Vigyan Bhairav Tantra 
Chapter 1 : The World of Tantra 

SUTRA: 

DEVI ASKS: 

OH SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? 

WHAT IS THIS WONDER-FILLED UNIVERSE? 

WHAT CONSTITUTES SEED? 

WHO CENTERS THE UNIVERSAL WHEEL? 

WHAT IS THIS LIFE BEYOND FORM PERVADING FORMS? 

HOW MAY WE ENTER IT FULLY, ABOVE SPACE AND TIME, NAMES AND 
DESCRIPTIONS? 

LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED! 

Some introductory points. First, the world of VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA is not 
intellectual, it is not philosophical. Doctrine is meaningless to it. It is concerned with 
method, with technique — not with principles at all. The word 'tantra’ means technique, 
the method, the path. So it is not philosophical — note this. It is not concerned with 
intellectual problems and inquiries. It is not concerned with the "why" of things, it is 
concerned with "how"; not with what is truth, but how the truth can be attained. 
TANTRA means technique. So this treatise is a scientific one. Science is not concerned 
with why, science is concerned with how. That is the basic difference between 
philosophy and science. Philosophy asks, "Why this existence?" Science asks, "How this 
existence?" The moment you ask the question, how?, method, technique, become 
important. Theories become meaningless; experience becomes the center. 

Tantra is science, tantra is not philosophy. To understand philosophy is easy because 
only your intellect is required. 

If you can understand language, if you can understand concept, you can understand 
philosophy. You need not change; you require no transfonnation. As you are, you can 
understand philosophy — but not tantra. 

You will need a change... rather, a mutation. Unless YOU are different tantra cannot be 
understood, because tantra is not an intellectual proposition, it is an experience. Unless 
you are receptive, ready, vulnerable to the experience, it is not going to come to you. 
Philosophy is concerned with the mind. Your head is enough; your totality is not 
required. Tantra needs you in your totality. It is a deeper challenge. You will have to be 
in it wholly. It is not fragmentary. A different approach, a different attitude, a different 
mind to receive it is required. Because of this, Devi is asking apparently philosophical 
questions. Tantra starts with Devi's questions. All the questions can be tackled 
philosophically. 

Really, any question can be tackled in two ways: philosophically or totally, antellectually 
or existentially. For example, if someone asks, "What is love?" you can tackle it 
intellectually, you can discuss, you can propose theories, you can argue for a particular 
hypothesis. You can create a system, a doctrine — and you may not have known love at 
all. 

To create a doctrine, experience is not needed. Really, on the contrary, the less you know 
the better because then you can propose a system unhesitatingly. 



Only a blind man can easily define what light is. When you do not know you are bold. 
Ignorance is always bold; knowledge hesitates. And the more you know, the more you 
feel that the ground underneath is dissolving. The more you know, the more you feel how 
ignorant you are. And those who are really wise, they become ignorant. They become as 
simple as children, or as simple as idiots. 

The less you know, the better. To be philosophical, to be dogmatic, to be doctrinaire — 
this is easy. To tackle a problem intellectually is very easy. But to tackle a problem 
existentially — not just to think about it, but to live it through, to go through it, to allow 
yourself to be transformed through it — is difficult. That is, to know love one will have to 
be in love. That is dangerous because you will not remain the same. The experience is 
going to change you. The moment you enter love, you enter a different person. And when 
you come out you will not be able to recognize your old face; it will not belong to you. A 
discontinuity will have happened. Now there is a gap, the old man is dead and the new 
man has come. That is what is kn own as rebirth — being twice-bom. 

Tantra is non-philosophical and existential. So of course Devi asks questions which 
appear to be philosophical, but Shiva is not going to answer them that way. So it is better 
to understand it in the beginning; otherwise you will be puzzled, because Shiva is not 
going to answer a single question. 

All the questions that Devi is asking, Shiva is not going to answer at all. And still he 
answers! And really, only he has answered them and no one else — but on a different 
plane. 

Devi asks, "What is your reality, my lord?" He is not going to answer it. On the contrary, 
he will give a technique. And if Devi goes through this technique, she will know. So the 
answer is round-about; it is not direct. He is not going to answer "Who am I." He will 
give a technique — do it and you will know. 

For tantra, doing is knowing, and there is no other knowing. Unless you do something, 
unless you change, unless you have a different perspective to look at, to look with, unless 
you move in an altogether different dimension than the intellect, there is no answer. 
Answers can be given — they are all lies. All philosophies are lies. You ask a question 
and the philosophy gives you an answer. It satisfies you or doesn't satisfy you. If it 
satisfies you, you become a convert to the philosophy, but you remain the same. If it 
doesn't satisfy you, you go on searching for some other philosophy to be converted to. 

But you remain the same; you are not touched at all, you are not changed. 

So whether you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Jain, it makes no 
difference. The real person behind the facade of a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a 
Christian is the same. Only words differ, or clothes. 

The man who is going to the church or to the temple or to the mosque is the same man. 
Only faces differ, and they are faces which are false; they are masks. Behind the masks 
you will find the same man — the same anger, the same aggression, the same violence, 
the same greed, the same lust — everything the same. Is Mohammedan sexuality different 
from Hindu sexuality? Is Christian violence different from Hindu violence? It is the 
same! The reality remains the same; only clothes differ. 

Tantra is not concerned with your clothes, tantra is concerned with you. If you ask a 
question it shows where you are. It shows also that wherever you are you cannot see; that 
is why there is the question. A blind man asks, "What is light?" and philosophy will start 
answering what is light. Tantra will know only this: if a man is asking "What is light?" it 



shows only that he is blind. Tantra will start operating on the man, changing the man, so 
that he can see. Tantra will not say what is light. Tantra will tell how to attain insight, 
how to attain seeing, how to attain vision. When the vision is there, the answer will be 
there. Tantra will not give you the answer; tantra will give you the technique to attain the 
answer. 

Now, this answer is not going to be intellectual. If you say something about light to a 
blind man, this is intellectual. If the blind man himself becomes capable of seeing, this is 
existential. 

This is what I mean when I say that tantra is existential. So Shiva is not going to answer 
Devi's questions, still, he will answer — the first thing. 

The second thing: this is a different type of language. You must know something about it 
before we enter into it. All the tantra treatises are dialogues between Shiva and Devi. 

Devi questions and Shiva answers. All the tantra treatises start that way. Why? Why this 
method? It is very significant. It is not a dialogue between a teacher and a disciple, it is a 
dialogue between two lovers. And tantra signifies through it a very meaningful thing: that 
the deeper teachings cannot be given unless there is love between the two — the disciple 
and the master. The disciple and master must become deep lovers. Only then can the 
higher, the beyond, be expressed. 

So it is a language of love; the disciple must be in an attitude of love. But not only this, 
because friends can be lovers. Tantra says a disciple moves as receptivity, so the disciple 
must be in a feminine receptivity; only then is something possible. You need not be a 
woman to be a disciple, but you need to be in a feminine attitude of receptivity. When 
Devi asks, it means the feminine attitude asks. Why this emphasis on the feminine 
attitude? 

Man and woman are not only physically different, they are psychologically different. Sex 
is not only a difference in the body; it is a difference in psychologies also. 

A feminine mind means receptivity — total receptivity, surrender, love. A disciple needs a 
feminine psychology; otherwise he will not be able to learn. You can ask, but if you are 
not open then you cannot be answered. You can ask a question and still remain closed. 
Then the answer cannot penetrate you. Your doors are closed; you are dead. You are not 
open. 

A feminine receptivity means a womb-like receptivity in the inner depth, so that you can 
receive. And not only that — much more is implied. A woman is not only receiving 
something, the moment she receives it, it becomes a part of her body. A child is received. 
A woman conceives; the moment there is conception, the child has become part of the 
feminine body. It is not alien, it is not foreign. It has been absorbed. Now the child will 
live not as something added to the mother, but just as a part, just as the mother. And the 
child is not only received: the feminine body becomes creative; the child begins to grow. 
A disciple needs a womb-like receptivity. Whatsoever is received is not to be gathered as 
dead knowledge. It must grow in you; it must become blood and bones in you. It must 
become a part, now. It must grow! This growth will change you, will transform you — the 
receiver. That is why tantra uses this device. Every treatise starts with Devi asking a 
question and Shiva replying to it. Devi is Shiva's consort, his feminine part. 


One thing more.... Now modern psychology, depth psychology particularly, says that 



man is both man and woman. No one is just male and no one is just female; everyone is 
bi-sexual. Both sexes are there. This is a very recent research in the West, but for tantra 
this has been one of the most basic concepts for thousands of years. You must have seen 
some pictures of Shiva as ARDHANARISHWAR — half man, half woman. There is no 
other concept like it in the whole history of man. Shiva is depicted as half man, half 
woman. 

So Devi is not just a consort, she is Shiva's other half. And unless a disciple becomes the 
other half of the master it is impossible to convey the higher teachings, the esoteric 
methods. When you become one then there is no doubt. When you are one with the 
master — so totally one, so deeply one — there is no argument, no logic, no reason. One 
simply absorbs; one becomes a womb. And then the teaching begins to grow in you and 
change you. 

That is why tantra is written in love language. Something must also be understood about 
love language. There are two types of language: logical language and love language. 
There are basic differences between the two. 

Logical language is aggressive, argumentative, violent. If I use logical language I become 
aggressive upon your mind. I try to convince you, to convert you, to make a puppet of 
you. 

My argument is "right" and you are "wrong." Logical language is egocentric: "I am right 
and you are wrong, so I must prove that I am right and you are wrong." I am not 
concerned with you, I am concerned with my ego. My ego is always "right." 

Love language is totally different. I am not concerned with my ego; I am concerned with 
you. I am not concerned to prove something, to strengthen my ego. I am concerned to 
help you. It is a compassion to help you to grow, to help you to transform, to help you to 
be reborn. 

Secondly, logic will always be intellectual. Concepts and principles will be significant, 
arguments will be significant. With love language what is said is not so significant; 
rather, it is the way it is said. The container, the word is not important; the content, the 
message is more important. It is a heart-to-heart talk, not a mind-to-mind discussion. It is 
not a debate, it is a communion. 

So this is rare: Devi is sitting in the lap of Shiva and asking, and Shiva answers. It is a 
love dialogue — no conflict, as if Shiva is speaking to himself. Why this emphasis on love 
— love language? Because if you are in love with your master, then the whole gestalt 
changes; it becomes different. Then you are not hearing his words. Then you are drinking 
him. Then words are irrelevant. Really, the silence between the words becomes more 
significant. What he is saying may be meaningful or it may not be meaningful. 

.. but it is his eyes, his gestures, his compassion, his love. 

That is why tantra has a fixed device, a structure. Every treatise starts with Devi asking 
and Shiva answering. No argument is going to be there, no wastage of words. There are 
very simple statements of fact, telegraphic messages with no view to convince, but just to 
relate. 

If you encounter Shiva with a question with a closed mind, he will not answer you in this 
way. First your closedness has to be broken. Then he will have to be aggressive. Then 
your prejudices, then your preconceptions have to be destroyed. Unless you are cleared 
completely of your past, nothing can be given to you. But this is not so with his consort 
Devi; with Devi there is no past. 



Remember, when you are deeply in love your mind ceases to be. There is no past; only 
the present moment becomes everything. When you are in love the present is the only 
time, the now is all — no past, no future. So Devi is just open. There is no defense — 
nothing to be cleared, nothing to be destroyed. The ground is ready, only a seed has to be 
dropped. The ground is not only ready, but welcoming, receptive, asking to be 
impregnated. 

So all these sayings that we are going to discuss will be telegraphic. They are just sutras, 
but each sutra, each telegraphic message given by Shiva is worth a Veda, worth a Bible, 
worth a Koran. Each single sentence can become the base of a great scripture. 

Scriptures are logical — you have to propose, defend, argue. Here there is no argument, 
just simple statements of love. 

Thirdly, the very words VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA mean the technique of going 
beyond consciousness. VIGYANA means consciousness, BHAIRAVA means the state 
which is beyond consciousness, and TANTRA means the method: the method of going 
beyond consciousness. This is the supreme doctrine — without any doctrine. 

We are unconscious, so all the religious teachings are concerned with how to go beyond 
unconsciousness, how to be conscious. For example, Krishnamurti, Zen, they are all 
concerned with how to create more consciousness, because we are unconscious. So how 
to be more aware, alert? From unconsciousness, how to move toward consciousness? 

But tantra says that this is a duality — unconscious and conscious. If you move from 
unconsciousness to consciousness, you are moving from one duality to another. Move 
beyond both! Unless you move beyond both you can never reach the ultimate, so be 
neither the unconscious nor the conscious; just go beyond, just be. Be neither the 
conscious nor the unconscious — just BE! This is going beyond yoga, going beyond Zen, 
going beyond all teachings. 

’Vigyana’ means consciousness, and ’bhairava' is a specific term, a tantra term for one 
who has gone beyond. That is why Shiva is known as Bhairava and Devi is known as 
Bhairavi — those who have gone beyond the dualities. 


In our experience only love can give a glimpse. That is why love becomes the very basic 
device to impart tantric wisdom. In our experience we can say that only love is something 
which goes beyond duality. When two persons are in love, the deeper they move into it, 
the less and less they are two, the more and more they become one. And a point comes 
and a peak is reached when only apparently they are two. Inwardly they are one; the 
duality is transcended. 

Only in this sense does Jesus' saying that "God is love" become meaningful; otherwise 
not. In our experience love is nearest to God. It is not that God is loving, as Christians go 
on interpreting — that God has a fatherly love for you. Nonsense! "God is love" is a 
tantric statement. It means love is the only reality in our experience which reaches 
nearest to God, to the divine. Why? Because in love oneness is felt. Bodies remain two, 
but something beyond the bodies merges and becomes one. 

That is why there is so much hankering after sex. The real hankering is after oneness, but 
that oneness is not sexual. In sex two bodies have only a deceptive feeling of becoming 
one, but they are not one, they are only joined together. But for a single moment two 
bodies forget themselves in each other, and a certain physical oneness is felt. This 
hankering is not bad, but to stop at it is dangerous. This hankering shows a deeper urge to 



feel oneness. 


In love, on a higher plane, the inner one moves, merges into the other, and there is a 
feeling of oneness. Duality dissolves. Only in this non-dual love can we have a glimpse 
of what is the state of a Bhairava. We may say that the state of a Bhairava is absolute 
love with no coming back, from the peak of love there is no falling back. It is remaining 
on the peak. 

We have made Shiva's abode on Kailash. That is simply symbolic: it is the highest peak, 
the holiest peak. We have made it Shiva's abode. We can go there but we will have to 
come down, it cannot be our abode. We can go on a pilgrimage. It is a TEERTHYATRA 
— a pilgrimage, a journey. We can touch for a single moment the highest peak; then we 
will have to come back. 

In love this holy pilgrimage happens, but not for all because almost no one moves beyond 
sex. So we go on living in the valley, the dark valley. Sometimes someone moves to the 
peak of love, but then he falls back because it is so dizzying. It is so high and you are so 
low,, and it is so difficult to live there. Those who have loved, they know how difficult it 
is to be constantly in love. One has to come back again and again. It is Shiva's abode. He 
lives there; it is his home. 

A Bhairava lives in love; that is his abode. When I say that is his abode, I mean now he is 
not even aware of love — because if you live on Kailash you will not be aware that this is 
Kailash, this is a peak. 

The peak becomes a plain. Shiva is not aware of love. We are aware of love because we 
live in non-love. And because of the contrast we feel love. Shiva IS love. The state of 
Bhairava means that one has become love, not loving; one has become LOVE, one lives 
on the peak. The peak has become his abode. 

How to make this highest peak possible: beyond duality, beyond unconsciousness, 
beyond consciousness, beyond the body and beyond the soul, beyond the world and 
beyond the so-called MOKSHA — liberation? How to reach this peak? The technique is 
tantra. But tantra is pure technique, so it is going to be difficult to understand. First let us 
understand the questions, what Devi is asking. 

OH SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? Why this question? You can also ask this 
question, but it will not carry the same meaning. So try to understand why Devi asks, 
WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? Devi is in deep love. When you are in deep love, for the 
first time you encounter the inner reality. Then Shiva is not the fonn, then Shiva is not 
the body. When you are in love, the body of the beloved falls away, disappears. The fonn 
is no more and the formless is revealed. You are facing an abyss. That is why we are so 
afraid of love. We can face a body, we can face a face, we can face a fonn, but we are 
afraid of facing an abyss. 

If you love someone, if you really love, his body is bound to disappear. 

In some moments of climax, of peak, the form will dissolve, and through the beloved you 
will enter the formless. That is why we are afraid — it is falling into a bottomless abyss. 

So this question is not just a simple curiosity: OH SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? 
Devi must have fallen in love with the form. Things start that way. She must have loved 
this man as a man, and now when the love has come of age, when the love has flowered, 



this man has disappeared. He has become formless. Now he is to be found nowhere. OH 
SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? It is a question asked in a very intense love 
moment. And when questions are raised, they become different according to the mind in 
which they are asked. 

So create the situation, the milieu of the question in your mind. Devi must be at a loss — 
Shiva has disappeared. When love reaches its peak the lover disappears. Why does this 
happen? This happens because really, everyone is fonnless. You are not a body. You 
move as a body, you live as a body, but you are not a body. When we see someone from 
the outside, he is a body. Love penetrates within. Then we are not seeing the person from 
the outside. Love can see a person as the person can see himself from within. Then the 
form disappears. 

A Zen monk, Rinzai, attained his enlightenment, and the first thing he asked was, "Where 
is my body? Where has my body gone?" And he began to search. 

He called his disciples and said, "Go and find out where my body is. I have lost my 
body." 

He had entered the formless. You are also a fonnless existence, but you know yourself 
not directly, but from others' eyes. You know through the mirror. Sometime, while 
looking in the minor, close your eyes and then think, meditate: if there was no minor, 
how could you have known your face? If there was no mirror, there would have been no 
face. You do not have a face; mirrors give you faces. Think of a world where there are no 
mirrors. You are alone — no mirror at all, not even others' eyes working as mirrors. You 
are alone on a lonely island; nothing can mirror you. Then will you have any face? Or 
will you have any body? You cannot have one. You do not have one at all. We know 
ourselves only through others, and the others can only know the outer form. That is why 
we become identified with it. 

Another Zen mystic, Hui-Hai used to say to his disciples, "When you have lost your head 
meditating, come immediately to me. When you lose your head, come immediately to 
me. When you begin to feel there is no head, do not be afraid; come immediately to me. 
This is the right moment. Now something can be taught to you." With a head, no teaching 
is possible. The head always comes in between. 

Devi asks Shiva, OH SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? - who are you? The form 
has disappeared; hence the question. 

In love you enter the other as himself. It is not you answering. You become one, and for 
the first time you know an abyss — a formless presence. 

That is why for centuries together, centuries and centuries, we were not making any 
sculptures, any pictures of Shiva. We were only making SHIVALINGA — the symbol. 
The Shivalinga is just a formless form. When you love someone, when you enter 
someone, he becomes just a luminous presence. The Shivalinga is just a luminous 
presence, just an aura of light. 

That is why Devi asks, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? 

WHAT IS THIS WONDER-FILLED UNIVERSE? We know the universe, but we never 
know it as wonder-filled. Children know, lovers know. Sometimes poets and madmen 
know. We do not know that the world is wonder-filled. Everything is just repetitive — no 
wonder, no poetry, just flat prose. It doesn’t create a song in you; it doesn’t create a dance 
in you; it doesn't give birth to the poetry inside. The whole universe looks mechanical. 



Children look at it with wonder-filled eyes. When the eyes are wonder-filled, the 
universe is wonder-filled. 

When you are in love, you again become like children. Jesus says, "Only those who are 
like children will enter my kingdom of God." Why? Because if the universe is not a 
wonder, you cannot be religious. The universe can be explained — then your approach is 
scientific. The universe is either known or unknown, but that which is unknown can be 
known any day; it is not unknowable. 

The universe becomes unknowable, a mystery, only when your eyes are wonder-filled. 
Devi says, WHAT IS THIS WONDER-FILLED UNIVERSE? Suddenly there is the 
jump from a personal question to a very impersonal one. She was asking, WHAT IS 
YOUR REALITY? and then suddenly, WHAT IS THIS WONDER-FILLED 
UNIVERSE? 

When fonn disappears, your beloved becomes the universe, the formless, the infinite. 
Suddenly Devi becomes aware that she is not asking a question about Shiva; she is 
asking a question about the whole universe. Now Shiva has become the whole universe. 
Now all the stars are moving in him, and the whole firmament and the whole space is 
surrounded by him. Now he is the great engulfing factor — "the great encompassing." 
Karl Jaspers has defined God as "the great encompassing." 

When you enter into love, into a deep, intimate world of love, the person disappears, the 
form disappears, and the lover becomes just a door to the universe. Your curiosity can be 
a scientific one — then you have to approach through logic. Then you must not think of 
the formless. Then beware of the formless; then remain content with the fonn. Science is 
always concerned with the form. If anything formless is proposed to a scientific mind, he 
will cut it into form — unless it takes a form it is meaningless. First give it a fonn, a 
definite fonn; only then does the inquiry start. 

In love, if there is form then there is no end to it. 

Dissolve the fonn! When things become formless, dizzy, without boundaries, every thing 
entering another, the whole universe becoming a oneness, then only is it a wonder-filled 
universe. 

WHAT CONSTITUTES SEED? Then Devi goes on. From the universe she goes on to 
ask, WHAT CONSTITUTES SEED? This formless, wonder-filled universe, from where 
does it come? From where does it originate? Or does it NOT originate? What is the seed? 

WHO CENTERS THE UNIVERSAL WHEEL? asks Devi. This wheel goes on moving 
and moving — this great change, this constant flux. But who centers this wheel? Where is 
the axis, the center, the unmoving center? 

She doesn’t stop for any answer. She goes on asking as if she is not asking anyone, as if 
talking to herself. 

WHAT IS THIS LIFE BEYOND FORM PERVADING FORMS? 

HOW MAY WE ENTER IT FULLY, ABOVE SPACE AND TIME, NAMES AND 
DESCRIPTION? 

LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED. The emphasis is not on questions but on doubts: 

LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED! This is very significant. If you are asking an 
intellectual question, you are asking for a definite answer so that your problem is solved. 



But Devi says, LET MY DOUBTS BE CLEARED. She is not really asking about 
answers. She is asking for a transformation of her mind, because a doubting mind will 
remain a doubting mind whatsoever answers are given. Note it: a doubting mind will 
remain a doubting mind. 

Answers are irrelevant. If I give you one answer and you have a doubting mind, you will 
doubt it. If I give you another answer, you will doubt that also. You have a doubting 
mind. A doubting mind means you will put a question mark to anything. 

So answers are useless. You ask me, "Who created the world?" and I tell you "A" created 
the world. Then you are bound to ask, "Who created 'A'?" So the real problem is not how 
to answer questions. The real problem is how to change the doubting mind, how to create 
a mind which is not doubting — or, which is trustful. So Devi says, LET MY DOUBTS 
BE CLEARED. 

Two or three things more.... When you ask a question, you may be asking for many 
reasons. One may be just this, that you want a confirmation. You already know the 
answer, you have the answer, you just want it to be confirmed that your answer is right. 
Then your question is false, pseudo; it is not a question. You may be asking a question 
not because you are ready to change yourself, but just as a curiosity. 

The mind goes on questioning. In the mind questions come as leaves come on a tree. That 
is the very nature of the mind — to question. So it goes on questioning. It matters not 
what you are questioning, with anything given to the mind it will create a question. It is a 
machine to grind out, to create questions. So give it anything and it will cut it into pieces 
and create many questions. 

One question answered, and the mind will create many questions from the answer. This 
has been the whole history of philosophy. 

Bertrand Russell remembers that when he was a child he thought that one day, when he 
will be mature enough to understand all philosophy, all questions will be answered. Then 
later, when he was eighty, he said, "Now I can say that my own questions are there 
standing, as they were standing when I was a child. No other questions have come up 
because of these theories of philosophy." So he said, "When I was young I used to say, 
philosophy is an inquiry for ultimate answers. Now I cannot say it. It is an inquiry for 
endless questions." 

So one question creates one answer and many questions. The doubting mind is the 
problem. Devi says, "Do not be concerned with my questions. I have asked so many 
things: What is your reality? What is this wonder-filled universe? What constitutes seed? 
Who centers the universal wheel? What is life beyond fonn? How can we enter it fully 
above time and space? But do not be concerned with my questions. Let my doubts be 
cleared. I ask these questions because they are in my mind. I ask them just to show you 
my mind, but do not pay much attention to them. Really, answers will not fulfill my need. 
My need is... let my doubts be cleared." 

But how can the doubts be cleared? Will any answer do? Is there any answer which will 
clear your doubts? Mind IS the doubt. 

It is not that the mind doubts, mind is the doubt! Unless the mind dissolves, doubts 
cannot be cleared. 

Shiva will answer. His answers are techniques — the oldest, most ancient techniques. But 
you can call them the latest also because nothing can be added to them. They are 



complete — one hundred and twelve techniques. They have taken in all the possibilities, 
all the ways of cleaning the mind, transcending the mind. Not a single method could be 
added to Shiva's one hundred and twelve methods. And this book, VIGYANA 
BHAIRAVA TANTRA, is five thousand years old. Nothing can be added; there is no 
possibility to add anything. It is exhaustive, complete. It is the most ancient and yet the 
latest, yet the newest. Old like old hills — the methods seem eternal — and they are new 
like a dewdrop before the sun, because they are so fresh. 

These one hundred and twelve methods of meditation constitute the whole science of 
transfonning mind. We will enter them one by one. We will try to comprehend first 
intellectually. But use your intellect only as an instrument, not as a master. Use it as an 
instrument to understand something, but do not go on creating barriers with it. When we 
will be talking about these techniques, just put aside your past knowledge, your knowing, 
whatsoever information you have collected. Put them aside — they are just dust gathered 
on the road. 

Encounter these methods with a fresh mind — with alertness, of course, but not with 
argumentation. 

And do not create the fallacy that an argumentative mind is an alert mind. It is not, 
because the moment you move into arguments you have lost the awareness, you have lost 
the alertness. Then you are not here. 

These methods do not belong to any religion. Remember, they are not Hindu, just as the 
theory of relativity is not Jewish because Einstein conceived it. And radio and television 
are not Christian. No one says, "Why are you using electricity? This is Christian, because 
a Christian mind conceived it." Science does not belong to races and religions — and 
tantra is a science. So remember, this is not Hindu at all. These techniques were 
conceived by Hindus, but these techniques are not Hindu. That is why these techniques 
will not mention any religious ritual. No temple is needed. You are quite enough of a 
temple yourself. You are the lab; the whole experiment is to go on within you. No belief 
is needed. 

This is not religion, this is science. No belief is needed. It is not required to believe in the 
Koran or the Vedas or in Buddha or in Mahavira. No, no belief is needed. Only a 
daringness to experiment is enough, courage to experiment is enough; that is the beauty. 
A Mohammedan can practice and he will reach to the deeper meanings of the Koran. A 
Hindu can practice and he will for the first time know what the Vedas are. And a Jain can 
practice and a Buddhist can practice; they need not leave their religion. 

Tantra will fulfill them, wherever they are. Tantra will be helpful, whatsoever their 
chosen path. 

So remember this, tantra is pure science. You may be a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a 
Parsee or whatsoever — tantra doesn't touch your religion at all. Tantra says that religion 
is a social affair. So belong to any religion; it is irrelevant. But you can transform 
yourself, and that transformation needs a scientific methodology. When you are ill, when 
you have fallen ill or you have caught tuberculosis or anything, then whether you are a 
Hindu or a Mohammedan makes no difference. The tuberculosis remains indifferent to 
your Hinduism, to your Mohammedanism, to your beliefs — political, social or religious. 
Tuberculosis has to be treated scientifically. There is no Hindu tuberculosis, no 
Mohammedan tuberculosis. 

You are ignorant, you are in conflict, you are asleep. This is a disease, a spiritual disease. 



This disease has to be treated by the tantra. You are irrelevant, your beliefs are irrelevant. 
It is just a coincidence that you are born somewhere and someone else is bom somewhere 
else. This is just a coincidence. Your religion is a coincidence, so do not cling to it. Use 
some scientific methods to transfonn yourself. 

Tantra is not very well known. And even if it is known, it is very much misunderstood. 
There are reasons for it. The higher and purer a science, the less is the possibility that the 
masses will know of it. 

We have only heard the name of the theory of relativity. It used to be said that only 
twelve persons understood it when Einstein was alive. All over the world only one dozen 
minds could understand it. It was difficult even for Albert Einstein to make it understood 
to someone, to make it understandable, because it moves so high, it goes above your 
head. But it can be understood. A technical, mathematical knowledge is needed; a 
training is needed, and then it can be understood. But tantra is more difficult because no 
training will help. Only transformation can help. 

That is why tantra could never become understood by the masses. And it always happens 
that when you cannot understand a thing, at least you will misunderstand, because then 
you can feel, "Okay, I understand." You cannot simply remain in the vacuum. 

Secondly, when you cannot understand a thing, you begin to abuse it because it insults 
you. You cannot understand it! You? YOU cannot understand it? That is impossible. 
Something must be wrong with the thing itself. One begins to abuse, one begins to talk 
nonsense, and then he feels, "Now it is okay." 

So tantra was not understood; tantra was misunderstood. It was so deep and so high that 
this was natural. Secondly, because tantra moves beyond duality, the very standpoint is 
amoral. Please understand this word: 'moral', 'immoral', 'amoral'. We understand morality, 
we understand immorality, but it becomes difficult if something is amoral — beyond both. 


Tantra is amoral. Look at it in this way.... A medicine is amoral; it is neither moral nor 
immoral. If you give it to a thief it will help; if you give it to a saint it will help. It will 
make no differentiation between a thief and a saint. The medicine cannot say, "This is a 
thief so I am going to kill him, and this is a saint so I am going to help him." A medicine 
is a scientific thing. Your being a thief or being a saint is irrelevant. 

Tantra is amoral. Tantra says, no morality is needed — no particular morality is needed. 
On the contrary, you are immoral because you have a very disturbed mind. So tantra 
cannot make a precondition, that first you become moral and then you can practice tantra. 
Tantra says, this is absurd. 

Someone is ill, feverish, and the doctor comes and says, "First bring down your fever; 
first be quite healthy. Only then can I give you the medicine." This is what is happening. 
One thief comes to a saint and he says, "I am a thief. Tell me how to meditate." The saint 
says, "First leave your profession. How can you meditate if you remain a thief?" 

One alcoholic comes and he says, "I am an alcoholic. How can I meditate?" The saint 
says, "The first condition is, leave alcohol, only then can you meditate." The conditions 
become suicidal. The man is alcoholic or a thief or immoral because he has a disturbed 
mind, an ill mind. 


These are the effects, the consequences of the diseased mind, and he is told, "First be 
well and then you can meditate." But then who needs meditation? Meditation is 



medicinal. It is a medicine. 

Tantra is amoral. It doesn’t ask you who you are. Your being a man is enough. Wherever 
you are, whatsoever you are, you are accepted. 

Choose a technique which fits you, put your total energy into it, and you will not be the 
same again. Real, authentic techniques always will be like that. If I make preconditions, it 
shows I have a pseudo technique — I say, "First do this and first do not do that, and 
then..." And those are impossible conditions because a thief can change his objects, but 
be cannot become a non-thief. 

A greedy man can change the objects of his greed, but he cannot become non-greedy. 

You can force him or he can force upon himself non-greed, but it is also only because of 
a certain greed. If heaven is promised he may even try to be non-greedy. But this is greed 
par excellence. Heaven, MOKSHA — liberation; SATCHITANANDA — existence, 
consciousness, bliss, they will be the objects of his greed. 

Tantra says, you cannot change man unless you give him authentic techniques with 
which to change. Just by preaching nothing is changed. And you can see this all over the 
world. Whatsoever tantra says is written all over the world — so much preaching, so 
much moralizing, so many priests, preachers. 

The whole world is filled with them, yet everything is so ugly and so immoral. 

Why is this happening? The same will be the case if you give your hospitals to preachers. 
They will go there and they will start preaching. And they will make every ill man feel, 
"You are guilty! You have created this disease; now change this disease." If preachers are 
given hospitals, what will be the condition of hospitals? The same as the condition of the 
whole world. 

Preachers go on preaching. They go on telling people, "Don't be angry," without giving 
any technique. And we have heard this teaching for so long that we never even raise the 
question: "What are you saying? I am angry and you simply say, 'Don't be angry.' How is 
this possible? When I am angry it means 'I' am anger, and you just tell me, 'Don’t be 
angry.’ So I can only suppress myself." 

But that will create more anger. That will create guilt — because if I try to change and 
cannot change myself, that creates inferiority. It gives me a feeling of guilt, that I am 
incapable, I cannot win over my anger. No one can win! You need certain weapons, you 
need certain techniques, because your anger is just an indication of a disturbed mind. 
Change the disturbed mind and the indication will change. Anger is just showing what is 
within. Change the within and the without will change. 

So tantra is not concerned with your so-called morality. 

Really, to emphasize morality is mean, degrading; it is inhuman. If someone comes to me 
and I say, "Leave anger first, leave sex first, leave this and that," then I am inhuman. 

What I am saying is impossible. And that impossibility will make that man feel inwardly 
mean. He will begin to feel inferior; he will be degraded inside in his own eyes. If he tries 
the impossible, he is going to be a failure. And when he is a failure he will be convinced 
that he is a sinner. 

The preachers have convinced the whole world that "You are sinners." This is good for 
them, because unless you are convinced, their profession cannot continue. You must be 
sinners: only then can churches, temples and mosques continue to prosper. Your being in 
sin is their success. Your guilt is the base of all the highest churches. The more guilty you 
are, the more churches will go on rising higher and higher. They are built on your guilt, 



on your sin, on your inferiority complex. Thus, they have created an inferior humanity. 
Tantra is not concerned with your so-called morality, your social formalities, etc. That 
doesn’t mean that tantra says to be immoral — no! Tantra is so much unconcerned with 
your morality that tantra cannot say to be immoral. Tantra gives you scientific techniques 
for changing the mind, and once the mind is different your character will be different. 
Once the basis of your structure changes, your whole edifice will be different. 

Because of this amoral attitude, tantra could not be tolerated by your so-called saints, 
they all went against it — because if tantra succeeds, then all this nonsense which goes on 
in the name of religion will have to stop. 

See this: Christianity fought very much against scientific progress. Why? Only because if 
scientific progress is there in the material world, then the time is not very far off when in 
the psychological and in the spiritual world also science will penetrate. So Christianity 
started fighting scientific progress, because once you know that you can change matter 
through technique, the time is not very far off when you will come to know that you can 
change mind through techniques — because mind is nothing but subtle matter. 

This is tantra's proposition, that mind is nothing but subtle matter; it can be changed. And 
once you have a different mind you have a different world, because you look through the 
mind. The world you are seeing, you are seeing because of a particular mind. Change the 
mind, and when you look there is a different world. And if there is no eind... that is the 
ultimate for tantra, to bring about a state where there is no mind. Then look at the world 
without a mediator. When the mediator is not, you are encountering the real, because now 
no one is between you and the real. Then nothing can be distorted. 

So tantra says that when there is no mind, that is the state of a Bhairava — a no-mind 
state. 

For the farst time you look at the world, at that which is. If you have a mind, you go on 
CREATING a world; you go on imposing, projecting. So first change the mind, then 
change from mind to no-mind. And these one hundred and twelve methods can help each 
and everyone. Any particular method may not be of use to you. That is why Shiva goes 
on relating many methods. Choose any one method which suits you. It is not difficult to 
know which suits you. 

We will try to understand each method and how to choose for yourself one method which 
can change you and your mind. This understanding, this intellectual understanding will 
be a basic necessity, but this is not the end. Whatsoever I talk about here, try it. 

Really, when you try the right method it clicks immediately. So I will go on talking about 
methods here every day. You try them. Just play with them — go home and try. The right 
method, whenever you happen upon it, just clicks. Something explodes in you, and you 
know that "This is the right method for me." But effort is needed, and you may be 
surprised that suddenly one day one method has gripped you. 

So while I am talking here, parallel to it go on playing with these methods. I say playing 
because you should not be too serious. Just play! Something may fit you. If it fits you, 
then be serious, and then go deep into it — intensely, honestly, with all your energy, with 
all your mind. 

But before that just play. 

I have found that while you are playing your mind is more open. While you are serious 
your mind is not so open; it is closed. So just play. Do not be too serious, just play. And 



these methods are simple, you can just play with them. 

Take one method and play with it for at least three days. If it gives you a certain feeling 
of affinity, if it gives you a certain feeling of well-being, if it gives you a certain feeling 
that this is for you, then be serious about it. Then forget the others, do not play with other 
methods. Stick to it — at least for three months. Miracles are possible. The only thing is 
that the technique must be for you. If the technique is not for you, then nothing happens. 
Then you may go on with it for lives together, but nothing will happen. If the method is 
for you then even three minutes are enough. 

So these one hundred and twelve methods can be a miraculous experience for you, or 
they may just be a listening — it depends on you. I will go on describing each method 
from as many angles as possible. If you feel any affinity with it, play with it for three 
days. If you feel that it fits, that something clicks in you, continue it for three months. 
Life is a miracle. If you have not known its mystery, that only shows that you do not 
know the technique for how to approach it. 

Shiva proposes one hundred and twelve methods. 

These are all the methods possible. If nothing clicks and nothing gives you the feeling 
that this is for you, then there is no method left for you — remember this. Then forget 
spirituality and be happy. Then it is not for you. 

But these one hundred and twelve methods are for the whole humanity — for all the ages 
that have passed and for all the ages that have yet to come. In no time has there ever been 
a single man, and there will never be one, who can say, "These one hundred and twelve 
methods are all useless for me." Impossible! This is impossible! 

Every type of mind has been taken into account. Every possible type of mind has been 
given a technique in tantra. There are many techniques for which no man exists yet; they 
are for the future. There are many techniques for which no man exists now; they are for 
the past. But do not be afraid. There are many methods which are for you. 

So we will start this journey from tomorrow. 


THE END. 



Chapter 2: The Path of Yoga and the Path of Tantra 


Many questions are there. 

The first: 

Question 1 

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRADITIONAL YOGA AND TANTRA? 
ARE THEY THE SAME? 

Tantra and yoga are basically different. They reach to the same goal; however, their paths 
are not only different, but contrary also. So this has to be understood very clearly. 

The yoga process is also methodology; yoga is also technique. Yoga is not philosophy, 
just like tantra — yoga depends on action, method, technique. Doing leads to being in 
yoga also, but the process is different. In yoga one has to fight; it is the path of the 
warrior. On the path of tantra one does not have to fight at all. Rather, on the contrary, 
one has to indulge — but with awareness. 

Yoga is suppression with awareness; tantra is indulgence with awareness. Tantra says 
that whatsoever you are, the ultimate is not opposite to it. It is a growth; you can grow to 
be the ultimate. There is no opposition between you and the reality. You are part of it, so 
no struggle, no conflict, no opposition to nature is needed. You have to use nature; you 
have to use whatsoever you are to go beyond. 

In yoga you have to fight with yourself to go beyond. In yoga, the world and MOKSHA, 
liberation — you as you are and you as you can be — are two opposite things. Suppress, 
fight, dissolve that which you are so that you can attain that which you can be. 

Going beyond is a death in yoga. You must die for your real being to be bom. 

In the eyes of tantra, yoga is a deep suicide. You must kill your natural self — your body, 
your instincts, your desires, everything. Tantra says accept yourself as you are. It is a 
deep acceptance. Do not create a gap between you and the real, between the world and 
NIRVANA. Do not create any gap. There is no gap for tantra; no death is needed. For 
your rebirth, no death is needed — rather, a transcendence. For this transcendence, use 
yourself. 

For example, sex is there, the basic energy — the basic energy you are born through, bom 
with. The basic cells of your being and of your body are sexual, so the human mind 
revolves around sex. For yoga you must fight with this energy. Through fight you create 
a different center in yourself. The more you fight, the more you become integrated in a 
different center. Then sex is not your center. Fighting with sex — of course, consciously 
— will create in you a new center of being, a new emphasis, a new crystallization. Then 
sex will not be your energy. You will create your energy fighting with sex. A different 
energy will come into being and a different center of existence. 

For tantra you have to use the energy of sex. Do not fight with it, transform it. Do not 
think in terms of enmity, be friendly to it. It is your energy. It is not evil, it is not bad. 

Every energy is just natural. It can be used for you, it can be used against you. You can 
make a block of it, a barrier, or you can make it a step. It can be used. Rightly used, it 
becomes friendly; wrongly used, it becomes your enemy. But it is neither. Energy is just 
natural. As ordinary man is using sex, it becomes an enemy, it destroys him; he simply 
dissipates in it. 

Yoga takes the opposite view — opposite to the ordinary mind. The ordinary mind is 



being destroyed by its own desires, so yoga says stop desiring, be desireless. Fight desire 
and create an integration in you which is desireless. 

Tantra says be aware of the desire; do not create any fight. Move in desire with full 
consciousness, and when you move into desire with full consciousness you transcend it. 
You are into it and still you are not in it. You pass through it, but you remain an outsider. 
Yoga appeals much because yoga is just the opposite of the ordinary mind, so the 
ordinary mind can understand the language of yoga. You know how sex is destroying you 
— how it has destroyed you, how you go on revolving around it like a slave, like a 
puppet. You know this by your experience. So when yoga says fight it, you immediately 
understand the language. That is the appeal, the easy appeal of yoga. 

Tantra can not be so easily appealing. It seems difficult: how to move into desire without 
being overwhelmed by it? How to be in the sex act consciously, with full awareness? The 
ordinary mind becomes afraid. 

It seems dangerous. Not that it is dangerous; whatsoever you know about sex creates this 
danger for you. You know yourself, you know how you can deceive yourself. You know 
very well that your mind is cunning. You can move in desire, in sex, in everything, and 
you can deceive yourself that you are moving with full awareness. That is why you feel 
the danger. 

The danger is not in tantra; it is in you. And the appeal of yoga is because of you, 
because of your ordinary mind, your sex-suppressed, sex-starved, sex-indulging mind. 
Because the ordinary mind is not healthy about sex, yoga has an appeal. With a better 
humanity, with a healthy sex — natural, normal — the case would be different. We are not 
nonnal and natural. We are absolutely abnormal, unhealthy, really insane. But because 
everyone is like us, we never feel it. 

Madness is so normal that not to be mad may look abnormal. A Buddha is abnormal, a 
Jesus is abnormal amidst us. They do not belong to us. This "normalcy" is a disease. This 
"normal" mind has created the appeal of yoga. If you take sex naturally — with no 
philosophy around it, with no philosophy for or against — if you take sex as you take your 
hands, your eyes; if it is totally accepted as a natural thing, then tantra will have an 
appeal. And only then can tantra be useful for many. 

But the days of tantra are coming. Sooner or later tantra will explode for the first time in 
the masses, because for the first time the time is ripe — ripe to take sex naturally. 

It is possible that the explosion may come from the West, because Freud, Jung, Reich, 
they have prepared the background. They did not know anything about tantra, but they 
have made the basic ground for tantra to evolve. Western psychology has come to a 
conclusion that the basic human disease is somewhere around sex, the basic insanity of 
man is sex-oriented. 

So unless this sex orientation is dissolved, man cannot be natural, nonnal. Man has gone 
wrong only because of his attitudes about sex. No attitude is needed. Only then are you 
natural. What attitude have you about your eyes? Are they evil or are they divine? Are 
you for your eyes or against them? There is no attitude! That is why your eyes are 
normal. 

Take some attitude — think that eyes are evil. Then seeing will become difficult. Then 
seeing will take the same problematic shape that sex has taken. Then you will want to 
see, you will desire and you will hanker to see. But when you see you will feel guilty. 
Whenever you see you will feel guilty that you have done something wrong, that you 



have sinned. You would like to kill your very instrument of seeing; you would like to 
destroy your eyes. And the more you want to destroy them, the more you will become 
eye centered. Then you will start a very absurd activity. You will want to see more and 
more, and simultaneously you will feel more and more guilty. The same has happened 
with the sex center. 


Tantra says, accept whatsoever you are. This is the basic note — total acceptance. And 
only through total acceptance can you grow. Then use every energy you have. How can 
you use them? Accept them, then find out what these energies are — what is sex, what is 
this phenomenon. We are not acquainted with it. We know many things about sex, taught 
by others. We may have passed through the sex act, but with a guilty mind, with a 
suppressive attitude, in haste, in a hurry. Something has to be done in order to become 
unburdened. The sex act is not a loving act. You are not happy in it, but you cannot leave 
it. The more you try to leave it, the more attractive it becomes. The more you want to 
negate it, the more you feel invited. 

You cannot negate it, but this attitude to negate, to destroy, destroys the very mind, the 
very awareness, the very sensitivity which can understand it. So sex goes on with no 
sensitivity into it. Then you cannot understand it. Only a deep sensitivity can understand 
anything; only a deep feeling, a deep moving into it, can understand anything. You can 
understand sex only if you move in it as a poet moves amidst flowers — only then! If you 
feel guilty about flowers, you may pass through the garden, but you will pass with closed 
eyes. And you will be in a hurry, in a deep, mad haste. Somehow you have to go out of 
the garden. Then how can you be aware? 

So tantra says, accept whatsoever you are. 

You are a great mystery of many multidimensional energies. Accept it, and move with 
every energy with deep sensitivity, with awareness, with love, with understanding. Move 
with it! Then every desire becomes a vehicle to go beyond it. Then every energy becomes 
a help. And then this very world is nirvana, this very body is a temple — a holy temple, a 
holy place. 

Yoga is negation; tantra is affirmation. Yoga thinks in terms of duality — that is the 
reason for the word yoga'. It means to put two things together, to 'yoke' two things 
together. But two things are there; the duality is there. Tantra says there is no duality. If 
there is duality, then you cannot put them together. And howsoever you try they will 
remain two. Howsoever put together they will remain two, and the fight will continue, the 
dualism will remain. 

If the world and the divine are two, then they cannot be put together. If really they are not 
two, if they are only appearing as two, only then can they be one. If your body and your 
soul are two, then they cannot be put together. If you and God are two, then there is no 
possibility of putting them together. They will remain two. 

Tantra says there is no duality; it is only an appearance. So why help appearance to grow 
stronger? Tantra asks, why help this appearance of duality to grow stronger? Dissolve it 
this very moment! Be one! Through acceptance you become one, not through fight. 

Accept the world, accept the body, accept everything that is inherent in it. Do not create a 
different center in yourself, because for tantra that different center is nothing but the ego. 
Do not create an ego. Just be aware of what you are. If you fight, then the ego will be 



there. 

So it is difficult to find a yogi who is not an egoist. And yogis may go on talking about 
egolessness, but they cannot be egoless. The very process they go through creates the 
ego. The fight is the process. If you fight, you are bound to create an ego. And the more 
you fight, the more strengthened the ego will be. And if you win your fight, then you will 
achieve the supreme ego. 

Tantra says, no fight! Then there is no possibility of the ego. If we understand tantra there 
will be many problems, because for us, if there is no fight there is only indulgence. No 
fight means indulgence for us. Then we become afraid. We have indulged for lives 
together and we have reached nowhere. But for tantra indulgence is not "our" indulgence. 
Tantra says indulge, but be aware. 

You are angry... tantra will not say do not be angry. Tantra will say be angry 
wholeheartedly, but be aware. Tantra is not against anger, tantra is only against spiritual 
sleepiness, spiritual unconsciousness. Be aware AND be angry. And this is the secret of 
the method — that if you are aware anger is transformed: it becomes compassion. 

So tantra says anger is not your enemy; it is compassion in seed form. The same anger, 
the same energy, will become compassion. 

If you fight with it, then there will be no possibility for compassion. So if you succeed in 
fighting, in suppression, you will be a dead man. There will be no anger because you 
have suppressed it, but there will be no compassion either because only anger can be 
transfonned into compassion. If you succeed in your suppression — which is impossible 
— then there will be no sex, but no love either, because with sex dead there is no energy 
to grow into love. So you will be without sex, but you will also be without love. And then 
the whole point is missed, because without love there is no divineness, without love there 
is no liberation, and without love there is no freedom. 

Tantra says that these same energies are to be transformed. It can be said in this way: if 
you are against the world, then there is no nirvana — because this world itself is to be 
transfonned into nirvana. Then you are against the basic energies which are the source. 

So tantric alchemy says, do not fight, be friendly with all the energies that are given to 
you. Welcome them. Feel grateful that you have anger, that you have sex, that you have 
greed. Feel grateful because these are the hidden sources, and they can be transfonned, 
they can be opened. And when sex is transformed it becomes love. 

The poison is lost, the ugliness is lost. 

The seed is ugly, but when it becomes alive it sprouts and flowers. Then there is beauty. 
Do not throw away the seed, because then you are also throwing the flowers in it. They 
are not there yet, not yet manifest so that you can see them. They are unmanifest, but they 
are there. Use this seed so that you can attain to flowers. So first let there be acceptance, 
a sensitive understanding and awareness. Then indulgence is allowed. 

One thing more which is really very strange, but one of the deepest discoveries of tantra, 
and that is: whatsoever you take as your enemies — greed, anger, hate, sex, whatsoever — 
your attitude that they are enemies makes them your enemies. Take them as divine gifts 
and approach them with a very grateful heart. For example, tantra has developed many 
techniques for the transformation of sexual energy. Approach the sex act as if you are 
approaching the temple of the divine. Approach the sex act as if it is prayer, as if it is 
meditation. Feel the holiness of it. 

That is why in Khajuraho, in Puri, in Konark, every temple has MAITHUN, intercourse 



sculptures. The sex act on the walls of temples seems illogical, particularly for 
Christianity, for Islam, for Jainism. It seems inconceivable, contradictory. How is the 
temple connected with maithun pictures? On the outer walls of the Khajuraho temples, 
every conceivable type of sex act is pictured in stone. 

Why? In a temple it doesn’t have any place, in our minds at least. Christianity cannot 
conceive of a church wall with Khajuraho pictures. Impossible! 

Modern Hindus also feel guilty because the minds of modern Hindus are created by 
Christianity. They are "Hindu-Christians" — and they are worse, because to be a Christian 
is good, but to be a Hindu-Christian is just weird. They feel guilty. One Hindu leader, 
Purshottamdas Tandon, even proposed that these temples should be destroyed, that they 
do not belong to us. Really, it looks like they do not belong to us because tantra has not 
been in our hearts for a long time, for centuries. It has not been the main current. Yoga 
has been the main current, and for yoga Khajuraho is inconceivable — it must be 
destroyed. 

Tantra says, approach the sex act as if you are entering a holy temple. That is why they 
have pictured the sex act on their holy temples. They have said, approach sex as if you 
are entering a holy temple. Thus, when you enter a holy temple sex must be there in order 
that the two become conjoined in your mind, associated. Then you can feel that the world 
and the divine are not two fighting elements, but one. They are not contradictory, they are 
just polar opposites helping each other. And they can exist only because of this polarity. 

If this polarity is lost, the whole world is lost. So see the deep oneness running through 
everything. 

Do not see only the polar opposites, see the inner running current which makes them one. 
For tantra everything is holy. Remember this, for tantra EVERYTHING is holy; nothing 
is unholy. Look at it this way: for an irreligious person, everything is unholy; for so- 
called religious persons something is holy, something is unholy. 

For tantra, everything is holy. 

One Christian missionary was with me a few days ago and he said, "God created the 
world." So I asked him, "Who created sin?" He said, "The devil." 

Then I asked him, "Who created the devil?" Then he was at a loss. He said, "Of course, 
God created the devil." 

The devil creates sin and God creates the devil. Then who is the real sinner — the devil or 
God? But the dualist conception always leads to such absurdities. For tantra God and the 
devil are not two. Really, for tantra there is nothing that can be called "devil", everything 
is divine, everything is holy. And this seems to be the right standpoint, the deepest. If 
anything is unholy in this world, from where does it come and how can it be? 

So only two alternatives are there. First, the alternative of the atheist who says everything 
is unholy. This attitude is okay. He is also a non-dualist; he sees no holiness in the world. 
Then there is the tantric's alternative — he says everything is holy. He is also a non- 
dualist. But between these two are the so-called religious persons, who are not really 
religious. 

They are neither religious nor irreligious because they are always in a conflict. Their 
whole theology is just to make ends meet, and those ends cannot meet. 

If a single cell, a single atom in this world is unholy, then the whole world becomes 
unholy, because how can that single atom exist in a holy world? How can it be? It is 



supported by everything; to be, it has to be supported by everything. And if the unholy 
element is supported by all the holy elements, then what is the difference between them? 
So either the world is holy totally, unconditionally, or it is unholy; there is no middle 
path. 

Tantra says everything is holy, that is why we cannot understand it. It is the deepest non- 
dual standpoint — if we can call it a standpoint. It is not, because any standpoint is bound 
to be dual. It is not against anything, so it is not any standpoint. It is a felt unity, a lived 
unity. 

These are two paths, yoga and tantra. Tantra could not be so appealing because of our 
crippled minds. But whenever there is someone who is healthy inside, not a chaos, tantra 
has a beauty. Only he can understand what tantra is. Yoga has appeal, an easy appeal, 
because of our disturbed minds. 

Remember, it is ultimately your mind which makes anything attractive or unattractive. It 
is you who is the deciding factor. 

These approaches are different. I am not saying that one cannot reach through yoga. 

One can reach through yoga also, but not through the yoga which is prevalent. The yoga 
which is prevalent is not really yoga, but the interpretation of your diseased minds. Yoga 
can be authentically an approach toward the ultimate, but that too is only possible when 
your mind is healthy, when your mind is not diseased and ill. Then yoga takes a different 
shape. 

For example, Mahavir was on the path of yoga, but he was not really suppressing sex. He 
had known it, he had lived it, he was deeply acquainted with it. But it became useless to 
him, so it dropped. Buddha was on the path of yoga, but he had lived through the world, 
he was deeply acquainted with it. He was not fighting. 

Once you kn ow something you become free from it. It simply drops like dead leaves 
dropping from a tree. It is not renunciation; there is no fight involved at all. Look at 
Buddha's face — it doesn't look like the face of a fighter. He has not been fighting. He is 
so relaxed; his face is the very symbol of relaxation... no fight. 

Look at your yogis. The fight is apparent on their faces. Deep down much turmoil is there 
— right now they are sitting on volcanos. You can look in their eyes, in their faces, and 
you will feel it. Deep down somewhere they have suppressed all their diseases; they have 
not gone beyond. 

In a healthy world, where everyone is living his life authentically, individually, not 
imitating others but living his own life in his own way, both are possible. 

He may learn the deep sensitivity which transcends desires; he may come to a point 
where all desires become futile and drop. Yoga can also lead to this, but to me yoga will 
lead to it in the same world where tantra can lead to it — remember this. We need a 
healthy mind, a natural man. In that world where a natural man is, tantra, and yoga also, 
will lead to transcendence of desires. 

In our so-called ill society, neither yoga nor tantra can do this, because if we choose yoga 
we do not choose it because desires have become useless — no! They are still meaningful; 
they are not dropping by themselves. We have to force them. If we choose yoga, we 
choose it as a technique of suppression. If we choose tantra, we choose tantra as a 
cunningness, as a deep deception — an excuse to indulge. 

So with an unhealthy mind neither yoga nor tantra can work. They will both lead to 
deceptions. A healthy mind, particularly a sexually healthy mind, is needed to start with. 



Then it is not very difficult to choose your path. You can choose yoga, you can choose 
tantra. 

There are two types of persons basically, male and female. I do not mean biologically, 
but psychologically. For those who are psychologically basically male — aggressive, 
violent, extrovert — yoga is their path. For those who are basically feminine, receptive, 
passive, non-violent, tantra is their path. So you may note it: for tantra, Mother Kali, 

Tara, and so many DEVIS, BHAIRAVIS — female deities — are very significant. 

In yoga you will never hear mentioned any name of a feminine deity. Tantra has feminine 
deities; yoga has male gods. Yoga is outgoing energy; tantra is energy moving inwards. 

So you can say in modern psychological terms that yoga is extrovert and tantra is 
introvert. So it depends on the personality. If you have an introverted personality, then 
fight is not for you. If you have an extroverted personality, then fight is for you. 

But we are just confused, we are just in a mess; that is why nothing helps. On the 
contrary, everything disturbs. Yoga will disturb you, tantra will disturb you. Every 
medicine is going to create a new illness for you because the chooser is ill, diseased; so 
the result of his choice will be illness. So I do not mean that through yoga you cannot 
reach. I emphasize tantra only because we are going to try to understand what tantra is. 
Another question: 

Question 2 

ON THE PATH OF SURRENDER, HOW DOES THE SEEKER COME TO THE 
RIGHT TECHNIQUE OUT OF ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE METHODS? 

On the path of will there are methods — these one hundred and twelve methods. On the 
path of surrender, surrender itself is the method, there are no other methods — remember 
this. All methods are non-surrendering, because a method means depending on yourself. 
You can do something; the technique is there, so you do it. On the path of surrender, you 
are no more, so you cannot do anything. 

You have done the ultimate, the last: you have surrendered. On the path of surrender, 
surrender is the only method. 

All these one hundred and twelve methods require a certain will; they require something 
to be done by you. You manipulate your energy, you balance your energy, you create a 
center in your chaos. You do something. Your effort is significant, basic, required. On the 
path of surrender only one thing is required — you surrender. We will go deep into these 
one hundred and twelve methods, so it is good to say something about surrender because 
it has no method. 

In these one hundred and twelve methods there will be nothing about surrender. Why has 
Shiva not said anything about surrender? Because nothing can be said. Bhairavi herself, 
Devi herself, has reached Shiva not through any method. She has simply surrendered. So 
this must be noted. She is asking these questions not for herself, these questions are asked 
for the whole humanity. She has attained Shiva. She is already in his lap; she is already 
embraced by him. She has become one with him, but still she is asking. 

So remember one thing, she is not asking for herself; there is no need. She is asking for 
the whole humanity. But if she has attained, why is she asking Shiva? Can she herself not 
speak to the humanity? She has come through the path of surrender, so she doesn't know 
anything about method. 


She herself has come through love; love is enough unto itself. Love doesn’t need anything 



more. She has come through love, so she doesn’t know anything about any methods, 
techniques. That is why she is asking. 

So Shiva relates one hundred and twelve methods. He also will not talk about surrender 
because surrender is not a method really. You surrender only when every method has 
become futile, when you cannot reach by any method. You have tried your best. You 
have knocked on every door and no door opens, and you have passed through all the 
routes and no route reaches. You have done whatsoever you can do, and now you feel 
helpless. In that total helplessness surrender happens. So on the path of surrender there is 
no method. 

But what is surrender and how does it work? And if surrender works, then what is the 
need of one hundred and twelve methods? Then why go into them unnecessarily? — the 
mind will ask. Then okay! If surrender works, it is better to surrender. Why go on 
hankering after methods? And who knows whether a particular method will suit you or 
not? And it may take lives to find out. So it is good to surrender, but it is difficult. It is 
the most difficult thing in the world. 

Methods are not difficult. They are easy; you can train yourself. But for surrender you 
cannot train yourself... no training! You cannot ask how to surrender; the very question is 
absurd. 

How can you ask how to surrender? Can you ask how to love? 

Either there is love or there is not, but you cannot ask how to love. And if someone tells 
you and teaches you how to love, remember, then you will never be capable of love. 

Once a technique is given to you for love, you will cling to the technique. That is why 
actors cannot love. They know so many techniques, so many methods — and we are all 
actors. Once you know the trick how to love, then love will not flower because you can 
create a facade, a deception. And with the deception you are out of it, not involved. You 
are protected. 

Love is being totally open, vulnerable. It is dangerous. You become insecure. We cannot 
ask how to love, we cannot ask how to surrender. It happens! Love happens, surrender 
happens. Love and surrender are deeply one. But what is it? And if we cannot know how 
to surrender, at least we can know how we are maintaining ourselves from surrendering, 
how we are preventing ourselves from surrendering. That can be known and that is 
helpful. 

How is it that you have not surrendered yet? What is your technique of non-surrendering? 
If you have not fallen in love yet, then the real problem is not how to love. The real 
problem is to dig deep to find out how you have lived without love, what is your trick, 
what is your technique, what is your structure — your defense structure, how you have 
lived without love. 

That can be understood, and that should be understood. 

Lirst thing: we live with the ego, in the ego, centered in the ego. I am without knowing 
who I am. I go on announcing, "I am." This "I-am-ness" is false, because I do not know 
who I am. And unless I know who I am, how can I say "I"? This "I" is a false "I". This 
false "I" is the ego. This is the defense. This protects you from surrendering. 

You cannot surrender, but you can become aware of this defense measure. If you have 
become aware of it, it dissolves. By and by, you are not strengthening it, and one day you 
come to feel, "I am not." The moment you come to feel "I am not," surrender happens. So 
try to find out whether you are. Really, is there any center in you that you can call your 



"I"?. Go deep down within yourself, go on trying to find out where is this "I", where is 
the abode of this ego. 

Rinzai went to his master and he said, "Give me freedom!" The master said, "Bring 
yourself. If you are, I will make you free. But if you are not, then how can I make you 
free? You are already free. And freedom," his master said, "is not your freedom. Really, 
freedom is freedom from 'you'. So go and find out where this 'I' is, where you are, then 
come to me. This is the meditation. Go and meditate." 

So the disciple Rinzai goes and meditates for weeks, months, and then he comes. Then he 
says, "I am not the body. 

Only this much I have found." So the master says, "This much you have become free. Go 
again. Try to find out." Then he tries, meditates, and he finds that "I am not my mind, 
because I can observe my thoughts. So the observer is different from the observed — I am 
not my mind." He comes and says, "I am not my mind." So his master says, "Now you 
are three-fourths liberated. Now go again and find out who you are." 

So he was thinking, "I am not my body. I am not my mind." He had read, studied, he was 
well informed, so he was thinking, "I am not my body, not my mind, so I must be my 
soul, my ATMA." But he meditated, and then he found that there is no atman, no soul, 
because this atma is nothing but your mental information — just doctrines, words, 
philosophies. 

So he came running one day and he said, "Now I am no more!" Then his master said, 

"Am I now to teach you the methods for freedom?" Rinzai said, "I am free because I am 
no more. There is no one to be in bondage. I am just a wide emptiness, a nothingness." 
Only nothingness can be free. If you are something, you will be in bondage. If you are, 
you will be in bondage. Only a void, a vacant space, can be free. Then you cannot bind it. 
Rin z ai came running and said, "I am no more. Nowhere am I to be found." This is 
freedom. And for the first time he touched his master's feet — for the first time! Not 
actually, because he had touched them many times before also. 

But the master said, "For the first time you have touched my feet." 

Rinzai asked, "Why do you say for the first time? I have touched your feet many times." 
The master said, "But you were there, so how could you touch my feet while you were 
already there? While you are there how can you touch my feet?" The "I" can never touch 
anybody's feet. Even though it apparently looks like it touches somebody's feet, it is 
touching its own feet, just in a round-about way. "You have touched my feet for the first 
time," the master said, "because now you are no more. And this is also the last time," the 
master said. "The first and the last." 

Surrender happens when you are not, so YOU cannot surrender. That is why surrender 
cannot be a technique. You cannot surrender — you are the hindrance. When you are not, 
surrender is there. So you and surrender cannot cohabit, there is no coexistence between 
you and surrender. Either you are or surrender is. So find out where you are, who you 
are. This inquiry creates many, many surprising results. 

Raman Maharshi used to say, "Inquire 'Who am I ?’" It was misunderstood. Even his 
nearest disciples have not understood the meaning of it. They think that this is an inquiry 
to find out really "Who am I?" It is not! if you go on inquiring "Who am I?" you are 
bound to come to the conclusion that you are not. This is not really an inquiry to find out 
"Who am I?" Really, this is an inquiry to dissolve. 



I have given many this technique, to inquire within "Who am I?" Then a month or two 
months later, they will come to me and say, "I have still not found 'Who am I?’ The 
question is still the same; there is no answer." 

So I tell them, "Continue. Someday the answer will come." And they hope that the 
answer will come. There is going to be no answer. It is only that the question will 
dissolve. There is not going to be an answer, that "You are this." Only the question will 
dissolve. There will be no one to ask even "Who am I?" And then you know. 

When the "I" is not, the real "I" opens. When the ego is not, you are for the first time 
encountering your being. That being is void. Then you can surrender; then you have 
surrendered. You are surrender now. So there can be no techniques, or only negative 
techniques like this inquiry into "Who am I?" 

How does surrender work? If you surrender, what happens? We will come to understand 
how methods work. We will go deep into methods, and we will come to know how they 
work. They have a scientific basis of working. 

When you surrender you become a valley; when you are an ego you are like a peak. Ego 
means you are above everyone else, you are somebody. The others may recognize you, 
may not recognize you — that is another thing. You recognize that you are above 
everyone. You are like a peak; nothing can enter you. 


When one surrenders, one becomes like a valley. One becomes depth, not height. Then 
the whole existence begins to pour into him from everywhere. He is just a vacuum, just a 
depth, an abyss, bottomless. The whole existence begins to pour from everywhere. You 
can say God runs from everywhere to him, enters him from every pore, fills him totally. 
This surrender, this becoming a valley, an abyss, can be felt in many ways. There are 
minor surrenders; there are major surrenders. Even in minor surrenders you feel it. 
Surrendering to a master is a minor surrender, but you begin to feel it because the master 
begins to flow into you immediately. If you surrender to a master, suddenly you feel his 
energy flowing into you. If you cannot feel energy flowing into you, then know well you 
have not surrendered even in a minor way. 

There are so many stories which have become meaningless for us because we do not 
know how they happened. Mahakashyap came to Buddha, and Buddha just touched his 
head with his hand, and the thing happened. And Mahakashyap began to dance. So 
Ananda asked Buddha, "What has happened to him? And I have been for forty years with 
you! Is he mad? Or is he just fooling others? What has happened to him? And I have 
touched your feet thousands and thousands of times." 

Of course, to Ananda, this Mahakashyap will either look like he is mad or as if he is just 
deceiving. 

He was with Buddha for forty years, but there was a problem. He was his elder brother, 
Buddha’s elder brother; that was the problem. When Ananda came to Buddha forty years 
before, the first thing he said to Buddha was this: "I am your elder brother, and when you 
will initiate me, I will become your disciple. So allow me three things before I become 
your disciple, because then I cannot demand. One, I will always be with you. Give me 
this promise, that you will not say to me, 'Go somewhere else.’ I will follow you. 
"Secondly, I will sleep in the same room where you sleep. You cannot say to me, 'Go 
out.’ I will be with you like your shadow. And thirdly, if I bring anyone at any time, even 



at midnight, you will have to answer him. You cannot say, 'This is not the time.’ And 
give me these three promises while I am still your elder brother, because once I become 
your disciple I will have to follow you. You are still younger than me, so give me these 
promises." 

So Buddha promised, and this became the problem. For forty years Ananda was with 
Buddha, but he could never surrender, because this is not the spirit of surrender. Ananda 
asked many, many times, "When am I going to attain?" Buddha said, "Unless I die, you 
will not attain." And Ananda could attain only when Buddha died. 

What happened to this Mahakashyap suddenly? Is Buddha partial — partial to 
Mahakashyap? He is not! He is flowing, constantly flowing. 

But you have to be a valley, a womb, to receive him. If you are above him, how can you 
receive? That flowing energy cannot come to you, it will miss you. So bow down. Even 
in a minor surrender with a master, energy begins to flow. Suddenly, immediately, you 
become a vehicle of a great force. 

There are thousands and thousands of stories... just by a touch, just by a look, someone 
became enlightened. They do not appear rational to us. How is this possible? This is 
possible! Even a look from the master into your eyes will change your total being, but it 
can change only if your eyes are just vacant, valley-like. If you can absorb the look of the 
master, immediately you will be different. 

So these are minor surrenders that happen before you surrender totally. And these minor 
surrenders prepare you for the total surrender. Once you have known that through 
surrender you receive something unknown, unbelievable, unexpected, never even 
dreamed of, then you are ready for a major surrender. And that is the work of the master 
— to help you in minor surrenders so that you can gather courage for a major surrender, 
for a total surrender. 

One last question: 

Question 3 

WHAT ARE THE EXACT INDICATIONS TO KNOW THAT THE PARTICULAR 
TECHNIQUE ONE IS PRACTISING WILL LEAD TO THE ULTIMATE? 

There are indications. One, you begin to feel a different identity within you. 

You are no more the same. If the technique fits you, immediately you are a different 
person. If you are a husband, you are no more the same husband. If you are a shopkeeper, 
you are never again the same shopkeeper. Whatsoever you are, if the technique fits you, 
you are a different person; that is the first indication. So if you begin to feel strange about 
yourself, know that something is happening to you. If you remain the same and do not 
feel any strangeness, nothing is happening. This is the first indication of whether a 
technique fits you. If it fits, immediately you are transported, transformed into a different 
person. Suddenly this happens: you look at the world in a different way. The eyes are the 
same, but the looker behind them is different. 

Secondly, all that creates tensions, conflicts, starts dropping. It is not that when you have 
practiced the method for years, then your conflicts, anxieties, tensions will drop — no! If 
the method fits you, immediately they start dropping. You can feel an aliveness coming 
to you; you are being unburdened. You will begin to feel, if the technique fits you, that 
gravity has become reversed. Now the earth is not pulling you down. Rather, the sky is 
pulling you up. How do you feel when an airplane takes off? Everything is disturbed. 
Suddenly there is a jerk, and gravity becomes meaningless. Now the earth is not pulling 



you, you are going away from gravity. 


The same jerk happens if a meditative technique fits you. Suddenly you take off. 

Suddenly you feel the earth has become meaningless; there is no gravity. It is not pulling 
you down, you are being pulled up. In religious terminology, this is called "grace". There 
are two forces — gravity and grace. Grace means you are being pulled upwards; gravity 
means you are being pulled downwards. 

That is why in meditation many people suddenly feel they have no weight. That is why 
many people feel an inner levitation. So many have reported this to me when the 
technique fits them: "This is strange! We close our eyes and we feel that we are a little bit 
above the earth — one foot, two feet, even four feet above the earth. When we open our 
eyes we are just on the ground; when we close our eyes we have levitated. So what is 
this? When we open our eyes we are just on the ground! We never levitated." 

The body remains on the ground, but you levitate. This levitation is really a pull from the 
above. If the technique fits you have been pulled, because the working of the technique is 
to make available for you the upward pull. This is what the technique means: to make 
you available for the force which can pull you up. So if it fits, you know — you have 
become weightless. 

Thirdly, whatsoever you will now do, whatsoever, howsoever trivial, will be different. 
You will walk in a different way, you will sit in a different way, you will eat in a 
different way. 

Everything will be different. This difference you will feel everywhere. Sometimes this 
strange experience of being different creates fear. One wants again to go back and be the 
same, because one was so attuned with the old. It was a routine world, even boring, but 
you were efficient in it. 

Now everywhere you will feel a gap. You will feel that your efficiency is lost. You will 
feel that your utility is reduced. You will feel that everywhere you are an outsider. One 
has to pass through this period. You will become attuned again. You have changed, not 
the world, so you will not fit. So remember the third thing: When the technique fits you, 
you will not fit into the world. You will become unfit. Everywhere something is loose, 
some bolt is missing. Everywhere you will feel that there has been an earthquake. And 
everything has remained the same; only you, you, have become different. But you will be 
attuned again on a different plane, on a higher plane. 

The disturbance is felt just like when a child grows and becomes sexually mature. At the 
age of fourteen or fifteen every boy feels that he has become strange. A new force has 
entered — sex. It was not there before, or it was, but it was hidden. Now for the first time 
he has become available for a new kind of force. That is why boys are very awkward; 
girls, boys, when they become sexually mature, they are very awkward. 

They are nowhere. They are no longer children and they are not yet men, so they are in 
between, fitting nowhere. If they play with small children they feel awkward — they have 
become men. If they start making friendships with men they feel awkward — they are still 
children. They fit with no one. 

The same phenomenon happens when a technique fits you. A new energy source 
becomes available that is greater than sex. You are again in a transitory period. Now you 
cannot fit in this world of worldly men. You are not a child, and you cannot yet fit in the 



world of saints; and in between one feels awkward. 

If a technique fits you these three things will come up. You may not have expected that I 
would say these things. You may have expected that I would say you will become more 
silent, more quiet, and I am saying quite the contrary: you will become more disturbed. 
When the technique fits you will become more disturbed, not more silent. Silence will 
come later on. And if silence comes and not disturbance, know well that this is not a 
technique; this is just getting adjusted to the old pattern. 

That is why more people go for a prayer than for meditation because prayer gives you a 
consolation. It fits you, adjusts to you, to your world. Prayer was doing virtually the same 
thing that psychoanalysts are now doing. If you are disturbed they will make you less 
disturbed, adjusted to the pattern, to the society, to the family. 

So by going to a psychoanalyst for one, two or three years you will not get better, but you 
will be more adjusted. Prayer does the same thing, and priests do the same thing — they 
make you more adjusted. 

Your child has died and you are disturbed, and you go to a priest. He says, "Do not be 
disturbed. Only those children die early whom God loves more. He calls them up." You 
feel satisfied. Your child has been "called up." God loves him more. Or the priest says 
something else: "Do not be worried, the soul never dies. Your child is in heaven." 

One woman was here just a few days before. Her husband had died just during the past 
month. She was disturbed. She came to me and she said, "Only assure me that he is 
reborn in a good place and then everything will be okay. Just give me a certainty that he 
has not gone to hell or he has not become an animal, that he is in heaven or he has 
become a god or some such thing. If you can just assure me of this, then everything is 
okay. Then I can bear it; otherwise I am miserable." 

The priest would say, "Okay! Your husband is bom as a god in the seventh heaven, and 
he is very happy. And he is waiting for you." 

These prayers, they make you adjusted to the pattern... you feel better. Meditation is a 
science. It is not going to help you in adjustment, it is going to help you in 
transfonnation. That is why I say these three signs will be there as indications. 

Silence will come, but not as an adjustment. Silence will come as an inner flowering. 
Then silence will not be an adjustment with the society, with the family, the world, the 
business — no! Then silence will be a real harmony with the universe. 

Then a deep harmony flowers between you and the totality, then there is silence — but 
that will come later. First you will get disturbed, first you will become mad. 

If a technique fits, it will make you aware of everything that you are. Your anarchy, your 
mind, your madness, everything will come to light. You are just a dark mess. When a 
technique fits, it is as if suddenly there is light and the whole mess becomes apparent. For 
the first time you will encounter yourself as you are. You would like to put the light off 
and go to sleep again — it is fearful. This is the point where the master becomes helpful. 
He says, "Do not be afraid. This is just the beginning. And do not escape from it." 

At first this light shows you what you are, and if you can go on and on, it transfonns you 
toward what you can be. 

Enough for today. 


THE END. 



Chapter 3: Breath-- a bridge to the universe 


SUTRAS: 

SHIVA REPLIES: 

1. RADIANT ONE, THIS EXPERIENCE MAY DAWN BETWEEN TWO BREATHS. 
AFTER BREATH COMES IN (DOWN) AND JUST BEFORE TURNING UP (OUT) - 
THE BENEFICENCE. 

2. AS BREATH TURNS FROM DOWN TO UP, AND AGAIN AS BREATH CURVES 
FROM UP TO DOWN - THROUGH BOTH THESE TURNS, REALIZE. 

3. OR, WHENEVER IN-BREATH AND OUT-BREATH FUSE, AT THIS INSTANT 
TOUCH THE ENERGY-LESS, ENERGY-FILLED CENTER. 

4. OR, WHEN BREATH IS ALL OUT (UP) AND STOPPED OF ITSELF, OR ALL IN 
(DOWN) AND STOPPED - IN SUCH UNIVERSAL PAUSE, ONE’S SMALL SELF 
VANISHES. THIS IS DIFFICULT ONLY FOR THE IMPURE. 

Truth is always here. It is already the case. It is not something to be achieved in the 
future. YOU are the truth just here and now, so it is not something which is to be created 
or something which is to be devised or something which is to be sought. Understand this 
very clearly; then these techniques will be easy to understand and also to do. 

Mind is a mechanism of desiring. Mind is always in desire, always seeking something, 
asking for something. Always the object is in the future; mind is not concerned with the 
present at all. In this very moment the mind cannot move — there is no space. The mind 
needs the future in order to move. It can move either in the past or in the future. It cannot 
move in the present; there is no space. The truth is in the present, and mind is always in 
the future or in the past, so there is no meeting between mind and truth. 


When the mind is seeking worldly objects it is not so difficult, the problem is not absurd; 
it can be solved. But when the mind starts seeking the truth the very effort becomes 
nonsense, because the truth is here and now and the mind is always then and there. There 
is no meeting. So understand the first thing: you cannot seek truth. You can find it, but 
you cannot seek it. The very seeking is the hindrance. 

The moment you start seeking you have moved away from the present, away from 
yourself, because YOU are always in the present. The seeker is always in the present and 
the seeking is in the future, you are not going to meet whatsoever you are seeking. Lao 
Tzu says, "Seek not; otherwise you will miss. Seek not and find. Don’t seek and find." 

All these techniques of Shiva's are simply turning the mind from the future or the past to 
the present. That which you are seeking is already there, it is the case already. The mind 
has to be turned from seeking to non-seeking. It is difficult. If you think about it 
intellectually it is very difficult. How to turn the mind from seeking to non-seeking? — 
because then the mind makes non-seeking itself the object! Then the mind says, "Don’t 
seek." Then the mind says, "I should not seek." Then the mind says, "Now non-seeking is 
my object. Now I desire the state of desirelessness." The seeking has entered again, the 
desire has come again through the back door. 

That is why there are people who are seeking worldly objects, and there are people who 
think they are seeking non-worldly objects. All objects are worldly because "seeking" is 



the world. 

So you cannot seek anything non-worldly. The moment you seek, it becomes the world. 
If you are seeking God, your God is part of the world. If you are seeking MOKSHA — 
liberation — NIRVANA, your liberation is part of the world, your liberation is not 
something that transcends the world, because seeking is the world, desiring is the world. 
So you cannot desire nirvana, you cannot desire non-desire. If you try to understand 
intellectually, it will become a puzzle. 

Shiva says nothing about it, he immediately proceeds to give techniques. They are non- 
intellectual. He doesn’t say to Devi, "The truth is here. Don't seek it and you will find it." 
He immediately gives techniques. Those techniques are non-intellectual. Do them, and 
the mind turns. The turning is just a consequence, just a by-product — not an object. The 
turning is just a by-product. 

If you do a technique, your mind will turn from its journey into the future or the past. 
Suddenly you will find yourself in the present. That is why Buddha has given techniques, 
Lao Tzu has given techniques, Krishna has given techniques. But they always introduce 
their techniques with intellectual concepts. Only Shiva is different. 

He immediately gives techniques, and no intellectual understanding, no intellectual 
introduction, because he knows that the mind is tricky, the most cunning thing possible. 

It can turn anything into a problem. Non-seeking will become the problem. 

There are people who come to me who ask how not to desire. They are desiring non- 
desire. Somebody has told them, or they have read somewhere, or they have heard 
spiritual gossip, that if you do not desire you will reach bliss, if you do not desire you 
will be free, if you do not desire there will be no suffering. Now their minds hanker to 
attain that state where there is no suffering, so they ask how not to desire. Their minds 
are playing tricks. They are still desiring, it is only that now the object has changed. They 
were desiring money, they were desiring fame, they were desiring prestige, they were 
desiring power. Now they are desiring non-desire. Only the object has changed, and they 
remain the same and their desiring remains the same. But now the desire has become 
more deceptive. 

Because of this, Shiva proceeds immediately with no introduction whatsoever. He 
immediately starts talking about techniques. Those techniques, if followed, suddenly turn 
your mind: it comes to the present. And when the mind comes to the present it stops, it is 
no more. You cannot be a mind in the present, that is impossible. Just now, if you are 
here and now, how can you be a mind? Thoughts cease because they cannot move. 

The present has no space in which to move; you cannot think. If you are in this very 
moment, how can you move? Mind stops, you attain to no-mind. 

So the real thing is how to be here and now. You can try, but effort may prove futile — 
because if you make it a point to be in the present, then this point has moved into the 
future. When you ask how to be in the present, again you are asking about the future. 

This moment is passing in the inquiry, "How to be present? How to be here and now?" 
This present moment is passing in the inquiry, and your mind will begin to weave and 
create dreams in the future: some day you will be in a state of mind where there is no 
movement, no motive, no seeking, and then there will be bliss — so how to be in the 
present? 

Shiva doesn’t say anything about it, he simply gives a technique. You do it, and suddenly 
you find you are here and now. And your being here and now is the truth, and your being 



here and now is the freedom, and your being here and now is the nirvana. 

The first nine techniques are concerned with breathing. So let us understand something 
about breathing, and then we will proceed to the techniques. We are breathing 
continuously from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Everything changes 
between these two points. Everything changes, nothing remains the same, only breathing 
is a constant thing between birth and death. 


The child will become a youth; the youth will become old. He will be diseased, his body 
will become ugly, ill, everything will change. He will be happy, unhappy, in suffering; 
everything will go on changing. But whatsoever happens between these two points, one 
must breathe. Whether happy or unhappy, young or old, successful or unsuccessful — 
whatsoever you are, it is irrelevant — one thing is certain: between these two points of 
birth and death you must breathe. 

Breathing will be a continuous flow; no gap is possible. If even for a single moment you 
forget to breathe, you will be no more. That is why YOU are not required to breathe, 
because then it would be difficult. Someone might forget to breathe for a single moment, 
and then nothing could be done. So, really, YOU are not breathing, because YOU are not 
needed. You are fast asleep, and breathing goes on; you are unconscious, and breathing 
goes on; you are in a deep coma, and breathing goes on. YOU are not required; breathing 
is something which goes on in spite of you. 

It is one of the constant factors in your personality — that is the first thing. It is something 
which is very essential and basic to life — that is the second thing. You cannot be alive 
without breath. So breath and life have become synonymous. Breathing is the mechanism 
of life, and life is deeply related with breathing. That is why in India we call it PRANA. 

We have given one word for both — PRANA means the vitality, the aliveness. Your life 
is your breath. 

Thirdly, your breath is a bridge between you and your body. Constantly, breath is 
bridging you to your body, connecting you, relating you to your body. Not only is the 
breath a bridge to your body, it is also a bridge between you and the universe. The body 
is just the universe which has come to you, which is nearer to you. 

Your body is part of the universe. Everything in the body is part of the universe — every 
particle, every cell. It is the nearest approach to the universe. Breath is the bridge. If the 
bridge is broken, you are no more in the body. If the bridge is broken, you are no more in 
the universe. You move into some unknown dimension; then you cannot be found in 
space and time. So, thirdly, breath is also the bridge between you, and space and time. 
Breath, therefore, becomes very significant — the most significant thing. So the first nine 
techniques are concerned with breath. If you can do something with the breath, you will 
suddenly turn to the present. If you can do something with breath, you will attain to the 
source of life. If you can do something with breath, you can transcend time and space. If 
you can do something with breath, you will be in the world and also beyond it. 

Breath has two points. One is where it touches the body and the universe, and another is 
where it touches you and that which transcends the universe. 

We know only one part of the breath. When it moves into the universe, into the body, we 
know it. But it is always moving from the body to the "no-body," from the "no-body" to 
the body. We do not know the other point. If you become aware of the other point, the 



other part of the bridge, the other pole of the bridge, suddenly you will be transformed, 
transplanted into a different dimension. 

But remember, what Shiva is going to say is not yoga, it is tantra. Yoga also works on 
breath, but the work of yoga and tantra is basically different. Yoga tries to systematize 
breathing. If you systematize your breathing your health will improve. If you systematize 
your breathing, if you know the secrets of breathing, your life will become longer; you 
will be more healthy and you will live longer. You will be more strong, more filled with 
energy, more vital, alive, young, fresh. 

But tantra is not concerned with that. Tantra is concerned not with any systematization of 
breath, but with using breath just as a technique to turn inward. One has not to practice a 
particular style of breathing, a particular system of breathing or a particular rhythm of 
breathing — no! One has to take breathing as it is. One has just to become aware of 
certain points in the breathing. 

There are certain points, but we are not aware of them. We have been breathing and we 
will go on breathing — we are born breathing and we will die breathing — but we are not 
aware of certain points. 

And this is strange. Man is searching, probing deep into space. Man is going to the moon; 
man is trying to reach farther, from earth into space, and man has not yet learned the 
nearest part of his life. There are certain points in breathing which you have never 
observed, and those points are the doors — the nearest doors to you from where you can 
enter into a different world, into a different being, into a different consciousness. But 
they are very subtle. 

To observe a moon is not very difficult. Even to reach the moon is not very difficult; it is 
a gross journey. You need mechanization, you need technology, you need accumulated 
information, and then you can reach it. Breathing is the nearest thing to you, and the 
nearer a thing is, the more difficult it is to perceive it. The nearer it is, the more difficult; 
the more obvious it is, the more difficult. It is so near to you that again there is no space 
between you and your breathing. Or, there is such a small space that you will need a very 
minute observation, only then will you become aware of certain points. These points are 
the basis of these techniques. 

So now I will take each technique. 

SHIVA REPLIES: 

RADIANT ONE, THIS EXPERIENCE MAY DAWN BETWEEN TWO BREATHS. 
AFTER BREATH COMES IN (DOWN) AND JUST BEFORE TURNING UP (OUT) - 
THE BENEFICENCE. 

That is the technique: 

RADIANT ONE, THIS EXPERIENCE MAY DAWN BETWEEN TWO BREATHS. 


After breath comes in — that is, down — and just before turning out — that is, going up — 
THE BENEFICENCE. Be aware between these two points, and the happening. When 
your breath comes in, observe. For a single moment, or a thousandth part of a moment, 
there is no breathing — before it turns up, before it turns outward. One breath comes in; 
then there is a certain point and breathing stops. Then the breathing goes out. When the 
breath goes out, then again for a single moment, or a part of a moment, breathing stops. 
Then breathing comes in. 

Before the breath is turning in or turning out, there is a moment when you are not 



breathing. In that moment the happening is possible, because when you are not breathing 
you are not in the world. Understand this: when you are not breathing you are dead; you 
ARE still, but dead. But the moment is of such a short duration that you never observe it. 
For tantra, each outgoing breath is a death and each new breath is a rebirth. Breath 
coming in is rebirth; breath going out is death. The outgoing breath is synonymous with 
death; the incoming breath is synonymous with life. So with each breath you are dying 
and being reborn. The gap between the two is of a very short duration, but keen, sincere 
observation and attention will make you feel the gap. If you can feel the gap, Shiva says, 
THE BENEFICENCE. Then nothing else is needed. 

You are blessed, you have known; the thing has happened. 

You are not to train the breath. Leave it just as it is. Why such a simple technique? It 
looks so simple. Such a simple technique to know the truth? To know the truth means to 
know that which is neither born nor dies, to know that eternal element which is always. 
You can know the breath going out, you can know the breath coming in, but you never 
know the gap between the two. 

Try it. Suddenly you will get the point — and you can get it; it is already there. Nothing is 
to be added to you or to your structure, it is already there. Everything is already there 
except a certain awareness. So how to do this? First, become aware of the breath coming 
in. Watch it. Forget everything, just watch breath coming in — the very passage. 

When the breath touches your nostrils, feel it there. Then let the breath move in. Move 
with the breath fully consciously. When you are going down, down, down with the 
breath, do not miss the breath. Do not go ahead and do not follow behind, just go with it. 
Remember this: do not go ahead, do not follow it like a shadow; be simultaneous with it. 
Breath and consciousness should become one. The breath goes in — you go in. Only then 
will it be possible to get the point which is between two breaths. It will not be easy. Move 
in with the breath, then move out with the breath: in-out, in-out. 


Buddha tried particularly to use this method, so this method has become a Buddhist 
method. In Buddhist terminology it is known as Anapanasati Yoga. And Buddha's 
enlightenment was based on this technique — only this. 

All the religions of the world, all the seers of the world, have reached through some 
technique or other, and all those techniques will be in these one hundred and twelve 
techniques. This first one is a Buddhist technique. It has become known in the world as a 
Buddhist technique because Buddha attained his enlightenment through this technique. 
Buddha said, "Be aware of your breath as it is coming in, going out — coming in, going 
out." He never mentions the gap because there is no need. Buddha thought and felt that if 
you become concerned with the gap, the gap between two breaths, that concern may 
disturb your awareness. So he simply said, "Be aware. When the breath is going in move 
with it, and when the breath is going out move with it. Do simply this: going in, going 
out, with the breath." He never says anything about the latter part of the technique. 

The reason is that Buddha was talking with very ordinary men, and even that might 
create a desire to attain the interval. That desire to attain the interval will become a 
barrier to awareness, because if you are desiring to get to the interval you will move 
ahead. Breath will be coming in, and you will move ahead because you are interested in 
the gap which is going to be in the future. 



Buddha never mentions it, so Buddha’s technique is just half. 

But the other half follows automatically. If you go on practicing breath consciousness, 
breath awareness, suddenly, one day, without knowing, you will come to the interval. 
Because as your awareness will become keen and deep and intense, as your awareness 
will become bracketed — the whole world is bracketed out; only your breath coming in or 
going out is your world, the whole arena for your consciousness — suddenly you are 
bound to feel the gap in which there is no breath. 

When you are moving with breath minutely, when there is no breath, how can you remain 
unaware? You will suddenly become aware that there is no breath, and the moment will 
come when you will feel that the breath is neither going out nor coming in. The breath 
has stopped completely. In that stopping, THE BENEFICENCE. 

This one technique is enough for millions. The whole of Asia tried and lived with this 
technique for centuries. Tibet, China, Japan, Burma, Thailand, Ceylon — the whole of 
Asia except India has tried this technique. Only one technique and thousands and 
thousands have attained enlightenment through it. And this is only the first technique. 

But unfortunately, because the technique became associated with Buddha's name, Hindus 
have been trying to avoid it. Because it became more and more known as a Buddhist 
method, Hindus have completely forgotten it. 

And not only that, they have also tried to avoid it for another reason. Because this 
technique is the first technique mentioned by Shiva, many Buddhists have claimed that 
this book, VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA, is a Buddhist book, not a Hindu book. 

It is neither Hindu nor Buddhist — a technique is just a technique. Buddha used it, but it 
was there already to be used. Buddha became a buddha, an enlightened one, because of 
the technique. The technique preceded Buddha; the technique was already there. Try it. It 
is one of the most simple techniques — simple compared to other techniques; I am not 
saying simple for you. Other techniques will be more difficult. That is why it is 
mentioned as the first technique. 

The second technique — all these nine techniques are concerned with breath. 

AS BREATH TURNS FROM DOWN TO UP, AND AGAIN AS BREATH CURVES 
FROM UP TO DOWN - THROUGH BOTH THESE TURNS, REALIZE. 

It is the same, but with a slight difference. The emphasis is now not on the gap, but on the 
turning. The outgoing and ingoing breath make a circle. Remember, these are not two 
parallel lines. We always think of them as two parallel lines — breath going in and breath 
going out. Do you think that these are two parallel lines? They are not. Breath going in is 
half the circle; breath going out is the other half of the circle. 

So understand this: first, breathing in and out creates a circle. 

They are not parallel lines, because parallel lines never meet anywhere. Secondly, the 
breath coming in and the breath going out are not two breaths, they are one breath. The 
same breath which comes in, goes out, so it must have a turn inside. It must turn 
somewhere. There must be a point where the incoming breath becomes outgoing. 

Why put such emphasis upon turning? Because, Shiva says, AS BREATH TURNS 
FROM DOWN TO UP AND AGAIN AS BREATH CURVES FROM UP TO DOWN, 
THROUGH BOTH THESE TURNS, REALIZE. Very simple, but he says: realize the 
turns and you will realize the self. 

Why the turn? If you know driving you know about gears. Each time you change the 



gear, you have to pass through the neutral gear, which is not a gear at all. From the first 
gear you move to the second or from the second to the third, but always you have to 
move through the neutral gear. That neutral gear is a turning point. In that turning point 
the first gear becomes the second and the second becomes the third. When your breath 
goes in and turns out, it passes through the neutral gear; otherwise it cannot turn out. It 
passes through the neutral territory. 

In that neutral territory you are neither a body nor a soul, neither physical nor mental, 
because the physical is a gear of your being and the mental is another gear of your being. 
You go on moving from gear to gear, but you must have a neutral gear where you are 
neither body nor mind. 

In that neutral gear you simply are: you are simply an existence — pure, simple, 
unembodied, with no mind. 

That is why there is the emphasis on the turn. Man is a machine — a large, very 
complicated machine. You have many gears in your body, many gears in your mind. You 
are not aware of your great mechanism, but you are a great machine. And it is good that 
you are not aware; otherwise you could go mad. The body is such a great machine that 
scientists say if we had to create a factory parallel to the human body, it would require 
four square miles of land, and the noise would be such that one hundred square miles of 
land would be disturbed by it. 

The body is a great mechanical device — the greatest. You have millions and millions of 
cells and each cell is alive. So you are a big city of seventy million cells; there are 
seventy million citizens inside you, and the whole city is running very silently, smoothly. 
Every moment the mechanism is working. It is very complicated. These techniques will 
be related at many points with the mechanism of your body and the mechanism of your 
mind. But always the emphasis will be on those points where suddenly you are not part of 
the mechanism — remember this. Suddenly you are not part of the mechanism. There are 
moments when you change gears. 

For example, in the night when you drop into sleep you change gears, because during the 
day you need a different mechanism for a waking consciousness — a different part of the 
mind functions. 

Then you drop into sleep, and that part becomes non-functioning. Another part of the 
mind begins to function, and there is a gap, an interval, a turning. A gear is changed. In 
the morning when you are again getting up, the gear is changed. You are silently sitting, 
and suddenly someone says something and you get angry — you move into a different 
gear. That is why everything changes. 

If you get angry, your breathing will suddenly change. Your breathing will become 
irritated, chaotic. A trembling will get into your breathing; you will feel suffocated. Your 
whole body would like to do something, shatter something, only then can the suffocation 
disappear. Your breathing will change; your blood will take a different rhythm, a 
different movement. Different chemicals will have to be released in the body, the whole 
glandular system will have to change. You become a different man when you are angry. 

A car is standing... you start it. Do not put it in any gear, let it be in neutral. It will go on 
pulling, vibrating, trembling, but it cannot move; it will get hot. That is why, when you 
are angry and you cannot do something, you will get hot. The mechanism is ready to run 
and do something and you are not doing — you will get hot. Y ou are a mechanism, but, of 
course, not only a mechanism. You are more, but the "more" has to be found. When you 



get into a gear, everything changes inside. 


When you change the gear, there is a turning. 

Shiva says, 

AS BREATH TURNS FROM DOWN TO UP, AND AGAIN AS BREATH CURVES 
FROM UP TO DOWN - THROUGH BOTH THESE TURNS, REALIZE. 

Be aware at the turn. But it is a very short turn; very minute observation will be needed. 
And we are just without any observing capacity; we cannot observe anything. If I say to 
you, "Observe this flower; observe this flower which I give to you," you cannot observe 
it. For a single moment you will see it, and then you will begin to think of something 
else. It may be about the flower, but it will not be THE FLOWER. You may think about 
the flower, about how beautiful it is — then you have moved. Now the flower is no more 
in your observation, your field has changed. You may say that it is red, it is blue, it is 
white... then you have moved. Observation means remaining with no word, with no 
verbalization, with no bubbling inside — just remaining WITH. If you can remain with a 
flower for three minutes, completely, with no movement of the mind, the thing will 
happen — the beneficence. You will realize. 

But we are not at all observers. We are not aware, we are not alert; we cannot pay 
attention to anything. We just go on jumping. This is part of our heritage, our monkey 
heritage. Our mind is just the growth of the monkey mind, so the monkey moves on. He 
goes on jumping from here to there. 

The monkey cannot sit still. That is why Buddha insisted so much on just sitting without 
any movement, because then the monkey mind is not allowed to go on its way. 

In Japan they have a particular type of meditation which they call Zazen. The word 
'zazen’ in Japan means just sitting, doing nothing. No movement is allowed. One is just 
sitting like a statue — dead, not moving at all. But there is no need to sit like a statue for 
years together. If you can observe the turn of your breath without any movement of the 
mind, you will enter. Y ou will enter into yourself or into the beyond within. 

Why are these turnings so important? They are important because on turning, the breath 
leaves you to move in a different direction. It was with you when it was coming in; it will 
be with you again when it goes out. But at the turning point it is not with you and you are 
not with it. In that moment the breath is different from you, and you are different from it: 
if breathing is life, then you are dead; if breathing is your body, then you are no-body; if 
breathing is your mind, then you are no-mind... in that moment. 

I wonder whether you have observed it or not: if you stop your breath, the mind stops 
suddenly. If you stop your breath just now, your mind will stop suddenly; the mind 
cannot function. A sudden stoppage of breath and the mind stops. Why? Because they are 
disjoined. 

Only a moving breath is joined with the mind, with the body; a non-moving breath is 
disjoined. Then you are in the neutral gear. The car is running, the power is on, the car is 
making a noise — it is ready to go forward — but it is not in gear, so the body of the car 
and the mechanism of the car are not joined. The car is divided into two. It is ready to 
move, but the moving mechanism is not joined with it. 

The same happens when breath takes a turn. You are not joined with it. In that moment 
you can easily become aware of who you are. What is this being? What is it to be? Who 
is inside this house of the body? Who is the master? Am I just the house or is there some 



master also? Am I just the mechanism or does something else also penetrate this 
mechanism? In that turning gap, Shiva says, REALIZE. He says just be aware of the 
turning, and you become a realized soul. 

The third technique: 

OR, WHENEVER IN-BREATH AND OUT-BREATH FUSE, AT THIS INSTANT 
TOUCH THE ENERGY-LESS, ENERGY-FILLED CENTER. 

We are divided into the center and the periphery. The body is the periphery; we know the 
body, we know the periphery. We know the circumference, but we do not know where 
the center is. When the out-breath fuses with the in-breath, when they become one, when 
you cannot say whether it is the out-breath or the in-breath... when it is difficult to 
demarcate and define whether the breath is going out or coming in, when the breath has 
penetrated in and starts moving out, there is a moment of fusion. 

It is neither going out nor moving in. The breath is static. When it is moving out it is 
dynamic; when it is coming in it is dynamic. When it is neither, when it is silent, non- 
moving, you are near to the center. The fusion point of the in and outgoing breath is your 
center. 

Look at it in this way: when the breath goes in, where does it go? It goes to your center, it 
touches your center. When it goes out, from where does it go out? It moves from your 
center. Your center has to be touched. That is why Taoist mystics and Zen mystics say 
that the head is not the center, the navel is your center. The breath goes to the navel, then 
it moves out. It goes to the center. 

As I said, it is a bridge between you and your body. You know the body, but you do not 
know where your center is. The breath is constantly going to the center and moving out, 
but we are not taking enough breath. Thus, ordinarily it does not really go to the center — 
now, at least, it is not going to the center. That is why everyone feels "off-center." In the 
whole modern world, those who can think at all feel they are missing their center. 

Look at a child sleeping, observe his breath. The breath goes in; the abdomen comes up. 
The chest remains unaffected. That is why children have no chests, only abdomens — 
very dynamic abdomens. The breath goes in and the abdomen comes up; the breath goes 
out and the abdomen goes down. 

.. the abdomen moves. Children are in their center, at their center. That is why they are so 
happy, so bliss-filled, so energy-filled, never tired — overflowing, and always in the 
present moment with no past, no future. 

A child can be angry. When he is angry, he is totally angry; he becomes the anger. Then 
his anger is also a beautiful thing. When one is totally angry, anger has a beauty of its 
own, because totality always has beauty. 

You cannot be angry and beautiful, you will become ugly, because partiality is always 
ugly. And not only with anger. When you love you are ugly because you are again 
partial, fragmentary; you are not total. Look at your face when you are loving someone, 
making love. Make love before a mirror and look at your face — it will be ugly, animal- 
like. In love also your face becomes ugly. Why? Love is also a conflict, you are 
withholding something. You are giving very miserly. Even in your love you are not total; 
you do not give completely, wholly. 

A child even in anger and violence is total. His face becomes radiant and beautiful; he is 
here and now. His anger is not something concerned with the past or something 



concerned with the future, he is not calculating, he is just angry. The child is at his center. 
When you are at your center you are always total. Whatsoever you do will be a total act; 
good or bad, it will be total. When you are fragmentary, when you are off-center, your 
every act is bound to be a fragment of yourself. 

Your totality is not responding, just a part, and the part is going against the whole — that 
creates ugliness. 

We all were children. Why is it that as we grow our breathing becomes shallow? It never 
goes to the abdomen; it never touches the navel. If it could go down more and more it 
would become less and less shallow, but it just touches the chest and goes out. It never 
goes to the center. You are afraid of the center, because if you go to the center you will 
become total. If you want to be fragmentary, this is the mechanism to be fragmentary. 
You love — if you breathe from the center, you will flow in it totally. You are afraid. You 
are afraid to be so vulnerable, so open to someone, to anyone. You may call him your 
lover, you may call her your beloved, but you are afraid. The other is there. If you are 
totally vulnerable, open, you do not know what is going to happen. Then YOU ARE 
completely, in another sense. You are afraid to be so completely given to someone. You 
cannot breathe; you cannot take a deep breath. You cannot relax your breathing so that it 
goes to the center — because the moment breathing goes to the center your act becomes 
total. 

Because you are afraid of being total, you breathe shallowly. You breathe just at the 
minimum, not at the maximum. That is why life seems so lifeless. If you are breathing at 
the minimum, life will become lifeless; you are living at the minimum, not at the 
maximum. 

You can live at the maximum — then life is an overflowing. But then there will be 
difficulty. You cannot be a husband, you cannot be a wife, if life is overflowing. 
Everything will become difficult. 

If life is overflowing, love will be overflowing. Then you cannot stick to one. Then you 
will be flowing all over; all dimensions will be filled by you. And then the mind feels 
danger, so it is better not to be alive. The more you are dead, the more you are secure. 

The more you are dead, the more everything is in control. You can control; then you 
remain the master. You feel that you are the master because you can control. You can 
control your anger, you can control your love, you can control everything. But this 
controlling is possible only at the minimum level of your energy. 

Everyone must have felt at some time or other that there are moments when he suddenly 
changes from the minimum level to the maximum. You go out to a hill station. Suddenly 
you are out of the city and the prison of it. You feel free. The sky is vast, and the forest is 
green, and the height touches the clouds. Suddenly you take a deep breath. You may not 
have observed it. 

Now if you go to a hill station, observe. It is not really the hill station that makes the 
change. It is your breathing. You take a deep breath. You say, "Ah! Ah!" You touch the 
center, you become total for a moment, and everything is bliss. 

That bliss is not coming from the hill station, that bliss is coming from your center — you 
have touched it suddenly. 

You were afraid in the city. Everywhere there were others present and you were 
controlling. You could not scream, you could not laugh. What a misfortune! You could 



not sing on the street and dance. You were afraid — a policeman was somewhere around 
the comer, or the priest or the judge or the politician or the moralist. Someone was just 
around the corner, so you could not just dance in the street. 

Bertrand Russell has said somewhere, "I love civilization, but we have achieved 
civilization at a very great cost." You cannot dance in the streets, but you go to a hill 
station and suddenly you can dance. You are alone with the sky, and the sky is not an 
imprisonment. It is just opening, opening and opening — vast, infinite. Suddenly you take 
a breath deeply, it touches the center and the bliss. But it is not so for long. Within an 
hour or two, the hill station will disappear. You may be there, but the hill station will 
disappear. 

Your worries will come back. You will begin to think to make a call to the city, to write a 
letter to your wife, or you will begin to think that since after three days you are going 
back you should make arrangements. You have just reached and you are making 
arrangements to leave. You are back. 

That breath was not from you really; it suddenly happened. 

Because of the change of situation the gear changed. You were in a new situation, you 
could not breathe in the old way, so for a moment a new breath came in. It touched the 
center, and you felt the bliss. 

Shiva says you are every moment touching the center, or if you are not touching you 
CAN touch it. Take deep, slow breaths. Touch the center; do not breathe from the chest — 
that is a trick. Civilization, education, morality, they have created shallow breathing. It 
will be good to go deep into the center, because otherwise you cannot take deep breaths. 
Unless humanity becomes non-suppressive toward sex, man cannot breathe really. If the 
breath goes deep down to the abdomen, it gives energy to the sex center. It touches the 
sex center; it massages the sex center from within. The sex center becomes more active, 
more alive. Civilization is afraid of sex. We do not allow our children to touch their sex 
centers, their sex organs. We say, "Stop! Don't touch!" 

Look at a child when he first touches his sex center, and then say "Stop!" and then 
observe his breathing. When you say "Stop! Don’t touch your sex center!" the breath will 
become shallow immediately — because it is not only his hand which is touching the sex 
center, deep down the breath is touching it. And if the breath goes on touching at, it is 
difficult to stop the hand. If the hand stops, then basically it is necessary, required, that 
the breath should not touch, should not go deep. 

It must remain shallow. 

We are afraid of sex. The lower part of the body is not only lower physically, it has 
become lower as a value. It is condemned as "lower." So do not go deep, just remain 
shallow. It is unfortunate that we can only breathe downwards. If some preachers were 
allowed, they would change the whole mechanism. They would only allow you to breathe 
upward into the head. Then you would absolutely not feel sex. 

If we are to create a sexless humanity, then we will have to change the breathing system. 
The breath must go into the head, to the SAHASRAR — the seventh center in the head — 
then come back to the mouth. This should be the passage: from the mouth to the sahasrar. 
It must not go deep down because down is dangerous. The deeper you go, the nearer you 
reach to the deeper layers of biology. You reach to the center, and that center is just near 
the sex center — just near. It has to be, because sex is life. 

Look at it in this way: breath is life from above downwards; sex is life from just the other 



comer — from down upwards. Sex energy is flowing and breath energy is flowing. The 
breath passage is in the upper body and the sex passage is in the lower body. When they 
meet they create life; when they meet they create biology, bio-energy. So if you are afraid 
of sex, create a distance between the two, do not allow them to meet. So really, civilized 
man is a castrated man; that is why we do not know about breath, and this sutra will be 
difficult to understand. 


Shiva says, WHENEVER IN-BREATH AND OUT-BREATH FUSE, AT THIS 
INSTANT TOUCH THE ENERGY-LESS, ENERGY-FILLED CENTER. He uses very 
contradictory terms: "energy-less, energy-filled." It is energy-less because your bodies, 
your minds, cannot give any energy to it. Your body energy is not there, your mind 
energy is not there, so it is energy-less as far as you know your identity. But it is energy- 
filled because it has the cosmic source of energy, not because of your body energy. 

Your body energy is just fuel energy. It is nothing but petrol. You eat something, you 
drink something — it creates energy. It is just giving fuel to the body. Stop eating and 
drinking and your body will fall dead. Not just now, it will take three months at least, 
because you have reservoirs of petrol. You have accumulated much energy; it can run for 
at least three months without going to any petrol station. It can ran; it has a reservoir. For 
an emergency, any emergency, you may need it. 

This is "fuel" energy. The center is not getting any fuel energy. That is why Shiva says it 
is energy-less. It is not dependent on your eating and drinking. It is connected with the 
cosmic source; it is cosmic energy. That is why he says ENERGY- LESS, ENERGY- 
FILLED CENTER. The moment you can feel the center from where breath goes out or 
comes in, the very point where the breaths fuse — that center — if you become aware of it, 
then enlightenment. 


The fourth technique: 

OR, WHEN BREATH IS ALL OUT (UP) AND STOPPED OF ITSELF, OR ALL IN 
(DOWN) AND STOPPED - IN SUCH UNIVERSAL PAUSE, ONE’S SMALL SELF 
VANISHES. THIS IS DIFFICULT ONLY FOR THE IMPURE. But then it is difficult 
for everyone because, he says, THIS IS DIFFICULT ONLY FOR THE IMPURE. But 
who is the pure one? It is difficult for you; you cannot practice it. But you can feel it 
sometimes suddenly. You are driving a car and suddenly you feel there is going to be an 
accident. Breathing will stop. If it is out, it will remain out. If it is in, it will remain in. 
You cannot breathe in such an emergency; you cannot afford it. Everything stops, 
departs. 

OR, WHEN BREATH IS ALL OUT (UP) AND STOPPED OF ITSELF, OR ALL IN 
(DOWN) AND STOPPED - IN SUCH UNIVERSAL PAUSE, ONE’S SMALL SELF 
VANISHES: Your small self is only a daily utility. In emergencies you cannot remember 
it. Who you are — the name, the bank balance, the prestige, everything — just evaporates. 
Your car is just heading toward another car; another moment and there will be death. In 
this moment there will be a pause. Even for the impure there will be a pause. Suddenly 
breathing stops. If you can be aware in that moment, you can reach the goal. 

Zen monks have tried this method very much in Japan. That is why their methods seem 
very weird, absurd, strange. They have done many inconceivable things. 



A master will throw someone out of the house. Suddenly the master will begin slapping 
the disciple without any rhyme or reason, without any cause. 

You were sitting with your master and everything was okay. You were just chit-chatting, 
and he will begin to beat you in order to create the pause. If there is any cause the pause 
cannot be created. If you had abused the master and he starts beating you there is a 
causality, your mind understands: "I abused him, and he is beating me." 

Really, your mind was expecting it already, so there is no gap. But remember, a Zen 
master will not beat you if you abuse him, he will laugh, because then laughter can create 
the pause. You were abusing him and you were saying nonsense things to him, and you 
expected anger. But he starts laughing or dancing. That is sudden; that will create the 
pause. You cannot understand it. If you cannot understand the mind stops, and when the 
mind stops, breathing stops. Either way — if breathing stops, mind stops; if mind stops, 
breathing stops. 

You were appreciating the master and you were feeling good, and you were thinking, 
"Now the master must be pleased." And suddenly he takes his staff and begins to beat 
you — and mercilessly, because Zen masters are merciless. He begins to beat you; you 
cannot understand what is happening. The mind stops, there is a pause. If you know the 
technique, you can attain to your self. 

There are many stories that someone attained buddhahood because the teacher suddenly 
started beating him. You cannot understand it — what nonsense! How can one attain 
buddhahood by being beaten by someone, or by being thrown out of the window by 
someone? Even if someone kills you, you cannot attain buddhahood. But if you 
understand this technique, then it becomes easy to understand. 

In the West particularly, in the last thirty or forty years Zen has become very much 
prevalent — a fashion. But unless they know this technique, they cannot understand Zen. 
They can imitate it, but imitation is of no use. Rather, it is dangerous. These are not 
things to be imitated. 

The whole Zen technique is based on the fourth technique of Shiva. But this is 
unfortunate. Now we will have to import Zen from Japan because we have lost the whole 
tradition; we do not know it. Shiva was the expert par excellence of this method. When 
he came to marry Devi with his BARAT, his procession, the whole city must have felt 
the pause... the whole city! 

Devi's father was not willing to marry his girl to this "hippie" — Shiva was the original 
hippie. Devi's father was totally against him, and no father would pennit this marriage. 

So we cannot say anything against Devi's father. No father would pennit his daughter’s 
marriage to Shiva. But Devi insisted so he had to agree — unwillingly, unhappily, but he 
agreed. 


Then came the marriage procession. It is said that people began to run, seeing Shiva and 
his procession. The whole barat must have taken LSD, marijuana. They were "high." And 
really, LSD and marijuana are just the beginning. Shiva knew and his friends and 
disciples knew the ultimate psychedelic — SOMA RASA. Aldous Huxley has named the 
ultimate psychedelic "soma" only because of Shiva. They were high, just dancing, 
screaming, laughing. The whole city fled. It must have felt the pause. 

Any sudden, unexpected, unbelievable thing can create the pause for the impure. But for 
the pure there is no need of such things. For the pure, the pause is always there. Many 



times, for pure minds, breathing stops. If your mind is pure — pure means you are not 
desiring, hankering, seeking anything — silently pure, innocently pure, you can be sitting 
and suddenly your breath will stop. 

Remember this: mind movement needs breath movement. Mind moving fast needs fast 
movement in breath. That is why when you are in anger, breath will move fast. In the sex 
act, the breath will move very fast. That is why in Ayurveda- a system of herbal medicine 
in India- it is said that your life will be shortened if too much sex is allowed. Your life 
will he shortened, according to Ayurveda, because Ayurveda measures your life in 
breaths. If your breathing is too fast, your life will be shortened. 


Modern medicine says that sex helps blood circulation, sex helps relaxation. And those 
who suppress their sex may get into trouble — particularly heart trouble. They are right 
and Ayurveda is also right, but they seem contradictory. But Ayurveda was invented five 
thousand years before. Every man was doing much labor: life was labor, so there was no 
need to relax, there was no need to create artificial devices for blood circulation. 

But now, for those who are not doing much physical labor, sex is their only labor. That is 
why modern medicine is also right for modem man. He is not doing any physical 
exertion, so sex gives the exertion: the heart beats more, the blood circulates faster, the 
breathing becomes deep and goes to the center. So after the sex act you feel relaxed and 
you can fall into sleep easily. Freud says that sex is the best tranquillizer, and it is — at 
least for modem man. 

In sex breathing will become fast; in anger breathing will become fast. In sex the mind is 
filled with desire, lust, impurity. When the mind is pure — no desire in the mind, no 
seeking, no motivation; you are not going anywhere, but just remaining here and now as 
an innocent pool... not even a ripple — then breathing stops automatically. There is no 
need for it. 

On this path, the small self vanishes and you attain to the higher self, the supreme self. 

I think this will do for today. 


THE END. 



Chapter 4: The deceptions of the mind 


Question 1 

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT BY SIMPLY BECOMING AWARE AT A 
PARTICULAR POINT IN THE BREATHING PROCESS ONE CAN ATTAIN 
ENLIGHTENMENT? HOW IT IS POSSIBLE TO BECOME FREE FROM THE 
UNCONSCIOUS BY JUST BEING AWARE OF SUCH A SMALL AND 
MOMENTARY GAP IN THE BREATHING? 

This question is significant, and this question is likely to have occurred to many minds, 
so many things have to be understood. First, it is thought that spirituality is a difficult 
attainment. It is neither: that is, it is neither difficult nor an attainment. Whatsoever you 
are, you are already spiritual. Nothing new is to be added to your being, and nothing is to 
be discarded from your being; you are as perfect as possible. It is not that you are going 
to be perfect sometime in the future, it is not that you have to do something arduous to be 
yourself. It is not a journey to some other point somewhere else; you are not going 
somewhere else. You are already there. That which is to be attained is already attained. 
This idea must go deep, only then will you be able to understand why such simple 
techniques can help. 

If spirituality is some attainment, then of course it is going to be difficult — not only 
difficult, but really impossible. If you are not already spiritual, you cannot be, you never 
can be, because how can one who is not spiritual be spiritual? If you are not divine 
already then there is no possibility, there is no way. 

And no matter what effort you will make, effort made by one who is not already divine 
cannot create divinity. If you are not divine, your effort cannot create divinity. Then it is 
impossible. 

But the whole situation is totally opposite: you are already that which you want to attain. 
The end of longing is already there, present in you. Here and now, this very moment, you 
are that which is known as divine. The ultimate is here; it is already the case. That is why 
simple techniques can help. It is not an attainment, but a discovery. It is hidden, and it is 
hidden in very, very small things. 

The persona is just like clothes. Your body is here, hidden in clothes; in the same way 
your spirituality is here, hidden in certain clothes. These clothes are your personality. 

You can be naked just here and now, and in the same way you can be naked in your 
spirituality also. But you do not know what the clothes are. You do not know how you 
are hidden in them; you do not know how to be naked. You have been in clothes so long 
— for lives and lives and lives you have been in clothes — and you have been so identified 
with the clothes, that now you do not think that these are clothes. You think these clothes 
are you. That is the only barrier. 

For example, you have some treasure, but you have forgotten or you have not yet 
recognized that this is a treasure, and you go on begging in the streets. 

.. you are a beggar. If someone says, "Go and look inside your house. You need not be a 
beggar, you can be an emperor this very moment," the beggar is bound to say, "What 
nonsense you are talking. How can I be an emperor this very moment? I have been 
begging for years and still I am a beggar, and even if I go on begging for lives together, I 
am not going to be an emperor. So how absurd and illogical your statement is, 'You can 



be an emperor this very moment.'" 

It is impossible. The beggar cannot believe it. Why? Because the begging mind is a long 
habit. But if the treasure is just hidden in the house, then from simple digging, removing 
the earth a little bit, the treasure will be there. And immediately he will not be a beggar 
again, he will become an emperor. 

It is the same with spirituality: it is a hidden treasure. Nothing is to be achieved 
somewhere in the future. You have not yet recognized it, but it is there already in you. 
You are the treasure, but you go on begging. 

So simple techniques can help. Digging the earth, removing a little bit, is not a big effort, 
and you can become an emperor immediately. You have to dig a little bit to remove the 
earth. And when I say remove the earth, it is not only symbolically that I am saying it. 
Literally your body is part of the earth, and you have become identified with the body. 
Remove this earth a little bit, create a hole in it, and you will come to know the treasure. 


That is why this question will occur to many. Really, to everyone this question will 
occur: "So small a technique like this — being aware of your breathing, being aware of 
the incoming breath and the outgoing breath, and then realizing the interval between the 
two — is this enough?" Such a simple thing! Is this enough for enlightenment? Is this the 
only difference between you and Buddha, that you have not realized the gap between two 
breaths and Buddha has realized it — only this much? It seems illogical. The distance is 
vast between a Buddha and you. The distance seems infinite. The distance between a 
beggar and an emperor is infinite, but the beggar can immediately become an emperor if 
the treasure is already hidden. 

Buddha was a beggar like you; he was not a buddha always. At a particular point the 
beggar died, and he became the master. This is not a gradual process really; it is not that 
Buddha goes on accumulating and then one day he is not the beggar and he becomes the 
emperor. No, a beggar can never become an emperor if it is going to be an accumulation, 
he will remain a beggar. He may become a rich beggar, but he will remain a beggar. And 
a rich beggar is a bigger beggar than a poor beggar. 

Suddenly, one day Buddha realizes the inner treasure. Then he is no more a beggar, he 
becomes a master. The distance between Gautam Siddharth and Gautam Buddha is 
infinite. 

It is the same distance that is between you and a buddha. But the treasure is hidden within 
you as much as it was hidden in Buddha. 

Take another example.... One man is bom with blind eyes, diseased eyes. For a blind 
man, the world is a different thing. A small operation may change the whole thing, 
because only the eyes have to be made all right. The moment the eyes are ready, the seer 
is hidden behind and he will begin to look from the eyes. The seer is already there, only 
windows are lacking. You are in a house with no windows. You can break a hole in the 
wall, and suddenly you will look out. 

We are already that which we will be, which we should be, which we are to be. The 
future is already hidden in the present; the whole possibility is here in the seed. Only a 
window has to be broken, only a small surgical operation is needed. If you can 
understand this, that spirituality is already there, already the case, then there is no 
problem concerning how such a small effort can help. 



Really, no big effort is needed. Only small efforts are needed, and the smaller the better. 
And if you work effortlessly it is still better. That is why it happens, many times it 
happens, that the more you try, the harder it is to attain. Your very effort, your tension, 
your occupiedness, your longing, your expectation, becomes the barrier. But with a very 
small effort, an effortless effort as they call it in Zen — doing as if not doing — it happens 
easily. 

The more you are mad after it, the less is the possibility, because where a needle is 
needed you are using a sword. The sword will not be helpful. It may be bigger, but where 
a needle is needed a sword will not do. 

Go to a butcher — he has very big instruments. And go to a brain surgeon: you will not 
find such big instruments with the brain surgeon. And if you do find them, then escape 
immediately! A brain surgeon is not a butcher. He needs very small instruments — the 
smaller the better. 

Spiritual techniques are more subtle; they are not gross. They cannot be, because the 
surgery is even more subtle. In the brain the surgeon is still doing something with gross 
matter, but when you are working on spiritual planes the surgery becomes more and more 
aesthetic. No gross matter is there. It becomes subtle — that is one thing. 

Secondly, the questioner asks, "If something is smaller, how can a bigger step be possible 
through it?" This concept is irrational, unscientific. Now science knows that the smaller 
the particle, the more atomic, the more explosive — the bigger really. The smaller it is, 
the bigger the effect. Could you have conceived before 1945, could any imaginative poet 
or dreamer have conceived that two atomic explosions would wipe out completely two 
big cities in Japan — Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Two hundred thousand people were 
simply wiped out of existence within seconds. 

And what was the explosive force used? An atom! The very smallest particle blew up two 
big cities. You cannot see the atom. Not only with your eyes can you not see, you cannot 
see by any means. The atom cannot be seen with any instrument; we can only see the 
effects. 

So do not think that the Himalayas are bigger because they have such a big body. The 
Himalayas are just impotent before an atomic explosion. One small atom can wipe out 
the whole Himalayas. Size in gross material is not necessarily power. On the contrary, 
the smaller the unit, the more penetrating. The smaller the unit, the more intensely it is 
filled with power. 

These small techniques are atomic. Those who are doing bigger things do not know 
atomic science. You will think that a person who is working with atoms is a small person 
working with small things, and a person who is working with the Himalayas will look 
very big. Hitler was working with great masses; Mao is working with great masses. And 
Einstein and Planck, they were working in their laboratories with small units of matter — 
energy particles. But ultimately, before Einstein's research politicians were just impotent. 
They were working on a bigger canvas, but they did not know the secret of the small unit. 
Moralists always work on big planes, but these are gross. The thing looks very big. They 
devote their whole lives to moralizing, practicing this and that, to S ANY AM — control. 

They go on controlling; the whole edifice looks very big. 

Tantra is not concerned with this. Tantra is concerned with the atomic secrets in the 
human being, in the human mind, in human consciousness. And tantra has achieved 



atomic secrets. These methods are atomic methods. If you can attain them, their result is 
explosive, cosmic. 

Another point is to be noted. If you can say, "How is it that with such a small, simple 
exercise one can become enlightened?" you are saying this without doing the exercise. If 
you do it, then you will not say that this is a small, simple exercise. It looks this way 
because within two or three sentences the whole exercise has been given. 

Do you know the atomic formula? Two or three words, and the whole formula is given. 
And with those two or three words, those who can understand, those who can use those 
words, can destroy the whole earth. The fonnula is very small. 

These too are formulas, so if you just look at the fonnula it will look to be a very, very 
small, simple thing. It is not! Try to do it. When you do it, then you will know that it is 
not so easy. It looks simple, but it is one of the deepest things. We will analyze the 
process; then you will understand. 

When you take your breath in, you never feel the breath. You have never felt the breath. 
You will immediately deny this. You will say, "This is not right. 

We may not be conscious continuously, but we feel the breath." No, you do not feel the 
breath, you feel the passage. 

Look at the sea. Waves are there; you see the waves. But those waves are created by air, 
wind. You do not see the wind, you see the effect on the water. When you take breath in 
it touches your nostril. You feel the nostril, but you never know the breath. It goes down 
— you feel the passage. It comes back — again you feel the passage. You never feel the 
breath, you just feel the touch and the passage. 

This is not what is meant when Shiva says, BE AWARE. First you will become aware of 
the passage, and when you have become completely aware of the passage, only then will 
you begin, by and by, to be aware of the breath itself. And when you become aware of 
the breath, then you will be capable of being aware of the gap, the interval. It is not so 
easy as it looks. 

For tantra, for all seeking, there are layers of awareness. If I embrace you, first you will 
become aware of my touch upon your body; not of my love, my love is not so gross. And 
ordinarily we never become aware of love. We are aware only of the body in movement. 
We know loving movements, we know non-loving movements — but we have never 
known love itself. If I kiss you, you become aware of the touch, not of my love; that love 
is a very subtle thing. And unless you become aware of my love the kiss is just dead, it 
means nothing. 

If you can become aware of my love, then only can you become aware of me, because 
that again is a deeper layer. 

The breath goes in. You feel the touch, not the breath. But you are not even aware of that 
touch. If something is wrong, only then do you feel it. If you have some difficulty in 
breathing, then you feel it; otherwise you are not aware. The first step will be to be aware 
of the passage where breath is felt to be touching; then your sensitivity will grow. It will 
take years to become so sensitive that not the touch, but the movement of breath is 
known. Then, says tantra, you will have known PRANA — the vitality. And only then is 
there the gap where breath stops, where breath is not moving — or the center where the 
breath is touching, or the fusion point, or the turning where the breath, the ingoing breath, 
becomes outgoing. This will become arduous; then it will not be so simple. 

If you do something, if you go into this center, only then will you know how difficult it 



is. Buddha took six years to come to this center beyond the breath. To come to this 
turning, he had a long, arduous journey of six years; then it happened. Mahavir was 
working on it for twelve years; then it happened. But the formula is simple, and 
theoretically this can happen this very moment — theoretically, remember. There is no 
barrier theoretically, so why should it not happen this very moment? YOU are the barrier. 

Except for you this can happen this very moment. The treasure is there; the method is 
known to you. You can dig, but you will not dig. 

Even this question is a trick not to dig, because your mind says, "Such a simple thing? 
Don’t be a fool. How can you become a buddha through such a simple thing? It is not 
going to be." And then you are not going to do anything, because how can this happen? 
Mind is tricky. If I say this is very difficult, the mind says, "This is so difficult it is 
beyond you." If I say this is very simple, the mind says, "This is so simple that only fools 
can believe in it." And mind goes on rationalizing things, always escaping from doing. 
Mind creates barriers. It will become a barrier if you think this is so simple, or this is too 
difficult — then what are you going to do? You cannot do a simple thing, you cannot do a 
difficult thing. What are you going to do? Tell me! If you want to do a difficult thing, I 
will make it difficult. If you are going to do a simple thing, I will make it simple. It is 
both — it depends on how it is interpreted. But one thing is needed, that you are going to 
DO. If you are not going to do then the mind will always give you explanations. 
Theoretically, it is possible here and now; there is no actual barrier. But there are 
barriers. They may not be actual, they may simply be psychological — they may just be 
your illusions — but they are there. 

If I say to you, "Do not be afraid — go! The thing that you are thinking is a snake is not a 
snake, it is just a rope," still the fear will be there. To you it appears to be a snake. 

So whatsoever I say is not going to help. You are trembling; you want to escape and run 
away. I say it is just a rope, but your mind will say, "This man may be in conspiracy with 
the snake. There must be something wrong. This man is forcing me toward the snake. He 
may be interested in my death, or something else." If I try to convince you too much that 
this is a rope, that will only show that I am somehow interested in forcing you toward the 
snake. If I say to you that theoretically it is possible to see the rope as a rope this very 
moment, your mind will create many, many problems. 

In reality there is no dilemma; in reality there is no problem. There never has been, there 
never will be. In mind there are problems, and you look at reality through the mind; thus, 
the reality becomes problematic. Your mind works like a prison. It divides and creates 
problems. And not only that, it creates solutions which become deeper problems, because 
in fact there are no problems to be solved. Reality is absolutely unproblematic; there is no 
problem. But you cannot see anything without problems. Wherever you look, you create 
problems. Your "look" is problematic. I told you this breath technique; now the mind 
says, "This is so simple." 

Why? Why does the mind say this is so simple ? 

When for the first time the steam engine was invented, no one believed it. It looked so 
simple — unbelievable. Just the same steam that you know in your kitchen, in your kettle, 
the steam running an engine, running hundreds and hundreds of passengers and such a 
load? The same steam that you are so well-acquainted with? This is not believable. 

Do you know what happened in England? When the first train started, no one was ready 



to sit in it — no one! Many people were persuaded, bribed, they were given money to sit 
in the train, but at the last point they escaped. They said, "Firstly, steam cannot do such 
miracles. Such a simple thing as steam cannot do such miracles. And if the engine starts, 
that means that the devil is at work somewhere. The devil is running the thing, it is not 
the steam. And what is the guarantee that once the thing starts you will be capable of 
stopping it?" 

No guarantee could be given because this was the first train. Never had it stopped before, 
it was only probable. There was no experience, so science could not say, "Yes it will 
stop." Theoretically it will stop... but the people were not interested in theories. They 
were interested if there was any actual experience of stopping a train: "If it never stops 
then what will happen to us who will be sitting in it?" 

So twelve criminals from the jail were brought as passengers. 

Anyhow they were going to die, anyhow they were sentenced to death, so there was no 
problem if the train was not going to stop. Then the mad driver who thought that it was 
going to stop, the scientist who had invented it and these twelve passengers who were 
anyhow going to be killed, they alone would all be killed. "Such a simple thing as 
steam," they said at that time. But now no one says this, because now it is working and 
you know it. 

Everything is simple — reality is simple. It seems complex only because of ignorance; 
otherwise everything is simple. Once you know it, it becomes simple. The knowing is 
bound to be difficult not because of reality, remember, but because of your mind. This 
technique is simple, but it is not going to be simple for you. Your mind will create 
difficulty. So try with it. 

Another friend says, IF I TRY THIS METHOD OF BEING AWARE OF MY 
BREATHING, IF I PAY ATTENTION TO MY BREATHING, THEN I CANNOT DO 
ANYTHING ELSE, THE WHOLE ATTENTION GOES TO IT. AND IF I AM TO DO 
ANYTHING ELSE THEN I CANNOT BE AWARE OF MY BREATHING. 

This will happen, so in the beginning choose a particular period in the morning, or in the 
evening, or at any time. For one hour just do the exercise; do not do anything else. Just 
do the exercise. Once you become attuned to it, then it will not be a problem. You can 
walk on the street and you can be aware. 

Between 'awareness’ and 'attention’ there is a difference. 

When you pay attention to anything it is exclusive; you have to withdraw your attention 
from everywhere else. So it is a tension really. That is why it is called attention. You pay 
attention to one thing at the cost of everything else. If you pay attention to your 
breathing, you cannot pay attention to your walking or to your driving. Do not try it while 
you are driving because you cannot pay attention to both. 

Attention means one thing exclusively. Awareness is a very different thing; it is not 
exclusive. It is not paying attention, it is being attentive; it is just being conscious. You 
are conscious when you are inclusively conscious. Your breathing is in your 
consciousness. You are walking and someone is passing, and you are also conscious of 
him. Someone is making noise on the road, some train passes by, some airplane flies by 
— everything is included. Awareness is inclusive, attention exclusive. But in the 
beginning it will be attention. 

So first try in selected periods. For one hour just be attentive to your breathing. By and 
by you will be able to change your attention into awareness. Then do simple things — for 



example, walking, walk attentively with full awareness of walking and also of breathing. 
Do not create any opposition between the two actions of walking and breathing. Be a 
watcher of both. It is not difficult. 

Look! For example, I can pay attention to one face here. 

If I pay attention to one face, all the faces will not be here for me. If I pay my attention to 
one face, then all the rest are bracketed out. If I pay attention only to the nose on that 
face, then the whole face, the remaining face, is bracketed out. I can go on narrowing 
down my attention to a single point. 

The reverse is also possible. I pay attention to the whole face; then eyes and nose and 
everything are there. Then I have made my focus wider. I look at you not as individuals, 
but as a group. Then the whole group is in my attention. If I take you as different from 
the noise that is going on the street, then I am bracketing out the street. But I can look at 
you and the street as one whole. Then I can be aware of both you and the street. I can be 
aware of the whole cosmos. It depends on your focus — on its becoming greater and 
greater. But first start from attention and remember that you have to grow into awareness. 
So choose a small period. The morning is good because you are fresh, energies are vital, 
everything is rising; you are more alive in the morning. 

Physiologists say that not only are you more alive, but your height is a little more in the 
morning than in the evening. If you are six feet tall, then in the morning you are six feet 
and one half inch and in the evening you go back to six feet. Half an inch is lost because 
your spine settles down when it is tired. 

So in the morning you are fresh, young, alive with energy. 

Do this: do not make meditation the last thing on your schedule. Make it the first. Then 
when you feel that now it is not an effort, when you can sit for an hour together 
completely immersed in breathing — aware, attentive — when you only know this, that 
you have achieved attention of breathing without any effort; when you are relaxed and 
enjoying it without any forcing, then you have attained it. 

Then add something else — for example, walking. Remember both; then go on adding 
things. After a certain period you will be capable of being aware of your breath 
continuously, even in sleep. And unless you are aware even in sleep you will not be able 
to know the depth. But this comes, by and by this comes. 

One has to be patient and one has to start rightly. Know this, because the cunning mind 
will always try to give you a wrong start. Then you can leave it after two or three days 
and say, "This is hopeless." The mind will give you a wrong start. So always remember 
to begin rightly, because rightly begun means half done. But we start wrongly. 

You know very well that attention is a difficult thing. This is because you are totally 
asleep. So if you start being attentive to breathing while you are doing something else, 
you cannot do it. And you are not going to leave the task, you will leave the effort of 
being attentive to breathing. 


So do not create unnecessary problems for yourself. In twenty-four hours you can find a 
small corner. Forty minutes will do... so do the technique there. But the mind will give 
many excuses. The mind will say, "Where is the time? There is already too much work to 
be done. Where is the time?" Or the mind will say, "It is not possible now, so postpone it. 
Sometime in the future when things are better, then you will do it." Beware of what your 



mind says to you. Do not be too trusting of the mind. And we are never doubtful. We can 
doubt everyone but we never doubt our own minds. 

Even those who talk so much of skepticism, of doubt, of reason, even they never doubt 
their own minds. And your mind has brought you to the state you are in. If you are in a 
hell, your mind has brought you to this hell, and you never doubt this guide. You can 
doubt any teacher, any master, but you never doubt your mind. With unflinching faith, 
you move with your mind as the guru. And your mind has brought you to the mess, to the 
misery that you are. If you are going to doubt anything, doubt first your own mind. And 
whenever your mind says something, think twice. 

Is it true that you do not have any time? Really? You do not have any time to meditate — 
to give one hour to meditation? Think twice. Ask again and again to the mind, "Is this the 
case, that I do not have any time?" 

I don’t see it. 

I have not seen a man who does not have more than enough time. I go on seeing people 
who are playing cards, and they say, "We are killing time." They are going to the movies 
and they say, "What to do?" They are killing time, gossiping, reading the same 
newspaper again and again, talking about the same things they have been talking about 
for their whole lives, and they say, "We don't have any time." For unnecessary things 
they have enough time. Why? 

With an unnecessary thing mind is not in any danger. The moment you think of 
meditation, mind becomes alert. Now you are moving in a dangerous dimension, because 
meditation means the death of the mind. If you move into meditation, sooner or later your 
mind will have to dissolve, retire completely. The mind becomes alert and it begins to say 
many things to you: "Where is the time? And even if there is time, then more important 
things are to be done. First postpone it until later. You can meditate at any time. Money is 
more important. Gather money first, then meditate at your leisure. How can you meditate 
without money? So pay attention to money, then meditate later on." 

Meditation can be postponed easily, you feel, because it is not concerned with your 
immediate survival. Bread cannot be postponed — you will die. Money cannot be 
postponed — it is needed for your basic necessities. Meditation can be postponed, you can 
survive without it. 

Really, you can survive without it easily. 

The moment you go deep in meditation, you will not survive on this earth at least — you 
will disappear. From the circle of this life, this wheel, you will disappear. Meditation is 
like death, so the mind becomes afraid. Meditation is like love, so the mind becomes 
afraid. "Postpone," it says, and you can go on postponing ad infinitum. Your mind is 
always saying things like this. And do not think I am talking about others. I am talking 
particularly about YOU. 

I have come across many intelligent people who go on saying very unintelligent things 
about meditation. One man came from Delhi; he is a big government official. He came 
only for the purpose of learning meditation here. He had come from Delhi, and he stayed 
seven days here. I told him to go to the morning meditation class on Chowpatty beach in 
Bombay, but he said, "But that is difficult. I cannot get up so early." And he will never 
think over what his mind has told him. Is this so difficult? Now you will know: the 
exercise can be simple, but your mind is not so simple. The mind says, "How can I get up 
in the morning at six o'clock?" 



I was in a big city, and the collector of that city came to meet me at eleven o’clock at 
night. I was just going to my bed, and he came and said, "No! It is urgent. I am very 
disturbed. It is a question of life and death," he told me. 

"So please give me at least half an hour. Teach me meditation; otherwise I might commit 
suicide. I am very much disturbed, and I am so frustrated that something must happen in 
my inner world. My outer world is lost completely." 

I told him, "Come in the morning at five o'clock." He said, "That is not possible." It is a 
question of life and death, but he cannot get up at five o'clock. He said, "That is not 
possible. I never get up so early." 

Okay," I told him, "Then come at ten." 

He said, "That will also be difficult because by ten- thirty I am to be present at my 
office." 

He cannot take one day's leave, and it is a question of life and death. So I told him, "Is it 
a question of your life and death or my life and death? Whose?" And he was not an 
unintelligent man, he was intelligent enough. These tricks were very intelligent. 

So do not think that your mind is not playing the same tricks. It is very intelligent, and 
because you think it is your mind you never doubt it. It is not yours, it is just a social 
product. It is not yours! It has been given to you, it has been forced upon you. You have 
been taught and conditioned in a certain way. From the very childhood your mind has 
been created by others — parents, society, teachers. The past is creating your mind, 
influencing your mind. The dead past is forcing itself upon the living continuously. 

The teachers are just the agents — agents of the dead against the living. They go on 
forcing things upon your mind. But the mind is so intimate with you, the gap is so small, 
that you become identified with it. 

You say, "I am a Hindu." Think again, reconsider it. YOU are not a Hindu. You have 
been given a Hindu mind. You were bom just a simple, innocent being — not a Hindu, 
not a Mohammedan. But you were given a Mohammedan mind, a Hindu mind. You were 
forced, encaged, imprisoned in a particular condition, and then life goes on adding to this 
mind and this mind becomes heavy — heavy on you. You cannot do anything; the mind 
starts forcing its own way upon you. Your experiences are being added to the mind. 
Constantly, your past is conditioning your every present moment. If I say something to 
you, you are not going to think about it in a fresh way, in an open way. Your old mind, 
your past will come in between, will begin to talk and chatter for or against. 

Remember, your mind is not yours, your body is not yours; it comes from your parents. 
Your mind is also not yours; it also comes from your parents. Who are you? 

Either one is identified with the body or with the mind. You think you are young, you 
think you are old, you think you are a Hindu, you think you are a Jain, you are a Parsee. 
You are not! You were bom as a pure consciousness. These are all imprisonments. 

These techniques which look so simple to you will not be so simple, because this mind 
will create constantly many, many complexities and problems. 

Just a few days before, a man came to me and he said, "I am trying your method of 
meditation, but tell me, in what scripture is it given? If you can convince me that it is 
given in my religious scripture, then it will be easier for me to do." But why will it be 
easier for him to do if it is written in a scripture? Because then the mind will not create a 
problem. The mind will say, "Okay! This belongs to us, so do it." If it is not written in 



any scripture then the mind will say, "What are you doing?" The mind goes against it. 

I said to the man, "You have been doing this method for three months. How are you 
feeling?" He said, "Wonderful. I am feeling very wonderful. But tell me... give some 
authority from the scriptures." His own feeling is not an authority at all. He says, "I am 
feeling wonderful. I have become more silent, more peaceful, more loving. I am feeling 
wonderful." But his own experience is not the authority. The mind asks for an authority 
from the past. 

I told him, "It is not written anywhere in your scriptures. Rather, many things which are 
against this technique are written." His face became sad. And then he said, "Then it will 
be difficult for me to do it and to continue it." 

Why is his own experience not of any value? 

The past — the conditioning, the mind — is constantly molding you and destroying your 
present. 

So remember, and be aware. Be skeptical and doubting about your mind. Do not trust it. 
If you can attain to this maturity of not trusting your mind, only then will these 
techniques be really simple, helpful, functioning. They will work miracles — they can 
work miracles. 

These techniques, these methods cannot be understood intellectually at all. I am trying 
the impossible, but then why am I trying? If they cannot be understood intellectually, 
then why am I talking to you? They cannot be understood intellectually, but there is no 
other way to make you aware of certain techniques which can change your life totally. 
You can understand only intellect, and this is a problem. You cannot understand anything 
else; you can understand only the intellect. And these techniques cannot be understood 
intellectually, so how to communicate? 

Either you should become capable of understanding without intellect being brought in, or 
some method should be found so that these techniques can be made intellectually 
understandable. The second is not possible, but the first is possible. 

You will have to start intellectually, but do not cling to it. When I say "Do," try doing. If 
something begins to happen within you, then you will be capable of throwing your 
intellect aside and reaching toward me directly without the intellect, without any effort, 
without the meditator. But start doing something. 

We can go on talking for years and years, your mind can be stuffed with many things, but 
that is not going to help. Rather, it may harm you because you will begin to know many 
things. And if you know many things you will become confused. It is not good to know 
many things. It is good to know a little and to practice it. A single technique can be 
helpful; something done is always helpful. What is the difficulty in doing it? 

Deep down somewhere there is fear. The fear is that if you do it, it may be that something 
stops happening — that is the fear. It may look paradoxical, but I have been meeting so 
many — so many persons — who think they want to change. They say they need 
meditation, they ask for a deep transformation, but deep down they are also afraid. They 
are dual — double; they have two minds. They go on asking about what to do, never 
doing it. Why then do they go on asking? Just to deceive themselves that they are really 
interested in transforming themselves. That is why they are asking. 

This gives a facade, an appearance that they are really, sincerely interested in changing 
themselves. That is why they are asking, going to this guru and that, finding, trying, but 
they never do anything. Deep down they are afraid. 



Eric Fromm has written a book, FEAR OF FREEDOM. The title seems contradictory. 
Everyone thinks that they like freedom; everyone thinks that they are endeavoring for 
freedom — in this world and in "that world" also. 

"We want MOKSHA — liberation — we want to be freed from all limitations, from all 
slaveries. We want to be totally free," they say. But Eric Fromm says that man is afraid of 
freedom. We want it, we go on saying that we want it, we go on convincing ourselves 
that we want it, but deep down we are afraid of freedom. We do not want it! Why? Why 
this duality? 

Freedom creates fear, and meditation is the deepest freedom possible. You are not freed 
only from outward limitations, you are freed from inner slavery — the very mind, the base 
of slavery. You are freed from the whole past. The moment you have no mind, the past 
has disappeared. You have transcended history; now there is no society, no religion, no 
scripture, no tradition, because they all have their abode in the mind. Now there is no 
past, no future, because past and future are part of the mind, the memory and the 
imagination. 

Then you are here and now in the present. Now there is not going to be any future. There 
will be now and now and now — eternal now. Then you are freed completely; you 
transcend all tradition, all history, body, mind, everything. One becomes free of the 
fearful. Such freedom? Then where will YOU be? In such freedom, can you exist? In 
such freedom, in such vastness, can you have your small "I" — your ego? Can you say "I 
am?" 

You can say, "I am in bondage," because you can know your boundary. 

When there is no bondage there is no boundary. You become just a state, nothing more... 
absolute nothingness, emptiness. That creates fear, so one goes on talking about 
meditation, about how to do it, and one goes on without doing it. 

All the questions arise out of this fear. Feel this fear. If you know it, it will disappear. If 
you do not know it, it will continue. Are you ready to die in the spiritual sense? Are you 
ready to be NOT? 

Whenever anyone came to Buddha he would say, "This is the basic truth — that you are 
not. And because you are not you cannot die, you cannot be bom; and because you are 
not you cannot be in suffering, in bondage. Are you ready to accept this?" Buddha would 
ask, "Are you ready to accept this? If you are not ready to accept this, then do not try 
meditation now. First try to find out whether you really are or you are not. Meditate on 
this first: is there any self? Is there any substance within or are you just a combination?" 

If you manage to find out, you will find that your body is a combination. Something has 
come from your mother, something has come from your father, and all else has come 
from food. This is your body. In this body you are NOT, there is no self. Contemplate on 
the mind: something has come from here, something from there. Mind has nothing that is 
original. It is just accumulation. 

Find out if there is any self in the mind. 

If you move deep, you will find that your identity is just like an onion. You peel off one 
layer and another layer comes up; you peel off another layer and still another layer comes 
up. You go on peeling layers off, and ultimately you come to a nothingness. With all the 
layers thrown off, there is nothing inside. Body and mind are like onions. When you have 
peeled off both body and mind, then you come to encounter a nothingness, an abyss, a 



bottomless void. Buddha called it SHUNYA. 

To encounter this shunya, to encounter this void, creates fear. That fear is there. That is 
why we never do meditation. We talk about it, but we never do anything about it. That 
fear is there. You know deep down that there is a void, but you cannot escape this fear. 
Whatsoever you do, the fear will remain unless you encounter it. That is the only way. 
Once you encounter your nothingness, once you know that within you are just like a 
space, shunya, then there will be no fear. Then there cannot be any fear, because this 
shunya, this void, cannot be destroyed. This void is not going to die. That which was 
going to die is no more; it was nothing but the layers of an onion. 

That is why many times in deep meditation, when one comes nearer to this nothingness, 
one becomes afraid and starts trembling. One feels that one is going to die, one wants to 
escape from this nothingness back to the world. 

And many go back; then they never turn within again. As I see it, every one of you have 
tried in some life or other some meditative technique. You have been near to the 
nothingness, and then fear gripped you and you escaped. And deep in your past 
memories, that memory is there; that becomes the hindrance. Whenever you again think 
of trying meditation, that past memory deep down in your unconscious mind again 
disturbs you and says, "Go on thinking; do not do it. You have done it once." 

It is difficult to find a man — and I have looked into many — who has not tried meditation 
once or twice in some life. The memory is there, but you are not conscious of it, you are 
not aware of where the memory is. It is there. Whenever you begin to do something that 
becomes a barrier, this and that begin to stop you in many ways. So if you are really 
interested in meditation, find out about your own fear of it. Be sincere about it: are you 
afraid? If you are afraid, then first something has to be done about your fear, not about 
meditation. 

Buddha used to try many devices. Sometimes someone would say to him, "I am afraid of 
trying meditation." And this is a must: the master must be told that you are afraid. You 
cannot deceive the master... and there is no need — it is deceiving yourself. So whenever 
someone would say, "I am afraid of meditation," Buddha would say, "You are fulfilling 
the first requirement." 

If you say yourself that you are afraid of meditation, then something becomes possible. 
Then something can be done because you have uncovered a deep thing. So what is the 
fear? Meditate on it. Go and dig out where it comes from, what the source is. 

All fear is basically death-oriented. Whatsoever its form, mode, whatsoever its shape, 
name, all fear is death-oriented. If you move deep, you will find that you are afraid of 
death. 

If someone came to Buddha and said, "I am afraid of death, I have found this out," 
Buddha would say, "Then go to the burning ghat, go to the cemetery, and meditate on a 
funeral pyre. People are dying daily — they will be burned. Just remain there at the 
MARGHAT — cemetery — and meditate on the burning pyre. When their family 
members have gone, you remain there. Just look into the fire, at the burning body. When 
everything is becoming smoke, you just look at it deeply. Do not think, just meditate on it 
for three months, six months, nine months. 

"When it becomes a certainty to you that death cannot be escaped, when it becomes 
absolutely certain that death is the way of life, that death is implied in life, that death is 
going to be, that there is no way out and you are already in it, only then come to me." 



After meditating on death, after seeing every day, night and day, dead bodies being 
burned, dissolved into ashes — just a smoke remains and then disappears — after 
meditating for months together, a certainty will arise: the certainty that death is 
inevitable. 

It is the only certainty really. The only thing certain in life is death. Everything else is 
uncertain: it may be or it may not be. But you cannot say that it may be or it may not be 
for death. It is; it is going to be. It has already occurred. The moment you entered life, 
you entered death. Now nothing can be done about it. 

When death is certain there is no fear. Fear is always with things which can be changed. 

If death is to be, fear disappears. If you can change, if you can do something about death, 
then fear will remain. If nothing can be done, if you are already in it, then it is absolutely 
certain that fear will disappear. When fear of death had disappeared, Buddha would allow 
you to meditate. He would say, "Now you can meditate." 

So you also go deep into your mind. And listening to these techniques will be helpful 
only when your inner barriers are broken, when inner fears disappear and you are certain 
that death is the reality. So if you die in meditation there is no fear — death is certain. 
Even if death occurs in meditation, there is no fear. Only then can you move — and then 
you can move at rocket speed because the barriers are not there. 

It is not distance that takes time, but the barriers. You can move this very moment if there 
is no barrier. You are already there but for the barrier. It is a hurdle race, and you go on 
putting up more and more hurdles. 

You feel good when you cross a hurdle; you feel good that now you have crossed the 
hurdle. And the idiocy of it, the foolishness of it, is that the hurdle was placed there by 
you in the first place. It was never there. You go on putting up hurdles, then jumping over 
them, then feeling good; then you go on putting up more hurdles, then jumping. You 
move in a circle and never, never reach to the center. 

Mind creates hurdles because mind is afraid. It will give you many explanations as to 
why you are not doing meditation. Do not believe it. Go deep, find out the basic cause. 
Why does a person go on talking about food and yet never eat? What is the problem? The 
man seems mad! 

Another man goes on talking about love and never loves, another man goes on talking 
about something else and never does anything about it. This talking becomes obsessive; it 
becomes a compulsion. One goes on, one sees talking as a doing. By talking you feel that 
you are doing something, so you feel at ease. You are doing something — at least talking, 
at least reading, at least listening. This is not doing. This is deceptive; do not fall into the 
deception. 

I will be talking here about these one hundred and twelve methods not to feed your mind, 
not to make you more knowledgeable, not to make you more infonned. I am not trying to 
make you a pundit. I am talking here in order to give you a certain technique which can 
change your life. 

So whichever method appeals to you, do not start talking about it — do it! Be silent about 
it and do it. Your mind will raise many questions. Just inquire deeply first before asking 
me. Inquire deeply first whether those questions are really significant or if your mind is 
just deceiving you. 

Do, then ask. Then your questions become practical. And I know which question has 



been asked through doing and which question has been asked just through curiosity, just 
through intellect. So by and by I will not answer your intellectual questions at all. Do 
something — then your questions become significant. These questions which say, "This 
exercise is a very simple one," are not asked after doing. This is NOT so simple. In the 
end I must repeat again: 

You are already the truth. 

Only a certain awakening is needed. 

You are not to go anywhere else. You are to go into yourself, and the going is possible 
this very moment. If you can put aside your mind, you enter here and now. 

These techniques are for putting your mind aside. These techniques are not really for 
meditation; they are for putting the mind aside. Once the mind is not there, YOU ARE! 

I think this is enough for today, or even more than enough. 

THE END. 



Chapter 5: Five Techniques of attentiveness 


5. ATTENTION BETWEEN EYEBROWS, LET MIND BE BEFORE THOUGHT. LET 
FORM FILL WITH BREATH ESSENCE TO THE TOP OF THE HEAD AND THERE 
SHOWER AS LIGHT. 

6. WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY, KEEP ATTENTION BETWEEN TWO 
BREATHS, AND SO PRACTICING, IN A FEW DAYS BE BORN ANEW. 

7. WITH INTANGIBLE BREATH IN CENTER OF FOREHEAD, AS THIS REACHES 
HEART AT THE MOMENT OF SLEEP, HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND 
OVER DEATH ITSELF. 

8. WITH UTMOST DEVOTION, CENTER ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH 
AND KNOW THE KNOWER. 

9. LIE DOWN AS DEAD. ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. OR STARE WITHOUT 
MOVING AN EYELASH. OR SUCK SOMETHING AND BECOME THE SUCKING. 

When one of the great Greek philosophers, Pythagoras, reached Egypt to enter a school — 
a secret esoteric school of mysticism — he was refused. And Pythagoras was one of the 
best minds ever produced. He could not understand it. He applied again and again, but he 
was told that unless he goes through a particular training of fasting and breathing he 
cannot be allowed to enter the school. 

Pythagoras is reported to have said, "I have come for knowledge, not for any sort of 
discipline." But the school authorities said, "We cannot give you knowledge unless you 
are different. And really, we are not interested in knowledge at all, we are interested in 
actual experience. No knowledge is knowledge unless it is lived and experienced. 

So you will have to go on a forty-day fast, continuously breathing in a certain manner, 
with a certain awareness on certain points." 

There was no other way, so Pythagoras had to pass through this training. After forty days 
of fasting and breathing, aware, attentive, he was allowed to enter the school. It is said 
that Pythagoras said, "You are not allowing Pythagoras in. I am a different man, I am 
reborn. You were right and I was wrong, because then my whole standpoint was 
intellectual. Through this purification, my center of being has changed. From the intellect 
it has come down to the heart. Now I can feel things. Before this training I could only 
understand through the intellect, through the head. Now I can feel. Now truth is not a 
concept to me, but a life. It is not going to be a philosophy, but rather, an experience — 
existential." 

What was that training he went through? This fifth technique was the technique that was 
given to Pythagoras. It was given in Egypt, but the technique is Indian. 

The fifth technique: 

ATTENTION BETWEEN EYEBROWS, LET MIND BE BEFORE THOUGHT. LET 
FORM FILL WITH BREATH ESSENCE TO THE TOP OF THE HEAD AND THERE 
SHOWER AS LIGHT. This was the technique given to Pythagoras. Pythagoras went 
with this technique to Greece, and really, he became the fountainhead, the source of all 
mysticism in the West. He is the father of all mysticism in the West. 



This technique is one of the very deep methods. Try to understand this: ATTENTION 
BETWEEN THE EYEBROWS... Modern physiology, scientific research, says that 
between the two eyebrows is the gland which is the most mysterious part of the body. 

This gland, called the pineal gland, is the third eye of the Tibetans — SHIVANETRA: the 
eye of the Shiva, of the tantra. Between the two eyes there exists a third eye, but it is non- 
functioning. It is there, it can function any moment, but it does not function naturally. 

You have to do something about it to open it. It is not blind; it is simply closed. This 
technique is to open the third eye. 

ATTENTION BETWEEN THE EYEBROWS... Close your eyes, then focus both of your 
eyes just in the middle of the two eyebrows. Focus just in the middle, with closed eyes, as 
if you are looking with your two eyes. Give total attention to it. 

