92. PUT MINDSTUFF
IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE FINENESS
ABOVE, BELOW AND IN YOUR HEART.93. CONSIDER ANY AREA OF YOUR PRESENT FORM
AS LIMITLESSLY SPACIOUS.
Life is not a problem but a mystery. For science life is a problem, but for religion it is a mystery. A problem can be solved, a mystery cannot be solved – it can be lived but it cannot be solved. Religion offers no solutions, no answers. Science offers answers; religion has none.
This is the basic difference, and before you make any effort to understand what religion is, this basic difference in the very approach of a religious mind and a scientific mind is to be deeply understood.
When I say that science looks at life as a problem, as something which can be solved, the whole approach becomes intellectual. Then the mind is involved, not you. You are out of it. The mind manipulates, the mind tackles, the mind penetrates and analyses. The mind argues, doubts, experiments, but you as a totality are out of it. Hence this very puzzling phenomenon: a scientist may be a very keen intellectual as far as his own department of research is concerned, but in ordinary life he will be just as ordinary a human being as anyone else – nothing special, just ordinary. In his own branch of knowledge he may be a genius, but in life he is just ordinary.
Science includes only your intellect, not your totality. An intellect has a violence, it is aggressive.
That is why very few women can be scientists – aggression is not natural to them. Intellect is male, aggressive, violent: that is why men are more scientific and women are more religious. Intellect tries to dissect, divide, analyze, and whenever you dissect an alive thing, the life disappears. Only dead parts are left in your hands.
That is why science never touches life. Really, whatsoever it touches becomes dead. When science says there is no soul or there is no God it is meaningful, not because their is no soul or no God, but because this shows that the very approach of the scientific mind is such that you cannot touch life anywhere. Wherever science touches, death happens. In the very method, in the very way, in the very approach of division, analysis, dissection, life is bracketed out.
One thing: intellect is violent and aggressive, so the ultimate outcome through intellect can only be death, not life. It is partial, not total, and parts are dead. Life is an organic unity. You can know life through synthesis, not through analysis. The greater the synthesis the higher the forms of life that evolve. God is the ultimate synthesis, the total unity, the wholeness of existence. God is not a puzzle but the ultimate synthesis of all that is – matter is the ultimate analysis of all that is.
So science comes to atomic materiality and religion comes to cosmic consciousness. Science moves downwards to the last, lowest denominator and religion moves upwards to the highest denominator. They move in opposite dimensions. So science transforms everything into a problem, because if you have to tackle it scientifically, you first have to decide whether it is a problem or not.
Religion takes mystery as the base. There is no problem, life is not a problem. The emphasis is that it cannot be solved. A problem means something solvable, something which can be known, something knowable. It may not be known right now, but it is not unknowable. At the most it may be unknown, but that unknownness will disappear and it will be transformed into a known thing.
So really, religion cannot ask a question like, “What is life?” This is absurd. Religion cannot ask such a question as, “What is God?” This is nonsense. The very approach of religion is not to create problems. Religion can ask how to be more alive, how to be in the very current of life, how to live abundantly; religion can ask how to be a God – but it cannot ask what God is.
We can live mysteries, we can become one with them, we can lose ourselves in them, we can have a totally difference existence, the very quality changes – but nothing is solved, because nothing can be solved. And all that appears to be solvable, all that appears to be knowable, is only because we are taking it in fragments. If we look at the whole then nothing is knowable, we just go on pushing the mystery backwards. All our questions are temporary, they appear to be answers only to lazy minds. If you have a penetrating mind you will come again upon the same mystery, only it has been pushed back, a step back. Just behind the answers the question is hidden. You have simply created a facade of an answer, just a curtain over the mystery.
If you can feel the distinction, then from the very beginning religion takes on a different shape, a different color and a different view. The whole perspective changes. These techniques that we are discussing here are not to solve anything – they don’t take life as a problem. Life is there. It has been a mystery and will remain a mystery. Whatsoever we do we cannot demystify it, because to be mysterious is the very quality of it. That life is mysterious is not something accidental, it is not something which can be separated, it is the very life itself. So to me, the more you enter into the mysterium, into the mysterious, the more religious you become.
A really religious man will not say that he believes in God; he will not say that God exists. These things seem to be very superficial, they seem to be like answers given to certain questions. A religious man cannot utter such profanities – that God is. It is such a profound phenomenon, such a mysterious thing, that to say anything will be profane. So whenever someone asked Buddha whether God existed or not, he remained silent. You are asking a thing which cannot be answered.
Not that there is no God, but to answer such a thing will make it answerable. Then life will become a problem which can be answered. Then the mystery disappears. So Buddha said, “Don’t ask me any metaphysical questions.”
Questions can only be physical. Physics can answer them. Metaphysical questions are not there, they cannot be, because metaphysics means the mystery.
These techniques are to help you to move more deeply into mystery, not into knowledge.
Or you can look at it in a different way: these techniques are to help you to be unburdened of your knowledge. They are not to help you to increase your ‘knowledgeability’, because ‘knowledgeability’ is the barrier. The door is then closed for the mystery. The more you know, the less you are capable of penetrating deep into life. The original wonder must be recaptured, because in a childlike sense of wonder nothing is known and everything becomes a mystery. And if you move into the mystery, the deeper you move, the deeper the mystery becomes. Then a moment comes when you can say that you don’t know anything. That is the right moment.
Now you have become meditative. When you can feel a deep ignorance, when you become aware that you don’t know anything, you have come to the right balancing point from where the door of the mystery can open. If you know, then the door is closed; if you are ignorant, fully alert that you don’t know anything, the door suddenly opens. The very feeling that you don’t know opens the door.
So take these techniques not as knowledge, but as a help to make you more innocent. Ignorance is innocent, knowledge is always a sort of cunningness, cleverness. If you can use your knowledge to be ignorant again, then you have used it rightly. This is the only use of all the scriptures, of all the knowledge, of all the Vedas – to make you childlike again.
Now the first technique:
PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE FINENESS ABOVE, BELOW AND IN YOUR HEART.
Three things. First, if knowledge is important then the head is the center; if childlike innocence is important then the heart is the center. The child lives in the heart; we live in the head. The child feels; we think. Even when we say that we feel, we think that we feel. Thinking becomes primary for us, feeling becomes secondary. Thinking is the tool for science, feeling is the tool for religion.
You must start to be a feeling organism again. And both the dimensions are different. When you think, you remain separate; when you feel, you melt.
Think about a flower, a rose flower. When you think, you are separate, there is a gap, a distance, a space. For thinking, space is needed; for thoughts to move, distance is needed. Feel the flower and the gap disappears, the distance drops. Because for feeling, distance is the barrier. The closer you come, the more you feel. A moment comes when even closeness appears to be a sort of distance – and then melting happens. Then you cannot feel the boundaries of where you are and where the flower is, of where you end and where the flower begins. Then boundaries melt into each other: the flower enters you in a way, you enter the flower in a way. Feeling is losing the boundaries; thinking is creating the boundaries. That is why thinking always insists on definitions, because without definitions you cannot create boundaries.
Thinking says define first, and feeling says don’t define. If you define, feeling stops.
The child feels; we think. The child comes close to existence, he melts and allows the existence to melt into him. We are isolated, imprisoned in the head. We are like islands.
This sutra says to come back to the heart center. Start feeling things. It will be a great experiment if you start feeling things. Whatsoever you do, give a certain amount of your time and energy to feeling. You are sitting here, you can listen to me – but that will be part of thinking. You can also feel me here but that will not be a part of thinking. If you can feel my presence, then definitions are lost.
Then really, if you come to a moment of feeling, you don’t know who is speaking and who is listening.
This can happen right this very moment. Then the speaker becomes the listener and the listener becomes the speaker. Then really they are not two, rather, they are two poles of one phenomenon:
on one pole is the speaker, on another pole is the listener. But these are just poles, isolated. They are not real. The real thing is just in-between these two – the life, the flow. Whenever you feel, something other than your ego becomes important. Object and subject lose their definitions. A flow, a wave, exists – on one pole the speaker, on another pole the listener, but the life is the wave.
