109. SUPPOSE YOUR PASSIVE FORM TO BE AN EMPTY ROOM WITH WALLS OF SKIN – EMPTY.
अपने निष्क्रिय रूप को त्वचा की दीवारों का एक रिक्त कक्ष मानो—सर्वथा रिक्त।
110. GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY.
THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL
WHEREIN YOUR MIND FROLICS INFINITELY.
‘हे गरिमामयी, लीला करो। यह ब्रह्मांड एक रिक्त खोल है जिसमें तुम्हारा मन अनंत रूप से कौतुक करता है।’111. SWEET HEARTED ONE, MEDITATE ON KNOWING AND NOT-KNOWING,
EXISTING AND NOT- EXISTING.
THEN LEAVE BOTH ASIDE THAT YOU MAY BE.
‘हे प्रिये, ज्ञान और अज्ञान, अस्तित्व और अनस्तित्व पर ध्यान दो। फिर दोनों को छोड़ दो ताकि तुम हो सको।’ज्ञान और अज्ञान, अस्तित्व और अनस्तित्व पर ध्यान दो।
जीवन के विधायक पहलू पर ध्यान करो और ध्यान को नकारात्मक पहलू पर ले जाओ, फिर दोनों को छोड़ दो क्योंकि तुम दोनों ही नहीं हो। फिर दोनों को छोड़ सको ताकि तुम हो सको।112. ENTER SPACE, SUPPORTLESS, ETERNAL, STILL.
‘आधारहीन, शाश्वत, निश्चल आकाश में प्रविष्ट होओ।’इस विधि में आकाश के, स्पेस के तीन गुण दिए गए है।
1–आधारहीन: आकाश में कोई आधार नहीं हो सकता।
2–शाश्वत: वह कभी समाप्त नहीं हो सकता।
3–निश्चल: वह सदा ध्वनि-रहित व मौन रहता है।इस आकाश में प्रवेश करो। वह तुम्हारे भीतर ही है।
These techniques are concerned with emptiness – they are the most delicate, the most subtle. Even to conceive of emptiness seems impossible. Buddha used all these four techniques for his disciples and BHIKKHUS, and because of these four techniques he was totally misunderstood. Buddhism got completely uprooted from Indian soil just because of these four techniques.
Buddha said that there is no God. If there is God, you cannot be totally empty. You may not be there but the God will be there, the Divine will be there. And your mind can deceive you, because your Divine may be just your mind playing tricks. Buddha said that there is no soul, because if there is any soul, ATMA, you can hide your ego behind it. Your ego will be difficult to leave if you feel that there is some self within you. Then you cannot be totally empty because you will be there.
Just to prepare the ground for these techniques of emptiness, Buddha denied everything. He was not an atheist but he appeared to be an atheist because he said that there is no God, he said there is no soul, he said there is nothing substantial in existence – existence is empty. But this was just to prepare the ground for these techniques. Once you enter emptiness you have entered all – you may call it the Divine, you may call it God, or ATMA, soul, whatsoever you like – but you can enter the truth only when you are totally empty. Nothing should be left of you.
Hindus thought that Buddha was destroying religion, that he was teaching irreligion. And people who heard him, even they couldn’t follow, because whenever you go somewhere, you go to seek something – you never go to seek emptiness. So those who went to hear him were seeking something – nirvana, moksha, the other world, heaven, truth – but they were seeking something.
They had come to gratify their ultimate desire: to find the truth. That is the last desire. And unless you are completely desireless, you cannot know the truth; the very condition of knowing is to be totally desireless.
So one thing is certain, you cannot desire truth. If you desire it, the very desire will become the barrier. There were masters before Buddha who were teaching, “Don’t desire, be desireless.” But they were talking about God, about the kingdom of God, heaven, paradise, moksha, the ultimate freedom and liberation – and they were saying, “Be desireless.” Buddha felt that you cannot be desireless if there is something to be attained. You may pretend that you are desireless, but this pretension, desirelessness, is also from some desire to be fulfilled. It is false. The masters say that you cannot attain to ultimate bliss with desire, and you want to attain ultimate bliss – so you start being desireless, you try to be desireless, so that you can attain the ultimate bliss. But the desire is there.You are trying to be desireless just because of the desire. So Buddha said that there is no God to be attained. Even if you desire, there is no one to be attained… so be desireless. There is no moksha somewhere, there is no goal. Life is meaningless and goal-less.
His emphasis is beautiful and wonderful – no one has tried that way. He destroyed all the goals just to help you to be desireless. If the goals are there, how can you be desireless? And if you are not desireless, you will not attain to the goal – this is the paradox. He destroyed all the goals – not that those goals are not there, they are there and they can be attained – but if you want to attain them, if you desire to attain them, it becomes impossible. The very basic condition is you must be desireless – then the ultimate happens to you. So Buddha says there is nothing to be desired, desires are futile. Drop all desires and when there is no desire you will be empty.
Just imagine, if there is no desire within you, what will you be? You are nothing but a bundle of desires. If all desires go, you simply disappear. Not that you will not exist – you will exist, but as an emptiness. You will be there, just like a vacant room: no one is there, just a SUNYA, a nothingness.
Buddha has called this nothingness ANATMA, ANATTA, no-soulness. You will not feel any center, that “I am”; there will be just “am-ness”, no “I” to it, because “I” is nothing but accumulated desires, condensed desires, crystallized desires – many, many desires have become your “I”.
It is just as in physics. Physicists say that if you analyze matter, then matter is nothing but atoms; there is nothing to join the atoms, each atom is surrounded by vacant space. If you have a rock in your hand, there is no rock, just atoms of energy, and between two atoms, infinite space. Even a rock is spacious, porous. They say that soon we will be able to pull that space out from anything.
H.G. Wells has written a story.
In the twenty-first century, a passenger starts calling for coolies in a big station. Other passengers who are traveling in the same compartment with this passenger cannot understand, because he has no luggage, just a packet of cigarettes and a small matchbox. That is all his luggage. And he goes on calling for coolies. A big group gathers and a passenger asked, “Why? Why are you calling?
You don’t have anything. You can carry this matchbox and this packet of cigarettes yourself. What are you going to do with these two dozen coolies?” The passenger laughs and he says, “Try, try that matchbox. That matchbox is not ordinary. One railway engine is condensed into it.”
It is possible soon. Space can be pulled out and then it can be again forced in, and the engine will take its shape again. Then big things can be carried without much problem. The weight will remain the same but the shape, the form, will become smaller and smaller. A matchbox can contain a railway engine, but the weight will remain the same, because space has no weight. You can pull out the space but you cannot pull out the weight. The weight will remain the same because weight is contained by the atoms, not by the space. They say that the whole earth can be condensed into the form, the shape, of one apple, but the weight will remain the same. And if you pull apart all these atoms; if you take one atom out, and then another, and then another; if you take all the atoms out, nothing will be left behind – so matter is just an appearance.
Buddha has analyzed the human mind in a simpler way: he is one of the greatest scientists possible.
He says your ego is nothing but desires, atomic desires. There are millions of desires; they make you. If you go on pulling out desires one by one, a moment will come when there is no desire left, you have disappeared… just space, just vacant space remains. And this, Buddha says, is nirvana.
This is the cessation of your being completely; you are no more. And Buddha says this is silence:
unless you are completely gone, silence cannot descend on you. Buddha says you cannot be silent because you are the problem; you cannot be peaceful because you are the disease; and you can never be blissful because you are the only barrier. The bliss can come at any moment but you are the barrier. When you are not, bliss will be there; when you are not, peace will be there; when you are not, silence will be there, when you are not, ecstasy will be there. When your inner being is totally empty, this emptiness itself is bliss. That’s why Buddha’s teachings are called SUNYAWAD, the philosophy of emptiness, or the philosophy of zero.
These four techniques are to attain this state of being, or you can call it this state of no-being – there is no difference. You can give it a positive term, as Hindus and Jains have called it, soul, or you can give it a more appropriate but negative term, as Buddha has called it, ANATTA, no-selfness or no-soulness. It depends on you. But whatsoever you call it, there is no one to be named and called, there is just infinite space. That’s why I say that these are the ultimate techniques, the most delicate, the most difficult – but the most wonderful. And if you can work with any of these four techniques, you will gain the unattainable.
SUPPOSE YOUR PASSIVE FORM TO BE AN EMPTY ROOM WITH WALLS OF SKIN – EMPTY.
SUPPOSE YOUR PASSIVE FORM TO BE AN EMPTY ROOM WITH WALLS OF SKIN… but inside, everything empty. This is one of the most beautiful techniques. Just sit in a meditative posture, relaxed, alone, your backbone straight and the whole body relaxed – as if the whole body is hanging on the backbone. Then close your eyes. For a few moments go on feeling relaxed, more relaxed, becoming calmer and calmer and calmer. Do this for a few moments, just to be in tune. And then suddenly start feeling your body is just walls of skin and there is nothing inside, there is no one inside, the house is vacant. Sometimes you will feel thoughts passing, clouds of thoughts moving, but don’t think that they belong to you. You are not. Just think that they are roaming in a vacant sky – they don’t belong to anyone, they don’t have any roots.
Really this is the case: thoughts are just like clouds moving in the sky. They don’t have any roots and they don’t belong to the sky, they simply roam in the sky. They come and they go and the sky remains untouched, uninfluenced. Feel that your body is just walls of skin and there is no one inside.