This is one of the simplest methods of being attentive. You cannot be attentive to any 
other part of the body so easily. This gland absorbs attention like anything. If you give 
attention to it, both your eyes become hypnotized with the third eye. They become fixed; 
they cannot move. If you are trying to be attentive to any other part of the body it is 
difficult. This third eye catches attention, forces attention; It is magnetic for attention. So 
all the methods all over the world have used it. It is the simplest to train you in attention 
because not only are you trying to be attentive, the gland itself helps you; it is magnetic. 

Your attention is brought to it forcibly. It is absorbed. 

It is said in the old tantra scriptures that for the third eye attention is food. It is hungry; it 
has been hungry for lives and lives. If you pay attention to it, it becomes alive. It 
becomes alive! The food is given to it. And once you know that attention is food, once 
you feel that your attention is magnetically drawn, attracted, pulled by the gland itself, 
attention is not a difficult thing then. One has only to know the right point. So just close 
your eyes, let your two eyes move just to the middle, and feel the point. When you are 
near the point, suddenly your eyes will become fixed. When it becomes difficult to move 
them, then know you have caught the right point. 

ATTENTION BETWEEN THE EYEBROWS, LET MIND BE BEFORE THOUGHT... 

If this attention is there, for the first time you will come to experience a strange 
phenomenon. For the first time you will see thoughts running before you; you will 
become the witness. It is just like a film screen: thoughts are running and you are a 
witness. Once your attention is focused at the third eye center, you become immediately 
the witness of thoughts. 

Ordinarily you are not the witness, you are identified with thoughts. If anger is there, you 
become anger. If a thought moves, you are not the witness, you become one with the 
thought, identified, and you move with it. 

You become the thought; you take the form of the thought. When sex is there you 
become sex, when anger is there you become anger, when greed is there you become 
greed. Any thought moving becomes identified with you. You do not have any gap 
between you and the thought. 

But focused at the third eye, suddenly you become a witness. Through the third eye you 
become the witness. Through the third eye you can see thoughts running like clouds in 
the sky or people moving on the street. 

You are sitting at your window looking at the sky or at people in the street; you are not 
identified. You are aloof, a watcher on the hill — different. Now if anger is there you can 
look at it as an object. Now you do not feel that YOU are angry. You feel that you are 



surrounded by anger — a cloud of anger has come around you — but you are not the 
anger. And if you are not the anger, anger becomes impotent, it cannot affect you; you 
remain untouched. The anger will come and go and you will remain centered in yourself. 
This fifth technique is a technique of finding the witness. ATTENTION BETWEEN THE 
EYEBROWS, LET THE MIND BE BEFORE THOUGHT. Now look at your thoughts; 
now encounter your thoughts. LET FORM FILL WITH BREATH ESSENCE TO THE 
TOP OF THE HEAD AND THERE SHOWER AS LIGHT. When attention is focused at 
the third eye center, between the two eyebrows, two things happen. One is, suddenly you 
become a witness. 


This can happen in two ways. You become a witness and you will be centered at the third 
eye. Try to be a witness. Whatsoever is happening, try to be a witness. You are ill, the 
body is aching and painful, you have misery and suffering, whatsoever — be a witness to 
it. Whatsoever is happening, do not identify yourself with it. Be a witness, an observer. 
Then if witnessing becomes possible, you will be focused in the third eye. 

The vice versa is the case also. If you are focused in the third eye, you will become a 
witness. These two things are part of one. So the first thing: by being centered in the third 
eye there will be the arising of the witnessing self. Now you can encounter your thoughts. 
This will be the first thing. And the second thing will be that now you can feel the subtle, 
delicate vibration of breathing. Now you can feel the fonn of breathing, the very essence 
of breathing. 

First try to understand what is meant by "the fonn," by "the essence of breathing." While 
you are breathing, you are not only breathing air. Science says you are breathing only air 
— just oxygen, hydrogen, and other gases in their combined form of air. They say you are 
breathing air! But tantra says that air is just the vehicle, not the real thing. You are 
breathing prana — vitality. Air is just the medium; prana is the content. You are breathing 
prana, not only air. 


Modern science is still not able to find out whether there is something like prana, but 
some researchers have felt something mysterious. Breathing is not simply air. It has been 
felt by many modem researchers also. In particular, one name is to be mentioned — 
Wilhelm Reich, a German psychologist who called it "orgone energy." It is the same 
thing as prana. He says that while you are breathing, air is just the container and there is a 
mysterious content which can be called orgone or prana or ELAN VITAL. But that is 
very subtle. Really, it is not material. Air is the material thing — the container is material 
— but something subtle, non-material, is moving through it. 

The effects of it can be felt. When you are with a very vital person, you will feel a certain 
vitality arising in you. If you are with a very sick person you will feel sucked, as if 
something has been taken out of you. When you go to the hospital, why do you feel so 
tired? You are being sucked from everywhere. The whole hospital atmosphere is ill, and 
everyone there needs more elan vital, more prana. So if you are there, suddenly your 
prana begins to flow out of you. Why do you feel suffocated sometimes when you are in 
a crowd? Because your prana is being sucked. While you are alone under the sky in the 
morning, under the trees, suddenly you feel a vitality in you — the prana. Each person 
needs a particular space. 



If that space is not given, your prana is sucked. 

Wilhelm Reich did many experiments, but he was thought to be a madman. Science has 
its own superstitions, and science is a very orthodox thing. Science cannot feel yet that 
there is anything more than air, but India has been experimenting with it for centuries. 
You may have heard or you may have even seen someone going into SAMADHI, cosmic 
consciousness — underground samadhi — for days together, with no air penetrating. One 
man went into such underground samadhi in Egypt in 1880 for forty years. Those who 
had buried him all died, because he was to come out of his samadhi in 1920, forty years 
afterwards. In 1920 no one believed that they would find him alive, but he was found 
alive. He lived afterwards for ten years more. He had become completely pale, but he 
was alive. And there had been no possibility of air reaching to him. 

He was asked by medical doctors and others, "What is the secret of it?" He said, "We do 
not know. We only know this, that prana can enter and flow anywhere." Air cannot 
penetrate, but prana can penetrate. Once you know that you can suck prana directly, 
without the container, then you can go into samadhi for centuries even. 

By being focused in the third eye, suddenly you can observe the very essence of breath — 
not breath, but the very essence of breath, prana. And if you can observe the essence of 
breath, prana, you are at the point from where the jump, the breakthrough happens. 


The sutra says, LET FORM FILL WITH BREATH ESSENCE TO THE TOP OF THE 
HEAD... And when you come to feel the essence of breathing, prana, just imagine that 
your head is filled with it — just imagine. No need of any effort. I will explain to you how 
imagination works. When you are focused at the third eye center, imagine, and the thing 
happens — then and there. 

Now your imagination is just impotent; you go on imagining and nothing happens. But 
sometimes, unknowingly, in ordinary life also things happen. You are imagining about 
your friend and suddenly there is a knock on the door. You say it is a coincidence that the 
friend has come. Sometimes your imagination works just like coincidence. But whenever 
this happens, now try and remember and analyze the whole thing. Whenever it happens 
that you feel your imagination has become actual, go inside and observe. Somewhere 
your attention must have been near the third eye. Whenever this coincidence happens, it 
is not a coincidence. It looks that way because you do not know the secret science. Your 
mind must have moved unknowingly near the third eye center. If your attention is in the 
third eye, just imagination is enough to create any phenomenon. 

This sutra says that when you are focused between the eyebrows and you can feel the 
very essence of breathing, LET FORM FILL. Now imagine that this essence is filling 
your whole head, particularly the top of the head, the SAHASRAR — the highest psychic 
center. 

And the moment you imagine, it will be filled. THERE — at the top of the head — 
SHOWER AS LIGHT. This prana essence is showering from the top of your head as 
light. And it WILL begin to shower, and under the shower of light you will be refreshed, 
reborn, completely new. That is what inner rebirth means. 

So two things: first, focused at the third eye your imagination becomes potent, powerful. 
That is why so much insistence has been given on purity. Before doing these practices, be 
pure. Purity is not a moral concept for tantra, purity is significant — because if you are 
focused at the third eye and your mind is impure, your imagination can become 



dangerous: dangerous to you, dangerous to others. If you are thinking to murder 
someone, if this idea is in the mind, just imagining may kill the man. That is why there is 
so much insistence on being pure first. 

Pythagoras was told to go through fasting, through particular breathing — this breathing 
— because here one is traveling in a very dangerous land. Because wherever there is 
power there is danger, and if the mind is impure, whenever you get power your impure 
thoughts will take hold of it immediately. 

You have imagined many times to kill but the imagination cannot work, fortunately. If it 
works, if it is actualized immediately, then it will become dangerous — not only to others, 
but to yourself also, because so many times you have thought to commit suicide. 

If the mind is focused at the third eye, just thinking of suicide will become suicide. You 
will not have any time to change, immediately it will happen. 

You might have observed someone being hypnotized. When someone is hypnotized, the 
hypnotist can say anything and immediately the hypnotized person follows. Howsoever 
absurd the order, howsoever irrational or even impossible, the hypnotized person follows 
it. What is happening? This fifth technique is at the base of all hypnotism. Whenever 
someone is being hypnotized he is told to focus his eyes at a particular point — on some 
light, some dot on the wall or anything, or on the eyes of the hypnotist. 

When you focus your eyes at any particular point, within three minutes your inner 
attention begins to flow toward the third eye. And the moment your inner attention 
begins to flow toward the third eye, your face begins to change. And the hypnotist knows 
when your face begins to change. Suddenly your face loses all vitality. It becomes dead, 
as if deeply asleep. The hypnotist knows immediately when your face has lost the luster, 
the aliveness. It means that now attention is being sucked by the third eye center. Your 
face has become dead; the whole energy is running toward the third eye center. 

Now the hypnotist immediately knows that anything said will happen. He says, "Now 
you are falling into a deep sleep" — you will fall immediately. 

He says, "Now you are becoming unconscious" — you will become unconscious 
immediately. Now anything can be done. If he says, "Now you have become Napoleon," 
you will become. You will begin to behave like a Napoleon, you will begin to talk like 
Napoleon. Your gestures will change. Your unconscious will take the order and will 
create the actuality. If you are suffering from a disease, now it can be ordered that the 
disease has disappeared and it will disappear. Or any new disease can be created. 

Just putting an ordinary stone from the street in your hand, the hypnotist can say, "This is 
fire in your hand," and you will feel intense heat; your hand will get burned — not only in 
the mind, but actually. Actually your skin will get burned. You will have a burning 
sensation. What is happening? There is no fire, there is just an ordinary stone, cold. 

How? How does this burning happen? You are focused at the third eye center, your 
imagination is being given suggestions by the hypnotist, and they are being actualized. If 
the hypnotist says, "Now you are dead," you will die immediately. Your heart will stop. It 
WILL stop. 

This happens because of the third eye. In the third eye, imagination and actualization are 
not two things. Imagination is the fact. Imagine, and it is so. There is no gap between 
dream and reality. There is NO gap between dream and reality! Dream, and it will 
become real. 



That is why Shankara has said that this whole world is nothing but the dream of the 
divine... the DREAM of the divine! This is because the divine is centered in the third eye 
— always, eternally — so whatsoever the divine dreams becomes real. If you are also 
centered in the third eye, whatsoever you dream will become real. 

Sariputta came to Buddha. He meditated deeply, then many things, many visions started 
coming, as it happens with anyone who goes into deep meditation. He began to see 
heavens, he began to see hells, he began to see angels, gods, demons. And they were 
actual, so real that he came running to Buddha to tell him that such and such a vision had 
come to him. But Buddha said, "It is nothing — just dreams. Just dreams!" 

But Sariputta said, "They are so real. How can I say that they are dreams? When I see a 
flower in my vision it is more real than any flower in the world. The fragrance is there; I 
can touch it. When I see you," he said to Buddha, "I do not see you as real. That flower is 
more real than your being here just before me, so how can I differentiate between what is 
real and what is dream?" Buddha said, "Now that you are centered in the third eye, dream 
and reality are one. Whatsoever you are dreaming will be real, and vice versa also." 

For one who is centered in the third eye dreams will become real and the whole reality 
will become just a dream, because when your dream can become real you know there is 
no basic difference between dream and reality. 

So when Shankara says that this whole world is just MAYA, a dream of the divine, it is 
not a theoretical proposition, it is not a philosophical statement. It is, rather, the inner 
experience of one who is focused in the third eye. 

When you are focused in the third eye, just imagine that the essence of prana is 
showering from the top of the head, just as if you are sitting under a tree and flowers are 
showering, or you are just under the sky and suddenly a cloud begins to shower, or you 
are just sitting in the morning and the sun rises and rays begin to shower. Imagine, and 
immediately there is a shower — a shower of light falling down from the top of your 
head. This shower recreates you, gives you a new birth. You are reborn. 

The sixth technique: 

WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY, KEEP ATTENTIVE BETWEEN THE TWO 
BREATHS, AND SO PRACTICING, IN A FEW DAYS, BE BORN ANEW. 

WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY, KEEP ATTENTIVE BETWEEN THE TWO 
BREATHS... Forget breaths — keep attentive in between. One breath has come: before it 
returns, before it is exhaled out, there is the gap, the interval. One breath has gone out; 
before it is taken in again, the gap. IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY KEEP ATTENTIVE 
BETWEEN THE TWO BREATHS, AND SO PRACTICING, IN A FEW DAYS, BE 
BORN ANEW. But this has to be done continuously. This sixth technique has to be done 
continuously. That is why this is mentioned: WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY. 

.. Whatsoever you are doing, keep your attention in the gap between the two breaths. But 
it must be practiced while in activity. 

We have discussed one technique that is just similar. Now there is only this difference, 
that this has to be practiced while in worldly activity. Do not practice it in isolation. This 
practice is to be done while you are doing something else. You are eating — go on eating 
and be attentive of the gap. You are walking — go on walking and be attentive of the gap. 
You are going to sleep — lie down, let sleep come, but you go on being attentive of the 
gap. Why in activity? Because activity distracts the mind, activity calls for your attention 



again and again. Do not be distracted, be fixed at the gap. And do not stop activity, let the 
activity continue. You will have two layers of existence — doing and being. 

We have two layers of existence: the world of doing and the world of being; the 
circumference and the center. Go on working on the periphery, on the circumference; do 
not stop it. But go on working attentively on the center also. What will happen? Your 
activity will become an acting, as if you are playing a part. 

You are playing a part — for example, in a drama. You have become Ram or you have 
become Christ. You go on acting as Christ or as Ram, and still you remain yourself. In 
the center, you know who you are; on the periphery you go on acting as Ram, Christ or 
anyone. 

You know you are not Ram — you are acting. You know who you are. Your attention is 
centered in you; your activity continues on the circumference. 

If this method is practiced, your whole life will become a long drama. You will be an 
actor playing roles, but constantly centered in the gap. If you forget the gap then you are 
not playing roles, you have become the role. Then it is not a drama; you have mistaken it 
as life. That is what we have done. Everyone thi nk s he is living life. It is not life, it is just 
a role — a part which has been given to you by the society, by the circumstances, by the 
culture, by the tradition, the country, the situation. You have been given a role and you 
are playing it; you have become identified with it. To break that identification there is 
this technique. 

Krishna has many names. Krishna is one of the greatest actors. He is constantly centered 
in himself and playing — playing many roles, many games, but absolutely non serious. 
Seriousness comes from identification. If you really become Ram in the drama then there 
are bound to be problems. Those problems will come out of your seriousness. When Sita 
is stolen you may get a heart attack, and the whole play will have to be stopped. If you 
really become Ram a heart attack is certain... even heart failure. 

But you are just an actor. Sita is stolen, but nothing is stolen. You will go back to your 
home and you will sleep peacefully. 

Not even in a dream will you feel that Sita is stolen. When really Sita was stolen, Ram 
himself was weeping, crying and asking the trees, "Where has my Sita gone? Who has 
taken her?" But this is the point to understand. If Ram is really weeping and asking the 
trees, he has become identified. He is no more Ram; he is no more a divine person. 

This is the point to remember, that for Ram his real life also was just a part. You have 
seen other actors playing Ram, but Ram himself was just playing a part — on a greater 
stage, of course. 

India has a very beautiful story about it. I think that the story is unique; nowhere else in 
any part of the world does such a thing exist. It is said that Valmiki wrote the 
RAMA YANA before Ram was bom, and then Ram had to follow. So really, the first act 
of Ram was also just a drama. The story was written before Ram was bom and then Ram 
had to follow, so what can he do? When a man like Valmiki writes the story, Ram has to 
follow. So everything was fixed in a way. Sita was to be stolen and the war had to be 
fought. 

If you can understand this, then you can understand the theory of destiny, BHAGYA — 
fate. It has a very deep meaning. And the meaning is, if you take it that everything is 
fixed for you, your life becomes a drama. If you are playing the role of Ram in the drama 
you cannot change it, everything is fixed, even your dialogue. 



If you say something to Sita it is just repeating something that is fixed. You cannot 
change it if life is taken as fixed. 

For example, you are going to die on a particular day — it is fixed. When you will be 
dying you will be weeping, but it is fixed. And such and such persons will be around you 
— it is fixed. If everything is fixed, everything becomes a drama. If everything is fixed, it 
means you are just to enact it. You are not asked to live it, you are just asked to enact it. 
This technique, the sixth technique, is just to make yourself a psychodrama — just a play. 
You are focused in the gap between two breaths and life moves on, on the periphery. If 
your attention is at the center, then your attention is not really on the periphery — that is 
just "sub-attention"; it just happens somewhere near your attention. You can feel it, you 
can know it, but it is not significant. It is as if it is not happening to you. I will repeat this: 
if you practice this sixth technique, your whole life will be as if it is not happening to 
you, as if it is happening to someone else. 

The seventh technique: WITH INTANGIBLE BREATH IN CENTER OF FOREHEAD, 
AS THIS REACHES HEART AT THE MOMENT OF SLEEP, HAVE DIRECTION 
OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF. More and more you are entering deeper 
layers. WITH INTANGIBLE BREATH IN CENTER OF FOREHEAD... If you have 
known the third eye then you know the intangible breath, the invisible prana in the center 
of the forehead, and then you know the showering — the energy, the light showers. 

AS THIS REACHES HEART... When the shower will reach your heart... AT THE 
MOMENT OF SLEEP, HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH 
ITSELF. 

Take this technique in three parts. One, you must be able to feel the prana in breath — the 
intangible part of it, the invisible part of it, the immaterial part of it. It comes if you are 
attentive between the two eyebrows; then it comes easily. If you are attentive in the gap, 
then too it comes, but a little less easily. If you are aware of the center at your navel 
where breath comes and touches and goes out, it also comes, but with less ease. The 
easiest way to know the invisible part of breath is to be centered at the third eye. But 
wherever you are centered, it comes, you begin to feel the prana flowing in. 

If you can feel the prana flowing in you, you can know when you are going to die. Six 
months before the day of your death you begin to know, if you can feel the invisible part 
of breath. Why do so many saints declare the day of their death? It is easy, because if you 
can see the content of the breath, the prana flowing into you, the moment the process 
reverses you can feel it. Before you die, six months before you die, the process reverses: 
prana begins to flow out of you. Then the breath is not taking it in. Rather, on the 
contrary, the breath is taking it out — the same breath. 

You cannot feel it because you do not know the invisible part — you know only the 
visible, you know only the vehicle. 

The vehicle will be the same. Now the breath is carrying prana in, leaving it there; then 
the vehicle goes back empty. Then again it is filled with the prana and it comes in. So the 
ingoing breath and the outgoing breath are not the same, remember. The ingoing breath 
and the outgoing breath are the same as vehicles, but the incoming breath is filled with 
prana and the outgoing breath is empty. You have taken in the prana and the breath has 
become empty. 

The reverse happens when you are nearing death. The incoming breath comes prana-less, 



empty, because your body cannot suck prana from the cosmos. You are going to die; 
there is no need for it. The whole process has reversed. And when the breath goes out, it 
takes your prana out. One who has been able to see the invisible can know his day of 
death immediately. Six months before, the process reverses. 

This sutra is very, very significant: WITH INTANGIBLE BREATH IN CENTER OF 
FOREHEAD, AS THIS REACHES HEART AT THE MOMENT OF SLEEP, HAVE 
DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF. While you are falling 
into sleep this technique has to be practiced — then only, not at any other time. While you 
are falling asleep, only then; that is the right moment to practice this technique. You are 
falling asleep. By and by, by and by, sleep is overtaking you. Within moments, your 
consciousness will dissolve; you will not be aware. 

Before that moment comes, become aware — aware of the breath and the invisible part 
prana, and feel it coming to the heart. 

Go on feeling that it is coming to the heart. The prana enters from your heart into the 
body. Go on feeling that the prana is coming into the heart, and let sleep come while you 
are continuously feeling it. You go on feeling, and let sleep come and drown you. 

If this happens — that you are feeling invisible breath coming into the heart and sleep 
overtakes you — you will be aware in dreams. You will know that you are dreaming. 
Ordinarily we do not know that we are dreaming. While you dream you think that this is 
reality. That too happens because of the third eye. Have you seen anyone asleep? His 
eyes move upwards and become focused in the third eye. If you have not seen, then see. 
Your child is sleeping... just open his eyes and see where his eyes are. His pupils have 
gone up and they are focused in the third eye. I say look at children, do not look at 
grown-ups — they are not believable because their sleep is not deep. They will just be 
thinking that they are asleep. Look at children, their eyes move up. They become focused 
in the third eye. Because of this focusing in the third eye you take your dreams as real, 
you cannot feel they are dreams — they are real. You will know when you get up in the 
morning. Then you will know that "I was dreaming." 

But this is the later, retrospective realization. You cannot realize in the dream that you 
are dreaming. If you realize it, then there are two layers: dream is there but you are 
awake, you are aware. For one who becomes aware in dreams, this sutra is wonderful. It 
says, HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF. 

If you can become aware of dreams, you can do two things. You can create dreams — 
one. Ordinarily you cannot create dreams. How impotent man is! You cannot even create 
dreams. If you want to dream a particular thing you cannot dream it; it is not in your 
hands. How powerless man is! Even dreams cannot be created. You are just a victim of 
dreams, not the creator. A dream happens to you; you cannot do anything. Neither can 
you stop it nor can you create it. 

But if you move into sleep remembering the heart being filled with prana, continuously 
being touched by prana with every breath, you will become a master of your dreams — 
and this is a rare mastery. Then you can dream whatsoever dreams you like. Just note 
while you are falling asleep that "I want to dream this dream," and that dream will come 
to you. Just say, while falling asleep, "I do not want to dream that dream," and that dream 
cannot enter your mind. 

But what is the use of becoming the master of your dreaming? Isn't it useless? No, it is 
not useless. Once you become master of your dreams you will never dream — it is absurd. 



When you are master of your dreams, dreaming stops; there is no need for it. And when 
dreaming stops, your sleep has a different quality altogether, and the quality is the same 
as of death. 

Death is deep sleep. If your sleep can become as deep as death, that means there will be 
no dreaming. Dreaming creates superficiality in sleep. You move on the surface because 
of the dreams; because of hanging on to the dreams, you move on the surface. When 
there is no dreaming you just drop into the sea, its depth is reached. 

Death is the same. That is why people in India have always been saying that sleep is a 
short duration of death, and death is a long sleep — qualitatively they are the same. Sleep 
is a day-to-day death. Death is a life-to-life phenomenon, a life-to-life sleep. Every day 
you are tired. You fall into sleep and you regain your vitality, your aliveness in the 
morning; you are reborn. After a life of seventy or eighty years you are tired completely. 
Now such short durations of death won’t do; you need a great death. After that great 
death or great sleep, you are reborn with a totally new body. 

Once you can know dreamless sleep and can be aware in it, then there will be no fear of 
death. No one has ever died, no one can die — that is the only impossibility. 

Just a day before I was telling you that death is the only certainty, and now I say to you 
that death is impossible. 

No one has ever died and no one can die — that is the only impossibility — because the 
universe is life. You are again and again reborn, but the sleep is so deep that you forget 
your old identity. Your mind is washed clean of the memories. 

Think of it in this way. Today you are going to sleep: it is just as if there were some 
mechanism — and soon we will have this — like that which can erase on a tape recorder, 
which can wipe a tape clean so that whatsoever was recorded is no more there. The same 
is possible with memory, because memory is really just a deep recording. Sooner or later 
we will have a mechanism which can be put on the head and it will clean your mind 
completely. In the morning you will no longer be the same person because you won’t be 
able to remember who it was who went to sleep. Then your sleep will look like death. 
There will be a discontinuity; you won’t be able to remember who went to sleep. This is 
happening naturally. When you die and you are reborn, you cannot remember who died. 
You start again. 

With this technique, first you will become the master of your dreams — that is, dreaming 
will cease. Or if you want to dream you will be able to dream, but dreaming will become 
voluntary. It will not be non-voluntary, it will not be forced upon you; you will not be a 
victim. Then the quality of your sleep will become just like that of death. Then you will 
know that death is sleep. 


That is why this sutra says: HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH 
ITSELF, you will know that death is just a long sleep — and helpful and beautiful 
because it gives you new life; it gives you everything anew. Death ceases to be... with 
cessation of dreaming, death ceases to be. 

There is another meaning to gaining power over death, direction over death. If you can 
come to feel that death is just a sleep, you will be able to direct it. If you can direct your 
dreams, you can direct your death also. You can choose where you are to be born again, 
to whom, when, in what form; you will become master of your birth also. 

Buddha died... I am not referring to his last life, but to his last-but-one life, before he 



became Buddha. Before dying he said, "I will be bom to such and such parents; such will 
be my mother, such will be my father. But my mother will die immediately... when I am 
bom my mother will die immediately. Before I am born my mother will have certain 
dreams." Not only do you gain power from your dreams, you gain power from others' 
dreams also. So Buddha, as an example, said, "Certain dreams will be there. When I will 
be in the womb, my mother will have certain dreams. So whenever any woman has these 
dreams in this sequence, know well I am going to be born to her." 

And it happened. Buddha's mother dreamed the same sequence. The sequence was 
kn own all over India, because it was no ordinary statement. 

It was known to everyone, particularly those who were interested in religion and the 
deeper things of life and the esoteric ways of life. It was known, so the dreams were 
interpreted. Freud was not the first interpreter — and, of course, not the deepest. Only in 
the West was he the first. 

So Buddha’s father immediately called dream interpreters, the Freuds and Jungs of those 
days, and he asked, "What does this sequence mean? I am afraid. These dreams are rare, 
and they go on repeating in the same sequence. There are one, two, three, four, five, six 
dreams continuously being repeated. There are the same dreams, as if one is seeing the 
same film again and again. What is happening?" 

So they told him, "You are going to be the father of a great soul — one who is going to be 
a buddha. But then your wife is going to be in danger, because whenever this buddha is 
bom it is difficult for the mother to survive." 

The father asked, "Why?" The interpreters said, "We cannot say why, but this soul who is 
going to be born has made a statement that when he will be born again, the mother will 
die immediately." 

Later on Buddha was asked, "Why did your mother die immediately?" He said, "Giving 
birth to a buddha is such a big event that everything else becomes futile afterwards. So 
the mother cannot exist. She will have to be bom again to start anew. It is such a climax 
giving birth to a buddha, it is such a peak, that the mother cannot exist beyond it." 


So the mother died. And Buddha had said in his previous life that he would be bom while 
his mother was standing under a palm tree — and it happened. The mother was standing 
under a palm tree — standing while Buddha was born. And he had said, "I will be bom 
while my mother is standing under a palm tree, and I will take seven steps. Immediately, 

I will walk. These are the signs I give to you," he said, "so that you will know that a 
buddha is born." And he carried out everything. 

And this is not only so about Buddha. It is so about Jesus, it is so about Mahavir, it is so 
about many others. Every Jain TIRTH ANKARA has predicted in his previous life how 
he is going to be born. And they have given particular dream sequences — that such and 
such will be the symbols — and they have told how it will happen. 

You can direct. Once you can direct your dreams you can direct everything, because 
dream is the very stuff of this world. This life is made out of the stuff of dreams. Once 
you can direct your dreams you can direct everything. This sutra says, OVER DEATH 
ITSELF. Then one can give a certain birth, a certain life to oneself. 

We are just victims. We do not know why we are born, why we die. Who directs us — 
and why? There seems to be no reason. It all seems just a chaos, just accidental. It is 
because we are not masters. Once we are masters it is not like this. 



The eighth technique: WITH UTMOST DEVOTION, CENTER ON THE TWO 
JUNCTIONS OF BREATH AND KNOW THE KNOWER. There is a slight difference 
in the techniques — slight modifications. But though the differences are slight in the 
techniques, for you they may be great. A single word makes a great difference. WITH 
UTMOST DEVOTION, CENTER ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH. The 
incoming breath has one junction where it turns, the outgoing breath has another junction 
where it turns. With these two turnings — and we have discussed these turnings — a slight 
difference is made: that is, slight in the technique, but for the seeker it may be great. Only 
one condition is added — WITH UTMOST DEVOTION — and the whole technique 
becomes different. 

In the first form of it there was no question of devotion, just a scientific technique. You 
do it, and it works. But there are persons who cannot do such dry, scientific tec'niques. 
Those who are heart-oriented, those who belong to the world of devotion, for them a 
slight difference has been made: WITH UTMOST DEVOTION, CENTER ON THE 
TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH AND KNOW THE KNOWER. 

If you are not of the scientific bent, of the scientific attitude, if you are not a scientific 
mind, then try this: WITH UTMOST DEVOTION - with faith, love, trust - CENTER 
ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH AND KNOW THE KNOWER. How to do 
this? How? You can have devotion about someone: about Krishna, about Christ you can 
have devotion. 

But how can you have devotion about yourself, about this junction of breathing? The 
phenomenon seems absolutely non-devotional. But that depends.... 

Tantra says that the body is the temple. Your body is the temple of the divine, the abode 
of the divine, so do not treat your body as an object. It is sacred, it is holy. And while you 
are taking a breath in, it is not only you who is taking the breath, it is the divine within 
you. You are eating, you are moving or walking... look at it in this way: it is not you, but 
the divine moving in you. Then the whole thing becomes absolutely devotional. 

It is said about many saints that they love their bodies. They treat their bodies as if their 
bodies belong to their beloveds. You can treat your body in this way or you can treat it 
just like a mechanism — that again is an attitude. You can treat it with guilt, sin; you can 
treat it as something dirty; you can treat it as something miraculous, as a miracle; you can 
treat it as the abode of the divine. It depends on you. If you can treat your body as a 
temple, then this technique will be helpful — WITH UTMOST DEVOTION... 

Try it. While you are eating, try it. Do not think that YOU are eating. Think that it is the 
divine in you who is eating, and look at the change. You are eating the same thing, you 
are the same, but immediately everything becomes different. You are giving the food to 
the divine. 

You are taking a bath — a very ordinary, trivial thing — but change the attitude: feel that 
you are giving a bath to the divine in you. Then this technique will be easy: WITH 
UTMOST DEVOTION, CENTER ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH AND 
KNOW THE KNOWER. 


The ninth technique: LIE DOWN AS DEAD. ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. OR 
STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH. OR SUCK SOMETHING AND 



BECOME THE SUCKING. 

LIE DOWN AS DEAD. Try it: suddenly you have gone dead. Leave the body! Do not 
move it, because you are dead. Just imagine that you are dead. You cannot move the 
body, you cannot move the eyes, you cannot cry, you cannot scream, you cannot do 
anything, you are just dead. And then feel how it feels. But do not deceive. You can 
deceive — you can slightly move the body. Do not move. If some mosquito is there, then 
treat the body as if it is dead. It is one of the most used techniques. 

Raman Maharshi attained his enlightenment through this technique, but it was not a 
technique used by him in his life. In his life it suddenly happened, spontaneously. But he 
must have persisted with this in some past life, because nothing happens spontaneously. 
Everything has a causal link, a causality. Suddenly one night Raman felt — he was just 
young, fourteen or fifteen at the time — that he was going to die. And it was so certain in 
his mind that death had taken over. He couldn't move his body, he felt as if he was 
paralyzed. 

Then he felt a sudden choking, and he knew that now the heart was going to stop. He 
could not even cry and say to another, "I am going to die." 

Sometimes it happens in some nightmare — you cannot cry, you cannot move. Even when 
you become awake for a few moments you cannot do anything. That happened. He had 
absolute power over his consciousness, but no power over his body. He knew he was 
there, that he was present, conscious, alert, but he felt he was going to die. And the 
knowledge became so certain that there was no other possibility, so he just gave up. He 
closed his eyes and remained there, just waiting to die; he waited there just to die. 

By and by the body became stiff. The body died, but then it became a problem. He knew 
that the body had died, but he was there and he knew it. He knew that he was alive and 
that the body had died. Then he came back. In the morning the body became okay but the 
same man never returned — because he had known death. He had known a different 
realm, a different dimension of consciousness. 

He escaped from the house. That death experience changed him completely. He became 
one of the very few enlightened persons of this age. 

This is the technique. This happened spontaneously to Raman, but it is not going to 
happen spontaneously to you. But try it. In some life it may become spontaneous. It may 
happen while you are trying it. 

And if it is not going to happen, the effort is never wasted. It is in you; it remains in you 
as a seed. Sometime, when the time is ripe and the rains will fall, it will sprout. 

Every spontaneity is just like this. The seed was sown some time ago, but the time was 
not ripe; there were no rains. In another life the time becomes ripe. You are more mature, 
more experienced, more frustrated with the world — then suddenly, in a certain situation, 
there are rains and the seed explodes. 

LIE DOWN AS DEAD. ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. Of course, while you are 
dying it will not be a happy moment. It is not going to be so blissful while you are feeling 
that you are dead. Fear will take you, anger may come in the mind, or frustration, 
sadness, sorrow, anguish... anything. It will differ from individual to individual. 

The sutra says: ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. If you feel enraged, stay so. If you 
feel sad, stay so. If you feel anxiety, fear, stay so. You are dead and you cannot do 
anything, so stay so. Whatsoever is in the mind, the body is dead and you cannot do 
anything, so stay. 



That staying is beautiful. If you can stay for a few minutes, suddenly you will feel that 
everything has changed. But we start moving. If there is some emotion in the mind, the 
body begins to move. That is why we call it "emotion" — it creates motion in the body. If 
you are angry, suddenly your body begins to move. 

If you are sad, your body begins to move. That is why it is called emotion, because it 
creates motion in the body. Feel dead and do not allow emotions to move your body. Let 
them be there, but you STAY SO — fixed, dead. Whatsoever is there... no movement. 
Stay! No movement. 

OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH. This OR STARE WITHOUT 
MOVING AN EYELASH was the method of Meher Baba. For years together he was 
staring just at the ceiling of his room. For years together he was just lying dead on the 
floor, staring at the ceiling without moving an eyelash, without moving his eyes. He 
would lie down for hours together, just staring, not doing anything. Staring with the eyes 
is good, because you become fixed again in the third eye. And once you are fixed in the 
third eye, even if you want to move the eyelids you cannot; they become fixed. 

Meher Baba attained through this staring, and you say, "How with these small 
exercises...?" But for three years he was staring at the ceiling not doing anything. Three 
years is a long time. Do it for three minutes and you will feel as if you have been lying 
there for three years. Three minutes will become very, very long. It will look as if time is 
not passing and as if the clock has stopped. 

Meher Baba stared and stared and stared. By and by thoughts ceased, movement ceased, 
and he became just a consciousness, he became just a staring. 

Then he remained silent for his whole life. He became so silent inside by this staring that 
it became impossible for him to formulate words again. 

Meher Baba was in America. There was one man who could read others’ thoughts, who 
could do mind readings, and he was really one of the rarest mind readers. He would close 
his eyes, sit before you, and within a few minutes he would become attuned with you and 
he would begin to write what you are thinking. Thousands and thousands of times he was 
examined, and he was always right, always correct. So someone brought him to Meher 
Baba. He sat there, and this was the only failure of his life — the only failure. But then 
again we cannot say it was a failure. He tried and tried, and he began to perspire, but he 
couldn’t catch a single word. 

Pen in his hand, he remained there and said, "What type of man is this? I cannot read 
because there is nothing to read. This man is absolutely vacant. I even forget that 
someone is sitting there. After closing my eyes, I have to open them again and look to see 
whether that man is there or whether he has escaped. So it is difficult to concentrate, 
because the moment I close my eyes I feel I am being deceived — as if that man has 
escaped and there is no one before me. I have to open my eyes again, and I find that this 
man is there. And he is not thinking at all." That staring, that constant staring had stopped 
his mind completely. 


OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH. OR SUCK SOMETHING AND 
BECOME THE SUCKING. These are slight modifications. Anything will do... you are 
dead — it is enough. 

ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. Even this part can become one technique. You are 



in anger: lie down, remain in the anger. Do not move from it, do not do anything, just 
remain still. 

Krishnamurti goes on talking about this. His whole technique depends on this single 
thing: ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. If you are angry then be angry, and remain 
angry. Do not move. If you can stay so, anger will go and you will come out a different 
man. If you are in anxiety, do not do anything. Remain there, stay there. The anxiety will 
go; you will come out a different man. And once you have looked at anxiety without 
being moved by it, you will be the master. 

OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH. OR SUCK SOMETHING AND 
BECOME THE SUCKING. This last one is physical and easy to do, because sucking is 
the first thing a child has to do. Sucking is the first act of life. When the child is born, he 
begins to cry. You may not have tried to penetrate into why there is this crying. He is not 
really crying — it appears to us that he is crying — he is just sucking air. And if the child 
cannot cry, within a few minutes he will be dead, because crying is the first effort to suck 
air. The child was not breathing while he was in the womb. 

He was alive without breathing. He was doing the same which yogis are doing 
underground. He was just getting prana without breathing — pure prana from the mother. 
That is why the love between the child and the mother is an altogether different thing 
from other loves, because the purest prana — energy — joins both. Now this can never 
happen again. There was a subtle pranic relationship. The mother was giving her prana to 
the child, and the child was not breathing at all. When he is born, he is thrown out of the 
mother into an unknown world. Now the prana, the energy, will not reach him so easily. 
He has to breathe himself. 

The first cry is an effort to suck, and then he will suck the milk from the mother's breast. 
These are the first basic acts which you have done. Whatsoever YOU have done comes 
later — these are the first life acts. They can be practiced also. This sutra says: OR SUCK 
SOMETHING AND BECOME THE SUCKING. Suck something - just suck the air, but 
forget the air and become the sucking. What does this mean? You are sucking something; 
you are the sucker, not the sucking. You are standing behind and sucking. 

This sutra says, do not stand behind, move in the act and become the sucking. Try 
anything that will work. You are running — become the running, do not be the runner. 
Become the running and forget the runner. Feel that there is no runner inside, just the 
process of running. 

You are the process, a river-like process running. Nobody is there inside. It is quiet inside 
and there is only a process. 

Sucking is good, but you will feel that it is very difficult because we have forgotten it 
completely — but not really completely, however, because we go on substituting for it. 
The mother's breast is substituted by a cigarette; you go on sucking it. It is nothing but 
the nipple, the mother's breast and the nipple. And when the warm smoke flows in, it is 
just like wann milk. 

So those who were not really allowed to suck the mother's breast as much as they wanted 
will smoke later on. This is a substitute, but the substitute will do. While you are smoking 
a cigarette become the sucking. Forget the cigarette, forget the smoker: become the 
smoking. 

There is the object you are sucking, there is the subject who is sucking, and the process in 
between of sucking. Become the sucking, become the process. Try it. You will have to 



try it with many things; then you will find out what is right for you. 

You are drinking water, the cold water is going in — become the drinking. Do not drink 
the water. Forget the water, forget yourself and your thirst, just become the drinking — 
the very process. Become the coolness, the touch, the entry, and the sucking that has to 
be given to the process. 

Why not? What will happen? If you become the sucking, what will happen? If you can 
become the sucking, immediately you will become innocent, like a first-day, newly-born 
child — because that is the first process. 

You will be regressed in a way. But the hankering is there. The very being of man 
hankers after sucking. He tries many things, but nothing helps because the point is 
missed. Unless you become the sucking, nothing will help. So try it. 

I gave this method to one man. He had tried many things; he had tried many, many 
methods. Then he came to me, so I asked him, "If I give you only one thing to choose in 
the whole world, what are you going to choose?" And I told him immediately to close his 
eyes and tell me, and not think about it. He became afraid, hesitant, so I told him, "Do not 
be afraid, do not be hesitant. Be frank and tell me." 

He said, "This is absurd, but a breast appears before me." 

And then he began to feel guilty, so I said, "Do not feel guilty. Nothing is wrong in a 
breast; it is one of the most beautiful things, so why be guilty?" 

But he said, "This has always been an obsession with me." And he said to me, "Please tell 
me first, then you can proceed with your method and the technique: first tell me why I am 
so much interested in the breasts of women? Whenever I look at a woman, the first thing 
I see is the breast. The whole body is secondary." 

And it is not so only with him, it is so with everyone — with almost everyone. And it is 
natural, because the breast of the mother was the first acquaintance with the universe. It 
is basic. 

The first contact with the universe was the mother's breast. That is why breasts are so 
appealing. They look beautiful; they attract, they have a magnetic force. That magnetic 
force comes from your unconscious. That was the first thing with which you came in 
contact, and the contact was lovely, it felt beautiful. It gives you food, instant vitality, 
love, everything. The contact was soft, receptive, inviting. It has remained so in the mind 
of man. 

So I told that man, "Now I will give you the method." And this was the method I gave 
him, to suck something and become the sucking. I told him, "Just close your eyes. 
Imagine your mother's breasts or anybody's breasts that you like. Imagine, and start 
sucking as if there is a real breast. Start sucking." He started sucking. Within three days 
he was sucking so fast, so madly, he became so much enchanted by it. He told me, "It has 
become a problem — I want to suck the whole day. And it is so beautiful, and such deep 
silence is created by it." 

Within three months the sucking became a very, very silent gesture. The lips stopped, 
you couldn’t even have judged that he was doing something. But inner sucking had 
started. He was sucking the whole day. It became a mantra, a JAPA — a mantra 
repetition. 

After three months he came to me and said, "Something strange is happening to me. 
Something sweet is falling from my head onto my tongue continuously. 



And it is so sweet and so energy filling that I do not need any food, there is no hunger 
left. Eating has become just a formality. I take something in order not to create any 
problems in the family. But something is continuously coming to me. It is so sweet, life- 
giving." 

I told him to continue. Three months more, and one day he came just mad, dancing to me, 
and he said, "Sucking has disappeared, but I am a different man. I am no more the same 
man who had come to you. Some door has opened within me. Something has broken and 
there is no desire left. Now I do not want anything — not even God, not even MOKSHA 
— liberation. I do not want anything. Now everything is okay as it is. I accept it and I am 
blissful." 

Try this. Just suck something and become the sucking. It may be helpful to many because 
it is so basic. 

This much for today. 

THE END. 



Chapter 6: Devices to transcend dreaming 


One friend has asked. 

Question 1 

WILL YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN TO US WHAT ARE SOME OF THE OTHER 
FACTORS WHICH CAN MAKE ONE CONSCIOUS WHILE DREAMING? 

This is a significant question for all those who are interested in meditation, because 
meditation is really a transcending of the process of dreaming. You are constantly 
dreaming — not only in the night, not only while you are asleep; you are dreaming the 
whole day. This is the first point to be understood. While you are awake you are still 
dreaming. 

Just close your eyes at any time of the day. Relax the body and you will feel that the 
dreaming is there. It never disappears, it is only suppressed by our daily activities. It is 
like the stars in the day. In the night you see the stars. In the day you cannot see them, but 
they are there always. They are simply suppressed by the sunlight. 

If you go into a deep well, then you can see the stars in the sky even in the day. A certain 
darkness is needed to see the stars. So go into a deep well and look from the bottom, and 
you will be able to see the stars in the day also. The stars are there. It is not that in the 
night they are there and in the day they are not, they are always there. In the night you 
can see them easily. In the day you cannot see them because the sunlight becomes a 
barrier. 

The same is true with dreaming. It is not that you dream while you are asleep. 

In sleep you can feel dreams easily because the activity of the day is no more there; thus 
that inner activity can be seen and felt. When you get up in the morning, the dreaming 
continues inside while you start acting on the outside. 

This process of activity, of daily activity, simply suppresses the dreaming. The dreaming 
is there. Close your eyes, relax in an armchair, and suddenly you can feel: the stars are 
there; they have not gone anywhere. The dreams are there always. There is a continuous 
activity. 

The second point. If the dreaming continues, you cannot be said to be really awake. In 
the night you are more asleep, in the day you are less asleep. The difference is relative, 
because if the dreaming is there you cannot be said to be really awake. Dreaming creates 
a film over the consciousness. This film becomes like smoke — you are surrounded by it. 
You cannot be really awake while you are dreaming, whether in the day or in the night. 

So the second thing: you can only be said to be awake when there is no dreaming at all. 
We call Buddha the awakened one. What is this awakening? This awakening is really the 
cessation of inner dreaming. There is no dream inside. You move there, but there is no 
dream. It is as if there were no star in the sky; it has become pure space. When there is no 
dreaming, you become pure space. 

This purity, this innocence, this non-dreaming consciousness, is what is known as 
enlightenment — the awakening. 

For centuries spirituality all over the world, East or West, has said that man is asleep. 
Jesus says this, Buddha says this, the Upanishads talk about this: man is asleep. So while 
you are asleep in the night you are just relatively more asleep; in the day you are less 
asleep. But spirituality says that man is asleep. This has to be understood. 



What is meant by this? Gurdjieff, in this century, emphasized this fact that man is asleep. 
"In fact," he said, "man is a sort of sleep. Everyone is deeply asleep." 

What is the reason for saying that? You cannot know, you cannot remember who you are. 
Do you know who you are? If you meet a person in the street and you ask him who he is 
and he cannot reply, what will you think? You will think that he is either mad, 
intoxicated, or just asleep. If he cannot answer who he is, what are you going to think 
about him? On the spiritual path everyone is like that. You cannot answer who you are. 
This is the first meaning when Gurdjieff or Jesus or anyone says that man is asleep: you 
are not conscious about yourself. You do not know yourself; you have never met 
yourself. You know many things in the objective world, but you do not know the subject. 
Your state of mind is as if you had gone to see a film. On the screen the film is running, 
and you have become so absorbed in it that the only thing you know is the film, the story, 
whatsoever is appearing on the screen. 

Then if someone asks you who you are, you cannot say anything. 

Dreaming is just the film — JUST the film! It is the mind reflecting the world. In the 
mirror of the mind the world is reflected; that is what dreaming is. And you are so deeply 
involved in it, so much identified with it, that you have completely forgotten who you 
are. This is what being asleep means: the dreamer is lost in the dreaming. You see 
everything except yourself; you feel everything except yourself; you know everything 
except yourself. This self-ignorance is the sleep. Unless dreaming ceases completely, you 
cannot awaken unto yourself. 

You might have felt it sometimes while looking at a film for three hours, and suddenly 
the film stops and you come back to yourself. You remember that three hours have 
passed, you remember that it was just a film. You feel your tears... you have been 
weeping because the film was a tragedy to you, or you were laughing, or you were doing 
something else, and now you laugh about yourself. What nonsense you were doing! It 
was just a film, just a story. There was nothing on the screen — just a play of light and 
shadow, just an electrical play. Now you laugh: you have come back to yourself. But 
where were you for these three hours? 

You were not at your center. You had moved completely to the periphery. There, where 
the film was moving, you had gone. You were not at your center; you were not with 
yourself. 

You were somewhere else. 

This happens in dreaming; this is what our life is. The film is only for three hours, but 
this dreaming is running for lives and lives and lives. Even if suddenly the dreaming 
stops you will not be able to recognize who you are. Suddenly you will feel very faint, 
even afraid. You will try to move again into the film because that is known. You are 
acquainted with it, you are well adjusted to it. 

For when the stopping of the dreaming happens there is a path, particularly in Zen, which 
is known as the path of sudden enlightenment. There are techniques in these one hundred 
and twelve methods, there are many techniques which can give you sudden awakening. 
But it can be too much, and you may not be capable of bearing it. You may just explode. 
You may die even, because you have lived with dreaming so long that you have no 
memory of who you are if there is no dreaming. 

If this whole world should suddenly disappear and you alone are left, it would be such a 
great shock that you would die. The same would happen if suddenly all dreaming 



disappeared from the consciousness. Your world will disappear, because your world was 
your dreaming. 

We are not really in the world. Rather, "the world" consists not of outside things to us, 
but of our dreams. So everyone lives in his own dream world. 

Remember, it is not one world that we go on talking about. 

Geographically it is, but psychologically there are as many worlds as there are minds. 
Each mind is a world of its own. And if your dreaming disappears, your world 
disappears. Without dreams it is difficult for you to live. That is why sudden methods are 
not used generally, only gradual methods are used. 

It is good to note this: gradual methods are used not because there is any need of gradual 
processes. You can suddenly jump into realization this very moment. There is no barrier; 
there has never been any barrier. You are already that realization, you can jump this very 
moment. But that may prove dangerous, fatal. You may not be capable of bearing it. It is 
going to be too much for you. 

You are attuned only to false dreams. Reality you cannot face; you cannot encounter it. 
You are a hothouse plant — you live in your dreams. They help you in many ways. They 
are not just dreams, for you they are the reality. 

Gradual methods are used not because realization needs time. Realization needs no time! 
Realization needs no time at all. Realization is not something to be attained in the future, 
but with gradual methods you will attain it in the future. So what are the gradual methods 
doing? They are not really helping you to "realize realization," they are helping you to 
bear it. They are making you capable, strong, so that when the happening happens you 
can bear it. 


There are seven methods through which immediately you can force your way into 
enlightenment. But you will not be capable of bearing it. You may go blind — too much 
of light. Or you may suddenly die — too much of bliss. 

This dreaming, this deep sleep we are in, how can it be transcended? This question is 
meaningful in transcending it: WILL YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN TO US WHAT ARE 
SOME OF THE OTHER FACTORS WHICH CAN MAKE ONE CONSCIOUS WHILE 
DREAMING? I will talk about two methods more. One we discussed yesterday. Today, 
two more that are even easier. 

One is to start acting, behaving as if the whole world is just a dream. Whatsoever you are 
doing, remember this is a dream. While eating, remember this is a dream. While walking, 
remember this is a dream. Let your mind continuously remember while you are awake 
that everything is a dream. This is the reason for calling the world MAYA, illusion, 
dream. This is not a philosophical argument. 

Unfortunately, when Shankara was translated into English, German and French, into 
Western languages, he was understood to be just a philosopher. That has created much 
misunderstanding. In the West there are philosophers — for example, Berkeley — who say 
that the world is just a dream, a projection of the mind. But this is a philosophical theory. 
Berkeley proposes it as an hypothesis. 

When Shankara says that the world is a dream it is not philosophical, not a theory. 


Shankara proposes it as a help, as a support for a particular meditation. And this is the 
meditation: if you want to remember while dreaming that this is a dream, you will have to 



start while you are awake. Normally, while you are dreaming you cannot remember that 
this is a dream; you think that this is a reality. 

Why do you think that this is a reality? Because the whole day you are thinking 
everything is a reality. That has become the attitude, a fixed attitude. While awake you 
were taking a bath — it was real. While awake you were eating — it was real. While 
awake you were talking with a friend — it was real. For the whole day, the whole life, 
whatsoever you are thinking, your attitude is that this is real. This becomes fixed. This 
becomes a fixed attitude in the mind. 

So while you are dreaming in the night, the same attitude goes on working, that this is 
real. So let us first analyze. There must be some similarity between dreaming and reality; 
otherwise this attitude would be somewhat difficult. 

I am seeing you. Then I close my eyes and I go into a dream, and I see you in my dream. 
In both seeings there is no difference. While I am actually seeing you, what am I doing? 
Your picture is reflected in my eyes. I am not seeing YOU. Your picture is mirrored in 
my eyes, and then that picture is transformed through mysterious processes — and science 
is still not in a position to say how. 

That picture is transfonned chemically and carried somewhere inside the head, but 
science is still not able to say where — where exactly this thing happens. It is not 
happening in the eyes; the eyes are just windows. I am not seeing you with the eyes, I am 
seeing you THROUGH the eyes. 

In the eyes you are reflected. You may be just a picture; you may be a reality, you may be 
a dream. Remember, dreams are three-dimensional. I can recognize a picture because a 
picture is two-dimensional. Dreams are three-dimensional, so they look exactly like you. 
And the eyes cannot say whether whatsoever is seen is real or unreal. There is no way to 
judge; the eyes are not the judge. 

Then the picture is transformed into chemical messages. Those chemical messages are 
like electrical waves; they go somewhere in the head. It is still unknown where the point 
is that the eyes come in contact with the surface of seeing. Just waves reach to me and 
then they are decoded. Then I again decode them, and in this way I know what is 
happening. 

I am always inside, and you are always outside, and there is no meeting. So whether you 
are real or just a dream is a problem. Even this very moment, there is no way to judge 
whether I am dreaming or you are really here. Listening to me, how can you say that 
really you are listening to me, that you are not dreaming? There is no way. That is why 
the attitude which you maintain the whole day is carried over into the night. 

And while you are dreaming you take it as real. 

Try the opposite; that is what Shankara means. He says that the whole world is an 
illusion, he says the whole world is a dreaming — remember this. But we are stupid 
people. If Shankara says, "This is a dream," then we say, "What is the need to do 
anything? If this is just a dream, then there is no need to eat. Why go on eating and 
thinking that this is a dream? Don’t eat!" But then remember — when you feel hunger, it 
is a dream. Or eat, and when you feel that you have eaten too much, remember, this is a 
dream. 

Shankara is not telling you to change the dream, remember, because the effort to change 
the dream is again falsely based on the belief that it is real; otherwise there is no need to 
change anything. Shankara is just saying that whatever is the case is a dream. 



Remember this: do not do anything to change it, just remember it constantly. Try to 
remember for three weeks continuously that whatsoever you are doing it is just a dream. 
In the beginning it is very difficult. You will fall again and again into the old pattern of 
the mind, you will start thinking that this is a reality. You will have to constantly awaken 
yourself to remind yourself that "This is a dream." If for three weeks continuously you 
can maintain this attitude, then in the fourth or fifth week, any night while dreaming you 
will suddenly remember that "This is a dream." 


This is one way to penetrate dreams with consciousness, with awareness. If you can 
remember in the night while dreaming that this is a dream, then in the day you will not 
need any effort to remember that this is also a dream. You will know it then. 

In the beginning, while you are practicing this, it will be just a make-believe. You start 
just in faith.. ."This is a dream." But when you can remember in dreaming that this is a 
dream, it will become a reality. Then in the day, when you get up you will not feel that 
you are getting up from sleep, you will feel you are simply getting up from one dreaming 
to another. Then it will become a reality. And if the whole twenty-four hours becomes 
dreaming, and you can feel and remember it, you will be standing at your center. Then 
your consciousness will have become double-arrowed. 

You are feeling dreams, and if you are feeling them as dreams you will start to feel the 
dreamer — the subject. If you take dreams as real, you cannot feel the subject. If the film 
has become real, you forget yourself. When the film stops and you know that it was 
unreal, your reality erupts, breaks out; you can feel yourself. This is one way. 

This has been one of the oldest Indian methods. That is why we have insisted on the 
world being unreal. We do not mean it philosophically; we do not say that this house is 
unreal so you can pass through the walls. 

We do not mean that! When we say that this house is unreal, it is a device. This is not an 
argument against the house. 

So Berkeley proposed that the whole world is just a dream. One day, in the morning, he 
was walking with Dr. Johnson. Dr. Johnson was a hardened realist, so Berkeley said, 
"Have you heard about my theory? I am working on it. I feel that the whole world is 
unreal, and it cannot be proved that it is real. And the burden of proving it is on those 
who say that it is real. I say it is unreal — just like dreams. Johnson was not a philosopher, 
but he had a very astute logical mind. 

They are on the street, just walking in the morning on a lonely street. Johnson then takes 
one stone in his hand and hits Berkeley's leg. Blood oozes out, and Berkeley screams. 
Johnson says, "Why are you screaming if the stone is just a dream? Whatsoever you say, 
you believe in the reality of the stone. What you are saying is one thing, and your 
behavior is something different and contrary. If your house is just a dream, then to where 
are you returning? Where are you returning after the morning walk? If your wife is just a 
dream, you will not meet her again." 

Realists have always argued this way, but they cannot argue this way with Shankara 
because his is not a philosophical theory. It is not saying anything about the reality; it is 
not proposing anything about the universe. 


Rather, it is a device to change your mind, to change the basic fixed attitude so that you 
can look at the world in a different, an altogether different way. 



This is a problem, continuously a problem for Indian thought — because for Indian 
thought everything is just a device for meditation. We are not concerned about its being 
true or untrue. We are concerned about its utility in transforming man. 

This is emphatically different from the Western mind. When they propose a theory they 
are concerned with whether this is true or untrue, whether this can be proved logically or 
not. When we propose anything we are not concerned about its truth; we are concerned 
about its utility, we are concerned about its capacity, its capability to transform the 
human mind. It may be true, it may not be true. Really, it is neither — it is simply a 
device. 

I have seen flowers outside. In the morning the sun rises and everything is just beautiful. 
You have never been outside, and you have never seen flowers, and you have never seen 
the morning sun. You have never seen the open sky; you do not know what beauty is. 

You have lived in a closed prison. I want to lead you out. I want you to come out under 
the open sky to meet these flowers. How am I to do it? 

You do not know flowers. If I talk about flowers, you think, "He has gone mad. There are 
no flowers." If I talk about the morning sun, you think, "He is a visionary. 

He sees visions and dreams. He is a poet." If I talk about the open sky, you will laugh. 
You will start laughing, "Where is the open sky? There are only walls and walls and 
walls." 

So what am I to do? I must devise something which you can understand and which helps 
you to go out, so I say that the house is on fire and I start running. It becomes infectious: 
you run after me and go out. Then you will know that what I said was neither true nor 
false. It was just a device. Then you will know flowers and then you can forgive me. 
Buddha was doing that, Mahavir was doing that, Shiva was doing that, Shankara was 
doing that. We can forgive them later on. We have always forgiven them because once 
we go out we know what they were doing. And then we understand that it was useless to 
argue with them because it was not a question of arguing. The fire was nowhere, but we 
could not understand only that language. Flowers were, but we could not understand the 
language of the flowers, those symbols were meaningless for us. 

So this is one way. Then there is a second method at the other pole. This method makes 
one pole; the other method makes another pole of the same thing. One method is to start 
feeling, remembering, that everything is a dream. The other is not to think anything about 
the world, but just to go on remembering that YOU ARE. 

Gurdjieff used this second method. 

This second method comes from the Sufi tradition, from Islam. They worked on it very 
deeply. Remember "I am" — whatsoever you are doing. You are drinking water, you are 
eating your food — remember, "I am." Go on eating and go on remembering, "I am, I 
am." Do not forget it! It is difficult because you already think that you know you are, so 
what is the need to go on remembering this? You never remember it, but it is a very, very 
potential technique. 

When walking remember, "I am." Let the walking be there, go on walking, but be 
constantly fixed in this self-remembering of "I am, I am, I am." Do not forget this. You 
are listening to me — just do it here. You are listening to me. Do not be so much merged, 
involved, identified. Whatsoever I am saying, remember, go on remembering. Listening 
is there, words are there, someone is talking, you are — "I am, I am, I am." Let this "I 
am" be a constant factor of awareness. 



It is very difficult. You cannot remember continuously even for a single minute. Try it. 
Put your watch before your eyes and look at the hands moving. One second, two seconds, 
three seconds... go on looking at it. Do two things: look at the movement of the hand 
which is showing seconds, and continuously remember "I am, I am." With every second 
go on remembering "I am." Within five or six seconds you will feel that you have 
forgotten. Suddenly you will remember that "Many seconds have passed and I have not 
remembered 'I am.’ 


Even to remember for one complete minute is a miracle. And if you can remember for 
one minute, the technique is for you. Then do it. Through it you will be capable of going 
beyond dreams and of knowing that dreams are dreams. 

How does it work? If the whole day you can remember "I am," then this will penetrate 
your sleep also. And when you will be dreaming, continuously you will remember, "I 
am." If you can remember "I am" in the dream, suddenly the dream becomes just a 
dream. Then the dream cannot deceive you, then the dream cannot be felt as reality. This 
is the mechanism: the dream is felt as reality because you are missing the self- 
remembering; you are missing "I am." If there is no remembering of oneself, then the 
dream becomes reality. If there is the remembering of oneself, then reality, the so-called 
reality, becomes just a dream. 

This is the difference between dreaming and reality. For a meditative mind, or for the 
science of meditation, this is the only difference. If you are, then the whole reality is just 
a dream. If you are not, then the dreaming becomes reality. 

Nagarjuna says, "Now I am, for the world is not. While I was not, the world was. Only 
one can exist." That doesn’t mean that the world has disappeared. Nagarjuna is not 
talking about this world, he is talking about the world of dreaming. Either you can be or 
the dreams can be — both cannot be. 


So the first step will be to continue remembering "I am" constantly; simply, "I am." Do 
not say "Ram," do not say "Shyam." Do not use any name, because you are not that. 
Simply use, "I am." 

Try it in any activity and then feel it. The more real you become inside, the more unreal 
becomes the surrounding world. The reality becomes "I", and the world becomes unreal. 
The world is real or the "I" is real — both cannot be real. You are feeling that you are just 
a dream now; then the world is real. Change the emphasis. Become real, and the world 
will become unreal. 

Gurdjieff worked on this method continuously. His chief disciple, P. D. Ouspensky, 
relates that when Gurdjieff was working on him with this method, and he was practicing 
for three months continuously this remembering of "I am, I am, I am," after three months 
everything stopped. Thoughts, dreaming, everything stopped. Only one note remained 
inside like eternal music: "I am, I am, I am, I am." But then this was not an effort. This 
was a spontaneous activity going on: "I am." Then Gurdjieff called Ouspensky out of the 
house. For three months he had been kept in the house and wasn't allowed to move out. 
Then Gurdjieff said, "Come with me." They were residing in a Russian town, Tiflis. 
Gurdjieff called him out and they went into the street. Ouspensky writes in his diary, "For 
the first time I could understand what Jesus meant when he said that man is asleep. 



The whole city looked to me as if it was asleep. People were moving in their sleep; 
shopkeepers were selling in their sleep; customers were buying in their sleep. The whole 
city was asleep. I looked at Gurdjieff: only he was awake. The whole city was asleep. 
They were angry, they were fighting, they were loving, buying, selling, doing 
everything." 

Ouspensky says, "Now I could see their faces, their eyes: they were asleep. They were 
not there. The inner center was missing; it was not there." Ouspensky said to Gurdjieff, "I 
do not want to go there any more. What has happened to the city? Everyone seems 
asleep, drugged." 

Gurdjieff said, "Nothing has happened to the city, something has happened to you. You 
have been undrugged; the city is the same. It is the same place you moved around in three 
months ago, but you couldn’t see that other people are asleep because you were also 
asleep. Now you can see because a certain quality of awareness has come to you. With 
three months of practising "I am" continuously, you have become aware in a very small 
measure. You have become aware! A part of your consciousness has gone beyond 
dreaming. That is why you can see that everyone is asleep, dead, moving, drugged, as if 
hypnotized." 

Ouspensky says, "I couldn’t bear that phenomenon — everyone asleep! Whatsoever they 
are doing, they are not responsible for it. They are not! How can they be responsible?" 

He came back and he asked Gurdjieff, "What is this? Am I deceived somehow? Have you 
done something to me that the whole city seems asleep? I cannot believe my own eyes." 


But this will happen to anyone. If you can remember yourself, then you will know that no 
one is remembering himself, and in this way each goes on moving. The whole world is 
asleep. But start while you are awake. Any moment that you remember, start "I am." 

I do not mean that you have to repeat the words "I am," rather, have the feeling. Taking a 
bath, feel "I am." Let there be the touch of the cold shower, and let yourself be there 
behind, feeling it and remembering "I am." Remember, I am not saying that verbally you 
have to repeat "I am." You can repeat it, but that repetition will not give you awareness. 
Repetition may even create more sleep. There are many people who are repeating many 
things. They go on repeating "Ram, Ram, Ram..." and if they are just repeating without 
awareness then this "Ram, Ram, Ram..." becomes a drug. They can sleep well through it. 
That is why Mahesh Yogi has so much appeal in the West, because he is giving mantras 
for people to repeat. And in the West sleep has become one of the most serious problems. 
Sleep is totally disturbed. Natural sleep has disappeared. Only through tranquilizers and 
drugs can you sleep; otherwise sleep has become impossible. This is the reason for 
Mahesh Yogi's appeal. It is because if you constantly repeat something, that repetition 
gives you deep sleep; that is all. 

So the so-called transcendental meditation is nothing but a psychological tranquilizer. 

It is nothing — just a tranquilizer. It helps, but it is good for sleep, not for meditation. You 
can sleep well, a more calm sleep will be there. It is good, but it is not meditation at all. If 
you repeat a word constantly it creates a certain boredom, and boredom is good for sleep. 
So anything monotonous, repetitive can help sleep. The child in the mother's womb 
sleeps for nine months continuously, and the reason for this you may not know. The 
reason is only the "tick-tock, tick-tock" of the heart of the mother. Continuously there is 
the beat, the heartbeat. It is one of the most monotonous things in the world. With the 



same beat continuously repeating, the child is drugged. He goes on sleeping. 

That is why whenever the child is crying, screaming, creating any problem, the mother 
puts his head near her heart. Then suddenly he feels good and goes into sleep. Again it is 
due to the heartbeat. He becomes again a part of the womb. That is why even if you are 
not a child and your wife, your beloved puts your head on her heart, you will feel sleepy 
from the monotonous beat. 

Psychologists suggest that if you cannot sleep, then concentrate on the clock. Just 
concentrate on the clock's tick-tock, tick-tock. It repeats the heartbeat, and you can fall 
asleep. Anything repetitive will help. 

So this "I am," the remembering of "I am," is not a verbal mantra. 

It is not going to be repeated verbally — feel it! Be sensitive to your being. When you 
touch someone's hand do not only touch his hand, feel your touch also, feel yourself also 
— that you are here in this touch, present totally. While eating, do not only eat, feel 
yourself eating as well. This feeling, this sensitivity must penetrate deeper and deeper 
into your mind. 

One day, suddenly, you are awake at your center, functioning for t'e first time. And then 
the whole world becomes a dream, then you can know that your dreaming is a dreaming. 
And when you know that qour dreaming is a dreaming, dreaming stops. It can continue 
only if it is felt as real. It is stopped if it is felt as unreal. 

And once dreaming stops in you, you are a different man. The old man is dead; the sleepy 
man is dead. That human being which you were you are no more. For the first time you 
become aware; for the first time in the whole world that is asleep, you are awake. You 
become a buddha, an awakened one. 

With this awakening there is no misery, after this awakening there is no death, through 
this awakening there is no more fear. You become for the first time free of everything. To 
be free of sleep, to be free of dreaming, is to be free of everything. You attain freedom. 
Hate, anger, greed disappear. You become just love. Not loving, you become just love! 
One question more — and it is relatively the same — 

Question 2 

IF WE ARE ALL ACTORS IN A PLAY THAT IS ALREADY WRITTEN, HOW CAN 
MEDITATION TRANSFORM US WITHOUT THE PLAY ITSELF CONTAINING A 
CHAPTER FOR OUR TRANSFORMATION AT A SPECIFIC TIME? AND IF SUCH 
A CHAPTER IS THERE ALREADY WAITING TO UNFOLD AT ITS DUE TIME, 
WHY MEDITATE? WHY MAKE ANY EFFORT AT ALL? 

This is the same; it contains the same fallacy. 

I am not saying that everything is detennined. I am not proposing this as a theory to 
explain the universe. It is a device. 

India has always been working with this device of fate. It is not meant by this that 
everything is predetennined. This is not meant at all! The only reason to propose this is 
that if you take it that everything is determined, everything becomes a dream. If you take 
things in this way, if you believe this way — that everything is predetermined; that, for 
example, you are going to die on a particular day — EVERYTHING becomes a dream. It 
is not determined, it is not fixed! No one is that much interested in you. The universe is 
completely unaware of you and when you are going to die. It is so useless a thing. Your 
death is irrelevant to the universe. 

Do not think yourself so important that the whole universe is determining your day of 



death — the time, the minute, the moment — no! You are NOT the center. It makes no 
difference to the universe whether you are or you are not. But this fallacy goes on 
working in the mind. It is created in childhood and it becomes part of the unconscious. 

A child is bom. He cannot give anything to the world, but he has to take many things. He 
cannot repay, he cannot give back anything. He is so impotent — just helpless. He will 
need food, he will need love, he will need shelter, he will need warmth. 

Everything is to be supplied. 

A child is born absolutely helpless — particularly man's child. No animal is so helpless. 
That is why no animal creates a family — there is no need. But man’s child is so helpless, 
so absolutely helpless, he cannot exist without there being a mother to protect, a father, a 
family, a society. He cannot exist alone. He would die immediately. 

He is so much dependent. He will need love, he will need food, he will need everything, 
and he will demand everything. And the mother will supply, the father will supply, the 
family will supply. The child begins to think that he is the center of the whole world. 
Everything is to be supplied to him; he has but to demand. Just to demand is enough, no 
other effort is needed. 

So the child begins to think of himself as the center, and everything just goes on around 
him, for him. The whole existence seems to be created for him. The whole existence was 
waiting for him to come and demand. And everything will be fulfilled. This is a 
necessity, that his demands should be fulfilled; otherwise he will die. But this necessity 
becomes very dangerous. 

He grows up with this attitude that "I am the center." By and by he will demand more. A 
child's demands are very simple; they can be supplied. But as he will grow his demands 
will become more and more complex. Sometimes it will not be possible to supply them, 
to fulfill them. 

Sometimes it may be absolutely impossible. He may demand the moon, or anything.... 
The more he will grow, the more the demands will become complex, impossible. Then 
frustration sets in, and the child begins to think that now he is being deceived. He has 
taken it for granted that he was the center of the world. Now problems will be there, and 
by and by he will be dethroned. When he becomes an adult, he will be completely 
dethroned. Then he will know that he is not the center. But deep down the unconscious 
mind goes on thinking in terms of him being the center. 

People come and ask me whether their fate is determined. They are asking whether they 
are so important, so significant for this universe that their fate must be determined 
beforehand. "What is my purpose?" they ask. "Why was I created?" This childhood 
nonsense that you are the center creates these questions like, "For what purpose am I 
created?" 

You are not created for any purpose. And it is good that you are not created for any 
purpose; otherwise you would be a machine. A machine is created for some purpose. 
Man is not created for some purpose, for something — no! Man is just the outflowing, 
overflowing creation. Everything simply is. Flowers are there and stars are there and you 
are there. Everything is just an overflowing, a joy, a celebration of existence without any 
purpose. 

But this theory of fate, of predetennination, is what creates problems, because we take it 
as a theory. 



We think that everything is determined, but nothing is determined. However, this 
technique uses this as a device. When we say everything is determined, this is not said to 
you as a theory. The purpose is this: that if you take life as a drama, predetermined, then 
it becomes a dream. For example, if I knew that this day, this night, I was going to talk to 
you, and it is predetermined what words I should speak on this day, and if it is so fixed 
that nothing can be changed — that I cannot utter a single new word — then suddenly I am 
not related at all with this whole process because then I am not the source of action. 

If everything is determined and if every word is to be spoken by the universe itself or by 
the divine or by whatsoever name you choose, then I am no more the source of it. Then I 
can become an observer — a simple observer. 

If you take life as predetennined then you can observe it, then you are not involved. If 
you are a failure, it was predetermined; if you are a success, it was predetermined. If both 
are predetennined, both become of equal value — synonymous. Then one is Ravan, one is 
Ram, and everything is predetermined. Ravan need not feel guilty, Ram need not feel 
superior. Everything is predetermined, so you are just actors, you are just on a stage 
playing a role. 

To give you the feeling that you are playing a role, to give you the feeling that this is only 
a predetennined pattern that you are fulfilling, to give you this feeling so that you can 
transcend it, this is the device. 

It is very difficult because we are so much accustomed to thinking of fate as a theory — 
not only as a theory, but as a law. We cannot understand this attitude of taking these laws 
and theories as devices. 

I will explain this to you. One example will be helpful. I was in a city. One man came; he 
was a Mohammedan, but I didn't know, I was not aware. And he was dressed so that he 
looked like a Hindu. He not only looked like a Hindu, but he talked as if he was of the 
Hindu type. He was not a Mohammedan type. 

He asked me one question. He said, "Mohammedans and Christians say that there is only 
one life. Hindus, Buddhists and Jains say there are many lives — a long sequence of lives, 
so that unless one is liberated one goes on and on being reborn again and again. So what 
do you say? If Jesus was an enlightened man, he must have known. Or Mohammed, or 
Moses, they must have known too if they were enlightened men that there are many lives 
and not just one. And if you say that they are right, then what about Mahavir, Krishna, 
Buddha and Shankara? One thing is certain, that they cannot all be enlightened. 

"If Christianity is right then Buddha is wrong, then Krishna is wrong, then Mahavir is 
wrong. And if Mahavir, Krishna and Buddha are right, then Mohammed, Jesus and 
Moses are wrong. So tell me. I am very much puzzled; I am in a mess, confused. And 
both cannot be right. 

How can both be right? Either there are many lives or there is one. How can both be 
right?" He was a very intelligent man, and he had studied many things, so he said, "You 
cannot just escape and say that both are right. Both cannot be right. It is logically so — 
both cannot be right." 

But I said, "This need not be; your approach is absolutely wrong. Both are devices. 
Neither is right, neither is wrong — both are devices." It became impossible for him to 
understand what I meant by a device. 

Mohammed, Jesus and Moses, they were talking to one type of mind, and Buddha, 
Mahavir, Krishna, they were talking to a very different type of mind. There are really two 



source religions — the Hindu and the Jewish. So all the religions born out of India, all the 
religions born out of Hinduism believe in rebirth, in many births; and all the religions 
bom out of Jewish thinking — Mohammedanism, Christianity — they believe in one life. 
These are two devices. 

Try to understand it. Because our minds are fixed, we take things as theories, not as 
devices. So many times people come to me and say, "One day you said this is right, and 
another day you said that is right, and both cannot be right." Of course both cannot be 
right, but no one is saying that both are right. I am not concerned at all with which is 
right and which is wrong. I am only concerned with which device works. 


In India they use this device of many lives. Why? There are many points. All the 
religions bom in the West, particularly out of Jewish thinking, were religions of poor 
people. Their prophets were uneducated. Jesus was not educated, Mohammed was not 
educated, Moses was not. They were all uneducated, unsophisticated, simple, and they 
were talking with masses who were not sophisticated at all, who were poor; they were not 
rich. 

For a poor man, one life is more than enough, more than enough! He is starving, dying. If 
you say to him that there are so many lives, that he will go on being reborn and reborn, 
that he will move in a wheel of a thousand and one lives, the poor man will just feel 
frustrated about the whole thing. "What are you saying?" a poor man will ask. "One life 
is too much, so do not talk of a thousand and one lives, of a million lives. Do not speak 
this. Give us heaven immediately after this life." God becomes a reality only if he can be 
achieved after this life — immediately. 

Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna, were talking to a very rich society. Today it has become 
difficult to understand because the whole wheel has turned. Now the West is rich and the 
East is poor. Then the West was poor and the East was rich. All the Hindu avatars, all the 
TIRTHANKARAS — world teachers — of the Jains, all the buddhas — awakened ones — 
they were all princes. 

They belonged to royal families. They were cultured, educated, sophisticated, refined in 
every way. You cannot refine Buddha more. He was absolutely refined, cultured, 
educated; nothing can be added. Even if Buddha comes today, nothing can be added. 

So they were talking to a society which was rich. Remember, for a rich society there are 
different problems. For a rich society, pleasure is meaningless, heaven is meaningless. 

For a poor society, heaven is very meaningful. If the society is living in heaven, heaven 
becomes meaningless, so you cannot propose this. You cannot create an urge to do 
something for heaven; they are already in it — and bored. 

So Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna, do not talk about heaven, they talk of freedom. They do 
not talk of a pleasant world beyond, they talk of a transcendental world where there is 
neither pain nor pleasure. Jesus' heaven would not have appealed to them — they were 
already in it. 

And secondly, for a rich man the real problem is boredom. For a poor man, promise him 
pleasure in the future. For a poor man, suffering is the problem. For a rich man, suffering 
is not the problem; for a rich man, boredom is the problem. He is bored of all pleasures. 
Mahavir, Buddha and Krishna, all used this boredom, and they said, "If you do not do 
anything you are going to be born again and again. This wheel will move. Remember, the 
same life will be repeated. 



The same sex, the same richness, the same food, the same palaces again and again: a 
thousand and one times you will be moving in a wheel." 

To a rich man who has known all pleasures this is not a good prospect, this repetition. 
Repetition is the problem. That is the suffering for him. He wants something new, and 
Mahavir and Buddha say, "There is nothing new. This world is old. Nothing is new under 
the heavens, everything is just old. You have tasted all these things before and you will 
go on tasting them. You are in a wheel, moving. Go beyond it, take a jump out of the 
wheel." 

For a rich man, if you create a device which intensifies his feeling of boredom, only then 
can he move toward meditation. For a poor man, if you talk about boredom you are 
saying meaningless things. A poor man is never bored — never! Only a rich man is bored. 
A poor man is never bored; he is always thinking of the future. Something is going to 
happen and everything will be okay. The poor man needs a promise, but if the promise is 
a very long way away it becomes meaningless. It must be immediate. 

Jesus is reported to have said that "In my lifetime, in your lifetime, you will see the 
kingdom of God." That statement has haunted the whole of Christianity for twenty 
centuries, because Jesus said, "In YOUR life, immediately, you are going to see the 
kingdom of God." And the kingdom of God has not come even yet, so what did he mean? 
And he said, "The world is going to end soon, so do not waste time! Time is short." 

Jesus said, "Time is very short. It is foolish to waste it. Immediately the world is going to 
end and you will have to answer for yourself, so repent." 

Jesus created a feeling of immediacy through the concept of one life. He knew, and 
Buddha and Mahavir also knew. Whatsoever they knew is not told. Whatsoever they 
devised is known. This was a device to create immediacy, urgency, so that you would 
begin to act. 

India was an old country, rich. There was no question of urgency in promises for the 
future. There was only one way possible to create urgency, and that was to create more 
boredom. If a man feels he is going to be born again and again, again and again, 
infinitely, ad infinitum, he immediately comes and asks, "How to be freed from this 
wheel? This is too much. Now I cannot continue it any more because whatsoever can be 
known I have known. If this is to be repeated it is a nightmare. I do not want to repeat it, I 
want something new." 

So Buddha and Mahavir say, "There is nothing new under the sky. Everything is old and 
a repetition. And you have repeated for many, many lives, and you will go on repeating 
for many, many lives. Beware of the repetition, beware of your boredom. Take a jump." 
The device is different, but the purpose is the same. Take a jump! Move! Transform 
yourself! Whatsoever you are, transform yourself from it. 

If we take religious statements as devices then there is no contradiction. 

Then Jesus and Krishna, Mohammed and Mahavir, mean the same thing. They create 
different routes for different people, different techniques for different minds, different 
appeals for different attitudes. But those are not principles to be fought and argued about. 
They are devices to be used, transcended, and thrown. 

This much for today. 


THE END. 



Chapter 7: Techniques to put you at ease 


10. WHILE BEING CARESSED, SWEET PRINCESS, ENTER THE CARESS AS 
EVERLASTING LIFE. 

11. STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN 
ANT. THEN. 

12. WHEN ON A BED ORA SEAT, LET YOURSELF BECOME WEIGHTLESS, 
BEYOND MIND. 

Man has a center, but he lives off of it — off the center. That creates an inner tension, a 
constant turmoil, anguish. You are not where you should be; you are not at your right 
balance. You are off balance, and this being off balance, off center, is the base of all 
mental tensions. If it becomes too much, you go mad. A madman is one who has gone out 
of himself completely. The enlightened man is just the reverse of the madman. He is 
centered in himself. 

You are in between. You have not gone completely out of yourself, and you are not at 
your center either. You just move in the gap. Sometimes you move very, very far away, 
so you have moments when you are temporarily mad. In anger, in sex, in anything in 
which you have moved too far away from yourself, you are temporarily mad. Then there 
is no difference between you and the madman. The difference is only that he is 
pennanently there and you are temporarily there. You will come back. 

When you are in anger it is madness, but it is not pennanent. Qualitatively there is no 
difference; quantitatively there is a difference. The quality is the same, so sometimes you 
touch madness and sometimes, when you are relaxed, totally at ease, you touch your 
center also. 

Those are the blissful moments. They happen. Then you are just like a Buddha or like a 
Krishna, but only temporarily, momentarily. You will not stay there. Really, the moment 
you realize that you are blissful you have moved. It is so momentary that by the time you 
have recognized the bliss it is finished. 

We go on moving between these two, but this movement is dangerous. This movement is 
dangerous because then you cannot create a self-image, a fixed self-image. You do not 
know who you are. If you constantly move from madness to being centered in yourself, if 
this movement is constant, you cannot have a solid image of yourself. You will have a 
liquid image. Then you do not know who you are. It is very difficult. That is why you 
even become afraid if you are expecting blissful moments, so you try to fix yourself 
somewhere in between. 

This is what we mean by a nonnal human being: he never touches his madness in anger 
and he never touches that total freedom, that ecstasy, either. He never moves from a solid 
image. The normal man is really a dead man, living between these two points. That is 
why all those who are exceptional — great artists, painters, poets — they are not nonnal. 
They are very liquid. Sometimes they touch the center, sometimes they go mad. They 
move fast between these two. Of course, their anguish is great, their tension is much. 

They have to live between two worlds, constantly changing themselves. 

That is why they feel that they have no identity. They feel, in the words of Cohn Wilson, 
that they are outsiders. In your world of nonnality, they are outsiders. 



It will be helpful to define these four types. First is the normal man who has a fixed, solid 
identity, who knows who he is — a doctor, an engineer, a professor, a saint — who knows 
who he is and never moves from there. He constantly clings to the identity, to the image. 
Second are those who have liquid images — poets, artists, painters, singers. They do not 
know who they are. Sometimes they become just normal, sometimes they go mad, 
sometimes they touch the ecstasy that a buddha touches. 

Third are those who are permanently mad. They have gone outside themselves; they 
never come back into their home. They do not even remember that they have a home. 

And fourth are those who have reached their home... Buddha, Christ, Krishna. 

This fourth category — those who have reached their home — is totally relaxed. In their 
consciousness there is no tension, no effort, no desire. In one word, there is no becoming. 
They do not want to become anything. They are, they have been. No becoming! And they 
are at ease with their being. Whatsoever they are, they are at ease with it. They do not 
want to change it, do not want to go anywhere. They have no future. This very moment is 
eternity for them. 

.. no longing, no desire. That does not mean that a buddha will not eat or a buddha will 
not sleep. He will eat, he will sleep, but these are not desires. A buddha will not project 
these desires: he will not eat tomorrow, he will eat today. 

Remember this. You go on eating in the tomorrow, you go on eating in the future; you go 
on eating in the past, in the yesterday. It rarely happens that you eat today. While you are 
eating today, your mind will be moving somewhere else. While you will be trying to go 
to sleep, you will start eating tomorrow, or else the memory of the past will come. 

A buddha eats today. This very moment he lives. He does not project his life into the 
future; there is no future for him. Whenever future comes, it comes as the present. It is 
always today, it is always now. So a buddha eats, but he never eats in the mind — 
remember this. There is no cerebral eating. You go on eating in the mind. It is absurd 
because the mind is not meant for eating. All your centers are confused; your entire body- 
mind arrangement is mixed up, it is mad. 

A buddha eats, but he never thinks of eating. And that applies to everything. So a buddha 
is as ordinary as you while he is eating. Do not think that a buddha is not going to eat, or 
that when the hot sun is there he is not going to perspire, or when cold winds come he 
will not feel cold. He will feel it, but he will feel always in the present, never in the 
future. 

There is no becoming. If there is no becoming there is no tension. Understand this very 
clearly. If there is no becoming, how can there be any tension? Tension means you want 
to be something else which you are not. 

You are A and you want to be B; you are poor and you want to be a rich man; you are 
ugly and you want to be beautiful; or you are stupid and you want to be a wise man. 
Whatsoever the wanting, whatsoever the desire, the form is always this: A wants to 
become B. Whatsoever you are, you are not content with it. For contentment something 
else is needed — that is the constant structure of a mind that is desiring. When you get it, 
again the mind will say that "This is not enough, something else is needed." 

The mind always moves on and on. Whatsoever you get becomes useless. The moment 
you get it, it is useless. This is desire. Buddha has called it TRISHNA: this is becoming. 
You move from one life to another, from one world to another, and this goes on. It can 
continue ad infinitum. There is no end to it, there is no end to desire, desiring. But if there 



is no becoming, if you accept totally whatsoever you are — ugly or beautiful, wise or 
stupid, rich or poor — whatsoever you are, if you accept it in its totality, becoming ceases. 
Then there is no tension; then the tension cannot exist. Then there is no anguish. You are 
at ease, you are not worried. 

This non-becoming mind is a mind that is centered in the self. 

On quite the opposite pole is the madman. He has no being, he is only a becoming. He 
has forgotten what he is. The A is forgotten completely and he is trying to be B. He no 
longer knows who he is; he only kn ows his desired goal. He doesn't live here and now, he 
lives somewhere else. That is why he looks crazy to us, mad, because you live in this 
world and he lives in the world of his dreams. He is not part of your world, he is living 
somewhere else. He has completely forgotten his reality here and now. And with himself 
he has forgotten the world around him, which is real. He lives in an unreal world — for 
him, that is the only reality. 

A buddha lives this very moment in the being and the madman is just the opposite. He 
never lives in the here and now, in the being, but always in the becoming — somewhere 
on the horizon. These are the two polar opposites. 

So remember, the madman is not against you, he is against the buddha. And remember 
also, the buddha is not against you, he is against the madman. You are in between. You 
are both, mixed; you have madnesses, you have moments of enlightenment, but both are 
mixed. 

Sometimes a glimpse into the center suddenly happens, if you are relaxed. There are 
moments when you are relaxed. You are in love: for a few moments, for a single 
moment, your lover, your beloved is with you. 

It has been a long desire, a long effort, and at last your beloved is with you. For a 
moment the mind goes off. There has been a long effort to be with the beloved. The mind 
has been hankering and hankering and hankering, and the mind has always been thinking, 
thinking about the beloved. Now the beloved is there and suddenly the mind cannot 
think. The old process cannot be continued. You were asking for the beloved; now the 
beloved is there, so the mind simply stops. 

In that moment when the beloved is there, there is no desire. You are relaxed; suddenly 
you are thrown back to yourself. Unless a lover can throw you to yourself it is not love. 
Unless you become yourself in the presence of the beloved, it is not love. Unless mind 
completely ceases to function in the presence of the lover or the beloved, it is not love. 
Sometimes it happens that mind ceases and for a moment there is no desire. Love is 
desireless. Try to understand this: you may desire love, but love is desireless. When love 
happens there is no desire; mind is quiet, calm, relaxed. No more becoming, nowhere to 
go- 

But this happens only for a few moments, if it happens at all. If you have really loved 
someone, then it will happen for a few moments. It is a shock. The mind cannot work 
because its whole function has become useless, absurd. The one for whom you were 
longing is there, and the mind cannot think what to do now. 


For a few moments the whole mechanism stops. You are relaxed in yourself. You have 
touched your being, your center, and you feel you are at the source of well-being. A bliss 
fdls you, a fragrance surrounds you. Suddenly you are not the same man you were. 



That is why love transforms so much. If you are in love you cannot hide it. That is 
impossible! If you are in love, it will show. Your eyes, your face, the way you walk, the 
way you sit, everything will show it, because you are not the same man. The desiring 
mind is not there. You are like a buddha just for a few moments. This cannot be 
continued for long because it is just a shock. Immediately the mind will try to find some 
ways and excuses to think again. 

For example, the mind may start thinking you have attained your goal, you have attained 
your love, so now what? What are you going to do? Then the prophesying starts, the 
arguments start. You begin thinking, "Today I have reached my beloved, but will it be the 
same tomorrow also?" The mind has started working. And the moment mind is working 
you have moved again into becoming. 

Sometimes even without love, just through fatigue, tiredness, one stops desiring. Then 
too one is thrown to oneself. When you are not away from yourself you are bound to be 
at your self, no matter what may be the cause of it. When one is tired totally, fatigued, 
when one does not even feel like thinking or desiring, when one is frustrated completely, 
without any hope, then suddenly one feels at home. 

Now he cannot go anywhere. All the doors are closed; hope has disappeared — and with 
it desire, with it becoming. 

It will not be for long because your mind has a mechanism. It can go off for a few 
moments, but suddenly it will come alive again because you cannot exist hopelessly, you 
will have to find some hope. You cannot exist without desire. Because you do not know 
how to exist without desire, you will have to create some desire. 

In any situation where it happens that suddenly the mind ceases functioning, you are at 
your center. You are on a holiday, in a forest or at a hill station, or on a beach: suddenly 
your routine mind will not work. The office is not there, the wife is not there, or the 
husband is not there. Suddenly there is a very new situation, and the mind will need some 
time to function in it, to be adjusted to it. The mind feels unadjusted. The situation is so 
new that you relax, and you are at your center. 

In these moments you become a buddha, but these will only be moments. Then they will 
haunt you, and then you would like to reproduce them again and again and repeat them. 
But remember, they happened spontaneously, so you cannot repeat them. And the more 
you try to repeat them, the more it will be impossible for them to come to you. 

That is happening to everyone. You loved someone, and in the first meeting your mind 
ceased for a few moments. 

Then you got married. Why did you get married? To repeat those beautiful moments 
again and again. But when they happened you were not married, and they cannot happen 
in marriage because the whole situation is different. When two people meet for the first 
time, the whole situation is new. Their minds cannot function in it. They are so 
overwhelmed by it — so filled by the new experience, by the new life, the new flowering! 
Then the mind starts functioning and they think. "This is such a beautiful moment! I want 
to go on repeating it every day, so I should get married." 

Mind will destroy everything. Marriage means mind. Love is spontaneous; marriage is 
calculating. Getting married is a mathematical thing. Then you wait for those moments, 
but they will never come again. That is why every married man and woman is frustrated 
— because they are waiting for certain things that happened in the past. Why are they not 
happening again? They cannot happen because you are missing the whole situation. Now 



you are not new; now there is no spontaneity; now love is a routine. Now everything is 
expected and demanded. Now love has become a duty, not a fun. It was fun in the 
beginning; now it is a duty. And duty cannot give you the same bliss that fun can give. It 
is impossible! Your mind has created the whole thing. Now you go on expecting, and the 
more you expect the less is the possibility of its happening. 


This happens everywhere, not only in marriage. You go to a master and the experience is 
new. His presence, his words, his way of life are new. Suddenly your mind stops 
functioning. Then you think, "This is the man for me, so I must go every day." Then you 
get married to him. By and by frustration sets in because you have made it a duty, a 
routine. Now those same experiences will not be coming. Then you think this man has 
deceived you or that you were fooled somehow. Then you think, "The first experience 
was hallucinatory. I must have been hypnotized or something. It was not real." 

It was real. Your routine mind makes it unreal. And then the mind tries to expect, but the 
first time it happened you were not expecting. You had come without any expectations, 
you were just open to receive whatsoever was happening. 

Now you come every day with expectations, with a closed mind. It cannot happen. It 
always happens in an open mind; it always happens in a new situation. That doesn't mean 
that you have to change your situation daily, it only means: do not allow your mind to 
create a pattern. Then your wife will be new every day, your husband will be new every 
day. But do not allow the mind to create a pattern of expectations; do not allow the mind 
to move in the future. Then your master will be every day new, your friend will be every 
day new. And everything is new in the world except the mind. 

Mind is the only thing which is old. It is always old. 

The sun is rising anew every day. It is not the old sun. The moon is new; the day, the 
night, the flowers, the trees... everything is new except your mind. Your mind is always 
old — remember, always — because mind needs the past, the accumulated experience, the 
projected experience. Mind needs the past and life needs the present. Life is always 
blissful — mind never is. Whenever you allow your mind to come in, misery sets in. 

These spontaneous moments will not be repeated again, so what to do? How to be in a 
relaxed state continuously? These three sutras are for this. These are three techniques 
concerning the feeling of ease, techniques to relax the nerves. 

How to remain in the being? How not to move into the becoming? It is difficult, arduous, 
but these techniques can help. These techniques will throw you upon yourself. 

The first technique: WHILE BEING CARESSED, SWEET PRINCESS, ENTER THE 
CARESSING AS EVERLASTING LIFE. Shiva starts with love. The first technique is 
concerned with love, because love is the nearest thing in your experience in which you 
are relaxed. If you cannot love, it is impossible for you to relax. If you can relax, your life 
will become a loving life. 

A tense man cannot love. Why? A tense man always lives with purposes. He can earn 
money, but he cannot love because love is purposeless. 

Love is not a commodity. You cannot accumulate it; you cannot make a bank balance of 
it; you cannot strengthen your ego out of it. Really, love is the most absurd act, with no 
meaning beyond it, no purpose beyond it. It exists in itself, not for anything else. 



You earn money FOR something — it is a means. You build a house for someone to live 
in — it is a means. Love is not a means. Why do you love? For what do you love? Love is 
the end in itself. That is why a mind that is calculative, logical, a mind that thinks in 
terms of purpose, cannot love. And the mind that always thinks in terms of purpose will 
be tense, because purpose can only be fulfdled in the future, never here and now. 

You are building a house — you cannot live in it just now, you will have to build it first. 
You can live in it in the future, not now. You earn money — the bank balance will be 
created in the future, not now. Means you will have to use now, and ends will come in the 
future. 

Love is always here; there is no future to it. That is why love is so near to meditation. 

That is why death is also so near to meditation — because death is also always here and 
now, it can never happen in the future. Can you die in the future? You can die only in the 
present. No one has ever died in the future. How can you die in the future? Or how can 
you die in the past? The past has gone, it is no more, so you cannot die in it. 

The future has not yet come, so how can you die in it? 

Death always occurs in the present. Death, love, meditation — they all occur in the 
present. So if you are afraid of death, you cannot love. If you are afraid of love, you 
cannot meditate. If you are afraid of meditation, your life will be useless. Useless not in 
the sense of any purpose, but useless in the sense that you will never be able to feel any 
bliss in it. It will be futile. 

It may seem strange to connect these three: love, meditation, death. It is not! They are 
similar experiences. So if you can enter in one, you can enter in the remaining two. 

Shiva starts with love. He says, WHILE BEING CARESSED, SWEET PRINCESS, 
ENTER THE CARESSING AS EVERLASTING LIFE. What does it mean? Many 
things! One: while you are being loved the past has ceased, the future is not. You move 
in the dimension of the present. You move in THE NOW. Have you ever loved someone? 
If you have ever loved, then you know that the mind is no longer there. 

That is why the so-called wise men say that lovers are blind, mindless, mad. In essence 
what they say is right. Lovers ARE blind because they have no eyes for the future, to 
calculate what they are going to do. They are blind; they cannot see the past. What has 
happened to lovers? They just move here and now without any consideration of past or 
future, without any consideration of consequences. 

That is why they are called blind. They are! They are blind for those who are calculating, 
and they are seers for those who are not calculating. Those who are not calculating will 
see love as the real eye, the real vision. 

So the first thing: in the moment of love, past and future are no more. Then, one delicate 
point is to be understood. When there is no past and no future, can you call this moment 
the present? It is the present only between the two — between the past and the future. It is 
relative. If there is no past and no future, what does it mean to call it the present? It is 
meaningless. That is why Shiva doesn't use the word 'present'. He says, EVERLASTING 
LIFE. He means eternity... enter eternity. 

We divide time into three parts — past, present, future. That division is false, absolutely 
false. Time is really past and future. The present is not part of time. The present is part of 
eternity. That which has passed is time; that which is to come is time. That which is, is 
not time because it never passes — it is always here. The now is always here. It is 
ALWAYS here! This now is eternal. 



If you move from the past, you never move into the present. From the past you always 
move into the future; there comes no moment which is present. From the past you always 
move into the future. From the present you can never move into the future. From the 
present you go deeper and deeper, into more present and more present. 

This is everlasting life. 

We may say it in this way: from past to future is time. Time means you move on a plane, 
on a straight line. Or we may call it horizontal. The moment you are in the present the 
dimension changes: you move vertically — up or down, toward the height or toward the 
depth. But then you never move horizontally. A Buddha, a Shiva, live in eternity, not in 
time. 

Jesus was asked, "What will happen in your kingdom of God?" The man who asked him 
was not asking about time. He was asking about what is going to happen to his desires, 
about how they will be fulfilled. He was asking whether there will be life everlasting or 
whether there will be death; whether there be any misery, whether there will be inferior 
and superior men. He was asking things of this world when he asked, "What is going to 
happen in your kingdom of God?" And Jesus replied — the reply is like that of a Zen 
monk — "There shall be time no longer." 

The man who was replied to in this way may not have understood at all: "There shall be 
time no longer." Only this one thing Jesus said — "There shall be time no longer," 
because time is horizontal and the kingdom of God is vertical... it is eternal. It is always 
here! You have only to move away from time to enter into it. 

So love is the first door. Through it, you can move away from time. That is why everyone 
wants to be loved, everyone wants to love. 

And no one knows why so much significance is given to love, why there is such a deep 
longing for love. And unless you know it rightly, you can neither love nor be loved, 
because love is one of the deepest phenomena upon this earth. 

We go on thinking that everyone is capable of love as he is. This is not the case — it is not 
so. That is why you are frustrated. Love is a different dimension, and if you try to love 
someone in time you will be defeated in your effort. In time, love is not possible. 

I remember one anecdote. Meera was in love with Krishna. She was a housewife — the 
wife of a prince. The prince became jealous of Krishna. Krishna was no more; Krishna 
was not present, Krishna was not a physical body. There was a gap of five thousand years 
between Krishna’s physical existence and Meera's physical existence. So really, how can 
Meera be in love with Krishna? The time gap was so great. 

One day the prince, her husband, asked Meera, "You go on talking about your love, you 
go on dancing and singing around Krishna, but where is he? With whom are you so much 
in love? With whom are you talking continuously?" Meera was talking with Krishna, 
singing, laughing, fighting. She looked mad — she was, in our eyes. The prince said, 
"Have you gone mad? Where is your Krishna? Whom are you loving? With whom are 
you conversing? I am here, and you have completely forgotten me." 


Meera said, "Krishna is here — you are not here — because Krishna is eternal; you are not. 
He will always be here, he was always here, he is here. You will not be here; you were 
not here. You were not here one day, you will not be here another day, so how can I 
believe that between these two non-existences you are here? How is an existence possible 



between two non-existences?" 

The prince is in time, but Krishna is in eternity. So you can be near the prince, but the 
distance cannot be destroyed. You will be distant. You may be very, very distant in time 
from Krishna, but you can be near. It is a different dimension, however. 

I look in front of me and there is a wall; I move my eyes and there is a sky. When you 
look in time there is always a wall. When you look beyond time there is the open sky... 
infinite. Love opens the infinity, the everlastingness of existence. So really, if you have 
ever loved, love can be made a technique of meditation. This is the technique: WHILE 
BEING LOVED, SWEET PRINCESS, ENTER LOVING AS EVERLASTING LIFE. 
Do not be a lover standing aloof, outside. Become loving and move into eternity. When 
you are loving someone, are you there as the lover? If you are there, then you are in time 
and love is just false, just pseudo. If you are still there and you can say, "I am," then you 
can be physically near but spiritually you are poles apart. 


While in love, YOU must not be — only love, only loving. Become loving. While 
caressing your lover or beloved become the caress. While kissing, do not be the kisser or 
the kissed — be the kiss. Forget the ego completely, dissolve it into the act. Move into the 
act so deeply that the actor is no more. And if you cannot move into love, it is difficult to 
move into eating or walking — very difficult, because love is the easiest approach for 
dissolving the ego. That is why those who are egoists cannot love. They may talk about 
it, they may sing about it, they may write about it, but they cannot love. The ego cannot 
love! 

Shiva says, become loving. When you are in the embrace, become the embrace, become 
the kiss. Forget yourself so totally that you can say, "I am no more. Only love exists." 
Then the heart is not beating but love is beating. Then the blood is not circulating, love is 
circulating. And eyes are not seeing, love is seeing. Then hands are not moving to touch, 
love is moving to touch. 

Become love and enter everlasting life. Love suddenly changes your dimension. You are 
thrown out of time and you are facing eternity. Love can become a deep meditation — the 
deepest possible. Lovers have known sometimes what saints have not known. And lovers 
have touched that center which many yogis have missed. But it will be just a glimpse 
unless you transform your love into meditation. 

Tantra means this: the transformation of love into meditation. And now you can 
understand why tantra talks so much about love and sex. Why? Because love is the 
easiest natural door from where you can transcend this world, this horizontal dimension. 
Look at Shiva with his consort, Devi. Look at them! They don’t seem to be two — they 
are one. The oneness is so deep that it has even gone into symbols. We all have seen the 
Shivalinga. It is a phallic symbol — Shiva's sex organ — but it is not alone, it is based in 
Devi's vagina. The Hindus of the old days were very daring. Now when you see a 
Shivalinga you never remember that it is a phallic symbol. We have forgotten; we have 
tried to forget it completely. 

Jung remembers in his autobiography, in his memoirs, a very beautiful and funny 
incident. He came to India and went to see Konark, and in the temple of Konark there are 
many, many Shivalingas, many phallic symbols. The pundit who was taking him around 
explained everything to him except the Shivalingas. And they were so many, it was 
difficult to escape this. Jung was well aware, but just to tease the pundit he went on 



asking, "But what are these?" So the pundit at last said into his ear, in Jung's ear, "Do not 
ask me here, I will tell you afterwards. This is a private thing." 

Jung must have laughed inside — these are the Hindus of today. Then outside the temple 
the pundit came near and said, "It was not good of you to ask before others. 

I will tell you now. It is a secret." And then again in Jung's ear he said, "They are our 
private parts." 

When Jung went back, he met one great scholar — a scholar of oriental thought, 
mythology, philosophy — Heinrich Zimmer. He related this anecdote to Zimmer. Zimmer 
was one of the most gifted minds who ever tried to penetrate Indian thought and he was a 
lover of India and of its ways of thinking — of the oriental non-logical, mystic approach 
toward life. When he heard this from Jung, he laughed and said, "This is good for a 
change. I have always heard about great Indians — Buddha, Krishna, Mahavir. What you 
relate says something not about any great Indians, but about Indians." 

Love for Shiva is the great gate. And for him sex is not something to be condemned. For 
him sex is the seed and love is the flowering of it, and if you condemn the seed you 
condemn the flower. Sex can become love. If it never becomes love then it is crippled. 
Condemn the crippledness, not the sex. Love must flower, sex must become love. If it is 
not becoming it is not the fault of sex, it is your fault. 

Sex must not remain sex; that is the tantra teaching. It must be transfonned into love. 

And love also must not remain love. It must be transformed into light, into meditative 
experience, into the last, ultimate mystic peak. How to transfonn love? Be the act and 
forget the actor. 

While loving, be love — simply love. Then it is not your love or my love or anybody 
else's — it is simply LOVE. When you are not there, when you are in the hands of the 
ultimate source, or current, when you are in love, it is not you who is in love. When the 
love has engulfed you, you have disappeared; you have just become a flowing energy. 

D. H. Lawrence, one of the most creative minds of this age, was knowingly or 
unknowingly a tantra adept. He was condemned in the West completely, his books were 
banned. There were many cases in the courts only because he had said, "Sex energy is the 
only energy, and if you condemn it and suppress it you are against the universe. Then you 
will never be capable of knowing the higher flowering of this energy. And when it is 
suppressed it becomes ugly — this is the vicious circle." 

Priests, moralists, so-called religious people — popes, shankaracharyas and others — they 
go on condemning sex. They say that this is an ugly thing. And when you suppress it, it 
becomes ugly. So they say, "Look! What we said is true. It is proved by you. Look! 
Whatsoever you are doing is ugly and you know it is ugly." 

But it is not sex which is ugly, it is these priests who have made it ugly. Once they have 
made it ugly they are proved right. And when they are proved right you go on making it 
more and more ugly. 

Sex is innocent energy — life flowing in you, existence alive in you. 

Do not cripple it! Allow it to move toward the heights. That is, sex must become love. 
What is the difference? When your mind is sexual you are exploiting the other; the other 
is just an instrument to be used and thrown away. When sex becomes love the other is not 
an instrument, the other is not to be exploited; the other is not really the other. When you 
love, it is not self-centered. Rather, the other becomes significant, unique. 



It is not that you are exploiting him — no! On the contrary, you both are joined in a deep 
experience. You are partners of a deep experience, not the exploiter and the exploited. 
You are helping each other to move into a different world of love. Sex is exploitation. 
Love is moving together into a different world. 

If this moving is not momentary and if this moving becomes meditative — that is, if you 
can forget yourself completely and the lover and the beloved disappear, and there is only 
love flowing — then, says Shiva, everlasting life is yours. 

The second technique: 

STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN 
ANT. THEN. 

This looks very simple, but it is not so simple. I will read it again: STOP THE DOORS 
OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. THEN. This is 
only an example; anything will do. STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN 
FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT, and then - THEN - the thing will happen. 

What is Shiva saying? 

You have a thorn in your foot — it is painful, you are suffering. Or one ant is there 
creeping on your leg. You feel the creeping and suddenly you want it to be thrown away. 
Take any experience! You have a wound — it is painful. You have a headache, or any 
pain in the body. Anything will do as an object. It is only an example — the CREEPING 
OF AN ANT. Shiva says: STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING 
THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. Whatsoever you are feeling, stop all the doors of the 
senses. 

What is to be done? Close your eyes and think that you are just blind and you cannot see. 
Close your ears and think that you cannot hear. With all of the five senses, you just close 
them. How can you close them? It is easy. Stop breathing for a single moment: all your 
senses will be closed. When the breath has stopped and all the senses are closed, where is 
this creeping? Where is the ant? Suddenly you are removed — far away. 

One of my friends, an old friend, very aged, fell down the staircase, and doctors said that 
now he would not be able to move from his bed for three months, he would have to rest 
for three months. And he was a very restless man; it was difficult for him. I went to see 
him, so he said, "Pray for me and bless me so that I may die, because these three months 
are more than death. I cannot remain stone-like. And others are saying, 'Don’t move.’ 


I told him, "This is a good opportunity. Just close your eyes and think that you are only a 
stone, you cannot move. How can you move? You are a stone — just a stone, a statue. 
Close your eyes. Feel that you are now a stone, a statue." He asked me what will happen. 
I told him, "Just try. I am sitting here, and nothing can be done. Nothing can be done! 

You will have to be here for three months anyhow, so try." 

He would have never tried, but the situation was so impossible that he said, "Okay! I will 
try because something may happen. But I don’t believe it," he said. "I don’t believe that 
something can happen just by thinking that I am stone-like, dead like a statue, but I will 
try." So he tried. 

I was also not thinking that something was going to happen, because the man was such. 
But sometimes when you are in an impossible situation, hopeless, things begin to happen. 
He closed his eyes. I waited, because I was thinking that within two or three minutes he 



would open them and he would say, "Nothing happened." But he would not open his 
eyes, and thirty minutes passed. I could feel and see that he had become a statue. All the 
tension on his forehead disappeared. His face was changed. 

I had to leave, but he would not open his eyes. And he was so silent, as if dead. His 
breathing calmed down, and because I had to leave, I had to tell him, "I want to go now, 
so please open your eyes and tell me what has happened." 


He opened his eyes a different man. And he said, "This is a miracle. What have you done 
to me?" 

I told him, "I have not done anything at all." 

He said, "You must have done something because this is a miracle. When I began to 
think that I am just like a stone, like a statue, suddenly the feeling came to me that even if 
I wanted to move my hands it was impossible to do so. I wanted so many times to open 
my eyes, but they were like stone so I couldn’t open them." 

He said, "I even became worried about what you will be thinking, as it was so long, but 
what could I do? I couldn’t move myself for these thirty minutes. And when every 
movement ceased, suddenly the world disappeared and I was alone, deep down in me, 
myself. Then the pain disappeared." 

There was severe pain; he could not sleep in the night without a tranquilizer. But the pain 
disappeared. I asked him how he felt when the pain was disappearing. He said, "First I 
began to feel that it was somewhere distant. The pain was there, but very far away as if 
happening to someone else. And then by and by, by and by, as if someone is going away 
and away and you cannot see him, it disappeared. The pain disappeared! For at least ten 
minutes, the pain was no more. How can a stone body have pain?" 

This sutra says, STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES. Become stone-like, closed to the 
world. When you are closed to the world, really, you are closed to your own body also, 
because your body is not part of you; it is part of the world. 

When you are closed completely to the world, you are closed to your own body also. 
Then, Shiva says, then the thing will happen. 

So try it with the body. Anything will do, you will not need some ant creeping on you. 
Otherwise you will think, "When the ant will creep, I will meditate." And such helpful 
ants are difficult to find, so anything will do. You are lying on your bed, you feel the cold 
sheets — become dead. Suddenly the sheets will go away, away, away, and they will 
disappear. Your bed will disappear; your bedroom will disappear; the whole world will 
disappear. You are closed, dead, a stone, like a Leibnitzian monad with no window 
outside — no window! You cannot move! 

And then, when you cannot move, you are thrown back to yourself, you are centered in 
yourself. Then, for the first time you can look from your center. And once you can look 
from your center, you can never be the same man again. 

The third technique: WHEN ON A BED OR A SEAT, LET YOURSELF BECOME 
WEIGHTLESS, BEYOND MIND. You are sitting here. Just feel that you have become 
weightless, there is no weight. You will feel that somewhere or other there is weight, but 
go on feeling the weightlessness. It comes. A moment comes when you feel that you are 
weightless, that there is no weight. When there is no weight you are no more a body, 
because the weight is of the body — not of you. 



You are weightless. 

That is why there were so many experiments done. Someone is dying... many scientists 
all over the world have tried to weigh the person. If there is a slight difference, if when a 
man is alive the weight is more and when a man is dead the weight is less, then scientists 
can say that something has moved from the body, that a soul or the self or something that 
was there is no more — because for science nothing can be weightless, nothing! 

Weight is basic to all matter. Even sunrays have weight. It is very, very slight, minute, 
and they are difficult to weigh, but scientists have weighed them. If you can collect all 
the sunrays on a five-square-mile plot of ground, their weight will be similar to that of a 
hair. But sunrays do have weight; they have been weighed. Nothing can be weightless for 
science. And if something can be weightless then it is immaterial, it cannot be matter. 
And science has believed for these twenty or twenty-five years that there is nothing 
except matter. 

So when a man dies, if something leaves the body the weight must differ. But it never 
differs; the weight remains the same. Sometimes it even becomes more — that is the 
problem. The alive man weighs less; the dead man becomes more weighty. That created 
new problems, because they were really trying to find out if some weight is lost; then 
they can say something has left. 

But it seems that, on the contrary, something has come in. What has happened? Weight is 
material, but you are not a weight. You are immaterial. 

If you try this technique of weightlessness, you just have to conceive of yourself as 
weightless — and not only conceive, but feel that your body has become weightless. If 
you go on feeling, feeling, feeling, a moment comes when suddenly you realize that you 
are weightless. You are already, so you can realize it anytime. You have only to create a 
situation in which you can feel again that you are weightless. 

You have to dehypnotize yourself. This is the hypnosis, the belief that "I am a body and 
that is why I feel weight." If you can dehypnotize yourself into realizing that you are not 
a body, you will not feel weight. And when you do not feel weight you are beyond mind, 
says Shiva: WHEN ON A BED OR A SEAT, LET YOURSELF BECOME 
WEIGHTLESS, BEYOND MIND. Then the thing can happen. The mind also has 
weight; everyone's mind has a different weight. 

At one time there were some proposals that the weightier the mind, the more intelligent. 
And generally it is true, but not absolutely, because sometimes very great men had very 
small minds, and sometimes some stupid idiot's mind weighed very much. But generally 
it is true, because when you have a bigger mechanism of the mind it weighs more. The 
mind is also a weight, but your consciousness is weightless. 

To feel this consciousness, you have to feel weightlessness. So try it: walking, sitting, 
sleeping, you can try it. 

Some observations.... Why does the dead body become more weighty sometimes? 
Because the moment the consciousness leaves the body, the body becomes unprotected. 
Many things can enter it immediately. They were not entering because of you. Many 
vibrations can enter into a dead body — they cannot enter into you. You are there, the 
body is alive, resistant to many things. That is why once you are ill, it begins to be a long 
sequence; one illness, then another, and then another — because once you are ill you 
become unprotected, vulnerable, non-resistant. Then anything can enter into you. Your 
presence protects the body. So sometimes a dead body can gain weight. The moment you 



leave it, anything can enter into the body. 

Secondly, when you are happy you always feel weightless; when you are sad you always 
feel more weight, as if something is pulling you down. The gravitation becomes much 
more. When you are sad, you are more weighty. When you are happy, you are light. You 
feel it. Why? Because when you are happy, whenever you feel a blissful moment, you 
forget the body completely. When you are sad, suffering, you cannot forget the body, you 
feel the weight of it. It pulls you down — down to the earth, as if you are rooted. Then 
you cannot move; you have roots in the earth. 

In happiness you are weightless. In sorrow, sadness, you become weighty. 

In deep meditation, when you forget your body completely, you can levitate. Even the 
body can go up with you. It happens many times. Scientists have been observing one 
woman in Bolivia. While meditating she goes up four feet, and now it has been observed 
scientifically; many films have been taken, many photographs. Before thousands and 
thousands of observers suddenly the woman goes up and gravity becomes nil, nullified. 
As of yet there is no explanation for what is happening, but that same woman cannot go 
up while not in meditation. And if her meditation is disturbed, suddenly she falls down. 
What happens? Deep in meditation you forget your body completely, and the 
identification is broken. The body is a very small thing; you are very big, you have 
infinite power. The body has nothing in comparison to you. 

It is as if an emperor has become identified with his slave, so as the slave goes begging, 
the emperor goes begging; as the slave weeps, the emperor weeps. When the slave says, 

"I am no one," the emperor says, "I am no one." Once the emperor recognizes his own 
being, once he recognizes that he is the emperor and this man is just a slave, everything 
will change suddenly. 

You are infinite power identified with a very finite body. Once you realize your self, then 
weightlessness becomes more and the weight of the body less. 

Then you can levitate, the body can go up. 

There are many, many stories which cannot yet be proven scientifically, but they will be 
proven... because if one woman can go up four feet, then there is no barrier. Another can 
go a thousand feet, another can go completely into the cosmos. Theoretically there is no 
problem: four feet or four hundred feet or four thousand feet, it makes no difference. 
There are stories about Ram and about many others who have disappeared completely 
with the body. Their bodies were never found dead on this earth. Mohammed disappeared 
completely — not only with his body; it is said he disappeared with his horse also. These 
stories look impossible, they look mythological, but they are not necessarily so. 

Once you know the weightless force, you have become the master of gravity. You can 
use it; it depends on you. You can disappear completely with your body. 

But to us weightlessness will be a problem. The technique of SIDDHASAN, the way 
Buddha sits, is the best way to be weightless. Sit on the earth — not on any chair or 
anything, but just on the floor. And it is good if the floor is not of cement or anything 
artificial. Just sit on the ground so that you are the nearest to nature. It is good if you can 
sit naked. Just sit naked on the ground in the Buddha posture, siddhasan — because 
siddhasan is the best posture in which to be weightless. 

Why? Because you feel more weight if your body is leaning this way or that way. Then 
your body has more area to be affected by gravity. If I am sitting on this chair then a 



greater area of my body is affected by gravity. 

While you are standing less area is affected, but you cannot stand for too long. Mahavir 
always meditated standing — always, because then one covers the least area. Just your 
feet are touching the ground. When you are standing on your feet, straight, the least 
amount of gravity works on you — and gravity is weight. 

Sitting in a Buddha posture, locked — your legs are locked, your hands are locked — also 
helps, because then your inner electricity becomes a circuit. Let your spine be straight. 
Now you can understand why so much emphasis has been given to a straight spine, 
because with a straight spine less and less area is covered, so gravity affects you less. 
With closed eyes, balance yourself completely, center yourself. Lean to the right and feel 
the gravity; lean to the left and feel the gravity; lean forward and feel the gravity; lean 
backward and feel the gravity. Then find the center where the least pull of gravity is felt, 
the least weight is felt, and remain there. Then forget the body and feel that you are not 
weight — you are weightless. Then go on feeling this weightlessness. Suddenly you 
become weightless; suddenly you are not the body; suddenly you are in a different world 
of bodilessness. 


Weightlessness is bodilessness. Then you transcend mind also. Mind is also part of the 
body, part of matter. Matter has weight; you do not have any weight. This is the basis of 
this technique. 

Try any technique, but stick to it for a few days so that you can feel whether it is working 
or not. 

Enough for today. 


THE END. 



Chapter 8: Total acceptance and non-division 


Question 1 

WHAT DOES TANTRA MEAN BY PURITY? 

One of the things being asked about is: WHAT DOES TANTRA MEAN BY 
PURIFICATION OF THE MIND, PURITY OF THE MIND, AS A BASIC 
CONDITION TO FURTHER PROGRESS? Whatsoever is ordinarily meant by purity is 
not what is meant by tantra. Ordinarily, we divide everything into bad and good. The 
division may be for any reason. It may be hygienically, morally or in any other way, but 
we divide life into two — good and bad. And ordinarily, whenever we say purity we mean 
goodness — the "bad" qualities should not be allowed and the "good" qualities should be 
there. But for tantra this division of good and bad is meaningless. Tantra does not look at 
life through any dichotomy, any duality, any division. Then "What is meant by purity in 
tantra?" is a very relevant question. 

If you ask a saint, he will say that anger is bad, sex is bad, greed is bad. If you ask 
Gurdjieff, he will say that negativity is bad, that whatsoever emotion is negative is bad 
and to be positive is good. If you ask Jains, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians or 
Mohammedans, they may differ in their definition of good and bad — but they have 
definitions. They call certain things bad and certain things good. So to define purity is not 
difficult for them. Whatsoever they take as good is pure, whatsoever they take as bad is 
impure. 

But for tantra it is a deep problem. 

Tantra makes no superficial division between good and bad. Then what is purity? Tantra 
says that to divide is impure and to live in non-division is purity. So for tantra purity 
means innocence — undifferentiated innocence. 

A child is there; you call him pure. He gets angry, he has greed, so why do you call him 
pure? What is pure in childhood? Innocence! There is no division in the mind of a child. 
The child is unaware of any division into what is good and what is bad. That 
unawareness is the innocence. Even if he gets angry, he has no mind to be angry, it is a 
pure and simple act. It happens, and when anger goes, it goes. Nothing is left behind. The 
child is again the same, as if the anger has never been there. The purity is not touched; 
the purity is the same. So a child is pure because there is no mind. 

The more mind grows, the more the child will become impure. Then anger will be there 
as a considered thing, not spontaneously. Then sometimes the child will suppress the 
anger — if the situation does not permit it. And when anger becomes suppressed, then 
sometimes it will be transferred onto another situation instead. When there is really no 
need to be angry he will get angry, because the suppressed anger will need some outlet. 
Then everything will become impure because the mind has come in. 

A child can be a thief in our eyes, but a child himself is never a thief because the very 
concept that things belong to individuals doesn’t exist in his mind. 

If he takes your watch, your money, or anything, it is not a theft for him because the very 
notion that things belong to someone is non-existent. His theft is pure while even your 
non-theft is not pure — the mind is there. 

Tantra says that when someone becomes again like a child, he is pure. Of course, he is 



not a child — only like a child. The difference is there and the similarity is there. The 
similarity is the innocence regained. Again someone is like a child. A child is standing 
naked — no one feels the nakedness because a child is still unaware of the body. His 
nakedness has a quality different from your nakedness. You are aware of the body. 

The sage must regain this innocence. Mahavir stands again naked. That nakedness again 
has the same quality of innocence. He has forgotten his body; he is no longer the body. 
But one difference is also there, and the difference is great: the child is simply ignorant, 
hence the innocence. But the sage is wise, that is the reason for his innocence. 

The child will one day become aware of his body and will feel the nakedness. He will try 
to hide, he will become guilty, and he will feel shame. He will come to be aware. So his 
innocence is an innocence of ignorance. Knowledge will destroy it. 

That is the meaning of the biblical story of Adam and Eve being expelled from the 
garden of Eden. They were naked like children. 

They were not aware of the body; they were not aware of anger, greed, lust, sex or 
anything. They were unaware. They were like children, innocent. 

But God had forbidden them to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The tree of 
knowledge was forbidden but they ate, because anything forbidden becomes inviting. 
Anything forbidden becomes attractive! They were living in a big garden with an infinite 
number of trees, but the tree of knowledge became the most important and significant 
because it was forbidden. Really, this forbidden-ness became the attraction, the 
invitation. They were as if magnetized, hypnotized by the tree. They couldn’t escape it, 
they had to eat. 

But this story is beautiful because the tree is named the tree of knowledge. The moeent 
they ate the fruit of knowledge they became non-innocent. They became aware; they 
came to realize that they were naked. Immediately, Eve tried to hide her body. With 
awareness of the body they became aware of everything — anger, lust, greed, everything. 
They became adult, so they were expelled from the garden. 

So in the Bible knowledge is sin. They were thrown out of the garden, they were 
punished, because of knowledge. Unless they become again like children — innocent, 
not-knowing — they cannot enter the garden. They can enter the kingdom of God again 
only if they fulfill this condition of becoming innocent again. 


The whole thing is just the story of humanity. Every child is expelled from the garden, 
not only Adam and Eve. Every child lives his childhood in innocence without knowing 
anything. He is pure, but the purity is of ignorance. It cannot continue. Unless it becomes 
a purity of wisdom, you cannot rely on it. It will have to go, sooner or later you will have 
to eat the fruit of knowledge. 

Each child will have to eat the fruit of knowledge. It was easy in the garden of Eden — 
just the tree was there. As a substitute for the tree we have schools, colleges and 
universities. Each child will have to pass, will have to become non-innocent, will have to 
lose his innocence. The very world needs knowledge, the very existence needs 
knowledge. You cannot exist in it without knowledge. And the moment knowledge 
comes, division enters. You begin to divide between what is good and what is bad. 

So for tantra the division into good and bad is impurity. Before it you are pure, after it 
you are pure; in it you are impure. But knowledge is a necessary evil, you cannot escape 
it. One has to go through it; that is part of life. But one need not remain in it always, one 



can transcend it. Transcendence makes you again pure and innocent. If divisions lost 
their meaning, if the knowledge which differentiates between good and evil were no 
more, you would again look at the world from an innocent attitude. 


Jesus says, "Unless you become like children, you cannot enter into my kingdom of 
God." Unless you become like children... this is the purity of tantra. 

Lao Tsu says, "One inch of division, and heaven and hell are set apart." No-division is 
the mind of the sage — no division at all! A sage doesn't know what is good or what is 
bad. He is like children but unlike them also, because he has known this division. He has 
passed through this division and transcended it; he has gone beyond it. He has known 
darkness and light, but now he has gone beyond it. Now he sees darkness as part of light 
and light as part of darkness, now there is no division. Light and darkness have both 
become one — degrees of one phenomenon. Now he sees everything as degrees of one; 
howsoever polar opposite they are, they are not two. Life and death, love and hate, good 
and bad, everything is part of one phenomenon, one energy. The difference is only of 
degrees, and they can never be divided. It cannot be demarked, that "From this point 
there is division." There is no division. 

What is good? What is bad? From where can you define them and demark them as 
separate? They are always one. They are only different degrees of the same thing. Once 
this is known and felt, your mind becomes again pure. This is the purity meant by tantra. 
So I will define tantric purity as innocence, not as goodness. 


But innocence can be ignorant — then it is of no use. It has to be lost, you have to be 
thrown out of it; otherwise you cannot mature. Giving up knowledge and transcendence 
of knowledge are both part of maturing, part of being really adult. So go through it, but 
do not remain there. Move! Go on moving! A day comes when you are beyond it. 

That is why tantric purity is difficult to understand and can be misunderstood. It is 
delicate! So to recognize a tantric sage is virtually impossible. Ordinary saints and sages 
can be recognized because they follow you — your standards, your definitions, your 
morality. A tantric sage is even difficult to recognize because he transcends all divisions. 
So really, in the whole history of human growth we know nothing about tantric sages. 
Nothing is mentioned or recorded about them because it is so difficult to recognize them. 
Confucius went to Lao Tsu. Lao Tsu's mind is that of a tantrically awakened sage. He 
never knew about the word 'tantra'; the word is meaningless for him. He never knew 
anything about tantra, but whatsoever he has said IS tantra. Confucius is representative of 
our mind, he is the arch-representative. He continually thinks in tenns of good and bad, 
of what should be done and what should not be done. He is a legalist — the greatest 
legalist ever born. He went to see Lao Tsu, and he asked Lao Tsu, "What is good? What 
ought one to do? What is bad? Define it clearly." 


Lao Tsu said, "Definitions create a mess, because defining means dividing: this is this, 
and that is that." You divide and say A is A and B is B... you have divided. You say A 
cannot be B; then you have created a division, a dichotomy, and the existence is one. A is 
always becoming B, A is always moving into B. Life is always becoming death, life is 
always moving into death, so how can you define? Childhood is moving into youth and 



youth is moving into old age; health is moving into disease and disease is moving into 
health. So where can you demark them as separate? 

Life is one movement, and the moment you define you create a mess, because definitions 
will be dead and life is an alive movement. So definitions are always false. Lao Tsu said, 
"Defining creates non-truth, so do not define. Do not say what is good and what is bad." 
So Confucius said, "What are you saying? Then how can people be led and guided? Then 
how can they be taught? How can they be made moral and good?" 

Lao Tsu said, "When someone tries to make someone else good, that is a sin in my eyes. 
Who are you to lead? Who are you to guide? And the more guides there are, the more 
confusion. Leave everyone to himself. Who are you?" 

This type of attitude seems dangerous. It is! Society cannot be founded on such attitudes. 
Confucius goes on asking, and the whole point is that Lao Tsu says, "Nature is enough, 
no morality is needed. 

Nature is spontaneous. Nature is enough, no imposed laws and disciplines are needed. 
Innocence is enough; no morality is needed. Nature is spontaneous, nature is enough. No 
imposed laws and disciplines are needed. Innocence is enough. Knowledge is not 
needed." 

Confucius came back very much disturbed. He could not sleep for nights. And his 
disciples asked, "Tell us something about the meeting. What happened?" Confucius 
answered, "He is not a man, he is a danger, a dragon. He is not a man. Never go to that 
place where he is. Whenever you hear about Lao Tsu, just escape from that place. He will 
disturb your mind completely." 

And that is right, because the whole of tantra is concerned with how to transcend the 
mind. It is bound to destroy the mind. Mind lives with definitions, laws and disciplines; 
mind is an order. But remember, tantra is not disorder, and that is a very subtle point to 
be understood. 

Confucius could not understand Lao Tsu. When Confucius left, Lao Tsu was laughing 
and laughing and so his disciples asked, "Why are you laughing so much? What has 
happened?" 

Lao Tsu is reported to have said, "The mind is such a barrier to understanding. Even the 
mind of a Confucius is a barrier. He could not understand me at all, and whatsoever he 
will say about me will be a misunderstanding. He thinks he is going to create order in the 
world. You CANNOT create order in the world. 

Order is inherent in it; it is always there. When you try to create order you create 
disorder." Lao Tsu said, "He will think that I am creating disorder, and really, he is the 
one who is creating disorder. I am against all imposed orders because I believe in a 
spontaneous discipline which comes and grows automatically. You need not impose it." 
Tantra looks at things in this way. For tantra, innocence is spontaneity, SAHAJATA — to 
be oneself without any imposition, to be simply oneself, growing like a tree. Not the tree 
of your garden, but the tree of your forest, growing spontaneously; not guided, because 
every guidance is a misguidance. For tantra, every guidance is a misguidance. Not 
guided, not guarded, not directed, not motivated, but simply growing. 

The inner law is enough; no other law is needed. And if you need some other law, it only 
shows that you do not know the inner law, you have lost contact with it. So the real thing 
is not something imposed. The real thing is again regaining the balance, again moving to 
the center, again returning to the home so that you gain the real inner law. 



But for morality, for religions — so-called religions — order is to be imposed, goodness is 
to be imposed from above, from without. Religions, moral teachings, priests, popes, they 
all take you as inherently bad — remember this. They do not believe in the goodness of 
man; they do not believe in any inner goodness. 

They believe that you are evil, that unless you are taught to be good you cannot be good; 
unless goodness is forced from without, there is no possibility of it coming from within. 
So for priests, for religious people, for moralists, you are naturally bad. Goodness is 
going to be a discipline imposed from without. You are a chaos and order has to be 
brought in by them; they will bring the order. And they have made the whole world a 
mess, a confusion, a madhouse, because they have been ordering for centuries and 
centuries, disciplining for centuries and centuries. They have taught so much that the 
taught ones have gone mad. 

Tantra believes in your inner goodness: remember this difference. Tantra says that 
everyone is bom good, that goodness is your nature. It is the case! You are already good! 
You need a natural growth, you do not need any imposition; that is why nothing is taken 
as bad. If anger is there, if sex is there, if greed is there, tantra says they are also good. 
The only thing lacking is that you are not centered in yourself; that is why you cannot use 
them. 

Anger is not bad. Really, the problem is that you are not inside, that is why anger creates 
havoc. If you are present there inside, anger becomes a healthy energy, anger becomes 
health. Anger is transfonned into energy, it becomes good. Whatsoever is there is good. 
Tantra believes in the inherent goodness of everything. 

Everything is holy, nothing is unholy and nothing is evil. For tantra there is no devil, only 
divine existence. 

Religions cannot exist without the devil. They need a God and they need a devil also. So 
do not be misguided if you see only a God in their temples. Just behind that God, the 
devil is hiding, because no religion can exist without the devil. 

Something has to be condemned, something has to be fought, something has to be 
destroyed. The total is not accepted, only part. This is very basic. You are not accepted 
totally by any religion, only partially. They say, "We accept your love, but not your hate. 
Destroy hate." And this is a very deep problem, because when you destroy hate 
completely love is also destroyed — because they are not two. They say, "We accept your 
silence, but we do not accept your anger." Destroy anger and your aliveness is destroyed. 
Then you will be silent, but not an alive man — only a dead one. That silence is not life, it 
is just death. 

Religions always divide you into two: the evil and the divine. They accept the divine and 
are against the evil — the evil has to be destroyed. So if someone really follows them, he 
will come to conclude that the moment you destroy the devil, God is destroyed. But no 
one really follows them — no one can follow them because the very teaching is absurd. 

So what is everyone doing? Everyone is just deceiving. 

That is why there is so much hypocrisy. That hypocrisy has been created by religion. You 
cannot do whatsoever they are teaching you to do, so you become a hypocrite. If you 
follow them you will die; if you do not follow them you feel guilty that you are 
irreligious. So what to do? 

The cunning mind makes a compromise. It goes on paying lip service to them, saying, "I 



am following you," but it goes on doing whatsoever it wants to do. You continue your 
anger, you continue your sex, you continue your greed, but you go on saying that greed is 
bad, anger is bad, sex is bad — that it is a sin. This is hypocrisy. The whole world has 
become hypocritical, no man is honest. Unless these dividing religions disappear, no man 
can be honest. This will look contradictory because all the religions are teaching to be 
honest, but they are the foundation stones of all dishonesty. They make you dishonest; 
because they teach you to do impossible things, which you cannot do, you become 
hypocrites. 

Tantra accepts you in your totality, in your wholeness, because tantra says, either accept 
wholly or reject wholly; there is no in between. A man is a whole, an organic whole. You 
cannot divide it. You cannot say, "We will not accept this," because that which you reject 
is organically joined to that which you accept. 

It is like this.... My body is there. Someone comes and says, "We accept your blood 
circulation, but we do not accept the noise of your heart. 

This continuous beating of your heart we do not accept. We accept your blood 
circulation. It is okay, it is silent." But my blood circulation is through my heart, and the 
beating is basically related with blood circulation; it happens because of it. So what am I 
to do? My heart and my blood circulation are an organic unity. They are not two things, 
they are one. 

So either accept me totally or reject me totally, but do not try to divide me because then 
you will create a dishonesty, a deep dishonesty. If you go on condemning my heartbeat, 
then I will also start condemning my heartbeat. But the blood won't be able to circulate 
and I cannot be alive without it. So what to do? Go on as you are, and go on all the time 
saying something else which you are not, which you cannot be. 

It is not difficult to see how heart and blood circulation are related, but it is difficult to 
see how love and hate are related. They are one. When you love someone, what are you 
doing? It is one movement, like breath going out. When you love someone, what are you 
doing? You are going out to meet him, it is a breath going out. When you hate someone, 
it is a breath coming back in. 

When you love, you are attracted to someone. When you hate, you are repelled. 

Attraction and repulsion are two waves of one movement. Attraction and repulsion are 
not two things; you cannot divide them. You cannot say, "You can breathe in but you 
cannot breathe out, or you can breathe out but you cannot breathe in. 

You are allowed only one thing. Either go on breathing out or go on breathing in, do not 
do both." How can you breathe in if you are not allowed to breathe out? And if you are 
not allowed to hate, you cannot love. 

Tantra says, "We accept the whole man because man is an organic unity." Man is a deep 
unity; you cannot discard anything. And this is as it should be — because if man is not an 
organic unity, then in this universe nothing can be an organic unity. Man is the peak of 
organic wholeness. The stone lying on the street is a unity. The tree is a unity. The flower 
and the bird are unities. Everything is a unity, so why not man? And man is the peak — a 
great unity, a very complex organic whole. Really, you cannot deny anything. 

Tantra says, "We accept you as you are. That does not mean there is no need to change; 
that does not mean that now you have to stop growing. Rather, on the contrary, it means 
that we accept the basis of growth." Now you can grow, but this growth is not going to be 
a choice. This growth is going to be a choiceless growth. 



Look! For example, when a buddha becomes enlightened we can ask, "Where has his 
anger gone — where?" He had anger, he had sex, so where has his sex gone? Where is it 
that his anger has gone? Where is his greed?" We cannot recognize any anger in him 
now. When he is enlightened we cannot recognize any anger in him. 


Can you recognize the mud in the lotus? The lotus comes from the mud. If you have 
never seen a lotus growing from the mud and a lotus flower is brought to you, can you 
conceive that this beautiful lotus flower has come up from the ordinary mud of a pond? 
This beautiful lotus coming from ugly mud! Can you recognize the mud anywhere in it? 
It is there, but transformed. Its fragrance is coming from that same ugly mud. The 
rosiness of the petals is coming from the same ugly mud. If you hide this lotus flower in 
mud, within days it will disappear again into its mother. Then again you won’t be able to 
recognize where that lotus has gone. Where? Where is the fragrance? Where are those 
beautiful petals? 

You cannot recognize yourself in Buddha, but you are there — of course, on a greater and 
higher plane, transfonned. The sex is there, the anger is there, the hate is there. 
Everything which belongs to man is there. Buddha is a man, but he has come to his 
ultimate growth. He has become a lotus flower; you cannot recognize the mud, but that 
doesn’t mean that the mud is not there. It is there, but not as mud. It is a higher unity. 

That is why in Buddha you can feel neither hate nor love. That is still more difficult to 
understand because Buddha appears totally loving — never hating, always silent — never 
angry. But his silence is different from your silence. It cannot be the same. 


What is your silence? Somewhere Einstein has said that our peace is nothing but a 
preparation for war. Between two wars we have a gap of peace, but that peace is not 
really peace. It is only the gap between two wars, so it becomes a cold war. Thus, we 
have two types of war — hot and cold. 

After the second world war, Russia and America began a cold war. They are not at peace 
— just in preparation for another war. They are getting ready. Each war disturbs, destroys. 
You have to get ready again, so you need a gap, an interval. But if wars really disappear 
from the world completely, then this type of peace which means cold war will also 
disappear, because it always happens between two wars. If war disappears completely, 
this cold war which we call peace cannot continue. 

What is your silence? Just a preparation between two angers. When you seem at ease 
what is it? Are you really relaxed, really at ease, or are you just preparing for another 
outburst, for another explosion? Anger is a wastage of energy, so you also need time. 
When you get angry you cannot get angry again immediately. When you move into the 
sex act, you cannot move again immediately. You will need time, so you will need a 
period of BRAHMACHARYA — celibacy — for at least two or three days. It will depend 
on your age. This celibacy is not really celibacy, you are only preparing again. 

Between two sex acts there can be no brahmacharya. 

You go on calling the period between two meals a fast. That is why in the morning you 
have 'breakfast', but where is the fast? You were just preparing. You cannot go on 
thrusting food into yourself continuously, you have to have a gap, but that gap is not a 
fast. Really, it is only a preparation for another meal, not a fast. 



So when we are silent, it is always between two angers. When we are at ease, it is always 
between two peaks of tension. When we are celibate, it is only between two sex acts. 
When we are loving, it is always between two hatreds — remember this. 

So when Buddha is silent, do not think this is your silence. When your anger has 
disappeared, your silence has disappeared also. They both exist together; they cannot be 
separated. So when Buddha is a brahmachari — a celibate — do not think this is your 
celibacy. When sex has disappeared, brahmacharya has also disappeared. They both were 
part of one thing, so they both have disappeared. With a Buddha a very different being is 
there such as you cannot conceive. You can only conceive of the dichotomy you know. 
You cannot conceive of what type of man this is, of what has happened to him. 

The whole energy has come to a different level, a different plane of existence. The mud 
has become a lotus, but it is still there. The mud has not been discarded from the lotus; it 
has been transformed. 

So all of the energies within you are accepted by tantra. 

Tantra is not for discarding anything whatsoever, but for transformation. And tantra says 
that the first step is to accept. The first step is very difficult — to accept. You may be 
getting angry many times every day, but to accept your anger is very difficult. To be 
angry is very easy; to accept your anger is very difficult. Why? Y ou do not feel so much 
difficulty in being angry, so why do you feel so much difficulty in accepting it? Getting 
angry seems not so bad as accepting it. Everyone thinks he is a good man and anger is 
just momentary, it comes and goes. It doesn’t destroy your self-image. You go on 
remaining good. You say that "It just happened." It is not destructive to your ego. 

So those who are cunning will repent immediately. They will get angry and they will 
repent, they will ask for forgiveness. These are the cunning ones. Why do I call them 
cunning? Because their anger gives a trembling to their self-image. They begin to feel 
uneasy. They begin to feel, "I get angry? I am so bad that I get angry?" So the image of a 
good man trembles. He has to try and make it established again. Immediately he says, 
"This was bad. I will never do it again. Forgive me." By asking for forgiveness his self- 
image is established again. He is okay — back to his previous state when there was no 
anger. He has canceled his anger by asking for forgiveness. He has called himself bad 
just to remain good. 


That is why you can go on for lives together being angry, being sexual, being possessive, 
being this and that, but never accepting. This is a trick of the mind. Whatsoever you do is 
just on the periphery. In the center, you remain good. If you accept that "I have anger," in 
the center you become bad. Then it is not just a question of getting angry, then it is not 
momentary. Rather, then anger is part of your constitution. Then it is not that someone 
irritates you into anger. Even if you are alone, the anger is there. When you are not 
getting angry the anger is still there, because anger is your energy, part of you. 

It is not that sometimes it flares up and then goes off — no! It cannot flare up if it is not 
always present. You can turn off this light, you can turn on this light; but the current must 
remain continuously there. If the current is not there, you cannot turn it on and off. The 
current, the anger current, is always there; the sex current is always there, the greed 
current is always there. You can turn it on, you can turn it off. In situations you change, 
but inwardly you remain the same. 

Accepting means anger is not an act. Rather, YOU are anger. Sex is not just an act; YOU 



are sex. Greed is not just an act; YOU are greed. Accepting this means throwing away the 
self-image. And we all have built beautiful self-images. Everyone has built a beautiful 
self-image — absolutely beautiful. 

And whatsoever you are doing never touches it, you go on protecting it. The image is 
protected, so you feel good. That is why you can become angry, you can become sexual, 
and you are not disturbed. But if you accept and say, "I am sex, I am anger, I am greed," 
then your self-image falls down immediately. 

Tantra says this is the first step, and the most difficult: to accept whatsoever you are. 
Sometimes we try to accept, but whenever we accept we again do so in a very calculated 
way. Our cunningness is deep and subtle, and mind has very subtle ways to deceive. 
Sometimes you accept and say, "Yes, I am angry." But if you accept this, you accept only 
when you thi nk of how to transcend anger. Then you accept and say, "Okay, I am angry. 
Now tell me how to go beyond it." You accept sex only to be non-sexual. Whenever you 
are trying to be something else you are able to accept, because your self-image is again 
maintained by the future. 

You are violent and you are striving to be nonviolent, so you accept and say, "Okay, I am 
violent. Today I am violent, but tomorrow I will be nonviolent, however." How will you 
become nonviolent? You postpone this self-image into the future. You do not think of 
yourself in the present. You always think in terms of the ideal — of nonviolence, love and 
compassion. Then you are in the future. This present is just to become a past, your real 
self is in the future, so you go on identifying yourself with ideals. 

Those ideals are also ways of not accepting the reality. You are violent — that is the case. 
And the present is the only thing that is existential; the future is not. Your ideals are just 
dreams. They are tricks to postpone the mind, to focus the mind somewhere else. 

You are violent: this is the case, so accept it. And do not try to be nonviolent. A violent 
mind CANNOT become nonviolent. How is this possible? Look deep into it. You are 
violent, so how can you be nonviolent? Whatsoever you do will be done by the violent 
mind — whatsoever! Even while striving to be nonviolent, the effort will be done by the 
violent mind. You are violent, so by trying to be nonviolent you will be violent. In the 
very effort to be nonviolent, you will try every type of violence. 

That is why you go to these strivers for nonviolence. They may not be violent with 
others, but they are with themselves. They are very violent with themselves — murdering 
themselves. And the more they get mad against themselves, the more they are celebrated. 
When they become completely mad, suicidal, then the society says, "These are the 
sages." But they have only transfonned the object of violence, nothing else. They were 
violent with someone else, now they are violent with themselves — but the violence is 
there. And when you are violent with someone else the law can protect, the court can 
help, the society will condemn you. 

But when you are violent against yourself there is no law. No law can protect you against 
yourself. 

When man is against himself there is no protection, nothing can be done. And no one 
cares because it is your business. No one else is involved in it: it is your business. So- 
called monks, so-called saints, they are violent against themselves. No one is interested. 
They say, "Okay! Go on doing it. It is your business." 

If your mind is one of greed, how can you be non-greedy? The greedy mind will remain 



greedy. Whatsoever is done by it to go beyond greed is not going to help. Of course, we 
can create new greeds. Ask a greedy mind, "What are you doing just accumulating 
wealth? You will die and you cannot take your wealth with you." This is the logic of the 
so-called religious preachers — that you cannot take your wealth with you. But if 
someone could take it, then the whole logic would fail. 

The greedy man feels the logic, of course. He asks, "How can I take wealth with me?" 

But he really wants to take it. That is why the priest becomes influential. He shows him 
that it is nonsense to accumulate things which cannot be taken beyond death. He says, "I 
will teach you how to accumulate things which can be taken. Virtue can be taken, 
PUNYA — good deeds — can be taken, goodness can be taken, but not wealth. So donate 
the wealth." 

But this is an appeal to his greed. 

This is telling him, "Now we will give you better things which can be carried beyond 
death." The appeal obtains results. The greedy man feels, "You are right. Death is there 
and nothing can be done about it, so I must do something which can be carried beyond. I 
must create some kind of bank balance in the other world also. The world, this bank 
balance, cannot be with me forever." He goes on talking in these tenns. 

Go through the scriptures... they appeal to your greed. They say, "What are you doing 
wasting your time in momentary pleasures?" The emphasis is on 'momentary'. So find 
some eternal pleasures; then it is okay. They are not against pleasures, they are just 
against their being momentary. Look at the greed! 

Sometimes it happens that you may find a non- greedy man who is enjoying momentary 
pleasures, but you cannot find among your saints a man who is not asking, demanding for 
eternal pleasures. The greed in them is even more. You can find a non-greedy man 
among ordinary men, but you cannot find a non-greedy man among your so-called saints. 
They also want pleasures, but they are more greedy than you. You are satisfied with 
momentary pleasures and they are not. Their greed is bigger. Their greed can only be 
satisfied with eternal pleasures. 

Infinite greed asks for infinite pleasures — remember this. A finite greed is satisfied with 
finite pleasure. 

They will ask you, "What are you doing loving a woman? She is nothing but bones and 
blood. Look deep into the woman you love. What is she?" They are not against the 
woman, they are against the bones, against the blood, against the body. But if a woman is 
of gold, then it is okay. They are asking for women of gold. 

They are not in this world, so they create another world. They say, "In heaven there are 
golden damsels — APSARAS — who are beautiful and who never age." In the Hindu 
heaven apsaras, the heavenly girls, remain always at sixteen. They never grow older, they 
are always sixteen — never less, never more. So what are you doing wasting your time on 
these ordinary women? Think of heaven. They are not against pleasure. Really, they are 
against momentary pleasure. 

If, through some whim, God gives this world eternal pleasure, your whole edifice of 
religion will fall down immediately; the whole appeal will be lost. If somehow bank 
balances can be carried beyond death, no one will be interested in creating bank balances 
in the other world. So death is a great help to the priests. 

A greedy man is always attracted by another greed. If you tell him and convince him that 
his greed is the cause of his misery, and that if he leaves greed he will attain a blissful 



state, he may try — because now you are not really against his greed. You are giving his 
greed new pastures. 

He can move into new dimensions of greed. 

So tantra says that a greedy mind cannot become non-greedy, a violent mind cannot 
become nonviolent. But this seems very hopeless. If this is the case, then nothing can be 
done. Then what does tantra stand for? If a greedy mind cannot become non-greedy, and 
a violent mind nonviolent, and a sex-obsessed mind transfonned beyond sex, if nothing 
can be done then what does tantra stand for? Tantra is not saying that nothing can be 
done. Something can be done, but the dimension is completely different. 

A greedy mind has to understand that it is greedy and accept it — not try to be non- 
greedy. The greedy mind has to go deep within itself to realize the depth of its greed. Not 
moving away from it, but remaining with it; not moving in ideals — in contradictory 
ideals, in opposite ideals — but remaining in the present, moving into the greed, knowing 
the greed, understanding the greed, and not trying to escape from it in any way. If you 
can remain with your greed, many things will happen. If you can remain with your greed, 
with your sex, with your anger, your ego will dissolve. This will be the first thing — and 
what a great miracle it is! 

Many people come to me and they go on asking how to be egoless. You cannot be 
egoless unless you look at the foundations of your ego to find it. You are greedy and you 
think you are non-greedy — this is the ego. 

If you are greedy and you know and accept totally that you are greedy, then where can 
you allow your ego to stand? If you are angry and you say that you are angry — you do 
not say it to others, but you feel it deep down, you feel the helplessness — then where can 
your anger stand? If you are sexual, accept it. Whatsoever is there, accept it. 

The non-acceptance of nature creates the ego, the non-acceptance of your suchness — 
your TATHATA, that which you are. If you accept it, the ego will not be there. If you do 
not accept it, if you reject it, if you create ideals against it, there will be ego. Ideals are 
the stuff the ego is made of. 

Accept yourself. But then you will look like an animal. You will not look like a man 
because your concept of man is in your ideals. That is why we go on teaching others not 
to be like animals, and everyone is an animal. What can you do? You ARE an animal. 
Accept your animality. And the moment you accept your animality, you have done the 
first thing to go beyond animals — because no animal knows that it is an animal, only 
man can know. That is going beyond. You cannot go beyond by denying. 

Accept! When everything is accepted, suddenly you will feel that you have transcended. 
Who is accepting? Who accepts the whole? That which accepts has gone beyond. If you 
reject, you remain on the same plane. If you accept, you go beyond. 

Acceptance is transcendence. And if you accept yourself totally, suddenly you are thrown 
to your center. Then you cannot move anywhere. You cannot move from your suchness, 
from your nature, so you are thrown to your center. 

All these tantric techniques which we are discussing and trying to understand are 
different ways of throwing you to your center, of throwing you from the periphery. And 
you are trying to escape from the center in many ways. Ideals are good escapes. Idealists 
are the most subtle of egoists. 

Many things happen.... You are violent and you create an ideal of nonviolence. Then you 



need not go into yourself, into your violence; there is no need. Then this is the only need 
— to go on thinking about nonviolence, reading about nonviolence, and trying to practice 
nonviolence. You say to yourself, "Do not touch violence," and you are violent. So you 
can escape from yourself, you can go to the periphery, but then you will never come to 
the center. That is one thing. 

Secondly, when you create the ideal of nonviolence, you can condemn others. Now it 
becomes very easy. You have the ideal to judge everyone with, and you can say to 
anyone, "You are violent." India has created many ideals; that is why India continuously 
goes on condemning the whole world. The whole mind of India is condemnatory. It goes 
on condemning the whole world: everyone else is violent, only India is nonviolent. 

No one seems to be nonviolent here, but the ideal is good for condemning others. It never 
changes you, but you can condemn others because you have the ideal, the criterion. And 
whenever you are violent you can rationalize it — your violence is an altogether different 
thing. 

These past twenty-five years we have been violent many times, but we have never 
condemned our violence. We have always defended and rationalized it in beautiful terms. 
If we are violent in Bengal, in Bangladesh, then we say that it is to help the people there 
to obtain freedom. If we are violent in Kashmir, it is to help Kashmiris. But you know, all 
those who are warmongering say the same. If America is violent in Vietnam, it is for 
"those poor people." No one is violent for himself; no one ever has been. We are always 
violent to help someone. Even if I kill you it is for your own good, it is to help you. And 
even if you are killed, even if I kill you, just look at my compassion. Even for your own 
good I can kill you. So go on condemning the whole world. 

When India attacked Goa, when India went to war with China, Bertrand Russell 
criticized Nehru, saying, "Where is your nonviolence now? You are all Gandhians. 

Where is your nonviolence now?" Nehru replied by banning Bertrand Russell's book in 
India. The book Russell wrote was banned. This is our nonviolent mind. 

This was a good discussion. 

The book should have been distributed free, because he argued beautifully. He said, "You 
are a violent people. Your nonviolence was just political. Your Gandhi was not a sage, he 
was just a diplomatic mind. And you all talk about nonviolence, but when the moment 
comes you become violent. When others are fighting, you stand on your high altar and 
you condemn the whole world as violent." 

With individuals, with societies, with cultures, with nations, this happens. If you have 
ideals, you need not transform yourself. You can always hope to be transformed in the 
future by the ideals themselves, and you can condemn others very easily. 

Tantra says to remain with yourself. Whatsoever you are, accept it. Do not condemn 
yourself, do not condemn others. Condemnation is futile, energies are not changed by it. 
The first step is to accept. Remain with the fact — this is very scientific — remain with the 
fact of anger, greed and sex. And know the fact in its total facticity. Do not just touch it 
from above, from the surface. Know the fact in its totality, in its total facticity. Move into 
it to the roots. And remember, whenever you can move to the roots of anything you 
transcend it. If you can know your sex to the very roots, you become the master of it. If 
you can know your anger to the very roots, you become the master of it. Then anger 
becomes just instrumental — you can use it. 



I remember many things about Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff taught his disciples to be rightly 
angry. We have heard about Buddha's words: right meditation, right thinking and right 
contemplation. We have heard about Mahavir’s teaching of right vision and right 
knowledge. Gurdjieff taught right anger and right greed, and the teaching was influenced 
by the old tantra tradition. Gurdjieff was condemned very much in the West, because in 
the West he was a living symbol of tantra. 

He would teach right anger; he would teach you how to be angry totally. If you were 
angry he would tell you, "Go on. Do not suppress it, let it come out in its totality. Move 
into it. Become anger. Do not withhold, do not stand aside. Take a deep jump into it. Let 
your whole body become a flare, a fire." 

You have never moved this deeply and you have never seen anyone do so, because 
everyone is more or less cultured. No one is original; everyone is more or less imitating. 
No one is original! If you can move into anger totally, you will become just a fire, a 
burning. The fire will be so deep, the flames will be so deep, that the past and future both 
will cease immediately. You will become just a present flame. And when your every cell 
is burning, when every part of the body has become fiery and you have become just anger 
— not angry — then Gurdjieff will say, "Now be aware. Do not suppress. 

Now be aware. Now suddenly be aware of what you have become, of what anger is." 

In this moment of total present-ness one can become suddenly aware, and you can start 
laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing, at the foolishness, at the stupidity of the 
whole thing. But this is not suppression; this is laughter. You can laugh at yourself 
because you have transcended yourself. Never again will anger be capable of mastering 
you. 

You have known anger in its totality, and still you could laugh and still you could go 
beyond it. You could see from beyond your anger. Once you have seen its totality, you 
know what anger is. And now you also know that even if the whole energy transforms 
into anger, still you can be an observer, a witness. So there is no fear. Remember this: 
that which is not known always creates fear. That which is dark always creates fear. You 
are afraid of your own anger. 

So people go on saying that we suppress anger because it is not good to be angry, it may 
hurt others. But that is not the real cause. The real cause is that they are afraid of their 
anger. If they really get angry, they do not know what may happen. They are afraid of 
themselves. They have never known anger. It is a very fearful thing, hidden inside, so 
they are afraid of it. That is why they fall in line with the society, with the culture, with 
the education, and they say, "We must not be angry. 

Anger is bad. It hurts others." 

