in his country -- became disturbed, became frustrated. He felt that life was meaningless. He had everything that could be purchased, but all that could be purchased proved meaningless. Only something that could not be purchased could have real meaning. He had everything he could purchase -- he could have purchased the whole world -- but what to do now? He was frustrated and deep discontent was within. So he gathered all his valuables, ornaments, gold, jewels, everything, into a big bag, and he started on a journey just to find a man who could give him something valuable, a glimpse of happiness. Then be would present his whole life's earnings to him. He went from one teacher to another, traveled and traveled, but no one was able to give him even a glimpse. And he was ready to give everything -- his whole kingdom.

Then he reached a village and asked for Mulla Nasruddin, who was a fakir living there. A village man told him, "Mulla Nasruddin is just sitting outside the town, meditating under a tree. You go there, and if he cannot give you a glimpse of happiness then forget it. Then you can go to all the corners of the world, but you will never get it. If this man cannot give you a glimpse, then there is no possibility."

So the man was very excited. He came to Nasruddin who was sitting under a tree. The sun was setting. The man said, "I have come for this purpose. My whole life's earnings are here in this bag, and I will give them to you if you can give me a glimpse of happiness.

" Mulla Nasruddin listened. The evening was descending; it was becoming dark. Without answering him, Mulla Nasruddin snatched the bag from the rich man and ran away. Of course, the rich man followed him crying, weeping and screaming. The village streets were known to Mulla Nasruddin; they were not known to the rich man as he was a stranger, so he couldn't find him. From all over the village people from the whole village started following them. Nasruddin was just running round and round. The man was mad. He was crying, "I have been robbed of all my life's riches. I am a poor man! I have become a beggar!" He was weeping -- weeping like anything.

Then Nasruddin reached the same tree, and he just put the bag before the tree and went behind the tree to hide there. The man came there, he fell on the bag, and started weeping in happiness. Nasrudin looked from behind the tree and said, "Are you happy, man? Have you had a little glimpse?

" The man said, "I am as happy as anyone can be on this earth."

What happened? To have a peak, a valley is needed. To feel happiness, unhappiness is needed. To know the divine, the world is needed. The world is just a valley. The man was the same, the bag was the same. Nothing new had happened, but now he said that he was happy -- as happy as anyone can be on this earth -- and just a few minutes before he was miserable. Nothing had changed. The man was the same, the bag was the same, the tree was the same. Nothing had changed, but the man was now happy, dancing. The contrast had happened. Consciousness becomes identified because through identification the world is and through the world you can regain yourself.

When Buddha attained he was asked, "What have you achieved?" He said, "Nothing. On the contrary, I have lost much. I have not attained anything because now I know that whatsoever I have attained was always there; it was my nature. It was never taken away from me, so I have not achieved anything. I have achieved that which was already there, which was already achieved. I have lost only my ignorance."

Identification is ignorance. It is part of this great play -- this cosmic LEELA, this cosmic play -- that you will have to lose yourself to find yourself again. This losing yourself is just a way, and the only way, to regain yourself. If you have lost too much already, you can regain. If you have not yet lost yourself enough, you will have to lose more. And nothing can be done before that; no help is possible before that. Unless you are lost completely in the valley, in the darkness, in the SANSARA, in the world, nothing can be done. Lose so that you can gain. This looks paradoxical, but this is how the world is, how the very process is.

The second question:

Question 2

IF ONE BEGINS TO FEEL THAT LIFE IS A PSYCHODRAMA, THEN ONE ALSO FEELS DETACHED AND LONELY. THUS, THE INTENSITY, SINCERITY AND DEPTH OF LIVING IS LOST. PLEASE SUGGEST WHAT TO DO IN THIS SITUATION. WHAT THEN IS THE RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE?"

"If one begins to feel that life is a psychodrama, then one also feels detached and lonely...." Then feel it! Why create a problem? If you feel detached and lonely, then feel it! But we go on creating problems. Whatsoever happens, we will create a problem out of it. Feel lonely and detached -- And if you can be at ease with your loneliness, it will disappear. If you start doing something with it to transcend it, it will never disappear; it will remain there. Now a modern trend in psychology and psychoanalysis says that anything can disappear if you remain with it without creating any problems, and this has been one of the oldest teachings of tantra.

For the last ten or twelve years, in Japan, a small psychotherapeutic technique has been in use. Western psychoanalysts and psychiatrists have been studying it. It is a Zen therapy, and it is wonderful. If someone goes neurotic or psychotic, that man or woman is simply put into a lonely room and he or she is told, "Remain with yourself, whatsoever you are. Neurotic? Okay! Then be neurotic and live with it." And the doctors do not interfere. Food is provided, needs will he fulfilled, attention will be given, but there is no interference. The patient has to live with himself, and within ten days he starts changing. Western psychoanalysis works for years, and basically nothing changes.

What happens to this Zen patient? There is no interference from outside. There is just acceptance of the fact that "Okay, you are neurotic. Nothing can be done." Zen says that one tree is small and another tree is very big, so okay: one is small, another is big, and nothing can be done. Once you accept a thing, you are already transcending it.

One of the most original psychiatrists of England, R. D. Laing, has now proposed that if we can leave a madman to himself, just paying loving attention to him, fulfilling his needs and not interfering with him, he will get over his madness within three or four weeks. His proposal is that no madness can last for more than ten days if it is not interfered with. If you interfere, then you prolong the process.

What happens when you are not interfering in anything? You feel lonely, so feel lonely: it is how you are. But when you feel lonely you start doing something, and then you are divided. Then one part of you feels lonely and another part tries to change it. This is absurd. It is just pulling yourself up by your legs or the strings of your shoes -- pulling yourself up to the sky. Absurd! You are lonely, so what can you do? There is no one else to do anything. You are alone, so be lonely. This is your fate; this is how you are. What will happen if you accept it? If you accept it, your fragmentariness will disappear, you will become one, you will be whole -- not divided.

If you are depressed, so be depressed; don't do anything. And what can you do? Whatsoever you do will be done out of depression, so it will create more confusion. You can pray to God, but you will pray so depressingly that you will even make God depressed through your prayers. Don't do that violence. Your prayer is going to be a depressed prayer.

You can meditate, but what will you do? The depression will be there. Because you are depressed, whatsoever you do the depression will follow. More confusion will be created, more frustration, because you cannot succeed. And when you cannot succeed you will feel more depressed, and this can go on ad infinitum. It is better to remain with the first depression than to create a second circle and then a third circle. Remain with the first; the original is beautiful. The second will be false, and the third will be a far-off echo. Don't create these. The first is beautiful. You are depressed, so this is how existence is happening to you at this moment.

You are depressed, so remain with it. Wait and watch. You cannot be depressed for long because in this world nothing is permanent. This world is a flux. This world cannot change its basic law for you so that you remain depressed forever. Nothing is here forever; everything is moving and changing. Existence is a river; it cannot stop for you, just for you, so that you remain depressed forever. It is moving, it has already moved. If you look at your depression, you will feel that even your depression is not the same the next moment; it is different, it is changing. Just watch, remain with it and don't do anything. This is how transformation happens through non-doing. This is what is meant by "effortless effort."

Feel depression, taste it deeply, live it. It is your fate. Then suddenly you will feel it has disappeared because the man who can accept even depression cannot be depressed. A man, a mind, who can accept even depression cannot remain depressed! Depression needs a non-accepting mind. "This is not good, that is not good; this should not be, that should not be; this must not be like this. "Everything is denied, rejected -- not accepted. "No" is basic. Even happiness will be rejected by such a mind. Such a mind will find something to reject in happiness also.

One man came to me just the other day and he said, "Meditation is going deep and I am feeling very happy, but I am suspicious. This happiness must be illusory because I have never felt any happiness before. I must be in a delusion; so much doubt has come to me. Now, please clarify my doubt." Even if happiness happens to a mind who has been always rejecting, he will feel a doubt about it. He will feel that something has gone wrong. He is happy, so he will feel something has gone wrong. Just by meditating for a few days this is not possible.

A non-accepting mind will "non-accept" anything, but if you can accept your loneliness, your depression, your sadness, you are transcending already. Acceptance is transcendence. You have taken the very ground away, and then the depression cannot stand there.

Try this: Whatsoever your state of mind, accept it and wait for when the state changes itself. You are not changing it; you can feel the beauty that comes when states change by themselves. You can know that it is just like the sun rising in the morning and then setting in the evening. Then again it will rise and again it will set, and it will go on. You need not do anything about it. If you can feel your states of mind changing by themselves, you can remain indifferent, you can remain away, miles away, as if the mind is going somewhere else. The sun is rising, setting; the depression is coming, the happiness is coming, going: but you are not in it. It goes and comes by itself; the states come and move.

"IF ONE BEGINS TO FEEL THAT LIFE IS A PSYCHODRAMA, THEN ONE ALSO FEELS DEPRESSED AND LONELY." So feel it! "THUS, THE INTENSITY, SINCERITY AND DEPTH OF LIVING IS LOST." Let it be lost, because the sincerity and depth that can be lost was not real. It was pseudo, false, and it is better that the false thing is lost. How can a real depth be lost? The very definition of a "real depth" is that it cannot be lost, no matter what you do. If you can disturb a buddha, then he is not a buddha. Whatsoever you do, he remains undisturbed. That unconditional undisturbance is the buddha-nature. The real cannot be lost. The real is always unconditional.

If I love you and I say, "Don't be angry; otherwise my love will be lost," then the sooner such a love is lost, the better. If the love is real, whatsoever you do makes no difference; the love will remain. And only then does it have any worth.

So if just by looking at the world as a psychodrama, as a drama, your intensity, your depth of living is lost, then it is not worth preserving. It was false. Why is it lost? Because it was really an act in a drama, and you were thinking that it was real so you felt it was deeper. Now you know it was just a drama. If it was just a drama and the sincerity is lost, the sincerity was false. You were thinking it was real, and it was not real. Just by looking at life as a drama, it disappeared.

It is just as if a rope was there lying in a dark room and you felt that it was a snake, but there was no snake. Now you come with a lamp, and with the lamp the snake is lost and only the rope remains. If with the lamp the snake is lost, then it was never there.

If you look at life as a drama, that which is false will be lost and that which is real will, for the first time, appear in you. Wait! Let the false be lost, and wait! There will be a gap, an interval, before the false disappears and the real comes. There will be a gap. When false shadows will have disappeared completely and your eyes will not be filled by them, and your eyes will have become detached from the false shadows, you will be able to look at the real that was always there. But one has to wait.

"PLEASE SUGGEST WHAT TO DO IN THIS SITUATION." Nothing! Please don't do anything. You have created a mess because of too much of your doing. You are such a good doer, you have confused everything around you -- not only for yourself, but for others also. Be a non-doer; that will be compassion towards yourself. Be compassionate. Don't do anything, because with a false mind, a confused mind, everything becomes more confused. With a confused mind, it is better to wait and not to do anything so that the confusion disappears. It will disappear; nothing is permanent in this world. You need only a deep patience. Don't be in a hurry.

I will tell you one story. Buddha was traveling through a forest. The day was hot -- it was just midday -- he felt thirsty, so he said to his disciple Ananda, "Go back. We crossed a little stream. You go back and bring, fetch, some water for me."

Ananda went back, but the stream was very small and some carts were passing through it. The water was disturbed and had become dirty. All the dirt that had settled in it had come up, and the water was not drinkable now. So Ananda thought, "I shall have to go back." He came back and he said to Buddha, "That water has become absolutely dirty and it is not drinkable. Allow me to go ahead. I know there is a river just a few miles away from here. I will go and fetch water from there."

Buddha said, "No! You go back to the same stream." As Buddha had said this Ananda had to follow it, but he followed it with half a heart as he knew that the water would not be brought. And time was being unnecessarily wasted and he was feeling thirsty, but when Buddha said it he had to go.

Again he came back and he said, "Why did you insist? That water is not drinkable."

Buddha said, "You go again." And as Buddha said it, Ananda had to follow.

The third time he reached the stream, the water was as clear as it had ever been. The dust had flowed away, the dead leaves had gone, and the water was pure again. Then Ananda laughed. He brought the water and he came dancing. He fell at Buddha's feet and he said, "Your ways of teaching are miraculous. You have taught me a great lesson -- that just patience is needed and nothing is permanent."