Head gives you clarity, and because of this clarity much confusion has come into being because the head defines clearly, marks boundaries, makes maps. With reason, everything is clear-cut: no vagueness, no mystery is allowed. All that is vague is rejected, only the clear is real. Reason gives you a clarity, and because of clarity, a great misunderstanding arises. Clarity is not reality. Reality is always unclear, vague. Concepts are clear, reality is mysterious; concepts are rational, reality is irrational.
Words are clear, logic is clear life is not clear. The heart gives you a melting vagueness. It reaches reality more intimately, but it is not clear. And because we have chosen clarity as the goal, we have been missing reality. You must have unclear eyes to enter reality again. You must be vague, you must be ready to enter into something which cannot be conceptualized, into something which is not logic, into something which is staggering and real, staggering and alive.
Clarity is dead. It remains fixed. Life is a flux, nothing is fixed, nothing remains the same the next moment. How can you be clear about it? If you insist too much on clarity you will lose contact with it. That is what has happened.
This sutra says that the basic thing is to come back to the heart center – but how to come to it? PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSABLE FINENESS ABOVE, BELOW AND IN YOUR HEART.
The word ‘mindstuff’ is not a good translation of the original Sanskrit word CHITT. But English has no other equivalent. So it is good in a way, it carries the meaning, not of ‘mind’ but of ‘mindstuff’.
Mind means mentation, thinking, thought, and mindstuff means the background upon which these thoughts float – just as in the sky the clouds move. Clouds are the thoughts and the sky is the background upon which they move. That sky, consciousness, has been called mindstuff. Your mind can be without thoughts; then it is chitt, then it is pure mind. When it has thoughts it is impure mind.
If your mind can be without thought, then it is very subtle, the subtlest thing possible in existence.
You cannot conceive of a more subtle possibility. Consciousness is the most subtle thing. So when there are no thoughts in the mind, you have pure mind. The pure mind can move towards the heart, the impure mind cannot. By impurity I don’t mean any immoral thoughts in the mind, by impurity I mean all thoughts – thought as such is impure.
Even if you are thinking of God it is an impurity, because the cloud is moving. The cloud is very white, but the cloud is there and the purity of the space is not there. A cloudless sky is not there. A cloud may be a black cloud, a sexual thought moving in the mind, or the cloud may be a white cloud, beautiful, a prayer moving in the mind, but in both cases the pure mind is not there. It is impure, clouded. And if the mind is clouded you cannot move in the heart.
This has to be understood because with thoughts you cling to the head. Thoughts are the roots, and unless those roots are cut you cannot fall back to the heart.
The child remains in the heart only up to the moment that thoughts crystalize, that thoughts start floating in his mind. Then they take root; then through education, culture, cultivation, they become rooted; then by and by the consciousness moves from the heart to the head. The consciousness can remain in the head only if there are thoughts. This is basic. If there are no thoughts, consciousness immediately drops back to its original innocence in the heart.
Hence so much emphasis on meditation, so much emphasis on non-thinking, on thoughtless awareness, on choiceless awareness, or on Buddha’s ‘right mindfulness’, which is just mindfulness without any thought, just being aware. What happens then? A very great phenomenon happens because when the roots are cut, immediately consciousness drops back to the heart, to the original place where it had been. You become a child again.
Jesus said, “Only those who are like children will enter into the kingdom of my God.” He refers to those persons whose consciousness has come back to the heart. They have become innocent, childlike.
But the first basic requirement is to PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE FINENESS….
Thoughts can be expressed. There is not a single thought which is inexpressible, nor can there be.
If it is inexpressible you cannot think it; if you can think it, it is expressible. There is not a single thought which you can say is inexpressible. The moment you can think it, it has become expressible – you have already expressed it to yourself.
Consciousness, pure consciousness, is inexpressible. That is why mystics go on saying that they cannot express what they know. Logicians always raise the question that if you know, then why can’t you say it? And their argument has meaning and significance. If you really say that you know then why can’t you express it?
For a logician, knowledge must be expressible – that which can be known can be made known to others, there is no problem. If you have known it, then where is the problem? You can make it known to others. But the mystic’s knowledge is not of thoughts. He has not known it as a thought, he has known it as a feeling. So really, it is not good to say, “I know God.” It is better to say, “I feel.” It is not good to say, “I have known God.” It is better to say, “I have felt him.” That is a more accurate description of the phenomenon because the ‘knowledge’ is through the heart it is like feeling, it is not like knowledge.
PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE FINENESS…. Mindstuff, consciousness, CHITT, is inexpressible. If a single thought is moving, it is expressible. So, to PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE FINENESS means to come to a point where you are conscious, but not conscious of any thought; where you are alert, but there is no thought moving in the mind. This is a delicate point and very difficult – you can miss it easily.
We know two states of mind. One is when thoughts are there. When thoughts are there, you cannot move to the heart. Then we know another state of mind – when thoughts are not there. When thoughts are not there, you fall asleep. Then too, you cannot move to the heart. Every night, for a few moments, for a few hours, you fall out of thinking. Thoughts cease, but you don’t reach to the heart because you are unconscious. So a very delicate balance is needed. Thoughts must cease as they cease in deep sleep, when there is no dream – and you must be as alert as you are while awake. These two points must meet. Mind must be as thoughtless as it is in deep sleep, but you must not be asleep, you must be perfectly alert, aware.
When awareness and this thoughtlessness meet, it is meditation. That is why Patanjali says that samadhi is like SUSHUPTI. The highest ecstasy, samadhi, is like the deepest sleep, with only one difference: in it you are not asleep. But the quality is the same – thoughtless, dreamless, undisturbed, without a single ripple, totally calm and quiet, but alert. When you are aware and there is no thought, you will feel a sudden transformation in your consciousness. The center changes.
You are thrown back. You are thrown to the heart. And from the heart, when you look at the world, there is no world, there is only God. From the head, when you look towards existence, there is no God, there is only material existence.
Matter, material existence, the world, and God are not two things, two outlooks, two perspectives.
They are the same phenomenon looked at from two centers of being.
PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE FINENESS, ABOVE, BELOW AND IN YOUR HEART. Be totally in it, merged, immersed. Be simply consciousness, above, below, in the heart; the whole heart surrounded by simple consciousness; not thinking anything in particular, just being aware, with no word, with no verbalization, not thinking at all, just being.
Put mindstuff above, below, and in your heart, and everything will become possible to you. All the doors of perception will be cleansed and all the doors of mysteries will be opened. Suddenly there will be no problem, and suddenly there will be no misery – it is as if the darkness has disappeared completely. Once you know this you can move back to the head but you will not be the same. Now you can use the head as an instrument. You can work with it, but now you are not identified with it, and even while working with it and looking at the world through it, you will know that whatsoever you are seeing is because of the intellect. Now you are acquainted with a higher standpoint, a deeper view – and any moment you want to you can drop back.
Once you know the passage and how consciousness drops back; how your age, your past, your memory and your knowledge, disappear and you become a newborn child again – once you know this secret, this passage, you can travel to that point as many times as you like, and you can be refreshed again and again. If you have to move to the head, you can use it; you can move in the ordinary world, working but not getting involved in it, because deep down you know that that which is known by the intellect is partial. It is not the whole truth. And a partial truth is more dangerous than a lie, because it appears to be true and you can be deceived by it.
Some more points. When you move to the heart, you look at existence as a total being. The heart is not departmental, the heart is not a fragment of you, the heart means you in your totality. Mind is a fragment, hand is a fragment, leg is a fragment, stomach is a fragment, the whole body taken in parts is fragmented. The heart is not a fragment. That is why my hand can be cut off and I will be alive. Even my brain can be removed and I will be alive, but if the heart is gone, I am gone.