You are afraid of your anger, you are afraid of your sex. You have never been in sex 
totally. You have never been in sex so totally that you could have forgotten yourself. You 
were always there; your mind was always there. And if the mind is there in the sex act, 
then the act is just pseudo, bogus. The mind must dissolve; you must become just body. 
There must not be any thinking. If thinking is there, you are divided. Then the sex act is 
nothing but releasing overflowing energy. It is a release, nothing else. But you are afraid 
to be totally in sex. That is why you fall in line, why you toe the line with the society and 
say that sex is bad. You are afraid! 

Why are you afraid? Because if you move into sex totally, you do not know what you can 



do, you do not know what can happen, you do not know what animal force may come up, 
you do not know what your unconscious may throw you into. You do not know! Then 
you will not be the master; you will not be in control. Your self-image may be destroyed. 
Thus you control the sex act. And the way to control it is to remain in the mind. Let the 
sex act be there, but local. 

Try to understand this 'local' and 'general'. Tantra says a sex act is local when only your 
sex center is involved. It is local; it is a local release. The sex center keeps on 
accumulating energy. When it is overflowing you have to release it; otherwise it will 
create tensions, it will create heaviness. 

You release it, but it is a local release. Your whole body, your whole self is not involved. 
Non-local, total involvement means that every fiber of the body, every cell of the body, 
whatsoever you are, is in it. Your whole being has become sexual. Not only your sex 
center, your whole being has become sexual. 

But then you are afraid because then anything is possible. And you do not know what can 
happen because you have never known the totality. You may do certain things of which 
you cannot conceive. 

Your unconscious will explode. You will become not one animal, but many animals, 
because you have passed through many lives, through many animal bodies. You may 
start howling, you may start screaming, you may start roaring like a lion. You do not 
know. 

Anything is possible — that creates fear. You need to be in control so that you never lose 
yourself in anything. That is why you never know anything. And unless you know, you 
cannot transcend. 

Accept, move deep, go to the very roots. This is tantra. Tantra stands for deep 
experiences. Anything experienced can be transcended; anything suppressed can never be 
transcended. 

This much for today. 


THE END. 



Chapter 9: Techniques for centering 


13. OR, IMAGINE THE FIVE-COLORED CIRCLES OF THE PEACOCK TAIL TO 
BE YOUR FIVE SENSES IN ILLIMITABLE SPACE. NOW LET THEIR BEAUTY 
MELT WITHIN. SIMILARLY, AT ANY POINT IN SPACE OR ON A WALL - 
UNTIL THE POINT DISSOLVES. THEN YOUR WISH FOR ANOTHER COMES 
TRUE. 

14. PLACE YOUR WHOLE ATTENTION IN THE NERVE, DELICATE AS THE 
LOTUS THREAD, IN THE CENTER OF YOUR SPINAL COLUMN. IN SUCH BE 
TRANSFORMED. 

Man is bom with a center, but he remains completely oblivious of it. Man can live 
without knowing his center, but man cannot be without a center. The center is the link 
between man and existence; it is the root. Y ou may not know it, knowledge is not 
essential for the center to be, but if you do not know it you will lead a life that is rootless 
— as if rootless. You will not feel any ground, you will not feel yourself based; you will 
not feel at home in the universe. You will be homeless. 

Of course, the center is there, but by not knowing it your life will be just a drifting — 
meaningless, empty, reaching nowhere. You will feel as if you are living without life, 
drifting, just waiting for death. You can go on postponing from one moment to another, 
but you know very well that that postponing will lead you nowhere. You are just passing 
time, and that feeling of deep frustration will follow you like a shadow. Man is born with 
a center, but not with the knowledge of the center. 

The knowledge has to be gained. 

You have the center. The center is there; you cannot be without it. How can you exist 
without a center? How can you exist without a bridge between you and existence?... or if 
you like, the word ’God'. You cannot exist without a deep link. You have roots in the 
divine. Every moment you live through those roots, but those roots are underground. Just 
as with any tree, the roots are underground; the tree is unaware of its own roots. You also 
have roots. That rootedness is your center. When I say man is born with it, I mean it is a 
possibility that you can become aware of your rootedness. If you become aware, your life 
becomes actual; otherwise your life will be just like a deep sleep, a dream. 

What Abraham Maslow has called "self-actualization" is really nothing but becoming 
aware of your inner center from where you are linked with the total universe, becoming 
aware of your roots: you are not alone, you are not atomic, you are part of this cosmic 
whole. This universe is not an alien world. You are not a stranger, this universe is your 
home. But unless you find your roots, your center, this universe remains something alien, 
something foreign. 

Sartre says that man lives as if he has been thrown into the world. Of course, if you do 
not know your center you will feel a thrownness, as if you have been thrown into the 
world. You are an outsider; you do not belong to this world and this world doesn’t belong 
to you. 

Then fear, then anxiety, then anguish are bound to result. A man as an outsider in the 
universe is bound to feel deep anxiety, dread, fear, anguish. His whole life will be just a 
fight, a struggle, and a struggle which is destined to be a failure. Man cannot succeed 



because a part can never succeed against the whole. 

You cannot succeed against existence. You can succeed with it, but never against it. And 
that is the difference between a religious man and a non-religious man. A non-religious 
man is against the universe; a religious man is with the universe. A religious man feels at 
home. He doesn’t feel he has been thrown into the world, he feels he has grown in the 
world. Remember the difference between being thrown and being grown. 

When Sartre says man is thrown into the world, the very word, the very fonnulation 
shows that you do not belong. And the word, the choice of the word ’thrown’ means that 
you have been forced without your consent. So this world appears inimical. Then anguish 
will be the result. 

It can be otherwise only if you are not thrown into the world, but you have grown as a 
part, as an organic part. Really, it would be better to say that you are the universe grown 
into a particular dimension which we call "human." The universe grows in multi- 
dimensions — in trees, in hills, in stars, in planets... in multi-dimensions. Man is also a 
dimension of growth. 

The universe is realizing itself through many, many dimensions. Man is also a dimension 
along with the height and the peak. No tree can become aware of its roots; no animal can 
become aware of its roots. That is why there is no anxiety for them. 

If you are not aware of your roots, of your center, you can never be aware of your death. 
Death is only for man. It exists only for man because only man can become aware of his 
roots, aware of his center, aware of his totality and his rootedness in the universe. 

If you live without a center, if you feel you are an outsider, then anguish will result. 
However, if you feel that you are at home, that you are a growth, a realization of the 
potentiality of the existence itself — as if existence itself has become aware in you, as if it 
has gained awareness in you — if you feel that way, if you really realize that way, the 
result will be bliss. 

Bliss is the result of an organic unity with the universe, and anguish the result of an 
enmity. But unless you know the center you are bound to feel a thrownness, as if life has 
been forced upon you. This center which is there, although man is not aware of it, is the 
concern of these sutras which we will discuss. Before we enter into VIGYANA 
BHAIRAVA TANTRA and its techniques concerning the center, two or three things 
more. 

One: when man is bom he is rooted in a particular spot, in a particular CHAKRA — 
center — and that is the navel. 

The Japanese call it HARA; hence the term HARA-KIRI. Hara-kiri means suicide. 
Literally, the term means killing the hara — the spine, the center. Hara is the center; 
destroying the center is the meaning of hara-kiri. But in a way, we have all committed 
hara-kiri. We have not killed the center, but we have forgotten it, or we have never 
remembered it. It is there waiting, and we have been drifting away and away from it. 
When a child is born he is rooted in the navel, in the hara; he lives through the hara. Look 
at a child breathing — his navel goes up and down. He breathes with the belly, he lives 
with the belly — not with the head, not with the heart. But by and by he will have to drift 
away. 

First he will develop another center — that is the heart, the center of emotion. He will 
learn love, he will be loved, and another center will develop. This center is not the real 
center; this center is a by-product. That is why psychologists say that if a child is not 



loved, he will never be able to love. 

If a child is brought up in a non-loving situation — a situation which is cold, with no one 
to love and give wannth — he himself will never be able in his life to love anyone 
because the very center will not develop. Mother’s love, father's love, family, society — 
they help to develop a center. That center is a by-product; you are not born with it. So if 
it is not being helped to grow, it will not grow. 

Many, many persons are without the love center. They go on talking about love, and they 
go on believing that they love, but they lack the center, so how can they love? It is 
difficult to get a loving mother, and very difficult and rare to get a loving father. Every 
father, every mother, thinks that he or she loves. It is not so easy. Love is a difficult 
growth, very difficult. But if love is not there in the beginning for the child, he himself 
will never be able to love. 

That is why the whole humanity lives without love. You go on producing children, but 
you do not know how to give them a love center. Rather, on the contrary, the more 
society becomes civilized, the more it forces into being a third center, which is intellect. 
The navel is the original center. A child is born with it; it is not a by-product. Without it 
life is impossible, so it is given. The second center is a by-product. If the child gets love, 
he responds. In this responding, a center grows in him: that is the heart center. The third 
center is reason, intellect, head. Education, logic and training create a third center; that 
too is a by-product. 

But we live at the third center. The second is almost absent — or even if it is present, then 
it is non-functioning; or even if it functions sometimes, it functions irregularly. But the 
third center, the head, becomes the basic force in life because the whole life depends on 
this third center. 

It is utilitarian. You need it for reason, logic, thinking. So everyone becomes, sooner or 
later, head-oriented; you begin to live in the head. 

Head, heart, navel — these are the three centers. The navel is the given center, the original 
one. Heart can be developed, and it is good to develop it for many reasons. Reason is 
necessary to develop also, but reason must not be developed at the cost of the heart — 
because if reason is developed at the cost of the heart then you miss the link and you 
cannot come to the navel again. The development is from reason to existence to being. 

Let us try to understand it in this way. 

The center of the navel is in being; the center of the heart is in feeling; the center of the 
head is in knowing. Knowing is the farthest from being — feeling is nearer. If you miss 
the feeling center, then it is very difficult to create a bridge between reason and being — 
really, very difficult. That is why a loving person may realize his at-homeness in the 
world more easily than a person who lives through intellect. 

Western culture has basically emphasized the head center. That is why in the West a deep 
concern is felt for man. And the deep concern is with his homelessness, his emptiness, his 
uprootedness. Simone Weil wrote a book, THE NEED FOR ROOTS. Western man feels 
uprooted, as if with no roots. The reason is because only the head has become the center. 

The heart has not been trained, it is missing. 

The beating of the heart is not your heart, it is just a physiological function. So if you feel 
the beating, do not misunderstand that you have a heart. Heart is something else. Heart 
means the capacity to feel; head means the capacity to know. Heart means the capacity to 



feel, and being means the capacity to be one — to be one with something... the capacity to 
be one with something. 

Religion is concerned with the being; poetry is concerned with the heart; philosophy and 
science are concerned with the head. These two centers, heart and head, are peripheral 
centers, not real centers, just false centers. The real center is the navel, the hara. How to 
attain it again? Or how to realize it? 

Ordinarily it happens only sometimes — rarely, accidentally it happens — that you come 
near the hara. That moment will become a very deep, blissful moment. For example, in 
sex sometimes you come near the hara, because in sex your mind, your consciousness 
moves downwards again. You have to leave your head and fall down. In a deep sexual 
orgasm, sometimes it happens that you are near your hara. That is why there is so much 
fascination about sex. It is not really sex which gives you the blissful experience, really, 
it is the hara. 

In falling down toward sex you pass through the hara, you touch it. But for modern man 
even that has become impossible, because for modem man even sex is a cerebral affair, a 
mental affair. 

Even sex has gone into the head; he thinks about it. That is why there are so many films, 
so many novels, so much literature, pornography and the like. Man thinks about sex, but 
that is absurdity. Sex is an experience; you cannot think about it. And if you start 
thinking about it, it will be more and more difficult to experience it because it is not a 
concern of the head at all. Reason is not needed. 

And the more modem man feels incapable of going deep in sex, the more he thinks about 
it. It becomes a vicious circle. And the more he thinks about it, the more it becomes 
cerebral. Then even sex becomes futile. It has become futile in the West, a repetitive 
thing, boring. Nothing is gained, you just go on repeating an old habit. And ultimately 
you feel frustrated — as if you have been cheated. Why? Because really, the 
consciousness is not falling back down to the center. 

Only when passing through the hara do you feel bliss. So whatsoever may be the cause, 
whenever you pass through the hara you feel bliss. A warrior on the field fighting 
sometimes passes through the hara, but not modern warriors because they are not 
warriors at all. A person throwing a bomb on a city is asleep. He is not a warrior; he is 
not a fighter; he is not a KSHATRIYA — not Arjuna fighting. 

Sometimes when one is on the verge of death one is thrown back to the hara. For a 
warrior fighting with his sword, any moment death becomes possible, any moment he 
may be no more. 

And when fighting with a sword you cannot think. If you think, you will be no more. You 
have to act without thinking because thinking feeds time; if you are fighting with a sword 
you cannot think. If you think then the other will win, you will be no more. There is no 
time to think, and the mind needs time. Because there is no time to think and thinking 
will mean death, consciousfess falls down from the head — it goes to the hara, and a 
warrior has a blissful experience. That is why there is so much fascination about war. Sex 
and war have been two fascinations, and the reason is this: you pass through the hara. 

You pass through it in any danger. 

Nietzsche says, live dangerously. Why? Because in danger you are thrown back to the 
hara. You cannot think; you cannot work things out with the mind. You have to act 
immediately. 



A snake passes. Suddenly you see the snake and there is a jump. There is no deliberate 
thinking about it, that "There is a snake." There is no syllogism; you do not argue within 
your mind, "Now there is a snake and snakes are dangerous, so I must jump." There is no 
logical reasoning like this. If you reason like this, then you will not be alive at all. You 
cannot reason. You have to act spontaneously, immediately. The act comes first and then 
comes thinking. When you have jumped, then you think. 

In ordinary life, when there is no danger you think first, then you act. 

In danger, the whole process is reversed; you act first and then you think. That action 
coming first without thinking throws you to your original center — the hara. That is why 
there is the fascination with danger. 

You are driving a car faster and faster and faster, and suddenly a moment comes when 
every moment is dangerous. Any moment and there will be no life. In that moment of 
suspense, when death and life are just as near to each other as possible, two points just 
near and you in between, the mind stops: you are thrown to the hara. That is why there is 
so much fascination with cars, driving — fast driving, mad driving. Or you are gambling 
and you have put everything you have at stake — the mind stops, there is danger. The 
next moment you can become a beggar. The mind cannot function; you are thrown to the 
hara. 

Dangers have their appeal because in danger your day-to-day, ordinary consciousness 
cannot function. Danger goes deep. Your mind is not needed; you become a no-mind. 
YOU ARE! You are conscious, but there is no thinking. That moment becomes 
meditative. Really, in gambling, gamblers are seeking a meditative state of mind. In 
danger — in a fight, in a duel, in wars — man has always been seeking meditative states. 

A bliss suddenly erupts, explodes in you. It becomes a showering inside. But these are 
sudden, accidental happenings. One thing is certain: whenever you feel blissful you are 
nearer the hara. 

That is certain no matter what the cause; the cause is irrelevant. Whenever you pass near 
the original center you are filled with bliss. 

These sutras are concerned with creating a rootedness in the hara, in the center, 
scientifically, in a planned way — not accidentally, not momentarily, but permanently. 
You can remain continuously in the hara, that can become your rootedness. How to make 
this so and how to create this are the concerns of these sutras. 

Now we will take the first sutra which is another of the ways concerning the point, or 
center. 

First: 

OR IMAGINE THE FIVE-COLORED CIRCLES OF THE PEACOCK TAIL TO BE 
YOUR FIVE SENSES IN ILLIMITABLE SPACE. NOW, LET THEIR BEAUTY 
MELT WITHIN. SIMILARLY, AT ANY POINT IN SPACE OR ON A WALL - 
UNTIL THE POINT DISSOLVES. THEN YOUR WISH FOR ANOTHER COMES 
TRUE. 

All these sutras are concerned with how to achieve the inner center. The basic 
mechanism used, the basic technique used is, if you can create a center outside — 
anywhere: in the mind, in the heart, or even outside on a wall — and if you concentrate 
totally on it and you bracket out the whole world, you forget the whole world and only 
one point remains in your consciousness, suddenly you will be thrown to your inner 



center. 

How does it work? First understand this... Your mind is just a vagabond, a wandering. It 
is never at one point. 

It is always going, moving, reaching, but never at any point. It goes from one thought to 
another, from A to B. But it is never at the A; it is never at the B. It is always on the 
move. Remember this: mind is always on the move, hoping to reach somewhere but 
never reaching. It cannot reach! The very structure of the mind is movement. It can only 
move; that is the inherent nature of the mind. The very process is movement — from A to 
B, from B to C... it goes on and on. 

If you stop at A or B or any point, the mind will fight with you. The mind will say, 

"Move on," because if you stop the mind dies immediately. It can be alive only in 
movement. The mind means a process. If you stop and do not move, mind suddenly 
becomes dead, it is no more there; only consciousness remains. 

Consciousness is your nature; mind is your activity — just like walking. It is difficult 
because we think mind is something substantial. We think mind is a substance — it is not, 
mind is just an activity. So it is really better to call it "minding" than mind. It is a process 
just like walking. Walking is a process, if you stop, there is no walking. You have legs, 
but no walking. Legs can walk, but if you stop then legs will be there but there will be no 
walking. 

Consciousness is like legs — your nature. Mind is like walking — just a process. When 
consciousness moves from one place to another, this process is mind. 

When consciousness moves from A to B, from B to C, this movement is mind. If you 
stop the movement, there is no mind. You are conscious, but there is no mind. You have 
legs, but no walking. Walking is a function, an activity; mind is also a function, an 
activity. 

If you stop at any point, the mind will struggle. The mind will say, "Go on!" The mind 
will try in every way to push you forward or backward or anywhere — but, "Go on!" 
Anywhere will do, but do not stay at one point. 

If you insist and if you do not obey the mind... it is difficult because you have always 
obeyed. You have never ordered the mind; you have never been masters. You cannot be 
because, really, you have never disidentified yourself from the mind. You think you are 
the mind. This fallacy that you are the mind gives the mind total freedom, because then 
there is no one to master it, to control it. There is no one! Mind itself becomes the master. 
It may become the master, but that mastery is just seemingly so. Try once and you can 
break that mastery — it is false. 

Mind is just a slave pretending to be the master, but it has pretended so long, for lives and 
lives, that even the master believes that the slave is the master. That is just a belief. Try 
the contrary and you will know that that belief was totally unfounded. 

This first sutra says, IMAGINE THE FIVE-COLORED CIRCLE OF THE PEACOCK 
TAIL TO BE YOUR FIVE SENSES IN ILLIMITABLE SPACE. 

NOW LET THEIR BEAUTY MELT WITHIN. Think that your five senses are five 
colors, and those five colors are filling the whole space. Just imagine your five senses are 
five colors — beautiful colors, alive, extended into infinite space. Then move within with 
those colors. Move within and feel a center where all these five colors are meeting within 
you. This is just imagination, but it helps. Just imagine these five colors penetrating 



within you and meeting at a point. 

Of course, these five colors will meet at a point: the whole world will dissolve. In your 
imagination there are only five colors — just like around the tail of a peacock — spread all 
over space, going deep within you, meeting at a point. Any point will do, but the hara is 
the best. Think that they are meeting at your navel — that the whole world has become 
colors, and those colors are meeting at your navel. See that point, concentrate on that 
point, and concentrate until the point dissolves. If you concentrate on the point it 
dissolves, because it is just imagination. Remember, whatsoever we have done is 
imagination. If you concentrate on it, it will dissolve. And when the point dissolves, you 
are thrown to your center. 

The world has dissolved. There is no world for you. In this meditation there is only color. 
You have forgotten the whole world; you have forgotten all the objects. You have chosen 
only five colors. 

Choose any five colors. This is particularly for those who have a very keen eye, a very 
deep color sensitivity. This meditation will not be helpful to everyone. Unless you have a 
painter's eye, a color consciousness, unless you can imagine color, it is difficult. 

Have you ever observed that your dreams are colorless? Only one person in a hundred is 
capable of seeing colored dreams. You see just black and white. Why? The whole world 
is colored and your dreams are colorless. If one of you remembers that his dreams are 
colored, this meditation is for him. If someone remembers even sometimes that he sees 
colors in his dreams, then this meditation will be for him. 

If you say to a person who is insensitive to color, "Imagine the whole space filled with 
colors," he will not be able to imagine. Even if he tries to imagine, if he thinks, "Red," he 
will see the word 'red', he will not see the color. He will say, "Green," and the word 
'green' will be there, but there will be no greenness. 

So if you have a color sensitivity, then try this method. There are five colors. The whole 
world is just colors and those five colors are meeting in you. Deep down somewhere in 
you, those five colors are meeting. Concentrate on that point, and go on concentrating on 
it. Do not move from it; remain at it. Do not allow the mind. Do not try to think about 
green and red and yellow and about colors — do not thi nk . 

Just see them meeting in you. Do not think about them! If you think, the mind has moved. 
Just be filled with colors meeting in you, and then at the meeting point, concentrate. Do 
not think! Concentration is not thinking; it is not contemplation. 

If you are really filled with colors and you have become just a rainbow, a peacock, and 
the whole space is filled with colors, it will give you a deep feeling of beauty. But do not 
think about it; do not say it is beautiful. Do not move in thinking. Concentrate on the 
point where all these colors are meeting and go on concentrating on it. It will disappear, it 
will dissolve, because it is just imagination. And if you force concentration, imagination 
cannot remain there, it will dissolve. 

The world has dissolved already; there were only colors. Those colors were your 
imagination. Those imaginative colors were meeting at a point. That point, of course, was 
imaginary — and now, with deep concentration, that point will dissolve. Where are you 
now? Where will you be? You will be thrown to your center. 

Objects have dissolved through imagination. Now imagination will dissolve through 
concentration. You alone are left as a subjectivity. The objective world has dissolved; the 
mental world has dissolved. You are there only as pure consciousness. 



That is why this sutra says: AT ANY POINT IN SPACE OR ON A WALL. 


.. This will help. If you cannot imagine colors, then any point on the wall will help. Take 
anything just as an object of concentration. If it is inner it is better, but again, there are 
two types of personalities. For those who are introvert, it will be easy to conceive of all 
the colors meeting within. But there are extroverts who cannot conceive of anything 
within. They can imagine only the outside. Their minds move only on the outside; they 
cannot move in. For them there is nothing like innerness. 

The English philosopher David Hume has said, "Whenever I go in, I never meet any self. 
All that I meet are only reflections of the outside world — a thought, some emotion, some 
feeling. I never meet the innerness, I only meet the outside world reflected in." This is the 
extrovert mind par excellence, and David Hume is one of the most extrovert minds. 

So if you cannot feel anything within, and if the mind asks, "What does this innerness 
mean? How to go in?" then try any point on the wall instead. There are persons who 
come to me and ask how to go in. It is a problem, because if you know only outgoing- 
ness, if you know only outward movements, it is difficult to imagine how to go in. 

If you are an extrovert then do not try this point inside, try it outside. The same will be 
the result. Make a dot on the wall; concentrate on it. Then you will have to concentrate 
on it with open eyes. 

If you are creating a center inside, a point within, then you will have to concentrate with 
closed eyes. 

Make a point on a wall and concentrate on it. The real thing happens because of 
concentration, not because of the point. Whether it is out or in is irrelevant. It depends on 
you. If you are looking at the outside wall, concentrating on it, then go on concentrating 
until the point dissolves. That has to be noted: UNTIL THE POINT DISSOLVES! Do 
not blink your eyes, because blinking gives a space for the mind to move again. Do not 
blink, because then the mind starts thinking. It becomes a gap; in the blinking, the 
concentration is lost. So no blinking. 

You might have heard about Bodhidhanna, one of the greatest masters of meditation in 
the whole history of humankind. A very beautiful story is reported about him. 

He was concentrating on something — something outward. His eyes would blink and the 
concentration would be lost, so he tore off his eyelids. This is a beautiful story: he tore 
off his eyelids, threw them away, and concentrated. After a few weeks, he saw some 
plants growing on the spot where he had thrown his eyelids. This anecdote happened on a 
mountain in China, and the mountain's name is Tah, or Ta. Hence, the name 'tea'. Those 
plants which were growing became tea, and that is why tea helps you to be awake. 

When your eyes are blinking and you are falling down into sleep, take a cup of tea. 

Those are Bodhidhanna's eyelids. That is why Zen monks consider tea to be sacred. Tea 
is not any ordinary thing, it is sacred — Bodhidhanna’s eyelids. In Japan they have tea 
ceremonies, and every house has a tea room, and the tea is served with religious 
ceremony; it is sacred. Tea has to be taken in a very meditative mood. 

Japan has created beautiful ceremonies around tea drinking. They will enter the tea room 
as if they are entering a temple. Then the tea will be made, and everyone will sit silently 
listening to the samovar bubbling. There is the steam, the noise, and everyone just 
listening. It is no ordinary thing... Bodhidhanna's eyelids. And because Bodhidhanna was 
trying to be awake with open eyes, tea helps. Because the story happened on the 



mountain of Tah, it is called tea. Whether true or untrue, this anecdote is beautiful. 

If you are concentrating outwardly, then non-blinking eyes will be needed, as if you no 
longer have eyelids. That is the meaning of throwing away the eyelids. You have only 
eyes, without eyelids to close them. Concentrating until the point dissolves. If you 
persist, if you insist and do not allow the mind to move, the point dissolves. And when 
the point dissolves, if you were concentrated on the point and there was only this point 
for you in the world, if the whole world had dissolved already, if only this point remained 
and now the point also dissolves, then the consciousness cannot move anywhere. 

There is no object to move to — all the dimensions are closed. The mind is thrown to 
itself, the consciousness is thrown to itself, and you enter the center. 

So whether in or out, within or without, concentrate until the point dissolves. This point 
will dissolve for two reasons. If it is within, it is imaginary — it will dissolve. If it is 
outside, it is not imaginary, it is real. You have made a dot on the wall and have 
concentrated on it. Then why will this dot dissolve? One can understand it dissolving 
inside — it was not there at all; you just imagined it — but on the wall it is there, so why 
will it dissolve? 

It dissolves for a certain reason. If you concentrate on a point, the point is not really 
going to dissolve, the mind dissolves. If you are concentrating on an outer point, the mind 
cannot move. Without movement it cannot live, it dies, it stops. And when the mind stops 
you cannot be related with anything outward. Suddenly all bridges are broken, because 
mind is the bridge. When you are concentrating on a point on the wall, constantly your 
mind is jumping from you to the point, from the point to you, from you to the point. 

There is a constant jumping; there is a process. 

When the mind dissolves you cannot see the point, because really, you never see the 
point through the eyes: you see the point through the mind AND through the eyes. If the 
mind is not there, the eyes cannot function. 

You may go on staring at the wall, but the point will not be seen. The mind is not there; 
the bridge is broken. The point is real — it is there. When the mind will come back, you 
will see it again; it is there. But now you cannot see it. And when you cannot see, you 
cannot move out. Suddenly, you are at your center. 

This centering will make you aware of your existential roots. You will know from where 
you are joined to the existence. In you, there is a point which is related with the total 
existence, which is one with it. Once you know this center, you know you are at home. 
This world is not alien. You are not an outsider. You are an insider, you belong to the 
world. There is no need of any struggle, there is no fight. There is no inimical 
relationship between you and the existence. The existence becomes your mother. 

It is the existence that has come into you and that has become aware. It is the existence 
that has flowered in you. This feeling, this realization, this happening... and there can be 
no anguish again. 

Then bliss is not a phenomenon; it is not something that happens and then goes. Then 
blissfulness is your very nature. When one is rooted in one's center, blissfulness is 
natural. One happens to be blissful, and by and by one even becomes unaware that one is 
blissful, because awareness needs contrast. If you are miserable, then you can feel it 
when you are blissful. 


When misery is no more, by and by you forget misery completely. And you forget your 



bliss also. And only when you can forget your bliss also are you really blissful. Then it is 
natural. As stars are shining, as rivers are flowing, so are you blissful. Your very being is 
blissful. It is not something that has happened to you: now it IS YOU. 

With the second sutra, the mechanism is the same, the scientific basis is the same, the 
working structure is the same: 

PLACE YOUR WHOLE ATTENTION IN THE NERVE, DELICATE AS THE LOTUS 
THREAD, IN THE CENTER OF YOUR SPINAL COLUMN. IN SUCH BE 
TRANSFORMED. 

For this sutra, for this technique of meditation, one has to close his eyes and visualize his 
spinal column, his backbone. It is good to look up in some physiology book the structure 
of the body, or to go to some medical college or hospital and look at the structure of the 
body. Then close your eyes and visualize your backbone. Let the backbone be straight, 
erect. Visualize it, see it, and just in the middle of it visualize a nerve, delicate as the 
lotus thread, running in the center of your spinal column. IN SUCH BE 
TRANSFORMED. 

If you can, concentrate on the spinal column, and then on a thread in the middle of it — on 
a very delicate nerve like a lotus thread running through it. Concentrate on it, and this 
very concentration throws you to your center. 

Why? 

The spinal column is the base of your whole body structure. Everything is joined to it. 
Really, your brain is nothing but one pole of your spinal column. Physiologists say it is 
nothing but a spinal column growth; your brain is really a growth of your spinal column. 
Your spine is connected with your whole body — everything is connected to it. That is 
why it is called the spine, the base. In this spine there is really a thread-like thing, but 
physiology will not say anything about it because it is not material. In this spine, just in 
the middle, there is a silver cord — a very delicate nerve. It is not really a nerve in the 
physiological sense. You cannot operate and find it; it will not be found there. 

But in deep meditation it is seen. It is there; it is non-material. It is energy, not matter. 

And really, that energy cord in your spinal column is your life. Through that you are 
related to the invisible existence, and through that also you are related to the visible. That 
is the bridge between the invisible and the visible. Through that thread you are related to 
the body, and through that thread also you are related to your soul. 

First, visualize the spine. At first you will feel very strange, you will be able to visualize 
it, but as an imagination. And if you go on endeavoring, then it will not be just your 
imagination. You will become capable of seeing your spinal column. 


I was working with a seeker on this technique. I gave him a picture of the body structure 
to concentrate upon so that he would begin to feel how the spinal column can be 
visualized inside. Then he started. Within a week he came and said, "This is very strange 
I tried to see the picture you gave me, but many times that picture disappeared and I saw 
a different spine. It is not exactly like the picture you gave to me." 

So I told him, "Now you are on the right path. Forget that picture completely, and go on 
seeing the spine that has become visible to you." 

Man can see his own body structure from within. We have not tried it because it is very, 
very fearful, loathsome; because when you see your bones, blood, veins, you become 



afraid. So really, we have completely blocked our minds from seeing within. We see the 
body from without, as if someone else is looking at the body. It is just as if you go 
outside this room and look at it — then you know the outer walls. Come in and look at the 
house — then you can look at the inner walls. You see your body from outside as if you 
are somebody else seeing your body. You have not seen your body from inside. We are 
capable of it, but because of this fear it has become a strange thing. 

Indian yoga books say many things about the body which have been found to be exactly 
right by new scientific research, and science is unable to explain this. 

How could they know? Surgery and knowledge of the inside of the human body are very 
recent developments. How could they know of all the nerves, of all the centers, of all the 
inner structures? They knew even about the latest findings; they have talked about them, 
they have worked upon them. Yoga has always been aware about all the basic, significant 
things in the body. But they were not dissecting bodies, so how could they know? 

Really, there is another way of looking at your own body — from within. If you can 
concentrate within, suddenly you begin to see your body — the inner lining of the body. 
This is good for those who are deeply body-oriented. If you feel yourself a materialist, if 
you feel yourself to be nothing but body, this technique will be very helpful for you. If 
you feel yourself to be a body, if you are a believer in Charvak or in Marx, if you believe 
that man is nothing but a body, this technique will be very helpful for you. Then go and 
see the bone structure of man. 

In the old tantra and yoga schools they used many bones. Even now a tantric will always 
be found with some bones, with a man's skull. Really, that is to help concentration from 
inside. First he concentrates on that skull, then he closes his eyes and tries to visualize his 
own skull. He goes on trying to see the outer skull inside, and by and by he begins to feel 
his own skull. His consciousness begins to be focused. 

That outer skull, the concentration on it and the visualization, are just helps. Once you 
are focused inside, you can move from your toes to your head. You can move inside — 
and it is a great universe. Your small body is a great universe. 

This sutra uses the spinal column because within the spinal column there is the thread of 
life. This is why there is so much insistence on a straight backbone, because if the 
backbone is not straight you will not be capable of seeing the inner thread. It is very 
delicate, it is very subtle — it is minute. It is an energy flow. So if the spinal column is 
straight, absolutely straight, only then can you have glimpses of that thread. 

But our spinal columns are not straight. Hindus have tried to make everyone's spinal 
column straight from the very childhood. Their ways of sitting, their ways of sleeping, 
their ways of walking were all based, basically, on a straight spinal column. If the spinal 
column is not straight, then it is very difficult to see the inner core. It is delicate — and 
really, it is not material. It is immaterial; it is a force. When the spinal column is 
absolutely straight, that thread-like force is seen easily. 

... IN SUCH BE TRANSFORMED. Once you can feel, concentrate and realize this 
thread, you will be filled with a new light. The light will be coming from your spinal 
column. It will spread all over your body; it may even go beyond your body. 

When it goes beyond, auras are seen. 

Everyone has an aura, but ordinarily your auras are nothing but shadows with no light in 
them — just dark shadows around you. And those auras reflect your every mood. When 



you are angry, then your auras become as if blood- filled; they become filled with a red, 
angry expression. When you are sad, dim, down, then your auras are filled with dark 
threads, as if you are just near death — everything dead, heavy. 

When this spinal column thread is realized, your auras become enlightened. So a Buddha, 
a Mahavir, a Krishna, a Christ are not painted with auras just as decorations, those auras 
exist. Your spinal column begins to throw out light. Within, you become enlightened — 
your whole body becomes a body of light — then it penetrates the outer. So really, for a 
buddha, for anyone who is enlightened, there is no need to ask anyone what he is. The 
aura shows everything. And when someone becomes enlightened the master knows it, 
because the aura reveals everything. 

I will tell you one story... Hui Neng, a Chinese master, was working under his master. 
When Hui Neng went to his master, the master said, "For what have you come here? 
There is no need to come to me." He couldn't understand. Hui Neng thought that he was 
not yet ready to be accepted, but the master was seeing something else. He was seeing his 
growing aura. He was saying this: "Even if you do not come to me, the thing is bound to 
happen sooner or later, anywhere. 

You are already in it, so there is no need to come to me." 

But Hui Neng said, "Do not reject me." So the master accepted him and told him to go 
just behind the monastery, in the kitchen of the monastery. It was a big monastery of five 
hundred monks. The master said to Hui Neng, "Just go behind the monastery and help in 
the kitchen, and do not come again to me. Whenever it will be needed, I will come to 
you." 

No meditation was given to Hui Neng, no scriptures to read, study or meditate upon. 
Nothing was taught to him, he was just thrown into the kitchen. The whole monastery 
was working. There were pundits, scholars, and there were meditators, and there were 
yogis, and the whole monastery was agog. Everyone was working and this Hui Neng was 
just cleaning rice and doing kitchen work. 

Twelve years passed. Hui Neng didn’t go again to the master because it was not allowed. 
He waited, he waited, he waited... he simply waited. He was just taken as a servant. 
Scholars would come, meditators would come, and no one would even pay any attention 
to him. And there were big scholars in the monastery. 

Then the master declared that his death was near, and now he wanted to appoint someone 
to function in his place, so he said, "Those who think they are enlightened should 
compose a small poem of four lines. In those four lines you should put all that you have 
gained. 

And if I approve any poems and see that the lines show that enlightenment has happened, 
I will choose someone as my successor." 

There was a great scholar in the monastery, and no one attempted the poem because 
everyone knew that he was going to win. He was a great knower of scriptures, so he 
composed four lines. Those four lines were just like this... the meaning of it was like this: 
"Mind is like a mirror, and dust gathers on it. Clean the dust, and you are enlightened." 
But even this great scholar was afraid because the master would know. He already knows 
who is enlightened and who is not. Though all he has written is beautiful, it is the very 
essence of all the scriptures — mind is like a mirror, and dust gathers on it; remove the 
dust, and you are enlightened — this was the whole gist of all the Vedas, but he knew that 
was all that it was. He had not known anything, so he was afraid. 



He didn’t go directly to the master, but in the night he went to the hut, to his master's hut, 
and wrote all the four lines on the wall without signing — without any signature. In this 
way, if the master approved and said, "Okay, this is right," then he would say, "I have 
written them." If he said, "No! Who has written these lines?" then he would keep silent, 
he thought. 

But the master approved. In the morning the master said, "Okay!" He laughed and said, 
"Okay! The man who has written this is an enlightened one." 

So the whole monastery began to talk about it. Everyone knew who had written it. They 
were discussing and appreciating, and the lines were beautiful — really beautiful. Then 
some monks came to the kitchen. They were drinking tea and they were talking, and Hui 
Neng was there serving them. He heard what had happened. The moment he heard those 
four lines, he laughed. So someone asked, "Why are you laughing, you fool? You do not 
know anything; for twelve years you have been serving in the kitchen. Why are you 
laughing?" 

No one had even heard him laugh before. He was just taken as an idiot who would not 
even talk. So he said, "I cannot write, and I am not an enlightened one either, but these 
lines are wrong. So if someone comes with me, I will compose four lines. If someone 
comes with me, he can write it on the wall. I cannot write; I do not know writing." 

So someone followed him — just as a joke. A crowd came there and Hui Neng said, 
"Write: There is no mind and there is no mirror, so where can the dust gather? One who 
knows this is enlightened." 

But the master came out and he said, "You are wrong," to Hui Neng. Hui Neng touched 
his feet and returned back to his kitchen. 

In the night when everyone was asleep, the master came to Hui Neng and said, "You are 
right, but I could not say so before those idiots — and they are learned idiots. If I had said 
that you are appointed as my successor, they would have killed you. 

So escape from here! You are my successor, but do not tell it to anyone. And I knew this 
the day you came. Your aura was growing; that was why no meditation was given to you. 
There was no need. You were already in meditation. And these twelve years' silence — 
not doing anything, not even meditation — emptied you completely of your mind, and the 
aura has become full. You have become a full moon. But escape from here! Otherwise 
they will kill you. 

"You have been here for twelve years, and the light has been constantly spreading from 
you, but no one observed it. And they have been coming to the kitchen, everyone has 
been coming to the kitchen every day — thrice, four times. Everyone passes through here; 
that is why I posted you in the kitchen. But no one has recognized your aura. So you 
escape from here." 

When the spinal column thread is touched, seen, realized, an aura begins to grow around 
you. ... IN SUCH BE TRANSFORMED. Be filled with that light and be transformed. 
This is also a centering — a centering in the spinal column. If you are body-oriented, this 
technique will help you. If you are not body-oriented, it is very difficult, it will be very 
difficult to visualize from the inside. Then to look at your body from the inside will be 
difficult. 

This sutra will be more helpful for women than for men. They are more body-oriented. 
They live more in the body; they feel more. 



They can visualize the body more. Women are more body-oriented than men, but for 
anyone who can feel the body, who feels the body, who can visualize, who can close his 
eyes and feel his body from within, this technique will be very helpful for him. 

Then visualize your spinal column, and in the middle a silver cord running through it. 
First it may look like imagination, but by and by you will feel that imagination has 
disappeared and your mind has become focused on that spinal column. And then you will 
see your own spine. The moment you see the inner core, suddenly you will feel an 
explosion of the light within you. 

Sometimes this can also happen without any effort. It happens sometimes. Again, in a 
deep sex act it sometimes happens. Tantra knows: in a deep sex act your whole energy 
becomes concentrated near the spine. Really, in a deep sex act the spine begins to 
discharge electricity. And sometimes, even, if you touch the spine you will get a shock. If 
the intercourse is very deep and very loving and long — really, if the two lovers are just in 
a deep embrace, silent, non-moving, just being filled with each other, just remaining in a 
deep embrace — it happens. It has happened many times that a dark room will suddenly 
become filled with light, and both bodies will be surrounded with a blue aura. 

Many, many such cases have happened. Even in some of your experiences it may have 
happened, but you may not have noticed that in a dark room, in deep love, suddenly you 
feel a light around both of your bodies, and that light spreads and fills the whole room. 

Many times it has happened that suddenly things drop from the table in the room without 
any visible cause. And now psychologists say that in a deep sex act, electricity is 
discharged. That electricity can have many effects and impacts. Things may suddenly 
drop, move or be broken, and even photographs have been taken in which light is visible. 
But that light is always concentrated around the spinal column. 

So sometimes, in a deep sex act also — and tantra knows this well and has worked on it — 
you may become aware, if you can look within to the thread running in the middle of the 
spinal column. And tantra has used the sex act for this realization, but then the sex act has 
to be totally different, the quality has to be different. It is not something to be gotten over 
with; it is not something to be done for a release; it is not something to be finished 
hurriedly; it is not a bodily act then. Then it is a deep spiritual communion. Really, 
through two bodies it is a deep meeting of two innernesses, of two subjectivities, 
penetrating each other. 

So I will suggest to you to try this technique when in a deep sex act — it will be easier. 
Just forget about sex. When in a deep embrace, remain inside. Forget the other person 
also, just go inside and visualize your spinal column. It will be easier, because then more 
energy is flowing near the spinal column, and the thread is more visible because you are 
silent, because your body is at rest. 

Love is the deepest relaxation, but we have made love also a great tension. We have 
made it an anxiety, a burden. 

In the wannth of love, filled, relaxed, close your eyes. But men ordinarily do not close 
their eyes. Ordinarily, women do close their eyes. That is why I said that women are 
more body-oriented while men are not. In a deep embrace in the act of sex, women will 
close their eyes. Really, they cannot love with open eyes. With closed eyes, they feel the 
body more from within. 

Close your eyes and feel your body. Relax. Concentrate on the spinal column. And this 
sutra says very simply, IN SUCH BE TRANSFORMED. And you will be transfonned 



through it. 
Enough for today. 

THE END. 



Chapter 10: Fullfillment through becoming centered 


Question 1 

IS SELF-ACTUALIZATION A BASIC NEED? 

There are many questions. The first: IS SELF-ACTUALIZATION A BASIC NEED OF 
MAN? First, try to understand what is meant by self-actualization. A. H. Maslow has 
used this term "self-actualization." Man is born as potentiality. He is not really actual — 
just potential. Man is born as a possibility, not as an actuality. He may become 
something; he may attain actualization of his potentiality or he may not attain. The 
opportunity may be used or it may not be used. And nature is not forcing you to become 
actual. You are free. You can choose to become actual; you can choose not to do 
anything about it. Man is born as a seed. Thus, no man is born fulfilled — just with the 
possibility of fulfillment. 

If that is the case — and that is the case — then self-actualization becomes a basic need. 
Because unless you are fulfilled, unless you become what you can be or what you are 
meant to be, unless your destiny is fulfilled, unless you actually attain, unless your seed 
becomes a fulfilled tree, you will feel that you are missing something. And everyone is 
feeling, that he is missing something. That feeling of missing is really because of this, 
that you are not yet actual. 

It is not really that you are missing riches or position, prestige or power. Even if you get 
whatsoever you demand — riches, power, prestige, anything — you will feel this constant 
sense of something missing within you, because this something missing is not related 
with anything outward. 

It is related with your inner growth. Unless you become fulfilled, unless you come to a 
realization, a flowering, unless you come to an inner satisfaction in which you feel, "Now 
this is what I was meant to be," this sense of something missing will be felt. And you 
cannot destroy this feeling of something missing by anything else. 

So self-actualization means a person has become what he was to become. He was born as 
a seed and now he has flowered. He has come to the complete growth, an inner growth, 
to the inner end. The moment you feel that all your potentialities have become actual, you 
will feel the peak of life, of love, of existence itself. 

Abraham Maslow, who has used this term "self-actualization," has also coined another 
tenn: "peak experience." When one attains to oneself, he reaches a peak — a peak of bliss. 
Then there is no hankering after anything. He is totally content with himself. Now 
nothing is lacking; there is no desire, no demand, no movement. Whatsoever he is, he is 
totally content with himself. Self-actualization becomes a peak experience, and only a 
self-actualized person can attain peak experiences. Then whatsoever he touches, 
whatsoever he is doing or not doing — even just existing — is a peak experience for him; 
just to be is blissful. Then bliss is not concerned with anything outside, it is just a by- 
product of the inner growth. 

A buddha is a self-actualized person. 

That is why we picture Buddha, Mahavir and others — why we have made sculptures, 
pictures, depictions of them — sitting on a fully blossomed lotus. That fully blossomed 
lotus is the peak of flowering inside. Inside they have flowered and have become fully 



blossomed. That inner flowering gives a radiance, a constant showering of bliss from 
them. All those who come even within their shadows, all those who come near them feel 
a silent milieu around them. 

There is an interesting story about Mahavir. It is a myth, but myths are beautiful and they 
say much which cannot be said otherwise. It is reported that when Mahavir would move, 
all around him, in an area of about twenty-four miles, all the flowers would bloom. Even 
if it was not the season for the flowers, they would bloom. This is simply a poetic 
expression, but even if one was not self-actualized, if one were to come in contact with 
Mahavir his flowering would become infectious, and one would feel an inner flowering 
in oneself also. Even if it was not the right season for a person, even if he was not ready, 
he would reflect, he would feel an echo. If Mahavir was near someone, that person would 
feel an echo within himself, and he would have a glimpse of what he could be. 
Self-actualization is the basic need. And when I say basic, I mean that if all your needs 
are fulfilled, all except self-realization, self-actualization, you will feel unfulfilled. 

In fact, if self-actualization happens and nothing else is fulfilled, still you will feel a deep, 
total fulfillment. That is why Buddha was a beggar, but yet an emperor. 

Buddha came to Kashi when he became enlightened. The king of Kashi came to see him 
and he asked, "I do not see that you have anything, you are just a beggar, yet I feel myself 
a beggar in comparison to you. You do not have anything, but the way you walk, the way 
you look, the way you laugh makes it seem as if the whole world is your kingdom. And 
you have nothing visible — nothing! So where is the secret of your power? You look like 
an emperor." Really, no emperor has ever looked like that — as if the whole world 
belongs to him. "You are the king, but where is your power, the source?" 

So Buddha said, "It is in me. My power, my source of power, whatsoever you feel around 
me is really within me. I do not have anything except myself, but it is enough. I am 
fulfilled; now I do not desire anything. I have become desireless." 

Really, a self-actualized person will become desireless. Remember this. Ordinarily we 
say that if you become desireless, you will know yourself. The contrary is more true: if 
you know yourself, you will become desireless. And the emphasis of tantra is not on 
being desireless, but on becoming self-actualized. Then desirelessness follows. 

Desire means you are not fulfilled within, you are missing something so you hanker after 
it. 

You go on, from one desire to another, in search of fulfillment. That search never ends 
because one desire creates another desire. Really, one desire creates ten desires. If you go 
in search of a desireless state of bliss through desires, you will never reach. But if you try 
something else — methods of self-actualization, methods of realizing your inner 
potentiality, of making them actual — then the more you will become actual the less and 
less desires will be felt, because really, they are felt only because you are empty inside. 
When you are not empty within, desiring ceases. 

What to do about self-actualization? Two things have to be understood. One: self- 
actualization doesn’t mean that if you become a great painter or a great musician or a 
great poet you will be self-actualized. Of course, a part of you will be actualized, and 
even that gives much contentment. If you have a potentiality of being a good musician, 
and if you fulfill it and you become a musician, a part of you will be fulfilled — but not 
the total. The remaining humanity within you will remain unfulfilled. You will be 
lopsided. One part will have grown, and the remaining will have stayed just like a stone 



hanging around your neck. 

Look at a poet. When he is in his poetic mood he looks like a buddha; he forgets himself 
completely. The ordinary man in the poetic mood is as if he is no more there. 

So when a poet is in his mood, he has a peak — a partial peak. And sometimes poets have 
glimpses which are only possible with enlightened, buddha-like minds. A poet can speak 
like a buddha. For example, Khalil Gibran speaks like a buddha but he is not a buddha. 

He is a poet — a great poet. 

So if you see Khalil Gibran through his poetry, he looks like Buddha, Christ or Krishna. 
But if you go and meet the man Khalil Gibran, he is just ordinary. He talks about love so 
beautifully — even a buddha may not talk so beautifully. But a buddha knows love with 
his total being. Khalil Gibran knows love in his poetic flight. When he is on his poetic 
flight, he has glimpses of love — beautiful glimpses. He expresses them with rare insight. 
But if you go and see the real Khalil Gibran, the man, you will feel a disparity. The poet 
and the man are far apart. The poet seems to be something which happens to this man 
sometimes, but this man is not the poet. 

That is why poets feel that when they are creating poetry someone else is creating; they 
are not creating. They feel as if they have become instruments of some other energy, 
some other force. They are no more. This feeling comes because, really, their totality is 
not actualized — only a part of it is, a fragment. 

You have not touched the sky. Only one of your fingers has touched the sky, and you 
remain rooted on the earth. 

Sometimes you jump, and for a moment you are not on the earth; you have deceived 
gravity. But the next moment you are on the earth again. When a poet is feeling fulfilled, 
he will have glimpses — partial glimpses. When a musician is feeling fulfilled, he will 
have partial glimpses. 

It is said of Beethoven that when he was on the stage he was a different man, altogether 
different. Goethe has said that when Beethoven was on stage directing his group, his 
orchestra, he looked like a god. It could not be said that he was an ordinary man. He was 
not a man at all; he was superhuman. The way he looked, the way he raised his hands, 
was all superhuman. But when he came back from the stage he was just an ordinary man. 
The man on the stage seemed to be possessed by something else, as if Beethoven was no 
more there and some other force had entered into him. Back down from the stage he was 
again Beethoven, the man. 

Because of this, poets, musicians, great artists, creative people are more tense — because 
they have two types of being. Ordinary man is not so tense because he always lives in 
one: he lives on the earth. But poets, musicians, great artists jump; they go beyond 
gravity. In certain moments they are not on this earth, they are not part of humanity. They 
become part of the buddha world — the land of the buddhas. Then again they are back 
here. They have two points of existence; their personalities are split. 


So every creative artist, every great artist is in a certain way insane. The tension is so 
much! The rift, the gap between these two types of existences is so great — unbridgeably 
great. Sometimes he is just an ordinary man; sometimes he becomes buddha-like. 
Between these two points he is divided, but he has glimpses. 

When I say self-actualization, I do not mean that you should become a great poet or you 



should become a great musician. I mean that you should become a total man. I do not say 
a great man because a great man is always partial. Greatness in anything is always 
partial. One moves and moves and moves in one direction, and in all other dimensions, 
all other directions, one remains the same — one becomes lopsided. 

When I say become a total man, I do not mean become a great man. I mean create a 
balance, be centered, be fulfilled as a man — not as a musician, not as a poet, not as an 
artist, but fulfilled as a man. What does it mean to be fulfilled as a man? A great poet is a 
great poet because of great poetry. A great musician is great because of great music. A 
great man is a great man because of certain things he has done — he may be a great hero. 
A great man in any direction is partial. Greatness is partial, fragmentary. That is why 
great men have to face more anguish than ordinary men. 

What is a total man? What is meant by being a whole man, a total man? It means, firstly, 
be centered; do not exist without a center. 

This moment you are something, the next moment something else. People come to me 
and I generally ask them, "Where do you feel your center — in the heart, in the mind, in 
the navel, where? In the sex center? Where? Where do you feel your center?" 

Generally they say, "Sometimes I feel it in the head, sometimes in the heart, sometimes I 
do not feel it at all." So I tell them to close their eyes before me and feel it just now. In 
the majority of cases this happens: they say, "Just now, for a moment, I feel that I am 
centered in the head." But the next moment they are not there. They say, "I am in the 
heart." And the next moment the center has slipped, it is somewhere else, at the sex 
center or somewhere else. 

Really, you are not centered; you are only momentarily centered. Each moment has its 
own center, so you go on shifting. When mind is functioning you feel that the head is the 
center. When you are in love, you feel it is the heart. When you are not doing anything 
particularly, you are confused — you cannot find out where the center is, because you can 
find this out only when you are working, doing something. Then a particular part of the 
body becomes the center. But YOU are not centered. If you are not doing anything, you 
cannot find where your center of being is. 

A total man is centered. Whatsoever he is doing, he remains in the center. If his mind is 
functioning, he is thinking, thinking goes on in the head but he remains centered in the 
navel. 

The center is never missed. He uses the head, but he never moves to the head. He uses the 
heart, but he never moves to the heart. All these things become instruments, and he 
remains centered. 

Secondly, he is balanced. Of course, when one is centered one is balanced. His life is a 
deep balance. He is never one-sided, he is never at any extreme — he remains in the 
middle. Buddha has called this the middle path. He remains always in the middle. 

A man who is not centered will always move to the extreme. When he eats he will eat 
much, he will overeat, or he can fast, but right eating is impossible for him. Fasting is 
easy, overeating is okay. He can be in the world, committed, involved, or he can 
renounce the world — but he can never be balanced. He can never remain in the middle, 
because if you are not centered you do not know what middle means. 

A person who is centered is always in the middle in everything, never at any extreme. 
Buddha says his eating is right eating; it is neither overeating, nor fasting. His labor is 
right labor — never too much, never too little. Whatsoever he is, he is always balanced. 



First thing: a self-actualized person will be centered. 

Second thing: he will be balanced. 

Thirdly: if these two things happen — centering, balance — many things will follow. He 
will always be at ease. Whatsoever the situation, the at-easeness will not be lost. 

I say whatsoever the situation — unconditionally, the at-easeness will not be lost, because 
one who is at the center is always at ease. Even if death comes, he will be at ease. He will 
receive death as one receives any other guest. If misery comes, he will receive it. 
Whatsoever happens, it cannot dislodge him from his center. That at-easeness is also a 
by-product of being centered. 

For such a man, nothing is trivial, nothing is great; everything becomes sacred, beautiful, 
holy — everything! Whatsoever he is doing, whatsoever, it is of ultimate concern — as if 
of ultimate concern. Nothing is trivial. He will not say, "This is trivial, this is great." 
Really, nothing is great, nor is anything small and trivial. The touch of the man is 
significant. A self-actualized person, a balanced, centered person, changes everything. 
The very touch makes it great. 

If you observe a buddha, you will see that he walks and he loves walking. If you go to 
Bodhgaya where Buddha attained enlightenment, to the bank of the Niranjana — to the 
place where he was sitting under the Bodhi tree — you will see that the place of his steps 
has been marked. He would meditate for one hour, then he would walk around. In 
Buddhist terminology this is called CHAKRAMAN. He would sit under the Bodhi tree, 
then he would walk. But he would walk with a serene attitude, as if in meditation. 
Someone asked Buddha, "Why do you do this? Sometimes you sit with closed eyes and 
meditate, then you walk." 

Buddha said, "Sitting in order to be silent is easy, so I walk. But I carry the same silence 
within. I sit, but inside I am the same — silent. I walk, but inside I am the same — silent." 
The inner quality is the same... When he meets an emperor and when he meets a beggar, 
a buddha is the same, he has the same inner quality. When meeting a beggar he is not 
different, when meeting an emperor he is not different; he is the same. The beggar is not 
a nobody and the emperor is not a somebody. And really, while meeting a buddha, 
emperors have felt like beggars and beggars have felt like emperors. The touch, the man, 
the quality remains the same. 

When Buddha was alive, every day in the morning he would say to his disciples, "If you 
have to ask anything, ask." The day he was dying, that morning it was the same. He 
called his disciples and said, "Now if you want to ask anything, you can ask. And 
remember, that this is the last morning. Before this day ends, I will be no more." He was 
the same. That was his daily question in the morning. He was the same! The day was the 
last, but he was the same. Just as on any other day, he said, "Okay, if you have to ask 
anything, you can ask — but this is the last day." 

There was no change of tone, but the disciples began to weep. They forgot to ask 
anything. Buddha said, "Why are you weeping? If you would have wept on another day it 
would have been okay, but this is the last day. 

By the evening I will be no more, so do not waste time in weeping. Another day it would 
have been okay; you could have wasted time. Do not waste your time in weeping. Why 
are you weeping? Ask if you have anything to ask." He was the same in life and death. 



So thirdly, the self-actualized man is at ease. Life and death are the same; bliss and 
misery are the same. Nothing disturbs him, nothing dislocates him from his home, from 
his centeredness. To such a man you cannot add anything. You cannot take anything out 
of him, you cannot add anything to him — he is fulfilled. His every breath is a fulfilled 
breath, silent, blissful. He has attained. He has attained to existence, to being; he has 
flowered as a total man. 

This is not a partial flowering. Buddha is not a great poet. Of course, whatsoever he says 
is poetry. He is not a poet at all, but even when he moves, walks, it is poetry. He is not a 
painter, but whenever he speaks, whatsoever he says becomes a painting. He is not a 
musician, but his whole being is music par excellence. The man as a totality has attained. 
So now, whatsoever he is doing or not doing... when he is sitting in silence, not doing 
anything, even in silence his presence works, creates; it becomes creative. 

Tantra is concerned not with any partial growth, it is concerned with you as a total being. 
So three things are basic: you must be centered, rooted, and balanced; that is, always in 
the middle — of course, without any effort. 

If there is effort you are not balanced. And you must be at ease — at ease in the universe, 
at home in the existence, and then many things follow. This is a basic need, because 
unless this need is fulfilled you are a man only in name. You are a man as a possibility, 
you are not actually a man. You can be, you have the potentiality, but the potentiality has 
to be made actual. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

KINDLY EXPLAIN CONTEMPLATION, CONCENTRATION AND MEDITATION. 
'Contemplation' means directed thinking. We all think; that is not contemplation. That 
thinking is undirected, vague, leading nowhere. Really, our thinking is not contemplation, 
but what Freudians call association. One thought leads to another without any direction 
from you. The thought itself leads to another because of association. 

You see a dog crossing the street. The moment you see the dog, your mind starts thinking 
about dogs. The dog has led you to this thought, and then the mind has many 
associations. When you were a child, you were afraid of a particular dog. That dog comes 
to the mind and then the childhood comes to the mind. Then dogs are forgotten; then just 
by association you begin to daydream about your childhood. Then the childhood goes on 
being connected with other things, and you move in circles. 

Whenever you are at ease, try to go backwards from your thinking to where the thoughts 
came from. 

Go back, retrace the steps. Then you will see that another thought was there, and that led 
to this. And they are not logically connected, because how is a dog on the street 
connected with your childhood? 

There is no logical connection — only association in your mind. If I was crossing the 
street, the same dog would not lead me to my childhood, it would lead to something else. 
In a third person it would lead to still something else. Everyone has associated chains in 
the mind. With any one person some happening, some accident will lead to the chain. 
Then the mind begins to function like a computer. Then one thing leads to another, 
another leads to another, and you go on, and the whole day you are doing that. 

Write down on a sheet of paper whatsoever comes to your mind, honestly. You will be 
just amazed what is happening in your mind. There is no relation between two thoughts, 



and you go on doing this type of thinking. You call this thinking? This is just association 
of one thought with another, and they lead themselves... you are led. 

Thinking becomes contemplation when it moves not through association, but is directed. 
You are working on a particular problem — then you bracket out all associations. You 
move on that problem only, you direct your mind. The mind will try to escape to any 
bypath, to any side route, to some association. You cut off all the side routes; on only one 
road you direct your mind. 


A scientist working on a problem is in contemplation. A logician working on a problem, 
a mathematician working on a problem is in contemplation. A poet contemplates a 
flower. Then the whole world is bracketed out, and only that flower and the poet remains, 
and he moves with the flower. Many things from side routes will attract, but he does not 
allow his mind to move anywhere. Mind moves in one line, directed. This is 
contemplation. 

Science is based on contemplation. Any logical thinking is contemplation: thought is 
directed, thinking guided. Ordinary thinking is absurd. Contemplation is logical, rational. 
Then there is 'concentration’. Concentration is staying at one point. It is not thinking; it is 
not contemplation. It is really being at one point, not allowing the mind to move at all. In 
ordinary thinking mind moves as a madman. In contemplation the madman is led, 
directed; he cannot escape anywhere. In concentration the mind is not allowed to move. 

In ordinary thinking, it is allowed to move anywhere; in contemplation, it is allowed to 
move only somewhere; in concentration, it is not allowed to move, it is only allowed to 
be at one point. The whole energy, the whole movement stops, sticks to one point. 

Yoga is concerned with concentration, ordinary mind with undirected thinking, the 
scientific mind with directed thinking. The yogic mind has its thinking focused, fixed at 
one point; no movement is allowed. 


And then there is ’meditation’. In ordinary thinking, mind is allowed to move anywhere; 
in contemplation, it is allowed only in one direction, all other directions are cut off. In 
concentration, it is not allowed to move even in one direction; it is allowed only to 
concentrate on one point. And in meditation, mind is not allowed at all. Meditation is no- 
mind. 

These are four stages: ordinary thinking, contemplation, concentration, meditation. 
Meditation means no-mind — not even concentration is allowed. Mind itself is not 
allowed to be! That is why meditation cannot be grasped by mind. Up to concentration 
mind has a reach, an approach. Mind can understand concentration, but mind cannot 
understand meditation. Really, mind is not allowed at all. In concentration, mind is 
allowed to be at one point. In meditation, even that point is taken away. In ordinary 
thinking, all directions are open. In contemplation, only one direction is open. In 
concentration, only one point is open — no direction. In meditation, even that point is not 
open: mind is not allowed to be. 

Ordinary thinking is the ordinary state of mind, and meditation is the highest possibility. 
The lowest one is ordinary thinking, association, and the highest, the peak, is meditation 
— no-mind. 


And with the second question, it is also asked: CONTEMPLATION AND 



CONCENTRATION ARE MENTAL PROCESSES. 


HOW CAN MENTAL PROCESSES HELP IN ACHIEVING A STATE OF NO-MIND? 
The question is significant. Mind asks, how can mind itself go beyond mind? How can 
any mental process help to achieve something which is not of the mind? It looks 
contradictory. How can your mind try, make an effort to create a state which is not of 
mind? 

Try to understand. When mind is, what is there? A process of thinking. When there is no- 
mind, what is there? No process of thinking. If you go on decreasing your process of 
thinking, if you go on dissolving your thinking, by and by, slowly, you are reaching no- 
mind. Mind means thinking; no mind means non-thinking. And mind can help. Mind can 
help in committing suicide. You can commit suicide; you never ask how a man who is 
alive can help himself to be dead. You can help yourself to be dead — everyone is trying 
to help. You can help yourself to be dead, and you are alive. Mind can help to be no- 
mind. How can mind help? 

If the process of thinking becomes more and more dense, then you are proceeding from 
mind to more mind. If the process of thinking becomes less dense, is decreased, is slowed 
down, you are helping yourself toward no-mind. It depends on you. And mind can be a 
help, because really, mind is what you are doing with your consciousness this very 
moment. If you leave your consciousness alone, without doing anything with it, it 
becomes meditation. 


So there are two possibilities: either slowly, gradually you decrease your mind, by and 
by. If one percent is decreased, then you have ninety-nine percent mind and one percent 
no-mind within you. It is as if you have removed some furniture from your room — then 
some space is created there. Then you remove more furniture, and more space is created 
there. When you have removed all the furniture, the whole room becomes space. 

Really, space is not created by removing the furniture, the space was already there. It is 
only that the space was occupied by the furniture. When you remove the furniture, no 
space comes in from outside; the space was there, occupied by furniture. You have 
removed the furniture, and the space is recovered, reclaimed. Deep down mind is space 
occupied, filled by thoughts. If you remove some thoughts, space is created — or 
discovered, or reclaimed. If you go on removing your thoughts, by and by you go on 
regaining your space. This space is meditation. 

Slowly it can be done — suddenly also. There is no need to go on for lives together 
removing the furniture, because there are problems. When you start to remove the 
furniture, one percent space is created and ninety-nine percent space is occupied. That 
ninety-nine percent occupied space will not feel good about the unoccupied space; it will 
try to fill it. So one goes on slowly decreasing thoughts and then again creating new 
thoughts. 


In the morning you sit for meditation for some time; you slow down your process of 
thought. Then you go to the market, and again there is a rush of thoughts. The space is 
filled again. The next day you again do this, and you go on doing this — throwing it out, 
and inviting it in again. 

You can also throw all the furniture out suddenly. It is your decision. It is difficult 



because you have become accustomed to the furniture. You may feel uncomfortable 
without the furniture; you will not know what to do with that space. You may become 
afraid even to move in that space. You have never moved in such freedom. 

Mind is a conditioning. We have become accustomed to thoughts. Have you ever 
observed — or if you have not observed, then observe — that you go on repeating the 
same thoughts every day. You are like a gramophone record, and then too not a fresh, 
new one — old. You go on and on repeating the same things. Why? What is the use of it? 
Only one use, it is just a long habit; you feel you are doing something. 

You are lying on your bed just waiting for sleep to come and the same things are repeated 
every day. Why are you doing this? It helps in a way. Old habits, conditionings, help. A 
child needs a toy. If the toy is given to him, he will fall into sleep; then you can take 
away the toy. But if the toy is not there, the child cannot fall into sleep. 

It is a conditioning. The moment the toy is given to him, it triggers something in his 
mind. Now he is ready to fall into sleep. 

The same is happening with you. The toys may differ. One person cannot fall into sleep 
unless he starts chanting, "Ram, Ram, Ram..." He cannot fall into sleep! This is a toy. If 
he chants, "Ram, Ram, Ram..." the toy is given to him; he can fall into sleep. 

You feel difficulty in falling asleep in a new room. If you are accustomed to sleeping in 
particular clothes, then you will need those particular clothes every day. Psychologists 
say that if you sleep in a nightgown and it is not given to you, you will feel difficulty in 
falling asleep. Why? If you have never slept naked and you are told to sleep naked, you 
will not feel at ease. Why? There is no relationship between nakedness and sleep, but for 
you there is a relationship, an old habit. With old habits one feels at ease, comfortable. 
Thinking patterns are also just habits. You feel comfortable — the same thoughts every 
day, the same routine. You feel everything is okay. 

You have investments in your thoughts — that is the problem. Your furniture is not just 
rubbish to be thrown; you have invested many, many things in it. All the furniture can be 
thrown immediately: it can be done! There are sudden methods of which we will speak. 
Immediately, this very moment, you can be freed of your whole mental furniture. 

But then you will be suddenly vacant, empty, and you will not know who you are. Now 
you will not know what to do because for the first time your old patterns are no more. 

The shock may be too sudden. You may even die, or you may go mad. 

That is why sudden methods are not used. Unless one is ready, sudden methods are not 
used. One may go suddenly mad because one may miss all the moorings. The past drops 
immediately, and when past drops immediately you cannot conceive of the future, 
because the future was always conceived of in terms of the past. 

Only the present remains, and you have never been in the present. Either you were in the 
past or in the future. So when you are just in the present for the first time, you will feel 
you have gone berserk, mad. That is why sudden methods are not used unless you are 
working in a school, unless you are working with a master in a group, unless you are 
totally devoted, unless you have dedicated your whole life for meditation. 

So gradual methods are good. They take a long time, but by and by you become 
accustomed to space. You begin to feel the space and the beauty of it, and the bliss of it, 
and then your furniture is removed by and by. 

So from ordinary thinking it is good to become contemplative — that is the gradual 
method. From contemplation it is good to move to concentration — that is the gradual 



method. 


And from concentration it is good to take a jump into meditation. Then you are moving 
slowly, feeling the ground at every step. And when you are really rooted in one step, only 
then do you begin to go for the next one. It is not a jump, it is a gradual growth. So these 
four things — ordinary thinking, contemplation, concentration, meditation — are four 
steps. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

IS THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NAVEL CENTER EXCLUSIVELY FREE AND 
SEPARATE FROM THE GROWTH OF THE HEART AND HEAD CENTERS, OR 
DOES THE NAVEL CENTER DEVELOP SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH THE 
GROWTH OF THE HEART AND THE HEAD? AND ALSO, PLEASE EXPLAIN IN 
WHICH WAY THE TRAINING AND TECHNIQUES FOR THE NAVEL CENTER 
WILL DIFFER FROM THE TRAINING AND TECHNIQUES FOR THE 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE HEART AND HEAD CENTERS. 

One basic thing to be understood: the heart and head centers are to be developed, not the 
navel center. The navel center is just to be discovered; it is not to be developed. The 
navel center is already there. You have to uncover, or discover it. It is there fully 
developed, you are not to develop it. The heart center and the head center are 
developments. They are not there to be discovered, they have to be developed. Society, 
culture, education, conditioning help to develop them. 

But you are bom with a navel center. Without the navel center you cannot be. You can be 
without the heart center, you can be without the head center. 

They are not necessities; it is good to have them, but you can be without them. It will be 
very inconvenient, but you can be without them. However, without the navel center you 
cannot be. It is not just a necessity, it is your life. 

So there are techniques for how to develop the heart center — how to grow in love, how 
to grow in sensitivity, how to become a more sensitive mind. There are methods and 
techniques for how to become more rational, more logical. Reason can be developed, 
emotion can be developed, but existence cannot be developed. It is already there; it has to 
be discovered. 

Many things are implied in this. One: it may not be possible for you to have a mind, a 
reasoning faculty, like Einstein. But you can become a buddha. Einstein is a mind center 
functioning at its perfection. Or someone else... a lover. A Majnu is functioning at his 
heart center in its perfection. You may not be able to become a Majnu, but you can 
become a buddha because buddhahood is not to be developed in you: it is already there. 

It is concerned with the basic center, the original center — the navel. It is already there. 
You are already a buddha, only unaware. 

You are not already an Einstein. You will have to try, and then too there is no guarantee 
that you will become one. There is no guarantee because really, it seems impossible. Why 
does it seem impossible? Because to develop the head of Einstein needs the same growth, 
the same milieu, the same training as was given to him. 

It cannot be repeated because it is unrepeatable. First you will have to find the same 
parents, because the training begins in the womb. It is difficult to find the same parents — 
impossible. How can you find the same parents, the same date of birth, the same home, 



the same associates, the same friends? You will have to repeat the life of Einstein exactly 
— ditto! If even one point is missing, you will be a different man. 

So that is impossible. Any individual is born only once in this world because the same 
situation cannot be repeated. The same situation is such a big phenomenon. It means 
there must be the same world in the same moment! It is not possible — it is impossible. 
And you are already here, so whatsoever you do, your past will be in it. You cannot 
become an Einstein. Individuality cannot be repeated. 

Buddha is not an individual, Buddha is a phenomenon. No individual factors are 
meaningful; just your being is enough to be a buddha. The center is already there, 
functioning; you have to discover it. So the techniques for the heart are techniques for 
developing something, and the techniques concerning the navel center are concerned with 
uncovering. You have to uncover. You are already a buddha, you only have to know the 
fact. 

So there are two types of persons — buddhas who know that they are buddhas, and 
buddhas who do not know that they are buddhas. 

But all are buddhas. As far as existence is concerned, everyone is the same. Only in 
existence is there communism; in everything else communism is absurd. No one is equal, 
inequality is basic in everything else. So it may look like a paradox if I say that only 
religion leads to communism, but I mean THIS communism: this deep equality of 
existence, of being. In this you are equal to Buddha, to Christ, to Krishna, but in no other 
way are two individuals equal. Inequality is basic as far as outer life is concerned; 
equality is basic as far as inner life is concerned. 

So these one hundred and twelve methods are not really for developing the navel center; 
they are for uncovering it. That is why instantly sometimes one becomes a buddha, 
because there is no question of creating something. If you can look at yourself, if you can 
go deep down into yourself, all that you need is already there. It is already the case, so 
the only question is how to be thrown to that point where you are already a buddha. 
Meditation doesn’t help you to be a buddha, it only helps you to become aware of your 
buddhahood. 

One question more: 

Question 4 

ARE ALL ENLIGHTENED ONES NAVEL CENTERED? FOR EXAMPLE, IS 
KRISHNAMURTI HEAD OR NAVEL CENTERED? WAS RAMAKRISHNA HEART 
OR NAVEL CENTERED? 

Every enlightened one is navel centered, but the expression of each enlightened one may 
flow through other centers. 

Understand the distinction clearly. Every enlightened one is navel centered; there is no 
other possibility. But the expression is a different thing. 

Ramakrishna expresses himself from the heart. He uses his heart as the vehicle of his 
message. Whatsoever he has found at the navel he expresses through his heart. He sings, 
he dances — that is his way of expressing his bliss. The bliss is found at the navel, 
nowhere else. He is centered at the navel, but how to say to others that he is centered at 
the navel? He uses his heart for the expression. 

Krishnamurti uses his head for that expression; that is why their expressions are 
contradictory. If you believe in Ramakrishna you cannot believe in Krishnamurti. If you 
believe in Krishnamurti you cannot believe in Ramakrishna, because belief is always 



centered in the expression, not in the experience. Ramakrishna looks childish to a man 
who thinks with reason: "What is this nonsense — dancing, singing? What is he doing? 
Buddha never danced, and this Ramakrishna is dancing. He looks childish." 

To reason the heart always looks childish, but to the heart reason looks useless, 
superficial. Whatsoever Krishnamurti says is the same. The experience is the same as it 
was for Ramakrishna or Chaitanya or Meera. But if the person is head centered, his 
explanation, expression is rational. If Ramakrishna sees Krishnamurti he will say, "Come 
on, let us dance. 

Why waste your time? Through dance it can be expressed more easily, and it goes 
deeper." Krishnamurti will say, "Dance? One gets hypnotized through dance. Do not 
dance. Analyze! Reason! Reason it out, analyze, be aware." 

These are different centers being used for expression, but the experience is the same. One 
can paint the experience — Zen masters have painted their experience. When they became 
enlightened, they would paint it. They would not say anything, they would just paint it. 
The RISHIS, sages, of the Upanishads have created beautiful poetry. When they became 
enlightened they would create poetry. Chaitanya used to dance; Ramakrishna used to 
sing. Buddha and Mahavir used the head, reason, to explain, to say whatsoever they had 
experienced. They created great systems of thought to express their experience. 

But the experience is neither rational nor emotional: it is beyond both. There have been 
few persons, very few, who could express through both the centers. You can find many 
Krishnamurtis, you can find many Ramakrishnas, but only sometimes does it happen that 
a person can express through both the centers. Then the person becomes confusing. Then 
you are never at ease with that man because you cannot conceive of any relationship 
between the two; they appear contradictory. 

If I say something, when I say it I must say it through reason. So I attract many people 
who are rationalistic, head-oriented. 

Then one day they see that I allow singing and dancing and they become uncomfortable: 
"What is this? There is no relationship..." But to me there is no contradiction. Dancing is 
also a way of speaking — and sometimes a deeper way. Reason is also a way of speaking 
— and sometimes a very clear way. So both are ways of expression. 

If you see Buddha dancing, you will be in difficulty. If you see Mahavir playing on a 
flute, standing naked, then you will not be able to sleep. What happened to Mahavir? Has 
he gone mad? With Krishna the flute is okay, but with Mahavir it is absolutely 
unbelievable. A flute in the hand of Mahavir? Inconceivable! You cannot even imagine 
it. But the reason is not that there is any contradiction between Mahavir and Krishna, 
Buddha and Chaitanya; it is due to difference of expression. Buddha will attract a 
particular type of mind — the head-oriented mind — and Chaitanya and Ramakrishna will 
attract quite the opposite — the heart-oriented mind. 

But difficulties arise. A person like me creates difficulties: I attract both, and then no one 
is at ease. Whenever I am talking, then the head-oriented person is at ease, but whenever 
I allow the other type of expression the head-oriented one becomes uneasy. And the same 
happens to the other — when some emotional method is used the heart-oriented one feels 
at ease, but when I discuss, when I reason out something, then he is absent, he is not here. 

He says, "This is not for me." 

One lady came just a day before, and she said, "I was at Mount Abu, but then there was a 



difficulty. The first day when I heard you it was beautiful, it appealed to me; I was just 
thrilled. But then I saw KIRTAN — devotional chanting and dancing — so I decided to 
leave immediately; that was not for me. I went to the bus station, but then there was a 
problem. I wanted to hear you talk, so I came back. I didn’t want to miss what you were 
saying." She must have been in difficulty. She said to me, "It was so contradictory." 

It appeared so because these centers are contradictory, but this contradiction is in YOU. 
Your head is not at ease with your heart; they are in conflict. Because of your inner 
conflict, Ramakrishna and Krishnamurti appear to be in conflict. Create a bridge between 
your head and your heart, and then you will know that these are mediums. 

Ramakrishna was absolutely uneducated — no development of reason. He was pure heart. 
Only one center was developed, the heart. Krishnamurti is pure reason. He was in the 
hands of some of the most vigorous rationalists — Annie Besant, Leadbeater and the 
Theosophists. They were the great system-makers of this century. Really, theosophy is 
one of the greatest systems ever created, absolutely rational. He was brought up by 
rationalists; he is pure reason. Even if he talks about heart and love, the very expression 
is rational. 


Ramakrishna is different. Even if he talks about reason, he is absurd. Totapuri came to 
him, and Ramakrishna began to learn VEDANTA from him. So Totapuri said, "Leave all 
this devotional nonsense. Leave this Kali, the mother, absolutely. Unless you leave all 
this I am not going to teach you, because VEDANTA is not devotion, it is knowledge." 

So Ramakrishna said, "Okay, but allow me one moment so that I can go and ask the 
mother if I may leave everything, this whole nonsense. Allow me one moment to ask the 
mother." 

This is a heart-oriented man. Even to leave the mother he will have to ask her. "And," he 
said, "she is so loving, she will allow me, so you do not bother." Totapuri could not 
understand what he had said. Ramakrishna said, "She is so loving, she has never said no 
to me at any time. If I say, 'Mother, I am to leave you because now I am learning 
VEDANTA and I cannot do this devotional nonsense, so allow me please,' she will allow. 
She will give me total freedom to drop it." 

Create a bridge between your head and heart, and then you will see that all those who 
have ever become enlightened speak the same thing, only their languages may differ. 


THE END. 



Chapter 11: Techniques to penetrate the inner centers 


15. CLOSING THE SEVEN OPENINGS OF THE HEAD WITH YOUR HANDS, A 
SPACE BETWEEN YOUR EYES BECOMES ALL INCLUSIVE. 

16. BLESSED ONE, AS SENSES ARE ABSORBED IN THE HEART, REACH THE 
CENTER OF THE LOTUS. 

17. UNMINDING MIND, KEEP IN THE MIDDLE - UNTIL. 

Man is as if he is a circle without a center. His life is superficial; his life is only on the 
circumference. You live on the outside, you never live within. You cannot, unless a 
center is found. You cannot live within, really you have no within. You are without a 
center, you have only the without. That is why we go on talking about the within, about 
how to go in, how to know oneself, how to penetrate inwards, but these words do not 
carry any authentic meaning. You know the meaning of the words, but you cannot feel 
what they mean because you are never in. Y ou have never been in. 

Even when you are alone, in your mind you are in a crowd. When no one is there outside, 
still you are not within. You go on thinking of others; you go on moving outwards. Even 
while asleep you are dreaming of others, you are not within. Only in very deep sleep, 
when there is no dreaming, are you within; but then you become unconscious. Remember 
this fact: when you are conscious you are never within, and when you are within in deep 
sleep you become unconscious. So your whole consciousness consists of the without. 

And whenever we talk about going within, the words are understood but the meaning is 
not — because the meaning is not carried by the words, the meaning comes through 
experience. 

Words are without meaning. When I say ’within’, you understand the word — but only the 
word, not the meaning. You do not know what within is, because consciously you have 
never been within. Your mind is constantly outgoing. You do not have any feel of what 
the inner means or what it is. 

That is what I mean when I say that you are a circle without a center — a circumference 
only. The center is there, but you drop into it only when you are not conscious. 

Otherwise, when you are conscious you move outwards, and because of this your life is 
never intense; it cannot be. It is just lukewarm. You are alive as if dead, or both 
simultaneously. You are deadly alive — living a dead-like life. You are existing at the 
minimum — not at the maximum peak, but at the minimum. You can say, "I am," that is 
all. You are not dead; that is what you mean by being alive. 

But life can never be known at the circumference. Life can be known only at the center. 
On the circumference only lukewann life is possible. So really, you live a very 
inauthentic life, and then even death becomes inauthentic — because one who has not 
really lived cannot really die. Only authentic life can become authentic death. 

Then death is beautiful: anything authentic is beautiful. Even life, if it is inauthentic, is 
bound to be ugly. And your life is ugly, just rotten. Nothing happens. You simply go on 
waiting, hoping that something will happen somewhere, someday. 

At this very moment there is just emptiness, and every moment has been like that in the 
past — just empty. You are just waiting for the future, hoping that something will happen 
someday, just hoping. Then every moment is lost. It has not happened in the past, so it is 



not going to happen in the future either. It can happen only in this moment, but then you 
will need an intensity, a penetrating intensity. Then you will need to be rooted in the 
center. Then the periphery will not do. Then you will have to find your moment. Really, 
we never think about what we are, and whatsoever we think is just hokum. 

Once I lived with a professor on a university campus. One day he came and he was very 
upset, so I asked, "What is the matter?" 

He said, "I feel feverish." 

I was reading something, so I said to him, "Go to sleep. Take this blanket and rest." 

He went to the bed, but after a few minutes he said, "No, I am not feverish. Really, I am 
angry. Someone has insulted me, and I feel much violence against him." 

So I said, "Why did you say that you are feeling feverish?" 

He said, "I couldn’t acknowledge the fact that I was angry, but really I am angry. 

There is no fever." He threw off the blanket. 

Then I said, "Okay, if you are angry then take this pillow. Beat it and be violent with it. 
Let your violence be released. And if the pillow is not enough, then I am available. You 
can beat me, and let this anger be thrown out." 

He laughed, but the laughter was false — just painted on his face. It came on his face and 
then disappeared, it never penetrated in. It never came from within; it was just a painted 
smile. But the laughter, even false laughter, created a gap. He said, "Not really... I am not 
really angry. Someone said something before others, and I felt very much embarrassed. 
Really, this is the thing." 

So I said to him, "You have changed your statement about your own feelings three times 
within half an hour. You said you were feeling feverish, then you said you were angry, 
and now you say that you are not angry but just embarrassed. Which one is real?" 

He said, "Really, I am embarrassed." 

I said, "Which? When you said you were feverish, you were also certain about that. 

When you said you were angry, you were also certain about that. And you are also 
certain about this. Are you one person or many persons? For how long a time is this 
certainty going to continue?" 

So the man said, "Really, I do not know what I am feeling. What it is, I do not know. I 
am simply disturbed. Whether to call it anger or embarrassment or what, I do not know. 

And this is not the moment to discuss it with me." He said, "Leave me alone. You have 
made my situation philosophical. You are discussing what is real, what is authentic, and I 
am feeling very much disturbed." 

This is not only with some other person — X, Y or Z — it is with you. You are never 
certain, because certainty comes from being centered. You are not even certain about 
yourself. It is impossible to be certain about others when you are never certain about 
yourself. There is just a vagueness, a cloudiness; nothing is certain. 

Someone was here just a few days ago, and he said to me, "I am in love with someone, 
and I want to marry her." I looked into his eyes deeply for a few minutes without saying 
anything. He became restless and he said, "Why are you looking at me? I feel so 
awkward." I continued looking. He said, "Do you think that my love is false?" I didn’t say 
anything, I just continued looking. He said, "Why do you feel that this marriage is not 
going to be good?" He said by himself, "I had not really thought it over very much, and 
that is why I have come to you. Really, I do not know whether I am in love or not." 

I had not said a single word. I was just looking into his eyes. But he became restless, and 



things which were inside began to come up, to bubble up. 

You are not certain, you cannot be certain about anything; neither about your love, nor 
about your hate, nor about your friendships. 

There is nothing which you can be certain about because you have no center. Without a 
center there is no certainty. All your feelings of certainty are false and momentary. One 
moment you will feel that you are certain, but the next moment the certainty will have 
gone because in each moment you have a different center. You do not have a permanent 
center, a crystallized center. Each moment is an atomic center, so each moment has its 
own self. 

George Gurdjieff used to say that man is a crowd. Personality is just a deception because 
you are not a person, you are many persons. So when one person speaks in you, that is a 
momentary center. The next moment there is another. With every moment, with every 
atomic situation, you feel certain, and you never become aware that you are just a flux — 
many waves without any center. Then in the end you will feel that life has been just a 
wastage. It is bound to be. There is just a wastage, just a wandering — purposeless, 
meaningless. 

Tantra, yoga, religion... their basic concern is how first to discover the center, how first to 
be an individual. They are concerned with how to find the center which persists in every 
situation. Then, as life goes on moving without, as the flux of life goes on and on, as 
waves come and go, the center persists inside. Then you remain one — rooted, centered. 
These sutras are techniques to find the center. 

The center is already there, because there is no possibility of being a circle without a 
center. The circle can exist only with a center, so the center is only forgotten. It is there, 
but we are not aware. It is there, but we do not know how to look at it. We do not know 
how to focus the consciousness on it. 

The third technique about centering: CLOSING THE SEVEN OPENINGS OF THE 
HEAD WITH YOUR HANDS, A SPACE BETWEEN YOUR EYES BECOMES ALL 
INCLUSIVE. 

This is one of the oldest techniques — very much used, and one of the simplest also. 

Close all the openings of the head — eyes, ears, nose, mouth. When all the openings of 
the head are closed, your consciousness, which is continuously flowing out, is stopped 
suddenly: it cannot move out. 

You may not have observed, but even if you stop your breathing for a moment, suddenly 
your mind will stop — because with breathing mind moves on. That is a conditioning with 
the mind. You must understand what 'conditioning’ means, then only will this sutra be 
easy to understand. 

Pavlov, one of the most famous Russian psychologists, has created this tenn 
"conditioning" — or "conditioned reflex" — a day-to-day word used all over the world. 
Everyone who is acquainted with psychology even a little knows the word. Two 
processes of thought — any two processes — can become so associated that if you start 
with one, the other is also triggered. 


This is the famous Pavlovian example. Pavlov worked with a dog. He found that if you 
put dog food before a dog, its saliva begins to flow. The tongue of the dog comes out and 



he begins to get ready, prepared for eating. This is natural. When he is seeing the food, or 
even imagining the food, saliva starts flowing. But Pavlov conditioned this process with 
another. Whenever the saliva would start to flow and the food was there, he would do 
some other things. For example, he would ring a bell, and the dog would listen to the bell 
ringing. For fifteen days, whenever the food was placed, the bell would ring. Then on the 
sixteenth day food was not placed before the dog, only the bell was rung. But still the 
saliva started flowing and the tongue came out, as if the food was there. 

But there was no food, only the bell ringing. There is no natural association between the 
bell ringing and saliva, the natural association is with food. But now the continuous 
ringing of the bell had become associated with it, and even the ringing of the bell would 
start the process. 

According to Pavlov — and he is right — our whole life is a conditioned process. The 
mind is a conditioning. Thus, if you stop something in the conditioning, every other 
associated thing also stops. 

For example, you have never thought without breathing. Thinking has always been with 
breathing. 

You are not conscious of breathing, but breathing is there continuously, day and night. 
Every thought, every thinking process is associated with breathing. If you stop your 
breathing suddenly, thought will also stop. And if all the seven holes — the seven 
openings of the head — are closed, your consciousness suddenly cannot move out. It 
remains in, and that remaining in creates a space between your eyes. That space is known 
as the third eye. 

If all the openings of the head are closed you cannot move out, because you have always 
been moving out from these openings. You remain in, and with your consciousness 
remaining in it becomes concentrated between these two eyes, between these two 
ordinary eyes. It remains in between these two eyes, focused. That spot is known as the 
third eye. 

This space BECOMES ALL INCLUSIVE. This sutra says that in this space everything is 
included; the whole existence is included. If you can feel the space, you have felt all. 
Once you can feel inside this space between the two eyes, then you have known 
existence, the totality of it, because this inner space is all inclusive. Nothing is left out of 
it. 

The Upanishads say, "Knowing the one, one knows all." These two eyes can only see the 
finite. The third eye sees the infinite. These two eyes can only see the material. The third 
eye sees the immaterial, the spiritual. With these two eyes you can never feel the energy, 
you can never see the energy; you can see only matter. 

But with the third eye, energy as such is seen. 

This closing of the openings is a way of centering, because once the stream of 
consciousness cannot flow out, it remains at its source. That source of consciousness is 
the third eye. If you are centered at the third eye, many things happen. The first is 
discovering that the whole world is in you. 

Swami Ramateertha used to say that "The sun moves in me, the stars move in me, the 
moon rises in me. The whole universe is in me." When he said this for the first time, his 
disciples thought he had gone crazy. How can stars be in Ramateertha? 

He was talking about the third eye, the inner space. When for the first time the inner 
space becomes illumined, this is the feeling. When you see that everything is in you, you 



become the universe. 

The third eye is not part of your physical body. The space between our two eyes is not a 
space which is confined in your body. It is the infinite space which has penetrated in you. 
Once this space is known, you will never be the same person again. The moment you 
know this inner space, you have known the deathless. Then there is no death. 

When you know this space for the first time, your life will be authentic, intense, for the 
first time really alive. Now no security is needed, now no fear is possible. Now you 
cannot be killed. Now nothing can be taken away from you. 

Now the whole universe belongs to you: you are the universe. Those who have known 
this inner space, they have cried in ecstasy, "AHAM BRAHMASMI! I am the universe, I 
am the existence." 

The Sufi mystic Mansoor was murdered only because of this experience of the third eye. 
When for the first time he became aware of this inner space, he started crying, "I am 
God!" In India he would have been worshipped, because India has known many, many 
persons who have come to know this inner space of the third eye. But in a Mohammedan 
country it was difficult. And Mansoor's statement that "I am God — ANA'L HAK!" — 
was taken to be something anti-religious, because Mohammedanism cannot conceive that 
man and God can become one. Man is man — the created — and God is the creator, so 
how can the created become the creator? So this statement of Mansoor's, "I am God," 
could not be understood; thus, he was murdered. But when he was being murdered, 
killed, he was laughing. So someone asked, "Why are you laughing, Mansoor?" 

Mansoor is reported to have said, "I am laughing because you are not killing me, and you 
cannot kill me. You are deceived by this body, but I am not this body. I am the creator of 
this universe, and it was my finger which moved this whole universe in the beginning." 

In India he would have been understood easily. The language has been known for 
centuries and centuries. 

We have known that a moment comes when the inner space is known. Then one simply 
goes mad. And this realization is so certain that even if you kill a Mansoor he will not 
change his statement — because really, you cannot kill him as far as he is concerned. Now 
he has become the whole. There is no possibility of destroying him. 

After Mansoor, Sufis learned that it is good to be silent. So in Sufi tradition, after 
Mansoor, it has been consistently taught to disciples, "Whenever you come to the third 
eye, remain silent and do not say anything. Whenever this happens, then keep quiet. Do 
not say anything, or just go on formally saying things which people believe." 

So Islam has now two traditions. One is just the ordinary, the outward, the exoteric; 
another, the real Islam, is Sufism — the esoteric. But Sufis remain silent, because since 
Mansoor they have learned that to talk in that language which comes when the third eye 
opens is to be unnecessarily in difficulty — and it helps no one. 

This sutra says: CLOSING THE SEVEN OPENINGS OF THE HEAD WITH YOUR 
HANDS, A SPACE BETWEEN YOUR EYES BECOMES ALL INCLUSIVE. Your 
inner space becomes all the space. 

The fourth technique: 

BLESSED ONE, AS SENSES ARE ABSORBED IN THE HEART, REACH THE 
CENTER OF THE LOTUS. 

Every technique is useful for a certain type of mind. The technique we have been 



discussing, the third — closing the openings of the head — can be used by many. 


It is very simple and not very dangerous. You can use it very easily, and there is also no 
need to close the openings with your hands. Closing is needed, so you can use ear plugs 
and you can use a mask for the eyes. The real thing is to close the openings of your head 
completely for a few moments — for a few moments or for a few seconds. Try it. Do not 
practice it — only suddenly is it helpful. When it is sudden it is helpful. When lying in 
your bed, suddenly close all your openings for a few seconds, and see what is happening 
within. 

When you feel suffocated, go on — unless it becomes absolutely unbearable, because 
breathing will be closed. Go on, unless it becomes absolutely unbearable. And when it is 
absolutely unbearable, you will not be able to close the openings any more, so you need 
not worry. The inner force will throw all the openings open. So as far as you are 
concerned, continue. When the suffocation comes, that is the moment — because the 
suffocation will break the old associations. If you can continue for a few moments more, 
it would be good. It will be difficult and arduous, and you will feel that you are going to 
die — but do not be afraid, because you cannot die. You cannot die just by closing the 
openings. But when you feel now you are going to die, that is the moment. 

If you can persist in that moment, suddenly everything will be illumined. 

You will feel the inner space which goes on spreading, and the whole is included in it. 
Then open your openings. Go on trying it again and again. Whenever you have time, try 
it. But do not practice it. You can practice stopping the breath for a few moments. But 
practice will not help, a sudden jerk is needed. In that jerk, the flow into your old 
channels of consciousness stops, and a new thing becomes possible. 

Many practice this even today — many persons all over India. But they practice it, and it 
is a sudden method. If you practice, then nothing will happen. If I throw you out of this 
room suddenly, your thoughts will stop. But if we practice it daily, then nothing will 
happen. It will become a mechanical habit. So do not practice it. Just try it whenever you 
can. Then suddenly, by and by, you will become aware of an inner space. That inner 
space comes only to your consciousness when you are on the verge of death. When you 
are feeling, "Now I cannot continue for a single moment; now death is near," that is the 
right moment. Persist! Do not be afraid. Death is not so easy. At least up until now not a 
single person has died using this method. 

There are built-in securities, that is why you cannot die. Before death one becomes 
unconscious. If you are conscious and feeling that you are going to die, do not be afraid. 
You are still conscious, so you cannot die. And if you become unconscious, then your 
breath will start. 

Then you cannot prevent it. So you can use ear plugs, etc. Hands are not necessary. 
Hands were used only because if you are falling into unconsciousness, the hands will 
become loose and the life process will resume again by itself. 

You can use plugs for the ears, a mask for the eyes, but do not use any plugs for the nose 
or for the mouth, because then it can become fatal. At least the nose should remain open. 
Close it with your hands. Then when you are actually falling into unconsciousness, the 
hands will become loose and the breathing will come in. So there is a built-in security. 
This method can be used by many. 

The fourth method is for those who have a very developed heart, who are loving, feeling 



types, emotional. BLESSED ONE, AS SENSES ARE ABSORBED IN THE HEART, 
REACH THE CENTER OF THE LOTUS. This method can be used only by heart- 
oriented persons. Therefore, understand first what is a heart-oriented person. Then this 
method can be understood. 

With one who is heart-oriented, everything leads to the heart, everything. If you love 
him, his heart will feel your love, not his head. A head-oriented person, even when loved, 
feels it cerebrally, in the head. He thinks about it; he plans about it. Even his love is a 
deliberate effort of the mind. 

A feeling type lives without reasoning. Of course, the heart has its own reasons, but it 
lives without reasoning. 

If someone asks you, "Why do you love?" if you can answer why, then you are a head- 
oriented person. And if you say, "I do not know, I just love," you are a heart-oriented 
person. 

Even if you say that someone is beautiful and that is why you love, it is a reason. For a 
heart-oriented person, someone is beautiful because they love him. The head-oriented 
person loves someone because he is beautiful or she is beautiful. The reason comes first, 
and then comes love. For the heart-oriented, love comes first and then everything else 
follows. The feeling type is centered in the heart, so whatsoever happens touches his 
heart. 

Just observe yourself. In your life, many things are happening every moment. Where do 
they touch you? You are passing, and a beggar crosses the street. Where are you touched 
by the beggar? Do you start thinking about economic conditions? Do you start thinking 
about how begging should be stopped by law, or about how a socialist society should be 
created so that there are no beggars? This is a head-oriented man. This beggar becomes 
just a datum for him. His heart is not touched, only his head is touched. He is not going to 
do something for this beggar here and now — no! He will do something for communism, 
he will do something for the future, for some utopia. He may even devote his whole life, 
but he cannot do anything just now. 

The mind is always doing in the future; the heart is always here and now. 

A heart-oriented person will do something now for this beggar. This beggar is an 
individual, not a datum. But for a head-oriented man, this beggar is just a mathematical 
figure. For him, how begging should be stopped is the problem, not that this beggar 
should be helped — that is irrelevant. So just watch yourself. In many situations, watch 
how you act. Are you concerned with the heart or are you concerned with the head? 

If you feel that you are a heart-oriented person, then this method will be very helpful to 
you. But know well that everyone is trying to deceive himself that he is heart-oriented. 
Everyone tries to feel that he is a very loving person, a feeling type — because love is 
such a basic need that no one can feel at ease if he sees that he has no love, no loving 
heart. So everyone goes on thinking and believing this, but belief will not do. Observe 
very impartially, as if you are observing someone else, and then decide — because there is 
no need to deceive yourself, and it will be of no help. Even if you deceive yourself, you 
cannot deceive the technique, so when you do this technique you will feel that nothing is 
happening. 

People come to me, and I ask them to what type they belong. They do not know really. 
They have never thought about it — about what type they are. They have just vague 
conceptions about themselves, and those conceptions are really just imagination. 



They have certain ideals and self-images, and they think — or rather, they wish — that 
they are those images. They are not, and often it happens that they prove to be just the 
contrary. 

There is a reason for it. A person who insists that he is a heart-oriented person may be 
insisting only because he feels the absence of heart, and he is afraid. He cannot become 
aware of the fact that he has no heart. 

Look at the world! If everyone is right about his heart, then this world cannot be so 
heartless. This world is our total, so somewhere, something is wrong. Heart is not there. 
Really, it was never trained to be there. Mind is trained, so it is there. There are schools, 
colleges, universities to train the mind, but there is no place to train the heart. And the 
training of the mind pays, but the training of the heart is dangerous. If your heart is 
trained you will become absolutely unfit for this world, because the whole world is run 
through reason. 

If your heart is trained, you will just be absurd in the context of the whole pattern. When 
the whole world will be moving to the right, you will be moving to the left. Everywhere 
you will feel difficulty. Really, the more man becomes civilized, the less and less the 
heart is trained. We have really forgotten about it — that it exists, or that there is any need 
for its training. That is why such methods, which can work very easily, never work. 


Most of the religions are based on heart-oriented techniques — Christianity, Islam, 
Hinduism and many others. They are based on the heart-oriented person. The older the 
religion, the more it is based on heart-oriented persons. Really, when the Vedas were 
written and Hinduism was developing, there were people who were heart-oriented. And 
to find a mind-oriented person then was really difficult. But now the reverse is a problem. 
You cannot pray, because prayer is a heart-oriented technique. That is why even in the 
West, where Christianity — which is a religion of prayer — prevails, prayer has become 
difficult. Particularly, the Catholic Church is prayer-oriented. 

There exists no such thing as meditation for Christianity, but now even in the West 
people are becoming crazy about meditation. No one is going to church — and even if 
someone is going, it is just a formal thing, just Sunday religion — because the heart- 
oriented prayer has become absolutely unknown for man as he is in the West. 

Meditation is more mind-oriented, prayer is more heart-oriented. Or we can say that 
prayer is a technique of meditation for heart-oriented persons. This technique is also for 
heart- oriented persons: BLESSED ONE, AS SENSES ARE ABSORBED IN THE 
HEART, REACH THE CENTER OF THE LOTUS. 

So what is to be done in this technique? AS SENSES ARE ABSORBED IN THE 
HEART. 

.. Try! Many ways are possible. You touch someone: if you are a heart-oriented person 
the touch immediately goes to your heart, and you can feel the quality. If you take the 
hand of a person who is head-oriented, the hand will be cold — not just cold, but the very 
quality will be cold. A deadness, a certain deadness will be in the hand. If the person is 
heart-oriented then there is a certain warmth, then his hand will really melt with you. Y ou 
will feel a certain thing flowing from his hand to you, and there will be a meeting, a 
communication of warmth. 

This warmth comes from the heart. It can never come from the head, because the head is 
always cool... cold, calculative. The heart is warm, non-calculative. The head always 



thinks about how to take more; the heart always feels how to give more. That warmth is 
just a giving — a giving of energy, a giving of inner vibrations, a giving of life. That is 
why you feel a different quality in it. If the person really embraces you, you will feel a 
deep melting with him. 

Touch! Close your eyes; touch anything. Touch your beloved or your lover, touch your 
child or your mother or your friend, or touch a tree or a flower, or just touch the earth. 
Close your eyes and feel a communication from your heart to the earth, or to your 
beloved. Feel that your hand is just your heart stretched out to touch the earth. Let the 
feeling of touch be related to the heart. 


You are listening to music. Do not listen to it from the head. Just forget your head and 
feel that you are headless, there is no head at all. It is good to have a picture of yourself 
without the head in your bedroom. Concentrate on it; you are without the head, do not 
allow the head to come in. While listening to music, listen to it from the heart. Feel the 
music coming to your heart; let your heart vibrate with it. Let your senses be joined to the 
heart, not to the head. Try this with all the senses, and feel more and more that every 
sense goes into the heart and dissolves into it. 

BLESSED ONE, AS SENSES ARE ABSORBED IN THE HEART, REACH THE 
CENTER OF THE LOTUS. The heart is the lotus. Every sense is just the opening of the 
lotus, the petals of the lotus. Try to relate your senses to the heart first. Secondly, always 
think that every sense goes deep down into the heart and becomes absorbed in it. When 
these two things become established, only then will your senses begin to help you. They 
will lead you to the heart, and your heart will become a lotus. 

This lotus of the heart will give you a centering. Once you know the center of the heart, it 
is very easy to fall down into the navel center, very easy. This sutra does not even 
mention this — there is no need. If you are really absorbed in the heart totally, and reason 
has stopped working, then you will fall down. 

From the heart, the door is opened toward the navel. Only from the head is it difficult to 
go toward the navel. Or if you are between the two, between the heart and the head, then 
too it is difficult to go to the navel. Once you are absorbed in the navel, you have 
suddenly fallen beyond the heart. You have fallen into the navel center which is the basic 
one — the original. 

That is why prayer helps. That is why Jesus could say, "Love is God." It is not exactly 
right, but love is the door. If you are deeply in love — with anyone, it doesn’t matter 
who... Love matters; the object of love doesn’t matter. If you are in deep love with 
anyone, so much in love that there is no relationship from the head, if just the heart is 
functioning, then this love will become prayer and your beloved or your lover will 
become divine. 

Really, the eye of the heart cannot see anything else, and that is why it happens with 
ordinary love also. If you fall in love with someone, that someone becomes divine. It may 
not prove to be very lasting, and it may not prove to be a very deep thing, but in that 
moment the lover or the beloved becomes divine. The head will destroy the whole thing 
sooner or later, because the head will come in and try to manage everything. Even love 
has to be managed. And once the head manages, everything is destroyed. 

If you can be in love without the head's management coming in, your love is bound to 
become prayer and your beloved will become the door. 



Your love will make you centered in the heart — and once you are centered in the heart, 
you automatically fall down deep into the navel center. 


The fifth technique: 

UNMINDING MIND, KEEP IN THE MIDDLE - UNTIL. 

Only this much is the sutra. Just like any scientific sutra it is short, but even these few 
words can transform your life totally. UNMINDING MIND, KEEP IN THE MIDDLE — 
UNTIL. 

KEEP IN THE MIDDLE... Buddha developed his whole technique of meditation on this 
sutra. His path is known as MAJJHIM NIKAYA — the middle path. Buddha says, 
"Remain always in the middle — in everything." 

One Prince Shrown took initiation, Buddha initiated him into sannyas. That prince was a 
rare man, and when he took sannyas, when he was initiated, his whole kingdom was just 
amazed. The kingdom couldn’t believe it, the people couldn’t believe that Prince Shrown 
could become a sannyasin. No one had ever even imagined it, as he was a man of this 
world — indulging in everything, indulging to the extreme. Wine and women were his 
whole milieu. 

Then suddenly Buddha came to the town, and the prince went to see him for a 
DARSHAN — A spiritual encounter. He fell at Buddha's feet and he said, "Initiate me. I 
will leave this world." Those who had come with him were not even aware... this was so 
sudden. So they asked Buddha, "What is happening? This is a miracle. 

Shrown is not that type of man, and he has lived very luxuriously. Up to now we couldn’t 
even imagine that Shrown is going to take sannyas, so what has happened? You have 
done something." 

Buddha said, "I have not done anything. Mind can move easily from one extreme to the 
other. That is the way of the mind — to move from one extreme to another. So Shrown is 
not doing something new. It is to be expected. Because you do not know the law of the 
mind, that is why you are so much taken aback." 

The mind moves from one extreme to another, that is the way of the mind. So it happens 
every day: a person who was mad after wealth renounces everything, becomes a naked 
fakir. We think, "What a miracle!" But it is nothing — just the ordinary law. A person 
who was not mad after wealth cannot be expected to renounce, because only from one 
extreme can you move to another — just like a pendulum, from one extreme to the other. 
So a person who was after wealth, mad after wealth, will become mad against it, but the 
madness will remain — that is the mind. A man who lived just for sex may become a 
celibate, may move into isolation, but the madness will remain. Before he was living only 
for sex, now he will be living only against sex — but the attitude, the approach, remains 
the same. 

So a BRAHMACHARI, a celibate, is not really beyond sex; his whole mind is sex- 
oriented. 

He is against, but not beyond. The way of beyond is always in the middle, it is never at 
the extreme. So Buddha says, "This could have been expected. No miracle has happened. 
This is how mind works." 

Shrown became a beggar, a sannyasin. He became a BHIKKHU, a monk, and soon other 
disciples of Buddha observed that he was moving to the other extreme. Buddha never 
asked anyone to be naked, but Shrown became naked. Buddha was not for nakedness. He 



said, "That is just another extreme." 

There are persons who live for clothes as if that is their life, and there are other persons 
who become naked — but both believe in the same thing. Buddha never taught nakedness, 
but Shrown became naked. He was the only disciple of Buddha who was naked. He 
became very, very self-torturing. Buddha allowed one meal every day for the sannyasins, 
but Shrown would take only one meal on alternate days. He became lean and thin. While 
all the other disciples would sit for meditation under trees, in the shade, he would never 
sit under any tree. He would always remain in the hot sun. He was a beautiful man and he 
had a very lovely body, but within six months no one could recognize that he was the 
same man. He became ugly, dark, black, burned. 

Buddha went to Shrown one night and asked him, "Shrown, I have heard that when you 
were a prince, before initiation, you used to play on a VEENA, a sitar, and you were a 
great musician. 

So I have come to ask you one question. If the strings of the veena are very loose, what 
happens?" Shrown said, "If the strings are very loose, then no music is possible." And 
then Buddha said, "And if the strings are very tight, too tight, then what happens?" 
Shrown said, "Then too music cannot be produced. The strings must be in the middle — 
neither loose nor tight, but just exactly in the middle." Shrown said, "It is easy to play the 
veena, but only a master can set these strings right, in the middle." 

So Buddha said, "This much I have to say to you, after observing you for the last six 
months — that in life also the music comes only when the strings are neither loose nor 
tight, but just in the middle. So to renounce is easy, but only a master knows how to be in 
the middle. So Shrown, be a master, and let these strings of life be just in the middle — in 
everything. Do not go to this extreme, do not go to that one. Everything has two 
extremes, but you remain just in the middle." 

But the mind is very unmindful. That is why the sutra says, UNMINDING MIND... You 
will hear this, you will understand this, but the mind will not take note. The mind will 
always go on choosing extremes. 

The extreme has a fascination for the mind. Why? Because in the middle, mind dies. 

Look at a pendulum: if you have any old clock, look at the pendulum. The pendulum can 
go on moving the whole day if it goes to the extremes. 

When it goes to the left it is gathering momentum to go to the right. When it goes toward 
the right, do not think that it is going toward the right — it is accumulating momentum to 
go toward the left. So the extremes are right-left, right-left. 

Let the pendulum stay in the middle, then the whole momentum is lost. Then the 
pendulum has no energy, because the energy comes from one of the extremes. Then that 
extreme throws it toward another, then again, and it is a circle... the pendulum goes on 
moving. Let it be in the middle, and the whole movement will then stop. 

Mind is just like a pendulum and every day, if you observe, you will come to know this. 
You decide one thing on one extreme, and then you move to another. You are angry; then 
you repent. You decide, "No, this is enough. Now I will never be angry." But you do not 
see the extreme. 

"Never" is an extreme. How are you so certain that you will never be angry? What are 
you saying? Think once more — never? Then go to the past and remember how many 
times you have decided that "I will never be angry." When you say, "I will never be 
angry," you do not know that by being angry you have accumulated momentum to go to 



the other extreme. 

Now you are feeling repentant, you are feeling bad. Your self-image is disturbed, shaken. 
Now you cannot say you are a good man, you cannot say that you are a religious man. 

You have been angry, and how can a religious man be angry? How can a good man be 
angry? So you repent to regain your goodness again. At least in your own eyes you can 
feel at ease — that you have repented and you have decided that now there will be no 
more anger. The shaken image has come back to the old status quo. Now you feel at ease, 
you have moved to another extreme. 

But the mind that says, "Now I will never be angry," will again be angry. And when you 
are again angry, you will forget completely your repentance, your decision — everything. 
After anger, again the decision will come and the repentance will come, and you will 
never feel the deception of it. This has been so always. 

Mind moves from anger to repentance, from repentance to anger. Remain in the middle. 
Do not be angry and do not repent. If you have been angry, then please, at least do this: 
do not repent. Do not move to the other extreme. Remain in the middle. Say, "I have been 
angry and I am a bad man, a violent man. I have been angry. This is how I am." But do 
not repent; do not move to the other extreme. Remain in the middle. If you can remain, 
you will not gather the momentum, the energy to be angry again. 

So this sutra says, UNMINDING MIND, KEEP IN THE MIDDLE - UNTIL. And what 
is meant by UNTIL? Until you explode! Keep in the middle until the mind dies. Keep in 
the middle until there is no mind. 

So, UNMINDING MIND, KEEP IN THE MIDDLE - UNTIL there is no mind. If mind 
is at the extremes, then the middle will be no-mind. 

But this is the most difficult thing in the world to do. It looks easy, it looks simple; it may 
appear as if you can do this. And you will feel good if you think that there is no need for 
any repentance. Try this, and then you will know that when you have been angry the 
mind will insist on repenting. 

Husbands and wives continue to quarrel, and for centuries and centuries there have been 
counsellors, advisors, great men who have been teaching how to live and love — but they 
go on quarreling. Freud, for the first time, became aware of the phenomenon that 
whenever you are in love — so-called love — you are also in hate. In the morning it is 
love, in the evening it is hate, and the pendulum goes on moving. Every husband, every 
wife knows this, but Freud has a very uncanny insight. Freud says that if a couple has 
stopped fighting, know well that love has died. 

That love which existed with hate and fight cannot remain, so if you see a couple never 
fighting, do not think that this is the ideal couple. It means no couple at all. They are 
living parallel, but not with each other. They are parallel lines never meeting anywhere, 
not even to fight. They are both alone together — parallel. 

Mind has to move to the opposite, so psychology now gives better advice. 

The advice is better, more deep, more penetrating. It says that if you really want to love — 
with the mind — then do not be afraid to fight. Really, you must fight authentically so you 
can move to the other extreme of authentic love. So when you are fighting with your 
wife, do not avoid it; otherwise the love will also be avoided. When the time for fight is 
there, fight until the end. Then by evening you will be able to love: the mind will have 
gathered momentum. The ordinary love cannot exist without fight because there is a 



movement of the mind. Only a love which is not of the mind can exist without fight, but 
then it is a different thing altogether. 

A Buddha loving... that is a different thing altogether. But if Buddha comes to love you, 
you will not feel good because there will be no fault in it. It will be simply sweet and 
sweet and sweet — and boring, because the spice comes from fight. A Buddha cannot be 
angry, he can only love. You will not feel his love because you can feel only opposites; 
you can feel it only in contrast. 

When Buddha came back to his home town after twelve years, his wife wouldn’t come to 
receive him. The whole city gathered to receive him except his wife. Buddha laughed, 
and he said to his chief disciple, Ananda, "Yashodhara has not come. I kn ow her well. It 
seems she still loves me. She is proud, and she feels hurt. I was thinking that twelve years 
is a long time and she might not be in love now, but it seems she is still in love — still 
angry. 

She has not come to receive me. I will have to go to the house." 

So Buddha went. Ananda was with him; it was a condition with Ananda. When Ananda 
took initiation he made a condition with Buddha, to which Buddha agreed, that he would 
always remain with him. He was an elder cousin-brother, so Buddha had to concede. 
Ananda followed him into the house, into the palace, so Buddha said, "At least for this 
you remain behind and do not come with me, because she will be furious. I am coming 
back after twelve years, and I just ran away without even telling her. She is still angry, so 
do not come with me; otherwise she will feel that I have not even allowed her to say 
anything. She must be feeling to say many things, so let her be angry, do not come with 
me." 

Buddha went in. Of course, Yashodhara was just a volcano. She erupted, exploded. She 
started crying and weeping and saying things. Buddha stayed there, waited there, and by 
and by she cooled down and realized that Buddha had not even uttered a single word. She 
wiped her eyes and looked at Buddha, and Buddha said, "I have come to say that I have 
gained something, I have known something, I have realized something. If you become 
cool I can give you the message — the truth that I have realized. I have waited so much in 
order that you could go through a catharsis. Twelve years is a long affair. You must have 
gathered many wounds, and your anger is understandable; I expected this. 

That shows that you are still in love with me. But there is a love beyond this love, and 
only because of that love have I come back to tell you something." 

But Yashodhara could not feel that love. It is difficult to feel it because it is so silent. It is 
so silent, it is as if absent. When mind ceases, then a different love happens. But that love 
has no opposite to it. When mind ceases, really, whatsoever happens has no opposite to 
it. With the mind there is always the polar opposite, and mind moves like a pendulum. 
This sutra is wonderful, and miracles are possible through it: UNMINDING MIND, 
KEEP IN THE MIDDLE - UNTIL. 

So try it. And this sutra is for your whole life. You cannot practice it sometimes, you 
have to be aware continuously. Doing, walking, eating, in relationship, everywhere — 
remain in the middle. Try at least, and you will feel a certain calmness developing, a 
tranquility coming to you, a quiet center growing within you. 

Even if you are not successful in being exactly in the middle, try to be in the middle. By 
and by you will have the feel of what middle means. Whatsoever may be the case — hate 
or love, anger or repentance — always remember the polar opposites and remain in 



between. And sooner or later you will stumble upon the exact middle point. 

Once you know it you can never forget it again, because that middle point is beyond the 
mind. 

That middle point is all that spirituality means. 

THE END. 



Chapter 12: Beyond mind to the source 


There are many questions. The first question: 

Question 1 

LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT WITH THE DAWN OF ENLIGHTENMENT, THE 
SPACE BETWEEN THE TWO EYEBROWS, THE THIRD EYE, BECOMES ALL 
INCLUSIVE. THE OTHER DAY YOU SAID THAT ALL ENLIGHTENED ONES 
ARE CENTERED IN THEIR NAVEL, AND ON STILL ANOTHER DAY YOU HAVE 
EXPLAINED ABOUT THE SILVER CORD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SPINE. THUS, 
WE KNOW ABOUT THREE BASIC THINGS AS THE ROOTS OF MAN. PLEASE 
EXPLAIN THE RELATIVE SIGNIFICANCE AND RELATIVE FUNCTIONS OF 
THESE THREE THINGS: THE NAVEL CENTER, THE THIRD EYE AND THE 
SILVER CORD. 

The basic thing to be understood about these centers is this: whenever you are centered 
within, the moment you are centered, whatsoever may be the center, you fall down to the 
navel. If you are centered at the heart, the heart is irrelevant — centering is meaningful. 

Or if you are centered at the third eye, the third eye is not basic; the basic point is that 
your consciousness is centered. So whatsoever may be the point of centering, once you 
are centered — anywhere — you will fall down to the navel. 

The basic existential center is the navel, but your functional center may be anywhere. 
From that center you will fall down automatically. There is no need to think about it. And 
this is not so only with the heart center or the third eye center. If you are really centered 
in reason, in the head, you will also fall down to the navel center. 


Centering is the thing, but it is very difficult to be centered in reason, in the head. There 
are problems. The heart center is based on love, faith, surrender. The head is based on 
doubt and negation. 

To be totally negative is really impossible; to be totally in doubt is impossible. But it has 
happened sometimes, because the impossible also happens. Sometimes, if your doubt 
comes to such an intensity that nothing remains which is believed, not even the doubting 
mind is believed, if the doubt turns upon itself and everything becomes doubt, then you 
will fall down to the navel center immediately. But this is a very rare phenomenon. 

Trust is easier. You can trust totally more easily than you can doubt totally. You can say 
yes totally more easily than you can say no. So even if you are centered at the head, the 
CENTERING is what is basic: you will fall down to your existential roots. So be 
centered anywhere. The spine will do; the heart will do; the head will do. Or you can also 
find other centers in the body. 

Buddhists talk about nine CHAKRAS — nine dynamic centers in the body. Hindus talk 
about seven CHAKRAS — seven dynamic centers in the body. Tibetans talk about 
thirteen centers in the body. You can find your own also, there is no need to study about 
these. 

Any point in the body can be made an object of centering. For example, tantra uses the 
sex center for centering. 

Tantra works with bringing your consciousness to it totally. The sex center will do. 
Taoists have used the big toe as the center. Move your consciousness down to the big toe; 



remain there, forget the whole body. Let your whole consciousness go to the toe. That 
will do, because really, on what you are centering is irrelevant. You are centering — that 
is what is basic. The thing happens because of centering, not because of the center — 
remember this. The center is not significant, CENTERING is significant. 

So do not be puzzled, because in so many methods, in one hundred and twelve methods, 
many centers will be used. Do not become puzzled over which center is more important 
or which is real, any center will do. You can choose according to your own liking. 

If your mind is very sexual, it is good to choose the sex center. Use it, because your 
consciousness is naturally flowing toward it — then it is better to choose it. But it has 
become difficult to choose the sex center. That is one of the most natural centers; your 
consciousness is attracted toward it biologically. Why not use this biological force 
toward inner transfonnation? Make it the point of your centering. 

But social conditioning, sexually repressive teachings, moralizing, they have done a deep 
hann. You are disjoined from your sex center. Really, our image of our real selves 
excludes the sex center. 

Imagine your body: you will leave your sex organs out of it; that is why many people feel 
as if their sex organs are something different from them, that they are not part of them. 
This is why there is so much hiding, so much becoming unconscious. 

If someone should come from space, from some other planet, and he should see you, he 
will not be able to conceive that you have any sex center. If he should listen to your talk, 
he will not be able to understand that there exists anything like sex. If he moves in your 
society, in the formal world, he will not know that anything like sex is happening. 

We have created a division. A barrier is there, and we have cut off the sex center from 
ourselves. Really, because of sex we have divided the body into two. The upper means 
"higher" in our minds and the lower means "lower" — it is condemned. So "lower" is not 
just some information about the location of the bottom half, it is an evaluation also. You 
yourself do not think that the lower body is you. 

If someone asks you, "Where are you in your body?" you will point to your head, 
because that is the highest. That is why brahmins in India will say, "We are the head and 
the sudras, the untouchables, they are the feet." The feet are lower than the head. Really, 
you are the head, and the feet and the other parts only belong to you, they are not you. To 
make this division we have made clothes in two parts — some for the upper body and 
some for the lower body. 

This is only to divide the body in two. There is a subtle division. 

The lower body is not part of you. It hangs on you — that is another thing. That is why it 
is difficult to use the sex center for centering. But if you can use it, that is the best, 
because biologically your energy is flowing toward that center. Concentrate on it. 
Whenever you feel any sexual urge, close your eyes and feel your energy flowing toward 
the sex center. 

Make it a meditation; feel yourself centered in the sex center. Then suddenly you will 
feel a change of quality in the energy. Sexuality will disappear, and the sex center will 
become illumined, full of energy, dynamic. You will feel life at its peak at this center. 
And if you are centered, sex will really be forgotten completely at that moment. From the 
sex center you will feel energy flowing all over the body, even transcending the body and 
going into the cosmos. If you are totally centered at the sex center, suddenly you will be 
thrown to your basic root, at the navel. 



Tantra has used the sex center, and I think tantra has been one of the most scientific 
approaches toward human transformation, because to use sex is very scientific. When the 
mind is already flowing toward it, why not use this natural flow as a vehicle? 

That is the basic difference between tantra and so-called moralist teachings. Moralist 
teachers can never use the sex center for transformation — they are afraid. 

And one who is afraid of sex energy will really find it very, very difficult to transform 
himself or herself because he is fighting against the current, unnecessarily flowing 
against the river. 

It is easy to flow with the river, just float. And if you can float without any conflict, you 
can use this center for centering. 

Any center will do. You can create your own centers... no need to be traditional. All 
centers are devices — devices for centering. When you are centered you will come down 
to your navel automatically. A centered consciousness goes back to the original source. 
The second question: 

Question 2 

BUDDHA INSPIRED A LARGE NUMBER OF PERSONS TO BECOME 
SANNYASINS - SANNYASINS WHO WOULD BEG FOR THEIR MEALS AND 
LIVE AWAY FROM SOCIETY, BUSINESS AND POLITICS. BUDDHA HIMSELF 
LIVED AN ASCETIC LIFE. THIS MONASTIC LIFE SEEMS TO BE THE OTHER 
EXTREME OF THE WORLDLY LIFE. THIS DOESN’T SEEM TO BE THE MIDDLE 
PATH. CAN YOU EXPLAIN THIS? 

It will be difficult to understand because you are not aware of what is the other end of 
worldly life. The other end of life is always death. There have been teachers who said 
that suicide is the only path. And not only in the past; even now, in the present, there are 
thinkers who say that life is absurd. If life as such is meaningless, then death becomes 
meaningful. Life and death are polar opposites, so the opposite to life is death. 

Try to understand it. And it will be helpful for you to find out the way for yourself. 

If death is the polar opposite of life, then mind can move to death very easily — and it 
happens. When someone commits suicide, have you ever observed that the person who 
commits suicide was attached too much to life? Only those who are too much attached to 
life can commit suicide. 

For example, you are too attached to your husband or to your wife and you think you 
cannot live without him or her. Then the husband or the wife dies, and you commit 
suicide. The mind has moved to the other end because it was too attached to life. When 
life frustrates, the mind can move to the other end. 

Suicides are of two types — wholesale suicide and gradual suicide. You can commit 
gradual suicide by withdrawing yourself from life, cutting yourself off, cutting your 
moorings in life by and by, dying slowly, gradually. 

In Buddha’s time there were schools which preached suicide. These were the real 
opposites to life, to worldly life. There were schools which were teaching that to commit 
suicide is the only way out of this nonsense which we call life, the only way out of this 
suffering. "If you are alive you will have to suffer," they said, "and there is no way of 
going beyond misery while you are alive. So commit suicide, destroy yourself." When 
you hear this it looks like too extremist a view, but try to understand it deeply. 


It carries some meaning. 



Sigmund Freud, after forty years of constant work with the human mind, one of the 
longest researches one individual can do, came to conclude that man as he is cannot be 
happy. The very way mind functions creates misery, so at the most less misery or more 
misery can be the choice. No misery cannot be the choice. If you adjust your mind you 
will be less miserable, that is all. It looks very hopeless. 

The existentialists — Sartre, Camus and others — say that life can never be blissful. The 
very nature of life is dread, anguish, suffering, so the most one can do is to face it 
bravely, with no hope. You can only face it bravely, and that is all — with no hope. The 
situation as such is hopeless. Camus asks, "Well, if this is the situation, then why not 
commit suicide? If there is no way to go beyond in life, then why not leave this life?" 

One of Dostoevsky's characters in one of the greatest novels of the world, THE 
BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, says, "I am trying to find out where your God is just to 
return to him the entrance ticket — the entrance ticket to life. I don’t want to be here. And 
if there is any God, he must be very violent and cruel," the character says, "because 
without asking me he has thrown me into life. It has never been my choice. Why am I 
alive without my choosing it?" 

There were many schools in Buddha's time. 

Buddha’s time was one of the most intellectually dynamic periods in human history. For 
example, there was Ajit Kesh Kambal. You may not have heard the name because it is 
difficult to create a following around those who preach suicide. So no sect exists around 
Ajit Kesh Kambal, but he said continuously for five years that suicide alone is the only 
way. 

It is reported that someone asked Ajit, "Then why have you not committed suicide up to 
now?" He said, "Just to preach, I have to suffer life. I have a message to give to the 
world. If I commit suicide, then who will preach? Who will teach this message? Just to 
give this message, I am here. Otherwise, life is not worth living." It is the opposite 
extreme of life, of this so-called life which we live. 

Buddha's was the middle path. Buddha said, neither death nor life. That is what sannyas 
means: neither attachment to life nor repulsion, but just being in the middle. So Buddha 
says that sannyas is to be just in the middle. Sannyas is not negation of life. Rather, 
sannyas is the negation of both life and death. When you are concerned with neither life 
nor death, then you become a sannyasin. 

If you can see the polar opposites of life and death, then Buddha's initiation into sannyas 
is just an initiation in the middle path. So a sannyasin is not really against life. If he is, 
then he is not a sannyasin. Then really, he is a neurotic; he has gone to the other extreme. 

A sannyasin has a very balanced consciousness — balanced just in the middle. 

"If life is misery," the mind says, "then move to the other end." But to Buddhists life is 
misery because you are at the extreme. That is the Buddhist idea: life is a misery because 
it is at one extreme, and death will also be a misery because it is another extreme. Bliss is 
just in the middle; bliss is balance. 

A sannyasin is a balanced being — neither leaning to the right nor to the left, neither a 
leftist nor a rightist: just in the middle — silent, unmoving, not choosing this nor that, in a 
non-choice, remaining in the center. 

So do not choose death. CHOICE is misery. If you choose death you have chosen misery, 
if you choose life you have chosen misery, because life and death are two extremes. And 
remember, they are two extremes of one thing. They are not really two, only one thing 



which has two poles: life and death. 

If you choose one, you will have to go against the other pole. That creates misery, 
because death is implied in life. You cannot choose life without choosing death. How can 
you? The moment you choose life, you have chosen death. That creates misery because 
as a result of your having chosen life, death will be there. You have chosen happiness: 
simultaneously, without your knowing, you have chosen unhappiness, because that is part 
of it. 

If you have chosen love, then you have chosen hate. 

The other is intrinsic in it; it is hidden there. And one who chooses love will suffer, 
because then he will hate — and when he comes to hate he will suffer. 

Do not choose, be in the middle. In the middle is the truth. At one end is death, at the 
other end is life. But this energy moving between these two, in the middle, is the truth. 

Do not choose, because choice means choice of one thing against another thing. To be in 
the middle means being choiceless. Then you will leave the whole thing. And when you 
have not chosen, you cannot be made miserable. 

Man is made miserable through choice. Do not choose. Just be! It is arduous, it appears 
impossible — but try it. Whenever you have two opposites, try to be in the middle. By and 
by you will know the hunch, the feel, and once you know the feel of how to be in the 
middle — and it is a delicate thing, very delicate, the most delicate thing in life — once 
you have the feel nothing can disturb you, nothing can make you suffer. Then you exist 
without suffering. 

That is what sannyas means: to exist without suffering. But to exist without suffering you 
have to exist without choice, so be in the middle. And Buddha has tried for the first time, 
so consciously, to create a path of being always in the middle. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

ENLIGHTEN US ABOUT A FEW PRACTICAL POINTS FOR THE OPENING AND 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE HEART CENTER. 


The first point: try to be headless. Visualize yourself as headless; move headlessly. It 
sounds absurd, but it is one of the most important exercises. Try it, and then you will 
know. Walk, and feel as if you have no head. In the beginning it will be only "as if." It 
will be very weird. When the feeling will come to you that you have no head, it will be 
very weird and strange. But by and by you will settle down at the heart. 

There is one law... You may have seen that someone who is blind has more keen ears, 
more musical ears. Blind men are more musical; their feeling for music is deeper. Why? 
The energy that ordinarily moves through the eyes now cannot move through them, so it 
chooses a different path. It moves through the ears. 

Blind men have a deeper sensitivity of touch. If a blind man touches you, you will feel 
the difference, because we ordinarily do much work with touch through our eyes; we are 
touching each other through our eyes. A blind man cannot touch through the eyes, so the 
energy moves through his hands. A blind man is more sensitive than anyone who has 
eyes. Sometimes it may not be so, but generally it is so. Energy starts moving from 
another center if one center is not there. 

So try this exercise I am talking about — the exercise in headlessness — and suddenly you 
will feel a strange thing: it will be as if for the first time you are at the heart. 



Walk headlessly. Sit down to meditate, close your eyes, and simply feel that there is no 
head. Feel, "My head has disappeared." In the beginning it will be just "as if," but by and 
by you will feel that the head has really disappeared. And when you feel that your head 
has disappeared, your center will fall down to the heart — immediately. You will be 
looking at the world through the heart and not through the head. 

When for the first time Westerners reached Japan, they couldn’t believe that Japanese had 
traditionally believed for centuries that they think through the belly. If you ask a Japanese 
child — if he is not educated in Western ways — "Where is your thinking?" he will point 
to his belly. 

Centuries and centuries have passed, and Japan has been living without the head. It is just 
a concept. If I ask you, "Where is your thinking going on?" you will point toward the 
head, but a Japanese will point to the belly, not to the head. And one of the reasons why 
the Japanese mind is more calm, quiet and collected, is this. 

Now this concept has been disturbed because the West has spread over everything. Now 
there exists no East. Only in some individuals here and there, who are like islands, does 
the East exist. Otherwise the East has disappeared; now the whole world is Western. 

Try headlessness. Meditate standing before your mirror in the bathroom. 

Look deep into your eyes and feel that you are looking from the heart. By and by the 
heart center will begin to function. And when the heart functions, it changes your total 
personality, the total structure, the whole pattern, because the heart has its own way. 

So the first thing: try headlessness. Secondly, be more loving, because love cannot 
function through the head. Be more loving! That is why when someone is in love, he 
loses his head. People say that he has gone mad. If you are not mad and in love, then you 
are not in love really. The head must be lost. If the head is there, unaffected, functioning 
ordinarily, then love is not possible, because for love you need the heart to function — not 
the head. It is a function of the heart. 

It happens that when a very rational person falls in love, he becomes stupid. He himself 
feels what stupidity he is doing, what silliness. What is he doing? Then he makes two 
parts of his life. He creates a division. The heart becomes a silent, intimate affair. When 
he moves out of his house, he moves out of his heart. He lives in the world with the head, 
and only comes down to the heart when he is loving. But it is very difficult, and 
ordinarily it never happens. 

I was staying in Calcutta at a friend's house, and the friend was a justice of the High 
Court. His wife told me, "I have only one problem to tell you. Can you help me?" 

So I said, "What is the problem?" 

She said, "My husband is your friend. 

He loves you and respects you, so if you say something to him it may be helpful." 

So I asked her, "What is to be said? Tell me." She said, "He remains a High Court judge 
even in the bed. I have not known a lover, a friend or a husband. He is a High Court 
judge twenty-four hours a day." 

It is difficult, it is difficult to come down from your pedestal. It becomes a fixed attitude. 
If you are a businessman, you will remain a businessman in the bed also. It is difficult to 
accommodate two persons within, and it is not easy to change your pattern completely, 
immediately, anytime you like. It is difficult, but if you are in love you will have to come 
down from the head. 

So for this meditation try to be more and more loving. And when I say be more loving, I 



mean change the quality of your relationship: let it be based on love. Not only with your 
wife or with your child or with your friend, but toward life as such become more loving. 
That is why Mahavir and Buddha have talked about nonviolence. It was just to create a 
loving attitude toward life. 

When Mahavir moves, walks, he remains aware not even to kill an ant. Why? Really, the 
ant is not his concern. He is coming down from the head to the heart. He is creating a 
loving attitude toward life as such. The more your relationships are based on love — all 
relationships — the more your heart center will function. 

It will start working; you will look at the world through different eyes, because the heart 
has its own way of looking at the world. The mind can never look in that way — that is 
impossible for the mind. The mind can only analyze! The heart synthesizes; the mind can 
only dissect, divide — it is a divider. Only the heart gives unity. 

When you can look through the heart, the whole universe looks like one unity. When you 
approach through the mind, the whole world becomes atomic. There is no unity, only 
atoms and atoms and atoms. The heart gives a unitary experience, it joins together, and 
the ultimate synthesis is God. If you can look through the heart, the whole universe looks 
like one. That oneness is God. 

That is why science can never find God. That is impossible, because the method applied 
can never reach to the ultimate unity. The very method of science is reason, analysis, 
division. So science comes to molecules, atoms, electrons... They will go on dividing, but 
they can never come to the organic unity of the whole. The whole is impossible to look at 
through the head. 

So be more loving. Remember, whatsoever you are doing, the quality of love must be 
there. This has to be a constant remembering. You are walking on the grass — feel that 
the grass is alive. Every blade is as much alive as you are. 

Mahatma Gandhi was staying with Rabindranath Tagore in Shanti Niketan. 

And look at their different approaches! Gandhi’s nonviolence was a mind affair. He was 
always reasoning about it, rational about it. He thought about it, he struggled over it, he 
pondered, contemplated, and then he concluded; he experimented, then he concluded. If 
you have read his autobiography, you will recall that he has named the book, 
EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH. The very word EXPERIMENTS is scientific, of reason 
— a lab word. 

He was staying with Rabindranath the poet, and they both went for a walk in the gardens. 
The land was green, alive, so Gandhi said to Rabindranath, "Come out to the lawn." 
Rabindranath said, "That is impossible. I cannot walk over the lawn. Every blade is as 
much alive as I am. I cannot step over so alive a phenomenon." 

And Rabindranath was not a preacher of nonviolence — not at all. He never talked about 
nonviolence, but his approach was through the heart. He feels the grass. Gandhi pondered 
over what he said, and then answered, "You are right." This is a mind approach. 

Be loving. Even with things, be loving. If you are sitting on a chair, be loving. Feel the 
chair; have a feeling of gratitude. The chair is giving comfort to you. Feel the touch, love 
it, have a loving feeling. The chair itself is not important. If you are eating, eat lovingly. 
Indians say that food is divine. The meaning is that when you are eating, the food is 
giving you life, energy, vitality. 


Be grateful, be loving to it. 



Ordinarily we eat food very violently, as if we are killing something, not as if we are 
absorbing — as if we are killing. Or very indifferently you go on throwing things into 
your belly, without any feeling. Touch your food lovingly, with gratitude: it is your life. 
Take it in, taste it, enjoy it. Do not be indifferent and do not be violent. 

Our teeth are very violent because of our animal heritage. Animals have no other 
weapons; nails and teeth are their only weapons of violence. Your teeth are basically a 
weapon, so people go on killing with their teeth — they kill their food. That is why, the 
more violent you are, the more you will need food. 

But there is a limit to food, so one goes on smoking or one goes on chewing gum. That is 
violence. You enjoy it because you are killing something with your teeth, grinding 
something with your teeth, so one goes on chewing gum or pan. This is a part of 
violence. Do whatsoever you are doing, but do it lovingly. Do not be indifferent. Then 
your heart center will start functioning, and you will come down deep into the heart. 

First: try headlessness. Secondly: try love. Thirdly: be more and more aesthetic — 
sensitive toward beauty, toward music, toward all that touches the heart. If this world can 
be trained more for music and less for mathematics, we will have a better humanity; if we 
can train the mind more for poetry and less for philosophy, we will have a better 
humanity. 

Because while you are listening to music or playing music the mind is not needed, you 
drop from the mind. 

Be more aesthetic, more poetic, more sensitive. You may not be a great musician or a 
great poet or a great painter, but you can enjoy, and you can create something in your 
own right. There is no need to be a Picasso. You can paint your house yourself; you can 
paint some pictures. 

No need to be a maestro, an Alauddin Khan. You can play something in your house; you 
can play on a flute, no matter how amateurish. But do something which is concerned with 
the heart. Sing, dance, do something which is concerned with the heart. Be more sensitive 
to the world of the heart — and not much is needed to be sensitive. 

Even a poor man can be sensitive; riches are not needed. You may not have a palace 
where you can be sensitive. If you are just lying on the beach, it is enough to be sensitive. 
You can be sensitive to the sand, you can be sensitive to the sun, you can be sensitive to 
the waves, to the wind, to the trees, to the sky. The whole world is there for you to be 
sensitive to it. Try to be more sensitive, alive — and ACTIVELY sensitive, because the 
whole world has become passive. 

You go to a cinema hall: someone else is doing something and you just sit there and 
watch. Someone else is loving on the screen and you are watching. You are just a voyeur 
— passive, dead, not doing anything. 

You are not a participant. Unless you are a participant, your heart center will not 
function. So it is better sometimes to dance. 

You are not going to be a great dancer — there is no need. Howsoever awkward, just 
dance. That will give you the feeling of the heart. While you are dancing your center will 
be the heart; it can never be at the mind. Jump, play like children. Sometimes forget 
completely your name, your prestige, your degree. Forget them completely; be childlike. 
Do not be serious. Sometimes take life as a fun, and the heart will develop. The heart 
gathers energy. 

And when you have a heart that is alive, the quality of your mind will also change. Then 



you can go to the mind, you can function through the mind, but the mind will become just 
an instrument — you can use it. Then you are not obsessed with it, and you can move 
away from it any moment you like. Then you are a master. The heart will give you a 
feeling that you are a master. 

And another thing: you will come to know that you are neither the head nor the heart, 
because you can move from heart to head, from head to heart. Then you know that you 
are something else — X. If you remain in the head and never move anywhere, you 
become identified with the head. You do not know that you are different. This movement 
from heart to head and from head to heart will give you the feeling that you are totally 
different. 

Sometimes you are at the heart and sometimes you are at the head, but you are neither 
heart nor head. 

This third point of awareness will lead you to the third center — to the navel. And the 
navel is not really a center. There, YOU ARE! That is why it cannot be developed, it can 
only be discovered. 

The fourth question: 

Question 4 

YOU SAID THAT WESTERN PSYCHOLOGISTS NOW SAY IT IS BETTER NOT TO 
AVOID FIGHTING IN A LOVE RELATIONSHIP, AND THAT FACING IT WHEN IT 
COMES MAKES THE LOVE MORE INTENSE. THEN YOU SPOKE OF BUDDHA’S 
MIDDLE PATH WHICH EXCLUDES BOTH EXTREMES. FOR THOSE WHO HAVE 
NOT YET TRANSCENDED INTO THE LOVE THAT IS BEYOND THE TWO 
POLES, WHICH WAY IS PREFERABLE FOR LOVERS IN YOUR OPINION? 

Some basic points. Firstly, the love of the mind is bound to be a movement between two 
polar opposites of hate and love. With mind, duality is bound to be there. So if you are 
loving to someone with your mind, you cannot escape the other pole. You can hide it, 
you can suppress it, you can forget about it — the so-called cultured are always doing 
that. But then they become numb, dead. 

If you cannot fight with your lover, if you cannot be angry, then the authenticity of the 
love is lost. If you suppress your anger, that suppressed anger will become a part of you, 
and that suppressed anger will not allow you total let-go while in love. It is always there. 

You are withholding it; you have suppressed it. 

If I am angry and I have suppressed it, then when I am loving the suppressed anger is 
there, and that will make my love dead. If I have not been authentic in my anger, I cannot 
be authentic in my love. If you are authentic, then you are authentic in both. If you are 
not authentic in one, you cannot be authentic in the other. 

All over the world so-called teachings, civilization, culture, they have deadened love 
completely — and in the name of love this has happened. They say, "If you love someone, 
then do not be angry — your love is false if you are angry. Then do not fight, then do not 
hate." 

Of course, it looks logical. If you are in love, how can you hate? So we cut off the hate 
part. But with the hate part cut off, the love becomes impotent. It is as if you have cut off 
one leg of a man and then you say, "Now you move! Now you can run, you are free to 
run." But you have cut off a leg, so the man cannot move. 

Hate and love are two poles of one phenomenon. If you cut hate, love will be dead and 
impotent. That is why every family has become impotent. And then you become afraid of 



letting go. When you are in love you cannot let go completely because you are afraid. If 
you let go completely the anger, the violence, the hate that is hidden and suppressed may 
come out. Then you have to force it down continuously. 

Deep down you have to fight it continuously. And in fighting it you cannot be natural and 
spontaneous. Then you just pose that you are loving. You pretend, and everyone knows: 
your wife knows that you are pretending, and you know that your wife is pretending. 
Everyone is pretending. Then the whole life becomes false. 

Two things have to be done in order to go beyond mind. First, go into meditation, and 
then touch the level of no-mind within you. Then you will have a love that will not have 
any polar opposite. But then in that love there will be no excitement, no passion. That 
love will be silent — a deep peace with not even a ripple on it. 

A Buddha, a Jesus, they also love. But in that love there is no excitement, no fever. The 
fever comes from the polar opposite; the excitement comes from the polar opposite. Two 
polar opposites create tension. But Buddha's love, Jesus' love, is a silent phenomenon, so 
only those who have reached to the state of no-mind can understand their love. 

Jesus was passing, and it was hot, at noon. He was tired, so he just rested under a tree. He 
didn't know to whom the tree belonged. It belonged to Mary Magdalene. Mary was a 
prostitute. 

She looked from her window and saw this very beautiful man — one of the most beautiful 
ever born. She felt attracted, and not only attracted, she felt passion. She came out and 
she asked Jesus, "Come into my house. 

Why are you resting here? You are welcome." Jesus saw in her eyes passion, love — so- 
called love. Jesus said, "Next time, when I am again tired while passing here, I will come 
to your house. But just now the need is fulfilled. I am ready to move again, so thank 
you." 

Mary felt insulted. This was rare... really, she had never invited anyone before. People 
would come from far away just to have a look at her. Even kings would come to her, and 
here was this beggar refusing her. Jesus was just a beggar, a vagabond — just a hippie, 
and he refused her. So Mary said to Jesus, "Can't you feel my love? This is a love 
invitation. So come! Do not reject me. Don’t you have any love in your heart?" 

Jesus said to her in reply, "I also love you — and really, all those who come pretending 
that they love you, they do not love you." He said, "Only I can love you." 

And he was right. But that love has a different quality. That love does not have the polar 
opposite, the contrast. Thus the tension is missing, the excitement is missing. He is not 
excited about love, not feverish. And love is not a relationship for him, it is a state of 
being. 

Go beyond mind; reach to a level of no-mind. Then love flowers, but that love has no 
opposite to it. Beyond mind there is no opposite to anything. Beyond mind everything is 
one. Within mind, everything is divided into two. But if you are within mind, it is better 
to be authentic than to be false. 


So be authentic when you feel angry toward your lover or your beloved. Be authentic 
while you are in anger, and then with no repression, when the moment of love will come, 
when the mind will move to the other extreme, you will have a spontaneous flow. So 
with mind, take fighting as part of it. It is the very dynamism of the mind to work in polar 



opposites. So be authentic in your anger, be authentic in your fight; then you will be 
authentic in your love also. 

So for lovers, I would like to say: be authentic. And if you are really authentic, a unique 
phenomenon will happen. You will become weary of the whole nonsense of moving in 
polar opposites. But be authentic; otherwise you will never become weary. 

A repressed mind never becomes really aware that he is gripped in polar opposites. He is 
never really angry, he is never really in love, so he has no real experience of the mind. 
Thus, I suggest to be authentic. Do not be false. BE REAL! And authenticity has its own 
beauty. Your lover, your beloved will understand when you are really angry — 
authentically angry. Only a fake anger or a false non-anger cannot be forgiven. Only a 
false face cannot be forgiven. Be authentic, and then you will be authentic in love also. 
That authentic love will compensate, and through this authentic living you will become 
wearied. You will come to wonder what you are doing — why you are just a pendulum 
moving from one pole to another. 

You will be bored, and then only can you decide to move beyond mind and beyond 
polarity. 

Be an authentic man or be an authentic woman. Do not allow any falsity; do not pretend. 
Be real and suffer reality. Suffering is good. Suffering is really a training, a discipline. 
Suffer it! Suffer anger and suffer love and suffer hate. Remember only one thing: never 
be false. If you do not feel love, then say that you do not feel love. Do not pretend; do not 
try to show that you are loving. If you are angry, then say that you are angry and be 
angry. 

There will be much suffering, but suffer it. Through that suffering a new consciousness is 
bom. You become aware of the whole nonsense of hate and love. You hate the person 
and you also love the same person, and you go on moving in a circle. That circle will 
become crystal clear for you, and it becomes crystal clear only through suffering. 

Do not escape suffering. You need a REAL suffering. It is like a fire: it will bum you. All 
that is false will bum and all that is real will be there. This is what existentialists call 
authenticity. Be authentic, and then you cannot be anymore in the mind. Be non- 
authentic, and you will be for lives and lives in the mind. 

You will get bored of the duality. But how can one get bored of the duality unless one is 
really in the duality, not pretending? Then you will know that the so-called love of the 
mind is nothing but a disease. 


Have you observed that a lover cannot sleep? He is not at ease — he is feverish. If you 
examine him, he will show many symptoms of many diseases. This love, the so-called 
love of mind and body, is really a disease, but one remains occupied — that is the 
function of it. Otherwise you will feel unoccupied, as if you are not doing anything in this 
world. Your whole life will seem vacant, so love is good to fill it. 

Mind itself is the disease, so whatsoever belongs to the mind is going to be a disease. 
Only beyond mind, where you are not divided in duality, where you are one, only there 
does a different love flower. Jesus calls it love. Buddha calls it compassion. This is just to 
make a distinction. It makes no difference what you call it. 

There is a possibility of a love which has no opposite to it, but that love can come only 
when you go beyond this love. And to go beyond, I suggest that you be authentic. To be 
authentic — in hate, in love, in anger. In everything, be authentic, real, not pretending, 



because only a reality can be transcended. You cannot transcend unreal things. 
THE END. 



Chapter 13: Entering the inner centering 


18. LOOK LOVINGLY AT SOME OBJECT. DO NOT GO TO ANOTHER OBJECT. 
HERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OBJECT - THE BLESSING. 

19. WITHOUT SUPPORT FOR FEET OR HANDS, SIT ONLY ON THE BUTTOCKS. 
SUDDENLY, THE CENTERING. 

20. IN A MOVING VEHICLE, BY RHYTHMICALLY SWAYING, EXPERIENCE. OR 
IN A STILL VEHICLE, BY LETTING YOURSELF SWING IN SLOWING 
INVISIBLE CIRCLES. 

21. PIERCE SOME PART OF YOUR NECTAR-FILLED FORM WITH A PIN, AND 
GENTLY ENTER THE PIERCING AND ATTAIN TO THE INNER PURITY. 

The human body is a mysterious mechanism. Its working is two-dimensional. In order to 
go to the outside, your consciousness goes through the senses to meet the world, to meet 
matter. But this is only one dimension of your body's functions. Your body has another 
dimension also: it leads you in. If consciousness goes out, then whatsoever you know is 
matter; if consciousness goes in, then whatsoever you know is non-matter. 

In reality, there is no division: matter and non-matter are one. But this reality — X — if 
looked at through the eyes, the senses, appears as matter. This same reality, the X, looked 
at from within — not through the senses, but through centering — looks like non-matter. 
The reality is one, but you can look at it in two ways. One is through the senses; another 
is not through the senses. All these techniques of centering are really to lead you to a 
point in yourself where senses are not working, where you go beyond senses. 


Three things have to be understood first before we enter the techniques. Firstly, when you 
see through the eyes, the eyes are not seeing: they are only openings to see. The seer is 
behind the eyes. That which looks through the eyes is not the eyes. That is why you can 
close your eyes and still see dreams, visions, images. The seer is behind the senses; he 
moves through the senses to the world. But if you close your senses, the seer remains 
within. 

If the seer, this consciousness, is centered, suddenly he becomes aware of himself. And 
when you are aware of yourself you are aware of the total existence, because you and 
existence are not two. But to become aware of oneself one needs centering. By centering 
I mean your consciousness not being divided in many directions, your consciousness not 
moving anywhere, remaining in itself... non-moving, rooted, without any direction, just 
remaining there: in. 

It looks difficult to remain in, because for our minds even this thinking of how to remain 
in becomes a going out. We start thinking: the "how" starts thinking. To think about the 
in, the inner, is also a thought for us — and every thought as such belongs to the outer, 
never to the inner, because in the innermost center you are simply consciousness. 
Thoughts are like clouds. They have come to you, but they do not belong to you. Every 
thought comes from the outside, from without. 

You cannot produce a single thought inside, within. Every thought comes from the 
outside; there is no possibility of creating a thought within. Thoughts are like clouds 
coming to you. So whenever you are thinking, you are not in — remember. To be thinking 



is to be out. So even if you are thinking about the inner, the soul, the self, you are not in. 
All these thoughts about the self, about the inner, about the within, have come from 
without; they do not belong to you. To you belongs only simple consciousness, sky-like, 
without the clouds. 

So what to do? How to gain this simple consciousness inside? Some devices are used, 
because directly you cannot do anything. Some devices are needed through which you 
are thrown in, thrown to it. This center always needs an indirect approach; you cannot 
approach it directly. Understand this clearly, because this is very basic. 

You are playing, and later on you report that it was very blissful, that "I was feeling very 
happy, I enjoyed it. A subtle happiness has been left behind." Someone listens to you. He 
is also after happiness — everyone is. He says, "Then I must play, because if through 
playing happiness is achieved, then I must achieve." He plays also, but he is directly 
concerned with happiness, with bliss, with enjoyment. Happiness is a by-product. If you 
are totally in your play, absorbed, happiness results, but if you are constantly hankering 
for happiness nothing happens. 

The play is the start. 

You are listening to music. Someone says, "I feel very blissful." But if constantly you are 
directly concerned with bliss, you will not even be able to listen. That concern, that greed 
for bliss will become a barrier. Bliss is a by-product, you cannot grab it directly. It is so 
delicate a phenomenon that you have to approach it only indirectly. Do something else 
and it happens. You cannot do it directly. 

Whatsoever is beautiful, whatsoever is eternal is so delicate that if you try to grab it 
directly it is destroyed. That is what is meant by techniques and devices. These 
techniques go on telling you to do something. That which you are doing is not 
significant; that which results is significant. But your mind must be concerned with 
doing, with technique, not with the result. The result happens — it is bound to happen. 

But it always happens indirectly, so do not be concerned with the result. Be concerned 
with the technique. Do it as totally as possible, and forget the result. It happens, but you 
can become a barrier to it. 

If you are concerned only with the result, then it will never happen. And then it becomes 
very strange. People come to me and say, "You said that if we do meditation this will 
happen, but we are doing it and this is not happening." And they are right, but they have 
forgotten the condition: you have to forget about the result, only then does it happen. 


You have to be in the act totally. The more you are in the act, the sooner the result 
happens. But it is always indirect. You cannot be aggressive about it; you cannot be 
violent about it. It is such a delicate phenomenon; it cannot be attacked. It only comes to 
you while you are engaged somewhere else so totally that your inner space is vacant. 
These techniques are all indirect. There is no direct technique for spiritual happening. 

Now the technique — the sixth technique for centering: 

LOOK LOVINGLY ON SOME OBJECT. DO NOT GO ON TO ANOTHER OBJECT. 
HERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OBJECT - THE BLESSING. 

I should repeat it: LOOK LOVINGLY ON SOME OBJECT. DO NOT GO ON TO 
ANOTHER. Do not move to another object. HERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS 
OBJECT - THE BLESSING. 



LOOK LOVINGLY ON SOME OBJECT... LOVINGLY is the key. Have you ever 
looked lovingly at any object? You may say yes because you do not know what it means 
to look lovingly at an object. You may have looked lustfully at an object — that is another 
thing. That is totally different, diametrically opposite. So first, the difference; try to feel 
the difference. 

A beautiful face, a beautiful body — you look at it, and you feel that you are looking at it 
lovingly. But why are you looking at it? Do you want to get something out of it? Then it 
is lust, not love. Do you want to exploit it? Then it is lust, not love. 

Then really, you are thinking of how to use this body, how to possess it, how to make this 
body an instrument for your happiness. 

Lust means how to use something for your happiness; love means your happiness is not 
at all concerned. Really, lust means how to get something out of it and love means how to 
give something. They are diametrically opposite. 

If you see a beautiful face and you feel love toward the face, the immediate feeling in 
your consciousness will be how to do something to make this face happy, how to do 
something to make this man or this woman happy. The concern is not with yourself, the 
concern is with the other. 

In love the other is important; in lust you are important. In lust you are thinking how to 
make the other your instrument; in love you are thinking how to become an instrument 
yourself. In lust you are going to sacrifice the other; in love you are going to sacrifice 
yourself. Love means giving; lust means getting. Love is a surrender; lust is an 
aggression. 

What you say is meaningless. Even in lust you talk in tenns of love. Your language is not 
very meaningful, so do not be deceived. Look within, and then you will come to 
understand that you have not once in your life looked lovingly toward someone or some 
object. 

The second distinction to be made: this sutra says, LOOK LOVINGLY ON SOME 
OBJECT. Really, even if you look lovingly at something material, insentient, the object 
will become a person. 

If you look lovingly at it, your love is the key to transform anything into a person. If you 
look lovingly at a tree, the tree becomes a person. 

Just the other day I was talking with Vivek, a close disciple, and I told her that when we 
move to the new ashram we will name every tree, because every tree is a person. Have 
you ever heard of anyone naming a tree? No one names a tree because no one feels love 
for it. If the case were otherwise, a tree would become a person. Then it is not just one in 
a crowd, it becomes unique. 

You name dogs and cats. When you name a dog and you call it Tiger or something else, 
the dog becomes a person. Then it is not just one dog amongst other dogs, it has a 
personality; you have created a person. Whenever you look lovingly at something, it 
becomes a person. 