And this is Buddha's basic teaching: nothing is permanent, everything is fleeting -- so why be so worried? Go back to the same stream. By now everything should have changed. Nothing remains the same. Just be patient: go again and again and again. Just a few moments, and the leaves will have gone and the dirt will have settled again and the water will be pure again.

Ananda also asked Buddha, when he was going back for the second time, "You insist that I go, but can I do something to make that water pure?"

Buddha said, "Please don't do anything; otherwise you will make it more impure. And don't enter the stream. Just be outside, wait on the bank. Your entering the stream will create a mess. The stream flows by itself, so allow it to flow."

Nothing is permanent; life is a flux. Heraclitus has said that you cannot step twice in the same river. It is impossible to step twice in the same river because the river has flowed on; everything has changed. And not only has the river flowed on, you have also flowed on. You are also different; you are also a river flowing.

See this impermanency of everything. Don't be in a hurry; don't try to do anything. Just wait! Wait in a total non-doing. And if you can wait, the transformation will be there. This very waiting is a transformation.

The third question:

Question 3

"THE PRACTICE OF WITNESSING MAKES ME QUIET, STILL, AND SILENT, BUT THEN THE FRIENDS AROUND ME SAY THAT I HAVE BECOME SERIOUS. THERE SEEMS TO BE SOME SUBSTANCE IN WHAT THEY SAY. PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW ONE CAN GROW SIMULTANEOUSLY IN STILLNESS AND PLAYFULNESS."

If you have really become silent, you will not pay attention to what others are saying. If others' opinions are still important, you are not silent. Really, you are waiting for them to say something or for them to approve and appreciate that you have become silent. Your silence needs their approval? You need them to certify it? Then you are not confident that you have become silent.

Others' opinions are meaningful only because you don't know anything. Opinion is never knowledge. You go on gathering others' opinions because you don't know what you are, who you are, what is happening to you. You have to ask others, "What is happening to me?" You have to ask others? If you are really silent, quiet, still, then there are no friends and no opinion is meaningful. Then you can laugh. Let them say whatsoever they say.

But you become affected. Whatsoever they say goes deep in you; you become disturbed. Your silence is false, forced, cultivated. It is not a spontaneous flowering within you. You may have forced yourself to be silent, but you were boiling within. Then the silence is just on the surface. If someone says you are not silent, or if someone says this is not good, or if someone says this is false, then you are disturbed and the silence is gone. The silence is gone, that is why you are asking me this. "THERE SEEMS TO BE SOME SUBSTANCE IN WHAT THEY SAY." You have become serious. So what is wrong in being serious? If you are born serious, to be serious, you will be serious. You cannot force playfulness; otherwise your playfulness will be serious, and you will destroy the whole play. There are serious players. They get so serious in their games and plays that it becomes even more anxiety-creating.

I was reading the memoirs of someone who was a great industrialist, much worried with day-to-day problems. Someone suggested golf: "Play golf. That will be anxiety-reducing." He started playing golf, but he was the same man. He became so excited about his golf that he couldn't sleep, he was playing the whole night. The industry was a burden, and now golf became a second burden -- and a stronger one. He played golf, but with a serious mind, the same mind.

If you are serious, you are serious. Nothing can he done about it. Be serious and remain serious. Then you have already started being playful; then you are playful about your seriousness, not serious about it. You take it as a play, so you say, "Okay, God has given me this role, so I will be a serious man and I will play my seriousness." Then it will have disappeared deep down. Do you understand me?

You can create seriousness out of your playfulness or you can create playfulness out of your seriousness. If you are a sad one, a serious one, tell everyone, "I am born serious and I am going to remain so" -- and don't get serious about it. Be! Simply be, and then you can laugh about it and it will disappear. And you will not even become aware of when it has disappeared.

And don't pay attention to what others say. This is a disease. They will drive you crazy -- the others. Who are these others and why are you so much interested in them? They drive you crazy and you drive them crazy because you are the other to them. Why pay so much importance to others' opinions? Pay attention to your own experiences and remain true to your own experiences. If you feel good in being serious, it is okay! If you feel you have become quiet and silent and still through your practice of witnessing, why be interested and why be disturbed by what others say?

But we are not confident, so we must gather others' opinions. We must go on a signature campaign: "You think I have become a buddha, so please sign." When everyone signs it and you have gathered many signatures, at least the majority, you think you are a buddha. This is not the way to be an enlightened one.

"AND PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW ONE CAN GROW SIMULTANEOUSLY IN STILLNESS AND PLAYFULNESS." One grows! There has never been any case that is otherwise. One grows simultaneously in stillness and playfulness, but if your stillness is false then the problem arises. All those who have known silence have always been playful, non-serious. They could laugh, and they could laugh not only at others, they could laugh at themselves.

Bodhidharma entered China fourteen hundred years ago, from India. He put one of his shoes on his head; one was on one of his feet and one was on his head. The Emperor of China, Wu, had come to welcome him. He became disturbed. There were many, many rumors, of course, that this man was strange, but he was an enlightened one and the emperor wanted to welcome him to his Kingdom. He became disturbed. His courtiers, they also became disturbed. What type of man was this? And he was laughing.

It was not good to say anything before others, so when everyone had gone and Bodhidharma and the emperor retired into Bodhidharma's room, the emperor asked, "Please tell me, why are you making such a fool of yourself? Why are you carrying one shoe on your head?"

Bodhidharma laughed and said, "Because I can laugh at myself, and it is good to show you my reality. I am such a man, and I don't pay more importance to my head than I pay to my feet; both are the same to me. Higher and lower have disappeared. And, moreover, I want to tell you that I don't pay any significance to what others say about me. This is good. The first moment that I entered, I wanted you to know what type of man I am."

This Bodhidharma was a rare jewel; very few have existed who can be compared to him. What was he showing? He is simply showing that on this path of spirituality you are to go alone as an individual. Society becomes irrelevant.

Someone had come to do an interview with George Gurdjieff. The man who came was a big journalist. Gurdjieff's disciples were very much excited because now the story was going to be in a big newspaper, and their master's photo and their master's news was going to be published. They cared very much; they paid much attention to the journalist. They virtually forgot their master, and they hung around the journalist. Then the interview began, but really, it never began. When the journalist asked some questions to Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff said, "Wait a minute."

Just by his side was sitting a lady. Gurdjieff asked, "What day is today?" The lady said, "Sunday." Gurdjieff said, "How is that possible? Just the day before it was Saturday, so how can it be Sunday today? Just the other day you said it is Saturday, and now it is Sunday. How, after Saturday, can Sunday come?"

The journalist stood up. He said, "I am going. This man seems to be mad." All the disciples just couldn't understand what had happened. When the journalist had left, Gurdjieff was laughing. What others say is not relevant. Be authentic to what you feel, but be authentic! If real silence happens to you, you will be able to laugh.

It is said about Do-zen, one Zen master, that when he attained enlightenment many people asked, "What did you do after that?" He said, "I ordered a cup of tea." What is there to do next? Everything is finished. And Do-zen was serious about his playfulness, playful about his seriousness. Really, what remains?

Don't pay much attention to what others say and remember only one thing: don't force and cultivate stillness. A cultivated stillness will be serious, ill, tense. But how can a real silence come to you? Try to understand this. You are tense, you are unhappy, you are depressed, angry, greedy, violent. A thousand diseases are there. Still, you can practice silence. These diseases will be within you, and you can create a layer of silence. You can do transcendental meditation; you can use a mantra. The mantra is not going to change your violence, neither is it going to change your greed. It is not going to change anything deep. The mantra can just give a tranquilizing effect. Just on the periphery, you will feel more silent. This is just a tranquilizer, a sound tranquilizer, and tranquilizing is possible through many ways -- many ways. When you repeat a mantra continuously, you become sleepy. Any continuous repetition of a sound creates boredom and sleep. You feel relaxed, but this relaxation is just on the surface. Within, you remain the same.

Go on practicing a mantra every day, and you will feel a certain stillness -- but not really, because your diseases have not changed, your personality structure remains the same. It is just whitewashed. Stop the mantra, stop the practice, and all your diseases will come up again.

This is happening everywhere. Seekers move from one teacher to another. They go on moving, practicing, and when they stop their practice they find they are the same; nothing has happened. Nothing will happen in this way. These are cultivated silences. You have to go on cultivating them. Of course, if you go on cultivating them, they remain with you just like a habit, but if you break the habit they disappear. A real silence comes not by just using some superficial technique, but by being aware of all that you are -- not only being aware, but remaining with the fact of what you are.

Remain with the fact. This is very difficult because the mind wants change. How to change violence, how to change depression, how to change unhappiness? The mind seeks change to create somehow a better image in the future. Because of this, one goes on seeking this and that method.

Remain with the fact, and don't try to change it. Do this for one year. Fix a date, and say that "From this date, for one year, I will not think in terms of change. I will remain with whatsoever I am; I will just be alert and aware." I am not saying that you are not to do anything, but that alertness is the only effort. You have to be alert, not thinking in terms of change; remaining whatsoever you are -- good, bad or whatsoever. One year, with no attitude of change, just being alert, suddenly one day you will find you are no more the same. Alertness will have changed everything.

In Zen, they call it "zazen" -- just sitting and doing nothing. Whatsoever happens, happens; you are just sitting. Zazen means just sitting, doing nothing. In Zen monasteries, monks will sit for years, the whole day. You will think they are meditating. They are not! They are just sitting silently. And by silence it is not that they are using some mantra to create any silence; they are simply sitting. If a leg goes dead, they feel it. They are alert. If the body feels tired, they are alert: the body feels tired. This is how the body has to feel. If thoughts are moving, they know it. They are not trying to stop them; they are not trying to push them away. They are not doing anything. Thoughts are just there like clouds in the sky, but they know the clouds cannot destroy the sky: they come and go.

So thoughts are moving in the sky of consciousness; they come and go. They don't force them, they don't stop them, they don't do anything;. They are just alert that the thoughts are moving. Sometimes depression comes, a cloud; everything becomes shadowy. Sometimes happiness comes, a sunshine; everything starts dancing, as if flowers have opened all over the consciousness. But they are not disturbed by either this or that, by cloudy weather or by sunshine. They just wait and see that things are moving. They are just sitting on the bank of a river, and everything goes on moving. They don't try to change anything.

If a bad thought comes, they don't say, "This is bad," because the moment you say, "This is bad," you have a greed to change it. The moment you say, "This is bad," you have pushed it away; you have condemned it, and you would like to change it into something good. They simply say this is this, that is that -- no condemnation, no evaluation, no justification. Simply, watching, witnessing.

Sometimes they forget witnessing. Then too they are not disturbed. They know that "Of course it is so," that "I forgot to witness; now I remember and I will witness again." They don't create any problem. They live what is. Years come and go, and they go on sitting and seeing what is.

Then one day everything disappears. Just like a dream, everything disappears and you are awakened. This awakening is not a practiced thing; this awakening is not cultivated. This awakening is your nature, your basic nature. It has erupted because you could wait patiently and watch, and you didn't create any problems. Remember this as a very basic thing: don't create problems. don't create problems!

One lady was here just two or three days ago. She said, "My mind is sexual, so what can I do?" Someone else came and said, "I feel very inferior; an inferiority complex is there. What can I do?" So I told that man, "You feel inferior, so feel inferior; know that you feel like that. What to do? There is nothing to do. One feels sexual, so feel sexual. Know that you are sexual." But the moment I say such things to someone, he feels shocked. He had come for a technique to change himself.

No one accepts himself; you are such enemies to yourself. You have never had any love for yourself; you have never been at ease with yourself. And this is surprising: you expect everyone to love you, and you yourself cannot even love yourself. You are so against yourself, you would like to shatter yourself in every way and create another. If you were allowed you would create another man. And you would not be satisfied with that either because you would still remain behind it.

Love yourself, accept yourself, and don't create unnecessary problems. And all problems are unnecessary; there are no necessary problems. I have not come across any. Remain with your "facticity," and transformation will happen. But it is not a result, you cannot force it to happen. It is a consequence, not a result. If you accept yourself and remain alert, it comes. You cannot force it, you cannot say that "I will force it to come." And if you force, a false thing will happen to you, and then that false thing can be disturbed by anyone -by anyone --

The last question:

Question 4

"YOU SAID THAT ACCEPTANCE TRANSFORMS BUT WHY IS IT THAT WHEN I ACCEPT MY SENSES AND DESIRES I FEEL THAT I HAVE BECOME ANIMAL-LIKE INSTEAD OF TRANSFORMED?"