Really, my whole body can be removed but if my heart is beating I am alive. The heart means your wholeness, so when the heart fails, you are no longer there. All other things are just parts, disposable. If the heart is beating you will remain intact. The center of the heart is the very core of your existence. I can touch you with my hand. That touch will give me a certain knowledge about you, about your skin, whether it is smooth or not. The hand will give a certain knowledge to me, but that knowledge will be partial because the hand is not my wholeness. I can see you. My eyes will give a certain knowledge from a different standpoint but that will not be the whole. I can think about you – again the same thing. But I cannot feel you in part. If I feel you at all I feel you in your wholeness. That is why, unless you know through love, you never know the wholeness of any person.
Only love can reveal the whole personality to you, the whole being, the essential, the total. Because love means knowing through the heart, feeling through the heart. So to me, feeling and knowing are not two fragments of your being. Feeling is your whole being and knowing is just a fragment of it.
To religion love is the highest knowledge. That is why religion is expressed more in poetic terms than in scientific ones. Scientific terms cannot be used, they belong to the realm of knowing. Poetry can be used. And those who have come to know reality through love, whatsoever they say becomes poetry. The Upanishads, the Vedas, the sayings of Jesus or Buddha or Krishna, they are all poetic statements.
It is not just a coincidence that all the old religious scriptures are written in poetry. It has a significance. It shows that there is some affinity between the world of a poet and the world of a mystic. The mystic is also using the language of the heart.
The poet is only a mystic in certain moments of flight, just as when you jump you can go away from the gravitation of the earth, but you again come back to it. A poet means a person who has been for some seconds on a flight into the world of the mystics. He has had some glimpses. A mystic is one who has gone beyond gravitation completely, who lives in the world of love, who lives through the heart. This has become his very abode. For the poetic person it is just a glimpse: sometimes he falls down from the head to the heart. But this is just for the time being – again he goes back to the head. So if you see a beautiful poem, don’t try to see the poet who has written it because you will not meet the same person. You will be disappointed because you will meet a very ordinary man.
He had a glimpse. For certain moments reality was revealed to him and he came down to the heart.
But he doesn’t know the passage. He is not the master of it. It has been a happening and he cannot move to it by his own will.
When Coleridge died he left about forty thousand incomplete poems. He really completed only seven poems in his whole life. He became a great poet, one of the greatest in the world, but he was asked many times, “Why do you go on piling up incomplete poems, and when are you going to complete them?” He said, “I cannot do anything. Sometimes a few lines come to me and then they stop. So how can I complete them? I will wait. I will have to wait. If it happens again and the glimpse comes to me, and I again have the world revealed to me, the reality, then I will complete it. But on my own I can do nothing.” He must have been a very sincere poet. To find such sincere poets is difficult, because the tendency of the mind is to supply. If three lines have come then you will supply the fourth, and the fourth will kill all the three because it will come from a very lower state of mind – when you are back on the earth.
When you jumped, and you were freed for some moments from gravitation, you had a different dimension of being.
A poet moves on the earth but sometimes he jumps. In those jumps he has glimpses. A mystic lives in the heart. He doesn’t move on the earth, the heart has become his abode. So he doesn’t really create poetry but whatsoever he does becomes poetic, whatsoever he says becomes poetry.
Really, a mystic cannot use prose because his prose is also poetry – it is coming through the heart, it is coming through love.
PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE FINENESS, ABOVE, BELOW AND IN YOUR HEART. The heart is your total being, and when you are total you can know the total – remember this. Only the similar can know the similar. When you are fragmentary you cannot know the total.
As within, so without. When you are total within, the total reality without is revealed to you; you have become capable of knowing it, you have earned the right to know it. When you are fragmented within, the reality is fragmented without. So whatsoever you are within will be the without for you.
Deep in the heart the whole world is different, the gestalt is different. I am looking at you. If I am looking at you through the head, through intellect, through one of my parts of knowing, then a few friends are here, individuals, egos – separate. But if I am looking at you through the heart, then individuals are not here. Then just an oceanic consciousness is here and individuals are just waves.
If I look at you through the heart, then you and your neighbor are not two, then the reality is between you and your neighbor. You are just two poles, and the real is just in-between. Then here there is an ocean of consciousness in which you exist as waves. But waves are not separate, they are linked together. And you are melting every moment into the other, whether you know it or not.
The breath that was within you just a moment ago has left you – now it is moving into your neighbor.
Just a moment before, it was your life and you would have died without it, and now it is moving into your neighbor. It is his life now. Your body is continuously radiating vibrations, you are a radiator, so your life energy is constantly moving into the neighbor and his life energy is moving into you.
If I look at you from my heart, if I look at you with loving eyes, if I look at you totally, then you are just radiating points, and life is moving continuously from you to others and from others to you….
And not only just in this room, this whole universe is a constant flux of life energy. It goes on moving.
There are no individual units, it is a cosmic whole. But through intellect the cosmic never appears, only fragments, atomic fragments, appear. And this is not a question which can be comprehended through intellect. If you try to comprehend through intellect it will be impossible to comprehend it. It is a totally different outlook, from a different point of existence.
If you are total within, the totality without is revealed to you. Some have called that revelation God- realization: some have called it moksha, liberation; some have called it nirvana, cessation. Different words, altogether different words, but they signify the same core, the same essence.
One thing is basic to all these expressions – the individual disappears. You may call it God- realization, then you are no longer an individual; you can call it liberation, then you are no longer a self; you can call it cessation – as Buddha has called it – then just as a lamp, a flame, ceases to be, disappears, disperses, you cannot find it anywhere again, you cannot locate it, it has gone into non- being, so the individual disappears. But this point has to be pondered over. Why do all religions say that the individual, the self, the ego, disappears when you realize the truth? If all religions emphasize this, this means that the self must be illusory – otherwise how can it disappear? The self must not be there really, only then can it disappear. This may seem paradoxical, but this is so: only that which is not can disappear. That which is will persist in being, it cannot disappear.
Just because of the head a false entity has come into being – the individual. If you come down to the heart, the false entity disappears. It was a creation of the head. From the heart the cosmic is, the individual is not; the whole is, the parts are not. And remember, when you are not, you cannot create a hell; when you are not, you cannot be in misery; when you are not, there can be no anxiety, no suffering. All anxiety, all suffering, exists because of you – the shadow of the shadow. The self is unreal, the ego is unreal, and because of that unreal self many unreal shadows are created. They follow you, you go on fighting with them, but you will never be victorious because the base goes on being hidden within you.
Swami Ramteerth has said somewhere that he was staying in a house, in a poor villager’s house.
The small child of the villager was playing just in front of the hut, and the sun was rising and the child saw his shadow. He tried to catch it, but the more he moved, the more the shadow would move ahead. The child started crying. He was a failure. He tried in every way to catch it, but it was impossible. To catch a shadow is impossible – not because a shadow is such a difficult thing to catch, it is impossible because the child was moving to catch it. When he was moving, the shadow moved ahead. You cannot catch a shadow because a shadow has no substance, and only a substance can be caught.
Ramteerth was sitting there. He was laughing and the child was crying, and the mother was at a loss about what to do. How to console the child? So she said to Ramteerth, “Swamiji, can you help me?” Ramteerth went to the child, caught the child’s hand and put it on his head – the shadow was caught. Now that the child had put his hand on his head, the shadow was caught. The child started laughing. Now he could see that his hand had caught the shadow.
You cannot catch a shadow, but you can catch yourself. And the moment you catch yourself, the shadow is caught.
Suffering is just a shadow of the ego. We are all like that child, fighting with suffering, anxiety, anguish, and trying to disperse them. We can never be victorious. It is not a question of strength – the whole effort is absurd, impossible. You must catch the self, the ego, and once you catch it, suffering suddenly disappears. It was just a shadow.
There are persons who start fighting with the self. It has been taught, “Disperse the self, be egoless, and you will be in bliss,” so they start fighting the self, the ego. But if you fight you are still believing that the self exists. Your fight will give food to it, it will become an energy-giving thing to it, you will be feeding it. This technique says don’t think of the ego, just move from the head to the heart and the ego will disappear. The ego is a projection of the head. Don’t fight with it. You can go on fighting for lives together, but if you remain in the head you cannot win.