And the contrary is also true. Whenever you look with lustful eyes toward a person, the 
person becomes an object, a thing. That is why lustful eyes are repulsive — because no 
one likes to become a thing. When you look at your wife with lustful eyes — or at any 
other woman, or man, with lustful eyes — the other feels hurt. What are you doing really? 
You are changing a person, a living person, into a dead instrument. You are thinking of 
how to "use," and the person is killed. 



That is why lustful eyes are repulsive, ugly. When you look at someone with love, the 
other is raised. 


He becomes unique. Suddenly he becomes a person. A person cannot be replaced; a thing 
can be replaced. A 'thing’ means that which is replaceable; a 'person’ means that which 
cannot be replaced: there is no possibility of replacing him or her. A person is unique; a 
thing is not unique. 

Love makes anything unique. That is why without love you never feel like a person. 
Unless someone loves you deeply, you never feel that you have any uniqueness. You are 
just one in a crowd — just a number, a datum. You can be changed. 

For example, if you are a clerk in an office or a teacher in a school or a professor in a 
university, your professor-hood is replaceable. Another professor will replace you; he can 
replace you at any moment because you are just used there as a professor. You have a 
functional meaning and significance. 

If you are a clerk, someone else is easily able to do the work. The work will not wait for 
you. If you die this moment, the next moment someone will replace you and the 
mechanism will continue. You were just a figure — another figure will do. You were just 
a utility. 

But then someone falls in love with this clerk or this professor. Suddenly the clerk is no 
more a clerk; he has become a unique person. If he dies, then the beloved cannot replace 
him. He is irreplaceable. Then the whole world may go on in the same way, but the one 
who was in love cannot be the same. 

This uniqueness, this being a person, happens through love. 

This sutra says, LOOK LOVINGLY AT SOME OBJECT. It makes no distinction 
between an object and a person. There is no need, because when you look lovingly 
anything will become a person. The very look changes, transforms. 

You may or may not have observed what happens when you drive a particular car, say a 
Fiat. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of Fiats exactly similar, but your 
car, if you are in love with it, becomes unique — a person. It cannot be replaced; a 
relationship is created. Now you feel this car as a person. If something goes wrong... a 
slight sound, and you feel it. And cars are very temperamental. You kn ow the temper of 
your car — when it feels good and when it feels bad. The car becomes, by and by, a 
person. 

Why? If there is a love relationship, anything becomes a person. If there is a lust 
relationship, then a person will become a thing. And this is one of the most inhuman acts 
man can do — to make someone a thing. 

LOOK LOVINGLY AT SOME OBJECT... So what is one to do? When you look 
lovingly, what are you to do? The first thing: forget yourself. Forget yourself completely! 
Look at a flower and forget yourself completely. Let the flower be; you become 
completely absent. Feel the flower, and a deep love will flow from your consciousness 
toward the flower. And let your consciousness be filled with only one thought — how you 
can help this flower to flower more, to become more beautiful, to become more blissful. 

What can you do? 

It is not meaningful whether you can do or not; that is not relevant. The feeling of what 
you can do — this pain, this deep ache over what you can do to make this flower more 
beautiful, more alive, more flowering — is meaningful. Let this thought reverberate into 



your whole being. Let every fiber of your body and mind feel it. You will be transfixed in 
an ecstasy, and the flower will become a person. 

DO NOT GO ON TO ANOTHER OBJECT... You cannot go. If you are in a love 
relationship, you cannot go. If you love someone in this group, then you forget the whole 
crowd; only one face remains. Really, you do not see anyone else, you see only one face. 
All the others are there, but they are subliminal — just on the periphery of your 
consciousness. They are NOT. They are just shadows; only one face remains. If you love 
someone then only that face remains, so you cannot move. 

Do not go to another object, remain with one. Remain with a roseflower or remain with a 
beloved's face. Remain there loving, flowing, with just one heart, with the feeling of, 
"What can I do to make the loved one happier, blissful?" 

HERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OBJECT - THE BLESSING. And when this is the 
case you are absent, not concerned with yourself at all, not selfish, not thinking in terms 
of your pleasure, your gratification. You have forgotten yourself completely, and you are 
just thinking in terms of the other. 

The other has become the center of your love; your consciousness is flowing toward the 
other. With deep compassion, with a deep feeling of love, you are thinking, "What can I 
do to make the loved one blissful?" In this state, suddenly, HERE IN THE MIDDLE OF 
THE OBJECT — THE BLESSING. Suddenly, as a by-product, the blessing comes to 
you. Suddenly you become centered. 

This looks paradoxical because this sutra says to forget yourself completely, not to be 
self-centered, to move to the other completely. Buddha is reported to have said 
continuously that whenever you are praying, pray for others — never for yourself. 
Otherwise the prayer is just useless. 

One man came to Buddha and he said, "I accept your teaching, but only one thing is very 
difficult to accept. You say that whenever we do prayer we are not to think about 
ourselves, we are not to ask anything about ourselves. We have to say, 'Whatsoever may 
be the result of my prayer, let that result be distributed to all. If blessing happens, let it be 
distributed to all.’" 

The man said, "This is okay, but can I make only one exception? Not to my immediate 
neighbor — he is my enemy. Let this blessing be distributed to all except to my immediate 
neighbor." 

The mind is self-centered, so Buddha said, "Your prayer is useless. Nothing will come 
out of it unless you are ready to give all, to distribute all, and then all will be yours." 


In love you are to forget yourself. It looks paradoxical: then when and how will the 
centering happen? By being totally concerned with the other, with the other's happiness, 
when you forget yourself completely and only the other remains there, suddenly you are 
filled with bliss — the blessing. 

Why? Because when you are not concerned with yourself you become vacant, empty; the 
inner space is created. When your mind is totally concerned with the other, you become 
mindless within. Then there are no thoughts inside. And then this thought — "How can I 
be helpful? How can I create more bliss? How can the other be more happy?" — cannot 
continue any more, because really, there is nothing you can do. This thought becomes a 
stop. There is nothing you can do. What can you do? If you think you can do, you are still 
thinking in terms of yourself — ego. 



With the love object one becomes totally helpless — remember this. Whenever you love 
someone you feel totally helpless. That is the agony of love: one cannot feel what he can 
do. He wants to do everything, he wants to give the whole universe to the lover or the 
beloved — but what can he do? If you think that you can do this or that, you are still not 
in a love relationship. Love is very helpless, absolutely helpless, and that helplessness is 
the beauty, because in that helplessness you are surrendered. 

Love someone and you will feel helpless; hate someone and you can do something. 

Love someone and you are absolutely helpless — because what can you do? Whatsoever 
you can do seems insignificant, meaningless; it is never enough. Nothing can be done. 
And when one feels that nothing can be done, one feels that one is helpless. When one 
wants to do everything and feels nothing can be done, mind stops. In this helplessness 
surrender happens. You are empty. That is why love becomes a deep meditation. 

Really, if you love someone, no other meditation is needed. But because no one loves, 
one hundred and twelve methods are needed — and even they may not be enough. 
Someone was here the other day. He was telling me, "It gives me much hope. I have 
heard for the first time from you that there are one hundred and twelve methods. It gives 
me much hope, but somewhere a depression also comes into the mind: only one hundred 
and twelve methods? And if these one hundred and twelve methods don’t work for me, 
then is there no one hundred and thirteenth?" 

And he is right. He is right! If these one hundred and twelve methods do not work for 
you, then there is no go. So as he suggests, a depression also follows hope. But really, 
methods are needed because the basic method is missing. If you can love, no method is 
needed. 

Love itself is the greatest method, but love is difficult — in a way impossible. Love means 
putting yourself out from your consciousness, and in the same place, where your ego has 
been in existence, putting someone else. 

Replacing yourself by someone else means love — as if now you are not and only the 
other is. 

Jean Paul Sartre says that the other is the hell, and he is right. He is right because the 
other creates only hell for you. But he is wrong also because if the other can be hell, the 
other can he heaven. If you live through lust, the other is a hell because then you are 
trying to kill that person. You are trying to make that person a thing. Then that person 
will also react and will try to make you a thing, and that creates hell. 

So every husband and every wife, they are creating hell for each other because each one 
is trying to possess the other. Possession is possible only with things, never with persons. 
You can only be possessed by a person; you can never possess a person. A thing can be 
possessed, but you try to possess persons. Through that effort persons become things. If I 
make you into a thing, you will react. Then I am your enemy. Then you will try to make a 
thing out of me — that creates hell. 

You are sitting in your room alone, and then suddenly you become aware that someone is 
peeping through the keyhole. Observe minutely what happens. Have you felt any change? 
And why do you feel angry about this peeping Tom? He is not doing anything to you — 
just peeping. Why do you feel angry? He has changed you into a thing. He is observing; 
he has made you into a thing, into an object. 


That gives you an uneasiness. 



And the same will happen to him if you come near the keyhole and look through it. The 
other will become shattered, shocked. He was a subject just a moment before: he was the 
observer and you were the observed. Now suddenly he has been caught. He has been 
observed observing you, and now he has become a thing. 

When someone is observing you, suddenly you feel your freedom has been disturbed, 
destroyed. That is why, unless you are in love with someone, you cannot stare. That stare 
becomes ugly and violent — unless you are in love. If you are in love then a stare is a 
beautiful thing, because your stare is not changing the other into a thing. Then you can 
look directly into the eyes; then you can go deep into the eyes of the other. You are not 
changing him into a thing. Rather, through your love your look is making him a person. 
That is why only the stares of lovers are beautiful; otherwise stares are ugly. 
Psychologists say there is a time limit. And you all know, observe and you will come to 
know, what the time limit is for how long you can stare into someone's eyes, if he is a 
stranger. There is a time limit. One moment more, and the other will become angry. Just 
a passing look in public can be pardoned because it seems as if you were just seeing, not 
looking. 

A look is a deep thing. If I just see you when passing, no relationship is created. 

Or I am passing and you look at me, just while passing — no offense is meant so it is 
okay. But if you suddenly stand and look at me, you become an observer. Then your look 
will disturb me and I will feel insulted: "What are you doing? I am a person, not a thing. 
This is not the way to look." 

Because of this, clothes have become so meaningful. Only when you love someone can 
you be easily naked, because the moment you are naked your whole body becomes an 
object. Someone can look at your whole body, and if he is not in love with you his eyes 
will turn your whole body, your whole being, into an object. But when you are in love 
with someone you can be naked without feeling that you are naked. Rather, you would 
like to be naked, because you would like this transfonning love to transfonn your whole 
body into a person. 

Whenever you are turning someone into a thing, that act is immoral. But if you are filled 
with love, then in that love-filled moment with any object this phenomenon, this blessing, 
is possible. It happens. 

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OBJECT - THE BLESSING. Suddenly you have forgotten 
yourself — the other was there. Then when the right moment comes, when you are no 
longer present, absolutely absent, the other will also become absent. And between the 
two the blessing happens. That is what lovers feel. That blessing is also because of an 
unknown, unconscious meditation. 


When two lovers are there, by and by they both become absent. A pure existence remains 
— without any egos, without any conflict... just a communion. In that communion one 
feels blissful. It is wrongly inferred that the other has given that bliss to you. That bliss 
has come because unknowingly you have fallen into a deep meditative technique. 

You can do it consciously — and when you do it consciously it goes deeper, because then 
you are not obsessed with the object. This is happening every day. If you love someone, 
you feel blissful not because of him or her, but because of love. And why because of 
love? Because this phenomenon happens — this sutra happens. 

But then you become obsessed. Then you think that because of A, because of A's 



proximity, nearness, because of A's love this blessing happens. Then you think, "I must 
possess A, because without A being present I may not be able to get this blessing again." 
You become jealous. If someone else possesses A, then he will be blissful and you will 
feel miserable, so you want to take away all possibilities of A being possessed by anyone 
else. A should be possessed only by you, because you have glimpsed a different world 
through him. Then the moment you try to possess, you will destroy the whole beauty and 
the whole phenomenon. 

When the lover is possessed, love is gone. Then the lover is just a thing. 

You can use it, but the blessing will never come again, because that blessing was coming 
when the other was a person. The other was made, created: you created the person in the 
other, and the other created the person in you. No one was an object. Both were 
subjectivities meeting — two persons meeting, not one person and one thing. 

But the moment you possess, this will become impossible. And mind will try to possess 
because mind thinks in terms of greed: "One day bliss has happened, so it must happen to 
me every day. So I must possess." But the bliss happens because there is no possession. 
And the bliss happens not because of the other, really, but because of you. Remember 
this, the bliss happens because of you. Because you are so absorbed in the other, the bliss 
happens. 

It can happen with a roseflower, it can happen with a rock, it can happen with the trees, it 
can happen with anything. Once you know the situation in which it happens, it can 
happen anywhere. If you know that you are not, and with a deep love your consciousness 
has moved to the other — to the trees, to the sky, to the stars, to anyone; when your total 
consciousness is addressed to the other it leaves you, it moves away from you — in that 
absence of the self is the blessing. 

The seventh technique: 

WITHOUT SUPPORT FOR FEET OR HANDS, SIT ONLY ON BUTTOCKS. 
SUDDENLY, THE CENTERING. 


This technique has been used by Taoists in China for centuries, and it is a wonderful 
technique - one of the easiest. Try this: WITHOUT SUPPORT FOR FEET OR HANDS, 
SIT ONLY ON BUTTOCKS. SUDDENLY, THE CENTERING. 

What is to be done? You will need two things. First, a very sensitive body, which you do 
not have. You have a dead body; it is just a burden to be carried — not sensitive. First you 
will have to make your body sensitive; otherwise this technique will not work. So first I 
will tell you something about how to make your body sensitive, and particularly your 
buttocks, because ordinarily your buttocks are the most insensitive part in your body. 
They have to be. They have to be because you are sitting the whole day on your buttocks. 
If they are too sensitive, it will be difficult. 

So your buttocks are insensitive — they need to be. Just like the soles of the feet, they are 
insensitive. Continuously sitting on them, you never feel you are sitting on your buttocks. 
Have you ever felt it before this? Now you can feel you are sitting on your buttocks, but 
you have never felt it before — and you have been sitting on your buttocks your whole 
life, never aware. Their function is such that they cannot be very sensitive. 

So first you have to make them sensitive. Try one very easy method... And this method 
can be done to any part of the body; then the body will become sensitive. 



Just sit on a chair, relaxed, and close your eyes. Feel your left hand or your right hand — 
either one. Feel your left hand. Forget the whole body and just feel the left hand. The 
more you feel it, the more the left hand will become heavy. 

Go on feeling the left hand. Forget the whole body, just go on feeling the left hand as if 
you are just the left hand. The hand will go on becoming more and more and more heavy. 
As it goes on becoming heavy, go on feeling it becoming more heavy. Then try to feel 
what is happening in the hand. Whatever the sensation, note it down: any sensation, any 
jerk, any slight movement — note down in the mind that this is happening. And go on 
doing it every day for at least three weeks. At any time during the day, do it for ten 
minutes, fifteen minutes. Just feel the left hand and forget the whole body. 

Within three weeks you will feel you have a new left hand, or a new right hand. It will be 
so sensitive. And you will become aware of very minute and delicate sensations in the 
hand. 

When you succeed with the hand, then try with the buttocks. Then try: close your eyes 
and feel that only two buttocks exist; you are no more. Let your whole consciousness go 
to the buttocks. It is not difficult. If you try, it is wonderful. And the feeling of aliveness 
that comes in the body is in itself very blissful. Then, when you can feel your buttocks 
and they can become very sensitive, when you can feel anything happening inside — a 
slight movement, a slight pain or anything — then you can observe and you can know. 

Then your consciousness is joined to the buttocks. 

First try it with the hand. Because the hand is very sensitive, it is easy. Once you gain the 
confidence that you can sensitize your hand, this confidence will help you to sensitize 
your buttocks. Then do this technique. So you will need at least six weeks before you can 
enter this technique — three weeks with your hand and then three weeks with your 
buttocks, just making them more and more sensitive. 

Lying on the bed, forget the whole body. Just remember that only two buttocks are left. 
Feel the touch — the bedsheet, the coldness or the slowly coming warmth. Feel it. Lying 
down in your bathtub, forget the body. Remember only the buttocks — feel. Stand against 
a wall with your buttocks touching the wall — feel the coldness of the wall. Stand with 
your beloved, with your wife or husband, buttock to buttock — feel the other through the 
buttocks. This is just to "create" your buttocks, to bring them to a situation where they 
start feeling. 

Then do this technique: WITHOUT SUPPORT FOR FEET OR HANDS... Sit on the 
ground. WITHOUT SUPPORT FOR FEET OR HANDS, SIT ONLY ON THE 
BUTTOCKS. The Buddha posture will do; PADMASANA will do. Or SIDDHASANA 
will do, or any ordinary asana, but it is good not to use your hands. Just remain on the 
buttocks; sit only on the buttocks. Then what to do? Just close your eyes. Feel the 
buttocks touching the ground. 

And because the buttocks have become sensitive, you will feel that one buttock is 
touching more. You are leaning on one buttock, and the other is touching less. Then 
move the leaning to the other. Immediately move to the other; then come to the first. Go 
on moving from one to the other, and then by and by, balance. 

Balancing means that both of your buttocks are feeling the same. Your weight on both of 
the buttocks is exactly the same. And when your buttocks are sensitive this will not be 
difficult, you will feel it. Once both your buttocks are balanced, SUDDENLY, THE 
CENTERING. With that balance, suddenly you will be thrown to your navel center, and 



you will be centered inside. You will forget the buttocks, you will forget the body. You 
will be thrown to the inner center. 

That is why I say centers are not meaningful, but centering is — whether it happens at the 
heart or at the head or at the buttocks, or anywhere. You have seen buddhas sitting. You 
may not have imagined that they are balancing their buttocks. You go to a temple and see 
Mahavir sitting, Buddha sitting; you may never have imagined that this sitting is just a 
balancing on the buttocks. It is — and when there is no imbalance, suddenly that balance 
gives you the centering. 

The eighth technique: 

IN A MOVING VEHICLE, BY RHYTHMICALLY SWAYING, EXPERIENCE. OR IN 
A STILL VEHICLE, BY LETTING YOURSELF SWING IN SLOWING INVISIBLE 
CIRCLES. 


It is the same in a different way. IN A MOVING VEHICLE... You are traveling in a train 
or in a bullock cart — when this technique was developed there was only the bullock cart. 
You are moving in a bullock cart on an Indian road — even today the road is the same. 

But when you are moving, your whole body is moving. Then it is useless. 

IN A MOVING VEHICLE, BY RHYTHMICALLY SWAYING... Sway rhythmically. 
Try to understand; this is very minute. Whenever you are in a bullock cart or in any 
vehicle, you are resisting. The bullock cart sways to the left, but you resist it. You sway 
to the right in order to balance; otherwise you will fall down. So you are constantly 
resisting. Sitting in a bullock cart, you are fighting its movements. It moves to this side, 
and you have to move to that. 

That is why when sitting in a train you become tired. You have not been doing anything. 
Why do you become so tired? You have been doing much unknowingly. You were 
fighting the train continuously; there was resistance. Do not resist — this is the first thing. 
If you want to do this technique, do not resist. Rather, move with the movements, sway 
with the movements. Become part of the bullock cart, do not resist it. Whatsoever the 
bullock cart is doing on the road, become part of it. That is why children are never tired 
of journeying. 

Poonam, a disciple, has just come from London with her two children, and she was afraid 
that they may get ill, that they may get tired because of such a long journey. 

She became tired, and they came laughing. She became completely tired when she came 
here. The moment she entered my room she was dead tired, and the two children started 
playing right then and there. An eighteen-hour- long journey from London to Bombay and 
they were not a bit tired. Why? Because they do not know how to resist yet. 

So a drunkard can sit in a bullock cart for the whole night, and in the morning he will be 
as fresh as ever, but you will not be. It is because a drunkard cannot resist. He moves 
with the cart; there is no fight. The fighting is not there, he is one. IN A MOVING 
VEHICLE, BY RHYTHMICALLY SWAYING... So do one thing: do not resist. And the 
second thing, create a rhythm. Create a rhythm in your movements. Make it a beautiful 
hannony. Forget about the road; do not curse the road and the government — forget them. 
Do not curse the bullock and the bullock cart, or the driver — forget them. Close your 
eyes, do not resist. Move rhythmically and create a music in your movement. Make it as 
if it is a dance. IN A MOVING VEHICLE, BY RHYTHMICALLY SWAYING, 



EXPERIENCE. The sutra says the experience will come to you. 

OR IN A STILL VEHICLE... Do not ask where to get a bullock cart; do not deceive 
yourself, because the sutra says, OR IN A STILL VEHICLE, BY LETTING 
YOURSELF SWING IN SLOWING INVISIBLE CIRCLES. Just sitting here, swing in a 
circle. First take a big circle, then go on slowing it. 

.. slowing, slowing, making it smaller and smaller and smaller, until your body is not 
visibly moving, but inside you feel a subtle movement. 

Start with a bigger circle, with closed eyes. Otherwise, when the body will stop you will 
stop. With closed eyes make big circles; just sitting, swing in a circle. Go on swinging, 
making the circle smaller and smaller and smaller. Visibly you will stop; no one will be 
able to detect that you are still moving. But inside you will feel a subtle movement. Now 
the body is not moving, only the mind. Go on making it slower and slower, and 
experience. That will become a centering. In a vehicle, in a moving vehicle, a non- 
resisting rhythmical movement will create a centering within you. 

Gurdjieff created many dances for such techniques. He was working on this technique. 
All the dances he was using in his school were, really, swaying in circles. All the dances 
were in circles — just whirling but remaining aware inside, by and by making the circles 
smaller and smaller. A time comes when the body stops, but the mind inside goes on 
moving, moving, moving. 

If you have been traveling in a train for twenty hours, after you have come home, after 
you have left the train, if you close your eyes you will feel that you are still traveling. 
Still you are traveling. The body has stopped, but the mind is still feeling the vehicle. So 
just do this technique. 


Gurdjieff created phenomenal dances, very beautiful. In this century he worked miracles 
— not miracles like Satya Sai Baba. Those are not miracles; any street magician can do 
them. But Gurdjieff really created miracles. He prepared a group of a hundred people for 
meditative dancing, and he was showing that dance to an audience in New York for the 
first time. A hundred dancers were on the stage whirling. Those who were in the 
audience, even their minds began whirling. There were a hundred white -robed dancers 
just whirling. 

When he indicated with his hand, they would whirl, and the moment he would say, 
"Stop," there would be dead silence. That was a stop for the audience, but not for the 
dancers — because the body can stop immediately, but the mind then takes the movement 
inside; it goes on and on. It was beautiful even to look at, because a hundred persons 
suddenly became dead statues. It created a sudden shock in the audience also, because a 
hundred movements — beautiful movements, rhythmical movements — suddenly stopped. 
You would be looking at them moving, whirling, dancing, and suddenly the dancers 
stopped. Then your thought would also stop. 

Many in New York felt that it was a weird phenomenon: their thoughts stopped 
immediately. But for the dancers, the dance continued inside, and the inside whirling 
circles became smaller and smaller until they became centered. 


One day it happened that they were coming just to the edge of the stage, dancing. It was 
expected, supposed, that Gurdjieff would stop them just before they danced down the 



stage onto the audience. A hundred dancers were just on the edge of the stage. One step 
more and they would all fall down into the hall. The whole hall was expecting that 
suddenly Gurdjieff would say stop, but he turned his back to light his cigar. He turned his 
back to the dancers to light his cigar, and the whole group of a hundred dancers fell down 
from the stage upon the floor — on a naked stone floor. 

The whole audience stood up. They were screaming, shouting, and they were thinking 
that many must have broken their bones — it was such a crash. But not a single one was 
hurt; not even a single bruise was there. 

They asked Gurdjieff what had happened. No one had been hurt, and the crash was such 
that it seemed impossible. The reason was only this: they were really not in their bodies 
at that moment. They were slowing down their inner circling. And when Gurdjieff saw 
that now they were completely oblivious of their bodies, he allowed them to fall down. 

If you are completely oblivious of your body, there is no resistance. A bone is broken 
because of resistance. If you are falling down, you resist: you go against the pull of 
gravity. That going against, that resistance, is the problem — not gravity. 

If you can fall down with gravity, if you can cooperate with it, then no possibility of 
being hurt will arise. 

This sutra: IN A MOVING VEHICLE, BY RHYTHMICALLY SWAYING, 
EXPERIENCE. OR IN A STILL VEHICLE, BY LETTING YOURSELF SWING IN 
SLOWING INVISIBLE CIRCLES. You can do it. There is no need of a vehicle, just 
whirl like children do. When your mind goes crazy, and you feel that now you will fall 
down, do not stop — go on! Even if you fall down, do not worry about it, close your eyes 
and whirl. Your mind will get whirled, and you will fall down. When your body has 
fallen down, inside, feel! The whirling will continue. And it will come nearer and nearer 
and nearer, and suddenly you will be centered. 

Children enjoy this very much because they get a great kick. Parents never allow their 
children to whirl. It is not good: they should be allowed — rather, encouraged. And if you 
can make them aware of inner whirling also, you can teach them meditation through their 
whirling. They enjoy it because they have a bodiless feeling. When they whirl, suddenly 
children become aware that their body is whirling but they are not. Inside they feel a 
centering which we cannot feel so easily, because their bodies and souls are still a bit 
apart; there is a gap. 

When you come into your mother's womb, you cannot immediately get totally in the 
body; it takes time. When a child is bom, then too he is not absolutely fixed, his soul is 
not absolutely fixed to the body; there are gaps. 

That is why there are many things which he cannot do. His body is ready to do it, but he 
cannot do it. 

If you have observed, you may have noticed that newly-bom children cannot see with 
two eyes, they always see with one eye. If you observe, then you will see that when they 
observe and see anything, they cannot see with two eyes. They always look with one eye 
— one eye gets bigger. The pupil of one eye will become bigger, and the other pupil will 
remain small. The consciousness of a newborn child is not yet fixed, it is loose. By and 
by it will become fixed, and then they will look with two eyes. 

They cannot yet feel their own body and others' bodies as different. It is difficult. They 
are not yet fixed, but fixation will come, by and by. 

Meditation is again trying to create a gap. You have become fixed, solidly fixed in your 



body. That is why you feel, "I am the body." If a gap can be created, then only can you 
feel that you are not the body but something beyond the body. Swaying and whirling are 
helpful. They create the gap. 

THE NINTH TECHNIQUE: PIERCE SOME PART OF YOUR NECTAR-FILLED 
FORM WITH A PIN, AND GENTLY ENTER THE PIERCING AND ATTAIN TO 
THE INNER PURITY. 

This sutra says, PIERCE SOME PART OF YOUR NECTAR-FILLED FORM... Your 
body is not just a body, it is fdled with you, and that you is the nectar. Pierce your body. 

When you are piercing your body, you are not pierced — only the body is pierced. But 
you feel the pierce as if you have been pierced; that is why you feel pain. If you can 
become aware that only the body is pierced, that you are not pierced, instead of pain you 
will feel bliss. There is no need to do it with a pin. Many things happen every day; you 
can use those situations for meditation. Or you can create a situation. 

Some pain is there in your body. Do one thing: forget the whole body, just concentrate on 
the part of the body which is painful. And then a strange thing will be noted. When you 
concentrate on the part of the body which is painful, you see that part is shrinking. First 
you feel that the pain, the ache, is in your whole leg. When you concentrate, then you feel 
it is not in the whole leg. It was exaggerated — it is just at the knee. 

Concentrate more, and you will feel it is not on the whole knee but just on a pinpoint. 
Concentrate more on the pinpoint; forget the whole body. Just close your eyes and go on 
concentrating in order to find where the pain is. It will go on shrinking; the area will 
become smaller and smaller. Then a moment will come when it will be just a pinpoint. 

Go on staring at the pinpoint, and suddenly the pinpoint will disappear and you will be 
filled with bliss. Instead of pain you will be filled with bliss. 

Why does this happen? Because you and your body are two, they are not one. 

The one who is concentrating is you. The concentration is being done on the body — that 
is the object. When you concentrate, the gap is broadened, the identification is broken. 
Just to have concentration you move inside, away from the body. To bring the spot of 
pain into perspective, you have to move away. That moving away creates the gap. And 
when you are concentrating on the pain, you forget the identification, you forget that "I 
am feeling pain." 

Now you are the observer and the pain is somewhere else. You are observing the pain, 
not feeling the pain. This change from feeling to observation creates the gap. And when 
the gap is bigger, suddenly you forget the body completely; you are aware only of 
consciousness. 

You can try this technique also: PIERCE SOME PART OF YOUR NECTAR-FILLED 
BODY WITH A PIN, AND GENTLY ENTER THE PIERCING. If there is pain, then 
first you will have to concentrate on the whole area; then by and by it will come to a 
pinpoint. 

But there is no need to wait. You can use a pin. Use a pin on any part which is sensitive. 
On the body many spots are blind spots; they will not be useful. You may not have heard 
about blind spots on the body. Then give a pin to anyone, to your friend, and sit, and tell 
your friend to pierce your back with the pin at many points. At many points you will feel 
no pain. You will say, "No, you have not pierced yet. 



I am not feeling any pain." Those are blind spots. Just on your cheeks there are two blind 
spots which can be tested. 

If you go to Indian villages, many times in religious festivals they will pierce their cheeks 
with an arrow. It looks like a miracle, but it is not. The cheeks have two blind spots. If 
you pierce through these blind spots, no blood will come out and there will be no pain. 

On your back there are thousands of dead spots, where you cannot feel any pain. Your 
body has two types of spots — sensitive, alive ones, and those that are dead. So find a 
sensitive spot where you can feel even a slight touch. Then pierce the pin and ENTER 
THE PIERCING. That is the thing; that is meditation. And GENTLY enter the piercing. 
As the pin moves inside, into your skin, and you feel the pain, you also enter. Do not feel 
that the pain is entering you; do not feel the pain, do not be identified with it. Enter with 
the pin. Pierce with the pin. 

Close your eyes; observe the pain. As the pain is piercing in, you also pierce you. And 
with the pin piercing you, your mind will become easily concentrated. Use that point of 
pain, of intense pain, and observe it. That is what is meant by GENTLY ENTER THE 
PIERCING. 

AND ATTAIN TO THE INNER PURITY. If you can enter observing, unidentified, 
aloof, standing far away, not feeling that the pain is piercing you, but observing that the 
pin is piercing the body and you are an observer, you will attain to the inner purity; the 
inner innocence will be revealed to you. 

For the first time you will become aware that you are not the body. And once you know 
that you are not the body your life is changed completely, because your whole life is 
around the body. Once you know you are not the body, you cannot continue this life. The 
center is being missed. 

When you are not the body, then you have to create a different life. That life is the 
sannyasin's life. It is a different life; the center is different now. Now you exist in the 
world as a soul, as an ATMAN, not as a body. If you exist as a body, then you have 
created a different world: of material gain, greed, gratification, lust, sex. You have 
created a world around you; this is the body-oriented world. 

Once you know you are not the body, your whole world disappears. You cannot support 
it any more. A different world arises which is around the soul — a world of compassion, 
of love, of beauty, of truth, of goodness, of innocence. The center is shifted, and it is not 
in the body now. It is in the consciousness. 

Enough for today. 


THE END. 



Chapter 14: Changing the direction of energy 


Question 1 

IF ENLIGHTENMENT AND SAMADHI MEAN TOTAL CONSCIOUSNESS, 
COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS, ALL-PERVADING CONSCIOUSNESS, THEN IT 
SEEMS VERY STRANGE TO CALL THIS STATE OF COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS 
CENTERING, AS THE WORD 'CENTERING’ IMPLIES ONE-POINTEDNESS. WHY 
IS COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS, OR SAMADHI, CALLED CENTERING? 

Centering is the path, not the goal. Centering is the method, not the result. Samadhi is not 
called centering; centering is the technique to samadhi. Of course, they look 
contradictory because when one realizes, becomes enlightened, there is no center left. 
Jacob Boehme has said that when one comes to the divine it can be described in two 
ways: either the center is everywhere now, or the center is nowhere; both mean the same 
thing. So the word 'centering’ seems contradictory, but the path is not the goal and the 
method is not the result. And method can be contradictory. So we have to understand it 
because these one hundred and twelve methods are methods of centering. 

But once you become centered you will explode. Centering is just to gather yourself 
totally at one point. Once you are gathered at one point, crystallized at one point, that 
point explodes automatically. Then there is no center — or then the center is everywhere. 
So centering is a means to explode. 

Why does centering become the method? If you are not centered your energy is 
unfocused, it cannot explode. 

It is spread out; it cannot explode. Explosion needs great energy. Explosion means that 
now you are not spread out — you are at one point. You become atomic; you become, 
really, a spiritual atom. And only when you are centered enough to become an atom can 
you explode. Then there is an atomic explosion. 

That explosion is not talked about because it cannot be, so only the method is given. The 
result is not talked about. It cannot be talked about. If you do the method the result will 
follow, and there is no way to express it. 

So remember this: basically, religion never talks about the experience itself, it talks only 
about the method; it shows the how, not the what. The what is left to you. If you do the 
how, the what will come to you. And there is no way to convey it. One can know it, but 
he cannot convey it. It is such an infinite experience that language becomes useless. The 
vastness is such that no word is capable of expressing it. So only the method is given. 
Buddha is reported to have said continuously for forty years, "Do not ask me about the 
truth, about the divine, about nirvana, liberation. Do not ask me anything about such 
things. Just ask me how to reach there. I can show you the path, but I cannot give you the 
experience, not even in words." The experience is personal; method is impersonal. 
Method is scientific, impersonal; experience is always personal and poetic. 


What do I mean when I differentiate in this way? Method is scientific. If you can do it, 
centering will result. That centering is bound to result if the method is done. If the 
centering is not happening, then you can know that you are missing the point somewhere. 
Somewhere you have missed the method; you have not followed it. Method is scientific; 
centering is scientific; but when the explosion comes to you, it is poetic. 



By poetic, I mean every one of you will experience it in a different way. Then there is no 
common ground. And everyone will express it in a different way. Buddha says 
something, Mahavir says something, Krishna says something else, and Jesus, 

Mohammed, Moses and Lao Tsu, they all differ — not in methods, but in the way they 
express their experience. Only on one thing do they all agree, that whatsoever they are 
saying is not expressing that which they have felt. Only on that one point do they agree. 
Still, they try. Still, they try to convey somehow, to hint. It seems impossible, but if you 
have a sympathetic heart something may be conveyed. But that needs a deep sympathy 
and love and reverence. So really, whenever something is conveyed it doesn't depend on 
the conveyer, it depends on you. If you can receive it in deep love and reverence, then 
something reaches you. But if you are critical about it, then nothing reaches. Firstly, it is 
difficult to express. 

And even if it is expressed you are critical — then the message becomes impossible; there 
is no communication. 

The communication is very delicate. That is why in all these one hundred and twelve 
methods it has been left out completely — only hinted at. Shiva says so many times: "Do 
this, and then the experience," and then he becomes silent. "Do this, and then the 
blessing," and then he becomes silent. 

"The blessing, the experience, the explosion": beyond them there is personal experience. 
With that which cannot be expressed, it is better not to try to express it — because if 
expression is tried with that which cannot be expressed, it will be misunderstood. So 
Shiva is silent. He is talking simply of methods, techniques, of how to do it. 

But centering is not the end; it is just the path. And why does centering happen, develop, 
grow into an explosion? Because if much energy is centered at one point, the point will 
explode. The point is so small and the energy is so great, the point cannot contain it; 
hence the explosion. 

This bulb can contain a particular quantity of electricity. If there is more electricity, the 
bulb will explode. That is the reason for centering: the more you are centered, the more 
energy is at your center. The moment there is much energy, the center won't be able to 
contain it. It will explode. 

So it is scientific; it is just a scientific law. 

And if the center is not exploding, that means you are still not centered. Once you are 
centered, immediately the explosion follows. There is no time gap. So if you feel that the 
explosion is not coming, it means that you are still not focused. Still you do not have one 
center, still you have many centers, still you are divided, still your energy is dissipated, 
still your energy is moving out. 

When the energy moves out you are just being emptied of energy, dissipated. Ultimately 
you will become impotent. Really, when death comes you have already died; you are just 
a dead cell. You have been constantly throwing energy outward — so whatsoever may be 
the quantity of energy, within a period you will become empty. Outgoing energy means 
death. You are dying every moment; your energy is being emptied; you are throwing 
your energy, dissipating it. 

They say that even the sun which has been there for millions and millions of years, such a 
great reservoir of energy, is being emptied constantly. And within four billion years it 
will die. The sun will die simply because there will be no energy to radiate. Every day it 
is dying because the rays are carrying its energy toward the boundaries of the universe, if 



there are any boundaries. The energy is going out. 

Only man is capable of transforming and changing the direction of energy. Otherwise 
death is a natural phenomenon — everything dies. 

Only man is capable of knowing the immortal, the deathless. 

So you can reduce this whole thing into a law. If energy is moving out, death will be the 
result and you will never know what life means. You can only know a slow dying. You 
can never feel the intensity of being alive. If energy moves out then death is the 
automatic result — of anything, whatsoever. If you can change the direction of energy — 
energy not moving out, but moving in — then a mutation, a transfonnation happens. 

Then this energy coming in becomes centered at one point in you. That point is just near 
the navel — because really, you are bom as a navel. You are connected with your mother 
at the navel. The life energy of the mother is being poured into you through the navel. 
And once the navel cord is cut, you are separated from the mother, you become an 
individual. Before that you are not an individual, just part of your mother. 

So real birth takes place when the navel cord is cut. Then the child takes its own life, 
becomes its own center. That center is bound to be just at the navel, because through the 
navel the energy comes to the child. That was the connecting link. And still, whether you 
are aware or not, your navel remains the center. 

If energy begins to pour in, if you change the direction of the energy so that it comes in, 
it will hit the navel. It will go on coming in and become centered at the navel. 

When it is so much that the navel cannot contain it, that the center cannot contain it any 
longer, the center explodes. In that explosion, again you are no longer an individual. You 
were not an individual when you were connected with your mother; again you will not be 
an individual. 

A new birth has taken place. You have become one with the cosmos. Now you do not 
have any center; you cannot say "I." Now there is no ego. A Buddha, a Krishna, goes on 
talking and using the word 'I'. That is simply formal; they do not have any ego. They are 
NOT. 

Buddha was dying. The day he was to die, many, many people, disciples, sannyasi, 
gathered, and they were sad; they were weeping and crying. So Buddha asked, "Why are 
you weeping?" Someone said, "Because soon you will be no more." 

Buddha laughed and said, "But I have been no more for forty years. I died the day I 
became enlightened. The center has not been there for forty years. So do not weep, do not 
be sad. No one is dying now. I am no more! But still the word T has to be used even to 
denote that I am no more." 

Energy moving in is the whole of religion, is what is meant by the religious search. How 
to move the energy, how to create a total about turn? These methods help. So remember, 
centering is not samadhi, centering is not the experience. Centering is the door to the 
experience, and when there is the experience there is no centering. 

So centering is just a passage. 

You are not centered now: you are multi-centered really. That is why I say you are not 
centered now. When you become centered, there is only one center. Then the energy that 
has been moving to multi-centers has come back; it is a homecoming. Then you are at 
your center; then... explosion. Again the center is no more, but then you are not multi- 
centered. Then there is no center at all. You have become one with the cosmos. Then 



existence and you mean one and the same thing. 

For example, an iceberg is floating in the sea. The iceberg has a center of its own. It has a 
separate individuality; it is separate from the ocean. Deep down it is not separate, because 
it is nothing but water at a particular degree of temperature. The difference between the 
ocean water and the iceberg is not in their nature — naturally, they are the same. The 
difference is only of temperature. And then the sun rises, and the atmosphere becomes 
hot, and the iceberg begins to melt. Then there is no iceberg: it has melted. Now you 
cannot find it because there is no individuality, no center in it. It has become one with the 
ocean. 

In you and in Buddha, in those who were crucifying Jesus and in Jesus, in Krishna and in 
Arjuna, there is no difference in nature. Arjuna is like an iceberg and Krishna is like an 
ocean. There is no difference in nature. They both are one and the same, but Arjuna has a 
form, a name — an individual, isolated existence. 

He feels, "I am." 

Through these methods of centering, the temperature will change, the iceberg will melt, 
and then there will be no difference. That oceanic feeling is samadhi; that being an 
iceberg is mind. And to feel oceanic is to be a no-mind. 

Centering is just the passage, the point of transformation from which the iceberg will be 
no more. Before it there was no ocean — only an iceberg. After it there will be no iceberg 
— only ocean. The oceanic feeling is samadhi: it is to feel oneself one with the whole. 

But I am not saying to think oneself one with the whole. You can think, but thinking is 
before centering; that is not realization. You do not know — you have only heard; you 
have read. You wish that someday this may happen to you also, but you have not 
realized. Before centering you can go on thinking, but that thinking is of no use. After 
centering there is no thinker. You know! It has happened! You are no more; only the 
ocean is. Centering is the method. Samadhi is the end. 

Nothing has been said about what happens in samadhi because nothing can be said. And 
Shiva is very scientific. He is not interested at all in telling. He is telegraphic; he will not 
use a single extra word. So he simply hints: "The experience, the blessing, the 
happening." Not only this, sometimes he will simply say, "Then." He will say, "Be 
centered between two breaths and THEN." 

And then he will stop. Then sometimes he will simply say, "Be in the middle, just in the 
middle between two extremes, and THAT." 

These are indications — "That, then, the experience, the blessing, the happening, the 
explosion." But then he stops completely. Why? We would like him to say something 
more. 

Two reasons. One: THAT cannot be explained. Why can it not be explained? There are 
thinkers — for example, modern positivists, language analysts and others in Europe — 
who say that which can be experienced can be explained. And they have a point to make. 
They say if you can experience it, then why cannot you tell of it. After all, what is an 
experience? You have understood it, so why can you not make it understood for others? 
So they say that if there is any experience, then it can be expressed. And if you cannot 
express it, it shows simply that there is no experience. Then you are a muddlehead — 
confused, blurred. And if you cannot even express it, then there is no possibility that you 
will be able to experience. 

Because of this standpoint, they say religion is all hokum. Why can you not express it if 



you can say you have experienced? Their point appeals to many, but their argument is 
baseless. Leave aside religious experiences, ordinary experiences also cannot be 
explained and expressed — very simple experiences. 

I have a pain in my head, and if you have never experienced a headache, I cannot explain 
to you what a headache means. 

That doesn’t mean that I am muddleheaded; that doesn’t mean that I am only thinking and 
I am not experiencing. The headache is there. I experience it in its totality, in its full 
painfulness. But if you have not experienced a headache, it cannot be explained, it cannot 
be expressed to you. If you also have experienced it, then of course there is no problem, it 
can be expressed. 

Buddha's difficulty is that he has to talk with non-buddhas — not non-Buddhists, because 
non-Buddhists can also be buddhas. Jesus is a non-Buddhist, but he is a buddha. Because 
Buddha is to communicate with those who have not experienced, there is a difficulty. 

You do not know what a headache is. There are many who have not known headaches. 
They have only heard the word; it means nothing to them. 

You can talk with a blind man about light, but nothing is conveyed. He hears the word 
Tight', he hears the explanation. He can understand the whole theory of light, but still the 
word Tight' conveys nothing to him. Unless he can experience, communication is 
impossible. So note it: communication is possible only if two persons are communicating 
who have had the same experience. 

We are able to communicate in ordinary life because our experiences are similar. But 
even then, if one is going to split hairs then there will be difficulties. I say the sky is blue 
and you also say the sky is blue, but how are we to decide that my experience of blue and 
your experience of blue is the same? There is no possible way to decide. 


I may be looking at one shade of blue and you may be looking at a different shade of 
blue, but what I am looking at inside, what I am experiencing, cannot be conveyed to 
you. I can simply say "blue." You also say "blue," but blue has a thousand shades — and 
not only shades, 'blue' has thousands of meanings. In my pattern of mind, blue may mean 
one thing. To you it may mean something else, because blue is not the meaning. The 
meaning is always in the pattern of the mind. So even in common experiences it is 
difficult to communicate. 

Moreover, there are experiences which are of the beyond. For example, someone has 
fallen in love. He experiences something. His whole life is at stake, but he cannot explain 
what has happened to him, what is happening to him. He can weep, he can sing, he can 
dance; these are indications that something is happening in him. But what is happening in 
him? When love happens to someone, what is happening really? And love is not very 
uncommon. It happens to everyone in some way or other. But still, we have not been able 
to express yet what happens inside. 

There are persons who feel love as a fever, as a sort of disease. Rousseau says that youth 
is not the peak of human life, because youth is prone to the disease called love. Unless 
one becomes so old that love loses all meaning, mind remains muddled and puzzled. So 
wisdom is possible only in very, very old age. 


Love will not allow you to be wise — that is his feeling. 

There are others who may feel differently. Those who are really wise will become silent 



about love. They will not say anything — because the feeling is so infinite, so deep, that 
language is bound to betray it. And if it is expressed then one feels guilty, because one 
can never do justice to the feeling of the infinite. So one remains silent: the deeper the 
experience, the less the possibility of expression. 

Buddha remained silent about God not because there is no God. And those who are very 
much vocal about God really show they have no experience. Buddha remained silent. 
Whenever he would go to any town, he would declare, "Please, do not ask anything about 
God. You can ask anything, but not about God." 

Scholars, pundits, who had no experience really but only knowledge, started talking 
about Buddha and creating rumors, saying, "He is silent because he doesn't know. If he 
kn ows then why will he not say?" And Buddha would laugh. That laughter could be 
understood only by very few. 

If love cannot be expressed, then how can God be expressed? Then any expression is 
hannful — that is one thing. That is why Shiva is silent about the experience. He goes to 
the point from where a finger can be used as an indication — "Then, that, the 
experience" — and then he becomes silent. 

The second reason is: even if it can be expressed in a certain way, even if it can be 
expressed only partially. 

.. Even if it cannot be expressed, really, then too some parallels can be created to help. 

But those too Shiva is not using, and there is a reason. It is because our minds are so 
greedy that whenever something is said about that experience the mind clings to it. And 
then the mind forgets the method and remembers only the experience, because method 
needs effort — a long effort which is sometimes tedious, sometimes dangerous. A long 
sustained effort is needed. 

So we forget about the method. We remember the result and we go on imagining, 
wishing, desiring the result. And one can fool oneself very easily. One can imagine that 
the result has been achieved. 

Someone was here a few days before. He is a sannyasin — an old man, a very old man. 

He took sannyas thirty years ago; now he is near seventy. He came to me and he said, "I 
have come to make some inquiries, to know something." 

So I asked him, "What do you want to know?" 

Suddenly he changed. He said, "No, not to know really — just to meet you, because 
whatsoever can be known I have known already." 

For thirty years he has been imagining, desiring — desiring bliss, divine experiences — 
and now, at this late age, he has become weak and death is near. Now he is creating 
hallucinations that he has experienced. So I told him, "If you have experienced, then keep 
silent. Be here with me for a few moments because then there is no need to talk." 


Then he became restless. He said, "Okay! Then suppose that I have not experienced. 

Then tell me something." 

So I told him, "There is no possibility with me to suppose anything. Either you have 
kn own or you have not known," I said. "So be clear about it. If you have known, then 
keep quiet. Be here for a few moments and then go. If you have not known, then be clear. 
Then tell me so." 

Then he was puzzled. He had come to inquire about some methods. Then he said, 

"Really, I have not experienced, but I have been thinking so much about AHAM 



BRAHMASMI — I am the BRAHMAN — that sometimes I forget that I have only been 
thinking. I have repeated it so much, day and night, for thirty years continuously, that 
sometimes I completely forget that I have not known this. It is just a borrowed saying." 

It is difficult to remember what is knowledge and what is experience. They get confused; 
they get mingled and mixed. And it is very easy to feel that your knowledge has become 
your experience. The human mind is so deceptive, so cunning, that that is possible. That 
is another reason why Shiva has remained silent about the experience. He will not say 
anything about it. He goes on talking about methods, remaining completely silent about 
the result. You cannot be deceived by him. 

That is one of the reasons why this book, one of the most significant of books, has 
remained altogether unknown. 

This VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA is one of the most significant books in the 
world. No Bible, no Veda, no Gita is so significant, but it has remained completely 
unknown. The reason? It contains only simple methods without any possibility for your 
greed to cling to the result. 

The mind wants to cling to the result. The mind is not interested in the method; it is 
interested in the end result. And if you can bypass the method and reach the result, the 
mind will be extremely happy. 

Someone was asking me, "Why so many methods? Kabir has said, 'SAHAJ SAMADHI 
BHALI — be spontaneous.' Spontaneous ecstasy is good, so there is no need of 
methods." 

I told him, "If you have achieved SAHAJ SAMADHI — spontaneous ecstasy — then of 
course no method is useful; there is no need. Why have you come here?" 

He said, "I have not achieved yet, but I feel that SAHAJ — the spontaneous — is better." 
"But why do you feel that the spontaneous is better?" I said. Because no method is 
suggested, the mind feels good that you have nothing to do — and without doing, you can 
have EVERYTHING ! 

Because of this Zen has become a craze in the West — because Zen says, achieve it 
effortlessly; there is no need of effort. Zen is right; there is no need for an effort. But 
remember, to achieve this point of no-effort you will need a long, long effort. To achieve 
a point where no effort is needed, to achieve a point where you can remain in non-doing, 
a long effort will be needed. 

But the superficial conclusion that Zen says no effort is needed has become very 
appealing in the West. If no effort is needed then the mind says: this is the right thing, 
because you can do it without doing anything. But no one can do it. 

Suzuki, who made Zen known in the West, has done a service and also a disservice. And 
the disservice will remain for a longer period. He was a very authentic man, one of the 
most authentic men of this century, and for his whole life he struggled to carry the 
message of Zen to the West. And alone, with his own effort, he made it known in the 
West. And now there is a craze; there are Zen friends all over the West. Nothing appeals 
like Zen now. 

But the point is missed. The appeal has come only because Zen says no method is 
needed, no effort is needed. You do not have to do anything; spontaneously it flowers. 
This is right — but you are not spontaneous, so it will never flower in you. To be 
spontaneous... It looks absurd and contradictory, because for you to be spontaneous many 
methods are needed to purify you, to make you innocent so that you can be spontaneous. 



Otherwise you cannot be spontaneous in anything. 

This VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA was translated into English by Paul Reps. He 
has written a very beautiful book, ZEN FLESH, ZEN BONES, and just in the appendix 
he included this book VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA. 

The whole book is concerned with Zen; just in the appendix he added this book also, the 
one hundred and twelve methods, and he called it a pre-Zen writing. Many Zen followers 
didn't like this because they said, "Zen says no effort is needed, and this book is 
concerned only with effort. This book is concerned only with methods, and Zen says no 
method, no effort is needed. So it is anti-Zen, not pre-Zen." Superficially they are right, 
but deep down they are not, because to achieve a spontaneous being one has to travel a 
long way. 

One of Gurdjieffs disciples, Ouspensky, used to say, whenever someone would come to 
him to ask about the path, "We don’t know anything about the path. We only teach about 
some footpaths which lead to the path. The path is not known to us." Do not think that 
you are already on the path. Even the path is far away. From where you are, from that 
point, even the path is far away. So first you have to reach to the path. Ouspensky was a 
very humble man, and it is very difficult to be religious and to be humble — very, very 
difficult, because once you begin to feel that you know, the head goes mad. He would 
always say, "We don’t know anything about the path. It is very far away, and there is no 
need just now to discuss it." Wherever you are, first you have to create a link, a small 
bridge, a footpath which will lead you to the path. 

Spontaneity — SAHAJ YOGA — is very far away from you. 

In the place where you are, you are totally artificial, cultivated and cultured. Nothing is 
spontaneous — NOTHING, I say, is spontaneous. When nothing is spontaneous in your 
life, how can religion be spontaneous? When nothing is spontaneous, even love is not 
spontaneous. Even love is a bargain, even love is a calculation, even love is an effort. 
Then nothing can be spontaneous. And then to explode spontaneously into the cosmos is 
impossible. 

From the situation you are in, from that situation it is impossible. First you will have to 
throw away all your artificiality, all your false attitudes, all your cultivated conventions, 
all your prejudices. Only then will a spontaneous happening be possible. These methods 
will help you to come to a point from where nothing is needed to be done — just your 
being is enough. But mind can deceive. And mind easily deceives, because then it can get 
consolation. 

Shiva never talks about any result, just methods. Remember this emphasis. Do 
something, so that a moment may be possible when nothing is needed, when your central 
being can just dissolve into the cosmos. But that has to be achieved. Zen's appeal is for 
the wrong reasons, and the same is true for Krishnamurti, because he says no yoga is 
needed, no method is needed. Really, he says there is no method of meditation. He is 
right. 

He is right, but Shiva says these one hundred and twelve methods of meditation are there, 
and Shiva is also right. 

And as far as YOU are concerned, Shiva is more right. And if you have to choose 
between Krishnamurti and Shiva, then choose Shiva. Krishnamurti is of no use to you. 
Even this can be said to help you — that Krishnamurti is absolutely wrong. Remember, I 



say to help you. And he is harmful. That too I say to help you, because if you get into his 
argument you will not achieve samadhi. You will achieve only one conclusion — that no 
method is needed. And that is dangerous. For you method is needed! 

There comes a moment when no method is needed, but that moment has not come for you 
yet. And before that moment, to know about something that is ahead is dangerous. That is 
why Shiva is silent. He will not say anything of the future, of what will happen. He 
simply sticks to you, to what you are and what is to be done with you. Krishnamurti goes 
on talking in terms which cannot be understood by you. 

The logic can be felt. The logic is right; it is beautiful. It will be good if you can 
remember the logic of Krishnamurti. He says that if you are doing some method, then 
who is doing that method? The mind is doing it. And how can any method done by mind 
dissolve mind? Rather, on the contrary, it will strengthen it more; it will strengthen your 
mind more. It will become a conditioning, it will be false. 

So meditation is spontaneous; you cannot do anything about it. What can you do about 
love? Can you practice any method for how to love? If you practice, then your love will 
be false. 

It happens, it cannot be practiced. If even love cannot be practiced, how can prayer be 
practiced? How can meditation be practiced? 

The logic is exactly, absolutely right — but not for you, because by listening to this logic 
continuously you will be conditioned by this logic. And those who have been listening to 
Krishnamurti for forty years are the most conditioned persons I have come across. They 
say there is no method, and still they are nowhere. 

I say, "You have understood there is no method and you do not practice any method, but 
has the spontaneity flowered in you?" They say, "No!" 

And if I tell them, "Then practice some method," immediately their conditioning comes 
in. They say, "There is no method." 

They have not been practicing any method, and samadhi has not happened. And if you 
tell them, "Then try some method," they say there is no method. So they are in a 
dilemma. They have not moved an inch, and the reason is that they have been told 
something which was not for them. 

It is like teaching a small child about sex. You can go on teaching, but you are saying 
something which is as yet meaningless for the child. And your teaching will be dangerous 
because you are conditioning his mind. It is not his need; he is not concerned with it. He 
doesn't know what sex means because his glands are still not functioning; his body is still 
not sexual. 

His energy has not yet moved biologically to the sex center, and you are talking to him. 
Because he has ears, do you think that anything can be taught to him? Because he can 
nod his head, do you think you can teach him anything? 

You can teach, and your teaching can become dangerous and harmful. Sex is not an 
inquiry for him, it has not become a problem for him. He has not reached that point of 
maturity where sex becomes significant. Wait! When he begins to inquire, when he 
matures and when he asks questions, then tell him. And never tell more than he can 
understand, because that more will become a burden on his head. It is the same with the 
phenomenon of meditation. 

You can be taught only about methods, not about results — that is taking a jump. And 
without getting a foothold on the method, taking the jump is simply a cerebral affair, a 



mental affair. And then you will always miss the method. 

It is like small children doing arithmetic. They can always go to the back of the book and 
can know the answer. The answer is there; at the back of the book, the answers are given. 
They can look at the question, then they can go to the back and know the answer. And 
once a child knows the answer it is very difficult for him to leam the method, because 
there seems to be no need. When he already knows the answer, there is no need. 

And really, he will do the whole thing in reverse order. 

Then through any false, pseudo method he will arrive at the answer. He knows the real 
thing, he knows the answer, so he can arrive at the answer by just creating a false 
method. And this happens so much in religion that it seems, as far as religion is 
concerned, everyone is just doing what children do. 

The answer is not good for you. The question is there, the method is there, and the 
answer must be reached by you. No one else should give you the answer. The real 
teachers do not help you to know the answer before the process is done, they simply help 
you to go through the process. In fact, even if you have known somehow, even if you 
have stolen some answer from somewhere, they will say that this is wrong. It may not be 
wrong, but they will say, "This is wrong. Throw this — it is not needed." They will debar 
you from knowing the answer before you really come to know it. That is why no answer 
is given. 

Shiva's beloved, Devi, has asked him questions. He is giving simple methods. The 
question is there, the method is there. The answer is left for you to work out, to live out. 
So remember, centering is the method, not the result. The result is cosmic, oceanic 
experience. There is no center then. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

YOU SAID IF ONE CAN REALLY LOVE, THEN LOVE ALONE IS ENOUGH AND 
THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE METHODS OF MEDITATION ARE NOT 
NEEDED. 

AS YOU HAVE EXPLAINED REAL LOVE, I FEEL REALLY THAT I LOVE, I 
BELIEVE. BUT THE BLISS I ENCOUNTER IN MEDITATION FEELS TO BE OF 
QUITE ANOTHER DIMENSION THAN THE DEEP CONTENTMENT I 
EXPERIENCE FROM LOVE, AND I CANNOT IMAGINE BEING WITHOUT 
MEDITATION ALSO. SO EXPLAIN MORE ABOUT HOW LOVE ALONE 
WITHOUT MEDITATION CAN BE ENOUGH. 

Many things will have to be understood. One, if you are really in love you will not 
inquire at all about meditation — because love is such a total fulfillment that it is never 
felt that something is lacking, that some gap is to be filled, that you need something 
more. If you feel that something more is needed, the gap is there. If you feel that 
something more is to be done and experienced, then love is just a feeling, not a reality. I 
do not doubt your belief, you may believe that you are in love. Your belief is authentic; 
you are not deceiving anyone. You feel that you are in love, but the symptoms show that 
you are not. 

What are the symptoms of being in love? Three things. First, absolute contentment. 
Nothing else is needed; not even God is needed. Second, no future. This very moment of 
love is eternity. No next moment, no future, no tomorrow. Love is a happening in the 
present. And third, you cease to be, you are no more. If you still are, then you have still 



not entered the temple of love. 

If these three things happen... If you are not, then who is going to meditate? If there is no 
future, then all methods become useless because methods are for the future, for a result. 

And if at this very moment you are content, absolutely content, where is the motivation to 
do anything? 

There is a school of psychologists — and this is one of the most significant trends in 
modern thinking — that started with Wilhelm Reich. He said that every mental disease 
arises because of the lack of love. Because you cannot feel deep love, because you cannot 
be in it totally, this unfulfilled being craves for fulfillment in many dimensions. 

When I say that "If you can love, nothing is needed," I do not mean that then love is 
enough. I mean that once you love deeply, love becomes a door — just like any 
meditation. What is meditation going to do? These three things: It will create 
contentment; it will allow you to remain in the present, help you to remain in the present; 
and it will destroy your ego. These three things meditation is going to do — with any 
method. So you can say it this way: love is the natural method. If the natural method has 
been missed, then other artificial methods have to be supplied. 

But one can feel that one is in love; then these three things will become criteria for him. 
He will think that these should be made the touchstones, the measures and he will 
observe whether these three things are happening. If they are not happening, then his 
feeling can be many other things, but not love. And the feeling of love is a great 
phenomenon, it can be many things. 

It can be lust; it can be simple sex; it can be just a possessive tendency. It can be just an 
occupation because you cannot be alone, and you need someone because you are afraid 
and you need security. The presence of the other helps you to be secure. Or it may be just 
a sexual relationship. 

Energy needs outlets. Energy goes on accumulating — then it becomes a burden. You 
have to throw it and release it. So your love may be just a release. Love can be many 
things, and love is many things. And ordinarily, love is many things except LOVE. To 
me, love is meditation. So try this: with your lover, be in meditation. Whenever your 
lover or beloved is present, be in deep meditation. Make this presence of each other a 
meditative state. 

Ordinarily, you are doing the very opposite. Whenever lovers are together they are 
fighting. When they are separated then they are thinking of each other, and when they are 
together they are fighting. When they are separated again, then again they are thinking 
about each other. When they are put together, again the fight starts. This is not love! 

So I will suggest some points. Make the presence of your beloved or lover a meditative 
state. Be silent. Remain close, but be silent. Use each other's presence to drop the mind; 
do not think. If you are thinking while your lover is with you, then you are not with your 
lover. How can you be? You are both there, but miles apart. 

You are thinking your thoughts, your lover is thinking his thoughts. You just appear to be 
near, but you are not — because when two minds are thinking, they are poles apart. 

Real love means cessation of thinking. In the presence of your beloved or lover, cease 
completely to think; then only are you near. Then suddenly you are one, then bodies 
cannot separate you. Then deep down within the body, someone has broken the barrier. 
The silence breaks the barrier — that is one thing. 



Make your relationship a sacred phenomenon. When you are really in love, the object of 
love becomes divine. If it is not, then know well it is not a love relationship; it is 
impossible. A love relationship is not a profane relationship. But have you ever felt any 
reverence for your beloved? You may have felt many other things, but never reverence. 

It seems inconceivable, but India has tried many, many ways... That is why India has 
been insisting that this love relationship between man and woman should be a sacred 
phenomenon, not a worldly relationship. The lover, the beloved, they become divine. 

You cannot look at them in any other way. 

I wonder, have you ever felt any reverence for your wife? The very thing seems 
irrelevant — reverence for a wife? There is no question. You can feel condemnation, you 
can feel everything, but never reverence. The relationship is just worldly; you are using 
each other. 

The wife may say that she respects her husband, but I have not seen a single wife who 
really respects. Traditionally, because it has been a convention to respect the husband, 
the wife goes on saying she respects, and so she will not even utter his name. Not 
because of respect, because she can utter anything, but she will not utter his name just 
traditionally. 

Reverence is the second thing. In the presence of your beloved or lover, feel reverence. If 
you cannot see the divine in your beloved or lover, you cannot see him anywhere else. 
How can you see him in a tree, where no relationship exists? When no deep intimacy 
prevails, how can you see him in a rock or a tree? They are unrelated. If you cannot see 
him in the person you love, if God is not felt there, he cannot be felt anywhere else. And 
if he can be felt there, sooner or later you will feel him everywhere — because once the 
door is thrown open, once you have a glimpse of the divine in any person, then you 
cannot forget that glimpse. And because of that, then everything becomes a door. That is 
why I say love itself is a meditation. 

So do not think in contrast — whether to love or to meditate. That was not my meaning. 
Do not try to choose whether to love or to meditate. Love meditatively, or meditate 
lovingly. Do not create any division. Love is a very natural phenomenon, and it can be 
used as a vehicle. And tantra has used it as a vehicle — not only love, even sex tantra has 
used as a vehicle. 


Tantra says that in a deep sex act you can meditate more easily than in any other state of 
mind — because this is a natural, biological ecstasy. But whatsoever is known by the sex 
act is in a very perverted form. So whenever such things are said you feel uneasy, 
because whatsoever you have known in the name of sex is not sex. It is just a shadow, 
because the whole society has cultivated your mind against sex. 

Everyone is a suppressed person, so natural sex is impossible. And whenever you are in a 
sex act, a deep guilt feeling is always present there. That guilt feeling becomes a barrier, 
and one of the greatest opportunities is lost. You could have used it to go deep down into 
yourself. 

Tantra says, in the sex act be meditative. Feel the whole phenomenon as holy; do not feel 
guilty. Rather, feel blessed that nature has given you one source through which you can 
go deep into ecstasy immediately. And then, be totally free in it. Do not repress; do not 
resist. Let the sexual communion take hold of you. Forget yourself; throw all your 



inhibitions. Be absolutely natural, and then you will feel a deep music in the body. 

When both bodies become one hannony, then you will forget completely that you are — 
and still, you will be. Then you will forget the "I": there will be no "I", just existence 
playing with existence, one being with another. 

And the two will become one. There will be no thinking; future will cease and you will 
be in the present this very moment. Without any guilt, without any inhibition, make it a 
meditation, and then sex is transformed. Then sex itself becomes a door. 

If sex becomes a door, by and by sex ceases to be sexual. And a moment comes when sex 
has gone — only the perfume has remained. That perfume is love. And later on, even that 
perfume disappears, and then that which remains is samadhi. 

Tantra says nothing has to be taken as an enemy. Every energy is friendly; one has just to 
know how to use it. So do not make any choice. Transform your love into meditation and 
transfonn your meditation into love. Then soon you will forget the word and you will 
know the real thing, which is not the word. The word 'love' is not love, and the word 
'meditation' is not meditation, and the word 'God' is not God. These are only words. And 
if you can penetrate in, then God, meditation, love; they all become one. 

One more question: 

Question 3 

WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR MAN’S INSENSITIVITIES AND HOW TO 
REMOVE THEM? 

When the child is bom the child is helpless. The human child, particularly, is totally 
helpless. He has to depend on others to be alive, to remain alive. This dependence is a 
bargain. The child has to give many things in this bargain, and sensitivity is one. 

The child is sensitive; his whole body is sensitive. But he is helpless, he cannot be 
independent; he has to depend on parents, on family, on society; he will have to be 
dependent. Because of this dependence and helplessness, the parents, the society, go on 
forcing things on the child, and he has to yield. Otherwise he cannot remain alive, he will 
die. So he has to give many things in this bargain. 

The first very deep and significant thing is sensitivity: he has to leave it. Why? Because 
the more the child is sensitive, the more he is in trouble, the more he is vulnerable. A 
slight sensation, and he begins to cry. The cry has to be stopped by the parents, and they 
cannot do anything. But if the child goes on feeling every detail of sensation, the child 
will become a nuisance. And children do become nuisances, so parents have to curtail 
their sensitivity. The child has to learn resistance, the child has to learn control. And by 
and by the child has to divide his mind into two. So there are many sensations which he 
just stops feeling because they are not "good" — he is punished for them. 

The child's whole body is erotic. He can enjoy his fingers, he can enjoy his body; the 
whole body is erotic. He goes on exploring his own body; it is a great phenomenon for 
him. But the moment comes in his exploration when the child gets to the genitalia. Then 
it becomes a problem because the father and mother are all repressed. 

The moment the child, boy or girl, touches the genitalia, the parents become uneasy. This 
is to be observed deeply. Their behavior suddenly changes, and the child notes it. 
Something wrong has happened. They start crying, "Don't touch!" Then the child starts 
feeling that something is wrong with the genitalia, he has to suppress. And the genitals 
are the most sensitive part of your body — the most sensitive, the most alive part of your 



body, the most delicate. Once the genitalia are not allowed to be touched and enjoyed, 
you have killed the very source of sensitivity. Then the child will become insensitive. 

The more he will grow, the more he will be insensitive. 

So first there is a bargain — necessary, but evil. And the moment one begins to 
understand, this bargain has to be thrown and you have to regain your sensitivity. The 
second reason for this bargain is because of security. 

I was with a friend for many years; I lived in his bungalow. From the very first day I 
observed that he would not look at his servants. He was a rich man, but he would never 
look at his servants, he would never look at his children. He would come running into the 
bungalow, then he would go running from his bungalow to his car. So I asked him, "What 
is the matter?" 

He said, "If you look at your servants they start feeling friendly, and then they start 
asking about money and this and that. 

If you talk with your children, then you are not the master, then you cannot control 
them." So he created a facade of insensitivity around himself. He was afraid that if he 
talked with a servant, if he should feel that the servant was ill, if he sympathized, then he 
would have to give some money or some help. 

Everyone learns sooner or later that to be sensitive is to be vulnerable to many things. 

You pull yourself in, you create a barrier around yourself that is a safeguard — a safety 
measure. Then you can go on through the streets... beggars are begging and there are 
dirty, ugly slums, but you do not feel anything, you do not really see. In this ugly society 
one has to create a barrier around himself, a wall — a subtle, transparent wall — behind 
which he can hide. Otherwise, one is vulnerable, and it will be very difficult to live. 

That is why insensitivity sets in. It helps you to be in this ugly world without being 
disturbed; but there is a cost — and the cost is very much. You are at ease in this world 
without being disturbed, but then you cannot enter into the divine, into the total, into the 
whole. You cannot enter the other world. If for this world insensitivity is good and for 
that world sensitivity is good, that creates the problem. 

If you are really interested in entering that world, you will have to create sensitivity, you 
will have to throw away all these walls, these securities. 

Of course, you will become vulnerable. You will feel much suffering, but that suffering is 
nothing in comparison to the bliss you can reach through sensitivity. The more sensitive 
you become, the more you will feel compassion. But you will suffer because all around 
you there is hell. You are closed — that is why you cannot feel it. Once you become open, 
you will be open to both — to the hell of this world and the heaven of that world. You 
will become open to both. 

And it is impossible to remain closed at one point and open at another, because really, 
either you are closed or you are open. If you are closed, you are closed for both. If you 
are open, you will be open for both. So remember this: a buddha is filled with bliss, but 
also filled with suffering. 

That suffering is not of his own, it is for others. He is in deep bliss, but he suffers for 
others. And Mahayana Buddhists say that when Buddha reached to the door of nirvana, 
the gatekeeper opened the door — this is a myth, and very beautiful — the doorkeeper 
opened the door, but Buddha refused to enter. The doorkeeper said, "Why are you not 
coming in? For millennia we have been waiting for you. Every day the news comes that 
'Buddha is coming, Buddha is coming!’ The whole of heaven is waiting for you. Enter! 



You are welcome!" 

Buddha said, "I cannot enter unless everyone else has entered before me. 

I will wait! Unless every single human being has entered, heaven is not for me." 

Buddha has a suffering for others. As for himself, he is now deep in bliss. See the 
parallel? You are deep in suffering, and you go on feeling that everyone else is enjoying 
life. Quite the contrary happens to a Buddha. He is now in deep bliss, and he knows that 
everyone else is suffering. 

These methods are the methods to remove this insensitivity. We will discuss more about 
HOW to remove it. 

Enough. 

THE END. 



Chapter 15: Toward the untouched inner reality 


22. LET ATTENTION BE AT A PLACE WHERE YOU ARE SEEING SOME PAST 
HAPPENING, AND EVEN YOUR FORM, HAVING LOST ITS PRESENT 
CHARACTERISTICS, IS TRANSFORMED. 

23. FEEL AN OBJECT BEFORE YOU. FEEL THE ABSENCE OF ALL OTHER 
OBJECTS BUT THIS ONE. THEN, LEAVING ASIDE THE OBJECT-FEELING AND 
THE ABSENCE-FEELING, REALIZE. 

24. WHEN A MOOD AGAINST SOMEONE OR FOR SOMEONE ARISES, DO NOT 
PLACE IT ON THE PERSON IN QUESTION, BUT REMAIN CENTERED. 

One of the great tantrics of this age, George Gurdjieff, says that identification is the only 
sin. The next sutra, the tenth sutra on centering — which we are going to penetrate tonight 
— is concerned with identification. So first be crystal clear on what identification means. 
You were a child once; now you are not. Someone becomes young, someone becomes 
old, and childhood becomes a past thing. Youth has gone, but still you are identified with 
your childhood. You cannot see it as happening to someone else; you cannot be a witness 
to it. Whenever you see your childhood, you are not aloof from it, you are one with it. 
Whenever someone remembers his youth, he is one with it. 

Really, now it is just a dream. And if you can see your childhood as a dream, as a film 
passing before you and you are not identified with it, you are just a witness, you will 
achieve a very subtle insight into yourself. If you see your past as a film, as a dream — 
you are not part of it, you are just out of it. 

.. and really you are — then many things will happen. If you are thinking about your 
childhood, you are not in it — you cannot be. The childhood is just a memory, just a past 
memory. You are remaining aloof and looking at it. You are different: you are a witness. 
If you can feel this witnessing and then see your childhood as a film on a screen, many 
things will happen. 

One: if childhood has become just a dream which you can see, then whatsoever you are 
just now will become a dream the next day. If you are young, then your youth will 
become a dream. If you are old, then your old age also will become a dream. One day 
you were a child; now the childhood has become just a dream and you can observe it. 

It is good to start with the past. Observe the past and disidentify yourself from it; become 
a witness. Then observe the future, whatsoever you imagine about the future, and be a 
witness to that also. Then you can observe your present very easily, because then you 
know that whatsoever is present just now was future yesterday, and tomorrow it will 
become the past. But your witness is never past, never future. Your witnessing 
consciousness is eternal; it is not part of time. That is why everything that happens in 
time becomes a dream. 

Remember this also: whenever you are dreaming something in the night you become 
identified with it, and you can never remember in your dream that this is a dream. 

Only in the morning, when you have awakened from the dream, can you remember that it 
was a dream and not a reality. Why? Because then you are aloof, not in it. Then there is a 
gap. Some space is there, and you can see that it was a dream. 

But what is your whole past? The gap is there, the space is there. Try to see it as a dream. 



Now it is a dream; now it is nothing more than a dream, because just as the dream 
becomes a memory, your past has become just a memory. You cannot prove really that 
whatsoever you think was your childhood was real or just a dream. It is difficult to prove. 
It may have been just a dream, it may have been real. The memory cannot say whether it 
was real or a dream. Psychologists say that old men occasionally get confused between 
what they have dreamed and what was real. 

Children always get confused. In the morning, small children cannot differentiate. 
Whatsoever they have seen in the dream was not real, but they may weep for a toy 
destroyed in the dream. And you also, for a few moments after sleep is broken, are still 
affected by your dream. If someone was murdering you in the dream, even though your 
sleep is broken and you are wide awake, your heart still beats fast, your blood circulation 
is fast. You may be still perspiring, and a subtle fear is still there hovering around you. 
Now you are awake and the dream has passed, but you will take a few minutes to feel 
that it was simply a dream and nothing else. 

When you can feel that it was a dream, then you are out of it and there is no fear. 

If you can feel that the past was just a dream — you are not to project this and force the 
idea that the past was just a dream, it is a consequence — if you can observe this; if you 
can be aware of it without getting involved in it, without being identified with it; if you 
can stand aloof and look at it, it will become a dream. Anything that you can look at as a 
witness is a dream. 

That is why Shankara and Nagarjuna could say that this world is just a dream. Not that it 
IS a dream; they were not fools, not simpletons saying this world actually is a dream. 
They meant by saying this that they have become witnesses. Even to this world which is 
so actual, they have become witnesses. And once you become a witness of anything, it 
becomes a dream. That is the reason why the world is called MAYA, an illusion. It is not 
that it is unreal, but that one can become a witness to it. And once you become a witness 
— aware, fully aware — the whole thing drops just like a dream for you, because the space 
is there and you are not identified with it. But we go on being identified. 

Just a few days before I was reading Jean Jacques Rousseau's CONFESSIONS. This is a 
rare book. It is really the first book in world literature in which someone bares himself, 
totally naked. Whatsoever sins he has committed, whatsoever immorality, he opens 
himself up, totally naked. 

But if you read the CONFESSIONS of Rousseau you are bound to feel that he is 
enjoying it; he feels very much elated. Talking about his sins, talking about his 
immoralities, he feels elated. It seems as if he is enjoying it with much relish. In the 
beginning, in the introduction, Rousseau says, "When the last day of judgement will 
come, I will say to God, to the almighty, 'You need not bother about me. Read this book 
and you will know everything.’" 

No one before him has ever confessed so truthfully. And at the end of the book he says, 
"Almighty God, eternal God, fulfill my only desire. I have confessed everything; now let 
a big crowd gather to listen to my confessions." 

So it is rightly suspected that he may have confessed some sins also which he has not 
committed. He feels so elated and he is enjoying the whole thing. He has become 
identified. And there is only one sin which he has not admitted to — the sin of being 
identified. With whatsoever sin he has committed or not committed he is identified, and 
that is the only sin for those who know deeply how the human mind functions. 



When for the first time he read his confessions amongst a small group of intellectuals, he 
was thinking that something earthshaking would happen, because he was the first man to 
confess so truthfully, as he said. The intellectuals listened, and they became more and 
more bored. 

Rousseau felt very uneasy because he was thinking something miraculous was going to 
happen. When he ended, they all felt relieved, but no one said anything. There was 
complete silence for a few moments. Rousseau's heart was shattered. He was thinking 
that he had created a very revolutionary thing, earthshaking, historical, and there was 
simply silence. Everyone was just thinking about how to get away from there. 

Who is interested in your sins except yourself? No one is interested in your virtues, no 
one is interested in your sins. Man is such that he becomes elated, he becomes 
strengthened in his ego, by his virtues and by his sins also. After writing 
CONFESSIONS, Rousseau began to think himself a sage, a saint, because he had 
confessed. But the basic sin remained. The basic sin is being identified with happenings 
in time. Whatsoever happens in time is dreamlike, and unless you get unattached from it, 
not identified with it, you will never know what bliss is. 

Identification is misery; non-identification is bliss. This tenth technique is concerned 
with identification. 

The tenth sutra: 

LET ATTENTION BE AT A PLACE WHERE YOU ARE SEEING SOME PAST 
HAPPENING, AND EVEN YOUR FORM, HAVING LOST ITS PRESENT 
CHARACTERISTICS, IS TRANSFORMED. 

You are remembering your past — any happening. Your childhood, your love affairs, the 
death of your father or mother. 

.. anything. Look at it, but do not get involved in it. Remember it as if you are 
remembering someone else's life. And when this happening is being filmed again, is on 
the screen again, be attentive, aware, a witness, remaining aloof. Your past form will be 
there in the film, in the story. 

If you are remembering your love affair, your first love affair, you will be there with your 
beloved; your past fonn will be there with your beloved. You cannot remember 
otherwise. Be detached from your past form also. Look at the whole phenomenon as if 
someone else were loving someone else, as if the whole thing doesn’t belong to you. You 
are just a witness, an observer. 

This is a very, very basic technique. It has been used much, particularly by Buddha. 

There are many forms of this technique; you can find your own way of approaching this. 
For example, when you are just falling into sleep at night, just ready to fall into sleep, go 
backwards through the memories of the whole day. Do not start from the morning. Start 
right from where you are, just on the bed — the last item — and then go back. Then go 
back by and by, step by step, just to the first experience in the morning when you first 
became awake. Go back, and remember continuously that you are not getting involved. 
For example, in the afternoon someone insulted you. See yourself, the form of yourself, 
being insulted by someone, but you remain just an observer. 

Do not get involved; do not get angry again. If you get angry again, then you are 
identified. Then you have missed the point of meditation. Do not get angry. He is not 



insulting you, he is insulting the form that was in the afternoon. That form has gone now. 
You are just like a river flowing: the forms are flowing. In your childhood you had one 
form, and now you do not have that fonn; that fonn has gone. River-like, you are 
changing continuously. So when in the night you are meditating backwards on the 
happenings of the day, just remember that you are a witness — do not get angry. Someone 
was praising you — do not get elated. Just look at the whole thing as if you are looking 
indifferently at a film. And backwards it is very helpful, particularly for those who have 
any trouble with sleep. 

If you have any trouble with sleep, insomnia, sleeplessness, if you find it difficult to fall 
into sleep, this will help deeply. Why? Because this is an unwinding of the mind. When 
you go back you are unwinding the mind. In the morning you start winding, and the mind 
becomes tangled in many things, in many places. Unfinished and incomplete, many 
things will remain on the mind, and there is no time to let them settle at the very moment 
that they happen. 

So in the night go back. This is an unwinding process. And when you will be getting 
back to the morning when you were just on your bed, to the first thing in the morning, 
you will again have the same fresh mind that you had in the morning. 

And then you can fall asleep like a very small child. 

You can use this technique of going back for your whole life also. Mahavir used this 
technique of going back very much. And now there is a movement in America called 
dianetics. They are using this method and finding it very, very useful. This movement, 
dianetics, says that all your diseases are just hangovers of the past. And they are right. If 
you can go backwards and unwind your whole life, with that unwinding many diseases 
will disappear completely. And this has been proven by so many successful incidents; 
there are so many successful cases now. 

So many persons suffer from a particular disease, and nothing physiological, nothing 
medical helps; the disease continues. The disease seems to be psychological. What to do 
about it? To say to someone that his disease is psychological is no help. Rather, it may 
prove harmful, because no one feels good when you say his disease is psychological. 
What can he do then? He feels he is helpless. 

This going backwards is a miraculous method. If you go back slowly — slowly unwinding 
the mind to the first moment when this disease happened — if by and by you go back to 
when for the first time you were attacked by this disease, if you can unwind to that 
moment, you will come to know that this disease is basically a complex of certain other 
things, certain psychological things. 

By going back those things will bubble up. 

If you pass through that moment when the disease first attacked you, suddenly you will 
become aware of what psychological factors contributed to it. And you are not to do 
anything, you are just to be aware of those psychological factors and go on backwards. 
Many diseases simply disappear from you because the complex is broken. When you 
have become aware of the complex, then there is no need of it; you are cleaned of it, 
purged. 

This is a deep catharsis. And if you can do it daily, you will feel a new health, a new 
freshness coming to you. And if we can teach children to do it daily, they will never be 
burdened by their past. They will not need ever to go to the past, they will be always here 
and now. There won’t be any hang-up; nothing will be hovering over them from the past. 



You can do it daily. It will give you a new insight for going backward through the whole 
day. The mind would like to start from the morning, but remember, then there is no 
unwinding. Rather, the whole thing is re-emphasized. If you start from the morning, you 
are doing a very wrong thing. 

There are many so-called teachers in India who suggest to do it — to reflect on the whole 
day — and they always say to do it again from the morning. That is wrong and harmful, 
because then you are re-emphasizing the whole thing and the trap will be deepened. 

Never go from the morning to the evening, always go backward. Only then can you clean 
the whole thing, purge the whole thing. The mind would like to start from the morning 
because it is easy: the mind knows it and there is no problem. If you start going 
backward, suddenly you will feel you have jumped into the morning and you have started 
going forward again. Do not do that — be aware, go back. 

You can train your mind to go back through other things also. Just go back from a 
hundred — 99, 98, 97... go back. Go from a hundred to one, backwards. You will feel a 
difficulty because the mind has a habit to go from one to hundred, never from a hundred 
to one. 

In the same way you have to go backward with this technique. What will happen? Going 
backward, unwinding the mind, you are a witness. You are seeing things that happened to 
you, but now they are not happening to you. Now you are just an observer and they are 
happening on the screen of the mind. 

While doing this daily, suddenly one day you will become aware during the day, while 
working in the market, in your office or anywhere, that you can be a witness to events 
that are happening just now. If you can be a witness later on, and look back at someone 
who had insulted you without becoming angry about it, why not right now, to what is 
presently happening? 

Someone is insulting you: what is the difficulty? You can pull yourself aside just now 
and you can see that someone is insulting you, and still you are different from your body, 
from your mind, from that which is insulted. 

You can witness it. If you can be a witness to this, you will not get angry; then it is 
impossible. Anger is possible only when you are identified. If you are not identified, 
anger is impossible — anger means identification. 

This technique says, look at any happening of the past — your form will be there. The 
sutra says your form, not you. You were never there. Always your form is involved; you 
are never involved. When you insult me, you do not insult ME. You cannot insult me, 
you can insult only the form. The form which I am is there just here and now for you. 

You can insult that form and I can detach myself from the form. That is why Hindus have 
always been insisting on being detached from name and form. Y ou are neither your name 
nor your fonn. You are the consciousness who knows the form and the name, and the 
consciousness is different, totally different. 

But it is difficult. So start with the past, then it is easy, because now, with the past there is 
no urgency. Someone insulted you twenty years back, so there is no urgency in it. The 
man may have died and everything is finished. It is just a dead affair, just dead from the 
past; it is easy to be aware of it. But once you can become aware there is no difficulty in 
doing the same with what is happening just here and now. 

But to start from here and now is difficult. The problem is so urgent and it is so near that 
there is no space to move. 



It is difficult to create space and move away from the incident. That is why the sutra says 
to start with the past: look at your own form, detached, standing aloof and different, and 
be transformed through it. 

You will be transformed through it because it is a deep cleaning, an unwinding. Then you 
can know that your body, your mind, your existence in time are not your basic reality. 

The substantial reality is different. Things come and go upon it without touching it in the 
least. You remain innocent, untouched; you remain virgin. The whole thing passes, the 
whole life passes: good and bad, success and failure, praise and blame — everything 
passes. Disease and health, youth and old age, birth and death — everything passes, and 
you are untouched by it. 

But how to know this untouched reality within you? That is the purpose of this technique. 
Start with the past. There is a gap when you look at your past; the perspective is possible. 
Or look at the future. But to look at the future is difficult. Only for a few persons is 
observing the future not difficult — for poets, for people with imagination who can look 
into the future as if they are looking at reality. But ordinarily the past is good to use; you 
can look into the past. For young men it may be good to look into the future. It is easier 
for them to look into the future because youth is future-oriented. 

For old men there is no future except death. 

They cannot look into the future; they are afraid. That is why old men always start 
thinking about the past. They always go again and again into their memories, but they 
commit the same mistake. They start from the past toward their present state of being — 
that is wrong, they should go backward. 

If they can go backward many times, by and by they will feel that their whole past is 
washed away from them. And then a person can die without the past clinging to him. If 
you can die without the past clinging to you, you will die consciously; you will die fully 
aware. Then death will not be a death to you. Rather, it will be a meeting with the 
deathless. 

Clean the whole consciousness of the depth of the past, and your very being will be 
transfonned through it. Try this. This method is not very difficult, only persistent effort is 
needed; there is no inherent difficulty in the method. It is simple, and you can start with 
your day. Just tonight on your bed go backward, and you will feel very beautiful, you 
will feel very blissful. And then the whole day will have passed. But do not be in a hurry, 
pass it slowly so that nothing is missed. It is a very strange feeling, because many things 
will come up before your eyes. Many things you have really missed while passing 
through the day because you were too much engaged. But the mind goes on collecting 
even when you are unaware. 


You were passing through a street. Someone was singing, but you might not have paid 
any attention. You might not have even been aware that you have heard the sound, just 
passing in the street. But the mind has heard and recorded it. Now that will cling; that 
will become a burden to you unnecessarily. So go back, but go very slowly, as if a film is 
being shown to you in very slow motion. Go back and see the details, and then your one 
day will look very, very long. It is, really, because for the mind there has been so much 
information, and the mind has recorded everything. Now go back. 

By and by you will become capable of knowing everything that has been recorded. And 
once you can go back, it is just like a tape recorder: it is washed away. By the time you 



will reach the morning you will fall asleep, and the quality of the sleep will be different — 
it will be meditative. Then again, in the morning when you feel that you have awakened, 
do not open your eyes immediately. Go backward into the night. 

It will be difficult in the beginning. You may go a little. Some part, some fragment of a 
dream which you were just dreaming before the sleep was broken may come to your 
mind. But by and by, with gradual effort, you will be able to penetrate more and more 
and more, and after a three-month period you will be capable of moving backward to the 
point when you fell asleep. 

And if you can go backward deep within your sleep, your quality of sleep and waking 
will change completely, because then you cannot dream; dreaming will have become 
futile. If you can go back in the day and in the night, dreaming is not needed. 

Now psychologists say that dreaming is really an unwinding. If you yourself have done 
it, then there is no need. All that has been hanging in the mind, all that has remained 
unfulfilled, incomplete, tries to complete itself in the dream. 

You were passing and you have seen something — a beautiful house — and a subtle desire 
arose in you to possess it. But you were going to your office and that was no time for 
daydreaming, so you just passed by. You did not even notice that the mind had created a 
desire to possess this house. But now that desire is hanging there, suspended, and if it 
cannot be removed it will be difficult to sleep. 

Difficulties in sleep basically mean only one thing, that your day is still hanging over you 
and you cannot be relieved of it. You are clinging to it. Then in the night you will see a 
dream that you have become the owner of this house — now you are living in this house. 
The moment this dream comes to you, your mind is relieved. 

So ordinarily people think that dreams are disturbances to sleep — that is absolutely 
wrong. Dreams are not disturbances to your sleep. They are not disturbing your sleep, 
they are really helping; without them you could not sleep at all. 

As you are you cannot sleep without dreams, because your dreams are helping to 
complete things which have remained incomplete. 

And there are things which cannot be completed. Your mind goes on desiring absurd 
desires, and they cannot be completed in reality, so what to do? Those incomplete desires 
go on in you, and they keep you hoping, they keep you thinking. So what to do? You 
have seen a beautiful woman and you were attracted to her. Now the desire has arisen to 
possess her. It may not be possible, the woman may not even look at you. So what to do? 
The dream will help you. 

In a dream you can possess the woman, and then the mind is relieved. As far as the mind 
is concerned, there is no difference between dream and reality. What is the difference? 
Loving a woman in reality and loving a woman in a dream, what is the difference for the 
mind? There is no difference. Or this may be the difference, that the dream phenomenon 
may be more beautiful, because then the woman will not disturb you. It is your dream 
and you can do anything, and the woman will not create any problems for you. The other 
is absent completely, you are alone. There is no barrier, so you can do whatsoever you 
like. 

There is no difference for the mind; mind cannot make any distinction between what is 
dream and what is reality. For example, if you could be put in a coma for one whole year, 
and you dream on and on, for one year you will not be able to feel in any way that 
whatsoever you are seeing is a dream. 



It will be real, and the dream will continue for one year. 

Psychologists say that if you can put a man in a coma for a hundred years he will dream 
for a hundred years, not for a single moment suspecting that whatsoever he is doing is 
just a dream. And if he dies he will never know that his life was just a dream, that it was 
never real. For the mind there is no difference: reality and dream are both the same. So 
mind can unwind itself in dream. 

If you do this technique, then there will be no need for dreams. The quality of your sleep 
will be changed totally, because without dreams you fall to the very bottom of your 
being, and without dreams you will be aware in your sleep. 

That is what Krishna says in the Gita, that while everyone is deeply asleep the yogi is 
not, the yogi is awake. That doesn’t mean that the yogi is not sleeping — he is also 
sleeping, but the quality of the sleep is different. Your sleep is just like a drugged 
unconsciousness. A yogi's sleep is a deep relaxation with no unconsciousness. His whole 
body is relaxed; every fiber and cell of his whole body is relaxed, with no tension left. 

But he is fully aware of the whole phenomenon. 

Try this technique. Start from tonight, try it, and then do it in the morning also. And 
when you feel that you are attuned to the technique, that you can do it, after one week try 
it for your whole past. 

Just take one day off. Go to some lonely place. It will be good if you fast — fast and be 
silent. Lie down on some lonely beach or under some tree, and just move toward your 
past from this point: you are lying on the beach feeling the sand and the sun, and now 
move backward. Go on penetrating, penetrating, penetrating, and find out the last thing 
that you can remember. 

You will be surprised. Ordinarily you cannot remember much, and you cannot pass the 
barrier of four or five years of age. Those who have a very good memory may go back to 
the age barrier of three years, but then suddenly a block comes and everything goes dark. 
But if you try with this technique, by and by you will break the barrier, and very easily 
you can come to remember the first day you were born. And that is a revelation. 

Back again with your sun and beach, you will be a different man. If you make more 
effort, you can penetrate to the womb. And you have memories of the womb — nine 
months of memories with your mother. That nine-month period is also recorded in the 
mind. When your mother was depressed, you have recorded it because you felt 
depressed. You were so connected with the mother, so united, so one, that whatsoever 
happened to your mother was happening to you. When she was angry, you were angry. 
When she was happy, you were happy. When she was praised, you felt praised. When she 
was ill, you felt the pain, the suffering, everything. 


If you can penetrate to the womb, now you are on the right track. And then, by and by, 
you can penetrate more and you can remember the first moment when you entered the 
womb. 

Only because of this remembrance, Mahavir and Buddha could say that there are past 
lives, rebirth. Rebirth is not really a principle, it is just a deep psychological experience. 
And if you can remember the first moment you entered the womb of your mother, then 
you can penetrate more and you can remember the death of your past life. Once you 
touch that point then the method is in your hands; then you can move very easily to all 
your past lives. 



This is an experience, and the result is phenomenal, because then you know that through 
many, many lives you have lived the same nonsense that you are living now. You have 
been doing this whole nonsense so many times, repeatedly. The pattern is the same, the 
format is the same, only the details differ. You loved some other woman, now you love 
this woman. You gathered money... the coins were of one kind, now the coins are 
different. But the whole pattern is the same; it is repetitive. 

Once you can see that for many, many lives you have lived the same nonsense, how 
stupid has been this whole vicious circle, suddenly you are awakened and the whole thing 
becomes a dream. You are thrown away from it, and now you do not want to repeat the 
same thing in the future. 


Desire stops, because desire is nothing but the past being projected into the future. Desire 
is nothing but your past experience in search of another repetition again. Desire means 
just an old experience that you want to repeat again — nothing else. And you cannot leave 
desire unless you become aware of this whole phenomenon. How can you leave it? The 
past is there as a great barrier, a rock-like barrier. It is upon your head; it is pushing you 
toward the future. Desires are created by the past and projected into the future. If you can 
know the past as a dream, all desires become impotent. They fall down, they just wither 
away — and the future disappears. In that disappearance of past and future, you are 
transfonned. 

The eleventh technique: 

FEEL AN OBJECT BEFORE YOU. FEEL THE ABSENCE OF ALL OTHER 
OBJECTS BUT THIS ONE. THEN LEAVING ASIDE THE OBJECT-FEELING AND 
THE ABSENCE-FEELING, REALIZE. 

FEEL AN OBJECT BEFORE YOU — any object. For example, a roseflower. Anything 
will do. FEEL AN OBJECT BEFORE YOU. First, feel it. Seeing won’t do — feel it. You 
see a roseflower, but your heart is not stilled, you are not feeling it; otherwise you may 
start weeping and crying, otherwise you may start laughing and dancing. You are not 
feeling it, you are just seeing it. And even that seeing may not be complete, because you 
never see completely. The past, the memory, says that this is a rose, and you pass on. 

You have not seen it really. The mind says that this is a rose. You know everything about 
it, as you have known roses before, so what about this one? So you pass on. Just a 
glimpse is enough to revive the memory of your past experience of roses, and you pass 
on. Even seeing is not complete. 

Remain with the rose. See it, then feel it. What to do to feel it? Smell it, touch it, let it 
become a deep bodily experience. First close your eyes and let the rose touch your whole 
face. Feel it. Put it on the eyes, let the eyes touch it; smell it. Put it against the heart, be 
silent with it; give a feeling to the rose. Forget everything, forget the whole world. FEEL 
AN OBJECT BEFORE YOU AND FEEL THE ABSENCE OF ALL OTHER OBJECTS, 
because if your mind is still thinking of other things then this feeling will not penetrate 
deeply. Forget all other roses, forget all other persons, forget everything. Just let this rose 
remain there. Only the rose, the rose, the rose! Forget everything else, let this rose 
envelope you completely... you are drowned in the rose. 

This will be difficult because we are not so sensitive. But for women it will not be so 
difficult; they can feel it more easily. For men it may be a little bit more difficult, unless 



they have a very developed aesthetic sense, like a poet or a painter or a musician — they 
can feel things. But try. Children can do it very easily. 


I was teaching this method to the son of one of my friends. He could feel very easily. 
When I gave him a roseflower and I told him all that I have told to you, he did it, and he 
enjoyed it deeply. And then I asked him, "How are you feeling?" He said, "I have become 
a roseflower — that is the feeling. I have become a roseflower." Children can do it very 
easily, but we never train them; otherwise they could be the best meditators. 

Forget all other objects completely. FEEL THE ABSENCE OF ALL OTHER OBJECTS 
BUT THIS ONE. This is what happens in love. If you are in love with someone, you 
forget the whole world. If you are still remembering the world, then know well that this is 
not love. You have forgotten the whole world; only the beloved or the lover remains. 

That is why I say love is a meditation. You can use this technique also as a love 
technique; forget everything else. 

Just a few days ago a friend came to me with his wife. His wife was complaining about a 
certain thing; that is why she had come. The friend said, "I have been meditating for a 
year and now I am deep in it. And while I meditate I have found it helpful when a peak 
comes to my meditation to suddenly cry, 'Rajneesh, Rajneesh, Rajneesh!’ It helps me, but 
now a strange thing has happened. When I am making love to my wife, when I come to a 
sexual peak, I start crying, 'Rajneesh, Rajneesh, Rajneesh!’ Because of this my wife is 
very much disturbed, and she says, 'Are you making love with me, are you meditating, or 
what are you doing? And why does this "Rajneesh" come in?’" 

The man said to me, "It is now very difficult because if I do not cry, 'Rajneesh, 

Rajneesh!’ I cannot achieve a peak. 

And if I cry, my wife is very much disturbed. She starts crying and weeping and making 
a scene. So what to do? Thus, I have brought my wife." Of course, his wife's complaint is 
right, because she does not like for someone else to be present between them. That is why 
love needs privacy — absolute privacy. The privacy is meaningful, just to forget all else. 

In Europe and America, now they are working with group sex. That is nonsense — many 
couples making love in one room. It is absolute nonsense because then love can never go 
very deep. It will become just a sex orgy. The presence of others becomes a barrier; then 
it cannot be meditative. 

With any object, if you can forget the whole world you are in a deep love — with a rose or 
with a stone or with anything. But the condition is to feel the presence of this object and 
feel the absence of all else. Let this object be the only existential thing in your 
consciousness. It will be easy if you try with some object you are naturally in love with. 

It would be difficult for you to put a stone, a rock, before you and forget the whole world. 
It would be difficult, but Zen masters have done it. They have rock gardens for 
meditation. No flowers, no trees, nothing — just rocks and sand. And they meditate on a 
rock because, they say, if you can have a deep love relationship with a rock, then no man 
can create a barrier for you. 

And men are like rocks. If you can love a rock, then you can love a man, then there is no 
problem. Men are like rocks — even more stony. It is difficult to break them and penetrate 
them. 

But choose some object you naturally love, and then forget the whole world. Relish the 



presence, taste the presence, feel it, go deep into it and let it go deep into you. THEN, 
LEAVING ASIDE THE OBJECT... And then comes the most difficult part of this 
technique. You have left all other objects, and only one object has remained. You have 
forgotten all, only one has remained. 

Now, LEAVING ASIDE THE OBJECT-FEELING... Now leave aside the feeling that 
you have for this object. LEAVING ASIDE THE OBJECT-FEELING AND THE 
ABSENCE-FEELING — of other objects. Now there are only two things; everything else 
is absent. Now leave that absence also. Only this rose, this face, this woman, this man, 
this rock, is present. Leave this also, and leave the feeling as well. Suddenly you fall into 
an absolute vacuum and nothing remains. And Shiva says, REALIZE. Realize this 
vacuum, this nothingness. This is your nature, this is pure being. 

It will be difficult to approach nothingness directly — very difficult and arduous. So it is 
easy to pass through one object as a vehicle. First put one object in the mind, and feel it 
so totally that you need not remember anything else. Your whole consciousness is filled 
with this one object. 

Then leave this also, forget this also. 

You fall into an abyss. Now nothing remains, no object. Only your subjectivity is there — 
pure, uncontaminated, unoccupied. This pure being, this pure consciousness, is your 
nature. But do it in steps; do not try the whole technique at once. First create an object- 
feeling. For a few days only do this part, do not do the whole technique. 

First, for a few days or for a few weeks, just do one part — the first part. Create an object- 
feeling; be filled with the object. And use one object, do not go on changing objects, 
because with every object you will have to make the same effort again. If you have 
chosen one roseflower, then go on using that roseflower every day. Be filled with it so 
that one day you can say, "Now I am the flower." Then the first part is fulfilled. When 
only the flower is there and all else is forgotten, then relish this idea for a few days. It is 
beautiful in itself — very, very beautiful, vital, powerful in itself. 

Just feel it for a few days. And then, when you are attuned to it and it has become easy, 
then you need not struggle. Then the flower comes there suddenly, the whole world is 
forgotten and only the flower remains. 

Then try the second part: close your eyes and forget the flower also. If you have done the 
first, the second will not be difficult — remember. But if you try the whole technique in 
one sitting, the second will be impossible — because if you can do the first, if you can 
forget the whole world for one flower, you can forget the flower also for nothingness. 

So the second part will come, but first you have to struggle for it. But the mind is very 
tricky. The mind will always say to try the whole thing, and then you will not succeed. 
Then the mind will say, "It is not useful," or, "It is not for me." Try it in parts if you want 
to succeed. Let the first part be complete, and then do the second. Then the object is not 
there and only your consciousness remains, just like a light, a flame without anything 
around it. 

You have a lamp and the lamp’s light falls on many objects. Visualize it. In your room 
there are many, many objects. If you bring one lamp into the darkness of the room, all the 
objects are lighted. The lamp radiates light on every object so that you can see them. 

Now remain with an object; let there be one object. The lamp is the same, but now only 
one object is there in its light. Now remove that object also: now light remains without 
any object. 



The same happens with your consciousness. You are a flame, a light; the whole world is 
your object. You leave the whole world, and you choose one object for your 
concentration. Your flame remains the same, but now it is not occupied with multi- 
objects, it is occupied with only one. And then drop that object also. Suddenly there is 
simply light — consciousness. It is not falling on anything. This Buddha has called 
NIRVANA; this Mahavir has called KAIVALYA — the total aloneness. 

The Upanishads have called it the experience of the BRAHMAN, or the ATMAN. Shiva 
says that if you can do this single technique, you will realize the supreme. 

The twelfth technique: 

WHEN A MOOD AGAINST SOMEONE OR FOR SOMEONE ARISES, DO NOT 
PLACE IT ON THE PERSON IN QUESTION, BUT REMAIN CENTERED. 

If hate arises for someone or against someone, or love arises for someone, what do we 
do? We project it on the person. If you feel hate toward me, you forget yourself 
completely in your hate; only I become your object. If you feel love toward me, you 
forget yourself completely; only I become the object. You project your love or hate or 
whatsoever upon me. You forget completely the inner center of your being; the other 
becomes the center. This sutra says when hate arises or love arises, or any mood for or 
against anyone, do not project it on the person in question. Remember, you are the source 
of it. 

I love you — the ordinary feeling is that you are the source of my love. That is not really 
so. I am the source, you are just a screen on which I project my love. You are just a 
screen; I project my love on you and I say that you are the source of my love. This is not 
fact, this is fiction. I draw my love energy and project it onto you. In that love energy 
projected onto you, you become lovely. You may not be lovely to someone else, you may 
be absolutely repulsive to someone else. 

Why? If you are the source of love then everyone will feel loving toward you, but you are 
not the source. I project love, then you become lovely; someone projects hate, then you 
become repulsive. And someone else doesn’t project anything, he is indifferent; he may 
not even have looked at you. What is happening? We are projecting our own moods upon 
others. 

That is why, if you are on your honeymoon, the moon looks beautiful, miraculous, 
wonderful. It seems that the whole world is different. And on the same night, just for 
your neighbor, this miraculous night may not be in existence at all. His child has died — 
then the same moon is just sad, intolerable. But for you it is enchanting, fascinating; it is 
maddening. Why? Is the moon the source or is the moon just a screen and you are 
projecting yourself? 

This sutra says, WHEN A MOOD AGAINST SOMEONE OR FOR SOMEONE 
ARISES, DO NOT PLACE IT ON THE PERSON IN QUESTION - or on the object in 
question. Remain centered. Remember that you are the source, so do not move to the 
other, move to the source. When you feel hate, do not go to the object. Go to the point 
from where the hate is coming. Go not to the person to whom it is going, but to the center 
from where it is coming. Move to the center, go within. Use your hate or love or anger or 
anything as a journey toward your inner center, to the source. Move to the source and 
remain centered there. 



Try it! This is a very, very scientific, psychological technique. Someone has insulted you 
— anger suddenly erupts, you are feverish. Anger is flowing toward the person who has 
insulted you. Now you will project this whole anger onto him. He has not done anything. 
If he has insulted you, what has he done? He has just pricked you, he has helped your 
anger to arise — but the anger is yours. If he goes to Buddha and insults him, he will not 
be able to create any anger in him. Or if he goes to Jesus, Jesus will give him the other 
cheek. Or if he goes to Bodhidharma, he will roar with laughter. So it depends. 

The other is not the source, the source is always within you. The other is hitting the 
source, but if there is no anger within you it cannot come out. If you hit a buddha, only 
compassion will come out because only compassion is there. Anger will not come out 
because anger is not there. If you throw a bucket into a dry well, nothing comes out. In a 
water-fdled well, you throw a bucket and water comes out, but the water is from the well. 
The bucket only helps to bring it out. So one who is insulting you is just throwing a 
bucket in you, and then the bucket will come out filled with the anger, hate, or fire that 
was within you. Y ou are the source, remember. 

For this technique, remember that you are the source of everything that you go on 
projecting onto others. 

And whenever there is a mood against or for, immediately move within and go to the 
source from where this hate is coming. Remain centered there; do not move to the object. 
Someone has given you a chance to be aware of your own anger — thank him 
immediately and forget him. Close your eyes, move within, and now look at the source 
from where this love or anger is coming. From where? Go within, move within. You will 
find the source there because the anger is coming from your source. 

Hate or love or anything is coming from your source. And it is easy to go to the source at 
the moment you are angry or in love or in hate, because then you are hot. It is easy to 
move in then. The wire is hot and you can take it in, you can move inward with that 
hotness. And when you reach a cool point within, you will suddenly realize a different 
dimension, a different world opening before you. Use anger, use hate, use love to go 
within. 

We use it always to move to the other, and we feel very much frustrated if no one is there 
to project upon. Then we go on projecting even on inanimate objects. I have seen persons 
being angry at their shoes, throwing them in anger. What are they doing? I have seen 
angry persons pushing a door in anger, throwing their anger on the door, abusing the 
door, using dirty language against the door. What are they doing? 

I will end with one Zen insight about this. 

One of the greatest of Zen masters, Lin Chi, used to say, "While I was young I was very 
fascinated by boating. I had one small boat, and I would go on the lake alone. For hours 
together I would remain there. 

"Once it happened that with closed eyes I was in my boat meditating on the beautiful 
night. One empty boat came floating downstream and struck my boat. My eyes were 
closed, so I thought, 'Someone is here with his boat, and he has struck my boat.’ Anger 
arose. I opened my eyes and I was just going to say something to that man in anger, then 
I realized that the boat was empty. Then there was no way to move. To whom could I 
express the anger? The boat was empty. It was just floating downstream, and it had come 
and struck my boat. So there was nothing to do. There was no possibility to project the 



anger on an empty boat." 

So Lin Chi said, "I closed my eyes. The anger was there, but finding no way out, I closed 
my eyes and just floated backward with the anger. And that empty boat became my 
realization. I came to a point within myself in that silent night. That empty boat was my 
master. And now if someone comes and insults me, I laugh and I say, 'This boat is also 
empty.' I close my eyes and I go within." 

Use this technique. It may work miracles for you. 

THE END. 



Chapter 16: Beyond the sin of unconsciousness 


The first question: 

Question 1 

THE LAST TECHNIQUE YOU DISCUSSED YESTERDAY SAID THAT WHEN A 
MOOD AGAINST SOMEONE OR FOR SOMEONE ARISES, NOT TO PLACE IT ON 
THE PERSON IN QUESTION BUT TO REMAIN CENTERED. BUT WHEN WE 
EXPERIMENT WITH THIS TECHNIQUE ON OUR ANGER, HATRED, ETC., WE 
FEEL THAT WE ARE SUPPRESSING OUR EMOTION AND IT BECOMES A 
SUPPRESSED COMPLEX. SO PLEASE CLARIFY HOW TO BE FREE FROM 
THESE SUPPRESSED COMPLEXES WHILE PRACTISING THE ABOVE 
TECHNIQUE. 

Expression and suppression are two aspects of one coin. They are contradictory, but 
basically they are not different. In expression and in suppression, in both, the other is the 
center. 

I am angry — I suppress the anger. I was going to express anger against you; now I 
suppress the anger against you. But the anger goes on being projected onto you whether 
expressed or suppressed. 

This technique is not for suppression. This technique changes the very base of expression 
and suppression both. This technique says, do not project it on the other, you are the 
source. Whether you express it or suppress it, you are the source. The emphasis is neither 
on expression nor on suppression. The emphasis is on knowing from where this anger 
arises. You have to move to the center, the source from where anger, hate and love arise. 
When you suppress you are not moving to the center, you are struggling with the 
expression. 


Anger has arisen in me. Ordinarily, I can do two things: express it onto someone or 
repress it. But in both the cases I am concerned with the other and I am concerned with 
the energy of anger that has come to the surface — not with the source. 

This technique is to forget the other completely. Just look at your energy of anger arising 
and move deep down to find the source within yourself from where it is coming. And the 
moment you find the source, remain centered in it. Do not do anything with anger — 
remember. In expression you are doing something with anger; in suppression also you are 
doing something with anger. Do not do anything with anger; do not touch it, just use it as 
a path. Just go deep down into it to know from where this has arisen. And the moment 
you will find the source, it is very easy to be centered there. Anger has to be used, really, 
as a path to find the source. Any emotion can be used. 

When you suppress you are not going to find the source, you are just struggling with 
energy that has come up and wants to be expressed. You can suppress it, but it will be 
expressed sooner or later because you cannot struggle forever with the energy that has 
come up. It has to be expressed. So you may not express it upon A, but then you will 
express it upon B or C. Whenever you find someone who is weaker than you, you will 
express the energy. And unless you express it you will feel burdened, tense, heavy and ill 
at ease. 



So it will be expressed. You cannot suppress it continuously. From somewhere it will 
leak out, because if it is not going to leak out you will be constantly worried by it. So 
suppression is really nothing but postponing expression. You will simply postpone. 

You are angry at your boss and you cannot express it; it is not economical. You will have 
to push it down, so you just wait until you can express it upon your wife or upon your 
child or somewhere — upon your servant... And the moment you reach your home you 
will express it. You will find causes, of course, because man is a rationalizing animal. He 
will rationalize; he will find something — something very trivial, but now that will 
become very meaningful because you have something to express. 

Suppression is nothing but postponing. You can postpone for months, for years. And 
those who kn ow say that you can postpone for lives also, but it will have to be expressed. 
This technique is not concerned at all with suppression or expression — no! This 
technique uses your mood, your energy, as a path for you to go deep down within 
yourself. 

Gurdjieff used to create situations in which he would force anger upon you, or hatred, or 
any other mood, and that was a created phenomenon. You would not be aware of what is 
going to happen. 

Gurdjieff is sitting with his disciples, and as you enter you are not aware of what is going 
to happen, but they are ready to create anger in you. 

They will behave in such a way... Someone will say something, and the whole group will 
behave so insultingly that you will become furious. Suddenly anger will come up; you are 
aflame. And when Gurdjieff has seen that now a point has come from where you can 
either go deep down or you can go out, when the peak has come within you and you are 
just going to explode, then he will say, "Close your eyes. Now be aware of your anger 
and go back." 

Only then would you realize that the situation was a created one. No one was interested 
in insulting you — that was just a drama, a psychodrama — but the anger has arisen. And 
even if you come to know that it was simply a drama, the energy cannot suddenly go 
down, it will take time. Now you can move down with the falling energy to the source. 
This energy will just help you to go down to where it has come from; you can connect 
now with the original source. And this is one of the most successful methods of 
meditation. 

Create any mood... but there is no need because the whole day moods are there. Use any 
mood to meditate. Then you have forgotten the other completely, and you are not 
suppressing anything. You are just moving down with some energy which has come up. 
Every energy comes from the source, so right now the path is wann and you can use that 
path to go back. And the moment you reach to the original source, the energy will 
subside into the original source. 

It is not suppression: the energy has gone back to the original source. And when you 
become capable of reuniting your energy with your original source, you have become the 
master of your body, your mind, your energy. You have become the master. Now you 
will not dissipate your energy. 

Once you can know how the energy falls back with you to the center, there is no need of 
any suppression and there is no need of any expression. Right now you are not angry. I 
say something — you become angry. From where is this energy coming? A moment 
before you were not angry, but the energy was in you. If this energy can fall back again 



to the source, you will again be the same as you were a moment before. 

Remember this: energy is neither anger nor love nor hate. Energy is simply energy — 
neutral. The same energy becomes anger; the same energy becomes sex; the same energy 
becomes love; the same energy becomes hate. These are all forms of the same energy. 
You give the form, your mind gives the form, and the energy moves into it. 

So remember, if you love deeply you will not have much energy to be angry. If you do 
not love at all, then you will have much energy to be angry, and you will go on finding 
situations in which to be angry. If your energy is expressed through sex, you will be less 
violent. If your energy is not expressed through sex, you will be more violent. That is 
why militaries will never allow sexual relationships for the soldiers. 

If it is allowed, the militaries will become absolutely impotent to fight. 

That is why, whenever civilization comes to a peak, it cannot fight. So always, more 
cultured and more civilized societies are overrun and defeated by lesser civilizations — 
always, because a more developed society cares about its individuals' every need, and sex 
is included. So when a society is really established, affluent, everybody's sexual need is 
fulfilled — but when the sexual need is fulfilled you cannot fight. Y ou can fight very 
easily if the sexual need is not fulfilled. So if you want a world of peace, more freedom 
for sex will be needed. If you want a world of warring, fighting, then deny sex, suppress 
sex, create anti-sex attitudes. 

This is a very paradoxical thing: the so-called saints and sages go on talking about peace, 
and they go on talking against sex also. They go on creating an anti-sex atmosphere, and 
at the same time they go on saying that the world needs peace, not war. This is absurd. 
Hippies are more correct; their slogan is right: "Make love, do not make war." That is 
right. If you can make love more, really you cannot make war. 

That is why the so-called sannyasins who have suppressed sex will always be violent, 
angry about nothing: just angry, just violent, bubbling, waiting to explode. Their whole 
energy is unexpressed. Unless the energy falls down to the source, no 
BRAHMACHARYA, no real celibacy is possible. 

You can suppress sex — then it will become violence. If the sex energy moves down to 
the center, you will be just like a child. 

The child has more sex energy than you, but it is still in the source; it has not moved to 
the body yet. It will move. When the body will be ready and the glands will be ready and 
the body will be mature, the energy will move. Why does a child look so innocent? The 
energy is at the source; it has not moved. Again the same thing happens when someone 
becomes enlightened. The whole energy moves to the source, and the person becomes 
childlike. That is what Jesus means when he says, "Only those who are like children will 
be able to enter into my kingdom of God." 

What does it mean? Scientifically it means your whole energy has moved back to the 
source. If you express, it has moved out. And when it is expressed, you are creating a 
habit for the energy to move out, to leak out. If you suppress, then the energy has not 
moved to the source and it has not moved out: it is suspended. And a suspended energy is 
a burden. 

That is why, if you really express anger, you feel relief. If you go through sex, you feel 
relief. If you destroy something, your hate is released and you feel relief. Why is this 
relief felt? Because suspended energy is burdensome, heavy. Your mind is cloudy with it. 
You have to throw it out or allow it to move back to the original source; these are the 



only two things. 


If it goes back to the source, it becomes formless. In the source, energy is formless. For 
example, electricity is formless. When it moves into a fan, it takes one kind of form. 
When it moves into a bulb, it takes a different fonn. You can use it in a thousand ways — 
the energy is the same. The form is given by the mechanism through which it moves. 
Anger is a mechanism, sex is a mechanism, love is a mechanism, hate is a mechanism. 
When energy moves into the channel of hate, it becomes hate. If the same energy moves 
into love, it becomes love. And when it moves into the source, it is formless energy — 
pure energy. It is neither hate nor love nor anger nor sex, simply energy. Then it is 
innocent, because formlessness is absolute innocence. That is why Buddha looks so 
innocent, childlike. The energy has moved to the source. 

Do not express, because you are wasting your energy and helping the other also to waste 
his. Do not suppress, because then you are creating a suspended phenomenon which will 
have to be released. Then what to do? 

This technique says, do not do anything with the mood itself, just go back to the source 
from where the mood is coming. And while the mood is hot, the path is clear, visible 
inside; you can move on it. Use moods for meditation. The result is miraculous, 
unbelievable. And once you find the key that shows you how to pour the energy back to 
the source, you will have a different quality of personality. 

Then you will not be dissipating anything, then it will look stupid. 

Buddha has said that whenever you are angry against someone, you are punishing 
yourself for the misdeed of the other. He has insulted you — that is his deed — and you 
are punishing yourself by being angry; you are dissipating your energy. This is stupid. 
But then, listening to Buddha, Mahavir, Jesus, we start repressing; we start suppressing 
our energy. Then we think that it is not good, that it is stupid to be angry. 

So what to do? Suppress the anger, do not be angry, pull yourself in, close yourself. Fight 
with your anger and suppress it. But then you will be sitting on something which will 
explode any moment. You are sitting on a Vesuvius — any moment it will explode. 

You go on collecting. The whole day's anger is collected; the whole month's anger is 
collected; the whole year's anger, and the anger of your whole life, and then the anger of 
many lives, is collected. It is there; it can explode at any moment. Then you become very 
afraid of being alive even, because any moment anything can go in and you will explode. 
You become afraid, every moment is an inner struggle. 

Psychologists say it is better to express than to suppress, but religion cannot say this. 
Religion says both are stupid. In expression you are hanning the other and also yourself. 
In suppression you are harming yourself, and you will harm someone else someday. 

Move to the source so that the energy falls back to the source and becomes formless. 

Then you will feel very powerful without being angry. Then you will feel energy — vital 
energy. You will be alive, you will have an intense life without forms. Anyone will be 
impressed just by your presence. You need not dominate anyone, just your presence and 
they will feel that some powerful source has come. 

Whenever someone goes to a Buddha or to a Krishna, suddenly his energy feels a change 
of climate because of such a powerful source. The moment you move near, you are 
magnetized. No one is magnetizing you, no one is trying anything, there is just the 



presence. You may feel that someone has hypnotized you, but no one is hypnotizing. The 
presence of a buddha — whose energy has become formless, whose energy has gone to 
the source, who is centered at his source — the very presence is hypnotizing. It becomes 
charismatic. 

Buddha became enlightened. Before his enlightenment he had five disciples. They were 
ascetics and when Buddha himself was a great ascetic, torturing his body in many, many 
ways, inventing new and more sadistic techniques to torture himself, those five were his 
ardent followers. Then Buddha felt that this was wholly, absolutely absurd. Just by 
torturing one's body one is not going to realize oneself. When he realized this, he left 
ascetic ways. Those five followers left him immediately. 

They said, "You have fallen down. You are no more an ascetic." They left him. 

When Buddha became enlightened, the first idea that came to his mind was about those 
five followers. Once they were his followers, so he must go to them. He felt a duty — he 
must find them and tell them what he has found. So he searched for them, and he traveled 
in Bihar, from Bodhgaya to Benares, just to find them. They were at Sarnath. Buddha 
never came back to Benares again, never came back to Sarnath again, because he came 
only for those five disciples. 

He came to Sarnath. It was evening time, the sun was setting, and those five ascetics were 
sitting on a hillock. They saw Buddha coming, so they said, "That fallen Gautam Buddha, 
that Gautam Siddharth who has fallen from the path, is coming. We must not pay any 
respect to him. We should not pay to him even ordinary respect." 

So they closed their eyes. Buddha came nearer and nearer, and those five ascetics began 
to feel a change — a change of mind. They became uneasy. When Buddha reached just 
near, suddenly all the five opened their eyes and fell at the feet of Buddha. Buddha said, 
"But why are you doing this? You decided not to give any respect to me, so why are you 
doing this?" 

They said, "We are not doing it, it is happening. What have you gained? You have 
become a magnetic force. We are just being pulled. What are you doing to us? Have you 
hypnotized us?" Buddha said, "No! I have done nothing to you, but something has 
happened in me. 

All the energies have fallen to the source, so wherever I move, suddenly a magnetic force 
is felt." 

That is why those who are against Buddha or Mahavir go on saying for centuries, "That 
man was not good; he was hypnotizing people." No one is hypnotizing. You become 
hypnotized — that is another thing. When your energy falls back to the original source, 
you become a magnetic center. This technique is to create this magnetic center in you. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

YESTERDAY YOU SAID THAT THE MEDITATION TECHNIQUE OF 
UNWINDING THE MIND IS VERY SIGNIFICANT. BUT IN THE WEST 
HUNDREDS OF FREUDIAN AND JUNGIAN PSYCHOANALYSTS AND 
PSYCHIATRISTS ARE PRACTICING THIS TECHNIQUE, BUT THEY ARE NOT 
GETTING VERY SIGNIFICANT RESULTS IN TRYING TO TRANSFORM THE 
BEING. WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THEIR BEING UNSUCCESSFUL? 

There are many things to be noted. One: Western psychology does not yet believe in the 
being of man, it believes only in the mind. For Western psychology there is nothing 



beyond the mind yet. If there is nothing beyond the mind, then whatsoever you do is not 
going to help man really. At the most it can help man to be nonnal — at the most! 

And what is normal? What is normalcy? Just the average. If the average man himself is 
not normal, then being normal means nothing. It simply means you are adjusted to the 
crowd. So Western psychology is doing only one thing: whenever someone is 
maladjusted, Western methods make that man again adjusted to the crowd. 

The crowd is not questioned at all; whether the crowd itself is okay is not the question. 
For Eastern psychology, the crowd is not the criterion. Remember this distinction: for 
Eastern psychology the crowd is not the criterion, society is not the criterion. Society 
itself is ill. Then what is the criterion? For us a buddha is a criterion. Unless you become 
buddha-like, you are ill. 

For Western psychology society is the criterion, because a buddha cannot be a criterion. 
They do not believe that there is such a thing as the inner being. If there is no such thing 
as the inner being, then there cannot be any enlightenment. But when the inner being 
becomes illuminated, then there is enlightenment. 

So Western psychology is really just therapeutic, just a part of medicine. It tries, it helps 
you to be readjusted, but it is not a transcendence. The Eastern effort is for how to 
transcend the mind, because for us there are no mental diseases, remember. For us there 
are no mental diseases — rather, the mind is the disease. For Western psychology the 
mind is not the disease. The mind is you, it is not the disease. The mind can be healthy, 
and the mind can be ill. 

For us the mind is the disease, the mind can never be healthy. Unless you go beyond 
mind, you can never be healthy. You can be ill and adjusted or you can be ill and 
maladjusted, but you can never be healthy. 

So the nonnal man is not really healthy. He is just within the boundaries, he is ill within 
the boundaries. The abnonnal person is one who has gone beyond the boundaries; and the 
difference between the two is only of degrees — of quantity, not of quality. 

A madman in a madhouse and you — there is no qualitative difference, only one of 
degrees. He is a little bit more mad than you; you are within the boundaries. Functionally, 
you can switch on. He cannot switch on now; he has gone further than you. He has an 
advanced case, nothing else. You are just on the path and he has reached. 

Western psychology tries to bring him back to the fold, to the herd, to the crowd. It 
makes him nonnal. It is good; as far as it goes, it is good. But for us, unless a man goes 
beyond mind he is mad, because for us the mind is madness. 

So we are trying to unwind the mind just to know that which is beyond it. They also try 
unwinding methods just to adjust the mind, but the beyond is not there. And remember 
this: unless you can go beyond yourself, nothing worthwhile happens. Unless you can 
reach something which is beyond you, life is meaningless. 

Certain other things also... For Freud and the Freudians, man is really a being that cannot 
be happy. The very being for them is such that man cannot be happy. If you are not 
unhappy, that is all. Remember, if you are not unhappy, be satisfied — it is enough. 

You cannot be happy. Why? Because Freudian psychology says that happiness lies in 
being instinctual, happiness lies in being like an animal, and that man cannot be. Reason 
goes on continuously interfering. You can lose your reason and become like an animal; 
then you can be happy. But then you will not be aware of happiness. This is the paradox 



for them. 

If you fall downward and become like an animal, you will be happy but you will not be 
aware. If you try to be aware you cannot be happy, because you cannot become like an 
animal. And reason goes on interfering in everything. Man cannot lose reason and also 
man cannot live with reason — that is the problem. So you cannot be happy according to 
Freud. At the most, if you are wise, you can arrange your life in such a way that you will 
not be unhappy. This is a very negative thing. 

For Eastern psychology or metaphysics or religion, a positive goal exists. You can be 
happy. Not only happy, you can be blissful. And Eastern psychology says that if you can 
feel that you are unhappy, that shows your potentiality, the possibility that you can be 
happy; otherwise you would not be able to feel this being unhappy either. 

If a man can see darkness he has eyes, and one who can see darkness can see light. 
Remember, blind men cannot see darkness. You may have been thinking that blind men 
live in darkness — forget it completely. 

They cannot see darkness, because even to see darkness eyes are needed. If you can feel 
unhappiness you have eyes, and if you can feel unhappiness you can feel happiness. 
Really, if you cannot feel happiness, there is no possibility of feeling unhappiness. These 
are polar opposites. 

You are capable of being totally happy, but then the mind cannot be. Take it in this way: 
if you fall downward and become just a body, you will be happy. Freud also agreed with 
this. If you fall downward and forget your reason completely, if you become like an 
animal, just a body, you will be happy but you will not know it. With the mind you can 
know it, but then you cannot be happy because the mind goes on disturbing. The body 
can be happy, but the mind goes on disturbing. 

There is another possibility which the East has worked out: go beyond. Freud says that if 
you fall downward and become an animal, you will be happy but you will not know it; if 
you are in the mind you can know, but you cannot be happy. Eastern search says that if 
you go beyond mind you will be happy and also aware. That is a third point — of the 
beyond. 

So these are three points. Man is in the middle; below is the animal existence. Go to a 
forest and look at the animals. They may not be aware that they are happy, but you will 
feel that they are happy. Go to the beach in the morning, or go to a garden in the morning 
and listen to the singing of the birds. 

They may not know it, but you will feel they are happy. You have never been singing like 
that. Look deep down into their eyes — they are so unclouded and innocent. They are 
happy, but you are not happy. 

Fall downward and become a body only — then you will be happy. Or go beyond and 
become the spirit or become the being, and you will be happy. But in the middle you will 
be always tense, because mind is really not the end. It is just a rope stretched between 
two realities: body and soul. 

So you are just on the rope like a NATA, a tightrope walker. A tightrope walker cannot 
be at ease. Either he must go back or he must go forward, but he must not remain on the 
rope. He must get down from the rope, and there are two possibilities: he can go 
backward, or he can go forward and beyond. Mind is a rope, and to live with the mind is 
tightrope walking. You are bound to be unbalanced, uneasy; every moment there is 
anxiety, anguish. The mind's life is tension. That is why Western psychology succeeds in 



making you normal, but fails to make you a self-actualized person. 

But there are new trends, and people are thinking, and the East is now penetrating the 
West very deeply. Really, that is the East's way to conquer. The West conquered the East 
— their way was very gross. The East has its own ways of conquering — very subtle ways, 
silent ways. Now the East is penetrating the Western mind deeply. 

Without any violence, without any visible conflict, the East is penetrating the West very 
deeply. And sooner or later Western psychology will have to evolve concepts about 
transcending, about how to transcend the mind. 

Unwinding can be helpful in both the ways. If you are just trying to create a normal mind, 
unwinding will be helpful. But then your goal is not transcendence. If your goal is 
transcendence, then too unwinding can be helpful. All these techniques can be used for 
ordinary mental peace, and all these techniques can also be used for a real silence which 
is not of the mind. 

There are two types of silence: one of the mind, in which the mind is silent, and another 
silence when the mind is no more. The silence when the mind is no more, is altogether 
different from mental peace. In mental peace the mind is there, only not very mad. The 
madness is slowed down — that is all. 

Western psychology must become a metaphysics, only then can man transcend. It must 
become a philosophy also, and ultimately it must become religion. Only then can man be 
helped to transcend. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

YOU HAVE BEEN EXPLAINING MANY MEDITATION METHODS TO US. 
HOWEVER, ISN’T IT TRUE THAT NO METHOD CAN BE ALL THAT POWERFUL 
UNLESS ONE IS INITIATED INTO IT? 

A method becomes qualitatively different when you are initiated into it. 

I am talking about the methods — you can use them. Once you know the scientific 
background and the way, the know-how, you can use it, but initiation makes it 
qualitatively different. If I initiate you into a particular method it will be a different thing, 
because many things are implied in initiation. 

When I talk about a method and I explain it to you, you can use it on your own. The 
method is explained to you, but whether it will suit you or not, how it will work upon 
you, what type of person you are, is not discussed. It is not possible. 

In initiation, you are more important than the technique. When the master initiates you, 
he observes you. He finds out what is your type, he finds out how much you have worked 
through in your past lives, where you are right at this moment, at what center you are 
functioning right now, and then he decides about the method; he chooses the method. It is 
an individual approach. The method is not important, you are important, you are being 
studied and observed and analyzed. 

Your past lives, your consciousness, your mind, your body, they are dissected. You are 
felt deeply in terms of where you are, because the journey begins from that point — the 
point where you are just now. Just any method will not do. 

Then the master chooses a particular method for you, and if he feels that this particular 
method has to be changed for you, that minute alterations or some additions are needed, 
he adds, he deletes, he makes the method fit for you. 



And then he gives the initiation; then he gives the method to you. That is why it is 
insisted that whenever you are initiated in a method, you are not to talk about it. It has to 
be secret because it is individual. If you tell it to someone else it may not be helpful, or it 
may even be harmful. 

It has to be kept secret. Unless you achieve and your master says that now you can 
initiate others, it should not be talked about at all — not uttered, not even to your husband 
or your wife or your friend. No, it is absolutely secret because it is dangerous, it is very 
powerful. It has been chosen and made for you. It will work for you, but it is not for any 
other individual in the world. Really, each individual is so unique that he needs a 
different method, and with a slight difference a method can become suitable for him. 
What I am talking about — these one hundred and twelve methods — they are generalized 
methods. They are one hundred and twelve generalized methods, all the methods which 
have been used. This is a general form so that you become acquainted. You can try — if 
something suits you, you can go on. But this is not initiation into a method. Initiation is a 
personal, individual affair between the master and the disciple. It is a secret transmission. 
And many other things are implied in initiation. Then the master chooses a right moment 
when he will give the method to you, so that it goes deep into the unconscious. 


While I am talking, your conscious mind is listening. You will forget. When I have talked 
about one hundred and twelve methods, you will not even be able to rename them again 
— the one hundred and twelve. You will forget many completely. You will be able to 
remember a few, and then you will be mixed up and confused. You will not know what is 
what. 

The master has to choose a right moment when your unconscious is open, and then he 
gives you the method. Then it goes deep down into the unconscious. So many times 
initiation is given in sleep, not when you are conscious. Many times initiation is given to 
you in a deep hypnotic trance, when your conscious mind is completely asleep and your 
unconscious mind is open. 

That is why surrender is so much needed in initiation. Unless you surrender initiation 
cannot be given, because unless you surrender your conscious mind is always alert and 
on guard. When you surrender, your conscious mind can then be relieved of its duty and 
your unconscious mind can come directly in contact with the master. 

A right moment has to be chosen, and then you have to be prepared for initiation. It may 
take months to prepare you. There has to be the right food, the right sleep, and everything 
has to come to a tranquil point; only then can you be initiated, so initiation is a long 
process, an individual process. Unless someone is ready to surrender totally, initiation is 
not possible. 


So I am not initiating you into these methods, I am just making you acquainted with these 
methods. If someone feels that some method suits him deeply and he feels that he should 
be initiated into that method, I can initiate him into that method. But then it is going to be 
a long process. Then your individuality has to be completely known. You have to become 
totally naked so that nothing remains hidden. And then things become very easy — 
because when a right method is given to a right person at a right moment, it works 
immediately. 

Sometimes it happens that while initiating the disciple, the disciple becomes enlightened, 



just the initiation becomes the enlightenment. Then the method becomes alive — when it 
is given by a master privately, individually. Whatsoever I am doing now is not initiating, 
remember this. This is a scientific approach just to revive the one hundred and twelve 
methods, to make them known. 

If someone is interested, he can be initiated. And when you are really interested you will 
seek initiation, because working alone on the method is a very long affair. It may take 
years, it may take lives, and you may not be able to sustain it for so long a period. 
Through initiation it becomes very easy, and then the method becomes a transmission. 
Then through the method the master starts working in you. Initiation is a living 
relationship with the master, and a long relationship, of course, goes deep. 

It changes you and transforms you. 

The next question: 

Question 4 

YOU QUOTED GEORGE GURDJIEFF AS SAYING THAT IDENTIFICATION IS 
THE ONLY SIN, BUT IN MANY TECHNIQUES THE PROCESS OF 
IDENTIFICATION IS USED. THEY SAY, FOR EXAMPLE, BECOME ONE WITH 
THE BELOVED, BECOME ONE WITH THE ROSEFLOWER, OR BECOME ONE 
WITH THE MASTER. AND, MOREOVER, EMPATHY IS SUPPOSED TO BE A 
MEDITATIVE AND SPIRITUAL QUALITY, SO THE ABOVE SAYING OF 
GURDJIEFF'S SEEMS TO BE PARTIALLY TRUE AND USEFUL ONLY FOR 
CERTAIN TECHNIQUES. 

No! It is not partially true, it is totally true. But you will have to understand. 

Identification is unconscious, but when you use identification in a meditative technique it 
is conscious. 

For example, your name is Ram. Someone insults "Ram" — immediately YOU feel 
insulted because you are identified with the name Ram. But this is not a conscious thing 
for you, it is unconscious. Your mind doesn’t work in this way: "I am called Ram. Of 
course, I am not Ram, this is only my name, and everyone is born nameless. This name is 
given, and it is arbitrary. This man is only insulting my arbitrary name, so am I to be 
angry or not?" You would never reason it out in this way. If you reasoned it out in this 
way, you would not be angry at all. Suddenly someone insults "Ram" and you are 
insulted, but this is just an arbitrary name. This identification is unconscious, it is not 
conscious. 


When you are identifying with a rose, it is a conscious effort. You are not identified with 
the rose. You are TRYING to identify yourself with the rose, and you are trying to forget 
yourself. You are trying to become one with the rose, and you are deeply conscious, 
aware of the whole process. YOU are doing it. Even if identification is done consciously, 
it becomes a meditation. And if you do a certain technique of meditation unconsciously, 
it is not meditation — remember. 

You go on doing your prayer every morning or every night unconsciously, just as a 
routine affair. While doing it you are not conscious at all of what you are doing. You are 
not conscious at all of what words you are saying in prayer. You just repeat them like a 
parrot. This is not meditation. And if you are taking your bath consciously, it is a 
meditation. So remember this: whatsoever you are doing consciously, with alertness, 
fully aware, becomes meditation. Even if you kill someone consciously, while fully 



conscious, it is meditative. 

That is what Krishna was saying to Arjuna: "Do not be afraid. Kill, murder, fully 
consciously, knowing fully that no one is murdered and no one is killed." Arjuna could 
very easily kill his enemies unconsciously. He could go mad in a rage and kill — that is 
easy. But Krishna is saying, "Be alert, be fully conscious. Just become the instrument of 
divine hands, and know well that no one is killed, no one can be killed. 

The inner being is eternal, immortal. So you are only destroying forms, not that which is 
behind the fonns. So destroy the forms." If Arjuna can be so meditatively aware then 
there is no violence, no one is killed, no sin is committed. 

I will tell you one anecdote in Nagarjuna's life. Nagarjuna was one of the great masters 
India has produced — of the caliber of Buddha and Mahavir and Krishna. And Nagarjuna 
was a rare genius. Really, on the intellectual level there is no comparison in the whole 
world; such a keen and penetrating intellect rarely happens. He was passing through a 
city, a capital city, and he always remained naked. The queen of that kingdom was a 
believer, a follower and a lover of Nagarjuna, a devotee. So Nagarjuna came to the palace 
to ask for food. He had one wooden begging bowl. The queen said, "Give this begging 
bowl to me. I will cherish it as a gift, and I have another made for you. You can take 
that." 

Nagarjuna said, "Okay!" The other one was golden, and many precious stones were set in 
it; it was very valuable. Nagarjuna didn’t say anything. Ordinarily no sannyasin would 
take it, he would say, "I cannot touch gold." But Nagarjuna took it. If really gold is just 
mud, then why make any distinction? He took it. Even the queen didn't feel it to be good. 
She felt, "Why? He should have said no. Such a great saint! Why has he taken such a 
valuable thing while he lives naked, without any clothes, without any possessions? Why 
should he not reject it?" 

If Nagarjuna had rejected it, the queen would have insisted, requested, but then she 
would have felt better. 

Nagarjuna took it and went away. One thief saw him passing through the city, and the 
thief thought, "This man cannot keep this begging bowl, someone is bound to steal it or 
someone is bound to take it away from him. With the nakedness — how can he protect 
it?" So he followed... the thief followed Nagarjuna. 

Nagarjuna was staying outside the town in an old monastery, alone; the monastery was 
just in ruins. He went in, he heard the footsteps of the man, but he didn’t look behind 
because he thought, "He must be coming for the begging bowl, not for me, because who 
would come? No one ever comes following me to these ruins." 

He went in. The thief stood behind a wall and waited. Nagarjuna, seeing that he was 
waiting outside, threw the begging bowl out of the door. The thief couldn’t understand: 
"What type of man is this? Naked, with such a precious thing, and he has thrown it out." 
So he asked Nagarjuna, "Can I come in, sir? I have to ask a question." 

Nagarjuna said, "I have thrown the bowl out just so that you can come in — to help you to 
come in, because I am just going to take my afternoon nap. You would have come for the 
begging bowl, but then there would have been no meeting with me. So come in." 

The thief came in. He said, "Such a precious thing and you have thrown it? And you are 
such a sage that I cannot lie before you — I am a thief." Nagarjuna said, "Do not be 
worried, everyone is a thief. 



You proceed on, do not waste time about such unnecessary things." 

The thief said, "Sometimes, looking at persons like you, my mind also longs to know 
how this state can be attained. I am a thief; it seems impossible for me. But I hope and I 
pray that someday I will also be capable of throwing away such a precious thing. Teach 
me something. I go to many sages, and I am a well-known thief, so everyone knows me. 
They say, 'First leave your business, your profession, only then can you proceed in 
meditation.’ That is impossible, I cannot leave it, so I cannot proceed in meditation." 
Nagarjuna said, "If someone says first leave thieving and then proceed in meditation, 
then he doesn’t know meditation at all — because how is meditation related with theft? 
There is no relationship. So you go on doing whatsoever you are doing. I will give you a 
technique; you practice this." 

The thief said, "Now it seems we can go on together. So I can go on doing my 
profession? What is the technique? Tell me immediately!" 

Nagarjuna said, "You just remain aware. When you go to steal something, just be fully 
conscious and aware. When you are breaking into some house, be fully conscious. When 
you are breaking into a treasury, be fully conscious. When you are taking something out 
of the treasury, be fully conscious. Do it consciously. Whatsoever you do is no concern 
of mine. 

And come after fifteen days, but do not come if you have not practiced. Practice for 
fifteen days: go on doing whatsoever you are doing, but do it fully consciously." 

The third day the thief came back and he said, "Fifteen days are too long, and you are a 
very tricky fellow. You have given me such a technique that if I am fully conscious I 
cannot steal. The last three nights continuously I have been to the palace. I reached the 
treasury, I opened it, precious things were before me, but then I became fully conscious. 
And the moment I become fully conscious, I became like a Buddha statue. I could not 
proceed further; my hand would not move, and the whole treasury seemed useless. So I 
have been going back there again and again. What am I to do? And you said that leaving 
my profession was not a condition, but your method seems to have a built-in process." 
Nagarjuna said, "Do not come to me again. Now you can choose. If you want to go on 
stealing, forget meditation. If you want meditation, then forget stealing. You can 
choose." The thief said, "You have put me in a dilemma. For these three days I have 
known that I am alive. And when I came back without taking anything from the palace, 
for the first time I felt that I was a sovereign, not a thief. These three days have been so 
blissful that now I cannot leave meditation. You have tricked me; now initiate me and 
make me your disciple. 

There is no need to go on trying, three days are enough." 

Whatsoever may be the object, if you are conscious it becomes meditation. Try 
identification consciously — it becomes meditation. Unconsciously, it is a great sin. 

You are all identified with many things: "This is mine, that is mine..." You are identified! 
"This is my country, this is my nation, this is my national flag..." If someone throws your 
national flag you become furious — what is he doing? You have no nation and all national 
flags are myths. It is good to play with them like children do; they are toys. But you can 
murder and be murdered for them, and countries can be created and destroyed for 
insulting a national flag. And it is just a piece of cloth. 

What is happening? You are identified with it. That identification is unconscious. 
Unconsciousness is sin. 



Enough for today. 
THE END. 



Chapter 17: Several stop techniques 


1. JUST AS YOU HAVE THE IMPULSE TO DO SOMETHING, STOP. 

2. WHEN SOME DESIRE COMES, CONSIDER IT. THEN, SUDDENLY, QUIT IT. 

3. ROAM ABOUT UNTIL EXHAUSTED AND THEN, DROPPING TO THE 
GROUND, IN THIS DROPPING BE WHOLE. 

Life has two balances: one is of being and the other of doing. Your being is your nature. 
It is with you always; you have not to do anything to get it. It is already the case, you are 
it. It is not that you possess it, not even that a distance exists between you and it — you 
are it. You are your being. Doing is an achievement. Whatsoever you do is not already 
the case. If you do it, it will happen; if you do not do it, it will not happen. All that is not 
already the case is not your being. 

To exist, to survive, you have to do much. And then, by and by, your activity becomes a 
barrier to knowing your being. Your activity is your circumference — you live on it, you 
cannot live without it. But it is only the circumference; it is not you, it is not the center. 
Whatsoever you have is the achievement of your doing; having is the result of doing. But 
the center is surrounded, engulfed by your doing and your having. 

The first thing to note before we proceed into these techniques is that whatsoever you 
have is not your being, and whatsoever you do or can do is not your being. Your being 
precedes all doing. Your being precedes all your possessions, all your having. 

But the mind is constantly involved in doing and having. Beyond mind or below mind 
exists your being. How to penetrate into that center is what religions have been seeking. 
This is what has always been the search of all those who are interested in knowing the 
basic reality of human existence, the ultimate core, the substance of your being. Unless 
you understand this division between the circumference and the center, you will not be 
able to understand these sutras which we are going to discuss. 

So note the distinction. Whatsoever you have — money, knowledge, prestige, whatsoever 
you have — it is not you. You have them, they are your possessions; you are different 
from them. Secondly, whatsoever you do is not your being. You may do it or you may 
not do it. For example, you laugh, but you may laugh or you may not laugh. You run, but 
you may run or you may not run. But you are and there is no choice. You cannot choose 
your being. You are already there. 

Action is a choice. You may choose, you may not choose. You may do "this," you may 
not do "this." You may become a saint or you may become a thief, but your sainthood 
and your thiefhood are both doings. You can choose, you can change. A saint can 
become a thief and a thief can become a saint. But that is not your being: your being 
precedes your sainthood, your thiefhood. 

Whenever you have to do something, you have to be there already; otherwise you cannot 
do it. 

Who runs? Who laughs? Who steals? Who becomes a saint? The being must precede all 
activity. The activity can be chosen, but being cannot be chosen. The being is the 
chooser, not the chosen, and you cannot choose the chooser — he is already there. You 
cannot do anything about him. Remember this: having, doing, are with you just as a 
circumference is with the center, but you are the center. 



This center is the self, or you may call it the ATMAN or whatsoever name you like. This 
center is your innennost point. How to reach it? And unless one reaches it, knows it, 
unless one realizes it, one cannot reach to a blissful state which is eternal, one cannot 
know the deathless, one cannot know the divine. Unless one realizes this center, one will 
remain in misery, anguish and suffering. The circumference is the hell. These techniques 
are the means to enter into this center. 

The first technique: 

JUST AS YOU HAVE THE IMPULSE TO DO SOMETHING, STOP. 

All these techniques are concerned with stopping in the middle. George Gurdjieff made 
these techniques very well-known in the West, but he was not aware of VIGYANA 
BHAIRAVA TANTRA. He learned these techniques in Tibet from Buddhist lamas. He 
worked on these techniques in the West, and many, many seekers came to realize the 
center through these techniques. He called them stop exercises, but the source of these 
exercises is VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA. 


Buddhists learned from VIGYANA BHAIRAVA. Sufis also have such exercises; they 
are also borrowed from VIGYANA BHAIRAVA. Basically, this is the source book of all 
techniques which are known all over the world. 

Gurdjieff used it in a very simple way. For example, he would tell his students to dance. 

A group would be dancing — a group of, say, twenty people would be dancing — and 
suddenly he would say, "Stop!" And the moment Gurdjieff would say stop, they would 
have to stop totally. Wherever the pause would fall, they would have to stop then and 
there. No change could be made, no adjustment could be made. If one of your feet was 
above the earth and you were just standing on one foot, you would have to remain that 
way. If you fell, that was another thing, but you were not to cooperate with the fall. If 
your eyes were opened, they had to remain opened. Now you could not close them. If 
they closed by themselves, that was another thing. But as far as you were concerned, 
consciously you had stopped, you had become just like a stone statue. 

Miracles happened because in activity, in dance, in movement, when suddenly you stop, 
a gap happens. This sudden stoppage of all activity divides you into two: your body and 
you. Your body and you were in movement. Suddenly you stop. The body has the 
tendency to move. It was in movement, so there is momentum; you were dancing, and 
there is momentum. 

The body is not ready for this sudden stop. Suddenly you feel that the body has the 
impulse to do something, but you have stopped. A gap comes into existence. You feel 
your body as something distant, far away, with the impulse to move, with momentum for 
activity. And because you have stopped and you are not cooperating with the body and its 
activity and its impulse, its momentum, you become separate from it. 

But you can deceive yourself. A slight cooperation and the gap will not happen. For 
example, you feel uncomfortable, but the teacher has said, "Stop!" You have heard the 
word, but still you make yourself comfortable and then you stop. Then nothing will 
happen. Then you have deceived yourself, not the teacher, because you missed the point. 
The whole point of the technique is missed. Suddenly, when you hear the word "Stop!" 
instantly you have to stop, not doing anything. 

Perhaps the posture was inconvenient, you were afraid you might fall down, you might 



break a bone. But whatsoever happens, now it is not your concern. If you have any 
concern, you will deceive yourself. This suddenly becoming dead creates a gap. The 
stopping is at the body and the stopper is the center; the circumference and the center are 
separate. In that sudden stopping you can feel yourself for the first time; you can feel the 
center. Gurdjieff used this technique to help many. 

This technique has many dimensions; it can be used in many ways. 

But first try to understand the mechanism. The mechanism is simple. You are in activity, 
and when you are in activity you forget yourself completely; the activity becomes the 
center of your attention. 

Someone has died, and you are weeping and crying, and tears are falling down. You have 
forgotten yourself completely. The one who has died has become the center, and around 
that center this activity is happening — your weeping, your crying, your sadness, your 
tears. If I suddenly say to you, "Stop!" and you stop yourself completely, you will be 
totally taken away from your body and the realm of activity. Whenever you are in 
activity, you are in it, deeply absorbed in it. Sudden stoppage throws you off balance; it 
throws you out of activity. This being thrown leads you to the center. 

Ordinarily, what are we doing? From one activity we move to another. We go on from 
one activity to another, from A to B and from B to C. In the morning, the moment you are 
awake activity has started. Now you will be active the whole day. You will change to 
many activities, but you will not be inactive for a single moment. How to be inactive? It 
is difficult. And if you try to be inactive, your effort to be inactive will become an 
activity. 

There are many who are trying to be inactive. They sit in a Buddha posture and they try 
to be inactive. But how can you try to be inactive? The very effort is again an activity. 

So you can convert inactivity also into activity. You can force yourself to be quiet, still, 
but that forcing is an activity of the mind. That is why so many try to go into meditation 
but never reach anywhere — because their meditation is again an activity. They can 
change... If you were singing an ordinary song, you can now change to a BHAJAN, to a 
devotional song. You can sing slow now, but both are activities. You are running, you are 
walking, you are reading — these are activities. You can pray — that too is an activity. 

You move from one activity to another. 

And with the last thing in the night, when you are falling into sleep, you are still active; 
the activity has not stopped. That is why dreams happen, because the activity goes on. 
You have fallen asleep, but the activity continues. In the subconscious you are still active 
— doing things, possessing things, losing things, moving. Dreaming means you have 
fallen asleep because of exertion, but the activity is still there continuously. 

Only sometimes, for a few moments — and these have become more and more rare for the 
modern man — only for a few moments dreaming stops and you are totally asleep. But 
then that inactivity is unconscious. You are not conscious, you are fast asleep. The 
activity has ceased; now there is no circumference, now you are at the center — but 
totally exhausted, totally dead, unconscious. 


That is why Hindus have always been saying that SUSHUPTI — dreamless sleep — and 
SAMADHI — the ultimate ecstasy — are similar, the same, with only one difference. But 
the difference is great: the difference is of awareness. In sushupti, in dreamless sleep, you 



are at the center of your being — but unaware. In samadhi, in the ultimate ecstasy, in the 
ultimate state of meditation, also you are at the center — but aware. That is the difference, 
but it is a great difference, because if you are unaware, even if you are at the center it is 
meaningless. It refreshes you, it makes you more alive again, it gives you vitality — in the 
morning you feel fresh and blissful — but if you are unaware, even if you are at the center 
your life remains the same. 

In samadhi you enter yourself fully conscious, fully alert. And once you are at the center 
fully alert, you will never be the same again. Now you will know who you are. Now you 
will know that your possessions, your actions are just on the periphery; they are just the 
ripples, not your nature. 

The mechanism of these techniques of stopping is to throw you suddenly into inactivity. 
The point must come suddenly, because if you try to be inactive you will turn it into 
activity. So do not try, and suddenly be inactive. That is the meaning of "Stop!" You are 
running and I say, "Stop!" Do not try, just stop! If you try, you will miss the point. 

For example, you are sitting here. If I say stop, then stop immediately then and there; not 
a single moment is to be missed. If you try and adjust, and you settle down and then say, 
"Okay, now I will stop," you have missed the point. SUDDENLY is the base, so do not 
make any effort to stop — just stop! 

You can try it anywhere. You are taking your bath — suddenly order yourself to "Stop!" 
and stop. Even if it is only for a single moment, you will feel a different phenomenon 
happening within you. You are thrown to the center and suddenly everything stops — not 
only the body. When the body stops totally, your mind stops also. When you say, "Stop!" 
do not breathe then. Let everything stop... no breathing, no body movement. For a single 
moment remain in this stop, and you will feel you have penetrated suddenly, at rocket 
speed, to the center. And even a glimpse is miraculous, revolutionary. It changes you, 
and by and by you can have more clear glimpses of the center. That is why inactivity is 
not to be practiced. Use it suddenly, when you are unaware. 

So a master can be helpful. This is a group method. Gurdjieff used it as a group method 
because if you say "Stop!" you can deceive yourself easily. First you make yourself 
comfortable and then you say "Stop!" Or even if consciously you have not made any 
preparation for it, unconsciously you may be prepared. Then you may say, "Now I can 
stop." 

If it is done by the mind, if there is a planning behind it, it is useless; then the technique 
will not be of any help. So in a group it is good. A master is working with you, and he 
says, "Stop!" He will find moments when you are in a very inconvenient posture, and 
then a flash happens, a sudden lightning. 

Activity can be practiced; inactivity cannot be practiced — and if you practice it, it 
becomes just another activity. You can be inactive only suddenly. Sometimes it happens 
that you are driving a car, and suddenly you feel there is going to be an accident, that 
another car has reached near yours and in just a moment there will be a crash. Suddenly 
your mind stops, breathing stops, everything stops. So many times in such accidents one 
is thrown to the center. But you may miss the point even in an accident. 

I was in a car and there was an accident, and one of the most beautiful accidents possible. 
Three persons were with me, but they missed the whole thing completely. It could have 
been a revolution in their lives, but they missed. The car went down into a river bed, into 
a dry river bed, from a bridge. The car was totally upside down, and the three persons 



with me began crying; they began weeping. 

One woman was there and she was crying. She was just beside me and she was crying, "I 
am dead! I am dead!" 

I told her, "If you were dead, then no one would be here to say this." 


But she was trembling, and she said, "I am dead! What will happen to my children?" 

Even after we carried her out of the car she was trembling and saying the same thing: 
"What will happen to my children? I am dead!" It took at least half an hour for her to 
calm down. 

She missed the point. It was such a beautiful thing: suddenly she could have stopped 
everything. And one couldn’t do anything. The car was falling from the bridge, so her 
activity was not needed at all. One couldn’t do anything. But still the mind can create 
activity. She started thinking about her children, and then she began crying, "I am dead!" 
A subtle moment was missed. In dangerous situations the mind stops automatically. 

Why? Because mind is a mechanism and it can work with only routine things — that 
which it has been trained to do. 

You cannot train your mind for accidents, otherwise they would not be called accidents. 
If you are ready, if you have passed through rehearsals, then they are not accidents. 
'Accident' means that the mind is not ready to do anything. The thing is so sudden, it 
leaps from the unknown — mind cannot do anything. It is not ready, it is not trained for it. 
It is bound to stop unless you start something else, unless you start something for which 
you are trained. 

This woman who was crying about her children was not at all attentive to what was 
happening. 

She was not even aware that she was alive. The present moment was not in her focus of 
consciousness. She had moved away from the situation to her children, to death and to 
other things. She had escaped. As far as her attention was concerned, she had escaped 
from the situation completely. 

But as far as the situation was concerned, nothing could be done; one could only be 
aware. Whatsoever was happening was happening. One could only be aware. As far as 
the present moment is concerned, in an accident what can you do? It is already beyond 
you, and the mind is not prepared for it. The mind cannot function, so the mind stops. 
That is why dangers have a secret appeal, an intrinsic appeal: they are meditative 
moments. If you race a car and it goes beyond ninety miles per hour, and then beyond 
one hundred and then beyond one hundred and ten and beyond one hundred and twenty, 
then a situation comes in which anything can happen and you will not be able to do 
anything. Now really, the car is beyond control, going beyond control. Suddenly the 
mind cannot function; it is not ready for it. That is the thrill of speed — because a silence 
creeps in, you are thrown to the center. 

