Asaad

ALAS, ALL THINGS IN THIS WORLD ARE MEANINGLESS, THEY ARE BUT SORROW’S SEEDS. SMALL TEACHINGS LEAD TO ACTS – ONE SHOULD ONLY FOLLOW TEACHINGS THAT ARE GREAT. Tantra is the great teaching. Small teachings tell you what to do, what not to do. They give you ten commandments: ”Do this, don’t do that” – small teachings. A great teaching doesn’t give you any commandment. It is not concerned with what you do, it is concerned with what you are. Your being, your center, your consciousness – that is the only thing significant.

Says Tilopa: ALAS, ALL THINGS IN THIS WORLD ARE MEANINGLESS, THEY ARE BUT SORROW’S SEEDS. SMALL TEACHINGS LEAD TO ACTS – ONE SHOULD FOLLOW TEACHINGS THAT ARE GREAT. In this world, everything is the seed of sorrow. But a ray of light enters into the world whenever a person becomes enlightened. In this world everything is a seed of sorrow, but a light-ray comes from the above whenever a person becomes enlightened. Follow that ray of light and you can reach to the very source of the light, the sun. ”And remember,” says Tilopa, ”don’t become a victim of small teachings.” Many are. People come to me, they say, ”We are vegetarians. Will it lead us to enlightenment?” – a very small teaching. They say, ”We don’t eat in the night. Will it lead us to enlightenment?” – a very small teaching. They say, ”We believe in celibacy” – a very small teaching. They do many things, but one thing they never touch – that is their being. They manage their character, they try to be as sagely as possible, but the whole thing remains a decoration. A discipline from without is a decoration. It should come from within, it should spread towards the periphery from the center. It should not be forced from the periphery towards the center. The great teaching is: You are already that which you can be – realize this. You are already the goal – be aware of this. This very moment your destiny can be fulfilled. For what are you waiting? Don’t believe in gradual steps – take the jump, be courageous. Only one who is courageous can follow the great teaching of tantra. Afraid, scared – afraid of dying, scared of losing yourself, fearful of surrender – you will become a victim of small teachings, because you can manage small teachings. Not to eat this, not to do this, you can manage; you remain in control. The great teaching is to surrender, to surrender your control and let the whole take you away wherever it would like to take. Don’t swim against the current. Leave yourself in the river, become the river – and the river is already going to the sea. This is the great teaching.

CHAPTER 7

The Pathless Path

17 February 1975 am in Buddha Hall THE SONG CONTINUES: TO TRANSCEND DUALITY IS THE KINGLY VIEW. TO CONQUER DISTRACTIONS IS THE ROYAL PRACTICE. THE PATH OF NO-PRACTICE IS THE WAY OF ALL BUDDHAS. HE WHO TREADS THAT PATH REACHES BUDDHAHOOD. TRANSIENT IS THIS WORLD, LIKE PHANTOMS AND DREAMS, SUBSTANCE IT HAS NONE. RENOUNCE IT AND FORSAKE YOUR KIN, CUT THE STRINGS OF LUST AND HATRED, AND MEDITATE IN WOODS AND MOUNTAINS. IF WITHOUT EFFORT YOU REMAIN LOOSELY IN THE NATURAL STATE, SOON MAHAMUDRA YOU WILL WIN AND ATTAIN THE NONATTAINMENT. There are two paths. One is the path of the warrior, the soldier; another is the path of the king, the royal path. Yoga is the first, tantra is the second. So first you will have to understand what is the path of a soldier, a warrior, only then will you be able to understand what Tilopa means by the royal path. A soldier has to fight inch by inch; a soldier has to be aggressive, a soldier has to be violent; the enemy has to be destroyed, or conquered. Yoga tries to create a conflict within you. It gives you a clear-cut distinction between what is wrong and what is right, what is good and what is bad, what belongs to God and what belongs to the devil. And almost all the religions, except tantra, follow the path of yoga. They divide reality and they create an inner conflict; through conflict they proceed. For example: you have hate in you; the path of the warrior is to destroy hate within. You have anger and greed and sex, and millions of things. The path of the warrior is to destroy all that is wrong, negative, and develop all that is positive and right. Hate has to be destroyed and love evolved. Anger has to be completely destroyed and compassion created. Sex has to go and give place to BRAHMACHARYA, to pure celibacy. Yoga immediately cuts you with a sword in two parts: the right and wrong; the right has to win over the wrong. What will you do? Anger is there – what does yoga suggest to do? It suggests: create the habit of compassion, create the opposite; make it so habitual that you start functioning like a robot – hence it is called the way of the soldier. All over the world, throughout history, the soldier has been trained in a robotlike existence; he has to create habits. Habits function without consciousness, they don’t need any awareness, they can move without you. If you have habits – and everybody has habits – you can watch this. A man takes out his packet of cigarettes from the pocket, watch him – he may not be at all aware what he is doing. Just robotlike he reaches to the pocket. If there is some inner restlessness, immediately his hand goes to the pocket; he brings out the cigarette, starts smoking. He may throw the remaining part, the last part of the cigarette; he may have moved through all the gestures without even being aware of what he was doing. A robotlike existence we teach to the soldier. The soldier has to do and follow, he has not to be aware. When he is commanded to turn to the right, he has to turn; he has not to think it, about whether to turn or not – because if he starts thinking then it is impossible, then the wars cannot continue in the world. Thinking is not needed, nor is awareness needed. He should simply be this much aware – that he can understand the order, that’s all. The minimum of awareness: here the order is given and there, immediately, like a mechanism, he starts following. It is not that he turns to the left when he is ordered to turn left – he listens and turns. HE is not turning, he has cultivated the habit. It is just like putting off or on the light: the light is not going to think about it, whether to be on or off – you push the button and the light is on. You say, ”Left turn!” and the button is pushed and the man moves left. William James has reported that once he was sitting in a coffeehouse and an old soldier – retired, retired almost for twenty years – was passing with a bucket of eggs. Suddenly William James played a joke. He loudly called ”Attention!” and the poor old man stood to attention. The eggs fell from his hands, they were destroyed. He was very angry; he came running and said, ”What type of joke is this?” But William James said, ”You need not follow it. Everybody is free to call ’Attention!’ You are not forced to follow it. Who told you to follow it? You should have gone on your way.” The man said, ”That is not possible – it is automatic. Of course twenty years have passed since I have been in the military, but the habit is deep-rooted.” Many years of training – a conditioned reflex is created. This word ”conditioned reflex” is good. It is coined by a Russian psychologist, Pavlov. It says you simply reflect; somebody throws something in your eye – you don’t think to blink it or close it, the eye simply closes. A fly comes flying and you close the eye: you need not think, there is no need, it is a conditioned reflex – it simply happens. It is in your body-habit, it is in your blood, in your bones. It simply happens – nothing has to be done about it. The soldier is trained to be in a completely robotlike way. He has to exist in conditioned reflexes. The same is done by yoga. You get angry – yoga says, ”Don’t get angry, rather cultivate the opposite: compassion.” By and by, your energy will start moving in the habit of compassion. If you persevere for a long time, anger will disappear completely, you will feel compassion. But you will be dead, not alive. You will be a robot, not a human being. You will have compassion, not because you have compassion, but only because you have cultivated a habit. You can cultivate a bad habit, you can cultivate a good habit. Somebody can cultivate smoking, somebody can cultivate no-smoking; somebody can cultivate nonvegetarian styles of food, somebody can cultivate vegetarian style – but both are cultivating, and in the final judgment both are the same because both live through habits. This point has to be pondered over very deeply because it is very easy to cultivate a good habit and it is very difficult to become good. And the substitute of a good habit is cheap, it can be done very easily. Now, particularly in Russia, they are developing a therapy: conditioned reflex therapy. They say people cannot leave their habits. Somebody has been smoking for twenty years – how can you expect him to leave it? You may try to explain to him that it is bad, the doctors may say he may be even in a dangerous situation, cancer may be developing, but twenty years of long habit – now it is engrained, now it has moved into the deepest core of his body, now it is in his metabolism. Even if he wants, even if he desires, even if he desires sincerely, it is difficult – because it is not a question of sincere desire: twenty years of continuous practice – it is almost impossible. So what to do? In Russia they say there is no need to do anything, and no need to explain to him. They have developed a therapy: the man starts smoking and they give him an electric shock. The shock, the pain of it, and the smoking, become joined together, become associated. For seven days he is hospitalized and whenever he starts smoking, immediately, automatically, he gets an electric shock. After seven days the habit is broken. Even if you persuade him to smoke he will be trembling. The moment he will take the cigarette in the hand the whole body will tremble because of the idea of the shock. They say now he will never smoke; they have broken the habit by a very sharp shock treatment. But now he cannot become a buddha just by shock treatment because he does not have an old habit. All the habits can be changed through shock treatment. Will he become a buddha, enlightened, because he has no bad habits anymore? No. He will not be even a human being now – he will be a mechanism. He will be afraid of things, he will not be able to do them because you have given him NEW habits of fear. That is the whole meaning of hell: all the religions have used it as a shock treatment. Hell is nowhere, nor is there any heaven. Both are tricks, old psychotherapeutic concepts. They have painted hell so horrible that a child can become afraid from the very childhood onwards. The mentioning of the name of hell and fear arises and he trembles. This is just a trick to prevent bad habits. And heaven is also a trick to help good habits; so, much pleasure, happiness, beauty, eternal life is promised in heaven if you follow good patterns. Whatsoever the society says is good you have to follow. Heaven is to help you towards positivity, and hell is to prevent you from going into the negative direction. Tantra is the only religion which has not used any such conditioned reflexes – because tantra says you have to flower into a perfectly awakened being, not a robotlike mechanism. So if you understand tantra, habit is bad; there are no bad habits, there are no good habits – habit is bad. And one should be awake so there are no habits. You simply live moment to moment with full awareness, not by habits. If you can live without habits that is the royal path. Why is it royal? – because a soldier has to follow, a king need not. The king is above, he gives orders, he receives no orders from anybody. A king never goes to fight, only soldiers go. A king is not a fighter. A king lives the most relaxed of all lives. This is just a metaphor: a soldier has to follow, a king simply lives loose and natural; there is nobody above him. Tantra says there is nobody above you whom you have to follow, through whom you have to get your pattern of life, through whom you have to become imitators – there is nobody. You live a loose and natural and flowing life – the only thing is: just be aware. Through fighting you can cultivate good habits, but they will be habits, not natural. People say a habit is a second nature; maybe – but remember the word ”second.” It is not natural; it may look almost natural, but it is not. What will be the difference between real compassion and a compassion cultivated? A real compassion is a response – the situation and the response. A real compassion is always fresh; something has happened and your heart flows towards it. A child has fallen and you run and help the child to stand back up, but this is a response. A false compassion, a cultivated compassion, is a reaction. These two words are very very meaningful: ”response” and ”reaction.” Response is alive to the situation; reaction is just an engrained habit. Because in the past you have been training yourself to help somebody if he has fallen, you simply go and help, but there is no heart in it. Somebody is drowning in the river: you run and help the person just because you have been taught to do so. You have cultivated the habit of helping, but you are not involved. You remain out of it, your heart is not there – you have not responded. You have not responded to this man, to this man drowning in this river; you have not responded to this moment, you have followed an ideology. To follow an ideology is good: help everybody, become a servant to people, have compassion! – you have an ideology, and through the ideology you react. It is out of the past that the action comes, it is already dead. When the situation creates the action and you respond with full awareness, only then something of beauty happens to you. If you react because of the ideology, old habit patterns, you will not gain anything out of it. At the most you can gain a little ego, which is not a gain at all. You may start bragging that you have saved a man who was drowning in the river. You may go to the market-place and shout loudly, ”Look, I have saved another human life!” You may gain a little more ego, you have done something good, but it is not a gain. You have lost a great opportunity of being spontaneous, of being spontaneous in compassion. If you had responded to the situation, then something would have flowered in you, a blossoming; you would have felt a certain silence, a stillness, a blessing. Whenever there is a response you feel a blossoming inside. Whenever there is a reaction you remain dead: corpselike you behave, robotlike you act. Reaction is ugly, response is beautiful. Reaction is always of the part, reaction is never of the whole. Response is always of the whole; your whole totality jumps into the river. You don’t think about it, the situation simply lets it happen. If your life becomes a life of response and spontaneity, you will become some day a buddha. If your life becomes a life of reaction, dead habits, you may look like a buddha but you will not become a buddha. You will be a painted buddha; inside you will be just a corpse. Habit kills life. Habit is against life. Every day in the morning you have made it a habit to get up early; at five you get up. In India I have seen many people – because in India, for centuries, it has been taught that the BRAHMAMUHURT, before the sun has arisen, is the most auspicious moment, the holiest. It is – but you cannot make a habit out of it, because the holy exists only in a living response. They get up at five, but you will never see on their faces the glory that comes if you get up early as a response. The whole life is awakening all around you; the whole earth is waiting for the sun, the stars are disappearing. Everything is becoming more conscious. The earth has slept, the trees have slept, the birds are ready to take wing. Everything is getting ready. A new day starts, a new celebration. If it is a response, then you get up like a bird – humming, singing; you have a dance to your step. It is not a habit, it is not that you HAVE to get up, it is not that because it is written in the scriptures and you are a devoted Hindu so you have to get up in the early morning. If you make a habit out of it you will not hear the birds because birds are not written in the scriptures; you will not see the sun rising because that is not the point – you are following a dead discipline. You may even be angry; you may even be against it because last night you were late going to bed and you are not feeling well enough to get up. It would have been better if you could have slept a little more. You were not ready, you were tired. Or last night was not good, and you have dreamed too much and your whole body feels lethargic; you would like to have a little more sleep. But no – the scriptures are against it and you have been taught from the very childhood.... In my childhood my grandfather was very much for the morning. He would drag me out of my sleep near about three in the morning – and since then I have not been able to get up early. He would drag me and I would curse him inside, but I couldn’t do anything and he would take me for a walk – and I was sleepy and I had to walk with him. He destroyed the whole beauty. Whenever later I had to go for a morning walk, I could not forgive him. I will always remember him. He destroyed.... For years continuously he was dragging me – and he was doing something good, and he was thinking that he is helping to create a lifestyle. This is not the way. Sleepy... and he was dragging me, and the path was beautiful and the morning was beautiful, but he destroyed the whole beauty. He put me off. Only after many years could I regain and move into the morning without remembering him; otherwise his memory was with me. Even when he was dead he would follow me like a shadow in the morning. If you make a habit, if you make a forced thing, then morning becomes ugly. Then it is better to go to sleep. But be spontaneous! Some days you may not be able to get up – nothing is wrong in it, you are not committing a sin. If you are feeling sleepy, sleep is beautiful – as beautiful as any morning and as beautiful as any sunrise, because sleep belongs to the divine as much as the sun. If you are feeling to rest the whole day, it is good! This is what tantra says: the royal way – behave like a king, not like a soldier. There is nobody on top of you to force you and order you; there should not be really a style of life. That is the royal way. You should live moment to moment, enjoying moment to moment – spontaneity should be the way. And why bother about tomorrow? – this moment is enough. Live it! Live it in totality. Respond, but don’t react. ”No habits” should be the formula. I am not saying live in a chaos, but don’t live through habits. Maybe, just living spontaneously, a way of life evolves in you – but that is not forced. If you enjoy the morning every day, and through enjoyment you get up early in the morning, not as a habit, and you get up every day... and you may get up for your whole life, but that is not a habit. You are not forcing yourself to get up – it happens. It is beautiful; you enjoy it, you love it. If it happens out of love it is not a style, it is not a habit, not a conditioning, not a cultivated, dead thing. Less habits – you will be more alive. No habits – you will be perfectly alive. Habits surround you with a dead crust and you become enclosed in them, you become encapsulated. Like a seed a cell surrounds you, hard. Be flexible. Yoga teaches you to cultivate the opposite of all that is bad. Fight with evil and attend to good. There is violence – kill the violence within you and become nonviolent, cultivate nonviolence. Always do the opposite and force the opposite to become your pattern. This is the soldier’s way – a small teaching. Tantra is the great teaching – the supreme. What does tantra say? Tantra says: don’t create any conflict within yourself. Accept both, and through the acceptance of both, a transcendence happens, not victory but transcendence. In yoga there are victories, in tantra there are none. In tantra... simply transcendence. Not that you become nonviolent against violence, you simply go beyond both, you simply become a THIRD phenomenon – a witness. I was sitting once in a butcher’s shop. He was a very good man and I used to go to visit him. It was evening and he was just going to close the shop when a man came and asked for a hen. And I knew because just a few minutes before he had told me that everything was sold today – only one hen was left. So he was very happy; he went in, brought the hen out, threw it on the scale and said, ”That will be five rupees.” The man said, ”It is good, but I am going to give a party and many friends are coming and this hen seems to be too small. I would like to have a little bigger one. ” Now I knew that he had no hen left, this was the only one. The butcher brooded a little, took the hen back inside the room, stayed there a little, came back again, threw the hen on the scale – the same one – and said, ”This will be seven rupees.” The man said, ”Tell you what, I will take both of them. ” Then the butcher was really in a fix. And tantra puts the whole existence itself in a fix. Tantra says, ”I will take both of them.” There are not two. Hate is nothing but another aspect of love. Anger is nothing but another aspect of compassion, and violence is nothing but another face of nonviolence. Tantra says, ”Tell you what, I will take both of them. I accept both.” And suddenly through this acceptance there is a transcendence, because there are not two. Violence and nonviolence are not two. Anger and compassion are not two. Love and hate are not two. That’s why you know, you observe, but you are so unconscious that you don’t recognize the fact. Your love changes into hate within a second. How is it possible if they are two? Not even a second is needed: this moment you love, and next moment you hate the same person. In the morning you love the same person, by the afternoon you hate, in the evening you love again. This game of love and hate goes on. In fact, love and hate is not the right word: love-hate, anger-compassion – they are one phenomenon, they are not two. That’s why love can become hate, hate can become love, anger can become compassion, compassion can become anger. Tantra says the division is brought by your mind and then you start fighting. You create the division first; you condemn one aspect and you appreciate another. You create the division first, then you create the conflict and then you are in trouble. And you WILL be in trouble. A yogi is constantly in trouble because whatsoever he will do the victory cannot be final, at the most temporary. You can push down anger and act compassion, but you know well that you have pushed it down into the unconscious and it is there – and any moment, a little unawareness and it will bubble up, it will surface. So one has to constantly push it down. And this is such an ugly phenomenon if one has to constantly push down negative things – then the whole life is wasted. When will you enjoy the divine? You have no space, no time. You are fighting with the anger and greed and sex and jealousy and a thousand things. And those thousand enemies are there; you have to be constantly on watch, you can never relax. How can you be loose and natural? You will always be tense, strained, always ready to fight, always afraid. Yogis become afraid even of sleep, because in sleep they cannot be on watch. In sleep all that they have forced down surfaces. They may have attained to celibacy while they are awake, but in dreams it becomes impossible – beautiful women keep on floating inside, and the yogi cannot do anything. Those beautiful women are not coming from some heaven as it is written in Hindu stories, that God sent them. Why should God be interested in you? A poor yogi, not doing anybody any harm, simply sitting in the Himalayas with closed eyes, fighting with his own problems – why should God be interested in him? And why should he send APSARAS, beautiful women, to distract him from his path? Why? Nobody is there. There is no need for anybody to send anybody. The yogi is creating his own dreams. Whatsoever you suppress surfaces in the dreams. Those dreams are the part the yogi has denied. And your waking hours are as much yours as your dreams are yours. So whether you love a woman in your waking hours, or you love a woman in dream, there is no difference – there cannot be, because it is not a question of a woman there or not, it is a question of you. Whether you love a picture, a dream picture, or you love a real woman, there is in fact no difference – there cannot be, because a real woman is also a picture inside. You never know the real woman, you only know the picture. I am here. How do you know that I am really here? Maybe it is just a dream – you are dreaming me here. What will be the difference if you dream me here and you see me actually here? – and how will you make the difference? What is the criterion? ... Because whether I am here or not makes no difference – you see me inside your mind. In both the cases – dream or real – your eyes take the rays in and your mind interprets that somebody is there. You have never seen any actual person, you cannot see. That’s why Hindus say this is a MAYA, this is an illusory world. Tilopa says, ”Transient, ghostlike, phantomlike, dreamlike is this world.” Why? – because in dream and actuality there is no difference. In both the cases you are confined in your mind. You only see pictures, you have never seen any reality – you cannot see, because the reality can only be seen when YOU become real. You are a ghostlike phenomenon, a shadow – how can you see the real? The shadow can see only the shadow. You can see reality only when the mind is dropped. Through the mind everything becomes unreal. The mind projects, creates, colors, interprets – everything becomes false. Hence the emphasis, continuous emphasis on how to be no-minds. Tantra says don’t fight. If you fight you may continue your fight for many lives and nothing will happen out of it, because in the first place you have missed – where you have seen two was only one. And if the first step has been missed, you cannot reach the goal. Your whole journey is going to be continuously a missing. The first step has to be taken absolutely rightly, otherwise you will never reach the goal. And what is the absolutely right thing? Tantra says it is to see the one in two, to see the one in many. Once you can see one in duality, already the transcendence has started. This is the royal path. Now we will try to understand the sutra. TO TRANSCEND DUALITY IS THE KINGLY VIEW. To transcend, not to win – to transcend. This word is very beautiful. What does it mean, to ”transcend”? It is just as if a small child is playing with his toys. You tell him to put them away and he becomes angry. Even when he goes to sleep he goes with his toys, and the mother has to remove them when he has fallen asleep. In the morning the first thing that he demands to know is where his toys are and who has taken them away. Even in the dream he dreams about the toys. Then suddenly one day he forgets about the toys. For a few days they remain in the corner of his room, and then they are removed or thrown away; never again does he ask for them. What has happened? He has transcended, he has become mature. It is not a fight and a victory; it is not that he was fighting against the desire to have toys. No, suddenly one day he sees this is childish and he is no more a child; suddenly one day he realizes that toys are toys, they are not real life and he is ready for the real life. His back is turned towards the toys. Never again in dreams will they come; never again will he think about them. And if he sees some other child playing with toys, he will laugh; he will laugh knowingly... a knowing laugh, a wise laugh. He will say, ”He’s a child, still childish, playing with toys.” He has transcended. Transcendence is a very spontaneous phenomenon. It is not to be cultivated. You simply become more mature. You simply see the whole absurdity of a certain thing... and you transcend. One young man came to me and he was very much worried. He has a beautiful wife, but her nose is a little too long. So he was worried and he said, ”What to do?” Even plastic surgery was done – the nose became a little more ugly; because there was nothing wrong, and when you try to improve something where nothing is wrong, it becomes more ugly, it makes more of a mess. Now he was more troubled and he asked me what to do. I talked to him about the toys and I told him, ”One day you will have to transcend. This is just childish – why are you obsessed so much with her nose? The nose is just a tiny part, and your wife is so