This is your transformation; this is your reality. And what is wrong in being an animal? I have not seen a single man who can be compared to any animal. Suzuki used to say, "I love a frog, even a frog, more than a man. Look at a frog sitting near a pond: how meditatively a frog sits! Look at him, how meditative he is -- not disturbed by the whole world going on, just sitting and sitting and meditating, one with existence." Suzuki said, "When I was unenlightened I was a man, and when I became enlightened I became just like a cat."

Look at a cat: she knows the secret of how to relax and she has not read any books about relaxation. How to relax? Look at a cat. No man can be a better teacher than a cat. The cat is relaxed and alert. If you relax, you go to sleep. The cat is alert even in her sleep, and the body is so flexible, so relaxed in every moment.

What is wrong in being an animal? Man, through his ego, has created comparisons. He says, "We are not animals." But no animal would like to be a human being. They are at ease, at home in existence. They are not worried, they are not tense. Of course, they don't create any religion because they don't need to. They don't have any psychoanalysts -- not because they are undeveloped, but because they don't need any.

What is wrong with animals? Why this condemnation? This condemnation is part of the human ego. Man thinks in terms of being the superior one, the highest in the hierarchy. No animal has consented to this hierarchy. Darwin said that man has evolved out of monkeys, but if you ask monkeys I am afraid they will not say that man is an evolution; they will say he is a degradation. Man thinks himself as the center. There is no need for this. This is only egoistic nonsense.

If you feel like being an animal, nothing is wrong in it. Be one, and be one totally -- and be one with full alertness. That alertness will first uncover your animal because that is your reality. Your humanity is just false, skin-deep. Someone insults you, and the animal comes out -- not the human being. Someone condemns you, and the animal comes out -- not the human being. It is there, and your humanity is just skin-deep. If you accept everything, this skin-deep humanity will disappear. This is a false thing, and you can become aware of your real animal. And it is good to become aware of reality. If you go on being alert, within this animal you will find the divine. And it is always better to be a real animal than to be an unreal man. Reality is the point.

So I am not against animals, I am only against falsities. Don't be a false human being. Be a real animal, and with that reality you will have become authentic, substantial. Now go on being alert, and by and by you will come to a deeper layer which is more real than the animal -- and that is the divine.

The divine is not only in you, remember; it is in all animals. It is not only that it is in animals: it is in all the trees, it is in the rocks. The divine is the basic center in everything. You can lose it only by being false, and you can gain it again by being real.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1

Chapter #39

Chapter title: From the wave to the cosmic ocean

28 February 1973 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7302285

ShortTitle: VBT139

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 85 mins

SUTRAS

AS WAVES COME WITH WATER AND FLAMES WITH FIRE, SO THE UNIVERSAL WAVES WITH US.

WHEREVER YOUR MIND IS WANDERING, INTERNALLY OR EXTERNALLY, AT THIS VERY PLACE, THIS.

WHEN VIVIDLY AWARE THROUGH SOME PARTICULAR SENSE, KEEP IN THE AWARENESS.

Sri Aurobindo says somewhere that the whole life is yoga -- and it is so. Everything can become a meditation. And unless everything becomes a meditation, meditation has not happened to you. Meditation cannot be a part, a fragment. Either it is -- and when it is you are wholly in it -- or it is not. You cannot make a part of your life meditative. That is impossible, and that is what is being tried everywhere.

You can become meditative, not a part of you; that is impossible because meditation is a quality of your being. It is just like breathing: you go on breathing whatsoever you are doing. Irrelevant of what you are doing, you go on breathing. Walking, sitting, lying, sleeping, you continue breathing. You cannot arrange it in such a way that sometimes you breathe and sometimes you don't breathe. It is a continuum.

Meditation is an inner breathing, and when I say "an inner breathing," I mean it literally; it is not a metaphor. Just as you are breathing air you can breathe consciousness, and once you start breathing consciousness in and out you are no more just a physical body. And with that start, beginning with a higher breathing -- a breathing of consciousness, of life itself, as it were -- you enter a different realm, a different dimension. That dimension is metaphysics.

Your breathing is physical; meditation is metaphysical. So you cannot make a part of your life meditative. You cannot meditate in the morning and then forget it. You cannot go to a temple or to a church and meditate there and come out of your meditation as you come out of the temple. That is not possible, and if you try it you will be trying a false thing. You can enter a church and you come out of it, but you cannot enter meditation and come out of it. When you enter, you have entered. Wherever you go now meditation will be you. This is one of the basic, primary, elemental facts to be remembered always.

Secondly, you can enter meditation from anywhere because the whole life is in a deep meditation. The hills are meditating, the stars are meditating, the flowers, the trees, the elements are meditating, the very earth is meditating. The whole life is meditating, and you can enter it from anywhere; anything can become an entrance. This has been used. That is why there are so many techniques; that is why there are so many religions; that is why one religion cannot understand another -- because their entrances are different. And sometimes there are religions which are not known even by the name of religion. You will not recognize certain persons as religious because their entrance is so different.

For example, a poet. A poet can enter meditation without going to any teacher, without going to any temple, without in any way being religious, so-called religious. His poetry, his creativity, can become an entrance; he can enter through it. Or a potter who is just creating earthen pots can enter meditation just by creating earthen pots. The very craft can become an entry. Or an archer can become meditative through his archery, or a gardener, or anyone can enter from anywhere. Whatsoever you can do can become a door. If the quality of awareness changes while you are doing something, it becomes a technique. So there can be as many techniques as you can imagine. Any act can become a door. So the act, the technique, the way, the method, is not primary, but the quality of consciousness that you bring to the act is the basic thing.

Kabir, one of India's greatest mystics, was a weaver, and he remained a weaver even when he attained. He had thousands and thousands of disciples, and they would come and they would tell him, "Now stop your weaving. You don't need it. We are here and we will serve you in every way.

" Kabir would laugh and he would say, "This weaving is not just weaving. I am making clothes -- that is the outer act -- but something goes on within me simultaneously that you cannot see. This is my meditation." How can a weaver be a meditator through weaving? If the quality of the mind that you bring to weaving is meditative, then the act is not relevant; it is irrelevant.

Another mystic was a potter; his name was Gora. He worked on earthen pots, and he would dance and he would sing while he was making his pots. While he was making a pot on the wheel, as the pot would center on the wheel he would also center within himself. One would see only one thing: the wheel was moving, the earthen pot was emerging and he was centering the earthen pot. You were seeing only one centering. Another centering was happening simultaneously: he was also being centered. While centering the pot, while helping the pot to emerge, he was also emerging in the unseen world of inner consciousness. When the pot was created, that was not the real thing he was working on; he was also creating himself.

Any act can become meditative, and once you know how an act becomes meditative you can transform all your acts into meditation. Then the whole life becomes yoga. Walking on the street or working in the office or just sitting and not doing anything -- just idling, or anything -- can become meditation. So remember, meditation doesn't belong to the act; it belongs to the quality you bring to the act. Now we will enter the techniques.

First:

"AS WAVES COME WITH WATER AND FLAMES WITH FIRE, SO THE UNIVERSAL WAVES WITH US."

First try to understand what a wave is, and then you can feel how this consciousness of waves can help you to enter into meditation. You see waves in the ocean. They appear; they are in a sense, and still in a deeper sense they are not. This is the first thing to be understood about a wave. The wave appears; it is there in a sense, but still it is not there in a deeper sense. In a deeper sense only the ocean is. You cannot have a wave without the ocean, and even while the wave is there, only the ocean is. The wave is just a form, not a substance. The ocean is substantial; the wave is just a form.

Because of language many problems are created. Because we say "wave," it looks as if a wave is some thing. It would be better if we use not wave, but "waving." There is no wave, just waving -- just an activity, not a thing; just a movement, not a substance; just a process, not matter. The matter is the ocean; the wave is just a form. The ocean can be silent. The waves will disappear, but the ocean will be there.

The ocean can be silent or in movement or in much activity or in no activity, but you cannot find a silent wave. A wave is activity, not a substance. When the activity is there, the wave is there: it is a waving, a movement -- a simple form of movement. But when the silence comes, when inactivity comes, the wave is no more and the ocean is there. In both the cases the ocean is the reality. The wave is just a play-form. The wave happens and disappears, the ocean remains.

Secondly, waves appear as individuals. Each wave has its own personality -- unique, different from any other. No two waves are similar. Some waves are big, some waves are small. They have their own peculiar characteristics. Each wave has its own character, and, of course, each wave is different from the other. One wave may rise, another may die. While one is rising, another is dying. Both cannot be the same because one is rising, another is dying. Still, the reality behind both is the same. They look different, they look separate, they look individual, but the look is fallacious. Deep down only one ocean is, and no matter how they look unrelated they are related. And while one wave is rising and another is dying, you may not see any relationship; the relationship may not appear, because how can a rising wave be related to a dying wave?

An old man is dying and a child is born: how are they related? If they are related, they will die both together or they will be born together. The child is born and the old man has died; one wave is dying, another is arising. But the rising wave may be gathering energy from the dying wave. The dying wave may be helping it, by its death, to rise. The dispersing wave may be the cause of the wave that is rising.

Deep down they are related to one ocean. They are not different; they are not unrelated, they are not separate. Their individuality is false and illusory. They are non-individual. Their duality appears to be, but it is not so: their non-duality is the truth.

Now I will read the sutra again: "AS WAVES COME WITH WATER AND FLAMES WITH FIRE, SO THE UNIVERSAL WAVES WITH US." We are just waves in a cosmic ocean. Meditate on it, allow this feeling to go deep down within you. Start feeling your breathing as just the rising of a wave. You breathe in, you breathe out, and the breath that is entering you was someone else's breath just a moment before and the breath that is leaving you will become someone else's breath the next moment. Breathing is just waving in the ocean of life. You are not separate -- just waves. You are one deep down. We have a togetherness; individuality is false and illusory. Hence, the ego is the only barrier. Individuality is false. It appears to be, but it is not real. The real is the non-individual, the oceanic, the togetherness.

That is why every religion is against the egoistic attitude. The person who says there is no God may not be irreligious, but the person who says "I am" is irreligious.

Gautam Buddha was an atheist; he didn't believe in any God. Mahavira Vardhaman was an atheist; he didn't believe in any God. But they achieved, they arrived, they realized the totality, the wholeness. If you don't believe in any God you may not be irreligious, because God is not basic to religion. Non-ego is basic to religion. And even if you believe in God, with an egoist mind you are irreligious. With a non-egoistic mind there is no need to believe in a God. You fall into the divine automatically. With no ego you cannot cling to the wave; you have to fall to the ocean. With the ego, you go on clinging to the wave. Look at life as an ocean, and feel yourself just as a wave, and allow this feeling to enter in you.

You can use this technique in many ways. While breathing, feel that the ocean is breathing in you. The ocean comes to you, goes out, comes in, goes out. With every breath feel a wave rising, with every exhalation feel a wave dying. And between the two, who are you? Just a nothingness, shunya -- a void. With that feeling of the void you will be transformed. With that feeling of nothingness all your misery will disappear, because misery needs a center -- and a false center at that. The void is your real center. With it there is no misery; you are in a deep ease. Because you are not, who can be tense? You are bliss-filled. It is not that you are bliss-filled, but because you are not, only bliss is. Without you, can you create misery?

That is why Buddha never says that in that state, the ultimate state, there will be ANANDA -- bliss. He never says it. He says that there will be no misery, that is all. To talk about bliss may mislead you, so Buddha says don't ask about bliss; simply try to know how you can be without misery. And that means how you can be without yourself.

What is our problem? The problem is that the wave thinks itself separate from the ocean; then there are problems. If a wave thinks itself separate from the ocean, the fear of death will immediately come. The wave has to die and the wave can see all around dying waves. And you cannot deceive yourself for long. The wave is seeing that other waves are dying, and the wave knows that even in its rising, death is hidden somewhere, because those other waves a moment before were rising and now they are falling down, dispersing. So you are to die. If the wave thinks itself separate from the ocean the fear of death is bound to appear sooner or later. But if the wave knows that it is not and only the ocean is, there is no fear of death. Only a wave can die, not the ocean. I can die, but not life. You can die, you will die -- but not the cosmos, not the existence. The existence goes on waving. It has waved in you, it will wave in others. And while your wave may be disappearing, just by your dispersal other waves will arise and the ocean continues.