These techniques help you to move to the center without any accidents, without any 
danger. But remember, you cannot practice them. When I say you cannot practice them, 
what do I mean? In a way you can practice them: suddenly you can stop. 

But the stopping must be sudden, you must not be prepared for it. Y ou should not think 
about it and plan it and say that "At twelve o'clock I will stop." Let the unknown happen 
to you when you are unprepared. Move in the unknown, the uncharted, without any 



knowledge. This is one technique: JUST AS YOU HAVE THE IMPULSE TO DO 
SOMETHING, STOP. This is one dimension. 

For example, you have the impulse to sneeze. You are feeling that the impulse is coming, 
you are feeling the sneeze coming. Now a moment comes when you cannot do anything 

— it will happen. But in the very beginning of the feeling, when you feel the sensation of 
a sneeze coming to you, the moment you become aware, stop! What can you do? Can you 
stop the sneeze? If you try to stop the sneeze, the sneeze will come sooner, because 
stopping will make your mind more conscious about it and you will feel the sensation 
more. You will become more sensitive, your total attention will be there, and that 
attention will help the sneeze to come out sooner. It will become unbearable. You cannot 
stop the sneeze directly, but you can stop yourself. 

What can you do? You feel the sensation that the sneeze is coming: stop! Do not try to 
stop the sneeze, just you yourself stop. Do not do anything. Remain completely 
unmoving, with not even your breath going in or coming out. For a moment, stop, and 
you will feel that the impulse has gone back, that it has dropped. 

And in this dropping of the impulse a subtle energy is released which is used in going 
toward the center, because in a sneeze you are throwing some energy out — in any 
impulse. 

'Impulse’ means you are burdened with some energy which you cannot use and cannot 
absorb. It wants to move out, it wants to be thrown out; you want a relief. That is why 
after you sneeze you will feel good, a subtle well-being. Nothing has happened, you have 
simply released some energy which was superfluous, a burden. Now it is no more there; 
you are relieved of it. Then you feel a subtle relaxation inside. 

That is why physiologists, Pavlov, B. F. Skinner and others, say sex is also like sneezing. 
They say physiologically there is no difference, sex is just like sneezing. You are 
overburdened with energy; you want to throw it out. Once it is thrown out your 
mechanism relaxes, you become unburdened. Then you feel good. That good feeling is 
just a release, according to physiologists, and as far as physiology goes they are right. 
Whenever you have some impulse, JUST AS YOU HAVE THE IMPULSE TO DO 
SOMETHING, STOP! Not only with a physiological impulse, any impulse can be used. 
For example, you were going to drink a glass of water. You have touched the water, the 
glass — suddenly stop. Let the hand be there, let the desire to drink, the thirst be there 
inside, but you stop completely. 

The glass is outside, the thirst is inside; the hand is on the glass, the eyes are on the glass 

— stop suddenly. No breathing, no movement, as if you have become dead. The very 
impulse, the thirst, will release energy, and that energy is used for going to the center. 
You will be thrown to the center. Why? Because any impulse is a movement outward. 
Remember, 'impulse’ means energy moving outward. 

Remember another thing: energy is always in movement — either going out or coming in. 
Energy can never be static. These are the laws. If you understand the laws, then the 
mechanism of the technique will be easy. Energy is always in movement. Either it is 
moving out or moving in; energy can never be static. If it is static it is not energy, and 
there is nothing which is not energy, so everything is moving somewhere. 

When an impulse, any impulse, comes to you, it means energy is moving out. That is why 
your hand goes to the glass — you have moved out. A desire has come to do something. 
All activities are movements toward that which is without from that which is within — 



movements from within to without. 

When you stop suddenly, the energy cannot be static in you. You have become static, but 
the energy cannot be static in you, and the mechanism through which it was moving out 
is not dead, it has stopped. So what can the energy do? The energy cannot do anything 
other than move inward. 

Energy cannot be static. It was going out. You have stopped, the mechanism has stopped, 
but the mechanism which can lead it toward the center is there. This energy will move 
inward. 

You are converting your energy and changing its dimension every moment without 
knowing it. You are angry, and you feel to beat someone or to destroy something or to do 
something violent — try this. Take someone — your friend, your wife, your child, anyone 

— and hug, kiss or embrace him or her. You were angry, you were going to destroy 
something; you wanted to do some violent thing. Your mind was destructive; the energy 
was moving toward violence. Love someone immediately. 

In the beginning you may feel that this is just like acting. You will wonder, "How can I 
love? How can I love in this moment? I am angry!" You do not know the mechanism. In 
this moment you can love deeply because the energy has been aroused, it has arisen. It 
has come to a point where it wants to be expressed, and energy needs movement. If you 
just start loving someone, the same energy will move into love and you will feel a rush of 
energy that you may not have ever felt. 

There are persons who cannot go into love unless they are angry, unless they are violent. 
There are people who can only go into deep love when their energy is moving violently. 
You may not have observed, but it happens daily: couples will fight before they make 
love. 

Wives and husbands fight, become angry, become violent, and then they make love, and 
they may not have understood what was happening. Then it becomes a mechanical habit 

— whenever they fight they will love. And the day they do not fight they will not be able 
to love. 

Particularly in Indian villages, where wives are still beaten, if a certain husband stops 
beating his wife it is known that now he has stopped loving her. And even wives 
understand that if the husband has become totally nonviolent toward them, it means the 
love has stopped. He is not fighting, so it means he is not loving. 

Why? Why is fight so associated with love? It is associated because the same energy can 
move in different dimensions. You may call it "love" or "hate." They look opposite, but 
they are not so opposite, because the same energy is moving. So a person who becomes 
incapable of hate becomes incapable of love, according to your definitions of love. A 
person who cannot be violently angry becomes incapable of the love which you know. 

He may be capable of a different quality of love, but that is not your love. A Buddha 
loves, but that love is totally different. That is why Buddha calls it compassion; he never 
calls it love. It is more like compassion, less like your love, because your love implies 
hate, anger, violence. 

Energy can move, can change directions. It can become hate, it can become love — the 
same energy. 

And the same energy can move inward also, so whenever you have the impulse to do 
something, Stop! This is not suppression. You are not suppressing anything, you are just 



playing with energy — just playing with energy and knowing the workings of it, how it 
works inwardly. But remember, the impulse must be real and authentic; otherwise 
nothing will happen. 

For example, when there is no thirst you move to a glass of water and then suddenly you 
stop. Nothing will happen because there is nothing to happen — the energy was not 
moving. You were feeling love toward your wife, your husband, your friend. You wanted 
to hug, to kiss — stop! But the impulse must be there authentically. If the impulse is not 
there and you were just going to console someone, to kiss because the kiss is expected, 
and then you stop, then nothing will happen because nothing was moving inside. 

So first remember, the impulse must be authentic, real. Only with a real impulse does 
energy move, and when a real impulse is suddenly stopped the energy becomes 
suspended. With no dimension from where to move out, it turns in. It has to move, it 
cannot remain there. 

But we are so false that nothing seems real. You eat your meal because of the clock, 
because of the time, not because of hunger. So if you stop, nothing will happen because 
there was really no hunger behind it, no impulse. No energy was moving there. 

That is why if you take your meal at one o'clock, at one o'clock you will feel the hunger. 
But the hunger is false; it is just a mechanical habit, just a dead habit. Your body is not 
hungry. If you do not eat you will feel something is missing, but if you can remain for 
one hour without eating you will forget it, the hunger will have subsided. 

A real hunger will grow more; it is bound to grow. If your hunger was real, then at two 
you will feel more hungry. If the hunger was false, then at two you will have completely 
forgotten. Really, there will be no hunger at two. Even if you want to eat, now you will 
not feel hungry. The hunger was just a false, mechanical feeling. No energy was moving, 
it was just the mind saying to you that now this is the time to eat, so eat. 

If you are feeling sleepy, stop! But the feeling must be real; that is the problem. And that 
is the problem for us now. It was not so in Shiva's time. When the VIGYANA 
BHAIRAVA TANTRA was preached for the first time, it was not so. Man was authentic, 
humanity was real, pure, nothing was false about it. With us everything is false. You 
pretend that you love; you pretend that you are angry. You go on pretending and then you 
forget yourself whether you are pretending or whether anything real is left. You never 
say what is in you, you never express it. You go on expressing what is not there. Watch 
yourself and you will come to know it. 


You say something, but you feel something else. Really, you wanted to say quite the 
opposite, but if you say the real thing you will become totally unfit — because the whole 
society is false, and in a false society you can exist only as a false person. The more 
adjusted, the more false, because if you want to be real you will feel a maladjustment. 
That is why renunciation came into existence, because of a false society. Buddha had to 
leave not because it had any positive meaning, but only a negative meaning — because 
with a false society you cannot be real. Or at every moment you are in a constant 
struggle, unnecessarily and dissipating energy. So leave the unreal, leave the false, so that 
you can be real. That was the basic reason for all renunciation. 

But watch yourself, how unreal you are. Watch the double mind. You are saying 
something, but you are feeling quite the contrary. Simultaneously, you are saying one 
thing in your mind and something else without. Thus, if you stop anything which is not 



real, the technique will not help. So find something authentic about yourself and try to 
stop that. Not everything has become false, many things are still real. Fortunately, 
everyone is real sometimes; in some moment everyone is real. Then stop it. 

You are feeling angry, and you feel it is real. You are going to destroy something, beat 
your child, or do something: Stop! But do not stop with a consideration. 

Do not say, "Anger is bad, so I should stop" — no ! Do not say, "This is not going to help 
the child, so I should stop." No mental consideration is needed, because if you consider, 
then the energy has moved into consideration. This is an inner mechanism. 

If you say, "I should not beat my child because it is not going to do any good to him, and 
this is not good for me also. This is useless and this never helps," the same energy which 
was going to become anger has become consideration. Now you have considered the 
whole thing, and the energy has subsided. It has moved into consideration, into thinking. 
Then you stop, but then there is no energy to move in. When you feel angry, do not 
consider it, do not think about it being good or bad; do not think at all. Suddenly 
remember the technique and stop! 

Anger is pure energy... nothing bad, nothing good. It may become good, it may become 
bad — that will depend on the result, not on the energy. It can become bad if it goes out 
and destroys something, if it becomes destructive. It may become a beautiful ecstasy if it 
moves within and throws you to the center; it may become a flower. Energy is simply 
energy — pure, innocent, neutral. Do not consider it. You were going to do something — 
do not think, simply stop and then remain stopped. In that remaining you will have a 
glimpse of the inner center. You will forget the periphery and the center will come into 
your vision. 


Just as you have the impulse to do something, Stop! Try it. Remember three things... 

One, try it only when a real impulse is there. Secondly, do not think about stopping, just 
stop. And thirdly, wait! When you have stopped, no breathing, no movement — wait and 
see what happens. Do not try. When I say to wait, I mean do not try now to think about 
the inner center. Then you will again miss. Do not think of the self, of the atman. Do not 
think that now the glimpse is there, now the glimpse is coming. Do not think, just wait. 
Let the impulse, the energy move by itself. If you start thinking about the brahman and 
the atman and the center, the energy will have moved into this thinking. 

You can waste this inner energy very simply. Just a thought will be enough to give it a 
direction; then you will go on thinking. When I say stop, it means stop totally, fully. 
Nothing is moving, as if the whole time has stopped. There is no movement — simply you 
are! In that simple existence, suddenly the center explodes. 

The second technique: 

WHEN SOME DESIRE COMES, CONSIDER IT. THEN, SUDDENLY, QUIT IT. 

This is a different dimension of the same technique. WHEN SOME DESIRE COMES, 
CONSIDER IT. THEN, SUDDENLY, QUIT IT. You feel a desire - a desire for sex, a 
desire for love, a desire for food, anything. You feel a desire: consider it. When the sutra 
says consider it, it means do not think for or against it, just consider the desire, what it is. 


A sexual desire comes to the mind. You say, "This is bad." This is not consideration. You 



have been taught that this is bad, so you are not considering this desire, you are 
consulting the scriptures, you are consulting the past — the past teachers, the RISHIS — 
sages. You are not considering the desire itself, you are considering something else. You 
are considering many things; your conditioning, your upbringing, your education, your 
culture, your civilization, your religion — but not the desire. 

This simple desire has come. Do not bring in the mind, the past, the education, the 
conditioning; do not bring in values. Just consider this desire — what it is. If your mind 
could be washed completely of all that has been given to you by the society, of all that 
your parents have given to you — the education, the culture — if your total mind could be 
washed out, the desire for sex will arise. It will arise, because that desire is not given to 
you by the society. That desire is biologically built in; it is in you. 

For example, if a child is born and no language is taught, the child will not learn any 
language. He will remain without language. A language is a social phenomenon; it has to 
be taught. But when the right moment conies, the child will feel sexual desire. That is not 
a social phenomenon, it is biologically built in. The desire will come at the right mature 
moment. 

It is not social, it is biological — deeper. It is built into your cells. 

Because you were born out of sex, every cell of your body is a sex cell; you consist of 
sex cells. Unless your biology can be washed off completely, the desire will be there. It 
will come — it is already there. When a child is born the desire is already there, because 
the child is a by-product of a sexual meeting. He comes through sex; his whole body is 
built with sex cells. The desire is there, only a time is needed before his body becomes 
mature enough to feel that desire, to enact that desire. The desire will be there whether 
you are taught that sex is bad or good, whether you are not taught that sex is hell or 
heaven, whether you are taught this way or that way, for or against — because both are 
teachings. 

The old traditions, the old religions, Christianity particularly, they go on preaching 
against sex. The new cults of hippies and yippies and others have started the opposite 
movement. They say sex is good, sex is ecstatic, sex is the only real thing in the world. 
Both are teachings. Do not consider your desire according to some teaching. Just 
consider the desire in its purity, as it is — a fact. Do not interpret it. 

Consideration here means not interpreting, but just looking at the fact as it is. The desire 
is there: look at it directly, immediately. Do not bring in your thoughts or ideas, because 
no thought is yours and no idea is yours. 

Everything has been given to you, every idea is a borrowed thing. No thought is original 
— no thought can be original. Do not bring in thinking, just look at the desire, at what it 
is, as if you do not know anything about it. Face it! Encounter it! That is what is meant 
by CONSIDER IT. 

WHEN SOME DESIRE COMES, CONSIDER IT. Just look at the fact - at what it is. 
Unfortunately, it is one of the most difficult things to do. Compared to this, reaching to 
the moon is not so difficult or reaching to the peak of Everest is not so difficult. It is 
highly complicated — reaching to the moon is highly complicated, infinitely complicated, 
a very complex phenomenon. But compared to living with a fact of the inner mind it is 
nothing, because the mind is so subtly involved in everything you do. It is always there. 
Look at the word... If I say, "Sex," the moment I say it you have decided for or against. 
The moment I say, "Sex," you have interpreted: "This is not good. This is bad." Or, "This 



is good." You have interpreted even the word. 

Many persons came to me when the book FROM SEX TO SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS 
was published. They came and they said, "Please change the title. The very word 'sex' 
makes them disturbed — they have not read the book. And those who have already read 
the book also say to change the title. 

Why? The very word gives you a certain interpretation. Mind is so interpretive that if I 
say "Lemon juice," your saliva starts flowing. 

You have interpreted the words. In the words 'lemon juice' there is nothing like lemon, 
but your saliva starts flowing. If I wait for a few moments, you will become uneasy 
because you will have to swallow. The mind has interpreted; it has come in. Even with 
words you cannot remain aloof, without interpreting. It will be very difficult, when a 
desire arises, to remain aloof, to remain just a dispassionate observer, calm and quiet, 
looking at the fact, not interpreting it. 

I say, "This man is a Mohammedan" The moment I say, "This man is a Mohammedan," 
the Hindu has thought that this man is bad. If I say, "This man is a Jew," the Christian has 
decided that this man is not good. The very word 'Jew', and in the Christian mind comes 
the interpretation; the traditional, conventional idea flares up. This Jew is not to be 
considered, the old interpretation will have to be imposed on this Jew. 

Every Jew is a different Jew. Every Hindu is a different, unique individual. You cannot 
interpret him because you know other Hindus. You may have come to conclude that all 
the Hindus you have known are bad, but this Hindu is not in your experience. You are 
interpreting this Hindu according to your past experience. Do not interpret, interpretation 
is not consideration. Consideration means consider THIS fact — absolutely this fact. 
Remain with this fact. 

Rishis have said that sex is bad. 

It may have been bad for them; you do not know. You have the desire, a fresh desire, 
with you. Consider it, look at it, be attentive to it. THEN, SUDDENLY, QUIT IT. 

There are two parts to this technique. First, remain with the fact — aware, attentive of 
what is happening. When you feel a sexual desire, what is happening in you? See how 
you become feverish, how your body begins to tremble, how you feel a sudden madness 
creeping in, how you feel as if you are possessed by something else. Feel it, consider it. 
Do not exercise any judgement, just move into this fact — the fact of sexual desire. Do 
not say it is bad! 

If you have said that, the consideration has stopped, you have closed the door. Now your 
face is not toward the desire — your back is. You have moved away from it. You have 
missed a moment in which you could have gone deep down into your biological layer of 
being. You are clinging to the social layer, which is the uppennost. 

Sex is deeper than your SHASTRAS — scriptures — because it is biological. If all the 
shastras can be destroyed — and they can be destroyed, many times they have been — 
your interpretation will be lost. But sex will remain; it is deeper. Do not bring superficial 
things in. Just consider the fact and move within, and feel what is happening to you. 

What happened to particular rishis, to Mohammed and Mahavir, is irrelevant. 

What is happening to you this very moment? This alive moment, what is happening to 
you? 

Consider it, observe it. And then the second part... this is really beautiful. Shiva says, 



THEN, SUDDENLY, QUIT IT. 

SUDDENLY — remember. Do not say, "This is bad, so I am going to leave it. I am not 
going to move with this idea, this desire. This is bad, this is sin, so I will stop it, I will 
suppress it." Then a suppression will happen, but not a meditative state of mind. And 
suppression is really creating by your own hands a deceived being and mind. 

Suppression is psychological. You are disturbing the whole mechanism and suppressing 
energies which are going to burst out any day. The energy is there, you have simply 
suppressed it. It has not moved out, it has not moved in, you have simply suppressed it. It 
has simply moved sideways. It will wait and it will become perverted, and perverted 
energy is the basic problem with man. 

Psychological diseases are by-products of perverted energy. Then it will take such 
shapes, such forms, which are not even imaginable, and in those forms it will try again to 
be expressed. And when it is expressed in a perverted form, it leads you into a very, very 
deep anguish, because there is no satisfaction in any perverted form. And you cannot 
remain perverted, you have to express it. Suppression creates perversion. This sutra is not 
concerned with suppression. 

This sutra is not saying to control, this sutra is not saying to suppress. The sutra says, 
SUDDENLY, QUIT IT. 

What to do? The desire is there; you have considered. If you have considered it, it will 
not be difficult; the second part will be easy. If you have not considered it, look at your 
mind. Your mind will be thinking, "This is good. If we can quit sexual desire suddenly, 
this is beautiful." You would like to do it, but your liking is not the question. Your liking 
may not be your liking, but just the society's. Your liking may not be your own 
consideration, but just tradition. First consider, do not create any liking or disliking. Just 
consider, and then the second part becomes easy — you can quit the desire. 

How to quit it? When you have considered a thing totally, it is very easy; it is as easy as 
dropping this paper from my hand. QUIT IT... What will happen? A desire is there. You 
have not suppressed it and it is moving out, it is coming up; it has stirred your whole 
being. Really, when you consider a desire without interpretation your whole being will 
become a desire. 

When sex is there and if you are not against it or for it, if you have no mind about it, then 
just by looking at the desire, your whole being will be involved in it. A single sex desire 
will become a flame. Your whole being will be concentrated in the flame, as if you have 
totally become sexual. 

It will not only be at the sex center, it will spread all over the body. Every fiber of your 
body will be trembling. The passion will have become a flame. Now, quit it. Don’t fight 
with it, simply say, "I quit it." 

What will happen? The moment you can simply say, "I quit," a separation happens. Your 
body — your passionate body, your body filled with sex desire — and you become two. 
Suddenly, in a moment, they are two poles apart. The body is writhing with passion and 
sex, and the center is silent, observing. No fight is there, just a separation — remember 
this. In fight you are not separate. When you are fighting you are one with the object. 
When you have just quit it, you are separate. Now you can look at it as if someone else is 
there, not you. 

One of my friends was with me for many years. He was a constant chain smoker, and he 
tried and tried, as smokers do, not to smoke. One day, suddenly in the morning, he would 



decide, "Now I am not going to smoke," and by the evening he would be smoking again. 
And he would feel guilty and he would defend it, and then for a few days he would not 
gather courage again to decide not to smoke. Then he would forget what happened. Then 
one day, again he would say, "Now I am not going to smoke," and I would just laugh 
because this had happened so many times. Then he himself became fed up with the whole 
thing — with this smoking and then deciding not to smoke, and this constant vicious 
circle. 


He wondered what to do. He asked me what to do, so I told him, "Do not be against 
smoking — that is the first thing to do. Smoke, and be with it. For seven days do not be 
against it; do this thing." 

He said, "What are you telling me? I have been against it, and even then I could not leave 
it, and you are saying not to be against it. Then there is no possibility of leaving it." 

So I told him, "You have tried with the inimical attitude and you have been a failure. 

Now try the other — the friendly attitude. Do not be against it for seven days." 
Immediately he said, "Then will I be able to leave it?" 

So I told him, "Then again... you are still inimical toward it. Do not think about leaving it 
at all. How can one think about leaving a friend? For seven days just forget it. Remain 
with it, cooperate with it, smoke as deeply as possible, as lovingly as possible. When you 
are smoking, just forget everything; become the smoking. Be totally at ease with it, in 
deep communion with it. For seven days, smoke as much as you like and forget about 
leaving it." 

These seven days became a consideration. He could look at the fact of smoking. He was 
not against it, so now he could face it. When you are against something, or someone, you 
cannot face it. The very being against becomes a barrier. You cannot consider... How can 
you consider an enemy? You cannot look at him, you cannot look into his eyes; it is 
difficult to face him. 

You can look deeply only into the eyes of one you love; then you penetrate deep. 
Otherwise eyes can never meet. 

So he looked into the fact deeply. For seven days he considered it. He was not against, so 
the energy was there, the mind was there, and it became a meditation. He had to 
cooperate with it; he had to become the smoker. After seven days he forgot to tell me. I 
was waiting for him to say, "Now the seven days have ended, so now how can I leave 
it?" He forgot completely about the seven days. Three weeks passed and then I asked 
him, "Have you forgotten completely?" 

He said, "The experience has been so beautiful, I do not want to think about anything else 
now. It is beautiful, and for the first time I am not struggling with the fact. I am just 
feeling what is happening to me." 

Then I told him, "Whenever you feel the urge to smoke, simply quit." He didn’t ask me 
how to quit it, he had simply considered the whole thing and the whole thing became so 
childish, and there was no struggle. So I said, "When you feel again the urge to smoke, 
consider it, look at it, and leave it. Take the cigarette in your hand, stop for a moment, 
then leave the cigarette. Let it drop, and as the cigarette drops let the urge also drop 
inside." 

He didn’t ask me how to do it, because consideration makes one capable — you can do it. 
And if you cannot do it, remember, you have not considered the fact. 



Then you were against it, all the time thinking how to leave it. Then you cannot quit it. 
When suddenly the urge is there and you quit it, the whole energy takes a jump inward. 
The technique is the same, only the dimensions differ: WHEN SOME DESIRE COMES, 
CONSIDER IT. THEN, SUDDENLY, QUIT IT. 

Third: 

ROAM ABOUT UNTIL EXHAUSTED AND THEN, DROPPING TO THE GROUND, 
IN THIS DROPPING BE WHOLE. 

The same! This technique is the same. ROAM ABOUT UNTIL EXHAUSTED. Just run 
in a circle. Jump, dance, and run again until you are exhausted — until you feel that now 
not a single step more can be taken. But you will have to understand that your mind will 
say that now you are completely exhausted. Do not pay any attention to the mind. Go on 
running, dancing, jumping. Go on! Do not pay any attention. The mind will say that now 
you are exhausted, now you cannot go on any more. Continue until you feel — not think, 
until you feel — that the whole body is tired, that "A single step more has become 
impossible, and if I move I will fall down." 

When you feel that you are falling down and now you cannot move, that the body has 
become heavy and tired and completely exhausted, THEN, DROPPING TO THE 
GROUND, IN THIS DROPPING BE WHOLE. Then drop! Remember, be so exhausted 
that dropping happens of itself. If you continue, you will drop. The point has come — you 
are just on the verge of dropping. 

Then, the sutra says, drop, and IN THIS DROPPING BE WHOLE. 

That is the central point in the technique: when you are dropping, be whole. What is 
meant? Do not drop just according to the mind — that is one thing. Do not plan it; do not 
try to sit, do not try to lie down. Drop as a whole, as if the whole body is one and it has 
dropped. And you are not dropping it, because if you are dropping it then you have two 
parts: you who is dropping it and the body which has been dropped. Then you are not 
whole. Then you are fragmentary, divided. Drop it as a whole; drop yourself totally. And 
remember, drop! Do not arrange it. Fall down dead. IN THIS DROPPING BE WHOLE. 
If you can drop in this way, you will feel for the first time your whole being, your 
wholeness. You will feel for the first time your center — not divided, but one, unitary. 
How can it happen? The body has three layers of energy. One is for day-to-day affairs, 
which is very easily exhausted. It is just for routine work. The second is for emergency 
affairs; it is a deeper layer. When you are in an emergency, only then is it used. And the 
third is the cosmic energy, which is infinite. The first can be easily exhausted. If I say to 
you to run, you will take three or four rounds and you will say, "I am feeling tired." 
Really, you are not feeling tired — the first layer is exhausted. In the morning it will not 
be so easily exhausted; in the evening it will be exhausted very easily because the whole 
day you have been using it. 

Now it needs repair; you will need a deep sleep. From the cosmic reservoir it can again 
get energy enough to work. This is the first layer. 

If I tell you to run just now, you will say, "I am feeling sleepy, I cannot run." And then 
someone comes and says, "Your house is on fire." Suddenly the sleepiness has gone. 
There is no tiredness, you feel fresh; you start running. What has happened so suddenly? 
You were tired, and the emergency has made you connected with the second layer of 
energy, so you are fresh again. This is the second layer. In this technique, the second 



layer has to be exhausted. The first layer is exhausted very easily. Continue. You will feel 
tired, but continue. And within a few moments a new surge of energy will come, and you 
will feel again renewed and there will be no tiredness. 

So many people come to me and they say, "When we are in a meditation camp, it seems 
miraculous that we can do this much. In the morning, for one hour meditating actively, 
chaotically, going completely mad. And then in the afternoon we do an hour, and then in 
the night also. Three times a day we can go on meditating chaotically." Many have said 
that they feel that this is impossible, that they cannot continue and they will be dead tired, 
and the next day it will be impossible to move any limb of the body. But no one gets 
tired. Three sessions every day, doing such exertions, and no one is tired. 

Why? Because they are in contact with the second layer of energy. 

But if you are doing it alone — go to a hill and do it alone — you will become tired. When 
the first layer is finished you will feel, "Now I am tired." But in a big group of five 
hundred people doing meditation, you feel, "No one is tired, so I should continue a little 
more." And everyone is thinking the same: "No one is tired, so I should continue a little 
more. If everyone is fresh and doing, why should I feel tired?" 

That group feeling gives you an impetus, and soon you reach the second layer. And the 
second layer is very big — an emergency layer. When the emergency layer is also tired, 
finished, only then are you in contact with the cosmic, the source, the infinite. 

That is why much exertion is needed — so much that you feel, "Now it is going beyond 
me." The first moment you feel it is going beyond you, it is not going beyond you — it is 
just going beyond the first layer. And when the first layer is finished, you will feel tired. 
When the second layer is finished, you will feel, "If I do anything now, I will be dead." 

So many come to me, and they say that whenever they reach deep in meditation, a 
moment comes when they become afraid and scared and they say, "Now I am afraid. It 
seems as if I am going to die. Now I cannot penetrate any further. A fear grips me, as if I 
am going to die, now I will not be able to come out of meditation." 


That is the right moment — the moment when you need courage. A little courage, and you 
will penetrate the third, the deepest, infinite layer. 

This technique helps you very easily to fall into that cosmic ocean of energy: ROAM 
ABOUT UNTIL EXHAUSTED AND THEN, DROPPING TO THE GROUND, IN 
THIS DROPPING BE WHOLE. And when you drop to the ground totally, for the first 
time you will be whole, unitary, one. There will be no fragments, no divisions. The mind 
with its divisions will disappear, and the being that is undivided, indivisible, will appear 
for the first time. 


THE END. 



Chapter 18: Remaining with the facts 


The first question: 

Question 1 

YOU SAID LAST NIGHT THAT MODERN MAN HAS BECOME INAUTHENTIC IN 
EXPRESSING ANGER, VIOLENCE, SEX, ETC. YOU SAY THAT IN INDIA 
STUDENTS AND THE YOUNGER GENERATION ARE LESS VIOLENT IN THEIR 
EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIONS THAN ARE WESTERN YOUTH DOES THIS MEAN 
THAT WESTERN YOUTH ARE BECOMING MORE AUTHENTIC IN THEIR 
EXPRESSIONS? IS PERMISSIVENESS IN THE EXPRESSION OF SEX AND 
ANGER A GROWTH TOWARD BEING AUTHENTIC IN EMOTIONAL 
EXPRESSIONS? 

Many things have to be considered. One, to be authentic means to be totally factual. 
Ideologies, theories, isms, they distort you and they give you a false persona. You 
cultivate faces, then whatsoever you show you are not. The reality is missed and you are 
suddenly acting and acting. Your life becomes less alive and more a game in which you 
are enacting something - not your real soul, but the culture, the education, the society, the 
civilization. Man can be cultivated - and the more you are cultivated, the less real you 
are. 

The reality is your uncultivated self, untouched by society. But that is dangerous. A child, 
if left to himself, will be just an animal. He will be authentic, but he will be an animal; he 
will not become a man. So that is not possible, that alternative is closed. We cannot leave 
a child to himself. We have to do something, and whatsoever we do will disturb the real 
self. 

It will give clothings, it will give faces and masks to the child. He will become a man, but 
then he will become an actor; he will not be real. If you leave him to himself he will be 
like an animal - authentic, real, but not a man. So it is a necessary evil that we have to 
teach him, we have to cultivate and condition him. Then he becomes a man, but unreal. 
The third possibility opens with these techniques of meditation. All techniques of 
meditation are really "unconditionings." Whatsoever society has given to you can be 
taken away again, and then you will not be an animal. Then you will be something more 
than man. You will be a supennan - real, but not an animal. 

How does it happen? A child has to be given culture, education. There is no possibility of 
leaving him to himself. If you leave him to himself, he will never become a man; he will 
remain an animal. He will be real, but he will miss the world, the dimension of 
consciousness which opens with man. So we have to make him a man, and he becomes 
unreal. 

Why does he become unreal? Because this man is just imposed from without. Inside he 
remains the animal. From outside we impose humanity on him. He is divided; he is split 
in two. Now the animal goes on living within, and the man without. That is why 
whatsoever you do and say is a double bind. You have to maintain a face which has been 
given to you, and you continuously have to satisfy your animal also. 

That creates problems, and everyone becomes dishonest. The more you are idealistic, the 
more you will have to be dishonest, because the ideal will say, "Do this," and the animal 
will be quite the contrary. He would like to do something else that is quite the opposite. 



Then what can one do? One can deceive others and oneself; one can maintain a face, a 
false face, and go on living the life of the animal. That is what is happening. You live a 
life of sex, but you never talk about it. You talk about BRAMACHARYA — celibacy. 
Your sex life is just pushed into the dark - not only from society, not only from your 
family, but even from your own conscious mind. You push it into the dark as if it is not a 
part of your being. You go on doing things which you are against because your biology 
cannot change just by education. 

Remember, your inheritance — your biological cells, your structure — cannot be changed 
just by ideological education. No school, no ideology can change your inner animal. Only 
a scientific technique can change the inner being. Just moral teachings will not help 
unless you have a scientific technique to change your total inner consciousness. Only 
then will you not be double: you will become single. 

The animal is single, unitary; the saint too is single and unitary. Man is double because 
man is just between the two, the animal and the saint - or, you can say between God and 
dog. 

Man is just in between. Inside he remains the dog; outside he pretends to be God. That 
creates a tension, anguish, and everything becomes false. You could fall down and 
become an animal; then you would be more authentic than man. But then you would miss 
much — you would miss the possibility to become God. 

The animal cannot become God because the animal has no problems to transcend. 
Remember, the animal cannot become God because there is nothing to be transformed. 
The animal is at ease with himself; there is no problem, no struggle, no need for 
transcendence. The animal is not even conscious, he is simply unconsciously authentic. 
But the animal IS authentic, although the authenticity is unconscious. No animal can lie; 
that is impossible. But it is not because animals maintain a morality, they cannot lie 
because they are not aware of the possibility that one can be false. 

They are bound to be true, but that truth is not their choice, it is their slavery. An animal 
is bound to be true, not because he has chosen to be true, but because he cannot choose 
the other alternative. There is no alternative for him; he can only be himself. There is no 
possibility to be false because he is unconscious of possibilities. 

Man is conscious of possibilities. Only man can be untrue. That is a growth! That is 
evolution! Man can be untrue and that is why he can be true. Man can choose. 

Animals are bound to be true; that is their slavery, not their freedom. If you are true, that 
is an achievement because you could always be untrue. The possibility is open, but you 
have not chosen it, you have chosen the other. It is a conscious choice. 

Of course, then man is always in difficulties. Choosing is always difficult, and the mind 
wants to choose something which is easy to do. The mind wants to have the thing with 
the least RESISTANCE. To lie is easy; to be false is easy. To appear loving is easy; to 
BE loving is very difficult. To create a facade is easy; to create a being is difficult. So 
man chooses the simple, the easy, which can be done without any effort and without any 
sacrifice. 

With man freedom comes into existence. Animals are just slaves. With man, freedom 
comes into existence, choice comes into existence — then difficulties and anxieties. With 
man, the untrue, the false, enters. You can deceive. Up to this point it is a necessary evil. 
Man cannot be simple and pure in the same way as animals, but he can be more simple 
and pure, and he can be more impure and more complex. He can be more simple and 



more pure and more innocent, but he cannot be simple and pure and innocent just like 
animals. That innocence is unconscious, and man has become conscious. Now he can do 
two things: he may go on with his falsities, with his falseness, and constantly remain a 
divided being in conflict with himself. 

Or he may become conscious of the whole phenomenon of what has happened and what 
is happening to him, and he may decide not to be false. He may leave all that is false. He 
may sacrifice, he may choose to sacrifice whatsoever can be gained by being false. Then 
he becomes again authentic. 

But this authenticity is different, qualitatively different from the authenticity of an 
animal. The animal is unconscious. He cannot do anything — he is forced by nature to be 
authentic. When a man decides to be authentic, no one is forcing him; on the contrary, 
everything is forcing him to be inauthentic - the society, the culture, all that exists around 
him is forcing him to be inauthentic. He DECIDES to be authentic. This decision makes 
you a self, and this decision gives you a freedom which no animal can attain and no false 
man can attain. 

Remember, whenever you lie, deceive, are dishonest, you are forced to do that. That is 
not your choice, not a real choice. Why do you lie? Because of the consequences, 
because of the society: you will suffer if you say the truth. You lie and you escape 
suffering. 

Really, the society has forced you to lie; it was not your choice. If you say the truth, it is 
your choice, no one is forcing you to say the truth. Everything is forcing you to say a he, 
to be dishonest. That is more convenient, safe, secure. Now you are entering danger, 
insecurity, but this is your choice. 

With this choice, for the first time you attain a self. 

So animal authenticity is one thing, and man’s authenticity is qualitatively different — it is 
a conscious choice. So a buddha is one again. He is like an animal, with only one 
difference: he is simple, pure, innocent like an animal, but unlike an animal because he is 
conscious. Now everything is a conscious choice. He is alert, aware. 

The question is, DOES THIS MEAN THAT WESTERN YOUTH IS BECOMING 
MORE AUTHENTIC? In a sense, yes. It is becoming more authentic because it is falling 
toward the animal. It is not a choice. Rather, again, it is the easiest course - to fall down. 
Western youth is more authentic than Eastern youth in the sense that they are now falling 
deeper down toward the animal. Eastern youth is false. Their behavior looks like a facade 
- not real, but phony. But these two are not really the only alternatives. 

Eastern youth is false, cultured, cultivated, forced to be something which is not real. 
Western youth has revolted against this, revolted toward the authenticity of the animal. 
That is why sex and violence have taken more and more of a grip on the Western youth. 
In a way they are more authentic, but in a way the greater possibility is lost. 

A buddha is in revolt and a hippie is also in revolt, but the revolts are different; the 
quality differs. A buddha is also revolting against the conditioning, but he is going 
beyond it - toward a unity which is higher than man and higher than the animal. 

You can revolt and go down toward the animal. Then you are also going toward a unity, 
but that is going down, below man. 

But in a way, revolt is good - because once revolt comes into the mind, the day is not far 
off when you will come to understand that this revolt is just going backwards. A revolt is 



needed which must go forward. So Western youth may come to understand sooner or 
later that their revolt is good, but the direction is wrong. Then it will become possible in 
the West for a new humanity to be born. 

In this sense, the Eastern phoniness is not worth anything. It is better to be authentic, to 
be revolting, because a revolting mind will not take much time to see that the direction is 
wrong. But a phony youth may continue for millennia, may not be even aware that there 
is a possibility to revolt and to go beyond. But between the two neither is worth 
choosing; the third alternative is the way. 

Man must revolt against conditioning and go beyond. If you fall below then you may 
have the pleasure of revolting, but the revolt has become destructive — it is not creative. 
Religion is the deepest revolt, but you may not have thought about it in that way. We take 
religion as the most orthodox thing - the traditional, the conventional. It is not. Religion 
is the most revolutionary thing in human consciousness, because it can lead you toward 
the unity which is higher than animal, higher than man. 

These techniques are concerned with that revolution. 

So when Shiva says be authentic, he means do not be phony, do not continue to be 
phony. Be aware about your false persona, about your clothings, dresses, masks - and 
then be authentic. Whatsoever you are, realize it. 

The real problem is that one becomes deceived by one's own deceptions. You talk about 
compassion... In India we talk so much about compassion, nonviolence, everyone thinks 
that he is nonviolent, but if you look at a person's acts, at his relationships, at his gestures, 
he is violent. But he is not aware that he is violent. He may be violent even in his 
nonviolence. If he is trying to force others to be nonviolent, that is violence. If he is 
forcing himself to be nonviolent, that is violence. To be authentic means he must 
understand and realize what is his real state of mind - not ideas, not principles, but the 
state of mind. What is his state of mind? Is he violent? Is he angry? 

This is what is meant by Shiva when he says, be authentic. Know what is the real, your 
fact, because only a fact can be changed.If you want to transfonn yourself, you must 
know your facticity. You cannot change a fiction. You are violent and you think that you 
are nonviolent — then there is no possibility of any transformation. That nonviolence is 
nowhere, so you cannot change. And the violence is there, but you are not aware of it, so 
how can you change it? 

First know the facts as they are. 

How to know the facts? Encounter them without your interpretations. That is what 
yesterday's sutra said: CONSIDER. Your servant has come — consider how you look at 
your servant. Your boss has come into the room — consider how you look at your boss. Is 
the look the same when you look at your servant as when you look at your boss? Are 
your eyes the same, or is there any difference? If there is any difference you are a violent 
man. 

You do not look personally at the man, at the human being, your look is an interpretation. 
If he is rich you look in a certain way; if he is poor you look in a different way. Your 
look becomes economical. You are not looking at the man right before you, you are 
looking at some bank balance. And if the man is poor, your look has a subtle violence in 
it, a degrading, insulting look. If the man is rich you have a subtle appreciation, a 
welcome. A deep concern is there always, whatsoever you are doing. 

Look at your concern. You are angry at your son or at your daughter, and you say you are 



angry for his or her sake, for his or her good. Go deep down; consider whether it is true. 
Your son has been disobedient and you are angry. You say you want to change him 
because it is for his own good. Look within and consider the fact. Is the fact that you are 
thinking about his good, or do you simply feel insulted because he has disobeyed you? 
You feel hurt because he has disobeyed you. 

Your ego is hurt because he has disobeyed you. 

If your ego is hurt, this is the fact, and you go on pretending that that is not the thing - 
that you are just thinking about his good, and that is why you are angry. You are angry 
just for him; you are not really angry. How can you be angry? You are a loving father, so 
you are not angry at all. How can you be angry? You love him so much, but because he is 
going on a wrong path, because of your love, you want to change him, and that is why 
you are angry. You are just pretending to be angry to help him. 

But is this the fact? Are you just pretending, or do you feel hurt because he has disobeyed 
you? And are you so sure that whatsoever you say is right for him? Go deep down within 
yourself, look at the fact, consider it - and be authentic. If you are really offended by his 
disobedience, then know it well that you are offended and you feel hurt, and that is why 
you are angry. This is being authentic. 

Then you can do much for a change in you because facts can be changed; fictions cannot 
be changed. With everything that you are doing or you are thinking, go deep down. Dig 
out the facts, and do not allow interpretations and words to color it. 

If this consideration is there, by and by you will become authentic. And this authenticity 
will not be like that of an animal. This authenticity will be like that of a saint, because the 
more you know how ugly you are, the more you know how violent you are, the more you 
penetrate inside your facts and become aware of the nonsense that you are doing, the 
more this awareness will help you. 

And by and by your ugliness will drop away, will wither away, because if you are aware 
of your ugliness it cannot continue. 

If you want it to continue, do not be aware of it and create a facade of beauty around it. 
Then you will see the beauty, and the ugliness will remain behind, never to be seen 
directly. Everyone else will see it — that is the problem. The son will see that the father is 
not angry for his good. He will see that the father is angry because he has been disobeyed 
and he feels hurt; the son will kn ow it. You cannot hide your ugliness from others. You 
can hide it only from yourself. Your look will reveal to everyone that there is 
violence. You can only deceive yourself that there was compassion. 

That is why everyone thinks of himself as a very superior being, and no one else agrees 
with him. Your wife doesn’t agree with you that you are a superior being. Your children 
are not in agreement with you that you are a superior being. Your friends do not agree, no 
one agrees with you, that you are a superior being. 

They have a popular saying in Russia that if everyone says their mind totally, exactly as 
it is, there will not be four friends in the whole world. Impossible! Whatsoever your 
friend thinks about you, he never says to you. That is why friendship continues. But he is 
always saying things behind you, and you are saying what you think about your friend 
behind him. 

No one says honestly what he thinks because then there will be no possibility of any 
friendship. Why? No one agrees with you, and the reason is only this: you can only 



deceive yourself; you cannot deceive anyone else. Only self-deception is possible. 

And when you think you are deceiving others you are simply deceiving yourself. It may 
be that others pretend to you that they have been deceived by you, because there are 
moments when it is convenient to play the role of being deceived. It may be beneficial for 
the person. You talk to someone about your greatness... Everyone is talking directly or 
indirectly about his greatness, his superiority. Someone may agree with you. If it is 
beneficial to him he will pretend to you that he is being deceived by you, but he knows 
inside who you are. 

You cannot deceive anyone unless someone is ready to be deceived; that is another thing. 
By authenticity I mean: remember your facticity. Always sort it out from your 
interpretations. Throw away your interpretations and look at the fact of what you are. 

And do not be afraid — much ugliness is there. If you are afraid, then you will never be 
able to change it. If it is there, accept that it is there; consider it. 

This is what consideration means: consider it, look at it in its total nakedness. Move 
around it, go to its roots, analyze it. See why it is there, how you help it to be there, how 
you feed it, how you protect it, how it has grown to be such a big tree. 

See your ugliness, your violence, your hatred, your anger, how you have protected it, 
how you have helped it to grow up to now. Look at the roots; look at the whole 
phenomenon. 

And Shiva says That if you consider it totally you can drop it immediately, this very 
moment, because it is you who have been protecting it. It is you who have been helping it 
to become rooted in you. It is your creation. You can drop it immediately - just now. You 
can leave it, and then there is no need to look again toward it. But before you can do this, 
you will have to know it - what it is, the whole mechanism, the whole complexity of it, 
how you help it every moment. 

If someone says something insulting to you, how do you react? Have you ever thought 
about it - that he may be right? Then look! He may be right. There is every possibility of 
him being more right than you are about yourself, because he is aloof, far away; he can 
observe. 

So do not react. Wait! Tell him, "I will consider what you have said. You have insulted 
me, and I will consider the fact. You may be right. If you are right, then I will give you 
my thanks. Let me consider it. And if I find that you are wrong I will inform you." But do 
not react. Reaction is different. 

If you insult me, I say to you, instead of reacting, "Wait. Come back after seven days. I 
will consider whatsoever you have said — you may be right. 

I will put myself in your place and will observe myself; I will create a distance. You may 
be right, so let me look at the fact. It is very kind of you to have pointed it out, so I will 
look at it. If I feel that you are right, I will tha nk you; if I feel that you are wrong, I will 
inform you that you are wrong." But what is the need of reaction? 

You insult me — then what do I do? I insult you immediately then and there. I escape 
consideration: I have reacted. You insulted me, so I have insulted you. 

And remember, reaction can never be right. It can NEVER be right! If you insult me, you 
create the possibility of my being angry. And when I am angry I am not conscious, I will 
say something which I have never thought about you. This very moment, because of your 
insults I react in a violent way. A moment later I may repent. 

Do not react — consider the facts. And if your consideration is total, you can drop 



anything. It is in your hands. Because you are clinging to it, it is there. But you can drop 
it immediately, and there will be no suppression - remember. When you have considered 
a fact, there will never be any suppression. Either you like it and you continue it, or you 
do not like it and you drop it. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

ACCORDING TO LAST NIGHT’S TECHNIQUE, WHEN ANGER, VIOLENCE, SEX, 
ETC., ARISES, ONE SHOULD CONSIDER IT AND THEN SUDDENLY QUIT IT. 

BUT WHEN ONE DOES IT, ONE SOMETIMES FEELS SICK AND UNEASY. 

WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THESE NEGATIVE FEELINGS? 

Only one reason: your consideration is not total. Everyone wants to quit anger without 
understanding it; everyone wants to quit sex without understanding it. And there is no 
revolution without understanding. You will create more problems and you will create 
more misery for yourself. Do not think of renouncing anything, just think of how to 
understand it: understanding, not renunciation. There is no need of thinking to quit 
anything. The only need is to understand it in its totality. If you have understood it in its 
totality, the transformation will follow. If it is good for you, if it is good for your being, it 
will grow. If it is bad for you, it will drop. So the real thing is not quitting, it is 
understanding. 

Why do you think about renouncing anger? Why? Because you have been taught that 
anger is bad. But have YOU understood it as bad? Have YOU come to a personal 
conclusion, through your own deepening insight, that anger is bad? If you have come to 
this conclusion through your own inner search, there will be no need to quit it — it will 
have already disappeared. The very fact of knowing that this is poisonous is enough. 

Then you are a different man. 

But you go on thinking of leaving, quitting, renouncing. Why? Because people say that 
anger is bad, and you are simply influenced by whatsoever they say. 

Then you go on thinking that anger is bad, and when the moment comes you go on being 
angry. 

This is how a double mind is created, you remain with anger, and yet you always think 
anger is bad. This is inauthenticity. If you think that anger is good, then do it and do not 
say that anger is bad. Or if you say anger is bad, then try to understand whether this is 
your realization or whether someone else has said it to you. 

Everyone is creating misery around himself because of others. Someone says this is bad 
and someone says that it is good, and they go on forcing these ideas in your mind. The 
parents are doing this, the society is doing this, and then one day you are just following 
others’ ideas. And the difference between your nature and others' ideas cause a split; you 
become schizophrenic. You will do something and you will believe in the very contrary. 
That will create guilt. Everyone feels guilty. Not that everyone IS guilty, everyone feels 
guilty because of this mechanism. 

They say anger is bad. Everyone has said to you that anger is bad, but no one has told 
you how to know what anger is. Everyone says sex is bad. They have been teaching, 
teaching, that sex is bad, and no one says what sex is and how to know it. Ask your 
father, and he will become uneasy. He will say, "Do not talk about such bad things!" But 
these bad things are facts. Even your father could not escape it; otherwise you would not 
have been bom. 



You are a naked fact. And no matter what your father says about sex, he couldn’t escape 
it. But he will feel uneasy if you ask him because no one has told him; his parents never 
told him why sex is bad. 

Why? And how to know it? And how to go deep into it? No one will tell this to you, they 
will just go on labelling things: this is bad and that is good. That labelling creates misery 
and hell. 

So one thing to remember - for any seeker, a real seeker, this is a basic thing to be 
understood: remain with your facts, try to know them. Do not allow the society to force 
its ideology on you. Do not look at yourself through others' eyes. You have eyes; you are 
not blind. And you have the facts of your inner life. Use your eyes! That is what 
consideration means. And if YOU consider, then this will not be a problem. 

BUT WHEN ONE DOES IT, ONE SOMETIMES FEELS SICK AND UNEASY. You 
will feel this if you have not understood the facts; you will feel uneasy, because it is 
subtle repression. You know already that anger is bad. If I say to consider it, you do 
consider so only that it can be renounced. That renouncing is there, always present in 
your mind. 

Someone was here, a very old man, sixty years of age. He is a very religious man - and 
not only a religious man, but a type of religious leader. He has been teaching many 
people and he has written many books. He is a moralizer, and now, at the age of sixty, he 
comes to me and he says, "You are the only person to whom I can tell my real problems. 

How can I get rid of sex?" 

And I have heard him speak about the misery of sex. He has written books, and he has 
tortured his sons and daughters. If you want to torture someone, morality is the best trick 
- the easiest. Immediately you create guilt in the other person. That is the subtlest torture. 
Talk about brahmacharya and you will create guilt, because it is so difficult to be a 
brahmachari, to be a pure celibate. It is so difficult, and when you talk about 
brahmacharya and the other cannot be he feels guilty. 

You have created guilt; now you can torture. You have made the other man degraded, 
inferior. Now he will never be at ease. He will have to live in sex and he will feel guilty. 
He will always think about brahmacharya, and he won’t know what to do. His mind will 
think of brahmacharya, and his body will live with sex. Then he will go against his body. 
Then he will think that "I am not my body. This body is an evil thing." And once you 
create guilt in someone, you have destroyed a mind, poisoned it. 

The old man came and asked how to get rid of sex, so I told him first to be aware of the 
fact - and he had missed much opportunity. Now the sex will be weak, and the awareness 
will need more effort. When sex is violent and the energy is there and sex is young, you 
can be aware of it very easily. It is so forceful, it is not difficult to see and know and feel 
it. 

This man, at the age of sixty, now feeble, weak, ill, will have difficulty in being aware of 
sex. 

When he was young he was thinking about brahmacharya. He couldn’t have lived that; he 
has five children. Then he was thinking about brahmacharya and missing the opportunity. 
And now he is thinking of what to do about sex. So I told him to be aware of it - to forget 
his teachings and burn his books, and not to say anything about sex to anyone without 
knowing it himself. I told him to be aware of it. 

So he said, "If I try to be aware, in how many days will I get rid of it?" This is how the 



mind works. He is ready even to be aware, but just to get rid of it. 

So I told him, "If YOU are not aware of it, who is deciding to get rid of it? How do you 
conclude that sex is bad? Is this taken for granted? Is there no need to discover it within 
yourself?" 

Do not think of renouncing anything. Renunciation means you are just being forced by 
others. Be individual. Do not allow society too much domination over you, do not be a 
slave. You have eyes, you have consciousness, you have sex, anger and other facts. Use 
your consciousness, use your eyes. Be aware. 

Think of yourself as if you are alone. No one is there to teach you. What will you do? 
Start from the very beginning, from ABC, and go inside. Be totally aware. Do not decide, 
do not be in haste; do not conclude so soon. 

If you can reach a conclusion through your own awareness, that very conclusion will 
become a transformation. Then you will not feel any unease, there will be no repression. 
Only then can you quit anything. I am not saying, be aware to quit. Remember, I am 
saying: if you are aware, you can quit anything. 

Do not make awareness a technique to quit. Quitting is just a consequence. If you are 
aware you can quit anything, but you may not decide to quit; there is no necessity. You 
may never decide to quit. Sex is there — if you become fully aware of it, you may not 
decide to quit it. If with full awareness you decide not to quit it, then sex has its own 
beauty. If with full awareness you decide to quit it, then your renunciation is also 
beautiful. 

Try to understand me. Whatsoever comes, whatsoever happens through awareness is 
beautiful, and whatsoever happens without awareness is ugly. That is why your so-called 
brahmacharis, celibate monks, are basically ugly. Their whole way of life is ugly. That 
celibacy has not come as a consequence, it is not their own search. Now look at a person 
like D. H. Lawrence. His sex is beautiful more beautiful than the renunciation of your 
celibate monks, because his sex is with full awareness. Through inner search he has come 
to conclude that he is going to live with sex. He has accepted the fact; now there is no 
hitch, no guilt. Rather, sex has become glorious. 

So a D. H. Lawrence, fully aware of his sex, accepting it, living it, has a beauty of his 
own. 

A Mahavir, fully aware of the fact and then coming to leave it, to quit it, has a beauty of 
his own. They both are beautiful - D. H. Lawrence and Mahavir. They BOTH are 
beautiful! But the beauty is not of sex and not of quitting sex, the beauty is of awareness. 
This must also be constantly remembered - that you may not come to the same 
conclusion as Buddha; there is no necessity. You may not come to the same conclusion 
as Mahavir; there is no inevitability. If there is any inevitability there is only one, and 
that is of awareness. When you are fully aware, whatsoever happens to you is beautiful, 
is divine. 

Look at the sages of the past: Shiva sitting with Parvati. Parvati is sitting in his lap in a 
deep love gesture. You cannot conceive of Mahavir in such a pose — impossible! You 
cannot conceive of Buddha in such a pose. Just because Ram is pictured with Sita, Jains 
cannot accept him as an AVATAR, as a divine incarnation, because he is still with 
women. It is impossible for Jains to conceive of him as an incarnation of God, so they say 
he is a great man - a MAHAMANAVA, but not an avatar. He is a great man, but still a 
man because the woman is there. When the woman is there, you cannot go beyond man; 



the counterpart is there, so you are still a man. Of course, Ram was a great man, but not 
beyond man, Jains say. 


If you ask Hindus, they have not talked about Mahavir at all - not even talked about him, 
not even mentioned him in their books - because for the Hindu mind, man alone without 
a woman is half, a fragment, not the whole. Ram alone is not the whole, so Hindus say 
"Sitaram." They put the woman first. They will never say "Ramsita," they will say 
"Sitaram." They will say "Radhakrishna." They will put woman first for a basic reason - 
because man is bom out of woman and man alone is half. With woman he becomes 
whole. 

So no Hindu god is alone. The other part, the other half, is there. Sitaram is really the 
whole; Radhakrishna is the whole. Krishna alone is half. There is no need for Ram to quit 
Sita and there is no need for Krishna to quit Radha. Why? They are fully aware. 

You cannot find a more aware man, a more conscious man than Shiva, but he is sitting 
with Parvati in his lap. It creates problems. Then who is right? Is a Buddha right or is a 
Shiva right? Problems are created because we do not know that everyone flowers 
individually. Buddha and Shiva both are fully conscious, but it happens to Buddha that he 
leaves something in this full consciousness — that is his choice. It happens to Shiva in his 
full consciousness that he accepts everything. They are both at the same point of 
realization, of awareness, but their expression is different. 

So do not fall into any pattern. 

No one knows what will happen when you become aware. Do not decide before 
becoming aware that you are going to quit this and that. Do not decide — no one knows. 
Wait! Be aware, and let your being flower. No one knows what will happen. With 
everyone there is an unknown possibility of flowering. And you need not follow anyone - 
because every following is dangerous, destructive; every imitation is suicide. Wait! 

These techniques are only to make you aware. And when you are aware, you can quit 
anything or you can accept anything. When you are not aware, remember what is 
happening: neither can you accept, nor can you quit. You have sex — neither can you 
accept it totally and forget about it, nor can you quit it. I say either accept it and forget, or 
quit it and forget. 

But you cannot do either of the two.; you will always be doing both. You will accept and 
then you will think of quitting, and this is a vicious circle. When you have had sex, then 
for a few hours or a few days you will think of quitting it. Really, you are doing nothing 
else but regaining energy. When you have regained energy, you will again think of 
having it. And this will go on for your whole life. It has been so for so many lives. When 
you become fully aware, you can decide. Either you accept it — then that acceptance 
gives a beauty — or you quit it — then that quitting is also beautiful. 

One thing is certain: when you are aware you can forget it - either way. 

It is not a problem then. Your decision is total and the problem drops. But if you feel any 
uneasiness, it means you have not considered, you have not been aware. 

So be more aware. Consider the fact more - more deeply, more individually without the 
conclusions of others. 

The third question: 

Question 3 



WHEN AN IMPULSE IS AUTHENTIC, I AM UNAWARE. HOW CAN I EXERCISE 
"STOP!"? 

This is a very significant question. It is easy to stop anything when you are false, and it is 
difficult to stop anything when you are authentic. When the anger is real, you will forget 
about the technique of Stop! When the anger is false you will remember, you can do it. 
But when the anger is false there is no meaning, there is no energy. You can stop it, but it 
is useless. When the anger is real, only then is the energy there, and if you stop it the 
energy will take an inner turn. 

So what to do? Try to be aware not of anger directly, but of easier things. You are 
walking — be aware of it. Do not start with anger, start with easier things. You are 
walking — be aware of it, there is no problem. Then suddenly stop your walk. Start with 
easy things, and then go on to a deeper, more complex thing. Do not start with complex 
things, do not jump to sex immediately. It is more subtle, and you will need a more deep 
awareness for it. 

So first create awareness with easier things. 

You are walking, you are taking a bath, you feel thirsty, you feel hungry — start with 
these things, all very ordinary things. You were just going to speak something to 
someone: Stop! Even in the middle of a sentence. You were going to relate a story you 
have related a thousand times, and you have bored everyone with it. You were again 
starting, "Once there was a king..." Stop! Start with easy things more easy things. 

There is a fly on your head and you were just going to send it away with your hand: Stop! 
Let the fly be there, let your hand remain stopped. Do it with easy things so that you have 
the feeling, the feel of stopping with awareness. Then move to complex things. 

Anger is a very complex thing; take a mechanical thing. Every day in the morning you 
step out of your bed. Have you observed? You step out every day in the same way. If 
your right foot comes first, it comes first always. Tomorrow morning when the right foot 
is coming out, stop and let the left foot come. 

Do it with easier things; then there is nothing to sacrifice but a habit. Always you start 
walking with the right foot first: Stop! Anything... anything can be used. Find something 
— the easier, the better. And when you become a master of easier things and you can stop 
suddenly, and you can have the feel of awareness, a sudden calmness comes to you. For a 
second, an inner silence explodes. 


Gurdjieff used to train his disciples in very easy things. For example, you say something 
and you nod your head. Then he would say to you, "Say the same thing, but do not nod 
your head." It is a mechanical habit. I am saying something; I make a gesture with my 
hand. Gurdjieff would say, "Do not make this gesture when you say this thing — 
remember this. Make any other gesture, but remember only this: when you are saying 
this, do not make this gesture. Be aware of it." 

Use anything -anything! You always start your conversation with a particular sentence — 
do not start with it. Someone says something and you have a mechanical response — do 
not respond that way, say something else. Or if you have started saying the old thing, 
stop in the middle. Stop with a jerk, suddenly. Try this, and only when you feel a 
mastery, move to complex things. 

This is one of the basic tricks of the mind, that it will always tell you to jump to a 
complex thing. Then you are a failure, then you will never try again; you know that it 



cannot be done. This is a trick of the mind. The mind will say, "Okay, now you know that 
the exercise of stopping will be a failure when you are angry, hot and angry." Then you 
will not try again. 

Try with cold things; do not move to the hot. And when you can do it with cold things, 
then move to the hot. With gradual steps feel the path, and do not be hasty; otherwise 
nothing will be accomplished. 


The last question: 

Question 4 

AFTER HEARING ABOUT SO MANY MEDITATION TECHNIQUES IN VIGYANA 
BHAIRAVA TANTRA, I AM BEGINNING TO FEEL THAT THE INNER DOOR 
CANNOT REALLY OPEN BY TECHNIQUES, BUT THAT IT REALLY DEPENDS 
ON THINGS LIKE INITIATION, THE GRACE OF THE MASTER, ETC. IS THAT 
NOT REALLY THE CASE? AND WHEN AND HOW CAN ONE BECOME 
CAPABLE OF RECEIVING INITIATION? 

Really, the grace of the master is again a technique. Just by changing the words nothing 
changes. It means surrender. You can receive the grace of the master only when you 
surrender, and surrender is a technique. If you do not know how to surrender, you will 
not receive any grace. So really, grace is not given, it is received. No one can give grace 
— you can receive it. With an enlightened person the grace is flowing always. It is there; 
it is just his nature. 

Just as a lamp is burning and the light is radiating, the enlightened person is always 
radiating grace. It is not any effort. It is flowing effortlessly, it is there. If you can 
receive, you can receive. If you cannot receive, you cannot receive. 

So it may look paradoxical if I say this, but it is the truth: the grace is not given by the 
master. It is received by the disciple. But how to be a disciple? Again, it is a technique. 
How to surrender? How to become receptive? Surrendering is the most difficult of things. 

You cannot surrender your anger, you cannot surrender your sadness, so how can you 
surrender your total being? You cannot surrender nonsensical things, you cannot 
surrender your diseases, so how can you surrender yourself? 

Surrendering means surrendering totally. You leave everything totally to your teacher, to 
your master. You say, "Now I am no more. Now you are — do whatsoever you like." And 
when you wait, and when you do not again go and ask him when he is going to do this or 
that, you have surrendered, you are finished. There is nothing to be asked any more. In 
the right moment the thing will happen. But how to do it? 

This also will need a very great awareness. Ordinarily, stupid people think that surrender 
is very easy. That is stupidity. They think that if you go and touch the feet of a master 
you have surrendered. Just touching the feet can be a surrender, but do not think that 
because you have touched the feet you have surrendered. Surrendering is an inner 
attitude. It is putting yourself off, forgetting yourself completely. Only the master 
remains; you are no more. Only the master is. 

This can be done only with a very deep awareness. What is that awareness? That 
awareness will come if you go on doing these techniques and you feel continuously that 
you are helpless. But do not decide on your helplessness before doing them — it will be 
false. 



First do them, and do them authentically. If the techniques happen to help you, there will 
be no need of surrender; you will be transformed. If you do them authentically, really, 
fully, if you are not deceiving yourself and still nothing happens, then you will feel a 
helplessness. You will feel, "I cannot do anything." If this goes deep in you, this feeling 
of helplessness, only then will you be capable of surrendering - not before. 

Do you feel helpless? No one feels helpless. NO ONE feels helpless! Everyone knows," I 
can do, if I want I can do. It is because I do not want to that I am not doing." Everyone 
thinks that if they wish, if they will, they will do. They think, "The moment I will it, I 
will do. The only reason I am not doing is because I am not willing it just now." 

But no one feels helpless. If someone says that through the grace of the master it can 
happen, you think you are ready just this very moment. If it is a question of doing 
something, you say you can do it whenever you want, but if it is a question of grace you 
say, "Okay! If it can be received from someone, I can receive it this very moment." 

You are not helpless, you are just lazy, and there is a great difference. In laziness no 
grace can be received - only in helplessness. And helplessness is not part of laziness. 
Helplessness comes only to those who first make every effort to reach, to penetrate, to 
do. 

When you have done everything and nothing happens, you feel helpless. Only then can 
you surrender to someone. Then your surrendering will become a technique. 

That is the last of techniques, but people try it first. That is the last, the ultimate. When 
nothing happens by doing, if there is only helplessness and helplessness and helplessness, 
if you lose all hope and your ego is shattered, then you know that nothing can be done 
alone. Then your hand reaches to the feet of a master. It is a different type of reach: you 
are helplessly searching for him, your whole being moves to his feet. You become just a 
womb to receive. 

Then the grace is available. It has never been unavailable; it is always available. In every 
age, in every period, there are enlightened persons. But unless you are ready to lose 
yourself, you will not be in contact with him. You may be just sitting behind him or just 
sitting by the side of him, but there will be no contact. 

There are three types of distances. One distance is of space. You are sitting there, I am 
sitting here, and there is space between the two points. This is a distance in space. You 
can come near and the distance will be less. You can just touch me and the distance is 
lost - but only in space. 

There is a second type of distance - in time. Your beloved has died, your friend has died. 
In space one point has disappeared completely; there is infinite distance. 

But in time, you will feel your friend just nearby. You close your eyes, and the friend is 
there. In time it may be that the person who is sitting by your side is more distant than 
your beloved who is no more in the world. The beloved is dead — then by and by, by and 
by, there will be a greater distance of time. People say time heals. When that time is very, 
very, very distant, the memory becomes more and more faint, and it disappears. 

A third distance exists a third dimension which is love. If you are in love with someone, 
then he be may be on another star, but in your love he is just near you. He may have died, 
there may be centuries of distance between you and him, but in love there is no distance. 
Someone can be near Buddha just now. Twenty-five centuries means nothing because the 
distance is of love. In space there is no Buddha now; the body has disappeared. In time 
there is a distance of twenty-five centuries, but in love there is no distance. If someone is 



in love with Buddha, time and space distances disappear. He is just here, and you can 
receive his grace. 

You may be just sitting by the side of a Buddha. There is no gap as far as space is 
concerned; there is no distance as far as time is concerned. But if there is no love, then 
there is infinite distance. So someone may have lived with Buddha without being in 
contact, and someone may be just here now who is in contact with Buddha. 


Grace happens in the dimension of love. For love everything is always eternally present. 
So if you are in love, grace can happen. But love is surrendering; love means now the 
other has become more important than yourself. Now for the other’s life, you are ready to 
die. For the other to live, you will sacrifice yourself. The other has become the center; 
you are just the periphery. By and by you disappear completely, and the other remains. In 
that right moment, grace is received. 

So do not think of a master as one who can give you grace. Think of becoming a helpless 
disciple - totally surrendered, in love. The master will come to you. When the disciple is 
ready, the master always comes. It is not a question of physical presence; when you are 
ready, from an unknown dimension of love, grace happens. But do not think about grace 
as an escape. 

Because I am talking about so many techniques, I know there are two possibilities: you 
may try some, or you may just become confused, and the latter is more possible. With 
one hundred and twelve techniques, listening to one and then another and then another 
continually, you will become confused. You will think it is beyond you — so many 
techniques, so what to do and what not to do? 

It may come to your mind that," It is better to receive grace - GURUKRIPA — than to go 
into this jungle-like world of techniques. 

This is very complex, so it is easier to receive grace." But that will not happen to you if 
this is your way of thinking. Try these techniques, and try honestly. If you are a failure, 
then that very failure will become your surrender. That is the ultimate technique. 

Okay? 


THE END. 



Chapter 19: A Technique for the intellectual and a technique for the feeling type 


SUTRAS: 

4. SUPPOSE YOU ARE GRADUALLY BEING DEPRIVED OF STRENGTH OR OF 
KNOWLEDGE. AT THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND. 

5. DEVOTION FREES. 

For tantra, man himself is the disease. It is not that your mind is disturbed — rather, your 
mind is the disturbance. It is not that you are tense within, but rather, you are the tension. 
Understand the distinction clearly. If the mind is ill then the illness can be treated, but if 
the mind itself is the illness, then this illness cannot be treated. It can be transcended, but 
it cannot be treated. That makes the basic difference between Western psychology, and 
Eastern tantric and yogic psychology; that is the difference between Eastern tantra and 
yoga, and Western psychology. 

Western psychology thinks that the mind can be healthy, the mind as it is can be treated 
and helped — because for Western thinking there is no transcendence, as there is nothing 
beyond mind. Transcendence is possible only if there is something beyond, so that you 
can live in your present state and move further. But if there is no beyond and the mind is 
the end, then transcendence is impossible. 

If you think you are just a body, then you cannot transcend your body - because who will 
transcend and to where will you transcend? If you are simply the body, then you cannot 
go beyond the body. If you can go beyond the body, that means you are not simply the 
body, but something plus. 

That "plus" becomes the dimension to move into. 

Similarly, if you are just the mind and nothing else, then no transcendence is possible. 
Then we can treat individual diseases... Someone is mentally ill — we can treat the 
illness. We will not touch the mind, but we will treat the illness and make the mind 
nonnal. And no one will think about whether the normal mind itself is healthy or not. 

The normal mind is just a sceptical mind. Freud says that as everyone is, we can only 
bring a diseased mind to normality. But whether everyone is healthy or not, that question 
cannot be raised. We take it for granted that the collective mind, the average mind, is 
okay. So whenever someone goes beyond that average mind, moves somewhere else, he 
has to be brought back and readjusted. Thus, the whole of Western psychology has been 
an effort toward readjustment - readjustment to the ordinary mind, the average mind. 

In this sense, there are thinkers, particularly one very intelligent thinker, Geoffrey, who 
says that genius is a disease because genius is abnonnal. If normality is health, then 
genius is disease. A genius is not nonnal; he is in a certain way mad. His madness may 
be useful, so we allow him to live. 

An Einstein or a Van Gogh or an Ezra Pound - poets, painters, scientists, mystics - they 
are mad, but their madness is allowed for two reasons: either their madness is hannless or 
their madness is utilitarian. 

Through their madness they contribute something which nonnal minds cannot contribute. 
Because they are mad they have moved to one extreme, and they can see certain things 
that the normal mind cannot see. So we can allow these madmen - and we even make 
them Nobel laureates. But they are ill. 



If normality is the criterion and the standard of health, then everyone who is not normal 
is ill. Geoffrey says that a day will come when we will treat scientists and poets in the 
same way we treat madmen: we will make them readjust to the average mind. This 
attitude is because of a particular hypothesis that mind is the end and there is no beyond. 
Just opposite to this attitude is the Eastern approach. We say here that mind itself is the 
disease. So whether normal or abnormal, we will make only the distinction of "normally 
ill" and "abnormally ill." A normal men is normally ill. He is not so much ill that you can 
detect it, he is just average. Because everyone else is like him, his illness cannot be 
detected. Even the person, the psychoanalyst who treats him, is himself a normally ill 
person. Mind itself is the disease for us. 

Why? Why call mind itself the disease? We will have to approach it from a different 
dimension, then it will be easy. For us, the body is death; for the Eastern approach, the 
body is death. So you cannot create a perfectly healthy body; otherwise it will not die. 

You can create a certain balance, but the body as such, because it is going to die, is prone 
to be ill. So health can only be a relative thing. The body cannot be perfectly healthy — it 
cannot be. 

That is why medical science has no standard and no definition of what health is. They can 
define diseases, they can define a particular disease, but they cannot define what health 
is. Or at the most they can only define negatively that when a person is not ill, not 
particularly ill, he is healthy. But to define health in a negative way looks absurd, because 
then disease becomes the primary thing by which you define health. But health cannot be 
defined, because really, the body can never be really healthy. Every moment the body is 
only in a relative balance, because death is progressing with life; you are dying also. You 
are not simply alive, you are dying simultaneously. 

Death and life are not two ends far away from each other. They are like two legs 
simultaneously walking - and they both belong to you. This very moment you are alive 
and dying both. Something is dying within you every moment. Within a span of seventy 
years, death will reach the goal. Every moment you will go on dying and dying and 
dying, and then you will die. 

The day you were born you started dying. The birthday is also the death-day. If you are 
dying continuously - and death is not something which will come from without, but 
something which will grow within - then the body can never be really healthy. 

How can it be? When it is dying every moment, how can it be really healthy? It can only 
be relatively healthy. So if you are normally healthy, it is enough. 

It is the same with the mind. The mind cannot be really healthy, whole, because the very 
existence of the mind is such that it is bound to remain diseased, ill at ease, tense, anxious 
in anxiety. The very nature of the mind is such, so we will have to understand what is this 
nature. 

Three things... One, mind is a link between the body and the no-body which is within 
you. It is a link between the material and the non-material within you. It is one of the 
most mysterious bridges. It bridges two quite contradictory things - matter and spirit. 

If you can, conceive the paradox. Usually you make a bridge over a river where both the 
banks are material. In this case, mind is the bridge between one bank which is material 
and the other which is non-material... between the visible and the invisible, between the 
dying and the non-dying, between life and death, between body and spirit - or whatsoever 
you name these two banks. Because mind bridges such contradictory things, it is bound 



to remain tense; it cannot be at ease. 

It is always moving from the visible to the invisible, from the invisible to the visible. 
Every moment the mind is in deep tension. It has to bridge two things which cannot be 
bridged. 

That is the tension, that is the anxiety. You are every moment in anxiety. 

I am not talking about your financial anxiety or other such anxieties — they are boundary 
anxieties, frame anxieties. The real anxiety is not that, the real anxiety is that of the 
buddha. You are also in that anxiety, but you are so much burdened by your day-to-day 
anxieties, you cannot discover your basic anxiety. Once you find your basic anxiety, you 
will become religious. 

Religion is a concern for the basic anxiety. Buddha became anxious in a different way. 

He was not worried about finance, he was not worried about a beautiful wife, he was not 
worried about anything. There was no worry; ordinary worries were not there. He was 
secure, safe, the son of a great king, the husband of a very beautiful wife, and everything 
was available. The moment he desired anything he would get it. All that was possible was 
possible for him. 

But suddenly he became anxiety-ridden - and that anxiety was a basic anxiety, a primary 
anxiety. He saw a dead man being carried away, and he asked his chariot driver what had 
happened to this man. The driver said, "This man is dead now. He has died." This was 
Buddha's first encounter with death, so he asked immediately, "Is everyone prone to 
death? Am I also going to die?" 

Look at the question. You may not have asked it. You may have asked who has died, 
why he has died, or you might have said that he looks too young and this is not the age to 
die. 

Those anxieties are not basic; they are not concerned with you. You may have felt 
sympathetic, you may have felt sad, but still that is just on the circumference - and you 
will have forgotten within a few moments. 

Buddha turned the whole question toward himself and he asked, "Am I going to die?" 

The chariot driver said, "I cannot lie to you. Everyone is prone to death, everyone is 
going to die." Buddha said, "Then turn back the chariot. If I am going to die, then what is 
the use of life? You have created a deep anxiety in me. Unless this anxiety is resolved, I 
cannot be at ease." 

What is this anxiety? It is a basic anxiety. So if you become aware of the very basic 
situation of life - of body, of mind — a subtle anxiety will creep in, and then that anxiety 
will continue to tremble within you. Whatsoever you are doing or not doing, the anxiety 
will be there - a deep anguish. The mind is bridging an abyss, an impossible abyss. The 
body is going to die, and you have something - X - within you which is deathless. 

These are two contradictions. It is as if you are standing in two boats which are moving 
in opposite directions. Then you will be in a deep conflict. That conflict is the conflict of 
the mind. The mind is between two opposites: — that is one thing. 

Secondly, mind is a process, not a thing. Mind is not a thing:, it is a process. The word 
mind is a false notion. 

When we say "mind," it appears as if there is something like a mind within you. There is 
nothing! Mind is not a thing, mind is a process. So it is better to call it "minding," not 
mind. We have a word in Sanskrit, CHITTA, which means minding. Not mind, but 



minding - a process. 

A process can never be silent. A process will always be tense; a process means a turmoil. 
And mind is always moving from the past to the future. The past goes on being a burden 
on it, so it has to move into the future. This constant movement creates another tension 
within you. If you become too much conscious about it, you may go mad. 

So that is why we are always engaged in something or other; we do not want to be 
unoccupied. If you are unoccupied, then you will become conscious of the inner process, 
of the minding, and that will give you very strange and peculiar tensions. So everyone 
wants to be occupied in some way or other. If there is nothing else to do, one goes on 
reading the same newspaper again and again. Why? Can you not sit silently? It is 
difficult, because if you sit silently you become aware of the totally tense process within. 
So everyone is in search of escapes. Alcohol can give that — you become unconscious. 
Sex can give that — for a moment you forget yourself completely. Television can give 
that, music can give that... anything where you can forget yourself and become occupied 
so much that for the time being you are as if you are not. 

This constant escaping from oneself is really because of this process of minding. If you 
are unoccupied — and unoccupied-ness means meditation — if you are totally unoccupied, 
you will become aware of your inner processes. And mind is the basic process within. 
That is why so many people come to me and say they have come to meditate, but when 
they start meditating they become more tense. They say, "We were not so tense before 
and we were not so worried before. Ordinarily the whole day we are not so much 
worried, but when we sit down quietly and start meditating, thoughts rush upon us; they 
crowd in." That is something new so they think it is because of meditation that thoughts 
are crowding them. 

It is not because of meditation. Thoughts are crowding you every moment of your 
existence, but you are so occupied outwardly, you cannot be conscious of it. Whenever 
you sit down you become conscious, you become conscious of something you have been 
escaping constantly. Mind, minding, is a process, and a process is an effort. Energy is 
wasted in it, dissipated in it. It is necessary; it is needed for life, it is part of the struggle 
for survival. It is a weapon - and one of the most violent weapons. 

That is why man could survive over other animals. The animals are more strong 
physically, but they lack a subtle weapon - minding. They have dangerous teeth, 
dangerous nails; they are more powerful than man; they can instantly kill a man 
completely. 

But they lack one weapon - minding. Because of that weapon, man could kill, survive. 

So the mind is a survival measure. It is needed; it is necessary, and it is violent. The mind 
is violent, it is part of the long violence man has had to pass through. It has been built 
through violence. So whenever you sit down, you will feel inner violence — thoughts 
rushing, violent thoughts, a turmoil, as if you are going to explode. That is why no one 
wants to sit silently. 

Everyone comes and says, "Give me some support, some inner support. I cannot just sit 
silently. Give me a name that I can repeat like 'Ram, Ram, Ram...’ Give me a name that I 
can repeat; then I can be silent." Really, what are you doing? You are creating a new 
occupation. Then you can be silent because the mind is still occupied. Now you are 
focused on "Ram, Ram, Ram..." on chanting; the mind is still not unoccupied. The mind as 
a process is bound to be always ill; it cannot be so balanced as silence needs. 



Thirdly, mind is created from without. When you are born you have just the capacity for 
mind, but no mind - just a possibility, a potentiality. So if a child is brought up without 
society, without a society, the child will grow, he will have a body, but not a mind. He 
will not be able to speak any language; he will not be able to think in concepts. He will 
be like any animal. 

Society trains your capacity into an actuality, it gives you a mind. 

That is why a Hindu has a certain mind and a Mohammedan has a different mind. Both 
are men, but their minds are different. A Christian has a different mind... These minds are 
different because different societies have cultivated them with different purposes, 
different goals. 

A child, a boy, is born, or a girl is born — they do not have minds, they have only the 
possibility that the mind can sprout. It can be there, but it is not there; it is just a seed. 
Then you train them. Then a boy becomes one mind and a girl becomes a different mind, 
because you teach them differently. Then a Hindu becomes different and a Mohammedan 
becomes different. Then a theist is different and an atheist is different. These minds are 
brought up in you. They are conditioned, forced upon you. 

Because of this, mind as such is always old and orthodox. There can be no progressive 
mind. This statement may look strange: There can be no progressive mind. Mind is 
orthodox because it is a conditioning. So these so-called progressives are as much 
orthodox about their progressiveness as any orthodox person. Look at a communist. He 
thinks he is very progressive, but Marx's Das Capital is just as authoritative upon him as 
the Koran on any Mohammedan, or the Gita on any Hindu. And if you start criticizing 
Marx, the communist feels as much hurt as any Jain will feel if you start criticizing 
Mahavir. 

Mind is orthodox because it is conditioned by the past, by the society, by others, for 
certain purposes. 

Why am I making you aware of this fact? Because life changes every moment and mind 
belongs to the past. Mind is always old and life is always new. There is bound to be 
tension and conflict. 

A new situation arises... You fall in love with a woman, and you have a Hindu mind and 
the woman is Mohammedan. Now there will be conflict. Now there is going to be much 
anguish unnecessarily. The woman is Mohammedan, and life has brought you to a 
situation where you fell in love with her. Now life gives you a new phenomenon, and 
mind does not know how to deal with it. There is no know-how, so there will be conflict. 
That is why, in a very changing world, people become uprooted; their lives become 
anxious. This was not so in past ages. Man was more silent - not so really, but he 
appeared more silent because the state of affairs around him was so static and the mind 
was not in much conflict. Now everything is changing so fast, and the mind cannot 
change so fast. Mind clings to the past, and everything changes every moment. 

That is why there is so much anxiety in the West. In the East there is less anxiety. This is 
strange because the East has to face more basic problems. Food is not there, clothes are 
not there, houses are not there; everyone is just starved. 

But they are in less anxiety, and the West is in more anxiety. The West is affluent, 
scientifically and technologically developed, with a higher state of living so why so much 
anxiety? Because technology gives life such a rapid change that the mind cannot cope 



with it. Before you are adjusted to a new thing, the new has become old and has changed. 
Again the gap! Life is bringing about new situations, and the mind always tries to react 
with the old conditioning. That gap goes on growing. The more the gap will be there, the 
more will be the anxiety. Mind is orthodox and life is not orthodox. 

These are reasons why mind itself is the disease. So what to do? If you are going to treat 
the mind, there are easy ways. Psychoanalysis is easy. It may take a long time, it may not 
succeed, but still it is not difficult. But this transcendence of the mind is difficult, 
arduous, because you have to leave the mind completely. You have to take wing and go 
beyond, and leave the mind as it is — do not touch it. 

For example, I am here and the room is hot. I can do two things. I can air-condition the 
room, but I continue to live in the room. I can go on making arrangements so that the 
room is not hot, but then every arrangement has to be looked after and then every 
arrangement creates its own anxieties and problems. There is another possibility: I can 
leave the room and go out. 


This is the difference. The West goes on living in the same room of the mind, trying to 
adjust, to make arrangements, so that living in the mind becomes at least normal. It may 
not be very blissful, but it becomes less and less unhappy. It may not reach a point, a 
peak of happiness, but one is saved from much suffering; there is less and less suffering. 
Freud has said that there is no possibility for man to be happy. At the most, if you can 
arrange your mind in such a way that you are nonnal, you will be less unhappy than 
others, that is all. This is very hopeless. But Freud is a very genuine, authentic thinker, 
and his insight is right in a way because he cannot see beyond the mind. 

That is why the East has not really developed any psychology comparable to Freud, Jung 
or Adler. And that is strange because the East has been talking about the mind for at least 
five thousand years. 

With five thousand years of talking about mind, meditation, going beyond, why couldn’t 
the East create psychology? Psychology is a very recent development in the West. Why 
couldn’t the East create a psychology? Buddha was here who talked about the deepest 
layers of the mind. He talked about the conscious, he talked about the subconscious, he 
talked about the unconscious. He must have known. But why couldn’t he develop 
psychologies about the conscious, subconscious and unconscious? 

The reason is this: the East has not been interested in the room. 

It talks about the room a little in order to go beyond, to go out. We have been interested 
in the room just to find the door; that is all. We are not interested in details about the 
room; we are not going to live in it. So the only interest has been in knowing where the 
door is and how to go out. We have talked about the room only so that the door can be 
located - so that we can know how to open it and go out. 

This has been our whole interest. That is why psychology could not be developed in 
India. If you are not interested in this room, you will not make maps of the room; you 
will not measure every wall and every inch of space. You are not bothered about these 
things. You are only interested in where the door is, where the window is, so that you can 
jump out. And the moment you are out you will forget the room completely, because then 
you are under the great infinite sky. You will not even remember that there was a room 
and you lived in a cave, while all the time the infinite sky was beyond — and you could 
have moved out at any moment. You will forget the room completely. If you can go 



beyond the mind, what happens? The mind remains the same, you do not make any 
change in the mind, but you go beyond it and everything changes. 

Then you can come back to the room again if you need to, but you will be a different 
person. This going out and coming in will have made you qualitatively different. 

A man who has been living in a room, and who has not known what it is like on the 
outside, is not really a man: he lives like a beetle, he lives like an insect. When he moves 
out to the sky - the open sky - and to the sun and the clouds and the infinite expanse, he 
becomes different immediately. This impact of the infinite makes him for the first time a 
man, a consciousness. 

Now he can move into the room again, but he will be a different man. Now the room can 
only be something which is used. It is not now a prison; he can move out any moment. 
Then the room becomes just something to be used, something utilitarian. Previously he 
was imprisoned in it; now he is not imprisoned. He is now a master, and he knows the 
sky is outside and the infinite is awaiting him. And even this room is part of that infinite 
now, even this small, limited sky and space within the room is the space, the same space 
which is outside. The man comes in again and lives in the room, uses the room, but now 
he is not imprisoned in it. This is a qualitative change. 

The East is concerned with how to go beyond the mind and then use it. Do not be 
identified with the mind — that is the message. And all the techniques of meditation are 
concerned only about how to find the door, how to use the key, how to unlock the door 
and go out. 

We will discuss two methods today. The first is concerned with stopping in the middle of 
an activity. 

We discussed three stop methods before; now this one remains. 

The fourth method: 

SUPPOSE YOU ARE GRADUALLY BEING DEPRIVED OF STRENGTH OR OF 
KNOWLEDGE. AT THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND. 

You can do it in an actual situation or you can imagine a situation. For example: lie 
down, relax, and feel as if your body is going to die. Close your eyes; start feeling that 
you are dying. Soon you will feel that your body is becoming heavy. Imagine: "I am 
dying, I am dying, I am dying." If the feeling is authentic, the body will start becoming 
heavy; you will feel as if your body has become like lead. You want to move your hand, 
but you cannot move; it has become so heavy and dead. Go on feeling that you are dying, 
dying, dying, dying, dying, and when you feel that now the moment has come — just a 
jump and you will be dead — then suddenly forget your body and transcend. 

SUPPOSE YOU ARE GRADUALLY BEING DEPRIVED OF STRENGTH OR OF 
KNOWLEDGE. AT THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND. When you 
feel that the body is dead, what is meant now by transcending? Look at the body. Up to 
now you were feeling that you are dying; now the body has become a dead weight. Look 
at the body. Forget that you are dying and now be the observer. The body is lying dead 
and you are looking at it. There will be a transcendence. You will be out of your mind, 
because a dead body needs no mind. 

A dead body relaxes so much that the very process of the mind stops. You are there and 
the body is there, but the mind is absent. Remember, mind is needed for life, not for 



death. 

If suddenly you come to know that within an hour you will die, what will you do in that 
hour? One hour left, and it is certain that you are going to die after one hour - exactly 
after one hour. What will you do? Your thinking will drop completely because the whole 
of thinking is concerned with either the past or the future. 

You were planning to purchase a house or to purchase a car, or you were planning to 
marry someone or divorce someone. You were thinking many things, and they were 
constantly on your mind. Now, with only one hour more, there is no meaning in marriage 
and no meaning in divorce. Now you can leave all the planning to others, who are going 
to live. With death planning ceases, with death worrying ceases, because every worry is 
life-oriented. 

You have to live tomorrow; that is why there is worry. So all those who have been 
teaching meditation to the world have always been saying: do not think of tomorrow. 
Jesus says to his disciples, "Do not think of the tomorrow," because if you think of the 
tomorrow you cannot go into meditation. Then you move into worries. But we are so 
fond of worries that not only do we think of the tomorrow, we think of the other life. So 
we plan not only for this life, we plan for the other life, beyond death, also. 


One day I was passing through a street and someone gave me a pamphlet. A very 
beautiful house was painted on the cover and a very beautiful garden. It was lovely - 
divinely lovely. And in very big capital letters was the question: "Do you want such a 
beautiful house and such a beautiful garden? And without any price, without any cost — 
for free?" I turned it over. The house was not of this earth. It was a Christian pamphlet, 
and it read, "If you want such a beautiful house and such a beautiful garden, believe in 
Jesus. Those who believe in him will get such houses free of cost in the kingdom of 
God." 

The mind goes on not only thinking of tomorrow, but thinking of beyond death, 
arranging and making reservations for the afterlife. Such a mind cannot be a religious 
mind. A religious mind cannot think of tomorrow. So those who think of the afterlife are 
constantly worried about whether God will behave rightly with them or not. 

Churchill was dying and someone asked him, "Are you ready to meet the Father there in 
heaven?" Churchill said, "That is not my worry. I am constantly worried whether the 
divine Father is ready to meet me." 

But either way one goes on worrying about the future. Buddha said, "There is no heaven 
and no afterlife." And he said, "There is no soul, and your death will be total and 
complete; nothing will survive." People thought he was an atheist. 

He was not, he was just trying to create a situation in which you can forget the tomorrow 
and can remain in this very moment, here and now. Then meditation follows very easily. 
So if you are thinking of death — not the death which will come, or is to come later — fall 
down on the ground and he dead. Relax and feel, "I am dying, I am dying, I am dying." 
And not only think it, feel it in every limb of the body, in every fib of the body. Let death 
creep in. It is one of the most beautiful meditations. When you feel that the body is a 
dead weight and you cannot move your hand, you cannot move your head and everything 
has become dead, suddenly look at your own body. 

Mind will not be there. You can look! You will be there; consciousness will be there. 
Look at your body — it will not look like yours, it will be just a body. The gap between 



you and the body will be clear - crystal clear. There will be no bridge. The body is lying 
dead and you are there standing as a witness, not in it — NOT in it! 

Remember, the feeling that you are in the body is because of the mind. This feeling that 
you are in the body is because of the MIND! If the mind is not there, if it is absent, you 
will not say you are in the body or out of the body. You will simply be there, no in or out. 
"In" and "out" are both relative terms associated with the mind. Simply, you will be there 
witnessing. 

This is transcendence. You can do it in many ways. 

Sometimes it is possible in actual situations... You are ill and you are feeling that there is 
no hope, you are going to die. This is a very useful situation. Use it for meditation. You 
can try it in other ways also. Suppose you are gradually being deprived of strength. Lie 
down and feel as if the whole existence is sucking your strength out. You are being 
sucked from everywhere — your strength is being sucked. Soon you will be impotent, 
completely devoid of strength. Your energy is flowing out, being taken out. Soon nothing 
will be left inside. That is how life is: you are being sucked out, everything that is around 
you is sucking you out. One day you will be just a dead cell; everything will have been 
sucked out. The life will have flown out of you, and only the dead body will remain 
there. 

Even this very moment you can do it. Imagine this: lie down and feel that the energy is 
being sucked out. Within a few days you will have the knack of how energy goes out. 

And when you feel that everything has moved out, nothing is now left within you, 
TRANSCEND: AT THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND. When the last 
quantum of energy is leaving you, transcend. Be an onlooker; just become a witness. 

Then this universe and this body, both, are not you. You are looking at the phenomenon. 
This transcendence will bring you out of the mind. 

This is the key. And you can do it in many ways, whatsoever is your liking. For example, 
we were talking about a run around. Exhaust yourself; go on running and running and 
running. Do not stop by yourself, let the body fall. When every fib is exhausted, you will 
fall down. When you are falling down, become aware. Just look and see that the body is 
falling down. Sometimes a very miraculous happening happens. You remain standing and 
the body has fallen down, and you can look at it. You can look, as only the body has 
fallen down and you are still standing. Do not fall with the body. Roam around, run, 
dance, exhaust the body — but remember, you are not to lie down. Then the inner 
consciousness also moves with the body and lies down. 

You are not to lie down, you just go on doing it until the body falls by itself. Then it falls 
like a dead weight. Immediately, you feel the body is falling and you cannot do anything. 
Open your eyes, be alert, do not miss the point. Be alert and see what is happening. You 
may be still standing, and the body has fallen down. And once you know it, you can 
never forget that you are different from the body. 

This "standing out" is the real meaning of the English word ecstasy. Ecstasy means to 
stand out. And once you can feel you are out of the body, there is no mind in that 
moment, because mind is the bridge that gives you the feeling that you are in the body. 

If you are out of the body for a single moment, there will be no mind in that moment. 

This is transcendence. Then you can move in the body, then you can move in the mind, 
but now you cannot forget the experience . That experience has become part and parcel 



of your being; it will be there always. Go on doing it every day, and many things happen 
through such a simple process. 

The West is always worried about how to tackle mind, and it tries to find many ways. But 
still, nothing works or seems to work. Everything becomes a fashion and then dies. Now 
psychoanalysis is a dead movement. New movements are there - encounter groups, group 
psychology, action psychology and many other things - but just like a fashion they come 
and go. Why? Because within mind, at the most you can only make arrangements. They 
will be disturbed again and again. Making arrangements with the mind is making a house 
on sand, or making a house of playing cards. It is always wavering, and the fear is always 
there that now it is going. At any moment it may not be there. 

Going beyond the mind is the only way to be inwardly happy and healthy, to be whole. 
Then you can move in the mind and use the mind, but the mind becomes the instrument 
and you are not identified with it. So two things. Either you are identified with the mind 
— this is illness for tantra — or you are not identified with the mind. 

Then you use it as an instrument, and then you are healthy and whole. 

The fifth technique is very simple in one sense and the most difficult in another, and it is 
only of two words. The fifth technique says, DEVOTION FREES. 

Just two words: DEVOTION FREES. It is simply one word really, because FREES is the 
consequence of devotion. What is meant by devotion? In VI GY ANA BHAIRAVA 
TANTRA, there are two types of techniques. One is for those who are intellectually 
oriented, scientifically oriented, and another is for those who are heart oriented, emotion 
oriented, poetically oriented. And there are only two types of minds: the scientific mind 
and the poetic mind - and these are poles apart. They meet nowhere, and they cannot 
meet. Sometimes they run parallel, but still, there is no meeting. 

Sometimes it happens in a single individual that he is a poet and a scientist. Rarely, but 
sometimes it happens that he is both a poet and a scientist. Then he has a split 
personality. He is really two persons, not one. When he is a poet, he forgets the scientist 
completely; otherwise the scientist will be disturbing. And when he is a scientist, he has 
to forget the poet completely and move into another world with another arrangement of 
concepts - ideas, logic, reason, mathematics. 

When he moves to the world of poetry, the mathematics is no more there — music is 
there. 

Concepts are no more there: words are there - but liquid, not solid. One word flows into 
another, and one word can mean many things or it may not mean anything. The grammar 
is lost; only the rhythm remains. It is a different world. 

Thinking and feeling - these are the two types, basic types. The first technique I taught 
was for a scientific mind. The second technique, DEVOTION FREES, is for a feeling 
type. Remember to find out your type. And no type is higher or lower. Do not think that 
the intellectual type is higher or the feeling type is higher - no! They are simply types. No 
one is higher or lower. So just think factually what is your type. 

This second technique is for the feeling type. Why? Because devotion is toward 
something else and devotion is a blind thing. In devotion the other becomes more 
important than you. It is a trust. The intellectual cannot trust anybody; he can only 
criticize. He cannot trust. He can doubt, but he cannot trust And if sometimes some 
intellectual comes to trust, it is never authentic. First he tries to convince himself about 



his trust; it is never authentic. He finds proofs, arguments, and when he is satisfied that 
the arguments help, the proofs help, then he trusts. But he has missed the point, because 
trust is not argumentative and trust is not based on proofs. If proofs are there, then there 
is no need of trust. 

You do not believe in the sun, you do not believe in the sky — you know. 

How can you believe in the sun rising? If someone asks what is your belief about the sun 
rising, you do not have to say, "I believe in it. I am a great believer." You say, "The sun 
is rising and I know it." No question of belief or disbelief. Is there someone who 
disbelieves in the sun? There is no one. Trust means a jump into the unknown without 
any proofs. 

It is difficult - difficult for the intellectual type, because the whole thing becomes absurd, 
foolish. First proofs must be there. If you say, "There is a God. Surrender yourself to 
God," first God has to be proven. But then God becomes a theorem - of course proven, 
but useless. God must remain unproven; otherwise he is of no use, because then trust is 
meaningless. If you believe in a proven God, then your God is just a theorem of 
geometry. No one believes in the theorems of Euclid — there is no need, they can be 
proven. That which can be proven cannot be made a basis of trust. 

One of the most mysterious Christian saints, Tertullian, said, "I believe in God because 
he is absurd." That is right. That is the attitude of the feeling type. He says, "Because he 
cannot be proven, that is why I believe in him." This statement is illogical, irrational, 
because a logical statement must be like this: "These are the proofs of God; therefore I 
believe in him." And he says, "Because there are no proofs, and no argument can prove 
that God is, therefore I believe in him." 

And he is right in a way, because trust means a jump into the unknown without any 
reasons. Only a feeling type can do that. 

Forget devotion, first understand love; then you will be able to understand devotion. You 
fall in love. Why do we say "falling in love"? Nothing falls - just your head. What falls in 
love but your head? You fall down from the head. That is why we say "falling in love" - 
because the language is created by intellectual types. For them love is a lunacy, love is 
madness. ; one has fallen in love. It means, now you can expect anything from him... now 
he is mad, now no reasoning will help, you cannot reason with him. Can you reason with 
someone who is in love? People try. People try, but nothing can be proven. 

You have fallen in love with someone. Everyone says, "That person is not worthwhile," 
or "You are entering a dangerous terrain," or "You are proving yourself foolish; you can 
find a better partner." But nothing will help, no reasoning will help. You are in love — 
now reason is useless. Love has its own reasoning. We say "falling in love." It means 
now your behavior will be irrational. 

Look at two lovers, at their behavior, their communication. It becomes irrational. They 
start using baby talk. Why? Even a great scientist, when he falls in love, will use baby 
language. Why not use a highly developed, technological language? Why use this baby 
talk? Because highly technological language is of no use. 


One of my friends married a girl. The girl was Czechoslovakian. She did know a little 
English, however, and this man knew a little Czechoslovakian; they got married. He was 
a highly educated man, a professor in a university, and the girl was also a professor. But 



the man said to me — I was staying with him — "It is very difficult because I know only 
technological Czech, technological terminology, and she also only knows technological 
English, so we cannot have baby talk. So it is strange. Our love is just that somewhere on 
the surface we feel; it cannot move deep. The language becomes the barrier. I can talk as 
a professor — as far as my subject is concerned I can talk about it — , and she can talk 
about her subject. But love has been neither of our's subject." 

So why do you fall into baby talk? Because that was your first love experience, with your 
mother. Those words that you uttered first were love words. They were not head- 
oriented, they came from the heart; they belonged to feeling. They had a different quality. 
So even when you have a very developed language, when you love you again fall back — 
you fall back into baby talk. Those words are different. They do not belong to this 
category of the mind; they belong to the heart. They may not be so expressive, so 
meaningful. Still, they are more expressive and more meaningful — but their meaning is 
of a different dimension altogether. 

Only if you are very deeply in love will you fall silent. Then you cannot talk with your 
beloved, or you can talk just by the way, but really, there is no talk. 

If the love goes deep, words become useless; you remain silent. If you cannot remain 
silent with your beloved, know well there is no love - because it is very difficult to live in 
silence with someone you are not in love with. With a stranger you immediately start 
talking. When you are riding in a train or in a bus you immediately start talking, because 
to sit by the side of a stranger silently is very difficult, awkward. There is no other bridge, 
so unless you create a language bridge there is no bridge. 

No inner bridge is possible with that stranger. You are closed in yourself and he is closed 
in himself, and two enclosures are just side by side. There is every fear of colliding and 
of danger, so you create a bridge. You start talking about the weather or about anything, 
any nonsense that gives a feeling that you are bridged and you are communicating. Two 
lovers will fall silent, and when two lovers start talking again you can know well that the 
love has disappeared; they have become strangers. 

So go and look... Wives and husbands, whenever they are alone, they will talk about 
anything. And they both know, they both are aware that there is no need to talk, but it is 
so difficult to remain silent. 

So anything, any trivia will do, but talk so that you can have the feeling that 
communication is there. But two lovers will fall silent. Language will disappear because 
language belongs to reason. First it will become a baby talk, and then this will disappear. 
Then they will be silently in communication. What is their communication? It is 
irrational. They feel attuned to a different dimension of existence, and they feel happy in 
that attunement. And if you ask them to prove what is their happiness, they cannot prove 
it. 

No lover has been able to prove up to now why he is happy in love. Why? Because love 
implies much suffering. Still, lovers are happy. Love has a deep suffering, because when 
you become one with someone it is always difficult. Two minds become one... it is not 
only two bodies becoming one. That is the difference between sex and love. If only two 
bodies become one, it is not very difficult and there is no suffering. It is one of the easiest 
things; any animal can do it. It is easy. But when two people are in love it is very 
difficult, because two minds have to dissolve, two minds have to be absent. Only then is 
the space created, and love can flower. 



No one reasons about love; no one can prove that love gives happiness. No one can even 
prove that love exists. And there are scientists, behaviorists, followers of Watson and 
Skinner, who say love is just an illusion. 

There is no love; you are just in an illusion. You feel that you are in love, but there is no 
love, you are just dreaming. And no one can prove they are wrong. They say that love is 
just a hallucination, a psychedelic experience. Nothing real, just body chemistry 
influencing you, just hormones, chemicals, influencing your behavior and giving a false 
well-being to you. No one can prove them wrong. 

But the miracle is this, that even a Watson will fall in love. Even a Watson will fall in 
love, knowing well that this is just a chemical affair. And even a Watson will be happy. 
But love cannot be proven, it is so inner and subjective. What happens in love? The other 
becomes important - more important than you. You become the periphery and he 
becomes the center. 

Logic always remains self-centered, mind always remains ego-centered: I am the center 
and everything just encircles around me — for me, but I am the center. This is how reason 
works. If you move with reason too much, you will come to the conclusion to which 
Berkeley came. He said, "Only I exist, everything else is just an idea in the mind. How 
can I prove that you are there, sitting there just before me? How can I prove reasonably, 
rationally, that you are really there? You may be just a dream. I may be just dreaming and 
talking; you may not be there at all. How can I prove to myself that really you are there? I 
can, of course, touch you, but I can touch you even in a dream. 

And even in a dream I feel it when I touch someone. I can hit you and you will scream, 
but even in a dream, if I hit someone the dream figure screams. So how can I make a 
distinction that my audience here, just now, is not a dream but a reality? It may be just a 
fiction." 

Go to a madhouse, and you will find people sitting alone talking. To whom are they 
talking? I may be talking to no one. How can I prove rationally that you are really here? 
So if reason goes to the extreme, to the very logical extreme, then only I remain and 
everything else becomes a dream. This is how reason works. 

Quite the contrary is the path of the heart. I become the mystery and you — thou, the 
other, the beloved — become the real. If you move to the very extreme, then it becomes 
devotion. If your love comes to such an extreme point that you forget completely that you 
are, you have no notion of yourself and only the other remains, that is devotion. 

Love can become devotion. Love is the first step; only then can devotion flower. But for 
us even love is a faraway reality, sex is the only real thing. Love has two possibilities: 
either it falls into sex and becomes a bodily thing, or it rises into devotion and becomes a 
thing of the spirit. Love is just in between. Just below it is the abyss of sex, and beyond it 
is the open sky - the infinite sky of devotion. 

If your love grows deeper, the other becomes more and more significant - so significant 
that you begin to call the other your god. 

That is why Meera goes on calling Krishna, God. No one can see Krishna, and Meera 
cannot prove that Krishna is there, but she is not interested in proving it at all. She has 
made that point, Krishna, her love object. And remember, whether you make a real 
person your love object or whether it is just your imagination, it makes no difference, 
because the whole transformation comes through devotion, not through the beloved - 



remember this. Krishna may not be there at all; it is irrelevant. For the lover, it is 
irrelevant. 

For Radha, Krishna was there in reality. For Meera, Krishna was not there in reality. That 
is why Meera is a greater devotee than Radha. And even Radha would become jealous of 
Meera, because for Radha the real person was there. It is not so difficult to feel Krishna's 
reality when he is present. But when Krishna is no more there, Meera alone is living in a 
room and talking to Krishna, and living for him who is nowhere. For her, he is everything 
and all. She cannot prove it; it is irrational. But she took a jump and she became 
transformed. Devotion freed her. 

I want to emphasize the fact that it is not a question of whether Krishna is there or not. It 
is not! This feeling that Krishna is there, this total feeling of love, this total surrender, this 
losing oneself into one who may be or may not be, this LOSING itself is the 
transfonnation. Suddenly one is purified - totally purified - because when the ego is not 
there you cannot be impure in any way. 

Because ego is the seed of all impurity. 

The feeling of ego is the root of all madness. For the feeling world, for the world of the 
devotee, ego is the disease. Ego dissolves, and it dissolves in only one way; there is no 
other way. There is only one way: the other becomes so important, so significant, that by 
and by you fade out and disappear. One day you are no more; just a consciousness of the 
other remains. 

And when you are no more, the other is also not the other, because he is the other only 
when you are there. When the "I" disappears, the "thou" also disappears. In love you take 
the first step — the other becomes important. You remain, but for certain moments there 
may be a peak when you are not. Those are rare peaks of love, but ordinarily you remain 
and the lover is there. When the lover becomes more important than you, you can die for 
him or her. If you can die for someone, there is love. The other has become the meaning 
of your life. 

Only if you can die for someone can you live for someone. If you cannot die for 
someone, you cannot live for someone. Life acquires a meaning only through death. In 
love, the other has become important, but you are still there. In some higher peaks of 
communication you may disappear, but you will come back; this will be only for 
moments. So lovers have glimpses of devotion. That is why in India the beloved used to 
call her lover her god. 

Only in peaks does the other become divine, and the other becomes divine only when you 
are not. This can grow. And if you make it a SADHANA — a spiritual practice — if you 
make it an inner search, if you are not just enjoying love but transforming yourself 
through love, then it becomes devotion. 

In devotion you surrender yourself completely. And this surrender can be to a god who 
may not be in the sky or who may be, or to a master who may not be awakened or who 
may be, or to a beloved who may not be worthwhile or who may be — that is irrelevant. If 
you can allow yourself to dissolve for the other, you will be transformed. 

Devotion frees. That is why we have glimpses of freedom only in love. When you are in 
love, you have a subtle freedom. This is paradoxical because everyone else will see that 
you have become a slave. If you are in love with someone, those around you will think 
that you both have become slaves to each other. But you will have glimpses of freedom. 
Love is freedom. Why? Because ego is the bondage; there is no other bondage. You may 



be in a prison and you cannot escape. If your beloved comes into the prison, the prison 
disappears that very moment. The walls are there still, but they do not imprison you. Now 
you can forget them completely. You can dissolve into each other and you can become 
for each other a sky in which to fly. The prison has disappeared; it is no more there. 

And you may be under the open sky without love, totally free, untethered, but you are in 
a prison because you have nowhere to fly. This sky will not do. 

Birds fly in that sky, but you cannot. You need a different sky - the sky of consciousness. 
Only the other can give you that sky, the first taste of it. When the other opens for you 
and you move into the other, you can fly. 

Love is freedom, but not total. If love becomes devotion, then it becomes total freedom. 

It means surrendering yourself completely. So those who are of the feeling type, this 
sutrais for them: DEVOTION FREES. 

Take Ramakrishna... If you look at Ramakrishna you will think that he is just a slave to 
the goddess Kali, to Mother Kali. He cannot do anything without her permission; he is 
just like a slave. But no one was more free than him. When he was appointed for the first 
time as priest in Dakshineshwar, at the temple, he started behaving strangely. The 
committee, the trustees gathered, and they said, "Throw this man out. He is behaving 
undevotionally." This happened because first he would smell a flower and then the flower 
would be put at the feet of the goddess. That is against the ritual. A smelled flower 
cannot be offered to the divine — it has become impure. 

First he would taste the food which was made for the offering, and then he would offer it. 
And he was the priest so the trustees asked him, "What are you doing? This cannot be 
allowed." 

He said, "Then I will leave this post. I will move out of the temple, but I cannot offer 
food to my Mother without tasting it. My mother used to taste... whenever she would 
prepare something, she would taste it first and then only would she give it to me. And I 
cannot offer a flower without smelling it first. So I can go out, and you cannot stop me, 
you cannot prevent me. I will go on offering it anywhere, because my Mother is 
everywhere; she is not confined in your temple. So wherever I will be, I will be doing the 
same thing." 

It happened that someone, some Mohammedan, told him, "If your Mother is everywhere, 
then why not come to the mosque?" He said, "Okay, I am coming." He remained there for 
six months. He forgot Dakshineshwar completely; he was in a mosque. Then his friend 
said, "Now you can go back." He said, "She is everywhere." So one may think that 
Ramakrishna is a slave, but his devotion is such that now the beloved is everywhere. 

If you are nowhere, the beloved will be everywhere. If you are somewhere, then the 
beloved will be nowhere. 


THE END. 



Chapter 20: Ordinary love and the love of a buddha 


The first question: 

Question 1 

IT SEEMS VERY DIFFICULT TO LOVE SOMEONE FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS 
A DAY. WHY DOES IT HAPPEN SO? SHOULD LOVE BE A CONTINUOUS 
PROCESS? AND AT WHICH STAGE DOES LOVE BECOME DEVOTION? 

Love is not an act; it is not something that you do. If you do it, it is not love. No doing is 
involved in love; it is a state of being, not an act. No one can do anything continuously 
for twenty-four hours. If you are doing love, then of course you cannot do it for twenty- 
four hours. With any act you will get tired; with any act you get bored. And then, after 
any act, you have to relax. So if you are doing love, you will have to relax into hate, 
because you can relax only into the opposite. 

That is why our love is always mixed with hatred. You love this moment, and the next 
moment you hate the same person. The same person becomes the object of both love and 
hate; that is the conflict of lovers. Because your love is an act, that is why there is this 
misery. 

So the first thing to be understood is that love is not an act; you cannot do it. You can be 
in love, but you cannot "do" love. Doing is absurd. But other things are also implied. It is 
not an effort because if it were an effort you would get tired. It is a state of mind. 

And do not think in terms of relationship, think in terms of states of mind. If you are in 
love, this is a state of mind. 

This state of mind may be focused on one person or it may be unfocused - on the whole. 
When it is focused on one person, it is known as love. When it becomes unfocused, it 
becomes prayer. Then you are just in love - not with someone, but just in love, as you are 
breathing. 

If breathing were an effort you would get tired of it, and you would have to relax and 
then you would die. If it were an effort, then at some time you might forget to do it and 
then you would die. Love is just like breathing: it is a higher plane of breathing. If you do 
not breathe, your body will die. If you are not in love, your spirit cannot be born. 

So take love as a breathing of the soul. When you are in love your soul becomes vital, 
alive, just like it is breathing. But think in this way. If I say to you, "Only breathe when 
you are near me and do not breathe anywhere else," then you will die. And the next time 
you will be near me you will be just dead and you will not even be able to breathe near 
me. 

That has happened with love. We possess — the love object is possessed and the lover 
says, "Don't love anybody else. Only love me." Then the love is atrophied and then the 
lover cannot love, it becomes impossible. It doesn’t mean that you have to love everyone, 
but you have to be in a loving state of mind. It is just like breathing: even if your enemy 
is there you will breathe. 

That is the meaning of Jesus' saying, "Love your enemy." 

It has been a problem for Christianity, how to understand this saying, "Love your 
enemy." It seems contradictory. But if loving is not an act, if it is just a state of mind, 
then there is no question of enemy or friend. You are in love. 

Look at it from the other side. There are persons who are continuously in hate, and 



whenever they try to show love they have to make much effort. Their love is an effort 
because their continuous state of mind is hate. That is why effort is needed. There are 
persons who are continuously sad; then their laughter is an effort. They have to fight 
against themselves. Then their laughter becomes a painted laughter - just false, imposed, 
put together, not coming from deep within but just arranged, no spontaneity in it but just 
artificial. 

There are persons who are continuously in anger - not angry at something or someone, 
just angry. Then love becomes an effort. On the other hand, if love is your state of mind, 
anger will be an effort. You can do it, but you cannot be angry. Then you will have to 
create it artificially; it will be false. 

If a buddha tries to be angry, much effort will be needed, and then too it will be false. 
And only those who do not know him can be deceived. Those who know him, they know 
that that anger is false, just painted, created. It is not coming from within; that is 
impossible. A Buddha, a Jesus, cannot hate. 

Then effort is needed. If they want to show hatred, then they will have to do it. 

But you do not need any effort to be hateful; you need effort to be loving. Change the 
state of mind. How to change the state of mind? How to be loving? And it is not a 
question of time, of how to be loving twenty-four hours a day. This is absurd — this 
question is absurd. 

It is not a question of time. If you can be loving in a single moment that is enough, 
because you never have two moments together. Only one moment is given. When one is 
lost, a second is given. You have only one moment always with you. If you know how to 
be loving in one single moment, you know the secret. You need not think about twenty- 
four hours, or of the whole life. 

Only a single moment of love and you know how to fill a moment with love. Then the 
second moment will be given to you, and you can fill that second moment also with love. 
So remember, it is not a question of time. There is a question only of a single moment, 
and a single moment is not part of time. A single moment is not a process; a single 
moment is just now. 

Once you know how to enter a single moment with love, you have entered eternity: time 
is no more. A buddha lives in the now; you live in time. Time means thinking of the past, 
thinking of the future. And while you are thinking of the past and of the future, the 
present is lost. 


You are engaged with the future and the past, and the present is being lost - and the 
present is the only existence. The past is no more and the future has yet to be: they both 
are not, they are non-existential. This very moment, this single atomic moment, is the 
only existence - here and now. If you know to be loving, you know the secret. And you 
will never be given two moments together, so you need not bother about time. 

A single moment is always - and it is always in the shape of now. Remember, there are 
not really two types of "nows." This single moment is the same; it doesn’t differ in any 
way from the moment that has gone before it, and it doesn't differ in any way from the 
moment that is going to follow it. 

This atomic now is always the same. That is why Eckhart says, "It is not that time passes. 
Time remains the same. Rather, we go on passing." Pure time remains the same; we go 
on passing. So do not think about twenty-four hours, and then you need not think of the 



present moment. 

One thing more. Thinking needs time; living doesn’t need time. You cannot think in this 
very moment. In this very moment, if you want to be you will have to cease thinking, 
because thinking is basically concerned with either the past or the future. Of what can 
you think in the present? The moment you think, it has become the past. 

A flower is there — you say this is a beautiful flower. 

This saying is now no more in the present; it has become the past. When you come to 
grasp something in thinking, it has become the past. In the present you can be, but you 
cannot think. Y ou can be with the flower, but you cannot think about it. Thinking needs 
time. 

So in another way, thinking is time. If you do not think, there is no time. That is why in 
meditation you feel a timelessness. That is why in love you feel a timelessness. Love is 
not thinking, it is a cessation of thought. You are! When you are with your beloved, you 
are not thinking about love, you are not thinking about the beloved. You are not thinking 
at all. And if you are thinking, then you are not with your beloved, you are somewhere 
else. Thinking means absence from the now... you are not there. 

That is why those who are too much obsessed with thinking cannot love, because even 
when they are there, even if they reach to the original divine source, even if they meet 
God, they will go on thinking about him and they will miss him completely. You can go 
on thinking about and about and about, but it is never the fact. 

A moment of love is a timeless moment. Then there is no question of thinking how to 
love twenty-four hours. You never think about how to live twenty-four hours, how to be 
alive twenty-four hours. Either you are alive or you are not. So the basic thing to be 
understood is not time, but now - how to be here and now in a state of love. 


Why is there hate? When you feel hatred, go to the cause of it. Only then can love flower. 
When do you feel hatred? When you feel that your existence, your life, is in danger, 
when you feel that your existence can be annihilated, suddenly hate surges in you. When 
you feel that you can be destroyed, you start destroying others. That is a safety measure. 

It is just a part of you that is struggling for survival. Whenever you feel that your 
existence is in danger, you are filled with hatred. 

So unless you come to feel that your existence cannot be in danger, that it is impossible 
to annihilate you, you cannot be filled with love. A Jesus can be in love because he 
knows something which is deathless. You cannot be in love because you know only that 
which belongs to death. And every moment death is there; every moment you are afraid. 
How can you love when you are afraid? Love cannot exist with fear. And fear is there, so 
you can only create a make-believe that you love. 

And again, your love is really nothing but a safety measure. You love so that you will not 
fear. Whenever you believe that you are in love, you are less afraid. For the moment you 
can forget death. An illusion is created in which you can feel that you are accepted by the 
existence; you are not denied, rejected. That is why there is so much need of love and of 
being loved. 

Whenever you are being loved by someone, you create around you an illusion that you 
are needed by the existence - at least by someone. 


You are needed by someone, so you are not just futile. You are not just accidental — you 



are needed somewhere. Without you the existence will miss something. That gives you a 
feeling of well-being. You feel a purpose, a destiny, a meaning, a worthiness. 

When you are not loved by anyone you feel rejected, you feel denied, you feel 
meaningless. Then you feel there is no purpose, no destiny. If no one loves you and you 
die, there will be no feeling of your absence, it will not be felt that you are no more. No 
one will feel that you were, and now you are no more. 

Love gives you the feeling of being needed. That is why in love one becomes or feels less 
afraid. Whenever love is not there you become more fearful, and in fear, as a protection, 
you become hateful. Hate is a protection. You are afraid of being destroyed; you become 
destructive. 

In love, you feel that you are accepted, welcome — not an uninvited guest, but rather that 
you are invited, welcome, waited for, received, that the existence is happy that you are. 
The one who loves you becomes the representative of the whole existence. But this love 
is basically fear-based. You are protecting against fear, against death, against the 
inhuman indifference of existence. 

Really, existence is indifferent - at least on the surface. The sun, the sea, the stars, the 
earth, they are totally indifferent to you; no one is worried about you. 

And it is apparently clear that you are not needed. Without you everything will be as 
good as it is with you; nothing will be lost. Look at the existence superficially: no one, 
nothing, cares about you. They may not even be aware of you. The stars are not aware of 
you; even the earth which you call Mother is not aware of you. And when you die, the 
earth will not be sad. Nothing will have changed; things will be as they are and as they 
always have been. With you or without you, there is no difference. 

You feel you are just an accident. You were not needed; uninvited you have come... just a 
chance product. This creates fear. This is what Kierkegaard calls "anguish." There is a 
subtle continuous fear — you are not needed. 

When someone loves you, you feel that a different dimension has come into existence. 
Now at least one person will be there who will weep, who will feel sorry, who will be 
sad. There will be tears; you will be needed. At least there will be one person who will 
always feel your absence if you are not. At least for one you have gained a destiny, a 
purpose. 

That is why there is so much need of love. And if you are not loved, you are uprooted. 

But this love is not the love I am talking about. This is a relationship and a mutual 
creation of illusion - a mutual illusion: "I need you, you need me. I give you this illusion 
that without you my purpose, my meaning, my life will be lost; you give me this illusion 
that without me everything will be lost. 

So we both are helping each other to be in an illusion. We are creating one separate, 
private existence in which we become meaningful, in which the whole indifference of 
this vast space is forgotten." 

Two lovers live in each other; they have created a private world. That is why love needs 
so much privacy. If you are not in privacy, the world goes on impinging upon you. It 
goes on telling you that whatsoever you are doing is just a dream, and this is a mutual 
illusion. Love needs privacy because then the whole world is forgotten. Only two lovers 
exist, and the indifference, the total indifference of existence, is forgotten. You feel 
loved, welcomed. Without you nothing will be the same. At least in this private world 
nothing will be the same without you.Life is meaningful. 



I am not talking about this love. This is really illusory. It is a cultivated illusion, and man 
is so weak that he cannot live without this illusion. Those who can, they live without this 
illusion. A buddha can live without this illusion, and then he will not create it. 

When it becomes possible to live illusion-lessly - to live without illusion — a second, a 
different dimension of love comes into being. It is not that one person needs you. It is 
coming to understand, to realize that you are not different from this existence which 
looks so indifferent. You are part of it, organically one with it. 

And if a tree is flowering, it is not separate from you. You have flowered in the tree and 
the tree has become conscious in you. 

The sea and the sand and the stars, they are one with you. You are not an island, you are 
organically one with this universe. The whole universe is within you and the whole of 
you is in this universe. Unless you come to know it and feel it and realize it, you will not 
get that love which is a state of mind. 

If you come to realize this, you will not need to create a private illusion that someone 
loves you. Then there is meaning, and if no one loves you, no meaning is lost. Then you 
are not afraid at all because even death will not annihilate you. It may annihilate the 
form, it may annihilate the body, but it cannot annihilate you because you are the 
existence. 

This is what happens in meditation. This is for what meditation is meant. In it you 
become a part, an opening. You come to feel, "Existence and I are one." Then you are 
welcomed, and there is no fear and there is no death. Then love flows from you. Then 
love is not an effort — you cannot do anything except love. Then it is like breathing. Deep 
inside you breathe love; in and out you breathe love. 

This love grows into devotion. Then ultimately you will even forget, it just as you forget 
your breathing. When do you remember your breathing? Have you observed? You 
remember only when something is wrong. 

When you feel any difficulty, then you know that you have been breathing; otherwise 
there is no need even to be aware of it. And if you are aware of your breathing, that 
shows that something is wrong with your breathing process. There is no need of being 
aware of the breathing process. Silently it goes on. 

So when you are aware of your love, the love that is a state of mind, it means that 
something is still wrong. By and by even that awareness is lost. You simply breathe love 
in and out. You have forgotten everything, even that you love. Then it has become 
devotion. That is the ultimate peak, the ultimate possibility — you may call it anything. 
Love can become devotion only when this awareness is lost, forgotten. It doesn’t mean 
that you have become unconscious, it only means that the process has become so silent 
that there is no noise around it. You are not unconscious of it, but you are not conscious 
of it either. It has become so natural. It is there, but it does not create any disturbance 
inside; it has become so hannonious. 

So remember, when I am talking about love, I am not talking about your love. But if you 
try to understand your love, it will become a step toward growing into a different kind of 
love. So I am not against your love. I am simply stating the fact that if your love is fear- 
based, it is just ordinary, animal love. And no derogation, no condemnation is implied; it 
is simply a fact. 



Man is afraid. He needs someone who gives him the feeling that he is welcomed, he need 
not be afraid. At least with one person you need not be filled with fear. This is good as 
far as it goes, but this is not what Buddha or Jesus called love. They called love a state of 
mind, not a relationship. So go beyond relationship, and by and by just be loving. First 
you will not be capable of it unless you move into meditation. Unless you come to know 
the deathless within, unless you come to know a deep unity between the inner and the 
outer, unless you feel that you are existence, it will be difficult. 

So these techniques of meditation are just to help you grow from relationship into a state 
of mind. And do not think of time at all, time is irrelevant for love. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

MOST OF THE TECHNIQUES WHICH YOU HAVE DISCUSSED HAVE USED THE 
BODY AS AN INSTRUMENT. WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE BODY TO BE 
GIVEN SO MUCH IMPORTANCE BY TANTRA? 

Many basic points are to be understood. One, you are your body. Right now you are just 
your body and nothing else. You may have notions about the soul, the ATMAN, etc — 
those are simply notions, just ideas. As you are right now you are just a body. And do not 
go on deceiving yourself that you are the deathless soul, the immortal atman. Do not go 
on deceiving yourself. That is just an idea, and that idea too is fear-based. 


You do not know whether the soul exists or not; you have never penetrated to the 
innermost core where one realizes the deathless. You have only heard about it, and you 
cling to the idea because you are afraid of death. You know death is real, so you go on 
wishing and believing that something in you must be there which is deathless. This is a 
wish fulfillment. 

I am not saying that there is no soul, I am not saying that there is nothing which is 
deathless. No, I am not saying that. But as far as you are concerned, you are just the body 
with an idea that there is a soul which is deathless. This is just in the mind, and this too 
you have collected because of the fear. That is why the weaker you will become, the 
older, the more you will become a believer in the immortal soul and God. Then you will 
go to the church or the temple or the mosque. If you go to the mosque or the church or 
the temple, you will find that old men, just on the verge of death, are gathered there. 
Youth is basically atheistic; always this has been so. The younger you are, the less 
theistic. The younger you are, the more you are an unbeliever. Why? Because you are 
still strong and you feel less fear, and you are still ignorant of death. Death is far away 
somewhere, it happens only to others. It happens only to others, not to you. But the older 
you grow, you will by and by begin to feel that now it is going to happen to you also. 


Death comes near, and one begins to believe. So all beliefs are fear-based. All beliefs are 
fear-based! And one who believes because of fear is really deceiving himself. You are the 
body right now — this is a fact. You do not know anything about the deathless, you know 
only about the "deathful." But the deathless is there; you can know it. Believing won’t do, 
only knowing can help. You can realize it, but just ideas are of no use unless they 
become a concrete experience. 

So do not be deceived by ideas and do not take ideas and beliefs for experiences. That is 
why tantra always starts with the body — because that is a fact. You have to start from the 



body because you are in the body. And that too is not right. When I say you are in the 
body, that too is not right. As far as you are concerned you ARE the body, not IN the 
body. You do not know anything about what is in the body, you know only the body. 
That experience of something beyond body is still far away. 

If you go to metaphysicians, to theologians, they are going to start with the soul. But 
tantra is absolutely scientific. It starts from where you are, not from where you can be. 
Starting from where you can be is absurd — you cannot start from where you can be, you 
can start only from where you are. 

Tantra has no condemnation against the body. Tantra is a total acceptance of things as 
they are. 

Christian theologians, and those of other religions also, are condemnatory, against the 
body. They create a dualism, a dichotomy, that you are two. And the body is the enemy, 
the evil for them, so fight with it. This duality is basically wrong, and this duality will 
divide your mind into two and will create a split personality. 

Religions have helped the human mind to be schizophrenic. Any division will divide you 
deeply, and you will become two, or you will become many. And everyone is a crowd of 
many divisions, with no organic unity and with no center. You are not an individual as 
far as the meaning of the word is concerned. The word means indivisible: 'individual’ 
means indivisible. But you are just divided into many things. 

Not only are your mind and your body divided, your soul and your body are divided also. 
The nonsense has gone so deep that even the body is divided: the lower body is evil and 
the upper body is good. It is stupid, but it is there. Even you yourself cannot feel at ease 
with your lower body. Some uneasiness creeps in. There is division and division and 
division... 

Tantra accepts everything. Whatsoever is, is accepted wholeheartedly. That is why tantra 
could accept sex totally. For five thousand years tantra has been the only tradition which 
has accepted sex totally, the only one all over the world. Why? Because sex is the point 
where you are, and any movement is going to be from the point where you are. 


You are at the sex center; your energy is at the sex center. And from that point it has to 
move up, far beyond. If you reject the center itself, then you can go on deceiving yourself 
that you are moving, but you cannot move. Then you are rejecting the only point from 
where movement is possible. So tantra accepts the body, accepts sex, accepts everything. 
And tantra says, wisdom accepts everything and transforms it; only ignorance rejects. 
Only ignorance rejects — wisdom accepts everything. Even a poison can become a 
medicine, but only through wisdom. 

The body can become a vehicle to that which is beyond body, and sex energy can become 
a spiritual force. And remember, when you ask, "what are the reasons that the body is 
given so much importance in tantra?" why do you ask? Why? 

You are born as a body; you live as a body; you become ill as a body; you are treated, 
given medicine, helped, made whole and healthy, as a body. You become young as a 
body, you will become old as a body, you will die as a body. Your whole life is body- 
centered - centered around the body. You will love someone. You will make love to 
someone and you will create other bodies; you will reproduce other bodies. 

What are you doing the whole life? Preserving yourself. What are you preserving with 
food, with water, with shelter? The body is preserved. What are you doing by 



reproducing children? The body is being reproduced. 


The whole life, ninety-nine point nine percent, is body-oriented. You can go beyond, but 
that journey has to be through the body, by the body, and you have to use the body. But 
why do you ask? Because the body is just the outer thing. Deep down the body is a 
symbol of sex. 

So those traditions which are against sex will be against the body. Those traditions which 
are not against sex can only be friendly toward the body. Tantra is absolutely friendly, 
and tantra says that the body is sacred, holy. For tantra, to condemn the body is a 
sacrilege. To say that the body is impure or to say that the body is sin is nonsense for 
tantra - a very poisonous teaching. Tantra accepts the body - not only accepts it, but says 
that the body is holy, pure, innocent. You can use it and you can make it a vehicle, a 
medium, to go beyond! It helps even in going beyond. 

But if you start fighting with body, you are lost. If you start fighting with it, you will 
become more and more diseased. And if you go on fighting with it, you will miss an 
opportunity. Fighting is negative; tantra is a positive transformation. Do not fight with it 
— there is no need. It is as if you are sitting in a car and you start fighting with the car. 
Then you cannot move because you are fighting with the vehicle — which has to be used, 
not fought against. And you will destroy the vehicle by your fighting, and then it will be 
more and more difficult to move. 


The body is a beautiful vehicle - very mysterious, very complex. Use it, do not fight with 
it. Help it. The moment you go against it you are going against yourself. It is as if a man 
wants to reach somewhere, but he fights with his own legs and cuts them. Tantra says, 
know the body and know the secrets of it. Know the energies of it and know how those 
energies can be transformed - how they can be moved and turned into different 
dimensions. 

For example, take sex, which is the basic energy in the body. Ordinarily, sex energy is 
just used for reproduction. One body creates another body and it goes on. The biological 
utility of sex energy is only in reproduction. But that is only one of the uses, and the 
lowest. No condemnation is implied, but it is the lowest. The same energy can do other 
creative acts also. Reproduction is a basic creative act — you create something. That is 
why a woman feels a subtle well-being when she becomes a mother: she has created 
something. 

Psychologists say that because man cannot reproduce like woman, because man cannot 
become a mother, he feels a certain unease, and to destroy that unease or to overcome it 
he goes on creating other things. He will paint, he will do something in which he 
becomes a creator, in which he becomes a mother. That is one of the reasons why women 
are less creative and men are more creative - because women have a natural dimension in 
which to be creative. 

They can become mothers and they can have a fulfillment, an easy fulfillment. A deep 
biological creativity is felt. 

But man lacks that and feels somewhere an imbalance. He wants to create, so he will 
substitute something. He will paint, he will sing, he will dance. He will do something in 
which he also becomes a mother. Sex energy, psychologists say now — and tantra has 
always been saying that — is always the source of all creation. So it happens that if a 



painter is really deep in his creation, he may forget sex completely. When a poet is very 
involved with his poetry, he will forget sex completely. He need not force any 
BRAHMACHARYA, any celibacy, upon himself. 

Only monks, non-creative monks living in a monastery, need to force brahmacharya - 
because if you are creative, the same energy which moves through sex moves into 
creation. You can forget it completely, and there is no need to make any effort to forget it 
because that is impossible. You cannot make any effort to forget anything, because the 
very effort will make you remember it again and again. That is futile - in fact, suicidal. 
You cannot try to forget anything. 

That is why those who force themselves to be brahmacharis , celibates, become simply 
cerebral sex perverts. Then sex revolves in the mind: the whole thing goes on in the mind 
- not in the body, but in the mind. And that is worse, because then the mind becomes 
totally mad. 

Any creativity will help sex to disappear. 

Tantra says, if you move into meditation sex will disappear completely; it can disappear 
completely. The whole energy is being absorbed at higher centers — and your body has 
many centers. Sex is the lowest center, and man exists at the lowest center. The more 
energy moves higher, the more the higher centers begin to flower. When the same energy 
comes to the heart, then it becomes love. When the same energy comes higher still, new 
dimensions and new experiences begin to flower. And when the same energy is at the 
highest, at the last peak in your body, it has reached that which tantra calls SAHASRAR - 
the last chakra in the head. 

Sex is the lowest chakra and sahasrar is the highest, and between these two the sex 
energy moves. It can be released from the sex center. When it is released from the sex 
center you become a cause to reproduce someone else. When the same energy is released 
from the sahasrar, from the head into the cosmos, you give a new birth to yourself. It is 
also reproduction, but not biologically. Then it is spiritually a reproduction; then you are 
reborn. In India we used to call such a person "twice-born" - DWIJ. Now he has given 
himself a new birth. The same energy has moved. 

Tantra has no condemnations, only secret techniques for how to transform. That is why 
tantra talks so much about the body — it is needed. 

The body has to be understood, and you can start only from where you are. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

YOU SAID THAT LOVE CAN MAKE YOU FREE. BUT ORDINARILY WE SEE 
THAT LOVE BECOMES ATTACHMENT, AND INSTEAD OF FREEING US IT 
MAKES US MORE BOUND. SO TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT ATTACHMENT 
AND FREEDOM. 

Love becomes attachment because there is no love. You were just playing, deceiving 
yourself. The attachment is the reality; the love was just a foreplay. So whenever you fall 
in love, sooner or later you discover you have become an instrument - and then the whole 
misery begins. What is the mechanism? Why does it happen? 

Just a few days ago a man came to me and he was feeling very guilty. He said, "I loved a 
woman. I loved her very much. The day she died I was weeping and crying, but suddenly 
I became aware of a certain freedom within me, as if some burden had left me. I felt a 
deep breath, as if I had become free." 



That moment he became aware of a second layer of his feeling. Outwardly he was 
weeping and crying and saying, "I cannot live without her. Now it will be impossible, or 
the life will be just like death. But deep down," he said, "I became aware that I am feeling 
very good, that now I am free." 

A third layer began to feel guilt. It said to him, "What are you doing?" And the dead body 
was lying there just before him, he said to me, and he began to feel a great deal of guilt. 

He said to me, "Help me. What has happened to my mind? Have I betrayed her so 
soon?" 

Nothing has happened; no one has betrayed. When love becomes attachment, it becomes 
a burden, a bondage. But why does love become an attachment? The first thing to be 
understood is that if love becomes an attachment, you were just in an illusion that it was 
love. You were just playing with yourself and thinking that this was love. Really, you 
were in need of attachment. And if you go still deeper, you will find that you were also in 
need of becoming a slave. 

There is a subtle fear of freedom, and everyone wants to be a slave. Everyone, of course, 
talks about freedom, but no one has the courage to be really free, because when you are 
really free you are alone. If you have the courage to be alone, then only can you be free. 
But no one is courageous enough to be alone. You need someone. Why do you need 
someone? You are afraid of your own loneliness. You become bored with yourself. And 
really, when you are lonely, nothing seems meaningful. With someone you are occupied, 
and you create artificial meanings around you. 

You cannot live for yourself, so you start to live for someone else. And the same is the 
case with the someone else also: he, or she, cannot live alone, so he is in search to find 
someone. Two persons who are afraid of their own loneliness come together and they 
start a play - a play of love. 

But deep down they are searching for attachment, commitment, bondage. 

So sooner or later, whatsoever you desire happens. This is one of the most unfortunate 
things in this world. Whatsoever you desire comes to happen. You will get it sooner or 
later and the foreplay will disappear. When its function is done, it will disappear. When 
you have become a wife and husband, slaves to each other, when marriage has happened, 
love will disappear because love was just an illusion in which two persons could become 
slaves to each other. 

Directly you cannot ask for slavery; it is too humiliating. And directly you cannot say to 
someone, "Become my slave. "He will revolt. Nor can you say, "I want to become a slave 
to you," so you say, "I cannot live without you." But the meaning is there; it is the same. 
And when this - the real desire - is fulfilled, love disappears. Then you feel bondage, 
slavery, and then you start struggling to become free. 

Remember this. It is one of the paradoxes of the mind: whatsoever you get you will get 
bored with, and whatsoever you do not get you will long for. When you are alone, you 
will long for some slavery, some bondage. When you are in bondage, you will begin to 
long for freedom. Really, only slaves long for freedom, and free people try again to be 
slaves. The mind goes on like a pendulum, moving from one extreme to the other. 

Love doesn’t become attachment. 

Attachment was the need; love was just a bait. You were in search of a fish named 
attachment: love was just a bait to catch the fish. When the fish is caught, the bait is 



thrown. Remember this, and whenever you are doing something, go deep within yourself 
to find out the basic cause. 

If there is real love, it will never become attachment. What is the mechanism for love to 
become attachment? The moment you say to your lover or beloved, "Love only me," you 
have started possessing. And the moment you possess someone you have insulted him 
deeply, because you have made him into a thing. 

When I possess you, you are not a person then, but just one more item amongst my 
furniture - a thing. Then I use you, and you are my thing, my possession, so I won’t allow 
anyone else to use you. It is a bargain in which I am possessed by you, and you make me 
a thing. It is the bargain that now no one else can use you. Both partners feel bound and 
enslaved. I make a slave of you, then you in return make a slave of me. 

Then the struggle starts. I want to be a free person, and still I want you to be possessed by 
me; you want to retain your freedom and still possess me — this is the struggle. If I 
possess you, I will be possessed by you. If I do not want to be possessed by you, I should 
not possess you. 

Possession should not come in between. We must remain individuals and we must move 
as independent, free consciousnesses. 

We can come together, we can merge into each other, but no one possesses. Then there is 
no bondage and then there is no attachment. 

Attachment is one of the ugliest things. And when I say ugliest, I do not mean only 
religiously, I mean aesthetically also. When you are attached, you have lost your 
loneliness, your aloneness: you have lost everything. Just to feel good that someone 
needs you and someone is with you, you have lost everything, you have lost yourself. 

But the trick is that you try to be independent and you make the other the possession - 
and the other is doing the same. So do not possess if you do not want to be possessed. 
Jesus said somewhere, "Judge ye not so that ye should not be judged." It is the same: 
"Possess not so that ye should not be possessed." Do not make anyone a slave; otherwise 
you will become a slave. 

So-called masters are always slaves of their own slaves. You cannot become a master of 
some one without becoming a slave — that is impossible. 

You can only be a master when no one is a slave to you. This seems paradoxical, because 
when I say you can only be a master when no one is a slave to you, you will say, "Then 
what is the mastery? How am I a master when no one is a slave to me?" But I say only 
then are you a master. Then no one is a slave to you and no one will try to make a slave 
out of you. 

To love freedom, to try to be free, means basically that you have come to a deep 
understanding of yourself. 

Now you know that you are enough unto yourself. You can share with someone, but you 
are not dependent. I can share myself with someone. I can share my love, I can share my 
happiness, I can share my bliss, my silence, with someone. But that is a sharing, not a 
dependence. If no one is there, I will be just as happy, just as blissful. If someone is there, 
that is also good and I can share. 

When you realize your inner consciousness, your center, only then will love not become 
an attachment. If you do not know your inner center, love will become an attachment. If 
you know your inner center, love will become devotion. But you must first be there to 
love, and you are not. 



Buddha was passing trough a village. One young man came to him and said, "Teach me 
something: how can I serve others?" Buddha laughed at him and said, "First be. Forget 
others. First be yourself and then everything will follow." 

Right now you are not. When you say, "When I love someone it becomes an 
attachment," you are saying you are not, so whatsoever you do goes wrong because the 
doer is absent. The inner point of awareness is not there, so whatsoever you do goes 
wrong. First BE, and then you can share your being. And that sharing will be love. 

Before that, whatsoever you do will become an attachment. 

And lastly: if you are struggling against attachment, you have taken a wrong turn. 

You can struggle. So many monks, recluses, sannyasins are doing that. They feel that 
they are attached to their house, to their property, to their wives, to their children, and 
they feel caged, imprisoned. They escape, they leave their homes, they leave their wives, 
they leave their children and possessions, and they become beggars and escape to a 
forest, to a loneliness. But go and observe them. They will become attached to their new 
surroundings. 

I was visiting a friend who was a recluse living under a tree in a deep forest, but there 
were other ascetics also. One day it happened that I was staying with this recluse under 
his tree, and a new seeker came while my friend was absent. He had gone to the river to 
take a bath. Under his tree the new sannyasin started meditating. 

The man came back from the river, and he pushed that new man away from the tree and 
said, "This is my tree. You go and find another, somewhere else. No one can sit under my 
tree." And this man had left his house, his wife, his children. Now the tree had become a 
possession — you cannot meditate under his tree. 

You cannot escape so easily from attachment. It will take new forms, new shapes. You 
will be deceived, but this will be there. So do not fight with attachment, just try to 
understand why it is there. And then know the deep cause: because you are not, this 
attachment is there. 


Inside, you your own self is so much absent that you try to cling to anything in order to 
feel safe. You are not rooted, so you try to make anything your roots. When you are 
rooted in your self, when you know who you are, what this being is which is in you and 
what this consciousness is which is in you, then you will not cling to anyone. 

That doesn’t mean you will not love. Really, only then can you love because then sharing 
is possible - and with no conditions, with no expectations. You simply share because you 
have an abundance, because you have so much it is overflowing. 

This overflowing of yourself is love. And when this overflowing becomes a flood, when 
by your own overflowing the whole universe is filled and your love touches the stars, in 
your love the earth feels good and in your love the whole universe is bathed, then it is 
devotion. 


THE END. 



Chapter 21: Three looking techniques 


6. EYES CLOSED, SEE YOUR INNER BEING IN DETAIL. THUS SEE YOUR TRUE 
NATURE. 

7. LOOK UPON A BOWL WITHOUT SEEING THE SIDES OR THE MATERIAL. IN 
A FEW MOMENTS BECOME AWARE. 

8. SEE AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME A BEAUTEOUS PERSON OR AN ORDINARY 
OBJECT. 

Tonight's techniques are concerned with the practice of looking. Before we enter these 
techniques, something has to be understood about the eyes, because all these seven 
techniques depend on that. The first thing: eyes are the most non-bodily part in the 
human body, the least bodily. If matter can become non-matter, then such is the case with 
eyes. Eyes are material, but simultaneously they are also non-material. Eyes are a 
meeting point of you and your body. Nowhere else in the body is the meeting so deep. 

The human body and you are much separated, a great distance is there. But at the point of 
the eyes you are nearest to your body and the body is nearest to you. That is why eyes 
can be used for the inner journey. A single jump from the eyes can lead you to the source. 
That is not possible from the hand, not possible from the heart, not possible from 
anywhere else in the body. From elsewhere you will have to travel long; the distance is 
great. But from the eyes a single step is enough to enter into yourself. That is why eyes 
have been used continuously in religious yogic and tantric practices. 


The first reason is because you are NEAREST from there. That is why, if you know how 
to look into someone's eyes, you can look into his depths. He is there. He is not so 
present anywhere else in the body, but if you can look into his eyes you will find him 
there. It is a difficult art to look into someone else's eyes, and it comes to you only when 
you have taken a jump from your own eyes within; otherwise you cannot look. If you 
have not looked within beyond your own eyes, you cannot have a look into someone 
else's eyes. But if you know how to look into the eyes, you can touch the depth of the 
person. 

That is why only in love can you look straight and stare into another's eyes. Otherwise, if 
you stare into someone's eyes he will feel offended. You are trespassing; this is a 
trespass. You can look at the body — there is no trespass. But the moment you stare into 
somebody's eyes, you are trespassing his individuality, you are trespassing his individual 
freedom, you are entering him without any invitation. That is why there is a limit, and 
now the limit can be measured. At the most you can be allowed to look for three seconds. 
You can be allowed just a casual look and then you have to move your eyes; otherwise 
the other will feel offended. This is violent, because you can have a glimpse of his inner 
secrets, and that cannot be allowed. 

Only in deep love can you look into another’s eyes, because love means that now you do 
not want to maintain any secrets. 

You are now open to the other and the other is always welcome and invited to enter you. 
And when lovers look into each other’s eyes, there is a meeting which is non-bodily, 
there is a meeting which is not of the body. So the second thing to be remembered: your 



mind, your consciousness, your soul, whatsoever is within you, can be glimpsed through 
the eyes. 

That is why a blind man has a dead face. It is not only that the eyes are lacking, but that 
the face is dead — not alive. Eyes are the light of the face: they enlighten your face; they 
give it an inner aliveness. When the eyes are not there, your face lacks aliveness. And a 
blind man is really closed. You cannot enter him so easily. That is why blind men are 
very secretive and you can rely upon a blind man. If you give him a secret, you can rely 
upon him. He will maintain it, and it will be difficult to judge whether he has a secret. 

But with a man who has alive eyes, it can be judged immediately that he has a secret. 

For example, you are traveling without a ticket on a railway train. Your eyes will go on 
betraying you that you are without a ticket. It is a secret; no one knows, only you know. 
But your eyes will have a different look, and you will look at anyone who enters the train 
with a different quality. If the other could understand the quality, he would know 
immediately that you are without a ticket. The look will be different when you have a 
ticket. 

The look will be different! 

So if you are hiding a secret, your eyes will reveal it. And to control the eyes is very 
difficult. The most difficult thing in the body to control is the eyes. So everyone cannot 
become a great detective because the basic training of the detective is the training of the 
eyes. His eyes should not reveal anything — or on the contrary they should reveal the 
opposite. When he is traveling without a ticket, his eyes should reveal that he has a ticket. 
It is very difficult because eyes are not voluntary: they are non-voluntary. 

Now many experiments are being done on the eyes. Someone is a BRAHMACHARI, a 
celibate, and he says he has no attraction toward women. But his eyes will reveal 
everything; he may be hiding his attraction. A beautiful woman enters the room. He may 
not look at her, but even his not looking at her will be revealing. There will be an effort, a 
subtle suppression, and the eyes will show it. Not only that, the surface of the eyes will 
expand. When a beautiful woman enters, the pupils of the eyes will expand immediately 
to allow the beautiful woman more space to go in. And you cannot do anything about it 
because those pupils and their expansion is non-voluntary. You cannot do anything! It is 
absolutely impossible to control them. So the second thing to remember is that your eyes 
are the doors to your secrets. If anyone wants to enter into your secret world, your 
privacy, your eyes are the doors. 


If you know how to unlock them, you will become vulnerable, open. And if you want to 
enter into your own secret life, your inner life, then again you will have to use the same 
lock and unlocking system. You will have to work on your eyes, only then can you enter. 
Thirdly, eyes are very liquid, moving, in constant movement, and that movement has its 
own rhythm, its own system, its own mechanism. Your eyes are not moving at random, 
anarchically. They have a rhythm of their own and that rhythm shows many things. If you 
have a sexual thought in the mind, your eyes move differently — with a different rhythm. 
Just by looking at your eyes and the movement, one can say what type of thought is 
moving inside. When you feel hungry and a thought of food is inside, eyes have a 
different movement. 

So now even your dreams can be penetrated. Your eye movements can be recorded while 
you are asleep. And remember, even in dreams your eyes behave similarly. If you are 



seeing a naked woman in your dream, this can be judged from your eye movements. Now 
they are mechanical devices to record what are the movements of the eyes. 

These eye movements are called R.E.M. — Rapid Eye Movements. They can be recorded 
on a graph, just like an electro-cardiogram. If you have been sleeping for the whole night, 
your eye movements can be continuously recorded. And then the graph can show when 
you were dreaming and when you were not, because when you are not dreaming the eyes 
stop and become static. 

When you are dreaming they move, and the movement is like when you are seeing 
something on the screen. If you are seeing a film, the eyes have to move. In the same 
way, in your dream your eyes move: they are seeing something. They follow the 
movements of the film. For your eyes there is no difference between an actual film being 
shown on the screen or just a dream film. 

So these R.E.M. recorders tell how much you dreamt in the night and for how many 
moments you were not dreaming, because the eyes stop their movement when you are not 
dreaming. There are many persons who say they never dream. They just have a very 
absent-minded memory — nothing else. They cannot remember, that is the only thing. 
They are actually dreaming, for the whole night they are dreaming, but they cannot 
remember. Their memory is not good, that is all. So in the morning when they say there 
was no dream, do not believe them. 

Why do the eyes move when there is a dream, and why do the eyes stop when there is no 
dream? Each eye movement is joined to the thought process. If thinking is there, the eyes 
will move. If there is no thinking, the eyes will not move — there is no need. 

So remember this third point also, that eye movements and thinking are joined together. 
That is why if you stop your eyes and their movements, your thought process will stop 
immediately. Or if your thought process stops your eyes will stop automatically. 


And one point more, the fourth. The eyes move continuously from one object to another. 
From A to B, from B to C, they go on moving. Movement is their nature. It is just like a 
river flowing: movement is their nature! And because of that movement, they are so 
alive! Movement is also life. 

You can try to stop your eyes at a particular point, at a particular object, and not allow 
them to move, but movement is their nature. You cannot stop movement, but you can 
stop your eyes: understand the distinction. You can stop your eyes at a particular fixed 
point — on a dot on the wall. You can stare at the dot; you can stop your eyes. But 
movement is their nature. So they may not move from object A to object B because you 
have forced them to remain at A, but then a very strange phenomenon happens. 
Movement is bound to be there; that is their nature. If you do not allow them movement 
from A to B, they will move from outwards to inwards. Either they can move from A to 
B, or if you do not allow this outward movement they will move inwards. Movement is 
their nature; they need movement. If you suddenly stop and do not allow them to move 
outwards, they will start moving inwards. 

So there are two possibilities of movement. One is from object A to object But — this is 
an outward movement. This is how it is happening naturally. But there is another 
possibility which is of tantra and yoga — not allowing movement from one outside object 
to another and stopping this movement. 



Then the eyes jump from an outside object to the inner consciousness, they begin to 
move inwards. Remember these four points; then it will be easy to understand the 
techniques. 

The first technique: 

EYES CLOSED, SEE YOUR INNER BEING IN DETAIL. THUS SEE YOUR TRUE 
NATURE. 

EYES CLOSED... 

Close your eyes. But this closing is not enough. Total closing means to close your eyes 
and stop their movements; otherwise the eyes will continue to see something which is of 
the outside. Even with closed eyes you will see things — images of things. Actual things 
are not there, but images, ideas, collected memories — they will start flowing. They are 
also from outside, so your eyes are still not totally closed. Totally closed eyes means 
nothing to see. 

Understand the difference. You can close your eyes; that is easy, everyone closes them 
every moment. In the night you close your eyes, but that will not reveal the inner nature 
to you. Close your eyes so that nothing remains to be seen — no outside object, no inside 
image of any outside object, just a blank darkness as if you have suddenly gone blind. 

Not blind only to reality, but to the dream reality also. 

One has to practise it. A long period will be needed; it cannot be done suddenly. You will 
need a long training. Close your eyes. Anytime you feel that it is easy and you have time, 
close your eyes and then inwardly stop all movements of the eyes. 

Do not allow any movement. Feel! Do not allow any movement. Stop all movements of 
the eyes. Feel as if they have become stones, and then remain in that "stoney" state of the 
eyes. Do not do anything; just remain there. Suddenly, someday, you will become aware 
that you are looking inside yourself. 

You can go just outside this building, move around the building and have a look, but that 
is looking at the building from the outside. Then you can enter into the room and you can 
stand in this room and have a look. That is looking at the building from the inside. When 
you are taking a round outside, you see the walls, but only one side; (The walls are the 
same, but) then you are seeing the outside of the walls. When you come in, the walls are 
the same, but now you will see the inside of the walls. 

You have seen your body only from the outside. You have seen your body in a mirror or 
you have seen your hands from the outside. You do not know what the inside of your 
body is. You have never entered into your own self; you have never been at the center of 
your body and being, to look around at what is there from the inside. 

This technique is very helpful for having a look from the inside, and that transforms your 
total consciousness, your total existence — because if you can have a look from the 
inside, you immediately become different from the world. This false identity that "I am 
the body" is only because we have been looking at our bodies from the outside. 

If you can have a look from the inside, the looker becomes different. And then you can 
move your consciousness in your body, from your toe to your head; you can now have a 
round inside the body. And once you become capable of having a look from the inside 
and moving there, then it is not difficult to go outside at all. 

Once you know how to move, once you know that you are separate from the body, you 
are freed from a great bondage. Now you have no gravitational pull; now you have no 



limitation. Now you are absolute freedom. You can go out of the body; you can go and 
come. And then your body becomes just an abode. 

Close your eyes, see your inner being in detail and move from limb to limb inside. Just 
go to your toe. Forget the whole body: move to the toe. Stay there and have a look. Then 
move through the legs, come on upwards, go to every limb. Then many things happen. 
MANY things happen! 

Then your body becomes such a sensitive vehicle, you cannot even imagine it. Then if 
you touch someone, you can move into your hand totally and that touch will become 
transfonning. That is what is meant by a master's touch: he can move to any limb totally, 
and then he is concentrated there. If you can move to any part of your body totally, that 
part becomes alive — so much alive that you cannot imagine what happens to that part. 
Then you can move to the eyes totally. If you can move to your eyes totally and then look 
into someone's eyes, you will penetrate him; you will go to his very depths. 


Now psychoanalysts are trying to go to the depths through psychoanalysis. Then they 
take one year, two years, three years... This is a sheer wastage of time. And life is so 
short that if three years are taken to analyze a person's mind, it is nonsense. And then too 
you cannot rely on whether the analysis is complete or not. You are groping in the dark. 
The Eastern approach has been through the eyes. No need of analyzing the person for 
such a long time. The work can be done by just entering through his eyes totally, 
touching his depths, knowing many things about him of which even he is not aware. 

The master has many things to do. One of the basic things is this: to analyze you, to go 
deep into you, to move into your darker realms which are unknown to you. And if he says 
to you that something is hidden in you, you will not believe it. How can you believe it? 
You are not aware of it. You know only one part of the mind — a very small fragment 
which is just the upper part, just the first layer. Behind it there are hidden nine layers 
which are not known to you, but through your eyes a penetration is possible. 

Close your eyes; SEE YOUR INNER BEING IN DETAIL. The first, outer part of the 
technique is to look at your body inwardly — from your inner center. Stand there and 
have a look. You will be separated from the body because the looker is never the looked 
at. 

The observer is different from the object. 

If you can see your body totally from the inside, then you can never fall into the illusion 
that you are the body. Then you will remain different — totally different: inside it but not 
it, in the body but not the body. This is the first part. Then you can move; then you are 
free to move. Once freed from the body, freed from the identity, you are free to move. 
Now you can move into your mind — deep down. Those nine layers which are within and 
unconscious can now be entered into. 

This is the inner cave of the mind. If you enter this cave of the mind, you will become 
separate from the mind also. Then you will see that the mind is also an object which you 
can look at, and that which is entering the mind is, again, separate and different. This 
entering into the mind is what is meant by: SEE YOUR INNER BEING IN DETAIL. 
Body and mind both should be entered and looked at from within. Then you are simply a 
witness, and this witness cannot be penetrated. 