beautiful and such a beautiful person – and why are you making her so sad because of her nose? ” – because she has also become touchy about her nose, her nose has become as if it was the whole problem of life. And all problems are like this! Don’t think that your problem is something greater – all problems are like this. All problems are out of childishness, juvenile, they are born out of immaturity. He was concerned so much with the nose that he would not even look at his wife’s face, because whenever he saw the nose he was troubled – but you cannot escape things so easily. If you are NOT looking at the face because of the nose, still you are reminded of the nose. Even if you are trying to evade the issue, the issue is there. You are obsessed. So I told him to meditate on the wife’s nose. He said, ”What? I cannot even look.” I told him, ”This is going to help – you simply meditate on the nose. People used in the ancient days, to meditate on the tip of their own nose, so what is wrong in meditating on the tip of your wife’s nose? Beautiful! You try.” He said, ”But what will happen out of it?” ”You just try,” I told him, ”and after a few months you tell me what happens. Every day, let her sit before you and you meditate on her nose.” One day he came running to me and he said, ”What nonsense I have been doing! Suddenly, I have transcended. The whole foolishness of it has become apparent – now it is no more a problem.” He has not become victorious because, in fact, there is no enemy there so that you can win, there is no enemy to you – this is what tantra says. The whole life is in deep love with you. There is nobody who is to be destroyed, nobody who is to be won, nobody who is an enemy, a foe to you. The whole life loves you. From everywhere the love is flowing. And within you also, there are no enemies – they have been created by priests. They have made a battleground, they have made you a battleground. They say, ”Fight this – this is bad! Fight that – that is bad!” They have created so many enemies that you are surrounded by enemies and you have lost contact with the whole beauty of life. I say to you: anger is not your enemy, greed is not your enemy; neither is compassion your friend, nor is nonviolence your friend – because friend or foe, you remain with the duality. Just look at the whole of your being and you will find they are one. When the foe becomes the friend and the friend becomes the foe, all duality is lost. Suddenly there is a transcendence, suddenly an awakening. And I tell you, it is sudden, because when you fight you have to fight inch by inch. This is not a fight at all. This is the way of the kings – the royal path. Says Tilopa, TO TRANSCEND DUALITY IS THE KINGLY VIEW. Transcend duality! Just watch and you will see there is no duality. Bodhidharma, one of the rarest jewels ever born, went to China. The king came to see him, and the king said, ”Sometimes I am very much disturbed. Sometimes there is much tension and anguish within me.” Bodhidharma looked at him and said, ”You come early tomorrow morning at four o’clock, and bring all your anguish, anxieties, disturbances with you. Remember, don’t come alone – bring all of them!” The king looked at this Bodhidharma – he was a very weird-looking fellow; he could have scared anybody to death – and the king said, ”What are you saying? What do you mean?” Bodhidharma said, ”If you don’t bring those things, then how can I set you right? Bring all of them and I will set everything right.” The king thought, ”It is better not to go. Four o’clock in the morning – it will be dark, and this man looks a little mad. With a big staff in his hand, he can even hit. And what does he mean that he will put everything right?” He couldn’t sleep the whole night because Bodhidharma haunted him. By the morning he felt that it would be good to go, ”because who knows? – maybe he can do something.” So he came, grudgingly, hesitatingly, but he reached. And the first thing Bodhidharma asked – he was sitting there before the temple with his staff, was looking even more dangerous in the dark, and he said, ”So you have come! Where are the other fellows that you were talking about?” The king said, ”You talk in puzzles, because they are not things that I can bring – they are inside.” Bodhidharma said, ”Okay. Inside, outside, things are things. You sit down, close your eyes and try to find them inside. Catch hold of them and immediately tell me and look at my staff. I am going to set them right!” The king closed his eyes – there was nothing else to do – he closed his eyes, afraid a little, looked inside here and there, watched, and suddenly he became aware the more he looked in, that there was nothing – no anxiety, no anguish, no disturbance. He fell into a deep meditation. Hours passed, the sun started rising, and on his face there was tremendous silence. Then Bodhidharma told him, ”Now open your eyes. Enough is enough! Where are those fellows? Could you get hold of them?” The king laughed, bowed down, touched the feet of Bodhidharma, and he said, ”Really, you have set them right, because I could not find them – and now I know what is the matter. They are not there in the first place. They were there because I never entered within myself and looked for them. They were there because I was not present inside. Now I know – you have done the miracle.” And this is what happened. This is transcendence: not solving a problem, but seeing whether really there is a problem in the first place. First you create the problem and then you start asking for the solution. First you create the question and then you roam around the world asking for the answer. This has been my experience also, that if you watch the question, the question will disappear; there is no need for any answer. If you watch the question, the question disappears – and this is transcendence. It is not a solution because there was no question at all to solve. You don’t have a disease. Just watch inside and you will not find the disease; then what is the need of a solution? Every man is as he should be. Every man is a born king. Nothing is lacking, you need not be improved upon. And people who try to improve you, they destroy you, they are the real mischiefmakers. And there are many who are just watching like cats for mice: you come near them and they pounce upon you and they start improving you immediately. There are many improvers – that’s why the world is in such a chaos – there are too many people trying to improve on you. Don’t allow anybody to improve upon you. You are already the last word. You are not only the alpha, you are the omega also. You are complete, perfect. Even if you feel imperfection, tantra says that imperfection is perfect. You need not worry about it. It will look very strange to say that your imperfection is also perfect, nothing is lacking in it. In fact, you appear imperfect not because you are imperfect but because you are a growing perfection. This looks absurd, illogical, because we think perfection cannot grow, because we mean by perfection that which has come to its last growth – but that perfection will be dead. If it cannot grow then that perfection will be dead. God goes on growing. God is not perfect in that way, that he has no growth. He is perfect because he lacks nothing, but he goes from one perfection to another, the growth continues. God is evolution; not from imperfection to perfection but from perfection to more perfection, to still more perfection. When perfection is without any future, it is dead. When perfection has a future to it, still an opening, a growth, still a movement, then it looks like imperfection. And I would like to tell you: be imperfect and growing, because that is what life is. And don’t try to be perfect, otherwise you will stop growing. Then you will be like a Buddha statue, stone, but dead. Because of this phenomenon – that perfection goes on growing – you feel it is imperfect. Let it be as it is. Allow it to be as it is. This is the royal way. TO TRANSCEND DUALITY IS THE KINGLY VIEW. TO CONQUER DISTRACTIONS IS THE ROYAL PRACTICE. Distractions are there, when you will lose your consciousness again and again. You meditate, you sit for meditation, a thought comes – and immediately you have forgotten yourself; you follow the thought, you have got involved in it. Tantra says only one thing has to be conquered, and that is distractions. What will you do? Only one thing: when a thought comes, remain a witness. Look at it, observe it, allow it to pass your being, but don’t get attached to it in any way, for or against. It may be a bad thought, a thought to kill somebody – don’t push it, don’t say, ”This is a bad thought.” The moment you say something about the thought, you have become attached, you are distracted. Now this thought will lead you to many things, from one thought to another. A good thought comes, a compassionate thought: don’t say, ”Aha, so beautiful! I am a great saint. Such beautiful thoughts are coming to me that I would like to give salvation to the whole world. I would like to liberate everybody.” Don’t say that. Good or bad, you remain a witness. Still, in the beginning, many times you will be distracted. Then what to do? If you are distracted, be distracted. Don’t be worried too much about it, otherwise that worry will become an obsession. Be distracted! For a few minutes you will be distracted, then suddenly you will remember, ”I am distracted.” Then it is okay, come back. Don’t feel depressed. Don’t say, ”It was bad that I was distracted” – again you are creating a dualism: bad and good. Distracted, okay – accept it, come back. Even with distraction you don’t create a conflict. That’s what Krishnamurti goes on saying. He uses a very paradoxical concept for it. He says if you are inattentive, be attentively inattentive. That’s okay! Suddenly you find you have been inattentive, give attention to it and come back home. Krishnamurti has not been understood and the reason is that he follows the royal path. If he had been a yogi he would have been understood very easily. That’s why he goes on saying there is no method – on the royal path there is no method. He goes on saying that there is no technique – on the royal path there is none. He goes on saying no scripture will help you – on the royal path there is no scripture. Distracted? – the moment you remember, the moment this attention comes to you that ”I have been distracted,” come back. That’s all! Don’t create any conflict. Don’t say, ”This was bad”; don’t feel depressed, frustrated that you have been again distracted. Nothing is wrong in distraction – enjoy it also. If you can enjoy the distraction, less and less it will happen to you. And a day comes when there is no distraction – but this is not a victory. You have not pushed the distracting trends of your mind deep into the unconscious. No. You allowed it also. It too is good. This is the mind of tantra, that everything is good and holy. Even if there is distraction, somehow it is needed. You may not be aware why it is needed; somehow it is needed. If you can feel good about everything that happens, then only are you following the royal path. If you start fighting with ANYTHING whatsoever, you have fallen from the royal path and you have become an ordinary soldier, a warrior. TO TRANSCEND DUALITY IS THE KINGLY VIEW. TO CONQUER DISTRACTIONS IS THE ROYAL PRACTICE. THE PATH OF NO-PRACTICE IS THE WAY OF ALL BUDDHAS. Nothing is to be practiced because practice creates habits. One has to become more aware, not more practiced. The beautiful happens through the spontaneous, not through the practiced. You can practice love, you can go through some training. In America they are thinking to create a few training courses for love, because people have even forgotten that, how to love. It is really strange! Even birds, animals, trees, they don’t ask anybody, they don’t go to any college – and they love. And many people come to me.... Just a few days ago one young man wrote a letter to me, and he said, ”I understand – but how to love? How to proceed? How to approach a woman?” It seems ridiculous but we have lost the natural, loose way completely. Not even love is possible without training. And if you are trained you will become absolutely ugly, because then everything you do will be part of the training. It will not be real, it will be acting. It will not be real life, it will be like just actors. They create love, they act in a loving way, but have you noticed that actors are the greatest failures as far as love is concerned? Their love-life is almost always a failure. This should not be so, because twenty-four hours a day they are practicing love; with so many women, with so many stories, in different ways they are practicing love. They are professional lovers, they should be perfect when they fall in love – but when they fall in love they are always failures. The life of actors and actresses, their Iove-life, is always a failure. What is the matter? Practice is the matter, they have practiced it too much – now the heart cannot function. They simply go on making impotent gestures: they kiss, but the kiss is not there, only lips meet. Only lips meet. The inner energy, the transfer of inner energy is not there; their lips are closed, cold. And if lips are cold, closed, and energy is not being released through them, the kiss is an ugly thing, unhygienic. It is just a transfer of millions of cells, germs, diseases – that’s all. A kiss is ugly if the inner energy is not present. You can embrace a woman or a man – only bones meet, bodies clash, but there is no jump of the inner energy. The energy is not there. You are just moving through an impotent gesture. You can even make love; you can move through all the gestures of love, but that will be more like gymnastics and less like love. Remember: practice kills life. Life is more alive when unpracticed. When it flows in all directions without any pattern, without any forced discipline, then it has its own order and discipline. THE PATH OF NO-PRACTICE IS THE WAY OF ALL BUDDHAS. HE WHO TREADS THAT PATH REACHES BUDDHAHOOD. Then what to do? If no-practice is the path, then what to do? Then just live spontaneously. What is the fear? Why are you so afraid to live spontaneously? Of course there may be dangers, hazards are there – but that is good! Life is not like a railway track, the trains moving on the same track again and again, shunting. Life is like a river: it creates its own path. It is not a channel. A channel is not good – a channel means a life of habits. Danger is there, but danger is life, it is involved in life. Only dead persons are beyond danger. That’s why people become dead. Your houses are more like graves. You are concerned too much with security, and too much concern for security kills, because life IS insecure. It is so; nothing can be done about it, nobody can make it secure. All securities are false, all securities are imagined. A woman loves you today – tomorrow who knows? How can you be secure about tomorrow? You may go to the court and register, and make a legal bond that she will remain your wife tomorrow also. She MAY remain your wife because of the legal bonds, but love can disappear. Love knows no legality. And when love disappears and the wife remains the wife and the husband remains the husband, then there is a deadness between them. Because of security we create marriage. Because of security we create society. Because of security we always move on the channelized path. Life is wild. Love is wild. And God is absolutely wild. He will never come into your gardens, they are too human. He will not come to your houses, they are too small. He will never be met on your channelized paths. He is wild. Remember, tantra says life is wild. One has to live it through all the dangers, hazards – and it is beautiful because then there is adventure. Don’t try to make a fixed pattern of your life. Allow it to have its own course. Accept everything; transcend duality through acceptance and allow the life to have its own course – and you will reach, you will certainly reach. This ”certainly” I say, not to make you secure – this is a fact, that’s why I say it. This is not your certainty of security. Those who are wild always reach. TRANSIENT IS THIS WORLD, LIKE PHANTOMS AND DREAMS, SUBSTANCE IT HAS NONE. RENOUNCE IT AND FORSAKE YOUR KIN, CUT THE STRINGS OF LUST AND HATRED, AND MEDITATE IN WOODS AND MOUNTAINS. IF WITHOUT EFFORT YOU REMAIN LOOSELY IN THE NATURAL STATE, SOON MAHAMUDRA YOU WILL WIN AND ATTAIN THE NONATTAINMENT. ... the nonattainable. This sutra has to be understood very deeply, because misunderstanding is possible. There has been much misunderstanding about Tilopa – about THIS sutra. And all those who have commented before me, they have missed the point. There is reason. This sutra says: TRANSIENT IS THIS WORLD – this world is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. In dreams and in this world there is no difference. Waking or asleep you live in a dream-world of your own. Remember there is not one world – there are as many worlds as there are per sons; everybody lives in his own world. Sometimes our worlds meet and clash, sometimes merge, but we remain enclosed in our own worlds. TRANSIENT IS THIS WORLD, mind-created, LIKE PHANTOMS AND DREAMS, SUBSTANCE IT HAS NONE. This is what physicists say also: substance it has none. Matter has disappeared completely from the vocabulary of the physicist just within thirty, forty years. Seventy years ago, seventy-five years ago, Nietzsche declared, ”God is dead.” And he said it to emphasize that only matter exists – and the century is not even complete. Just twenty-five years after Nietzsche died – Nietzsche died in 1900 – in 1925 physicists came to understand that we don’t know anything about God, but one thing is certain: matter is dead. There is no material thing around you, everything is just vibrations; crisscrossing vibrations create the illusion of matter. It is the same as you see in a movie: there is nothing on the screen – only crisscrossing electric lights, and they create the whole illusion. And now there are three-dimensional films; they create the complete illusion of three-dimensionality. Exactly like the movie film on the screen is the whole world, because it is all electric phenomenon – only YOU are real, only the witness is real and everything is a dream. And buddhahood means when you transcend all these dreams and nothing is left to be seen – only the seer sits silently; there is nothing, no object to be seen, only the seer is left – then you have attained to buddhahood, to reality. TRANSIENT IS THIS WORLD, LIKE PHANTOMS AND DREAMS, SUBSTANCE IT HAS NONE. RENOUNCE IT AND FORSAKE YOUR KIN.... These words, RENOUNCE IT AND FORSAKE YOUR KIN, have been misunderstood. There is a reason why – because they are all renouncers, and they thought that Tilopa is saying what they believe. Tilopa cannot say it because it is against his whole trend. If they are like dreams, what is the meaning of renouncing them? You can renounce reality, you cannot renounce dreams – it will be too foolish. You can renounce a substantial world, you cannot renounce a phantom world. In the morning do you say, declare, go to the housetop and call everybody around and say, ”I have renounced dreams! Last night there were many dreams and I have renounced them!” They will laugh, they will think you have gone crazy – nobody renounces dreams. One simply awakes; nobody renounces dreams. One Zen master one morning woke up and he asked one of his disciples, ”I had a dream last night. Would you interpret it for me, what it means?” The disciple said, ”Wait! Let me bring a cup of tea for you.” The master took the cup of tea and then asked, ”Now what about the dream?” The disciple said, ”Forget about it, because a dream is a dream and needs no interpretation. A cup of tea is enough interpretation – awake!” The master said, ”Right, absolutely right! If you had interpreted my dream I would have thrown you out of my monastery, because only fools interpret dreams. You did well; otherwise you would have been thrown out completely, and I would not have looked at your face again.” When there is a dream you need a cup of tea and be finished with it. Freud and Jung and Adler would have been much worried had they known this story, because they wasted their whole lives interpreting others’ dreams. A dream has to be transcended. Simply by knowing it is a dream you transcend – THIS is the renunciation. Tilopa has been misunderstood because there are so many renouncers in the world, condemners. They thought he was saying renounce the world. He was not saying that. He was saying, ”Know that it is transient and this is renunciation.” ”Renounce it,” he says; he means, know that it is a dream. FORSAKE YOUR KIN – it has been thought that he is saying, ”Leave your family, your relations, your mother, your father, your children.” No, he is not saying that; he cannot say that. It is impossible for Tilopa to say that. He is saying renounce the inner relationship with people. You should not think somebody is your wife – that ”yourness” is a phantom, it is a dream. You should not say, ”This child is my son” – that ”myness,” that ”mine” is a dream. Nobody is yours, nobody can be yours. Renounce these attitudes that somebody is yours – husband, wife, friend, enemy; renounce all these attitudes. Don’t bridge: ”mine,” ”thine” – these words, drop them. Suddenly, if you drop these words, you have renounced your kin – nobody is yours. That doesn’t mean that you escape, you run away from your wife, because the running away will show that you think she is substantial. Running away will show that you still think she is yours, otherwise why are you running? It happened: One Hindu sannyasin, Swami Ramateertha, came back from America. He was staying in the Himalayas; his wife came to see him – he became a little disturbed. His disciple, a very penetrating mind, Sardar Poorn Singh, was sitting beside him. He watched, he felt that Ramateertha was disturbed. When the wife went, suddenly Ramateertha threw off his orange robes. Poorn Singh asked, ”What is the matter? I was watching, you were a little disturbed. It felt that you were not yourself.” He said, ”That’s why I’m throwing off these robes. I have met so many women, and I was never disturbed. Nothing is special about this woman – except that she was my wife. That ’my’ is still there. I am not worthy to wear these robes. I have not renounced the ’mine,’ I have renounced only the wife. And the wife is not the problem; NO other woman has ever disturbed me. I have walked all over the earth, but my wife comes – she is as ordinary a woman as any – and suddenly I am disturbed. The bridge is still there.” He died in ordinary clothes, he never again used the orange. He said, ”I am not worthy.” Tilopa cannot say renounce your wife and children and your kin. No. He is saying renounce the bridges, drop them – that is your affair; it is not concerned with the wife. If she continues to think about you as her husband, that is her problem, not yours. If the son continues to think of you as his father, that is his problem; he is a child, he needs maturity. I say to you: Tilopa means renouncing the inner dreams and bridges, the inner worlds. ... AND MEDITATE IN WOODS AND MOUNTAINS. And that too – he is not saying to run away to the mountains and the woods. It has been interpreted like that, and many have escaped from their wives and children and gone to the mountains – that is absolutely wrong. What Tilopa is saying is deeper; it is not so superficial, because you can go to the mountains and remain in the market. Your mind is the question. You may sit in the Himalayas and think of the market and your wife and your children and what is happening to them. It happened: a man renounced his wife, children, family and came to Tilopa to be initiated as his disciple. Tilopa was staying in a temple outside the town. The man came. When he reached inside he was alone and Tilopa was alone. Tilopa looked around him and said, ”You have come, that’s okay – but why this crowd?” He also looked behind him, because there was no one. Tilopa said, ”Don’t look back! Look in! – the crowd is there.” The man closed his eyes and the crowd was there: the wife was still there crying, the children were weeping and sad; they were standing there. They had come to leave him at the boundary of the town – friends, family, others, they were all there. And Tilopa said, ”Go out, leave the crowd! I initiate persons, not crowds.” No, Tilopa cannot mean that you renounce the world and go to the mountains. He is not so foolish. He cannot mean that – he is an awakened man. What he means is this: he says if you renounce the dreams, the bridges, the relationships – not the relations – if you renounce your mind, suddenly you are in the woods and in the mountains. You may be sitting in the market – the market has disappeared. You may be sitting in your house – the house has disappeared. Suddenly you are in the woods and in the mountains. Suddenly you are alone. Only you are there, nobody else. You can be in the crowd and alone, and you can be alone and in the crowd. You can be in the world and not of the world. You can be in the world, but you belong to the mountains and the woods. This is an inner phenomenon. There are inner mountains and inner woods, and Tilopa cannot say anything about the outer mountains and woods, because they are also dreams. A Himalaya is as much a dream as the market-place in Poona, because a Himalaya is as outer a phenomenon as the market-place is. The woods are also a dream. You have to come to the inner – the reality is there. You have to move more and more deeper, in the depths of your being, then you will come to the real Himalayas, then you will come to the real woods of your being, peaks and valleys of your being, heights and depths of your being. Tilopa means that. IF WITHOUT EFFORT YOU REMAIN LOOSELY IN THE NATURAL STATE.... And he has to mean that because he is for a loose and natural state. To escape from the wife and the children is not natural, and it is not loose at all. A man who leaves his wife and children and friends and the world becomes tense, he cannot be loose. In the very effort of renouncing a tension comes in. To be natural means to be there where you are. To be natural means: wherever you found yourself, be there. If you are a husband, good; if you are a wife, beautiful; if you are a mother, right – it has to be so. Accept wherever you are and whatsoever you are and whatsoever is happening to you, only then you can be loose and natural, otherwise you cannot be loose and natural. Your socalled monks, SADHUS, people who have escaped from the world, in fact, cowards sitting in their monasteries, canNOT be loose and natural – they have to be uptight. They have done something unnatural, they have gone against the natural flow. Yes, for a few people it can be natural. So I am not saying FORCE yourself to be in the marketplace, because then you will commit the other extreme, and you will do again the same foolishness. To a few people it may be absolutely natural to be in a monastery; then they have to be in the monastery. To a few people it may be absolutely natural to move in the mountains; they have to be in the mountains. The thing to be remembered as a criterion is being loose and natural. If you are natural in the market, beautiful – the market is also divine. If you feel loose and natural in the Himalayas, beautiful – nothing is wrong in it. Remember only one thing: Be loose and natural. Don’t strain, and don’t try to create a tension within your being. Relaxed... ... SOON MAHAMUDRA YOU WILL WIN... Remaining loose and natural, soon you will come to the orgasmic peak with the existence. ... AND ATTAIN THE NONATTAINMENT. And you will attain that which cannot be attained. Why? Why say it cannot be attained? – because it cannot be made a goal. It cannot be attained by a goal-oriented mind. It cannot be attained by an achieving mind. Many people here are of the same trend of the achieving mind. They are uptight because they have made a goal of that which cannot be made a goal. It HAPPENS to you. You can only be passive, loose and natural, and wait for the right time, because everything has its own season. It will happen in its own season. What is the hurry? If you are in a hurry then you will become uptight, then you will be constantly expecting. That’s why Tilopa says: ”... AND ATTAIN THE NONATTAINMENT.” It is not a goal. You cannot make a target of it: ”I am going to attain it.” You cannot reach it like an arrow, no. The mind which is arrowed towards a goal is a tense mind. Suddenly it comes, when you are ready – not even the footsteps are heard. Suddenly it comes. You do not even become aware that it is coming. It has bloomed. Suddenly you see the blooming – you are filled with the fragrance.