Once you detach yourself from the wave form, and you become one and feel one and realize oneness with the ocean, the formless, there is no death for you. Otherwise the fear of death will create misery. In every pain, in every anguish, in every anxiety, the basic fear is of death. You are afraid, trembling. You may not be conscious of it, but if you penetrate within you will find that every moment there is a trembling because you are going to die.

You may create many securities, you may create a citadel around you, but nothing is going to help. Nothing is going to help! Dust unto dust! You are going to fall back down. Have you ever observed or have you ever meditated on the fact that when you are just walking on the road dust clings to your shoe? The dust may have been the body of a Napoleon, of an Alexander. Somewhere, Alexander is just dust now, and the dust clinging to your shoe may have once been the body of Alexander.

The same is going to be the case with you. Now you are here, and the next moment you will not be; the same is going to be the case with you! Sooner or later the dust will go unto dust, the wave will disappear. Fear grips. Just imagine yourself as dust clinging to somebody's shoe or imagine some potter making an earthen pot of you, of your body, or of your beloved's body, or imagine yourself moving into a worm or becoming a tree. But this is happening. Everything is a form and form has to die. Only the formless is eternal. If you cling to the form, if you identify yourself with the form, if you feel yourself as a wave form, you are getting into trouble by yourself. You are the ocean, not the wave.

This meditation can help; it can bring a metamorphosis for you, it can become a mutation. But allow it to spread all through your life. While breathing, think; while eating, think; while walking, think. Think two things -- that the form is always the wave and the formless is always the ocean. The formless is deathless; the form is mortal. And it is not that you will die someday, you are dying every day. Childhood dies and "youth-hood" is born; then "youth-hood" dies and the old age is born; then the old age dies and the form disappears.

Every moment you are dying into something else; something else is born. Your first day of birth is not the first day of your only birth; that is simply part of many more births to come. And your death of this life is not the first death: it is only the death of this life. You have been dying before. Every moment something is dying and something else is born. A part of you dies; another part is born.

Physiologists say that within seven years nothing old remains in your body; everything changes -- every cell. If you are going to live for seventy years, ten times over your body is renewed again and again. Every seven years you have a new body. Not suddenly, but every moment something is changing.

You are a wave, and that too not substantial; every moment you are changing. And a wave cannot be static, a wave has to be changing; a wave has to be constantly in movement. There can be no phenomenon like a non-moving wave. How can there be? A non-moving wave makes no sense. There is movement, process; you are a process, a movement. If you become identified with this movement and process and think yourself confined between birth and death, you will be in misery. Then you are taking appearance as reality. This is what Shankara calls MAYA -- illusion. The ocean is the BRAHMAN, the ocean is the truth.

So think yourself as a wave, or as a continuum of waves rising and falling, and just be a witness to this. You cannot do anything. These waves will disappear. That which has appeared will have to disappear; nothing can be done about it. Every effort is absolutely useless. Only one thing can be done, and that is to be a witness of this wave form. Once you become a witness, suddenly you will become aware of something which is beyond the wave, which transcends the wave, which is in the wave also and out of the wave also, which forms the wave and still goes beyond, which is the ocean.

"AS WAVES COME WITH WATER AND FLAMES WITH FIRE, SO THE UNIVERSAL WAVES WITH US." The universal waves with us. You are not, the universal is -- and he is waving through you. Feel it, contemplate over it, meditate on it. Allow it to happen to you in many, many ways.

I told you about breathing. A sex desire arises in you: feel it -- not as your desire, but just as the ocean waving in you, just as life pulsating, just as life having a wave in you. You meet in a love act: don't think of it as two waves meeting, don't think of it as two individuals meeting. Rather, think of it as two individuals merging. There are no more two individuals. Waves have disappeared; only the ocean has remained. Then the sex act becomes a meditation. Whatsoever happens to you, feel it not as if it is happening to you, but as if it is happening to the cosmos. You are just a part of it -- just a wave on the surface. Leave everything to the Universe.

Dogen, a Zen master, used to say, when he felt hungry he would say, "It seems the universal feels hungry through me." When he would feel thirsty he would say, "The existence is thirsty within me." This is what this meditation will lead you to. Then everything disperses from your ego and becomes part of the universe. Then whatsoever happens, happens to existence itself; you are no more here. Then there is no sin, then there is no responsibility.

I don't mean that you will become irresponsible; I don't mean that you will become a sinner. Sin will be impossible because sin can happen only around an ego. There will be no responsibility because sin can happen only around an ego. There will be no responsibility because now you cannot be irresponsible. Only you are, so to whom can you be responsible? And now if you see someone dying, you will feel you are dying with him, within him. The Universe is dying and you are part of it. And if you will see some flower flowering, you will flower with it. The whole universe will become you now. To be in such a deep affinity and harmony is to be in SAMADHI.

Meditation is the way, and this harmony of oneness, this feeling of oneness with all, is the end, is the goal. Try it! Remember the ocean and forget the wave. And whenever you remember the wave and start behaving as the wave, remember, you are doing something wrong and you will create misery because of it.

There is no God who is punishing you. Whenever you fall a prey to some illusion, you punish yourself. The law, DHARMA, the Tao is there. If you move in harmony with it, you feel blissful. If you move against it, you feel yourself to be in misery. There is no one sitting there in the skies to punish you. There is no record of your sins; there is no need for this. It is just like gravity. If you walk rightly, the gravity is a help. You cannot walk without it. If you walk wrongly, you will fall down, you may get a fracture. But no one is punishing you; it is just the law, the gravity -- the impersonal gravity.

If you walk wrongly and you fall down, you will have a fracture. If you walk rightly, you use gravity. The energy can be used wrongly or rightly. When you feel yourself as a wave, you are against the universal law, you are against the reality. Then you will create misery for yourself. This is what the law of KARMA means. There is no law-giver; God is not a judge. To be a judge is ugly, and if God were a judge, he would be completely bored, or else he would have gone mad by now. He is not a judge, he is not a controller, he is not a law-giver. The universe has its own laws, and the basic law is that to be real is to be in bliss, to be unreal is to be in misery.

The second technique:

"WHEREVER YOUR MIND IS WANDERING, INTERNALLY OR EXTERNALLY, AT THIS VERY PLACE, THIS."

This mind is the door -- this very mind. Wherever it is wandering, whatsoever it is thinking, contemplating, dreaming, this very mind, this very moment, is the door. This is a very revolutionary method because we never think that the ordinary mind is the door. We think that some supermind -- a Buddha, a Jesus -- can enter, that they have some superhuman mind. This very mind that you have -- this mind which goes on dreaming and imagining relevant or irrelevant thoughts, which is crowded with ugly desires, passions, anger, greed, all that is condemned, which is there beyond your control, pulling you here and there, pushing you from here and there, constantly a madhouse -- this very mind, says this sutra, is the door. Wherever your mind is wandering -- wherever remember; the object is not relevant -- wherever your mind is wandering, internally or externally, "AT THIS VERY PLACE, THIS."

Many things have to be understood. One, the ordinary mind is not so ordinary as we think. The ordinary mind is not unrelated to the universal mind: it is part of it. Its roots go down to the very center of existence; otherwise you cannot be. Even a sinner is grounded into the divine; otherwise he cannot be. Even if the devil is there, he cannot be without divine support.

Existence itself is possible only because of the groundedness into the being. Your mind is dreaming, imagining, wandering, tense, in anguish, in misery. Howsoever it moves and wheresoever it moves, it remains grounded in the totality. Otherwise is not possible. You cannot go away from existence; that is impossible. This very moment you are grounded in it.

So what is to be done? If this very moment we are grounded in it, then it will appear to the egoist mind that nothing is to be done. We are already the divine, so why so much fuss? You are grounded in the divine, but you are unaware of the fact. When mind is wandering, there are two things -- the mind and the wandering, the objects in the mind and the mind itself, clouds wandering in the sky and the sky. There are two things -- the clouds and the sky.

Sometimes it may happen, it happens, that there are so many clouds that the sky disappears, you cannot see it. But even if you cannot see it, it has not disappeared; it cannot disappear. There is no way to help the sky to disappear. It is there; hidden or unhidden, visible or invisible, it is there.

But clouds are also there. If you pay attention to the clouds, the sky has disappeared. If you pay attention to the sky, the clouds are just accidental, they come and they go. You need not be too much worried about them. They come and they go. They have been coming, they have been going. They have not been destroying the sky even an inch, they have not made the sky dirty; they have not even touched it. The sky remains virgin.

When your mind is wandering, there are two things: one is the clouds, the thoughts, the objects, images, and the other is the consciousness, the mind itself. If you pay too much attention to the clouds, to objects, thoughts, images, you have forgotten the sky. You have forgotten the host; you have become too much interested in the guest. Those thoughts, images, wandering, are just guests. If you focus yourself on the guests, you forget your own being. Change the focus from the guests to the host, from the clouds to the sky. Do it practically.

A sex desire arises: this is a cloud. Or a greed arises to have a bigger house: this is a cloud. You can become so obsessed with it that you forget completely to whom it has arisen, to whom it has happened. Who is behind it? In what sky is this cloud moving? Remember that sky, and suddenly the cloud disappears. You need just a change of focus from the object to the subject, from the outer to the inner, from the cloud to the sky, from the guest to the host -- just a change of focus.

Lin-Chi, one Zen master, was speaking. Someone said from the crowd, "Answer me only one question:Who am I?

"Lin-Chi stopped speaking. Everyone was alert. What answer was he going to give? But he didn't answer. He came down from his chair, walked, came near to the man. The whole crowd became attentive, alert. They were not even breathing. What was he going to do? He should have answered from the chair; there was no need. The man became afraid, and Lin-Chi came near him with his piercing eyes. He took the man's collar in his hand, gave him a shake and asked him, "Close your eyes! And remember who is asking this question, 'Who am I?'" The man closed his eyes -- afraid, of course. He went within to seek who had asked this question, and he would not come back.

The crowd waited and waited and waited. His face became silent calm, still. Then Lin-Chi had to shock him again. "Now come out and tell everybody, 'Who am I?'"

The man started laughing and he said, "What a miraculous way of answering a thing. But if someone asks me this now, I am going to do the same. I cannot answer."

It was just a change of focus. You ask the question "Who am I?" and your mind is focused on the question and the answer is hidden just behind the question in the questioner. Change the focus; return to yourself.

This sutra says, "WHEREVER YOUR MIND IS WANDERING, INTERNALLY OR EXTERNALLY, AT THIS VERY PLACE, THIS." Move from the objects to the mind itself, and you are no more an ordinary mind. You are ordinary because of the objects. Suddenly you become a buddha yourself. You are already a buddha, you are just burdened with many clouds. And not only are you burdened: you are clinging to your clouds, you won't allow them to move. You think that clouds are your property. You think that the more you have, the better: you are richer. And your whole sky, your inner space, is just hidden. In a way, it has disappeared amidst the clouds and clouds have become your life. The life of the clouds is sansara -- the world.

This can happen in a single moment even, this change of focus -- and it always happens suddenly. I don't mean that you need not do anything and it will happen suddenly; you will have to do much. But it will never happen gradually. You will have to do and do and do, and one day, suddenly, a moment comes when you are at the right temperature to evaporate. Suddenly there is no water; it has evaporated. Suddenly you are not in the object. Your eyes are not focused to the clouds: suddenly they have turned inward to the inner space.

It never happens gradually that one part of your eyes has turned inward and one part is with the outward clouds -- nor does it happen in percentages, that now you have become ten percent inner and ninety percent outer, now twenty percent inner and eighty percent outer -- no! When it happens it happens a hundred percent, because you cannot divide your focusing. Either you see the objects or you see yourself -- either the world or the BRAHMAN. You can come back to the world, you can change your focus again; you are the master. Really, only now are you the master -- when you can change your focus as you like.

I remember Marpa, one Tibetan mystic. When he realized, when he became a Buddha, when he turned inward, when he came to encounter the inner space -- the infinity, someone asked him, "Marpa, how are you now?"

Marpa's answer is exceptional, unexpected. No buddha has answered that way. Marpa said, "As miserable as before."

The man was bewildered. He said, "As miserable as before?"