That is why it is your innermost core: that is you. That which can be penetrated, that 
which can be seen, is not you. When you have come to that which cannot be penetrated, 



that in which you cannot move, which cannot be observed, then only have you come to 
the real self. You cannot witness the witnessing source, remember — that is absurd. 

If someone says that "I have witnessed my witness," that is absurd. 

Why is it absurd? Because if you have witnessed your witnessing self, then the 
witnessing self is not the witnessing self. That who has witnessed it is the witness. That 
who you can see, you are not; that which you can observe, you are not; that which you 
can become aware of, you are not. 

But a point comes beyond the mind where simply you are. Now you cannot divide your 
single existence into two: object and subject. Simple subjectivity is there, just witnessing. 
This is very, very difficult to comprehend through intellect because all the categories of 
the intellect are broken there. 

Because of this logical difficulty, Charwak — the expounder of one of the most logical 
philosophical systems in the world — says that you cannot know the self; there is no self- 
knowledge. And because there is no self-knowledge, how can you say that there is a elf? 
Whatsoever you know is not the self. The knower is the self, not the known, so you 
cannot say logically that "I have known my self." That is absurd, illogical. How can you 
know your self? Then who will be the knower and who will be the known? Knowledge 
means a dichotomy, a division between object and subject, the knower and the known. 

So Charwak says that all those who say they have known the self are talking nonsense. 
Self-knowledge is impossible because the self is irreducibly the knower. It cannot be 
converted into the known. 


Then Charwak says that if you cannot know the self, how can you say that there is self? 
Those like Charwak, who do not believe in the presence of a self, are called 
ANATMAVADIN. They say no self is; they say there is no self — that which cannot be 
known is not. And they are right logically. If logic is all, they are right. But this is the 
mystery of life, that logic is only the beginning — not the end. A moment comes when 
logic ends, but you do not end. A moment comes when logic is finished, but you are still 
there. Life is illogical. That is why it is difficult to comprehend, to conceive of what is 
meant when it is said that only the witness remains. 

For example, if there is a lamp in this room, you see many objects around you. When the 
lamp is turned off, there is darkness and nothing can be seen. When the lamp is put on, 
there is light and you can see everything in the room. But have you ever observed what is 
happening? If there are no objects, will you be able to see the lamp and its light? You 
will not be able to see its light, because to be seen the light must reflect something. It 
must strike an object. The rays must go to an object and then be reflected, then they will 
reach to your eyes. So first you see objects, then you infer that light is there. When you 
bum a lamp or a candle, you never see the light first. First you see the objects, and 
because of the objects you come to know about the light. 


Scientists say that if there are no objects then light cannot be seen. Look at the sky: it 
looks blue but it is not blue, it is filled with cosmic rays. It looks blue because there are 
no objects. Those rays cannot reflect and come to your eyes. If you go into space and 
there are no objects, then there will be darkness. Of course, rays will be passing just by 
your side, but there will be darkness. To know the light some objects have to be there. 



Charwak says that if you enter within and come to the point where only the witness has 
remained and there is nothing to be witnessed, how can you know about it? Some object 
must be there to be witnessed; only then can you know the witnessing. Logically, 
scientifically, it is right. But existentially it is not right. 

Those who really move inside come to a point where there is no object left but just the 
consciousness of being. You are, but nothing is there to be seen — only the seer. ONLY 
the seer! There is simple subjectivity without any object around it. The moment you 
come to this point, you have entered your ultimate goal of being. You can call it the alpha 
— the beginning, or you can call it the omega - the end. It is both, alpha and omega. This 
is called "self-knowledge." 

Linguistically the word is wrong because linguistically nothing can be said about it. 
Language becomes meaningless when you enter the world of the one. 

Language is meaningful only when you are in the world of two. In the world of duality 
language is meaningful because language is created in, is part of the dualistic world. It 
becomes meaningless when you enter the one, the non-dual. That is why those who know 
have remained silent — or even if they say something they hurriedly add that whatsoever 
they are saying is just symbolic, and whatsoever they are saying is not exactly true: it is 
false. 

Lao Tsu said that that which can be said cannot be true, and that which is true cannot be 
said. He remained silent; for most of his life he would not write anything. He said, "If I 
say something it will be untrue, because nothing can be said about the realm where only 
the One remains." 

EYES CLOSED, SEE YOUR INNER BEING IN DETAIL - body and mind both. 

THUS SEE YOUR TRUE NATURE. See your body and mind, your structure. And 
remember, body and mind are not two things. Rather, you are both: body-mind — 
psychosomatic. Mind is the finer part of the body and body is the grosser part of the 
mind. 

So if you can become aware of the structure of body-mind, if you can become conscious 
of the structure, you are freed from the structure, you are freed from the vehicle, you have 
become different. And this knowing that you are separate from the structure is your true 
nature. That is what you really are. This body will die, but that true nature never dies. 

This mind will die and change, and die again and again, but that true nature never dies. 
That true nature is eternal. That is why that true nature is neither your name nor your 
form. It is beyond both. 

So how to do this technique? Total closing of the eyes is needed. If you try it, close your 
eyes and then stop the movements. Let your eyes become just like stones. No movements 
allowed. Suddenly, any day while practising this, suddenly it will happen that you will be 
able to look within. The eyes which were always looking outside will turn in and you will 
have a glimpse inside. 

Then there is no difficulty. Once you have the glimpse inside, you know what to do and 
how to move. Only the first glimpse is difficult; after that you have the knack. Then it 
becomes just like a trick. Any moment you can close your eyes, make your eyes static, 
and you can enter the realm. 

Buddha was dying. It was the last day of his life, and he asked his disciples if they 
wanted to ask any questions. They were weeping, crying, and they said, "You have told 
us so much. Now nothing is left to ask." Buddha had a habit of asking thrice. He would 



never stop after asking once. He would ask again, and then he would ask still again 
whether you had any question to ask . Many times Buddha was asked, "Why do you ask a 
single thing three times?" He said, "Because man is so unaware, so unconscious, he may 
not have heard the first time and he may have missed the second time." 


Thrice he asked, and thrice his BHIKKHUS, monks, his disciples said, "Now we do not 
want to ask anything. You have said so much." Then he closed his eyes and said, "If you 
do not have anything to ask, before death occurs to the body I will move from it. Before 
death enters the body I will move from it." 

He closed his eyes. His eyes became static and he started moving. It is said that there 
were four parts to his movement inwards. First he closed his eyes; secondly, his eyes 
became static, there were no movements. If you had then the instrument for recording 
R.E.M., the graph would not have come. The eyes became static — that was the second 
thing. Thirdly, he looked at his body; then fourthly, he looked at his mind. 

This was the whole journey. Before death occurred he was back at his center, in his 
original source. That is why this death is not called death: we call it NIRVANA, and this 
is the difference. We call it nirvana — cessation — not death. Ordinarily, we die because 
death occurs to us. It never occurred to Buddha. Before death came, he had already 
returned to the source. 

Death occurred only to the dead body — he was not there to be found. So in Buddhist 
tradition it is said that he never died. Death could not catch him. It followed as it follows 
him everyone, but he could not be trapped; he tricked Death out of it. He must have been 
laughing — standing beyond, and Death was there only with a dead body. 


This technique is the same. Make four parts of it and move. And when you know one 
glimpse, the whole thing will become very easy and simple. Then any moment you can 
move in and come out, and go in and come out, just like coming out of your house and 
going in... coming out and going in. 

The second technique: 

LOOK UPON A BOWL WITHOUT SEEING THE SIDES OR THE MATERIAL. IN A 
FEW MOMENTS BECOME AWARE. 

Look at anything. A bowl or any object will do, but look with a different quality. LOOK 
UPON A BOWL WITHOUT SEEING THE SIDES OR THE MATERIAL. Look upon 
any object, but with these two conditions... Do not look at the sides, look at the object as 
a whole. Ordinarily, we look at parts. It may not be done so consciously, but we look at 
parts. If I look at you, first I see your face, then your torso, and then your whole body. 
Look at an object as a whole; do not divide it in parts. Why? Because when you divide 
something in parts, the eyes have an opportunity to move from one part to another. Look 
at a thing as a whole. You can do it. 

I can look at all of you in two ways. I can look from this side and then move. I can look 
at A, then at B, then I look at C and go on moving. When I look at A, B and C, I am not 
present — or just present on the fringe, but not focused. When I look at B, I am leaving A. 
When I look at C, A has been completely lost; he has gone out of my focus. 


I can look at this group in this manner, but I can look at the whole group without dividing 



it into individuals, into units, taking it as a whole. 

Try it. First look at a thing moving from one fragment to another. Then suddenly look at 
this thing as a whole; do not divide it. When you look at a thing as a whole, the eyes have 
no need to move. In order not to give any opportunity for movement, this has been made 
a condition: look at an object totally, taken as a whole. And secondly, without seeing the 
material. If the bowl is of wood, do not see the wood: just see the bowl, the form. Do not 
see the substance. 

It may be of gold, it may be of silver — observe it. Do not look at the material of which it 
is made, just look at the form. The first thing is to look at it as a whole. Secondly, look at 
it as a fonn, not as a substance. Why? Because substance is the material part, form is the 
spiritual part, and you are to move from the material to the non-material. It will be 
helpful. 

Try it. You can try it with anyone. Some man or some woman is standing: look, and take 
the man or woman wholly into your look, totally into it. It will be a weird feeling in the 
beginning because you are not habituated this way, but it is very beautiful in the end. And 
then, do not think about whether the body is beautiful or not, white or black, man or 
woman. Do not think; just look at the form. 

Forget the substance and just look at the form. 

In a few moments become aware. Go on looking at the form as a whole. Do not allow the 
eyes any movement. Do not start thinking about the material. What will happen? You 
will suddenly become aware of your self. Looking at something, you will become aware 
of your self. Why? Because for the eyes there is no possibility to move outwards. The 
form has been taken as a whole, so you cannot move to the parts. The material has been 
dropped; pure form has been taken. Now you cannot think about gold, wood, silver, etc. 

A form is pure fonn. No thinking about it is possible. A form is just a form; you cannot 
think about it. If it is of gold, you can think many things. You would like, you may like to 
steal it, or to do something with it, or to sell it, or you can think about the price — many 
things are possible. But of pure form, no thinking is possible. Pure fonn stops thinking. 
And there is no possibility of changing from one part to another; you have taken it as a 
whole. 

Remain with the whole and the form. Suddenly you will become aware of yourself, 
because now the eyes cannot move. And they need movement; that is their nature. So 
your look will move toward you. It will come back, it will return home, and suddenly you 
will become aware of your self. This becoming aware of one's self is one of the most 
ecstatic moments possible. 

When for the first time you become aware of your self, it has such beauty and such bliss 
that you cannot compare it with anything else you have known. 

Really, for the first time you become your self; for the first time you know you are. Your 
being is revealed in a flash. 

But why does it happen? You might have seen, in children’s books particularly, a picture, 
or in some psychological treatises, but I hope everyone must have seen somewhere or 
other — a picture of an old woman, and in the same lines a beautiful young woman is also 
hidden. There is one picture, the same lines, but two figures are in it: one old woman, one 
young woman. 

Look at the picture: you cannot become aware of both simultaneously. You will become 
aware either of one or the other. If you have become aware of the old woman, you cannot 



see where the young woman is hiding. But if you try to find her, it will be difficult, and 
the very effort will become a barrier. Because you have become aware of the old woman, 
she will have become a fixed thing in your eyes. With this fixed thing, you are trying to 
find the young woman. It is impossible, you will not be able to find her. You have to do a 
technique. 

Just stare at the old woman; forget the young woman completely. Stare at the old woman, 
at the old woman figure. Stare! Go on staring. Suddenly the old woman will disappear, 
and you will become aware of the young woman hiding there. 

Why? If you try to find her you will miss. This type of picture is given to children like a 
puzzle, and it is said to them, "Find the other." Then they start trying to find her, and 
because of that they miss. 

The trick is not to try to find her: just stare at the figure and you will become aware. 
Forget the other, no need to think about it. Your eyes cannot remain at one point, so if 
you stare at the old woman figure the eyes will become tired. Then suddenly they will 
move from the figure, and in that movement you will become aware of the other figure 
which is hidden just by the old woman's side, in the same lines. But the miracle is that 
when you become aware of the young woman, you cannot see the old woman. But you 
know that both are there now. 

In the beginning you may not have believed that the young woman is hiding, but now you 
know because you have seen the old woman first. Now you know that the old woman is 
there, but while looking at the young one you cannot simultaneously become aware of the 
old one. And if you become aware of the old one, you will miss the young are again. 

Both cannot be seen simultaneously; you can see only one at a time. 

The same happens with the outside and the inside look. Y ou cannot have both looks 
simultaneously. When you are looking at a bowl or at any object, you are looking out: the 
consciousness is moving out, the river is flowing out. 

You are focused on the bowl. Go on staring at it. That very staring will create the 
opportunity to move in. Your eyes will become tired; they would like to move. Finding 
nothing to move out toward, suddenly the river will turn back — that remains the only 
possibility. You will have forced your consciousness to fall back. And when you will 
become aware of you, you will miss the bowl; it will not be there. 

That is why a Shankara or a Nagarjuna says the whole world is illusory; they have kn own 
it so. When we come to know ourselves, the world is not. Really, the world is not 
illusory; it is there. But you cannot see both worlds simultaneously — that is the problem. 
So when a Shankara enters into himself, when he comes to know his self, when he 
becomes a witness, the world is not there. So he is right. He says it is maya — illusion. It 
simply appears to be; it is not there. 

Be aware of the fact. When you know the world, you are not. You are there, but hidden, 
and you cannot believe that you are hidden there; the world is too much present for you. 
And if you start to look for yourself directly, it will be difficult, the very effort may 
become a barrier. So tantra says, fix your stare somewhere in the world, on any object, 
and do not move from there, remain there. This very effort to remain there will create the 
possibility for the consciousness to begin to flow upwards — backwards. 

Then you will become aware of your self. 

But when you become aware of your self, the bowl will not be there. It is there, but FOR 



YOU it will not be there. So Shankara says the world is illusory because when you come 
to know your self the world is not there. It disappears like a dream. 

But Charwak and Epicurus and Marx, they are also right. They say the world is true, and 
your self is just false; it is nowhere to be found. They say science is real. Science says 
only matter is, only objects are; there is no subject. They are right, because the eyes are 
focused on the object. 

A scientist is constantly focusing on objects. He forgets the self completely. Both 
Shankara and Marx are right in one sense and wrong in another. If you are fixed upon the 
world, if your look is fixed on the world, the self will look illusory — like it is just a 
dream. If you are looking inwards, the world will become a dream. Both are real, but you 
cannot be aware of both simultaneously — that is the problem. And nothing can be done. 
You will meet the old woman or you will meet the young woman, and one will become 
maya, illusory. But this technique can be used easily. It will take a little time, but it is not 
difficult. 

Once you know the turning of consciousness, you can do it anywhere. Just riding in a bus 
or sitting in a train you can do it — anywhere. No need of a bowl or any particular object: 
you can do it with anything. 

With anything, stare, stare, stare... and suddenly turn inwards, and the train disappears. 

Of course, when you come back from your inner journey you will have traveled, but the 
train will have disappeared. From one station you will reach to another, and in between 
there will have been no train — just a gap. Of course, the train was there; otherwise how 
can you come to the other station? But it was not there for you; for you it was not. 

Those who can practice this technique, they can live in the world very easily. Any 
moment they can make anything disappear — remember this. You are bothered with your 
wife or with your husband — you can have her or him disappear. The wife is there sitting 
just by your side and she is not there. She is maya, she has disappeared. Just by staring 
and then turning your consciousness inwards, she has ceased to be there. And it has 
happened many times. 

I remember Socrates. His wife Xanthippe was very much worried about him, and any 
wife would have been in the same dilemma. To have a Socrates as a husband is one of the 
most difficult things to tolerate. Socrates is good as a teacher, but not as a husband. 

One day it happened... and because of it his wife has been condemned for two thousand 
years continuously, but that is not just, I do not think she has done anything wrong. 
Socrates was sitting there, and he must have been doing something like this technique — 
it is not recorded, I am just assuming. 

His wife came with a tray, a teapot to give him tea. She must have found that he was not 
there, so it is reported that she poured the tea upon Socrates, over his face. Then suddenly 
he came back. 

His face remained burned for his whole life. And because of this his wife has been 
condemned very much, but no one knows what Socrates was doing there — because no 
wife would do this suddenly, there is no need. He must have done something; something 
must have been happening there. That is why Xanthippe had to throw tea over him. He 
must have been in an inner trance, and the burning sensation of the tea must have brought 
him back, the consciousness must have returned. 

I assume that this was the case because there are many other cases reported about 
Socrates which are similar. For forty-eight hours he was not found. He was sought all 



over, the whole Athens went in search of Socrates, but he was not to be found anywhere. 
Then he was found outside the city, miles away, standing under a tree. Half of his body 
was just under snow. Snow was falling, and he was just frozen, standing there with open 
eyes. But he was not looking at anyone. 

When the crowd gathered around, they looked into his eyes and they thought that he was 
dead. His eyes were just like stones — looking, but not looking at anyone; just static, 
unmoving. They felt his heart: It was beating slowly; he was alive. 

They had to give him shocks, only then did he come back to look at them. Immediately 
he asked, "What is the time now?" He had missed forty-eight hours completely, they 
never existed for him. He was not in this world of time and space. 

So they asked, "What were you doing? We thought you were dead already... forty-eight 
hours!" He said, "I was staring at the stars, and just suddenly it happened that the stars 
disappeared. And then, I don't know... then the whole world disappeared. But I remained 
in such a cool, calm, blissful state that if it is death it is worth thousands of lives. If it is 
death, then I would like to enter it again and again." 

It may have happened without his knowledge, because Socrates was not a yogi, not a 
tantric. He was not in any way concerned consciously with any spiritual practice. But he 
was a great thinker, and it may have happened as an accident that he was staring at the 
stars in the night, and suddenly his look returned back, inwards. You can do it. And stars 
are really good objects. 

Lie down on the ground, look at the black sky, and then fix yourself on one star. 
Concentrate on it, stare at it. Narrow down your consciousness to one star; forget other 
stars. By and by, concentrate, narrow down your gaze. Other stars will be there just on 
the fringe, on the boundary. But by and by they will disappear, and only one star will 
remain. 

Then go on staring, go on staring. A moment will come when that star will disappear. 

And when that star disappears, you will appear to yourself. 

The third technique: 

SEE AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME A BEAUTEOUS PERSON OR AN ORDINARY 
OBJECT. 

Some basic things first; then you can do this technique. We look at things always with 
old eyes. You come to your home; you look at it without looking at it. You know it — 
there is no need to look at it. You have entered it again and again for years together. You 
go to the door, you enter the door; you may unlock the door. But there is no need to look. 
This whole process goes on robot-like, mechanically, unconsciously. If something goes 
wrong, only if your key is not fitting into the lock, then you look at the lock. If the key 
fits, you never look at the lock. Because of mechanical habits, repeatedly doing the same 
thing again and again, you lose the capacity to look; you lose the freshness to look. 

Really, you lose the function of your eyes — remember this. You become basically blind, 
because eyes are not needed. 

Remember the last time you looked at your wife. The last time you looked at your wife or 
at your husband may have been years ago. For how many years have you not looked? 

You just pass, giving a casual glimpse, but not a look. Go again and look at your wife or 
at your husband as if you were looking for the first time. 



Why? Because if you are looking for the first time, your eyes will be filled with a 
freshness. They will become alive. 

You are passing through a street, and a beautiful woman passes. Your eyes become alive 
— lighted. A sudden flame comes to them. This woman may be a wife to someone. He 
will not look at her; he may become as blind as you have become seeing your wife. Why? 
For the first time eyes are needed, the second time not so much, and the third time they 
are not needed. After a few repetitions you become blind. We live blindly. 

Be aware. When you meet your children, are you looking at them? You are not looking at 
them. This habit kills the eyes; the eyes become bored — repeatedly there is the old again 
and again. And nothing is old really, it is just that your habit makes you feel that it is so. 
Your wife is not the same as she was yesterday, she cannot be; otherwise she is a miracle. 
Nothing can be the same the next moment. Life is flux, everything is flowing, nothing is 
the same. 

The same sunrise will not happen again. In a sense also, the sun is not the same. Every 
day it is new; basic changes have occurred. And the sky will not be the same again; this 
morning is not going to come again. Every morning has its own individuality, and the sky 
and the colors, they will not gather in the same pattern again. But you go on moving as if 
everything is just the same. 


They say nothing is new under the sky. Really, nothing is old under the sky. Only the 
eyes become old, accustomed to things; then nothing is new. For children everything is 
new: that is why everything gives them excitement. Even a colored stone on a beach, and 
they become so excited. You will not be excited even seeing God himself coming to your 
house. You will not be so excited! You will say, "I know him, I have read about him." 
Children are so excited because their eyes are new and fresh, And everything is a new 
world, a new dimension. 

Look at children's eyes — at the freshness, the radiant aliveness, the vitality. They look 
mirror-like, silent, but penetrating. Only such eyes can reach within. 

So this technique says, SEE AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME A BEAUTEOUS PERSON 
OR AN ORDINARY OBJECT. Anything will do. Look at your shoes. You have been 
using them for years, but look as if for the first time and see the difference: the quality of 
your consciousness suddenly changes. 

I wonder whether you have seen Van Gogh's painting of his shoe. It is one of the rarest 
things. There is just an old shoe — tired, sad, as if just on the verge of death. It is just an 
old shoe, but look at it, feel it, and you will feel what a long, boring life this shoe must 
have passed through. It is so sad, just praying to be taken away from life, tired 
completely, every nerve broken, just an old man, an old shoe. 

It is one of the most original paintings. But how could Van Gogh see it? 

You have even more old shoes with you — more tired, more dead, more sad, depressed, 
but you have never looked at them, at what you have done to them, how you have 
behaved with them. They tell a life story about you because they are your shoes. They 
can say everything about you. If they could write, they would write a most authentic 
biography of the person they had to live with — every mood, every face. When their 
owner was in love he behaved differently with the shoes, when he was angry he behaved 
differently. And the shoes were not concerned at all, and everything has left a mark. 

Look at Van Gogh's painting, and then you will see what he could see in the shoes. 



Everything is there — a whole biography of the person who was using them. But how 
could he see? To be a painter, one has to regain the child's look, the freshness. He can 
look at everything — at most ordinary things even. He can look! 

Cezanne has painted a chair, just an ordinary chair, and you may even wonder... why 
paint a chair? There is no need. But he worked on that painting for months together. You 
may have stopped for a single moment to look at it, and he worked for months on it 
because he could look at a chair. A chair has its own spirit, its own story, its own 
miseries and happinesses. It has lived! It has passed through life! It has its own 
experiences, memories. 

They are all revealed in Cezanne’s painting. But do you look at your chair? No one looks 
at it, no one feels it. 

Any object will do. This technique is just to make your eyes fresh — so fresh, alive, 
radiantly vital, that they can move within and you can have a look at your inner self. SEE 
AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME. Make it a point to see everything as if for the first time, 
and sometime, suddenly, you will be surprised at what a beautiful world you have been 
missing. Suddenly become aware and look at your wife as if for the first time. And it will 
be no wonder if you feel again the same love you felt the first time, the same surge of 
energy, the same attraction in its fullest. But look as if for the first time at a 
BEAUTEOUS PERSON OR AN ORDINARY OBJECT. What will happen? You will 
regain your eyesight. You are blind. Just now, as you are, you are blind. And this 
blindness is more fatal than physical blindness, because you have eyes and still you 
cannot look. 

Jesus says many times, "Those who have eyes, let them see. Those who have ears, let 
them hear." It seems that he was talking to blind men or to deaf men. But he goes on 
repeating it What was he - a superintendent in some institute for the blind ? He goes on 
repeating, "If you have eyes, look." He must be talking with ordinary men who have 
eyes. But why this insistence on, "If you have eyes, look"? He is talking about the eyes 
which this technique can give you. 


Look at everything you pass as if for the first time. Make it a continuous attitude. Touch 
everything as if for the first time. What will happen? If you can do this, you will be freed 
from your past. The burden, the depth, the dirtiness, the accumulated experiences - you 
will be freed from them. 

Every moment, move from the past. Do not allow it to enter within you; do not allow it to 
be carried — leave it. Look at everything as if for the first time. This is a great technique 
to help you to be freed from the past. Then you are constantly in the present, and by and 
by you will have an affinity with the present. Then everything will be new. Then you will 
be able to understand Heraclitus' saying that you cannot step twice in the same river. 

You cannot see a person twice - the same person — because nothing is static. Everything 
is river-like, flowing and flowing and flowing. If you are freed from the past and you 
have a look which can see the present, you will enter the existence. And this entry will be 
double: you will enter into everything, into its spirit, and you will enter into yourself also 
because the present is the door. All meditations in one way or the other try to get you to 
live in the present. So this technique is one of the most beautiful techniques — and easy. 
You can try it, and without any danger. 

If you are looking afresh even when passing through the same street again, it is a new 



street. 


Meeting the same friend as if he is a stranger, looking at your wife as you looked for the 
first time when she was a stranger, can you really say that he or she is not still a stranger? 
You may have lived for twenty years or thirty years or forty years with your wife, but can 
you say that you are acquainted with her? She is still a stranger: you are two strangers 
living together. You know the outer habits of each other, the outer reactions, but the inner 
core of the being is unknown, untouched. 

Look freshly again, as if for the first time, and you will see the same stranger. Nothing, 
nothing, has become old; everything is new. This will give a freshness to your look. Your 
eyes will become innocent. Those innocent eyes can see. Those innocent eyes can enter 
into the inner world. 

THE END. 



Chapter 22: The third eye and psychic eye power 


The first question: 

Question 1 

EXPLAIN THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE TWO EYES WITH THE THIRD EYE. IN 
WHICH WAY DO THE TECHNIQUES CONCERNED WITH LOOKING AFFECT 
THE THIRD EYE? 

Firstly, two points are to be understood. One, the energy of the third eye is really the 
same as that which moves in the two ordinary eyes — the same energy. It begins to move 
in a new center. The third eye is already there, but non-functioning, and it cannot see 
unless these ordinary eyes become unseeing. 

The same energy has to move in it. When the energy is not moving in the two eyes it can 
move in the third, and when it moves in the third the two eyes will become unseeing. 

They will be there, but you won’t be able to see through them. That energy that looks 
through them will be absent; it will move through a new center. That center is between 
these two eyes. It is already there, complete; any moment it can function. But it needs 
energy to function, and that same energy has to be diverted. 

Secondly, when you are seeing through the two eyes, you are seeing through the physical 
body. The third eye is not really a part of the physical body. It is part of the second body 
which is hidden — the subtle body, the SUKSHMA SHARIR. It has a corresponding spot 
in the physical body, but it is not part of it. That is why physiology cannot believe that 
there exists a third eye or anything like it, because your skull can be analyzed, penetrated, 
x-rayed, and there is no point, no physical entity which can be said to be the third eye. 

The third eye is part of the subtle body, the sukshma sharir. 

When you die your physical body dies, but your sukshma sharir, your subtle body, moves 
with you; it takes another birth. Unless the subtle body dies, you can never be freed from 
the circle of birth-death, rebirth-redeath. The circle moves on. 

The third eye belongs to the subtle body. When the energy is moving through the 
physical body, you are looking through the physical eyes. That is why through the 
physical eyes you cannot look at anything other than the physical, than the material. The 
two eyes are physical. Through these eyes you cannot look at anything, cannot see 
anything which is not physical. 

Only with the third eye functioning can you enter a different dimension. Now you can see 
things which are invisible to the physical eyes, but are visible to the subtle eyes. Then, 
with the third eye functioning, if you look at a person you look at his soul, at his spirit, 
not at his body — just like you look at the physical body through the physical eyes, but 
you cannot see the soul. The same happens when you look through the third eye: you 
look and the body is not there, just the one who resides in the body. 

Remember these two points. Firstly, the same energy has to move. It has to be taken 
away from the ordinary physical eyes and allowed to move through the third eye. 
Secondly, the third eye is not part of the physical body. 

It is part of the subtle body, the second body that is within. Because it is part of the subtle 
body, the moment you can look through it you look at the subtle world. You are sitting 
here. If a ghost is sitting here you cannot see it, but if your third eye is functioning you 
will see the ghost, because subtle existence can be seen only through the subtle eye. 



How is the third eye related with this technique of looking? It is deeply related. Really, 
this technique is to open the third eye. If your two eyes stop completely, if they become 
non-moving, static, like stones, with no movement in these eyes, the energy stops flowing 
through them. If you stop them, the energy stops flowing through them. The energy 
flows; that is why they move. The vibration, the movement, is because of the energy. If 
the energy is not moving, your eyes will become just like a dead man’s eyes — stoney, 
dead. 

Looking at a spot, staring at it without allowing your eyes to move anywhere else, will 
give a staticness. Suddenly the energy which was moving through the two eyes will not 
be moving through these eyes. And energy has to move; energy cannot be static. Eyes 
can be static, but energy cannot be static. When these eyes are closed to the energy, if 
suddenly the doors are closed and the energy cannot move through these eyes, it tries to 
find a new path. And the third eye is just near, just between the two eyebrows, half an 
inch deep. 

It is just near — the nearest point. 

If your energy is released from these eyes, the first thing that can happen is that it will 
move through the third eye. It is just as if water is flowing and you close one hole: it will 
find another — the nearest which can be found with the least resistance. It will find it 
automatically; you do not have to do anything specifically. With these physical eyes, you 
just have to stop energy from moving through them, and then energy will find its own 
path and it will move through the third eye. 

This movement through the third eye transforms you into a different world. You start 
seeing things you have never seen, you start feeling things you have never felt, you start 
smelling things you have never smelled. A new world, a subtle world, starts functioning. 
It is already there. The eye is there; the world, the subtle world, is already there. Both are 
there, but not revealed. 

Once you function in that dimension, many things become apparent to you. For example, 
if a person is going to die, if your third eye is functioning you will become immediately 
aware that he is going to die. No physical analysis, no physical diagnosis can say that 
certainly he is going to die. At the most, we can talk about probabilities. We can say 
perhaps he will die, and this statement will be conditional: "If such and such remains the 
case, he may die; if something can be done he may not die." 


Medical diagnosis cannot yet be certain about death. Why? So much development and 
yet so much uncertainty about death! Really, medical science is trying to deduce death, to 
infer death, through physical symptoms, and death is a subtle phenomenon, not physical. 
It is an invisible phenomenon of a different dimension. But with the third eye 
functioning, you suddenly feel that a man is going to die. How do you feel it? Death has 
an impact. If the man is going to die, then death has already cast its shadow there, and 
that shadow can be felt with the third eye at any time. 

When a child is born, those who have had much deep practice using the third eye can see 
the time of his death that very moment. But then the shadow is very subtle. When a 
person is going to die in six months, then anyone whose third eye functions a little can 
see the death six months before it comes. The shadow darkens. Really, around you a dark 
shadow settles down and that can be felt, but not with these two eyes. 

With the third eye, you begin to see auras. A person comes to you; he cannot deceive 



you, because whatever he says is meaningless unless it corresponds to his aura. He may 
say he is a person who never gets angry, but the red aura will show that he is filled with 
anger. He cannot deceive as far as his aura is concerned, because he is completely 
unaware about the aura. Whatsoever he says can be judged through his aura, whether it is 
right or wrong. 

With the third eye you start seeing radiations, auras. 

In the old days, that was how someone was initiated. Unless the aura was right, the 
master would wait, because your wish fulfillment was not the question. You may have 
wanted to be initiated, but that was not enough unless your aura said that you were ready. 
So for years the disciple had to wait until the aura was ready; it had nothing to do with 
his desire to be initiated — that is futile. Sometimes even for lives, one had to wait. 

For example, Buddha resisted the temptation to initiate women for many years. So much 
pressure was put upon him; still he would reject this. Ultimately he agreed to initiate 
women, but then he said, "Now my religion will not be alive after five hundred years; I 
have compromised. But because you are forcing me, I will initiate women." 

What was the reason why he would not initiate women? One basic reason was this: with 
man, sexual energy can be regulated very easily. A man can become a celibate very 
easily. With a woman’s body it is difficult because menses is a regular phenomenon — 
unconscious, uncontrollable, non-voluntary. Semen ejaculation can be controlled, but 
menses cannot be controlled. Or, if one tries to control it, then it will have very bad 
effects on the body. 

The moment a woman enters her period of menses, her aura changes completely: it 
becomes sexual, aggressive, depressed, all that is negative surrounds the woman, and this 
happens every month. 

Only because of this Buddha was not ready to initiate women. He said that it was difficult 
because every month the menses moves in a circle, periodically, and nothing can be done 
voluntarily. Something can be done, but it was difficult to do that in Buddha's time. Now 
it can be done. 

Mahavir completely denied any possibility of a woman being liberated from a woman's 
body. He said that a woman has to be born again as a man, and only then can she be 
liberated. So all the effort should be channelled for a woman to enter a new birth as a 
man. Why? It was a problem of the aura. 

If you initiate a woman, every month she will fall down and the whole effort will be lost. 
There was no discrimination, no evaluation about whether or not woman and man are 
equal; that was not the question. But for Mahavir the question was this: how to help? So 
he found an easier way: to help a woman to be reborn as a man. That was easier. It meant 
that a woman had to wait for another life, and the whole effort had to be directed toward 
the goal that she should be bom in a male body. 

This appeared easier to Mahavir than to initiate a woman, because every month she 
comes back down to the original state and all effort is lost. But these two thousand years 
have done much. Particularly, tantra has done much. 

Tantra has found different doors, and tantra is the only system in the world which makes 
no differentiation between man and woman. 

Rather, on the contrary, it says that a woman can become easily liberated, and the reason 
is the same, only looked at from a different angle. Tantra says that because a woman’s 



body is periodically regulated, she can detach herself from her body more easily than 
man. Because man's mind is more involved in the body, that is why he can regulate it. 
Man's mind is more involved in the body; that is why he can control his sex. 

Woman’s mind is not so involved in the body. The body functions as an automata — 
different, on a different layer, and the woman cannot do anything about it. It is like an 
automatic mechanism; it goes on. Tantra says that because of this woman can detach 
herself from her body very easily. And if this becomes possible — this detachment, this 
gap — then there is no problem. 

So it is a very paradoxical thing: if a woman decides to be celibate and to detach herself 
from her body, she can maintain her purity more easily than a man. Once the detachment 
is there, then she can forget the body completely. Man can detach himself very easily, 
can control very easily, but his mind is more involved in the body. That is why he can 
control, but then he will have to control every day, continuously. And because feminine 
sex is passive, it is very easy for a woman to be relaxed about sex. Man's sex is active. It 
is easy for him to control it, but difficult for him to relax about it. 


So tantra has been trying to find many, many ways, and tantra is the only system which 
says there is no difference, that even a feminine structure can be used. So tantra is the 
only path which gives women equal status. Otherwise, every religion, whatsoever it may 
say, deep down feels that women are inferior. It may be Christianity, it may be Islam, it 
may be Jainism, it may be Buddhism, but deep down it feels this, and the reason is the 
diagnosis through the third eye, the aura — the forming of the aura every month at the 
time of menses. 

With the third eye you become capable of seeing things which are there, but which 
cannot be seen with ordinary eyes. All the methods about looking affect the third eye, 
because looking means a certain energy moving outward from you toward the world. If 
blocked, if suddenly blocked, the energy will find another path, and the third eye is just 
near. 

In Tibet there were even surgical operations for the third eye. Sometimes it happens that 
your third eye is blocked because you have not used it for millennia. If the third eye is 
blocked and you stop your eyes, you will feel a certain uneasiness because the energy is 
there and there is no path where to move. In Tibet they devised certain operations to have 
the passage cleared. This can be done. And if it is not done, then many things can happen. 
Just two or three days before, one sannyasin — she is here — came to me. 

She said, "There is a very hot sensation at the third eye." And not only was there the 
sensation, the skin had become burned as if really someone had burned it from the 
outside. The sensation, the burning, was inside, but the skin was affected. It became 
completely burned. She was afraid — what had happened? The feeling was pleasant, the 
warmth was very pleasant as if something were melting. Something was happening, but 
even the physical body had become affected, as if actual fire had touched it. 

The reason? The third eye had started functioning, the energy began to move in it. It had 
been cold for lives together; energy never moved through it. When for the first time 
energy moves there is the warmth. When for the first time energy moves there is the 
burning sensation. And because the passage has to be created and forced, it may become 
like fire. It is concentrated energy hammering on the third eye. 

In India we have been using sandalwood powder and other things, ghee and other things, 



just on the third eye spot. We call this mark a TILAK. It is put just on the third eye spot 
in order to give a certain coolness from the outside. So if wannth comes within and fire 
moves within, it should not affect the skin outside. Not only can the skin be burnt by it, 
sometimes even holes have appeared on the skull. 

I was reading one of the most penetrating books about one of the very deep mysteries of 
human existence on the earth. 

There have always been proposals that man came from some other star, because there 
seems to be no possibility that man suddenly evolved on earth. There seems to be no 
possibility really that man could have evolved from a baboon or a chimpanzee. And there 
has been no link, because if man evolved from the chimpanzee to be man, there must be 
li nk s — something that is between man and chimpanzee — but there is no such thing. With 
all the available data and discoveries, we have not yet found a single body structure, a 
skull or anything, which we can say is a link between the chimpanzee and man. 

Evolution means steps. A chimpanzee cannot suddenly become a man — stages must have 
been followed. But there is no proof, so Darwin’s theory remains a hypothesis. There are 
no in-between li nk s. 

So there have always been fantastic proposals that man must have appeared on the earth 
suddenly. A man's skull dating very far back, a hundred thousand years back, has been 
found. But in comparison with other skulls there is nothing lacking in it. It is the same 
type of skull, with the same brain, with the same structure. We have not evolved really as 
far as mind structure is concerned. 

So it seems man suddenly appeared on earth. He must have come from some other planet. 
For example, now we are traveling into space, and if we find some planet worth living 
upon we will populate it; then suddenly man will appear there. 

I was reading a book about such a proposal, and the author has been finding many things 
to help his hypothesis. 

There is one thing that I wanted to tell you about in connection with this matter of 
looking. He has found one skull in Mexico and one in Tibet. Both of these skulls have 
holes at the third eye spot, and the holes are such that they could only have been made by 
a gun bullet. The skulls are at least one-half million to one million years old. If the holes 
were made by an arrow, they could not be round. They are so round that they could not 
have been made by an arrow; only a bullet could make such holes. So that author tries to 
prove by this that bullets existed one million years before. Otherwise how were these two 
men killed? 

But really, that doesn’t prove anything about bullets. Whenever the third eye is blocked 
completely and the energy moves suddenly, this hole can appear. The energy is just like a 
bullet coming from within — just like a bullet. It is concentrated fire; it will create a hole. 
Those two skulls with holes show not that those men were killed by bullets, but simply 
that there was a third eye phenomenon. The third eye was blocked completely; energy 
became concentrated. The eyes were stopped completely; energy could not move, and it 
became fire. Then it exploded. Just so that there would not be such an accident, in Tibet 
they discovered and devised methods to make a hole so that the energy could move 
easily. 


So whenever you are trying this looking, remember this: if you feel a burning sensation, 



do not be afraid. But if you feel that the energy has become a great fire as if a live bullet 
is there and wants to penetrate the skull — stop the method and come immediately to me. 
Do not do it further. If you feel as if a bullet is there and it wants to penetrate the skull, 
stop. Open your eyes and move them as much as you can. Immediately the sensation will 
drop, the energy will have moved through the eyes. And unless I say something to you do 
not proceed, because sometimes it has happened that the skull is broken. 

Nothing is wrong even if it happens. Even if one dies in it nothing is wrong, because one 
has achieved something which is beyond death. But just to be safe, stop whenever you 
feel that something wrong can happen — with any method, not only with this. With any 
method, if you feel something wrong is possible, stop. 

In India now, many methods are being taught and many, many seekers suffer 
unnecessarily, because those who teach are not even aware of the dangers. And those 
who follow, they follow in a blind way. They do not know where they are moving or 
what they are doing. 

I am talking about these one hundred and twelve methods specifically because of this — 
so that you become aware of all the methods, all the possibilities, the dangers, and so that 
you can then find out which will suit you best. 

Then if you proceed in any method, you will be fully aware of what can happen, what 
you have to be aware of, and when something happens how you have to tackle it. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

IT IS OBSERVED THAT THE PRACTITIONERS OF PSYCHIC SCIENCES 
POSSESS TENSE AND FEARFUL EYES. EXPLAIN WHAT THIS INDICATES AND 
HOW TO OVERCOME THIS PHENOMENON. 

Those who practice hypnotism, mesmerism, magnetism, or things like this, will have 
very tense eyes — obviously, because they are trying to move their energy through the 
eyes forcibly. They are bringing their total energy near the eyes just to influence, impress 
or dominate someone. Their eyes will become tense because then their eyes are flooded 
with energy, more than they can tolerate. Their eyes will be red, tense, and if you look at 
them you will feel a sudden shivering: they are using their eyes in a very political way. If 
they look at you, they are sending their energy to dominate you. And through eyes, 
domination is very easy. 

This was the case with Rasputin, who dominated Russia, before Lenin, just through his 
eyes. He was an ordinary peasant, uneducated, but with very magnetic eyes, and he came 
to know how to use this. The moment he would look at you, you would forget yourself, 
and in that moment he could send any suggestion to you telepathically and you would 
follow it. That is how he dominated the Czar and the Czarina, the royal family, and 
through them, the whole Russia. 

Nothing could be done without his will. 

You can have those eyes also; it is not difficult. You have just to leam how to bring your 
total body energy to the eyes. They become flooded, and then, whenever you look at 
someone your energy starts flowing toward him. It envelopes the person, penetrates his 
mind, and in this flooded shock his thinking stops. And this is not a very rare thing that 
happens just with man, it happens all over the animal kingdom. There are many animals 
who will just look at their prey, and if the prey looks at them he is done for. Then the 
prey's eyes become fixed; he cannot move, he cannot escape. 



Hunters know this well, and hunters develop very powerful eyes because they are always 
in search in the darkness for animals. Their eyes become powerful. Thieves and hunters 
by and by gather more energy in their eyes automatically, because of their work. 

Suddenly a lion comes before a hunter, and he is without weapons and he cannot do 
anything. Then this is what has been done always: the hunter can stare into the eyes of 
the lion, and now it will depend on whether he has more magnetic eyes or the lion. If the 
lion is less magnetic and the hunter can bring his total energy to his eyes... And it is easy, 
he can do this, because when death is there one can do anything. When death is there the 
hunter can put his total energy at stake. If the hunter can look directly into the eyes of the 
lion and forget everything and just look, if he can just become the look, then the whole 
energy will move from his eyes and the lion will escape. 

He will be trembling with fear. 

Through the eyes you can cause your whole energy to flood out, but when you do that 
your eyes will be tense: you will not be able to sleep, you will not be able to relax. So all 
those who are trying to dominate others will be restless. If you look at their faces their 
eyes will be alive, but their faces will be dead. Look at any hypnotist: his eyes will be 
very much alive, but his face will be dead, because his eyes are sucking the whole energy 
and nothing is left anywhere else. 

Do not do this because it is useless to dominate anyone. The only useful thing is to 
dominate yourself. It is useless, a wastage of your energy. Nothing is achieved through it 
— just an egoistic feeling that you can dominate. So this is evil, a black art. That is the 
difference between black magic and white magic. Black magic means using your energy, 
wasting it, in dominating others. White magic means using the same methods, but using 
your energy in dominating your own life, becoming a master of yourself. 

And remember, sometimes similarities happen... If a Buddha moves amongst you, you 
will be dominated by him, although he is not dominating you. He is not trying to 
dominate you, but you will be dominated because he is the master of himself. And he is 
such a master that all around him whosoever moves will become a slave. But there is no 
conscious effort on his part. 

Rather, on the contrary, he will continually insist, "Be your own master — remember 
this." And this insistence is because of this knowledge. 

Buddha knows that whosoever comes around him will become a slave. He is not doing 
anything; he is not trying to dominate anyone, but he knows this will happen. His last 
dying words were, "Be a lamp unto yourself." He was dying, and Ananda asked him, just 
a day before his actual death, "When you will be no more, what shall we do?" He said, "It 
is good that I shall be no more. Then you can be your own master. Be a lamp unto 
yourself; forget me. It is good, because when I am no more you will be freed from my 
domination." 

Those who try to dominate others will try in every way to make a slave of you. That is 
evil, satanic. Those who become their own masters will help you to become masters, and 
they will try in every way to cut their influence. That can be done in many ways. 

For example, I will tell a more recent incident. Ouspensky, the chief disciple of Gurdjieff, 
was working under Gurdjieff for ten years. It was very difficult to work under Gurdjieff. 
He was a man of infinite magnetism. Whosoever would come around him would be 
pulled. 

With such people, either you are pulled or you become afraid and go against them, but 



you cannot remain indifferent. You are either for or against; you cannot be indifferent to 
such people. 

And that going against is just a safety measure. If you come around a person who is 
magnetic, either you will become a slave to him or, just to protect yourself, you will 
become an enemy, because that is a protection. 

Ouspensky came to him, stayed with him, worked with him, and there was no theoretical 
knowledge to be imparted. He was a man of action. He would give techniques, and one 
had to work. Then Ouspensky achieved a certain crystallization. He became an integrated 
man; he was transfonned. He was not fully enlightened yet, but he was not fast asleep as 
we are. He was in between, just on the verge. 

When you feel that the morning is near, when you start listening to the noises which 
indicate morning is near, you are asleep, but not totally asleep. The sleep is just on the 
verge of going. You are not yet awake, you may again fall into a sleep. You are just on 
the surface, just near awakening. 

And when Ouspensky was just near awakening, he was thinking that now Gurdjieff will 
help him more because this was the moment. But suddenly Gurdjieff started behaving in 
such a strange way that Ouspensky had to leave. He started up in such strange ways with 
him, did such absurd things, contradictory, nonsensical — on the surface — that 
Ouspensky had to leave him on his own account. 

Gurdjieff never told him to leave. On his own account he left him, went against him, said 
that he had gone mad. 

He started teaching, and he always said, "I am teaching according to Gurdjieff, my 
teacher, but now he is mad." He would say, "According to the early Gurdjieff..." He 
would not talk about the later Gurdjieff. 

But the basic reason why Gurdjieff did this is deep compassion. That was the moment 
when Ouspensky had to be left alone; otherwise he would have become a constant 
dependent. The moment came when he had to be thrown out, and in such a way that he 
would never become aware that he had been thrown out consciously. 

Such persons like Buddha or Gurdjieff will affect you without their conscious effort and 
you will be pulled toward them. But they will try in every way that you are not pulled in 
that way: that you are not attracted hypnotically, that you are not dominated by them. 

And they will help to make you masters, standing on your own feet. 

Those who are trying to dominate others, their eyes will be tense, evilish. You will not 
feel any innocence in their eyes, you will not feel purity in their eyes. You will feel 
attraction, but the attraction will be like alcohol. You will feel a magnetic pull, but the 
pull will be not to free you but to enslave you. 

Remember, never use any energy to dominate anyone. Because of this, Buddha, Mahavir, 
Jesus, they made it a point, and they went on hammering, that the moment you enter the 
spiritual search, be fdled with love for everyone, even for your enemy — because if you 
are filled with love you will not be attracted to the inner violence which wants to 
dominate. 


Only love can become an antidote. Otherwise when the energy comes to you and you are 
overfilled with it, you will start dominating. This happens every day. I have come across 
many, many people... I start helping them, they will grow a little, and the moment they 



feel that a certain energy is coming to them they will start dominating others, they will 
try now to use it. 

Remember, never use spiritual energy to dominate. You are wasting your efforts. Sooner 
or later you will be empty again, and you will fall down suddenly. And this is pure 
wastage, but it is very difficult to control it because you become aware that now you can 
do certain things. If you touch someone who was ill and he becomes okay, how can you 
resist touching others now? How can you resist? 

If you cannot resist, you will waste your energy. Something has happened to you, but 
soon you will throw it away unnecessarily. And really, the mind is so cunning that you 
may be thinking that you are helping others by healing them. That may be just a cunning 
trick of the mind, because if you have no love, how can you be so concerned with others' 
diseases, their illnesses, their health? You are not concerned. Really, now this is a power. 
If you can heal, you can dominate them. 

You may say, "I am just helping them," but even in your help you are simply trying to 
dominate them. Your ego will be fulfilled. 

This will become a food for your ego. So all the old treatises say beware. They say 
beware because when the energy comes to you, you are at a dangerous point. You can 
waste it, you can throw it away. When you feel any energy, make it a secret; do not allow 
anyone to know about it. 

Jesus said, "If your right hand is doing something, do not allow the left hand to know 
about it." In the Sufi mystic tradition, they say when energy starts coming, do not even 
pray before others, do not go to a mosque with others. Why? When the energy comes and 
someone is praying, and there are many persons present, they will feel immediately that 
something is happening. So the Sufis say that then you should do your prayers deep in 
the night — at midnight — when everyone is asleep and no one can be aware of what is 
happening to you. Do not tell anyone what is happening to you. 

But the mind is just a chattering box. If something happens, immediately you will go and 
spread the good news that something has happened to you. Then you have wasted it. And 
if people are impressed, then all you have gained is their good opinion and nothing else. 
This is not a good bargain. Wait! A moment will come when your energy becomes 
accumulated; it reaches a point where it becomes integrated, transformed. Then things 
will happen around you without your doing anything. And only then can you help others 
to be their own masters — when you are your own master. 


I remember one Sufi mystic, Junnaid. One day a man came to him and he said, "Junnaid, 
master, great master, I have come to know your inner secret. People say you have a 
golden secret and that you have not told it to anyone until now. I will do anything you 
say, but tell me the secret." Junnaid said, "I have been keeping it, hiding it, for thirty 
years, so how much time can you wait? You will have to go through a preparation. It is a 
thirty-year secret but I will tell it to you. But for how much time will you keep patient?" 
The man became afraid, scared. He said, "How long do you suggest?" Junnaid said, "At 
least thirty years. It is not too much, I am not asking too much." 

The man said, "Thirty years? I will think it over." Junnaid said, "Then if you come back 
again, I will not be ready to give it to you in thirty years. Remember, if you decide just 
now, then okay. Otherwise I will also have to think." So the man agreed. 

It is said that he remained for thirty years with Junnaid. Then the last day came, and he 



went to Junnaid and said to him, "Now communicate your secret." Junnaid said, "I will 
give it to you on one condition: that you will keep it a secret. You are not to tell it to 
anyone. This secret must die with you, unknown." 

The man said, "Why have you wasted my whole life? Thirty years I was waiting for the 
secret just to tell others, and now there is a condition! Then what is the use of knowing it 
if I cannot tell it to others? If you make this condition, then please do not tell it to me; 
otherwise it will haunt me, I will know something which I cannot tell to others. 

So be kind enough and do not tell it to me. You have wasted my thirty years. A little life 
is left, so let me live it relaxedly. This will be too much, knowing something without 
telling it to others." 

Whatsoever you gain through any spiritual method, let it remain secret. Do not go on 
spreading it, do not try to use it in any way. Let it remain unused, pure. Only then will it 
be used for inner transformation. If you use it outwardly, it is a wastage. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

YOU MENTIONED THAT RAPID EYE MOVEMENTS INDICATE MENTAL 
PROCESSES AND THAT IF EYE MOVEMENTS ARE STOPPED THE MENTAL 
PROCESSES WILL ALSO STOP. BUT THIS PHYSIOLOGICAL CONTROL OF THE 
MENTAL PROCESSES, THIS STOPPING OF EYE MOVEMENTS, SEEMS TO 
CREATE PSYCHIC TENSIONS SUCH AS HAPPENS WHEN WE KEEP OUR EYES 
CLOSED UNDER A BLINDFOLD FOR A LONG TIME. 

Firstly, your mind and your body are not two things as far as tantra is concerned. 
Remember that always. Do not say, "physiological process" and "mental process." They 
are not two — just two parts of one whole. Whatsoever you do physiologically affects the 
mind. Whatsoever you do psychologically affects the body. They are not two, they are 
one. 

You can say that the body is a solid state of the same energy and the mind is a liquid state 
of the same energy — of the same energy! So no matter what you are doing 
physiologically, do not think that this is just physiological. 

Do not wonder how it is going to help any transfonnation in the mind. If you take 
alcohol, what happens to your mind? Alcohol is taken in the body, not in the mind, but 
what happens to the mind? If you take LSD, it goes into the body, not into the mind, but 
what happens to the mind? 

Or if you go on a fast, fasting is done by the body, but what happens to the mind? Or 
from the other end: if you think sexual thoughts, what happens to your body? The body is 
affected immediately. You think in the mind of a sex object and your body starts getting 
ready. 

There was a theory by William James. In the first part of this century it apparently looked 
very absurd, but in a sense it is right. He and another scientist named Lange proposed this 
theory which is known as the James-Lange theory. Ordinarily, we say you are afraid and 
that is why you escape and run away, or you are angry and that is why your eyes get red 
and you start beating your enemy. 

But James and Lange proposed quite the contrary. They said that because you run away, 
that is why you feel fear; and because your eyes get red and you start beating your 
enemy, you feel anger. It is just the opposite. They said that if this is not so, then we want 
to see even one instance of anger when the eyes are not red and the body is not affected 



and one is simply angry. Do not allow your body to be affected and try to be angry — 
then you will know that you cannot be angry. 


In Japan they teach their children a very simple method of controlling anger. They say, 
whenever you feel angry, do not do anything with the anger, just start taking deep 
breaths. Try it, and you will not be able to get angry. Why? Just because you take deep 
breaths, why can you not get angry? It becomes impossible to get angry. Two reasons... 
You start taking deep breaths but anger needs a particular rhythm of breathing. Without 
that rhythm anger is not possible. A particular rhythm in breathing or chaotic breathing is 
needed for anger to be. 

If you start taking deep breaths it is impossible for the anger to come out. If you are 
consciously taking deep breaths, then the anger cannot express itself. It needs a different 
breathing which should be allowed. Y ou need not do it; the anger will do it itself. With 
deep breathing you cannot be angry. 

And secondly, your mind shifts. When you feel angry and you start to take deep breaths; 
your mind is shifted from anger to breathing. The body is not in a state to be angry, and 
the mind has shifted its concentration toward something else. Then it is difficult to be 
angry. That is why the Japanese are the most controlled people on earth. It is just a 
training from childhood. 

It is difficult anywhere else to find such an incident, but in Japan it happens even today. 

It is happening less and less because Japan is becoming less and less Japanese. 

It is becoming more and more Westernized, and the traditional methods and ways are 
becoming lost. But it was happening, and it still happens today. 

One of my friends was there in Kyoto, and he wrote me a letter saying, "I have seen such 
a beautiful phenomenon today that I want to write about it to you. And when I come 
back, I will want to understand how it is possible. One man was struck by a car. He fell 
down, stood up, thanked the driver, and went away — he thanked the driver!" 

In Japan it is not difficult. He must have taken a few deep breaths, and then it was 
possible. You are transformed into a different attitude, and you can thank even a person 
who was just going to kill you, or who has already tried to kill you. 

Physiological processes and psychological processes are not two things, they are one, and 
you can start from either pole to affect and change the other. And any science will do 
that. For example, tantra believes deeply in the body. Only philosophy is vague, airy, 
verbal; it may start from something else. Otherwise, any scientific approach is bound to 
start from the body because that is within your reach. If I talk of something which is 
beyond your reach, you may listen to it, you may gather it in your memory, you may talk 
about it, but nothing happens. You remain the same. Your infonnation is increased, but 
not your being. Your knowledge goes on increasing, but your being remains the same 
poor mediocrity; nothing happens to it. 


Remember, the body is what is within your reach; just now you can do something with it 
and change your mind through the body. By and by you will become a master of the 
body, and then you will become a master of the mind. And when you become a master of 
the mind, you will change the mind by and by, and you will be moving beyond it. If the 
body changes, you move beyond body. If the mind changes, you move beyond mind. And 



always do something which you CAN do. 

For example, you may not be capable of becoming a master of anger, like a Buddha, just 
now. How can you? But you can change your breathing and then you can feel the subtle 
effect, the change. Do it. If you feel fdled with passion, sexual passion, take a few deep 
breaths and feel the effect: the passion will have dispersed. 

Aldous Huxley's wife, Laura Huxley, has written a beautiful book — just simple devices 
for doing certain things. If you feel angry, Laura Huxley says, just tighten up your face. 
You can tighten in such a way — for example, in your closet — so that no one will be able 
to see. 

A person is sitting just in front of you and you feel angry — so just tighten up your face. 
Go on tightening it as much as you can, and then suddenly relax and feel the difference. 
The anger will have gone. Or if it has not gone, do it again. Go on doing it — twice, 
thrice... What happens? If you tighten your face muscles and you go on tightening and 
tensing them, the energy that was going to become anger moves into the face. 


And it is very easy for it to move into the face. When you are angry, how do you feel? 
You feel you want to beat someone with your fists. The energy is there, so use it. If you 
can use it, it is dispersed. Your face will become relaxed, and the other person will not 
even be able to know that you were angry. It will appear as if nothing has happened to 
you. And once you know these things, you become more and more aware that energy can 
be transformed, diverted, checked, released, or prevented from being released, or used in 
a different way. If you can use your energy you become the master. Then one day you 
may not use it at all; you may preserve it. 

This exercise is not good for a Buddha — to clench the fists. This is not good for a 
Buddha because this is wasting energy. But this is good for you. At least the other is 
saved from you, and a vicious circle is saved. If you get angry he will get angry, and 
there is no end to it. It may disturb your whole night, and it may continue as a hangover 
for a week. And then, because of this hangover, you may do many things you never 
intended to do. Do not say that this is just physiological. You are physiological, so what 
can be done? You are a physique; you cannot deny that fact. Use your energy. There is 
no need of denying it. 

If you close your eyes, sometimes you may feel a certain tension gathering there, or an 
uneasiness. 

Then there are certain things you can do. One, when you close your eyes do not become 
tense about it, let them be relaxed. You can close your eyes forcibly — then you will get 
tense. Then your eyes will get tired and inside you will feel uneasiness. Relax the face, 
relax the eyes, and let them be closed. I say, let them be closed; do not close them. Relax! 
Feel relaxed. Drop the eyelids and let the eyes be closed. Do not force them! If you force 
them, that is not good. 

If you cannot feel the difference, then do this: first force them to close. Let your whole 
face become tense, strained, and then close your eyes forcibly. For a few moments 
remain strained, then relax. Then again close your eyes relaxedly. Then you will feel the 
difference. Do not strain to do anything — that will tire you. 

Two, when the eyes are closed and your face is relaxed, look as if everything has become 
dark. A deep darkness is around you. Imagine you are amidst darkness, in a deep, velvety 
darkness, surrounded by it, in a deep, dark night. Go on feeling this darkness. That will 



help your eyes to stop their movements. With nothing to be seen, the eyes will stop. Be in 
darkness. 

You can do it in a dark room. Open your eyes, look at the darkness, then close them and 
feel the darkness. Again open your eyes, feel the darkness; close your eyes, feel it inside. 
Darkness is deeply relaxing. 

Darkness is outside and inside you; everything is dead — dark and dead. Both are related. 
That is why we paint death as black, dark. All over the world death is painted as black, 
and people fear darkness. 

While doing this method, feel darkness, love darkness, and feel inside that you are going 
to die. Darkness is all around, and you are dying. The eyes will stop. You will feel that 
they cannot move: they will have stopped. In that stopping, suddenly the energy will go 
up and start hammering the third eye. When it starts hammering, you will hear it, you will 
feel it. A warmth will come, a fire will flow — a liquid fire trying to find a new path. 

Do not be afraid. Help it, cooperate with it, let it move, become it. And when the third 
eye opens for the first time, the darkness will disappear and there will be light — light 
without a source. You have seen light, but always with a source. Either it comes from the 
sun or from the stars or from the moon or from the lamp, but some source is there. 

When your energy moves through the third eye, you will come to know a light without 
source. It is not coming from any source, it is simply there, not coming from anywhere. 
That is why the Upanishads say that God is not like the sun or like a flame. He is 
sourceless light. There is no source anywhere, simply light is there, just as if it is 
morning. 

The sun has not arisen, but the night has disappeared. 

In between there is the dawn — the pre-dawn. Or in the evening, the sun has set and the 
night has not yet come. Just in between there is the margin. That is why Hindus have 
chosen SANDHYA as a proper time for meditation. SANDHYA is the in between time — 
neither night nor day, just the line that divides. Why? Just as a symbol. The light is there, 
but without a source. The same will happen inside, light will be there without a source. 
Wait for it; do not imagine it. 

The last thing to be remembered: you can imagine anything, so it is dangerous to tell you 
many things. You can imagine them. You will close the eyes and you will feel and 
imagine that now the third eye has opened or is opening, and you can imagine light also. 
Do not imagine; resist imagination. Close your eyes. Wait! Whatsoever comes, feel it, 
cooperate with it, but wait. Do not jump ahead; otherwise nothing will happen. You will 
be having a dream — a beautiful, spiritual dream, but nothing else. 

People go on coming to me and they say, "We have seen this and we have seen that." But 
they have imagined it — because if really they had seen, they would be transformed. But 
they are not transformed. They are the same persons, only now a spiritual pride is added. 
They have some dreams — beautiful, spiritual dreams: someone is seeing Krishna playing 
on his flute, someone is seeing light, someone is seeing kundalini rising. 

They go on seeing things, and they remain the same — mediocre, stupid, dull. Nothing 
has happened to them; they go on relating that this is happening, that is happening, but 
they remain the same — angry, sad, childish, stupid. Nothing has changed. 

If you really see the light which is there waiting for you, to be seen through the third eye, 
you will be a different person. And then you need not tell anyone. People will come to 



know you are a different person. You cannot even hide it; it will be felt. Wherever you 
will move, others will feel that "Something has happened to this man." 

So do not imagine; wait, and let things take their own course. You do the technique, and 
then wait. Do not jump ahead. 


THE END. 



Chapter 23: Several more looking methods 


9. SIMPLY BY LOOKING INTO THE BLUE SKY BEYOND CLOUDS, THE 
SERENITY. 

10. LISTEN WHILE THE ULTIMATE MYSTICAL TEACHING IS IMPARTED. 

EYES STILL, WITHOUT BLINKING, AT ONCE BECOME ABSOLUTELY FREE. 

1 1. AT THE EDGE OF A DEEP WELL LOOK STEADILY INTO ITS DEPTHS UNTIL 
- THE WONDROUSNESS. 

12. LOOK UPON SOME OBJECT, THEN SLOWLY WITHDRAW YOUR SIGHT 
FROM IT, THEN SLOWLY WITHDRAW YOUR THOUGHT FROM IT. THEN. 

We live on the surface of ourselves — just at the fringe, the boundary. The senses are just 
on the boundary and your consciousness is way deep down at the center. We live in the 
senses; that is natural. But that is not the ultimate flowering, it is just the beginning. And 
when we are living in the senses, we are basically concerned with objects, because senses 
are irrelevant unless there is concern with some object of enjoyment. For example, eyes 
are useless unless there is something to be seen, ears are useless unless there is something 
to be heard, and hands are useless unless there is something to be touched. 

We live in the senses; therefore, we have to live in objects. The senses are just on the 
boundary of the being, in the body, and objects are not even on the boundary: they are 
beyond the boundary. So three points have to be understood before we enter the 
techniques. 

First, the consciousness is at the center. Second, the senses through which the 
consciousness moves out are at the boundary. 

And third, the objects in the world to which the consciousness moves, through the senses, 
are beyond the boundary. These three things have to be remembered: consciousness at 
the center, senses at the boundary and objects beyond the boundary. Try to understand it 
clearly, because then the techniques will be very simple. 

Look at it from many directions. One: senses are just in between, just in the middle. At 
one side is consciousness, at another side is the world of objects. Senses are just in the 
middle — between the two. From the senses you can move either way: either you can go 
to the objects or you can go to the center. Either way the distance is the same. From the 
senses, doors open both ways — move to the objects or move to the center. 

You are at the senses. That is why one of the most famous Zen Masters, Bokuju, has said 
that NIRVANA and the world are the same distance away. So do not think that the 
nirvana is very far away. The world and the nirvana, this world and that other world, are 
both at the same distance. 

This saying has created much confusion because we feel that nirvana is very, very far 
away - that Moksha, liberation, the kingdom of God, is very, very far away. We feel that 
the world is just near, just here. But Bokuju says, and he says rightly, that both are at the 
same distance. 

The world is here, and nirvana is also here. 

The world is near, and nirvana is also near, For nirvana you have to move inwards, for 
the objects you have to move outwards; the distance is the same. From my eyes, my 
center is just as near as you are near me. I can see you if I move outward, I can see 



myself if I move inward. And we are at the doors of the senses, but naturally, the bodily 
needs are such that consciousness moves outwards. You need food, you need water to 
drink, you need a house where to live. These are your bodily needs and these can only be 
found in the world, so quite naturally, consciousness moves through the senses toward 
the world. Unless you create a need which can only be fulfilled when you move inward, 
you will never move inward. 

For example, if a child were born self-sufficient, if he didn’t need any food, he would not 
look at his mother at all. The mother would become irrelevant, meaningless, because for 
the child the mother is not the meaning: food is the meaning. The mother is his first food, 
and because the mother gives him food and satisfies a basic need, without which he will 
die, he starts loving the mother. That love comes secondly, as a shadow, because the 
mother is fulfilling a basic need. 

So those mothers who are feeding their children through bottles should not expect much 
love because for the child food is the need, not the mother. The mother will come into his 
being, enter into his being only through food. 

That is why food and love are deeply related-very, very deeply related. If your love need 
is fulfilled, you will need less food. If your love need is not fulfilled, you will need more 
food. So those who love and who are loved will not gather much fat. There are other 
reasons also, but this is one of the most basic. They will not eat much. If love is not 
fulfilled, then food becomes a substitute. Then they will eat much. 

For the child, food is the basic need. But if a child should be born who can be self- 
sufficient, who does not need any food, who does not need any outward help to be alive, 
he will not move in the world at all. Do you think he will move? There would be no need. 
And unless a need is there, the energy will never move. We move outwardly not because 
we are sinners. We move outwardly because we have needs which can be fulfilled only 
through objects-which can be gained if we move in the world of objects. 

Why do you not move inward? Because you have not yet created the need to move 
inward. Once the need is there, it is as easy to move inward as to move outward. What is 
that need? That need is concerned with religion. Y ou cannot be religious unless that need 
is there. How is that need created? By what process does one become aware of a deep 
need which helps you move inward? 

Three things are to be remembered. Firstly, death. Remember, all life-needs force you to 
move outward. 

If you want to move inward, death must become a basic concern; otherwise you cannot 
move inward. That is why it happened that persons like Buddha, who became deeply 
conscious of death, started moving inward. Only when you become aware of death will 
you create the need to look back. 

Life looks outward. Unless you become aware of death, religion is meaningless for you. 
That is why animals have no religion. They are alive, they are as much alive as man, or 
even more, but they cannot be conscious of death, they cannot conceive of death, they 
cannot see death in the future. They see that others are dying, but it never occurs to the 
animal mind that this death is an indication of his death also. 

For the animal mind death always occurs to others. And if for you also death is just 
something which happens to others, you still live in the animal mind. If you are not aware 
of death, you have not yet become man. That is the basic difference between animal and 
man-because animal cannot be aware of death, only man can be. If you are not aware of 



death you are not a man yet, and only man creates the need to move inward. 

To me, man means awareness of death. I am not saying become afraid of death; that is 
not awareness. Just be aware of the fact that death is coming nearer and nearer and you 
have to be prepared for it. 

Life has its own needs; death creates its own needs. 

That is why younger societies are irreligious — because younger societies are not yet 
aware of the phenomenon of death; it has not become a central concern for them. An 
older society — for example, India, one of the oldest societies in existence — is so much 
aware of death. Because of that awareness, deep down India is religious. So the first 
thing: become aware of death. Think about it, look at it, contemplate it. Do not be afraid, 
do not escape the fact. It is there and you cannot escape it! It has come into existence 
with you. 

Your death is bom with you; now you cannot escape it. You have hidden it in yourself — 
become aware of it. The moment you become aware that you are going to die, that death 
is certain, your total mind will start looking in a different dimension. Then food is a basic 
need for the body, but not for the being, because even if you get food death will occur. 
Food cannot protect you from death, food can only postpone. Food can help you to 
postpone. If you get a good shelter, a good house, it will not protect you from death, it 
will only help you to die conveniently, comfortably. And death, whether it happens 
comfortably or uncomfortably, is the same. 

In life you may be poor or rich, but death is the great equalizer. The greatest communism 
is in death. Howsoever you live, it makes no difference; death happens equally. In life, 
equality is impossible; in death, inequality is impossible. 

Become aware of it, contemplate it. And it is not only that death is certain somewhere in 
the future: with the idea that it is very far away, you will again not be able to contemplate 
it. The mind has a very small range; the focus of the mind is very small. You cannot think 
beyond thirty years. After thirty years there will be death... it is as if you are not going to 
die. Thirty years is so long, the distance is so much, it is as if death is not going to occur. 
If you want to contemplate death, know another fact about it: it can occur the next 
moment; it is possible the very next moment. You may not be able to hear my whole 
sentence, I may not be able to complete it. My mother's father used to tell me that when I 
was born he consulted one astrologer, one of the best known astrologers of those days. 
The astrologer was to make my KUNDALI — birth chart. But the astrologer studied it 
and he said, "If this child survives after seven years, only then will I make the chart. It 
seems impossible that he can survive for more than seven years, so it is useless. If the 
child is going to die in seven years it is useless to make the kundali; it will be of no use. 
And it has been my habit," the astrologer said, "that unless I am certain that the kundali 
will be useful I never make it." So he didn’t make it. 

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I survived. Then my mother's father went to the astrologer, 
but he was dead, so he never could make my kundali. 

He was dead, and I have been constantly wondering about this. He was aware of the fact 
that this child may die, but he was not aware of the fact that he may die. He was not 
aware! It seems that he was absolutely unconcerned — and he was no ordinary man. But 
no one is concerned with his own death. Knowingly, cunningly, we are not concerned 
with it because it creates a fear. So I have always suspected that that astrologer might 



have never looked at his own kundali; otherwise he would have become aware. 

Death is possible the very next moment, but the mind will not believe it. I say it and your 
mind will say, "No! How is it possible the next moment? It is far away." But that is a 
trick. If you postpone, you cannot contemplate. It must be so near that you can focus on 
it. And when I say that the next moment it is possible, I mean it. It can happen, and 
whenever it will happen it will be the next moment. Just before it, you could not have 
conceived that it was going to happen. 

A person is dying: just a moment before he could never have thought that death is so 
near. It always happens in the next moment — remember. It has always happened that 
way, and this will be the way always. It always happens in the next moment. Bring it near 
so that you can focus on it, and that very focusing will help you to enter in, a new need 
will be created. 

Secondly, you go on living. 

You go on creating artificial meanings and purposes for this very moment. You never 
think of your life as a whole, whether it has any meaning or not. You go on creating new 
meanings, and you push yourself on with those meanings. That is why a poor man lives a 
more meaningful life than a rich man — because a poor man has many things to get, and 
that gives a meaning to his life. If you are really rich, it means you have everything that is 
possible and this world cannot offer anything to you. Then your life becomes 
meaningless. Now you cannot create any meaning for this moment, for this day, to help 
you live. That is why the richer a society, the more affluent a culture, the more 
meaninglessness is felt. Poorer societies never feel meaninglessness. 

A poor man is concerned with having a house. For years together he will work for it. His 
life has a meaning; something has to be achieved. And when he gets the house he will be 
happy for a few days at least, but then bigger houses are there... So he will go on moving, 
doing this and that, never thinking about his life as a whole, whether it has any meaning 
or not. He never takes life as a whole. 

Just imagine that you have everything — the house, the car that you long for, and all your 
dreams are fulfilled. So now what? Just imagine that whatsoever you need is there, you 
have it. Now what? Suddenly meaning disappears. 

You are standing on an abyss; nothing can be done. You become meaningless. You are 
already meaningless, just not aware. Even if you get the whole world, then what? What is 
fulfilled? 

Alexander was coming to India, and he met a great saint, Diogenes. Diogenes was one of 
the most penetrating minds ever born. He lived naked like Mahavir; he is the Mahavir of 
Greek civilization and culture. He left everything, renounced everything, not because 
through renouncing things he was going to get anything — that is not real renouncing, not 
authentic renunciation. If you renounce something to get something, that is a bargain. If 
you think that you are going to have some reservation in heaven and that is why you 
renounce, it is not renunciation. If you renounce the bodily pleasures to have spiritual 
pleasures, this is not renunciation. 

Diogenes renounced everything, not because out of it he was going to get something. He 
renounced just to see if when he has nothing, whether there is any meaning or not. He 
thought that if one possesses nothing, if even then one has a meaning, a purpose, a 
destiny, then death cannot annihilate anything, because death can annihilate only a 
possessions and the body is also possession. He left everything. He had only one thing: a 



wooden bowl out of which to drink water. He thought, "This is not much of a 
possession." Then one day he saw a child drinking water with his hands. 

He immediately threw away the bowl. He said, "If a child can drink water with his hands, 
am I more weak than a child?" 

When Alexander was coming to India to conquer, to make a world empire, somebody 
informed him that just on the way, where he would be stopping, there lived a great sage 
who was just the opposite of him. He was told, "You are going to make a world empire, 
and he has even thrown away his bowl because he says that as he is happy without it, 
why carry this burden? And you say that unless the whole world becomes your empire, 
you cannot be happy. So he is just at the opposite pole, and it would be good if you meet 
him." 

Alexander was fascinated. It happens that the opposite always fascinates. The opposite 
always fascinates; it has a deep sexual attraction. Just a man is attracted to woman or 
woman is attracted to man, there is the same attraction with the opposite. Alexander 
could not by-pass Diogenes, but it was not good for him to go to Diogenes, and it was 
impossible that Diogenes would come to him — there was no solution. 

Diogenes was informed. Many, many messengers came to inform him that "The Great 
Alexander is passing this way. It would be good if you meet him." He said, "The Great 
Alexander? Who has said this to you! I think he himself has. So tell your Great 
Alexander that he has nothing to give to me, and there is no need for him to meet me — 
and I am a very small man." 

He used to say, "Really, I am a dog, not a man at all — just a dog, so there is no need. It is 
below his dignity to meet this dog." 

Then Alexander had to come. Diogenes is reported to have said, "I hear you are going to 
win the whole world, so I thought, I closed my eyes and thought, ’Okay! If I have won the 
whole world, then what?' This has been my problem constantly: if I have won the whole 
world, then what?" It is reported that Alexander, after hearing this, became very sad. 
"Then what?" he said to Diogenes. "Do not talk such things. You make me very sad." 
Diogenes said, "But you will become very sad when you win the whole world. What can 
I do? I am just imagining, and I have come to conclude that this is useless. You are 
making a suicidal effort. You yourself are trying to win the whole world — so then what? 
If you succeed, then what? " 

Alexander returned from Diogenes very disturbed, upset, sad. He said to his companions, 
"This man is very dangerous. He has shattered my dreams." And he could never forget, 
could never forgive Diogenes. The day he died, he remembered him again, and he said, 

"It may be that that fellow was right: then what ?" 

So the next thing is to remember always that whatsoever you are doing, whatsoever you 
are achieving, remember to ask, "If I succeed, then what?" Is there any meaning in it all, 
or is there just some artificial meaning given by you only to divide, to create an illusion 
around you so that you feel you are doing something worthwhile — and all the time you 
are really wasting life and energy, not doing anything worthwhile! There is only one 
thing worthwhile: if you can become happy without anything, without any dependence: if 
you can be blissful alone, totally alone. 

If nothing is needed for your bliss, only then can you be blissful; otherwise you will be in 
misery, always in misery. 



Dependence is misery, and those who depend on possessions, those who depend on 
accumulated knowledge, those who depend on this or that, they are helping their own 
misery to become accumulated more and more. So the next point to remember is to ask 
whether you have any meaning, or whether you are just floating along without any 
meaning. Are you just making believe that this or that is the meaning of your existence? 
One man used to come to me. He used to say that if his son gets into college, that would 
be all and he would be very happy. He was a poor man, a very ordinary clerk, and that 
was the only dream, that his son would get into college. Then the son got into college. 
Now the son has become a forest official. A few months back the son was here and he 
told me, "I am getting only six hundred rupees per month. I have two children and this is 
my only dream, that they can get a good education; that is all. I am working hard. If they 
can be well educated and if I can send one of my children to some foreign country to 
study, that is all I ask." 

His father is no more; he has died. This was his meaning in life, his purpose — to make 
his boy educated and well placed. Now the boy is well placed, and now the boy has the 
same purpose, to help his children become educated and well placed. 

And he will die, and those children will go on doing the same nonsense. 

What is the meaning of all this? What are you doing? Just passing time? Just destroying 
life? Or have you got some authentic meaning which you can say makes you happy, 
blissful? This is the second consideration which will turn you inward. 

And thirdly, man goes on forgetting. You go on forgetting things. You were angry 
yesterday, and you repented it. Now you have forgotten, and if the same stimulus is given 
again, you will be angry again. This has been so for your whole life: you go on repeating 
the same things. 

It is said that it is very extraordinary to find a man who learns through life — very rare. 
Really, no one learns. If you learn, then you cannot commit the same mistake twice. But 
you go on committing the same thing again and again. Rather, the more you commit, the 
more you become prone to commit it. You are angry again and again, and again and 
again you repent it, and you have not learned anything. Given the stimulus, you will be 
angry, and you will do the same madness, and then you will repent again — that is also 
part of it. And then you will again be ready to be stimulated and to be angry. 

The third thing: if you want to turn in, learn! Whatsoever you are doing, learn through it. 
Take the essential out of it. Look back at what have you been doing with your life and 
your energy and your time. 

The same mistakes, the same foolishnesses, the same stupidities, again and again. 

So you move in a wheel. However, it is not good to say that you move the wheel: rather, 
the wheel moves you. Mechanically, you go on and on and on. That is why in India we 
have called the world SANSAR. SANSAR means the wheel which goes on, and you are 
just clinging to some spoke on it and you go on moving. 

Unless you learn something about this wheel, this vicious circle, this sansar, unless you 
learn something about it, you will not leave the spoke and jump out of it. So three words, 
three key words: 

Death: make it a constant contemplation. 

Meaning: go on searching for it in your life. 

And leam: learn through your life, because there is no other learning. Scriptures won’t 
give you anything. 



If your own life cannot give you something, nothing can give it to you. Learn through 
your own life, conclude through it. What have you been doing with yourself? If you are 
in a wheel, jump out of it. But to know that you are in a wheel, you will have to go deep 
into understanding and learning. These three things will help you to turn in. 

Now the techniques: 

SIMPLY BY LOOKING INTO THE BLUE SKY BEYOND CLOUDS, THE 
SERENITY. 

That is why I have said so many things — because the techniques are very easy, and you 
can do them and nothing will result. 

Then you will say, "What type of techniques are these? We can do them, they are so 
simple. SIMPLY BY LOOKING INTO THE SKY, THE BLUE SKY, BEYOND THE 
CLOUDS, THE SERENITY: one will become silent and serene, fulfilled." 

You can look at the blue sky beyond the clouds and nothing will happen. Then you will 
say, "What type of technique is this? Shiva is not talking rationally, reasonably. He is 
saying anything, whatsoever comes to his mind. What kind of technique is this — 
SIMPLY BY LOOKING INTO THE BLUE SKY BEYOND CLOUDS, THE 
SERENITY. One will become serene!" 

But if you remember: death, meaning, learning, this technique will help you immediately 
to turn in. LOOKING INTO THE BLUE SKY BEYOND CLOUDS... Just looking, not 
thinking. The sky is infinite; it ends nowhere. Just look into it. There is no object; that is 
why the sky is chosen. The sky is not an object. Linguistically it is; existentially, the sky 
is not an object because an object begins and ends. You can go around an object; you 
cannot go around the sky. You are in the sky, but you cannot go around it. So you may be 
the object for the sky, but the sky cannot be your object. You can look into it, but you 
cannot look at it, and that looking into it goes on and on... it never ends. 

So look into the blue sky and go on looking. The object is infinite, there is no boundary 
to it. Do not think about it; do not say it is beautiful. 

Do not say, "How lovely!" Do not appreciate the color; do not start thinking. If you start 
thinking, you have stopped. Now your eyes are not moving into the blue, the infinite 
blue. Just move, just look — do not think. Do not create words; they will become barriers. 
Not even "blue sky" should be said. Do not verbalize. 

There should be just a pure, innocent look into the blue sky. It never ends. You will go on 
and on and on and on, and suddenly, because there is no object, just a vacuum, suddenly 
you will become aware of yourself. Why? Because if there is any vacuum your senses 
become useless. Senses are only useful if there is an object. 

If you are looking at a flower, then you are looking at something — the flower is there. 
The sky is not there. What do we mean by a sky? That which is not there. Sky means the 
space. All objects are in the sky, but the sky is not an object. It is just the vacuum, the 
space in which objects can exist. The sky itself is just pure emptiness. Look at this pure 
emptiness. That is why the sutra says: BEYOND THE CLOUDS. Because clouds are not 
the sky, they are objects floating in the sky. You can look at the clouds, but that will not 
help. Look into the blue sky — not at the stars, not at the moon, not at the clouds, but at 
objectlessness, emptiness. Look into it. 

What will happen? In emptiness, there is no object to be grasped by the senses. 



Because there is no object to be grasped, clung to, senses become futile. And if you are 
looking into the blue sky without thinking, without thinking, suddenly you will feel that 
everything has disappeared; there is nothing. In that disappearance you will become 
aware of yourself. Looking into this emptiness, you will become empty. Why? Because 
your eyes are like a mirror. Whatsoever is before them is reflected. I see you and you are 
sad — then a sudden sadness enters into me. If a sad person enters into your room, you 
become sad. What has happened? You have looked at sadness. You are like a mirror: the 
sadness is reflected in you. 

Someone laughs heartily — suddenly you feel a laughter coming to you also. It has 
become infectious. What has happened? You are like a mirror, you are reflecting things. 
You look at a beautiful object — it is reflected in you. You look at an ugly object — it is 
reflected in you. Whatsoever you are seeing penetrates deep into you. It becomes part of 
your consciousness. 

If you are looking into the emptiness, there is nothing to be reflected - or only the blue 
infinite sky. If it is reflected, if you feel the blue infinite sky within, you will become 
serene, you will find serenity. That is there. And if really you can conceive of emptiness - 
where sky, blue, everything disappears: just at emptiness - inside also emptiness will be 
reflected. 

And in emptiness, how can you be worried, how can you be tense? 

In emptiness, how can the mind function? It stops; it disappears. In the disappearance of 
the mind - the mind that is tense, worried, filled with thoughts that are relevant, irrelevant 
- in that disappearance of the mind, THE SERENITY. 

One thing more. Emptiness, if reflected in, becomes desirelessness. Desire is tension. 

You desire and you become worried. You look at a beautiful woman — a sudden desire 
arises. You look at a beautiful house — you want to possess it. You look at a beautiful car 
just passing by your side — you want to be in it, you want to drive it. A desire has come 
in, and with the desire mind becomes worried: "How to get it? What to do to get it?" The 
mind becomes frustrated or hopeless or hopeful, but it is all dreaming. Many things can 
happen. 

When desire is there, you are disturbed. The mind is shattered into fragments, and many 
plans, dreams, projections start; you become mad. Desire is the seed of madness. 

But emptiness is not an object; it is just emptiness. When you look at emptiness, no 
desire arises; it cannot arise. You do not want to possess emptiness, you do not want to 
love emptiness, you do not want to make a house out of it. Emptiness? You cannot do 
anything with it! All movement of the mind stops, no desire arises, and with the non- 
arising of desire, THE SERENITY. 

You become silent, serene. A sudden peace explodes in you. You have become like the 
sky. 

Another thing. Whatsoever you contemplate, you become like it, you become that, 
because mind can take infinite forms. Whatsoever you desire, your mind takes its form, 
you become it. That is why a person who is just after riches, gold, after money, his mind 
becomes just a treasure - nothing else. Shake him, and you will feel the rupees inside - 
the sound of rupees, nothing else. Whatsoever you desire, you become that. So be 
conscious of what you are desiring because you are becoming that. 

The sky is the most empty thing. It is just near you and it costs nothing, and you do not 
have to go somewhere — to the Himalayas or to Tibet — to find the sky. They have 



destroyed everything, technology has destroyed everything, but the sky is still there; you 
can use it. Use it before they destroy it — any day they will destroy it. Look, penetrate 
into it. And the look must be a non-thinking one, remember this. Then you will feel the 
same sky within, the same dimension within, the same space and blueness and emptiness. 
That is why Shiva says, SIMPLY. 

SIMPLY BY LOOKING INTO THE BLUE SKY BEYOND CLOUDS, THE 
SERENITY. 

The next technique: 

LISTEN WHILE THE ULTIMATE MYSTICAL TEACHING IS IMPARTED. EYES 
STILL, WITHOUT WINKING, AT ONCE BECOME ABSOLUTELY FREE." 

LISTEN WHILE THE ULTIMATE MYSTICAL TEACHING IS IMPARTED. This is a 
secret method. In this esoteric tantra, the master gives you the teaching secretly, the 
doctrine secretly — or the mantra secretly. When the disciple is ready, then the mantra, or 
the supreme secret, will be imparted, communicated to him, privately. Just in his ear it 
will be whispered. This technique is concerned with that whispering. LISTEN WHILE 
THE ULTIMATE MYSTICAL TEACHING IS IMPARTED. 

When the master has decided that now you are ready and the secret of his own experience 
can be communicated, when the moment has come when he can say to you that which is 
unsayable, then this technique has to be used. EYES STILL, WITHOUT WINKING, AT 
ONCE BECOME ABSOLUTELY FREE. When master, is imparting his secret to you in 
your ear, whispering it, let your eyes be totally still: no movement of the eyes. That 
means the mind should be quiet, thoughtless. 

No winking — not even a slight movement, because that will show a disturbance within. 
Just become an empty ear with no movement within. The consciousness is just waiting to 
be impregnated, just open, receptive, passive... no activity on its own part. And when this 
will happen, this moment when you are totally empty, not thinking anything but just 
waiting... not waiting for something, because then it will become thinking, not waiting 
for something but just waiting; when this static moment, this non-dynamic moment will 
happen; when everything has stopped, time is not flowing and mind is totally vacant — it 
becomes no-mind. 

Only into a no-mind can a master impart. 

And he is not going to give a very long discourse: he will give just one or two or three 
words. In that silence those one, two or three words will penetrate to your very core, to 
the very center, and they will become a seed there. In this passive awareness, in this 
silence, AT ONCE BECOME ABSOLUTELY FREE. 

One can become free only by becoming free of the mind; there is no other freedom. 
Freedom from the mind is the only freedom. Mind is the bondage, the slavery, the 
servitude. So a disciple has to wait with his master for the right moment when he will call 
him and impart. He is not to ask, because asking means desire. He is not to expect, 
because expectation means conditions, desire, mind. He is just to wait. And when he will 
be ready, when his waiting will become total, the master can do anything. 

Sometimes the master can do very trivial things, and the thing will happen. And 
ordinarily, even if a Shiva goes on talking about one hundred and twelve methods, 
nothing will happen because the preparation is not there. You can throw seeds on stones, 



but nothing will happen. The fault is not of the seeds. You can throw a seed out of 
season, but nothing will happen. The fault is not of the seed. The right season is needed, 
the right moment is needed, the right soil is needed. Only then will the seed become alive 
and transform. 


So sometimes very trivial things work. For example, Lin Chi became enlightened while 
he was just sitting on his master's verandah - on the verandah of his master, and the 
Master came out and just laughed. He looked at Lin Chi - into his eyes - and laughed 
uproariously. Lin Chi started laughing, bowed down, and left. But he had been waiting 
there for six years: that verandah was his abode for six years. 

The master would come day after day, month after month, and he would not even look at 
him. And Lin Chi was waiting there. Then after two years, for the first time he looked at 
him. Then two more years passed, and for the first time he patted him. Then Lin Chi 
waited and waited, and after six years, one day suddenly he came out, stared into Lin 
Chi's eyes, and Lin Chi must have done this technique: LISTEN WHILE THE 
ULTIMATE MYSTICAL TEACHING IS IMPARTED. EYES STILL, WITHOUT 
WINKING, AT ONCE BECOME ABSOLUTELY FREE. 

The master looked and used laughter as a medium. He was a great master. Really, words 
were not needed, just laughter. Suddenly there was that laughter, and something 
happened in Lin Chi. He bowed down, laughed, left, and told everyone that now he was 
no more, that he was liberated, free. He was no more: that is what liberation means. You 
are not liberated. You are liberated from yourself. 

Lin Chi used to tell how it happened. For six years he was waiting. 

It was a long waiting, a patient waiting. He was just waiting on the verandah, and every 
day the master would come. And he would wait for the right moment — when he would 
become ready, then the master would do something. Just by waiting for six years, you 
will fall into meditation. What can you do? He might have thought for a few days about 
old things, but if you do not give new food every day to the mind, by and by it stops. 

How long can you chew again and again on the same thing? 

He might have been thinking about past things, and by and by, because no new stimulus 
was given, thinking stopped. He was not allowed to read, he was not allowed to talk, he 
was not allowed to move and meet anyone. He was just allowed to fulfill the basic bodily 
needs and wait on the verandah. 

Silently he waited, day after day — day in, day out, day and night. Summer would come 
and pass away, and winter would come and pass away, and there would be rain and it 
would pass away: he must have forgotten time. He must have forgotten for how many 
days he had been there. And then one day suddenly the master appeared, and he looked 
deeply into his eyes. Lin Chi's eyes must have suddenly become static, non-dynamic. 

This was the moment; six years were wasted for this. There was no movement of the 
eyes, because a single movement and he may miss. Everything must have become silent 
— and then suddenly, the uproarious laughter: the master began laughing madly. 

That laughter must have been heard deep down at the very core; it must have reached. 

So when Lin Chi was asked, "What happened to you?" he said, "When my master 
laughed, suddenly I recognized that the whole world is just a joke. In his laughter, this 
was the message: The whole world is just a joke, just a drama. An seriousness 



disappeared. And if the whole world is just a joke, who is in bondage? And who needs to 
be free?" So Lin Chi said, "There was no bondage at all. I was thinking that I was bound, 
and that is why I was trying to be free, and then suddenly the master laughed and the 
bondage fell away." 

Sometimes it has happened with such things; you can never conceive of how it was 
possible. There are many Zen stories... One Zen master became aware when the gong 
was beaten. Just while he was hearing the gong being beaten, the sound, something 
shattered in him. One Zen nun became aware, enlightened, while she was carrying two 
pails of water. Suddenly the bamboo broke, and the earthen pots fell down. The sound, 
the breaking of the pots and the water flowing out of them, and she became enlightened. 
What happened? You can break many pots, but nothing will happen. A right moment had 
come. She was coming back. Her master had said, "This night I am going to give you the 
secret, so go and take a bath, and bring two pails of water for me. I will take a bath and 
impart to you the secret for which you have been waiting." 

She must have felt ecstatic — the moment had come. She took a bath, filled the pots, and 
carried them back. 

It was a full-moon night, and just when she was passing on the footpath from the river to 
the ashram, suddenly the bamboo broke. When she reached, the master was waiting, and 
he looked at her and he said, "Now there is no need, it has happened. Now I have nothing 
to convey. You have already received." 

That old nun used to say, "With that bamboo breaking, something broke in me — 
something broke in me also. Those pails falling down, those broken earthen pots, and I 
saw my body broken. I looked at the moon. Everything was silent, serene, and I became 
silent and serene. From that moment, I have not been, I am no more." This is what 
liberation, freedom means. 

The next technique: 

AT THE EDGE OF A DEEP WELL LOOK STEADILY INTO ITS DEPTHS UNTIL - 
THE WONDROUSNESS. 

The techniques are similar, with a slight difference. AT THE EDGE OF A DEEP WELL 
LOOK STEADILY INTO ITS DEPTHS UNTIL - THE WONDROUSNESS. Look into 
a deep well. The well will be reflected in you. Forget thinking completely; stop thinking 
completely. Just go on looking into the depth. Now they say mind has its own depth, like 
a well. Now in the West, they are developing depth psychology. They say mind is not just 
a surface. It is just a beginning; there are depths — many depths, hidden depths. 


Look into a well without thinking. The depth will be reflected in you, the well will 
become just an outer symbol of the inner depth. And go on looking UNTIL - THE 
WONDROUSNESS, until you feel wonder- filled. 

Do not stop before this moment. Go on looking, go on looking, go on looking, day after 
day, month after month. Just go to a well, look deep, with no thoughts moving in the 
mind. Just meditate. Just meditate on the depth: meditate the depth, become one with it. 
Go on meditating; one day your thoughts will not be there. Any moment it can happen. 
Suddenly you will feel you have the same well within you, the same depth. And then a 
strange, very strange feeling will come to you: you will feel wonder-filled. 

Chuang Tzu was passing over a bridge with his master, Lao Tsu. Lao Tsu is reported to 



have said to Chuang Tzu, "Remain here. Go on looking down from this bridge to the 
river until the river stops and the bridge starts flowing. Then come to me." The river is 
flowing; the bridge never flows. But Chuang Tzu was given this meditation - to wait on 
this bridge. It is said he made a hut on the bridge and remained there. Months passed... he 
would just sit on the bridge, looking down for the moment when the river would stop and 
the bridge would flow. Then he would go to the master. 

One day it happened: the river stopped and the bridge started flowing. 

How can it happen? If thought stops completely, then anything is possible, because 
really, it is fixedness of thought which says that the river is flowing and the bridge is 
static. This is just relative - just relative! 

Einstein says, and physics says, that everything is relative. You are traveling in a train, a 
fast train. What happens? The trees flow by, they run by. And if the train is really smooth 
and you do not feel that the train is running, you are just looking through the windows, 
the trees are moving, not the train. 

Einstein has said that if in space two trains are running, or two spaceships are running 
side by side with the same speed, you will not be able to feel that they are moving. You 
can feel a moving train because you see the static things by the side. If there is nothing - 
for example, if the trees are also moving in the same direction with the same speed - you 
will feel static. Or when a train passes in the opposite direction, your speed is doubled. 
You feel your train has become faster. 

It has not become faster. It is the same train with the same speed, but a train going in the 
opposite direction gives you the feeling of double speed. If speed is relative, then it is just 
a fixedness of the mind to think that the river is flowing and the bridge is static. 
Continuously meditating, meditating, meditating, Chuang Tzu came to realize that 
everything is relative. 

The river is flowing because you take the bridge as static. The bridge is also flowing deep 
down. Nothing is static in this world. Atoms are moving, electrons are moving; the bridge 
is a constant movement within. Everything is flowing; the bridge is also flowing. 

Chuang Tzu must have had a glimpse of the atomic structure of the bridge. Now they say 
this wall which looks static is not static. Movement is there, every electron is running, 
but the movement is so fast you cannot see it. That is why you feel it as static. 

If this fan goes on with a faster movement, faster and faster, you will not be able to see its 
wings, the spaces between them. You will not be able to see this. And if it moves with the 
speed of light, you will see simply one circular disc that is static. Nothing will be moving 
in it because eyes cannot catch that fast movement. 

So Chuang Tzu must have had a glimpse of the atomic structure of the bridge. He waited 
and waited, and the fixed mind dissolved. Then he saw that the bridge was flowing - and 
the movement was so fast that the river was just static in comparison to it. He came 
running to Lao Tsu and Lao Tsu said, "Okay! Now do not ask me. The thing has 
happened to you." What had happened? No-mind had happened. 

In this technique, AT THE EDGE OF A DEEP WELL LOOK STEADILY INTO ITS 
DEPTH UNTIL - THE WONDROUSNESS. When you feel wonder-filled, when the 
mystery descends upon you, when mind is no more but simply mystery - a milieu of 
mystery — then you will be capable of knowing yourself. 



Another technique: 

LOOK UPON SOME OBJECT, THEN SLOWLY WITHDRAW YOUR SIGHT FROM 
IT, THEN SLOWLY WITHDRAW YOUR THOUGHT FROM IT. THEN. 

Look upon some object. Look at a flower, but remember what that LOOK means. Look! 
Do not think. I need not repeat it. Always remember that look means: look, do not think. 
If you think, it is not a look; then you have contaminated everything. It must be a pure 
look, a simple look. 

LOOK UPON SOME OBJECT. Look at a flower,- a roseflower. THEN SLOWLY 
WITHDRAW YOUR SIGHT FROM IT - very slowly. The flower is there — first look at 
it. Drop thinking; go on looking. When you feel that now there is no thought, simply the 
flower is there in your mind, nothing else, now slightly move your eyes away. By and by 
the flower recedes, goes out of focus, but the image will remain with you. The object will 
have gone out of focus; you will have turned your look away. The image, the outer 
flower is no more there, but it is reflected - reflected in your mirror of consciousness. It 
will be there! THEN SLOWLY WITHDRAW YOUR SIGHT FROM IT, THEN 
SLOWLY WITHDRAW YOUR THOUGHT FROM IT. 

So first, withdraw from the outer object. Then only the inner image remains - the thought 
of the roseflower. Now withdraw that thought also. This is very difficult, the second part, 
but if the first part is done exactly as it is said, it will not be so difficult. 

First withdraw your mind from the object, your sight. Then close your eyes, and just as 
you have removed your eyesight from the object, remove yourself from the image. 
Withdraw yourself; become indifferent. Do not look at it inside, just feel that you have 
gone away from it. Soon the image will also disappear. 

First the object disappears, then the image disappears. And when the image disappears, 
Shiva says, THEN. Then you are left alone. In that aloneness one realizes oneself, one 
comes to the center, one is thrown to the original source. 

This is a very good meditation — you can do it. Take any object, but let the object remain 
the same every day so that the same image is created inside and you remove yourself 
from the same image. Images in the temples were used for this technique.Now images are 
there, but the technique is lost. You go to a temple — this is the technique to do. Look at 
the statue of Mahavir or Buddha or Ram or Krishna or any other. Look at the statue, 
concentrate on it; focus the whole mind so that the statue becomes an image inside. Then 
close your eyes. Remove your eyes from the statue, then close them. And then remove 
the image, wipe it out completely. 

Then you are there in your total aloneness, in your total purity, in your total innocence. 
Realizing that is freedom, realizing that is truth. 


THE END. 



Chapter 24: Doubt or faith, life or death; the bases of different paths 


The first question: 

Question 1 

I FEEL THAT NEITHER AM I THE FEELING TYPE ALTOGETHER, NOR AM I 
THE INTELLECTUAL TYPE. I AM A MIXED TYPE. SHOULD I DO TWO 
DIFFERENT KINDS OF TECHNIQUES ALTERNATIVELY? PLEASE GUIDE. 

This is a significant question. Many things will have to be understood. One: whenever 
you feel that you are neither the intellectual type nor the emotional type, know well that 
you belong to the intellectual type, because confusion is part of it. The emotional type is 
never confused. One who belongs to the emotional type will not feel such confusion. 
Emotion is always total and whole, intellect is always fragmented, divided, confused. 

That is the very nature of intellect. Why? Because intellect depends on doubt and 
emotion depends on faith. Wherever doubt is, division will be, and doubt can never be 
total. How can it be? The very nature of doubt is doubting. It can NEVER be total! You 
cannot doubt a thing totally. If you doubt a thing totally, it becomes faith. 

Doubt is always confusion, and basically, when you doubt, you also doubt your doubt. 
You cannot be certain about it. A doubting mind cannot be even certain about doubt. So 
layers of confusion will be there, and each layer will be based on another layer of doubt 
and confusion. 

The intellectual type always feels this way. The feeling will always be there that "I am 
nowhere, I do not belong anywhere," or "Sometimes I am here and sometimes there, 
sometimes this and sometimes that." 

But the emotional type is at ease with himself. Because trust is the base, emotion is not 
divided, it is whole, individual. So if you have any doubt, if you cannot feel certain to 
what type you belong, know well you belong to the intellectual type. Then practise 
techniques which are meant for the intellectual type. If you do not feel any confusion, 
then only do you belong to the emotional type, the feeling type. 

For example, a Ramakrishna: he is a feeling type. You cannot create doubt in him; that is 
impossible, because a doubt can be created only when basically the doubt exists already. 
No one can create doubt in you if it is not already hidden there. Others can only help it to 
come out, they cannot create it. Neither can faith be created. That too others can help to 
manifest, to come out. 

Your basic type cannot be changed, so it is very essential to know your basic type - 
because if you are doing something which doesn’t suit you, fit with you, you are wasting 
time and energy. And you will get more and more confused because of your wrong 
efforts. Neither can doubt be created in you, nor faith. You already have the seed of 
either this or that. If you have doubt, then it is better not to think of faith at all, because 
that will be a deception and hypocrisy. If you have doubt, do not be afraid — Even doubt 
can lead to the divine. You have to use it. 

I will repeat, even doubt can lead to the divine - because if your doubt can destroy the 
divine, then it is stronger, more powerful than the divine. 

Even doubt can be used, it can be made a technique. But do not deceive. There are 
persons who go on teaching that if you have doubts, you can never reach to the divine. So 
what to do? Then you have to force it underneath, suppress it, hide it, create a false 



belief. But that will be only on the surface, it will never touch your soul. Deep down you 
will remain in doubt, and just on the surface a facade will be created of belief. 

That is the difference between faith and belief. Belief is always false. Faith is a quality; 
belief is a concept. Faith is the quality of your mind; belief is just acquired. So those who 
have doubt and are afraid of it, they cling to beliefs; they say, "I believe," but they have 
no faith. Deep down they know their doubt. They are always afraid of it. If you touch, 
criticize their belief, they will immediately get angry. Why? Why the anger, this 
irritation? They are not irritated by you, they are irritated by their own doubt which you 
are helping to come up. If a man of faith is there you can criticize him and he is not going 
to get angry, because you cannot destroy faith. 

A Ramakrishna is the type, or a Chaitanya or a Meera - they are feeling types. One of the 
most beautiful minds of Bengal, Keshav Chandra, went to meet Ramakrishna. He went 
not just to meet him, but to defeat him, because Ramakrishna was just an illiterate, not a 
scholar at all. 

And Keshav Chandra was one of the greatest minds ever born on Indian soil, one of the 
most keen, logical intellects. It was certain that Ramakrishna would be defeated. When 
Keshav Chandra came, all the intellectuals of Calcutta gathered at Dakshineshwar just to 
see Ramakrishna defeated. Keshav Chandra started arguing, but he must have felt very 
awkward because Ramakrishna enjoyed his arguments very much - in fact, too much. 
When he would propose some argument against God, Ramakrishna would start jumping, 
dancing. 

He felt very awkward, so he said, "What are you doing? You have to answer my 
arguments." Ramakrishna is reported to have said, "By my seeing you, my faith is 
strengthened. Such an intellect is impossible without God." That is how a feeling type 
looks at things. "And I predict," said Ramakrishna, "that sooner or later you will be a 
greater devotee than me because you have a greater mind. With such a mind, how can 
you fight the divine? With such a keen mind? Even a fool, an idiot like me, has reached. 
How can you remain without reaching?" 

He was not angry, not arguing, but he defeated Keshav Chandra. Keshav Chandra 
touched his feet and he said, "You are the first theist I have met with whom argument is 
futile. Looking at your eyes, looking at you and the way you have behaved with me, this 
is the first glimpse for me that the divine is possible. You are the proof without giving 
any proof." 

Ramakrishna became the proof. 

The intellectual type has to proceed through doubt. Do not force any belief upon 
yourself; that will be deceiving yourself. You cannot deceive anyone else, you can only 
deceive yourself. Do not force; be authentic. If doubt is your nature, then proceed 
through doubt. Doubt as much as possible, and do not choose any technique which is 
based on faith — that is not for you. Choose some technique which is scientifically 
experimental. No need to believe. 

There are two types of methods. One is experimental. You are not told to believe, you are 
told to do it, and the consequence will be the belief, the faith. A scientist cannot believe. 
He can take a hypothesis to work on, to experiment with, and if the experiment comes out 
righ, if the experiment proves that the hypothesis is right, then he reaches to a conclusion. 
Faith is achieved through experiment. So there are techniques in these one hundred and 
twelve techniques which do not require any faith on your part. 



That is why Mahavir, Buddha, they are intellectual types, just as Ramakrishna and 
Chaitanya are feeling types. Because of this Buddha says that there is no need to believe 
in God; there is no God. He says, "Do what I say, do not believe in me. Experiment with 
what I say, and if your experience proves it right then you can believe it." 

Buddha says, "Do not believe in me, do not believe what I say. 

Do not believe something because I have said it. Experiment with it, go through it, and 
until you achieve your own conclusion remain in doubt. Your own experience will 
become your faith." 

Mahavir said, "No need to believe in anyone - not even in the master. Just do the 
technique." 

Science never says to believe. It says, do the experiment, go to the lab. This is for the 
intellectual type. Do not try faith before you do the experiment. You cannot try it — you 
will falsify everything. Be real unto yourself. Remain real and authentic. 

Sometimes it has happened that even atheists have reached the divine because of finding 
their truth about themselves. Mahavir is an atheist; he doesn’t believe in God. Buddha is 
an atheist; he doesn’t believe in any God. So a miracle happened with Buddha. It is said 
about him that he was the most godless man and the most god-like. Both - godless and 
god-like. He was absolutely intellectual, but he reached because he never deceived 
himself, he went on doing experiments. For six years continuously he was doing this 
experiment and that, and he did not believe. Unless something were proven true by 
experience, he would not believe it. So he would do something, and if nothing happened 
he would leave it. 

One day he reached. Just by doubting and doubting and doubting, experimenting, a point 
came... a point came when nothing remained to be doubted. 

Without any object, the doubt fell. There was no object to doubt now. He had doubted 
everything, and even doubt became futile. Doubt dropped, and in that dropping he 
realized. Then he realized that the doubt was not the real thing: rather, the doubter was, 
and you cannot doubt the doubter. The doubter is there to say, "No, this is not right." 

It may not be right, it may be right, but who is it who is saying that this is not right or this 
is right? That source of saying is right, is true. You can say there is no God, but you 
cannot say, "I am not," because the moment you say "I am not," you have accepted 
yourself. Who is making this statement? You cannot deny yourself without at the same 
time recognizing yourself. That is impossible. 

Even to deny you have to be there. You cannot say to someone, some guest who is 
knocking on the door, that "I am not in the house. "How can you say this? This is 
absurd, because your saying that "I am not in the house," proves that you are there. 
Buddha doubted everything, but he could not doubt himself. When everything was 
doubted and became useless, ultimately he was thrown to himself. And there, doubt was 
impossible, so doubt fell. Suddenly he was awakened to his own reality, to his own 
source of consciousness, the very ground of consciousness. So he was godless, but he 
became god-like. Really, on this earth a more god-like person has never walked, but his 
instinct was intellectual. 


Both types of techniques are there. If you feel you are intellectual, confused, doubting, do 
not try faith techniques, they are not for you. Every technique is not for everyone. If you 



have faith, there is no need to try any other method - no need ! If you have faith, then try 
those methods which require faith as a presupposition. But be authentic; that is basic. 

That is a very essential thing to remember continuously. 

It is very easy to deceive - VERY easy to deceive, because we imitate. You may start 
imitating Ramakrishna without knowing that you are not of that type. If you imitate, you 
will be an imitation; nothing real will happen to you. You can imitate Buddha. This is 
happening every day because we are bom into religions. Because of that, much nonsense 
continues. You cannot be born into a religion: you have to choose. Religion has nothing 
to do with blood, bones, birth - nothing! 

Someone is bom a Buddhist. He may be a feeling type, but he will follow Buddha. Then 
his whole life will be wasted. Someone is born an intellectual type. He may be bom a 
Mohammedan or he may be bom into a devotional cult. His life will be wasted and he 
will become false. The whole world is irreligious because religion is foolishly associated 
with birth. There is no relationship at all. You have to choose consciously, because first 
you have to understand your type and then you have to choose. 

The world will be deeply religious the day we allow everyone to choose his religion, 
method, technique, path. 

But religion has become organizational, politically organizational. That is why the 
moment a child is bom we force religion upon him, we condition him into a religion. The 
parents are afraid that he may move into another organization. Before he becomes 
conscious he must be destroyed, crippled, forced. Before he becomes conscious and can 
think about things, his mind must be conditioned so that he cannot think freely. You 
cannot think freely because whatsoever you think has been preconditioned. 

I was reading Bertrand Russell. He says, "Intellectually, I conceive of Buddha as being 
greater than Jesus. But deep down in my heart, that is impossible: Jesus is greater than 
Buddha. At the most, if I force myself, then I will put them parallel, equal. Intellectually, 

I feel Buddha is a giant. Jesus is nothing before him." 

Why this feeling? Because Bertrand Russell is himself the intellectual type, so Buddha 
has an appeal for him. Jesus has no appeal. But the mind has been conditioned into 
Christianity. This is not truth because these comparisons are meaningless, they simply 
show something about Bertrand Russell - neither about Buddha nor about Jesus, because 
no comparison is possible. For someone who is of the feeling type, Jesus will look greater 
than Buddha. 

But if he is a Buddhist, if he is born a Buddhist it will be difficult. His own mind will feel 
uneasy if he thinks that someone is greater than Buddha. It is difficult, impossible in a 
way, because whatsoever you think has been fed into you — it has already been fed. in. 
Your mind is something like a computer. The infonnation has been fed in, evaluation has 
been fed. in. You are already based on some non-sensical concepts, traditions. You cannot 
throw them away easily; that is why religion is just a word. Very few people can become 
religious, because very few people can rebel against their own conditioning. Only a 
revolutionary mind can become religious - a mind which can see a thing, the facts of it, 
and then decide what to do. 

But feel your type, try to feel your type. It is not difficult. The first thing: if you feel 
confused, you are the intellectual type. If you feel certain, trusting, then proceed with the 
different techniques which require trust as a basic thing. And secondly, remember, never 
do both the techniques. That will create more confusion in you. Nothing is wrong; both 



are right; Ramakrishna is right, Buddha is right. Remember one thing: in this world, 
many things can lead you to truth - many paths. There is no monopoly. Even 
contradictory paths, absolutely contradictory paths, can lead you to the same point. 

There is no "one" path. On the contrary, if you go deep and realize, you will come to 
know that there are as many paths as there are travelers, because each individual has to 
proceed from the point where he is standing already. 

He cannot use a ready-made path. Basically, you create your path by your movement. 
There is no ready-made path already there, there are no highways that are ready-made. 
But every religion tries to force on you this idea that the path is ready and you have just 
to travel over it. That is wrong. This inner search is more like the sky than the earth. 

A bird is flying: he will leave no footprints in the sky. The sky will remain a vacuum. 

The bird has flown — he has not left any footprints. No bird can follow in his footprints; 
The sky is always empty. Another bird, any bird who has to fly, will create his own path. 
Consciousness is like a sky, not like the earth. A Mahavir moves, a Buddha moves, a 
Meera moves, a Mohammed moves... You can see their movement, you can see their 
achievement, but the moment they move, the path disappears. You cannot follow, dead- 
like, you cannot imitate. You have to find your own path. 

First think about your type and then choose methods. In these one hundred and twelve 
methods, many are for the intellectual type, many are for the emotional type. But do not 
think that because you are a mixed type you have to follow both. That will create more 
confusion, and you will be divided so deeply that you may even go mad, schizophrenic; 
you may become split. Do not do that. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

TO KNOW DEATH IS CERT AIN, YOU SAID YESTERDAY. 

THIS SEEMS TO BE THE APPROACH OF BUDDHA, WHO WAS LIFE-NEGATIVE. 
BUT TANTRA’S APPROACH IS LIFE AFFIRMATIVE, NOT NEGATIVE, SO HOW 
CAN THIS DEATH ORIENTATION BE USED IN TANTRA? 

Buddha is not really life -negative. He appears so: he appears to be live-negative because 
he focuses on death. To us he appears to be in love with death, but he is not. On the 
contrary, he is in love with eternal life. To find that life which is deathless, he focuses on 
death. Death is not his love, he has to focus on death just to find something which is 
beyond death. And Buddha says that if there is nothing beyond death then life is futile — 
but only then is life futile. He never says life is futile,. he says that if nothing is beyond 
death, then life is futile. And your life is futile, he says, because your life is not beyond 
death. Whatsoever you think is your life is just a part of death. You are fooled by that. 
You think it is life and it is nothing but death on its way. 

A man is born — he is on his way to die. Whatsoever he becomes, whatsoever he 
achieves, possesses, nothing will help: he is moving toward death. This so-called life is 
moving toward death. How can we call it life? That is Buddha’s question. A life which 
moves toward death, how call it life? Life which implies death inevitably is just hidden 
death, not life; it is gradual death. By and by you are dying, and you go on thinking that 
you are living. 


Right now you feel you are living, but you are dying. Every moment you are losing life 



and gaining death. A tree is known by its fruits, Buddha says, so your tree of life cannot 
be called life because death is the fruit. A tree is known by its fruit, and if on your tree of 
life only fruits of death come, then you were deceived by the tree. And another thing: if a 
tree gives a particular fruit, it shows that that particular fruit was the seed of the tree; 
otherwise that particular fruit could not come out of the tree. So if life gives the fruit of 
death, death must have been the seed. 

Let us understand this. You are born, and you think that birth is the beginning — it is not. 
Before this birth, you died in another life. That death was the seed of this birth, and then 
again, death will become the fruit. And that fruit will become the seed for another birth. 
Birth leads to death, death precedes birth. So if you want to see life as it really is, it is 
rounded on both the sides by death. Death is the beginning and death is again the end, 
and life is just the illusion in between. You feel alive between two deaths; the passage 
joining one death to another you call life. Buddha says this is not life. This life is 
DUKKHA - misery. This life is death. That is why he appears to us who are deeply life- 
hypnotized, obsessed about being alive in any way, as life -negating. 

To us, just to be alive seems to be the end. We are so much afraid of death that Buddha 
appears in love with death, and that looks abnormal. He seems to be suicidal. This is 
what many have criticized Buddha for. 

Albert Schweitzer has criticized Buddha because he feels that Buddha is obsessed with 
death. He is not obsessed with death: we are obsessed with life. He is simply analyzing 
things, finding out what are the facts. And the deeper you go, the more you will find he is 
right. Your life is just false, fake, overtaken by death, just a clothing — inside there is 
death. Buddha focuses on death because he says, "If I can find out what death is, only 
then can I find out what life is. And if I can know what both death and life are, then there 
is a possibility that I may transcend both and know something which is beyond birth and 
death, beyond both." He is not negative, not life-denying, but he appears so. 

Tantra appears life-affirmative, but that again is our interpretation. Neither is Buddha 
life-denying, nor is tantra life-affirmative; the source is the same. Buddha focuses on 
death, tantra focuses on life. And both are one, so wherever you want to start, start. But 
go so deeply that you come to know the other also. 

Buddha focuses on the end - death. Tantra focuses on the beginning-life. That is why 
Buddha seems to be too much in love with death and tantra seems to be too much in love 
with sex, love, body, life. 

In the end there is death and in the beginning there is sex. Because tantra focuses itself on 
the beginning, sex becomes very important. So how to go deep and know what sex is, 
how to reveal the mystery of love, how to penetrate into the beginning, into the seed, so 
that you can go beyond — that is tantra's approach. 

Buddha focuses on death, and he says to meditate deeply on death, move into it and know 
the whole reality of it. Both are two ends of the same thing. Sex is death, and death is 
very sexual. It will be difficult to understand. 

There are many insects which die with their first intercourse. The first sex act, and death 
occurs. There is a species of spider in Africa in which the male dies in copulation. He 
cannot come down from the copulation; he is just on the female, and he dies there. The 
first copulation becomes death, and it is very horrible. At the moment of ejaculation he 
dies. Actually, he is not even really dead: he is still in the pangs of death. The moment 
the spider, the male spider, ejaculates, death starts and the female starts eating him. He 



never dismounts. The female starts eating him, and by the time the sexual act is finished, 
he is half eaten. 

Sex and death are so interconnected. Because of this, man became afraid of sex. Those 
who want to live more, who are fascinated with long life, they will be always afraid of 
sex, and those who think that they can become immortal, BRAHMACHARYA celibacy 
will be their cult. 

No one has yet been immortal and no one can be because you are born out of sex. If you 
were born out of BRAHMACHARYA, then it could be possible. If your father and 
mother were celibates, then, then only could you be immortal. 

Sex has already entered with your birth. Whether you go into sex or not makes no 
difference: you cannot escape death. Your very being starts with sex, and sex is the 
beginning of death. Because of this Christians say Jesus was bom from a virgin mother. 
Just to say that he is no mortal, no ordinary mortal, they say he was born to a virgin 
mother. "He is no ordinary mortal"... just to say this, just to say that death has no power 
over him, they had to create this myth. 

This is a part of a long myth. If he was bom out of sex, then death would have its power 
over him. Then he could not escape death, as with sex, death enters. So they say that he 
was born without any sex act; he was not a by-productof sex. They say that because he 
was the son of a virgin mother, he could revive again - resurrect. They crucified him, but 
they could not kill him. He remained alive because he was not a by-product of sex. They 
could not kill him. If really Jesus was born out of a virgin mother, it is impossible to kill 
him. It is impossible to kill him! Death is impossible! When the beginning is not, how 
can the end be? If he was not bom out of a virgin mother, then death will be the certain, 
inevitable end. 


So the whole myth has to be maintained. If you say that he was not bom out of a virgin 
mother, then the second part of the myth, resurrection, becomes false. If you say he 
resurrected, that he denied death, escaped death, that death could not kill him, that he 
could not be cmcified really, that those who were crucifying him were deceived, that he 
was alive and he remained alive, then you have to maintain the first part of the myth. 

I am not saying anything for or against, I am simply saying that the WHOLE myth has to 
be maintained, one part only cannot be maintained. If sex is there before birth, then death 
will be there. Because of this deep association, many times many societies have become 
afraid of sex. That fear is of death. Even if you accept sex, a certain fear remains there. 
Even if you move into sex, a certain fear remains there. No one allows himself a total let- 
go in it. The fear is there, you are on guard. You cannot go into it totally; you cannot let 
yourself go completely because that let-go is just like death. 

Neither is tantra for your idea of life, nor is Buddha against the real life. Tantra starts 
from one part — the beginning; Buddha starts with the end. And tantra is more scientific 
than Buddha, because it is always good to begin at the beginning. You are already born; 
death is far away. Birth has occurred — you can work on it more deeply — death has to 
occur. 

It is still in the imagination; it is not a reality to you. And when you see someone die, you 
never see death. You see someone dying, never the death — the process which happens to 
him inside. You cannot see it; it is invisible, it is individual. And the individual himself 



cannot say anything because the moment he goes through the process he is no more. He 
cannot come back, he cannot step back and tell what has happened. 

So whatsoever is known about death is just inference. No one knows anything about 
death actually. Unless you can remember your past lives, you cannot actually know 
anything about death. You have died many times; that is why Buddha had to revive many 
techniques about remembering past lives. Because your death of this life is in the future, 
how can you concentrate on it? How can you meditate on it? It has not happened yet. It is 
very vague, dark, unknown. What can you do? You can only think about it, but that 
thinking will also be borrowed. You will be repeating what others have said. Someone 
has said something about death, and you will be repeating it. How can you meditate on 
death? You can see others dying, but that is not a real entry into it. You are just an 
outsider. 

It is just as if someone is eating a sweet... You look at him, but how can you feel what is 
happening to him, what taste, what sweetness, what fragrance is happening to him? What 
is going on in him you cannot know. 

You can just look at his mouth, his behavior, or you can see the expression on his face — 
but this is all inference, not actual experience. 

You cannot know what is happening to him unless he says something, but whatsoever he 
says will be words to you, and again not an experience. Buddha talked about his past 
deaths, but no one believed him. If I tell you something about my past deaths, deep down 
you will not believe it. How can you believe it? You do not have any access to the reality 
of it. You are just closed at this birth, and the death of this life has not come yet. It 
always happens to others; it has not happened to you yet. 

It is difficult to meditate on death. As a base, you will have to move into past lives, you 
will have to go digging into past memories. Buddha, Mahavir, they both used the 
technique of JAATI SMARAN — the technique of going into past lives. Only then can 
you meditate on death. 

Tantra is more scientific. It starts with life, with birth, with sex, which is a fact to you. 
Death is still a fiction. But remember, the end of both is the same. They both are in search 
of eternal life — life which is deathless. Either transcend the beginning or transcend the 
end, either jump from one pole or from another. And remember, you can jump out of it 
only from a pole, you cannot jump from the middle. 

If I want to jump out of this room, either I have to move to this side to the extreme, or to 
that side to the extreme. 

I cannot jump out from the middle of the room, because jumping is possible only from 
the extreme pole. And there are two extreme poles in life - birth and death. Tantra starts 
from birth. It is more scientific, more real. You are already in it, so you can meditate 
upon it. Sex is a fact, so you can meditate upon it: you can move deep within it. 

Death is not a fact. A very rare mind is needed to conceive of death; a very keen intellect 
is needed to penetrate into the future. Rarely, it happens that a buddha will conceive of 
death so deeply that the future becomes the present. But it is always for rare individuals. 
Tantra can be used by anyone who has any interest, who has any desire to search in order 
to know what real life is. But tantra also uses death just to help you move inwards - not 
for you to meditate on it, not for you to jump out of it, but to help you move inwards. 
Buddha also talked about birth just to make it a part of the meditation on death. The other 
part can be used as a help, but is not the center. Tantra says, if you can think about death, 



your life will take a different meaning, shape and significance. Your mind will start 
thinking in new dimensions which without death would be difficult or even impossible. 
The moment you begin to feel that this life is going to end in death, death becomes a 
certainty and you cannot cling to this life: mind starts moving beyond. 

That is what I was saying yesterday. 

If you think about just this life, your mind will go outwards: it will go out and out and out 
to the objects. If you begin to look and see that death is hidden everywhere, then you 
cannot cling to objects. Your mind will start moving inwards. 

Just the other day a young girl came to me. She is an Indian girl who fell in love with an 
American boy. But after she fell in love and they were just thinking and planning to get 
married, the boy fell ill and it was discovered, diagnosed, that he had a certain type of 
cancer that is incurable. Death was certain. He could be alive two or three or four years at 
the most. The boy tried to persuade the girl not to marry him now. He said, "Death is so 
certain, why waste your life with me?" 

But the more he insisted — this is how the mind functions — the more the girl became 
adamant about wanting to marry him. This is how mind works — in paradoxes. If I would 
have been in the place of that boy, I would have insisted on marrying;then the girl would 
have escaped. Then there was no possibility of marriage. Then I would not have seen that 
girl again. But the boy insisted - out of his love, but out of a foolish mind, without 
knowing how mind functions — that she should not marry him. Anyone would have done 
the same. And because he was insisting, the girl felt it to be a matter of conscience: she 
insisted to marry. 


Then they got married. Now, after marriage, the girl is surrounded constantly by death. 
She is sad; she cannot love the boy. It is easy to die for anyone, .it is very difficult to live. 
It is very easy to die... to be a martyr is such an easy thing. It is such an easy thing to be a 
martyr because it is a momentary thing: you can do it in a single moment. 

If you love me and I say, "Jump out of this building," you can jump because you feel you 
love me. But if I say, "Okay, now live with me for thirty years," it is very difficult - 
VERY difficult! 

You can become a martyr in a single moment. To die for someone, for something, is the 
easiest thing in the world; to live for something is the most arduous and difficult thing. 
She became a martyr, but now she has to live enclosed in death's presence. She cannot 
love. She cannot see the face of her husband, because the moment she sees it the cancer is 
there, the death is there just by the corner. Any moment it can happen, so she is in 
constant agony. 

What has happened? Death has become a certainty. Now life has no interest for her, 
everything has dropped and has become death. She came from America just to meet me . 
She wants to meditate because life seems futile. Life has become equivalent to cancer, so 
now she has come here to ask me, "Teach me meditation. How can I move beyond life?" 
Unless life becomes futile you never think about moving beyond it. 


I told her that apparently her marriage looks very unfortunate, but it may prove very 
fortunate. Everyone's husband is going to die, but it is not certain. Everybody's wife is 
going to die, but it is not certain. Death is certain, only the date is not certain. And who 



knows, even the date may be certain — you do not know. That is why ignorance is very 
blissful. She could have loved that boy if still they were ignorant; apparently nothing 
would be wrong. But now love has become impossible, life has become impossible. 

Death is always there, constantly present between the two of Them. 

So I asked her, "Why are you not loving him more because he is going to die? Love him 
more." 

She said, "How can I love? We are always three; the privacy is lost. I am there and my 
husband is there, and between we two, Death. There is no privacy left." 

Death is too much; it is impossible to live with. It can become a turning. If you can 
become aware of death, says tantra, use it as a turning inwards. No need to go into details 
about death, no need to go on contemplating about it. Do not make it an obsession. Just 
the awareness that death is there will help you to move inwards, to be meditative. 

The third question : 

Question 3 

HOW CAN THE MIND BE TRANSCENDED AND TRANSFORMED ONLY BY 
BRINGING THE BODY TO A DEATH-LIKE STATE? 

The mind is constantly active. 

While you are active meditation is impossible, because meditation means a deep 
inactivity. You can know yourself only when everything has become still, silent and 
quiet. Only then, in that silence, do you happen to encounter yourself. Otherwise, in 
activity you are so much occupied with something or other, you cannot feel your own 
presence. You go on forgetting yourself. Continuously, with this or that object, you go on 
forgetting yourself. 

Activity means being related with something outside. You are active because you are 
related with something outside, doing something outside. Inactivity means you have 
returned home; you are not doing anything. In Greek language, leisure is called schole. 
The English word school comes from this Greek word; School means leisure. You can 
learn something only when you are at leisure; learning happens in leisure. If you are 
active, doing this and that, you cannot leam. 

Schools were for the leisure class - those who could afford leisure. Their children were 
sent to schools, to places of leisure. They were not to do anything but leam; they were 
allowed total inactivity as far as the world was concerned. They were freed from all 
worldly activity, and then they could leam. 

The phenomenon is similar if you want to learn about your own presence: you will have 
to be completely inactive - COMPLETELY inactive, just being, not doing anything. 

All the ripples must cease, all activity must evaporate. You are, simply. YOU ARE! In 
that moment, for the first time you become aware of your own presence. Why? Because 
the presence is so subtle. Occupied with a gross object, engaged with gross activity, you 
cannot become aware of such a subtle presence. It is a very silent music, your presence. 
And you are so much filled with noise ,and every type of noise is occupying you, that you 
cannot hear that still, small voice within. 

Cease being engaged in outward noises and activities. Then that still, small voice, for the 
first time is heard; that soundless sound, that soundless music is felt. You enter the subtle 
and leave the gross. Activity is gross; inactivity is subtle. And your presence is the most 
subtle thing in the world. To feel that, you will have to cease; you will have to be absent 
from everywhere so that your total presence comes in and you can encounter yourself. 



That is why in many techniques it is suggested to make your body as if it is dead. It 
means simply being inactive like a dead man. 

While you are meditating, let your body enter death. It will be imagination, but even that 
will help. Do not ask how imagination can help. Imagination has its own function. For 
example, now scientific experiments are done... You sit down, there is a doctor, and he is 
observing your pulse rate. Inside, you just start being angry; you imagine that you are 
fighting, angry — your pulse rate will go higher. 


Inside, just imagine you are dying, that you are just going to die. Become silent and feel 
death descending. Your pulse rate will come down. The pulse rate is a physical thing, and 
you were just imagining. Imagination is not unreal; it is also real. If you can really 
imagine, even real death can occur. If you can really imagine, you can affect physical 
things. 

You might have observed some display of hypnosis. Or if not, you can do this easily at 
home; it is not difficult, it is very easy. Use your child as the medium. If the child is a 
girl, it is better than using a boy, because a boy is more doubting than a girl, and a boy is 
always in a fighting mood instead of a cooperative mood. A boy means that - a fighting 
mood. 

Cooperation is needed. Just tell the child to relax, and go on suggesting, "You are going 
into a deep trance, going into a deep trance, going into a deep trance, falling asleep. Your 
eyelids are becoming heavy, heavy, heavier..." And use a monotonous voice: "Heavier, 
heavier, heavier..." Let your voice be monotonous, as if you are also becoming sleepy. 
Within five minutes the child will be fast asleep. This is not ordinary sleep, this is a 
hypnotic trance. It is basically, qualitatively different from sleep, because now the child 
can hear only your voice. There is nothing else that he or she can hear. If someone else 
talks, the child is deaf. 

If you talk — the person who has hypnotized him — he can still hear, he will follow your 
orders. 

Try to do some experiments. Say to the child, "This is a burning hot coal that I am putting 
in your hand. You will be burned." Put any ordinary thing in the child's hand - a piece of 
stone that is cold, with nothing hot about it. The child will throw it immediately because 
the mind has the suggestion that it is a burning coal, hot, and that his or her hand is going 
to be burned. He will throw it, he will scream as if he has touched something hot. 

But a miracle happens. You will come to know that his hand is really burned. What is 
happening? There was no possibility of being burned by a cold stone, but the child is 
burned exactly as if there was a burning coal put in his hand. It was just imagination. 

That is why those who have penetrated the human mind, they say that imagination is as 
real a fact as anything. Imagination is not JUST imagination, because it results in actual 
fact. 

Do this experiment... Fall down on the ground, lie still and feel you are going to die. The 
body is becoming dead. By and by you will feel a heaviness coming over the body. The 
whole body will become a dead weight, a lead weight. Tell yourself that "Even if I want 
to remove my hand from the position where it is, I cannot move it. "Then try to remove it, 
and you will not be able to do so. 


Now the imagination is working. 



In this state where you feel the body has become a dead weight, you can cut yourself off 
from the world of activity easily. That is why this is suggested. You can now become 
inactive because you are dead. Now you can feel that everything has died and the bridge 
from you to the world is broken. The body is the bridge. If the body is dead, you cannot 
do anything. Can you do anything without the body? You cannot do anything without the 
body. 

Any activity is through the body. Mind can think about it but cannot do it. You have 
become impotent; you cannot do anything. You are inside, the world is outside, the 
vehicle is dead and the bridge is broken. In this state of the body being dead and the 
bridge being broken, your energy will start moving inwards, because there is no way to 
move out. The outer way is closed and blocked, so now you move inwards. See yourself 
standing at the heart center; look within at the details of the body. You will feel very 
strange when for the first time you can look from within your own body. 

Tantra, yoga, ayurveda, all the old physiologies, all the old physiological doctrines, their 
work was revealed and made known through such inner meditative techniques. Modem 
physiology is known through dissection, but ancient physiology was known through 
meditation, not dissection. And now there is a school, a school of very avant-garde 
medical thinkers who say that when you dissect a body and come to know something, 
you come to know something which is dead - and whatsoever is inferred from a dead part 
is irrelevant to a live body. 


They may be right. If you take my blood out and then examine it, you are examining dead 
blood. It is not the same blood which was in me. Outwardly it is the same, but in me it 
was a live process, a live current, alive, part of a mechanism, of an organic whole. Now it 
is dead. It is as if you pull my eyes out and then examine them. When they were with me 
I was behind them and in them. Now they are dead stones, and whatsoever you come to 
know about those eyes is not about my eyes, because the basic, essential part is missing: I 
am not there. 

Those eyes were part of a big whole. Their whole quality consisted in being part of a big 
whole. Now they are independent, not part of anything. The pattern is lost, the live 
contact is lost. All the traditions of yoga and tantra say that unless you can come to know 
the living body, your knowledge is false. But how to come to know the living body? 

There is only one way: you enter into yourself, and move within to see the details of the 
body. A different world was revealed through these techniques, an alive world. 

So the first thing: be centered at the heart, and look around at your body, move. Two 
things will happen. One: you will not feel now that you are the body — you cannot feel it. 
You are the observer, one who is aware, alert, looking at, not being looked at. For the 
first time the body will become just a clothing; you will be different from it. 

And the second thing: immediately you will feel, "I cannot die." 

This will seem strange — using a method, an imaginary method of death, and then coming 
to the deathless point. You will come to know suddenly, "I cannot die." You have seen 
others who have died. What happened to them? Their bodies became dead; that is why 
you inferred that they were dead. Now you can see that the whole body is lying dead, and 
you are alive. 

So bodily death is not your death. The body dies, and you move on. And if you persist in 
this technique, the time is not very far away when you can come out of your body and 



look at your body from without, at your body lying dead just before you. It is not very 
difficult. Once you experience this, you will never be the same person again. You will be 
reborn; you will become DWIJ - twice born. Now a new life starts. 

I was telling you yesterday about one astrologer who had promised to work on my life's 
birth chart. He died before he had done it, so his son had to prepare the chart, but he was 
also puzzled. He said, "It is almost certain that this child is going to die at the age of 
twenty-one. Every seven years he will have to face death." So my parents, my family, 
were always worried about my death. Whenever I would come to the end of a seven-year 
cycle, they would become afraid. And he was right. At the age of seven I survived, but I 
had a deep experience of death - not of my own, but of the death of my maternal 
grandfather. 

And I was so much attached to him that his death appeared to be my own death. 

In my own childish way I imitated his death. I would not eat for three days continuously, 
would not drink water, because I felt that if I did so it would be a betrayal. I loved him so 
much, he loved me so much, that when he was alive I was never allowed to go to my 
parents. I was with my maternal grandfather. He said, "When I die, only then can you 
go." He lived in a very small village, so I couldn’t go to any school because there was no 
school. He would never leave me, but then the time came when he died. He was part and 
parcel of me. I had grown with his presence, his love. 

When he died I felt that it would be a betrayal to eat. Now I didn’t want to live. It was 
childish, but through it something very deep happened. For three days I remained lying 
down: I would not come out of the bed. I said, "Now that he is dead, I do not want to 
live." I survived, but those three days became a death experience. I died in a way, and I 
came to realize — now I can tell about it, though at that time it was just a vague 
experience — I came to feel that death is impossible. This was a feeling. 

Then at the age of fourteen, my family again became disturbed that I would die. I 
survived, but then I again tried it consciously. I said to them, "If death is going to occur 
as the astrologer has said, then it is better to be prepared. 

And why give a chance to death? Why should I not go and meet it half way? If I am 
going to die, then it is better to die consciously." 

So I took leave from my school for seven days. I went to my principal and I told him, "I 
am going to die." He said, "What nonsense you are talking! Are you committing suicide? 
What do you mean you are going to die?" 

I told him about the astrologer's prediction that the possibility of death would confront 
me every seven years. I told him, "I am going into retreat for seven days to wait for 
death. If death comes, it is good to meet it consciously so that it becomes an experience." 
I went to a temple just outside of my village. I arranged with the priest that he should not 
disturb me. It was a very lonely, unvisited temple - old, in ruins. No one ever came to it. 
So I told him, "I will remain in the temple. You just give me once a day something to eat 
and something to drink, and the whole day I will be lying there waiting for death." 

For seven days I waited. Those seven days became a beautiful experience. Death never 
came, but on my part I tried in every way to be dead. Strange, weird feelings happened. 
Many things happened, but the basic note was this - that if you are feeling you are going 
to die, you become calm and silent. Nothing creates any worry then because all worries 
are concerned with life. Fife is the basis of all worries. 



When you are going to die anyway one day, why worry? 

I was lying there. On the third or fourth day a snake entered the temple. It was in view, I 
was seeing the snake, but there was no fear. Suddenly I felt very strange. The snake was 
coming nearer and nearer, and I felt very strange. There was no fear, so I thought, "When 
death is coming, it may be coming through this snake, so why be afraid? Wait!" 

The snake crossed over me and went away. Fear had disappeared. If you accept death, 
there is no fear. If you cling to life, then every fear is there. 

Many times flies came around me. They would fly around, they would creep over me, on 
my face. Sometimes I felt irritated and would have liked to throw them off, but then I 
thought, "What is the use? Sooner or later I am going to die, and then no one will be here 
to protect the body. So let them have their way." 

The moment I decided to let them have their way, the irritation disappeared. They were 
still on the body, but it was as if I was not concerned. They were as if moving, as if 
creeping on someone else's body. There was a distance immediately. If you accept death, 
a distance is created. Life moves far away with all its worries, irritations, everything. I 
died in a way, but I came to know that something deathless is there. Once you accept 
death totally, you become aware of it. 

Then again at the age of twenty-one, my family was waiting. 

So I told them, "Why do you go on waiting? Do not wait. Now I am not going to die." 
Physically, someday I will die, of course. However, this prediction of the astrologer 
helped me very much because he made me aware very early on about death. 
Continuously, I could meditate and could accept that it was coming. 

Death can be used for deep meditation because then you become inactive. Energy is 
released from the world; it can move inwards. That is why a death-like posture is 
suggested. Use life, use death, for discovering that which is beyond both. 


THE END. 



Chapter 25: From words to pure sounds to being 


13. DEVI, IMAGINE THE SANSKRIT LETTERS IN THESE HONEY-FILLED FOCI 
OF AWARENESS, FIRST AS LETTERS, THEN MORE SUBTLY AS SOUNDS, 
THEN AS MOST SUBTLE FEELING. THEN, LEAVING THEM ASIDE, BE FREE. 

14. BATHE IN THE CENTER OF SOUND, AS IN THE CONTINUOUS SOUND OF A 
WATERFALL. OR, BY PUTTING THE FINGERS IN THE EARS, HEAR THE 
SOUND OF SOUNDS. 

Jean Paul Sartre wrote an autobiography. He has called it WORDS. The name is very 
meaningful. It is the autobiography of every man — words and words and words. You are 
fdled with words, and this process of words continues the whole day, even in the mind. 
When you are sleeping, you are still fdled with words, thoughts. 

The mind is just an accumulation of words, and everyone is too much obsessed with the 
mind. That is why self-knowledge becomes more and more impossible. The self is 
beyond the words, or behind the words, or below the words, or above the words, but 
never in the words. You exist not in the mind, but just below the mind, behind the mind, 
above the mind — never in the mind. You are focused in the mind, but you are not there. 
Standing out, you are focused in the mind. Because of this constant focusing, you have 
become identified with the mind. You think you are the mind, this is the only problem, 
the basic problem, and unless you are aware that you are not the mind, nothing 
meaningful can happen to you. 

You will live in misery. 

This identification is the misery. It is as if one is identified with a shadow. Then the 
whole life becomes false. Your whole life is false, and the basic error is that you are 
identified with the mind. You think you are the mind: this is the ignorance. You can 
develop your mind, but in that way ignorance will not be dissolved. You can become 
very intelligent, you can become very talented, you may even become a genius. But if the 
identification with the mind is there, you remain basically mediocre because you remain 
identified with a false shadow. How does it happen? Unless you understand the 
mechanism of how it happens you cannot go beyond it, and all the techniques of 
meditation are nothing but processes to go beyond, to go beyond the mind. 

Meditation techniques are not against the world, they are against the mind — and not 
really against the mind, but against identification. How are you identified with the mind? 
What is the mechanism that is working? Mind is a need — a great need, particularly for 
humanity. And that is the basic difference between man and the animals. Man thinks, and 
he has used thinking as a weapon for his struggle to survive. He could survive because he 
could think; otherwise he is more helpless than any animal, more weak than any animal. 
Physically, it was impossible for him to survive. He could survive because he could 
think. 

Because of thinking, he has become the master of the earth. 

If thinking has been so deeply helpful, then it becomes easy to understand why man has 
become identified with the mind. You are not so much identified with the body. Of 
course, religions go on saying, "Do not be identified with the body," but no one is really 
identified with the body — no one! You are identified with the mind, not with the body, 



and this identification with the body is not so fatal as the identification with the mind — 
because the body is more real. The body exists, it is related to existence very deeply. 
Mind is just a shadow. 

Identification with the mind is more subtle than identification with the body, but we are 
identified with the mind because mind has been such a great help to survive — not only 
against animals, against nature, but against other human beings also. If you have a keen, 
intelligent mind, you will win against other human beings as well. You will succeed, you 
will become more rich, because you will be more calculating and more cunning. Against 
other human beings also, mind is the weapon. That is why we are so much identified — 
remember this. 

Against death, against disease, against nature, against animals, against other human 
beings, mind has been your protection, your security. And mind has done much, so 
obviously we think of ourselves as mind. If someone says that your body is ill you do not 
feel offended, but if someone says that your mind seems ill you do feel offended. 

If your body is ill, you do not feel offended. Why? You are not identified with the body. 
But if your mind is ill and someone says you are psychologically ill, mentally ill, insane, 
you feel offended. Now this is something about you, not about your body. 

You behave with the body as if it is a vehicle, something you possess, but not so with the 
mind. With the mind, you are the mind; with the body, you are the master. The body is a 
slave — you possess it. 

This mind has created a division in your being also, and that is the second basic cause of 
why we are identified with it. You think not only about external things, you think about 
internal things also. For example, the body has many instincts. You think about your 
instincts also. Not only do you think, you fight against your instincts, so there is a 
constant internal fight. There is sex: the mind fights it, or tries to mold it in its own way. 
ft suppresses it, perverts it, tries to control it. 

The mind is fighting inside also. That fight creates a division between you and your 
body. And really, you start thinking that the body is something inimical, not a friend, 
because the body goes on doing things which the mind is against. The body is not going 
to listen to the mind, so the mind feels offended, defeated, ft attacks the body, and then a 
division is created. And you are always identified with the mind, never with the body. 


The mind is your ego. That is your "1". If the body feels sexuality, you can divide. You 
can say, "This is the body, not me. 1 am against it. 1 have taken a vow of celibacy, 1 am 
against it. This is the body; this is not me." Then who are you? The mind which has taken 
a vow? This mind is your ego, and you go against the body because the body is very 
much ego-destroying. Whatsoever you decide, it never listens. 

All the ascetic nonsense was born because of this: the body will not listen. The body is 
nature, the body is a part of the cosmic whole, the body has its own laws. Those laws are 
unconscious; it functions according to them. The mind tries to create its own laws over 
and above the body. Then a conflict is created. Then the mind starts fighting the body. 
Then the mind will starve the body; it will try in every way to kill it. 

That is what has happened in the past: so-called religious people have been really mad 
against their bodies. And whatsoever they were doing was less for God and more against 
the body. Really, to be in search of God became synonymous with being against the 
body. Religious persons took the attitude, "Kill the body, destroy the body. The body is 



the enemy." And really, this is not a religious attitude, but one of the most irreligious 
attitudes, because it is the most egoistical. This is the ego, the ego feels offended. 

You decide not to be angry again, and then anger comes: your ego feels defeated. 

Your decision is thrown overboard, and the anger comes. And when the anger comes you 
feel this is coming from the body. You decide against sex and sex comes: you feel 
offended, so you try to punish the body. Asceticism is nothing but punishment — 
punishing your own body in order to force it to behave according to the ego. 

This mind, this process of thinking, this ego, is just a fragment of your whole total being, 
and this fragment is trying to be the sovereign. This is not possible, the fragment cannot 
be the sovereign. It is going to fail; that is why there is so much frustration in life. You 
can never succeed — you are trying the impossible. The fragment cannot be the 
sovereign. The whole is bigger and the whole is more powerful. 

It is just as if a branch of a tree tries to control the whole tree, even the roots. How can a 
branch control the whole tree, and how can it force the roots to follow it? That is 
impossible. Whatsoever it thinks, it is mad; the branch has gone mad. It may go on 
thinking and dreaming, conceiving of some future where the tree will be following it, but 
it is not possible; it will have to follow the tree. It is alive only because of the tree and the 
roots. And the roots were there before it was. The roots are the source of it also. 

Your mind is just a fragment of your body; it cannot control it. The very effort to control 
the body will create frustration and failure. 

And the whole humanity has been a failure because of this. Everyone is suffering, in 
conflict, in anguish, in anxiety, trembling, because the impossible is being tried. But the 
ego always likes to try the impossible. The possible has no challenge for it; the 
impossible is a challenge. And if the impossible can be done, then the ego will feel very 
good — because this cannot be done. You can try to do it, but you will waste your life 
trying that which cannot be done. 

Because of this inner effort to become the master, you are identified with the mind. Who 
would like to be identified with a slave? Who would like to be identified with the 
unconscious? It is useless. The unconscious is negated because it cannot be grasped. And 
with the unconscious there is no ego; you cannot feel "I". 

Try to understand it in this way: when sex overpowers you, really you cannot say "I". It 
is as if something greater than you has taken possession — as if you are in a strong 
current. Y ou are no more; something else is driving you. That is why these words are 
meaningful... that is why those who are against sex will say, "Sex possessed me." 

Anger possesses you, hunger possesses you. They are something greater than you, and 
you are just taken by the current. It is fearful. It is very fearful because then you are no 
more. It is a sort of death. That is why you are so much against sex — it is a sort of death. 

Those who are against sex will always be afraid of death, and those who are not against 
sex and can flow in it easily, spontaneously, will never be afraid of death. See the 
association: those who are against sex will always be afraid of death, and those who are 
afraid of death will be always against sex. 

Those who are afraid of death will always create theories of immortality; they will 
always think about life beyond death. Those who think about immortality will always be 
against sex — these are alternatives. Sex gives you a fear. What is the fear? You are no 
more in it, something greater than you possesses you. You are thrown overboard; you are 



no more in it. 

So even those who are not against sex, they too never move really deep into sex. They 
never move; they are always holding back, trying to remain there, not allowing 
themselves, not ready for a let-go. That is why orgasm, such a natural thing, has become 
so impossible for man and woman. A deep orgasm means you have been in something 
which was greater than you. You have been in something where you were not, the ego 
was not. 

The ego is struggling to control everything, and mind helps you. In the effort you become 
identified with the mind, and this identification is the misery, it is a false shadow. Mind is 
a very utilitarian instrument. You have to use it, but do not become identified with it. It is 
a good instrument — necessary. 

Use it! But do not feel that YOU are the mind, because once you start feeling you are the 
mind, you cannot use it. The mind starts using you. Then you are simply drifting with the 
mind. 

All the meditation techniques are an effort to give you a glimpse of that which is not 
mind. So how to go beyond it? How to leave it and look at it even for a single moment? 

The first technique: 

DEVI, IMAGINE THE SANSKRIT LETTERS IN THESE HONEY-FILLED FOCI OF 
AWARENESS, FIRST AS LETTERS, THEN MORE SUBTLY AS SOUNDS, THEN 
AS MOST SUBTLE FEELING. THEN, LEAVING THEM ASIDE, BE FREE. 

Words are sounds. Thoughts are words in sequence, in logical sequence, in a particular 
pattern. Sound is basic. With sound words are created, and then with words thoughts are 
created, and then with thoughts religion and philosophy, everything. Deep down is the 
sound. 

This technique uses a reverse process. Shiva says: DEVI, IMAGINE THE SANSKRIT 
LETTERS IN THESE HONEY-FILLED FOCI OF AWARENESS, FIRST AS 
LETTERS, THEN MORE SUBTLY AS SOUNDS, THEN AS MOST SUBTLE 
FEELING. THEN, LEAVING THEM ASIDE, BE FREE. 

We live in philosophy. One is a Hindu, one is a Mohammedan, one is a Christian, or 
something else. We live in philosophies, systems of thought, and they have become so 
important that we can die for them. Man can die for words, for mere words. Someone 
calls his conception of the absolute a lie, or someone calls Ram or someone calls Christ 
or something else a lie — then man can fight, for a mere word he can kill the other. 

The word has become so important. This is nonsense, but this is history and this is how 
we are still behaving. 

A single word can create such a disturbance in you that you are ready to kill or to die for 
it. We live in philosophies, systems of thought. What are philosophies? Thoughts 
arranged logically, systematically, in a pattern. And what are thoughts? Words arranged 
in a system, meaningfully. And what are words? Sounds, upon which it is agreed that 
they mean either this or that. So sounds are basic; they are the basic structure of the mind. 
Philosophies are the peak, but the bricks by which the whole structure is raised are 
sounds. 

What is wrong? A sound is just a sound, and the meaning is given by us, agreed upon by 
us; otherwise it has no meaning. The meaning is invested by us, projected by us; 
otherwise "Ram" is just a sound — it is meaningless. We give it a meaning, and then we 



create a system of thought around it. Then this word becomes very significant, then we 
make a philosophy around it. Then you can do something, anything, for it. You can die or 
you can live for it. If someone insults this sound "Ram," you can become infuriated. And 
what is this? Just an agreement, a legal agreement that "This word means this." No word 
means anything in itself, it is simply a sound. 

This sutra says to go in the reverse order — go backwards. Come to the sounds, then, 
more basic than sounds, a feeling is somewhere hidden. 

This has to be understood. Man uses words. Words mean sounds with meanings that are 
agreed upon. But animals, birds use sounds without any linguistic meaning. They do not 
have any language, but they use sounds with feeling. A bird is singing: it has a "feeling" 
meaning in it, it is indicating something. It may be a call for the partner, for the beloved, 
or it may be a call for the mother, or the child may be feeling hungry and just showing his 
distress. It is indicating a feeling. 

Above sounds there are words, thoughts, philosophies; below sounds are feelings. And 
unless you can get below feelings, you cannot get below mind. The whole world is filled 
with sounds, only the human world is filled with words. And even a child who cannot use 
language uses sounds. Really, the whole language developed because of particular 
sounds that every child is using all over the world. 

For example, in any language the word 'mother’ is somehow related with Tna’. It may be 
'mater', it may be 'Mutter', it may be Tnata', it may be Tna’, — anything — but somewhere 
it is related with the sound "ma" in all the languages, more or less. The child can utter 
"ma" most easily. The first sound which the child can utter is "ma." Then the whole 
structure is based on this "ma." A child utters "ma" because it is the first sound which is 
easy for the child to utter. This is the case anywhere, in any part of the world, in any 
time. 

Just because of the structure of the throat and the body, "ma" is the easiest sound to utter. 
And the mother is the nearest and the first person who is meaningful. So the first sound 
becomes associated with the first person who is meaningful, and from this mother, mater, 
mata, ma, all the other words are derived. But when the child for the first time utters 
"ma," he has no linguistic meaning for it, but a feeling is there. And because of that 
feeling the word becomes associated with the mother. That feeling is more basic than the 
sound. 

So this sutra says first to imagine the Sanskrit letters. Any language will do. Because 
Shiva was talking to Parvati, that is why he said Sanskrit. You can use English or Latin 
or Arabic, any language will do. Sanskrit has no significance except in that Shiva was 
talking to Parvati in Sanskrit. It is not that Sanskrit is something superior to any other 
language, any language will do. First feel inside, in your consciousness, THE HONEY- 
FILLED FOCI OF AWARENESS filled with letters: A, B, C, D... any letters of any 
language. This can be done, and it is a very beautiful exercise. If you want to do it, close 
your eyes and just see your consciousness inside being filled with words. 

Think of consciousness as a blackboard, then: A, B, C... Visualize all the words, all the 
letters. Visualize these first as letters. "A": look at it as "A" as you write it. 

Write it with consciousness and look at it. Then by and by, forget the letter "A" and just 
remember the sound of "A" — just the sound. Start with visualization — because eyes are 
predominant for us. Ears are not so predominant. We are eye-oriented, eye-centered. 



Again, the reason is the same. Because eyes help us to survive more than anything else, 
our consciousness is ninety percent in the eyes. Conceive of yourself without eyes, and 
your whole life goes dead — then a very minor part remains. 

So first visualize. Use your eyes inwards and see the letters. Letters are more related to 
ears than eyes because they are sounds, but for us, because we are reading, reading, 
reading, they have become associated with eyes. Basically, they are associated with ears 
— they are sounds. Start with the eyes, then forget the eyes by and by. Then move away 
from the eyes to the ears. First imagine them as letters, then see them, hear them MORE 
SUBTLY AS SOUNDS, THEN AS MOST SUBTLE FEELINGS. And this is a very 
beautiful exercise. 

When you say "A", what is the feeling? You may not have been aware of it. What is the 
feeling inside you? Whenever you use any sound, what type of feeling comes into 
existence? We are so feeling-less that we have simply forgotten. When you see a sound, 
what happens inside? You go on using it and the sound is even forgotten. You go on 
seeing it. If I say "A", you will see it first. 

In your mind, "A" will become visible; you will visualize it. When I say "A", do not 
visualize it. Just hear the sound "A", and then go and find out what happens in your 
feeling center. Does nothing happen? 

Shiva says, move from letters to sounds, uncover sounds through the letters. Uncover 
sounds, and then, through the sounds also, uncover feelings. Be aware of how you feel. 
They say that man has now become very insensitive; he is the most insensitive animal on 
earth. 

I was reading about one poet, a Gennan poet, and he relates one incident of his 
childhood. His father was a lover of horses, so he had many horses at the house, a big 
stable, but he would not allow this child to go to the stable. He was afraid, as the child 
was very small. But when the father was not there the child would sometimes steal into 
the stable where he had a friend — a horse. Whenever the child would go in, the horse 
would make some sounds. 

And the poet has written, "Then I also started making sounds with the horse, because 
there was no possibility of language. Then, in communication with that horse, for the first 
time I became aware of sounds — their beauty, their feeling." 

You cannot be aware with a man because he is dead. A horse is more alive, and he has no 
language. He has pure sound. He is filled with his heart, not with his mind. So that poet 
remembers, "For the first time, I became aware of the beauty of sounds and their 
meaning. 

This was not the meaning of words and thoughts, but a meaning filled with feeling." If 
someone else was there, the horse would not make those sounds, so the child could 
understand that the horse meant, "Do not come in. Someone is here and your father will 
be angry." 

When there was no one, the horse would make the sounds meaning, "Come in. There is 
no one." So the poet remembers that "It was a conspiracy, and he helped me very much, 
that horse helped me very much. And when I would go and love that horse, he would 
move his head in a particular way when he liked it. When he did not like it, he would not 
move his head in that way. When he liked it, then it was a certain thing, he would express 
it. When he was not in the mood, then he would not move in a certain way." 