CHAPTER 8

Cut the Root

18 February 1975 am in Buddha Hall THE SONG CONTINUES: CUT THE ROOT OF A TREE AND THE LEAVES WILL WITHER; CUT THE ROOT OF YOUR MIND AND SAMSARA FALLS. THE LIGHT OF ANY LAMP DISPELS IN A MOMENT THE DARKNESS OF LONG KALPAS; THE STRONG LIGHT OF THE MIND IN BUT A FLASH WILL BURN THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE. WHOEVER CLINGS TO MIND SEES NOT THE TRUTH OF WHAT’S BEYOND THE MIND. WHOEVER STRIVES TO PRACTICE DHARMA FINDS NOT THE TRUTH OF BEYOND- PRACTICE. TO KNOW WHAT IS BEYOND BOTH MIND AND PRACTICE ONE SHOULD CUT CLEANLY THROUGH THE ROOT OF MIND AND STARE NAKED. ONE SHOULD THUS BREAK AWAY FROM ALL DISTINCTIONS AND REMAIN AT EASE. Choice is bondage, choicelessness freedom. The moment you choose something, you have fallen in the trap of the world. If you can resist the temptation to choose, if you can remain choicelessly aware, the trap disappears on its own accord, because when you don’t choose you don’t help the trap to be there – the trap is also created by your choice. So this word ”choice” has to be understood very deeply, because only through that understanding can choicelessness flower in you. Why can’t you remain without choosing? Why does it happen the moment you see a person or a thing, immediately a subtle wave of choice has entered in you, even if you are not aware that you have chosen? A woman passes by and you say she is beautiful. You are not saying anything about your choice, but the choice has entered, for to say of a person that she is beautiful means: ”I would like to choose her.” In fact, deep down you have chosen; you are already in the trap. The seed has fallen to the soil; soon there will be sprouts, there will be a plant and a tree. The moment you say, ”This car is beautiful,” choice has entered. You may not be aware at all that you have chosen, that you would like to possess this car, but in the mind a fantasy has entered, a desire has arisen. When you say something is beautiful, you mean that you would like to have it. When you say something is ugly, you mean that you would not like to have it. Choice is subtle and one has to be very minutely aware about it. Whenever you say something remember this: that saying is not only saying, not a mere saying – something has happened in the unconscious. Don’t make the distinction: this is beautiful and that is ugly, this is good and that is bad. Don’t make the distinctions. Remain aloof! Things are neither bad nor good. The quality of goodness and badness is introduced by you. Things are neither beautiful nor ugly; they are simply there as they are – the quality of being beautiful and ugly is introduced by you, it is your interpretation. What do you mean when you say something is beautiful? Is there any criterion of beauty? Can you prove it that it is beautiful? Just standing by your side, somebody may think, ”This is ugly!” – so it is nothing objective; nobody can prove anything beautiful. Thousands and thousands of books have been written on aesthetics, and it has been a long, arduous journey for intellectuals, thinkers and philosophers to define what beauty is – they have not yet been able. They have written great books, great treatises, they go round about and round about, but nobody has ever been able to pinpoint what beauty is. No, it seems impossible – because there exists nothing like beauty or ugliness, it is your interpretation. First you make a thing beautiful. This is why I say that first you create the trap and then you fall into it. First you think this face is beautiful – this is YOUR creation, this is just your imagination, this is just your mind interpreting; this is not existential, this is just psychological – and then you yourself fall into the trap. You dig the hole and then you fall into it and then you cry for help, and then you cry for people to come to your salvation. Nothing is needed says tantra. You simply see the whole trick – it is your own creation. What do you mean that something is ugly? If man is not on the earth will there be ugliness and beauty? Trees will be there, of course, and they will bloom; of course, rains will come, and summer and seasons will follow one another – but there will be nothing like beautiful and ugly, it will disappear with man and his mind. The sun will rise and in the night the sky will be filled with stars – but nothing will be beautiful and nothing will be ugly. It was just man creating noise. Now he is no more there the interpretations have disappeared; what will be good and what will be bad? In nature nothing is good and nothing is bad. And remember, tantra is the loose and the natural way. It wants to bring you to the deepest, most natural phenomena of life. It wants to help you drop from the mind – and mind creates distinctions, and mind says this is to be chosen and that has to be avoided. To this you cling, and that you avoid and escape from. Look at the whole phenomenon. Just a look is needed, nothing else; no practice is needed – just a look at the whole situation. The moon is beautiful; why? – because for centuries you have been indoctrinated that the moon is beautiful. For centuries poets have been singing about the moon, for centuries people have believed – now it has become engrained. Of course there are a few things which happen with the moon: it is very soothing, you feel calmed down, and the light of the moon gives a mysterious aroma to the whole nature; it gives a sort of hypnosis, you feel a little sleepy and awake and things look more beautiful; it gives a dreamlike quality to the world – that’s why we call madmen, lunatics. The word ”lunatic” comes from the word ”luna,” the moon. They have gone mad, moonstruck. The moon creates a sort of lunacy, a sort of madness, a neurosis. It may be concerned with the water in your body – just like the sea is affected by the moon and tides come. Your body is ninety percent sea water. If you ask the physiologists they will say that something must be happening in the body because of the moon, because your body remains a part of the sea. Man has come from the sea to the earth; basically life was born in the sea. When the whole sea is affected, of course all sea animals are affected by the moon, they are part of the sea, and man has also come from the sea. Very very long he has traveled, but it makes no difference; the body still reacts in the same way. Ninety percent of your body is water, and not only water, sea water, with the same chemicals, same saltiness. In the womb the child swims for nine months, floats in sea water; the mother’s womb is filled with sea water. That’s why when women are pregnant they start using, eating more salt. More salt is needed for their womb, to keep the same balance of saltiness. And the child passes through all the phases humanity has passed through. In the beginning he is just like a fish, he moves into the ocean of the mother’s womb, floats. By and by, in nine months he passes millions of years. Physiologists have come to realize that he passes through all the stages of life in nine months. That may be, that the moon affects you, but there is nothing like beauty – it is a chemical phenomenon. Certain eyes you feel are very beautiful. What is happening? Those eyes must have a quality, a chemical quality, an electric quality in them, they must be releasing some energy – you become affected by them. You say some eyes are hypnotic, like Adolf Hitler’s eyes. Just the moment he sees you something happens in you. You say eyes are very beautiful. What do you mean by beauty? You are affected. In fact, when you say something is beautiful you are not saying that something is beautiful, you are saying that you are affected in a nice way, that’s all. When you say something is ugly, you are saying that you are affected in an antagonistic way. You are repelled or you are attracted. When you are attracted it is beauty, when you are repelled it is ugly. But it is YOU, not the object, because the same object can attract somebody else. It happens every day; people are always amazed about other people. They say, ”That man has fallen in love with that woman – amazing!” Nobody can believe that this can happen; that woman is ugly. But to that man, that woman is the very incarnation of beauty. What to do? There can be no objective criterion, there is none. Tantra says: remember, whenever you choose something, whenever you decide for this or against this, it is your mind playing tricks. Don’t say the thing is beautiful; just simply say, ”I am affected in a nice way” – but the base remains ”I.” If once you transfer the whole phenomenon on the object, then it can never be solved because from the first step you missed, you missed the root. The root is you, so if you are affected it means your mind is affected in a certain way. And then that affection, that being affected, creates the trap and you start moving. First you create a beautiful man and then you start chasing him, then you run after him. And after a few days living with a beautiful man or woman, all fantasies fall to the ground. Suddenly you become aware, as if you have been deceived, that this woman looks ordinary. And you were thinking she was a Laila or a Juliet, or you were thinking he is a Majnu or a Romeo, and suddenly, after a few days, the dreams have evaporated and the woman has become ordinary, or the man has become ordinary; then you feel disgusted, as if the other has deceived you. Nobody has deceived and nothing has fallen from the man or woman; it is your own fantasy that has fallen – because fantasies cannot be maintained. You can dream about them but you cannot maintain them for a long time. Fantasies are fantasies! So if you really want to continue in your fantasy, then when you see a beautiful woman, immediately escape from her as far as you can. Then you will always remember her as the most beautiful woman in the world. Then the fantasy will never come in contact with reality. Then there will be no shattering. You can always sigh and sing and weep and cry for the beautiful woman – but never go near her! The nearer you come, the more reality, the more objective reality, reveals itself. And when there is a clash between objective reality and your fantasy, of course you know who is going to be defeated – your fantasy. Objective reality cannot be defeated. This is the situation. And tantra says become aware: nobody is deceiving you except yourself. The woman was not trying to be very beautiful, she was not creating the fantasy around her, YOU created it around her; you believed it, and now you are at a loss what to do, because the fantasy cannot be continued against reality. A dream has to break – and that is the criterion. Hindus in the East have made a criterion of truth: they say truth is that which lasts forever, forever, forever; and untruth is that which lasts only for a moment. No other distinction is there. The momentary is the untrue and the everlasting is the truth. And life is everlasting; existence is everlasting. Mind is momentary – so whatsoever mind gives to life remains momentary; it is a color that the mind gives to the life, it is an interpretation. By the time the interpretation is complete, the mind has changed. You cannot maintain the interpretation because mind cannot be maintained for two consecutive moments in the same situation in the same state. Mind goes on changing, mind is a flux. It has already changed – by the time you realize that this man is beautiful, the mind has already changed. Now you will be falling in love with something which is there no more, even in your mind. Tantra says: understand the mechanism of the mind and cut the root. Don’t choose, because when you choose you get identified. Whatsoever you choose you become, in a certain way, one with it. If you love a car, you become one with that car in a certain way. You come closer and closer, and if the car is stolen, something of your being is stolen. If something goes wrong with the car, something goes wrong with you. If you fall in love with a house you become one with the house. Love means identification; coming so close, as if you put two wax candles closer, closer, closer, and put them very close – they become one. The heat, the burning of the flame... by and by they become one. This is identification. Two flames coming closer and closer and closer, they become one. And when you are identified with something you have lost your soul. This is the meaning of losing your soul in the world: you have become identified with millions of things, and with everything a part of you has become a thing. Choice brings identification. Identification brings a hypnotic state of sleep. Gurdjieff has only one thing to teach to his disciples and that is not to be identified. His whole school, all his techniques, methods, situations, are based on one single base, and that base is: not to be identified. You are crying; when you are crying, you have become one with the crying. There is nobody to watch it, there is nobody to see it; be alert and aware of it – you are lost in crying. You have become the tears and the red, swollen eyes and your heart is in a crisis. Teachers like Gurdjieff, when they say not to be identified, they say, ”Cry, nothing is wrong in it, but stand by the side and look at it – don’t be identified.” And it is a wonderful experience if you can stand by the side. Cry, let the body cry, let the tears flow, don’t suppress it because suppression helps nobody, but stand by the side and watch. This can be done – because your inner being is a witness, it is never a doer. Whenever you think it is a doer there is an identification. It is never a doer. You can walk the whole earth – your inner being never walks a single step. You can dream millions of dreams – your inner being never dreams a single dream. All movements are on the surface. Deep in the depth of your being there is no movement. All movements are on the periphery, just like a wheel moves, but at the center nothing moves. At that center everything remains as it is, and on the center the wheel moves. Remember the center! Watch your behavior, your actions, your identifications, and a distance is created; by and by a distance comes into existence – the watcher and the doer become two. You can see yourself laughing, you can see yourself crying, you can see yourself walking, eating, making love; you can act many things, whatsoever is going on around – and you remain the seer. You don’t jump and become one with whatsoever you are seeing. This is the trouble. Whatsoever happens you start saying: you are hungry, you say, ”I am hungry” – you have become identified with the hunger. But just look inside; are you hunger, or is hunger happening to you? Are you hunger or are you simply aware of the hunger happening in the body? You cannot be hunger; otherwise, when the hunger has disappeared, where will you be? When you have eaten well and the belly is full and you are satiated, where will you be if you are hunger? Evaporated? No, then immediately you become the satiety. Before the hunger disappears a new identification has to be created; you become the satiety. You were a child and you thought you were a child; now where are you because you are no more a child? You have become a young man or you have become old – who are you now? Again you are identified with youth or old age. The innermost being is just like a mirror. Whatsoever comes before it, it mirrors, it simply becomes a witness. Disease comes or health, hunger or satiety, summer or winter, childhood or old age, birth or death – whatsoever happens, happens before the mirror, it never happens TO the mirror. This is nonidentification, this is cutting the root, the very root – to become a mirror. And to me this is sannyas: to become like a mirror. Don’t become like a very sensitive photoplate – that is identification. Whatsoever comes before the lens of the camera, the photoplate immediately takes it in, becomes one with it. Become like a mirror. Things come and pass and the mirror remains vacant, empty, void. This is the no-self of Tilopa. The mirror has no self to be identified with. It simply reflects. It does not react, it simply responds. It doesn’t say, ”This is beautiful, that is ugly.” An ugly woman stands before it, the mirror is as happy as when a beautiful woman stands before it. It makes no difference. It reflects whatsoever is the case but it doesn’t interpret. It doesn’t say, ”Go away, you disturb me very much,” or ”Come a little closer, you are so beautiful.” The mirror says nothing. The mirror simply watches without any distinction, friend or foe. The mirror has no distinctions to make. And when somebody passes, goes away from the mirror, the mirror doesn’t cling to it. The mirror has no past. It is not that you have passed and the mirror will cling a little to your phantom. It is not that the mirror will cling to your shadow a little while. It is not that the mirror will try to retain the reflection that has happened in it. No. You have passed, the reflection has gone; not even for a single second the mirror retains it. This is the mind of a buddha. You come before it, he is filled with you; you go away, you have gone. Not even a memory flashes. A mirror has no past, neither has a buddha. A mirror has no future, neither has a buddha. The mirror doesn’t wait: ”Now who is coming before me; now who am I going to reflect? I would like this person to come and not like that person.” The mirror has no choice, he remains choiceless. Try to understand this metaphor of the mirror because this is the real situation of the inner consciousness. Don’t get identified by things that are happening around you. You remain centered... remain centered and rooted in your being. Things are happening and they will continue to happen, but if YOU can be centered in your mirror-like consciousness, nothing will be the same – the whole has changed. You remain virgin, innocent, pure. Nothing can become an impurity to you, absolutely nothing because nothing is retained. You reflect, for a moment somebody is there and then everything is gone. Your emptiness is untouched. Even while a mirror is reflecting somebody, there is nothing happening to the mirror. The mirror is not changing in any way; the mirror remains the same. This is cutting the very root. There are two types of people. One, who go on fighting with the symptoms, who go on fighting, not with the root cause, but just with the symptoms of the disease. For example, you have a fever, a one-hundred-and-five degrees fever. You can do one thing: you can go and take a good shower, a cold shower; that will cool down the body, that will bring the fever low – but you are fighting with the symptom because the temperature is not the disease. A temperature is simply an indication that something has gone wrong in the body. The body is in a turmoil, that’s why the temperature has gone high. The body is in a crisis. Inside the body something like a war is going on. Some germs are fighting with other germs, that’s why the temperature has gone high. You are feeling hot – this heat is not the problem, this heat is just a symptom. This heat is very very friendly to you, this heat simply shows you: Do something, inside there is a crisis – and if you treat the symptom you will kill the patient. Putting ice on his head won’t do. Giving him a cold shower won’t help. It is destructive, because it will give a false coolness on the surface. But how, just by giving a cold shower, can you hope that the inner turmoil and the inner fight in the germs will stop? – they will continue and they will kill you. The fool is always treating the symptoms. The wise man looks to the root, to the very cause. He doesn’t try to cool down the body, he tries to change the root cause of why the body is becoming hot. And when that root is changed, the cause is changed, the cause is treated, the temperature comes down by itself. Temperature is not the problem. But in life there are more fools than wise men. In medicine we have become wiser but in life, still not. In life we go on doing foolish things. If you are angry you start fighting with the anger. Anger is nothing but a temperature; it is exactly a temperature, it is a fever. If you are really angry your body becomes hot, but that only shows that in your bloodstream some chemicals are being released. But that too is not the root either. Those chemicals are released for a certain reason – because you have created a situation in which either you will have to fight or take flight. When an animal is in a situation of danger he has two choices: one choice is to fight, another choice is to escape. For both these choices certain poisons are needed in the blood, because when you fight you will need more energy than ordinarily. When you fight you will need more blood circulating than ordinarily. When you fight you will need emergency sources of energy to work, to function – the body has emergency sources. It collects poisons, hormones, many things in the glands; when the time comes and the need is there it releases them into the bloodstream. That’s why when you are angry you become almost three times more powerful than you are ordinarily. If your anger can be created, you can do many things you can never do ordinarily: you can throw a big rock – ordinarily you cannot even move it. In fight it will be needed – nature provides. Or if you have to escape and run away, then too energy will be needed because the enemy will chase you, follow you. Everything has changed – man has created a civilization, a society, a culture, where animal situations no longer exist – but deep inside the mechanism remains the same. Whenever you are in a situation when you feel somebody is going to be aggressive to you, somebody is going to hit you, insult you, do some harm, immediately the body comes into the situation: it releases poisons in the bloodstream, your temperature rises high, your eyes become red, your face is more filled with blood – you are ready to fight or take flight. This too is not the deepest thing because this too is just a help from the body. Anger on the face, anger in the body, are not real things; they follow your mind, they follow your interpretation. It can be that there was nothing. In a lonely street on a dark night, you pass, you see a lamp-post, you think it is a ghost – immediately the body has released something in the bloodstream, the body is preparing to fight the ghost or escape. Your mind interpreted the lamp-post as a ghost – immediately the body follows. You think somebody is your enemy, the body follows. You think somebody is a friend, the body follows. So the root cause is in the mind, it is in your interpretation. Buddha says, ”Think that the whole earth is your friend.” Why? Jesus says, ”Even forgive your enemies”; not only that, ”even love your enemies.” Why? Buddha and Jesus are trying to change your interpretations, but Tilopa goes still higher. He says: Even if you think that all are your friends, you continue to think in terms of friendship and enmity. Even if you love the enemy you think that he is the enemy. You love because Jesus has said. Of course, you will be in a better situation than an ordinary man who hates the enemy, less anger will happen to you. But Tilopa says to THINK that someone is an enemy, to think that someone is a friend, is to divide – you have already fallen into the trap. Nobody is a friend and nobody is an enemy. This is the highest teaching. Sometimes Tilopa surpasses even Buddha and Jesus. Maybe the reason is that Buddha was talking to the masses and Tilopa is talking to Naropa. When you talk to a very developed disciple, you can bring the highest down. When you talk to the masses you have to make compromises. I was talking to the masses for fifteen years continuously, then by and by I felt I have to drop it. I was talking to thousands of people. But when you talk to twenty thousand people you have to compromise, you have to come down; otherwise it will be impossible for them to understand. Seeing this I dropped it. Now I like to talk only to Naropas. And you may not be aware, even if a single new person comes here and I am not aware that a new person is there, he changes the whole atmosphere. He brings you down and suddenly I feel that I have to make a compromise. The higher you go, the higher your energy, the higher teaching can be delivered to you. And a moment comes when Naropa becomes perfect – Tilopa becomes silent. Then there is no need to say anything, because even saying is a compromise. Then silence suffices, then silence is enough; then just sitting together is enough. Then the master sits with the disciple, they don’t do anything, they just remain together – and then only the highest glimpse happens. So it depends on the disciples. It will depend on you, how much you can allow me to bring to you. It is not only for your own understanding – of course, that is there – but it will depend on you how much I can bring to the earth because it is going to come through you. Jesus has very ordinary disciples in that way, very ordinary, because he is starting a thing and he has to make compromises – with foolish things. Jesus is going to be caught in the night and the disciples are asking, ”Master, tell us: in the Kingdom of God you will, of course, be sitting to the right of God, on the right side of the throne – but we twelve, what will be our hierarchical situation? How will we be