But Marpa laughed. He said, "Yes, but with a difference, and the difference is that now the misery is voluntary. Sometimes, just for a taste of the world, I move outwards, but now I am the master. Any moment I can go inwards, and it is good to move in the polarities. Then one remains alive. I can move!" Marpa said, "I can move now. Sometimes I move in the miseries, but now the miseries are not something which happen to me. I happen to them and I remain untouched." Of course, when you move voluntarily, you remain untouched.

Once you know how to change your focus inwards, you can come back to the world. Every buddha has come back to the world. Again he focuses, but now the inner man has a different quality. He knows that this is his focusing. These clouds are allowed to move. These clouds are not masters; they cannot dominate you. You allow them, and it is beautiful. Sometimes, when the sky is filled with clouds, it is beautiful; the movement of the clouds is beautiful. If the sky remains itself, the clouds can be allowed to move. The problem arises only when the sky forgets itself and only clouds are there. Then everything becomes ugly because the freedom is lost.

This sutra is beautiful. "WHEREVER YOUR MIND IS WANDERING, INTERNALLY OR EXTERNALLY, AT THIS VERY PLACE, THIS". This sutra has been used deeply in Zen tradition. Zen says your ordinary mind is the buddha-mind. Eating, you are a buddha; sleeping, you are a buddha; carrying water from the well, you are a buddha. You are! Carrying water from the well, eating your food, lying down on your bed, you are a buddha. Inconceivable! It looks puzzling, but it is the truth.

If when carrying water you simply carry the water, if you don't make any problem out of it and you simply carry water, if your mind is unclouded and the sky vacant, if you are just carrying water, then you are a buddha. Eating, just eat without doing anything else. When we are eating we are doing thousands and thousands of things. The mind may not be here at all. Your body may be eating just like a robot; your mind may be somewhere else.

One university student was here some days before. His examination is coming near, so he came to ask me, "I am very much confused and the problem is this: I have fallen in love with a girl. While I am with the girl, I think of my examination, and while I read I think only of my girl. So what to do? While reading, studying, I am not there, I am with my girl in my imagination. And with my girl, I am never with her; I am thinking about my problems, about my examination which is drawing near. So everything has become a mess."

This is how everyone has become a mess, not only that boy. While in the office you think of the house; while in the house you are in the office. And you cannot do such a magical thing. While in the house you can be only in the house, you cannot be in the office. And if you are in the office, you are not sane, you are insane. Then everything gets into everything else. Then nothing is clear. And this mind is a problem.

While drawing water from a well, carrying water from a well, if you are simply doing this simple act, you are a buddha. So many times, if you go to Zen masters and ask them, "What do YOU do? What is your SADHANA? What is your meditation?" they will say, "While feeling sleepy, we sleep. While feeling hungry, we eat. And that is all, there is no other SADHANA." But this is very arduous. It looks simple: if while eating you can just eat, if while sitting you can just sit -- not doing anything else, if you can remain with the moment and not move away from it, if you can be merged with the moment with no future, no past, if this moment now is the only existence, then you are a buddha. This very mind becomes a buddha-mind.

When your mind wanders, don't try to stop it. Rather, become aware of the sky. When mind wanders, don't try to stop it, don't try to bring it to some point, to some concentration -- no! Allow it to wander, but don't pay much attention to the wandering -- because for or against, you remain concerned with the wandering.

Remember the sky, allow the wandering, and just say, "Okay, it is just a traffic on the road. Many people are moving this way and that. The same traffic is going on in the mind. I am just the sky, not the cloud." Feel it, remember it, and remain in it. Sooner or later you will feel that the clouds are slowing down and there are bigger gaps between the clouds. They are not so dark, not so dense. The speed has slowed down, and intervals can be seen, and the sky can be looked at. Go on feeling yourself as the sky and not the clouds. Sooner or later, someday, in some right moment when your focus has really gone inwards, clouds will have disappeared and you are the sky, the ever-pure sky, the ever-virgin sky.

Once you know this virginity, you can come back to the clouds, to the world of the clouds. Then that world has its own beauty. You can move in it, but now you are a master. The world is not bad; the world as the master is the problem. With you as the master, you can move in it. Then the world has a beauty of its own. It is beautiful, it is lovely, but you need to know that beauty and that loveliness as a master within.

The third technique:

"WHEN VIVIDLY AWARE THROUGH SOME PARTICULAR SENSE, KEEP IN THE AWARENESS."

You see through your eyes. Remember, you see THROUGH your eyes. Eyes cannot see; you see through them. The seer is hidden behind, the eyes are just the opening, just the windows. But we go on thinking that we see by the eyes; we go on thinking we hear by the ears. No one has ever heard by the ears. You hear THROUGH the ears, not BY the ears. The hearer is hidden behind. The ears are just receptive organs.

I touch you: I give you a loving touch, a handclasp. The hand is not touching you: I am touching you, through the hand. The hand is just instrumental, so there can be two types of touch -- when I really touch you and when I just avoid touch. I can touch your hand and avoid touch. I may not be there in my hand, I may have withdrawn. Try this, and you will have a different, a distant feeling. Put your hand on someone and withdraw yourself. A dead hand is there, not you. And if the other is sensitive, he will feel a dead hand. He will feel insulted. You are deceiving; you are just showing that you are touching, and you are not touching.

Women are very sensitive about it; you cannot deceive them. They have a greater sensitivity of touch, of body touch, so they know. The husband may be talking beautiful things. He may have brought flowers and he may be saying, "I love you," but his touch will show that he is not there. And women have an instinctive feeling when you are with them and when you are not with them. It is difficult to deceive them unless you are a master. Unless you are a master of your own self, you cannot deceive them. But a master would not like to become a husband, that is the difficulty.

Whatsoever you say will be false; your touch will show it. Children are very sensitive, you cannot deceive them. You may pat them, but they know that this is a dead pat. If your hand is not a flowing energy, a loving energy, they know. Then it is just as if a dead thing is being used. When you are present in your hand in your totality, when you have moved, when your center of being has come to the hand, when your soul is there, then the touch has a different quality.

This sutra says that the senses are just doors, receiving stations, mediums, instruments, receptors. You are hidden behind. "WHEN VIVIDLY AWARE THROUGH SOME PARTICULAR SENSE, KEEP IN THE AWARENESS." While hearing music, don't forget yourself in the ear, don't lose yourself into the ear. Remember the awareness that is hidden behind. Be alert! While seeing someone... Try this. You can try it right now, looking at me. What is happening? You can look at me by the eyes, and when I say "by the eyes," it means you are not aware that you are hidden behind the eyes. You can look at me through the eyes, and when I say "through the eyes," then the eyes are just in between you and me. You are standing there behind the eyes, looking through the eyes, just as if someone looks through a window or specs.

Have you seen some clerk in a bank looking from above his specs? The specs have slipped down on his nose, and he looks. Just look that way at me, towards me, as if you are looking from above your eyes, as if the eyes have slipped down a little on your nose and you are standing behind looking at me. Suddenly you will feel a change in the quality. Your focus changes; eyes become just doors. This becomes a meditation.

When hearing, just hear through the ears and remain aware of your inner center. When touching, just touch through the hand and remember the inner one who is hidden behind. From any sense you can have a feeling of the inner center, and every sense goes to the inner center. It has to report. That is why, when you are seeing me and you are hearing me, when you see me through the eyes and you hear me through the ears, deep down within you know that you are seeing the same man whom you are also hearing.

If I have some body odor your nose will smell it. Then three different senses report to one center. That is why you can coordinate. Otherwise it will be difficult: if your eyes see and your ears hear, it will be difficult to know whether you are hearing the same man whom you are seeing or two different ones, because these two senses are different and they never meet. Your eyes have never known about your ears and your ears have not heard about your eyes. They don't know each other, they have never met; they have not even been introduced.

So how does everything become synthetic? Ears hear, eyes see, hands touch, the nose smells, and suddenly somewhere inside you know that this is the same man that you are hearing and seeing and touching and smelling. This knower is different from the senses. Every sense reports to this knower, and in this knower, in the center, everything falls, fits and becomes one. This is miraculous.

I am one, outside you. I am one! My body and body's presence, my body odor, my speaking, are one. Your senses will divide me. Your ears will report if I say something, your nose will report if there is some odor, your eyes will report if I can be seen and am visible. They will divide me into parts. But again, somewhere within you, I will become one. Where I become one within you is your center of being. That is your awareness, and you have forgotten it completely. This forgetfulness is the ignorance, and the awareness will open the doors for self-knowledge. And you cannot know yourself in any other way.

"WHEN VIVIDLY AWARE THROUGH SOME PARTICULAR SENSE, KEEP IN THE AWARENESS." Remain with the awareness; keep in the awareness; remain alert. It is difficult in the beginning. We go on falling asleep, and it seems arduous to look through the eyes. It is easy to look "by" the eyes. In the beginning you will feel a certain strain -- if you try to look through the eyes. Not only will you feel a strain; the person you look at will also feel a strain.

If you look at someone through the eyes, he will feel as if you are trespassing upon him, as if you are doing something unmannerly. If you look through the eyes, the other will become aware suddenly that you are not behaving properly, because your look will become piercing, your look will go deeper. If it comes from your depth, it will penetrate to the other's depth. That is why society has a built-in security: don't look too deeply into anyone unless you are in love. If you are in love, you can look deeply into the other; you can penetrate to the very depth because the other is not afraid. The other can be naked, totally naked, the other can be vulnerable, the other can be open to you. But ordinarily, if you are not in love, you are not allowed to see directly, to see penetratingly.

In India, a person who looks in such a way, penetratingly at someone, is called a LUCHCHA. A LUCHCHA means a seer. The word LUCHCHA comes from LOCHAN; LOCHAN means eyes, and LUCHCHA means one who has become eyes towards you. So don't try it on someone you don't know; he will think you are a LUCHCHA.

First try with objects -- a flower, a tree, the stars in the night. They will not feel trespassed upon and they will not object. Rather, they will like it and will feel very good and appreciated. First try with them, then with loving persons -- your wife, your child. Sometimes take your child into your lap and look at him through the eyes, and the child will understand. He will understand more than anyone else because he is still uncrippled by the society, still unperverted, still natural. He will feel deep love if you look through the eyes; he will feel your presence.

Look at your lover or beloved, and then only, by and by, as you get the feel of it and as you become more artful about it, you will be able to look at anyone -- because then no one will be able to know that someone has looked so deeply. And once you have this art of standing always alert behind your senses, the senses cannot deceive you. Otherwise the senses deceive you.

In a world which is just an appearance, they have deceived you to feel it as real. If you can look through the senses and remain alert, the world will by and by appear to you as illusory, dream-like, and you will be able to penetrate to the substance -- to the very substance of it. That substance is the BRAHMAN.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1

Chapter #40

Chapter title: Sudden Enlightenment and its obstacles

1 March 1973 pm in Woodlands, Bombay

Archive code: 7303015

ShortTitle: VBT140

Audio: Yes

Video: No

Length: 91 mins

The first question:

Question 1

"YOU SAID THAT EITHER ONE SEES THE WORLD OR THE BRAHMAN AND THAT NO GRADUALLY INCREASING PERCEPTION OF THE BRAHMAN IS POSSIBLE. BUT IN EXPERIENCE WE FEEL THAT AS WE BECOME AWARE AND MORE SILENT AND STILL, THE FEELING OF THE DIVINE PRESENCE BECOMES GRADUALLY CLEARER AND CLEARER. WHAT IS THIS GRADUAL GROWTH AND CLARITY IF THE AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE IS NEVER GRADUAL, BUT SUDDEN?"

This has been a very ancient problem: "Is enlightenment sudden or gradual?" Many things have to be understood. There has been a tradition which says that enlightenment is gradual and that everything can be divided into degrees, everything can be divided into steps -- that like anything else, knowledge can also be divided; you can become more and more wise, you can become more and more enlightened. This has been widely accepted because the human mind cannot conceive of anything sudden. Mind wants to divide, analyze. Mind is a divider. Degrees can be understood by the mind, but suddenness is non -- mental-beyond mind.

If I say to you that you are ignorant and that gradually you will become wise, this is comprehensible, you can comprehend it. If I say to you, "No, there is no gradual growth. Either you are ignorant or you become enlightened, there is a sudden jump," then the question arises of HOW to become enlightened. If there were no gradualness, there could be no progress. If there were no degree of growth, no degrees, then you could not make progress, you could not proceed. From where to begin? In a sudden explosion, the beginning and the end are both the same. There is no gap between the beginning and the end, so from where to begin? The beginning is the end.