Thoughts will still continue – because of old habit, old momentum, old cooperation, thoughts will go on coming. But just think that they are rootless clouds moving in space – they don’t belong to you, they don’t belong to anybody else. There is no one to whom they can belong – you are empty. It will be difficult, but because of the old habits, nothing else. Your mind would like to catch some thought, be identified with it, move with it, enjoy it, indulge in it. Resist! Just say there is no one to indulge, there is no one to fight, there is no one to do anything with this thought. Within a few days, a few weeks, thoughts will slow down, they will become less and less. The clouds will start disappearing, or, even if they come, there will be great gaps of cloudless sky when there will be no thought. One thought will pass. Then another will not come for a period. Then another will come and then there will again be an interval. In those intervals you will know for the first time what emptiness is. And the very glimpse of it will fill you with such deep bliss you cannot imagine.
Really it is difficult to say anything about it, because whatsoever is said in language will refer to you, and you will not be there. If I say that you will be filled with happiness it will be nonsense. You will not be there, so how can I say you will be filled with happiness? Happiness will be there. Just within the four walls of your skin, happiness will be there, vibrating – but you will not be there. A deep silence will descend on you, because if you are not, no one can create a disturbance. You always go on thinking that somebody else is disturbing you; the traffic noise on the road, children playing around you, the wife working in the kitchen… somebody is disturbing you. Nobody is disturbing you; you are the cause of the disturbance. Because you are there, anything can disturb you. If you are not there, then disturbances will come and pass through the emptiness without touching it. You are there – very touchy, a wound; anything immediately hurts you.
I have heard about a scientific story. It happened after the third world war that all were dead; now there was no one on the earth, only trees and hills were there. One big tree thought to create a great noise, as it used to create in the past. It fell down from a big rock, it did everything that was possible, but there was no noise. Because for noise your ears are needed, for sound your ears are needed. If you re not there, sound cannot be created. It is impossible. I am speaking here. I am making sound because you are here. If no one is here, I may go on speaking, but sound cannot be created. But I can create it myself because I myself can hear it. If no one is there to hear, sound cannot be crated, because sound is a reaction of your ears.
If no one is there on the earth, the sun will rise but it cannot create light. It seems absurd. We cannot conceive of it because we always think that the sun will rise and there will be light. Your eyes are needed. Without your eyes, the sun cannot create light. It may go on rising but it will be futile because the rays will pass in emptiness. There will be no one who can react and who can say that this is light. Light is a phenomenon of your eyes. You react. Sound is a phenomenon of your ears. You react. What do you think… a rose is there in the garden, but if no one passes, will there be perfume? A rose alone cannot create perfume. Impossible. You and your nose are needed – someone to react and interpret that this is perfume, this is rose-perfume. However hard a rose tries, without a nose it will not be a rose at all.
The disturbance on the street is not there really, it is within your ego. Your ego reacts and says that this is a disturbance. It is your interpretation. Sometimes in a different mood you may enjoy it. Then it will not be a disturbance. You may enjoy it in a different mood. And then you will say, “This is beautiful. What music!” But in a sad moment even music will become a disturbance. But if you are not there, just space, emptiness, there can be neither disturbance nor music. Things will just pass through you, unnoticed. Because unstruck, there is no wound to react, there is no one to respond; not even an ego will be created. This is what Buddha calls nirvana.
And this technique can help you.
SUPPOSE YOUR PASSIVE FORM TO BE AN EMPTY ROOM WITH WALLS OF SKIN – EMPTY.
Sit in a passive state, inactive, not doing anything…. Because whenever you do something the doer comes in. Really there is no doer. Only because of the doing you imagine that there is one. Buddha is difficult only because of this. Only because of linguistic forms have problems arisen. We say a man is walking. If you analyze this sentence, it means that there is someone who is walking. But Buddha says there is only a process of walking, there is no one who is walking. You are laughing. Because of language it appears that there is someone who is laughing. Buddha says there is laughter but no one inside who is laughing. When you laugh, remember this, and find out who laughs. You will never find anyone – there is simply laughter. There is no one behind it doing it. When you are sad, there is no one who is sad, there is simply sadness. Look at this. Simply sadness. It is a process:
simply laughter, simply happiness, simply unhappiness. There is no one behind it.
Only because of language do we go on thinking in terms of two. If there is movement, we say there must be someone who has moved – the mover. We cannot conceive of movement alone. But have you ever see the mover? Have you ever seen the one who laugh? Buddha says there is life, the process of life, but no one inside who is alive. And then there is death, but no one dying. For Buddha you are not a duality – the language creates a duality. I am speaking, there is no one who is speaking. It is a process. It belongs to no one.
But for us this is difficult because our mind is deeply rooted in dualism. Whenever we think of some activity, we conceive of some actor inside, some doer. That’s why a passive, inactive form is good in meditation because then you can fall into emptiness more easily. Buddha says, “Don’t meditate. Be in meditation.” The difference is vast. I will repeat. Buddha says, “Don’t meditate.
Be in meditation.” Because if you meditate, the doer has come in – you will go on thinking that you are meditating. Then meditation has become an act. Buddha says, “Be in meditation.” That means be totally passive, don’t do anything, and don’t think that there is any doer. That’s why sometimes, when the doer is lost in the doing, you feel a sudden upsurge of happiness. It comes because you have become one. With a dancer a moment comes when dance takes over the dancer disappears – then happens a sudden blessing, a sudden beatitude, a sudden ecstasy. He is filled with unknown bliss. What has happened? Only the doing remained and the doer was no more.
At the war-front, soldiers sometimes attain to very deep bliss. It is difficult to conceive of because they are so near death – at any moment they can die. In the beginning it makes them afraid; they tremble in fear. But you cannot continue trembling and fearing every day, continuously. One becomes accustomed, one accepts death – then the fear disappears. And when death is so near and with any wrong movement you may be dead immediately, the doer is forgotten, and only duty remains, only doing remains. And one has to be so deeply in the doing that one cannot go on remembering that “I am”. That “I am” will create trouble. You will miss. You will not be totally in the activity. And life is at stake so you cannot afford duality. Action becomes total. When action is total, you suddenly feel you are happy as you have never been before. Warriors have known very deep springs of joy that ordinary life cannot give to you. That may be the reason why war is so appealing. And that may be the reason why KSHATRIYAS, warriors, have attained to moksha more than brahmins; because brahmins are always thinking and thinking – much mental activity. Twenty- four Jain TEERTHANKARAS, Ram, Krishna, Buddha, were all KSHATRIYAS, warriors. They have attained to the highest peak.
No businessman has ever been heard to attain to that peak. He lives in such security that he can afford to be dual. Whatsoever he is doing, it is never total. Profit cannot be a total activity. You can enjoy it, but it is never a life-and-death problem. You can play with it, but nothing is at stake. It is a game. A business is playing a game, the game of money. The game is not very dangerous so businessmen almost always remain mediocre.. Even a gambler may attain to higher peaks of bliss than a businessman, because a gambler moves into danger. He stakes everything that he has got – in that moment of total stake the doer is lost.
That may be the reason why gambling is so appealing, war is so appealing. As far as I understand, behind whatsoever is appealing, there must be some ecstasy lurking somewhere, some hint of the unknown somewhere, some glimpse of the deep mystery of life hidden somewhere there. Otherwise nothing can be appealing.
Passivity…. Any posture that you take in meditation should be passive. In India we have evolved the most passive ASANA, the most passive posture, that is SIDDHASANA. And the beauty of it is that in this SIDDHASANA posture, as Buddha sits, the body is in the deepest of passive states. Even while lying down you are not so passive; even while sleeping, your posture is not so passive, it is active. Why is a SIDDHASANA so passive? For many reasons. In this posture the body is locked, closed. The body has an electric circle: when the circle is closed and locked, the electricity moves round and round inside the body, it does not leak out. Now it is a proved scientific phenomenon that in certain postures your body leaks energy. When the body is leaking energy, it has to create energy continuously. It is active. The body dynamo has to work continuously because you are leaking.
When energy is leaking from the outside body, the inside body has to be active to replace it. So the most passive state will be when no energy is leaking.
Now in Western countries, particularly in England, they treat patients just by making a circle of their body electricity. In may hospitals these techniques are being used and they are very helpful. A person lies on the floor on a net of wires. The net of wires is just to make a circle of his body electricity. Just half an hour is enough, and he will feel so relaxed, so filled with energy, so strong, that he cannot believe that when he came he was so weak.
In all the old cultures, people used to sleep in a particular direction in the night just so that energy didn’t leak out – because the earth has a magnetic force. To use that magnetic force you have to lie in a particular direction – then the force in the earth will magnetize you the whole night. If you are lying opposite to it the force is fighting with you and your energy will be destroyed. Many people in the morning feel very depressed, very weakened. This should not be so, because sleep is meant to rejuvenate you, to give you more energy. But there are many people who are energetic when they go to bed but in the morning they are just dead. There can be many reasons for it but this may be one: they are lying in the wrong direction. If they are lying against the earth magnet they will feel dissipated.
So now scientists say that the body has an electric circuit which can be locked, and they have studied many yogis sitting in SIDDHASANA. In that state the body is leaking the minimum energy; energy is preserved. When energy is preserved the inner batteries need not work, there is no need for any activity. So the body is passive. In this passivity, you can become more empty than if you are active.