sitting? Who will be sitting by the side of you? and who next?” Jesus is going to die and these foolish disciples are asking something absurd. And they are worried in the Kingdom of God what will be the hierarchy, who will be next to Jesus. Of course, Jesus... they can see that much, that Jesus will be next to God, but then who will be next to Jesus? Foolish egos. And Jesus has to compromise with these people. That’s why Jesus’ teachings could not go to that height where Buddha can go easily because he is not talking to such foolish people; never in his life has a single person asked such a foolish thing. But nothing to compare with Tilopa.... He never talked to the masses. He searched for a single man, a single developed soul, Naropa, and said, ”Because of you, Naropa... I will tell you things which cannot be told; because of you and your trust, I have to.” That’s why the teaching has gone, taken a flight to the very farthest corner of the sky. Now try to understand the sutra: CUT THE ROOT OF A TREE AND THE LEAVES WILL WITHER; CUT THE ROOT OF YOUR MIND AND SAMSARA – the world – FALLS. THE LIGHT OF ANY LAMP DISPELS IN A MOMENT THE DARKNESS OF LONG KALPAS – long ages, millennia – THE STRONG LIGHT OF THE MIND IN BUT A FLASH WILL BURN THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE. ”CUT THE ROOTS OF A TREE AND THE LEAVES WILL WITHER.” But people ordinarily try to cut off the leaves. That is not the way; the root cannot wither that way. On the contrary, if you cut off the leaves, more leaves will come into the tree; you cut off one leaf, three will come, because by your cutting off the leaves, the roots become more active to protect. So every gardener knows how to make a tree dense and thick – you just go on pruning. It will become thicker and thicker and thicker, because you give a challenge to the roots: you cut off one leaf, the roots will send three to protect the body of the tree, because leaves are the body surface of the tree. Leaves are not just there for your enjoyment, to see and for you to sit under the shade; no, leaves are the tree’s body surface. Through leaves the tree absorbs sunrays, through leaves the tree releases vapors, through leaves the tree is in contact with the cosmos. The leaves are the skin of the tree. You cut off one leaf and the roots take the challenge: they send three instead; they become more alert, they cannot remain sleepy. Somebody is trying to destroy them and they have to protect – and the same happens in life also, because life is also a tree. Roots and leaves are there. If you cut anger, three leaves will come instead; you will be thrice angry. If you cut sex, you will become abnormally obsessed with sex. Cut anything and watch and you will see that thrice is happening to you. And then the mind will say, ”Cut more, this is not enough!” Then you cut more and then more comes of it – then you are in a vicious circle. The mind will go on, ”Cut more, it is still not enough.” That’s why so many leaves are coming. You can cut all the branches, it will make no difference because the tree exists in the root, not in the leaves. Identification is the root and everything else is nothing but leaves. Being identified with greed, being identified with anger, being identified with sex, is the root. And remember, it is the same whether you are identified with greed, or sex, or even meditation. Love, MOKSHA, God – it makes no difference, it is the same identification. Being identified is the root, and all else is just like leaves. Don’t cut the leaves, leave them, nothing is wrong in them. That’s why tantra does not believe in improving your character. It may give you a good shape – if you prune a tree you can make any shape out of it – but the tree remains the same. Character is just an outer shape – but you remain the same, no transmutation happens. Tantra goes deeper and says, ”Cut the root!” That’s why tantra was misunderstood too much, because tantra says, ”If you are greedy, be greedy; don’t bother about greed. If you are sexual, be sexual; don’t bother about it at all.” The society cannot tolerate such a teaching: ”What are these people saying? They will create chaos. They will destroy the whole order.” But they have not understood that only tantra changes the society, the man, the mind, nothing else; and only tantra brings a real order, a natural order, a natural flowering of the inner discipline, nothing else. But it is a very deep process – you have to cut the root. Watch greed, watch sex, watch anger, possessiveness, jealousy. One thing has to be remembered: you don’t get identified, you simply watch; you simply look, you become a spectator. By and by, the quality of witnessing grows; you become able to see all the nuances of greed. It is very subtle. You become capable of seeing how subtly the ego functions, how subtle are its ways. It is not a gross thing; it is very subtle and delicate and deep-hidden. The more you watch, the more your eyes become capable of seeing, become more perceptive, the more you see and deeper you can move, and the more distance is created between you and whatsoever you do. Distance helps because without distance there can be no perception. How can you see a thing which is too close? If you are standing too close to a mirror, you cannot see your reflection. If your eyes are touching the mirror, how can you see? A distance is needed – and nothing can give you a distance except witnessing. You try it and see. Move into sex; nothing is wrong in it, but remain a watcher. Watch all the movements of the body; watch the energy flowing in and out, watch how the energy is falling downwards; watch the orgasm, what is happening – how two bodies move in a rhythm. Watch the heartbeat – faster and faster it goes, a moment comes when it is almost mad. Watch the warmth of the body; the blood circulates more. Watch the breathing; it is going mad and chaotic. Watch the moment when a limit comes to your voluntariness and everything becomes involuntary. Watch the moment from where you could have come back, but beyond that there is no return. The body becomes so automatic all control is lost. Just a moment before the ejaculation you lose all control, the body takes over. Watch it: the voluntary processes, the nonvoluntary process. The moment when you were in control and you could have gone back, the return was possible, and the moment when you cannot come back, the return has become impossible – now the body has taken over completely, you are no more in control. Watch everything – and millions of things are there. Everything is so complex and nothing is as complex as sex, because the whole bodymind is involved – only the witness is not involved, only one thing remains always outside. The witness is an outsider. By its very nature the witness can never become an insider. Find out this witness and then you are standing on a top of the hill, and everything goes in the valley and you are not concerned. You simply see; what is your concern? It is as if it is happening to somebody else. And it is the same with greed and it is the same with anger; everything is very complex. And you will enjoy it if you can watch – negative, positive, all the emotions. You simply remember one thing, that you have to be a watcher; then the identification is broken, then the root is cut. And once the root is cut, once you think you are not the doer, everything suddenly changes. And the change is sudden, there is no gradualness to it. CUT THE ROOT OF THE TREE AND THE LEAVES WILL WITHER, CUT THE ROOT OF YOUR MIND AND SAMSARA FALLS. The moment you cut the root of the mind, the identification with it, the samsara falls; the whole world falls like a house of cards. Just a small wind of awareness and the whole house falls. Suddenly you are here, but no more in the world – you have transcended. You can live just the old way, doing the old things – but nothing is old, because you are no longer the old. You are a perfectly new being – this is rebirth. Hindus call it DWIJ, twice-born. A man who has attained to this is twice-born, this is a second birth – and this is the birth of the soul. This is what Jesus means by resurrection. Resurrection is not the rebirth of the body; it is a new birth of consciousness. CUT THE ROOT OF YOUR MIND AND SAMSARA FALLS. THE LIGHT OF ANY LAMP DISPELS IN A MOMENT THE DARKNESS OF LONG LONG KALPAS... long long ages. So don’t be worried about how a sudden light will dispel the darkness of many, many millions of lives. It dispels it because darkness has no density to it, darkness has no substance to it. Whether one moment old or many thousands of years old, it is the same. Absence cannot grow more or less, absence remains the same. Light is substantial, it is something – darkness is just an absence. The light is there and darkness is there no more. It is not that the darkness is dispelled really, because there was nothing to be dispelled. It is not that when you burn the light, the darkness goes out – there was nothing to go out. In fact there was nothing, just the absence of light. Light comes and darkness is not. THE STRONG LIGHT OF THE MIND IN BUT A FLASH WILL BURN THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE. Buddhists use ”mind” in two senses: mind with a small ”m” and Mind with a capital ”M.” When they use Mind with a capital ”M,” they mean the witness, consciousness. When they use mind with a small ”m” they mean the witnessed. And both are mind – that’s why they use the same word for both – with just a small difference, with a capital ”M.” With a capital ”M” you are the witness and with a small ”m” you are the witnessed – thoughts, emotions, anger, greed, everything. Why use the same word? Why create confusion? There is a reason for it – because when the Mind with a capital ”M” arises, the mind with the small ”m” is simply absorbed in it. As rivers fall into the ocean, the millions of minds around the great Mind all fall into it, the energy is reabsorbed. Greed, anger, jealousy – they were energies moving outwards, centrifugally. Suddenly when the Mind with capital ”M” arises, the witness sits there silently watching and all the rivers change their course. They were going centrifugally towards the periphery; suddenly they turn back, they become centrifugal; they start falling into the great Mind – everything is absorbed. That’s why the same word is used. THE STRONG LIGHT OF THE MIND IN BUT A FLASH WILL BURN THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE. Just in a single moment all ignorance is burned – this is sudden enlightenment. WHOEVER CLINGS TO MIND SEES NOT THE TRUTH OF WHAT’S BEYOND THE MIND. If you cling to the mind, thoughts, emotions, then you will not be able to see that which is beyond the mind – the great Mind – because if you cling, how can you see it? If you cling, your eyes are closed by your clinging. And if you cling to the object, how can you see the subject? This ”clinging-ness” has to be dropped. WHOEVER CLINGS TO MIND is identified, and SEES NOT THE TRUTH OF WHAT’S BEYOND THE MIND. WHOEVER STRIVES TO PRACTICE DHARMA FINDS NOT THE TRUTH OF BEYOND-PRACTICE. All practice is of the mind. Whatsoever you do is of the mind. Only witnessing is not of the mind, remember this. So, even while you are doing meditation, remain a witness, continuously see what is happening. You are whirling in a dervish meditation? – whirl, whirl as fast as you can, but remain a witness inside and go on seeing that the body is whirling. The body goes on, faster and faster and faster, and the faster the body goes, the deeper you feel that your center is not moving. You are standing still, the body moves like a wheel, you stand still just in the middle of it. The faster the body goes, the deeper you realize the fact that you are not moving, and the distance is created. Whatsoever you are doing, even meditation – I make no exception – don’t cling to meditation either, because a day has to come when even that clinging has to be dropped. Meditation becomes perfect when it too is dropped. When there is perfect meditation, you need not meditate. So keep it constantly in your awareness that meditation is just a bridge; it has to be passed over. A bridge is not a place to make your house. You have to pass it and go beyond it. Meditation is a bridge; you have to be watchful about it also, otherwise you may stop being identified with anger, greed, and you may start being identified with meditation, compassion. Then you are in the same trap again; through another door you have entered the same house. It happened once: Mulla Nasruddin came to the town bar and he was already too drunk, so the barkeeper told him, ”You go away! You are already drunk and I cannot give you any more. You just go back to your house.” But he was insisting, so the barkeeper had to throw him out. He walked a long distance in search of another bar. Then he came to the same bar from another door, entered, looked at the man with a little suspicion because he looked familiar. The barman said, ”I have told you once and forever that tonight I am not going to give you anything. You get away from here!” Mulla was insisting again, he was thrown out again. He walked a long distance in search of another bar, but in that town there was only one bar. Again, from the third door, he entered, looked at the man, who looked so familiar. Mulla said, ”What is the matter? Do you own all the bars in the town?” This happens. You are thrown out from one door; you enter from another door. You were identified with your anger, your lust; now you become identified with your meditation. You were identified with your sexual pleasure; now you become identified with the ecstasy that meditation gives. Nothing is different – the town has only one bar. Don’t try to enter the same bar again and again. And from WHEREVER you enter you will find the same owner – that is the witness. Be mindful of it, otherwise much energy is unnecessarily wasted. Long distances you travel to enter into the same thing again. WHOEVER CLINGS TO MIND SEES NOT THE TRUTH OF WHAT’S BEYOND THE MIND. What is beyond the mind? You. What is beyond the mind? Consciousness. What is beyond the mind? SAT-CHIT-ANAND – truth, consciousness, bliss. WHOEVER STRIVES TO PRACTICE DHARMA FINDS NOT THE TRUTH OF BEYOND- PRACTICE. And whatsoever you practice, remember, practice cannot lead you to the natural, the loose and the natural, because practice means practicing something which is not there. Practicing means always practicing something artificial. Nature has not to be practiced; there is no need, it is already there. You learn something which is not there. How can you learn something which is already there? How can you learn nature, tao? It is already there! You are born in it. There is no need to find any teacher so that you can be taught – and that is the difference between a teacher and a master. A teacher is one who teaches you something, a master is one who helps you to unlearn all that you have already learned. A master is to help you unlearn. A master is to give you the taste of the nonpracticed. It is already there; through your learning you have lost it. Through your unlearning you will regain it. Truth is not a discovery, it is a rediscovery. It was already there in the first place. When you came into this world it was with you, when you were born into this life it was with you, because you ARE it. It cannot be otherwise. It is not something external, it is intrinsic in you, it is your very being. So if you practice, says Tilopa, you will not know that which is beyond practice. Remind yourself again and again, that whatsoever you practice will be a part of the mind, the small mind, the outer periphery, and you have to go beyond it. How to go beyond it? Practice, nothing is wrong in it, but be alert; meditate, but be alert – because in the final meaning of the term, meditation IS witnessing. All techniques can be helpful but they are not exactly meditation, they are just a groping in the dark. Suddenly one day, doing something, you will become a witness. Doing a meditation like the dynamic, or KUNDALINI or whirling, suddenly one day the meditation will go on but you will not be identified. You will sit silently behind, you will watch it – that day meditation has happened; that day technique is no more a hindrance, no more a help. You can enjoy it if you like, like an exercise, it gives a certain vitality, but there is no need now – the real meditation has happened. Meditation is witnessing. To meditate means to become a witness. Meditation is not a technique at all. This will be very confusing to you because I go on giving you techniques. In the ultimate sense meditation is not a technique; meditation is an understanding, awareness. But you need techniques because that final understanding is very far away from you; deep hidden in you, but still very far away from you. Right this moment you can attain it, but you will not attain it, because your moment goes on, your mind goes on. THIS very moment it is possible and yet impossible. Techniques will bridge the gap, they are just to bridge the gap. So in the beginning techniques are meditations; in the end you will laugh, techniques are not meditation. Meditation is a totally different quality of being, it has nothing to do with anything. But it will happen only in the end; don’t think it has happened in the beginning, otherwise the gap will not be bridged. This is the problem with Krishnamurti, and this is the problem with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – they are the two opposite poles. Mahesh Yogi thinks that technique is meditation, so once you are attuned to a technique – Transcendental Meditation or any other – the meditation has happened. This is right and wrong. Right, because in the beginning a beginner has to attune himself to some technique, because his understanding is not ripe enough to understand the ultimate. So approximately... a technique is approximately a meditation. It is just like a small child learning the alphabet – so we tell the child that ”m” is the same letter as when you use ”monkey,” the monkey represents ”m.” With the ”m” the monkey is there, the child starts learning. There is no relationship between monkey and ”m.” ”M” can be represented by millions of things, and still it is different from everything. But a child has to be shown something. Monkey is nearer the child; he can understand the monkey, not ”m.” Through the monkey he will be able to understand ”m” – but this is just a beginning, not the end. Mahesh Yogi is right in the beginning, to push you on the path, but if you are stuck with him you are lost. He has to be left, he is a primary school; good as far as it goes, but one need not always remain in the primary school. The primary school is not the university, and the primary school is not the universe; one has to pass from there. It is a primary understanding that meditation is a technique. Then there is Krishnamurti at the other pole. He says there are no techniques, no meditations, but choiceless awareness. Perfectly right! – but he is trying to help you enter into the university without the primary school. He can be dangerous because he is talking about the ultimate. You cannot understand it; right now in your understanding it is not possible – you will go mad. Once you listen to Krishnamurti you will be lost, because you will always intellectually understand he is right, and in your being you will know that nothing is happening. Many Krishnamurti followers have come to me. They say intellectually they understand: ”Of course it is right, there is no technique and meditation is awareness – but what to do?” And I tell them, ”The moment you ask what to do, it means you need a technique. ’What to do?’ You ask HOW to do it, you are asking for a technique. Krishnamurti will not help you. Rather, go to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – that will be better.” But people are stuck with Krishnamurti and there are people who are stuck with Mahesh Yogi. I am neither – or I am both; and then I am very confusing. They are both clear, their standpoints are simple; there is no complexity in understanding Mahesh Yogi or Krishnamurti. If you understand language, you can understand them, there is no problem. The problem will arise with me because I will always talk about the beginning and will never allow you to forget the end. I will always talk about the end and always help you to start from the beginning. You will be confused because you will say, ”What do you mean? If meditation is simply awareness then why go through so many exercises?” You have to go through them; only then will that meditation help you... that will happen to you which is simple understanding. Or you say, ”If techniques are all, then why do you go on saying again and again that techniques have to be left, dropped?” ... Because then you feel: ”Something learned so deeply, with so much effort and arduous labor has to be left again?” You would like to cling to the beginning. I will not allow you. Once you are on the path I will go on pushing you to the very end. This is a problem; with me this problem has to be faced, encountered and understood. I will look contradictory. I am; I am a paradox – because I am trying to give you both the beginning and the end, the first step and the last. Tilopa is talking of the ultimate. He is saying: WHOEVER STRIVES TO PRACTICE DHARMA FINDS NOT THE TRUTH OF BEYOND- PRACTICE. TO KNOW WHAT IS BEYOND BOTH MIND AND PRACTICE, one should not cling, ONE SHOULD CUT CLEANLY THROUGH THE ROOT OF THE MIND AND STARE NAKED. That’s what I am calling witnessing: stare naked. Just staring naked will do, the root is cut. This staring naked becomes like a sharp sword. ONE SHOULD THUS BREAK AWAY FROM ALL DISTINCTIONS AND REMAIN AT EASE. Loose, natural, staring naked within yourself – that is the final word. But go slowly, because mind is a very delicate mechanism. If you are in too much of a hurry and you take too big a dose of a Tilopa, you may not be able to absorb and digest it. Go slowly; take proportions only which you can digest and absorb. Even I am here, I will be saying many things because you are many, and I will be taking many dimensions because you are many. But you absorb only that which is a nourishment to you; you digest. Just the other day a sannyasin came, a sincere seeker, but puzzled because I talked about yoga and tantra, and said that tantra is the higher teaching and yoga is a lower teaching, and he has been practicing hatha yoga for two years and feeling good. He became puzzled what to do. Don’t get so easily puzzled. If you are feeling good with yoga, follow your own natural inclination. Don’t allow me to confuse you. I can be confusing to you; you simply follow your natural inclination – loose, natural. If it is good, it is good for you. Why bother whether it is higher or lower? Let it be lower. The ego comes in; the ego says, ”If it is a lower thing, then why follow?” That will not help. Follow it; it is right for you. Even if it is lower what is wrong in it? A moment will come when through the lower you will reach to the higher. The staircase has two ends: on one end it is the lowest, on another end it is the highest. So tantra and yoga are not opposites – complementary. Yoga is the primary, the basic, from where you have to start. But then one should not cling. A moment comes when one has to transcend yoga and move into tantra; and finally you have to leave the whole staircase – yoga and tantra both. Alone in yourself, deep in rest, one forgets everything. Look at me: I am neither a yogi nor a tantric. I do nothing – no practice, no nonpractice. I cling to neither method nor to no-method. I am simply here resting, not doing anything. The staircase doesn’t exist for me now, the path has disappeared; there is no movement, it is absolute rest. When one comes home there is nothing to do; one simply forgets everything and rests – God is ultimate rest. Remember this, because sometimes I will be talking of tantra because there are many who will be helped through it; and sometimes I will be talking about yoga, and there are many who will be helped by it. You just think of your own inclination, your own feeling – follow it. I am here to help you to be yourself, not to distract you. But I have to talk about many things because I have to help many. So what will you do? You just go on listening to me. Whatsoever you find nourishing, you digest it; chew it well, digest it; let it become your blood and bones, the very marrow of your bones – but follow your inclination. And when I talk about tantra I am so absorbed with it, because that’s how I am; I cannot be partial, I am total whatsoever I do. If I am talking about tantra, I am totally in it; then nothing matters, only tantra matters. That may give you a false impression. I am not talking comparatively – nothing matters to me. Tantra is the highest, ultimate flower. This is because if I look totally at it, it is. When I am talking about yoga the same will happen again, because I am total. This has nothing to do with tantra or yoga – it is my totality that I bring to anything. When I bring it to yoga and Patanjali's, I will be again saying that this is the last. So don’t be distracted; always remember this is MY totality and my quality that I bring to it. If you can remember that, you will be helped. Even through my paradoxical being you will not be confused.

