become each being:
106. FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS.SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING.
‘हर मनुष्य की चेतना को अपनी ही चेतना जानो। अंत: आत्मचिंता को त्यागकर प्रत्येक प्राणी हो जाओ।’
107. THIS CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS AS EACH BEING, AND NOTHING ELSE EXISTS.
‘यह चेतना ही प्रत्येक प्राणी के रूप में है। अन्य कुछ भी नहीं है।’
108. THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE.
‘यह चेतना ही प्रत्येक की मार्ग दर्शक सत्ता है, यही हो रहो।’
Existence as such is one. The human problem arises because of human self-consciousness.
Consciousness gives everyone a feeling that they are separate, and the feeling that you are separate from existence creates all the problems. Basically this feeling is false, and whatsoever is based on a falsity will create anguish, will create problems, will create confusion. And whatsoever you do, if it is based on this false separateness, it will go wrong.
So from the very beginning the problem of human anguish has to be tackled: how does it arise?
Consciousness gives you a feeling that you are the center of your being, and consciousness makes you aware that others are ‘other’, that you are different from them. This difference is just because you are conscious. While you are asleep there is no difference – you are again merged with the universe. Hence so much bliss comes out of sleep. In the morning you feel refreshed, rejuvenated, again alive, fresh.
What is happening in deep sleep? You are losing your ego, you are losing yourself, you are falling into a unity with the universe. That falling back int the unity makes you fresh and alive, and in the morning you feel blissful. All the anguish disappears; all conflict, all disturbance, disappears; all fear, all death disappears – because death is possible only if you are separate. If you are not separate, then death is impossible. Who is going to die if you are not separate? Who can suffer if you are not separate? So all Tantra, yoga and other methods of meditation are just to make you aware that separateness is false and inseparateness is real. And if you can become aware of that you will be totally different, because the center will have disappeared from you and it will take its right place in the universe. You will be just a wave on this vast ocean. You will not be separate so you will not be afraid. You will not feel insecure. You will not feel the anguish of approaching death and annihilation.
All that disappears with the ego.
Hindus have always believed that samadhi is conscious sleep.In sleep it happens automatically that you are no more. The existence is, and you are no more; but you are deeply unconscious so you don’t know what is happening. If this same phenomenon can happen consciously, you become enlightened. Buddha moves to the same source, to the same source that you move every night in deep sleep, in dreamless sleep. But Buddha moves to that source consciously, alert, aware. He knows where he is moving to, he knows what is happening, and when he comes back from that deep source, he comes totally different. The old has disappeared and a new being, a new energy has arisen out of it. Of this being, the center is the universe; and with this transfer of the center, all your worry, all your anguish, all your hell disappears, simply disappears. It is not solved, it is simply not there. It cannot exist there without the ego.] So how to be consciously deep asleep? How to move into sleep consciously? How to remain alert while you are losing the ego? The ego is a by-product, a by-product of your whole upbringing, a by-product of the natural course of life. It has to be there. There is no other way. No being can evolve without being involved with the ego. But a point comes when the ego can be dropped and should be dropped, and the being should transcend it.
The ego is just like the shell of the egg. It is needed, it protects. Just like the shell of a seed, it is needed, it protects. But the protection can become dangerous also, if it protects too much. If it goes on protecting and doesn’t allow the seed to sprout, then it becomes a hindrance. It must dissolve into the earth so that the inner life evolves out of it. It must die.
The seed must die. Every man is born as a seed. The ego is the outer covering; it protects the child. If a child is born without the ego, without the feeling that “I exist”, he cannot survive. He will to be able to protect himself, he will not be able to struggle, he will not be able in any way to exist. He needs a strong center. Even if it is false, it is needed. But a moment comes when this help becomes a hindrance. It protects you from outside, but it become so strong that it will not allow you, the inner being, to spread, to go beyond it, to sprout. So ego is needed – and then ego-transcendence is needed.
If someone dies with the ego, he has died as a seed. He has died without really attaining the destiny that was possible, without attaining existence consciously These techniques are for how to destroy this seed.
FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS.
SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING.
‘हर मनुष्य की चेतना को अपनी ही चेतना जानो। अंत: आत्मचिंता को त्यागकर प्रत्येक प्राणी हो जाओ।’
FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. In reality it is so, but it is not felt so. You feel your consciousness as yours, and others’ consciousnesses you never feel. At the most you infer that others are also conscious. You infer because you think that because you are conscious, other beings like you must be conscious. This is a logical inference; you don’t feel them as conscious. It is just like when you have a headache you feel your headache, you have a consciousness of it. But if someone else has a headache, you infer – you cannot feel the other’s headache. You simply infer that whatsoever he is saying must be true and he must have something like you. But you cannot feel it.
The feeling can come only if you become conscious about others’ consciousnesses – otherwise it is a logical inference. You believe, you trust, that others are saying something honestly, and whatsoever they are saying is worth believing because you also have similar types of experiences.
There is a logical school which says that nothing can be known about the other, it is impossible. At the most there can be an inference but nothing certain can be known about others. How can you know that others have pain like you, that others have anxieties like you? Others are there but we cannot penetrate them, we can only just touch their surface. Their inner being remains unknown.
We remain closed in ourselves.
The world around us is not a felt world, it is just inferred – logically, rationally. The mind says it is there but the heart is not touched by it. That is why we behave with others as if they are things not persons. Our relationship with persons is also as it is with things. A husband behaves towards his wife as if she is a thing: he possesses her. The wife possesses the husband just like a thing. If we behaved with the other as if they were persons then we would not try to possess them, because only things can be possessed.
A person means freedom. A person cannot be possessed. If you try to possess them, you will kill them, they will become things. Our relationship with others is really not an ‘I-thou’ relationship, deep down it is just an ‘I-it’ relationship. The other is just a thing to be manipulated, to be used, exploited.
That is why love becomes more and more impossible, because love means taking the other as a person, as a conscious being, as a freedom, as something as valuable as you are.
If you behave as if everything is a thing, then you are the center and things are just to be used. The relationship becomes utilitarian. Things have no value in themselves – the value is that you can use them, they exist for you. You can be related to your house – the house exists for you. It is a utility.
The car exists for you, but the wife doesn’t exist for you and the husband doesn’t exist for you. The husband exists for himself and the wife exists for herself. A person exists for himself; that is what being a person means. And if you allow the person to be a person and don’t reduce him to being a thing, you will by and by start feeling him. Otherwise you cannot feel. Your relationship will remain conceptual, intellectual, mind to mind, head to head – but not heart to heart.
This technique says, FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. This will be difficult because first you have to feel the person as a person, as a conscious being. Even that is difficult.
Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” This is the same thing – but the other must first become a person for you. He must exist in his own right, not to be exploited, manipulated, utilized, not as a means but an end in himself. First, the other must become a person; the other must become a ‘thou’, as valuable as you are. Only then can this technique be applied. FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. First feel that the other is conscious, and then this can happen – you can feel that the other has the same consciousness that you have. Really, the ‘other’ disappears, only a consciousness flows between you and him. You become two poles of one consciousness flowing, of one current.
In deep love it happens that the two persons are not two. Something between the two has come into being and they have just become two poles. Something is flowing between the two. When this flow is there you will feel blissful. If love gives bliss, it gives bliss only because of this: that two persons, just for a single moment, lose their egos – the ‘other’ is lost and oneness comes into being just for as ingle moment. If it happens, it is ecstatic, it is blissful, you have entered paradise. Just a single moment, and it can be transforming.
This technique says that you can do this with every person. In love you can do it with one person, but in meditation you have to do it with every person. Whosoever comes near you, simply dissolve into him and feel that you are not two lives, but one life, flowing. This is just changing the gestalt.
Once you know how, once you have done it, it is very easy. In the beginning it seems impossible because we are so stuck in our own egos. It is difficult to lose it, difficult to become a flow. So it will be good if in the beginning you try with something that you are not very scared or afraid of.
You will be less afraid of a tree so it will be easier. Sitting near a tree, just feel the tree and feel that you have become one with it, that there is a flow within you, a communication, a dialogue, a melting. Sitting near a flowing river just feel the flow, feel that you and the river have become one.
Lying under the sky, just feel that you and the sky have become one. In the beginning it will be just imagination but by and by you will feel that you are touching reality through imagination.
And then try it with persons. This is difficult in the beginning because there is a fear. Because you have been reducing persons to things, you are afraid that if you allow someone to be so intimate he will also reduce you to a thing. That is the fear. So no one allows much intimacy: a gap is always to be kept and guarded. Too much closeness is dangerous because the other can convert you into a thing, he can try to possess you. That is the fear. You are trying to convert others into things, and others are trying to convert you – and no one wants to be a thing, no one wants to become a means, no one wants to be used. It is the most degrading phenomenon to be reduced to just a means to something, not valuable in yourself. But everyone is trying. Because of this there is a deep fear and it will be difficult to start this technique with persons.