Just change the standpoint, just move from the head to a different standpoint, to a deeper standpoint of the being, and the whole thing changes because now you can look from a different perspective.
From the heart there is no ego. Because of this we have become afraid of the heart. We never allow it to have its own way, we always interfere with it, we always bring mind into it. We try to control the heart through the mind because we have become afraid – if you move to the heart, you lose yourself. And this losing is just like death. Hence the incapacity to love, hence the fear of falling in love. Because you lose yourself, you are not in control. Something greater than you grips you and takes possession. Then you are not on sure ground and you don’t know where you are moving. So the head says, “Don’t be a fool, move with reason. Don’t be mad.”
Whenever someone is in love everyone thinks that he is mad. He himself thinks that something has gone crazy, “I am not in my senses!” Why does it happen? Because now there is no control.
Something is happening that he cannot control, he cannot manage and manipulate. Rather, something is manipulating him, a greater force has taken him over. He is possessed….
But unless you are ready to be possessed there can be no God for you. Unless you are ready to be possessed there is no mystery for you, and no bliss, no benediction. One who is ready to be possessed by love, by prayer, by the cosmos, means one who is ready to die as an ego. Only that one can know what life really is, what life has to give. What is possible becomes immediately actual, but you must put yourself at the stake.
This technique is beautiful. It doesn’t say anything about your ego. It doesn’t say anything about it.
It simply gives you a technique, and if you follow the technique, the ego will have disappeared.
The second sutra:
CONSIDER ANY AREA OF YOUR PRESENT FORM AS LIMITLESSLY SPACIOUS.
This is the same, through a different door. The basic essential is the same, that is, to destroy limits.
Mind creates limits. If you don’t think, you move into the unlimited. Or, from a different door, you can try with the unlimited and you will fall from the mind. The mind cannot co-exist with the unlimited, with the undefined, unbordered, infinite. The mind cannot exist with the unbordered, so if you can try something limitless, the mind will disappear.
This technique says, CONSIDER ANY AREA OF YOUR PRESENT FORM AS LIMITLESSLY SPACIOUS. Any area. You can just close your eyes and imagine that your head has become infinite.
Now there are no boundaries to it. It goes on and on and on and there is no boundary to it. Your head has become the whole cosmos, without any boundaries. If you can imagine this, suddenly thoughts will stop. If you can imagine your head as infinite, thinking will not be there. Thinking can exist only in a very narrow mind. The narrower it is, the better for thinking. The greater the mind, the less the thinking, and when the mind becomes total space, there is no thinking at all.
Buddha is sitting under his Bodhi tree. Can you imagine what he is thinking? He is not thinking at all. His head is the whole cosmos. He has become spacious, infinitely spacious. This technique is good for those who can imagine, it will not be good for all. For those who can imagine, and for whom the imagination becomes so real that you cannot really say whether it is imagination or real, it will work. Otherwise it will not be of much use. But don’t be afraid, because at least thirty per cent of people are capable of such imagination. These people are very powerful.
If your mind is not very educated it will be easy for you to imagine. If it is educated then the creativity is lost, then your mind is just a storage space, a bank. And the whole education system is a banking system. They go on banking and dumping stuff onto you. Whatsoever they feel has to be dumped onto you, they do. They use your mind for storage-then you cannot imagine. Then whatsoever you do is just repeating that which has been taught to you.
So those who are uneducated, they can use this technique very easily. And those who have come out of university without being distorted by it, they can also use it. Those who are really still alive, even after so much education, they can do it. Women can do it more easily than men. All those who are imaginative, dreamers, they can do it very easily.
But how to know whether you can do it or not?
You can do a small experiment before entering it. Just lock both your hands together and close your eyes. For five minutes, any time, relax in a chair, lock both your hands together, and just imagine that the hands are so locked that even if you try, you cannot open them. It will look absurd to you because they are not locked but you just go on imagining that they are.
For five minutes go on thinking, and then say three times in your mind, “Now I will try to open my hands but I know it is impossible. They are locked and they cannot be opened.”
Then try to open them. Thirty per cent of you will not be able to open your hands. They will be really locked, and the more you try, the more you will feel that it is impossible. You will start perspiring – you cannot open your own hands. Then this method is for you. Then you can try this method.
If you can easily open your hands and nothing has happened, this method is not for you. You will not be able to do it. But don’t get scared if your hands do not open, and don’t try too much, because the more you try, the more difficult it will be. Just close your eyes again and imagine that now your hands are unlocked. You will need five minutes again to go on imagining that when you try to open them, they will open immediately.
Unlock the same way as you locked them, just through imagination. And if this is possible, that your hands become locked just by imagination and you yourself cannot open them, then this technique will work miracles for you. And in these one hundred and twelve techniques there are many which work with imagination. For all those techniques this hand-locking experiment will be good. Just remember, experiment whether or not the technique is for you.
CONSIDER ANY AREA OF YOUR PRESENT FORM AS LIMITLESSLY SPACIOUS. Any area….
You can consider the whole body. Just close your eyes and consider that the whole body is spreading, spreading, spreading, and then the boundaries are lost. It has become infinite. What will happen? You cannot even conceive of what will happen. If you can conceive that you have become the cosmos – that is the meaning, the infinite – all that is bound up with your ego will not be found there. Your name, your identity, all will be lost. Your poorness or richness, your health or your disease, your miseries – all will be lost, because they are part of the finite body. With an infinite body they cannot exist. And once you know this, come back to your finite body. But now you can laugh. And even in the finite you can have the sense, the feel of the infinite. Then you can carry it.
Try. And it will be good if you try from the head, because that is the base of all illness. Close your eyes, lie down on the ground or sit on a chair and relax. Just look within the head. Feel the walls of the head spreading, expanding. If you feel that it will be very staggering, then try it slowly. First think that your head has come to occupy the whole room. You will actually feel your skin touching the walls. If you can lock your hands, this will happen. You will feel the coolness of the walls which your skin is touching. You will feel the pressure.
Go on moving. Your head has gone beyond – now the house has come within your head, then the whole town has come within your head. Go on spreading. Within three months, slowly, you can come to the point where the sun rises in your head, it starts moving in your head. Your head has become infinite. This will give you a deep freedom such as you have never known. And all the misery that belongs to this narrow mind will disappear. In such a state, Upanishadic seers could say, ‘AHAM BRAHMASMI’ – “I am the Divine, I am the Absolute.” In such ecstasy ‘ANALAHAK’ was uttered.
Mansoor cried in ecstasy, “ANALAHAK, ANALAHAK – I am the God.” Mohammedans couldn’t understand him. Really, no sectarian will be able to understand such things. They thought he had gone mad, but he was not mad, he was the sanest person possible. They thought he had become an egoist. He said, “I am the God.” So they killed him. While he was being killed, with his hands cut off, he was laughing and he was saying, “ANALAHAK, AHAM BRAHMASMI – I am the God.” Someone asked, “Mansoor, why are you laughing? You are being murdered.” He said, “You cannot murder me. I am the whole.”
You can murder only a part. How can you murder the whole? Whatsoever you do to it cannot make any difference.
Mansoor is reported to have said, “If you really wanted to kill me, you should have come at least ten years before. Then I was. Then you could have killed me, but now you cannot kill me, because I am no more. I myself have killed the ego which you could have killed and murdered.”
Mansoor was practising certain Sufi methods of this type, the type in which one goes on expanding until the expanse becomes so infinite that one is no more. Then the whole is and the individual is not. In these past few decades, these past two or three decades in the West, psychedelic drugs have become very significant. And the attraction is really one of expansion, because under the influence of the drug your narrowness, your limitations, are lost. But it is a chemical change, nothing spiritual happens out of it. It is just a forced violence on the system – you force the system to break.