And this poet says, "This continued for years. I would go and love that horse, and that 



love was so deep, I never felt any affinity with anyone else so deeply. Then one day when 
I was stroking his neck and he was moving and enjoying it ecstatically, suddenly for the 
first time I became aware of my hand, that I was stroking, and the horse stopped. Now he 
would not move his neck." And that poet says, "Then for years I tried and tried, but there 
was no response, the horse would not reply. Only later on did I become aware that 
because I became aware of my hand and myself, the ego came in and the communication 
broke. 

I couldn’t recapture again that communication with the horse." 

What happened? That was a feeling communication. The moment ego comes, words 
come, language comes, thought comes, then the layer is changed completely. Now you 
are above sounds; then you were below sounds. Those sounds are feelings, and the horse 
could understand feelings. Now he couldn’t understand, so the communication broke. The 
poet tried and tried — but no effort is successful because even your effort is the effort of 
your ego. 

He tried to forget his hand, but he couldn't forget. How can you forget? It is impossible. 
And the more you try to forget it, the more you remember. So you cannot forget anything 
with effort. Effort will simply emphasize the memory more. The poet says, "I became 
fixed with my hand; I couldn’t move that horse. I would go up to my hand, and then there 
was no movement. The energy would not move into that horse and he became aware of 
this." 

How did the horse become aware? If I suddenly start speaking some other language, then 
the communication is broken, then you will not be able to understand me. And if this 
language were not known to you, you would suddenly stop because now the language is 
unknown to you. Thus, the horse stopped. 

Every child lives with feeling. First come sounds, then those sounds are filled with 
feeling. Then come words, then thoughts, then systems, religions, philosophies. 

Then one goes farther and farther away from the center of feeling. 

This sutra says, come back, come down — down to the state of feeling. Feeling is not 
your mind: that is why you are afraid of feeling. You are not afraid of reasoning. You are 
always afraid of feeling because feeling can lead you into chaos. You will not be able to 
control. With reason, the control is with you; with the head, you are the head. Below the 
head you lose the head, you cannot control, you cannot manipulate. Feelings are just 
below the mind — a link between you and the mind. 

Then Shiva says, THEN, EEAVING THEM ASIDE, BE FREE. Then leave the feelings. 
And remember, only when you come to the deepest layer of feelings can you leave them. 
You cannot leave them just now. You are not at the deepest layer of feelings, so how can 
you leave them? First you have to leave philosophies — Hinduism, Christianity, 
Mohammedanism — then you have to leave thoughts, then you have to leave words, then 
you have to leave letters, then you have to leave sounds, then you have to leave feelings 
— because you can leave only that which is there. You can leave that step upon which 
you are standing; you cannot leave a step upon which you are not standing. 

You are standing at the step of philosophy, the farthest away one. That is why I insist so 
much that unless you leave religion you cannot be religious. 


This sutra, this technique, can be done very easily. The problem is not with feelings, the 



problem is with words. You can leave a feeling, just as you can undress — as you can get 
out of your clothes. You can throw off your clothes; you can leave feelings simply in that 
way. But right now you cannot do it, and if you try to do it, it will be impossible. So go 
step by step. 

Imagine letters — A, B, C, D — then change your emphasis from the written letter to the 
heart sound. You are moving deep, the surface is left behind. You are sinking deep — 
then feel what feeling comes through a particular sound. 

Because of such techniques, India could discover many things. It could discover which 
sounds are related to particular feelings. Because of that science, the MANTRA was 
developed. A particular sound is related to a particular feeling, and it is never otherwise. 
So if you create that sound within you, that feeling will be created. You can use any 
sound, and then the related feeling will be created around you. That sound creates the 
space to be fdled by a particular feeling. 

So do not use just any mantra, that is not good; it may be dangerous for you. Unless you 
know, or unless a person who gives you the mantra knows, what particular sound creates 
what particular feeling, and whether that feeling is needed by you or not, do not use any 
mantra. 

There are mantras which are known as death mantras. If you repeat them, you will die 
within a particular time. Within a particular period you will die, because they create in 
you a longing for death. 

Freud says that man has two basic instincts: libido — eros — the will to live, the will to be, 
the will to continue, the will to exist. And thanatos — the will to die. There are particular 
sounds which, if you repeat them, the will to die will come to you. Then you would like 
just to drop into death. There are sounds which give you eros — which give you more 
libido, which give you more lust to live, to be. If you create those sounds within you, that 
particular feeling will overwhelm you. There are sounds which give you a feeling of 
peace and silence, there are sounds which create anger. So do not use any sound, any 
mantra, unless it is given to you by a master who knows what is going to happen through 
it. 

When you come down from sounds, you will be aware. Each sound has its counterpart in 
feeling. Each sound has a corresponding feeling that goes with it, just hidden behind it. 
Then move to the feeling; forget the sound and move to the feeling. It is difficult to 
explain, but you can do it. And there were techniques for this. Particularly in Zen, there 
were techniques. A particular mantra would be given to a seeker. If he was doing it 
rightly inside, the master could know from the face. 

The master could know from the face whether he was doing it rightly or not because a 
particular feeling would come. If the sound is created, then the feeling is bound to come, 
and it will be on the face. You cannot deceive a master. He knows by your face what is 
happening inside. 

Dozo was a great master, but he himself was very much disturbed, when he was a 
disciple, about how his master came to know what he was experiencing. And the Zen 
master moved with his staff and he would hit you immediately. If something goes wrong 
with your sound inside, he will hit you immediately. So Dozo asked, "But how do you 
know? And you hit me exactly in the right moment. How do you know?" 

The face expresses the feeling, not the sound. The sound cannot be expressed by the face, 
but the face is bound to express the feeling. And the deeper you move, the more your face 



becomes flexible to express, more liquid. It immediately shows what is happening inside. 
This face which you have right now will drop because this is a mask — this is not a face. 
When you move in, masks fall down because they are not needed. Masks are needed for 
others. 

Because of this, the old masters insisted on moving away from the world. This was so 
that you could move away from the mask easily; otherwise others will be there, and 
because of them you have to carry masks. You do not love your wife or your husband, 
but you have to carry a mask — a loving face, a false loving face. 

The moment you enter the house, you arrange the face: you come in and you start 
laughing. This is not your face. 

Zen masters insisted that first one should attain the original face, because with the 
original face everything becomes easy. Then the master can simply know what is 
happening. So enlightenment was never reported. If some seeker attained enlightenment, 
he was not to report to the master that he had attained because the master would simply 
know. He would tell the disciple. No disciple was allowed to tell the master, "I have 
attained." There was no need. The face will show, the eyes will show, the very 
movement, the walking, will show. Whatsoever he does, every gesture will show that he 
has attained. 

When you move from sounds to feelings, you move into a very, very ecstatic world, an 
existential world. You move away from the mind. Feelings are existential; that is what 
the word means — you feel them. You cannot see them, you cannot hear them, you 
simply feel them. When you come to this point, you can take the jump. This is the last 
step. Now you are standing near an abyss; you can jump. 

And if you jump from the feelings, you jump into yourself. That abyss is you — not as 
your mind, but as your being; not as the accumulated past, but as the present, here and 
now. 

You move from the mind to the being, and the bridge, the link, is the feelings. 

But to come to the feelings you will have to leave many things — words, sounds, the 
whole deception of the mind. THEN, LEAVING THEM ASIDE, BE FREE. 

You ARE free. This saying, BE FREE, doesn’t mean that you have to do something to be 
free. THEN, LEAVING THEM ASIDE, BE FREE means you are free! Being is freedom; 
mind is bondage. That is why it is said that mind is the SANSAR, the world. 

Do not leave the world... you cannot leave it. If the mind is there, you will create another 
world; the seed is there. You can move to a mountain, to a retreat, but you will move with 
the mind; you cannot leave it here. The world moves with you, you will create another 
world. Even in your retreat you will start creating it again, because the seed is there. You 
will create relationships again. It may be with the trees, it may be with birds, but you will 
create relationships again, you will create expectations again, and you will go on 
spreading the net because the seed is there. You will again be in a world. 

Mind is the world, and you cannot leave mind anywhere. You can leave it only if you 
move within. So the only Himalaya is this; no other Himalaya will do. If you move 
within from words to feelings, and from feelings to being, you are moving away from the 
world. And once you know this inner abyss of being, then you can be anywhere, even in 
hell. Then it makes no difference. 


It makes no difference then! If you are without mind, hell cannot enter you, and with 



mind ONLY hell enters. The mind is the door to hell. 

LEAVING THEM ASIDE, BE FREE. But do not try directly with feelings, you will not 
succeed. Try first with words. But with words also you will not succeed if you do not 
leave philosophies, if you do not leave thoughts. Words are just units — and if you give 
significance to words you cannot leave them. 

Know well that language is a human creation. It is utilitarian, necessary, and the 
meanings we have given to sounds are our own creation. If you can understand this well, 
then you can move easily. If someone is saying something against the Koran, or against 
the Vedas, how do you feel? Can you laugh about it or does something clench within 
you? Can you laugh about it? Someone is insulting the Gita or someone is saying some 
derogatory thing against Krishna or Ram or Christ — can you laugh? Can you see through 
the words, that these are mere words? No, you will be hurt. Then it is difficult to lose 
words. 

See that words are just words — noises with agreed-upon meanings and nothing else. Be 
convinced of it. And it is so! First become detached from words. If there is detachment 
from words, then you can understand that these are just noises. 

It is just like in the military where they use numbers. One soldier is number 101: he can 
become identified with '101'. 

And if someone says something derogatory against the number 101, he will feel insulted, 
he will start fighting. And '101' is just a number, but he has become identified with it. 
Your name is just a number, just an index number. Things will be difficult otherwise, so 
we have labelled you. That is just a label; any other label can do the same work. But it is 
not just a label for you, it has gone deep; your name has become the center of your ego. 

So they say, the so-called wise ones, they say, "Live for your name. See that your name 
remains pure. Respectability of your name must be there, and even if you die your name 
will live." It was never there, it is just a code number. You will die and the name will 
live... When you yourself cannot live, how is the label going to live? 

Look at words — at their futility, their meaninglessness, and do not become attached to 
any word. Only then can you do this technique. 

The second technique: 

BATHE IN THE CENTER OF SOUND, AS IN THE CONTINUOUS SOUND OF A 
WATERFALL, OR BY PUTTING THE FINGERS IN THE EARS, HEAR THE 
SOUND OF SOUNDS. 

This technique can be done in many ways. One way is to begin by just sitting anywhere. 
Sounds are always present. It may be in a market or it may be at a Himalayan retreat: 
sounds are there. Sit silently, and with sound there is something very special. Whenever 
there are sounds, you are the center. 

All the sounds come to you from everywhere, from all directions. 

With sight, with eyes, this is not so. Sight is linear. I see you — then there is a line toward 
you. Sound is circular, it is not linear. So all sounds come in circles and you are the 
center. Wherever you are, you are always the center of sound. For sounds, you are always 
God, the center of the whole universe. Every sound is coming to you, moving toward 
you, in circles. 

This technique says, BATHE IN THE CENTER OF SOUND. Wherever you are, if you 
are doing this technique, just close your eyes and feel the whole universe filled with 



sound. Feel as if every sound is moving toward you and you are the center. Even this 
feeling that you are the center will give you a very deep peace. The whole universe 
becomes the circumference and you are the center, and everything is moving toward you, 
falling toward you. 

... AS IN THE CONTINUOUS SOUND OF A WATERFALL. If you are sitting by the 
side of a waterfall, close your eyes and feel the sound all around you, falling on you from 
every side, creating a center in you from every side. Why this emphasis on feeling that 
you are in the center? Because in the center there is no sound. The center is without 
sound, that is why you can hear sounds; otherwise you could not hear them. A sound 
cannot hear another sound. Because you are soundless at your center, you can hear 
sounds. 

The center is absolute silence. That is why you can hear sounds entering you, coming to 
you, penetrating you, encircling you. 

If you can find out where is the center, where is the field in you to where every sound is 
coming, suddenly sounds will disappear and you will enter into soundlessness. If you can 
feel a center where every sound is being heard, there is a sudden transference of 
consciousness. One moment you will be hearing the whole world filled with sounds, and 
another moment your awareness will suddenly turn in and you will hear the 
soundlessness, the center of life. 

Once you have heard that, then no sound can disturb you. It comes to you, but it never 
reaches you. It is always coming to you, but it never reaches you. There is a point where 
no sound enters. That point is YOU. Do it in a market, there is no other place like a 
market. It is so much filled with sounds, mad sounds. But do not start thinking about 
sounds — that this is good and that is bad, and this is disturbing and that is very beautiful 
and hannonious. You are not supposed to think about sounds, you are simply supposed to 
think of the center. You are not supposed to think about every sound moving toward you 
— whether it is good, bad, beautiful. You are just to remember that you are the center and 
all the sounds are moving toward you — every sound, whatsoever the sort. 

In the beginning you will get dizzy because you have not been hearing whatsoever is 
happening all around. 

Your hearing is selective, your seeing is selective. And now scientific research says that 
ninety-eight percent is not heard, only two percent of whatsoever is happening all around 
you is heard. Otherwise, if you heard one hundred percent of what is happening all 
around you, you will simply go mad. Previously, it was thought that the senses are the 
doors, the openings, the windows for the outside to enter inside. Now they say they are 
not doors, and they are not so open as it was thought. Rather, they are like a watchman, a 
censor, who is every moment watching what is to be allowed in or not. 

Only two percent of happenings are allowed in — and you are already mad with two 
percent. With one hundred percent, with a total opening, with everything opened, every 
sense opened, functioning, and everything being allowed in, you will go mad. So when 
you try this method, in the first step you will feel a dizziness coming to you. Do not be 
afraid, go on feeling the center — and allow everything, whatsoever is happening. Allow 
everything to move in. 

Relax yourself, relax your watch towers, your senses; relax everything, let everything 
enter you. You have become more liquid, open; everything is coming to you, all sounds 
are moving toward you. Then move with the sounds, and come to the center where you 



hear them. 

Sounds are not heard in the ears, the ears cannot hear them. 

The ears only do a transmission work, and in the transmission they cut out much which is 
useless for you. They choose, they select, and then those Sanskrit sounds enter you. Now 
find out within where is your center. The ears are not the center, you are hearing from 
somewhere deep down. The ears are simply sending you selected sounds. Where are you? 
Where is your center? 

If you are working with sounds, then sooner or later you will be surprised — because the 
center is not in the head. It appears to be in the head because you have never heard 
sounds, you have heard only words. With words the head is the center, with sounds it is 
not the center. That is why in Japan they say that man thinks not through the head, but 
through the belly — because they have been working with sounds for a long time. 

You have seen in every temple a gong. That is placed there to create sounds around a 
seeker. Someone is meditating, and the gong is sounded or a bell is rung. A disturbance 
seems to have been created by the very sound of the bell; someone is meditating, and this 
bell or gong seems disturbing. In a temple, every visitor who comes will hit the gong or 
ring the bell. With someone meditating there, this would seem to be a constant 
disturbance. It is not, because the person is waiting for this sound. 

So every visitor is helping. Again and again the bell is hit, and the sound is created and 
the meditator again enters himself. 

He looks at the center, where this sound goes deep. There is one hit on the bell — the 
visitor has done that. Now the second hit will be inside the meditator, somewhere inside. 
Where is it? The sound always hits at the belly, at the navel, never in the head. If it hits in 
the head, you can understand well that it is not sound, it is words. Then you have started 
thinking about the sound. Then the purity is lost. 

Now there is much research about children who are in the womb. They are also hit by 
sounds and they react to sounds. They cannot react to language. They have no head yet, 
they have no reasoning, and they do not yet know language and the agreed-upon customs 
of the society. They do not know about language, but they hear the sounds. And every 
sound affects the child more than it affects the mother, because the mother cannot hear 
the sounds — she hears the words. And we are creating mad sounds, chaotic, and those 
sounds are hitting the unborn children. They will be born mad; you have already 
disturbed them too much. 

Even plants are affected by sound. They grow more if some musical sounds are created 
around them; they grow less if some chaotic sounds are created around them. You can 
help them to grow. You can help them in many ways through sounds. 

Now they say that because of traffic noises — which are not hannonious and cannot be — 
man is going mentally insane, and it seems that the limit has come. 

If it grows more, then there is no hope for man. These sounds are hitting you 
continuously, but if you think about them they will hit your head, and that is not the 
center: the navel is the center. So do not think about them. 

All the mantras are meaningless sounds. And if some master says that "This is the 
meaning of this mantra," then it is not a mantra at all. A mantra needs to be, of necessity, 
without meaning. It has some work, but no meaning. It has to do something within you, 
but it has no meaning because it has just to be a pure sound within you. That is why we 



evolved the mantra AUM. It is meaningless, it is just a pure sound. If this pure sound is 
created within you, if you can create it within, then too the same technique can be used. 
BATHE IN THE CENTER OF SOUND, AS IN THE CONTINUOUS SOUND OF A 
WATERFALL. OR, BY PUTTING THE FINGERS IN THE EARS, HEAR THE 
SOUND OF SOUNDS. You can create the sound just by using your finger, or with 
anything which closes your ears forcibly. Then a certain sound is heard. What is that 
sound, and why do you hear it when the ears are closed, when the ears are plugged? 

It happened in America, that a train passed through a certain neighborhood in the middle 
of the night, somewhere about 2:00 a.m. A new line was inaugurated and the train 
stopped moving on the old route. But a very strange phenomenon happened. The people 
who were living in that neighborhood where the train had stopped moving complained to 
the police that at about 2:00 a.m. something mysterious was heard. There were so many 
reports, it had to be investigated what was the matter. Strange sounds were heard at about 
two. They were never heard when the train was passing; the people had become 
accustomed to the train. Now suddenly the train stopped. They were waiting to hear it in 
their sleep; they had become accustomed to it, conditioned. They were waiting, and the 
sound was not there. Absence was heard, and this absence was something new. They felt 
uneasy about it, they couldn’t sleep. 

So for the first time it was understood that if you are constantly hearing something and it 
stops, you will hear the absence of it. So do not think that you will simply not hear it. 

You will hear the absence, the negative part of it will be heard. If I look at you, and then 
if I close my eyes, I see your negative. If you look at the window and then close your 
eyes you will see the negative of the window, and the negative can be so forceful that if 
you suddenly look at the wall the negative will be projected on the wall. You will be 
seeing the negative. 

Just as there are negatives of photographs, there are negative sounds. Not only can the 
eyes see the negative, the ears can even hear the negative. So when you close your ears, 
you hear the negative world of sounds. All the sounds have stopped. Suddenly a new 
sound is heard. This sound is the absence of sound. 

A gap has come in. You are missing something, and then you hear this absence. 

OR, BY PUTTING THE FINGERS IN THE EARS, HEAR THE SOUND OF SOUNDS. 
That negative sound is known as the sound of sounds — because it is not really a sound, 
but its absence. Or, it is a natural sound, because it is not created by anything. 

All sounds are created. The sound you hear when you close your ears is not a created 
sound. If the whole world becomes absolutely silent, then you will hear the silence also. 
Pascal is reported to have said, "The moment I think about the infinite cosmos, the 
silence of the infinite cosmos makes me very much afraid." The silence makes him afraid 
because sounds are only on the earth. Sounds need atmosphere. The moment you go 
beyond the earth's atmosphere there are no sounds — only absolute silence. That silence 
you can create even on the earth, if you close both of your ears completely. Then you are 
on the earth, but you have moved; you have dropped below sounds. 

Astronauts are being trained for many things, and one thing is to be in the silence. They 
have to be trained in silent chambers so that they become accustomed to soundlessness; 
otherwise they will go mad. Many problems face them, and this is one of the deepest 
problems: how to be away from the human world of sounds. Then you become isolated. 

If you are lost in the forest and you hear a certain word, you may not know the source but 



you are less afraid. 


Someone is there! You are not alone! In soundlessness, you are alone. In a crowd, if you 
close both of your ears totally and move in, you are alone. The crowd has disappeared, 
because it was through sounds that you could know others were there. 

PUTTING THE FINGERS IN THE EARS, HEAR THE SOUND OF SOUNDS. This 
absence of sound is a very subtle experience. What will it give to you? The moment there 
are no sounds, you fall back upon yourself. With sounds we move away, with sounds we 
move to the other. Try to understand this: with sounds we are related to the other, we 
communicate with the other. 

So even a blind man is not in so much difficulty as a man who cannot speak, who is 
dumb. Observe a person who is dumb: he looks inhuman. A blind man never looks 
inhuman, but a dumb person looks inhuman; the face gives a feeling of something which 
is not human. And a dumb person is in more difficulty than a blind man. With the blind 
man the problem is that he cannot see, but he can communicate. He can become a part of 
a greater humanity, he can become a part of a society, of a family; he can love, he can 
speak. A dumb man is suddenly out of society. He cannot speak, he cannot communicate, 
he cannot express. 

Try to imagine yourself in an air-conditioned glass room, a soundproof room. No sound 
can enter to you, and you cannot scream, you cannot do anything to express yourself, the 
sound will not go out. 

In a glass room you can see the whole world moving around you, but neither can you 
speak to them nor can they speak to you. You will feel hopelessly frustrated, and the 
whole thing will become a nightmare. 

A dumb man is in a nightmare continuously. Without communicating he is not part of 
humanity. Without expression he cannot flower. He cannot reach anyone and no one can 
reach him. He is with you and far away, and the gap is unbridgeable. 

If sound is the vehicle to move to the other, then soundlessness becomes the vehicle to 
move to oneself. With sound you communicate with the other; with soundlessness you 
fall down into your own abyss, into yourself. That is why so many techniques use 
soundlessness to move within. 

Become absolutely dumb and deaf — even if only for a few moments — and you cannot 
go anywhere else than to yourself. Suddenly you will find that you are standing within; 
no movement will be possible. That is why silence was practiced so much. In it, all the 
bridges for moving to the other are broken. 

Gurdjieff used to give long silent periods to his disciples, and then he would insist that 
not only was language not to be used, but there was to be no communication, no gesture 
— neither with the eyes nor the hands. No communication was to be used. Silence means 
NO communication. So he would force the group to live in a house — twenty, thirty or 
forty people in one bungalow, in one house — and than he would say, "Remain here in 
this house as if you are alone. 

You cannot go out." Forty persons would be there, and he would say, "Move in the 
house, live in the house as if you are alone. No communication! Do not recognize that the 
other is, not even by the eyes. Move completely as if you are the only person residing in 
the house." With three months of living in this way, absolutely dumb and deaf, with no 
possibility of communicating, there would be no possibility to move out. 



I do not know whether you have observed or not, but in society those who can talk much 
become prominent; those who can communicate their thoughts easily become leaders — 
religious, political, literary, any type. Those who can communicate their thoughts, those 
who can talk efficiently, they become leaders. Why? They can reach more people, they 
can reach to greater masses. 

Have you ever heard of any dumb person becoming a leader? You can find a blind man 
becoming a leader; there is no problem. And sometimes he may become a great leader, 
because all that his eyes are not doing, all those energies will be transferred to his ears. 
But a dumb man cannot become a leader in any walk of life. He cannot communicate, he 
cannot become social. 

Society is a language. Language is basic to social existence — to relationship. If you leave 
language, you are alone. The world may be filled with millions, but if you lose language 
you are alone. 

Meher Baba stayed continuously for forty years in silence. 

What was he doing in silence? Really, you cannot do anything in silence because every 
act is somehow related with others. Even in imagination, if you do something you will 
have to imagine others; you cannot do it alone. If you are absolutely alone, action 
becomes impossible. Even the imagination to act becomes impossible. Acting is related 
to others. If you drop language inside, all doing drops. You are, but you are not doing 
anything. 

Meher Baba would tell his disciples, by writing a note, "On this particular date I am 
going to break my silence," and then he would not break it. This continued for forty 
years, and then he died in silence. What was the problem? Why should he say, "Now, this 
year, on this day, on this date, I am going to speak?" And why should he postpone it 
again? What was happening inside? Why would he not keep his promise? 

Once you know silence for such a long time, you cannot fall back to sounds again; it 
becomes impossible. There is a rule, and he didn’t follow the rule so he could not come 
back. There is a rule that one should not remain silent for more than three years. Once 
you cross the limit, you cannot come back to the world of sounds. You may try, but it is 
impossible. It is easy to move from sounds to silence, but it is very difficult to move from 
silence to sounds. Beyond three years many things simply become impossible. The 
mechanism cannot function the same way again. 

It has to be used continuously; at the most, one can remain silent for three years. Beyond 
that, if you remain silent the mechanism which can produce sounds and words cannot be 
used again, it becomes dead. 

Secondly, the person becomes so much silent remaining with himself alone that it will 
now be a misery to communicate. Then to say something to someone will be like talking 
to a wall, because the person who has remained silent for such a long time knows that 
you cannot understand whatsoever he is saying. Regardless of what he is saying, he 
knows he is not saying that which he wants to say. The whole thing has gone. After such 
a deep silence, he cannot move again to the world of sounds. 

So Meher Baba tried and tried, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak again. He wanted to 
say something, and he had something worth saying, but the mechanism and the 
movements necessary to come back to a lower realm were impossible. Thus, he died 
without saying what he wanted to say. 

It will be helpful to understand this: whatsoever you are doing, always go on doing the 



opposite with it. Go on changing to the opposite always. Remain silent for a few hours, 
then talk. Do not become fixed in anything — you will be more alive and more moving. 
Do meditation for a few days, and then stop suddenly and do everything that can create 
tension in you. Then move again to meditation. 


Go on moving between the opposites, you will be more alive and dynamic. Do not get 
fixed. Once you get fixed, you will not be able to move to the other extreme, and the 
ability to move to the other extreme means life. If you are not able to move, you are 
already dead. This movement is very good. 

Gurdjieff advised his disciples to have sudden changes. He would insist on fasting and 
then he would say, "Now eat as much as you can." Then suddenly he would say, "Go on a 
fast." Then again he would say, "Start eating." He would say, "Be awake for a few days 
and nights continuously, then fall asleep for a few nights." This movement between the 
polar opposites gives you a dynamism, an aliveness. 

OR, BY PUTTING THE FINGERS IN THE EARS, HEAR THE SOUND OF SOUNDS. 
In one technique, two opposites have been shown. BATHE IN THE CENTER OF 
SOUND, AS IN THE CONTINUOUS SOUND OF A WATERFALL - this is one 
extreme. OR, BY PUTTING THE FINGERS IN THE EARS, HEAR THE SOUND OF 
SOUNDS — this is another extreme. 

One part is to hear the sounds coming to your center; another part is to stop all sounds 
and feel the soundless center. These both have been given in one technique for a special 
purpose — so that you can move from one to the other. 

The OR is not a choice to do this or that. Do both! That is why both have been given in 
one technique. First do one for a few months, then do the other for a few months. 

You will be more alive, and you will know two extremes. And if you can move to the two 
extremes easily, you can remain young forever. Those who get fixed at any extreme 
become old and die. 


THE END. 



Chapter 26: Tantra: anacceptance of the peaks and the valleys 


The first question: 

Question 1 

LAST NIGHT YOU DISCUSSED THE CENSORSHIP AND SUPPRESSION BY THE 
CONSCIOUS MIND OF THE UNCONSCIOUS INSTINCTS, AND YOU SAID THAT 
THE UNCONSCIOUS INSTINCTS BELONG TO THE ANIMAL HERITAGE IN 
MAN'S EVOLUTION. THEN IS IT NOT GOOD TO CHANNEL AND REGULATE 
THEM ACCORDING TO THE INTELLIGENCE, DISCRIMINATION AND ART OF 
LIVING WHICH BELONG TO THE CONSCIOUS MIND? 

Man is an animal, but not only an animal: he is more also. But that "more" cannot deny 
the animal, it has to absorb it. Man is more than an animal, but the animal cannot be 
denied. It has to be absorbed creatively. You cannot leave it aside, it is in your very roots; 
you have to use it creatively. So the first thing to remember is not to be negative about 
your animal heritage. Once you start thinking in negative terms you will become 
destructive to yourself, because you are ninety-nine percent animal. 

If you create a division, you are fighting a losing battle; you cannot win. The result of 
your fight will be quite the opposite, because ninety-nine percent is animal. Only one 
percent of the mind is conscious, and this one percent cannot win against the ninety -nine 
percent. It is going to be defeated. That is why there is so much frustration, because 
everyone is defeated by his own animal. You can never succeed. Of necessity you are 
going to be a failure, because that one percent cannot succeed against the ninety-nine 
percent. 

It cannot even be divided from the ninety-nine percent. 

It is just like a flower: it cannot go against the roots, it cannot go against the whole tree. 
And while you are against your animal heritage, you are being fed by it. You are alive 
because of it. If your animal dies this moment, you will die immediately. Your mind 
exists as a flower; your animal heritage is the whole tree. Do not be negative — that is 
suicidal. And if you are divided against yourself, you can never attain anything which is 
blissful. 

You are creating a hell, and the hell is nowhere else but in a divided personality. In the 
split personality is the hell. And hell is not something geographical, hell is psychological 
— and heaven also. The personality which is a whole, one unit, with no inner division and 
conflict, is heaven. 

So the first thing I would like to say is, do not be negative. Do not divide yourself, do not 
go against yourself, do not become two. The animal that is there is not something bad. 
The animal in you is a great potential. That is your past and also your future, because 
much is hidden in it. Uncover it, develop it, allow it to grow and go beyond it, but do not 
fight with it. That is one of the basic teachings of tantra. 

Other traditions are divisive. They divide you, they create a fight within you. Tantra is 
not divisive, it doesn’t believe in fight. Tantra is absolutely positive; it doesn’t believe in 
saying no. 

Tantra believes in saying yes — yes to the whole of life. And through 'yes' the 
transfonnation happens, and through 'no' there is only disturbance — no transformation is 
possible. Against whom are you fighting? Against yourself? How can you win? And the 



major part of you is from the animal, so the major part will win. So those who fight, they 
are creating their own defeats. If you want to be defeated, fight. If you want to win, do 
not fight. 

Victory needs knowledge, not fight. Fight is a subtle violence. And this is strange, but 
this has happened: those who talk about nonviolence to others are very much violent 
against themselves. There are teachings and traditions which say, "Do not be violent to 
anyone," but those same teachings are very much violent as far as you are inwardly 
concerned. They teach you to be violent with yourself, but not to be violent with others. 
All types of asceticism, renunciation, negative attitudes, life-denying philosophies, are 
based on maintaining a violent attitude toward yourself. They tell you to be violent with 
yourself. 

Tantra is absolutely nonviolent. It says, if you cannot be nonviolent with yourself, you 
cannot be nonviolent with anyone else — that is impossible. A person who is violent to 
himself will be violent to everyone; in his nonviolence also he will be just hiding his 
violence. Aggression can be turned against yourself, but that aggressive attitude is 
destructive. 


But that doesn’t mean to remain the animal which you are. The moment you accept your 
heritage, the moment you accept your past, the future becomes an opening. Through 
acceptance is the opening. The animal is the past; it need not be the future. There is no 
need to go against the past — and you cannot go. Use it creatively. 

What can be done to use it creatively? The first thing is to be profoundly aware of its 
existence. Those who fight are not aware of it. Because they are afraid, they push the 
animal behind, they push the animal into the unconscious. Really, there need not be any 
unconscious, but because of suppression the unconscious is created. You feel many 
things within which you condemn without understanding them. A man who understands 
condemns nothing; there is no need. He can even use poison as a medicine because he 
knows. Everything can be used creatively. Because you do not know, in ignorance poison 
is poison. With wisdom it can become the elixir. 

The person who is fighting against his sex, anger, greed, against the animal, what will he 
do? He will suppress. Fighting is suppression. He will push down anger, sex, greed, 
hatred, jealousy. He will push everything down somewhere underground, and he will 
create a false structure above ground. The structure will be false because the energies 
have not been transformed which can make it real. The structure is phony; underground, 
the real energies have been repressed. 

Those real energies will always remain there working, any moment they can explode. 

You are just sitting on a volcano, and every moment that volcano is trying to erupt. If it 
does, your structure will be shaken. 

Whatsoever you have built in the name of religion, morality, culture, is a phony structure 
that is above ground — just a false facade. Underground the real man is hiding. So your 
animal is not very far away; your facade is just skin-deep. Someone insults you, and the 
gentleman disappears and the animal comes out. The gentleman is just skin-deep; the 
volcano is just near. Any moment it can be brought out, and when it comes out, your 
intelligence, your morality, your religion, your so-called being above animal things, 
simply disappear. When the real asserts, the false disappears. Only when the real goes 
back underground does the false come again. 



When you are angry, where is your mind, where is your consciousness, where is your 
morality? Where are your vows that you have taken so many times — that "Now I am not 
going to be angry again?" When anger comes they all simply disappear. When anger has 
moved again to its cave, its underground cave, you start repenting. Those phony fellows 
have gathered again. They start talking, condemning, and planning for the future, and 
again in the future the same will happen; when anger will come the shadows will 
disappear. 


Your consciousness right now is just a shadow. It is not a real thing; it has no substance 
in it. You can take a vow of BRAMACHARYA, of celibacy — it makes no difference to 
your sex instinct. The sex instinct simply goes underground, and when it comes up, your 
vows of brahmacharya, of celibacy, will prove to be made of just very dream-like stuff. 
They cannot face the real thing. 

So these are the two attitudes. You can either suppress sex — then you will never go 
beyond it — or you can use your sex energy in a creative way. Not saying no to it, but 
giving it a deep yes; not forcing it to go underground, but creating a structure above 
ground with it. Then you will be a real man. It will be difficult, obviously; that is why we 
choose the easier path. It is easier to have a false structure, because nothing is needed. 
Only one thing is needed: to deceive yourself, that is all. If you can deceive yourself, you 
can create a false structure very easily. Nothing will change really, but you will go on 
thinking that everything has changed. 

This is easy, to create an illusion. To create a reality is a difficult task, it is arduous. But it 
is worthwhile, because once you have created something with real energies, your 
structure cannot be shattered. If sex is above ground, then you can create something out 
of it — for example, love. If sex is transfonned, it becomes love; if it is suppressed, it 
becomes hatred. 


You become afraid of love if you suppress sex. A person who has suppressed sex will 
always be afraid of love, because the moment love comes sex will follow. Love is of the 
soul and sex is of the body, so love cannot be allowed to happen because then sex will 
follow. It will be just somewhere near, by the corner. So a person who has suppressed sex 
cannot be loving. He may show it, he may pretend that he is very loving, but he cannot be 
because he is so afraid. He cannot touch you with a loving hand because the fear is there. 
The loving hand can any moment turn out to be a sexual touch, so he will be afraid; he 
will not allow you to touch him. 

He may create many justifications for it but the real thing is fear — fear of the instinct 
which he has repressed. And he will be filled with hatred, because any energy that is 
repressed reverses itself and goes to its original nature. 

Sex moves easily toward love; that is a natural flow. If you prevent it, if you create 
hindrances to its path, it will become hatred. So your so-called saints and so-called moral 
teachers, if you look deep into them you will find them filled with hatred. And that is 
bound to be, it is natural. Sex is hidden there, any moment it can erupt. They are sitting 
on a dangerous volcano. If you push down energies, you are just postponing a task, and 
the more it is postponed, the more difficult it will be. 



Tantra says, create your life with real energies — and real energies are all animal 
energies. But when I say animal, there is no condemnation in it. The word 'animal’ for me 
is not condemnatory, as it is for you. The animal is beautiful in itself, the animal in itself 
is nothing to be condemned. The animal within you is pure energy, moving according to 
natural laws. 

It has been asked, "What should we do consciously? Should we not channel? Should we 
not control?" No! Your consciousness is not to control, your consciousness is not to 
channel. Your consciousness can do only one thing: your consciousness is to understand, 
and understanding in itself becomes the transformation. 

Tantra will say, understand sex, do not try to channel it. If you do not understand it, every 
effort is bound to be a failure, and harmful. So do not do anything. First understand it, 
and through understanding the path will be revealed. You are not to force your energies 
on that path. Through understanding you come to know the law, just like in science. 

What are you doing in science? You come to understand a law; a natural mystery is 
revealed. Once the natural mystery is revealed, you can use the energy creatively. 

Without your knowing the inherent law, all efforts are doomed. So tantra says, 
understand the animal, because in the animal is hidden the potential for your future. 

Really, it can be said that in the animal God is hidden. The animal is your past, God is 
your future — but the future is hidden in your past, in seed form. Understand whatsoever 
your natural forces are. Accept them, understand them. Your mind is not to be there 
mastering; it is not there to control them and fight with them, it is there to understand 
them. 

Really, if you understand them, you are using your mind rightly. Understand sex, 
understand anger, understand greed. Be alert; try to find out their ways — how they work, 
what are their functions. And be constantly aware of the very movement of these animal 
instincts within. If you can be conscious of these animal instincts, there will be no 
division, you will not have an unconscious mind. If you can move with these instincts 
deep within, you will have only a conscious mind; there will be no unconscious. 

The unconscious is there because of repression. You have closed the major part of your 
being to consciousness because you are afraid. You cannot look at your own reality. You 
are so afraid that you have already moved out of the house — you just live on the 
verandah. You never go in because the fear is there: if you come face to face with 
yourself, all your imagination, all your illusions about yourself will fall down. 

You think yourself to be a saint, you think yourself to be a religious person, you think 
yourself to be this and that. 

If you face your reality, all these illusions will evaporate. And everyone has created an 
image of himself. That image is false, but we cling to the image and this clinging 
becomes the barrier toward moving within. 

So the first thing is to accept the animal. It is there, and nothing is wrong about it. It is 
your past, and you cannot deny your past, you can only use it. If you are wise, you will 
use it and create a better future out of it. If you are foolish you will fight with it, and 
through fight the future will be destroyed. Fight with a seed, and you will destroy it. Use 
it, give it soil, help it, protect it so that the seed becomes a tree, an alive tree, and the 
future blossoms through it. 

The animal is your seed. Do not fight with it. Tantra has no condemnation against it, 
simply love for it, because the whole future is hidden in it. Know it well, and then you 



can use it and you can thank it. 

I have heard that when St. Francis died, when he was just on his deathbed, suddenly he 
opened his eyes and thanked his body before going to his death. Before moving to the 
other world, he thanked his body. He said, "Much was hidden in you, and you helped me 
so much. And I was so ignorant, and there were times when I even fought with you. 
There were times I even thought about you in inimical terms. But you were always a 
friend, and it is because of you I could move to such a state of consciousness." 


This thanksgiving to the body is beautiful. But St. Francis could understand it only in the 
end. Tantra says, try to understand in the beginning. If you only thank your body when 
you are dying, it will be of no use. 

Your body is a treasury of hidden forces, of mysterious possibilities. Tantra says that in 
your body is the whole cosmos in miniature: it is just a miniature of the whole cosmos. 

Do not fight with it. What is your sex if the body is a miniature? If really this is so, that 
your body is the whole cosmos in miniature, what is sex? That which is creation in the 
cosmos is sex in you. Throughout the whole cosmos, creation is going on every moment 
— that is sex in you. And if there is so much force in it, it is because you are needed to be 
a creator. 

If sex is so powerful, it only means for tantra that you cannot be allowed to be non- 
creative; you must create. If you cannot create something greater, then at least create life. 
If you cannot create anything better than you, then at least create someone who will 
replace you when you die. Sex is so forceful because the cosmos cannot allow you to be 
non-creative, and you are fighting with it. Use it. 

There is no need to use sex only in reproduction. In every creation sex is used. That is 
why a great poet, a great painter, may not feel so much of an urge for sex. But the reason 
is not that he is a saint. 

The reason is simply, that he is creating something greater and the need is fulfilled. 

A great musician is creating music. No father can feel so much fulfilled as a musician 
feels when great music is created, and no son can give so much happiness to any parent 
as a great piece of music can give to the musician, or great poetry can give to the poet. 
Because he is creating on higher realms, nature relieves him of lower creation: the energy 
has moved higher. Tantra says, do not fight with the energy, allow the energy to move 
higher. And there are many realms of higher movement and many dimensions. 

Buddha is neither a painter nor a musician nor a poet, but he has gone beyond sex. What 
has happened to him? The highest creation is the creation of oneself. The highest creation 
is the creation of total consciousness within, creation of a whole within, oneness. That is 
the peak, the Himalayan peak. Buddha is at that peak, he has created himself. When you 
move in sex, you create your body; the replica is created. When you move higher, you 
create spirit, you create soul. Or if you will allow me the expression, you create God. 

You have heard that God created the world, but I say to you that you have the potentiality 
to create God — and unless you create him you will never be fulfilled. So do not think 
that God is in the beginning. Rather, it will be better to think that God is in the end. 

God is not the cause of the world, but the teleology, the very end, the very peak. If you 
flower in your totality, you will become a god. That is why we call Buddha a god — and 
he never believed in God. This is very paradoxical. He never believed in God; he is one 



of the deepest atheistic minds ever bom. He says there is no God, but we called Buddha 
himself divine. 

H. G. Wells has written that Gautam Buddha was the most godless man and the most 
god-like. What happened to this Gautam? He created, he gave birth to the highest peak, 
the highest possibility. The ultimate had happened in him; then he was no longer creating 
anything — there was no need. It would have been futile for Buddha to write poetry, it 
would have been futile for him to paint. It would have been childish. He created the 
ultimate; he gave himself a new birth. The old was used completely to give birth to the 
new. And because it is an ultimate phenomenon, the whole past had been used. The past 
disappeared, the animal was no more, because when the tree is bom the seed disappears. 
The seed cannot be there. 

Jesus says, unless a seed of corn falls to the ground and dies, nothing can happen. Once 
the seed falls to the ground and dies, the new life bubbles up through it. The death is only 
a death of the seed, of the past. But there can be no death without giving birth to the new; 
something new will come out of it. 


Tantra says, do not try to control. Who are you to control, and how will you be able to 
control? Your control will be just illusory. Try to understand. Try to understand the inner 
nature, the phenomenon, the dynamics of the energies, and that understanding will 
automatically change you. Change is not an effort. If change is an effort, then it cannot 
create bliss. 

Bliss never happens through effort. Effort is always tension-creating; it gives anguish. 
Effort is always ugly because you are forcing something. Understanding is not an effort; 
it is beautiful, it is a spontaneous happening. Do not control. If you try, you will be a 
failure, and you will destroy yourself. Understand! Let understanding be the only law, the 
only SADHANA — spiritual practice. Leave everything to understanding. If 
understanding cannot do anything then it cannot be done, so forget it. All that can be 
done can be done through understanding. 

So tantra says, accept things because acceptance will be needed to understand. You 
cannot understand anything if you deny. If I hate you, I cannot look into your eyes, I 
cannot see your face. I will turn about, I will escape from you, I will not look at you 
directly. When I love you, only then can I look into your eyes. When I love you deeply, 
only then can I see your face. 

Only love sees a face; otherwise you never see faces. You move, you look, but that look 
is just casual, not deep. 

It touches, but it never penetrates. But when you love, then your whole energy becomes 
your eyes. Then the energy moves, touches deep, goes deep down into the other person, 
meets at his center of being. Then only can you see and know. 

That is why in the old biblical language they have used the word 'know' for sex, for love 
— for deep love. It is not coincidental. In the Bible it is reported that "Adam knew his 
wife Eve, and then Cain was bom." This use of 'know' for deep love, for sex, is strange 
but very meaningful, because when you know someone it means you have loved 
someone. There is no other way to know someone. 

And it is not only with persons, it is so with energies also. If you want to know your inner 
being and the multi-dimensional phenomenon of energies, love! Do not hate the animal, 
love it. And you are not unrelated to it, you are part of it. The animal has pushed you to 



this point where you have become man — be grateful to it. 

It is sheer ungratefulness when people go on condemning the animal in man. This is 
sheer ingratitude. The animal has pushed you to this point where you have become man, 
and the animal can push you to the point where you can become God. It is the animal that 
is pushing you. Understand it — its ways, how it works — and that understanding will 
become transformation. 

So no control, no effort to become the boss — no! Why are you so afraid of your animal? 
Because your mind is really impotent; that is why you are so afraid. 

Why do you want to control it? If you are really the master, the animal will follow you. 
But you know well that the animal is the master and you have to follow him. That is why 
there is this whole effort to become the master. 

You know very well that anything real that happens, happens through the animal, and 
anything bogus that happens, happens through the mind. This awareness creates fear. 

That is why you want to try to become the master, but a master is never born out of 
effort. Only slaves try to become masters. A master is simply a master. 

I will tell you one story... It happened in the house of a great warrior. One night he 
suddenly became aware of a mouse. He was a great warrior, a great swordsman. He 
became very much angry because the mouse was sitting just in front of him and looking 
into his eyes. No one had ever dared so much as the mouse was daring. So he pulled out 
his sword, but the mouse would not run. Then he attacked the mouse, but suddenly the 
mouse jumped and the sword was broken in pieces; it fell on the floor. 

Of course, the warrior became just mad. He tried and tried, and the more he tried, the 
more he was defeated. It is difficult to fight with a mouse, and once you have started 
fighting you have accepted defeat. The mouse became bold. With every failure of the 
warrior, the mouse became more bold. He simply jumped on the warrior's bed. 

The warrior went out and asked his friends what to do. "This has never happened in my 
life," he said. "No one can dare so much as an ordinary mouse! But it seems miraculous 
— I am totally defeated." So the friends said, "It is nonsense to fight with a mouse. It is 
better to bring in a cat." 

But the rumor went out that the warrior had been defeated — and even the cats heard it, so 
no cat was ready to come. All the cats gathered. They elected a leader and said, "You go, 
because it is not an ordinary mouse — the warrior has been defeated. We are ordinary 
cats, and this is a great warrior. If he is defeated, where are we? So we will wait outside 
and let you go in." 

The leader became afraid — leaders are always afraid. They are leaders because cowards 
are there, and those cowards choose them. They are leaders of the cowards. If there were 
no cowards, there would not be any leaders. Basically, they are chosen by cowards, so 
they are leaders of cowards. 

The cat had to go, as every leader has to go — because the followers were pushing him. 
Now that the leader was chosen, nothing could be done, the cat had to go. She entered, 
afraid, trembling, nervous. The mouse was sitting on the bed. The cat had never seen 
such a mouse: he was just sitting on the bed. She started thinking what to do, what 
method to apply, and while she was thinking what to do, what method to apply, what 
technique — about old experiences and memories, about what to do with this situation — 
while she was thinking, the mouse suddenly attacked. 



The cat ran away, because this had never happened in the past! There is no mention in 
history of a mouse attacking a cat. 

She came out and fell dead, so the warrior was advised by the neighborhood that "Now 
ordinary cats won't do. You go to the palace, bring the king's cat. Only a royal cat can do 
something. This is not an ordinary case." So the warrior had to go to the king and ask for 
the cat. The cat from the palace came. The warrior was very much afraid when the cat 
was coming with him because that cat looked just very ordinary. He was afraid that this 
was again going to be a failure, because the cat who had died was bigger, greater, a great 
leader, and this ordinary cat...? It seemed that the king was just joking — this cat won't 
do. But the warrior couldn’t say anything to the king. 

He came with that ordinary cat. The cat entered, killed the mouse and came out. All the 
cats were waiting. They gathered around and they said, "What is the trick? Our leader has 
died, the warrior has been defeated by the mouse, and you simply killed him. You came 
out with the dead mouse." The cat said, "I am a cat and he is a mouse. There is no other 
technique. I am a cat — that is enough. What is the use of any technique? Being a cat is 
enough. When I entered, it was enough that a cat should enter. I am a cat." 

Really, this is a Zen story. If your mind were the master, there would be no need for 
effort. 

Every effort is just to deceive yourself: you are not the cat, and you are fighting with the 
mouse. Become a master! But how to become a master? Tantra says, understanding will 
make you a master, nothing else. Understanding is the secret of all mastery. If you kn ow 
it well, you are the master. If you do not know, you will go on fighting. Then you will 
remain the slave, and the more you fight, the more you will be defeated. You are fighting 
with a mouse. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

ARE THERE NO HORRIBLE NOISES IF WE LISTEN FROM THE CENTER OF THE 
BODY? WHAT ABOUT THE SCREECHING CITY NOISES THAT HAVE BEEN A 
SOURCE OF IRRITATION TO US ALL OF OUR LIVES: CAN WE TURN THESE 
INTO POSITIVE SOUND? 

This always remains a basic question: how to change something else, how to change 
negative sounds into positive ones. You cannot! If you are positive, then nothing is 
negative for you. If you are negative, then everything will be negative for you. You are 
the source of all that exists around you; you are the creator of your own world. And we 
are not living in one world, remember. There are as many worlds as there are minds. 

Each mind is living in its own world; it creates the world. 

So if everything looks negative and everything looks destructive and everything looks 
inimical, against you, it is because you do not have the positive center in you. So do not 
think about how to change negative noises. 

If you feel negativity all around you, it simply shows you are negative within. The world 
is just a mirror, and you are reflected in it. 

I was staying in a village rest house. It was a very poor village, but it was filled with 
many dogs. They all gathered in the night around the rest house; it must have been their 
usual habit. The rest house was a good place — big trees, shadows, and they must have 
been resting there every night. So I was staying there, and one minister of a particular 
state was staying there. The minister became very much disturbed because the dogs were 



barking, creating much nuisance. Half the night passed and the minister couldn’t sleep, so 
he came to me. 

He said, "Are you asleep?" I was fast asleep, so he came near to me, made me wake up 
and asked me, "Please tell me how you could fall into sleep amid such noises all around. 
At least twenty to thirty dogs are there, and they are fighting and barking and doing 
everything that dogs ordinarily do. So what to do? I cannot sleep, and I am so tired after 
the whole day's journey. If I cannot sleep, it will be difficult for me. The next day I have 
to go again on a tour, and I will leave early in the morning. Sleep doesn't seem to come, 
and I have tried all the methods I have learned and heard about — chanting a mantra, 
praying to God, etc. I have done everything, but nothing happens, so what to do now?" 

So I told him, "Those dogs are not gathered here for you or to disturb you. 

They are not even aware that a minister is staying here; they do not read newspapers. 
They are completely ignorant. They are not here purposefully, they are not concerned 
with you. They are doing their work. Why are you getting disturbed?" 

So he said, "Why should I not? How not to? With so much barking, how can I go into 
sleep?" 

So I told him, "Do not fight with the barking. You are fighting — that is the problem, not 
the noise. The noise is not disturbing you, you are disturbing yourself because of the 
noise. You are against the noise, so you have a condition. You are saying, 'If the dogs 
stop barking, then I will sleep.’ The dogs won't listen to you. You have a condition. You 
feel that if the condition is fulfilled, then you can sleep. This condition is disturbing you. 
Accept dogs! Do not make a condition that 'If they stop barking, then I will sleep.' Just 
accept. 

"Dogs are there and they are barking; do not resist, do not fight, do not try to forget those 
noises. Accept them and listen to them, they are beautiful. The night is so silent, and they 
are barking so vitally — just listen. This will be the mantra, the right mantra: just listen to 
them." 

So he said, "Okay! I do not believe that this will help, but as there is nothing else to do, I 
will try." He fell asleep, and the dogs were still barking. In the morning he said, "This is 
miraculous. I accepted them; I withdrew my condition. I listened. Those dogs became 
very musical, and their barking, their noise, was not disturbing. Rather, it became a sort 
of lullaby, and I fell into deep sleep because of it." 

It depends on your mind. If you are positive, then everything becomes positive. If you are 
negative, then everything turns negative, everything turns sour. So please remember this - 
not only about noises, but about everything in life. If you feel that something negative 
exists around you, go and find the cause within. It is you. You must be expecting 
something, you must be desiring something, you must be making some conditions. 
Existence cannot be forced to go according to you; it flows in its own way. If you can 
flow with it, you will be positive. If you fight with it, you will become negative and the 
whole cosmos around you will turn negative. 

It is just like a person who is trying to float upstream: then the stream is negative. If you 
are trying to float upstream in a river, then the river will seem negative and you will feel 
that the river is fighting you, that the river is pushing you downwards. The river is trying 
to move you downstream, not upstream, so it will seem as if the river is fighting you. The 
river is completely unaware of you, blissfully unaware. And it is good; otherwise the 
river will have to go into a madhouse. The river is not fighting with you, you are fighting 



with the river. 


You are trying to float upstream. 

I will tell you one anecdote... A great crowd gathered around Mulla Nasrudin's house, 
and they said, "What are you doing? Your wife has fallen into the stream and the river is 
in a flood. Go immediately; otherwise the stream will take your wife to the sea." The sea 
was just near. So Mulla came running to the bank, jumped into the stream, and started 
swimming upstream to find where his wife was. 

The crowd screamed, "What are you doing, Nasrudin? Your wife couldn’t have gone 
upstream. She has gone downstream." Mulla said, "Do not disturb me. I know my wife 
very well. If anyone else had fallen into the stream, he would have gone downstream. Not 
my wife, however. She must have gone upstream. I know my wife well, I have lived with 
her for forty years." 

The mind is always trying to go upstream, to move upstream. Fighting with everything, 
you create a negative world around you. Obviously, this has to happen. The world is not 
against you, but because you are not with the world, you feel it is against you. Float 
downstream, and then the river will help you to float. Then your energy will not be 
needed. The river will become a boat, it will take you. You will not lose any energy by 
floating downstream, because once you float downstream you have accepted the river, 
the current, the flow, the direction — everything. Then you have become positive to it. 

When you are positive, the river is positive to you. 

You can make everything positive only by making yourself positive toward life. But we 
are not positive toward life. Why? Why are we not positive toward life? Why are we 
negative? Why this constant struggle? Why can we not have a total let-go with life? What 
is the fear? 

You may not have observed: you are afraid of life — very much afraid of life. It may 
sound odd to say that you are afraid of life, because ordinarily you feel that you are afraid 
of death, not of life. This is the usual observation, that everyone is afraid of death. But I 
tell you, you are afraid of death only because you are afraid of life. One who is not afraid 
of life will not be afraid of death. 

Why are we afraid of life? Three reasons. Firstly, your ego can exist only if it goes 
upstream. Floating downstream, your ego cannot exist. Your ego can exist only when it 
fights, when it says no! If it says yes, always yes, it cannot exist. The ego is the basic 
cause of saying no to everything. 

Look at your ways, at how you behave and react. Look at how the no comes immediately 
to the mind, and how yes is very, very difficult — because with no you exist as an ego. 
With yes your identity is lost, you become a drop in the ocean. Yes has no ego in it; that 
is why it is so difficult to say yes — very difficult. 

You understand me? If you are going upstream, you feel YOU are. 

If you just let go and you start floating with the stream wheresoever it leads, you do not 
feel that you are. Then you have become part of the stream. This ego, this thinking 
yourself to be isolated as an "I", creates the negativity around you. This ego creates the 
ripples of negativity. 

Secondly, life is unknown, unpredictable, and your mind is very narrow: it wants to live 
in the known, in the predictable. Mind is always afraid of the unknown. There is a 
reason: it is because mind consists of the known. Whatsoever you have known, 



experienced, learned, mind consists of that. The unknown is not part of the mind. The 
mind is always afraid of the unknown, the unknown will disturb the mind, so the mind is 
closed for the unknown. It lives in its routine, it lives in a pattern. It moves in particular 
grooves, known grooves. It goes on moving, moving, just like a gramophone record. It is 
afraid to move into the unknown. 

Life is always moving into the unknown, and you are afraid. You want life to go 
according to your mind, according to the known, but life cannot follow you. It always 
moves into the unknown. That is why we are afraid of life, and whenever we get any 
chance we try to kill life, we try to fix it. Life is a flux. We try to fix it because with the 
fixed, prediction is possible. 

If I love someone, immediately my mind will start working on how to marry them, 
because marriage fixes things. 

Love is a flux, love cannot be predicted. No one knows where it will lead, or whether it 
will lead anywhere. No one knows! It is floating with the stream, and you do not know 
where the stream is going. It may not be there the next day, the next moment. 

You cannot be certain of the next moment. But the mind wants certainty, and life is 
insecurity. Because the mind wants certainty, the mind is against love. The mind is for 
marriage because marriage is a fixed thing. Now you have fixed things, so now the flux is 
broken. Now the water is not flowing — it has become ice. Now you have something 
dead; you can predict. Only dead things are predictable. The more something is alive, the 
more it is unpredictable. No one knows where life will move. 

So we do not want life, we want dead things. That is why we go on possessing things. It 
is difficult to live with a person; it is easy to live with things. So we go on possessing 
things and things and things. It is difficult to live with a person. And if we have to live 
with a person, we will try to make a thing out of that person, we cannot allow the person. 
A wife is a thing, a husband is a thing. They are not persons, they are fixed things. When 
the husband comes to the house, he knows that the wife will be there, waiting. He knows, 
he can predict. If he feels like loving, he can love — the wife will be available. 

The wife has become a thing. The wife cannot say, "No, today I am not in the mood to 
love." Wives are not supposed to say such things. Not in the mood? They are not 
supposed to have moods. They are fixed institutions — institutes. You can rely on the 
institute; you cannot rely on life. Thus, we turn persons into things. 

Look at any relationship. In the beginning it is a relationship of "I" and "thou", but sooner 
or later it becomes a relationship of "I" and "it". The "thou" disappears, and then we go 
on expecting things. We say, "Do this. This is the duty of a wife and that is the duty of a 
husband. Do this!" You will have to do it. It is a duty; it has to be done mechanically. 

You cannot say, "I cannot do it." 

This fixedness is a fear of life. Life is a flux; nothing can be said about life. I love you 
this moment, but the next moment the love may disappear. The moment before it was not 
there; this moment it is there. And it is not because of me that it is there, it just happened. 
I couldn’t have forced it to be here. It just happened, and that which has happened can 
unhappen at any moment, you cannot do anything. The next moment it may disappear; 
there is no certainty for the next moment. 

But the mind wants certainty, so it turns love into marriage. The living thing becomes 
dead. Then you can possess it; then you can rely on it. The next day also there will be 
love. 



This is the absurdity of the whole thing: you have killed the thing in order to possess it, 
and then you can never enjoy it because it is no more, it is dead. 

In order that you could possess the wife, she has been killed. The beloved has become a 
wife, and now you expect that the wife should behave like the beloved. That is absurd, 
the wife cannot behave like the beloved. The beloved was alive, the wife is dead. The 
beloved was a happening, the wife is an institution. And when the wife is not behaving 
like the beloved, then you go on saying, "Don't you love me? You loved me before." But 
this is not the same person. This is not even a person: this is a thing. First you killed her 
to possess her, and now you want aliveness out of her. Then the whole misery is created. 
We are afraid of life because life is a flux. The mind wants certainty. If you really want to 
be alive, be ready to be insecure. There is no security and there is no way to create 
security! There is only one way, do not live; then you will be secure. So those who are 
dead, they are absolutely secure. An alive person is insecure. Insecurity is the very 
central core of life, but the mind wants security. 

Thirdly, in life, in existence, there is a basic duality. Existence exists as duality, and the 
mind wants to choose one part and deny the other. For example, you want to be happy, 
you want pleasure; you do not want pain. 

But the pain is part of pleasure, the other aspect of it. The coin is one. On one side is 
pleasure, on another side is pain. You want pleasure, but you do not know that the more 
you want pleasure, the more pain will follow; and the more you become sensitive to 
pleasure, the more you become sensitive to pain also. 

So a person who wants pleasure should be ready to accept pain. This is just like valleys 
and hills. You want peaks, hills, but you do not want valleys — so where will the valleys 
go? And without the valleys, how can there be peaks? Without valleys there can be no 
peaks. If you love peaks, love valleys also. They become part of the destiny. 

The mind wants one thing and it denies the other, and the other is part of it. The mind 
says, "Life is good, death is bad." But death is one part, — the valley part, — and life is the 
peak part. Life cannot exist without death. Life exists BECAUSE of death. If death 
disappeared, life would disappear, but the mind says, "I want only life, I do not want 
death." Then the mind moves in a dream world which exists nowhere, and it starts 
fighting with everything, because in life everything is related to the opposite. If you do 
not want the opposite, a fight starts. 

A person who understands this — that life is duality — accepts both. He accepts death, not 
as against life, but as part of it, as the valley part. 

He accepts night as the valley part of the day. One moment you feel blissful; the next 
moment you are sad. Y ou do not want to accept the next moment — that is the valley part. 
And the higher the peak of bliss, the deeper will be the valley, because deeper valleys are 
only created by higher peaks. So the higher you move, the lower you will be falling. And 
this is just like waves rising high: then there is a valley part. 

Understanding means being aware of this fact — not only being aware, but having a deep 
acceptance of the fact, because you cannot move away from the fact. Y ou can create a 
fiction... and we have been creating fictions for centuries. We have put hell somewhere 
deep down and heaven high up somewhere. We have created an absolute division 
between them, which is nonsense, because hell is the valley part of heaven. It exists with 
heaven; it cannot exist apart. 

This understanding will help you to be positive; then you will be able to accept 



everything. By positive I mean that you accept everything because you know that you 
cannot divide existence. 

I take a breath in, and immediately I have to throw it out. I inhale and then exhale. If I 
were only to inhale and not to exhale, I would die; or if I were only to exhale and not to 
inhale, then too I would die, because inhaling and exhaling are part of one process, a 
circle. I can inhale only because I exhale. 

Both are together and they cannot be divided. 

This is what a liberated man is — undivided. It happens if this understanding comes to 
him. I call a man liberated, enlightened, who accepts the very duality of existence. 

Then he is positive. 

Then whatsoever happens is accepted. 

Then he has no expectations. 

Then he makes no demands on existence. 

Then he can float downstream. 

THE END. 



Chapter 27: Soundlessness, soundfulness and total awareness 


15. INTONE A SOUND, AS AUM, SLOWLY. AS SOUND ENTERS 
SOUNDFULNESS, SO DO YOU. 

16. IN THE BEGINNING AND GRADUAL REFINEMENT OF THE SOUND OF ANY 
LETTER, AWAKE. 

17. WHILE LISTENING TO STRINGED INSTRUMENTS, HEAR THEIR 
COMPOSITE CENTRAL SOUND; THUS OMNIPRESENCE. 

I wonder whether or not you have heard about the concept of anti-matter. A new concept 
has entered recently in the world of physics — the concept of anti-matter. It has been felt 
always that nothing can exist in the universe without its opposite. It is impossible to 
conceive of anything which exists alone without its opposite. The diametrically opposite 
must be there whether known or not. 

The shadow cannot exist without light, life cannot exist without death, morning cannot 
exist without night, man cannot exist without woman — or the same with anything you 
can think of. 

The diametrically opposite pole is inevitably needed. This was always proposed in 
philosophy, but now this is a proposition of physics. And very absurd notions have 
developed because of this concept. Time moves from the past to the future, but now 
physicists say that if time moves from the past to the future, there must be somewhere the 
opposite time process, which moves from the future to the past; otherwise this time 
process cannot be — but it is. The opposite, the diametrically opposite must be there 
somewhere — anti-time. 

Moving from the future to the past? It looks very absurd. How can something move from 
the future to the past? 

They also say that matter exists, so anti-matter must be existing somewhere. What will be 
the anti-matter? Matter is density. Suppose a stone is here in my hand. What is that 
stone? Around it is space and in the space there is a density of matter. That density is 
matter. What will be the anti-matter? They say anti-matter will be just a hole in space. 
Density is matter, and there is also a hole in space with nothing in it. A space will be 
around it, but it will be just a hole of nothingness. They say anti-matter must exist to 
balance matter. Why am I talking on this? Because these sutras which are to follow are 
based on this "anti"phenomenon. 

Sound exists, but tantra says sound can exist only because of silence; otherwise sound 
will be impossible. Silence is anti-sound. So wherever there is sound, just behind it there 
is silence. It cannot exist without silence; it is the other aspect of the same coin. So I utter 
a word; for example, Aum. The more I utter it, just side by side, just behind it is the anti- 
phenomenon, soundlessness. So if you can use sounds as a technique to enter 
soundlessness, you will enter meditation. If you can use a word to go beyond words, you 
will move into meditation. Look at it in this way: mind is the word; meditation is no- 
mind. 

Mind is filled with sound and words and thought. Just by the corner is the other extreme 
— no-mind. 

Zen masters have called meditation the state of no-mind. What is mind? If you analyze it, 



it is a process of thought. Or if you analyze it in terms of physics, then it is a process of 
sounds. This sound process is mind, then just near it the no-mind exists. And you cannot 
move into the no-mind without using the mind as the jumping board, because you cannot 
even conceive of what no-mind is without understanding what mind is. Mind has to be 
used as a jumping board, and from that jumping board you can have a plunge into the no- 
mind. 

There have been two opposing schools. One school is there — it is known as "Sankya." 
Sankya says mind has not to be used, because if you use mind you cannot go beyond it. 
The same is the teaching of J. Krishnamurti; he is a Sankyaite. You cannot use mind. If 
you use mind you cannot go beyond it, because the very use of the mind will strengthen 
it, will make it more powerful. When you use it, you will be in its clutches. Using it, you 
cannot go beyond it. So don’t use mind. That is why Krishnamurti is against all 
techniques of meditation: because any technique is bound to use mind as a base. Mind 
has to be used if you are going to use a technique. Any technique is bound to be a sort of 
conditioning — or a reconditioning, or an unconditioning, or whatsoever name you give 
to it, but it is going to be with the mind. 


Sankya philosophy says that mind cannot be used: just understand this and take a jump. 
But yoga says this is impossible. Even this understanding is to be done by mind. Even 
with this understanding — that you cannot use mind, that no technique will be of help, 
that every technique will become a hindrance and whatsoever you do will create a new 
conditioning — you will still be using mind, you will move within mind. This too has to 
be understood by mind. 

So yoga says there is no way in which mind is not used; mind will have to be used. It 
should not be used positively, it should be used negatively. It should not be used in such 
a way that it is strengthened, it should be used in such a way that it is weakened. And 
techniques are the ways to use the mind in such a way that you use it to jump beyond it. 
You use it just to go beyond it — as a jumping board. 

If mind can be used as a jumping board — and yoga and tantra believe that it can — then 
something which belongs to mind has to be trained. Sound is one of the basic things, you 
can use sound to go into soundlessness. 

The third technique on sound: 

INTONE A SOUND, AS AUM, SLOWLY. AS SOUND ENTERS SOUNDFULNESS, 
SO DO YOU. 

INTONE A SOUND, AS AUM, SLOWLY. For example, take Aum This is one of the 
basic sounds. A-U-M: these three sounds are combined in it. A-U-M are three basic 
sounds. 

All sounds are made of them or derived from them; all sounds are combinations of these 
three sounds. So these three are basic. They are as basic as in physics the electron, 
neutron and proton are basic. This has to be deeply understood. 

Gurdjieff speaks of "The Law Of The Three". He says existence in the absolute sense is 
one. In the absolute sense, in the ultimate sense, there is only one. But that is absolute, 
and whatsoever we see is relative. Whatsoever we see is never absolute; the absolute is 
always hidden. It cannot be seen, because the moment we see something, it is divided. It 
is divided in three: the seer, the seen, and the relationship. I am seeing you: I am here, 



you are there, and between the two there is the relationship of knowledge, of seeing, of 
vision, of cognition. The process is divided into three. The absolute is divided into three; 
the moment it is known it becomes three. Unknown, it remains one. Known, it becomes 
three. The known is relative; the unknown is absolute. 

So even our talk about the absolute is not absolute, because the moment we say "the 
absolute," it has become known. Whatsoever we know, even the word 'absolute’ is 
relative. That is why Lao Tsu insists so much that truth cannot be said. The moment you 
say it, it has become untrue because it has become relative. So whatsoever word we use — 
the truth, the absolute, PARA-BRAHMA, Tao — whatsoever word we use, the moment 
we use it, it has become relative and it has become untrue. 

The one has become divided into three. 

So Gurdjieff says that "The Law Of The Three" is basic for the universe that we know. 
And if we go deep we will find, we are bound to find, that everything will be reduced to 
three. This is "The Law Of The Three". Christians have called it the trinity — God the 
father, Jesus the son, and the Holy Ghost. Indians have called it TRIMURTI: the three 
faces of Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh or Shiva. Now physics says that if we move, if we go 
on moving through analysis to the very base, then matter will be reduced to three: the 
electron, neutron and proton. 

Poets have said that if we go deep in search for human aesthetic feeling, emotion, then 
there is SATYAM, SHIVAM, SUNDARAM — the true, the good and the beautiful. 
Human feeling is based on these three. Mystics have said that if we analyze ecstasy, 
SAMADHI, then there is SAT-CHIT-ANANDA — existence, consciousness and bliss. 
The whole human consciousness, in whatsoever dimension it works, comes to "The Law 
Of The Three". 'Aum’ is a symbol of The "Law Of The Three". A-U-M: these three are 
basic sounds. The atomic sounds, you can call them. These three sounds have been 
combined in Aum, so Aum is just near the absolute, just behind it is the absolute, the 
unknown. And Aum is the last station as far as sounds are concerned. If you move 
beyond Aum, you move beyond sound; then there is no sound. 

A-U-M: these three are the last, they are the boundary of existence. Beyond these three 
you move into the unknown, into the absolute. 

Physicists say that now we have come to the electron, it seems we have come to the limit, 
to the very limit, because the electron cannot be said to be matter. Electrons are not 
visible; they have no material property. And they cannot be called non-matter either 
because all matter consists of them, is constituted of them. If they are neither matter nor 
non-matter, what to call them? No one has seen electrons, they are just inferred; it is 
mathematically assumed that they are there. Their effects are known, but they have not 
been seen. Now we cannot move beyond them. The "Law Of The Three" is the limit, and 
if you move beyond "The Law Of The Three" you move into the unknown. Nothing can 
be said then. Even about electrons very little can be said. 

Aum is the limit as far as sound is concerned, you cannot move beyond. That is why 
Aum has been used so much, in India, and all over the world. The Christian- 
Mohammedan ’Amen’ is nothing but Aum in a different form; the same basic notes are 
there. The English words ’omnipresent’, ’omnipotent’, ’omniscient’ contain it: the prefix 
’omni’ is a derivation of Aum. So ’omnipresent’ refers to that which is present in the 
whole of the Aum, in the whole of existence. ’Omnipotent’ means that which is absolutely 
potent. 



’Omniscient’ means that which has seen the Aum, the whole, "The Law Of The Three". 
The whole universe comes under it. 

Christians, Mohammedans, have been using after their prayers ’Amen’. But Hindus have 
made a complete science out of it — the science of sound and the science of how to 
transcend sound. And if mind is sound, then no-mind must be soundlessness, or — and 
both mean the same — soundfulness. 

This has to be understood. The absolute can be described in either of two ways — 
negative or positive. The relative has to be described in both the ways — negative and 
positive: it is a duality. When you try to express the absolute, you can use either positive 
tenns or negative terms, because human languages have two types of tenns — negative 
and positive. When you are going to describe the absolute, the indescribable, you have to 
use some tenns symbolically. So it depends on the mind. 

For example, Buddha liked to use negative terms. He would say soundlessness; he would 
never say soundfulness. 'Soundfulness' is a positive term. Buddha would say 
soundlessness, but tantra uses positive terms. The whole thinking of tantra is positive. 
That is why the tenn used here is 'soundfulness': ENTER SOUNDFULNESS. Buddha 
describes his absolute in negative terms: SHUNYA, nothingness. The Upanishads 
describe the same absolute as the BRAHMAN — absoluteness. Buddha will use 
nothingness and the Upanishads will use absoluteness, but both mean the same thing. 


When words lose meaning you can use either the negative or the positive, because all 
words are either negative or positive; you just have to choose one. You can say for a 
liberated soul that he has become the whole. This is a positive way of saying it. Or you 
can say he is no more — he has become nothingness. This is a negative way of saying it. 
For example, if a small drop of water meets the ocean, you can say that the drop has 
become nothingness, the drop has lost its individuality, the drop is no more. This is a 
Buddhist way of saying things. It is good, it is right as far as it goes, because no word 
goes very far. So as far as it goes, it is good. The drop is no more" that is what is meant 
by NIRVANA. The drop has become non-being, it is not. Or you can use Upanishadic 
tenns. The Upanishads will say that the drop has become the ocean. They are also right, 
because when the boundaries are broken, the drop has become the ocean. 

So these are simply attitudes. Buddha likes negative terms, because the moment you say 
anything positive it becomes limited, it looks limited. When you say that the drop has 
become the ocean, Buddha will say that the ocean is also finite. The drop remains the 
drop; it has become a little bigger, that is all. Howsoever bigger makes no difference. 
Buddha will say that it has become a little bigger, but it remains. The finite has not 
become infinite. 

The finite remains finite, so what is the difference? A small drop and a big drop... for 
Buddha, that is the only difference between 'ocean' and 'drop' — and it is right, 
mathematically it is so. 

So Buddha says that if the drop has become the ocean, then nothing has happened. If you 
have become a god, then nothing has happened, you have only become a bigger man. If 
you have become the BRAHMAN nothing has happened, you are still finite. So Buddha 
says that you have to become nothing, you have to become SHUNYA — empty of all 
boundaries and attributes, empty of everything that you can conceive of, just emptiness. 
But Upanishadic thinkers will say that even if you are empty YOU ARE. If you have 



become emptiness YOU are still there, because emptiness exists, emptiness is. 
Nothingness is also a way of being, a way of existence. So they say, why belabor the 
point and why unnecessarily use negative terms? It is good to be positive. 

It is your choice, but tantra almost always uses positive terms. The very philosophy of 
tantra is positive. It says, do not allow no, do not allow the negation. Tantrics are the 
greatest of yea-sayers. They have said yes to everything, so they use positive tenns. The 
sutra says, INTONE A SOUND, AS AUM, SLOWLY. AS SOUND ENTERS 
SOUNDFULNESS, SO DO YOU... 

INTONE A SOUND, AS AUM, SLOWLY. The intoning of a sound is a very subtle 
science. 

First you have to intone it loudly, outwardly; then others can hear it. And it is good to 
start loudly. Why? Because you can also hear it clearly when you intone it loudly; 
because whatsoever you say it is to others, and this has become a habit. Whenever you 
are talking you are talking to others, and you hear yourself talk only when you are talking 
to others. So start from the natural habit. 

Intone the sound Aum, then by and by, feel attunement with the sound. When you intone 
the sound Aum, be filled with it, forget everything else. Become the Aum, become the 
sound. And it is very easy to become the sound, because sound can vibrate through your 
body, through your mind, through your whole nervous system. Feel the reverberation of 
Aum. Intone it, and feel it as if your whole body is being filled with it, every cell is 
vibrating with it. 

Intoning is also "in-tuning." Tune yourself with the sound, become the sound. And then, 
as you feel a deep hannony between you and the sound, and you develop a deep affection 
for it — and the sound is so beautiful and so musical: Aum — then the more you intone it, 
the more you will feel yourself filled with a subtle sweetness. There are sounds which are 
bitter, there are sounds which are very hard. Aum is a very sweet sound, the purest. 

Intone it and be filled with it. 

And when you begin to feel hannonious with it, you can drop intoning loudly. 

Then close your lips and intone it inwardly, but inwardly also first try it loudly. Intone 
inwardly, but loudly, so that the sound spreads all over your body, touches every part, 
every cell of your body. You will feel vitalized by it, you will feel rejuvenated, you will 
feel a new life entering you — because your body is a musical instrument. It needs 
hannony, and when the harmony is disturbed you are disturbed. 

That is why when you hear music you feel good. Why do you feel good? What is music, 
but just some harmonious sounds? Why do you feel such a well-being when there is 
music around you? And when there is chaos, noise, why do you feel so disturbed? You 
yourself are deeply musical. You are an instrument, and that instrument re-echoes things. 
Intone Aum inside, and you will feel that your whole body dances with it. Y ou will feel 
that your whole body is undergoing a cleansing bath; every pore is being cleansed. But as 
you feel it more intensely, and as it penetrates you more, go on becoming more and more 
slow, because the slower the sound, the deeper it can go. It is just like homeopathy. The 
smaller the dose, the deeper it penetrates — because if you want to go deeper, you have to 
go more subtly, more subtly, more subtly... 

Crude, coarse sounds cannot enter your heart. They can enter your ears, but they cannot 
enter your heart. The passage is very narrow, and the heart is so delicate that only very 
slow, very rhythmic, very atomic sounds are allowed to enter it. 



And unless a sound enters your heart, the mantra is not complete. The mantra is complete 
only when the sound enters your heart — the deepest, most central core of your being. 
Then go on being more slow, more slow, more slow. 

And there are also other reasons for making these sounds slower and more subtle: the 
more subtle a sound is, the more intense an awareness you will need to feel it inside. The 
more coarse the sound, the less need there is of any awareness. A coarse sound will hit 
you, you will become aware of it; but then it is violent. 

If a sound is musical, hannonious, subtle, then you will have to listen to it inside and you 
will have to be very alert to listen to it. If you are not alert, you will go to sleep and miss 
the whole point. That is the problem with a mantra, with any chanting, with any use of 
sound: it can create sleep. It is a subtle tranquilizer. If you continuously repeat any sound 
without being alert about it, you will fall asleep, because then the repetition becomes 
mechanical. "Aum, Aum, Aum..." becomes mechanical, and then repetition creates 
boredom. 

Boredom is a basic necessity for sleep. You cannot get to sleep unless you are bored. If 
you are excited, you cannot get to sleep. That is why the modem man is becoming 
incapable of going to sleep. What is the reason? There is so much excitement. It was 
never like this before. 

In the old, past world life was a deep boredom, a repetitious boredom. 

If you go to a village hidden somewhere in the hills, there life is a boredom. It may not 
look to you like a boredom because you have not lived there, and on a holiday you may 
feel very much excited. But that excitement is because of Bombay, not because of those 
hills. Those hills are completely boring. Those who are living there are bored and asleep. 
There is only the same thing, the same routine with no excitement, with no change, and 
nothing ever happens. There is no news. Things go on as they have always, they go on 
repeating in a circular way. As seasons repeat, as nature repeats, as day and night move 
in a circle, everything moves in a village, in an old village, in a circle. That is why 
villagers can fall to sleep so easily: everything is just boring. 

Modern life has become so exciting — nothing repeats. Everything goes on becoming 
new, changing. Life has become unpredictable, and you are so excited you cannot fall 
asleep. Every day you can see a new film, every day you can hear a new speech, every 
day you can read a new book, every day something new is possible. 

This constant excitement continues. When you go to your bed, the excitement is there. 
The mind wants to be awake; it seems futile to fall asleep. There are thinkers who are 
saying that this is pure wastage — if you live for sixty years, twenty years are wasted in 
sleep. Sheer wastage! Life is so much excitement, why waste any of it? But in the old 
world, in the old days, life was not an excitement. 

It was a circular movement of the same repetition. If anything excites you, it means it is 
new. 

If you repeat a particular sound, it creates a circle within you. It creates boredom; it 
creates sleep. That is why Mahesh Yogi's transcendental meditation is known in the West 
as a non-medical tranquilizer. It is because it is a simple repetition of a mantra. But if 
your mantra becomes just a repetition without an alert YOU inside, an alert YOU 
constantly listening to you, listening to the sound, it may help sleep, but it cannot help 
anything else. As far as it goes, it is good. If you are suffering from insomnia, 
transcendental meditation is good. 



Otherwise, it helps — but not unless you use the mantra with an alert inner ear. Then you 
have to do two things: go on reducing the pitch of the mantra, reducing the sound, 
making it more slow and more subtle, and at the same time simultaneously go on 
becoming more alert, more alert. As the sound becomes subtle, become more alert; 
otherwise, you will miss the whole point. 

So two things have to be done: sound has to be slowed down, and you have to become 
more alert. The more sound becomes subtle, the more alert you are. To make you more 
alert the sound has to be made more subtle, and a point comes when sound enters 
soundlessness, or soundfulness, and you enter total awareness. When the sound enters 
soundlessness or soundfulness, by that time your alertness must have touched the peak. 

When the sound reaches the valley, when it goes to the down-most, deepest center in the 
valley, your alertness has gone to the very peak, to the Everest. And there, sound 
dissolves into soundfulness or soundlessness, and you dissolve into total awareness. 

This is the method: INTONE A SOUND, AS AUM, SLOWLY. AS SOUND ENTERS 
SOUNDFULNESS, SO DO YOU. And wait for the moment when the sound has become 
so subtle, so atomic, that now, any moment, it will take a jump from the world of the 
laws, the world of the three, and it will enter the world of the one, the absolute. Wait! 

This is one of the most beautiful experiences possible to man — when sound dissolves. 
Then suddenly you cannot find where the sound has gone. 

You were hearing it subtly, deep down: "Aum, Aum, Aum..." and then it is no more 
there. You have entered the world of the one. The world of the three is no more. This, 
tantra says, is soundfulness; Buddha says soundlessness. 

This is a way — one of the most used, one of the most helpful. Mantra became so 
important because of this. Because sound is already there and your mind is so filled with 
it, you can use it as a jumping board. But there are difficulties, and the first difficulty is 
sleep. Whosoever uses a mantra must be aware of this difficulty. That is the hindrance — 
sleep. You are bound to fall into sleep because it is so repetitious, it is so harmonious, it 
is so boring — you will fall victim. 

And do not think that your sleep is your meditation. Sleep is not meditation. 

Sleep is good in itself, but beware. If you are using the mantra for sleep, then it is okay. 
But if you are using the mantra for spiritual awakening, then beware of sleep. For those 
who use a mantra, sleep is the enemy — and it so easily happens. And it is so beautiful, 
because it is a different type of a sleep: remember that too. When it comes from a mantra, 
this is not ordinary sleep. This is a different kind of sleep. 

The Greeks have called it HYPNOS, and from hypnos the word hypnotism has been 
derived. In yoga, they call it YOGA TANDRA — a particular sleep which happens to the 
yogi and not to the ordinary man. It is hypnos — an induced sleep, not an ordinary sleep. 
And the difference is very basic, so try to understand it — because if you try a mantra, any 
sound, this is going to be your problem. The greatest problem to face is sleep. 

Hypnosis uses the same technique — creating boredom. The hypnotist goes on repeating a 
certain word or certain sentences. He is continuously repeating, and you become bored. 
Or he gives you a light to concentrate on. Seeing a light continuously, you get bored. 

In many temples, churches, people are fast asleep. Listening to scriptures, they fall 
asleep. They have heard those scriptures so many times, it has become a boredom. There 
is no excitement, they already know the story. 



If you go on seeing the same film again and again, you will be fast asleep: no excitement 
for the mind, no challenge, and there is nothing to see. You have heard the RAMAYANA 
so many times, you can be asleep and without any difficulty you can go on hearing in 
your sleep. And you will never feel that you were asleep because you will never miss 
anything in the story: you know it already. 

Preachers' voices are very deeply sleep- inducing, monotonous. You can talk 
monotonously, in the same pitch, then sleep happens. Many psychologists advise their 
patients with insomnia to go and hear a religious talk, that gives sleep easily. Whenever 
you are bored, you will fall asleep, but that sleep is hypnosis, that sleep is yoga tandra. 
And what is the difference? That is not natural. It is unnatural, and with particular 
attributes. 

One, when you fall asleep through a mantra or through hypnosis, you can create any 
illusion easily and the illusion will be as real as possible. In ordinary sleep you can create 
dreams, but the moment you are awake you will know that they were dreams. In 
hypnosis, in yoga tandra, you can create visions, and when you will be out of it you will 
not be able to say that they were dreams. You will say that they were more real than the 
life around you. That is one of the basic differences. 

You can create any illusion. So if a Christian falls into hypnosis, he will see Christ. 

If a Hindu falls, he will see Krishna playing on his flute. It is beautiful! And the quality 
of hypnosis is that you will believe that this is real. That is the danger, and no one can 
convince you that this is unreal. The feeling is such that you KNOW this is real. You can 
say that the whole life is unreal, MAYA, illusion, but you cannot say that whatsoever you 
have seen in hypnosis, in yoga tandra, is unreal. It is so alive, so colorful, so attractive 
and magnetizing. 

That is why if someone says something to you while you are hypnotized, you will believe 
him absolutely. There can be no doubt; you cannot doubt him. You may have seen some 
hypnotic sessions. Whatsoever the hypnotist says, the hypnotized person believes and 
starts acting out. If he says to a man, "You are a woman. Now walk on the stage," the 
man will walk like a woman. He cannot walk like a man because hypnosis is deep trust; it 
is faith. There is no conscious mind to think, no reasoning mind to argue. You are simply 
the heart, you simply believe. There is no way not to believe, you cannot question. The 
questioning mind is asleep — that is the difference. 

In your ordinary sleep, the questioning mind is present, it is not asleep. In hypnosis your 
questioning mind is asleep, and you are not asleep. That is why you can hear the 
hypnotist say anything to you and you will follow his instructions. In ordinary sleep you 
cannot hear, but your reasoning is not asleep. 

So if something happens which can be fatal to you, your sleep will be broken by your 
reason. 

A mother is sleeping with her child. She may not hear anything else, but if the child gives 
even a very small sound, a small signal, she will be awake. If a child feels a little uneasy, 
she will be awake. The reasoning mind is alert. You are asleep, but your reasoning mind 
is alert. So even sometimes in dreams, you can feel that they are dreams. Of course, the 
moment you feel this your dream will be broken. You can feel that it is absurd, but the 
moment you feel it the dream will be broken. Your mind is alert, a part is constantly 
watching. 



But in hypnosis, or in yoga tandra, the watcher is asleep. That is the problem with all 
those who want to use sound to go into soundlessness or soundfulness, to go beyond. 

They must be aware that the mantra should not become an auto-hypnotic technique. It 
must not create auto-hypnosis. 

So what can you do? You can do only one thing: while you are using your mantra, while 
you are intoning your mantra, do not simply intone it. At the same time be alert and listen 
to it also. Intone it and listen to it both. Otherwise, if you are not listening consciously, it 
will become your lullaby and you will fall into deep sleep. That sleep will be very good — 
you will feel refreshed after it, alive; you will feel a certain well-being — but this is not 
the point. 


The fourth technique on sound: 

IN THE BEGINNING AND GRADUAL REFINEMENT OF THE SOUND OF ANY 
LETTER, AWAKE. 

Sometimes teachers have used this technique very much. They have their ingenious 
ways. For example, if you enter a Zen master's hut, he may suddenly give a scream. You 
will become startled, but if you know why he is doing this you know he is doing it just to 
make you awake. Any sudden thing makes you awake. Any sudden sound can make you 
awake. 

Suddenness breaks your sleep, and ordinarily we are asleep. Unless something goes 
wrong, we are not out of sleep, we go on doing things sleepily. That is why we never feel 
the sleep. You go to your office, you drive the car, you come back to your home, you 
love your children, you talk to your wife, so you think you are not sleepy at all. How can 
you do all of these things in a sleep? You think that isn’t possible, but do you know 
anything about sleepwalkers — about those who walk in their sleep? Their eyes are open, 
and they are asleep, and they can do many things. But they will not remember in the 
morning that they have done them. 

They may go to the police station and report that something is wrong, that someone came 
into their house at night and was creating mischief, and they themselves have been found 
to be responsible. But in the night, in their sleep, they walk and do certain things, then 
they come back into their beds and continue their sleep, and in the morning they cannot 
remember what has happened. 

They can open doors, they can use keys, they can do many things. Their eyes are open, 
and they are asleep. 

In a deeper sense, we are all sleepwalkers. You can go to your office, you can come to 
your home, you can do certain things: you will repeat the same things you have always 
repeated. You will tell your wife, "I love you," and you will not mean anything by it. The 
words will be just mechanical. You are not even aware that you are telling your wife, "I 
love you." You are simply doing things as if you are fast asleep. This whole world is a 
world of sleepwalkers for a person who has become awakened. A Buddha feels that way, 
a Gurdjieff feels that way — that everyone is fast asleep and still doing things. 

Gurdjieff used to say that whatsoever is happening in this world is absolutely what can be 
expected — wars, fights, riots, murder, suicide. Someone asked Gurdjieff, "Can 
something be done to stop wars?" He said, "Nothing can be done — because those who 
are fighting, they are fast asleep, and those who are pacifists, they are fast asleep. And 



everyone is going on in a sleep. These happenings are natural, inevitable. Unless man is 
awake, nothing can be changed, because these are all just by-products of his sleep. He 
will fight; he cannot be stopped from fighting. Only the causes can be changed." 

Once he was fighting for Christianity, for Islam, for this and that. 

Now he is not fighting for Christianity, now he is fighting for communism, for 
democracy. Causes will change, excuses will change, and the fight will continue, because 
man is asleep and you cannot expect anything else. 

This sleepiness can be broken. You have to use certain techniques. This technique says, 
IN THE BEGINNING AND GRADUAL REFINEMENT OF THE SOUND OF ANY 
LETTER, AWAKE. Try with any sound, with any letter — Aum, for example. In the 
beginning, when you have not yet created the sound, AWAKE. Or when the sound moves 
into soundlessness, then awake. 

How can you do it? Go to a temple. A bell is there or a gong. Take the bell in your hand 
and wait. First become totally alert. The sound is going to be there and you are not to 
miss the beginning. First become totally alert, as if your life depends on this, as if 
someone is going to kill you this very moment, and you will be awake. Be alert — as if 
this is going to be your death. And if there is thought, wait, because thought is sleepiness. 
With thought you cannot be alert. When you are alert, there is no thought. So wait. When 
you feel that now the mind is without thought, that there is no cloud and you are alert, 
then move with the sound. 

Look when the sound is not there, then close your eyes. Then look when the sound is 
created, struck; then move with the sound. The sound will become slower and slower, 
subtler and subtler and subtler, and then it will not be there. 

Then go on with the sound. Be aware, alert. Move with the sound to the very end. See 
both the poles of the sound, both the beginning and the end. 

Try it with some outer sound like a gong or a bell or anything, then close your eyes. Utter 
any sound inside — Aum or anything — and then do the same experiment with it. It is 
difficult; that is why we do it outwardly first. When you can do it outwardly, then you 
will be able to do it inwardly. Then do it. Wait for the moment when the mind is vacant, 
then create the sound inside. Feel it, move with it, go with it, until it disappears 
completely. 

Until you can do this... it will take time. A few months will be needed, at least three 
months. In these three months, you will become more and more alert. The pre-sound state 
and the after-sound state have to be watched. Nothing is to be missed. Once you become 
so alert that you can watch the beginning and the end of a sound, through this process 
you will have become a totally different person. 

Sometimes this looks very absurd. Such simple techniques, how can they change you? 
Everyone is so disturbed, in anguish, and these methods seem so simple. They seem like 
tricks. If you go to Krishnamurti and tell him that this is the method, he will say, "This is 
a mental trick. Do not be tricked by it. Forget it, throw it!" 

It looks so. Obviously, it looks like a trick. 

How can you be transfonned through such simple things? But you do not know — they 
are not simple. When you do them, then you know that they are very arduous. If you just 
hear me telling about them, they are simple. If I tell you, "This is poison and if you take 
one drop of it you will die," if you do not know anything about poison you will say, 



"What are you talking about? Just a drop of this liquid, and a person like me who is 
healthy, strong, will die?" If you do not know anything about poison, then only can you 
say this. If you know something about it, you cannot say this. 

This seems to be very simple: intoning a sound and then becoming aware in the 
beginning and in the end. But awareness is very difficult, and when you try it then you 
will know that it is not child's play. You are not aware — and when you try it, for the first 
time you will know that you have been asleep your whole life. Right now you think you 
are already aware. Try this. With any small thing, try this. 

Tell yourself that "I will be awake, alert, for ten breaths," and then count the breaths. "For 
ten breaths only," tell yourself, "I will remain alert. And I will count from one to ten, the 
incoming breath, the outgoing, the incoming, the outgoing. I will remain alert." 

You will miss. Two or three, and you will have moved somewhere else. Then suddenly 
you will become aware that "I have missed. 

I am not counting the breaths." Or you can count, but when you have counted to ten you 
will become aware that "I was counting in my sleep. I was not alert." 

Alertness is one of the most difficult things. Do not think that the methods are simple. 
Whatsoever the technique, alertness is the thing to be attained. All else is just a help. 

And you can devise your own methods. But remember only one thing: alertness must be 
there. You can do anything in sleep; then there is no problem. The problem arises only 
when it is a condition to do it alertly. 

The fifth sound technique: 

WHILE LISTENING TO STRINGED INSTRUMENTS, HEAR THEIR COMPOSITE 
CENTRAL SOUND; THUS OMNIPRESENCE. 

The same! You are hearing an instrument — a sitar, or anything. Many notes are there. Be 
alert and listen to the central core, the backbone of it around which all the notes are 
flowing, the deepest current which holds all the notes together — that which is central, 
just like your backbone. The whole body is held by the backbone. Listening to the music, 
be alert, penetrate the music, and find the backbone of it — the central thing which goes 
on flowing, holding everything together. Notes come and go and disappear, but the 
central core flows on. Become aware of it. 

Basically, originally, music was used for meditation; particularly Indian music developed 
as a method of meditation, Indian dancing developed as a method of meditation. 

For the doer it was a deep meditation, and for the audience also it was a deep meditation. 
A dancer or a musician can be a technician. If there is no meditation in it, he is a 
technician. He can be a great technician, but then the soul is not there, only the body. The 
soul comes only when the musician is a deep meditator. 

And music is just the outward thing. While playing on his sitar, one is not only playing 
on his sitar, he is also playing on his alertness inside. The sitar goes on outwardly and his 
intense awareness moves inside. The music flows outwardly, but he is alert, constantly 
aware of the innennost core of it. And that gives samadhi. That becomes ecstasy. That 
becomes the highest peak. 

It is said that when the musician has really become the musician, he will break his 
instrument — because it is of no use. If he still needs his instrument, he is not a real 
musician yet. He is just learning. If you can play with music, with meditation, sooner or 
later the inner music will become more important, and the outer will become not only 



less important: ultimately it will become a disturbance. If your consciousness moves 
inside and can find the inner music, then the outer music will be a disturbance. You will 
throw the sitar, you will throw the instrument away from you, because now you have 
found the inner instrument. But it cannot be found without the outer; with the outer you 
can become alert more easily. 

Once you have become alert, leave the outer and move inwards. And for the listener also, 
the same! 

But what are you doing when you listen to music? You are not meditating. On the 
contrary, you are using music as something like alcohol. You are using it to be relaxed, 
you are using it for self-forgetfulness. This is the misfortune, the misery: the techniques 
which were developed for awareness are being used for sleep. And this is how man goes 
on doing mischief with himself. 

If something is given to you which can make you awake, you will use it to make yourself 
more sleepy. That is why for millennia teachings were kept secret — because it was 
thought to be useless to give techniques to a sleepy man. He will use them for sleep; he 
cannot do otherwise. So techniques were given only to particular disciples who were 
ready to shake their sleep, who were ready to be shattered out of their sleepiness. 
Ouspensky dedicates one book to George Gurdjieff as "the man who disturbed my 
sleep." Such people ARE disturbers. Persons like Gurdjieff or Buddha or Jesus, they are 
disturbers. That is why we take revenge upon them. Whosoever disturbs our sleep, we 
will crucify him. He doesn't look good to us. We may have been dreaming beautiful 
dreams and he comes and disturbs our sleep. We want to kill him. The dream was so 
beautiful. 

The dream may be beautiful and I may not be beautiful, but one thing is certain: it is a 
dream, and futile, useless! And if it is beautiful, then it is more dangerous because it can 
attract you more, it can become a drug. 


We have been using music as a drug, dancing as a drug. And if you want to use music 
and dancing as drugs, then they will become not only drugs for your sleep, they will 
become drugs for sexuality also. So remember this point: sexuality and sleep go together. 
The more sleepy the person, the more sexual; the more awake, the less sexual. Sex is 
basically rooted in sleep. When you awake you will be more loving, the whole energy of 
sex will have been transformed to love. 

This sutra says: WHILE LISTENING TO STRINGED INSTRUMENTS, HEAR THEIR 
COMPOSITE CENTRAL SOUND - their complete central sound - THUS 
OMNIPRESENCE. And then you will know what is to be known, or what is worth 
knowing. You will become omnipresent With the music, finding the composite central 
core, you will become awake, and with that awakening you will be everywhere. 

Right now, you are somewhere — a point which we call the ego. If you can become 
awake, this point will disappear. You will not be anywhere then, you will be 
EVERYWHERE — as if you have become the all. You will have become the ocean, you 
will have become the infinite. 

The finiteness is with the mind. 

The infiniteness enters with meditation. 



THE END. 



Chapter 28: Meditation: an unburdening of repressions 


The first question: 

Question 1 

REPRESSION HAS BECOME AN AUTOMATIC REACTION IN OUR BODIES AND 
MINDS WHICH WE DO NOT EVEN RECOGNIZE OR WANT TO CHANGE ANY 
MORE. HOW CAN WE LEARN TO TELL BETWEEN A FALSE IMAGE AND A 
REAL ONE IN OURSELVES? 

Many things have to be understood. One: all your faces are false; you do not have any 
real face. That is why the question arises over which is false and which is real. If you 
have the real, you know. Then the question never arises. All the faces are unreal, false, so 
you do not have any comparisons to make. You do not know the real — that is the 
difficulty. You have not seen the real, and the real is not seen naturally; much effort is 
needed to find it. 

In Zen they say that the real is the original face — the face you had before your birth and 
the face you will have after your death. That means that all the faces in life, so-called life, 
are false. How to find out what is the real face? You will have to go back to before your 
birth. That is the only way to find the real face, because the moment you are born you 
have started being false. You have started being false because it pays to be false. 

The child is bom, and he has started to be a politician. The moment he is related to the 
world, to the parents, to the family, he is in politics. Now he has to take care about his 
faces. He will smile as a bribery. 

He will try to find out in what ways he should behave so that he is accepted more, loved 
more, appreciated more. And sooner or later the child will find out what is condemmed 
by the parents, by the family, and he will start repressing it. Then the false has entered. 

So all the faces you have are false. Do not try to find out the real one among your present 
faces. They are all false, similarly false. They are useful — that is why they have been 
adopted — utilitarian, but not true. And the deepest deception is that whenever you 
become aware that your faces are false, you will create another face which you will think 
is the real. 

For example, a person who lives an ordinary life, in an ordinary world, with a business, a 
family, comes to realize the whole of his falseness, the whole inauthenticity of his life, so 
he renounces it. He becomes a sannyasin and leaves the world, and he may be thinking 
that now the face is real. It is again a false face. It has been adopted as a reaction to other 
faces, and with a reaction you can never get to the real. By reacting to a false face you 
will create another false face. So what is to be done? 

The real is not something which has to be achieved. The false is your achievement. The 
real is not something to be achieved, it is not something to be cultivated. It is something 
to be discovered! It is already there. You need not try to attain it, because any effort will 
only lead to some other false face. 

For a false face effort is needed; it has to be cultivated. For the real face you have not to 
do anything, it is already there. If you simply leave your clinging to the false faces, the 
false will drop and that which is real will remain. When you have nothing to drop, and 
only that which cannot be dropped is there, you will come to realize what is real. 



Meditation is the way to drop the false faces. That is why there is so much insistence on 
being thoughtless — because without thought you cannot create a false face. In a 
thoughtless state of awareness, you will be real — because it is basically thought which 
creates false faces and masks. When there is no thought there can be no face. You will be 
faceless, or with the real face — and both mean the same. 

So be aware of your thought process. Do not fight with it, do not repress it. Simply have 
awareness: the thoughts are there just like clouds in the sky, and you are looking at them 
without any prejudice, either for or against. If you are against, you will be fighting — and 
that very fight will create a new thought process. If you are for them, you will forget 
yourself and you will float in the current of the thought process. You will not be there as 
a conscious witness. If you are for, you will be in the process. If you are against, you will 
create another process in reaction. 

So do not be for and do not be against. 

Allow the thoughts to move, let them go wherever they are going, be in a deep let-go, and 
simply witness. Whatsoever is passing, witness. Do not judge; do not say, "This is good, 
this is bad." If the thought of a divine being comes, do not say, "Beautiful!" The moment 
you say this you are identified with it, and you are cooperating with the thought process. 
You are helping it, you are giving energy to it, you are feeding it. And if you are feeding 
it, it can never drop. 

Or if there is a thought, a sexual thought, do not say, "This is bad; this is sin." Because 
when you say, "This is sin," you have created another series of thoughts. Sex is a thought, 
sin is a thought, God is a thought. Be neither for nor against. Simply look with 
unprejudiced eyes, just watching indifferently. 

This will take time. Because your mind is so occupied with notions, it is very difficult. 
The moment we see something we have judged it. We do not wait; there is not even a 
single moment's gap. You see a flower, and you have already said, "It is beautiful." In the 
very seeing the interpretation comes in. 

You will have to be constantly aware to drop this mechanical habit of judging. You see a 
face and you have already judged — ugly, good, bad, or anything else. This judgement 
has become so deep-rooted that we cannot see anything simply. The mind enters 
immediately. It becomes an interpretation; it is not a simple vision. 

Do not interpret. Simply SEE. 

Sit down in a relaxed posture or lie down. Close your eyes and allow your thoughts to 
move. If you say, "Bad!" if you condemn, then you start repressing them. Then you are 
not allowing them to move independently. That is why there is so much need for dreams, 
because whatsoever you are repressing during the day you will have to release in the 
night. That which is repressed goes on forcing its expression, it needs expression. So 
whatsoever you repress you dream. Dreams are cathartic. 

Now modern sleep research says that you can be deprived of sleep and not much harm 
will result, but you cannot be deprived of your dreams. The old idea that sleep is very 
necessary has been found to be false. Instead of sleep, dreams are very necessary, and 
sleep is necessary only because you cannot dream without sleep. 

Researchers have developed techniques with which it can now be judged from the outside 
whether you are dreaming or whether you are simply asleep. If you are simply asleep, 
they will disturb the sleep — the whole night long. When you are dreaming they will 
allow it, when you are not dreaming they will disturb the sleep, and no bad result comes 



out of it. 

But if they should disturb you when you are dreaming and allow you to sleep when you 
are not dreaming, within three days you will begin to feel dizzy, and within seven days 
you will feel a deep uneasiness. 

Your body and mind both will feel ill. Within three weeks you will feel a certain type of 
insanity. What happens? It is because dreams are cathartic. If you go on repressing during 
the day and if the repressions are not allowed to be expressed, they will accumulate in 
you, and that accumulation of repression is insanity. 

In meditation you are not to repress any thought. But it is difficult because your whole 
mind consists of judgments, theories, 'isms,' doctrines, beliefs. So one who is very deeply 
obsessed with any idea, a philosophy or a religion, cannot really enter into meditation. It 
is difficult because his obsession will become the barrier. So if you are a Christian or a 
Hindu or a Jain, it will be difficult for you to enter meditation because your philosophy 
gives you judgements. — This is good and that is not good, this has to be repressed, this is 
not to be allowed. 

All philosophies are repressive and all religions, all ideologies, are repressive, because 
they give you interpretations. They do not allow you to see life as it is. They force 
interpretations on it. 

One who wants to go deep into meditation has to be aware of this nonsense of ideology. 
Just be a simple man without any philosophy, with no attitude toward life. Just be a 
seeker — one who is in an inquiry, in a deep inquiry to know what life is. Do not force 
any ideology over and above it. 

Then it will be very easy to move into meditation. 

Because of this, the greatest meditator the world has ever known, Gautam Buddha, 
insisted that no ideology is needed, no philosophy is needed, no concepts about life are 
needed. Whether God is or is not is meaningless, irrelevant. Whether MOKSHA, 
liberation, exists or not is meaningless. Whether your soul is immortal or not is 
meaningless. 

Buddha was so much anti-philosophy not because HE was anti-philosophy, but because 
anti-philosophy can become the basic ground for a meditator to jump into the unknown. 
Philosophy means knowing something about the unknown without knowing it. It is just 
preconceptions, hypotheses, man-constructed ideologies. 

This is to be remembered as a very foundational fact: do not judge, let the mind flow 
easily. As the river flows, let the mind flow easily; just sit on the bank watching. And this 
watching should be pure — without any interpretations. Sooner or later, when the water 
has flown, when the repressed ideas have moved, you will find gaps coming. A thought 
will go, and another thought will not be coming, and there will be a gap — an interval. In 
that interval, nothingness happens. In that interval you will have the first glimpse of your 
real face, of the original face. 

When there is no thought there is no society. When there is no thought there is no other. 
When there is no other, no society, you need not have any face. 

Thoughtlessness is facelessness. In that interval, when one thought has gone and another 
has not appeared, in that interval, for the first time you will know in reality what is your 
face — the face you had when you were not bom and the face you will have when you 
die. 



All the faces in life are false. And once you know the real face, once you feel this inner 
nature which Buddhists call BUDDHA SWAB HAVA — the nature of the inner buddha — 
when you come to feel this inner nature even once, even with a single glimpse, you will 
be a different person, because now you will constantly know what is false and what is 
real. Then you will have the criterion. Then you can compare, and there will be no need 
to ask what is real and what is unreal. The question comes only because you do not know 
what is real, and whatsoever you know is all unreal. 

Only through meditation will you be able to learn what is a false image and what is a 
real, authentic face. Of course, the mind is automatic, and whatsoever you have done has 
become mechanical. It is hard to break this mechanicalness. 

The first thing to be understood: mechanicalness is a necessity of life — and your body 
has an inner mechanism. Colin Wilson has called it the inner robot, you have a robot 
within you. Once trained, once you are trained in anything, that training is passed to the 
robot. You can call it memory, you can call it mind, — anything — but the word robot is 
good because it is absolutely mechanical, automatic. 

It functions in its own way. 

You are learning to drive. While you are learning, you will have to be aware, alert. A 
danger is there. You do not know how to drive and anything can happen, so you will have 
to be alert. That is why learning is so painful, one has to be alert constantly. When you 
have learned driving, the driving has been given to the robot part of your mind. Now you 
can go on smoking, singing, listening to the radio or talking to a friend, or even loving 
your girlfriend. You can go on doing anything and the robot part of your being will drive. 
You will not be needed; you are relieved of the burden. The robot will do everything. 

You will not even have to remember where to turn; you need not. The robot will know 
where to turn, where to stop, where not to stop, what to do and what not to do. You are 
not needed; you are relieved of the job. The robot does everything. 

If something very sudden happens, some accident or something that the robot cannot 
tackle because it is not trained in it, only then will you be needed. Suddenly there will be 
a jerk in your body. The robot will be replaced and you will come in its place. You can 
feel that jerk. When suddenly you feel that an accident is going to happen, there is a jerk 
inside. The robot moves away; it gives place to you. Now YOU are driving. But when the 
accident is avoided, again the robot will take over. 

You will relax and the robot will drive. 

And this is necessary for life because there are so many things to do — so many things! 
And if there is no robot to do them, you will not be capable of doing them at all. So a 
robot is needed, it is a necessity. 

I am not against the robot. Go and give unto the robot whatsoever you leam, but remain 
the master. Do not allow the robot to become the master. This is the problem: the robot 
will try to be the master, because the robot is more efficient than you. Sooner or later the 
robot will say to you, "Be completely retired. You are not needed. I can do things more 
efficiently." 

Remain the master. What can be done in order for you to remain the master of the robot? 
Only one thing is possible, and that is: sometimes, without any danger, take the reins into 
your hands. Tell the robot to relax, come into the seat, and drive the car — without any 
danger, because in danger it is again automatic, the jerk, the replacement of the robot by 
you is automatic. 



You are driving: suddenly, without any necessity, tell the robot to relax. You come into 
the seat and drive the car. You are walking: suddenly remember and tell the body that 
"Now I will walk consciously. The robot is not allowed. I am the master and I will move 
the body consciously." You are hearing me: it is the robot part which is hearing me. 
Suddenly give a jerk to it; do not allow the mind to come in. 

Hear me directly, consciously. 

What do I mean when I say hear consciously? When you are hearing unconsciously, you 
are just focused on me and you have forgotten yourself completely. I exist, the speaker 
exists, but the listener is unconscious. You are not aware of yourself as the listener. When 
I say take the reins in your hands, I mean be aware of the two points: the speaker and the 
listener. And if you are aware of the two points, the speaker and the listener, you have 
become the third — the witness. 

This witnessing will help you to remain the master. And if you are the master, your robot 
cannot disturb your life. It IS disturbing your life. Your total life has become a mess 
because of this robot. It helps, it is efficient, but it goes on taking everything from you — 
even those things which should not be given to it. 

You have fallen in love: it is beautiful in the beginning because it has not been given to 
the robot yet. You are learning. You are alive, aware, alert, and love has a beauty. But 
sooner or later the robot will take it over. You will become a husband or a wife, and you 
will have given the charge to the robot. 

Then you will say to your wife, "I love you," but YOU will not be saying it. The robot 
will be saying it, the gramophone record. Then it is a recorded thing. You just play it 
again and again, and your wife will understand it — because whenever your robot says, "I 
love you," it means nothing. 

And when your wife says, "I love you," you too will know it is nothing, because a 
sentence given by a gramophone record only creates noise. It makes no sense; there is no 
sense in it. 

Then you will want to do everything, yet Y OU are not doing it. Then love becomes a 
burden and one even wants to escape from love. All your feelings, all your relationships 
are now directed by the robot. That is why sometimes you insist on not doing a certain 
thing, but the robot insists that you do it because the robot is trained to do it. And you are 
always a failure and the robot always succeeds. 

You say, "I am not going to be angry again," but your saying it is meaningless because 
the robot is trained. And the training has been long, so just a sentence in the mind that "I 
am not going to be angry again," will not have any effect. This robot has been long 
trained. So next time when someone insults you, your decision not to be angry will be of 
no help. The robot will take charge immediately and the robot will do whatsoever it is 
trained to do. And then in the end, when the robot has done it, you will repent. 

But the difficulty, the deep difficulty is this, that even this repentance is done by the 
robot, because you have always done that — after the anger you have repented. The robot 
has learned that trick also; it will repent, and again you will do the same thing. 

That is why many times you feel that you have done something, said something, behaved 
in a certain way, in spite of yourself. 

What does this expression, 'in spite of yourself,' mean? It means that there is another self 
within you which can act, which can do something in spite of you. Who is that self? The 



robot! 

What to do? Do not take vows that "I will not be angry again." They are self-defeating; 
they will not lead you anywhere. Rather, on the contrary, whatsoever you are doing, do it 
consciously. Take charge from the robot — with any ordinary thing. When eating, eat 
consciously. Do not do it mechanically, as you have done every day. When smoking, 
smoke consciously. Do not allow your hand to move to the packet unconsciously, do not 
bring the cigarette out unconsciously. Be conscious, alert — and there is a difference. 

I can raise my hand mechanically, just without any awareness; I can raise my hand with 
full awareness flowing in my hand. Try it! You will feel the difference. When you are 
aware, your hand will be raised very slowly, very silently, and you will feel that the hand 
is filled with the awareness. And when the hand is filled with the awareness, your mind 
will be thoughtless, because your whole awareness will have moved to the hand. Now no 
energy is left to think. 

When you raise your hand automatically, mechanically, you go on thinking and your 
hand goes on moving. Who is moving that hand? Your robot. Move it yourself! Do it in 
the day at any time, any moment, while doing anything. 

Take charge from the robot. Soon you will be able to have a mastery over the robot. But 
do not try it with difficult situations — that is suicidal. We always try with difficult 
situations, but because of the difficulty you never win. Start with simple situations, where 
even if you are not so efficient no hann is going to result. 

We always try with difficult situations. For example, one man thinks, "I am not going to 
be angry." Anger is a very difficult situation and the robot will not leave it to you. And it 
is better that the robot should do it because he knows more than you. You decide about 
sex — not to do something or to do something — but you cannot follow it through. The 
robot will take over. The situation is very complex, and more efficient handling is needed 
than you can give it right now. 

Unless you become so perfectly aware that you can tackle any complex situation without 
the help of the robot, the robot will not allow you to do it. And this is a very necessary 
defense mechanism. If it were otherwise, you would make a great mess of your life — if 
you were to go on taking things away from the robot in difficult situations. 

Try! Start with simple things such as walking. Try with this; there is no harm. You can 
say to the robot that "There is not going to be any hann. I am just walking, taking a walk, 
and I am not going anywhere — just walking. 

So there is no need of you; I can be non-efficient." 

And then be aware and walk slowly. Be filled with awareness throughout your whole 
body. When one foot moves, move with it. When one foot leaves the ground, leave the 
ground with it. When the other foot touches the ground, touch the ground with it. Be 
perfectly aware. Do not do anything else with the mind; just turn the whole mind into 
awareness. 

It will be difficult because the robot will interfere continuously. Every moment the robot 
will try and will say, "What are you doing? I can do it better than you." And he CAN do 
it better. So try it with non-serious things, with non-complex things, simple things. 
Buddha has told his disciples to walk, eat and sleep with awareness. If you can do these 
simple things, then you will also know how to enter into difficult things with awareness. 
Then you can try. 

But we always try with difficult things; then we are defeated. Then the defeated feeling 



gives you a deep pessimism about yourself. You start thinking that you cannot do 
anything. That is very helpful for the robot. The robot will always help you to do 
something when you are in difficulty because then you are defeated. Then the robot can 
say to you, "Leave it to me. I can always do it better than you can do it." 

Start with simple things. Zen Buddhists, Zen monks, have been so many times reported to 
have been doing this. 

When Bosho was asked, "What is your meditation? What is your SADHANA, spiritual 
practice?" he said, "When I feel hungry I eat and when I feel sleepy I go to sleep. This is 
all." 

The man who was asking said, "But this we all do. What is special about it?" Bosho 
repeated it again. He said, "When I am hungry 'I' eat and when I feel sleepy 'I' sleep." 

And that is the difference. When you feel hungry your robot eats, when you feel sleepy 
your robot sleeps. Bosho said "I", and that is the difference. 

If you become more aware in your day-to-day work, in your ordinary life, the awareness 
will grow. And with that awareness you will not be just a mechanical thing. For the first 
time you become a person — now you are not one. And a person has a face and a 
mechanical thing has many masks — no face. 

If you are a person — alive, alert, aware — you can have an authentic existence. If you are 
just a mechanical device, you cannot have any authentic existence. Each moment will 
change you; each situation will change you. You will be just a floating thing with no 
inner core, with no inner being. Awareness gives you the inner presence. Without it you 
feel that you are, but you are not. 

Someone asked Buddha, "I want to serve humanity. Tell me how I can serve." Buddha 
looked at the man very deeply, penetratingly, with deep compassion, and then he said, 
"But where are YOU? WHO will serve humanity? You are not yet. 

First be, and when you are, you need not ask me. When you are, you will do something 
which just happens to you which is worth doing." 

Gurdjieff noted that everyone comes with the notion that he is, that he already is. 
Someone came to Gurdjieff and asked, "I am very insane inside. My mind goes on in 
conflicts, in contradictions, so tell me what I can do to dissolve this mind, to have mental 
peace, inner calm." Gurdjieff said, "Do not think about the mind, you cannot do anything 
about it. The first thing is to be present. First YOU have to be; then you can do 
something. YOU are not." 

What is meant by this "You are not?" It means that you are a robot, a mechanical thing, 
working according to mechanical laws. Start being alert. Join awareness with anything 
you are doing — and start with simple things. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

EXPLAIN THE MEANING, PREPARATION AND PROCESS OF MANTRA 
DEEKSHA - MANTRA INITIATION. AND WHAT ARE THE REASONS WHY 
INDIVIDUALS MUST KEEP THE MANTRA SECRET? 

First try to understand what initiation is, what is DEEKSHA. It is a deep communion, a 
deep transfer of energy from the master to the disciple. Energy always flows downwards. 
Every energy flows downwards, just like water flows downwards. The master — one who 
has attained, one who has known, one who has become — is the highest peak of energy 
possible, of purest energy. 



.. the Everest of energy. This energy can flow downwards to anyone who is receptive, 
humble, surrendered. This surrendered attitude — the receptive attitude, a deep 
humbleness — will be needed to receive. Otherwise you yourself are a peak; you are not a 
valley. Then the energy cannot flow downwards to you. 

You are a different sort of peak, the peak of ego — not of energy, not of being, not of 
bliss, not of consciousness. You are a density of ego, of "I-ness." You are a peak, and 
with this peak no initiation is possible. Ego is the barrier because ego closes you and you 
cannot surrender. 

To be a disciple, to be initiated, one has to surrender himself totally. And there is no 
partial surrender. Surrender means total. You cannot say, "I partially surrender" — it 
makes no sense. Then you are still there with your ego. Ego has to be surrendered, and 
when you surrender the ego you become receptive, open. You become like a valley, and 
then the peak can flow downwards to you. And I am not talking symbolically, it is so 
actually. 

Have you ever been in love? Then you can feel that love actually flows between two 
bodies, it is an actual flow. Energy is being transmitted, transferred, received, given. But 
love is on the same level. You both can remain peaks of ego, and still love can be. 

But with a master you are not on the same level. And if you try to be on the same level, 
initiation becomes impossible. 

Love is possible, but initiation becomes impossible. Initiation is possible only when you 
are on a lower level — just humble, surrendered, open to receive — when the disciple is 
feminine, just womb-like, passive, able to receive. The master is the male factor in 
initiation. 

This secret of initiation is now completely lost because the more we are educated, the 
more civilized, the more cultured, then the more egoistic we become. And now, to 
surrender has become very, very impossible. It has always been difficult, but now it is 
impossible. 

Initiation is a transfer of inner energy, actual energy, and the master can enter in you and 
can transfonn you if you are ready and receptive. But then deep trust is needed — more 
trust than is needed in love — because you do not know what is going to happen. You are 
completely in the dark. 

Only the master knows what is going to happen and what he is doing. He knows; you 
cannot know. And there are things that cannot be said about what is going to happen 
because with the human mind there are many problems. One problem is this: that if 
something is said before it happens, it will change the happening. It cannot be said. 

So there are many things which the master cannot say to you. He can do them to you, but 
he cannot say them to you. That doing is initiation. He actually moves in you — in your 
body, in your mind. 

He cleanses you, changes you. The only thing required is your total trust, because 
without it there is no opening and he cannot enter you: your doors are closed. 

You are always defending yourself. Life is a struggle — a struggle for survival, to survive. 
This struggle gives you a closing. You are closed, afraid; you are afraid to be vulnerable. 
Someone may enter, someone may do something within you. So you shrink yourself, you 
remain closed — just hiding behind, constantly defending. 

In initiation you have to lose this defense; this armor of defense has to be thrown away. 
You become vulnerable, and then the master can enter you. 



For example, it is just like a deep love act. You can rape a woman, but you cannot rape a 
disciple. You can rape a woman because it is a bodily rape, and the body can be raped 
and entered without any consent. Without the will of the woman you can rape. It is a 
forced thing. The body is material; things can be forced on it. 

Something just like this happens in initiation. The master enters your spirit, not your 
body. Unless you are ready and receiving, the entrance is not possible. A disciple cannot 
be raped because it is not a bodily question. It is a question of spirit, and you cannot force 
entry into a spirit. No violence is possible with it. 

So when the disciple is ready and open, just like a loving woman, inviting and receptive, 
ready, in a deep let-go, only then can the master enter and work. 

And centuries of work can be done in moments. You may not be able to do in many lives 
certain things which can be done in a moment. But then you have to be vulnerable, totally 
trusting. You do not know what is going to happen and what he will do inside you. 

A woman is afraid because the sexual act is a journey into the unknown for her. Unless 
she loves the man, unless she is ready to suffer, to carry the burden of a child, to carry the 
child for nine months and then make a life commitment to it, unless she is deeply in love, 
she will not allow the man to enter her body — because it is not simply her body, it is her 
whole life. When she is in deep love, then she is ready to suffer, to sacrifice. And to 
sacrifice and suffer in deep love is blissful. 

But the problem with the disciple is deeper. It is not a question only of a physical birth, of 
a new child, it is HIS rebirth. He himself is going to be reborn. He will die in a certain 
sense and he will be bom in a certain different sense. And this is possible if the master 
enters him, but the master cannot force it. No force is possible, the disciple can only 
invite it. 

And that is the problem — a very great problem in spiritual discipleship, because the 
disciple goes on defending himself or herself, goes on creating more and more annor 
around him. He behaves with his master in the same way he would behave with anyone 
in the world; the same defense mechanisms go on working. 

And then time is wasted unnecessarily, energy is wasted, and the moment is delayed 
which can happen right now. But this is natural, and sometimes even with great masters 
disciples have missed the chance. 

Ananda, one of the great disciples of Buddha and the nearest, couldn’t attain liberation 
while Buddha was alive. Buddha was with Ananda for forty years, and Ananda couldn’t 
attain. But many who came after Ananda attained, and then it became a problem. And 
Ananda was one of the nearest — the closest. He was sleeping in the same room with 
Buddha, he was moving with Buddha for forty years continuously. He was like a shadow 
to Buddha; as much as he knew about Buddha even Buddha might not have known. 

But he couldn't attain; he remained the same. And a very ordinary thing was the only 
barrier: he was an elder cousin-brother of Buddha. This created the ego. 

Buddha died... a great council met to write down whatsoever Buddha had said. It had to 
be written then. Soon those who lived with Buddha would be no more, so everything had 
to be recorded. But the council would not allow Ananda, and only he knew the greater 
experiences, the statements of Buddha, his life, his biography. This was all known to 
Ananda; no one knew so much. 

But the council decided that Ananda could not be allowed because he was still 
unenlightened. He could not record Buddha's sayings because an ignorant man cannot be 



believed. 


He would not deceive, but with an ignorant man nothing is reliable. He may think that 
something happened, and he may relate it authentically as far as he knows, but he is a 
man who is not yet awakened. Whatsoever he has seen and heard in sleep could not be 
believed, so only those would record who had become awakened — they decided. 

Ananda was weeping just outside the door. The door was closed, and he remained just by 
the door for twenty-four hours, weeping, crying and screaming. But they would not allow 
him. For these twenty-four hours he was weeping, weeping, and then suddenly he 
became aware what had been the barrier — why he hadn’t been able to attain while 
Buddha was alive, what had been the barrier. 

Then he went back into his memories. A forty-year-long life with Buddha! He 
remembered the first day when he came to him for initiation. But he had one condition, 
and that was why he missed the whole initiation. He could not be initiated because be 
made a condition. 

He came to Buddha and he said, "I have come to be a disciple of yours. Once I become 
your disciple, you will be the master and I will have to follow whatsoever you say, I will 
have to obey. But right now I am your elder brother, and I can order you and you will 
have to obey. You are not the master, I am not the disciple. Once I am initiated, you will 
be the master and I will be the disciple. 

Then I will not be able to say anything, so before I become a disciple these are my three 
conditions. Say yes to these three conditions; then initiate me." 

The conditions were not very big, but a condition is a condition and then your surrender 
is not total. They were very small conditions, very loving conditions. He said, "One, I 
will always be with you. You cannot tell me to move anywhere else. While I am alive I 
will be your shadow; you cannot order me away. Give me the promise — because later on 
I will be just a disciple, and if you order me away I will have to follow. This will be a 
promise given to an elder brother — that I will be with you. You cannot tell me to move 
anywhere else. I will just be your shadow; I will sleep in the room where you sleep. 
"Secondly, whenever I will say, 'Meet this man,’ you will have to meet him. Whatsoever 
your reason for not meeting, you will have to agree. If I want that someone should be 
given your DARSHAN — spiritual presence — you will have to give it. 

"And thirdly, if I say that someone has to be initiated, you cannot refuse. Grant me these 
three conditions. Promise me and then initiate me. I will not ask anything again because 
then I shall be just a disciple." 

When he remembered this, while he was weeping, crying before the door of the council, 
after he went back into his memories, he suddenly became aware that the initiation was 
not there because he had not been receptive. 

Buddha had agreed. He said, "Okay!" and he followed the three conditions his whole life. 
But Ananda missed, the nearest one missed. 

And the moment he realized this he became enlightened. That which couldn’t happen 
with Buddha happened when he was no more: he surrendered. 

If there is surrender, even an absent master can help you. If there is no surrender, even an 
alive master who is present cannot help you. So in initiation, in any initiation, surrender 
is needed. 

Mantra initiation means that when you have surrendered, the master will enter you — 



your body, your mind, your spirit. He will move in you to find a sound for you, so that 
whenever you chant that sound you will be a different man in a different dimension. 

A mantra cannot be given unless you have surrendered totally, because mantra giving 
means the master has entered you and felt the deep harmony, the inner music of your 
being. And then he gives a symbolic sound which is in harmony with your inner music. 
The moment you chant that sound you enter the world of your inner music, the inner 
hannony is entered. 

That sound is just a key, and a key cannot be given unless the lock is known. So I cannot 
give you a key unless I kn ow your lock, because a key is meaningful only when it can 
unlock. Any key will not do, and everyone is a particular lock — you need a particular 
key. That is why mantras are to be kept secret. 


If you give your mantra to someone he may experiment with it, but that key will not suit 
that lock. And sometimes, when you force a wrong key into a lock you can destroy the 
lock, you can disturb the lock. You can so much disturb it that even when a right key is 
found it may not work. That is why mantras are to be kept absolutely secret. They are not 
told to anyone; that is a promise you make. The master gives you a key, it is a key only 
for you. You cannot go on distributing it — for many that would be harmful. 

You will be allowed to give keys only when your lock is totally opened. But then you 
will not give THIS key to anyone. Then you will have become capable of entering into 
the other. Then you will be able to feel the lock and devise a key for it. 

The key is always devised by the master. If there is a heap of keys, one who doesn’t know 
may think all keys are the same. There may be only very small differences, minute 
differences, and even the same word can be used differently. For example, Aum. This has 
three sounds — "A-U-M." If emphasis is given on the "U", the mid-sound, it is one key. If 
emphasis is given on the "A", it is a different key. If the emphasis is given on the "M", it 
is still a different key; it will open different locks. That is why there is so much emphasis 
on the exact use of the mantra as it is given by the master. 

So the master gives the mantra in your ear; he chants it exactly as it should be used. 

He chants it in your ear, and you have to become so alert that your whole consciousness 
comes to the ear. He chants it, and then it enters into you. You have to remember it now 
— the exact use of it. 

That is why individuals must keep their mantras secret; they should not be made public. 
They are dangerous, and if you are initiated you know it. If a master has really given you 
a key, you know it. You treasure it like anything; you cannot go on distributing it. It can 
be hannful for others and it can be harmful for you also — for many reasons. 

Firstly, you are breaking a promise, and the moment the promise is broken your contact 
with the master is broken. You will not be in contact with him again. If the promise is 
kept, there is a constant contact. 

Secondly, if you give the mantra to anyone and talk about it, it comes to the surface of 
the mind. The deeper roots are broken, it becomes a gossip. 

Thirdly, if you can keep anything secret, the more you keep it secret, the deeper it goes. It 
is bound to go deeper. 

It is said of Marpa that when he was given the secret mantra by his master, the promise 
was there that the mantra would be kept absolutely secret. "You are not to talk about it," 
he was told. 



Then Marpa's master appeared in his dream and he said, "What is your mantra?" Even in 
the dream Marpa kept his promise, he refused to tell it. 

And it is said that because of the fear that someday in a dream the master may come or 
send someone, and he may be so asleep that he would break the secret and the promise 
would be broken, he stopped sleeping altogether. He would not sleep! 

He had not been sleeping for seven or eight days, and his master asked Marpa, "Why are 
you not sleeping? I see you do not go to sleep at all, so what is the matter?" Marpa said, 
"You are playing tricks with me. You came in a dream and you were asking for the 
mantra. I cannot tell even you. Once the promise is there, it will not come out of my 
mouth even in a dream. But then I became fearful. In sleep, who knows! Someday I may 
forget." 

If you are so aware of keeping the promise that even in a dream you remember it, then it 
is going deep. It is going deep, it is entering inner realms. And the deeper it moves, the 
more it will be a key to you — because the lock is at the deepest layer. Try with anything. 
If you can keep it a secret, it will move deep. If you cannot keep it a secret, it will move 
out. 

Why do you want to say something to someone? Why do you chatter? Really, anything 
that you chatter about you are relieved of. Once you tell it you are relieved of it; it has 
moved out. 

The whole psychoanalysis is nothing but this. The psychoanalyst is just listening and the 
patient goes on talking. It helps the patient — because the more he talks about his 
problems, inner conflicts and associated ideas, the more he is relieved of them. 

The reverse happens when you can keep a secret. At no moment are you allowed to talk 
about it. It will enter deep, deep, and one day it will hit the exact lock. 

One question more: 

Question 3 

IN REFERENCE TO THE MEDITATION TECHNIQUES BASED ON SOUNDS, 
PLEASE EXPLAIN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CHAOTIC MUSIC 
PLAYED IN YOUR DYNAMIC MEDITATION AND THE SHAKE OR ROCK 
MUSIC OF THE WEST. 

Your mind is in chaos. That chaos has to be brought out, acted out. Chaotic music can be 
helpful, so if you are meditating and chaotic music is played or chaotic dancing is there 
around you, it will help to bring out your chaos. You will flow in it, you will become 
unafraid of expression. And this chaotic music will hit your chaotic mind within and will 
bring it out. It helps. 

Rock, jazz, or other music which is chaotic in a way also help something to come out, 
and that something is repressed sexuality. I am concerned with all your repressions. 
Modern music is more concerned just with your repressed sex, but there is a similarity. 
However, I am not concerned only with your repressed sex, I am concerned with all your 
repressions — sexual or not sexual. 

Rock music, or other music like that, is so influential in the West because of Christianity. 
Christianity has been repressing sex for twenty centuries. They have forced sex to go so 
deep down inside that every man has become a pervert deep down. 

So the West has to relieve itself of the sin that Christianity has done with man, with his 
mind, through music, through dance, through chaotic painting, chaotic poetry — in every 



dimension. 

In the West mind has to be completely freed somehow from the whole centuries-long past 
of repression. In every way they are doing it. All that is influential today is chaotic. But 
sex is not the only thing, there are many other things also. Sex is the basic thing, it is very 
important, but there are other things also. Your anger is repressed, your sadness is 
repressed, even your happiness is repressed. 

Man as he is is a repressed being. He is not allowed to do anything, he has just to follow 
rules. He is not a free agent but just a kept slave, and the whole society is a big prison. 

The walls are very subtle: they are glass walls, transparent. You cannot see them, but 
they are, and everywhere. Your morality, your culture, your religion, they are all walls. 
They are transparent, you cannot see them, but whenever you want to cross them you are 
thrown back. 

This state of mind is neurotic. The whole society is ill. That is why I so much insist on 
chaotic meditation. Relieve yourself, act out whatsoever society has forced on you, 
whatsoever situations have forced on you. Act them out, relieve yourself of them, go 
through a catharsis. The music helps. 

Once you can throw out everything that has been repressed in you, you will become 
natural again, you will be a child again. 

And with that child many possibilities open. With you everything is closed. When you 
become again a child, then only can your energies be transformed. Then you are pure, 
innocent, and with that innocence and purity transfonnation is possible. 

Perverted energies cannot be transformed. Natural, spontaneous energy is needed. That is 
why I insist so much on acting out things: so that you can throw the society out. The 
society has entered you very deeply. It has not left YOU anywhere; it has entered from 
everywhere. You are a citadel, and the society has entered from everywhere. Its police, 
its priests, they have done much to make you a slave. You are not free, and man can 
attain to bliss only when he becomes a total freedom. 

For you to be made a total freedom the whole society has to be thrown out of you, but 
that doesn’t mean that you are going to become anti-social. Once you throw the society 
out, once you become aware of your pure freedom inside, you can live with the society; 
there is no need to be anti. But then the society cannot enter into you. You can move in it, 
you can act in it, but then the whole thing becomes just a psychodrama — you are acting. 
Now the society cannot kill you, cannot make a slave of you; you are acting knowingly. 
Those who become anti-social simply show that they are still bound to the same society. 
All the anti-social movements in the West are reactionary, not revolutionary. 

You are reacting to the same society, you are related to the same society in a reverse 
manner. You are standing on your head, that is all. You are doing SHIRS HAS ANA — the 
headstand posture — but you are the same person. Whatsoever the society is insisting 
upon, you are doing quite the contrary — but you are still following the society. This will 
not help. 

If you are anti you will never be beyond the society, you will always be part of it. If the 
society dies, you will die. Think of what in the West they now call the establishment — 
the society that is established — and the alternate societies of hippies, yippies, or others. 
They exist as a part of this establishment. If the establishment is dissolved, they will be 
nowhere. They cannot exist by themselves; they are just a reaction. 

You cannot create a society of hippies by itself. Hippies can exist only as an alternate 



society WITH an establishment — just as a reaction. They cannot exist independently. So 
howsoever much they may think they are independent, they are not independent. The 
establishment is their source, their life. Once the establishment is not there, they will be 
at a loss where to move and what to do. Whatsoever they are doing is dictated by the 
establishment. They go against it, but the directions, the instructions are given by the 
establishment. 

If the establishment says short hair, you can be long-haired. 

But if there is no establishment, then what to do? If the establishment says cleanliness, 
you can be dirty. But if there is no establishment and no fuss about cleanliness, you are 
nowhere. If the establishment says this, you can do that — quite the reverse — but you 
follow the establishment. 

So anti-socials are not revolutionaries. They are reactionaries, a part and a product of the 
same society — those who have moved against it in bitterness. 

A meditator, a sannyasin, is not anti-society, he is beyond society. He is not against the 
establishment, neither is he for it — but he takes it non-seriously. He knows it is just a 
play; he moves in it like an actor. And if you can move in the society like an actor on the 
stage, it never touches you; you remain beyond it. So do not be for it, do not be against it. 
But how can you do it? You can do it only when you have thrown the society out of you. 
If it is there, then there are two paths open to you: follow it or go against it. But you are 
bound to it; you are in bondage. First one has to clean oneself of society, then for the first 
time you become an individual. Right now you are not, you are just a social unit. 

When the society is thrown out, when its entire presence is thrown out, you are again 
back to your childhood: you have become innocent. And this innocence is deeper than 
that which any child can have, because you know the fall as well and now you have risen. 

It is a resurrection. You have experienced, you have known the whole nonsense. Now 
you are again pure. This purity becomes the temple for the divine. 

Once you can throw the society out of you, without any bitterness, without going against 
it or being involved in any reaction... if you can simply throw society out of you, the 
divine can enter into you. 

With society in, the divine will remain out; with society out, the divine can enter — 
because the divine means existence. Society is a human, local phenomenon. Existence is 
greater, infinite. It is not concerned with man, morals, traditions, it is concerned with the 
very roots of being. 

One has to be beyond society, not against it, remember. And this chaotic method helps 
you. It is a catharsis. 


THE END. 



Chapter 29: Sound methods for the dropping of the mind 


18. INTONE A SOUND AUDIBLY, THEN LESS AND LESS AUDIBLY AS 
FEELING DEEPENS INTO THIS SILENT HARMONY. 

19. WITH MOUTH SLIGHTLY OPEN, KEEP MIND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE 
TONGUE. OR, AS BREATH COMES SILENTLY IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH". 

20. CENTER ON THE SOUND "AUM" WITHOUT ANY "A" OR "M". 

Tantra divides life into two dimensions: one is the S ANSAR — that which is, the world; 
and the other is MOKSHA — that which can be, the ultimate, the hidden which can 
become manifest. But there is no contradiction between these two. The hidden is just here 
and now, in the world — of course, unknown to you, but not non-existent. It is there. The 
ultimate and the immediate are not two things, but just two dimensions of one existence. 
So for tantra there is no contradiction, there is no duality. The one appears as two because 
of our limitations; because we cannot see the whole. The moment we can see the whole, 
one appears as one. The division is not in reality, but in our limited knowledge. That 
which we know is S ANSAR — the world; and that which is unknown but which can be 
known is MOKSHA — the transcendental, the ultimate, the absolute. 

For other traditions, there is a conflict between the two; for tantra there is no conflict. 

This has to be understood very deeply in the mind and in the heart. Unless this is 
understood deeply, you will never be able to understand the viewpoint of tantra. 

And whatsoever is your belief, that belief is of duality. Whether you are a Christian or a 
Mohammedan or a Hindu or a Jain, your belief is of duality, of conflict. The world 
appears to be something which is against the divine, and you have to fight the world to 
reach the divine. This is the common belief of all so-called religions, particularly 
organized religions. 

Mind can understand duality very easily. Rather, it can understand only duality because 
the very function of the mind is to divide. The very function of the mind is to cut the 
whole into fragments. 

The mind works like a prism, and when a ray of light enters the prism it is divided into 
seven colors. Mind is a prism and reality is divided through it. That is why mind revels in 
analysis. It goes on dividing things into fragments, and it cannot prevent itself unless 
there is nothing to be divided anymore. So mind has a tendency to reach to the atomic, 
the lowest division. It goes on dividing, dividing, until a moment comes when no division 
is possible. If division is still possible, it will divide still further. 

Mind goes to the fragment, to the minutest fragment, and reality is a whole, not the 
fragment. So a completely reverse process is needed to know the real: a process which is 
of synthesis, not of analysis; a process which crystallizes, not one which divides. A no- 
mind process is needed. 


Tantra denies divisions and tantra says that the whole is whole. The part that we know is 
the world, the part that is hidden is the divine, or God, or whatsoever you name it — but 
the hidden is just here and now. You are not aware of it, but it is here and now. It is 
already. For you it will be in the future, but in the existence it is here and now. You may 
have to travel to it; you may have to attain a no-mind attitude of looking at things — then 



it will be revealed. You are just standing and the morning sun is rising, but you are 
standing with closed eyes. The morning is here and now, but for you it is not here and 
now. When you will open your eyes, only then will it become a fact for you. 

In the existence the morning exists, but not for you. You are closed to it, it is hidden for 
you. For you there is only darkness and the light is hidden. But if you open your eyes, 
any moment the morning will become a fact to you. It was already a fact, only you were 
blind. 

Tantra says that the world is already the divine, but you are blind. So whatsoever you 
know in your blindness is to be called the world, and whatsoever is hidden because of 
your blindness is the divine. This is one of the basic tenets — that this sansar is the 
moksha, this very world is divine, this very world is the ultimate. The immediate and the 
ultimate are not two, but one. The here and there are not two, but one. 

Because of this insistence, many things become possible for tantra. One: tantra can 
accept everything, and the deep acceptance relaxes you completely. Nothing else can 
relax you. 

If there is no division between this world and that, if the transcendental is imminent here 
and now, if matter is just the body of the divine, then nothing is denied, nothing is 
condemned and you need not be tense. Even if it may take ages for you to come to realize 
the divine, there is no hurry for tantra. It is already there, and time is not lacking. It is 
eternally here; whenever you will open your eyes you will find it. And whatsoever you 
are already getting is the hidden divine. 

So the Christian attitude of condemnation, of sin, or other such religious attitudes, is 
totally a lie to tantra — and absurd, because if you condemn something you also become 
divided inwardly. You cannot divide things only outwardly. If you divide, you also will 
be divided in parallel. If you say that this world is wrong, then your body will become 
wrong because your body is part of this world. 

If you say that this world is something which is a hindrance to reaching the ultimate, then 
your whole life will be condemned and you will feel guilty. Then you cannot enjoy, then 
you cannot live, then you cannot laugh. Then seriousness will become your face. You can 
be only serious; you cannot be non-serious, you cannot be playful. 


That has happened to all the minds all over the world. They become dead, serious. 
Through seriousness they become dead because they cannot accept life as it is. They 
deny it, and they feel that unless they deny they cannot reach the other world. 

So the other world becomes the ideal, the future, the desire, the vision, and this world 
becomes a sin. Then one feels guilty with it. And any religion that makes you guilty, 
makes you neurotic. It drives you crazy! In this sense, tantra is the only healthy religion. 
And whenever any religion becomes healthy, it becomes tantra — it becomes tantric. So 
every religion has two aspects. One is the outer aspect: the church, the organization, the 
publicized, the public face, the exoteric. This aspect is always life-denying. The other 
aspect is the inner core. Every religion has that too: the esoteric. It is always tantric — 
totally accepting. 

Unless you accept the world totally, you cannot be at ease within. Non-acceptance 
creates a tension. Once you accept everything as it is, you are at home in the world. 
Tantra says this is a basic thing: you must be at home. Only then does something more 
become possible. If you are tense, divided, in conflict, in anguish, in guilt, how can you 



transcend? You are so much mad inside, you cannot travel further. You are so much 
engaged here, so much possessed by the here, you cannot go beyond. 


This seems paradoxical. Those who are too much against the world are too much in it; 
they have to be. You cannot go away from your enemy, you are possessed by the enemy. 
If the world is your enemy, no matter what you do or pretend to do you will remain 
worldly. You may even renounce it, but your very approach will be worldly. 

I have seen one saint, a very renowned one... He will not touch money, and if you put 
some coins before him, he will close his eyes. This is neurotic, this man is ill! What is he 
doing? But people worship him because of this. They think he is so otherworldly. He is 
not, he is too much in the world. Even you are not so much in the world. What is he 
doing? He has just reversed the process; now he is standing on his head. He is the same 
man — the same man who was greedy for money. Constantly he must have been thinking 
of money, accumulating possessions. Now he has become quite the opposite, but he 
remains the same within. Now he is against money, now he cannot touch it. 

Why this fear? Why this hatred? Remember, whenever there is hatred it is love in 
reverse. You can hate a thing only if you have been in love with it. Hate is always 
possible only through love. You can be against something only if you have been so much 
for it, but the basic attitude remains the same: this man is greedy. 

I asked this man, "Why are you so much afraid?" 

He said, "Money is the hindrance. Unless I use will against my greed toward money, I 
cannot reach the divine." 

So now it is only a new sort of greed. He is in a bargain: if he touches money he loses the 
divine. And he wants to get the divine, he wants to possess the divine, so he is against the 
money. 

Tantra says, do not be for the world, do not be against the world, just accept it as it is. Do 
not create any problem out of it. How is this going to help you? If you do not create any 
problem out of it, if you do not grow neurotic over it — this way or that — if you remain 
simply in it and accept it as it is, your whole energy is relieved from it and can move to 
the hidden realm, to the hidden dimension. 

Acceptance in this world becomes transcendence for that. Total acceptance here will lead 
you, will transform you to the other dimension, the hidden dimension, because all your 
energy is relieved; it is not engaged here. Tantra believes deeply in the concept of 
NIYATI — fate. Tantra says, take this world as your fate and do not be worried about it. 
Once you take it as your niyati, as your fate, you accept it, whatsoever it is. You are not 
worried about changing it, about making it different, about making it according to your 
desire. Once you accept it as it is and you are not bothered by it, your total energy is 
relieved, and then this energy can penetrate inwards. 

These techniques can be helpful only if you take this attitude; otherwise they will not be 
helpful. 

And they look so simple. If you start them directly as you are, they will seem simple, but 
you will not succeed in them. The basic framework is lacking. Acceptance is the basic 
framework. Once the acceptance is there in the background, these very simple methods 
will work wonders. 


The sixth method concerning sound: 



INTONE A SOUND AUDIBLY, THEN LESS AND LESS AUDIBLY AS FEELING 
DEEPENS INTO THIS SILENT HARMONY. 

Any sound will do, but if you love a certain sound it will be better, because if you love a 
certain sound then the sound is not just sound. When you intone the sound, then you are 
also intoning a hidden feeling with it, and by and by the sound will be dropped and only 
feeling will remain. 

The sound has to be used as a passage toward feeling. Sound is mind and feeling is heart. 
Mind has to use a passage toward the heart. It is difficult to enter the heart directly. 
Because we have been missing it so much and for so many lives, we do not know from 
where to move to the heart. How to enter it? The door seems closed. 

We go on talking about the heart, but that talk also is just in the mind. We say that we 
love through the heart, but this too is cerebral; in the head. Even the talk of the heart is in 
the head. And we do not know where the heart is. I do not mean the physical part of it, 
we know about that. But then physicians will say, medical science will say, that there is 
no possibility of love in it. 

It is just a pumping system. Nothing else is in it, and all else is just myth and poetry and 
dreaming. 

But tantra knows a deep center hidden behind your physical heart. That deep center can 
only be reached through the mind because we are standing in the mind. We are there in 
the head, and any travel inwards has to begin from there. Mind is sound. If all sound 
stops, you won't have any mind. In silence there is no mind — that is why there is so 
much insistence on silence. Silence is a no-mind state. 

Ordinarily we say, "My mind is silent." This is absurd, meaningless, because mind means 
absence of silence. So you cannot say that the mind is silent. If mind is, there cannot be 
any silence, and when silence is, there is no mind. So there is no such thing as a silent 
mind; there cannot be. It is just like saying that someone is alive-dead. It makes no sense. 
If he is dead, then he is not alive. If he is alive, then he is not dead. You cannot be alive- 
dead. 

So there is nothing like a silent mind. When silence comes, mind is not there. Really, 
mind goes out and silence comes in; silence comes in and mind goes out. Both cannot be 
there. Mind is sound. If the sound is systematic you are sane, if the sound has gone 
chaotic you are insane; but in both the cases sound is there, and we exist at the point of 
the mind. 

So how to drop from that point to the inner point of the heart? Use sound, intone sound. 

One sound will be helpful. If there are many sounds in the mind, it is difficult to leave 
them. If there is only one sound, it can be left easily. So first many sounds are to be 
sacrificed for one sound. That is the use of concentration. 

Intone one sound. Go on intoning it, first audibly so that you can hear it, and then by and 
by, slowly, inaudibly. No one else can hear it then, but you can hear it inside. Make it 
more quiet, make it less and less audible, and then suddenly drop it. There will be silence, 
an explosion of silence — but feeling will be there. Now there will be no thought, but 
feeling will be there. 

That is why it is good to use a sound, a name, a mantra, for which you have some feeling. 
If a Hindu uses "Ram," he has some feeling for it. It is not simply a word for him, it is not 
only in his head. The vibrations reach to his heart also. He may not be aware, but it is 
deep-rooted in his bones, in his very blood. There has been a long tradition, a long 



conditioning, for many lives. If you have been attached to one sound continuously, it is 
very deep-rooted. Use it. It can be used. 

A Christian can use "Ram," but it will remain in the mind, it will not go deep. It is better 
that he uses "Jesus" or "Maria" or something else. It is very easy to be influenced by a 
new idea, but it is difficult to use it. You do not have any feeling for it. Even if you are 
convinced in the mind that this will be better, this conviction is on the surface. 


One of my friends was living in Gennany. He was there for thirty years and he 
completely forgot his mother tongue — he was a Maharashtrian and his mother tongue 
was Marathi. But he had forgotten it, for thirty years he was using German. German 
became just like his mother tongue. I say just like because no other tongue can become 
your mother tongue. There is no possibility because the mother tongue remains deep 
down inside of you. He consciously forgot it, and he was not able to speak or understand 
it. 

Then he fell ill, and he was so ill that his whole family had to go there to see him. He was 
unconscious, but sometimes consciousness would come. Whenever he would become 
conscious he would speak German and whenever he would become unconscious he 
would mutter in Marathi. Consciously he couldn’t understand anything of Marathi; 
unconsciously he couldn’t understand anything of German. 

Deep in the unconscious Marathi remained; it was the mother tongue. And you cannot 
replace the mother tongue. You can put other things over and above it, you can 
overimpose other things, but you cannot replace it. Deep down, it will remain. 

So if you have a feeling for a certain sound, it is better to use it. Do not use an intellectual 
sound, it will be of no help because the sound has to be used to make a passage from the 
mind to the heart. So use some sound for which you have a deep love, a certain feeling. 


If a Mohammedan uses "Ram," it is very difficult, the word means nothing to him. That 
is why the two oldest religions never believe in conversion — Hinduism and Judaism. 
They are the two oldest religions, the two original religions, all other religions are just 
offshoots of these two. Christianity and Islam are offshoots of the Jewish tradition; 
Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism are offshoots of Hinduism. These two original religions 
never believed in conversion, and the reason was this: that you can convert a man 
intellectually, but you cannot convert a man from his heart. You can convert a Hindu into 
a Christian, you can convert a Christian into a Hindu, but the conversion will remain of 
the mind. 

Deep down a converted Hindu remains a Hindu. He may go to a church and he may pray 
to Mary or to Jesus, but his prayer remains of the head. You cannot change the 
unconscious. And if you hypnotize him, you will find he is a Hindu. If you hypnotize him 
and let him reveal his unconscious, you will find he is a Hindu. 

Hindus and Jews never believed in conversion because of this basic fact. You cannot 
change a man’s religion because you cannot change his heart and unconscious feelings. 
And if you try, then you disturb him, because you give him something which will remain 
on the surface and you divide him. Then he becomes a split personality. Deep down he is 
a Hindu; on the surface he is a Christian. 


He will use Christian sounds, mantras, which will not go deep, and he cannot use Hindu 



sounds which can go deep. You have disturbed his life. 

So find a certain sound for which you have some feeling. Even your own name may be 
helpful. If you do not have any feeling for anything else, then your own name will be 
helpful. There are many cases on record... One very famous mystic, Bukkh, used his own 
name, because he said, "I do not believe in any God. I do not know about him, I do not 
know what his name is. There are names I have heard, but there is no proof that they are 
his name. And I am in search of myself, so why not use my own name?" So he would use 
his own name, and just by using his own name he would drop down into silence. 

If you do not have any love for anything else, use your own name. But it is very difficult 
because you are so condemning toward yourself that you do not have any feeling, you do 
not have any respect toward yourself. Others may be respectful toward you, but you are 
not respectful toward yourself. 

So the first thing is to find any sound that will be helpful: for example, your lover's name, 
your beloved's name. If you love a flower, then "rose" will do, anything — any sound that 
you feel good using, uttering, listening to, from which you feel a certain well — being 
coming to you. If you cannot find one, then there are some suggestions from traditional 
sources. 

"Aum" can be used, "Amen" can be used, "Maria" can be used, "Ram" can be used, or 
Buddha's name, or Mahavir's name, or any name that you have a love for. But a feeling 
must be there. That is why the Master's name can be helpful, if you have the feeling. But 
feeling is essential! 

INTONE A SOUND AUDIBLY, THEN LESS AND LESS AUDIBLY AS FEELING 
DEEPENS INTO THIS SILENT HARMONY. And go on reducing the sound. Intone it 
more slowly, more inaudibly so that even you have to make an effort to hear it inside. Go 
on dropping, go on dropping, and you will feel the change. The more sound will drop, the 
more you will be filled with feeling. When sound disappears, only feeling remains. This 
feeling cannot be named. It is a love, a deep love, but not toward anyone — this is the 
difference. 

When you use a sound or a word, the love is attached to a label. You say, "Ram, Ram, 
Ram..." You have a deep feeling for this word, but the feeling is addressed to "Ram," 
narrowed down to "Ram." When you go on reducing the "Ram," a moment will come 
when "Ram" disappears, the sound disappears. Now only the feeling remains, the feeling 
of love — not toward Ram, it is now not addressed. There is simply a feeling of love — 
not toward anyone, not even toward; there is simply a feeling of love, as if you are in an 
ocean of love. 

When it is not addressed, then it is of the heart. When it is addressed, it is of the head. 

Love toward someone is through the head; simple love is of the heart. And when love is 
simple, unaddressed, it becomes prayer. If it is addressed, it is not yet prayer; you are just 
on the way. That is why I say if you are a Christian you cannot start as a Hindu, you 
should start as a Christian. If you are a Mohammedan you cannot start as a Christian, you 
should start as a Mohammedan. But the deeper you go, the less you will be a 
Mohammedan or a Christian or a Hindu. 

Only the start will be Hindu, Mohammedan or Christian. The more you will proceed 
toward the heart, as the sound will be less and less and feeling more and more, you will 
be less a Hindu, less a Mohammedan. When the sound disappears, you will simply be a 
human being — not Hindu, not Mohammedan, not Christian. 



It is like the difference between 'sects' and 'religion'. Religion is one, sects are many. 

Sects help you to begin. If you think that they are the end, then you are finished. They are 
just the beginning. You have to leave them and go beyond, because the beginning is not 
the end. In the end there is religion; in the beginning there is just a sect. Use the sect to 
go toward religion; use the limited to go toward the unlimited; use the finite to go toward 
the infinite. 

Any sound will do. Find your own sound. And when you intone it, you will feel whether 
you have a loving relationship with it, because the heart will start vibrating. 

Your whole body will begin to be more sensitive. You will feel as if you are falling into 
something warm, just like your beloved's lap; something warm begins enveloping you. 
And this is a physical feeling also, not simply a mental feeling. If you intone a sound 
which you love, you will feel a certain wannth around you, inside you. Then the world is 
not a cold world, it is warm. 

If you have gone to a Hindu temple, then you must have heard of the GARBHAGRIHA 
— the womb house. The innennost center of the temple is known as GARBHA — the 
womb. You might not have observed why it is called the womb. If you intone the sound 
of the temple — and every temple has its own sound, its own mantra, its own ISHTA 
DEVATA, its own deity, and the related mantra of the deity — if you intone that sound, 
the same wannth as there is in the womb of the mother is created. That is why the garbha, 
the womb of the temple, is made just similar to the womb of the mother: round-shaped, 
almost closed, with only one opening. 

When Christians came for the first time to India and discovered Hindu temples, they felt 
that these temples were really unhygienic — not ventilated at all, with only one little door. 
But the womb is with only one door and not ventilated at all. That is why the temple was 
made only with one door, just like a womb, and if you intone that sound, that womb 
becomes alive. 

And also it is called the garbha because you can get a new birth there, you can become a 
new man. 

If you intone a sound that you love, that you have feeling for, you will create a sound- 
womb around you. So it is good not to practice this method under the open sky. You are 
very weak, you cannot fill the whole sky with your sound. It is better to choose a small 
room, and if the room is such that it vibrates your sound it is good, it will help you. And 
if you can choose the same place every day, it will be very good. It becomes charged. If 
the same sound is repeated every day, every atom, the very space becomes a milieu. 

That is why followers of other religions are not allowed in the temples. In Mecca, no one 
can enter if he is not a Mohammedan, and this is good. Nothing is wrong in it, it is 
because Mecca belongs to a particular science. One who is not a Mohammedan goes 
there with a sound which will be disturbing to the whole milieu. If a Mohammedan is not 
allowed into a Hindu temple, there is no insult in it. And all those social reformers who 
do not know anything about temples, religion and esoteric science, they go on giving 
slogans, nonsense slogans, and they are disturbing everything. 