So start with a river, with a hill, with the stars, with the sky, with trees.Once you come to know the feeling of what happens when you become one with the tree; once you come to know how blissful you become when you become one with the river, how without losing anything you gain the whole existence – then you can try it with persons. And if it is so blissful with a tree, with a river, you cannot imagine how much more blissful it will be with a person, because a person is a higher phenomenon, a more highly evolved being. Through a person you can reach higher peaks of experience. If you can become ecstatic with even a rock, with a person you can feel a Divine ecstasy happening to you.
But start with something that you are not much afraid of, or, if there is a person you love, a friend, a beloved, a lover, of whom you are not afraid, with whom you can be really intimate and close without any fear, with whom you can lose yourself without getting scared deep down that he may turn you into a thing – if you have someone like that, then try this technique. Lose yourself consciously into him. When you lose yourself consciously into someone, that someone will lose himself into you; when you are open and you flow into the other, the other starts flowing into you and there is a deep meeting, a communion. Two energies melt into each other. In that state there is no ego, no individual – simply consciousness. And if this is possible with one individual, it is possible with the whole universe. What saints have called ecstasy, samadhi, is just a deep love phenomenon between a person and the whole universe.
FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS.
SO,LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING. We are always concerned with our own self. Even while we are in love, we are concerned with our own self, that is why love becomes a misery. It can become heaven but it becomes a hell, because even lovers are concerned with their own selves. The other is loved because he gives you happiness, the other is loved because you feel good with him, but the other is still not loved as if he is something valuable in himself or herself. The value comes through your enjoyment. You are gratified, you are satisfied in some way, that is why the other has become significant. This is also using the other.
Concern for the self means exploitation of the other. And religious consciousness can come into existence only when the concern for the self is lost, because then you become non-exploitive. With existence your relationship becomes one, not of exploitation, but of sheer sharing, sheer bliss.You are not using, you are not being used – it becomes a sheer celebration of being.
But concern for the self has to be thrown away… and it is very deep-rooted. It is so deep-rooted that you are not even aware of it. In one of the Upanishads it is said that the husband loves his wife, not for the wife, but for himself; and the mother loves the child, not for the child, but for herself.
The concern for the self is so deep-rooted that whatsoever you do, you do for yourself. This means that you are always gratifying the ego, feeding the ego, feeding a false center which has become a barrier between you and the universe.
Lose the concern for the self. If even sometimes, even for a few moments, you can lose concern for the self and can become concerned with the other, with the other’s self, you will be entering a different reality, a different dimension. Hence so much emphasis on service, love, compassion.
Because compassion, love, service, mean concern for the other’s self, not your own.
But look… human mind is so cunning that it has converted service, compassion and love into concerns for the self. A Christian missionary serves, and his service is sincere. Really, no one else can serve so deeply and intensely as a Christian missionary. No Hindu can do that, no Mohammedan can do that, because Jesus has emphasized service so much. A Christian missionary is serving poor people, ill people, diseased people, but deep down he is concerned with himself not with them. This service is just a method to reach heaven. He is not concerned with them, he is not really concerned with them at all, he is concerned with his own self. Through service he can achieve a greater self, so he is doing service. But he has missed the basic point, because service means the concern for the other – the other is the center and you have become the periphery.
Try it some time. Make someone the center – then his happiness becomes your happiness, his misery becomes your misery. Whatsoever happens, happens to him and flows to you. But he is the center. If once, even once, you can feel that the other is the center and you have become just a periphery to him, you have entered a different type of existence, a different dimension of experience.
Because in that moment you will feel a deep bliss, unknown before, unexperienced before. Just by making the other the concern, you will lose all misery. In that moment there will be no hell for you; you have entered paradise.
Why does it happen? It happens because the ego is the root of all misery. If you can forget it, if you can dissolve it, all misery dissolves with it.
FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING. Become the tree, become the river, become the wife, become the husband, become the child, become the mother, become the friend – it can be practiced every moment of life. But in the beginning it will be difficult. so do it for a least one hour every day. In that hour, whatsoever passes around you, become that. You will wonder how it can happen. There is no other way to know how it can happen – you have to practice it.
Sit with the tree and feel that you have become the tree. And when the wind comes and the whole tree starts shaking and trembling, feel that shaking and trembling in you; when the sun rises and the whole tree becomes alive, feel that aliveness in you; when a shower of rain comes and the whole tree is satisfied and content, a long thirst, a long awaiting has disappeared and the tree is completely satisfied and content, feel satisfied and content with the tree. and then you will become aware of the subtle moods, of the nuances of a tree.
You have seen that tree for many years, but you don’t know its moods. Sometimes it is happy; sometimes it is unhappy. Sometimes it is sad, dead, worried, frustrated; sometimes it is very blissful, ecstatic. There are moods. The tree is alive and it feels. And if you become one with it, then you will feel it. Then you will feel whether the tree is young or old; whether the tree is dissatisfied with its life or satisfied; whether the tree is in love with existence or not – is anti, against, furious, angry; whether the tree is violent or there is a deep compassion in it. As you are changing every moment, the tree is also changing – if you can feel a deep affinity with it, what they call empathy.
Empathy means you have become so sympathetic that really you become one. The moods of the tree become your moods. And then, if this goes deeper and deeper and deeper, you can talk, you can have a communication with the tree. Once you know its moods you start understanding its language, and the tree will share its mind with you. It will share its agonies and ecstasies.
And this can happen with the whole universe.
For at least one hour every day try to be in empathy with something. In the beginning you will look foolish to yourself. You will think,”What kind of stupidity am I doing?” You will look around and you will feel that if someone looks or someone sees or someone comes to know, they will think you have gone crazy. But only in the beginning. Once you enter this world of empathy the whole world will look crazy to you. They are missing so much unnecessarily. Life gives in such abundance and they are missing it. They are missing because they are closed: they don’t allow life to enter into them.
And life can enter you only if you enter life through many, many ways, through many paths, through multi-dimensions. Be in empathy for at least one hour every day.
This was the meaning of prayer in the beginning of every religion. The meaning of prayer was to be in an affinity with the universe, to be in a deep communication with the universe. In prayer you are talking to God – God means the totality. Sometimes you may be angry with God, sometimes thankful, but one thing is certain – you are in communication. God is not a mental concept, it has become a deep, intimate relationship. That is what prayer means.
But our prayers have gone rotten because we don’t know how to communicate with beings. And if you cannot communicate with beings, you cannot communicate with the Being – Being with a capital ‘B’ – it is impossible. If you cannot communicate with a tree, how can you communicate with the total existence? And if you feel foolish talking to a tree, you will feel more foolish talking to God.
Leave one hour aside every day for a prayerful state of mind, and don’t make your prayer a verbal affair. Make it a feeling thing. Rather than talking with the head, feel it. Go and touch the tree, hug the tree, kiss the tree; close your eyes and be with the tree as if you are with your beloved. Feel it.
And soon you will come to a deep understanding of what it means to put the self aside, of what it means to become the other.
FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING.
THIS CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS AS EACH BEING, AND NOTHING ELSE EXISTS.
‘यह चेतना ही प्रत्येक प्राणी के रूप में है। अन्य कुछ भी नहीं है।’
Scientists used to say in the past that only matter existed, nothing else. Great systems of philosophy arose based on the concept that only matter existed. But even those who believed that matter existed had to concede that there was something like consciousness. Then what was it? They said that consciousness was just an epi-phenomenon, just a by-product of matter. It was nothing but matter in disguise, something very subtle but still material. But this half century has seen a very great miracle happen.
Scientists tried and tried to find out what matter was, but the more they tried, they more they came to realize that there was nothing like matter. Matter was analyzed and it was found that it had disappeared. Nietzsche had said just a hundred years before, “God is dead.” With God dead there can be no consciousness because God means the totality of consciousness. But within a hundred years matter is dead – and it is dead not because religious people believe it so but because scientists have come to a definite conclusion that matter is just appearance. It appears to be as it is because we cannot see very deeply. If we can see deeply it disappears, and then energy is left.
This phenomenon of energy, this non-material energy force, has been known by mystics since long ago.In the Vedas, in the Bible, in the Koran, in the Upanishads – all over the world mystics have penetrated into existence and have always concluded that matter is just an appearance; deep down there is no matter, only energy. With this science now agrees. And the mystics have said one thing more which science has yet to agree with – but with which it will have to agree one day! The mystics have come to another conclusion also. They say that when you penetrate deep into energy, energy also disappears and only consciousness remains.