In this SIDDHASANA posture your backbone is straight and the whole body is also straight. Now many studies have been done. When your body is straight, totally straight, you are least influenced by the gravitation of the earth. That’s why if you sit in a posture which is inconvenient, which you call inconvenient, the inconvenience is caused because your body is affected by more gravitation. If you are sitting straight then gravitation is least effective, because it can pull only your backbone, nothing else. That’s why it is difficult to sleep while standing. It is almost impossible to sleep while standing in a SHIRSHASANA, on your head. For sleep you have to lie down. Why? Because then the earth has the maximum pull on you – and the maximum pull makes you unconscious. For sleep you have to lie down on the ground, so the earth’s gravitation touches the whole of your body and pulls every cell of it. Then you become unconscious. Animals are more unconscious than man because they cannot stand erect. Evolutionists say that man could evolve because he could stand erect, on two feet. The gravitation pull is less. Because of that he could become a little more aware.
In siddhasana, the gravitational pull is at its minimum. The body is inactive and passive, closed inside, it has become a world unto itself. Nothing is moving out, nothing is coming in .Eyes are closed, hands are locked, feet are locked – energy moves in a circle. And whenever energy moves in a circle, it creates an inner rhythm, an inner music. The more you hear that music, the more you feel relaxed.
SUPPOSE YOUR PASSIVE FORM TO BE AN EMPTY ROOM – just like an empty room – WITH WALLS OF SKIN – EMPTY. Go on dropping into that emptiness. A moment will come sometime when you feel everything has disappeared; that there is no one, nobody, the house is vacant, the lord of the house has disappeared, evaporated. In that gap, in that interval, when you are not present inside, the Divine will be present. When you are not, God is. When you are not, bliss is. So try to disappear. Try to disappear from within.
GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR MIND FROLICS INFINITELY.
GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR MIND FROLICS INFINITELY. This second technique is based on the dimension of play. That has to be understood. If you are inactive, it is good to fall into deep emptiness, into the inner abyss. But you cannot be empty the whole day and you cannot be passive the whole day. You will have to do something. Activity is a basic requirement, otherwise you cannot be alive. Life means activity. So you can be inactive for a few hours, but for twenty-four hours you will have to be active. And meditation should be something which becomes your style of life, it should not be a fragment. Otherwise you will gain it and lose it.
If you are inactive one hour then for twenty-three hours you will be active. The active forces will be more, and they will destroy whatsoever you attain in your inactivity. The active forces will destroy it.
And the next day you will again do the same: for twenty-three hours you will accumulate the doer and in one hour you will have to drop it. It will be difficult. So your mind must change its attitude about work and activity. Hence the second technique.
Work should be considered as play, not as work. Work should be considered as play, just a game.
You should not be serious about it; you should be just like children playing. It is meaningless, nothing is to be achieved; just the very activity is enjoyed. You can feel the distinction if you play sometimes.
When you work it is different: you are serious, burdened, responsible, worried, anxious, because the result, the end-result, is the motive. The work itself is not worth enjoying. The real thing is just in the future, in the result. In play there is no result, really. The very process is blissful. And you are not worried, it is not a serious thing. Even if you look serious, it is just pretending. In play you enjoy the very process; in work the process is not being enjoyed – the goal, the end, is important. The process has to be tolerated anyhow. It has to be done because the end has to be achieved. If you could achieve the end without this, you would drop activity and jump to the end.
But in play you would not do that. If you could achieve the end without playing, then the end would be futile. It has meaning only through the process. For example, two football teams are on the playing-ground. Just by throwing a coin they can decide who will win and who will be defeated. Why go through so much effort, unnecessarily exerting yourself? The thing can be decided very easily just by tossing a coin. The end will be there. One team can win, another can be defeated. Why work for it? But then there will be no meaning, no significance. The end is not meaningful, the very process is the meaning. Even if no one wins and no one is defeated the game was worth it. The activity in itself is enjoyed.
This dimension of play has to be applied to your whole life: whatsoever you are doing, be there in that activity so totally that the end is irrelevant. It may come, it has to come, but it is not on your mind. You are playing, you are enjoying.
That’s what Krishna means when he tells Arjuna to leave the future in the hands of the Divine. The result of your activity is in the hands of the Divine, you simply do. This simply doing becomes a play. That’s what Arjuna finds difficult to understand, because he says that if it is just play, then why kill, why fight? He understands what work is but he cannot understand what play is. And Krishna’s whole life is just a play. You cannot find such a non-serious man anywhere. His whole life is just a play, a game, a drama. He is enjoying everything but he is not serious about it. He is enjoying it intensely but he is not worried about the result. What happens is irrelevant.
It is difficult for Arjuna to understand Krishna because he calculates, he thinks in terms of the end- result. He says in the beginning of the Gita, “This whole thing seems to be absurd. On both sides my friends and my relatives are standing to fight. Whosoever wins, it will be a loss, because my family, my relatives, my friends, will be destroyed. Even if I win, it will not be worth anything because to whom am I going to show my victory? Victories are meaningful because friends, relatives, family will enjoy them. But there will be no one, the victory will be just over dead bodies. Who will appreciate it? Who will say, ‘Arjuna, you have done a great deed’? So whether I am victorious or I am defeated, it seems absurd. The whole thing is nonsense.” He wants to renounce. He is deadly serious. And anyone who calculates will be that deadly serious.
The setting of the Gita is unique: war is the most serious affair. You cannot be playful about it, because lives are involved, millions of lives are involved – you cannot be playful. And Krishna insists that even there you have to be playful. You don’t think about what will happen in the end, you just be here and now. You just be a warrior playing. Don’t get worried about the result because the result is in the hands of the Divine. And it is not even the point if the result is in the hands of the Divine or not. The point is that it should not be in your hands. You should not carry it. If you carry it then your life cannot become meditative.
This second technique says, GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. Let your whole life be just a play. THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR MIND FROLICS INFINITELY. Your mind goes on playing infinitely: the whole thing is just like a dream in an empty room. While meditating, one has to look at the mind just frolicking, just like children playing, jumping out of overflowing energy, that’s all. Thoughts jumping, frolicking, just a play – don’t be serious about them. Even if a bad thought is there, don’t feel guilty. Or, if there is a very great thought, a very good thought – that you want to serve humanity and transform the whole world; and you want to bring heaven onto earth – don’t get too much ego through it, don’t feel that you have become great. This is just a frolicking mind. Sometimes it goes down, sometimes it comes up – it is just overflowing energy, taking many shapes and forms. Mind is just an overflowing spring, nothing else.
Be playful, Shiva says, Gracious one, play. The attitude of the player means he is enjoying the activity, it is good in itself. No profit motive is involved; he is not calculative. Just look at a businessman. Whatsoever he is doing, he is calculating about the profit, what he is going to attain out of it. A customer comes. The customer is not a person, he is just a means. What can be profited out of him? How can he be exploited? Deep down he is calculating what is to be said, what is to be done. Everything is calculated just to manipulate, just to exploit. He is not concerned with this person, he is not concerned with the deal, he is not concerned with anything – he is concerned only with the future, the profit.
Look at the East:in the villages still, a businessman is not just a profit-maker, and the customer has not come just to purchase something. They enjoy it. I remember my old grandfather. He was a cloth merchant and I and my whole family was puzzled because he enjoyed it so much. For hours together it was a game with the customers. If something was worth ten rupees, he would ask fifty rupees for it, and he knew this was absurd. And his customers knew it too, they knew that it must be near about ten rupees, and they will start from two rupees. Then a long haggling would follow – hours together. My father any my uncles would get angry. “What is going on? Why don’t you simply say what the price is?” But he had his own customers. When they came, they would ask, “Where is Dada, where is grandfather? Because with him it is a game, a play. Whether we lose one rupee or two, whether it is more or less, that is not the point!”
They enjoyed it. The very activity in itself was something worth pursuing. Two persons were communicating through it. Two persons were playing a game and both knew it was a game – because of course a fixed price was possible.
In the West now they have fixed prices because people are more calculating and more profit- motivated. They cannot conceive of wasting time. Why waste time? The thing can be settled within minutes. There is no need. You can just write the exact price. Why fight for hours together?
But then the game is lost and the whole thing becomes a routine. Even machines can do it. The businessman is not needed; the customer is not needed.
I have heard about a psychoanalyst who was such a busy man and who had so many patients that it was difficult to have personal contact with everyone. So he would feed his tape-recorder for a particular patient and the tape-recorder would say whatsoever that psychoanalyst wanted to say to the patient.
Once it happened that it was the appointed time of a patient who was a very rich man. The psychoanalyst was entering a hotel. Suddenly he saw the patient sitting there. So he asked, “What are you doing here? It was your time with me.” The patient said, “I am so busy that I have fed my words to my own tape-recorder. Both the tape-recorders are talking to each other. Whatsoever you have to say to me, my tape-recorder has recorded, and whatsoever I have to say to you, your tape-recorder has recorded it from my tape-recorder. This same time, and we are both free.”
If you are too calculating then persons disappear, and more and more mechanization comes in.
Even now in villages in India the haggling goes on. It is a game and worth enjoying. You are playing.
It is a match between two intelligences, and two persons come in deep contact. But it is not time- saving. Games can never be time-saving. And in games you don’t worry about the time. You are carefree, and whatsoever is going on, you enjoy it right in that moment. Being playful is one of the deepest bases of all meditative processes. But we are businesslike; we are trained for it. So even when we meditate, we are looking for the end, for the result. And whatsoever happens, you will be unsatisfied.
People come to me and they say, “Yes, meditation is growing, progressing. I’m feeling more happy, a little more silent, at east, but nothing else is happening.” What nothing else? I know that people like this are bound to come some day and say, “Yes, I am feeling nirvana, but nothing else is happening.