CHAPTER 9

Beyond and Beyond

19 February 1975 am in Buddha Hall THE SONG CONTINUES: ONE SHOULD NOT GIVE OR TAKE, BUT REMAIN NATURAL – FOR MAHAMUDRA IS BEYOND ALL ACCEPTANCE AND REJECTION. SINCE ALAYA IS NOT BORN, NO ONE CAN OBSTRUCT OR SOIL IT; STAYING IN THE UNBORN REALM ALL APPEARANCE WILL DISSOLVE INTO DHARMATA, AND SELF-WILL AND PRIDE WILL VANISH INTO NOUGHT. The ordinary mind wants to take more and more from the world; from everywhere, from every direction and dimension. The ordinary mind is a great taker, it is a beggar, and the begging is such that it cannot be satisfied – it is infinite. The more you get, the more the longing arises; the more you have, the more you desire. It becomes an obsessive hunger. There exists no need for it in your being, but you are obsessed, and you become more and more miserable because nothing satisfies. Nothing can satisfy the mind which is constantly asking for more. The ”more” is feverish, it is not healthy, and there is no end to it. The ordinary mind goes on eating, in a metaphorical sense, not only things but persons also. The husband would like to possess the wife so deeply and so absolutely that it is a sort of eating her; he would like to eat and digest her so she becomes part of him. The ordinary mind is cannibalistic. The wife wants the same: to absorb the husband so totally that nothing is left behind. They kill each other. Friends do the same; parents to children, children to parents do the same; all relationship of the ordinary mind is of absorbing the other completely. It is a sort of eating. And then there is the extraordinary mind, just the opposite to the ordinary mind. And because of the ordinary mind, the extraordinary mind has come into existence. Religions teach about it. They say, ”Give, share, donate!” All the religions teach basically that you should not take, rather on the contrary, you should give. Charity is preached. This is preached to create an extraordinary mind. The ordinary mind will always be in misery, because the longing for the ”more” cannot be fulfilled; you will find him always depressed, sad. The extraordinary mind the religions have been cultivating – you will find him always happy, a certain cheerfulness is there because he is not asking for more; on the contrary, he goes on giving – but deep down he is still the ordinary mind. The cheerfulness cannot be of the deepest being, it can only be of the surface. He has totally turned around and become just the reverse of the ordinary. He is standing on his head, he is in a SHIRSHASANA, but he remains the same. Now a new desire arises to give more and more and more; again there is no end to it. He will be cheerful, but deep down in his cheerfulness you can detect a certain quality of sadness. You will always find that quality of sadness in religious people. Cheerful, of course, because they give, but sad because they cannot give more; cheerful because they share, but sad because it is not enough. Nothing will be enough. So there are two types of miseries: the ordinary misery; you can find those miserable people all around, everywhere. The whole earth is filled with them because they ask for more and it cannot be fulfilled. Then there is another misery which has a face of cheerfulness; you will find in the priests, monks, in the monasteries, the ashrams, people who seem to be always smiling, but their smile carries a certain sadness behind it. If you observe deeply you will find they are also miserable – because you cannot give infinitely, you don’t have it! These are the two types of people easily met. This religious man is cultivated by Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism. It is better than the ordinary mind but cannot be the final word about consciousness. It is good to be miserable in a religious way, better to be miserable like an emperor, not like a beggar. A very rich man was dying and he had called me to be near him when he died, so I was there. At the last moment he opened his eyes and he told his son – that that had been always in his mind, he had told me many times: he was worried about his son because he was a spendthrift and he loved material things, and this old man was a religious man. The last word he said to the son was, ”Listen: money is not everything and you cannot buy everything with money. There are things which are beyond money, and money alone cannot make anybody happy.” The son listened and said, ”You may be right, but with money a person can choose the sadness of his own liking” – it may not purchase happiness but you can choose the sadness of your own liking, you can be miserable in your own way. A poor man has to be miserable through no choice; a rich man can be miserable through his own choice – that’s the only difference. He chooses his own misery, there is a certain freedom. The poor man’s misery simply happens to him like a fate, a destiny; he has no choice. The religious man has chosen his misery, that is why he is a little cheerful; and the nonreligious man is suffering his misery because he has not chosen it. Both live in the same world of the ”more,” but the religious man lives like an emperor, sharing, giving, charity. Buddhism, Jainism and Tao, they have created a third type of mind which is neither ordinary nor extraordinary; in fact, which is not a mind at all. To give it a name it will be good to call it a no-mind. So try to understand the classification. Ordinary mind, extraordinary mind – just the opposite of it, but still in the same dimension of more – then no-mind, which Buddhism, Jainism, Tao have created. What is this no-mind? – the third approach towards reality. Buddhism and Jainism don’t preach charity, they preach indifference. They don’t say, ”Give!” because giving is part of taking, the same circle. In taking you take from somebody, in giving you give to somebody, but it is the same circle. Dimensions don’t change, only direction changes. Buddhism preaches to be indifferent, to be nonpossessive. The emphasis is on nonpossession, not on giving. You should not possess, that’s all. You should not try to possess things or persons; you simply drop out of the world of possessions. There is no question of taking or giving, because both belong to the world of possessions. You can give only that which you possess; how can you give that which you don’t possess? You can give only that which you have acquired before; you can give only that which you have taken before – otherwise, how can you give it? You come in the world without anything, with no possessions; you go out of the world without any possessions. In the world you can be on these two sides: either on the side of those who long for more and more, to take more and more and absorb more and more, and go on fattening themselves; and then there is another side who go on giving and giving more and more, and become thinner and thinner and thinner. Buddha says you should not possess; you should not choose either side. You simply be in the state of nonpossession. This man, this third type of man, whom I call the man of no-mind, will not be as happy, cheerful as the extraordinary man. He will be more silent, he will be more quiet; he will have a deep contentment – but not cheerfulness. You will not even find a smile on his face; you will not find a single statue of Buddha smiling or of Mahavira smiling, no. They are not cheerful, they are not happy. They are not miserable, of course; they are not happy – they have dropped out of the world of misery and happiness. They are simply at rest, indifferent to the things and the world of things; nonpossessing, they are aloof, detached. This is what ANASHAKTI is: detachment, indifference. This man will have a certain quality of silence around him – you can feel that silence. But Tilopa goes beyond all the three; Tilopa goes beyond all three, and now it is difficult to classify him. Ordinary mind, asking for more; extraordinary mind, trying to give more; no-mind, indifferent, unattached, neither giving nor taking – then what to call Tilopa’s mind? Tilopa is of the fourth type, and the fourth is the last and the highest, there is no beyond to it. It is not even a no-mind, it is not a mind at all – because in the no-mind also, negatively the mind is present. The emphasis is still on being indifferent to the things and the world of things, but your focus is on things: Remain indifferent, unattached! You are not possessing things, but you have to be alert not to possess; you have to remain detached, you have to move very alert so you don’t possess anything. Make a clear point of it: the emphasis is still on things – be indifferent to the world! Tilopa says the emphasis should be on your own self, not on the things. Rest in yourself; don’t be even indifferent to the world, because that indifference still is a very subtle bridge with the world. The focus should not be on the other. Turn your lives completely inwards. You don’t bother about the world, not even to be indifferent to it. You neither ask for more, you neither try to give more, nor are you indifferent to the world either... as if the world has simply disappeared. You are selfcentered, sitting inside, doing nothing. Your whole focus has turned, taken a total about-turn... as if the world has completely disappeared. There is nothing to give, nothing to take, nothing to be indifferent about. Only you are. You live in your consciousness and that is your only world. Nothing else exists. This is the state of beyond mind AND beyond no-mind. This is the suprememost state of understanding. Nothing is beyond it. And I would like to tell you: never be satisfied unless you attain this. Why? – because man is miserable, the ordinary man. He asks for more and it can never be satisfied, so continuously the misery is there, and the misery goes on becoming more and more and more. The man of extraordinary mind that the religions teach, is cheerful, but deep down sad. Even the very cheerfulness has an undercurrent of sadness. It seems as he is trying to smile, the smile is not coming to him; it seems he is posing, as if some photographers are there and he is posing a certain gesture which doesn’t exist in fact. Better than the first, at least you can smile; the smile is not very deep but at least it is there. But this will not last for long. Soon, whatsoever you can give will be exhausted; then, then the smiling cheerfulness will disappear. You would like to give more; then you will be in the same plight of the first, the ordinary man. It will take a little longer for the second man to understand and realize the misery, but the misery will come. The cheerfulness that you practice in the mosques, temples, monasteries, cannot go very deep and it cannot become a permanent state of affairs. It cannot be eternal. You will lose it. The very nature of it is such that it can be only momentary. Why can it be only momentary? – because a point will come, is bound to come, when you cannot give because you don’t have. That’s why people of these two minds settle on a compromise. The ordinary mind and the extraordinary mind are the same in their quality; they settle for a compromise. And the compromise you will find everywhere. First a man goes on taking things and then he starts donating. Or he will earn a hundred rupees and donate ten percent of it, because that is the only possible way. If you donate one hundred rupees completely, then you don’t have to donate any more. Go on taking things and then a part of it distribute. The Mohammedans say one-fifth of your income you should donate; be charitable with one-fifth of your income. Why? – because this is a compromise; otherwise, you won’t have anything to donate. So first accumulate and then distribute. Accumulate to distribute, be rich so that you can be charitable, exploit so that you can help. This is absurd! But this is the only possible way: the bridge between the ordinary and the extraordinary. And even the ordinary mind goes on thinking and believing that when he has much he will donate, he will help people. And of course he also does it, when he has enough he gives – a donation to a hospital, a donation to a cancer research center, a donation to a library or a college. First he exploits and then he donates; first he robs you and then he helps you. Helpers and robbers are not different; in fact they are the same persons: with the right hand they rob and with the left hand they help; they belong to the same dimension of affairs. The third man, the man of no-mind, is in a better situation than these first two. His silence can be longer, but he is not blissful. He doesn’t feel blissful – he is not unhappy, he is not miserable, but his state is of the nature of negativity. He is like a man who is not ill because doctors cannot find anything wrong with him, and he is not healthy because he doesn’t feel any well-being. He is not ill and he is not healthy – he is just in the middle. He is not miserable, he is not happy – he is simply indifferent. And indifference may give you silence, but silence is not enough. It is good, it is beautiful, but you cannot be content with it; sooner or later you will be bored with it. That is what happens if you go to the hills. You were too bored with the city-life – Bombay, London, New York. You were bored – the noise, the traffic, and the whole madness going on and on – you escaped to the Himalayas. But after a few days – three, four, five, at the most seven – you start feeling bored with the silence. The hills are silent, the trees are silent, the valley is silent – no excitement. You start longing for the city-life: the club, the movie house, the friends. Silence is not enough, because silence has the nature of death, not the nature of life. It is good as a holiday, it is good as a picnic, it is good to get out of your too many concerns of life for a few days, a few moments, and be silent; you will enjoy it, but you cannot enjoy it forever. Soon you will get fed up with it; soon you will feel this is not enough. This is not nourishing. A silence will protect you from misery and happiness, from excitements, but there is no nourishment in it. It is a negative state. The fourth state that Tilopa is indicating – that which cannot be said and which he is trying to say for Naropa and his trust and his love and his faith – is a blissful state, silent and blissful. It has a positivity in it. It is not simply silence. It has not come through indifference to life, rather on the contrary, it has come through the deepest experience of one’s own being. It has not been driven by renouncing; it has bloomed by being loose and natural. Subtle are the differences. But if you try to understand and meditate on these distinctions, your whole life-path will be clear, and then you can travel very easily. Never be satisfied before the fourth state, because even if you become satisfied, sooner or later the discontentment will arise. Unless you attain SAT-CHIT-ANAND, absolute truth, absolute consciousness, and absolute blissfulness, the home has not been reached yet, you are still traveling on the path. Okay, sometimes you rest by the side of the path, but don’t make it a home. The journey has to continue; you have to get up again and you have to move. From the first state of mind move to the second, from the second move to the third, from the third move to the beyond. If you are in the first state of mind, as ninety-nine percent of people are, then Jewish thinking, Islam, Christianity, will be helpful. They will bring you out of the ordinary trap of misery – good, but you are still on the path and don’t deceive yourself that you have reached. Now you have to get beyond this, beyond this cheerfulness which has a sadness in it, beyond this taking and giving both, beyond charity. Who are you to give to? What have you got to give? Who are you to help? You have not helped even yourself; how can you help others? Your own light is not burning and you are trying to burn others’ lights? You may blow them off, you may put them off – your own inner being is dark. You cannot help, you cannot give, you have nothing to give. Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Lao Tzu, Mahavira and Siddhartha Gautam can help you out of it, but Tilopa says don’t be satisfied even with that indifference, silence, a detached standing, aloofness, because it is still not a happening, still you are concerned with the world. Tilopa can help you beyond that. He can bring you to your innermost center of being. He can help you center: rooted in yourself, unconcerned with the world – not even unconcern is there. Everything has dissolved; only you remain in your crystal purity, only you remain in your absolute innocence – as if the world has not arisen, was not there ever. You come to the point in this fourth state of consciousness, to the point where you were not born, to the absolute source of being. Even the first step has not been taken in the world, or, you have come to the last, the last step has been taken. This is what Zen people call attaining the original face. Zen masters say to the disciples, ”Go, and find your face you had before you were born”; or, ”Go, and find the face you will have when you are dead.” Either when the world was not, or when the world has disappeared, you attain to your original purity. That is what nature is. Now try to understand Tilopa: ONE SHOULD NOT GIVE OR TAKE, BUT REMAIN NATURAL – FOR MAHAMUDRA IS BEYOND ALL ACCEPTANCE AND REJECTION. ONE SHOULD NOT GIVE OR TAKE, because when you give you have moved out of yourself, when you take you have moved out of yourself. Both are distractions, both lead you to the other; you get mixed, your energy has flown outwards. Whether you give or take is irrelevant – the other has come into being; your eyes are focused on the other, and when the eyes are focused on the other you forget yourself. This is what has happened to you all. You don’t remember yourself because your eyes have become focused, paralyzed in fact on the other. Whatsoever you do, you do it for the other; whatsoever you are, you are for the other. Even if you escape from the world, your mind goes on, continuing: ”What are people thinking about me?” Even if you escape to the Himalayas, sitting there you will think, ”Now people must be thinking that I have become a great sage, renounced the world; in the newspapers there must be talk about me.” And you will wait for some lonely traveler, wanderer, to reach and give you news what is happening in the world about YOU. You don’t have your own face, you have only opinions of others about you. Somebody says you are beautiful, and you start thinking you are beautiful. Somebody says you are ugly, and you feel hurt and you carry a wound that somebody has said ”ugly” – you have become ugly. You are just an accumulation of the opinions of others, you don’t know who you are. You know only what others think you are. And this is strange, because those others who think who you are, don’t know themselves – they know themselves through you. This is a beautiful game: I know myself through you, you know yourself through me, and we both don’t know who we are. The other has become too important, and your whole energy has become obsessed with the other – always thinking of others, always either taking something from them or giving something to them. Tilopa says one should not give or take. What is he saying? Is he saying one should not share? No. If you take it in that way you will misunderstand him. He is saying one should not be concerned with taking or giving; if you can give naturally, beautiful, but then there is nothing in the mind, no accumulation that you have given something. That is the difference between giving and sharing. A giver knows that he has given and he would like you to recognize it, give him a receipt that ”Yes, you have given me.” You should thank him, you should feel grateful that he has given to you. This is not a gift; this is again a bargain. In fact he would like you to give him something in return. Even if it is your gratefulness, that’s okay, but something he would like; it is a bargain, he gives to get. Tilopa is not saying don’t share. He is saying don’t be concerned with taking or giving. If you have, and it happens naturally that you feel like giving, give. But it should be a sharing, a gift. This is the difference between a gift and giving. A gift is not a bargain; nothing is expected, absolutely nothing; not even a recognition, not even a nod of the head of appreciation – no, nothing is expected. If you don’t mention it, there will be no scar in the person who has given you a gift. In fact, if you mention it he will feel a little embarrassed because that was never expected. On the contrary, he feels grateful towards you that you accepted his gift. You could have rejected; the possibility is there. You could have said no, but how nice of you that you didn’t say no. You accepted it – that’s enough. He feels grateful towards you. A man who gives you a gift always feels grateful that you accepted. You could have rejected it. That’s enough. Tilopa is not saying don’t give, and he is not saying don’t take, because life cannot exist without giving and taking. Even Tilopa has to breathe, even Tilopa has to beg for his food, even Tilopa has to go to the river to drink water. Tilopa is thirsty, he needs water; Tilopa is hungry, he needs food; Tilopa feels suffocated in a closed room, he comes out and breathes deeply. He is taking life every moment – you cannot exist without taking. People have tried, but those are not natural people, they are the suprememost egoists. Egoists always try to be independent of everything. Egoists always try as if they don’t need anything from anybody. This is foolish, absurd! Tilopa cannot do such a thing. He is a very very natural man, you cannot find a more natural man than Tilopa. And if you understand nature you will be surprised to find, to discover a very deep basic fact, and that fact is this: no one is dependent, no one is independent – everyone is interdependent. Nobody can claim, ”I am independent.” This is foolish! You cannot exist for a single moment in your independence. And nobody is absolutely dependent. These two polarities don’t exist. One who looks dependent is also independent, and one who looks independent is also dependent. Life is an interdependence, it is a mutual sharing. Even the emperor depends on his slaves; and even the slaves are not dependent on the emperor – at least they can commit suicide; that much independence they have. Absolutes don’t exist here. Life exists in relativity. Of course, Tilopa knows that. He prescribes the natural way – how can he not know it? He knows it; life is a give and take. You share, but you should not be concerned about it, you should not think about it – you should allow it to happen. Allowing it to happen is totally different. Then you neither ask for more than you can get, nor you ask to give more than you can give; you simply give what naturally can be given, you simply take what naturally can be taken. You don’t feel obliged to anybody and you don’t make anybody feel obliged to you. You simply know that life is interdependent. We exist mutually, we are members of each other. Consciousness is a vast ocean and nobody is an island. We meet and merge with each other. There are no boundaries ... all boundaries are false. That Tilopa knows – then what does he say? ONE SHOULD NOT GIVE OR TAKE, BUT REMAIN NATURAL.... The moment you think you have taken you have become unnatural. Taking is okay, but THINKING that you have taken you become unnatural. Giving is beautiful, but the moment you think that you have given, it becomes ugly, you become unnatural. You simply give because you cannot help it; you have, so