So these are the three layers. Matter is the first layer, the surface. If you penetrate the surface then the second layer becomes apparent: you can perceive the second layer which is energy. Then if you penetrate energy, the third layer becomes illumined – that third layer is consciousness. In the beginning, science said that mystics were just dreaming, because science saw only matter and nothing else. Then science tried to penetrate, and the mystics’ second layer was uncovered:
matter is just apparent – deep down it is nothing but energy. And the mystics’ other claim is:
penetrate more into energy and energy also disappears, then there remains only consciousness.
That consciousness is God. That is the deepest-most core.
If you penetrate into your body, these three layers are there. Just on the surface is your body. The body looks material, but deep down there are currents of life, PRANA, vital energy. Without that vital energy your body would be just a corpse. It is alive, with something flowing in it. That flowing ‘something’ is energy. But deeper, still deeper, you are aware, you can witness. You can witness both your body and your vital energy. That witnessing is your consciousness.
Every existence has three layers. The deepest is the witnessing consciousness. In the middle is vital energy and just on the surface is matter, a material body.
This technique says, THIS CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS AS EACH BEING, AND NOTHING ELSE EXISTS. WHAT ARE YOU? Who are you? If you close your eyes and try to find out who you are, ultimately you are bound to come to a conclusion that you are consciousness. Everything else may belong to you, but you are not that. The body belongs to you, but you can be aware of the body – and that which is aware of the body becomes separate. The body becomes an object of knowledge and you become the subject. You can know your body.Not only can you know, you can manipulate your body, you can activate it or make it inactive. You are separate. You can do something with your body.
And not only are you not your body, you are not your mind either. You can become aware of your mind also. If thoughts move, you can see them, and you can do something with them: you can make them disappear completely, you can become thoughtless. Or, you can concentrate your consciousness on one thought and not allow it to move from there. You can focus yourself on it and make it remain there. Or, you can allow a riverlike flow of thoughts.You can do something with your thoughts. You can even dissolve them completely until there is no thought – but still you are.
You will know that there are no thoughts, that a vacuum has come into being; but you will be there, witnessing that vacuum.
The only thing you cannot separate yourself from is your witnessing energy. That means you are that. You cannot separate yourself from it. You can separate yourself from everything else: you can know that you are not your body, not your mind, but you cannot know that you are not your witnessing because whatsoever you do you will be the witness. You cannot separate yourself from witnessing.
That witnessing is consciousness. And unless you come to a point from where separation becomes impossible, you have not come to yourself.
So there are methods by which the seeker goes on eliminating. He goes on eliminating – first the body, then the mind, and then he comes to the point where nothing can be eliminated. In the Upanishads they say, NETI, NETI. This is a deep method: “This is not, that is not.” So the seeker goes on knowing, “This is not, this is not me, this is not I.” He goes on and on until ultimately he comes to a point where he cannot say. “This is not I.” Just a witnessing self remains. Pure consciousness remains. This pure consciousness exists as each being.
Whatsoever is in existence is just a phenomenon of this consciousness, just a wave, just a crystallization of this consciousness – and nothing else exists. But this has to be felt. Analysis can be helpful, intellectual understanding can be helpful, but it has to be FELT that nothing else exists, only consciousness. Then behave as if only consciousness exists.
I have heard about Lin Chi, a Zen master. As he was sitting one day in his hut someone came to see him. The man who came was angry. He may have been fighting with his wife or with his boss or something – but he was angry. He pushed open the door in anger, he threw down his shoes in anger and then he came, very respectfully, and bowed down to Lin Chi. Lin Chi said, “First go and ask forgiveness from the door and from the shoes.” The man must have looked at Lin Chi very strangely.
There were other people also sitting there and they started laughing. Lin Chi said, “Stop!” and then said to the man, “If you don’t do it then leave. I will have nothing to do with you.” The man said, “It will look crazy to ask forgiveness from the shoes and from the door.” Lin Chi said, “It was not crazy when you expressed anger. Will it now be crazy? Everything has a consciousness. So you go, and unless the door forgives you, I am not going to allow you in.”
The man felt awkward but he had to go. Later on he became a monk himself and became enlightened. When he became enlightened, he related the whole anecdote and he said, “When I stood before the door, asking forgiveness, I felt awkward, foolish. But then I thought that if Lin Chi says so, there must be something in it. I trusted Lin Chi, so I thought that even if it was foolish do it. In the beginning whatsoever I was saying to the door was just superficial, artificial; but by and by I started to get warm. And Lin Chi was waiting and he said that he would watch. If the door forgave me, only then could I come in; otherwise I had to stay there until I had persuaded the door and the shoes to forgive me. By and by I became warm. I forgot that many people were looking. I forgot about Lin Chi – and then the concern became sincere and real. I started to feel the door and the shoes were changing their mood. And the moment I realized that the door and the shoes had changed and that they are feeling happy, Lin Chi immediately said that I could come. I had been forgiven.”
This incident became a transforming phenomenon in his life because for the first time he became aware that everything is really a crystallization of consciousness. If you cannot see it, it is because you are blind. If you cannot hear it, it is because you are deaf. There is nothing the matter with the things around you. Everything is condensed consciousness. The problem is with you – you are not open and sensitive.
This technique says, THIS CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS AS EACH BEING, AND NOTHING ELSE EXISTS. Live with this notion. Be sensitive to this and wherever you move, move with this mind and this heart – that everything is consciousness and nothing else exists. Sooner or later, the world will change its face. Sooner or later, objects disappear and persons start appearing everywhere.
Sooner or later, the whole world will be suddenly illumined and you will know that you were living in a world of dead things just because of your insensitivity. Otherwise everything is alive – not only alive, everything is conscious.
Everything deep down is nothing but consciousness. But if you leave it as a theory, if you believe in it as a theory, then nothing will happen. You will have to make it a way of life a style of life – behaving as if everything is conscious. In the beginning it will be an ‘as if’, and you will feel foolish, but if you can persist in your foolishness, and if you can dare to be foolish, soon the world will start revealing its mysteries.
Science is not the only methodology to use to enter the mysteries of existence. Really, it is the crudest methodology, the slowest. A mystic can enter existence in a single moment. Science will take millions of years to penetrate that much. The Upanishads say that the world is illusory, that matter is illusory, but only after five thousand years can science say that matter is illusory. The Upanishads say that deep down energy is conscious – science will take another five thousand years more. Mysticism is a jump; science is a very slow movement. The intellect cannot jump; it has to argue – argue every fact, prove, disprove, experiment. But the heart can jump immediately.
Remember, for the intellect a process is necessary, then comes the conclusion – process first, then the conclusion – logical. For the heart, conclusion comes first, then the process. It is just the reverse. That is why mystics cannot prove anything. They have the conclusion, but they don’t have the process.
You may not be aware, you may not have noticed, that mystics simply talk about conclusions. If you read the Upanishads you will find only conclusions. When for the first time they were translated into Western languages, Western philosophers couldn’t see the point – because there was no argument.
How do you reach this conclusion? What is the proof? On what premises do you declare, “There is Brahma”? The Upanishads don’t say anything, they simply come to a conclusion. The heart reaches a conclusion immediately. And when the conclusion is reached, you can create the process. That is the meaning of theology.
Mystics reach the conclusion and theologians create the process. Jesus reached the conclusion and then the theologians – St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas – they created the process. That is secondary. The conclusion has been reached, now you have to find the proofs. The proof is in the life of the mystic. He cannot argue about it. He himself is the proof – if you can see it. If you cannot see, then there is no proof. Then religion is absurd.
Don’t make these techniques theories. They are not. They are jumps into experience, jumps into conclusion.
THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE.
‘यह चेतना ही प्रत्येक की मार्ग दर्शक सत्ता है, यही हो रहो।’
The first thing is that you have the guide within you but you don’t use it. And you have not used it for so long, for so many lives, that you may not even be aware that a guide exists within you. I was reading Castaneda’s book. His master, Don Juan, gives him a beautiful experiment to do. It is one of the oldest experiments.
On a dark night, on a very hilly track, dangerous, without any light, Castaneda’s master said, “You simply believe in the inner guide and start running.” It was dangerous. It was a hilly track, unknown, with trees, bushes, abysses. He could fall anywhere. Even in the daylight he had to be alert walking there, and at night everything was dark. He could not see anything and his master said, “Don’t walk, run!” He couldn’t believe it! It was simply suicidal. He became scared – but the master ran. He ran off just like a wild animal, and came running back. And Castaneda could not understand how he was doing it. Not only was he running in this darkness, but each time he came running directly to him, as if he could see. Then by and by Castaneda gathered courage. If this old man could do this, why not he? He tried, and by and by he felt an inner light coming in. Then he started running.