You can have a glimpse that you are no longer confined to anything, that you have become infinite, liberated. But this is because of the chemical enforcement. Once back, you will be again in the narrow body, and now this body will feel more narrow than before. Again you will be confined to the same imprisonment, but now the imprisonment will be more intolerable because you have had a glimpse. And because that glimpse was through a chemical you are not master of it, you will become a slave, you will become addicted. Now you will need it more and more.
This technique is a spiritual psychedelic. If you practise it, a spiritual change will take place which will not be chemical and of which you will be the master.
Take it as a criterion: if you are the master, then the thing is spiritual. If you are the slave, then beware – the thing may appear to be spiritual, but it cannot be. Anything that becomes addictive, powerful, enslaving, imprisoning, is leading you towards more slavery, more ‘unfreedom’ – whatsoever the appearance.
So take it as a criterion that whatsoever you do, your mastery must grow through it. You must become more and more the master of it. It is said, and I repeat it again and again, that when meditation has really happened to you, you will not need to do it. If you still need to do it, it has not yet really happened. Because that too has become a slavery. Even meditation must disappear. A moment must come when you need not do anything. Then just as you are, you are Divine; just as you are, you are the bliss, the ecstasy.
But this technique is good for expansion, for expanding the consciousness. Before trying it, try the hand-locking experiment, so that you can feel. If your hands become locked, you have a very creative imagination, it is not impotent. Then you can work miracles through it.
Enlightenment – the most ordinary
The first question:
Question 1:
LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT WHEN THERE ARE NO THOUGHTS IN THE MIND,
THE MIND BECOMES AN EMPTY SPACE AND THE DOORS TO ALL THE MYSTERIES ARE OPENED.
I FEEL THIS INNER SPACE DEEPLY AND CLEARLY
BUT THERE IS NOTHING SPECIAL THAT I FEEL AS MYSTERY.
WILL YOU EXPLAIN WHAT YOU MEAN BY THE MYSTERY AND HOW IT IS FELT?
The inner emptiness itself is the mystery. You cannot feel it and you cannot know it. You become it.
You are IT. When the inner space is there, then you are not. You cannot observe it. If you observe it, then the inner space has not yet appeared. Who will observe it? If you can observe it you are separate from it, so it is not inner, it is outer. It is ‘out’ to you. The inner has not yet become empty, it is filled. The ego is there – in a very subtle form; as an observer or onlooker, it is there. The inner is not empty yet, because when the inner is empty, you are not.
So the first thing to remember is that you will not be a witness to the mystery, you will be the mystery.
You will not be able to observe it because you cannot be separate, there cannot be any duality.
One thing… when the inner is really empty, you are not, because you are the thing by which the inner is filled. Because of you it is not empty; because of you the space is covered, occupied. When you dissolve, when you simply disappear, only then the inner emptiness is there. So you will not be a witness to the mystery. Until you are not, the mystery will not be revealed; when you are not, the mystery will be revealed. So if you say that you feel inner emptiness it means you are not the emptiness; emptiness is something that is happening to you, around you, but you are not empty. So really this emptiness is just a ‘thought’ of emptiness – that is why you can say that now your inner space has become empty. This is a thought: this emptiness is not real, this emptiness is just part of the mind. The observer is there so the object must be there. You can make emptiness an object, a thought.
It is reported that Bokuju became empty like this. He must have come across this type of emptiness.
He came to his master and he said, “Now there is nothing, I have become empty.” The master said, “Go out and throw this nothingness also. This nothingness is still something, why are you carrying it? If you have really become nothing you will not be able to report it. Who will carry it? Who will feel in it a certain achievement?” The master said to Bokuju, “You have done well, you have become empty, now go and throw out this emptiness also.”
You can be filled with emptiness – that is the problem. And if you are filled with emptiness you are not empty.
The second thing… what do I mean by mystery? Whatsoever you understand, I don’t mean, because you think that a mystery will be something very amazing, staggering, shocking, that you will be thrown off the ground. That is not the point. Mystery is the simple pure existence with nothing amazing about it, nothing staggering. You will not be pushed aside, not thrown, not shocked, not puzzled. Mystery is nothing mysterious really. This very ordinary existence – accept it as it is without creating any problem. When you don’t create a problem this existence is the mystery; when you create the problem you are destroying the mystery. Now you are in search of a solution, some answer. The same mind goes on. If you hear me talking about the mystery then you think about something very special. There is nothing special in existence. Only for the ego does the word ‘special’ exist.
It is reported that when Lin Chi achieved enlightenment he laughed. His disciples asked, “Why are you laughing?” He said, “I am laughing for this. I was endeavoring for thousands and thousands of lives for this – it is so ordinary.”
This is the mystery – nothing special.
It is said of Do-zen, another Zen master, that when he achieved enlightenment disciples asked him, “What was the first thing that you wanted to do after it?” Do-zen is reported to have said, “I wanted a cup of tea.”
It was so ordinary. But for the ego these things are not appealing. If I say that enlightenment is so ordinary that you would like to have a cup of tea after it, then you will feel that the whole thing is nonsense – why endeavor? Then the ego comes in. The ego wants something special, something rare, something that does not usually happen, that has happened only to you, which has not happened to just anyone. The ego wants something special, extraordinary.
Reality is not extraordinary; it is happening everywhere. And if it has not happened to you than that is special! Because it is there, always present. Not for a single moment is it absent. Enlightenment is happening every moment, it is the very core of existence – but you are deaf and blind. It is nothing special.
To be a Buddha, to be enlightened, is the most ordinary phenomenon. When I say ‘ordinary’ I mean:
it must be so. If it looks very extraordinary it is because of you, because you create so many hurdles – and you love them. First you create the obstacle, and then you try to cross it. And then you feel very elated. In the first place, there is no obstacle. But your ego will not feel good – you must create a long route to come to the point that was the nearest, the most intimate one. And you had never missed it!
So don’t seek something mysterious. Just be simple and innocent. And then the whole existence opens to you. You will not go mad, you can simply smile at the absurdity of the whole thing that was so near but you could not attain it. And there was no barrier. It was, in a sense, always within you.
It was a miracle how you went on missing it.
If the emptiness is real, all that is there, the whole of it, the reality, will be opened to you. Not that it is closed right now, it is open. You are closed. Your mind is occupied. When your mind is empty, unoccupied, you will be open to it, and there will be a meeting. And then everything is beautiful in its total ordinariness. Hence it is said that one who has known becomes absolutely ordinary. He is one with the reality. To be hankering for the special is the way of the ego, and all the ways of the ego create gaps and distances between you and the real. Be empty and everything will have happened to you.
Not that you will have must to report: there is nothing to be reported. It is thought that Buddhas and Krishnas or those who have attained the ultimate, cannot describe it because it is so simple.
Complex things can be described, remember. Simple things cannot be described. The more complex a thing is, the easier the description is, because in a complexity you can divide, contrast, compare. With a simple thing you cannot do anything.
For example, if I ask you, “What is yellow?” what will you say? Yellow is so simple, there is nothing complex about it. If I ask, “What is water?” you can say, “H20.” It is complex: there is hydrogen, there is oxygen, so you can define it. But if I ask you, “What is yellow?” at the most you can say that yellow is yellow. But that is a tautology, it makes no sense. What will you do if I say, “What is yellow?” You may indicate a yellow flower, you may indicate a yellow sun rising, but you are not saying anything, you are indicating.
A simple thing can only be indicated; a complex thing can be defined, divided, analyzed. Buddhas are silent, not because they have encountered a very complex reality, they are silent because of a phenomenon so simple that it can only be indicated, not defined. So they can lead you towards it but they cannot say anything about it.
That mystery is not a complex thing, it is very simple, the simplest possible. But you can only meet with it when you have also become simple. If you are complex, you cannot meet it. There is no meeting ground. Only when you have become simple, totally simple, innocent, empty, the reality and you meet. Then there is a reflection of it in you. It echoes in you. It enters into you.