you have to give. You simply take because you cannot help it; you are part of the whole. But no unnatural ego is created through taking or through giving – that is the point to be understood. You neither accumulate, nor do you renounce – you simply remain natural. If things come on your way, you enjoy. If you have more, and the more always becomes a burden, you share. It is just a deep balancing, you simply remain natural. No holding and no renouncing; no possessiveness, no nonpossessiveness. Look at the animals or the birds: no taking, no giving. Everybody enjoys out of the whole, out of the whole everybody shares, in the whole everybody shares. Birds and trees and animals, they exist naturally. Man is the only unnatural animal – that’s why religion is needed. Animals don’t need any religion, birds don’t need any religion – because they are not unnatural. Only man needs religion. And the more man becomes unnatural, the more religion is needed. So remember this: whenever a society becomes more and more unnatural, technological, more religion will be needed. People come and ask me why in America there is so much search about religion, so much turmoil, seeking.... Because America is the most unnatural country today, the most technological, technical. A technocracy has come into existence which has made everything unnatural. Your inner being thirsts for freedom from technology. Your inner being thirsts for being natural, and your whole society has become unnatural; more cultured, more civilized – more unnatural. When a society becomes too cultured then comes religion to balance it. It is a subtle balancing. A natural society doesn’t need religion. Says Lao Tzu, ”I have heard from the ancients that there was a time when people were natural, there was no religion. When people were natural they never thought about heaven and hell. When people were natural they never thought about moral precepts. When people were natural there was no code, no law.” Lao Tzu says because of the law people have become criminals, and because of morality people have become immoral, and because of too much culture.... And China has known too much culture; no other country has known that much culture. Confucius has made an absolute discipline of how to culture a man – three thousand three hundred rules to discipline. Suddenly Lao Tzu came into being to balance, because this Confucius will kill the whole society – three thousand three hundred rules? This is too much. You will culture the man so much that the man will disappear completely. He will not be a man at all! Lao Tzu erupts and Lao Tzu throws all the rules to the dust, and he says the only golden rule is to have no rules. This is a balancing. Lao Tzu is religion, Confucius is culture. Religion is needed like a medicine, it is medicinal. You are ill, you need medicine; the more ill, of course, the more medicine. A society becomes ill when the natural is lost. A man becomes ill when the natural is forgotten. And Tilopa is all for the natural and the loose. And remember always the loose WITH the natural – because you can try to be natural so hard that the very effort can become unnatural. That’s how fads are created. I have come across many people, faddists, who have made something absolutely unnatural out of a natural teaching. For example, it is good to have organic food; nothing is wrong in it, but if you become too concerned, and you become so minutely concerned that every moment you are thinking of organic food, and nothing inorganic should be allowed in the body, then you have overdone it. I know people who believe in natural therapies, naturotherapy, and they have become so unnatural through their naturotherapy that you cannot believe how it happens. It happens. If it becomes a straining on the mind, then it has become already unnatural. The word ”loose” has to be continuously remembered, otherwise you can become faddists, you can become maniacs; and then you can take one part of it and you can strain so much that even the natural turns into the unnatural. Loose and natural is Tilopa, and that is his whole teaching. He cannot say you should not give and you should not take, but he does say it; then he must mean something else. ONE SHOULD NOT GIVE OR TAKE BUT REMAIN NATURAL.... There is hidden the meaning: remaining natural. And if, remaining natural, it happens that you give – beautiful! If, remaining natural, somebody gives something to you and you take, natural. But don’t make out of it a profession. Don’t make out of it an anxiety. ... FOR MAHAMUDRA IS BEYOND ALL ACCEPTANCE AND REJECTION. Lao Tzu teaches acceptance. And Tilopa teaches something beyond rejection and acceptance both. Tilopa is really one of the greatest masters. You reject something and you become unnatural – that we can understand. You have anger inside and you reject it because of the moral teachings, and because of difficulties that anger brings you in – conflicts, violence. And to live with anger is not easy, because if you want to live with anger you cannot live with anybody else. It creates trouble, and then the moral teachers are there who are always ready to help you and they say, ”Suppress it, throw it, don’t be angry, reject it!” You start rejecting. The moment you reject you start becoming unnatural, because whatsoever you have, nature has given it to you – who are you to reject it? A part of the mind playing the role of the master with another part of the mind? – and both are the parts of the same. It is not possible. You can go on playing the game. And the part who is the anger does not bother about your other part who is trying to suppress it, because when the moment comes it erupts. So there is no trouble for the part which is anger, the part which is sex, the part which is greed. You go on fighting, wasting, putting yourself together in millions of ways and always remaining divided, in conflict, fragmentary. Once you reject, you become unnatural. Don’t reject. Of course, immediately the acceptance comes in: if you don’t reject then accept. This is subtle, delicate. Tilopa says even in acceptance there is a rejection, because when you say, ”Yes I accept,” deep down you have rejected already; otherwise why do you say, ”I accept”? What is the need to say that you accept? Acceptance is meaningful only if there is rejection; otherwise it is meaningless. People come to me and they say, ”Yes, we accept you.” I see their faces, what they are saying; not knowing what they are doing, they have already rejected me. They are forcing their minds to accept me and a certain part of the mind is rejecting. Even when they say yes, there is a no; that very yes carries the no in it. The yes is just a superficial garb, a decoration. Inside I can see their no alive and kicking, and they say, ”We accept” – you have already rejected. If there is no rejection how can you accept, how can you say, ”I accept”? If there is no fight how can you say, ”I surrender”? If you can see this point then an acceptance happens which is beyond both rejection and acceptance. Then surrender happens which is beyond both fight and surrender – then it is total... FOR MAHAMUDRA IS BEYOND ALL ACCEPTANCE AND REJECTION. And when you remain simply natural, neither rejecting nor accepting, neither fighting nor surrendering, neither saying no nor saying yes, but allowing things, whatsoever happens happens, you have no choice of your own. Whatsoever happens you simply note it down that it has happened; you don’t try to change anything, you don’t try to modify anything. You are not concerned with improving yourself, you simply remain whatsoever you are. Very, very arduous for the mind, because the mind is a great improver. The mind always says, ”You can reach higher. You can become great. You can polish here and there and you can become pure gold. Improve, transform, transmute, transfigure yourself!” The mind goes on again and again and again saying, ”More is possible, more is still possible, do it!” Then rejection comes. And when you reject part of yourself you will be in deep trouble, because that part is yours, that part is organically yours – you cannot throw it away. You can cut the body but you cannot cut the being, because being remains the whole. How can you cut the being? There is no sword that can cut the being. If your eyes go against you, you can throw them away; if your hand commits a crime you can cut it off; if your legs lead you to sin, you can cut them off – because the body is not you, it is already separate, you can cut it – but how will you cut your consciousness? How will you cut your innermost being? It is not substantial, you cannot cut it. It is like emptiness – how can you cut emptiness? Your sword will go through it, it will remain undivided. If you try too much, your sword may break, but the emptiness will remain undivided; you cannot cut it. Your innermost being is of the nature of emptiness. It is a no-self, it is nonsubstantial. It is, but it is not matter. You cannot cut it, there is no possibility. Don’t reject – but immediately the mind says, ”Then okay, we accept.” The mind never leaves you alone. The mind follows you like a shadow; wherever you go the mind says, ”Okay, I am with you just a help, a helper. Whenever you are in need I will give you help. Don’t reject – of course, right! Tilopa is right: accept!” And if you listen to this mind, again you are in the same trap. Rejection and acceptance are both aspects of the same coin. Says Tilopa: ... FOR MAHAMUDRA IS BEYOND ALL ACCEPTANCE AND REJECTION. You don’t accept, you don’t reject. There is nothing to do in fact. You are not asked to do anything. You are simply asked to be loose and natural; be yourself and let things happen. The whole world is going on without you: the rivers go to the sea, the stars move, the sun rises in the morning, the seasons follow each other, the trees grow and bloom and disappear, and the whole is going without you – can’t you leave yourself loose and natural and move with the whole? This is sannyas for me. People come to me and they ask, ”Give us definite discipline. You simply give us sannyas and you never talk about discipline. What do you expect us to do?” I don’t expect anything. I want you to be loose and natural. You just be yourself and let things happen – whatsoever happens, WHATSOEVER unconditionally: good and bad, misery and happiness, life and death – whatsoever happens let it happen. Just don’t you come in the way. You relax. The whole existence goes on, and goes on so perfectly well; why are you worried about yourself? There is no need to improve, there is NO need to change. You simply remain loose and natural and improvement happens of its own accord, and changes follow, and you will be transfigured completely – but not by you. If you are trying, you are doing the same thing as if somebody is pulling himself by the strings of his own shoes... pulling up. Foolish! Don’t try it. It is just like a dog catching his own tail. On a winter morning when the sun has arisen you can find many dogs doing that. They are sitting silently, enjoying, and then suddenly they see their tail by the side – looks tempting. And how can they know, poor dogs, that the tail belongs to them? The same is your plight; on the same boat you are also traveling: the temptation becomes too much and the tail looks delicious, it can be eaten! The dog tries, first very slowly and silently so the tail is not disturbed, but whatsoever he does, the tail simply moves itself farther and farther. Then a hectic activity starts, then the dog becomes alert: ”What does this tail think about herself?” It becomes a challenge. Now he jumps, but the more he jumps, the more the tail jumps. A dog can go crazy. And this is all that spiritual seekers are doing to themselves. Catching their own tails on a winter morning when everything is beautiful, unnecessarily bothering with their tails. Let it rest! Be natural and loose – and who can catch his own tail? You jump; the tail jumps with you and then you feel frustrated. And then you come to me and say, ”The KUNDALINI is not rising.” What can I do? You are chasing your own tail and missing the beautiful morning meanwhile. Could you have rested with your tail silently? Many flies were coming of their own accord and there would have been a good breakfast. But your catching the tail – the flies are also scared and the very possibility of a good breakfast.... You simply wait! – just knowing that things cannot be improved; they are already the best they can be. You have just to enjoy. Everything is ready for the celebration, nothing is lacking. Don’t get caught in absurd activities – and spiritual improvement is one of the most absurd activities. ... REMAIN NATURAL – FOR MAHAMUDRA IS BEYOND ALL ACCEPTANCE AND REJECTION. SINCE ALAYA IS NOT BORN.... ALAYA is a Buddhist term, it means the abode, the inner abode, the inner emptiness, the inner sky. SINCE ALAYA IS NOT BORN NO ONE CAN OBSTRUCT OR SOIL IT. Don’t be worried. Since your innermost being is never born, it cannot die; since it is never born nobody can soil it or obstruct it. It is deathless. And since the whole has given you life, since life comes from the whole, how can the part improve it? From the source comes everything, let the source supply it – and the source is eternal. You unnecessarily get in the way and you start pushing the river which was already flowing towards the sea.... NO ONE CAN OBSTRUCT OR SOIL IT. Your inner purity is absolute! You cannot soil it. This is the tantra essence. All the religions say that you have to attain it – tantra says it is already attained. All the religions say you have to work hard for it – tantra says because of your hard activity you are missing it. Please, relax a little; just by relaxation you attain the nonattainable. ... NO ONE CAN OBSTRUCT OR SOIL IT. You may have done millions of things – don’t be worried about karmas, because no act of yours can soil, make your inner being impure. This is the base of the myth of Jesus’ virgin birth. It is not that Jesus’ mother Mary was a virgin; it is a tantra attitude. Jesus came across many tantrikas on his travels in India – and he understood the fact that virginity cannot be destroyed, and every child is born out of a virgin. Christian theologians have been very much worried how to prove that Jesus was born out of a virgin. There is no need! Every child is always born out of a virgin, because the virginity cannot be soiled. How can you soil the virginity? Just two beings, man and wife, or two lovers, moving into a deep sexual orgasm – how can you soil the virginity by that? The innermost being remains a witness, it is not a part of it. The bodies meet, the energies meet, the mind meets, and there is a blissful moment – out of it. But the innermost being remains a witness – out of it. That virginity cannot be soiled. So they are worried in the West how to prove that Jesus is born out of a virgin. And I tell you that not even a single child has ever been born without a virgin mother. All children are born out of virginity. Every moment, whatsoever you do, YOU remain out of it. No action is a scar on you, cannot be. And once you relax and see this, then you are not worried what to do and what not to do. Then you let things have their own course. Then you simply float like a white cloud, not moving anywhere, simply enjoying the movement. The very wandering is beautiful. ... NO ONE CAN OBSTRUCT OR SOIL IT; STAYING IN THE UNBORN REALM ALL APPEARANCE WILL DISSOLVE INTO THE DHARMATA.... DHARMATA means that everything has its own elementary nature. If you remain in your inner abode everything, by and by, will dissolve in its own natural element. You are the disturber. If you remain inside your being, in the alaya, in the inner sky, in that absolute purity, just like the sky, clouds come and go, no trace is left. Actions come and go, thoughts come and go, many things happen, but inside, deep down, nothing happens. There you simply ARE. Only existence is there. No actions reach, no thoughts reach. If you remain loose and natural in that inner abode, by and by, you will see all elements move into their own nature. The body is made of five elements. The earth, by and by, will move into the earth, the air into the air, the fire into the fire. That is what happens when you die: every element moves to its own rest. Dharmata means the elementary nature of everything – everything moves to its own abode. You move to your own abode and then everything moves to its own; then there is no disturbance. There are two ways to live and two ways to die. One way is to live like everybody is living: getting mixed up with everything, forgetting completely the inner sky. Then there is another way of living: resting within and allowing the elementary forces to have their own way. When the body feels hunger it will move and seek food. A man who is enlightened remains inside his abode. The body feels the hunger, he watches. The body starts moving to feed hunger, he watches. The body finds the food, he watches. The body starts eating, he watches. The body absorbs, feels satiated, he watches. He goes on watching – he is no more an actor. He is not doing anything; he is not a doer. The body feels thirst, he watches. The body stands and moves; these are elementary forces working on their own. You unnecessarily say, ”I am thirsty” – you are not! You get mixed up. The BODY is thirsty and the body will find its own course. It will move wherever the water is. If you remain inside, you will see everything happens by itself. Even trees, with no ego and no mind, find their water sources; the roots will go and seek the sources, sometimes even hundreds of feet they will travel to find a source of water. And this has been one of the most amazing things for botanists because they cannot understand how it happens. A tree is there. Towards the north one hundred feet away, there is a water source, a little spring hidden inside the earth. How does the tree know that the roots have to move towards the north, not to the south? And it is one hundred feet away, so even a guess is not possible; and the tree has no mind of its own, no ego. But the elemental forces by themselves... the tree starts growing roots towards the north, and one day it reaches the water source. The tree reaches towards the sky.... In African jungles trees grow very high; they have to because the forest is so dense that if the trees don’t grow very high they will not be able to reach to the sun and the light and the air. So they grow higher and higher and higher, they seek their way. Even trees can find their water source – why are you worried? That’s why Jesus says, ”Look, consider the lilies in the field: they toil not.” They don’t do anything, but everything happens. When you sit inside your abode, your elemental forces will start functioning in their crystal purity. You don’t come in. The body feels hunger, the body itself moves – and it is so beautiful to see the body moving itself. It is really one of the most wonderful experiences to see one’s own body moving itself and finding the source of water or food. There is a thirst for love and the body moves itself. You go on sitting inside your abode, then suddenly you see actions don’t belong to you: you are not a doer, you are simply a watcher. Realizing this, you have attained the nonattainable. Realizing this, you have realized all that can be realized. ... STAYING IN THE UNBORN REALM ALL APPEARANCE WILL DISSOLVE INTO DHARMATA, AND SELF-WILL AND PRIDE WILL VANISH INTO NOUGHT. And when you see that things are happening by themselves, then how can you gather an ego, pride about it? How can you say ”I” when hunger has its own way, fulfills itself, becomes satiety; when life has its own way, fulfills itself, reaches death and rest? Who are you to say, ”I am”? The pride, the self, the self-will, all dissolve. Then you don’t do anything, then you don’t will anything – you simply sit in your innermost being and the grass grows by itself.... Everything happens by itself. Difficult to understand, this, because you have been brought up, conditioned, that you have to do, that you have to be a doer, constantly alert and moving and fighting. You have been brought up in a milieu which says that you have to fight for your survival otherwise you will be lost, otherwise you will achieve nothing. You have been brought up with the poison of ambition in you. And in the West particularly, a very nonsensical word ”willpower” exists. This is simply absurd. There is nothing like willpower – a fantasy, a dream. There is no need for any will. Things are happening by themselves, it is their nature. It happened: The master of Lin Chi died. The master was a well known man, but Lin Chi was even more well known than the master, because the master was a silent man, and through Lin Chi he had become very famous, in fact. Then the master died – and Lin Chi was also known to be enlightened – and a crowd of thousands gathered to pay their respects and bid him the last farewell. And they saw Lin Chi crying and weeping and tears flowing down like a small child whose mother has died. People could not believe it because they thought that he had attained – and he was crying like a small child. This is okay when a person is ignorant, but when a person is awakened, and he himself has been teaching that the innermost nature is immortal, eternal, it never dies... so why now? A few who were very very intimate to Lin Chi, they came and told him, ”It is not good, and what will people think about you? – already there is a rumor: people are thinking that they were wrong in thinking that you have attained. Your whole prestige is at stake. You stop crying! And a man like you need not cry.” Lin Chi said, ”But what can I do? Tears are coming! It is their dharmata. And who am I to stop them? I neither reject nor accept; I remain inside myself. Now tears are flowing, nothing can be done. If the prestige is at stake, let it be. If the people think I am not enlightened, that is their own business. But what can I do? I have left the doer long ago, there is no longer any doer. It is simply happening. These eyes are crying and weeping on their own accord, because they will not be able to see the master again – and it was a nourishment to them, they lived on that food. I know very well that the soul is eternal, nobody ever dies, but how to teach these eyes? What to tell them? They don’t listen, they don’t have any ears. How to teach these eyes not to weep, not to cry, that life is eternal? And who am I? It is their business. If they feel like crying, they are crying.” Remaining natural and loose means this: things happen, you are not the doer. Neither accepting nor rejecting, self-will dissolves. The very concept of willpower becomes empty and impotent; it simply withers away and pride vanishes into nothingness Difficult to understand an enlightened person. No concepts will be helpful. What will you think about Lin Chi? He says, ”I know – but the eyes are crying; let them cry, they will feel relaxed. And they will not be able to see this man again; that body is to be burned soon. They were nourished by him, and they knew no beauty except in this man, and they knew no grace. They have lived too long nursing on this man’s form and the body. Now, of course, they feel thirsty, hungry; now, of course, they feel that the very ground is disappearing underneath them – they are crying!” A natural man simply sits inside and allows things to happen. He does not ”do.” And Tilopa says only then does Mahamudra appear; the final, the utterly final orgasm with the existence. Then you are separate no more. Then your inner sky has become one with the outer sky. There are not two skies then, only one sky.