You only ARE whenever you stop thinking. The moment you stop thinking, the inner happens. If you don’t think, everything is okay – it is as if some inner guide is working. Your reason has misguided you. And the greatest misguidance has been this: you cannot believe in the inner guide.
First, you have to convince your reason. Even if your inner guide says, “Go ahead,” you have to convince your reason and then you miss opportunities. Because there are moments… you can use them or you can miss them. Intellect takes time, and while you are pondering, contemplating, thinking, you miss the moment. Life is not waiting for you. One has to live immediately. One has to be really a warrior – as they say in Zen – because when you are fighting in the field with your sword, you cannot think. You have to move without thinking.
Zen masters have used the sword as a technique for meditation, and they say in Japan that if two Zen masters, two meditative persons, are fighting with those swords, there can be no conclusion.
No one can be defeated and no one is going to win, because both are not thinking.. The swords are just not in their hands, they are in the hands of their inner guide, the non-thinking inner guide, and before the other attacks, the guide knows and defends. You cannot think about it because there is no time. The other is aiming at your heart. In a flash of a moment the sword will penetrate to the heart. There is no time to think about it, about what to do. When the thought, “penetrate the heart” occurs to him, simultaneously the thought, “defend” must occur to you – simultaneously, with no gap – only then can you defend. Otherwise you will be no more.
So they teach swordsmanship as a meditation and they say, “Be moment to moment with the inner guide, don’t think. Allow the inner being to do whatsoever happens to it. Don’t interfere with the mind.” This is very difficult because we are so trained with our minds. Our schools, our colleges, our universities, the whole culture, the whole pattern of civilization, teach our heads. We have lost contact with the inner guide. Everyone is born with that inner guide but it is not allowed to work, to function. It is almost paralyzed, but it can be revived.
This sutra is for that inner guide. THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE. Don’t think with the head. Really, don’t think at all. Just move. Try it is some situations. It will be difficult, because the old habit will be to start thinking. You will have to be alert: not to think, but to feel inwardly what is coming to the mind. You may be confused many times because you will not be able to know whether it is coming from the inner guide or from the surface of the mind. But soon you will know the feeling, the difference.
When something comes from the inner, it comes from your navel upwards. You can feel the flow, the warmth, coming from the navel upwards. Whenever your mind thinks, it is just on the surface, in the head, and then it goes down. If your mind decided something, then you have to force it down. If your inner guide decides, then something bubbles up in you. It comes from the deep core of your being towards the mind. The mind receives it, but it is not of the mind. It comes from beyond – and that is why the mind is scared about it. For reason it is reliable because it comes from behind – without any reason with it, without any proofs. It simply bubbles up.
Try it in certain situations. For example, you have lost your path in a forest. Try it. Don’t think – just close your eyes, sit down, be meditative, and don’t think. Because it is futile – how can you think?
You don’t know. But thinking has become such a habit that you go on thinking even in moments when nothing can come out of it. Thinking can think only about something which is already known.
You are lost in a forest, you don’t have any map, there is nobody you can ask. What are you thinking about? But still you think. That thinking will be just a worry, not a thinking. And the more you get worried, the less the inner guide can be competent.
Be unworried. Sit down under a tree, and just allow thoughts to drop and subside. Just wait, don’t think. Don’t create the problem, just wait. And when you feel a moment of non-thinking has come, then stand up and start moving. Wheresoever your body moves, allow it to move. You just be a witness. Don’t interfere. The lost path can be found very easily. But the only condition is, “Don’t interfere with the mind.”
This has happened many times unknowingly. Great scientists say that whenever a great discovery has been made, it was never made by the mind; it was always made by the inner guide.
Madame Curie was trying and trying to solve a mathematical problem. She did her best, all that was possible. Then she got fed up. For days together, weeks together, she had been working and nothing had come out. She was feeling just mad. No path was leading to the solution. Then one night, just exhausted, she fell down and slept. And in the night, in a dream, the conclusion bubbled up. She was so concerned with the conclusion that the dream was broken, she awoke. Immediately she wrote down the conclusion – because there was no process in the dream, just a conclusion.
She wrote it down on a pad and then slept again. In the morning she was puzzled; the conclusion was right, but she didn’t know how it had been achieved. There was no process, no method. Then she tried to find the process; now it was an easier affair because the conclusion was in the hand, and it is easy to go back from the conclusion. She won the Nobel Prize because of this dream – but she always wondered how it happened.
When your mind gets exhausted and cannot do any more, it simply retires. In that moment of retirement the inner guide can give hints, clues, keys. The man who won the Nobel Prize for the inner structure of a human cell, saw it in a dream. He saw the whole structure of the human cell, the inner cell, in a dream, and then in the morning he just made a picture of it. He himself couldn’t believe that it could be so, so he had to work for years. After years of work he could conclude that the dream was true.
With Madame Curie it happened that when she came to know this inner process of the inner guide, she decided to try it. Once there was a problem which she wanted to solve, so she thought, “Why worry about it, and why try? Just go to sleep.” She slept well, but there was no solution. So she was puzzled. Many times she tried: when there was a problem immediately she would go to sleep.
But there was no solution. First, the intellect has to be tried, completely; only then can the solution bubble up. The head has to be completely exhausted otherwise it goes on functioning, even in a dream.
So now scientists say that all the great discoveries are intuitive, not intellectual. This is what is meant by the inner guide.
THIS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE. Lose the head and drop into this inner guide. It is there. Old scriptures say that the master or the guru – the “outer” guru – can be helpful only in finding the inner guru. That is all. Once the outer guru has helped you to find the inner guru, the function of the outer guru is no more.
You cannot reach to the truth through a master; you can reach only to the inner master through a master – and then this inner master will lead you to the truth. The outer master is just a representative, a substitute. He has his inner guide and he can feel your inner guide also, because they both exist on the same wavelength – they both exist in the same tuning and the same dimension.
If I have found my inner guide, I can look into you and feel your inner guide. And if I am really a guide to you, all my guidance will be to lead you to your inner guide.
Once you are in contact with the inner guide, I am no longer needed. Now you can move alone. So all that a guru can do is to push you down from your head to your navel, from your reasoning to your intuitive force, from your argumentative mind to your trusting guide. And it is not like this with only human beings, it is so with animals, with birds, with trees, with everything. The inner guide exists, and many new phenomena have been discovered which are mysteries.
There are a number of cases. For example, the mother fish dies immediately after she lays the egg.
Then the father helps the egg to be fertilized, and then he dies. The egg remains alone without a mother and without a father. It matures. Then a new fish is born. This fish doesn’t know anything about father, mother, parents; she doesn’t know from where they came. But although this particular fish lives in a particular part of the sea, she will move to the part from where the father and mother came to lay the eggs. She will move to the source. This has been happening again and again, and when she wans to lay an egg she will come to this bank, lay the egg, and die. So there is no communication between parents and their children but the children somehow know where they have to go, where they have to move – and they never miss. And you cannot misguide them. It has been tried, but you cannot misguide them. They will reach to the source. Some inner guide is working.
In Soviet Russia they have been experimenting with cats, with rats, and with many small animals. A cat, a mother cat, was separated from her children and the children were taken deep down into the sea; she could not know what was happening to her children. Every type of scientific instrument was attached to the cat to measure what was going on within her mind and her heart, and then one child was killed, deep in the sea. Immediately the mother became aware. Her blood-rate changed. She became puzzled and worried, her heartbeat increased.. as soon as the child was killed. And the scientific instrument said that she was feeling severe pain. Then after a while everything became normal. Then another child was killed – again the change. And the same with the third child. It happened every time, exactly at the same time, without any time-gap. What was happening?
Now Soviet scientists say the mother has an inner guide, an inner feeling-center and it is joined to her children, wherever they are. And she immediately feels a telepathic relationship. The human mother will not feel so much. This is puzzling. It should be quite the otherwise: the human mother should feel more because she is more evolved. But she will not because the head has taken everything into its hands and the inner centers are all lying paralyzed.
THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE.
Whenever you are puzzled in a situation and you cannot see how to get out of it, don’t think; just be in a deep non-thinking and allow the inner guide to guide you. In the beginning you will feel afraid, insecure, but soon, when you come every time to the right conclusion, when you come every time to the right door, you will gather courage and you will become trusting.