I am blissful, but nothing else is happening.” What nothing else? He is looking for some profit and unless some very visible profit comes into his hands, something which he can deposit in a bank, he cannot be satisfied. Silence and happiness are so vague, you cannot possess them, you cannot show them to anyone.
Every day it happens that people come to me and they say that they are sad. They are expecting something which should not be expected even in businesses – and they are expecting in their meditations. The business mind comes into meditation with the whole training of business – what profit can be made out of it?
The businessman is not playful. And if you are not playful, you cannot be meditative. Be more and more playful. Waste time in play. Just playing with children will do. Even if there is no one, you can jump and dance alone in the room and be playful. Enjoy. But your mind will go on insisting, “What are you doing, wasting time? You can earn something out of this time. You can do something, and you are just jumping, singing, and dancing. What are you doing? Have you gone mad? Try it. Snatch whatsoever time you can get out of your business, and be playful. Whatsoever. You can paint, you can play on a sitar, anything you like – but be playful. Look for no profit out of it, see no future in it, just the present. And then, then you can be playful inside also. Then you can jump on your thoughts, play with them, throw them here and there, dance with them, but not be serious about them.
Many people are just unconscious as far as their mind is concerned. Whatsoever happens in their mind, they are unconscious about it; they are drifting in it without knowing where the mind leads them. If you can be aware of any track of the mind you will be puzzled at what is happening. Mind moves through associations. A dog barks on the street. The bark comes to your head – and now you have started. You may move to the very end of the world through this barking of the dog. You may remember some friend who had a dog. Then this dog is dropped and that friend has come into the mind and he had a beautiful wife and the wife was beautiful… and now you are moving. You can go to the very end of this world and you will never remember that just a dog played a trick on you; it just barked, and put you on the track, and you started to move.
You will feel very awkward at what scientists say about this. They say that this track is fixed in your mind. If the same dog in the same situation barks again, you will follow this track again: the friend, the dog, the wife – the beautiful wife – you will go the same way again.
Now they have tried many experiments with electrodes in the human brain. They touch a particular spot in the brain and then a particular memory is released. Suddenly you see that you are five years old, playing in a garden, running after a butterfly. Then the whole sequence is there: you feel pleasant, everything is nice, the air, the garden, the smell, everything comes alive. It is not simply memory, you relive it. Then the electrode is pulled out and the memory stops. If the electrode again touches the same spot, again the same memory comes again. It is just as if you are remembering something mechanical. And it always starts from a certain beginning and ends at a particular end; and then starts from the beginning… just as you record something on a tape-recorder. Your brain has millions of memories, millions of cells recording, and it is all mechanical.
These experiments on the human brain are very strange and very revealing. Memories can be revived again and again, again and again. One experimenter tried three hundred times and the memory was the same – it was recorded. The person on whom the experiment was done became aware and he felt that it was very, very weird because he was not the master, he could not do anything. When the electrode touched the place, the memory started and he had to see it. During three hundred times he by and by became a witness. He started seeing the memory but then he became aware that he was different and this memory was different. This experiment can be helpful, very helpful, for meditators, because when you know your mind is nothing but a mechanical recording around you, you are separate.
This mind can be touched. Now scientists say that sooner or later we will cut all the centers which give you anguish, anxiety, because again and again the same thing is touched and the whole thing has to be relived.
I have been trying many experiments with many disciples. Do the same thing and they move in the same vicious circle, again and again, again and again – unless they become a witness that this is a mechanical thing. You are aware that if you say the same thing to your wife each week, the same thing, she will react. After seven days, when she has forgotten, say the same thing: she will react.
Then record – the reaction is going to be the same. You know, your wife knows, a pattern becomes fixed – and it goes on. Even a dog can start your pattern just by barking. Something is touched, an electrode has entered. You have started on a journey.
If you are playful in life then you can be playful inside with the mind also. Then be as if you are watching something on a TV screen: you are not involved, you are just a spectator, an onlooker.
Look, and enjoy it. Don’t say good, don’t say bad, don’t condemn, don’t appreciate, because these are serious things. If a naked woman comes onto your screen, don’t say that this is bad, that some devil is playing a trick on you. No devil is there to play a trick upon you. Look at it as if it is just on the screen, a film screen. And be playful about it: say to the lady, “Wait”. Don’t try to push her out because the more you push her out, the more she will come in – ladies are difficult. And don’t follow her. If you follow then you will be in trouble. Don’t follow, don’t fight – this is the rule. Just look and be playful. Just say a “hello” or “good morning”. Just look and don’t be disturbed at all. Let the lady wait. She will go by herself, as she came: she moves on her own. She is not related to you, she is just something in the memory. Struck by some situation she came there, just a picture. Be playful with it. If you can be playful with your mind it will drop very soon, because mind can be there only if you are serious. Seriousness is the link, the bridge.
GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR MIND FROLICS INFINITELY.
SWEET-HEARTED ONE, MEDITATE ON KNOWING AND NOT-KNOWING, EXISTING AND NOT- EXISTING. THEN LEAVE BOTH ASIDE THAT YOU MAY BE.
… MEDITATE ON KNOWING AND NOT-KNOWING, EXISTING AND NOT-EXISTING. Meditate on the positive aspect of life and then on the negative – then put both aside because you are neither.
THEN LEAVE BOTH ASIDE THAT YOU MAY BE.
Look at it this way. Meditate on a birth: a child is born, you are born. Then you grow, you become young – meditate on this whole growth. Then you become old, then you die. From the very beginning, imagine the very moment when your father and mother conceived you, and into the womb of the mother you came. Just the first cell. From there look to the very end, where your body is burning on a funeral pyre and all your relative are standing around you. Then put both aside – the one who was born and the one who has died. Just put both aside and then look within. There you are – that which is never born and which is never going to die.
… knowing and not-knowing, existing and not-existing. Then leave both aside that you may be. You can do it with any positive-negative polarity. You are sitting here. I look at you. I know you. When I close my eyes, you are no longer there, I don’t know you. Then put aside both the knowledge that I have known and the knowledge that I don’t know – you will be empty. Because when you put both knowledge and no-knowledge aside, you will be empty.
There are two types of people: some are filled with knowledge and some are filled with ignorance.
There are people who say, “We know.” Their ego is bound up with their knowledge. And there are people who say, “We are ignorant.” They are filled with their ignorance. They say, “We are ignorant.
We don’t know.” One is identified with knowledge, the other is identified with ignorance, but both possess something, both cherish something. Push both aside, knowing and not-knowing, so that you are neither – neither ignorant nor knowing. Put aside both positive and negative. Then who are you? Suddenly the who will be revealed to you. You will become aware of the beyond, that which transcends. Putting aside both positive and negative, you will be empty. You will be no one, neither wise nor ignorant. Put both hate and love aside, put both friendship and enmity aside… when both the polarities are put aside you are empty.
But this is a trick of the mind: it can put one aside but never the two together. It can put one aside – you can put ignorance aside, then you cling to knowledge. You can put pain aside, but then you cling to pleasure. You can put enemies aside, but then you cling to friends. And there are a few people who do just the verse: they will be put friends aside and cling to the enemies, they will put love aside and cling to hate, they will put wealth aside and cling to poverty, and they put knowledge, scriptures, aside and cling to ignorance. These people are great renouncers. Whatsoever you cling to they put it aside and cling to the opposite – but they cling all the same Clinging is the problem, because if you cling you cannot be empty. Don’t cling – this is the message of this technique. Just don’t cling to anything positive or negative because with non-clinging you will find yourself. You are there but because of the clinging, you are hidden. With non-clinging you will be exposed, you will be uncovered. You will explode.
ENTER SPACE, SUPPORTLESS, ETERNAL, STILL.
Enter space, supportless, eternal, still. Three qualities of space have been given in this technique.
Supportless: there can be no support in space. Eternal: it can never end. Still: it will be soundless, it will be silent. Enter this space, it is within you.
But the mind always asks for support. People come to me and if I say to them, “Just sit silently, with closed eyes, and don’t do anything,” they say, “Give me some AVALAMBAN, some support. Give me some mantra as a support, because I cannot sit.” Just sitting is difficult. If I give them a mantra, it is okay. They can go on repeating the mantra. Then it is easy. With support you are never empty, that’s why it is easy. Something must go on, you must be doing something. Doing, the doer remains:
doing, you are filled. You may be filled with Aumkar, Aum, Ram, Jesus, Ave Maria, anything – you may be filled with anything, but you are filled. Then you are okay Mind resists emptiness. It wants always to be filled by something else, because if it is filled it can be. If it is not filled it will disappear.
In emptiness you will attain no no-mind. That’s why mind asks for support.
If you want to enter inner space, don’t ask for support. Drop all supports, mantras, gods, scriptures, whatsoever gives you a support. If you feel you are supported, drop it, and just move inside – supportless. It will be fearful; you will feel scared. You are moving to where you can be lost completely. You may not be able to come back because all supports will be lost. Your contact with the bank is lost and where this river will lead you, no one knows. Your support is lost. You may fall into an infinite abyss. Hence, fear grips you, and you ask for some support. Even if it is a false support, you enjoy it. Even a false support is helpful. Because for the mind it makes no difference whether a support is real or false – it must be a support, that’s the point. You are not alone, something is there and supporting you.
It happened once that a man came to me. He was living in a house where he felt there were spirits and ghosts. And he was very worried. Through worries, he started seeing more illusions. Through worries, he became ill, weak. His wife said, “If you live any longer in this house, I am leaving.” His children were sent to some relative’s house.