It becomes a puzzle for the mind, it becomes a koan. But sudden enlightenment seems to be impossible. It is not that it is impossible, but that the mind cannot conceive of it. And, remember, how can the mind conceive of enlightenment? It cannot. It has been widely accepted that this inner explosion is also gradual growth. Even many enlightened persons have conceded that to your minds, and they have said, "Yes, there is a gradual growth."

It is not that there is. They have said it and accepted your attitude, your way of perception. They have been in a deep compassion for you. They know that if you start thinking that it is gradual, the start will be good, but there will be no gradual growth. But if you start, if you go on seeking it, someday the sudden thing will happen to you. And if it is said that enlightenment is only sudden and no gradual growth is possible, you are not even going to start and it will never happen. Many enlightened persons have said that enlightenment is a gradual thing just to help you, just to persuade you to start.

Something is possible through gradual process, but not enlightenment -- not enlightenment, something else. And that something else becomes helpful. For example, if you are making water to evaporate it, heating it, evaporation will come suddenly. At a certain point, at a hundred degrees, evaporation will happen -- suddenly! There will be no gradual growth between water and vapor. You cannot divide; you cannot say that this water is a little vapor and a little water. Either it is water or it is all vapor. Suddenly the water jumps into the state of vapor. There is a jump -- not gradual growth. But by heating you are gradually giving heat to the water. You are helping it to reach the hundred-degree point, the evaporating point. This is a natural growth. Up to the evaporating point, the water will grow in the sense of being more and more hot. Then evaporation will happen suddenly.

So there have been masters who were wise, compassionate, who used the language of the human mind which you can understand, telling you, "Yes, there is a gradual growth." It gives you courage and confidence and hope, and a possibility that it can happen to you also. You cannot attain in a sudden explosion, but by and by, step by step, with your limitations, with your weaknesses, you can grow to it. It may take many lives, but still there is hope. You will just get heated by all your efforts.

The second thing to remember: even hot water is still water. So even if you become more clear in your mind, more pure in your perceptions, more moral, more centered, you are still man, not a buddha, not enlightened. You become more silent, more still, calmer. You feel a deep bliss, but still you are a man, and your feelings are really negative, not positive.

You feel calm because you are now less tense. You feel blissful because now you are clinging less to your miseries; you are not creating them. You feel collected. It is not that you have come to realize the one, but only because now you are less divided. Remember this: your growth is negative. You are just hot water. The possibility is there that at any moment you will come to the point where evaporation happens. When it happens, you will not feel calmness, you will not even feel blissful, you will not feel silent, because these attributes are relative to their opposites. When you are tense, you can feel silence. When you feel noise, you can feel stillness. When you are divided, fragmentary, you can feel oneness. When you are in suffering, anguish, you can feel bliss.

That is why Buddha was silent -- because language cannot now express that which is beyond polarities. He cannot say, "Now I am filled with bliss," because even this feeling that "Now I am filled with bliss" is possible only with a background of suffering and anguish. You can feel health only with a background of illness and disease; you can feel life only with a background of death. Buddha cannot say, "Now I am deathless," because death has disappeared so completely that deathlessness cannot be felt.

If the misery has disappeared so completely, how can you feel blissful? If the noise and the anguish are so absolutely non-existent, how can you feel silence? All these experiences, feelings, are related to their opposites. Without their opposites they cannot be felt. If darkness disappears completely, how can you feel light? It is impossible.

Buddha cannot say, "I have become light!" He cannot say, "Now I am filled with light." If he says such things, we will say he is not yet a buddha. He cannot utter such things. Darkness must be there if you want to feel light; death must be there if you want to feel deathlessness. You cannot avoid the opposite. It is a basic necessity for any experience to exist. So what is Buddha's experience? Whatsoever we know, it is not that. It is neither negative nor positive, neither this nor that. And whatsoever can be expressed, it is not that.

That is why Lao Tzu insists so much that truth cannot be said, and the moment you say it you have falsified it. Already it is untrue. Truth cannot be said because of this: it cannot be divided into polar opposites, and language is meaningful only with polar opposites. Language becomes meaningless otherwise. Without the contrary, language loses meaning.

So there is a tradition which says that enlightenment is gradual, but that tradition is not really the truth. It is just a half-truth uttered in compassion for human minds. Enlightenment is sudden, and it cannot be otherwise. It is a jump! It is a discontinuity from your past! Try to understand: if something is gradual, the past goes on remaining in it. If something is gradual, then there is a continuity. There is no gap. If from ignorance to knowledge there is gradual growth, the ignorance cannot completely disappear. It will remain, it will continue, because there has been no discontinuity, there has been no gap. So the ignorance may become more polished, the ignorance may become more knowledgeable. The ignorance may appear wise, but it is there. The more polished it is, then, of course, the more dangerous. The more knowledgeable it is, then the more cunning one is and the more capable of deceiving oneself.

Enlightenment and ignorance are absolutely separate, discontinuous. A jump is needed -- a jump in which the past dissolves completely. The old is gone; it is no more, and the new has appeared which was never there before.

Buddha is reported to have said, "I am not that one who was seeking. The one who has appeared now never was before." This looks absurd, illogical, but it IS so. It is so! Buddha says, "I am not he who was seeking; I am not he who was desiring enlightenment; I am not he who was ignorant. The old man is dead completely. I am a new one. I never existed in that old man. There has been a gap. The old has died and the new is born."

For the mind to conceive of this is difficult. How can you conceive of it? How can you conceive of a gap? Something must continue. How can something disappear completely and something new appear? It was absurd for logical minds, it was absurd for scientific minds, just two decades before. But now, for science, it is not absurd. Now they say that deep down in the atom electrons appear and disappear, and they take jumps. From one point the electron takes a jump to another; in between the two it is not. It appears at point A, then disappears and reappears at point B, and within the gap it is no more. It is not there. It becomes absolutely non-existent.

If this is so, it means that non-existence is also a sort of existence. It is difficult to conceive of, but it is so: non-existence is also a sort of existence. It is as if something moves from the visible to the invisible, as if something moves from form to formlessness.

When Gautam Siddharth, the old man who died in Gautam Buddha, was seeking, he was a visible form. When the enlightenment happened, that form completely dissolved into the formless. For a moment there was a gap; there was no one. Then from that formlessness a new form arose. This was Gautam Buddha. Because the body continues in the same way, we think that there is a continuity, but the inner reality changes completely. Because the body continues in the same way, that is why we say "Gautam Buddha" -- that "Gautam Siddharth has now become Gautam the awakened; he has become a buddha." But Buddha himself says, "I am not he who was seeking. I am a totally different one."

It is difficult for the mind to conceive of this -- and for the mind many things are difficult, but they cannot be denied just because they are difficult for the mind. The mind has to yield to those impossibilities which are incomprehensible to it. Sex cannot yield to the mind; the mind has to yield to sex. This is one of the most basic inner facts -- that enlightenment is a discontinuous phenomenon. The old simply disappears and the new is born.

There has been another tradition, a later tradition, of those who have been insisting all through history that Enlightenment is sudden -- that it is not gradual. But those who belong to it are very few. They stick to the truth, but they are bound to be very few because no following can be created if sudden Enlightenment is the case. You simply cannot understand it, so how can you follow it? It is shocking to the logical structure and it seems absurd, impossible. But remember one thing: then you move into deeper realms. Whether of matter or of mind, you will have to encounter many things of which a superficial mind cannot conceive.

Tertullian, one of the greatest Christian mystics, has said, "I believe in God because God is the greatest absurdity. I believe in God because mind cannot believe in God." It is impossible to believe in God; no proof, no argument, no logic can help the belief in God. Everything goes against him, against his existence, but Tertullian says, "That is why I believe -- because only by believing in an absurdity can I move away from my mind."

This is beautiful. If you want to move away from your mind, you will need something of which your mind cannot conceive. If your mind can conceive of it, it will absorb it into its own system, and then you cannot transcend your mind. That is why every religion has insisted on some point which is absurd. No religion can exist without some absurdity just as a foundation in it. From that absurdity you either turn back and say, "I cannot believe so I will go away." Then you remain yourself -- or you take a jump, you turn away from your mind. And unless your mind is killed the enlightenment cannot happen.

Your mind is the problem, your logic is the problem, your arguments are the problem. They are on the surface. They look true, but they deceive. They are not true. For example, look how the mind's structure functions. The mind divides everything in two, and nothing is divisible. Existence is indivisible; you cannot divide it -- but mind goes on dividing it. It says that "this" is life and "this" is death. What is the actual fact? The actual fact is that both are the same. You are both alive and dying this very moment; you are doing both. Rather, you ARE both -death and life.

Mind divides. It says, "this" is death and "this" is life. Not only does it divide; it says that both are opposites, enemies, and that death is trying to destroy life. And it looks okay: death is "trying to destroy life." But if you penetrate deeper, deeper than the mind, death is not trying to destroy life! You cannot exist without death. Death is helping you to exist. It is every moment helping you to exist. If for a single moment death stops working, you will die.

Death is every moment throwing away many parts in you which have become non-functional. Many cells die; they are removed by death. When they are removed, new ones are born. You are growing: something is dying and something is being born continuously. Every moment there is death and life, and both are functioning. In language I have to call them both two. They are not two; they are two aspects of one phenomenon. Life and death are one; "life-death" is a process. But mind divides. That division looks okay for us, but that division is false.

You say "this" is light and "that" is dark; you divide. But where does darkness start and where does light end? Can you demarcate them? You cannot demark them. Actually, whiteness and blackness are two poles of a long greyness, and that greyness is life. On one pole blackness appears and on another pole whiteness appears, but the reality is grey, and that grey contains both in itself.

Mind divides and then everything looks clear-cut. Life is very confusing; that is why life is a mystery. And because of this, mind cannot understand life. It is helpful to create clear-cut concepts. You can think easily, conveniently, but you miss the very reality of life. Life is a mystery, and mind demystifies everything. Then you have dead fragments, not the whole.

With the mind you will not be able to conceive of how enlightenment is sudden, how you will disappear and something new will be there which you had never known before. But don't try to understand through mind. Rather, practice something which will make you more and more hot. Rather, try to attain some fire which will make you more and more hot. And then one day suddenly you will know that the old has disappeared; the water is no more. This is a new phenomenon. You have evaporated, and everything has changed totally.

Water was always flowing downwards, and after evaporation the new phenomenon is rising upwards. The whole law has changed. You have heard about one law, Newton's law of gravity, which says that the earth attracts everything downwards. But the law of gravity is only one law. There is another law. You may not have heard about it because science has yet to uncover it, but yoga and tantra have known it for centuries. They call it levitation. Gravity is the pull downwards and levitation is the pull upwards.

The story of how the law of gravity was discovered is well known. Newton was sitting under a tree, under an apple tree, and then one apple fell down. Because of this he started thinking, and he felt that something is pulling the apple downwards. Tantra and yoga ask, "How did the apple reach upwards in the first place? How?" That must be explained first -- how the apple reached the upward position, how the tree is growing upwards. The apple was not there; it was hidden in a seed, and then the apple traveled the whole journey. It reached the upward position and only then did it fall down. So gravity is a secondary law. Levitation was there first. Something was pulling the apple upwards. What is that?

In life we easily know gravity because we are all pulled downwards. The water flows downwards; it is under the law of gravity. When it evaporates, suddenly the law also evaporated. Now it is under levitation, it rises upwards.

Ignorance is under the law of gravity: you always move downwards, and whatsoever you do makes no difference. You have to move downwards. In every way you will have to move downwards, and struggle alone will not be of much help unless you enter a different law -- the law of levitation. That is what SAMADHI is -- the door for levitation. Once you evaporate, once you are no more water, everything changes. It is not that now you can control: there is no need to control, you simply cannot flow downwards now. As it was impossible before to rise upwards, now it is impossible to flow downwards.

It is not that a buddha tries to be non-violent; he cannot do otherwise. It is not that he tries to be loving; he cannot do otherwise. He has to be loving. That is not a choice, not an effort, not any cultivated virtue, it is simply that now this is the law: he rises upwards. Hate is under the law of gravity; love is under levitation.

This sudden transformation doesn't mean that you are not to do anything and that you are simply to wait for the sudden transformation. Then it will never come. This is the puzzle. When I say -- or someone else says -- that enlightenment is sudden, we think that if it is sudden nothing can be done that we must simply wait. When it will happen, it will happen, so what can one do? If it is gradual you can do something.