CHAPTER 10

The Supreme Understanding

20 February 1975 am in Buddha Hall THE SONG ENDS: THE SUPREME UNDERSTANDING TRANSCENDS ALL THIS AND THAT. THE SUPREME ACTION EMBRACES GREAT RESOURCEFULNESS WITHOUT ATTACHMENT. THE SUPREME ACCOMPLISHMENT IS TO REALIZE IMMANENCE WITHOUT HOPE. AT FIRST A YOGI FEELS HIS MIND IS TUMBLING LIKE A WATERFALL; IN MID-COURSE, LIKE THE GANGES, IT FLOWS ON SLOW AND GENTLE; IN THE END IT IS A GREAT VAST OCEAN WHERE THE LIGHTS OF SON AND MOTHER MERGE IN ONE. Everybody is born in freedom, but dies in bondage. The beginning of life is totally loose and natural, but then enters the society, then enter rules and regulations, morality, discipline and many sorts of trainings, and the looseness and the naturalness and the spontaneous being is lost. One starts to gather around oneself a sort of armor. One starts becoming more and more rigid. The inner softness is no more apparent. On the boundary of one’s being one creates a fortlike phenomenon, to defend, to not be vulnerable, to react, for security, safety, and the freedom of being is lost. One starts looking at others’ eyes; their approvals, their denials, their condemnations, appreciations become more and more valuable. The others become the criterion, and one starts to imitate and follow others because one has to live with others. And a child is very soft, he can be molded in any way; and the society starts molding him – the parents, the teachers, the school – and by and by he becomes a character not a being. He learns all the rules. Either he becomes a conformist; that too is a bondage – or he becomes rebellious; that too is another sort of bondage. If he becomes a conformist, orthodox, square, that is one sort of bondage; he can react, can become a hippy, can move to the other extreme, but that too is again a sort of bondage – because reaction depends on the same thing it reacts against. You may go to the farthest corner, but deep down in the mind you are rebelling against the same rules. Others are following them, you are reacting, but the focus remains on the same rules. Reactionaries or revolutionaries, all travel in the same boat. They may be standing against each other, back to back, but the boat is the same. A religious man is neither a reactionary nor a revolutionary. A religious man simply is loose and natural; he is neither for something nor against, he is simply himself. He has no rules to follow and no rules to deny; simply, he has no rules. A religious man is free in his own being, he has no mold of habits and conditionings. He is not a cultured being – not that he is uncivilized and primitive, he is the highest possibility of civilization and culture, but he is not a cultured being. He has grown in his awareness and he doesn’t need any rules, he has transcended rules. He is truthful not because this is the rule to be truthful; being loose and natural he is simply truthful, it happens to be truthful. He has compassion, not because he follows the precept: Be compassionate! No. Being loose and natural he simply feels compassion flowing all around. That is nothing to do on his part; it is just a byproduct of his growth in awareness. He is not against society, nor for society – he is simply beyond it. He has again become a child, a child of an absolutely unknown world, a child in a new dimension – he is reborn. Every child is born natural, loose; then the society comes in, has to come in for certain reasons.... Nothing is wrong in it, because if the child is left to himself or herself the child will never grow, and the child will never be able to become religious, he will become just like an animal. The society has to come in; the society has to be passed through – it is needed. The only thing to remember is: it is just a passage to pass through; one should not make one’s house in it. The only thing to remember is: the society has to be followed and then transcended, the rules have to be learned and then unlearned. The rules will come in your life because there are others, you are not alone. When the child is in the mother’s womb he is absolutely alone, no rules are needed. Rules come only when the other comes into relationship; the rules come with relationship – because you are not alone you have to think of others and consider others. In the mother’s womb the child is alone; no rules, no morality, no discipline is needed, no order; but the moment he is born, even the first breath he takes is social. If the child is not crying, the doctors will force him to cry immediately, because if he doesn’t cry for a few minutes then he will be dead. He has to cry because the cry opens the passage through which he will be able to breathe, it clears the throat. He has to be forced to cry – even the first breath is social; others are there and the molding has started. Nothing is wrong in it. It has to be done, but it has to be done in such a way that the child never loses his awareness, does not become identified with the cultured pattern, remains deep inside still free, knows that rules have to be followed but rules are not life, and knows this also and has to be taught. And that’s what a good society will do: ”These rules are good but there are others, but these rules are not absolute, and you are not expected to remain confined to them – one day you must transcend them.” A society is good if it teaches its members civilization AND transcendence; then the society is religious. If it never teaches transcendence then that society is simply secular and political, it has no religion in it. You have to listen to others up to an extent, and then you have to start listening to yourself. You must come back to the original state in the end. Before you die you must become an innocent child again – loose, natural; because in death again you are entering the dimension of being alone. Just as you were in the womb, in death again you will enter in the realm of being alone. No society exists there. And the whole of your life you have to find a few spaces in your life, a few moments like oases in deserts, where you simply close your eyes and go beyond society, move into yourself, in your own womb – this is what meditation is. The society is there; you simply close your eyes and forget the society and become alone. No rules exist there, no character is needed, no morality, no words, no language. You can be loose and natural inside. Grow into that loose-and-naturalness. Even if there is a need for outer discipline, inside you remain wild. If one can remain wild inside and still practicing things which are needed in the society, then soon one can come to a point where one simply transcends. I will tell you one story and then I will enter into the sutras. This is a Sufi story: An old man and a young man are traveling with a donkey. They have reached near a town; they both are walking with their donkey. School children passed them and they giggled and they laughed and they said, ”Look at these fools: they have a healthy donkey with them and they are walking. At least the old man can sit on the donkey.” Listening to those children the old man and the young man decided, ”What to do? – because people are laughing and soon we will be entering the town, so it is better to follow what they are saying.” So the old man sat on the donkey and the young man followed. Then they came near another group of people and they looked at them and said, ”Look! – the old man is sitting on the donkey and the poor boy is walking. This is absurd! The old man can walk, but the boy should be allowed to sit on the donkey.” So they changed: the old man started walking and the boy was allowed to sit. Then another group came and said, ”Look at these fools. And this boy seems to be too arrogant. Maybe the old man is his father or his teacher and he is walking, and he is sitting on the donkey – this is against all rules!” So what to do? They both decided that now there is only one possibility: that they both should sit on the donkey; so they both sat on the donkey. Then other groups came and they said, ”Look at these people, so violent! The poor donkey is almost dying – two persons on one donkey. It would have been better if they carried the donkey on their shoulders.” So they again discussed, and then there was the river and the bridge. They had now almost reached the boundary of the town, so they thought: ”It is better to behave as people think in this town, otherwise they will think we are fools.” So they found a bamboo; on their shoulders they put the bamboo and hung the donkey by his legs, tied it in the bamboo and carried him. The donkey tried to rebel, as donkeys are they cannot be forced very easily. He tried to escape because he is not a believer in society and what others are saying. But the two men were too much and they forced him, so the donkey had to yield. Just on the bridge in the middle a crowd passed and they all gathered and they said, ”Look, these fools! We have never seen such idiots – a donkey is to ride upon, not to carry on your shoulders. Have you gone mad?” Listening to them – and a great crowd gathered – the donkey became restless, so restless that he jumped and fell from the bridge down into the river – died. Both men came down – the donkey was dead. They sat by the side and the old man said, ”Now listen....” This is not an ordinary story – the old man was a Sufi master, an enlightened person, and the young man was a disciple and the old master was trying to give him a lesson, because Sufis always create situations; they say unless the situation is there you cannot learn deeply. So this was just a situation for the young man. Now the old man said, ”Look: just like this donkey you will be dead if you listen to people too much. Don’t bother what others say, because there are millions of others and they have their own minds and everybody will say something; everybody has his opinions and if you listen to opinions this will be your end.” Don’t listen to anybody, you remain yourself. Just bypass them, be indifferent. If you go on listening to everybody, everybody will be prodding you to this way or that. You will never be able to reach your innermost center. Everybody has become eccentric. This English word is very beautiful: it means off the center, and we use it for the mad people. But everybody is eccentric, off the center, and the whole world is helping you to be eccentric because everybody is prodding you. Your mother prodding you towards north, your father towards south, your uncle is doing something else, your brother something else, your wife, of course, something else – everybody is trying to force you somewhere. By and by, a moment comes when you are nowhere. You remain just on the crossroads being pushed from north to south, from south to east, from east to west, moving nowhere. By and by, this becomes your total situation – you become eccentric. This is the situation. And if you go on listening to others and not listening to your inner center, this situation will continue. All meditation is to become centered, not to be eccentric, to come to your own center. Listen to your inner voice, feel it, and move with that feeling. By and by, you can laugh at others’ opinions, or you can be simply indifferent. And once you become centered you become a powerful being; then nobody can prod you, then nobody can push you anywhere – simply, nobody dares. You are such a power, centered in yourself, that anybody who comes with an opinion simply forgets his opinion near you; anybody who comes to push you somewhere simply forgets that he had come to push. Rather, just coming near you he starts feeling overpowered by you. That’s how even a single man can become so powerful that the whole society, the whole history, cannot push him a single inch. That’s how a Buddha exists, a Jesus exists. You can kill a Jesus but you cannot push him. You can destroy his body, but you cannot push him a single inch. Not that he is adamant or stubborn, no, simply he is centered in his own being – and he knows what is good for him, and he knows what is blissful for him. It has already happened; now you cannot allure him towards new goals, no salesmanship can allure him to any other goal. He has found his home. He can listen to you patiently but you cannot move him. He is centered. This centering is the first thing towards being natural and loose; otherwise if you are natural and loose, anybody will take you anywhere. That’s why the children are not allowed to be natural and loose, they are not mature enough to be that. If they are natural and loose and running all around, their life will be wasted. Hence, I say, society does a needful work: it makes them protected; a celllike character becomes the citadel. They need it: they are very vulnerable, they may be destroyed by anybody. The multitude is there, they will not be able to find their way – they need a character armor. But if that character armor becomes your total life, then you are lost. You should not become the citadel, you should remain the master and you should remain capable of going out of it; otherwise it is not a protection, it becomes a prison. You should be capable of going out of your character. You should be capable of putting aside your principles. You should be capable, if the situation demands, of responding in an absolutely novel way. If this capacity is lost then you become rigid, then you cannot be loose. If this capacity is lost then you become unnatural, then you are not flexible. Flexibility is youth, rigidity is old age; the more flexible, the younger; the more rigid, the older. Death is absolute rigidity. Life is absolute looseness, flexibility. This you have to remember and then try to understand Tilopa. His final words: THE SUPREME UNDERSTANDING TRANSCENDS ALL THIS AND THAT. THE SUPREME ACTION EMBRACES GREAT RESOURCEFULNESS WITHOUT ATTACHMENT. THE SUPREME ACCOMPLISHMENT IS TO REALIZE IMMANENCE WITHOUT HOPE. Very very significant words. THE SUPREME UNDERSTANDING TRANSCENDS ALL THIS AND THAT. Knowledge is always either of this or of that. Understanding is neither. Knowledge is always of duality: a man is good, he knows what good is; another man is bad, he knows what bad is – but both are fragmentary, half. Neither the good man is whole because he does not know what bad is; his goodness is poor, it lacks the insight that badness gives.... The bad man is also half; his badness is poor, it is not rich because he does not know what goodness is. And life is both together. A man of real understanding is neither good nor bad, he understands both. And in that very understanding he transcends both. A sage is neither a good man nor a bad man. You cannot confine him to any category; there exists no pigeon-hole for him, you cannot categorize him. He is elusive, you cannot catch hold of him. And whatsoever you say about him will be half, it can never be total. A sage may have friends and followers, and they will think he is God because they see only the good part. And the sage may have enemies and foes, and they will think that he is the devil incarnate because they know only the bad part. But if you know a sage he is neither – or both together; and both mean the same. If you are both together, good and bad, you are neither – because they annihilate each other, negate each other, and a void is left. This concept is very difficult for the Western mind to understand, because the Western mind has divided God and the devil absolutely. Whatsoever is bad belongs to the devil and whatsoever is good belongs to God; their territories are demarked, hell and heaven are apart... set apart. That’s why Christian saints look a little poor before tantric sages, very poor; just good, simple – they don’t know the other side of life. And that’s why they are always afraid of the other side, always trembling with fear. A Christian saint is always praying for God to protect him from the evil. The evil is always by the corner; he has avoided it and when you avoid something, continuously it is in the mind. He is afraid, trembling. A Tilopa knows no trembling, no fear, and he never goes to pray to God, ”Protect me”; he is protected. What is his protection? Understanding is his protection. He has lived all, he has moved to the farthest corner into evil, and he has lived the divine, and now he knows both are two aspects of the same. And now he is neither worried about good nor worried about bad; now he lives a loose and natural, simple life, he has no predetermined concepts. And he is unpredictable. You cannot predict a Tilopa. You can predict Saint Augustine, you can predict other saints, but you cannot predict a tantra sage. You cannot – simply unpredictable, because in each moment he will respond and nobody knows in what way, nobody knows; even he himself does not know. That’s the beauty of it, because if you know your future then you are not a free man, then you are moving according to certain rules, then you have a prefabricated character; then somehow you have to react, not respond. Nobody can say what a Tilopa will do in a certain situation. It will depend; the whole situation will bring the response. And he has no likings, no dislikings – neither this nor that. He will act, he will not react; he will not react out of his past, he will not react according to his future concepts, of his own ideals. No. He will not react, he will act here and now, the response will be total; nobody can say what will happen. Understanding transcends duality. It is said that once Tilopa was staying in a cave and a passer-by, a seeker of a certain type, came to visit him. He was taking his food and he was using a human skull as a pot. The traveler became afraid. It was weird! – he had come to see a sage and this man seemed to be something of the world of black magicians. A human skull... and he was enjoying; and a dog was sitting by the side of Tilopa and the dog was also eating from the same pot. When this man came Tilopa invited him to participate. ”Come here,” he said, ”so beautiful you reached in time because this is all that I have got. Once it is finished then for twenty-four hours there is nothing. Only tomorrow somebody may bring something. So you come and join in and participate.” The man felt very much disgusted – a human skull, food in it, and a dog also a participant! The man said, ”I feel disgusted.” Tilopa said, ”Then you escape as soon as possible from here and run fast and never look back, because then Tilopa is not for you. Why are you disgusted with this human skull? You have been carrying it for so long and what is wrong if I am taking my food in it? It is one of the cleanest things. You are not disgusted with your own skull inside – and your whole mind, your beautiful thoughts and your morality and your goodness and your saintliness, all are in the skull. I am taking only my food in it; and your heaven and your hell and your gods and your BRAHMA, all are in your skull. They must have become absolutely dirty by now – you should be disgusted about that. And you yourself are there in the skull. Why do you feel disgusted?” The man tried to avoid and rationalize; he said, ”Not because of the skull but because of this dog.” Tilopa laughed and said, ”You have been a dog in your past life and everybody has to pass through all the stages. And what is wrong in being a dog? And what is the difference between you and a dog? The same greed, the same sex, the same anger, the same violence, aggressiveness, the same fear – why do you pretend that you are superior?” Tilopa is difficult to understand because ugly and beautiful make no sense to him; purity, impurity make no sense to him; good and bad make no sense to him. He has an understanding of the total. Partial is knowledge, understanding is total. And when you look at the total, all distinctions drop: What is ugly and what is beautiful? What is good and what is bad? All distinctions simply drop if you have a bird’s-eye view of the total, then all boundaries disappear. It is just like looking down from an airplane. Then where is Pakistan and where is India? And where is England and where is Germany? All boundaries are lost, the whole earth becomes one. And if you go still higher in a spaceship and look at it from the moon, the whole earth becomes so small – where is Russia and where is America? And who is a communist and who is a capitalist? Who is a Hindu and who is a Mohammedan? The higher you go, the less are the distinctions – and understanding is the highest thing, there is no more beyond it. From that highest peak everything becomes everything else. Things meet and merge and become one, boundaries are lost... an unbounded ocean with no source to it... infinity. THE SUPREME UNDERSTANDING TRANSCENDS ALL THIS AND THAT. THE SUPREME ACTION EMBRACES GREAT RESOURCEFULNESS WITHOUT ATTACHMENT. Tilopa says be loose and natural – but he doesn’t mean be lazy and go to sleep. On the contrary, when you are loose and natural much resourcefulness happens to you. You become tremendously creative. Activity may not be there – action is there. Obsession with occupation may not be there, will not be there, but you become tremendously resourceful, creative. You do millions of things, not because of any obsession but just because you are so filled with energy you have to create. Creativity comes easy to a man who is loose and natural. Whatsoever he does becomes a creative phenomenon. Wherever he touches, it becomes a piece of art; whatsoever he says becomes a poetry. His very movement is aesthetic. If you can see a buddha walking, even his walking is creativity. Even through his walking he is creating a rhythm, even through his walking he is creating a milieu, an atmosphere around him. If a buddha raises his hand he changes the climate immediately around him. Not that he is doing these things, they are simply happening. He is not the doer. Calm, settled inside; tranquil, collected, together inside, filled with infinite energy overpouring, overflowing in all directions, his every moment is a moment of creativity, of cosmic creativity. Remember that. It has to be remembered because many people can misunderstand. They can think, ”No activity is needed,” so they can think, ”No action is needed.” Action has a different quality altogether. Activity is pathological. If you go in a madhouse you will see people in activity, every madman doing something, because that is the only way they can forget themselves. You may find somebody washing his hands three thousand times a day because he believes in cleanliness. In fact, if you stop him washing his hands three thousand times a day he will be unable to stand himself, it will be too much. This is an escape. Politicians, people who are after wealth, power – they are all mad people. You cannot stop them because if you stop they don’t know what to do then; and then they are thrown into themselves, and that is too much. One of my friends was telling me once that they had to go to a certain party; and they have a very small child, a beautiful child, and of course very active as children are. So they locked the room and told him, ”If you behave well and don’t create any disturbance in the house, whatsoever you ask we will give you, and within an hour we will be back.” The child was allured: whatsoever he can ask will be given. So really he acted well. In fact, he didn’t do anything; he simply stood in the corner because, ”Whatsoever I do may turn out... nobody knows, nobody knows about these adult minds – what is wrong and what is good; and they go on changing their opinions also.” So he stood with closed eyes just like a meditator. And then they opened the door when they came back; he was standing in the corner, stiff. He opened the eyes and looked at them, and they asked, ”Did you behave well?” He said, ”Yes, in fact I behaved so well that I couldn’t stand myself.” It was too much! People who are too occupied in activities are afraid of themselves. Activity is a sort of escape; they can forget themselves in it. It is alcoholic, it is an intoxicant. Activity has to be dropped because it is pathological, you are ill. Action has not to be dropped, action is beautiful. What is action? Action is a response: when it is needed you act; when it is not needed you relax. Right now you go on doing things which are not needed; and right now when you want to relax, you cannot relax. A man of action, total action, acts; and when the situation is over he relaxes. I am talking to you.... Talking can be either activity or action. There are people who cannot stop talking: they go on, they go on. Even if you stop their mouths it will not make any difference INSIDE; they will go on chattering, they cannot stop it. This is activity: a feverish obsession. You are here and I talk to you: even I don’t know what I am going to talk about to you. Until the sentence is uttered, even I am not aware what it is going to be. Not only are you the listeners, I am also a listener here. When I have said something then I know that I have said it. Neither you can predict nor can I predict what I am going to say; even the next sentence is not there, it is YOUR situation that brings it. So whatsoever I say, I alone am not responsible, remember; you are also half responsible for it. It is half-half: you create the situation, I act. So if my listeners change, my talk changes. It depends, because I have nothing preformulated. I don’t know what is going to happen, and that’s why it is beautiful for me also. It is a response, an act. When you are gone I sit inside my abode, not even a single word floats in the inner sky. It is you. So sometimes it happens people come to me and say, ”We were going to ask a certain question and you answered it.” And every day it happens. It is happening: if you have a certain question, you create a climate around you of that question, you come filled with that question. Then what am I to do? I have to respond. Simply your question creates the situation and I have to respond. That’s why many of your questions are simply solved. If some question is not solved the reason must be somewhere in you; you may have forgotten it. In the morning it was in the mind but when you entered this room you forgot about it. Or there were many questions and you were not certain exactly which question is to be asked; you were in confusion, vague, cloudy. If YOU are certain about your question the answer will be there. It is nothing on my part, it simply happens. You create the question, I simply float into it. I have to, because I have nothing to say to you. If I have something to say to you, you are irrelevant; whatsoever question you have doesn’t make any sense – I have my prepared thing in me and I have to tell it to you. Even if you are not there it will not make any sense. The All-India Radio used to invite me to speak, but I felt it was very difficult because it was so impersonal: talking to nobody! I simply said, ”This is not for me. And it is such a strain and I don’t know what to do – there is nobody.” So they arranged... they said, ”This can be done: from our staff a few people can come and they can sit.” But then I told them, ”Then you don’t give me the subject because those people will give me the subject. This will be totally irrelevant – anybody sitting there and you have given me a subject to talk on it and nobody is involved in that subject; they are just a dead audience.” When you are there you create the question, you create the situation and the answer flows towards you. It is a personal phenomenon. Then I simply stopped going there. I said, ”This is not for me, it is not possible. I cannot talk to machines, because they don’t create any situation for me to float in. I can talk only to persons.” That’s why I have never written a book. I cannot! – because for whom? Who will read it? Unless I know that man who will read it, and unless he creates a situation, I cannot write – for whom? I have written only letters, because then I know that I am writing to somebody. He may be somewhere in the United States, it makes no difference – the moment I write a letter to him it is a personal phenomenon: he is there. While I am writing he helps me to write. Without him it is not possible; it is a dialogue. This is action. The moment you are gone, all language disappears from me; no words float, they are not needed. And this should be so! When you walk you use your legs and when you sit in your chair what is the point of moving your legs? It is mad! When there is a dialogue, words are needed; when there is a situation, action is needed. But let the whole decide it; you should not be the deciding factor, you should not decide. Then there are no karmas, then you move, from moment to moment, fresh. The past dies by itself every moment, and the future is born and you move into it fresh like a child. THE SUPREME ACTION EMBRACES GREAT RESOURCEFULNESS WITHOUT ATTACHMENT. Actions happen but there is no attachment; you don’t feel, ”I have done this.” I don’t feel I have said this. I simply feel it had been spoken, it has happened. The whole has done it, and the whole is neither me nor you – the whole is both and neither. And the whole hovers around and the whole decides: you are not the doer. Much happens through you, but you are not the doer. Much is created through you, but you are not the creator. The whole remains the creator – you become simply vehicles, mediums for the whole. A hollow bamboo... and the whole puts his fingers and his lips on it and it becomes a flute, and a song is born. From where does this song come? From that hollow bamboo you call a ”flute”? No. From the lips of the whole? No. From where does it come? Everything is involved: the hollow bamboo is also involved, the lips of the whole are also involved, the singer is involved, the listener is involved – everything is involved. Even a small thing can create a difference. Just a roseflower by the side of the room and this room will not be the same, because the roseflower has his own aura, his own being. He will influence: he will influence your understanding, he will influence whatsoever is spoken by me – and the total moves, not parts. Much happens but nobody is the doer. ... GREAT RESOURCEFULNESS WITHOUT ATTACHMENT. And when you are not the doer how can the attachment happen? You do a small thing and you become attached. You say, ”I have done this.” You would like everybody to know that you have done this and you have done that. This ego is the barrier for the supreme understanding. Drop the doer and let things happen. That’s what Tilopa means by being loose and natural. THE SUPREME ACCOMPLISHMENT IS TO REALIZE IMMANENCE WITHOUT HOPE. This is a very deep thing, very subtle and delicate. Tilopa says, ”What is the supreme accomplishment? It is to realize immanence without hope; that inside, the inner space is perfect, absolute – without hope. Why does he bring this word ”hope” in? – because with the hope comes future, with the hope comes desire, with the hope comes the effort to improve, with the hope comes the greed for more, with the hope comes discontentment, and then, of course, frustration follows. He is not saying be hopeless, because that too comes with hope. He is simply saying ”no hope”; not hopeful, not hopeless – because they both come with the hope. And this has become such a great problem for the West, because Buddha says the same, and then Western thinkers think that these people are pessimists. They are not. They are not pessimists, they are not optimists. And this is the meaning of ”no hope.” If somebody hopes we call him an optimist. We say about him that he can see the silver lining in the darkest cloud, we say that he can see the morning following the darkest night: he is an optimist. And then there is the pessimist, just the opposite of it. Even in the brightest silver lining he will always see the darkest cloud