If this trust happens, I call it faith. This really is religious faith – the trust in the inner guide. Reasoning is part of the ego. It is you believing in yourself. The moment you go deep within you, you have come to the very soul of the universe. Your inner guide is part of the Divine guidance. When you follow it, you follow the Divine; when you follow yourself, you are complicating things, and you don’t know what you are doing. You may think yourself very wise. You are not.
Wisdom comes from the heart, it is not of the intellect. Wisdom comes from the innermost depth of your being, it is not of the head. Cut your head off, be headless – and follow the being, whatsoever, wheresoever it leads. Even if it leads into danger, go into danger, because that will be the path for you and your growth. Through that danger you will grow and become mature. Even if the inner guide leads you to death, go into it, because that is going to be the path for you. Follow it, trust it, and move with it.
The inner guide:
The first question:
Question 1:
SOME OF THE TECHNIQUES IN THE ONE HUNDRED
AND TWELVE METHODS SEEM TO BE END RESULTS AND NOT TECHNIQUES,
SUCH AS THOSE THAT SAY TO “BECOME UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS”
OR “BE THIS ONE” ETC.IT SEEMS THAT WE NEED TECHNIQUES TO ACHIEVE THESE TECHNIQUES.
WERE TECHNIQUES LIKE THESE MEANT FOR VERY ADVANCED PERSONS
WHO COULD JUST BECOME COSMIC AT A MERE SUGGESTION?
Such techniques were meant, not for very advanced persons, but for very innocent persons – simple, innocent, trusting. Then just a suggestion is enough. You have to have something to do because you cannot trust.You don’t have faith. Unless you do something, nothing can happen to you because you believe in action. If something happens to you suddenly without any doing on your part, you will be scared and you will not believe it. You may even bypass it; you may not even record in the mind that it happened. Unless you DO, you cannot feel something happening to you – this is the way of the ego. But for an innocent person, for an innocent, open mind, just a suggestion is enough.
Why? Because really, the innermost being is not something to be achieved in the future – it is here and now, it is already the case. Whatsoever is to be attained is here, present in you right this very moment. If you can trust without any effort, it can become revealed. It is not a question of time, of you having to work it out. It is not somewhere far away that you have to travel to. It is you. You may call it God, you may call it nirvana or whatsoever you like – it is you already. So even a suggestion , if believed totally, can reveal it to you. That’s why so much significance is given to SHRADDHA, trust, faith. If a person can believe in the master, just a hint, a suggestion, an indication – and in a flash everything will be revealed.
The basic point to be understood is this: there are things which you cannot attain right now because time will be needed to produce them. They are not with you. If I give you a seed, it cannot immediately become a tree. Time will be needed, and you will have to wait and work. Then the seed cannot become the tree immediately. But you are really the tree already. It is not a seed which has to be worked, it is a tree hidden in darkness, it is a tree which is covered, it is a tree which you are inattentive too – that’s all. Your inattention is the cover. You are not looking at it, that’s all. You are looking somewhere else and that’s why you are missing it. In a trusting moment the master can tell you, just by a suggestion, that it is here. And if you can believe, if you can look in that dimension in trust, it will be revealed to you.
These techniques are not for advanced people; they are for simple, innocent people. Advanced people are, in a way, difficult. They are not innocent, they have been working, they have attained something, and they have a subtle ego behind it. They know something so they are not innocent, they cannot believe. You will have to argue and convince them – and then too they will have to make some efforts. By an innocent mind, I mean a mind which is not arguing. It is just like a small child.
The child goes with his father hand in hand, he is not afraid. Whatsoever the father is leading, he must be leading in the right direction. The father knows – so the child need not worry about it. He is not thinking of the future, what is going to happen is not his concern. He is enjoying the very journey; the end is not the problem at all. For the father it may be a problem. He may be afraid. He may be wondering whether they have lost the path or not, whether they are on the right path or not.
But for the child it is not a problem. He knows that the father knows. That’s all. And wherever the father leads, he will follow – and he is happy at this very moment.
A trusting disciple, an innocent mind is just like a child – and the master is more than a father. Once the disciple surrenders, he trusts. Then at any moment, when the master feels that the disciple is tuned, that the disciple is in harmony, he will just give a hint.
I have heard about a Zen master, Bokuju. He struggled hard to attain enlightenment, but nothing happened. Really, with a hard struggle sometimes nothing will happen, because the hard struggle is through the ego. And through hard struggle the ego becomes more hard. He did whatsoever could be done but the goal was no nearer. Rather, on the contrary, it was further away; further away than when he had started the journey. He was puzzled, confused, so he came to his master. The master said, “For a few years just completely stop any effort, any goal, any destination. Just forget, and live moment to moment near me. Don’t do anything. Simply eat, sleep, walk, and just be near me. And don’t raise any question… just see me, my presence. And don’t make any effort because nothing is to be achieved. Forget the achieving mind because the achieving mind is always in the future – that’s why it goes on missing the present. Just forget that you have to achieve anything.”
Bokuju believed in his master. He started living with him. For a few days, a few months, ideas floated in, thoughts came, and sometimes he would become uneasy and would think, “I am wasting time.
I am not doing anything. How can it happen without doing anything? If it couldn’t happen through such hard effort, how is it going to be easily attained by not doing anything?” But, still, he believed in the master. By and by the mind slowed down, and in the present of his master he started to feel a subtle calm flowing – a silence would fall from the master onto him. He started feeling a merging.
Years passed. He completely forgot that he was. The master became the center and he started to live like a shadow.
Then the miracle is possible – this happening itself is the miracle. One day, suddenly, the master called his name, “Bokuju, are you here?” Just this, “Bokuju, are you here?” And he said, “Yes, master.” And, it is said, he became enlightened.
There was nothing like a technique, not even a suggestion – just, “Bokuju, are you here?” The total presence had been called, “Are you here, not moving anywhere, not gone somewhere else? With total intensity, are you present here?” And Bokuju said, “Yes, master.” In that “yes” he became totally present there.
It is said that the master started laughing and Bokuju started laughing, and the master said, “Now you can go. Now you can move out there and help people by your presence.” Bokuju never taught any method. He would simply ask this much, “Just be near. Remain present.” And whenever a disciple was in tune, he would call the name of the disciple and ask, “Are you here?” This was the whole technique.
But this technique will need a grounding of your mind, a deep innocence. There are many techniques which are simple, the simplest possible: just a saying, “Be this one” – just a hint. But it must have been said by the master in a certain moment. “Be this one” cannot always be said. It must have been said in a certain tuning, when the disciple was totally one with the master, or totally with the universe, merged. Then the master says, “Be this one” – and suddenly the focus will change and the last part of the ego will dissolve.
These methods worked in the past but now it is difficult, very difficult, because you are so calculating, you are so clever. And being clever is just against being innocent. You are so calculating, you know too much arithmetic. This calculation goes on and on in the mind: whatsoever you do, it is always calculated, planned. You are never innocent, never open, receptive; you believe too much in yourself. Hence you go on missing. These methods won’t be helpful for you unless you prepare.
That preparation can be very long, and you are very impatient.
This age is basically the most impatient age that has ever happened on this earth. Everyone is impatient, everyone is too time-conscious, and everyone wants to do everything immediately.
Not that it cannot be done – it can be done immediately. But with such time-consciousness it is impossible. People come to me and they say that they have come only for one day. The next day they are going to Sai Baba, and after meeting him they will go to Rishikesh, and then they will go somewhere else. Then they return frustrated and they think there is nothing India can give. It is not a question of whether India can give something or not, the question is always whether you can receive it or not. You are in such a hurry and you want something immediately. Just like instant coffee, you think of instant meditation, instant nirvana. It is not possible. Nirvana cannot be packed, cannot be made instant. Not that it is impossible to make it instant, it can become instant – but it can become instant only with the mind which is not after the instant. That’s the problem. It can become instant.
Immediately, this moment, it can happen. Not even a single moment is needed. But only to one who is relaxed about time completely, to one who can wait for infinity – for him it will happen instantly.
This looks paradoxical but this is the case. If you can wait for eternity, you will not need to wait at all.
But if you cannot wait for even a single moment, you will have to wait for eternity. You will have to wait because the mind which says, “Let it happen immediately,” is a mind which has already moved from the moment. It is running, it is standing nowhere, it is just on the move. A mind which is on the move, on the way, cannot be innocent.
You may not be aware of it but innocent people are always without time-consciousness. Time lingers slowly. There is no hurry to go anywhere, they are not running. They are enjoying moment to moment. They are chewing each moment. And each moment has its own ecstasy to deliver. But you are in such a hurry that it cannot be delivered. While you are here, your hands are in the future, your mind is in the future – you will miss this moment. And this will be always the case; you will always miss the now. And NOW is the only time! The future is false, the past is just memory. The past is no more, the future is yet to be – and all that ever happens is the now. Now is the only time.