The man came to me and he said, “It has become very difficult now. I see them clearly. They walk in the night. The whole house is filled with spirits.You help me.” So I gave him one of my pictures and said, “Take it. Now I will tackle those spirits. You simply sleep silently, you need not worry. Really, I will tackle them, I will see to them. Now it is my business. And don’t interfere. Now you need not be concerned.” The man came the next day. He said, “I slept, it was so beautiful! You have done a miracle!”
And I had not done anything but give a support. Through support the mind was filled. It was no longer vacant; someone was there.
In ordinary life you are leaning on many false supports, but they help. And unless you become strong enough, you will need them. That’s why I say that this is the ultimate technique – no support.
Buddha was dying and Anand asked him, “Now you are leaving us, what shall we do? How shall we attain? How shall we proceed now? When the master is gone, we will be wandering in darkness for many, many lives. No one is there to lead us, to guide us, the light is going out.” So Buddha said, “It will be good for you. When I am no more, you become your own light. Move alone, don’t ask for any support, because support is the last barrier.”
And it happened. Anand had not become enlightened. For forty years he was with Buddha, he was the closest disciple, he was just like a shadow to Buddha, moving with him, living with him; he had had the longest contact with him. For forty years Buddha’s compassion was falling over him, raining over him – for forty years. But nothing happened, Anand remained as ignorant as ever. And the day after Buddha died, Anand became enlightened – the next day, the very next day. The very support had been the barrier. When there was no more Buddha, Anand could not find any support. It is difficult. If you live with a Buddha, and the Buddha goes, then no one can be a support to you. Now no one will be worth clinging to. One who has been clinging to a Buddha cannot cling to anybody else in this world. This whole world will be vacant. Once you have known a Buddha and his love and compassion, then no love, no compassion can compare. Once you have tasted that, nothing else is worth tasting. So Anand was alone for the first time in forty years, totally alone. There was no way to find a support. He had known the highest support; now lower supports would not do. The next day he became enlightened. He must have moved into the inner space, supportless, eternal, still.
So remember, don’t try to find any support. Be supportless. If you are trying to do this technique, then be supportless. That is what Krishnamurti is teaching, “Be supportless. Don’t cling to a master.
Don’t cling to a scripture. Don’t cling to anything.”
That is what every master has been doing. A master’s whole effort is first to attract you towards him, so that you start clinging to him. When you start clinging to him, when you become close and intimate with him, then he knows that the clinging must be cut. And you cannot cling to anyone else now – that is finished. You cannot move to anyone else – that is impossible. Then he cuts the clinging and suddenly you are left supportless. It will be miserable in the beginning. You will cry and you will weep and you will scream and the whole being will feel that you are lost. Into the very deepest depth of misery you will fall. But from there one arises alone, supportless.
ENTER SPACE, SUPPORTLESS, ETERNAL, STILL. That space has no beginning, no end. And that space is absolutely soundless. There is nothing – not even a sound vibrating, not even a ripple.
Everything is still.
That point is just within you. Any moment you can enter it. If you have the courage to be supportless, this very moment you can enter it. The door is open. The invitation is for all, all and everyone. But courage is needed; courage to be alone, courage to be empty, courage to dissolve and melt, courage to die. And if you can die within to your inner space, you will attain to the life which never dies, you will attain to AMRIT, to immortality.
All and nothing mean the same:
The first question:
Question 1:
YOU SAID THAT REALLY THERE IS NO ONE INSIDE US, THERE IS ONLY A VOID,
AN EMPTINESS, BUT THEN WHY DO YOU OFTEN CALL IT THE BEING, THE CENTER?
Being or non-being, nothing or all – they look contradictory but they both mean the same. All and nothing mean the same. In dictionaries they are opposites but in life they are not.Nobody understands. Look at it in this way: if I say that I love all, or if I say that I love no one, it means the same. If I love someone, then only is there a difference. If I love all, it means the same as loving no one. There is no difference then. The difference is always in degrees, relative. And these are both two extremes, they have no degrees: the total and the zero have no degrees. So you can call the total a zero, or you can call a zero the total. That’s why some enlightened persons have called the inner space emptiness, SUNYA, the void, nothingness, non-being, ANATMA – and some have called it the inner being, the absolute being, the BRAHMA, ATMA, the supreme self. These are the two ways to describe it. One is positive, the other is negative. Either you have to include all or have to exclude all – you cannot describe it with any term which is relative. An absolute term is needed.
Both the contradictory poles are absolute terms.
But there have been some enlightened persons who have remained totally silent. They have not called it anything, because whatsoever you call it – whether you call it being or non-being – the moment you give it a name, a term, a word, you have erred, because it includes both.
For example, if you say, “God is alive,” or “God is life,” it is meaningless, because then who will be death? He includes all. He must have death in him as completely as life, otherwise to whom will death belong? And if death belongs to someone else and life belongs to God – then there are two Gods, and then there will be many problems which cannot be solved. God must be both life and death. God must be both the creator and the destroyer. If you say God is the creator, then who is the destroyer? If you say God is good, then who will be evil? Because of this difficulty, Christians, Zoroastrians, and many other religions have created a Devil side by side with God, because to whom will the evil belong? They have created a Devil. But nothing is solved – the problem is only pushed one step back because then it can be relevantly asked, “Who has created the Devil?” If God himself creates the Devil, then he is responsible. And if the Devil is something independent, not related to God, then he himself becomes a God, a supreme power. And if God has not created the Devil, how can God destroy him? It is impossible. Theologians go on giving some answers to a question but that answer again creates more questions.
God created Adam, then Adam became evil. He was expelled. He disobeyed God and he was expelled from the heavenly world. It has been asked again and again, and relevantly, why did Adam become evil? The possibility must have been created by God in him – the possibility to be evil, to go wrong, to disobey. If there was no possibility, no inherent tendency, then how could Adam go wrong?
God must have created the tendency. And if the tendency for evil was there, another thing is also certain: the tendency to overcome it was not so strong. the tendency to fight it was not so strong.
The evil tendency was stronger. Who created this strength? No one except God can be responsible.
Then the whole thing seems to be a hoax. God creates Adam: he creates an evil tendency in him, a strong evil tendency which he cannot control; then he goes wrong; then he is punished. God should be punished, not Adam! Or, you have to accept that some other force exists side by side with God.
And that other force must be stronger than God, because the evil can tempt Adam and God cannot protect him. The Devil can provoke and seduce and God cannot protect. The Devil seems to be a stronger God.
There is a church, recently born in America, called the church of Satan, the church of the Devil.
They have a high priest, just like the pope of the Vatican. And they say that history proves that the real God is the Devil. And they look logical. They say, “Your God, the God of good, has always been defeated, and the Devil has always been the victorious. The whole of history proves it. So why worship a weak God who cannot protect you? It is better to follow a strong God who can seduce you but who can protect you also – because he is stronger.” The church of the Devil is now a growing church. And they seem logical. This is what history proves.
This duality – to save God from the negative pole – creates problems. In India we have not created the other pole. We say God is both: the creator and the destroyer, the good and the bad. This is difficult to conceive of because the moment we say “God” we cannot conceive of him being bad. But in India we have tried to penetrate the deepest mystery of existence – that is, oneness. Somehow, good and bad, life and death, negative and positive, meet somewhere, and that meeting point is existence, oneness. What will you call that meeting point? Either you will have to use a positive term, or a negative one, because we don’t have any other terms. If you use positive terms, then you call it “Being” with a capital B – God, Absolute, BRAHMA. Or if you want to use s negative term, then you call it nirvana, nothingness, SUNYA, non-being, ANATMA. Both indicate the same. It is both and your inner being is also both. That is why sometimes I call it being, and sometimes I call it non-being.
It is both. It depends on you. If the positive appeals to you, then call it being. If the negative appeals to you, then call it non-being. It depends on you. Whatsoever feels good, whatsoever you feel will give you maturity, growth, evolution, call it that.
There are two types of persons: one who cannot feel any affinity with negativity and the other who cannot feel any affinity with the positive. Buddha is the negative type. He cannot feel affinity with the positive, he feels affinity with the negative. He uses all negative terms. Shankara doesn’t feel affinity with the negative. He talks about the ultimate reality in positive terms. Both say the same thing. Buddha calls it SUNYA, and Shankara calls it BRAHMA. Buddha calls it the void, nothing, and Shankara calls it the Absolute, the All. But they are saying exactly the same thing.
Ramanuja, one of Shankara’s greatest critics, says that Shankara is just a hidden Buddhist. He is not a Hindu, he only appears to be because he uses positive terms. That is all the difference there is. Wherever Buddha says nothing, he says BRAHMA – all else is the same. Ramanuja says that Shankara is the great destroyer of Hinduism because he has brought Buddhism in from the back door by just using a trick – wherever a negative term is used, he uses a positive term, that’s all. He calls him a “PRACHANNA-BOUDDHA”, a crypto-Buddhist. And he is right in a way because there is no difference. The message is the same.
So it depends on you. If you feel an affinity with silence, nothingness, then call that great being Emptiness. If you don’t feel an affinity, if you feel afraid, then call that emptiness The Great Being.
But then your techniques will be different. If you feel scared with emptiness, aloneness, nothingness, then the four techniques I talked about last night will not be of much use to you. Forget them. There are other methods about which I have been talking. Use positive techniques.
But if you are ready and have the courage to be supportless, to move into emptiness, alone, ready to cease completely, then these four techniques will help you tremendously. It depends on you.