there. If you talk about the morning he will say, ”Every morning ends in the evening.” But remember: they may be opposites but they are not really separate; their focus is different but their mind is the same. Whether you see the bright lining, the silver lining in the dark cloud, or you see the dark cloud in the silver lining, you always see the part. Your division is there; you choose, you never see the total. Buddha, Tilopa, myself, we are neither optimists nor pessimists – we simply drop hope. With hope they come in – both the optimist and the pessimist. We simply drop the coin of hope, and both the aspects are dropped with it. This is a totally new dimension, difficult to understand. Tilopa sees the suchness of things; he is without choice. He sees both the morning and the evening together, he sees both the thorns and the flower together, he sees both the pain and the pleasure together, he sees both the birth and death together. He has no choice of his own. He is neither a pessimist nor an optimist – he lives without hope. And that is a really wonderful dimension to live in: to live without hope. The very words ”without hope” are used... simply inside you it feels it is something so pessimistic, but that is because of the language – and what Tilopa is saying is beyond language. He says, THE SUPREME ACCOMPLISHMENT IS TO REALIZE IMMANENCE WITHOUT HOPE. You simply realize yourself as you are in your total suchness, and simply you are that. There is no need for any improvement, change, development, growth, no need. Nothing can be done about it. It is simply the case. Once you go deeply into this – that it is simply the case – suddenly all flowers and all thorns disappear, days and nights disappear, life and death disappear, summer and winter disappear. Nothing is left – because the clinging disappears. And with the acceptance of whatsoever you are, whatsoever is the case, there is no problem then, no question, nothing to be solved – you simply are that. A celebration comes; and this celebration is not of hope, this celebration is just an overflowing of the energy. You start blooming. You simply bloom, not for something in the future; you cannot do otherwise. When one realizes the suchness of being, the blooming happens; one goes on blooming and blooming and celebrating for no visible cause at all. Why am I happy? What have I got that you have not got? Why am I serene and quiet? Have I achieved something that you have to achieve? Have I attained to something that you have to attain? No. I have simply relaxed into the suchness. Whatsoever I am – good, bad, moral, immoral – whatsoever I am, I have simply relaxed into the suchness of it. And I have dropped all efforts to improve, and I have dropped all future. I have dropped hope, and with the dropping of hope everything has disappeared. I am alone and simply happy for no reason at all; simply silent because now, without hope, I don’t know how to create disturbance. Without hope how can you create disturbance in your being? Remember this: all effort will lead you to a point where you leave all effort and will become effortless. And the whole search will lead you to a point where you simply shrug your shoulders and sit down under a tree and settle. Every journey ends in the innermost suchness of being – and that you have every moment. So it is only a question of becoming a little more aware. What is wrong with you? I have seen millions of people and I have not seen even a single person who has really something wrong, but he creates things. You are creators, great creators of illnesses, wrongs, problems, and then you chase them – how to solve them? First you create and then you go chasing. Why in the first place create them? Just drop hope, desire, and simply look at the case that you are already; just simply close your eyes and see who you are, and finished! Even in the blinking of the eye this is possible, it needs no time. If you are thinking it needs time, gradual growth. Then it is because of your mind you will need time, otherwise time is not needed. THE SUPREME ACCOMPLISHMENT IS TO REALIZE IMMANENCE... ... that all that is to be achieved is in. That is the meaning of immanence: all that is to be achieved is already there inside you. You are born perfect; otherwise is not possible because you are born of the perfect. That is the meaning when Jesus says, ”I and my Father are one.” What is he saying? He is saying that you cannot be otherwise than the whole because you come out of the whole. You take a handful of water from the ocean, you taste it: it tastes the same everywhere. In a single drop of seawater you can find the whole chemistry of the sea. If you can understand a single drop of seawater you have understood all seas, past, future, present – because a small drop is a miniature ocean. And you are the whole in a miniature form. When you go deeper inside you and realize this, suddenly a laughter happens, you start laughing. What were you seeking? The seeker himself was the sought; the traveler was himself the goal. This is the suprememost accomplishment: to realize oneself, one’s absolute perfection, without hope – because if a hope is there it will stir; it will continually stir in your disturbance. You will start thinking again, ”Something more is possible.” Hope always creates dreams: ”Something more is possible. Of course it is good....” People come to me and they say, ”Meditation is going very well; of course, it is good, but give us some other technique so that we can grow more.” Even sometimes people have come to me saying, ”Everything is beautiful....” And then they say, ”Now what?” Now the hope stirs. Everything is beautiful, then why ask, ”Now what?” Everything was wrong, then again you were asking, ”Now what?” And now everything is beautiful, again you ask, ”Now what?” Now leave it, this hope. Just the other day somebody came, and said, ”Everything is going very beautifully now, but who knows about tomorrow?” Why bring tomorrow in when everything is going absolutely right? Can’t you remain without problems? Now everything is good, but you worry whether it may be good tomorrow or not. If it is good today from where is the tomorrow going to come? It will be born out of today, so why be worried? If today is silent, tomorrow is going to be more silent; it will be born out of today. But because of this worry you can destroy today; then the tomorrow will be there and you will be fulfilled in your frustration and you will say, ”This is what I was thinking and worried about – it has happened.” And it has happened because of you. It was not going to happen! Had you remained without the future, it would not have happened. And this is the self-destructive tendency of the mind, suicidal; and in a way it is very self-fulfilling, so the mind can always say, ”I was warning you before. I had warned you beforehand, you didn’t listen to me.” Now you will think, ”Yes, that’s right; the mind was warning and I was not listening to it.” But it has come only because of the warning of the mind. Many things happen.... If you go to the astrologers, JYOTISHI, palmists, and they say something to you, when it happens you will think they predicted your future. Just the opposite is the case: because they predicted, your mind got into it and it happened. If somebody says that next month on the thirteenth of March you are going to die, the possibility is there – not because he had known your future, but because he has predicted the future. Now the thirteenth of March will move in your mind continuously: you will not be able to sleep without it, you will not be able to dream without it, you will not be able to love without it. Twenty-fours hours: ”The thirteenth of March and I am going to die.” It will become a self-hypnosis, a chanting. It will go round and round; the nearer the thirteenth of March will come, the faster it will move. And it will self-fulfill: thirteenth of March.... It happened once that a German palmist predicted his own death. He had been predicting many people’s death and it happened, so he became certain that his prediction was something; otherwise, how was it happening? And he was getting old so a few friends suggested, ”Why not predict your own?” So he studied the hands and charts and everything – all foolish – and then he decided about his own death: that it was going to happen on such and such a date, six o’clock early in the morning. And then he waited for it. Six was approaching; from five o’clock he was ready, sitting at the clock. Each moment, and death was coming nearer and nearer and nearer. And then came just the last moment – one moment more and the clock would say it is six, and he is still alive, how is it possible? Seconds started passing, and exactly when the clock struck six he jumped out of the window... because how is it possible.... And of course, he died exactly as predicted. Mind has a self-fulfilling mechanism. Be alert about it. You are happy; the mind says, ”Of course, you are happy, it is okay – but what about tomorrow?” Now already the mind has distorted, destroyed this moment, it has brought tomorrow in. Now the tomorrow will come out of this mind, not out of that blissful moment that was there. Don’t hope this way or that, for or against, drop all hope. Remain to the moment, in the moment, with the moment, for the moment. There is no other moment than this. And whatsoever is going to happen will happen out of this moment, so why worry? If this moment is beautiful how can the next moment be ugly? From where will it come? It grows, it will be more beautiful – has to be. There is no need to think about it. And once you accomplish this, remaining with your innate perfection.... Remember, I have to use words and there is a danger that you may misunderstand. When I say remain with your inner perfection you may be worried because sometimes you may feel that you are not perfect – then remain with your imperfection. Imperfection is also perfect! Nothing is wrong in it, remain with it. Don’t move away from THIS moment; here and now is the whole existence. Everything that has to be accomplished is to be accomplished here and now, so whatsoever is the case, even if you feel imperfect – beautiful, be imperfect! That’s how you are, that is your suchness. You feel sexual – perfect, feel sexual. That’s how you are, that’s how God meant you to be. Sad – beautiful, be sad, but don’t move from the moment. Remain with the moment and, by and by, you will feel the imperfection has dissolved into perfection, the sex has dissolved into the inner ecstasy, the anger has dissolved into compassion. This moment, if you can be your total being, then there is no problem. This is the supreme accomplishment. It has no hope, it need not have. It is so perfect there is no need for hope. Hope is not a good situation; hoping always means something is wrong with you – that’s why you hope for the against, for the opposite. You are sad and you hope for happiness; your hope says that you are sad. You feel ugly and you hope for a beautiful personality; your hope says you are ugly. Show me your hope and I can tell you who you are, because your hope immediately shows who you are – just the opposite. Drop hope and just be. At first, if you try this, just being, this will happen: AT FIRST A YOGI FEELS HIS MIND IS TUMBLING LIKE A WATERFALL; IN MID-COURSE, LIKE THE GANGES, IT FLOWS ON SLOW AND GENTLE; IN THE END IT IS A GREAT VAST OCEAN WHERE THE LIGHTS OF SON AND MOTHER MERGE IN ONE. If you are being here and now, the first SATORI will happen, the first glimpse of enlightenment. And this will be the situation inside: AT FIRST A YOGI FEELS HIS MIND IS TUMBLING LIKE A WATERFALL... because your mind starts melting. Right now it is like a frozen glacier. If you remain loose, natural, true to the moment, authentically here and now, the mind starts melting. You have brought sun energy to it. This very being in the here and now conserves such a vast energy. Not moving in the future, not moving in the past, you have so much, tremendous energy in you, that the very energy starts melting the mind. Energy is fire, energy is of the sun. When you are not moving anywhere, completely still, here and now – no going, converging upon yourself – all leakage stops, because leakage is through desire and hope. You leak because of the future. Leakage is because of a motivation: ”Do something, be something, have something. Why are you wasting your time sitting? Go! Move! Do!” – then there is leakage. If you are simply here, how can you leak? Energy converges, falls back upon you, it becomes a circle of fire – and then the glacier of the mind starts melting. AT FIRST A YOGI FEELS HIS MIND IS TUMBLING LIKE A WATERFALL.... Everything falls. The whole mind is falling, falling, falling – you may be scared. Near the first satori the master is needed very very deeply and intimately, because who will tell you, ”Don’t be afraid; it is beautiful – fall”? Just the word ”fall” and fear comes in, because falling means falling into an abyss, losing your ground, moving into the unknown. And falling carries a sense of death – one becomes afraid. Have you ever gone to some mountains, a high peak, and from there you looked down into the abyss, the valley?Nausea, trembling, fear comes in as if the abyss is death and you can fall into it. When the mind melts everything starts falling, EVERYTHING I say. Your love, your ego, your greed, your anger, your hate – all that you have been up to now suddenly starts becoming loose and falling, as if the house is falling apart. You become a chaos – no more order, all discipline falling. You have been maintaining yourself somehow; somehow you were together forcing a control upon yourself, a discipline. Now being loose and natural everything is falling. Many things that you have suppressed will bubble up, they will surface. You will find a chaos all around; you will be just like a madman. The first step is really difficult to pass through, because whatsoever society has forced on you will fall, whatsoever you have learned will fall, whatsoever you have conditioned yourself will fall. All your habits, all your directions – all your paths will simply disappear. Your identity will evaporate; you will not be able to know who you are. Up to now you knew well who you were: your name, your family, your status in the world, your prestige, your honor, this and that: you were aware of them. Now suddenly everything is melting, the identity is lost. You knew many things, now you will not know anything. You were wise in the ways of the world; they will fall and you will feel completely ignorant. This is what happened to Socrates. That was his first satori moment, when he said, ”Now I know only one thing, that I don’t know anything. Only one knowledge I have, that I am ignorant.” This is the first satori. Sufis have a particular term for this man, this type of man, who comes to this state; they call him MAST, they call him the madman. He looks at you without looking at you. He roams around not knowing where he is going. He talks nonsense. He cannot keep a relevant coherence in his talk. One word and then a gap; then another word absolutely unrelated; one sentence, then another sentence not connected at all – no coherence, all consistency is lost. He becomes a contradiction; you cannot rely on him. For these moments a school is needed, where people can take care of you. Ashrams came into existence because of this – because this man cannot be allowed in the society, otherwise they will think he is mad and they will force him into a prison or a madhouse, and they will try to treat him. They will try to bring him down, back to his normal state – and he is growing! He has broken all the chains of the society; he has become a chaos. Hence my insistence on chaotic meditations. They will help you to come to this first satori. From the very beginning you cannot sit silently; you can befool, but you cannot sit, that is not possible. That can happen only in the second satori. In the first satori you have to be chaotic, dynamic; you have to allow your energies to move so that all strait-jackets around you are broken and all chains are thrown away. You become for the first time an outsider, no more part of the society. A school is needed where care can be taken of you. A master is needed who can say to you, ”Don’t be afraid,” who can tell you to fall easily. Allow it to happen; don’t cling to something because that will only delay the moment – fall! The sooner you fall, the madness will disappear sooner; if you delay, then the madness can be continued for long. There are millions of mad people in the madhouses in the whole world who are not in fact mad, who needed a master, who don’t need a psychotherapist. They have attained their first satori, and all psychotherapies are forcing them back to be normal. They are in a better situation than you; they have reached a growth, but the growth is so outlandish – it has to be so in the beginning, they are passing the first satori – and you have made them guilty. You say, ”You are mad!” – and they try to hide it and they try to cling, and the longer they cling, the longer the madness will follow them. Only just recently a few psychoanalysts, particularly R.D. Laing and others, have become aware of the phenomenon that a few mad people have not fallen lower than the normal, really they have gone beyond the normal. Just a few people in the West, very perceptive people, have become aware of it – but the East has always been aware, and the East has never suppressed mad people. The first thing the East will do: the mad people have to be brought to a school where many people are working and a living master is there. The first thing is to help them to attain a satori. Mad people have been respected highly in the East; in the West they are simply condemned, forced to have electric shocks, insulin shocks, forced somehow even if their brains are destroyed – because now there are surgical things going on. Their brain is operated on and a few parts of the brain are removed. Of course then they become normal, but dull, idiotic, their intelligence is lost. They are no more mad, they will not harm anybody; they will become a silent part of the society – but you have killed them not knowing that they were reaching a point from where a man becomes superhuman. But of course, the chaos has to be passed. With a loving master and a loving group of people in a school, in an ashram, it passes easily, everybody takes it easily, helps it; one moves to the second stage easily. This has to happen because all order is imposed on you, it is not real order. All discipline is forced on you, it is not your inner discipline. Before you attain to the inner, the outer has to be dropped; before a new order is born, the old has to cease – and there will be a gap. That gap is madness. One feels like tumbling, falling like a waterfall into the abyss, and there seems to be no bottom to it. In mid-course if this point is passed, if the first satori is lived well, then a new order arises that is from within, that comes from your own being. Now it is no more of the society, it is not given to you by others, it is not an imprisonment. Now a new order arises which has a quality of freedom. A discipline comes to you naturally, it is of your own. Nobody asks it of you, nobody says, ”Do this!” – you simply do the right thing. IN MID-COURSE, LIKE THE GANGES, IT FLOWS SLOW AND GENTLE.... The tumbling, the roaring waterfall has disappeared, the chaos is no more. This is the second satori. You become like the Ganges, flowing gently, slowly; not even a sound is created. You walk like a bridegroom, silently, gracefully. An absolutely new charm happens to your being – grace, elegance. This is the second stage in which we have caught all the buddhas in the statues; because the third cannot be caught, only the second or the first. All the buddhas, TIRTHANKARAS of the Jainas – go and look at their statues: the elegance, the grace, the subtle roundness of their bodies, feminine. They don’t look masculine, they look feminine; a roundness, their curvature is feminine. That shows their inner being has become very slow, very gentle; nothing of aggression in them. Zen masters – Bodhidharma, Rinzai, Bokuju – they have been pictured in the first state. That’s why they are so ferocious. They look like roaring lions, they look like they will kill you. If you look at their eyes, their eyes are volcanoes, fire jumps at you; they are like shocks. They have been pictured in the first satori state for certain reasons, because Zen people know that the first is the problem; and if you know Bodhidharma in this state, when the same state will happen to you you will understand not to be afraid; even Bodhidharma.... But if you have been always watching buddhas and tirthankaras in their silent and slow-flowing rivers and their feminine grace, you will become very much afraid when ferociousness comes to you, when you become like a lion – exactly: one starts roaring. You become a waterfall – tremendous! That’s why in Zen the ferocious state has been pictured more and more. Of course there were buddhas in the shrine, but that is the next state. And that is not a problem at all; when you become silent there is no problem. In India the second stage has been emphasized too much and that became a barrier, because one should know from the very beginning how things are. A buddha is already an accomplished being. It can happen to you, but in the gap from you to Buddha something else is going to happen – and that is complete madness. What happens when you accept all madness, you allow it? – it subsides by itself. The old order that society forced, goes, simply evaporates. Old knowledge is no more there; all that you knew about the scriptures is no more there. There is a Zen monk burning all scriptures – his picture is one of the most famous pictures. That comes in the first state. One burns all the scriptures, one throws all knowledge; everything that has been given to you looks rubbish, rot. Now your own wisdom is arising; there is no need to borrow it from anybody. But it will take a little time, just like a seed takes time, to sprout. If you can manage to pass through the chaotic state, then the second follows very very easily, automatically, of its own accord. You become silent, everything is calmed down, just like the Ganges when it comes to the plains. In the hills it is roaring like a lion, falling from great heights into depths, much turmoil; and then it comes to the plains, leaves the hills. Now the terrain changes, now everything flows silently. You cannot even see whether it is flowing or not; everything moves as if it is not moving, at ease. Attain to inner accomplishment, innate, with no hope – not going to any goal, not in any hurry, no haste; just enjoying... each moment. LIKE THE GANGES, IT FLOWS SLOW AND GENTLE. This second stage has the quality of absolute silence, calm, quietude, tranquility, collectedness, at-homeness, rest, relaxation. And then: IN THE END IT IS A GREAT VAST OCEAN WHERE THE LIGHTS OF SON AND MOTHER MERGE IN ONE. Then suddenly, flowing silently, it reaches to the ocean and becomes one with the ocean – a vast expanse, no boundaries. Now it is no longer a river, now it is no longer an individual unit, now there is no ego. Even in the second stage there is a very very subtle ego. Hindus have two names: one they call AHAMKAR, ego, that’s what you have; the second they call ASMITA, amness, no ego. When you say, ”I am,” not the ”I,” but simply ”am,” amness, they call it asmita. It is a very very silent ego, nobody will feel it, it is very passive, not aggressive. It will not leave any trace anywhere, but it is still there. One feels one is. That’s why it is called the second satori: the Ganges is flowing silently of course, at home, at peace, but still it is; it is asmita, it is amness. The ”I” has dropped and all the madness of the ”I” has gone; the aggressive, the ferocious ”I” is no more there, but a very silent amness follows, because the river has banks and the river has boundaries. It is still separate, it has its own individuality. With the ego, personality drops but individuality remains. Personality is the outer individuality. Individuality is the inner personality. Personality is for others, it is a showroom thing, a display. That has dropped; that is the ego. But this inner feeling, ”I am” or rather ”am,” is not for display, nobody will be able to see it. It will not interfere with anybody’s life; it will not poke its nose into anybody’s affairs. Simply it moves, but it is still there – because the Ganges exists as an individual. Then the individuality is also lost. That is the third word: ATMA. Ahamkar is ego, the ”I-ness”; the ”am” is just a shadow of it, the ”I” is focused. Then the second state, asmita: the ”I” has dropped; now the amness has become the total, not a shadow. And then atma: now the amness has also dropped. This is what Tilopa calls no-self. You ARE, but without any self; you are, but without any boundaries. The river has become the ocean; the river is in the ocean, it has become one with it. The individuality is no more there, no boundaries, but the being exists as a nonbeing. It has become a vast emptiness. It has become just like the sky. The ego was like black clouds all over the sky. The amness, asmita, was like white clouds in the sky. And atma is as if without clouds, only the sky has remained. IN THE END IT IS A GREAT VAST OCEAN WHERE THE LIGHTS OF SON AND MOTHER MERGE IN ONE. Where you come back to the original source, the mother, the circle is complete. You have come back home, dissolved with the original source. The Ganges has come to Gangotri, the river has come to its original source: the complete circle. Now you are, but in such a totally different sense that it is better to say that you are not. This is the most paradoxical state because it is most difficult to bring it into language and expression. One has to taste it. This is what Tilopa calls Mahamudra – the great orgasm, the ultimate orgasm, the supreme orgasm. You have come back from where you had gone. The journey is over, and not only the journey is over, but also the journeyman is no more. Not only the journey is over as a path, but the goal is also over. Now nothing exists and everything is. Remember this distinction. A table exists, a house exists – but God IS; because a table can go into nonexistence, a house can go into nonexistence, but the God cannot. So it is not good to say that God exists; God simply is. It cannot go into nonexistence. It is pure isness. This is Mahamudra. All that exists has disappeared, only isness remains. The body has disappeared, it existed. The mind has disappeared, it existed. The path has disappeared, it existed. The goal has disappeared. All that existed has disappeared, only purity of isness is there – an empty mirror, an empty sky, an empty being. This is what Tilopa calls Mahamudra. This is the supreme, the last, there is no beyond to it. It is the very ”beyondness.” Remember these three stages; you will have to pass through them. Chaos, everything gone topsyturvy; you are no more identified with anything, everything has become loose and fallen apart – you are completely mad. Watch it, allow it, pass through it, don’t be scared; and when I am here you need not be scared. I know it will pass, I know it always passes, I can assure you. And unless it passes, the grace, the elegance, the silence of a buddha will not happen to you. Let it pass. It will be a nightmare, of course, but let it pass. With that nightmare all your past will be cleansed. It will be a tremendous catharsis. All your past will pass through a fire, but you will become pure gold. Then comes the second state. The first has to be passed because you may get scared and run away from it. The second also has a different kind of danger, an absolutely different kind; not at all a danger. The first has to be passed; you have to be aware that it will pass. It will pass, just time is needed, and trust. The second has a different kind of danger: you would like to cling to it because it is so beautiful; one would like to be in it forever and ever. When the inner river flows calm and quiet one wants to cling to the banks; one wants not to go anywhere else, this is so good. In a way it is a greater danger. A master has to assure you that the first will pass, and a master has to force you so that you don’t cling to the second, because if you cling, the Mahamudra will never happen to you. There are many people clinging to the second, they are hanging on to it. There are many people who are hanging on to the second because they have become so attached to it. It is so beautiful one would like to fall in love with it; one falls automatically. Aware, remain aware – that too has to be passed. Watch so that you don’t start clinging. If you can watch your fear with the first and your greed with the second.... Remember, fear and greed are two aspects of the same coin. In fear you want to escape from something, in greed you want to cling to it, but they are both the same. Watch fear, watch greed and allow the movement to continue; don’t try to stop it. You can become stagnant, then the Ganges becomes not a flowing thing – a stagnant pool. Howsoever beautiful, it will be dead soon. It will become dirty, it will dry up and soon all that was gained will be lost. Go on moving. The movement has to be eternal – keep it in mind. It is an endless journey, more is always possible; allow it to happen. Don’t hope for it, don’t ask for it, don’t go ahead of yourself, but allow it to happen, because then the third danger comes when the Ganges falls into the ocean, and that is the last because you will be losing yourself. That is the ultimate death. It appears like the ultimate death. Even the Ganges shudders, trembles before it falls; even the Ganges looks backwards, thinks of past days and memories, and the beautiful time on the plains and the tremendous energy phenomenon in the hills and the glaciers. At the last moment when the Ganges is going to fall into the ocean, it lingers a little while more. It wants to look back, think over memories, beautiful experiences. That has to be also watched. Don’t linger. When the ocean comes, allow: merge, melt, disappear. Only at the last point can you say goodbye to the master, never before it. Say goodbye to the master and become the ocean. But up to that moment you need the hand of somebody who knows. There is a tendency in the mind to avoid intimate relationship with the master; that’s what becomes a barrier in taking sannyas. You would like to remain uncommitted; you would like to learn, but you would like to remain uncommitted. But you cannot learn, that is not the way; you cannot learn from the outside. You have to enter the inner shrine of a master’s being. You have to commit yourself. Without it you cannot grow. Without it you can learn a little bit from here and there, and you can accumulate a certain knowledge – that will not be of any help, rather it may become an encumbrance. A deep commitment is needed, a total commitment in fact, because there are many things going to happen. And if you are just outside on the periphery, just learning as a casual visitor, then much is not possible, because what will happen to you when the first satori comes? What will happen to you when you go mad? And you are not losing anything when you commit yourself to a master because you don’t have anything to lose. By your commitment you are simply gaining; you are not losing anything because you don’t have anything to lose. You have nothing to be afraid of. But still, still one wants to be very clever, and one wants to learn without commitment. That has never happened, because it is not possible.