So if you can be prepared to slow down a little, to become non-calculating, playing like children, here and now, then these simple techniques can work miracles. But this century is too time- conscious. That’s why you ask, IT SEEMS THAT WE NEED TECHNIQUES TO ACHIEVE THESE TECHNIQUES. No. These are techniques, not end-results. They look like end-results because you cannot conceive of how they can work. They can work in particular mind; they cannot work in other types of mind. And really, those who know, they say that all the techniques will ultimately bring you to the innocence where the phenomenon happens. When the phenomenon happens, it will be because the techniques will have brought you to that innocence – if the innocence is there.
But it is difficult now because nowhere is innocence taught; everywhere we are teaching cleverness.
Universities are not to make you innocent, they are to make you clever, cunning, calculating. The more clever you are, the better you will be in the struggle of life. You can gain much wealth, prestige, power, if you are calculating. If you are innocent, you will prove to be stupid; if you are innocent, then you will be nowhere in this competitive world. This is the problem: in this competitive world you may not be anywhere, but in that non-competitive world of nirvana, if you are innocent, you will be somewhere. If you are calculating you will not be anywhere in the world of nirvana, but in this world you will be somewhere. And we have chosen this world to be our goal.
Old universities differed completely, their orientation was totally different. Nalanda, Takshila – they did not teach calculation, they did not teach cleverness. They were teaching innocence. Their orientation was different from Oxford or Kashi or Cambridge. Their orientation was totally different – they were creating a different type of mind. So it almost always happened that a person who studied in Takshshila or Nalanda would become a BHIKKHU, a SANNYASIN, in the end. By the time he graduated from university he would renounce this world. Those universities were anti-world; they were preparing for some other dimension. They were preparing you for something else which cannot be measured in terms of this world. These techniques were for those type of people. Either they were innocent by their nature or they were training themselves to be innocent.
When Jesus said to his followers, “If someone hits you on one cheek, you give him the other,” what is he intending to do? He is trying to make you innocent. Only a foolish person would do this. When someone hits you on one cheek, a calculating mind will say, “Hit him hard, immediately.” And a really calculating mind will say, “Before someone hits you, hit him. Because attack is the best defense.”
Ask Machiavelli – he is the cleverest mind. He says, “Before someone attacks you, you attack him, because attack is the best defense. Once someone has attacked you, you are already weak; he has already gained over you. Now the race is not equal. He is ahead of you. So don’t allow the enemy to go ahead. Attack before anybody attacks you.”
This is a calculating mind; this is a clever mind. Machiavelli was read by every prince and every king in medieval Europe – but he was such a clever person that no king would employ him. He was read – his book was the bible for power-politics, every prince would read his book The Prince and they would follow it – but no king was ready to employ him because he was such a clever man. It was better to keep him away – he was dangerous; he knew too much. He said, “Virtue is not good, but pretending to be virtuous is. Don’t be virtuous, but pretend always that you are virtuous. That is the real good because then you gain from both the ends: from vice you gain, and from virtue also.”
This is the calculating mind. Go on pretending that you are virtuous, and always praise virtue. But never be really virtuous. Always praise virtue so others know that you are a virtuous person. Always condemn vice – but don’t be afraid to use it.
Jesus says, “When someone hits you on one cheek, give him the other. And if someone takes your coat, snatches it, give him your shirt also. And if someone forces you to carry his load for one mile, tell him that you are ready to carry it for two miles.” This is patent foolishness, but very meaningful.
If you can do this, these techniques will be for you. Jesus is preparing his disciples for sudden enlightenment. Just think about it. If you can be so innocent, so trusting, that if the other is hitting you, he must be hitting you for your good – so give him the other cheek also, and let him hit it. The other’s goodness is believed in, trusted in; no one is your enemy. When Jesus says, “Love your enemies,” this is the meaning. No one is your enemy; don’t see the enemy anywhere. That doesn’t mean that there will not be enemies and there will not be people who will exploit you. There will be. They will exploit you. But be exploited – and don’t be cunning. Just look at that dimension: be exploited but don’t be cunning. Be exploited but don’t be mistrusting, don’t disbelieve, don’t lose faith. That is more valuable than anything others can cheat you of. Nothing else is so valuable.
But how do our minds function? If one man deceives you, the whole of humanity is evil. If one man is dishonest or you think that he is dishonest, then you don’t believe in man at all. Then the whole of humanity has become dishonest. If one Jew is a miser, then the whole race of Jews is miserly.
If one Mohammedan is bigoted, then all Mohammedans are. Just one is enough for us to lose our faith in all. Jesus says, “Even if all are dishonest, you should not lose faith, because faith is more valuable than what these dishonest people can take from you by their dishonesty.” So really, if you lose faith you are losing something; otherwise nothing is lost.
For such innocent people these techniques are enough, they will not ask for anything more. You say, and it happens to them. Just on hearing the master many have become illumined – but in the past, not in this age.
I have heard a story about Rinzai. He was a very poor BHIKKHU, a poor SANNYASIN, a beggar.
As he was sleeping in his hut a thief entered. There was nothing in the hut except a blanket that he himself was using. He was sleeping on the floor, covered with his blanket. Then he became very uncomfortable and stared to think, “What an unfortunate fellow! He has come so far from the village to find something, and there is nothing in my hut. What misery! How to help him? The only thing is this blanket.” And he was under it and the thief would not have the courage to snatch the blanket, so he slipped out from under it, left it there and slipped into a dark corner. The thief took the blanket and went away. The night was very cold, but Rinzai was happy that the thief had not gone back empty-handed.
Then he sat at the window of his hut. The night was cool, and the full moon was in the sky. He wrote a small haiku, a small poem. In the haiku he said, “If I could have given this moon to that thief, I would have.” This mind! What has he lost? Just a blanket. What has he gained? The whole world, all that can be gained. He has gained innocence, trust, love.
For this man no technique is needed. His master would say, “Just look. Be aware. Be alert.” And that would do.
The second question:
Question 2:
HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE DICTATES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND
AND THAT OF THE INNER GUIDE? HOW CAN ONE RECOGNIZE
THAT THE INNER GUIDE HAS COME INTO FUNCTION?
The first thing: because of Freud, much misunderstanding has arisen around the word “unconscious”. Freud completely misunderstood it, misinterpreted it. And he has become the very basis of modern knowledge about mind. To Freud, unconscious meant simply the repressed conscious, the suppressed part of the conscious. So all that is evil and bad, immoral, has been suppressed. Because the society cannot allow it, it has to be suppressed within. For Freud, that repressed part is the unconscious – but not for mystics. Freud is not a mystic; he has not entered his own unconscious. He has been simply observing cases of patients: ill people, abnormal people, mad, insane, pathological. He has been studying the pathological mind, and through the study of the pathological mind – and that, too, from without – he concluded that just underneath the conscious there is an unconscious mind. That unconscious mind carries all that has been suppressed from the childhood, all that society has condemned. The mind has suppressed it, just to forget that it is there.
But it is there – and it goes on functioning. And it is very powerful: it goes on changing the conscious, it goes on playing tricks with the conscious. The conscious is really impotent before it, because whatsoever is repressed is repressed only because it is so powerful that society cannot cope with it. So society has been repressing it and society doesn’t know what else to do with it. For example, sex. It is so powerful that if you don’t repress it you won’t know what to do with it. It will lead you into dangerous paths. And it is such a forceful energy that the whole society will become chaotic if it is allowed completely.No marriage could exist, no love could exist, everything could be just a chaos if it was allowed total freedom – because then man would behave like an animal. If there were no marriage, no family, the whole society would be destroyed. Society depends on the unity of the family; the family depends on marriage; marriage depends on sex-suppression. Everything that is natural, forceful, has been inhibited, tabooed – so forcibly that you feel guilty about it and you go on fighting with it. Society has not only created policemen outside, it has created inner policemen, your conscience – a double arrangement so that you don’t go astray so that you cannot be natural, you have to be unnatural.
Now modern psychologists say that insanity is part of civilization – no civilization can be without madness. But mad people are suffering because you have forced such an order over them that their natural instincts are crushed. They have been crippled. It may be that your madmen are more powerful than you, that’s why their inner instincts have revolted and they have thrown their conscience, their mind, everything, overboard. That’s why they are mad. A better concept of humanity, a better organization, a better discipline with more knowledge and wisdom, may use them. They may prove geniuses; they may prove very talented people. They are. But they have such a force in them that they cannot repress themselves. And society will not allow them to move because they are wild. Freud came to the conclusion that civilization needs the unconscious, the repressed part.