But don’t wait for anything special. Nirvana is nothing special. When I say this, what is happening to your mind? When I say this nirvana is nothing special, what do you feel? How do you feel? You feel a little disappointed. In the mind the question must be arising – then why struggle? Then why make any effort? Then why meditate? Then why these techniques?
Look at that mind, that mind is the problem. The mind wants something special. And because of that desire the mind goes on creating special things. In reality there is nothing special: either the whole of reality is special or nothing is special.
Because of this desire, the mind has created heavens, paradises. And it is not satisfied with one, it goes on creating many. Christians have one heaven, Hindus have seven – because there are so many good people, there must be a hierarchy. The supreme good, where should they go? There is no end to it. In Buddha’s days there was a sect who believed in seven hundred heavens. You have to place the egos: the highest ego must go to the highest heaven.
I was looking at a book of the Radha swamis. They say there are many divisions – fourteen divisions.
Only their guru has reached to the last. Buddha is somewhere in the seventh, Krishna somewhere in the fifth, Mohammed somewhere in the third. Only their guru has reached to the fourteenth. And everyone else is given a place, categorized. Only their guru is special. This is the desire to be special. And everyone is according to his desire.
I have heard an anecdote. In a Sunday school the priest was giving a religious lesson to the very small boys of the neighborhood. He talked much about what good people would achieve – the crowns of glory and a heavenly reward. Those who are good would be crowned in heaven. Then at the end of his talk he said, “Who will get the biggest crown?” There was silence for a while, then a little boy, the hatmaker’s son, stood up confidently and said, “The one who has the biggest head.”
This is what we are all doing. Our definition of the biggest head may differ but we have a conception of something special in the end, and because of that ‘special’ we go on moving. But remember, because of that ‘special’ you are not moving anywhere at all, you are moving in desires. And a movement in desire is not a progress, it is circular.
If you can still meditate – knowing well that nothing special is going to happen, that you will just come to a reconciliation with the ordinary reality, that you will be in harmony with this ordinary reality – if with this mind you can meditate, then enlightenment is possible this very moment. But with this mind you won’t feel like meditating – you will say, “Leave everything if nothing special is going to happen.”
People come to me and they say, “I have been meditating for three months and nothing has happened yet.” A desire… and that desire is the barrier. It can happen in a single moment if desire is not there.
So don’t desire the mysterious. Really, don’t desire anything. Just be at ease, at home with reality as it is. Be ordinary – to be ordinary is wonderful. Because then there is no tension, no anguish. To be ordinary is very mysterious because it is so simple. To me, meditation is a play, a game; it is not a work. But to you it goes on being work; you think in terms of work.
It will be good to understand the distinction between work and play. Work is end-oriented, not enough in itself. It must lead somewhere, to some happiness, to some goal, to some end. It is a bridge, a means. In itself it is meaningless. The meaning is hidden in the goal.
Play is totally different. There is no goal to it, or, it itself is the goal. Happiness is not beyond it, outside it; to be in it is to be happy. It will not give you any happiness outside of it, there is no meaning beyond it – all that is there is intrinsic, internal. You play, not because of any reason, but because you enjoy it right now. It is purposeless.
That’s why only children can play really; the more you grow, the less capable you become of playing.
Because of more and more purpose, more and more you ask why, why should I play? More and more you become end-oriented: something must be achieved through it, in itself it has no meaning.
Intrinsic value loses meaning for you. Only children can play because they don’t think of the future.
They can be here timelessly.
Work is time; play is timeless. Meditation must be like play, not end-oriented. You must not meditate to achieve something because then the whole point is lost. You cannot meditate at all if you are meditating for something. You can meditate only if you are playing with it, enjoying it, if nothing is to be achieved out of it, if it is beautiful in itself. Meditation for meditation’s sake… then it becomes timeless. And then the ego cannot arise.
Without desire, you cannot project yourself into the future, without desire you cannot start expectations, and without desire you will never be disappointed. Without desire, time really disappears: you move from one moment of eternity to another moment of eternity. There is no sequence… and then you will never ask why nothing special is happening.
For myself, I have not come to know the mystery yet. The very play is the mystery; being timeless, desireless, is the mystery. And to be ordinary is the ‘goal’, if you allow me to use the word. To be ordinary is the goal. If you can be ordinary you are liberated, then there is no SANSAR for you, no world for you.
This whole world is a struggle to be extraordinary. Some try it in politics, some try it in economics, some try it in religion. But the lust remains the same.
The second question:
Question 2:
NOT ONLY IN MEDITATION BUT IN ROUTINE LIFE ALSO,
I CONSTANTLY FEEL A ONENESS WITH THE EXISTENCE, EGOLESSNESS, TIMELESSNESS.
YET I FEEL MYSELF ORDINARY.
AND I DO NOT FIND IN ME THE TOTAL TRANSFORMATION
ABOUT WHICH YOU TALK VERY OFTEN.
This is good. This is the goal. You should not create a problem out of it. You should relax and be ordinary.
But why do you feel it? Why do you feel that you remain ordinary? Somewhere there must be the desire to be extraordinary, to be not ordinary. Only in contrast to that can you feel ordinary, and then a certain sadness will follow. But why not be ordinary? What do I mean when I say, “Be ordinary?” I mean that whatsoever the case is – be.
One young man came to me just a few days ago, and he said, “I am an egoist and whenever I listen to you, I feel that I am wrong. So how to be egoless?” I told him, “You be simply egoistic, and accept the fact that you are so and don’t struggle. Don’t try to be egoless. You are an egoist, so feel it and be it.”
He felt very disappointed because really he was searching for a new way for the ego. He was searching for egolessness. And I said, “Be whatsoever you are,” so that that desire would be cut and the ego couldn’t move. And I told him, “For three months don’t come to me and don’t fight the ego – accept it, it is there. It is part of you, it is how you are. Don’t fight with it, and don’t think in terms of the contrary, how to be egoless, because that is the way of the ego. Accept it. Acceptance is the death.”
But the young man said, “But every religion says be egoless, and I want to be egoless.” Who is this’I’ that wants to be egoless? The ways of the ego are very subtle. When I was talking to him I felt he was not listening to me. If I gave him some technique to do to be egoless, he would be ready and accepting, receptive, because then the ego could start work. But I was saying, “Don’t talk about egolessness, just be whatsoever you are. And for three months don’t struggle, then come to me.”
He tried. After three months he came again and he said to me, “It has been very hard to accept, but because you told me, I tried. Now give me some technique, give me some key to go beyond this ego.” The whole effort was false, because if you accept then there is no desire to go beyond.
Whenever you feel yourself to be ordinary you try to be extraordinary in some way. But everyone is ordinary: to be ordinary is to be real. It may be that to you someone looks extraordinary because you compare him with yourself, but a genius in himself is as ordinary as anybody, and he feels himself ordinary. A rose flower is ordinary, a lotus flower is ordinary, but if the rose starts comparing and starts thinking about how to be a lotus flower then problems arise. And if the lotus starts thinking about the beautiful perfume that comes from the rose flower, then the rose flower becomes extraordinary.
When you compare, in comparison extraordinariness happens – otherwise everything is ordinary. In itself everything is as it is. Don’t compare and don’t hanker after it. If you hanker then meditation will disappoint you, because meditation will bring you to a point where you feel your total ordinariness.
Be receptive to it, welcome it. It is good. It shows that meditation is progressing, deepening. But somewhere the desire for the extraordinary is still there and that is creating the barrier.
If that desire disappears, you will not feel yourself as ordinary. You will simply be. How can you feel that you are ordinary? You will simply be, and to be, to be so simple that you don’t feel whether you are ordinary or extraordinary, is to attain.
It is good, don’t be disappointed by it. If you are disappointed then remember that you are carrying a desire, and that desire is creating poison. Why is there this madness? Why does it come and happen to everyone? This whole world is mad because of this: everyone is trying to be something special, somebody.
Life happens to you only when you are nobody. When you are so empty that there is no one, then the whole of life flows through you without any barrier, without any obstacle, without any hindrance.
Then the flow is total and complete.