The second question:
Question 2:
IF THERE IS ABSOLUTE EMPTINESS INSIDE AN ENLIGHTENED ONE,
THEN HOW IS IT THAT HE SEEMS TO BE MAKING DECISIONS,
DISCRIMINATING, LIKING THIS OR DISLIKING THAT, SAYING YES OR NO?
This will really look a paradox. If an enlightened one is simply emptiness, then for us it becomes a paradox. Then why does he say yes or no? Why does ht choose? Why does he like some things and dislike other things? Why does he talk? Why does he walk? Why does he live at all?
For us this is a problem; but for the enlightened one it is not a problem. Everything is done out of emptiness. The enlightened one is not choosing. It looks like choice to us but the enlightened one simply moves in one direction – that direction comes from the emptiness itself.
It is just like this. You are walking. Suddenly a car comes in front of you and you feel that an accident will happen. You don’t decide what to do. Do you decide? How can you decide? There is no time.
A decision will take time. You will have to ponder and think, weigh up the pros and cons, decide whether to jump this way or that. You don’t decide. You simply jump. From where does that jump com? Between the jump and you there is no thinking process. Suddenly you become aware that the car is in front of you and you jump. The jump happens first. Then later on you can think. In that moment you jump through hastiness; your whole being jumps without any decision.
Remember, decision is always of the part, it can never be of the whole. Decision means that there was a conflict. One part of your being was saying, “Do this,” another part was saying, “Don’t do this.”
That’s why the decision was needed. You had to decide, argue, and one part had to be pushed aside. That’s what decision means. When your totality is there, there is no need to decide. There is no alternative. An enlightened one is total within himself, total emptiness. So whatsoever comes out, it comes out of his totality, not out of any decision. If he says “yes” it is not a choice: there was no “no” to be chosen, there was no alternative. “Yes” is the response of his total being. If he says “no”, then “no” is the response of his total being. That’s why an enlightened man can never repent.
You will repent always. Whatsoever you do, it makes no difference – whatsoever you do, you will repent. If you want to marry a woman, if you decide “yes”, you will repent, if you decide “no”, you will repent. Because whatsoever you decide is a partial decision, the other part is always against. If you decide, “Yes, I will marry this woman,” one part of your being is saying, “Don’t do this, you will repent.” You are not total.
When difficulties arise…. They are bound to arise because when two different persons start living together, difficulties are bound to arise. There will be conflicts, there will be a struggle to dominate, there will be power politics. Then the other part will say, “Look! What did I say? I was insisting that you shouldn’t do this, and you have done it.” But that doesn’t mean that if you had followed the other part, there would have been no repentance. No! The repentance would have been there, because then you would have married some other woman, and the conflict and the struggle would have happened. Then the other part would go on saying, “I was saying marry the first woman. You have missed an opportunity. A heaven is lost, and you are married to a hell.”
You will repent, whatsoever the case, because your decision cannot be total. It is always against a part, and that part will take revenge. So whatsoever you decide, if you do good you will repent, if you do bad you will repent. If you do good, then your mind, the other part, will go on saying that you have missed an opportunity. If you do bad, then you will feel guilty. An enlightened being never repents. Really he never looks backwards. There is nothing to look backwards at. Whatsoever is done is done with his totality.
So the first thing to be understood is that he never chooses. The choice happens to his emptiness; he never decides. That doesn’t mean that he is indecisive. He is absolutely decisive, but he never decides. Try to understand me. The decision happens in his emptiness. This is how his whole being acts: there is nothing more to it. If you are walking and a snake crosses your path, you jump suddenly – that’s all. You don’t decide. You don’t consult a master and a guide. You don’t go to look into books in the library about what to do when a snake crosses the path – how to do it, what the technique is. You simply jump. And remember, that jump is coming from your total being, it has not been a decision. Your total being has acted that way. That is all. There is nothing more to it. To you it seems as if an enlightened one is choosing, deciding, discriminating, because you are doing that every moment. And you cannot understand something which you have not known at all. An enlightened one happens to be doing things without any decision, without any effort, without any choice – he is choiceless. But that doesn’t mean that if you give him food and stones, he will start eating stones. He will eat the food. To you it will look as if he has decided not to eat the stones, but he has not decided. That is simply foolish. It doesn’t occur to him. He eats the food. This is not a decision – only an idiot person would decide whether to eat stones or food. Stupid minds decide; enlightened minds simply act. And the more mediocre the mind, the more effort has to be made for a decision.
That’s what worry means. What is worry? There are two alternatives and no way to decide between them – and the mind goes on, one moment this side, another moment that side. This is what worry is. Worry means you have to decide and you are trying to decide, but you cannot decide. So you are worrying, puzzled, moving in vicious circles. An enlightened one is never worried. He is total. Try to understand this. He is not divided, he is not split, there are not two beings in him. But in you there is a crowd: not only two, there are many, many persons living in you, many voices, just a crowd. An enlightened one is a deep unity, he is a universe. You are a “multiverse”. This word “universe” is beautiful. It means one – “uni”. You are a “multiverse”, there are many worlds in you.
The second thing to be understood is that whatsoever you do, before doing it, there is thinking, thought. Whatsoever an enlightened person is doing, there is no thinking, no thought. He is doing it.
Remember, thinking is needed because you have no eyes to see. Thinking is a substitute. It is just like a blind man groping his way on a path with a stick. A blind man can ask people who have eyes how they grope, what type of sticks they use to grope their way on the path. And they will simply laugh; they will say that they don’t need sticks. They have eyes. They simply see where the door is, they need not grope for it. And they never think about where the door is. They see and they pass through it. But a blind man cannot believe that you can simply pass through a door. First you will have to think about where the door is. First you will have to inquire. If someone is there you will have to ask where the door is. And even if the direction is given, you will have to grope for it with your stick – and then too there may be many pitfalls. But when you have eyes, if you want to go out, you simply look… you don’t think about where the door is, you don’t decide. You simply look, the door is there, you pass through it. You never think that this is a door – you simply use it and you act.
The same is the situation with unenlightened minds and enlightened minds. An enlightened mind simply looks. Everything is clear. He has a clarity. His whole being is light. He looks around and he simply moves, acts – he never thinks. You have to think because you don’t have eyes. Only blind men think; they have to think because they don’t have eyes. They need substitute eyes, and thinking provides that.
I never say that Buddha or Mahavira or Jesus are great thinkers. That would be just nonsense. They are not thinkers at all. They are knowers, not thinkers. They have eyes, they can see, and through their seeing they act. Whatsoever comes out of a Buddha comes out of emptiness, not out of a mind filled with thoughts. It has come out of an empty sky. It is the response of emptiness.
But for us it is difficult because nothing comes to us in that way. We have to think about it. If someone asks a question, you have to think about it. And even then you can never be certain that whatsoever you are saying is the answer. A Buddha answers; he doesn’t think. You question him, and the emptiness simply responds. That response is not a thought-over thing. It is a total response.
His being behaves that way. That’s why you cannot ask for consistency from a Buddha. You cannot.
Thought can be consistent, a thinker is bound to be consistent – but an enlightened person cannot be consistent, because each moment the situation changes. And each moment things come out of his emptiness. He cannot force. He cannot think. He does not really remember what he said yesterday. Every question creates a new answer. And every question creates a new response. It depends on the questioner.
Buddha enters a village. One man asks, “Is there God?” Buddha says, “No.” In the afternoon, another man asks, “Is there God?” Buddha says, “Yes.” Then in the evening, a third one asks, “Is there God?” Buddha remains silent. In just one day: in the morning, no; in the afternoon, yes; in the evening, silence – neither yes nor no.
Buddha’s disciple, Anand, became puzzled. He had heard all three answers. In the night when everyone had retired, he asked Buddha, “Can I ask you a question? Just in one day you have answered one question in three ways, not only differently, contradictorily. My mind is puzzled. I cannot sleep if you don’t answer. What do you mean? In the morning you say yes, in the afternoon no, in the evening you remain silent. And the question was the same.” Buddha said, “But the questioners were different. And how can different questioners ask the same question?” This is really beautiful, very deep. He said, “How can different questioners ask the same question? A question comes out of a being, it is a growth. If the being is different, how can the question be the same? In the morning when I said yes, the man who was asking was an atheist. He had come to get my confirmation that there is no God. And I could not confirm his atheism, because he was suffering because of it. And because I could not be a part in his suffering, and I wanted to help him, I said, “Yes, God exists.” That’s how I tried to destroy his so-called atheism. In the afternoon, when the other person was there, he was a theist and he was suffering through his theism. I couldn’t say yes to him because that would have been a confirmation – which he had come for. Then he would go and say, ‘Yes, whatsoever I was saying is right. Even Buddha says so.’ And the man was wrong.
I could not help a wrong man in his wrongness so I had to say no to destroy whatsoever he is, to shatter his mind. And the man who came in the evening was neither. He was a simple, innocent man and he was not asking for any confirmation. He had no ideology; he was really a religious person.
So I had to be silent. I said to him, “Be silent about this question. Don’t think about it.” If I had said yes, it would have been wrong because he was not there to find a theology. If I had said no, it would have been wrong, because he was not to be confirmed in any atheism. He was not interested in thoughts, in ideas, in theories, doctrines, no; he was a real religious man. How can I utter any word before him? I had to be silent. He understood my silence. When he went away, his religiousness had deepened.”