But really, for Tantra and yoga this unconscious is not the unconscious, it is just between the conscious and the unconscious, a small boundary. It is subconscious. The conscious has forced something down, but the conscious knows about it. It is not really unconscious, you know about it.
You may not want to recognize it, you may not want to be attentive to it, because you are afraid that if you give it attention it will come up. You have forced it into darkness but you are conscious bout it.
The Freudian unconscious is not really unconscious, it is only subconscious. It is not dark night, it is in the light, you can see it.
Tantra talks about the real unconscious which is not suppressed by you but which is your deepest being. And your conscious is just one part of it which has come into light, the one-tenth part which has seen the light, which has become conscious. Nine parts, nine-tenths, are just hidden underneath. That unconscious is really your source of life-energy, of being. Your conscious mind is one-tenth of the whole mind and this conscious mind has created its own center: that center is the ego. This center is false because it doesn’t belong to the whole mind, it is not the center of the whole mind. It is just a center of the conscious part, a fragment. The fragment has created its own center and that center goes on pretending it is the center of the whole being. No, your total mind has a center: that center is called the guide. That center is in the unconscious and it will be revealed only when five fragments, or half of the mind, come into light. Then the center which is the guide will be revealed. It is hidden in the unconscious.
So you need not be afraid of the unconscious; it is the Freudian unconscious you are afraid of. It is something to be afraid of. But this Freudian unconscious can be thrown out in catharsis. Hence my great insistence on catharsis. This Freudian unconscious can be thrown out in catharsis: whatsoever you wanted to do and you have not done, do it, meditatively. Don’t do it to anyone because that will create a chain of events – and you will not be in control. Just do it in a vacuum. If you are angry, do it in a vacuum. If you feel sexuality, throw it into the sky. If you feel anything, just allow it to move from your inwards outwards. Express it. A meditative catharsis will relieve you of the Freudian unconscious. With the technique that I am teaching – if it is followed – the Freudian unconscious will simply disappear. And only when this Freudian unconscious disappears can you penetrate the real unconscious. It is just in-between, between the conscious and the unconscious. You just go on throwing your rubbish things into a room and you close it; you go on accumulating a junkyard – Freudian unconscious is just a junkyard. Don’t throw it in – I say, throw it out. When it moves in, you will become pathological, you can go insane. When it moves out you will become fresh, young, unburdened. For this age, catharsis is a must. No one can reach the inner guide without catharsis.
And once you are in deep catharsis you need not be afraid. Then the real unconscious will start revealing itself; then it will penetrate into your conscious, and then for the first time you will become aware of your vast territory. You are not such a small fragment, you have a very vast being, and this vast being has a center – that center is the inner guide.
How to differentiate between the unconscious and the inner guide? How to differentiate between the Freudian unconscious and the inner guide? It will be difficult if you don’t go through catharsis.
But you can feel a difference by and by because the Freudian unconscious is just a repressed thing.
If something appears in you with a violent force, know well that this violent force is coming because you have repressed it in the first place. If something simply appears in you without any violence, just bubbles up silently, easily, without any sounds, even soundlessly, then know that this is the real unconscious. From the guide something is coming to you. But you will become proficient only when you go through catharsis. Then you will know what is happening. Whenever anything comes from the Freudian unconscious you will feel disturbed, it will make you uneasy, uncomfortable; and whenever something comes from the guide you will feel such serenity, you will feel so happy, so at ease, so at home, that you cannot imagine it. You will simply feel that this is the thing. Your total being is in harmony with it, there is no resistance. You know this is the right, this is the good, this is the truth – and nobody can convince you otherwise. With the Freudian unconscious you can never be serene, you can never be still and calm; you will be disturbed. It is a sort of disease that has come up – and there will be a fight with it. So it is better if you pass through deep catharsis, then the Freudian unconscious will become silent, by and by.
And just as bubbles come up from a riverbed, come up to the very surface of the water, you will feel bubbles coming up from the very bed of your being. They will come to your conscious mind.
But their very coming will give you a deep tranquility – a feeling that nothing can be more right than this. But before it happens you have to unburden yourself of the Freudian unconscious. And that can happen only if you are in a let-go, because the innermost being is so nonviolent that it will not assert itself. The Freudian unconscious will want to assert itself; every moment it is trying to assert itself and you are pushing it back. This is the difference. It wants to assert itself, it wants to become active, it wants to lead you somewhere, it wants to manipulate you – and you are resisting it, fighting it. The real unconscious, the guide, is not assertive. If you allow it, if you invite it, prayerfully, it will come to you just like an invited guest. You have to be in a let-go. Only then will it come. When it feels you are ready, when it feels it will not be denied, rejected, when it feels it will be welcomed, then it will come to you. So, you have to do two things: catharsis for the Freudian unconscious, and training in let-go and surrender for the real guide, the real unconscious. These two things done, you will know the difference.
The difference really cannot be taught to you – you will know it. When it happens, you will know it. How do you know the difference between when there is pain in your body and when the whole body feels a well-being? When the whole body is filled with well-being and when your head has a headache, how do you feel what the difference is? You simply know it. You cannot define it, you simply know it: you know what a headache is and you know what well-being is.
The real guide will always give you a feeling of well-being, and the Freudian unconscious will always give you a feeling of headache. It is a turmoil, it is an inner conflict, it is anguish, it is pain suppressed.
So whenever it comes you will feel painful all over.
Because of this Freudian unconscious, many things have become painful which are not naturally painful For example, sex. Because society has repressed sex, it has become painful. One of the most blissful things in natural life is sex. But it has become painful. If you move into sex you will feel frustrated, you will feel guilty, at the end you will feel weakened. And you will decide never to have sex again. This is not because of natural sex, this is because of the unconscious. Sex has become painful. It has been so repressed that it has become ugly and painful Otherwise it is one of the most natural ecstasies. If a child is never taught that sex is bad and a sin he will enjoy it, and every time he will feel a deep well-being flowing all over the body.
Men feel more well-being than women – because women are repressed more. No one requires that a boy should be a virgin but everyone requires, even the boy himself, that the girl he is going to marry should be a virgin. Even playboys require that the girl should be a virgin. Women’s unconscious has been repressed ore than men’s, that’s why only a few women achieve orgasm. And that, too, in the West – in the east not more than five per cent of women, at the most, achieve any enjoyment in sex.
Ninety-five percent are simply fed up with it. That’s why when sadhus and monks teach that sex is sin, women always agree. They gather in multitudes around monks because the thing appeals to them, it is right. Because they are so suppressed they have never known any bliss out of it. In India, while making love, woman are not supposed to move, be active. They have to lie still like a corpse.
If they are active their man will become suspicious: they are enjoying sex and this is not the sign of a good woman. A good woman is one who doesn’t enjoy. In the East they will say that if you want to marry, marry a good woman, and if you want to enjoy, then have a friendship with a bad woman – because only bad women can enjoy. This is unfortunate. The woman is not supposed to move, to be active, she should be just dead. How can she achieve orgasm when the energy is not moving?
And if she cannot enjoy it she is bound to be against the husband and she is bound to think that the husband is evil. Every day Indian women come to me and they say that they are fed up with sex and their husbands are forcing them again and again to have sex. They don’t like it, they are disgusted.
And why are the husbands not so disgusted? Why are the women disgusted? The reason is that they have a greater repressed unconscious about sex than men.
Sex will become painful. If you have suppressed it, it is a headache. Anything can become a headache – just suppress it, that is the trick. It will become a suffering. And anything can become blissful – just express it, don’t suppress it.
This Freudian unconscious is all that you know right now. You don’t know about the real unconscious, the Tantra unconscious – that’s why you are afraid. And afraid, you cannot let go. Afraid, you cannot lose control. You know that if you lose control, immediately the suppressed instincts will take over.
Immediately, whatsoever you have repressed will come to the mind and it will insist on being acted out. That’s why you are afraid. Catharsis is needed first so the fear goes. And then you can let go. And if you let go, a very silent force will start flowing to your conscious mind and you will feel a well-being, you will feel that you are at home, you will feel that everything is good, you will feel that you are blessed.
HOW CAN ONE RECOGNIZE THAT THE INNER GUIDE HAS COME INTO FUNCTION? This will be the first sign: you will start feeling good, good about yourself. Remember, you always feel bad about yourself. I almost never come across a person who feels good about himself. Everyone is condemning himself, everyone thinks he is bad. And when you think you are bad how do you suppose that someone else is going to love you? And when no one loves you, you feel frustrated.