When you are somebody, you become a rock, you disturb the flow – life cannot move through you.
There is a struggle, a resistance, and of course you create much noise. And you may think that because you are creating so much noise that you are something extraordinary.
Be an empty vessel, passage, with no resistance, so that life can flow through it, flow through it easily. Then no noise will be created. You may not be able to feel that you are, because you only feel that you are when you fight. The more you fight, the more you feel.
Life flows so smoothly through you that you may even completely forget that you exist. There is no barrier, no resistance, no rejection, no negation. And you are so welcoming that you even forget that you are.
It was heard about one Zen master that he would call his own name many times during the day. In the morning he would call, “Bokuju?” and then he would say, “Yes sir, I am here.” Bokuju was his name. And his disciples would ask why he did this. He would say, “I go on forgetting. I have become so smooth that I have to remind myself – ‘Bokuju?’ And then I say, ‘Yes sir, I am here.'”
Life can become such a smooth flow, such a silent river, that no noise is created. But if you are bent upon being something, somebody, extraordinary, special, then life cannot flow through you. Then there is a constant struggle between life and you, between your small ego and the cosmos.
This is creating madness. The whole earth has become a mad planet. And this madness cannot be helped by treatments, therapies, because it is so basic a style of life that it is not a pathology. This is how we are living. Our whole style of life is mad. So you cannot be helped through therapies unless the whole life-style changes.
There are only two life-styles: ego-oriented and egoless-oriented. You must be somebody… this is one way of life. Then madness is the outcome. Really, the madman is the most extraordinary man.
He has achieved extraordinariness because now he is completely uprooted from reality, he is not concerned with the reality at all. Now he lives isolated in himself, he has created his own world. Now the dream is the real and the real has become just a dream. Everything is upside down.
You cannot convince a madman that he is wrong, because he is very logical. Madmen are very rational and logical.
One madman used to come out of his house every day in the morning and chant some mantras and make some gestures. So, whosoever was passing would ask, naturally, what he was doing. And the madman would say, “I am protecting this neighborhood from ghosts.” So the person who was asking would say, “But there are no ghosts in this neighborhood.” And the man would say, “See, because of my chanting mantras, there are no ghosts.”
He is rational, you cannot convince him – ghosts are not there because of his chanting. But he lives now in his own subjective dream-world and you cannot pull him out.
If you think yourself somebody – nobody can be somebody that is not in the nature of things – but if you think yourself somebody, then a part of you has gone mad. That somebodiness is your madness. And the more this cancer of somebodiness grows, the more you will be cut off from reality.
A Buddha is a nobody. All his doors are open. The wind comes and blows, the rains come and blow, the sun-rays enter and pass, the life flows, but he is not there. This is what I mean when I say meditation has happened to you. And this is very ordinary, natural, real.
The third question:
Question 3:
YOU ARE OFTEN SAYING THAT THIS IS GOOD OR BAD, OR THIS IS RIGHT OR WRONG.
IS THIS A LANGUAGE JUST FOR US
AS WE ARE NOT ABLE TO REALIZE THE ONENESS OF EVERYTHING>
OR IS THERE SUCH A THING AS GOOD AND BAD?
No, it is simply a language. For me there is nothing good and nothing bad. But this will be too dangerous for you. Truth can be dangerous. Really, only truth can be dangerous – lies are never so dangerous because they are not potential. They have no force in them.
Truth can be very shattering. It is the truth that there is no good, no bad, that nothing is right, nothing is wrong. Everything is as it is, all condemnation, division, is futile – but this will be dangerous for you. This will be too much for you, you will misunderstand it. You cannot understand it; when there is nothing good, nothing bad, you cannot understand it, and you will have your own interpretation of it.
If I say there is nothing good, nothing bad, you will think that now whatsoever you have been thinking of up to now as bad, there is no need to think of it as such. So it will become a licence for you and you will start double thinking. You will think that for yourself there is nothing good, nothing bad, but for others you will not allow the same. If you can allow the same for others also, then you have understood; then it is not a licence, it is a freedom. But the mind must be one; there should not be double standards.
Why do I say that there is nothing good and nothing bad? Because goodness and badness are interpretations, they are not reality.
If there is a flower outside in the garden, you can call it beautiful and somebody else can call it ugly.
The flower is neither. The flower exists there as it is in its authenticity. And it is not bothered about your interpretations. But to you it is either beautiful or not. That beauty and ugliness is interpretation, not reality. It is your mind which says that it is beautiful or ugly. The flower will not be affected by it, but you will be. If you say that it is beautiful, your behavior will be of one kind; if you say that it is ugly, your behavior will be different. You will be affected by your interpretation.
And I am talking to you, so I have to constantly remember that whatsoever I say, your behavior will be affected. Unless you come to a point where the whole emphasis has changed from doing to being, when you are not interested in doing and you are only interested in being, you cannot understand what I mean when I say that there is nothing good or bad. Things are as they are.
But it is only possible to understand this when you are deeply centered in the being. And if you are centered in the being, then whatsoever you do will be good. Then there is no danger. But right now you are not centered in the being, you are centered on the periphery. You are continuously choosing what to do and what not to do.
Really, you have not asked the question, “What to be?” You have always been asking what to do and what not to do and whether it will be good or not. You never ask the question, “What to be?” And unless being becomes more important than doing, there is good and there is bad – for you. Then something has to be done and something has not to be done.
How do I make this difference and why? If there is really no good and no bad then how and why is this difference made?
To me, this is again a difference I make for you: I call something good if it leads to your being, where everything will become good, and I call something bad if it leads you away from the being. If you go on being away from yourself, everything will become bad.
To help you to come to yourself, to your home, I call something good and bad, or, something right and wrong. It is better to use the words ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ than the words ‘good’ and ‘bad’ because I am more concerned with techniques of how to bring yourself to your being. So, a technique can be right if it brings you to your being; a technique can be wrong if it doesn’t bring you to your being or if it becomes a hindrance, or moves you into by-paths, or moves you on ways which will become cul-de-sacs and will not lead you anywhere.
But if you ask me, ultimately there is nothing good, nothing bad, nothing right, nothing wrong. And if you can understand this right now, then start living in a way where nothing is wrong and nothing is right – and this is for you as far as you are concerned with others, and for others as far as they are concerned with you.
Jesus says, “Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.” This is the basic principle of ‘one standard’ and this is the whole of the teaching of all those who want to help you to come to yourself – there is one standard where nothing is good and nothing is bad, not only for you but for everyone.
It is easy to say that to steal is not bad if you are stealing, but if someone else is stealing something from you then it becomes difficult to say that stealing is not bad.
I have heard about a thief. For the fourth time he was caught and the judge asked him, “You get caught again and again, what is the matter? If you are not so efficient, why go on doing it?” The man said, “It is not a question of efficiency. I am alone and the work is too much.” So the judge said, “Then why don’t you have a companion, a partner?” The thief said, “Morals have become so low that you cannot depend on any partner.”
Even a thief thinks in terms of morality, for others – “Morals have gone so low that you cannot depend on a partner. So I have to do all the work myself and the work is too much.”
This is the deepest teaching of all the knowers: there is nothing to choose. Everything is accepted.
If you can accept it in its totality, you are transformed. But if you are cunning and want to deceive yourself, then this total acceptability will be dangerous.
So, I say many things to you just because of you. And just in-between I also go on communicating that which I would really like to say to you. But it can be given only very indirectly. You are so dangerous, so suicidal, that you can commit something which will be harmful to you.
I am talking about a higher truth – not only a higher truth, but an ultimate truth. Naropa, in his song, says that only an inch difference sets heaven and hell apart. An inch difference between what is good and what is bad sets heaven and hell apart.
And you will have to live in anguish because you have created the division. Bring all the dualities nearer, closer, and let them merge. Let the good and bad merge into each other, the darkness and the light merge into each other, life and death merge into each other. Then there is ADVAIT, then there is oneness. That oneness brings freedom, transformation.