Buddha said, “Three persons cannot ask the same question. They can formulate it in a similar way – that is another thing. The questions were all “Does God exist?” Their formulation was the same, but the being from where the question was coming was totally different. They meant different things by it; their values were different; their associations with words were different.”
I remember, once it happened that Mulla Nasruddin came back to his house one evening. The whole day he had been involved in a football match. He was a fan. IN the evening when he entered the house, his wife was reading a newspaper, and she said, “Look, Nasruddin, there is something for you. It is reported here that a man has given his wife in return for a season ticket for the football matches. You are also a fan, a mad fan, but I cannot conceive that you would do the same. Or would you? Could you exchange me just to get a season ticket for the football matches?”
Nasruddin thought hard, and then he said, “Of course I would not – because it is ridiculous and criminal. The season is half over.”
Every mind has its own orientation. You may use the same words but because you are different, those same words cannot be the same.
Then Buddha said another thing, and that is even more significant. He said, “Anand, why are you disturbed? You were not a party. You should not listen, because not a single answer was given to you. You should remain indifferent, otherwise you will go mad. Don’t move with me because I will be involved with many, many types of persons. And if you listen to everything that is not said to you, you will get confused and crazy. You just leave me. Otherwise remember to listen only when I speak to you; at other times don’t listen. Whatsoever I say is not your business. It was not said to you and it was not your question at all. So why should you be worried? You were not related. Someone asked, someone else replied. Why are you unnecessarily worried about it? If you have the same question, ask, and then I will answer. But remember, my answers are not to the questions, but to the questioners. I respond. I look at the man, I see through the man, the man becomes transparent – and this is my response. The question is irrelevant; the questioner is relevant.”
You cannot ask for consistency from an enlightened person. Only unenlightened, ignorant persons can be consistent, because they don’t have to look. They just follow some ideas. They carry dead ideas, consistently. For their whole life they will carry something and they will remain consistent to it. They are stupid, that’s why they can remain consistent. They are not alive. They are dead.
Aliveness cannot be consistent. That doesn’t mean that it is wrong – aliveness is consistent, but very deeply, not on the surface. Buddha is consistent in all the three answers, but his consistency is not in the answers – his consistency is in his effort to help. He wanted to help the first man. He wanted to help the second man. He wanted to help the third man. For all three, compassion was there, love was there. He wanted to help them – that is his consistency. But it is a deep current. His words are different, his answers are different, but his compassion is the same.
So when an enlightened person speaks, answers, that answer is a total response of his emptiness, of his being. He echoes you, he reflected you, he is a mirror. He has no face of his own. Your face is mirrored in his heart. So if an idiot comes to meet a Buddha, he will meet an idiot – Buddha is just a mirror. And that man will go and spread the rumor that Buddha is an idiot. He has seen himself in Buddha. If someone sensitive, understanding, mature, grown up comes, he will see something else in Buddha: he will see his own face. There is no other way – you go on seeing mirrors in persons who are totally empty. Then whatsoever you carry is your interpretation.
It is said in old scriptures that when you reach an enlightened person, remain totally silent. Don’t think, otherwise you will miss the opportunity of meeting him. Just remain silent. Don’t think. Absorb him, but don’t try to understand him through your head. Absorb him, drink him, allow your total being to be open to him, let him move within you, but don’t think about him – because if you think, then your mind will be echoed. Let your total being be bathed in his presence. Only then will you have a glimpse of what type of being, of what type of phenomenon you have come in contact with. Many came to Buddha. They came and went. They carried their own opinions, and they went out and they spread them. Very few, really very few, understood – and that is how it should be, because you can understand only according to you. If you are ready to melt and change and be transformed, only then can you understand what an enlightened person, what an enlightened being is.
The third question:
Question 3:
YOU SAID THAT NOISE AND DISTURBANCES ARE NOT OUTSIDE IN THE WORLD,
BUT ARE BECAUSE OF YOUR OWN MINDS AND EGO.
BUT WHY DO THE SAINTS AND MYSTICS ALWAYS LIVE IN UNNOISY, UNCROWDED PLACES?
Because they are still not saints and mystics. They are still endeavoring, still working. They are seekers, not SIDDHAS. They have not reached. Noise will disturb them, the crowd will disturb them.
The crowd will pull them back to its own level. They are still weak, they need protection. They are still not confident. They cannot move into temptation. They have to protect themselves in the lonely solitude where they can grow and become strong. When they are strong there will be no problem.
Mahavir moved into the wilderness. For twelve years he was alone, silent, not talking, not moving in villages or cities. Then he became enlightened. Then he came back to the world. Buddha was in total silence for six years. Then he came back to the world. Jesus or Mohammed, or anyone – when they are growing they need protected conditions. When they have grown, then there is no problem.
So if you find a mystic afraid of moving in a crowd, then know well that he is still a child, growing.
Otherwise why should a mystic be afraid of moving in crowds? Nothing can be done to him by the crowd, by the noise, by the world, by the objects of the world. With all this madness around him, nothing can be done to him. He cannot be touched. He can move and he can live – anywhere it happens for his emptiness to live, he can live.
But in the beginning it is good to be alone, to be in a harmonious, natural surrounding. So remember, don’t think that because you live in a noisy Bombay you are a mystic, or you have grown up and have become a SIDDHA. If you want to grow you will also have to move sometimes, for some definite periods, into loneliness – out of the crowd, out of the concerns of the world, relations of the world, objects of the world – into such a place where you can be alone and not disturbed by others. As you are now you can be disturbed, but once you have the strength, once you have the inner power, once you are crystallized and you know that now no one can shatter your inner center, you can move anywhere. Then the whole world is lonely. Then wherever you are is wilderness. Then the space of silence moves with you because you are the creator of it. Then around you, you create your own inner silence, and wherever you move, you are in silence. No one can penetrate that silence. No noise can disturb it.
But unless the crystallization has happened, don’t believe that you will not be disturbed. You are disturbed, whether you know it or don’t know it. Really, you are so disturbed that you cannot know it. You have become accustomed to disturbance. Every nerve is on edge; you are continuously disturbed. Right now you don’t feel the disturbance – to feel the disturbance sometimes you need to be not disturbed. Only then can you feel it in contrast. You are continuously disturbed but you have become accustomed to it, habituated to it. You think this is how life is. It would be good if you move into the Himalayas for some time. It would be good to go into some remove village, a remote forest, and be alone for a few days’ silence – as if the whole of humanity has disappeared. Then come back to Bombay. Then you will know what disturbance you have been living in. You will be suddenly disturbed. Now you have a contrast. You had an inner music, now it is shattered. For seekers solitariness is good; for SIDDHAS it is irrelevant.
And there are two types of wrong people. With the first type, if you say to them that it is they who are disturbed, the situation is irrelevant, then they will never go into solitariness to have a glimpse of what silence is. Then they will remain here and they will say, “Nothing disturbs us. It is us really, not the surrounding. So we remain here.” And they are disturbed but their theory will become a rationalization. Then there are other people, the other type of wrong people, who, if you tell them to move into silence, to solitude, because it will help, they will move – but then they will never come back. Then it becomes an addiction and they will remain weak forever, they will always feel afraid of coming back to the world. Then their solitariness has not been a help; rather, it has become a hindrance. They are not stronger through it, they have become weaker. Now they cannot move in the world. Both these types are wrong.
Be the third type, which is the right type. In the beginning, know well that you are disturbed by circumstances; so sometimes try, manage, to move out of them. Then when you are out of them, whatsoever silence you attain, bring it back to your circumstances and try to preserve it. If you can preserve it in the circumstances, then only will the theory have become an experience. Then you know that nothing disturbs. Then you know it is you ultimately who are disturbed or not disturbed.
But make it an experience – just as a theory it is useless.
The fourth question:
Question 4:
IT IS ONE THING TO REALIZE COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS ON EARTH,
AND TRANSCEND BODY.BUT HOW DO REALIZED ONES KNOW FOR SURE THAT THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS ETERNAL
AND WILL REMAIN AFTER THE DEATH OF THE BODY?
The first thing is they don’t bother about it. They are not worried about whether it will remain or not.
It is you who are worried. They don’t think of the next moment. The next life is just irrelevant; even the next day, the next moment, is not a point of concern. It is you who always ask about something in the future, something of the future. Why? Because your present is just empty, your present is just nothing, your present is just rotten, your present is such a suffering that you can tolerate it only if you go on thinking of the future and the paradise and the life ahead. Just here now there is no life so you pitch your mind into the future just to escape from the present, the ugly present. One who is realized is here and now, totally alive. All that can happen has happened. There is no future to it. Whether death is going to kill him or not is not a concern at all. It is the same. Whether he disappears or remains, it makes no difference. This moment is so rich, so absolutely rich, this moment is so intense, that his whole being is here and now.
Anand asked Buddha again and again, “What will happen to you when your body dies?” And Buddha insisted again and again, “Anand, why are you so concerned about the future? Why don’t you look at me, at what is happening now?” But again, after a few days, he will ask, “What happens to an enlightened one when his body dies?” He is afraid about himself. He is afraid. He knows that when the body dies there is no possibility of reviving it, there is no possibility of remaining, there is no possibility of being. And he has not attained anything. The light will just go out – it has been a futile thing. If that happens without his attaining anything, he will simply disappear. So the whole thing was meaningless, the whole suffering was meaningless, leading nowhere. He was concerned; he wanted to know if something survives after the body. But Buddha says, “I am here and now. What will happen in the future is not a concern at all.”
So the first thing is that a realized one is not bothered. That is one of the signs of a realized one – he is not bothered by the future.