But you yourself don’t love you. You have never touched your hand lovingly, you have never felt your body lovingly, you have never thanked God that he has given you such a beautiful body, such a beautiful organism. No, you just feel disgusted. And the religions, the so-called religions have taught you to feel condemned – this body is a bag of sins. You are carrying a burden.
When the unconscious is released you will feel suddenly that you are accepted, you are not bad.
Nothing is bad. The whole of life becomes deep down a blessing. You feel blessed. And the moment you feel blessed, all others around you become blessed; you can bless them, you can feel happy.
Because you feel condemned, you feel bad about yourself and you think the same about others.
How can you love another’s body if you condemn your own body? If you are against your own body, how can you love another body? You will condemn – deep down you will condemn. Really, religions have prepared you to become just ghosts. They don’t want you to be with the body, they want you to be just unembodied spirits. Everything has been so condemned..and you have taken it for granted.
I have seen in scriptures, in many scriptures, that it written that your body has nothing but blood, fat, phlegm – just to condemn it. I don’t know what these persons who were writing these scriptures wanted. Did they want gold to be there? Why is blood bad? Blood is life! But they have condemned it and we have accepted the condemnation. They must be mad, insane.
Jains always say that their TEERTHANKARAS never urinated, they don’t defecate. Such bad things.
But why is urine bad? What do you want to urinate instead of urine? And what is bad in it? But it is such a bad thing. And psychologists say that because the sex center and the urinating organ are the same in man, sex has become condemned. And in woman the sex center is just in the middle, on one side defecation and on the other side urination, sex cannot be good if it is between two such bad things. The condemnation of sex has come because we have condemned defecation. But why?
Why condemn it? What is bad? But we accept condemnation and when we accept, then there are problems.
Your whole body is condemned by neurotic people. They may have written scriptures but that doesn’t make any difference. They may have been great leaders – neurotics almost always are. They are great leaders because they are so fanatic that they can immediately get a following. And there are always people who worship fanaticism. Anyone who says something strongly will have people falling at his feet saying he is the right leader. and he may be just neurotic, just mad. These neurotic people have condemned you and you have accepted them, you have been conditioned by them.
When the unconscious flows in you, a subtle well-being will come. You will feel good: everything is good, and everything is Divine. Your body comes from the Divine, your blood also, your urine also.
Everything is Divine. When the unconscious flows in you, everything is Divine, everything becomes spiritual. Nothing is bd, nothing is condemned. This will be the feeling, and then you will fly. You will become so light you cannot walk. Then nothing is a burden on your head. Then you can enjoy small things in a very great way. Then every trivial things becomes a beauty. But that beauty is given by you – whatsoever you touch becomes golden because deep down you are so filled with bliss.
This will be the first thing that will happen to you – a goodness about yourself. And, when the unconscious starts flowing into your conscious, the second thing will be that you will become less world-oriented, less intellectual, more total. Then if you are happy you will not just simply say that you are happy – you will dance. Just saying, “I am happy,” is pale, meaningless. I see people who say, “I am happy” – but just look at their faces! I know people who say, “I love you,” but their body is not expressing anything. Words are dead but we have substituted them for life. When the unconscious flows in you, this will be the difference: you will live with your total being. When you feel happy, you will dance. Then you will not simply say, “I am happy”-you will be happy: that’s the difference. You will not say, “I am happy” – there is no need to say it because you will be happy.
Then there will be no need to say to someone, “I love you” – you will be love. Your whole being will show the feeling, you will vibrate with love. Anybody passing nearby will feel that you love; anyone just touched by your hand will feel a subtle energy has entered into him. There is a warmth in your presence, a happiness.
This will be the second thing. First, you will feel a goodness about yourself and about everything; and second, you will become total. When the guide takes you, you will be total.
The third question:
Question 3:
WHEN THAT INTUITION STARTS FUNCTIONING,
IS SURRENDER THE ONLY TECHNIQUE FOR THAT INTUITION, OR THE INNER GUIDE?DOES A PERSON LIVING THROUGH INTUITION ALWAYS SUCCEED?
HOW DO YOU VALUE SUCCESS AND FAILURE?
IS IT NOT TRUE THAT THE PERSON LIVING INTUITIVELY WILL BECOME WEAK INTELLECTUALLY?
Surrender is the only technique for the inner being to become active.
DOES A PERSON LIVING THROUGH INTUITION ALWAYS SUCCEED? No, but he is always happy – whether he succeeds or not. And a person not living intuitively is always unhappy whether he succeeds or not. Success is not the criterion because success depends on many things. Happiness is the criterion because happiness depends only on you. You may not succeed because others are competitors there. Even if you are working intuitively, others may be working more cunningly, more cleverly, more calculatingly, more violently, more immorally. So success depends on many other things; success is a social phenomenon. You may not succeed.
Who can say that Jesus succeeded? Crucifixion is not a success, it is the greatest failure. A man crucified when he was just thirty-three – what type of success is this? No one knew about him. Just a few villagers, uneducated people, were his disciples. He had no position, no prestige, no power.
What type of success is this? Crucifixion cannot be said to be a success. But he was happy. He was totally blissful – even when being crucified. And those who were crucifying him would remain alive for many years but they would remain in misery. So really, who was undergoing crucifixion? That is the point. Those who crucified Jesus, were they undergoing crucifixion? Or was Jesus, who was crucified? He was happy. How can you crucify happiness? He was ecstatic. How can you crucify ecstasy? You can kill the body but you cannot kill the soul. Those who crucified him, they lived, but their life was nothing but a long slow crucifixion – misery and misery and misery.
So the first thing is that I don’t say that if you follow the inner guide you will always succeed – in the sense that the world recognizes success; but in the sense that a Buddha or a Jesus recognizes success, you will succeed. But that success is measured by your happiness, your bliss – whatsoever happens is irrelevant, you will be happy. Whether the world says that you have been a failure, or the world makes you a star, a success, it doesn’t make any difference. You will be happy whatsoever the case; you will be blissful. Bliss is success to me. If you can understand that bliss is success, then I say you will succeed always.
But to you bliss is not success; success is something else. It may even be misery. Even if you know that it is going to be a misery, you long for success. Ask political leaders – they are in misery. I have not seen any political leader who is happy. They are just miserable, but still they are trying for higher posts, trying to get still higher on the ladder. And those who are already above him are in misery, and he knows it. But we are ready to be miserable if success comes to us. So what is success to us? Success is egoistic fulfillment, not bliss. It is just so that people will say that you have succeeded. You may have lost everything – you may have lost your soul; you may have lost all that innocence that gives bliss; you may have lost all that peace, silence, that brings you nearer to the Divine; you may have lost all, and become just a madman – but the world will say you are a success.
For the world, ego gratification is the success; for me it is not. For me, to be blissful is success – whether anyone knows about you or not. It is irrelevant whether anyone knows about you or not, whether you live totally unknown, unheard of, unnoticed. But if you are blissful, you have succeeded.
So remember this distinction because there are many people who would like to be intuitive, who would like to find the inner guide, just to succeed in the world. For them the inner guide will be a frustration. In the first place, they cannot find it. In the second place, even if they can find it, they will be miserable. Because what they are aiming at is recognition by the world, ego fulfillment – not bliss.
Be clear in the mind – don’t be success-oriented. Success is the greatest failure in the world. So don’t try to succeed otherwise you will be a failure. Think of being blissful. Every moment think of being more and more blissful. Then the whole world may say you are a failure but you will not be a failure. You have attained.
Buddha was a failure in the eyes of his friends, family, wife, father, teachers, society – he was a failure. He had become just a beggar. What type of success is this? He could have been a great emperor: he had the qualities, he had the personality, he had the mind. He could have been a great emperor but he became a beggar. He was a failure – obviously. But I say to you he was not a failure.
If he had become an emperor then he would have been a failure because he would have missed the real life. What he attained under the Bodhi Tree was the real and what he lost was unreal.
With the real you will succeed in the inner life; with the unreal… I don’t know. If you want to succeed in the unreal then follow the path of those who are working in cunningness, cleverness, competition, jealousy, violence. Follow their path, the inner guide is not for you. If you want to gain something of the world, then don’t listen to the inner guide.
But ultimately you will feel that although you have won the whole world, you have lost yourself. Jesus says, “And what does a man get if he loses his soul and gains the whole world?” Who will you call a success: Alexander the Great or Jesus the Crucified? So if – and that ‘if’ has to be understood well – if you are interested in the world, then the inner guide is not a guide for you. If you are interested in the inner dimension of being then the inner guide, and only the inner guide, can help.
Osho ~ Vigyan Bhairav Tantra 