But I say to you that it is not gradual, and yet you can do something. And you have to do something, but that something will not bring you enlightenment. That something will bring you near the phenomenon of enlightenment. That something will make you open for the phenomenon of enlightenment to happen. So enlightenment cannot be an outcome of your efforts; it is not. Through your efforts you simply become available for the higher law of levitation. Your availability will come through your effort, not enlightenment. You will become open, you will become non-resistant, you will become cooperative for the higher law to work. And once you are cooperative and non-resistant, the higher law starts functioning. Your efforts will yield you, your efforts will make you more receptive.

It is just like this: you are sitting in your room with closed doors. The sun is outside, but you are in darkness. You cannot do anything to bring the sun in, but if you simply open the doors your room becomes available. You cannot bring the sun in, but you can block it out. If you open your doors, the sun will enter, the waves will come; the light will come into the room.

You are not really bringing the light, you are simply removing the hindrance. The light comes by itself. Understand it deeply: you cannot do anything to reach enlightenment, but you are doing many things to hinder it -- to hinder it from reaching to you. You are creating many barriers, so you can only do something negatively: you can throw the barriers, you can open the doors. The moment the doors are open, the rays will enter, the light will touch you and transform you.

All effort in this sense is to destroy the barriers, not to attain enlightenment. All effort is negative. It is just like medicine. The medicine cannot give you health; it can only destroy your diseases. Once the diseases are not there, health happens; you become available. If diseases are there, health cannot happen.

That is why medical science, Eastern or Western, has not yet been able to define what health is. They can define each disease exactly -- they know thousands and thousands of diseases and they have defined them all -- but they cannot define what health is. At the most they can say that when there is no disease you are healthy. But what is health? Something which goes beyond mind. It is something which is there: you can have it, you can feel it, but you cannot define it.

You have known health, but can you define it -- what it is? The moment you try to define it you will have to bring disease in. You will have to talk something about disease, and you will have to say, "No-disease is health." This is ridiculous. To define health you need disease? And disease has definite qualities. Health also has its own qualities, but they are not so definite because they are infinite. You can feel them; when health is there you know it is there. But what is it? Diseases can be treated, destroyed. Barriers are broken and the light enters. Similar is the phenomenon of enlightenment. It is a spiritual health. Mind is a spiritual disease, and meditation is nothing but medicine.

Buddha is said to have said, "I am a medicine man, a VAIDYA -- a physician. I am not a teacher and I have not come to give you doctrines. I know a certain medicine which can cure your diseases. And don't ask about health. Take the medicine, destroy the disease, and you will know what health is. Don't ask about it." Buddha says, "I am not a metaphysician, I am not a philosopher. I am not interested in what God is, in what soul is, in what KAIVALYA, aloneness, MOKSHA, liberation, and NIRVANA is. I am not interested! I am simply interested in what disease is and in how it can be cured. I am a medicine man." His approach is absolutely scientific. He has diagnosed human dilemma and disease. His approach is absolutely right.

Destroy the barriers. What are the barriers? Thinking is the basic barrier. When you think, a barrier of thoughts is created. Between you and the reality a wall of thoughts is created, and thoughts are more dense than any stone wall can be. And then there are many layers of thought. You cannot penetrate through them and see what the real is. You go on thinking about what the real is and you go on imagining what the real is, and the real is here and now waiting for you. If you become available to it, it will happen to you. You go on thinking about what the real is, but how can you think if you don't know?

You cannot think about something which you don't know; you can only think about something which you already know. Thinking is repetitious, tautological; it never reaches to anything new and unknown. Through thinking you never touch the unknown; you only touch the known, and it is meaningless because you already know it. You can go on feeling it again and again; you may enjoy the feeling, but nothing new comes out of it.

Stop thinking. Dissolve thinking, and the barrier is broken. Then your doors are open and the light can enter. And once the light enters, you know that the old is no more. You know now that that which you are is absolutely the new. It never was before, you had never known it; but you may even say that this is the "ancient-most" -- it was there always, not known to you.

You can use both expressions, they mean the same. You can call it the "ancient-most" -- the BRAHMAN who has always been there, and you can say that you were missing it continuously. Or you can say that this is the most new -- that which has happened only now and never was before. That too is right because for you this is the new. If you want to speak about the truth, you will have to use paradoxical expressions. The Upanishads say, "This is the new and this is the old. This is the most ancient and this is the most new. It is the far and the near both." But then language becomes paradoxical, contradictory.

And you ask me, "WHAT IS THIS GRADUAL GROWTH AND CLARITY IF THE AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE IS NEVER GRADUAL, BUT SUDDEN?" This clarity is of the mind; this clarity is of a lessening of disease; this clarity is of the falling of barriers. If one barrier falls you are less burdened, your eyes are less clouded. If another barrier falls you are still more unburdened, your eyes become still more clear. But this clarity is not of enlightenment; this clarity is only of a lessening disease, not of health. When all barriers disappear, with those barriers your mind also disappears. Then you cannot say, "Now my mind is clear, it is no more." Then you simply say, "Now there is no mind."

When there is no mind, then the clarity is of enlightenment. Then the clarity is of enlightenment! that is absolutely different. Then another dimension has opened. But you will have to pass through clarities of mind. Remember always that no matter how clear your mind becomes, it is still a barrier. No matter how transparent your mind becomes, even if it becomes a transparent glass and you can look to the other side, still it is a barrier and you will have to break it completely. So sometimes it happens that when one is meditating one becomes more and more clear, more sane, more still; silence is felt. Then one clings to meditation and thinks that everything is achieved. Great masters have always been emphasizing that a day comes when you have to throw your meditation also.

I will tell you one story -- one Zen story. Bokuju was meditating -- meditating very deeply, meditating with his whole heart. His master would come every day, and he would just laugh and go back. Bokuju became annoyed. The master would not say anything, he would just come and look at him, laugh and go away. And Bokuju was feeling very good in meditation. His meditation was deepening, and he needed someone to appreciate him. He was waiting for the master to pat him and say, "Good, Bokuju. You did well." But the master just laughed. The laughter felt insulting -- as if Bokuju was not progressing, and he was progressing. As he progressed more, the laughter grew more and more insulting. It was impossible to tolerate it now.

One day the master came, and Bokuju was feeling absolutely silent as far as mind can go; there was no noise within, no thought. The mind was absolutely transparent; no barrier was felt. He was filled with a subtle deep happiness, joy was bubbling all over, he was in ecstasy. Thus, he thought, "Now my master will not laugh. Now the moment has come, and he is going to tell me, `Now Bokuju, you have become enlightened.'"

That day the master came: the master came with a brick in his hand, and he started rubbing that brick on the rock on which Bokuju was sitting. He was so silent, and the rubbing of the brick created noise. He became annoyed. At last he couldn't tolerate it, so he opened his eyes and asked his master, "What are you doing?"

The master said, "I am trying to make this brick a mirror, and by continuously rubbing it I hope that someday this brick will become a mirror."

Bokuju said, "You are behaving stupidly. This stone, this brick, is not going to become a mirror. No matter how much you rub it, it is not going to become a mirror."

The master laughed and said, "Then what are you doing? This mind can never become enlightened, and you go on rubbing and rubbing it. You are polishing it, and you are feeling so good that when I laugh you feel annoyed." And suddenly, as the master threw his brick, Bokuju became aware. When the master threw his brick, suddenly he felt that the master was right, and the mind broke. Then from that day on there was no mind and no meditation. He became enlightened.

The master said to him, "Now you can move anywhere. Go, and teach others also. First teach them meditation; then teach them non-meditation. First teach them how to make the mind clear, because only a very clear mind can understand that now even this clear mind is a barrier. Only a deeply meditative mind can understand that now even meditation has to be thrown.

You cannot understand it right now. Krishnamurti goes on saying that there is no need of any meditation, and he is right. But he is talking to wrong persons. He is right; there is no need for any meditation, but he is wrong because of to whom he is saying this. Those who cannot even understand what meditation is, how can they understand that there is no need for any meditation? This is going to be harmful for them because they will cling to this idea. They will feel that this idea is very good, there is no need of meditation, so "We are already enlightened."

Listening to Krishnamurti, many feel that now there is no need of meditation and that those who are meditating are foolish. They may waste their whole life because of this thought, and this thought is right. There comes a point when meditation has to be thrown; there comes a point when meditation becomes a barrier. But wait for this point to come. You cannot throw something which you don't have. Krishnamurti says, "No need of meditation; don't meditate." But you have never meditated, so how can you say, "Don't meditate"?

A rich man can renounce his riches, not a poor man. To renounce you need something to renounce in the first place. If you meditate, you can renounce it one day -- and that is the last renunciation, and that is the greatest. Wealth can he renounced, it is easy. Family can be renounced, it is not difficult. The whole world can be renounced because everything is outer and outer and outer. The last thing is meditation, the innermost wealth. And when you renounce it, you have renounced yourself. Then no self remains -- not even the meditating self, the great meditator. Even that image is broken. You have fallen into nothingness. Only in this nothingness, the discontinuity. The old has disappeared and the new has happened. You become available through meditation.

Whatsoever is felt through meditation, don't think that it is enlightenment. These are just glimpses of a lessening disease, of a dispersing disease. You feel good. The disease is less, so you feel relatively healthy. Real health is not yet there, but you are more healthy than before and it is good to be more healthy than before.

The second question:

Question 2

"YOU SAID THAT LIFE EXISTS IN POLAR OPPOSITES LIKE LOVE AND HATE, ATTRACTION AND REPULSION, VIRTUE AND VICE, ETCETERA. BUT WHAT HAPPENS TO THESE POLAR OPPOSITES WHEN ONE IS IN THE WITNESSING CONSCIOUSNESS?"

Don't ask, wait for the happening, for what happens. You can ask and some answer can be given, but that answer cannot become an authentic answer for you. And never jump ahead. Don't ask what happens when one dies. What happens? Whatsoever is said will be meaningless because you are still alive. What happens when someone is dead? You will have to pass through it. Unless you are dead you cannot know it. Whatsoever is said can be believed on trust, but this is meaningless.

Rather, ask how to be dead so that you can know what happens. No one else can die for you; no one else's experience can be an experience for you. You will have to die. Death cannot be another's experience for you, it has to be your own. Similar is the case here. What happens when polarities disappear? In a way nothing happens. "Happening" dissolves because all happening is polar. When love and hate both dissolve -- and they DO dissolve -- , what happens? When you love, you hate also -- and you hate the same person you love. Hate is just hidden, and when hate comes up love goes down.

Jesus says, "Love your enemies," and I say that you cannot do otherwise. You DO love your enemies. You hate them so much, and without love that is impossible. Love is just the other aspect of the coin. And where is the demarcation where love ends and hate begins? There is just a grey extension. When do you hate someone and when do you love? Can you demark it? You love and hate the same person; any moment hate can become love and love can become hate. This is the polarity of mind, this is how mind functions. Don't become worried about it. If you know, you will never become worried. If you love someone, you know hate will be there. If someone loves you, you will expect both -- love and hate.

But what happens in a buddha-like consciousness when love and hate both disappear? What happens? It is difficult to express what happens, but whatsoever has been felt around Buddha is more like love without hate. It has been felt around Buddha; it is not that Buddha feels it so. Buddha cannot feel love now because he cannot feel hate. He cannot feel love, but around him everyone has felt a deep love flowing. We can describe it as love without hate, but then the quality is different.

With our love, hate is inevitably present. It colors it, it changes the quality of it. Hate gives a passion to love, a force, an intensity, a focused quality, a concentration, while Buddha's love becomes a dispersed phenomenon. Intensity is not there. It cannot burn you, it can only warm you. It is not a fire, it is just a glow. It is not a flame, it is just like the morning light when the sun has not yet risen and the night has disappeared. It is just the moment of interval -- light without any fire, without any flame. We have felt it as love, and as the purest because there is no hate. Even to feel this type of love, you have to be a very deeply meditative mind. You need a mind which can meditate; otherwise such a delicate and diffuse phenomenon will not be felt. You have to be very deeply sensitive.

You can only feel gross love, and that grossness is given by hate. If someone simply loves you without any hate, it will be difficult for you to feel his love. You will have to grow to become more transparent, delicate, sensitive. You will have to become like a very sensitive musical instrument; only then will the breeze sometimes come to you. And the breeze is so non-violent now that it will not hit you. It will be just a delicate touch. If you are very, very aware, you will feel it; otherwise you will miss it.