The fourth question:
Question 4:
IT IS OUR IMAGINATION, THROUGH AUTO-SUGGESTIONS,
THAT HAS ESTABLISHED US IN THE WORLD OF THE FINITE,
IN THE WORLD OF NAMES AND FORMS,
IN THE WORLD OF PAINS AND PLEASURES.
CAN THE SAME INSTRUMENT BE USED TO REACH THE INFINITE,
THE ABSOLUTE, THE BLISSFUL?THE SAME INSTRUMENT IN THE REVERSE ORDER?
You have come to this house, soon you will be going back, and the same path will be used again – but in the reverse order. While you were coming here your face was towards me and when you go back, your back will be towards me. But the path will be the same. No other path is needed to go back home. Only the direction changes.
The way which you have traveled to come into darkness will be the way, is the way, the only way.
You will have to travel back that way. The way that has brought you into misery and anguish will be the way which will lead you towards bliss and ecstasy. There is no other way, there is no need. And remember, don’t follow any other way otherwise you will never reach home.
You have to be alert to follow the same path again. The only change is in the direction – it is a total about-turn. Hypnosis, auto-suggestion, they create this world; de-hypnosis, de-auto-suggestion will lead you back to the real. There is no finite world, the world is infinite. It is your super-imposition, your hypnosis, that makes it look finite. Withdraw your hypnosis and the world is infinite – it has always been so.
All techniques of meditation are similar to hypnosis. This creates a problem. It creates a problem when people go on asking about the difference between hypnosis and meditation. There is no difference. The path is the same but the direction is different.
In hypnosis you are falling more and more asleep, losing awareness; in meditation you are coming out of sleep, gaining awareness. It is the same path. In hypnosis you are conditioning yourself, in meditation you are unconditioning yourself – but the process is the same. Meditation is hypnosis in reverse. So whatsoever you have done with yourself you have to undo it. That’s all.
Try to do a very simple experiment which will be revealing: you can hypnotize yourself. Close your room and make it completely dark, then put a small candle just in front of your eyes. Then without blinking your eyes, stare at the flame, and just go on thinking that you are falling asleep, you are falling asleep. A deep sleep is descending upon you – just let this thought be floating there, within.
Go on staring at the candle and let this thought be there as a cloud hovering over you. You are falling asleep, you are falling asleep. When you do it, you have to say, “I am falling asleep. Sleep is descending. My limbs are relaxing.”
You will immediately feel a subtle change, and within three minutes you will feel that the body has become heavy. Any moment you can fall. The lids of the eyes are heavy and now it is very difficult to go on staring at the flame. The eyes want to close. Everything has become numb.
Now you can feel that this is what hypnosis is: being more sleepy, falling into unawareness, becoming more unconscious. Feel the feel of it, what is happening, how your mind has become cloudy. The clarity has gone, aliveness has gone, you are becoming dead. Your body feels more weighty. This will give you the sensation of how your consciousness can become unconsciousness.
Try this for seven days so that you can feel completely what it is, and how you descend into the well.
With more and more darkness, more sleep, more unconsciousness, at the last moment suddenly you will not be there and the flame will have disappeared. You are fast asleep. You can feel the grave.
Then after one week try the other experiment. Have the same room, the same flame, the same way of staring, but a different thought in the mind, “I will become more alert, I am becoming more and more alert, more alive, more alert. The body is becoming more and more weightless.” Let this thought be there and go on staring at the flame – you will feel a sudden surge of life awareness and consciousness.
Within seven days you can come to a point where you will feel so alert that you will feel as if the body is not. On one pole the whole spectrum is deep sleep where you forget yourself completely; on the other pole there is deep awareness where everything is forgotten, you remember only yourself.
Then there are many mid-stages. The stage we are in is just in the middle – half asleep, half awake.
So whatsoever you do, you are doing it half asleep, half awake. Both the processes are the same, they are the same process.
Thought in an intense state becomes reality; thought condensed becomes a thing. One thought kept continuously in the consciousness transforms you, becomes a seed. So if you are struggling to be more and more alert, you are deconditioning yourself, moving in the other direction. Gurdjieff calls it self-remembering – he says, “Continuously remember yourself.” Buddha says, “Don’t forget yourself whatsoever you are doing; continuously go on hammering that you are doing it.” And he is so particular that he says to his monks, “While you are walking and your left foot comes up, remember that your left foot is coming up: now the foot is going down, now the right one is coming up, now the right is going down. Remember that the breath is coming in, that the breath is going out. Remember continuously, whatsoever is happening and use every happening as a situation to remember. Don’t do anything in an unconscious state, a sleepy state.” And Buddha says that this is enough. If you can work like this for twenty-four hours, sooner or later you will have de-hypnotized yourself. You will have become aware, alert.
Hypnosis and meditation are the same process in diametrically opposite directions. You can use hypnosis to awaken you; you can use hypnosis to fall deep into sleep. And if you become master of the art of hypnosis, you have got the key to open all the doors of life.
If you are not the master of the key of hypnosis, then you are a victim of many, many forces. This is worth understanding: if you don’t know what hypnosis is then you are a victim. Everybody is trying hypnosis on you – I say everybody! They may not be doing it knowingly, but everybody is trying. There are different ways, methods. The whole world is filled with hypnotic tricks: the same advertisement in the newspaper, on the television and on the radio. It goes on hammering, it becomes a hypnotic thing.
In the mind you go on repeating, “Lux is the best soap.” You go on repeating it. Wherever you move it is written on the walls; in films you see it, on the T.V. screen it is there, on the radio it is there, in magazines, in newspapers, in anything: “Lux Toilet Soap.” It goes on and on. You become hypnotized by it. Then you go to the shop and the man behind the counter asks you, “What soap do you need?” You say, “Lux Toilet Soap.” You are asleep. You are not saying it consciously, it has been hammered in and now it is built in.
Crores of rupees are spent on advertising just to hypnotize you. Those advertisements have to be repeated continuously. Repetition is the way. Then there is imprint, and you become unconscious about it; then suddenly it comes out of your mouth, “Lux Toilet Soap.” And you think that you are choosing. You are not the chooser.
The whole education system is hypnotic. That’s why for the teacher a higher place is needed. It must be measured scientifically because there is a particular point – the way I am sitting here is at a wrong point, this is not right. Your eyes should be in a tension looking at me, in much tension, not relaxed – then you are easily hypnotized.
Hitler used every proportion. He had an expert committee to measure how much distance from the audience and how much height was needed so that the eyes are correctly at a tension where they become easily hypnotized and sleepy. And then all the lights would be put off – in Hitler’s lecture hall the only lights would be on Hitler. Nobody could see anywhere else, and so you were forced to look only at him. In a particular situation a particular tension was created. In this tension he would go on saying something for a while. The things that he wanted to put into you would be said later on, when the whole audience had become sleepy. Then the words would simply move into the unconscious and start functioning.
Now they have invented subliminal advertisements in films. As you watch a film, between two scenes, just for a fraction of a second, the advertisement will be flashed. You will not be able to read it, you will not even know what has happened. Simply watching the film, suddenly for a few seconds the advertisement will be there – but you will not be continuously aware of it.
Only two persons in a hundred can feel that something has happened. Only those who have very keen eyes can feel that something was in-between. Ninety-eight per cent will not feel it, but the unconscious has read it. It has entered you.
There was one experiment about it in an American film. They flashed a particular brand of cold drink on the screen, something new. Only two per cent of the people became aware that there was an advertisement, ninety-eight per cent were fully unaware, but in the interval many people went out and asked for the drink. They were not aware that there had been an advertisement because it had been so fast.
Hypnosis is all around. Education uses it, politics uses it, the market uses it – everyone is using it. And if you are not aware then you are a victim. Become aware. If you become aware, you can use it; not to hypnotize others, but to de-hypnotize yourself. And if you can become completely de-hypnotized, you are free, you are liberated.
And there is no conflict between meditation and hypnosis. The conflict is in the directions – the process is the same.
Osho ~ Vigyan Bhairav Tantra 