And the second thing – you asked, how does he know for sure? Knowledge is always sure. Certainty is inherent, intrinsic, to knowledge. You have a headache. Can I ask you, “How can you say for sure that you have a headache?” You will say, “I know.” I can ask, “But how are you sure that your knowledge is right and not wrong?” But no one asks such nonsensical questions. When the headache is there, it is there – you know it. Knowledge is intrinsically certain. When one is enlightened, he knows he is enlightened; he knows that he is not this body; he knows that inside he is just a vast space. And space cannot die. Things can die, space cannot die.
Just think about this room. We can destroy this building, this “Woodlands”, but we cannot destroy the roominess in this room. Can you destroy it? The walls can be destroyed, but we are sitting here in this roominess, space. The walls can be destroyed, but how can you destroy this room – not the walls, the space here? The whole of “Woodlands” may disappear – it will disappear one day – but this space will remain. Your body will disappear and because you don’t know the inner space, you are afraid. You want to know it for sure. But an enlightened man knows that he is the space – not the body, not the walls, but the inner space. The walls will drop, they have dropped many times, but the inner space will remain. It is something he has to find proofs for, it is his immediate knowledge.
He knows it, that’s all. Knowledge is intrinsically certain.
If your knowledge is uncertain, then remember it is not knowledge. People come to me and they say, “Our meditation is going very well. We are feeling very happy.” And then suddenly they ask me, “What do you say about it? Is our happiness really there? Are we really happy?” They ask me! They are not certain about their happiness. What type of knowledge is this? They are simply pretending.
But they cannot deceive themselves. They are thinking, they are hoping, they are wishing – but they are not happy. Otherwise what is the need to ask me? I will never go to ask anybody whether I am happy or not. Why should I? If I am happy, I am happy. If I am not, I am not. Who else can give proof of it? If I cannot be a witness, who will be a witness for me, and how can the other be a witness? So sometimes I play games. Sometimes I say, “Yes, you are happy. You are absolutely happy.” And they become more happy just by hearing me. And sometimes I say, “No, you don’t show anything. There is no indication. You are not happy. You must have been dreaming.” And they drop, their happiness disappears, they become sad. What type of happiness is this? Just by saying that you are happy it increases; and just by saying that you are not, it disappears! They are just trying to be happy but they are not. This is not knowledge, this is just wish-fulfillment. They hope, and they think they can deceive themselves. By thinking that they are happy, believing that they are happy, finding some proof, finding some certificate from somewhere that they are happy, they think that they will create happiness. It is not so easy. When something happens in the inner world, you know it has happened. You don’t need any certificate, you don’t need one! The very search for someone to approve is childish. It shows that you long for happiness, but you have not attained it. You don’t know it. It has not happened to you.
One who has realized is always certain, and when I say certain, sure, absolutely sure, I don’t mean that he feels some uncertainty somewhere, and against that uncertainty he feels certain – no. He is simply certain. There is no question of uncertainty. I am alive. Am I certain about it, sure about it?
There is no question. There is no question of certainty. It is absolutely certain. It does not have to be decided. I am alive.
Socrates was dying and someone asked him, “Socrates, you are dying so easily, so happily. What is the matter? Are you not afraid? Are you not scared?” Socrates said a very beautiful thing. He said, “Only two things are possible after I am dead: either I will be or I will not be. If I am not, then there is no question. No one is there to know it, to know that ‘I am not’. The whole thing simply disappears.
And if I am there, then there is no question – ‘I am’. Only two are the possibilities: either I will be, or I will not be, and both are okay. If I am, then the whole thing continues. If I am not, then there is no one to know, so why be worried?”
He is not an enlightened one, but he is a very wise man. Remember, this is the difference between a wise one and an enlightened one. A wise one thinks deeply, penetrates intellectually into everything, and comes to a conclusion. He is a very wise man. He says that there are two alternatives.
Logically he penetrates into the phenomenon of death: “only two are the possibilities: either I simply disappear, I am no more; or I will remain.” Is there any third alternative? There is no third alternative.
So Socrates says, “I have thought about both. If I remain, then there is no question to be worried about. If I am no more, there is no one to worry. So why be worried now? I will see what happens.” He is not in the know, he doesn’t know what is going to happen, but he has thought about it wisely. He is not a Buddha, he is the keenest intellectual possible. But if you can become wise – not enlightened, because enlightenment is neither wisdom nor ignorance, the duality has been transcended – even if you can become wise, you will feel relaxed; even if you can become wise, you can feel very contented.
But wisdom is not the goal of Tantra or yoga. Tantra and yoga aim for the superhuman, the point where wisdom and ignorance are both transcended: where one simply knows and does not think, where one simply looks and is aware.
The last question:
Question 5:
I CERTAINLY WANT TO BECOME ENLIGHTENED.
BUT IF I DO, WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD?
But why are you worried about the rest of the world? Let the world worry about itself. And you are not worried about what will happen to the rest of the world if you remain ignorant….
If you are ignorant, what happens to the rest of the world? You create misery. Not that you knowingly do it, you are misery – so whatsoever you do, you sow seeds of misery all around. Your hopes are meaningless; your being is significant. You may think you are helping others – you hinder them. You may think you love others – you may be simply killing them and murdering them. You may think you are teaching others, but you may be simply helping them to remain ignorant forever – because what you hope, what you think, what you wish, is not significant. What you are is significant.
Every day I see people around who are loving to each other – but they are killing each other.
They think they are loving, and they think they are living for the other, and without them the life of their family, their beloveds, their children, their wives, their husbands, will be miserable – but it is miserable with them. And they try in every way but whatsoever they do, it goes wrong. It is bound to be so, because they are wrong. Doing is not of much importance, the being from where it comes, originates, is. If you are ignorant, you are helping the world to become a hell. It is already. This is what has happened through you. Wherever you touch, you will create hell.
If you become enlightened, whatsoever you do – or you need not do anything – just your being, your presence will help others to flower, to be happy, to be blissful.
But that should not be your concern. The first thing is how to be enlightened. You ask me, “I want to be enlightened.” But that wanting seems to be very impotent because immediately you say “but”.
Whenever “but” comes in, it shows the desire is impotent. “But what will happen to the world?” Who are you? What do you think about yourself? Does the world depend on you? Are you running it? Managing it? Are you responsible? Why give so much importance to yourself? Why feel so important?
This feeling is part of the ego and this worrying about others will never allow you to move to a peak of realization, because that peak is achieved only when you drop all worries. And you are so efficient in accumulating worries that you are simply wonderful. Not only your own, you go on accumulating others’ worries – as if yours are not enough. You go on thinking about others, and what can you do?
You can only get more and more worried and mad.
I was reading a viceroy’s journal. Lord Wavell’s journal. The man seems to be very sincere, deeply honest, because some remarks he makes are just superb. One remark he makes in a journal is, “Unless these three old men, Gandhi, Jinnah, and Churchill, die, India will be in trouble.” These three men, Gandhi,Jinnah, Churchill – and these three were helping in every way! Churchill’s own viceroy writes in a journal that these three men should die soon. And he hopefully even gives their ages: Gandhi, 75,Jinnah, 65, Churchill, 68. Because these three are the problems. Can you think of Gandhi imagining that he is the problem – or Jinnah, or Churchill? All are doing their best to solve the problem of this country! And Wavell said that these three are the problem, because all the three are adamant, stubborn; every one of these three has the absolute truth and the other two are absolutely wrong. These three absolutes cannot meet anywhere – the other two are simply wrong.
There is no question about it.
Everyone thinks as if he is the center and he has to worry about the whole world, and change the whole world, transform the whole world, create a utopia. All that you can do is just change yourself.
You cannot change the world. You can create more mischief trying to change it; you can create more chaos; you can harm; and you can puzzle. Already the world is too puzzled. You can puzzle it more and confuse it more.
Please leave the world to itself. You can do only one thing, and that is, you can achieve inner silence, inner bliss, inner light. If you achieve this, you have helped the world very much. Just by changing one ignorant spot into an enlightened flame, just by changing one person from darkness into light, you have changed apart of the world. And this changed part will have its own chain reactions.
Buddha is not dead. Jesus is not dead. They cannot be dead because there is a chain reaction – from one lamp, from one flame, another flame takes over. And a successor is created, and they go on living.
But if your light is not there, if your lamp is without a flame, you cannot help anyone. The first basic thing is that you must attain your inner flame. Then others can share. Then you can kindle others’ light also. Then it becomes a succession. Then you may disappear from the body but your flame goes on passing from hand to hand. Up to eternity it goes on and on. Buddhas never die, enlightened persons never die, because their light becomes a chain reaction. And unenlightened persons never live, because they cannot create any chain, they don’t have any light to share, no flame to kindle someone else’s flame.
Please be concerned with yourself only. Be selfish, I say, because that is the only way you will become selfless, that is the only way you can become a help and a blessing to the world. Don’t be worried about it; that is not your concern. The greater your worries are, the greater you think your responsibilities are. And the greater your responsibilities, the more you feel yourself as being great.
You are not. You are simply mad. Get out of this madness of helping others. Just help yourself.
That’s all that can be done.
And then many things happen… but they happen as a consequence. Once you become a source of light, things start happening. Many will share it, man will be enlightened through it, many will attain life, more life, abundant life through it. But don’t think about it. You cannot do anything about it consciously. Only one thing can be done and that is: you can become conscious. Then everything follows.
Osho ~ Vigyan Bhairav Tantra 