But this is our feeling around a buddha, not Buddha's feeling. Buddha cannot feel love or hate. Really, the polar opposites disappear, and simple presence remains. Buddha is a presence, not a mood. You are moods, not a presence. Sometimes you are hate, one mood, sometimes you are love -- another mood; sometimes you are anger, another mood, sometimes you are greed -- another mood. You are moods, you are never a pure presence, and your consciousness goes on being modified by your moods. Each mood becomes the master. It modifies the consciousness, cripples it, changes it, colors it, deforms it.

A buddha is without moods. Now hate has gone, love has gone, anger has gone, greed has gone -- and non-greed also, non-anger also. They have disappeared! They both have disappeared! He is a simple presence. If you are sensitive, you will feel love flowing from him, you will feel compassion. If you are not sensitive, if you are gross, if your meditation has not developed, you will not feel him at all. A buddha will move amidst you, and you will not even become aware that some phenomenon is passing -- something rare, something which passes only once in centuries. You will not become aware!

Or, if you are very gross, anti-meditative, you will even become angered by his presence. Because his presence is subtle, you may even become violent because of his presence. His presence may be disturbing to you. If you are very gross, anti-meditative, you will become an enemy of a Buddha and he will not have done anything. If you are open, sensitive, you will become a lover, and he will not have done anything. Remember this: when you become an enemy, it is you; when you become a friend, it is you. A buddha is a simple presence, he is available. If you become an enemy, you turn your back. You will simply miss something for which you may have to wait for lives to come again.

Ananda was weeping the day Buddha was passing away, and Buddha said in the morning, "Now this is my last day. Now the body is going to be finished." Ananda was near. He was the first to whom Buddha said, "This is my last day, so go and tell everyone that if they have to ask something they can ask."

Ananda started weeping and crying, so Buddha said, "Why are you weeping? For this body? I have been teaching and teaching and teaching that this body is false, it is already dead -- or are you weeping for my death? Don't weep, because I have died forty years ago. I died the day I became enlightened, so this body is only disappearing now. Don't weep."

Ananda said a beautiful thing. He said, "I am not weeping for your body or for you, I am weeping for myself. I am yet unenlightened, and now how many lives will pass before again a buddha will be available? And I may not be again able to recognize you."

Unless you become enlightened, your clarity of mind can be clouded at any moment. Before you become enlightened, you can fall back again and again. Nothing is certain. So Ananda said, "I am weeping for myself. I am yet unenlightened, I have not yet reached the goal, and you are entering nothingness."

Many, even Buddha's own father, couldn't recognize that his son was no more his son -- that something had happened into this body which rarely happens. The darkness had disappeared and the eternal light was burning there, but he couldn't recognize it. Many were against him; many tried to kill him. But it is all up to you: whether you become a friend, a lover or an enemy depends on you, on your sensitivity, on your mind -- how your mind feels.

But a buddha is not doing anything, he is simply a presence. Just by his presence much happens around him. Those who can feel love, they will feel he is in deep love with them. And the deeper you can feel, the more you will grow in the feeling that his love is deepening towards you. If you can become a real lover, you will feel that a buddha is a lover to you. If you become an enemy, and you feel hate, you will feel that a buddha is an enemy and you will feel that he has to be killed, destroyed. It depends on you. A buddha is a non-doer; he is simply being, he is there. So what happens is difficult to say because whatsoever we say will be a mood. If we say he becomes a lover, that he has a great love, it will be false. That will be our feeling.

Jesus's followers felt that he was simply love and Jesus' enemies thought he had to be crucified -- so it depends on you. It depends on you how you take it, how you are capable of taking it, how much open you are. But from the side of an enlightened one, nothing can he said. He can simply say that now he is: without doing anything he is -- just a presence, a being.

The third question:

Question 3

"YOU SAID THAT WHEN A PERSON IS TOTALLY IN THE PRESENT MOMENT WITHOUT ANY THOUGHT IN THE MIND, THEN HE IS A BUDDHA-MIND. BUT EVEN WHEN THERE IS NO THOUGHT IN ME AND I AM IN THE MOMENT, ABSORBED, WITH NO PAST OR FUTURE, I DO NOT FEEL THE BUDDHA-NATURE. PLEASE EXPLAIN WHEN IN THIS THOUGHTLESS AWARENESS THE BUDDHA-MIND IS REVEALED."

The first thing: if you are aware that there is no thought in your mind, there is thought. Even this is a thought, that now there is no thought in you. This thought is the last thought. Allow it also to disappear. And why are you waiting for when the buddha-nature is going to happen to you? That again is a thought. It will not happen in that way -- never!

I will tell you one story. One king came to Gautam Buddha. He was a devotee, a great devotee, and he had come for the first time for his darshan -- for his audience. In one of his hands, in his left hand, he had one beautiful golden ornament, priceless, with many jewels in it. It was the most precious that he had -- a rare piece of art. He had come to present it to Buddha just to show his devotion. He came near. In his left hand was that priceless jeweled ornament; he was going to present it. Buddha said, "Drop it!" He was disturbed. He never expected this. He was shocked. But because Buddha was saying "Drop it", he dropped it.

In his other hand, in his right hand, he had brought a beautiful rose. He thought that Buddha might not like stones. He might just think that this was a childish thing that he had brought. But it was good to have an alternative, so he brought a beautiful rose. A rose is not so gross, not so material. It has a spirituality, something of the unknown is there. And Buddha might like it because he says life is flux, and the flower is in the morning and in the evening it is no more. It is the most flux-like thing in the world. So he put his other hand in front of Buddha and he wanted to present the flower. Buddha again said, "Drop it!" Then he felt very disturbed. Now he had nothing to present. But when Buddha again said to drop it, he dropped it.

Then suddenly he became aware of the "I." He thought, "Why am I presenting things when I can present myself?" When he became aware, with both his hands empty he presented himself. But Buddha again said, "Drop it!" Now he had nothing to drop -- just empty hands -- and Buddha said, "Drop it!"

Mahakashyapa, Sariputta, Ananda and his other disciples were there, and they started laughing. The man became aware that even to say that "I present myself to you" is egoistic. Even to say, "Now I am here and I surrender to you," is not surrender. So he himself fell down. Buddha smiled and said, "You understand well."

Unless you drop even this idea of surrendering, unless you drop even this idea of empty hands, it is not surrender. One has to drop even emptiness in the hand. It is easy to understand the dropping of things... but then the hands were empty and Buddha said, "Drop it! Don't even cling to this emptiness!" When you do meditation, you have to drop thoughts. When thoughts are dropped, a thought remains and the thought is, "Now I have become thoughtless." There is a subtle feeling, a thought that "Now I have achieved and now there is no thought. Now the mind is vacant. Now I am empty."

But this emptiness is filled with this thought. And whether thoughts are there or a thought is there makes no difference. Drop the thought also. And why are you waiting for the buddha-nature? YOU cannot wait because you will not be there. You will never meet Buddha; when Buddha happens you will not be there, so your hopes are futile. You are wasting time, you will not be there.

Kabir has said, "When I was you were not. Now you are, and where has Kabir gone? When I was seeking and seeking and desiring and hungering for you, you were not. I was there. Now you are there, and please tell me where has Kabir gone? Where is that seeker who was seeking and seeking and hungering and weeping and crying for you? Where has that Kabir gone?"

You will not be there when Buddha happens. So don't wait, don't desire, because your desire of "When will Buddha happen to me?" and "When will I become a buddha-nature? When will I become enlightened?" -this very desire will create a barrier, the last barrier. For the achieving of total freedom, the desire for freedom is the last barrier. To be enlightened, even this desire for enlightenment has to be thrown, has to be cast away.

One of the great Zen masters, Lin-Chi, used to say, "If you meet Buddha anywhere, kill him immediately! If you meet Buddha anywhere in your meditation, kill him immediately!" He means it. This desire to be a buddha, to be enlightened, if you meet it anywhere, kill it immediately. Only then does it happen. Total desirelessness is needed, and when I say, "total desirelessness," I mean that even the desire for total desirelessness must be dropped. You are, without any desire. You are, without any thought, not even aware that there is no thought, that there is no desire. Then it happens.

The last question:

Question 4

"WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE REASONS FOR NOT HAVING AN EXPLOSIVE CATHARSIS? I CONSTANTLY, EVEN WITH TODAY'S SHAKTIPAT MEDITATION, HAVE ONLY A VERY MILD CATHARSIS. DOES IT NECESSARILY MEAN THAT I AM NOT OPEN OR NOT OPEN ENOUGH, OR ARE THERE OTHER POSSIBLE REASONS? MY CONCERN OVER THIS THEN BECOMES A DISTRACTION TO ME DURING THE MEDITATION AND AFTER."

The first thing to be noted, to be remembered: catharsis will happen deeply if you just help it to happen, if you just cooperate with it. Mind is so suppressed, and you have so much pushed things down, that to reach them your cooperation is needed. So whenever you feel even a light catharsis, help it to become stronger. Don't just wait. If you feel that your hand is trembling, don't just wait, help it to tremble more. Don't feel, think that it has to be spontaneous, so you have to wait. If it has to be spontaneous, then you will have to wait for years, because for years you have been suppressing and the suppression was not spontaneous. You have done it on purpose.

You will have to do quite the opposite now. Only then can the suppressions be brought to the surface. You feel like weeping; you weep mildly. Help it along! Make it a deep scream! You don't know that from the very beginning you have been suppressing your crying, you have not cried really. From the very beginning the child wants to cry, to laugh. The crying is a deep necessity in him. Through crying, every day he goes through catharsis.

The child has many frustrations. This is bound to be; it is of necessity. The child wants something, but he cannot say what, he cannot express it. The child wants something, but the parents may not be in a position to fulfill it. The mother may not be available there. She may be engaged in some other work, and he may not be cared for. At that moment no attention is paid to him, so he starts crying. The mother wants to persuade him, to console him, because she is disturbed, the father is disturbed, the whole family is disturbed. No one wants him to cry, crying is a disturbance; everyone tries to distract him so that he may not cry. We can bribe him. The mother can give him a toy; the mother can give him milk -- anything to create a distraction or to console him -- but he should not cry.

But crying is a deep necessity. If he can cry and is allowed to cry, he will become fresh again; the frustration is thrown through crying. Otherwise, with a stopped crying, the frustration is stopped. Now he will go on piling it up, and you are a "piled-up" cry. Now psychologists say that you need "a primal scream." Now a therapy is developing in the West just to help you to scream so totally that every cell of your body is involved in it. If you can scream so madly that your whole body screams in it, you will be relieved of much pain, much suffering that is accumulated. You will become just like a child -- fresh and innocent again.

But that primal scream is not going to come suddenly. You will have to help it. It is so deep down, and there are so many layers of repression, that don't just wait: help it. When you want to cry, cry wholeheartedly! Give total energy to it and enjoy it. Help it. And the second thing -- enjoy it, because if you are not enjoying what you are doing it cannot go deep. It will be superficial. If you are screaming, then enjoy it. Enjoy the very thing; feel good. If you are feeling somewhere that "What I am doing is not good; what will others say? What a childish thing I am doing," even a slight feeling like this will become repression. Enjoy it and be playful about it. Enjoy and be playful. Just inquire more and more whether it can become deeper, whether you can help it along more -- in what ways you can help it along more.

If you are sitting and crying, then maybe if you start jumping the cry will become deeper. Or if you lie down on the floor and start thrashing about maybe it will become deeper. Try, help it along, and enjoy it -- and you will feel there are many ways in which you can help it along. Enjoy trying to deepen it, and once it takes over then you will not be needed. Once it comes to the right source where energy is hidden, once you touch the right source and the energy is released, then you are not needed. You can flow automatically, spontaneously. And when it starts flowing spontaneously, you will be cleansed completely.

It is just like flowers being cleansed after a rain. Then they become new. Every bit of dust, whatsoever has gathered upon one, is no more there; they are themselves. In life we gather dust. This catharsis is just a cleansing. Help it along, enjoy it and one day the primal scream will come. Just go on doing it. It cannot be predicted when it will come. When the primal scream will come cannot be said because man is very complex. It can come this very moment; it may take years. One thing is certain: if you help it, enjoy it and play with it, it is going to come.