A Hindu temple is for Hindus because a Hindu temple is a particular place — a created 
place. For millennia they have been working on it to make it alive, and anyone can 
disturb it. 


That disturbance is very dangerous. A temple is not a public place. It is for a particular 



purpose and for particular people; it is not for visitors. That is why visitors were not 
allowed in the old days. Now they are allowed because we do not know what we are 
doing. A visitor should not be allowed. It is not a place to see, to go to for sightseeing. It 
is a created space filled with particular vibrations. 

If it is a Ram temple and you were bom in a family where Ram’s name has been sacred, 
loved, then when you enter an alive space which is always filled with Ram's name, even 
if you do not want to chant, even if you are not using the Ram mantra, you will start 
chanting. The space all around will press you. Those vibrations all around will hit you, 
and you will start chanting from deep down. So use a place — a temple is good. 

These methods are temple methods. A temple is good, or a mosque or a church. Your 
own house is not good for these methods, because with so many sounds you have a 
chaotic space around you and you are not so strong that just by your sound you can 
change the space. So it is better to go to a certain place which belongs to a certain sound, 
and then use it. And it is good to go to the same place every day. 

By and by you will become powerful. By and by you will drop down from the mind to 
the heart. Then you can do this method anywhere and the whole cosmos becomes your 
temple. 

Then there is no problem. But in the beginning it is good to choose the place, and if you 
can even choose the time, exactly the same time every day, it is good because then the 
temple waits for you. Right at that exact time, the temple waits for you. It is more 
receptive; it is happy that you have come. And I mean physically; this is not a symbolic 
thing, but a physical one. 

It is just as if you take your meals every day at a particular time. At that particular time 
your whole body feels the hunger. The body has its own inner clock, it feels the hunger 
exactly at that time. If you go to sleep every day at a particular time, your whole body 
gets ready at that particular period. If you change every day your sleeping time and your 
food time, you are disturbing your body. 

Now they say your age will be affected by it. If you go on daily changing your body 
routine, then if you were going to be alive for eighty years you will be alive only for 
seventy years. Ten years will be lost. And if you go regularly with the body clock, then if 
you were going to live for eighty years you will live for ninety very easily. Ten years can 
be added. 

Exactly like this, everything all around you has its own clock, and the world moves in 
cosmic time. If you enter the temple at exactly the same time every day, the temple is 
ready for you and you are ready for the temple. These two readinesses meet, and the 
results are magnified a thousandfold. 


Or you can create a small corner in your house. But then do not use that comer for any 
other purpose, because every purpose has its own vibrations. If you use that corner for a 
business purpose or you play cards there, that space becomes confused. And now these 
confusions can even be recorded on mechanical devices; it can be known if the space is 
confused. 

If you can create a corner in your house, a small temple, it is very good. If you can afford 
a small temple, that is the first thing to be tried. But do not use it for any other purpose. 
Let it be absolutely private for you, and results will come very soon then. 



The seventh sound technique: 

WITH MOUTH SLIGHTLY OPEN, KEEP MIND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE 
TONGUE. OR, AS BREATH COMES SILENTLY IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH." 

Mind can be focused anywhere in the body. Ordinarily, we have focused it in the head, 
but it can be focused anywhere. And with a change of the focus, your qualities change. 
For example, in many Eastern countries — Japan, China, Korea — traditionally it has been 
taught that mind is in the belly, not in the head. And because of this, those who thought 
that mind is in the belly had different qualities of mind. You cannot have those qualities 
because you think mind is in the head. 

Really, the mind is nowhere. The brain is in the head; the mind is not there. 

"Mind" means your focusing. You can focus it anywhere, and once focused it is very 
difficult to remove it from that point. 

For example, now psychologists and workers who are doing in depth human research say 
that when you are making love your mind must move from the head to the genital area; 
otherwise your sex will be a frustration. If it remains in the head, you cannot go deep into 
sex. No orgasm will result, the experience will not be orgasmic. It will not give you a 
peak. You may produce children, but you will not have known what is the highest peak 
of love. 

You have not known that about which tantra talks or Khajuraho depicts, you cannot. 

Have you seen Khajuraho? Or if you have not seen Khajuraho, you might have seen 
pictures of the Khajuraho temple. Then look at the faces, at couples making love. Look at 
the faces, the faces look divine. They are in the act of sex, but the faces are as ecstatic as 
any buddha's face. What is happening to them? This sex is not cerebral. They are not 
making love through the head; they are not thinking about it. They have dropped down 
from the head. Their focusing has changed. 

Because of this dropping from the head, the consciousness has moved to the genital area. 
The mind is no more. The mind has become no-mind. Their faces have the same ecstasy 
as a buddha has. This sex has become a meditation. Why? Because the focus has 
changed. 

If once you can change the focus of your mind, if you can remove it from the head, the 
head is relaxed, the face is relaxed. Then all tensions have dissolved. You are not there, 
the ego is not there. 

That is why the more mind becomes intellectual, rational, the less capable it becomes of 
love, because love needs a different focusing. In love you need a focusing near the heart; 
in sex you need a focusing near the genital center. If you are doing mathematics, the head 
is okay. But love is not mathematics and sex is absolutely not. And if the mathematics 
continues in the head and you are making love, you are simply wasting energy. Then this 
whole effort will be disgusting. 

But mind can be changed. Tantra says there are seven centers, and mind can be changed 
to any center. Each center has a different functioning. If you concentrate on a particular 
center, you become a different man. 

In Japan there has been a military group, which is just like the KSHATRIYAS in India, 
known as the SAMURAI. They are trained to be soldiers, and their first training is to 
bring the mind down to just two inches below the navel. In Japan this center is called the 
HARA. The samurai are trained to bring the mind to the hara. Unless a soldier can bring 
his mind's focusing to the hara, he is not allowed to go to fight, and this is right. The 



samurai are the greatest fighters the world has ever known, the greatest warriors; in the 
world there is no comparison with a samurai. 

He is a different man, a different being, because his focusing is different. 

They say that when you are fighting there is no time. Mind needs time to function; it 
calculates. If you are attacked and your mind thinks about how to protect, you have 
missed the point already, you have lost. There is no time. You must function timelessly 
and mind cannot function timelessly, mind needs time. Howsoever short, mind needs 
time. 

Below the navel there is a center, the hara, which functions timelessly. If the focusing is 
at the hara and the fighter is fighting, then this fight is intuitive, not intellectual. Before 
you attack him, he knows. It is a subtle feeling in the hara, not in the head. It is not an 
inference, it is a psychic telepathy. Before you attack him, before you think of attacking 
him, the thought has reached him. His hara is hit and he is ready to protect himself. Even 
before you have attacked, he is in defense, he has protected himself. 

Sometimes, if two persons are fighting and both are samurais, defeating the other is a 
problem. Neither can defeat the other; it is a problem. No one can be declared the winner. 
In a way it is impossible because you cannot attack the man — before you attack, he 
knows. 

There was one Indian mathematician... The whole world was wonderstruck because he 
would not calculate. Ramanujam was his name. You would give him the problem and he 
would give you the answer immediately. 

One of England's best mathematicians, Hardy, visited Ramanujam. Hardy was one of the 
best mathematicians ever born, and he had to work with a particular problem for six 
hours. But Ramanujam was given the same problem and he answered immediately. There 
was no possibility for the mind to function in this way, as the mind needs time. 
Ramanujam was asked again and again, "How do you do it?" He would say, "I don’t 
know. You give me the problem, and the answer comes to me. It comes from somewhere 
below. It is not from my head." It was coming from the hara. He was not aware, he was 
not trained, but this is my feeling: he must have been a Japanese in his previous birth 
because in India we have not worked much upon the hara. 

Tantra says, focus your mind on different centers and the results will be different. This 
technique is concerned with focusing on the tongue, in the middle of the tongue. WITH 
MOUTH SLIGHTLY OPEN — as if you are going to speak. Not closed, but slightly open 
as if you are going to speak; not like when you are speaking, but like when you are just 
going to speak. 

Then keep the mind in the middle of the tongue. You will have a very strange feeling, 
because the tongue has a center just in the middle which controls your thoughts. If you 
suddenly become aware and you focus on that, your thoughts will stop. Focus as if your 
whole mind has come to the tongue — just in the middle. 

Let the mouth be slightly open as if you were going to speak, and then focus the mind as 
if it is not in the head. Feel it as if it is in the tongue, just in the middle. 

The tongue has the center of speech, and thought is speech. What are you doing when 
you are thinking? Talking within. Can you think anything without talking within? You 
are alone; you are not talking to anyone, you are thinking. What are you doing while you 
are thinking? Talking within, talking to yourself. Your tongue is involved. Next time, 



while you are thinking, be aware: feel your tongue. It is vibrating as if you are talking to 
someone else. Then feel it again, and you can feel that the vibrations are centered in the 
middle. They arise from the middle and then they spread all over the tongue. 

Thinking is talking within. If you can bring your total consciousness, your mind, to the 
center of the tongue, thinking stops. So those who have been practicing silence, they are 
simply practicing not talking. If you stop talking outwardly, then you will become very 
deeply aware of talking inside. And if you remain completely silent for one month or two 
months or one year, not talking, you will feel your tongue vibrating violently. You are 
not feeling it because you go on talking and the vibrations are released. But even now, if 
you stop and become conscious while thinking, you will feel your tongue vibrating a 
little. 

Stop your tongue completely and then try to think — you cannot think. Stop your tongue 
completely as if it is frozen; do not allow it to move. You cannot think then. 

The center is just in the middle, so bring your mind there. WITH MOUTH SLIGHTLY 
OPEN, KEEP MIND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TONGUE. OR, AS BREATH COMES 
SILENTLY IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH." 

This is the second technique. It is just similar: OR, AS BREATH COMES SILENTLY 
IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH." 

With the first technique your thinking will stop, you will feel a solidity within — as if you 
have become solid. When thoughts are not there you become immovable; thoughts are 
the inner movement. And when thoughts are not there and you have become immovable, 
you have become part of the eternal, which only appears to move but which is 
immovable, which remains unmoved. 

In thoughtlessness you become part of the eternal, the unmoved. With thought you are 
part of the movement, because nature is movement. The world is movement, that is why 
we have called it the S ANSAR, the wheel — it is moving and moving and moving. The 
world is movement and the hidden, the ultimate, is unmoved, unmoving, immovable. 

It is just like a wheel that is moving, but a wheel is moving on something which never 
moves. A wheel can move only because in the center there is something which never 
moves, which remains unmoved. 

The world moves and the transcendental remains unmoved. If your thoughts stop, 
suddenly you drop from this world to the other. With the movement stopped inside, you 
become part of the eternal — that which never changes. 

OR, AS BREATH COMES SILENTLY IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH." Open your 
mouth slightly, as if you are going to speak. Then inhale, and be aware of the sound 
which is created by inhaling. It is just "HH" — whether you are exhaling or inhaling. You 
are not to make the sound, you are just to feel the incoming breath on your tongue. It is 
very silent. You will feel "HH." It will be very silent, very slightly audible. You have to 
be very alert to be aware of it. But do not try to create it. If you create it, you have missed 
the point. Your created sound will be of no help, it is the natural sound that happens 
when you inhale or exhale. 

But the technique says while inhaling, not exhaling — because while exhaling you will go 
out, and with the sound YOU will go out, while the effort is to go in. So while inhaling, 
hear the sound "HH." Go on inhaling and go on feeling the sound "HH." Sooner or later 
you will feel that the sound is not being created only at the tongue, it is being created in 
the throat also. But then it is very, very inaudible. With very deep alertness you can 



become aware of it. 

Start from the tongue, then by and by be alert; go on feeling it. 


You will hear it in the throat, then you will start hearing it in the heart. And when it 
reaches the heart, you have gone beyond mind. All these techniques are just to give you a 
bridge from where you can move from thought to no-thought, from mind to no-mind, 
from the surface to the center. 

The eighth sound technique: 

CENTER ON THE SOUND "AUM" WITHOUT ANY "A" OR "M". 

CENTER ON THE SOUND "AUM" - A-U-M, AUM - WITHOUT ANY "A” OR "M". 
Just the "U" remains. This is a difficult technique, but for some it may be suitable, 
particularly for those who work with sound: musicians, poets, those who have a very 
sensitive ear, for them this technique can be helpful. For others, those who have no 
sensitive ear, this is very difficult because it is very delicate. 

You have to intone Aum, and you have to feel in this Aum three sounds separately: A-U- 
M. Intone Aum, and in the sound you have to feel three sounds — A-U-M. They are there, 
infused together. A very delicate ear can be aware, can hear A-U-M separately while 
intoning. They are separate — very close, but separate. If you cannot hear them 
separately, then this technique cannot be done. Your ears will have to be trained for it. 

In Japan, particularly in Zen, they train the ears first. They have a method of training the 
ears. The wind is blowing outside — it has a sound. The master will say, "Concentrate on 
it. Feel all the nuances, the changes: when the sound is angry, when the sound is furious, 
when the sound is compassionate, when the sound is loving, when the sound is strong, 
when the sound is delicate. Feel the nuances of the sound. The wind is blowing through 
the trees — feel it. The river is running — feel the nuances." 

For months together the seeker, the meditator, will be sitting by the side of the bank of 
the river, listening to it. It has different sounds. Everything is changing. In the rain it will 
be flooded; it will be very much alive, overflowing. The sounds will be different. In the 
summer it will be reduced to nothingness, sounds will cease. But there will be inaudible 
sounds if one is listening, if you listen. All the year round the river will be changing, and 
one has to be aware. 

In Hermann Hesse's book SIDDHARTHA, Siddhartha lives with a boatman. And there is 
no one, just the river, the boatman and Siddhartha. And the boatman is a very silent man. 
He has lived all his life with the river. He has become silent, he rarely speaks. Whenever 
Siddhartha feels lonely, he tells Siddhartha to go to the river, to listen to the river. It is 
better than listening to human words. 

And then by and by, Siddhartha is attuned to the river. Then he begins to feel its moods — 
the river changes moods. Sometimes it is friendly and sometimes it is not, and sometimes 
it is singing and sometimes it is weeping and crying, and sometimes there is laughter and 
sometimes there is sadness. 

And then he begins to feel the slight, delicate differences. His ear becomes attuned. 

So in the beginning you may feel it to be difficult, but try. Intone Aum, go on intoning it, 
feeling A-U-M. Three sounds are combined together in it: Aum is a synthesis of three 
sounds. Once you start feeling them differently, then drop "A" and "M". Then you cannot 
say Aum: "A" will be dropped, "M" will be dropped. Then "U" will remain. Why? What 
will happen? The real thing is not the mantra. It is not A-U-M or the dropping. The real 



thing is your sensitivity. 

First you become sensitive of three sounds, which is very difficult. And when you 
become so sensitive that you can drop the "A" and "M" and only the middle sound 
remains, in this effort you will lose your mind. You will be so much engrossed in it, so 
deeply attentive to it, so sensitive to it, that you will forget to think. And if you think, you 
cannot do this. 

This is just an indirect way to bring you out of your head. So many ways have been tried, 
and they look very simple. You wonder, "What can happen? Nothing will happen by such 
simple methods." But miracles happen, because it is just indirect. Your mind is being 
focused on something very subtle. If you focus, you cannot go on thinking; mind will 
drop. Suddenly one day you will become aware, and you will wonder what has happened. 
In Zen they use koans. 

One of the famous koans they tell to the beginner is, "Go and try to hear the sound of one 
hand. You can create a sound with two hands. If one hand can create a sound, hear it." 
One small boy was serving a Zen master. He would see many people coming. They 
would come to the master, put their head at his feet, and then they would ask the master 
to tell them something to meditate on. He would give them a koan. The boy was just 
doing some work for the master, he was serving him. He was just nine or ten years of 
age. 

Seeing every day many people coming and going, one day he also came very seriously, 
put his head at the master's feet, and then asked him, "Give me some koan, some object 
for meditation." The master laughed, but the boy was very serious, so the master said, 
"Okay! Try to hear the sound of one hand. And when you have heard it, then come to me 
and tell me." 

The boy tried and tried. He couldn’t sleep the whole night. In the morning he came and he 
said, "I have heard. It is the sound of the wind blowing through the trees." The master 
said, "But where is the hand involved in it? Go again and try." So he would come every 
day. He would find some sound and then he would come, and the master would say, 

"This is also not it. Go on trying, go on trying!" 

Then one day the boy didn't come. The master waited and waited, and then he told his 
other disciples to go and find out what had happened — it seemed the boy had heard. 

So they went around. He was sitting under a tree, absorbed — just a newborn buddha. 
They came back and they said, "But we are afraid to disturb the boy. He is looking just 
like a newborn buddha. It seems he has heard the sound." So the master came, put his 
head at the boy's feet and asked him, "Have you heard? It seems you have heard." The 
boy said, "Yes, but it is soundlessness." 

How did this boy develop? His sensitivity developed. He tried every sound, he listened 
attentively. Attention developed. He would not sleep. The whole night he would listen for 
what is the sound of one hand. He was not so intellectual as you are, so he never thought 
that there cannot be any sound of one hand. If the koan is given to you, you are not going 
to try. You will say, "What nonsense! There cannot be any sound with one hand." 

But the boy tried. The master had said there must be something in it, so he tried. He was 
a simple boy, so whenever he would hear something, whenever he would feel this was 
something new, he would come again. But by this process his sensitivity developed. He 
became attentive, alert, aware. He became one -pointed. He was in search, and the mind 
dropped because the master said, "If you go on thinking you may miss. Sometimes there 



is the sound which is of one hand. Be so alert that you do not miss it." 

He tried and tried. There is no sound of one hand, but that was just an indirect method to 
create sensitivity, awareness. 

And one day, suddenly, everything disappeared. He was so attentive that only attention 
was there, so sensitive that only sensitivity was there, so aware — not aware of 
something, but simply aware! And then he said, "I have heard it, but it is soundlessness. 
It is soundlessness!" But you have to be trained to be attentive, to be alert. 

This is just a method to make you very delicately aware of the subtle nuances of sound. 
Just doing this, you will forget Aum. Not only will "A" drop, not only will "M" drop, but 
one day suddenly you will also drop, and there will be soundlessness, and you will be a 
newborn buddha sitting under a tree. 

THE END. 



Chapter 30: Surrendering to a Master 


The first question: 

Question 1 

LAST NIGHT YOU DISCUSSED THE ATTITUDE OF TOTAL ACCEPTANCE AS 
THE BASIC GROUND FOR ALL TANTRIC SADHANA - SPIRITUAL PRACTICE. 
IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY, ON ANOTHER DAY YOU SAID THAT THE 
SCIENCE OF TANTRA TEACHES TO BE IN THE MIDDLE IN EVERYTHING, 
BEING FREE FROM THE EXTREMES IN LIFE. IN THIS REFERENCE, EXPLAIN 
HOW ONE CAN COME TO UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 
INDULGENCE AND REPRESSION IN ONE’S SEX LIFE.” 

Accepting the total life means the middle path. If you deny, you move to the opposite 
extreme. Denial is extreme. If you deny anything, you deny it for something; then you 
move to one extreme. If one denies sex, he will move to BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy - 
to the other extreme. If you deny brahmacharya, you will move to indulgence - to the 
other extreme. The moment you deny, you have accepted the extreme path. 

Acceptance of totality is to be automatically in the middle. You are neither for something 
nor against something. You have not chosen, you are just floating in the stream. You are 
not moving toward a goal — you have no choice. You are in a let-go. 

Tantra believes in a deep let-go. When you choose, your ego comes in. When you 
choose, your will comes in. When you choose, you are moving against the whole 
universe — you have your own choice. When you choose, you are not choosing the 
universal flow: you are standing aloof, isolated; you are like an island. 

You are trying to be yourself against the whole flux of life. 

Non-choosing means you are not to decide where life goes. You allow the life to move, 
to take you with it, and you have no fixed goal. If you have a fixed goal, you are bound to 
choose. Life's goal is your goal. You are not moving against life; you have no ideas of 
your own against life. You leave yourself, you surrender yourself, to the life force itself. 
This is what tantra means by total acceptance. 

And once you accept life in its totality things start happening, because this total 
acceptance frees you from your ego point. Your ego point is the problem, because of it 
you create problems. There are no problems in life itself; existence is problem-less. You 
are the problem and you are the creator of the problem, and you create problems out of 
everything. Even if you meet God, you will create problems out of him. Even if you 
reach paradise, you will create problems out of paradise - because you are the original 
source of the problems. You are not going to surrender. This non-surrendering ego is the 
source of all problems. 

Tantra says that it is not a question of achieving something; it is not a question of 
achieving brahmacharya. If you achieve brahmacharya - celibacy — against sex, your 
brahmacharya will remain basically sexual. Two extremes, howsoever opposite, are parts 
of one whole - two aspects of one thing. 

If you choose one, you have chosen the other also. The other will be hidden now, 
repressed. What does repression mean? Choosing one extreme against the other, which is 
a basic part of it. 

You choose brahmacharya against sex, but what is brahmacharya? It is just the reversal 



of sex energy, You have chosen brahmacharya, but you have also chosen sex with it. 
Now brahmacharya will be on the surface, and deep down there will be sex. You will be 
disturbed because your choice will create the disturbance. You can choose only one pole, 
and the other pole follows automatically. And you are against the other pole, so now you 
will be disturbed. 

Tantra says, do not choose: be choiceless. Once you understand this, the question will 
never arise of what is indulgence and what is repression. Then there is no repression and 
no indulgence. The question arises only because you are still choosing. There are people 
who come to me and they say, "We will accept life, but if we accept life when will 
brahmacharya happen?" They are ready to be in total acceptance, but the readiness is 
false, just superficial. Deep down they are still clinging to the extremes. 

They want brahmacharya - celibacy. They have not achieved it by fighting with sex, so 
when they hear me they think, "As we have not been able to achieve it through fighting, 
now we should achieve it through acceptance." But the achieving mind, the motivated 
mind, the greedy mind, is there - and the goal is there, the choice is there. 


If you have something to achieve, you cannot accept the totality; the acceptance is not 
total. Then you are also trying acceptance as a technique to achieve something. 
Acceptance means: now you leave that achieving mind, that motivated mind that is 
always for something, hankering for something — you leave it! You allow life to flow 
freely, just as the wind is flowing through the trees. You allow life to be free, to move 
freely through you; you have no resistance. Wherever it leads, you are ready to move. 

You have no goal. If you have any goal then you will have to resist life, then you will 
have to fight it. 

If a tree has some goal, some leaning, some idea, then it cannot allow the wind to move 
freely through it. If it wants to go south, then the wind which is forcing it north will be 
the enemy. 

If you have some goal, you cannot accept life as a friend. Your goal creates the enmity. If 
you expect something out of life, you are forcing yourself on life, you are not allowing 
life to happen to you. Tantra says, things happen when you do not expect them, things 
happen when you do not force them, things happen when you are not hankering after 
them. 

But this is a consequence, not a result. And be clearly aware of the difference between 
'consequence’ and 'result'. A result is consciously desired; a consequence is a by-product. 
For example, if I say to you that if you are playing happiness will be the consequence, 
any play, you will try it for a result. 

You go and you play, and you are waiting for the result of happiness. But I told you it 
will be the consequence, not the result. 

Consequence means that if you are really in the play, happiness will happen. If you 
constantly think about happiness, then it is going to be a result; it will never happen. A 
result is a conscious effort; a consequence is just a by-product. If you are deep in play, 
you will be happy. But the very expectation, the conscious longing for happiness, will not 
allow you to be deep in play. The longing for the result will become the barrier and you 
will not be happy. 

Happiness is not a result, it is a consequence. If I tell you that if you love you will be 
happy, happiness will be a consequence, not a result. If you think that because you want 



to be happy you must love, nothing will come out of it. The whole thing will be bogus 
because one cannot love for any result. Love happens! There is no motivation behind it. 

If there is motivation, it is not love. It may be anything else. If I am motivated and I think 
that because I long for happiness I will love you, this love will be false. And because it 
will be false, happiness will not result out of it. It will not come; that is impossible. But if 
I love you without any motivation, happiness follows like a shadow. 

Tantra says, acceptance will be followed by transformation, but do not make acceptance a 
technique for transfonnation. 

It is not! Do not long for transformation — only then does transfonnation happen. If you 
desire it, your very desire is the hindrance. Then there is no question of what indulgence 
is and what repression is. 

This question comes to the mind only because you are not ready to accept the whole. 
Accept it! Let it be indulgence and accept it! If you accept it, you will be thrown to the 
middle. Or let it be repression and accept it! If there is acceptance, you will be thrown to 
the middle. Through acceptance you cannot remain with the extreme. 'Extreme’ means 
denial of something - accepting something and denying something. 'Extreme' means 
being for something and against something. The moment you accept whatsoever is the 
case you will be thrown to the middle, you will not remain with the extreme. 

So forget any intellectual understanding of what repression is and what indulgence is. It 
is nonsense and it will not lead you anywhere. Just accept, wherever you are. If you are in 
indulgence, accept it. Why be afraid of it? 

But there is a problem. If you are in indulgence, you can remain in indulgence only if you 
are simultaneously trying to transcend it. That gives a good feeling to the ego: you can 
feel good and you can postpone. You know this is not going to be forever. You feel, 
"Today I am indulgent, but tomorrow I will be beyond it." The tomorrow helps you to be 
in indulgence today. 

You know that "Today I am drinking alcohol or smoking, but this is not going to be for 
all my life. I know this is bad, and tomorrow I am going to leave it." 

That hope for tomorrow helps you to indulge today, and that is a good trick. Those who 
want to indulge, they must have great ideals. Those ideals give you opportunity. Then 
you need not feel very guilty about whatsoever you are doing because in the future 
everything is going to be okay; this is just for the moment. This is a trick of the mind. So 
those who indulge, they always talk of non-indulgence. Those who indulge, they go to 
the masters, who are against it. And you can see a deep relationship... 

If you are after riches, money, power, you will always worship someone who is against 
riches - the ascetic. One who has renounced will be your ideal. A rich society can 
worship and respect only one who has renounced riches. Look around and you will see. If 
you are indulging in sex, you must respect a person who has gone beyond it, who has 
become a brahmachari - a celibate. You will worship him. He is the ideal; he is your 
future. You are thinking that someday you are going to be like this man. You worship 
him. 

And if one day some rumor comes to you that he is indulging in sex, the respect is gone, 
because you cannot respect yourself. You are so self-condemning of whatsoever you are 
that if you find that your master is just like you, the respect is gone. 


He must be just the opposite. Then he gives you hope. Then he can lead you to the 



opposite end. Then you can follow him. 

So there is always a very deep relationship between the followers and the master. You 
will always see them on opposite poles: the follower will be just on the opposite pole, 
and he is a follower only because of this. If you are obsessed with food, then you can 
respect only a person who goes for long fasting. He is "the miracle." You hope someday 
to attain the same. He is your future. You can worship him and respect him. He is the 
image, but this image helps you to be whatsoever you are; it is not going to change you. 
The very effort to change, the very idea to change, is the hindrance. This is the insight of 
tantra. 

Tantra says, whatsoever you are, accept it. Do not create any ideals. They are dreams - 
and false. Accept whatsoever is. Do not call it good or bad, do not try to justify it or 
rationalize it. Live in the moment and see that this is the case. Remain with the fact and 
accept it. This is difficult - very difficult, arduous. Why is it so difficult? Because then 
your ego is shattered. Then you know that you are a sexual animal. Then the high ideal of 
brahmacharya cannot help your ego at all. Then you know that you are ninety-nine 
percent an animal... and that one percent I leave you just not to shock you too much. 

With the ideals of Mahavir, Buddha, Krishna, Christ, you feel you are ninety-nine 
percent divine and only one percent is lacking. 

So sooner or later, by the grace of God, you will attain it. You feel happy as you are. That 
will not help. That will not help at all! That can help only to postpone the real problem, 
the real crisis, and unless you face that crisis you will never be transformed. One has to 
pass through it; one has to suffer it. But only the facticity of life leads you toward the 
truth. Fictions will not help. 

So remain with the fact. Whatsoever you are - animal or whatever - is okay. Sex is there, 
anger is there, greed is there: okay, so it is there. It is so, such is the case. The universe 
happens to you in this way; you have found yourself in this way. It is how life has made 
you; it is how life is forcing you, leading you to somewhere. 

Relax and allow the life to lead you. What is the difficulty in relaxing? The difficulty is 
that if you relax, you cannot maintain the ego. Ego can be maintained only in resistance. 
When you say No, ego is strengthened. When you say Yes, ego simply disappears. 

That is why it is so difficult to say Yes to anything. Even in ordinary things it is so 
difficult to say Yes. We want to say No. The ego, the "I", feels good only when it is 
fighting. If you are fighting with someone else, it is good, the ego feels good. If you are 
fighting with yourself the ego feels even more good, because to fight with someone else 
creates more problems around you. 

When you are fighting with yourself, there is no problem around you. When you are 
fighting with someone else, the society will create problems for you. When you are 
fighting with yourself, the whole society will worship you. It is good because you are not 
hanning anyone. 

And really, if you are someone who is harming yourself, if you are not allowed to hann 
yourself you will harm others. Otherwise where will that energy move? So society is 
always happy with those idiots who are harming themselves. The society feels good 
because the violence is redirected back; they will not do any harm. 

That is why we call them SADHUS -the good ones. They are good ones because they can 
do much harm — they ARE doing it — but they are doing it to themselves. They are 
suicidal. A killer, a murderer, can become suicidal if he turns against himself, so the 



society feels good, unburdened of a murderer if he becomes suicidal. The society pays 
respect, appreciates him. But the person remains the same — he remains violent. Now he 
is violent with himself, or he remains greedy but he talks of non-greed. 

But look! Try to understand the talk of non-greed. The base is always greed. They say 
that if you are non-greedy, only then will you achieve paradise. And what is to be gained 
in paradise? Everything that greed would like. 

So be non-greedy to achieve paradise. If you are not a celibate, you will not go to heaven. 

And what are you going to achieve in heaven? All that you condemn here on earth. Then 
beautiful women are allowed, and there is no comparison - because anyone who is 
beautiful on earth will become ugly, this is what the SHASTRAS, scriptures say. And the 
women that are in heaven never become old, they remain fixed at the age of sixteen. So 
be celibate here so that you can indulge there. 

But what type of logic is this? The motivation remains the same. The motivation remains 
exactly the same! Only the objects change, the time sequence changes. You are 
postponing your desires for the future. This is a bargain. 

Tantra says, try to understand this whole working of the mind, and then it is good not to 
fight, then it is good to flow as you are and accept it. We are afraid because if we accept, 
then how will we change? And tantra says, acceptance is transcendence. You have tried 
fighting and you have not changed. Look at your whole life, analyze it, and if you are 
honest you will find that you have not changed a single bit, not an inch. Move back 
toward your childhood. Analyze your whole life, and no matter what you may be talking 
and thinking, the exact, actual life has remained the same. And you have been fighting 
continuously. Nothing happens out of it. 

So now try tantra. Tantra says, do not fight; no one ever changes with fight. Accept! 

Then there is no question of what is indulgence and what is repression, and what is 
brahmacharya and what is this and that. 

There is no question then! Whatsoever is, you accept it and flow with it. You dissolve 
your ego resistance, you relax into the existence and go wherever it leads. If the destiny 
of the existence is that you are meant to be an animal, then, says tantra, be an animal. 
What will happen out of it and how does it happen? Tantra says, total transformation 
happens - because once you accept, the inner division dissolves, you become one. Then 
there are not two in you - the saint and the animal, the saint repressing the animal and the 
animal throwing the saint aside every moment. Then there is no two in you: you become 
one. 

And this oneness gives energy. All your energy is wasted in inner fight and conflict. This 
acceptance makes you one. Now there is no animal who is to be condemned and no saint 
who is to be appreciated. You are whatsoever you are. You have accepted it, you have 
relaxed with it, so your energy becomes one. Then you are a whole and not divided 
against yourself. 

This wholeness is an alchemical transformation. With this wholeness you have energy. 
Now you are not wasting your life. There is no inner conflict; you are at ease within. This 
energy which you gain through non-conflict becomes your awareness. 

Energy can move in two dimensions. If it moves in fight, you are wasting it every day. If 
it accumulates and there is no fight, a moment comes just like when you go on heating 
water to a hundred degrees: then the water becomes something else, it evaporates. 



Then it is no more liquid, it becomes a gas. It will not become transformed at ninety-nine 
degrees. It will become transformed only at a hundred degrees. 

The same happens inwards. You are wasting your energy every day, and the evaporating 
point never comes. It cannot come because energy is not accumulated at all. Once the 
inner fight is not there, energy goes on accumulating and you feel more and more strong. 
But not the ego: the ego feels strong only when fighting. When there is no fight, the ego 
becomes impotent. YOU feel strong, and that "you" is a totally different thing. You 
cannot know about it unless you are whole. Ego exists with fragments, division. This 
"you," the self or what we call the ATMAN, exists only when there is no division, no 
inner fight. 'Atman’ means the whole; 'Self means the undivided energy. 

Once this energy is undivided, it goes on accumulating. You are producing it every day, 
life energy is produced in you, but you are wasting it in fight. This same energy comes to 
a point where it becomes awareness — this is automatic. Tantra says, this is automatic. 
Once you know how to be whole, you will become more and more aware, and the day 
will come when your total energy will be transformed into awareness. 

When the energy is transfonned into awareness many things happen, because then the 
energy cannot move to sex. When it can move to a higher dimension, it will not move to 
a lower dimension. 

Your energy goes on moving to the lower dimension because there is no higher for you. 
And you do not have the level of energy where it CAN move into the higher, so it moves 
into sex. It moves into sex and you become afraid of it, so you create the ideal of 
brahmacharya and you become divided. Then you become less and less energetic. You 
are wasting energy! 

This is a very potent experience - that when you are weak you feel more sexual. This 
looks absolutely absurd in biological terms, because biology will say that when you are 
more potent you will feel more sexual. But this is not the case. When you are weak, ill, 
you will feel more sexual. When you are healthy and a subtle well-being is there, you 
will not feel so sexual. 

And the quality of sex will also be different. When you are weak, the sexuality will be a 
sort of disease and a vicious circle will be created. Through sex you will become more 
weak, and the more weak you become the more sexual you will feel. And the sex will 
become cerebral; it will move into your head. 

When you are healthy, when a well-being is there, when you feel blissful, relaxed, you 
are not so sexual. Then even if sex happens, it is not a disease. Rather, it is an 
overflowing. A totally different quality is there. When sex is an overflowing, it is just 
love expressing itself through bio-energy. It is creating a deep sharing, a deep contact 
through bio-energy. 

It is a part of love. 

When you are weak and sex is not overflowing it is a violence against yourself, and when 
it is a violence against yourself it is never love. A weak person can have sex, but his sex 
is never love. It is more or less rape - and rape to both the parties; to himself also it is a 
rape. But then a vicious circle is created: the more weak he feels, the more sexual he 
feels. 

But why does this happen? Biology has no explanation for it, but tantra has an 
explanation. Tantra says that sex is an antidote against death. Sex is an antidote against 
death! Sex means life for society. You may die, but life will continue. So whenever you 



feel weak, death is near, tantra says that then sex will become very important because 
you may die at any moment. Your energy layer has gone down. You may die at any 
moment, so indulge in sex so someone can live. Life should go on. 

For tantra, old men are more sexual than young men. And this is a very deep insight. 
Young men are more sexually potent, but not so sexual; old men are less sexually potent, 
but more sexual. So if we can enter an old man's mind, then we can know what is 
happening. 

As far as sex energy is concerned, it is less in old men, more in young men. But as far as 
sexuality is concerned — sexuality means thinking about sex — it is more in old men than 
in young men. Death is coming near and sex is the antidote of death, so now the 
weakening energy would like to produce someone. 

Life must continue. Life is not concerned with you, life is concerned with itself. This is a 
vicious circle. 

And the same happens in the reverse order also. If you are overflowing with energy, sex 
becomes less and less important and love becomes more and more important. And then 
sex can happen just as a part of love, as a deep sharing. The deepest sharing can be of 
bio-energy because that is the life force. To whomsoever you love you want to give 
something. Giving is part of love; in love you give things. The greatest gift can be of the 
life energy of yourself. In love, sex becomes a deep gift of bio-energy, of life. You are 
giving a part of yourself. 

Really, in every act of sex you are giving yourself totally. Then a different circle is 
created: the more you feel love, the more you become strong. The more you feel love, the 
more you share love, then the more strong you become because in love the ego is 
dissolved. In love you have to flow with life. 

You need not flow with life in politics. Rather, you will be a fool if you flow with life in 
politics, because there you have to force yourself against life; only then can you rise in 
politics. If you are doing business you will be a fool if you flow with life. You will be 
nowhere, because you have to fight, you have to compete, you have to be violent. The 
more violent and the more mad, the more you will succeed there. 

It is a struggle. 

Only in love is there no competition, no fight, no violence. You succeed in love only 
when you surrender. So love is the only anti-worldly thing in the world, the only non- 
worldly thing in the world. And if you are in love you will become more a whole, 
undivided; more energy will be accumulated. The more the energy, the less will be the 
sexuality. And a moment comes when the energy comes to a point where transformation 
happens, and energy becomes awareness. Sex disappears, and only a loving kindness, a 
compassion, remains. 

Buddha has a glow of loving compassion; this is sex energy transformed. But you cannot 
achieve it through fight, because fight creates division and division makes you more 
sexual. This is the insight of tantra - absolutely different from whatsoever you may have 
been thinking about sex and brahmacharya. Only through tantra does a real 
brahmacharya, a real purity and innocence, happen. But then it is not a result, it is a 
consequence. It follows total acceptance. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

MY MIND THINKS THAT IT IS ANXIOUS TO RECEIVE YOUR MESSAGE, YET 



TOWARD THE END I FIND MYSELF RESISTING AND GETTING TIRED. I 
SUSPECT THAT IF I WERE OPEN SEXUALLY I WOULD ALLOW MYSELF TO 
RECEIVE WITHOUT ANY CLOSING. IS THERE ANY CONNECTION BETWEEN 
OPENING TO A MASTER AND OPENING UP IN SEX? MY BACKGROUND 
GIVES A NEGATIVE AND PASSIVE MEANING TO SURRENDER. 

I KNOW I WILL NOT GO DEEPER UNLESS I AM ABLE TO OVERCOME THIS 
NEGATIVITY THAT SEEMS TO BE ENGRAVED IN MY PSYCHE. IS 
SURRENDER POSSIBLE WHEN THE OPPOSITE IS PLANTED SO DEEPLY? 

Yes, there is a connection between surrender and sex, because sex is the first surrender, a 
biological surrender - which you can experience easily. What does surrender mean? It 
means to be open, unafraid, vulnerable. It means allowing the other to enter you. 
Biologically, naturally, sex is the basic experience where without any effort you allow 
someone to enter you, or someone to be so deeply close to you that you are not annored 
against him. You are not resisting, not holding yourself back, but you are flowing., 
relaxed, not afraid, not thinking of the future, of the result, of the consequences, but just 
being in the moment. Even if death occurs you will accept it. 

In deep love, lovers have always felt that this is the right moment to die. And if death 
occurs, then even death can be welcomed in this moment. They are open — even for death 
they are open. If you are open for life, you will be open for death. If you are closed for 
life, you will be closed for death. 

Those who are afraid of death are basically afraid of life. They have not lived; that is why 
they are so afraid of death. And the fear is natural. If you have not lived at all you are 
bound to be afraid of death, because death will deprive you of the opportunity to live and 
you have not lived yet. 

So if death comes, then when will you live ? 

One who has lived deeply is not afraid of death. He is fulfilled, and if death comes he can 
welcome it, accept it. Now whatsoever life can give, life HAS given. Whatsoever can be 
known in life, he has known it. Now he can move into death easily. He would like to 
move into death so that he can know something unknown, something new. In sex, in 
love, you are fearless. You are not fighting for something in the future; this very moment 
is paradise, this very moment is eternal. 

But when I say this, I do not necessarily mean that you have experienced it through sex. 

If are afraid, resisting, then in sex you can have a biological release, a sexual release, but 
you will not attain to the ecstasy tantra talks about. 

Wilhelm Reich says you have not known sex at all unless in sex you can attain a deep 
orgasm. It is not only a release of sex energy, your whole body must become relaxed. 
Then the sex experience is not localized at the sex center, but it spreads all over the body. 
Your every cell is bathed in it, and you have a peak - a peak in which you are not a body. 
If you cannot attain a peak in sex, a peak in which you are not a body, you have not 
known sex at all. That is why Wilhelm Reich says a very paradoxical thing: he says sex is 
spiritual. 

This is what tantra says, and the meaning is that in deep sex you will not be a body at all; 
you will become just a spirit that is hovering. 

Your body will be left far behind; you will have forgotten it completely. It will be no 
more. You will not be part of the material world, you will have become immaterial. Only 



then is there orgasm. That is what tantra says about SAMBHOG - intercourse. 

There comes a total relaxation, a feeling that now you are fulfilled, a feeling that there is 
no need to desire anything. Unless this feeling happens to you in sex - this feeling of 
desirelessness — you have not known sex at all. You may have produced children, but 
that is easy - and a different thing. 

Only man can achieve this spirituality in sex; otherwise sex is just an animal instinct. But 
when teachers, monks condemn sex, you nod your head that they are right. When tantra 
says something it is difficult to believe in it because it is not your experience. That is why 
tantra couldn’t become a universal message yet. But the future is good - because the more 
man will become wise and understanding, the more tantra will be felt and understood. 
Only within these hundred years has psychology laid foundations for a world which will 
be tantric. But you nod your head with someone who is condemning sex because you also 
have the same experience. You know that nothing happens in it, and after sex you feel 
depressed. That is why there is so much condemnation. Everytime you move into it you 
feel depressed, later on you repent. 


Tantra, Wilhelm Reich, Freud and others who know, agree absolutely that if you achieve 
an orgasm in sex the glow will last for hours afterwards and you will feel absolutely 
different - without any worries, without any tensions. Euphoria will result, they say; 
ecstasy will be there. And that ecstasy happens only when there is really a let-go - when 
you are not holding yourself back, you are not fighting; you are just moving with the life 
energy. 

Life energy has two layers, and it will be good to understand this. I was talking about 
breath, and I told you that breath was something like a link between your voluntary 
system and your non-voluntary system. In your body the major part is non-voluntary. The 
blood circulates, and you are not asked to do anything. You cannot do anything, it just 
goes on circulating. Only during these last three hundred years could man know that 
blood circulates. Before that it was thought that blood just filled the body - not that it was 
circulating, because you cannot feel its circulation. It goes on working without you, 
without your knowledge. It is non-voluntary. 

You eat food; then the body starts working. Beyond your mouth you are not needed. The 
moment food goes beyond your mouth the body takes it; the non-voluntary system goes 
on working on it. And it is good that it works this way. If it were left to you, you would 
create a mess. 

It is such a great work that if you had to do it you would not be able to do anything else. 
If you had taken a cup of tea, it would be enough to keep you engaged the whole day - to 
work it out, to transform it into blood. And the work is so much. 

The body works non-voluntarily, but there are a few things you can do voluntarily. I can 
move my hand, but I cannot move the blood that moves in the hand. I cannot do anything 
directly with the bone that moves in the hand. I cannot do anything with the system that 
works, but I can move my hand. I can move my body, but I cannot do whatsoever goes 
on within it, I cannot interfere. I can jump, I can run, I can sit, I can lie down, but inside I 
cannot do anything. Just on the surface I am allowed freedom. 

Sex is a very mysterious phenomenon. You start it, but a moment comes when you are no 
more. Sex is started as a voluntary thing, then there is a limit. If you cross that limit you 
cannot come back; if you do not cross that limit you CAN come back. So sex is both 



voluntary and non-voluntary. There is a limit up to which your mind will be needed. But 
if you do not lose your mind, your head, your reason, your consciousness, your religion, 
your philosophy, your way of life, if you do not lose your mind, then the boundary will 
not be crossed and you will be experiencing sex in the voluntary realm. 

This is what is happening. 

Then after sex you will feel depressed, against it - and you will be thinking of renouncing 
life and taking a vow against sex. Of course, these vows will not go on for long. Within 
twenty-four hours you will be okay and ready to move again into sex. But it becomes a 
repetition and the whole thing seems futile. You accumulate energy, then you throw it — 
and nothing results out of it. And this is a long boredom, a drab thing. That is why monks 
and teachers who are against sex appeal to you: they are talking about something you can 
understand. 

But you have not known the non-voluntary sex, - the deepest biological dimension. You 
have not touched it, and you always come back from the limit because that limit creates 
fear. Beyond that limit your ego will not be; beyond that limit you will not be. The sex 
energy will take hold of you, it will possess you. Then you will be doing something 
which you cannot control. 

Unless you can move to this uncontrolled phenomenon, you cannot achieve orgasm. And 
once you know this uncontrolled life energy, you are no more in it. You have become just 
a wave in a great ocean, and things are just happening. You are not forcing them to 
happen. 

Really, you are not active — you have become passive. In the beginning you are active, 
and then a moment comes when you become passive. And when you become passive, 
only then does orgasm happen. 

If you have known it then you can understand many things. Then you can understand 
religious surrender also. Then you can understand the surrender of a disciple to a master. 
Then you can understand the surrender of someone to the existence itself. But if you do 
not know any surrender it is difficult even to conceive of what it means. 

So it is right: sex is deeply related with surrender. If you have known deep sex you will 
be more capable of surrendering, because you have known a deep pleasure that follows 
surrender, you have kn own a bliss that comes as a shadow of surrender. Then you can 
trust. 

Sex is biological surrender. SAMADHI — cosmic consciousness — is existential 
surrender. Through sex you touch life. Through samadhi, ecstasy, you touch existence, 
you move even deeper than life; the basic existence is touched. Through sex you move 
from yourself to another person; in samadhi you move from yourself to the whole, to the 
cosmos. 

Tantra is, if you will allow me, "cosmic sex"! It is a falling in love with the whole 
cosmos, it is a surrender toward the whole cosmos. And you have to be passive. To a 
limit you have to be active, but beyond that limit you are not needed; you are a hindrance 
then. Then leave it to the life force, leave it to the existence. 

The second thing: if you go on thinking about surrender as negative and passive, nothing 
is wrong in it. 

It IS passive and negative, but the negativity and the passivity is nothing condemnable. In 
our minds, the moment we hear the word 'negative' some condemnation enters, the 



moment we hear 'passive' some condemnation enters - because for the ego both of these 
are deaths. 

Nothing is wrong in being passive. Passivity is a way to be in deep contact with the 
universe. And you cannot be active with it — that is the difference between religion and 
science. Science is active with the universe, religion is passive with the universe. Science 
is just like the male mind - active, violent, forcing; religion is a feminine mind - open, 
passive, receptive. Receptivity is always passive. And truth is not to be created, it is to be 
received. 

You are not going to create the truth. The truth is already there! You have to receive it. 
You have to become the host and then the truth will become your guest. And a host has to 
be passive. You have to be like a womb to receive it, but your mind is trained for activity 
- to be active, to do something - and this is the realm where whatsoever you do will 
become a hindrance. Do not do — just be! This is what passivity means: do not do 
anything. Just be, and allow that which is already there to happen to you. You are not 
needed creatively, actively, to do something. You are needed just to receive. Be passive; 
do not interfere. Nothing is wrong with passivity. 


Poetry happens when you are passive. Even the greatest discoveries of science have 
happened in passivity. But the attitude of science is active. Even the greatest things in 
science happen only when the scientist is passive, just waiting, not doing anything. And 
religion is basically passive. 

What is Buddha doing when he is meditating? Our language, our tenns, give a false 
impression. When we say Buddha is meditating, it appears, because of the tenns used, 
that he is doing something. But meditation means not doing. If you are doing something, 
nothing will happen. 

But all doing is just like sex: in the beginning you have to be active; then a moment 
comes when activity ceases and you have to be passive. When I say "Buddha is 
meditating," I mean Buddha is no more. He is not doing anything, he is just passive - a 
host waiting, just waiting. And when you are waiting for the unknown, you cannot even 
expect anything. You do not really know what is going to happen, because if you know 
then the waiting becomes impure and the desire enters. You do not know anything! 

All that you had known has ceased, all the known has dropped. The mind is not 
functioning, it is just simply awaiting, and then everything happens to you. The whole 
universe falls into you; the whole universe enters from all sides into you. All the barriers 
are withdrawn. You are not withholding yourself. 


Nothing is wrong with passivity. Rather, your activity is the problem. But we are trained 
for activity because we are trained for violence, struggle, conflict. And it is good as far as 
it goes, because in the world you cannot be passive. In the world you have to be active, 
fighting, forcing your way. But that which is so helpful in the world is not helpful when 
you move toward a deeper existence. Then you have to reverse your steps. Be active if 
you are moving in politics, in society, for riches or for power. Be inactive if you are 
moving into God, into religion, into meditation. Passivity is the way there. 

And nothing is wrong about the negative either - nothing is wrong! 'Negative' only 
means that something has to be dropped. For example, if I want to create space in this 
room, what am I going to do? What is the process to create space? What am I going to 



do? Can I bring space from outside and fill this room? I cannot bring space from outside. 
The space is already here — that is why it is a room — but it is filled with people or 
furniture or things, so I take the things and people out of it. Then the space is discovered, 
not brought. It was already here, but filled. So I do a negative process: I empty it. 
Negativity means emptying yourself, not doing something positive, because that which 
you are trying to discover is already there. Just throw out the furniture. 

Thoughts are the furniture in the mind. Just throw them out and the mind becomes a 
space, and when the mind is a space it becomes your soul - your atman. But when it is 
filled with thoughts, desires, it is mind; vacant, empty, it is not mind. Negation is a 
process of elimination. Eliminate things... 

So do not be afraid of the words 'negative’ and 'passive’. If you are afraid, you can never 
surrender. Surrender IS passive and negative. It is not something you are doing; rather, 
you are leaving your doings, you are leaving the very notion that you can do. You cannot 
do — this is the basic feeling. Only then is there surrender. It is negative because you are 
moving into the unknown, the known is left. 

When you surrender to a master it is one of the miracles, because you do not know what 
is going to happen and what this man is going to do to you. And you can never be certain 
whether he is real or not. You cannot know to whom you are surrendering and where he 
is going to lead you. You will try to make certain, but the very effort means that you are 
not ready for surrender. 

If you are absolutely certain before you surrender that this man is going to lead you 
somewhere - to a paradise - and then you surrender, it is not a surrender at all. You have 
not surrendered. Surrender is always to the unknown. When everything is known, there is 
no surrender. You have already checked that this is going to happen, and that two and 
two are going to make four, then there is no surrender. 

You cannot say "I surrender" because the four is already made certain. 

In uncertainty, in insecurity, is the surrender. So it is easy to surrender to God because 
really, there is no one to whom you are surrendering and you remain the master. It is 
difficult to surrender to a living master because then you are no longer a master. With 
God you can go on deceiving, because no one is going to ask you... 

I was reading a Jewish anecdote. One old man was praying to God, and he said, "My 
neighbor 'A’ is very poor, and last year I prayed to you but you have not done anything 
for him. My other neighbor 'B’ is crippled, and I prayed last year also, but you have not 
done anything." And so on and so forth, he continued. He talked about all the neighbors, 
and then in the end he said, "Now I will pray again this year. If you forgive me, I can also 
forgive you." 

But he was talking alone. Every talk with the divine is a monologue; the other is not 
there. So it is up to you; what you are doing is up to you, and you remain the master. That 
is why there is so much insistence in tantra to surrender to a living master, because then 
your ego is shattered. And that shattering is the base. That shattering is the base, and only 
then something can arise out of it. 

But do not ask me what you can do to surrender. You cannot do anything. Or, you can do 
only one thing: be aware of what you can do by doing, what you have gained by doing — 
be aware! You have gained much: you have gained many miseries, anguishes, 
nightmares. 



You have gained! That is what you have gained through your own effort, this is what ego 
can gain. Be aware of it - of the misery that you have created - positively, actively, 
without surrendering. Whatsoever you have done to your life, be aware of it. That very 
awareness will help you one day to throw it all and to surrender. And remember that you 
will be transformed not by surrender to a particular master, but by surrender itself. 

So the master is irrelevant; he is not the point. People go on coming to me and they say, 

"I want to surrender, but to whom?" That is not the point, you are missing the point. It is 
not a question of to whom. Just the surrendering helps, not the person to whom you have 
surrendered. He may not be there or he may not be authentic or he may not be an 
enlightened one. He may just be a rogue; that is not the point. It is irrelevant! You have 
surrendered — that helps because now you are vulnerable, open. You have become 
feminine. The male ego is lost, and you have become a feminine womb. 

The person you have surrendered to may be bogus or he may not be. That is not the 
point! You have surrendered; now something can happen to you. And many times it has 
happened that even with a false master disciples have become enlightened. You may be 
surprised, even with a false master disciples have become enlightened! 

It is reported of Milarepa that he went to a master and he surrendered. 

Milarepa was a very faithful man, very trusting, so when the master said, "You will have 
to surrender to me, only then can I help," he said, "Okay, I surrender." But many persons 
were jealous. The old followers of that master were jealous of Milarepa because Milarepa 
was such a different type of man. He was a very magnetic force. They became afraid that 
if this man remained there he would become the chief disciple, the next master. So they 
said to their master, "This man seems to be false, so first check whether his surrender is 
real." 

The master said, "How should we examine him?" They said, "Tell him to jump from this 
hill" — they were sitting on a hill. So the master said, "Milarepa, if you have really 
surrendered, jump from this hill." So he did not wait even to say yes, he jumped. The 
disciples thought he would be dead; then they went down. It took hours for them to go to 
the valley. He was just sitting under a tree meditating, and he was happy - as happy as he 
had never been. 

So they gathered, and the disciples thought that it must be a coincidence. The master was 
also surprised... how could this happen? So he asked Milarepa privately, "What did you 
do? How did it happen?" He said, "When I surrendered, there was no question of MY 
doing. YOU have done something." 

The master knew well that he had not done anything, so he tried again. One house was on 
fire, so he told Milarepa to go in and sit there and only to come out when the whole house 
had become ashes. 

Milarepa went in. He stayed there for hours, then the house was just ashes. When they 
reached there he was just buried in the ashes - but as alive and as blissful as ever. 
Milarepa touched his master's feet and said, "You are doing miracles." 

So the master said, "It is difficult to think that it is again a coincidence." But the 
followers said, "This is nothing but a coincidence. Try again. At least three trials are 
needed." 

They were passing through a village and the master said, "Milarepa, the boat has not yet 
come and the ferryman has not kept his promise, so you go - walk on the water, go to the 
other bank and tell the ferryman to come." Milarepa walked, and then the master really 



thought it was a miracle. He walked and went to the other bank and brought the ferry. 

The master said, "Milarepa, how are you doing it?" He said, "I just take your name and 
go on. It is your name, master, that helps me." 

So the master thought, "If my name helps so much... " He tried to walk on the water also, 
but he drowned - and no one has ever heard about him again. 

How did it happen? Surrender is the thing - not the master, not the thing to which you 
surrender. The statue, the temple, the tree, the stone - anything will do. If you surrender, 
you become vulnerable to the existence. Then the whole existence takes you into its 
arms. 

This story may be just a parable, but the meaning is that when you surrender, the whole 
existence is for you. 

The fire, the hill, the river, the valley - nothing is against you because you are not against 
anything. The enmity is lost. 

If you fall from a hill and your bones are broken, it is the bones of your ego. You were 
resisting; you didn’t allow the valley to help you. You were helping yourself. You were 
thinking yourself more wise than the existence. Surrender means you come to realize that 
whatsoever you do will be stupid, foolish. And you have done many stupid things for 
many lives. 

Leave it to the existence itself. YOU cannot do anything! You have to realize that you are 
helpless. This realization that "I am helpless" helps the surrender to happen. 

THE END. 



Chapter 31 : From sound to inner silence 


21. SILENTLY INTONE A WORD ENDING IN "AH." THEN IN THE "HH," 
EFFORTLESSLY, THE SPONTANEITY. 

22. STOPPING EARS BY PRESSING AND THE RECTUM BY CONTRACTING, 
ENTER THE SOUND. 

23. ENTER THE SOUND OF YOUR NAME AND, THROUGH THIS SOUND, ALL 
SOUNDS. 

Tantra is not a philosophy. Rather, it is a science with one difference: science is 
objective, tantra is subjective. But still, it is a science and not a philosophy. Philosophy 
thinks about the truth, the unknown, the ultimate; science tries to discover what is. 
Science enters the immediate; philosophy thinks of the ultimate. Philosophy is always 
looking toward the sky; science is more down to earth. 

Tantra is not concerned with the ultimate. It is concerned with the immediate, the here 
and now. Tantra says, the ultimate is hidden in the immediate, so you need not worry 
about the ultimate. By worrying about the ultimate you will miss the immediate, and the 
ultimate is hidden in the immediate. So by thinking about the ultimate you will miss both. 
If the immediate should be missed, because of it you will miss the ultimate also. So 
philosophy is just smoke. The approach of tantra is scientific, but the OBJECT is 
different from that of so-called science. 

Science tries to understand the object, the objective world, the reality that is before your 
eyes. Tantra is the science of the reality that is behind your eyes, the subjectivity, but the 
approach is scientific. 

Tantra doesn’t believe in thinking, it believes in experimenting, in experiencing. And 
unless you can experience, everything is just a wastage of energy. 

I am reminded of one incident. Mulla Nasruddin was crossing a street. Just in front of a 
church he was knocked down by a hit-and-run driver. He was an old man, and a crowd 
gathered. Someone was saying that "That man cannot survive." The priest of the church 
ran out. He came near and he found out that the old man was just going to die, so he 
prepared to administer the last rites. He came near and asked the dying Mulla, "Do you 
believe in God the Father? Do you believe in God the Son? Do you believe in God the 
Holy Ghost?" Mulla opened his eyes and said, "My God! I am dying and he is asking me 
puzzles!" 

All philosophy is like this: it is asking puzzles while you are dying. Every moment you 
are dying, every moment everyone is on his deathbed - because death can occur at any 
moment. But philosophy goes on asking and answering puzzles. Tantra says, it is good 
for children to philosophize but those who are wise will not waste their time in 
philosophy. They should try to know - not to think, because through thinking there is no 
knowledge. Through thinking you go on webbing words, creating patterns of words. It 
leads nowhere, you remain the same — no transformation, no new insights. The old man 
just goes on gathering dust. 


Knowing is a different phenomenon. It does not mean "thinking about," it means going 
deep into the existence itself in order to know, moving into the existence. Remember this, 



that tantra is not a philosophy. It is science - a subjective science. The approach is 
scientific and non-philosophic. It is very down to earth, concerned with the immediate. 
The immediate is to be used as a door to the ultimate, the ultimate happens if you enter 
the immediate. It is there, and there is no other way to reach to it. 

Philosophy is not a way in the eyes of tantra. It is a false way! It only appears that this is 
a way. It is a door which is not; it simply appears to be a door. It is a false door. The 
moment you try to enter it you come to know that you cannot enter, it is just a painted 
door, there is no door in reality. Philosophy is a painted door. If you sit by its side and go 
on thinking and thinking, it is good. If you try to enter it, it is a wall. 

So every philosophy is good for philosophizing. For experiencing, every philosophy is 
impotent. That is why there is so much insistence on technique in tantra - SO MUCH 
insistence on technique, because a science can do nothing but give technology, whether 
of the outside world or of the inside. The very word 'tantra’ means technique. The very 
word 'tantra’ MEANS technique! That is why, in this small and yet one of the greatest 
and deepest books, only techniques are given, no philosophy, just one hundred and 
twelve techniques to reach the ultimate through the immediate. 


The ninth technique concerning sound: 

SILENTLY INTONE A WORD ENDING IN "AH." THEN IN THE ”HH,” 
EFFORTLESSLY, THE SPONTANEITY. 

SILENTLY INTONE A WORD ENDING IN ’’AH ” Any word that ends in "AH” - 
intone it silently. Emphasis should be given to the ending "AH." Why? Because the 
moment this sound "AH" is intoned, your breath goes out. You may not have observed it, 
but now you can observe: whenever your breath goes out you are more silent, and 
whenever your breath comes in you are more tense - because the outgoing breath is death 
and the incoming breath is life. Tension is part of life, not of death. Relaxation is part of 
death; death means total relaxation. Life cannot be totally relaxed; it is impossible. 

Life means tension, effort. Only death is relaxed. So whenever a person becomes 
absolutely relaxed, he is both - alive outwardly and dead within. You can see in the face 
of a buddha both life and death simultaneously. That is why there is so much silence and 
calm, they are part of death. Life is not relaxation. You relax in the night when you are 
asleep. That is why the old traditions say that death and sleep are similar. Sleep is a 
temporary death and death is permanent sleep. That is why night relaxes you, it is the 
outgoing breath. The morning is the incoming breath. 

The day makes you tense and the night relaxes you. Light makes you tense, darkness 
relaxes you. 

That is why you cannot sleep when there is light, it is difficult to relax because light is 
similar to life: it is anti-death. Darkness is similar to death: it is pro-death. 

So darkness has deep relaxation in it, and those who are afraid of darkness cannot relax... 
impossible, because every relaxation is dark. And darkness surrounds your life on both 
the sides. Before you are born you are in darkness; when life ceases you are again in 
darkness. Darkness is infinite, and this light and this life is just a moment in it, just a 
wave arising and then falling back. If you can remember the darkness that surrounds both 
the ends, you will be relaxed here and now. 

Life, death - they both are two sides of existence. The incoming breath is life, the 



outgoing breath is death. So it is not that you die someday, you are dying with every 
breath. That is why the Hindus have been counting life in breaths, they do not count life 
in years. Tantra, yoga, all the old Indian systems, they count life in breaths: how many 
breaths you are going to live. So they say if you breathe very fast, with too much 
breathing in a short time, you will die very soon. If you breathe very slowly and your 
breaths are less in an interval, you will live very long. And this is so. 

If you go and observe animals, those animals whose breathing is very slow live long. 

Take the elephant: the elephant lives long; the breath is very slow. 

Then there is the dog: the dog dies soon; the breath is very fast. Whenever you find an 
animal in which the breath is fast, any animal, the animal will not have a long life. A long 
life is always with slow breath. 

Tantra and yoga and other Indian systems count your life in breaths. Really, with every 
breath you are born and with every breath you are dying. This mantra, this technique, 
uses the outgoing breath as the method, the medium, the vehicle, to go deep into silence. 
It is a death method. INTONE SILENTLY A WORD ENDING IN "AH." The breath has 
gone — that is why a word ending in "AH." 

This AH is meaningful because when you say AH it completely empties you. The whole 
breath has moved out; nothing remains within. You are totally empty - empty and dead. 
For a single moment, for a very small interval, life has moved out of you. You are dead - 
empty. This emptiness, if realized, if you can become aware of it, will change you 
completely. You will be a different man. 

Then you will know well that this life is not your life and this death is also not your 
death. Then you will know something which is beyond the incoming and outgoing breath 
- the witnessing soul. And this witnessing can happen easily when you are empty of 
breath, because life has subsided and with it all tensions have subsided. So try it, it is a 
very beautiful method. But the ordinary process, the ordinary habit, is to emphasize the 
incoming breath, never the outgoing breath. 


We always take the breath in. We ALWAYS take it in, but we never throw it out. We 
take it in and THE BODY throws it out. Observe your breathing and you will know. We 
take it in. We never exhale, we only inhale. The exhaling is done by the body because we 
are afraid of death, that is the reason. If it was in our power we would not exhale at all, 
we would inhale and then control it within. No one emphasizes exhaling — inhaling is 
emphasized. Because we HAVE to do exhaling after inhaling, that is why we go on 
"suffering" it. We tolerate it because we cannot inhale without exhaling. 

So exhaling is accepted as a necessary evil, but basically we are not interested in 
exhaling. And this is not only about breath, this is our whole attitude toward life. We 
cling to everything that comes to us; we will not leave it. This is the miserliness of the 
mind. 

And remember, there are many implications in it. If you are suffering from constipation, 
this will be the basic cause: you always inhale and never exhale. The mind which never 
exhales but just inhales will suffer from constipation. The constipation is the other end of 
the same thing. He cannot exhale anything, he goes on accumulating, he is afraid. The 
fear is there. He can only accumulate, but anything that is accumulated becomes 
poisonous. 

If you only inhale and do not exhale, your very breath becomes poison to you; you will 



die because of it. 


You can turn a life-giving force into poison if you behave in a miserly way, because the 
exhaling is absolutely necessary. It throws all the poisons out of you. 

So really, death is a purifying process and life is a poisoning process. This will look 
paradoxical. Life is a poisoning process because to live you have to use many things - 
and the moment you have used them they turn into poison, they are converted into 
poisons. You take a breath in, you use oxygen, and then what remains becomes poison. It 
was life only because it was oxygen, but you have used it. So life goes on changing 
everything into a poison. 

Now there is a great movement in the West - ecology. Man has been using everything 
and turning it into poison, and the very Earth is just on the verge of dying. Any day it can 
die because we have turned everything into poison. Death is a purifying process. When 
your whole body has become poisonous, death will relieve you of the body. It will renew 
you, it will give you a new birth; a new body will be given to you. Through death all the 
accumulated poisons are dissolved back into nature. You are given a new mechanism. 
And this happens with every breath. The outgoing breath is similar to death — it takes 
poisons out. And when it is going out, everything ebbs within. If you can throw the 
whole breath out, completely out so that no breath remains within, you touch a point of 
silence that can never be touched while the breath is in. 


It is just like the ebb and tide: with every breath a tide of life comes to you; with every 
exhalation, everything ebbs - the tide has gone. You are just a vacant, empty shore. This 
is the use of this technique. SILENTLY INTONE A WORD ENDING IN "AH." 
Emphasize the exhaling breath. And you can use it for many changes in the mind. If you 
are suffering from constipation, forget intaking. Just exhale and do not inhale. Let the 
body do the work of inhaling; you just do the work of exhaling. You force the breath out 
and do not inhale. The body will inhale by itself; you need not worry about it, you are not 
going to die. The body will take breath in, you just throw it out and let the body take it in. 
Your constipation will go. 

If you are suffering from heart disease, just exhale, do not inhale. Then you will not 
suffer from heart disease. If while just going upwards on a staircase, or anywhere, you 
feel tired - very much tired, suffocated, breathless - simply do this: just exhale, do not 
inhale. Then you can climb up any amount of steps and you will not be tired. What 
happens? When you go with an emphasis on exhaling, you are ready to let go, you are 
ready to die. You are not afraid of death; that makes you open. Otherwise you are closed 
— fear closes you. 

When you exhale, the whole system changes and accepts death. There is no fear, you are 
ready to die. And one who is ready to die can live. 

Really, only one who is ready to die can live. He alone becomes capable of life - because 
he is not afraid. 

One who accepts death, welcomes it, receives it as a guest, lives with it, goes deep into 
life. Exhale, do not inhale, and that will change your total mind. Because of simple 
techniques tantra never appeals, because we think, "My mind is such a complex thing." It 
is not complex - just foolish. And fools are very complex. A wise man is simple. Nothing 
is complex in your mind, it is a very simple mechanism. If you understand, you can 



change it very easily. 

If you have not seen anybody dying, if you have been protected from seeing death as 
Buddha was protected, you cannot understand anything about it. Buddha's father was 
afraid because some astrologer said that "This boy is going to be a great sannyasin. He 
will renounce the world." The father asked, "What is to be done to protect him from 
doing such a thing?" So those astrologers thought and thought, and then they concluded 
and they said, "Do not allow him to see death, because if he is not aware of death he will 
never think of renouncing life." 

This is beautiful - very meaningful. That means all religion, all philosophy, all tantra and 
yoga, is basically death-oriented. If you are aware of death, only then does religion 
become meaningful. That is why no animal except man is religious, because no animal is 
aware of death. 

They die, but they are not aware. They cannot conceive or imagine that there is going to 
be death. 

When one dog dies, other dogs never imagine that death is going to happen to them also. 
Always someone else dies, so how can a dog imagine that "I am going to die"? He has 
never seen himself dying. Someone else, some other dog dies, so how can he connect that 
"I am going to die"? No animal is aware of death; that is why no animal renounces. No 
animal can become a sannyasin. Only a very high quality of consciousness can lead you 
to renounce - when you become aware of death. And if even by being a man you are not 
aware of death, you belong to the animal kingdom; you are not yet a man. You become a 
man only when you encounter death. Otherwise there is no difference between you and 
the animal. 

Everything is similar; only death makes the difference. With death encountered, you are 
no more animal, something has happened to you which never happens to an animal. Now 
you will be a different consciousness. 

So Buddha’s father protected him from seeing any type of death - not only man’s death, 
but the death of animals and even of flowers. So the gardeners were instructed not to 
allow the child to see a dead flower, a pale flower dying on the branch, a pale leaf, a dry 
leaf. No, nowhere should he come to realize that something dies — he may infer from it 
that "I am going to die." 

And you do not infer it even seeing your wife dying, your mother, your father, your child. 
You weep for them, but you never conceive that this is a sign that "I am going to die." 

But the astrologers said, "The boy is very, very sensitive, so protect him from any type of 
death." And the father was over-conscientious He would not allow even an old man or an 
old woman to be seen, because oldness is just death heard from a distance; death is there 
from a distance, just coming. So Buddha's father would not allow any old man or old 
woman to be seen by the child. If Buddha suddenly became aware that just by stopping 
the breath a man could die, it would be very difficult for him. "Just because no breath is 
coming in, how can a man die?" he would wonder. "Life is such a big, complex process." 
If you have not seen anyone dying, even you cannot conceive that just by stopping the 
breath a man will die. Just by stopping the breath? Such a simple thing! And how can 
such a complex life die? 

It is the same with these methods. They look simple, but they touch the basic reality. 
When the breath is going out, when you are completely emptied of life, you touch death: 
you are just near it, and everything becomes calm and silent within you. 



Use it as a mantra. Whenever you feel tired, whenever you feel tense, use any word 
which ends in "AH." "Allah" will do - any word that brings your total breath out so that 
you exhale completely and you are emptied of breath. 

The moment you are emptied of breath you are emptied of life also. And all your 
problems belong to life: no problem belongs to death. Your anxiety, your anguish, your 
anger, your sadness, they all belong to life. 

Death is non-problematic. Death never gives any problem to anyone. And even if you 
think that "I am afraid of death and death creates a problem," it is not death that creates 
the problem but your clinging to life. Only life creates problems; death dissolves all 
problems. So when the breath has moved completely out, "AH," you are emptied of life. 
Look within at that moment when the breath is completely out. Before taking another 
breath in, go deep down in that interval and become aware of the inside calm, the silence. 
In that moment you are a buddha. 

If you can catch that moment, you have known a taste of what Buddha might have 
known. And once known, you can detach this taste from the incoming-outgoing breath. 
Then the breath can go on coming in, going out, and you can remain in that quality of 
consciousness that you have come to know. It is always there; one has just to discover it. 
And it is easier to discover when life is emptied out. 

SILENTLY INTONE A WORD ENDING IN "AH." THEN IN THE "HH," 
EFFORTLESSLY, THE SPONTANEITY. And when the breath goes out, "HH," 
everything is emptied. EFFORTLESSLY : in this moment, there is no need to make any 
effort. 

The SPONTANEITY : just be aware, be spontaneous, be sensitive, and realize this 
moment of death. 

In this moment you are just near the door, just near the door!- very, very near to the 
ultimate. The immediate has moved out, the superfluous has moved out. In this moment 
you are not the wave: you are the ocean - just near, just near! If you can become aware 
you will forget that you are a wave. Again the wave will come, but now you can never be 
identified with it, you will remain the ocean. Once you have kn own that you are the 
ocean, you can never again be the wave. 

Life is waves... death is the ocean. That is why Buddha so much insists about his 
NIRVANA that it is death-like. He never says you will attain life immortal, he says you 
will simply die totally. Jesus says, "Come to me and I will give you life, and life 
abundant." Buddha says, "Come to me to realize your death. I will give you death 
totally." And both mean the same thing, but Buddha’s terminology is more basic. But you 
will become afraid of it. That is why Buddha had no appeal in India; he was uprooted 
completely. And we go on saying that this land is a religious land, but the most religious 
person couldn’t get roots here. 

What type of religious land is this? We have not produced another Buddha; he is 
incomparable. And whenever the world thinks India to be religious, the world remembers 
Buddha - no one else. 

Because of Buddha, India is thought to be religious. What type of religious land is this? 
Buddha has no roots here; he was totally uprooted. He used the language of death - that is 
the cause, and brahmins were using the language of life. They say THE BRAHMAN and 
he says NIRVANA: 'Brahman' means life — life, infinite life; and 'Nirvana’ means just 



cessation, death - total death. 

Buddha says, "Your ordinary death is not total; you will be born again. It is NOT total! 
You will be bom again! I will give you a total death, and you will never be born again." 

A total death means now no birth is possible. So this so-called death, Buddha says, is not 
death. It is just a rest period, you will become alive again. It is just a breath gone out. 

You will take the breath in again, you will be reborn. Buddha says, "I will give you the 
way so that the breath will go out and will never come in again - total death, nirvana, 
cessation." 

We become afraid because we cling to life. But this is the paradox: the more you cling to 
life, the more you will die, and the more you are ready to die, then the more you become 
deathless. If you are ready to die, then there is no possibility of death. No one can give 
you death if you accept it, because through that acceptance you become aware of 
something within you which is deathless. 

This incoming breath and outgoing breath are the life and death of the body, not of "me." 

But "I" do not know anything other than the body; "I" am identified with the body. Then 
it will be difficult to be aware when the breath comes in, easy to be aware when the 
breath goes out. When the breath is going out, for that moment you have become old, 
dying, emptied completely of the breath; you are dead for a moment. 

IN THE "HH," EFFORTLESSLY, THE SPONTANEITY. Try it! Any moment you can 
try it. Just riding in a bus or traveling in a train or moving to the office, whenever you 
have time intone a sound like "Allah" - any sound ending with "AH." This "Allah" helped 
so much in Islam - not because of any Allah there in the sky, but because of this "AH." 
This word is beautiful. And then the more one goes on using this word "Allah, Allah..." it 
becomes reduced. Then what remains is "Lah, Lah..." Then it is reduced further; then it 
remains as "Ah, Ah..." It is good, but you can use any word that ends in "AH" - or just 
"AH" will do. 

Have you observed that whenever you are tense you will sigh — "AH" — and you will feel 
relaxed. Or whenever you are in joy, overjoyed, you say "AH," and the whole breath is 
thrown out and you feel within a tranquility that you have never felt. Try this: when you 
are feeling very good, take the breath in and then see what you feel. Y ou cannot feel that 
well-being that comes with "AH." It is coming because of the breath. 

So languages differ, but these two things never differ. 

All over the world, whenever someone feels tired he will say "AH." Really, he is calling 
for death to come and relax him. Whenever one feels overjoyed, blissful, he says "AH." 
He is so overfilled with joy that he is not afraid of death now. He can relieve himself 
completely, relax completely. 

And what will happen if you go on trying it, trying it? You will become fully aware of 
something within you - the spontaneousness of your being; of SAHAJ of being 
spontaneous. That you are already, but you are too much engaged with life, too much 
occupied with life. You cannot become aware of the being which is behind. 

When you are not occupied with life, with the incoming breath, the being behind is 
revealed; there is a glimpse. But the glimpse will become, by and by, a realization. And 
once it is known you cannot forget it - and this is not something which you are creating. 
That is why it is spontaneous: it is not something you are creating. It is there, you have 
simply forgotten. It is a remembrance! It is a rediscovery! 

Try to see children, very small children, taking their breaths. They take them in a 



different way. Look at a child sleeping. His belly comes up and down, not the chest. If 
you are sleeping and you are being observed, your chest comes up and down; your breath 
never goes down to the belly. The breath can go down to the belly only if you exhale and 
do not inhale. 

If you inhale and do not exhale, the breath cannot go down to the belly. The reason why 
breath goes to the belly is that when one exhales, the whole breath is thrown out and then 
the BODY takes it in. And the body takes only that amount which is needed — never 
more, never less. 

The body has its own wisdom, and it is more wise than you. Do not disturb it. You can 
take more — then it will be disturbed. You can take less — then it will be disturbed. The 
body has its own wisdom, it only takes that amount which is needed. When more is 
needed, it creates the situation. When less is needed, it creates the situation. It never goes 
to the extreme, it is always balanced. But if YOU inhale it is never balanced, because you 
do not know what you are doing, you do not know what is the need of the body. And the 
need changes every moment. 

Allow the body! You just exhale, you just throw it out, and then the body will take breath 
in - and it will take it deeply and slowly, and the breath will go down to the belly. It will 
hit the navel point exactly and your belly will go up and down. If you inhale then really, 
you never exhale totally. Then the breath is in and you go on inhaling, so the breath 
which is already in will not allow your breath to go down to the very bottom. Then just 
shallow breathing happens. You go on taking breath in, and the poisonous breath is there, 
fdling you up. 


They say that you have six thousand sacs in your lungs and only two thousand are 
touched by your breath. The four thousand are always fdled with poisonous gases which 
need to be exhaled, and that two-thirds portion of your chest creates much anxiety, much 
anguish and misery in the mind, in the body. A child exhales, he never inhales. Inhaling 
is done by the body itself. 

When the child is born, the first thing he is going to do is cry. With that cry his throat 
opens, with that cry comes the first "AH." The oxygen and air that had been given by the 
mother is exhaled. This is his first effort with breathing. That is why if a child is not 
crying, then the doctor will become uneasy, because he has not shown the sign of life. He 
still feels dependent on the mother. He must cry! That cry shows that now he is becoming 
an individual; the mother is not needed, he will take his own breath. And the first thing is 
that he is going to cry in order to exhale that which was given by the mother, and then his 
body will start functioning, inhaling. 

A child is always exhaling, and when the child starts inhaling, when the emphasis moves 
to inhaling, be aware. He has already become old; he has learned things from you. He has 
become tense. Whenever you are tense, you cannot take a deep breath. Why? Your 
stomach becomes rigid. Whenever you are tense your stomach becomes rigid, it won’t 
allow breath to go down. 

Then you have to take shallow breaths. 

Try with "AH." It has a beautiful feeling around it. Whenever you feel tired, "AH" — 
throw the breath. And make it a point to emphasize exhaling. You will be a different 
man, and a different mind will evolve. With the emphasis on breathing in, you have 



developed a miser mind and a miser body. With exhaling, that miserliness will disappear 
and with it many problems. Possessiveness will disappear. 

So tantra will not say leave possessiveness. Tantra says, change your system of 
breathing; you cannot possess then. Observe your own breathing and your moods, and 
you will become aware. Whatsoever is wrong is always associated with the emphasis that 
is given to the incoming breath and whatsoever is good, virtuous, beautiful, true, is 
always associated with exhaling. Whenever you are speaking a lie, you will hold your 
breath in. Whenever you speak truth, you never hold the breath. You fear that "I am 
speaking a lie," so you hold the breath. You are afraid something may go out with it - the 
out-moving breath. Your hidden truth may be revealed, so you are afraid. 

Go on trying this "AH" more and more. You will be more healthy in body, more healthy 
in mind, and a different quality of calm, at-easeness, tranquillity will develop. 

The tenth sound method: 

STOPPING EARS BY PRESSING AND RECTUM BY CONTRACTING, ENTER THE 
SOUND. 


We are not aware of the body even or how the body functions and what is its tao, what is 
its way. But if you observe, then you can become very easily aware. If you stop your ears 
and pull your rectum up, contract your rectum, everything will stop for you. It will be as 
if the whole world has become non-moving - as if everything has become static, stopped. 
Not only movements, you will feel as if time has stopped. 

What happens when you pull the rectum up, contract it? What happens? When both the 
ears are closed simultaneously, with closed ears you will hear a sound within. But if the 
rectum is not pulled up, that sound is released by the rectum. That sound is very subtle. If 
the rectum is pulled up, contracted, and the ears are closed, you will see within you a 
pillar of sound - and that sound is of silence. It is a negative sound. When all sounds have 
ceased, then you feel the sound of silence or the sound of soundlessness. But it will be 
released from the rectum. 

So close the ears and pull the rectum up. Then you are closed from both the sides, and 
your body becomes closed and just filled with sound. This feeling of being filled with 
sound gives a deep fulfillment. So we will have to understand many things around it, only 
then will it become possible for you to have the feeling of what happens. 

We are not aware of the body — that is one of the basic problems for a seeker. 

And the society is against becoming aware of the body because society is afraid of the 
body. So we train every child not to be aware of the body, we make every child 
insensitive. We create a distance between the child's mind and body, so he is not very 
much aware of the body, because body awareness will create problems for the society. 
Many things are implied. If the child is aware of the body, he will become aware of sex 
sooner or later. And if he is too much aware of the body, he will feel too much sexual, 
sensuous. So we have to kill the very root. He should be "made dull" about his body, 
insensitive, so he never feels it. You do not feel your body. You feel it only when 
something wrong happens, when something goes wrong. 

You have a headache in the head, then you feel your head. Some thorn is there, then you 
feel your leg, your feet. When your body aches, you feel that you have a body. You feel it 
only when something goes wrong, and then too not right away. You are never aware of 



your diseases immediately. You become aware only when a period has passed and when 
the disease goes on knocking at your consciousness that, "I am here." Only then do you 
become aware. So no one really goes to the doctor in time. Everyone reaches there late, 
when the disease has entered deep and has done much wrong. 

If a child has grown up with sensitivity he will become aware of the disease even before 
the disease happens. 

And now, in Russia particularly, they are working on the theory that a disease can be 
known even six months before its happening if someone is very deeply sensitive about 
his body, because subtle changes start long in advance. They prepare the body for the 
disease. The impact is felt even six months before. 

But never mind disease, we never become aware even of death! If you are going to die 
tomorrow, you are not aware even today. A thing like death which may happen the next 
moment, and you are not aware this moment. You are totally dead to your body, 
insensitive. This whole society, the whole culture up to now, creates this dullness, this 
deadness, because it has been against the body. You are not allowed to feel it. Only in 
accidents can you be pardoned, forgiven for being aware of it; otherwise "do not be 
aware of the body." 

This creates many problems, particularly for tantra, because tantra believes in deep 
sensitivity and knowledge of the body. You go on moving and your body goes on doing 
many things and you are unaware. Now much work is being done on body language. The 
body has its own language, and psychiatrists and psychologists and psychoanalysts in 
particular are being trained for body language, because they say you cannot believe the 
modern man. Whatsoever he says cannot be believed. Rather, one must observe his body, 
that will give a more true clue. 


A man enters a psychiatrist's office. The old psychiatry, Freudian psychoanalysis, will 
talk and talk with the man to bring out whatsoever is hidden in his mind. Modern 
psychiatry will observe his body because that gives clues. If a man is an egoist, if ego is 
his problem, he stands in a different way than a humble man. His neck has a different 
angle than a humble man, his spine is not flexible but dead, fixed. He looks wooden, not 
alive. If you touch his body it has a wooden feeling, not the warmth of a living body. He 
is like a soldier just moving to the front. 

Look at the soldier moving to the front. He has a wooden shape, a wooden feeling, and 
that is needed by a soldier because he is going to die or to kill. He must not be much 
aware of the body, so his whole training is to create a wooden body. Soldiers marching 
look like toys, like dead toys marching. 

If you are humble you have a different body; you sit differently you stand differently. If 
you feel inferior, you stand differently; if you feel superior you stand differently. If you 
are always in fear, you stand in such a way as if you are protecting yourself from some 
unknown force. That is always there. If you are not afraid, you are just like a child 
playing with his mother; there is no fear. Wherever you go you are unafraid, at home 
with the universe around you. The man who is afraid is armored. 

And when I say armored it is not only symbolically, physiologically he is annored. 
Wilhelm Reich was working very much on body structure, and he came to see some deep 
associations between mind and body. If a man is afraid, his stomach is not flexible. You 



touch his stomach and it is like a stone. If he becomes fearless, his stomach relaxes 
immediately. Or if you relax the stomach, then the fear disappears. Massage the stomach 
to relax, and you will feel more fearless, less afraid. 

A person who is loving has a different quality of body and warmth — he is warm bodily. 
A person who is not loving is cold, physiologically he is cold. Cold and other things have 
moved into your body and they have become barriers, they do not allow you to know 
about your body. But the body goes on working in its own way and you go on working in 
your own way — a rift is created. That rift has to be broken. 

I have seen that if someone is suppressive, if you have suppressed your anger, then your 
fingers, your hands, have the sensation of a suppressed anger. And a person who knows 
how to feel it can feel just by touching your hand that you have suppressed anger. And 
why in the hand? Because anger has to be released by the hands. If you have suppressed 
anger then in your teeth, in your gums, it is suppressed - and it can be felt by touching. It 
gives a vibration that "I am suppressed here." 


If you have suppressed sex, then in your erotic zones it is there. If a person has 
suppressed sex, then if you touch his erotic zones you can feel it. With any erotic zone 
touched, sex is there if it has been suppressed. The zone will become afraid and will 
withdraw from your touch, it will not be open. Because the person inside is withdrawing, 
the part of the body will withdraw. It will not allow you to bring about an opening. 

Now they say that fifty percent of women are frigid, and the reason is because we teach 
girls to be more suppressive than boys. So they have suppressed, and when a girl 
suppresses her sexual feelings up to the age of twenty, it has become a long habit - 
twenty years of suppression. Then when she will love, she will talk about love, but her 
body will not be open; the body will be closed. And then an opposite, a diametrically 
opposite phenomenon happens: two currents oppose each other. She wants to love but her 
body is repressive, the body withdraws; it is not ready to come closer. 

If you see a woman sitting with a man, if the woman loves the man she will be inclining 
toward him, the body will be inclining. If they are sitting on a sofa, both of their bodies 
will be inclining toward each other. They are not aware, but you can see it. If the woman 
is afraid of the man, her body will be inclining to the opposite direction. If a woman loves 
a man she will never cross her legs when sitting near him. 

If she is afraid of the man she will cross her legs. She is not aware; this is not done 
consciously. It is body annor. The body protects itself and works in its own ways. 

Tantra became aware of this phenomenon; the first awareness of such deep body feeling, 
sensitivity, was with tantra. And tantra says that if you can use your body consciously, 
the body becomes the vehicle to move to the spirit. Tantra says, it is foolish, absolutely 
idiotic, to be against the body. Use it! It is a vehicle! And use its energy in such a way 
that you can go beyond it. 

Now, STOPPING EARS BY PRESSING AND RECTUM BY CONTRACTING, 

ENTER THE SOUND. Many times you have been contracting the rectum and sometimes 
the rectum is released even without your consciousness. If you suddenly become afraid, 
the rectum is released. You may defecate in fear, you may urinate in fear. Then you 
cannot control it. If a sudden fear grips you, your bladder will relax, your rectum will 
relax. What happens? In fear, what happens? Fear is a mental thing, so why do you 
urinate in fear? Why is the control lost? There must be some deep connecting root. 



Fear happens in the head, in the mind. When you are unafraid this never happens. The 
child really has no mental control over his body. No animal controls his urine, bladder or 
anything. Whenever the bladder is full it is released. No animal controls it, but man has 
to control it of necessity. 

So we force a child to control when he should go to the bathroom and when not. We tell 
him he has to control; we give timings. So the mind takes over the control of a function 
which is non-voluntary. That is why it is so difficult to train the child for the toilet. And 
now psychologists say that if we stop toilet training, humanity will very much improve. 
Toilet training is the first repression of the child and its natural spontaneity, but it seems 
difficult to listen to these psychologists. We cannot listen to them because then the 
children will create many problems. We have to train them of necessity. Only a very, 
very rich, affluent society will be able not to bother. Poor societies have to manage. We 
cannot afford it. If the child urinates anywhere, we cannot afford it. If he urinates on the 
sofa we cannot afford it, so we have to train. This training is mental. The body really has 
no built-in program for it. The body has NO built-in program for it! 

Man is an animal as far as body is concerned, and the body knows no culture, no society. 
That is why when you are in deep fear, the control mechanism that you have imposed on 
the body is relaxed. You are not in control; you are thrown off control. You can control 
only in nonnal conditions. In emergencies you cannot control because for emergencies 
you have never been trained. You have only been trained for the normal, day-to-day, 
routine world. 

In an emergency the control is lost, your body starts functioning in its own animal way. 
But one relationship can be understood, that with a fearless man this will never happen. 
So this has become a sign of a coward. 

If in fear you urinate or defecate, this shows you are a coward. A fearless man will not 
behave in this way, because a fearless man is taking deep breaths. His body and his 
breathing system are related; there is no gap. With a man who is a coward there is a gap, 
and because of that gap he is always overburdened with urine and defecation. So 
whenever an emergency comes, that overburdenedness has to be thrown: he has to be 
unburdened. And it has a reason in nature. A coward who is unburdened can escape more 
easily with his stomach relaxed, can run more easily. A burdened stomach will become a 
hindrance, so it is helpful for a coward to be relaxed. 

Why am I talking about this? I am just saying this, that you have to be aware of your 
mental processes and your stomach processes; they are deeply related. Psychologists say 
that fifty to ninety percent of your dreams are because of your stomach processes. If you 
have taken a very heavy meal you are bound to see nightmares. They are not related with 
the mind, it is just that the heavy stomach creates them. 

Many dreams can be created by outside tricks. If you are sleeping, your hands can be 
crossed on your chest and immediately you will start dreaming some nightmare. 

A pillow can be put on your chest and you will dream that some demon is sitting on your 
chest just going to kill you. And this has been one of the problems. Why is there such a 
burden from the small weight of a pillow? If you are awake, there is no weight; you do 
not feel anything heavy. But why is it that a small pillow placed on you in the night when 
you are sleeping is felt as being so heavy that it is as if you have been burdened with a 
big stone or a rock? Why is so much weight felt? 



The reason is this: when you are aware, when you are awake, your mind and body are not 
correlated; the gap is there. You cannot feel the body and its sensitivity. While asleep, the 
control, the culture, the conditioning, dissolves; you have again become a child and your 
body has become sensitive. Because of that sensitivity, a small pillow is felt as a rock. It 
is magnified because of sensitivity — the sensitivity magnifies it. So body-mind processes 
are deeply related, and if you know what happens you can use this. 

Rectum closed, pulled upwards, contracted, creates a situation in the body in which 
sound can be felt if present. You will feel a pillar of sound in silence within the closed 
space in your body. Close the ears and pull up the rectum, and then just remain with what 
is happening inside you. Just remain in that vacant state which is created by these two 
things. Your life energy is moving within and it has no way to go out. 

Sound goes out either from your ears or from your rectum. Those are the two doors from 
where the sound can move out. If is not moving out, you can feel it more easily. 

And what will happen when you feel this inner sound? With the very phenomenon of 
hearing the inner sound, your thoughts dissolve. Just try it anytime during the day: just 
pull up the rectum and put your fingers in the ears. Press the ears and pull up the rectum. 
You will feel that your mind has stopped. It will not be functioning; thoughts will have 
stopped. That constant flow of thoughts is not there. It is good! And if one goes on doing 
it whenever there is time, in the day if you can do it for five or six times, within three or 
four months you will become an expert in it. And then such a well-being flows out of it! 
And the inner sound, once heard, remains with you. Then you can hear it the whole day. 
The market is noisy, the road is noisy, the traffic is noisy, but if even in that noise you 
have heard the inner sound, you will feel the still small voice that goes on inside. And 
then nothing will disturb you. If you can feel your inner sound, then nothing from the 
outside can disturb you. Y ou remain silent; whatsoever happens around you makes no 
difference. 

The last sound technique: 

ENTER THE SOUND OF YOUR NAME AND, THROUGH THIS SOUND, ALL 
SOUNDS. 

Your own name can be used as a mantra very easily, and it is very helpful because your 
name has gone very deep into your unconscious. 

Nothing else has gone so deep. If we are all are sitting here, and we all fall asleep and 
someone comes and calls "Ram," no one will listen except the person whose name is 
Ram. He will listen to it; he will be disturbed in his sleep. No one else will listen to the 
sound "Ram," but why does this man listen? It has gone down deep; it is not conscious 
now, it has become unconscious. 

Your name has gone very deep within you, but there is a very beautiful phenomenon 
about your name: you never call it, others call it. Others use it; you never use it. 

I have heard that in the first world war, for the first time in America rationing was 
created. Thomas Edison was a very great scientist, but he was very poor so he had to 
stand in the queue for his ration card. And he was such a great man that no one ever used 
his name before him. There was no need to use his name for himself, and no one else 
would use his name because he was so much respected. Everyone would call him 
Professor, so he had forgotten what was his name. 

He was standing in the queue, and when his name was called, when it was asked who 



Thomas Alva Edison was, he just stared blankly. Again the name was called, then 
someone who was a neighbor to Edison said to him, "Why are you standing? Your name 
is being called. It is your name, Professor." Then he became aware and he said, "But how 
can I recognize it? No one calls me Edison. 

It has been so long... they just call me Professor." 

You never use your own name. Only others use it — you have heard it used by others. But 
it has gone deep, very deep. It has penetrated like an arrow into your unconscious. If you 
yourself use it, then it becomes a mantra. And for two reasons it helps: one, when you use 
your own name, if your name is "Ram" and you use "Ram, Ram, Ram...", suddenly you 
feel as if you are using someone else's name - as if it is not yours. Or if you feel that this 
IS yours, you feel that there is a separate entity within you which is using it. It may 
belong to the body, it may belong to the mind, but he who is calling "Ram, Ram..." 
becomes a witness. 

You have always called others' names. When you call your own name it looks as if it 
belongs to someone else, not to you, and it is a very revealing phenomenon. You can 
become a witness to your own name, and with the name your whole life is involved. 
Separated from the name, you are separated from your whole life. And this name has 
penetrated deep within you because everyone has called you this from your very birth, 
you have always heard this. So use this sound, and with this sound you can go to the very 
depths to which the name has gone. 

In the old days we gave everyone a name of God - everyone. Someone was Ram, 
someone was Narayan, someone was Krishna, someone was Vishnu, or something like 
that. 

They say all the Mohammedan names are the names of God - ALL the Mohammedan 
names! And all over the world that was the practice, to give a name which is really a 
name of God. 

This was for good reasons. One reason was this technique — because if your name can be 
used as a mantra it will serve you a double purpose. It will be YOUR name - and you 
have heard it so much, so many times, and all your life it has penetrated deep. Then also, 
it is the name of God. So go on repeating it inside, and suddenly you will become aware 
that "This name is different from me." Then by and by this name will have a sanctity of 
its own. You will remember any day that "Narayan" or "Ram," this is God's name. Your 
name has turned into a mantra. 

Use it! This is very good! You can try many things with your name. If you want to be 
awakened at five o’clock in the morning, no alarm is so exact as your own name. Just 
repeat thrice inside, "Ram, you have to be awake by five o’clock sharp." Repeat it three 
times, and then just fall asleep. You will be awakened at five o'clock because "Ram," 
YOUR name, is very deep in the unconscious. 

Call your name and tell yourself that "At five o'clock in the morning, let me be 
awakened." Someone WILL awaken you. And if you continue this practice, one day you 
will suddenly realize that at five o'clock someone calls you and says, "Ram, be awake." 
That is your unconscious calling you. 


This technique says, ENTER THE SOUND OF YOUR NAME AND, THROUGH THIS 
SOUND, ALL SOUNDS. Your name becomes just a door for all names. But enter the 



sound. First, when you repeat "Ram, Ram, Ram..." it is just a word. But it means 
something when you go on repeating "Ram, Ram, Ram..." 

You must have heard the story of Valmiki. He was given this mantra "Ram," but he was 
an ignorant man - uneducated, simple, innocent, childlike. He started repeating "Ram, 
Ram, Ram..." but he was repeating so much that he forgot completely and reversed the 
whole thing. Instead he was chanting "Mara, Mara..." He was chanting "Ram, Ram, 
Ram..." so fast that it became "Mara, Mara, Mara..." And he achieved the goal through 
"Mara, Mara, mara..." 

If you go on repeating the name fast inside, soon it will not be a word: it will become a 
sound, just meaningless. And then there is no difference between Ram and Mara - no 
difference! Whether you call Ram or Mara, it makes no sense, they are not words. It is 
just the sound, just the sound that matters. Enter the sound of your name. Forget the 
meaning of it, just enter the sound. Meaning is with the mind, sound is with the body. 
Meaning is in the head, sound spreads all over the body. So forget the meaning. Just 
repeat it as a meaningless sound, and through this sound you will enter all sounds. This 
sound will become the door to all sounds. 

And "all sounds" means all that exists. 

This is one of the basic tenets of Indian inner search, that the basic unit of the existence is 
sound and not electricity. Modern science says that the basic unit of the existence is 
electricity, not sound, but they also say that sound is a form of electricity. Indians, 
however, have always been saying that electricity is nothing but a form of sound. 

You may have heard that through a particular RAGA, a particular sound, fire can be 
created. It can be created - because this is the Indian idea, that sound is the basis of all 
electricity. So if you hit sound in a particular frequency, electricity will be created. 

On long bridges, if a military, is passing, they are not allowed to march because many 
times it has happened that because of their march the bridge falls. It is because of sound, 
not because of their weight. They will be passing anyhow, but if they pass marching, then 
the particular sound of their feet breaks the bridge. 

In old Hebrew history, the city of Jericho was very protected by great walls and it was 
impossible to break those walls by guns. But through a particular sound the walls were 
broken, and that sound was the secret of the breaking of those walls. If that sound is 
created before walls, the walls will give way. 

You have heard the story of Ali Baba: a particular sound and the rock moves. 

These are allegories. Whether they are right or not, one thing is certain: if you can create 
a particular sound so continuously that meaning is lost, mind is lost, the rock at your 
heart will be removed. 


THE END. 



Chapter 32: The path of surrender 


The first question: 

Question 1 

BELOVED MASTER, PLEASE EXPLAIN WHETHER THE TECHNIQUES YOU 
HAVE DISCUSSED SO FAR FROM VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA BELONG TO 
THE SCIENCE OF YOGA INSTEAD OF TO THE ACTUAL AND CENTRAL 
SUBJECT MATTER OF TANTRA. WHAT IS THE CENTRAL SUBJECT MATTER 
OF TANTRA? 

This question arises to many. The techniques that we have discussed also belong to yoga. 
They are the same techniques, but with a difference: you can use the same techniques 
with a very different philosophy behind them. The framework, the pattern differs, not the 
technique. You may have a different attitude toward life, just the contrary to tantra. 

Yoga believes in struggle; yoga is basically the path of will. Tantra does not believe in a 
struggle; tantra is not the path of will. Rather, on the contrary, tantra is the path of total 
surrender. Your will is not needed. For tantra your will is the problem, the source of all 
anguish. For yoga your surrender, your will-lessness is the problem. 

Because your will is weak, that is why you are in anguish, suffering - for yoga. For 
tantra, because you have a will, because you have an ego, an individuality, that is why 
you are suffering. Yoga says, bring your will to absolute perfection and you will be 
liberated. Tantra says, dissolve your will completely, become totally emptied of it, and 
that will be your liberation. 

And both are right; this creates the problem. For me, both are right. 

But the path of yoga is a very difficult one. It is just impossible, nearly impossible, that 
you can attain to the perfection of the ego. It means you become the center of the whole 
universe. The path is very long, arduous, and really, it never reaches to the end. So what 
happens to the followers of yoga? Somewhere on the path, in some life, they turn to 
tantra. 

Intellectually yoga is conceivable; existentially it is impossible. If it is possible you will 
reach by yoga also, but generally it never happens. Even if it happens, it happens very 
rarely, such as to a Mahavir. Sometimes centuries and centuries pass and then a man like 
Mahavir appears who has achieved through yoga. But he is rare, an exception, and he 
breaks the rule. 

But yoga is more attractive than tantra. Tantra is easy, natural, and you can attain through 
tantra very easily, very naturally, effortlessly. And because of this, tantra never appeals to 
you as much. Why? Anything that appeals to you appeals to your ego. Whatsoever you 
feel is going to fulfill your ego will appeal to you more. You are gripped in the ego; thus 
yoga appeals to you very much. 

Really, the more egoistic you are, the more yoga will appeal to you, because it is pure 
ego effort. The more impossible, the more it is appealing to the ego. That is why Mount. 

Everest has so much appeal. There is so much attraction to reach to the top of a 
Himalayan peak because it is so difficult. And when Hillary and Tensing reached Mount. 
Everest, they felt a very ecstatic moment. What was that? It was because the ego was 
fulfilled — they were the first. 

When the first man landed on the moon, can you imagine how he felt? He was the first in 



all history. And now he cannot be replaced; he will remain the first in all the history to 
come. Now there is no way to change his status. The ego is fulfilled deeply. There is no 
competitor now, and there cannot be. Many will land on the moon but they will not be the 
first. But many can land on the moon and many can go to Everest — yoga gives you a 
higher peak. And the more unreachable the end, the more there is the perfection of the 
ego — pure, perfect, absolute ego. 

Yoga would have appealed to Nietzsche very much because he felt that the energy which 
is working behind life is the energy of will — the will to power. Y oga gives you that 
feeling. You are more powerful through it. 

The more you can control yourself, the more you can control your instincts, the more you 
can control your body and the more you can control your mind, then the more you feel 
powerful. You become a master inside. But this is through conflict; this is through 
struggle and violence. And it always happens more or less that a person who has been 
practicing yoga for many lives comes to a point where the whole journey becomes drab, 
dreary, futile, because the more ego is fulfilled, the more you will feel it is useless. 

Then the follower of the path of yoga turns to tantra. 

But yoga appeals because everyone is an egoist. Tantra never appeals in the beginning. 
Tantra can appeal only to the higher depths — to those who have worked on themselves, 
who have really been struggling through yoga for many lives. Then tantra appeals to 
them because they can understand. Ordinarily you will not be attracted by tantra, and if 
you are attracted you will be attracted by the wrong reasons, so try to understand them 
also. 

You will not be attracted by tantra in the first place because it asks you to surrender, not 
to fight. It asks you to float, not to swim. It asks you to move with the current, not to go 
upstream. It tells you, nature is good; trust nature, do not fight it. Even sex is good. Trust 
it, follow it, flow into it; do not fight it. "no-fight" is the central teaching of tantra. Flow. 
Let go! It cannot appeal, there is no fulfillment of your ego through it. In the first step it 
asks for your ego to be dissolved, in the very beginning it asks you to dissolve it. 

Yoga also asks you, but at the end. First it will ask you to purify it. And if it is purified 
completely it dissolves, it cannot remain. But that is the last in yoga, and in tantra that is 
the first. 

So tantra will not appeal generally. And if it does appeal, it will appeal for wrong 
reasons. For example, if you want to indulge in sex then you can rationalize your 
indulgence through tantra. 

That can become the appeal. If you want to indulge in wine, in women, in other things, 
you can feel attracted toward tantra. But really, you are not attracted to tantra. Tantra is a 
facade — a trick. You are attracted to something else which you think tantra allows you. 
So tantra always appeals for wrong reasons. 

Tantra is not to help your indulgence, it is to transform it. So do not deceive yourself. 
Through tantra you can deceive yourself very easily, and because of this possibility of 
deception Mahavir would not describe tantra. This possibility is always there. And man is 
so deceptive that he can show one thing when he really means another, he can rationalize. 
For example, in China, in old China, there was something like tantra — a secret science. It 
is known as Tao. Tao has similar trends to tantra. For example, Tao says that it is good, if 
you want to be freed of sex, that you should not stick to one person — to one woman or 
one man. You should not stick to one person if you want to be freed. Tao says that it is 



better to go on changing partners. 

This is absolutely right, but you can rationalize it; you can deceive yourself. You may 
just be a sex maniac and you can think that "I am doing tantra practice, so I cannot stick 
to one woman. I have to change." And many emperors in China practiced it. They had big 
harems only for this. 

But Tao is meaningful if you look deep down into human psychology. 

If you know only one woman, sooner or later your attraction for that woman will wither 
away, but your attraction for women will remain. You will be attracted by the other sex. 
This woman, your wife, will really not be of the opposite sex. She will not attract you, 
she will not be a magnet for you. You will have become accustomed to her. 

Tao says that if a man moves amidst women, women, he will not only go beyond one, he 
will go beyond the opposite sex. The very knowledge of many women will help him to 
transcend. And this is right — but dangerous, because you would like it not because it is 
right but because it gives you license. That is the problem with tantra. 

So in China also that knowledge was suppressed; it had to be suppressed. In India tantra 
was also suppressed because it said many dangerous things - dangerous only because you 
are deceptive. Otherwise they are wonderful. Nothing has happened to the human mind 
that is more wonderful and mysterious than tantra; no knowledge is so deep. 

But knowledge always has its dangers. For example, now science has become a danger 
because it has come to know many deep secrets. Now it knows how to create atomic 
energy. Einstein is reported to have said that if he is again given a life, rather than being a 
scientist he would like to be a plumber, because as he looks back, his whole life has been 
futile — not only futile, but dangerous to humanity. 

And he has given one of the deepest secrets, but to a mankind which is self-deceptive. 

I wonder... the day may come soon when we will have to suppress scientific knowledge. 
There are rumors that there are secret thoughts amid scientists about whether to disclose 
more or not — whether they should stop the search or whether they should go further, 
because now it is dangerous ground. 

Every knowledge is dangerous; only ignorance is not dangerous, you cannot do much 
with it. Superstitions are always good — never dangerous. They are homeopathic. If the 
medicine is given to you, it is not going to hann you. Whether it is going to help you or 
not depends on your own innocence, but one thing is certain: it is not going to hann you. 
Homeopathy is harmless; it is a deep superstition. If it works, it can only help. 

Remember, if something can only help then it is deep superstition. If it can do both, help 
and hann, then only is it knowledge. A real thing can do both, help and harm. Only an 
unreal thing can just help. But then the help never comes from the thing, it is always a 
projection of your own mind. So, in a way, only illusory things are good; they never harm 
you. 

Tantra is science, and it is deeper than atomic knowledge because atomic science is 
concerned with matter and tantra is concerned with you, and you are always more 
dangerous than any atomic energy. 

Tantra is concerned with the biological atom, with you — the living cell; with life 
consciousness itself and how its inner mechanism works. 

That is why tantra became so much interested in sex. One who is interested in life and 
consciousness will automatically become interested in sex because sex is the source of 



life, of love, of all that is happening in the world of consciousness. So if a seeker is not 
interested in sex, he is not a seeker at all. He may be a philosopher, but he is not a seeker. 
And philosophy is, more or less, nonsense - thinking about things which are of no use. 

I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was interested in girls, but he had very bad luck with 
girls, no one would like him. He was going to meet a certain girl for the first time, so he 
asked a friend, "What is your secret? You are wonderful with women, you simply 
hypnotize them, and I am always a failure, so give me some clue. I am going on a date for 
the first time with a girl, so give me some secrets." 

The friend said, "Remember three things: always talk about food, family and 
philosophy." 

"Why about food?" Mulla asked. The friend said, "I talk about food because then the girl 
feels good - because every woman is interested in food. She is food for the child, for the 
whole humanity she is food, so she is basically interested in food." 

Mulla said, "Okay. And why family?" So the man said, "Talk about her family so your 
intentions look honorable." 


Then Mulla said, "And why about philosophy?" The man said, "Talk about philosophy. 
That makes the woman feel that she is intelligent." 

So Mulla rushed. Immediately, when he saw the girl, he said, "Hello, do you like 
noodles?" The girl was startled and said, "No!" 

Then the Mulla asked the second question: "Have you got two brothers?" The girl was 
even more startled and wondered, "What type of date is this?" She said, "No!" 

So for a moment Mulla was at a loss. He wondered, "How to start talking about 
philosophy?" Just for a moment he was at a loss, and then he asked, "Now, if you had a 
brother would he like noodles?" 

Philosophy is more or less nonsense. Tantra is not interested in philosophy; tantra is 
interested in actual existential life. So tantra never asks whether there is a God or whether 
there is MOKSHA, liberation, or whether there is hell or heaven. Tantra asks basic 
questions about life. That is why there is so much interest in sex and love. They are basic. 
YOU ARE through them; you are part of them. 

You are a play of sex energy and nothing less, and unless you understand this energy and 
transcend it you will never be anything more. You are, right now, nothing but sex energy. 
You can be more, but if you do not understand this and you do not transcend it you never 
will be more. The possibility is just there as a seed. 

That is why tantra is interested in sex, in love, in natural life. 

But the way to know it is not through conflict. Tantra says you cannot know anything if 
you are in a fighting mood because then you are not receptive. Then because you are 
fighting the secrets will be hidden from you — you are not open to receive. And whenever 
you are fighting you are always outside. If you are fighting sex you are always outside; if 
you surrender to sex you reach the very inner core of it; you are an insider. If you 
surrender; then many things become known. 

You have been in sex, but always with a fighting attitude behind it. That is why you have 
not known many secrets. For example, you have not known the life-giving forces of sex. 
You have not them known because you cannot know — that needs you to be an insider. 

If you are really flowing with sex energy, totally surrendered, sooner or later you will 
arrive at the point where you will know that sex cannot only give birth to a new life: sex 



can give you more life. To lovers sex can become a life-giving force, but for that you 
need a surrender. And once you are surrendered, many dimensions change. 

For example, tantra has known, Tao has known that if you ejaculate in the act, then it 
cannot be life-giving to you. There is no need to ejaculate; ejaculation can be totally 
forgotten. Tantra and Tao both say ejaculation is because you are lighting; otherwise 
there is no need of it. 


The lover and the beloved can be in a deep sexual embrace, just relaxing into each other 
with no hurry to ejaculate, with no hurry to end the affair. They can just relax into each 
other. And if this relaxation is total, they both will feel more life. They both will enrich 
each other. 

Tao says a man can live for one thousand years if he is not in any hurry with sex, if he is 
deeply relaxed. If a woman and man are deeply relaxed with each other, simply melting 
into each other, absorbed into each other, not in any hurry, not in any tension, many 
things happen — alchemical things happen — because the life juices of both, the 
electricity of both, the bio-energy of both, meet. And just by this meeting — because they 
are "anti"; one is negative, one is positive: they are anti-poles — Just by meeting with 
each other deeply, they invigorate each other, make each other vital, more alive. 

They can live for a long time, and they can live never becoming old. But this can only be 
known if you are not in a fighting mood. And this seems paradoxical. Those who are 
fighting sex, they will ejaculate sooner because the tense mind is in a hurry to be relieved 
of the tension. 

New research says many surprising things, many surprising facts. Masters and Johnson, 
they have worked scientifically for the first time with what happens in deep intercourse. 
They have come to realize that seventy-five percent of men are premature ejaculators — 
seventy-five percent Before there is a deep meeting they have ejaculated and the act is 
finished. 

And ninety percent of women never have any orgasm; they never reach to a peak, to a 
deep, fulfilling peak — ninety percent of women! 

That is why women are so angry and irritated, and they will remain so. No meditation can 
help them to be peaceful and no philosophy, no religion, no ethics will make them at ease 
with the men with whom they are living. They are in frustration, in anger, because 
modern science and old tantra both say that unless a woman is deeply fulfilled 
orgasmically she will be a problem in the family. That which she is lacking will create 
irritations and she will be always in a fighting mood. 

So if your wife is always in a fighting mood, think again about the whole thing. It is not 
simply the wife — you may be the cause. And because women are not achieving orgasm, 
they become anti-sex. They are not willing to go into sex easily. They have to be bribed; 
they are not ready to go into sex. Why should they be ready if they never achieve any 
deep bliss through it? Rather, they feel after it that the man has been using them, that they 
have been used. They feel like a thing which has been used and then discarded. 

The man is satisfied because be has ejaculated. Then he moves and goes to sleep, and the 
wife goes on weeping. She has been just used, and the experience has not been in any 
way fulfilling to her. It may have relieved her husband or lover or friend, but it has not 
been in any way fulfilling to her. 



Ninety percent of women do not even know what orgasm is. They have never known it; 
they have never reached a peak of such a blissful convulsion of the body that every fiber 
vibrates and every cell becomes alive. They have not reached it, and this is because of an 
anti-sexual attitude in the society. The fighting mind is there, and the woman is so 
repressed that she has become frigid. 

The man goes on doing the act as if it is a sin. He feels it as guilt: "It is not to be done." 
And while he is making love to his wife or beloved, he is thinking of some MAHATMA 
— so-called saint — of how to go to the mahatma and how to transcend this sex, this guilt, 
this sin. 

It is very difficult to get rid of the mahatmas, they are already there even while you are 
making love. You are not two; one mahatma must be there. If there is no mahatma, then 
God is watching you doing this sin. The concept of God in people's minds is just that of a 
Peeping Tom — he is always watching you. This attitude creates anxiety, and when 
anxiety is there ejaculation comes soon. 

When there is no anxiety, ejaculation can be postponed for hours — even for days. And 
there is no need of it. If the love is deep, both parties can invigorate each other. Then 
ejaculation completely ceases, and for years two lovers can meet with each other without 
any ejaculation, without any wastage of energy. 

They can just relax with each other. Their bodies meet and relax; they enter sex and 
relax. And sooner or later, sex will not be an excitement. It is an excitement right now. 
Then it is not an excitement, it is a relaxation, a deep let-go. 

But that can happen only if you have first surrendered inside to the life energy — the life 
force. Only then can you surrender to your lover or beloved. Tantra says, this happens, 
and it says how it can happen. 

Tantra says, never make love while you are excited. This seems very absurd because you 
want to make love when you are excited. And normally, both partners excite each other 
in order that they can make love. But tantra says that in excitement you are wasting 
energy. Make love while you are calm, serene, meditative. First meditate, then make 
love, and when making love do not go beyond the limit. What do I mean by "do not go 
beyond the limit"? Do not become excited and violent, in order that your energy will not 
be dispersed. 

If you see two persons making love you will feel that they are fighting. If small children 
sometimes see their father and mother making love, they think the father is going to kill 
the mother. It looks violent; it looks like a fight. It is not beautiful, it looks ugly. 

It must be more musical, harmonious. The two partners must be as if they are dancing, 
not fighting — as if singing one harmonious melody, just creating an atmosphere in which 
both may dissolve and become one. 

And then they relax. This is what tantra means. Tantra is not sexual at all, tantra is the 
least sexual thing and yet it has so much concern with sex. And if through this relaxation 
and let-go nature reveals to you its secrets, it is no wonder. Then you begin to be aware 
of what is happening. And in that awareness of what is happening many secrets come to 
your mind. 

Firstly, sex becomes life-giving. As it is now it is death giving, you are simply dying 
through it, wasting yourself, deteriorating. Secondly, it becomes the deepest natural 
meditation. Your thoughts cease completely. When you are totally relaxed with your 



lover, your thoughts cease. The mind is not there, only your heart beats. It becomes a 
natural meditation. And if love cannot help you into meditation, nothing will help, 
because everything else is just superfluous, superficial. If love cannot help, nothing will 
help! 

Love has its own meditation. But you do not know love; you know only sex and you 
know the misery of wasting energy. Then you get depressed after it. Then you decide to 
take a vow of BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy. And this vow is taken in depression, this 
vow is taken in anger, this vow is taken in frustration. It is not going to help. 

A vow can be helpful if taken in a very relaxed, deeply meditative mood. Otherwise you 
are simply showing your anger, your frustration and nothing else, and you will forget the 
vow within twenty-four hours. 

The energy will have come again, and just as an old routine you will have to release it. 
Tantra says, sex is very deep because it is life. But you can be interested in tantra for the 
wrong reasons. Do not be interested in tantra for wrong reasons, and then you will not 
feel that tantra is dangerous. Then tantra is life transforming. 

Some tantric methods have been used by yoga also, but with a conflict, a fighting 
attitude. Tantra uses the same methods, but with a very loving attitude — and that makes a 
great difference. The very quality of the technique changes. The technique becomes 
different because the whole background is different. 

It has been asked, "What is the central subject matter of tantra?" The answer is you! You 
are the central subject matter of tantra: what you are right now and what is hidden in you 
that can grow, what you are and what you can be. Right now you are a sex unit, and 
unless this unit is understood deeply you cannot become a spirit, you cannot become a 
spiritual unit. Sexuality and spirituality are two ends of one energy. 

Tantra starts with you as you are; yoga starts with what your possibility is. Yoga starts 
with the end; tantra starts with the beginning. And it is good to start with the beginning. It 
is always good to begin with the beginning, because if the end is made the beginning, 
then you are creating unnecessary misery for yourself. 

You are not the end — not the ideal. You have to become a god, the ideal, and you are 
just an animal. And this animal goes berserk because of the ideal of the god; it goes mad, 
it goes crazy. 

Tantra says, forget the god. If you are the animal, understand this animal in its totality. In 
that understanding itself, the god will grow. And if it cannot grow through that 
understanding then forget it, it can never be. Ideals cannot bring your possibilities out; 
only the knowledge of the real will help. So you are the central subject matter of tantra, 
as you are and as you can become, your actuality and your possibility — they are the 
subject matter. 

Sometimes people get worried. If you go to understand tantra God is not discussed, 
moksha — liberation — is not discussed, nirvana is not discussed. What type of religion is 
tantra? Tantra discusses things which make you feel disgusted, which you do not want to 
discuss. Who wants to discuss sex? Everyone thinks he knows about it. Because you can 
reproduce, you think you know. 

No one wants to discuss sex and sex is everyone's problem. No one wants to discuss love 
because everyone feels he is a great lover already. And look at your life! It is just hatred 
and nothing else. And whatsoever you call love is nothing but a relaxation, a little 
relaxation, of the hatred. Look around you, and then you will know what you know about 



love. 


Baal Shem, a fakir, went to his tailor every day for his robe, and the tailor took six 
months to make a simple robe for the fakir. The poor fakir! When the robe was ready and 
the tailor gave it to Baal Shem, Baal Shem said, "Tell me, even God had only six days to 
create the world. Within six days God created the whole world and you took six months 
to make this poor man’s robe?" 

Baal Shem remembered the tailor in his memoirs. The tailor said, "Yes, God created the 
world in six days, but look at the world, at what type of world it is. Yes, he created the 
world in six days, but look at the world!" 

Look around you; look at the world you have created. Then you will come to know that 
you do not know anything, you are just groping in the dark. And because everyone else is 
also groping in the dark, it cannot be that you are living in light. If everyone else is 
groping in the dark you feel good, because then you feel there is no comparison. 

But you are also in the dark, and tantra starts with you as you are. Tantra wants to 
enlighten you about basic things which you cannot deny. If you try to deny them, it is at 
your own cost. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

HOW CAN ONE CONVERT THE SEX ACT INTO A MEDITATIVE EXPERIENCE? 
SHOULD ONE PRACTICE ANY SPECIAL POSITIONS IN SEX? 

Positions are irrelevant; positions are not very meaningful. 

The real thing is the attitude - not the position of the body, but the position of the mind. 
But if you change your mind you may want to change your positions, because they are 
related. But they are not basic. 

For example, the man is always on the woman — on top of the woman. This is an egoist 
posture because the man always thinks he is better, superior, higher — how can he be 
below the woman? But all over the world in primitive societies the woman is above the 
man. So in Africa this posture is known as the missionary posture, because for the first 
time when missionaries — Christian missionaries — went to Africa, the primitives just 
could not understand what they were doing. They thought it would kill the woman. 

The man-on-top posture is known in Africa as the missionary posture. African primitives 
say this is violent that man should be on top of the woman. She is weaker, delicate, so she 
must be on top of the man. But it is difficult for man to think of himself as lower than 
woman, under her. 

If your mind changes, many things will change. It is better that the woman should be on 
top, for many reasons. If the woman is on top she will be passive, so she is not going to 
do much violence; she will simply relax. And the man under her cannot do much, he will 
have to relax. This is good. If he is on top he is going to be violent, he will do much. And 
nothing is needed to be done on her part. 

For tantra you have to relax, so it is good that the woman should be on top. She can relax 
better than any man. The feminine psychology is more passive, so relaxation comes easy. 
Positions will change, but do not be bothered about positions much. Just change your 
mind. Surrender to the life force, float in it. Sometimes, if you are really surrendered, 
your bodies will take the right position that is needed in that moment. If both partners are 



deeply surrendered, their bodies will take the right posture that is needed. 

Every day situations change, so there is no need to fix postures beforehand. That is a 
problem, that you try to fix it beforehand. Whenever you try to fix it, this is a fixing by 
the mind; then you are not surrendering. 

If you surrender then you let things take their own shape, and that is a wonderful 
hannony - when both partners have surrendered. They will take many postures or they 
will not take them and will just relax. That depends on the life force, not on your cerebral 
decision beforehand. You need not decide anything beforehand. Decision is the problem. 
Even to make love, you decide. Even to make love, you go and consult books. 

There are books on how to make love. This shows what type of human mind we have 
produced. You even consult books on how to make love. Then it becomes cerebral; you 
think everything. Really, you create a rehearsal in the mind and then you enact it. 

Your action is a copy; it is never real then. You are enacting a rehearsal. It becomes 
acting; it is not authentic. 

Just surrender and move with the force. What is the fear? Why be afraid? If you cannot 
be unafraid with your lover, then where will you be unafraid? And once you have the 
feeling that the life force helps by itself and takes the right path that is needed, it will give 
you a very basic insight into your whole life. Then you can leave your whole life to the 
divine. That is your beloved. 

Then you leave your whole life to the divine. Then you do not think and you do not plan; 
you do not force the future according to you. You just allow yourself to move into the 
future according to Him, according to the total. 

But how to make the sex act a meditation? Just by surrendering it becomes so. Do not 
think about it, let it happen. And be relaxed, do not move ahead. This is one of the basic 
problems with the mind: it always moves ahead. It is always seeking the result, and the 
result is in the future. You are never in the act; you are always in the future seeking a 
result. That seeking of a result is disturbing everything, it damages everything. 

Just be in the act. What is the future? It is to come; you need not worry about it. And you 
are not going to bring it with your worries. It is already coming; it has already come. So 
you forget about it, you just be here and now. 


Sex can become a deep insight in being here and now. That is, I think, the only act now 
left into which you can be here and now. You cannot be here and now while in your 
office; you cannot be here and now while you are studying in your college; you cannot be 
here and now anywhere in this modem world. Only in love can you be here and now. 

But even then you are not. You are thinking of the result. And now many modern books 
have created many new problems. You read a book on how to make love, and then you 
are afraid about whether you are making it rightly or wrongly. You read a book on how a 
posture is to be taken, or what type of posture is to be used, and then you are afraid about 
whether you are taking the right posture or not. 

Psychologists have created new worries in the mind. Now they say the husband must 
remember whether his wife is achieving orgasm or not, so he is worried over it. And this 
worry is not going to help in any way; it is going to become a hindrance. 

The wife is worried whether she is helping the husband to relax totally or not. She must 
show that she is feeling very blissful. Then everything becomes false. Both are worried 
about the result, and because of this worry the result will never come. 



Forget everything. Flow in the moment and allow your bodies their expression. Your 
bodies know well; they have their own wisdom. 

Your bodies are constituted of sex cells. They have a built-in program; you are not asked 
at all. Just leave it to the body and the body will move. This leaving it to nature together, 
both together, this let-go, will create meditation automatically. 

And if you can feel it in sex, then you know one thing: that whenever you surrender you 
will feel the same. Then you can surrender to a master. It is a love relationship. You can 
surrender to a master, and then while you are putting your head at his feet, your head will 
become empty. You will be in meditation. 

Then there is even no need of a master. Then go out and surrender to the sky. You know 
how to surrender — that is all. Then you can go and surrender to a tree. But it looks 
foolish because we do not know how to surrender. We see a person - a villager, a 
primitive man - going to the river, surrendering himself to the river, calling the river the 
Mother, the divine Mother, or surrendering himself to the rising sun, calling the rising 
sun a great god, or going to a tree and putting his head at the roots and surrendering. 

For us it looks superstitious. You say, "What nonsense he is doing! What will the tree 
do? What will the river do? They are not goddesses. What is the sun? The sun is not a 
god." Anything becomes a god if you can surrender. So your surrender creates divinity. 
There is nothing divine, there is only a surrendering mind which creates divinity. 


Surrender to a wife and she becomes divine. Surrender to a husband and he becomes 
divine. The divinity is revealed through surrender. Surrender to a stone and there is no 
stone now: that stone has become a statue, a person — alive. 

So just know how to surrender. And when I say "how" to surrender, I do not mean to 
know a technique; I mean you have a natural possibility of surrendering in love. 

Surrender in love and feel it there. And then let it spread all over your life. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

PLEASE EXPLAIN WHETHER THE ANAHAT NADA - SOUNDLESS SOUND - IS 
A TYPE OF SOUND OR WHETHER IT IS TOTAL SOUNDLESSNESS. AND ALSO 
EXPLAIN HOW THE STATE OF TOTAL SOUNDFULNESS CAN BE EQUAL TO 
TOTAL SOUNDLESSNESS. 

ANAHAT NADA is not a type of sound, it is soundlessness, but this soundlessness is 
heard. To express it is difficult because then the logical question arises of how 
soundlessness can be heard. 

Let me explain it.... I am sitting on this chair. If I go away from this chair, will you not 
see my absence in the chair? It cannot be seen by one who has not seen me sitting here, 
he will simply see the chair. But a moment before I was here and you have seen me 
sitting here. If I move away and you look at the chair, you will see two things: the chair 
and my absence. But that absence will be seen only if you have seen me and you have not 
forgotten me, that I was there. 


We are hearing sounds; we only know sounds. So when that soundlessness comes, anahat 
nada, we feel that every sound has disappeared and absence is felt. That is why it is 
called anahat nada. It is also called nada; ’nada’ means sound. But ANAHAT changes the 



quality of the sound. ’Anahat’ means uncreated, so it is uncreated sound. 

Every sound is a created sound. Whatsoever sounds you have heard, they are all created. 
That which is created will die. I can clap my hands — a sound is created. It was not there 
before and now it is no more; it was created and it has died. A created sound is known as 
AHAT NADA. Uncreated sound is known as ANAHAT NADA - the sound that is 
always. Which is that sound that is always? It is not really a sound. You call it a sound 
because the absence is heard. 

If you live by a railway station and one day the railway union goes on strike, you will 
hear something no one can hear. You will hear the absence of the trains coming and 
going and moving. 

I was traveling in the past for at least three weeks every month. In the beginning it was 
very difficult to sleep in the train, and then it became difficult to sleep at home. When I 
was no longer sleeping only in trains, the sound of the train was missed. Whenever I 
would reach home it would be difficult, because I would miss and I would feel the 
absence of the railway sounds. 

We are accustomed to sounds. 

Every moment is filled with sound. Our heads are constantly filled by sounds and sounds 
and sounds. When your mind goes away, moves up or down, goes beyond or below, 
when you are not in the world of sounds, you can hear the absence. That absence is 
soundlessness. 

But we have call it anahat nada. Because it is heard we call it nada — sound; and because 
it is not really a sound we call it anahat — uncreated. "Uncreated sound" is contradictory. 
Sound is created — "uncreated" contradicts. So all deep experiences of life have to be 
expressed in contradictory terms. 

If you go and ask a master like Eckhart or Jacob Boehme, or Zen masters like Hui Hai or 
Huang Po or Bodhidhanna or Nagarjuna, or Vedanta and the Upanishads, everywhere 
you will find two contradictory terms whenever a deeper experience is talked about. The 
Vedas say, "he is and He is not" — about God. 

You cannot find a more atheistic expression: "He is and he is not." he is far away and He 
is near. He is far away and he is also near. Why contradictory statements? The 
Upanishads say, "You cannot see him, but unless you see him you have not seen 
anything." What type of language is this? 

Lao Tsu says that "Truth cannot be said" — and he is saying it! This too is a saying. He 
says that "Truth cannot be said, if it is said it cannot be true," and then he writes a book 
and says something about the truth. 

It is contradictory. 

One student came to a great old sage. The student said, "If you can forgive me master, I 
want to relate to you something about myself. I have become an atheist; now I do not 
believe in God." 

So the old sage asked, "For how many days have you been studying scriptures? For how 
many days?" So the man, the seeker, the student said, "Nearabout twenty years I have 
been studying the Vedas - the scriptures." So the old man sighed and said, "Just twenty 
years and you have the nerve to say that you have become an atheist?" 

The student was puzzled. What was this old man saying? So he said, "I am puzzled. What 
are you saying? You make me more confused than when I came here." The old man said, 
"Go on studying the Vedas. In the beginning one says God is. Only in the end does one 



say God is not. To become an atheist you will have to travel much into theism. God is at 
the beginning; God is not at the end. Do not be in a hurry." The student was even more 
puzzled. 

"God is and God is not" has been uttered by those who know. "God is" is uttered by those 
who do not know and "God is not" is also uttered by those who do not know. Those who 
know, they utter both simultaneously: God is and God is not. 

"Anahat nada" is a contradictory term, but used with much consideration — with deep 
consideration. It is meaningful. It says that the phenomenon is felt as a sound and it is not 
a sound. 

It is felt as a sound because you have only felt sounds, you do not know any other 
language. You know only the language of sounds; that is why it is felt as sound. But it is 
silence, not sound. 

And the question fhrther says: EXPLAIN IN WHICH WAY THE STATE OF 
SOUNDFULNESS CAN BE EQUAL TO TOTAL SOUNDLESSNESS. It is always so. 
The zero and the absolute both mean the same! 

For example, if I have ajar which is completely empty and I have another jar which is 
completely filled, both are complete. One is completely empty, another is completely 
filled. But both are complete, both are perfect. If the jar is half-filled, it is half-filled and 
half-empty. You can call it half-empty, you can call it half-filled. But whether it is 
completely empty or completely filled, one thing is common to both: completeness! 
Soundlessness is complete. You cannot do anything more to make it more soundless. 
Understand this: it is complete, nothing can be done. You have come to a point beyond 
which there is no movement possible. And if a sound is total you cannot add anything to 
it. You have come to another limit; you cannot go beyond it. This is common and this is 
what is meant. 

One can say it is soundlessness because no sound is heard, everything has become absent. 
You cannot take anything further from it; it is complete. Or you can say it is a complete 
sound, a full sound, absolute sound; nothing can be added to it. 

But in both the cases the indication is for perfection, absoluteness, wholeness. 

It depends on the mind. There are two types of minds and two types of expressions. For 
example, if you ask Buddha, "What will happen in deep meditation? When one achieves 
SAMADHI what will happen?" he will say, "There will be no DUKKHA — there will be 
no pain." He will never say there will be bliss, he will simply say there will be no pain — 
just painlessness. If you ask Shankara, he will never talk about pain. He will simply say, 
"There will be bliss — absolute bliss." 

And both are expressing the same experience. Buddha saying "no pain" refers to the 
world. He says, "All the pains I have known are not there. And whatsoever is there, I 
cannot relate it in your language." 

Shankara says, "There is bliss, absolute bliss." He never talks about the world and its 
pain. He is not referring to your world; he is referring to the experience itself. He is 
positive; Buddha is negative. But their indications are toward the same moon. 

Their fingers are different, but what their fingers indicate is the same. 


THE END. 



Chapter 33: The spirituality of the trantic sex act 


AT THE START OF SEXUAL UNION KEEP ATTENTIVE ON THE FIRE IN THE 
BEGINNING, AND SO CONTINUING, AVOID THE EMBERS IN THE END. 

WHEN IN SUCH EMBRACE YOUR SENSES ARE SHAKEN AS LEAVES, ENTER 
THIS SHAKING. 

EVEN REMEMBERING UNION, WITHOUT THE EMBRACE, 

TRANSFORMATION. 

ON JOYOUSLY SEEING A LONG ABSENT FRIEND, PERMEATE THIS JOY. 
WHEN EATING OR DRINKING, BECOME THE TASTE OF FOOD OR DRINK, 

AND BE FILLED. 

Sigmund Freud has said somewhere that man is born neurotic. This is a half-truth. Man is 
not born neurotic, but he is bom in a neurotic humanity and the society around drives 
everyone neurotic sooner or later. Man is born natural, real, nonnal, but the moment the 
newborn becomes part of the society neurosis starts working. 

As we are, we are neurotic, and the neurosis consists of a split — a deep split. You are not 
one: you are two or even many. This has to be understood deeply; only then can we 
proceed in tantra. Your feeling and thinking have become two different things: this is the 
basic neurosis. Your thinking part and your feeling part have become two, and you are 
identified with the thinking part, not with the feeling part. And feeling is more real than 
thinking; feeling is more natural than thinking. You have come with a feeling heart, but 
thinking is cultivated; it is given by society. And your feeling has become a suppressed 
thing. 

Even when you say that you feel, you only think that you feel. The feeling has become 
dead, and this has happened for certain reasons. 

When a child is born, he is a feeling being: he feels things. He is not a thinking being yet. 
He is natural, just like anything natural in nature — just like a tree or like an animal. But 
we start molding him, cultivating. He has to suppress his feelings because without 
suppressing his feelings he is always in trouble. When he wants to cry he cannot cry 
because his parents will not approve of it. He will be condemned. He will not be 
appreciated, he will not be loved. He is not accepted as he is. He must behave: he must 
behave according to a particular ideology, ideals. Only then will he be loved. 

Love is not for him as he is. He can be loved only if he follows certain rules. Those rules 
are imposed; they are not natural. The natural being begins to become suppressed, and 
the unnatural, the unreal, is imposed over it. This unreal is your mind, and a moment 
comes when the split is so great that you cannot bridge it. You go on forgetting 
completely what your real nature was — or is. You are a false face; the original face is 
lost. And you are also afraid to feel the original, because the moment you feel it the 
whole society will be against you. So you yourself are against your real nature. 

This creates a very neurotic state. 

You do not know what you want; you do not know what are your real, authentic needs. 
And then you go on after non-authentic needs because only the feeling heart can give you 
the sense, the direction, of what are your real needs. When they are suppressed you create 
symbolic needs. For example, you may go on eating more and more, stuffing yourself 



with food, and you may never feel that you are filled. The need is for love; it is not for 
food. But food and love are deeply related, so when the need for love is not felt, or is 
suppressed, a false need for food is created and you can go on eating. Because the need is 
false, it can never be fulfilled, and we live in false needs. That is why there is no 
fulfillment. 

You want to be loved; that is a basic need — natural. But it can be diverted into a false 
dimension. For example, the love need, the need to be loved, can be felt as a false need if 
you try to divert the attention of others to yourself. You want that others should pay 
attention to you, so you may become a political leader. Great crowds may pay attention to 
you, but the real basic need is to be loved. And even if the whole world is paying 
attention to you, that basic need cannot be fulfilled. That basic need can be fulfilled even 
by a single person loving you, paying attention to you because of love. 

When you love someone, you pay attention to him. Attention and love are deeply related. 

If you suppress the need for love, then it becomes a symbolic need; then you need the 
attention of others. You may get it, but then too there will be no fulfillment. The need is 
false, disconnected from the natural, basic need. This division in the personality is 
neurosis. 

Tantra is a very revolutionary concept — the oldest and yet the newest. Tantra is one of 
the oldest traditions and yet non-traditional, even anti-traditional, because tantra says 
unless you are whole and one you are missing life altogether. You should not remain in a 
split state: you must become one. What to do to become one? You can go on thinking, 
but that is not going to help because thinking is the technique to divide. Thinking is 
analytical. It divides; it splits things. Feeling unites, synthesizes, makes things one. So 
you can go on thinking, reading, studying, contemplating. It is not going to help unless 
you fall back to the feeling center. But it is very difficult, because even when we think 
about the feeling center, WE THINK! 

When you say to someone, "I love you," be aware of whether it is just a thought or 
whether it is a feeling. If it is just a thought, then you are missing something. A feeling is 
of the whole: your whole body, mind, everything you are, is involved. In thinking, only 
your head is involved, and that too not totally, but just a fragment of it. There is only a 
passing thought; it may not be there the next moment. 

Only a fragment is involved, and that creates much misery in life — because with a 
fragmentary thought, you give promises which you cannot fulfill. You can say, "I love 
you and I will love you forever." However, the second part is a promise which you 
cannot fulfill because it is given by a fragmentary thought. Your whole being is not 
involved in it. And what will you do tomorrow when the fragment has gone and the 
thought is no more there? Now the promise will become a bondage. 

Sartre said somewhere that every promise is going to be false. You cannot promise 
because you are not whole. Just a part of you promises, and when the part is no more 
there on the throne and another part has taken over, what are you going to do? Who will 
fulfill the promise? Hypocrisy is bom because when you go on trying to fulfill, 
pretending that you are fulfilling, then everything becomes false. Tantra says fall down 
deep within to the feeling center. What to do and how to fall back? Now I will enter the 
sutras. These sutras, each sutra, is an effort to make you whole. 


The first sutra: 



"AT THE START OF SEXUAL UNION KEEP ATTENTIVE ON THE FIRE IN THE 
BEGINNING, AND SO CONTINUING, AVOID THE EMBERS IN THE END." 

Sex can be a very deep fulfillment, and sex can throw you back to your wholeness, to 
your natural, real being, for many reasons. Those reasons have to be understood. 

One, sex is a total act. You are thrown off your mind, off balance. That is why there is so 
much fear of sex. You are identified with the mind, and sex is a no-mind act. You 
become headless; you do not have any head in the act. There is no reasoning, no mental 
process. And if there is any mental process, there is no real, authentic sex act. Then there 
is no orgasm, no fulfillment. Then the sex act itself becomes a local thing, something 
cerebral, and it has become so. 

All over the world, so much hankering, so much lust for sex, is not because the world has 
become more sexual. It is because you cannot even enjoy sex as a total act. The world 
was more sexual before. That is why there was no such hankering for sex. This hankering 
shows that the real is missing and there is only the false. The whole modern mind has 
become sexual because the sex act itself is no more there. Even the sex act is transferred 
to the mind. It has become mental; you think about it. 

Many people come to me: they say they go on thinking about sex; they enjoy thinking 
about it, reading, seeing pictures, pornography. They enjoy this, but when the actual 
moment for sex comes they suddenly feel they are not interested. They even feel they 
have become impotent. They feel vital energy when they are thinking. When they want to 
move into the actual act, they feel there is no energy, even no desire. 

They feel that the body has become dead. 

What is happening to them? Even the sex act has become mental. They can only think 
about it; they cannot do it because doing will involve their whole being. And whenever 
there is any involvement of the whole, the head becomes uneasy because then it can no 
more be the master; it can no more be in control. 

Tantra uses the sex act to make you whole, but then you have to move in it very 
meditatively. Then you have to move in it forgetting all that you have heard about sex, 
studied about sex, all that the society has told you: the church, your religion, the teachers. 
Forget everything and get involved in it in your totality. Forget to control! Control is the 
barrier. Rather, be possessed by it; do not control it. Move in it as if you have become 
mad. The "no-mind" state looks like madness. Become the body, become the animal, 
because the animal is whole. And as modem man is, only sex seems to be the easiest 
possibility to make you whole because sex is the deepest, the biological center within 
you. You are born out of it. Your every cell is a sex cell; your whole body is a sex-energy 
phenomenon. 

This first sutra says, "AT THE START OF SEXUAL UNION KEEP ATTENTIVE ON 
THE FIRE IN THE BEGINNING, AND SO CONTINUING, AVOID THE EMBERS IN 
THE END." And this makes the whole difference. For you, the sex act is a release. So 
when you move in it you are in a hurry. 

You just want a release. Overflowing energy will be released; you will feel at ease. This 
at-easeness is just a sort of weakness. Overflowing energy creates tensions, excitement. 
You feel something has to be done. When the energy is released, you feel weak. You may 
take this weakness as relaxation. Because the excitement is no more, the overflowing 
energy is no more, you can relax. But this relaxation is a negative relaxation. If you can 



relax just by throwing energy, it is at a very great cost. And this relaxation can only be 
physical. It cannot go deeper and cannot become spiritual. 

This first sutra says don’t be in a hurry and do not hanker for the end: remain with the 
beginning. There are two parts to the sex act — the beginning and the end. Remain with 
the beginning. The beginning part is more relaxed, wann. But do not be in a hurry to 
move to the end. Forget the end completely. 

"At the start of sexual union, keep attentive on the fire in the beginning." While you are 
overflowing, do not think in terms of release: remain with this overflowing energy. Do 
not seek ejaculation: forget it completely. Be whole in this wann beginning. Remain with 
your beloved or your lover as if you have become one. Create a circle. 

There are three possibilities. Two lovers meeting can create three figures — geometrical 
figures. You may have even read about it or even seen an old alchemical picture in which 
a man and woman are standing naked within three geometrical figures. 

One figure is a square, another figure is a triangle and the third figure is a circle. 

This is one of the old alchemical and tantric analyses of the sex act. Ordinarily, when you 
are in the sex act, there are four persons, not two, and this is a square: four angles are 
there because you yourself are divided in two — into the thinking part and the feeling 
part. Your partner is also divided in two; you are four persons. Two persons are not 
meeting there, four persons are meeting. It is a crowd, and there can be no deep meeting 
really. There are four corners, and the meeting is just false. It looks like a meeting, but it 
is not. There can be no communion because your deeper part is hidden and your 
beloved's deeper part is also hidden. And only two heads are meeting, only two thinking 
processes are meeting — not two feeling processes. They are hidden. 

The second type of meeting can be like a triangle. You are two — two angles of the base. 
For a sudden moment you become one, like the third angle of the triangle. For a sudden 
moment your two-ness is lost and you become one. This is better than a square meeting 
because at least for a single moment there is oneness. That oneness gives you health, 
vitality. You feel alive and young again. 

But the third is the best and the third is the tantric meeting: you become a circle. There 
are no angles, and the meeting is not for a single moment. 

The meeting is really non-temporal; there is no time in it. And this can happen only if 
you are not seeking ejaculation. If you are seeking ejaculation, then it will become a 
triangle meeting — because the moment there is ejaculation the contact point is lost. 
Remain with the beginning; do not move to the end. How to remain in the beginning? 
Many things are to be remembered. First, don't take the sex act as a way of going 
anywhere. Don’t take it as a means: it is the end in itself. There is no end to it; it is not a 
means. Secondly, do not think of the future; remain with the present. And if you cannot 
remain in the present in the beginning part of the sex act, then you can never remain in 
the present — because the very nature of the act is such that you are thrown into the 
present. 

Remain in the present. Enjoy the meeting of two bodies, two souls, and merge into each 
other, melt into each other. Forget that you are going anywhere. Remain in the moment 
going nowhere, and melt. Warmth, love, should be made a situation for two persons to 
melt into each other. That is why, if there is no love, the sex act is a hurried act. You are 
using the other; the other is just a means. And the other is using you. You are exploiting 
each other, not merging into each other. With love you can merge. This merging in the 



beginning will give many new insights. 

If you are not in a hurry to finish the act, the act, by and by, becomes less and less sexual 
and more and more spiritual. 

Sex organs also melt into each other. A deep, silent communion happens between two 
body energies, and then you can remain for hours together. This togetherness moves 
deeper and deeper as time passes. But don’t think. Remain with the moment deeply 
merged. It becomes an ecstasy, a samadhi, cosmic consciousness. And if you can know 
this, if you can feel and realize this, your sexual mind will become non-sexual. A very 
deep BRAHMACHARYA, CELIBACY, can be attained. Celibacy can be attained 
through it! 

This looks paradoxical because we have been always thinking in terms that if a person 
has to remain celibate he must not look at the other sex, he must not meet the other sex. 
He must avoid, escape. A very false celibacy happens then: the mind goes on thinking 
about the other sex. And the more you escape from the other, the more you have to think, 
because this is a basic, deep need. 

Tantra says do not try to escape; there is no escape possible. Rather, use nature itself to 
transcend. Don’t fight: accept nature in order to transcend it. If this communion with your 
beloved or your lover is prolonged with no end in mind, then you can just remain in the 
beginning. Excitement is energy. You can lose it; you can come to a peak. Then the 
energy is lost and a depression will follow, a weakness will follow. You may take it as 
relaxation, but it is negative. 

Tantra gives you a dimension of a higher relaxation which is positive. 

Both partners melting with each other give vital energy to each other. They become a 
circle, and their energy begins to move in a circle. They are giving life to each other, 
renewing life. No energy is lost. Rather, more energy is gained because through the 
contact with the opposite sex your every cell is challenged, excited. And if you can 
merge into that excitement without leading it to a peak, if you can remain in the 
beginning without becoming hot, just remaining warm, then those two "warmths" will 
meet and you can prolong the act for a very long time. With no ejaculation, with no 
throwing energy out, it becomes a meditation, and through it you become whole. 

Through it your split personality is no more split: it is bridged. 

All neurosis is a "splitness." If you are bridged again, you become again a child — 
innocent. And once you know this innocence you can go on behaving in your society as it 
requires. But now this behavior is just a drama, an acting. You are not involved in it. It is 
a requirement, so you do it. But you are not in it; you are just acting. 

You will have to use unreal faces because you live in an unreal world; otherwise the 
world will crush you and kill you. We have killed many real faces. We crucified Jesus 
because he started behaving like a real man. The unreal society will not tolerate it. We 
poisoned Socrates because he started behaving like a real man. 

Behave as the society requires; do not create unnecessary troubles for yourself and 
others. But once you know your real being and the wholeness, the unreal society cannot 
drive you neurotic; it cannot make you mad. 

"AT THE START OF SEXUAL UNION KEEP ATTENTIVE ON THE FIRE IN THE 
BEGINNING, AND SO CONTINUING, AVOID THE EMBERS IN THE END". IF 
ejaculation is there, energy is dissipated. Then there is no more fire. You are simply 



relieved of your energy without gaining anything. 


The second sutra: 

"WHEN IN SUCH EMBRACE YOUR SENSES ARE SHAKEN AS LEAVES, ENTER 
THIS SHAKING." 

When in such embrace, in such deep communion with the beloved or the lover, your 
senses are shaken as leaves, enter this shaking. We have even become afraid: while 
making love you do not allow your bodies to move much, because if your bodies are 
allowed much movement the sex act spreads all over your body. You can control it when 
it is localized at the sex center. The mind can remain in control. When it spreads all over 
your body, you cannot control it. You may start shaking, you may start screaming, and 
you will not be able to control your body once the body takes over. 

We suppress movements. Particularly, all over the world, we suppress all movements, all 
shaking for women. They remain just like dead bodies. You are doing something to them; 
they are not doing anything to you. 

They are just passive partners. Why is this happening? Why all over the world do men 
suppress women in such a way? There is fear — because once a woman's body becomes 
possessed, it is very difficult for a man to satisfy her: because a woman can have chain 
orgasms; a man cannot have. A man can have only one orgasm; a woman can have chain 
orgasms. There are cases of multiple orgasms reported. Any woman can have at least 
three orgasms in a chain, but man can have only one. And with man’s orgasm, the woman 
is aroused and is ready for further orgasms. Then it is difficult. Then how to manage it? 
She needs another man immediately, and group sex is a taboo. All over the world we 
have created monogamous societies. We seem to feel that it is better to suppress the 
woman. So, really, eighty to ninety percent of women never know what orgasm is. They 
can give birth to children; that is another thing. They can satisfy the man; that is also 
another thing. But they themselves are never satisfied. So if you see such bitterness in 
women all over the world — sadness, bitterness, frustration — it is natural. Their basic 
need is not fulfilled. 

Shaking is just wonderful because when you shake in your sex act the energy starts 
flowing all over the body, the energy vibrates all over the body. Every cell of the body is 
involved then. Every cell becomes alive because every cell is a sex cell. 


When you were born, two sex cells met and your being was created, your body was 
created, those two sex cells are everywhere in your body. They have multiplied and 
multiplied and multiplied, but your basic unit remains the sex cell. When you shake all 
over your body, it is not only a meeting of you with your beloved. Within your body also, 
each cell is meeting with the opposite cell. This shaking shows it. It will look animal-like, 
but man IS an animal and there is nothing wrong in it. 

This second sutra says, "WHEN IN SUCH EMBRACE YOUR SENSES ARE SHAKEN 
AS LEAVES..." A great wind is blowing and a tree is shaking. Even the roots are 
shaking, every leaf is shaking. Just be like a tree. A great wind is blowing, and sex IS a 
great wind — a great energy blowing through you. Shake! Vibrate! Allow every cell of 
your body to dance, and this should be for both. The beloved is also dancing, every cell 
vibrating. Only then can you both meet, and then that meeting is not mental. It is a 
meeting of your bio-energies. 



Enter this shaking, and while shaking don't remain aloof. Don’t be a spectator, because 
mind is the spectator. Don’t stand aloof! Be the shaking, become the shaking. Forget 
everything and become the shaking. It is not that your body is shaking: it is YOU, your 
whole being. You become the shaking itself. Then there are not two bodies, two minds. 
In the beginning, there are two shaking energies, and in the end just a circle — not two. 


What will happen in this circle? One, you will be part of an existential force — not a 
societal mind, but an existential force. You will be part of the whole cosmos. In that 
shaking you will be part of the whole cosmos. That moment is of great creation. You are 
dissolved as solid bodies. You have become liquid — flowing into each other. The mind is 
lost, the division is lost. You have a oneness. 

This is ADVAITA, this is non-duality. And if you cannot feel this non-duality, then all 
the philosophies of non-duality are useless. They are just words. Once you know this 
non-dual existential moment, then only can you understand the Upanishads. Then only 
you can understand the mystics — what they are talking about when they talk of a Cosmic 
oneness, a wholeness. Then you are not separate from the world, not alien to it. Then the 
existence becomes your home. And with that feeling that "Now I am at home in the 
existence," all worries are lost. Then there is no anguish, no struggle, no conflict. This is 
what Lao Tzu calls Tao, what Shankara calls ADVAITA. You can choose your own 
word for it, but through a deep love embrace it is easy to feel it. But be alive, shaking, 
and become the shaking itself. 

The third sutra: 

"EVEN REMEMBERING UNION, WITHOUT THE EMBRACE, THE 
TRANSFORMATION ! ’’ 

Once you know this, even the partner is not needed. 

You can simply remember the act and enter into it. But first you must have the feeling. If 
you know the feeling, you can enter into the act without the partner. This is a little 
difficult, but it happens. And unless it happens, you go on being dependent, a dependency 
is created. For so many reasons it happens. If you have had the feeling, if you have 
known the moment when you were not there but only a vibrating energy had become one 
and there was a circle with the partner, in that moment there was no partner. In that 
moment only you are, and for the partner you are not: only he or she is. That oneness is 
centered within you; the partner is no more there. And it is easier for women to have this 
feeling because they are always making love with closed eyes. 

During this technique, it is good if you have your eyes closed. Then only an inner feeling 
of a circle, only an inner feeling of oneness, is there. Then just remember it. Close your 
eyes; lie down as if you are with your partner. Just remember and start feeling it. Your 
body will begin to shake and vibrate. Allow it! Forget completely that the other is not 
there. Move as if the other is present. Only in the beginning is it "as if." Once you know, 
then it is not "as if," then the other is there. 

Move as if you are actually going into the love act. Do whatsoever you would have done 
with your partner. Scream, move, shake. 


Soon the circle will be there, and this circle is miraculous. Soon you will feel that the 
circle is created, but now this circle is not created with a man and woman. If you are man, 



then the whole universe has become woman; if you are woman, then the whole universe 
has become man. Now you are in a deep communion with the existence itself, and the 
door, the other, is no more there. 

The other is simply a door. While making love to a woman, you are really making love to 
existence itself. The woman is just a door, the man is just a door. The other is just a door 
for the whole, but you are in such a hurry you never feel it. If you remain in communion, 
in deep embrace for hours together, you will forget the other and the other will just 
become an extension of the whole. Once this technique is known you can use it alone, 
and when you can use it alone it gives you a new freedom — freedom from the other. 

It really happens that the whole existence becomes the other — your beloved, your lover 
— and then this technique can be used continuously, and one can remain in constant 
communion with the existence. And then you can do it in other dimensions also. Walking 
in the morning, you can do it. Then you are in communion with the air, with the rising 
sun and the stars and the trees. Staring at the stars in the night, you can do it. Looking at 
the moon, you can do it. You can be in the sex act with the whole universe once you 
know how it happens. 


But it is good to start with human beings because they are nearest to you — the nearest 
part of the universe. But they are dispensable. You can take a jump and forget the door 
completely - "EVEN REMEMBERING UNION, THE TRANSFORMATION" - and 
you WILL be transformed, you will become new. 

Tantra uses sex as a vehicle. It is energy; it can be used as a vehicle. It can transform you, 
and it can give you transcendental states. But as we are using sex, it looks difficult for us 
— because we are using it in a very wrong way, and the wrong way is not natural. Even 
animals are better than us: they are using it in a natural way. Our ways are perverted. 
Constant hammering on the human mind that sex is sin has created a deep barrier within 
you. You never allow yourself a total let-go. Something is always standing aloof 
condemning, even for the new generation. They may say they are not burdened, obsessed, 
that sex is not a taboo for them, but you cannot unburden your unconscious so easily. It 
has been built over centuries and centuries; the whole human past is there. So while you 
may not be condemning it as sin consciously, the unconscious is there constantly 
condemning it. You are never totally in it. Something is always left out. That left-out part 
creates the split. 

Tantra says move in it totally. Just forget yourself, your civilization, your religion, your 
culture, your ideology. 

Forget everything. Just move in the sex act: move in it totally; do not leave anything out. 
Become absolutely non-thinking. Only then does the awareness happen that you have 
become one with someone. And this feeling of oneness can then be detached from the 
partner and it can be used with the whole universe. You can be in a sex act with a tree, 
with the moon, with anything. Once, you know how to create this circle, it can be created 
with anything — even without anything. 

You can create this circle within yourself because man is both man and woman, and 
woman is both woman and man. You are both because you were created by two, You 
were created by man and woman both, so half of you remains the other. You can forget 
everything completely, and the circle can be created within you. Once the circle is 
created within you — your man is meeting your woman, the inner woman is meeting the 



inner man — you are in an embrace within yourself. And only when this circle is created 
is real celibacy attained. Otherwise all celibacies are just perversions, and then they 
create their own problems. When this circle is created inside, you are freed. 

This is what tantra says: "Sex is the deepest bondage, yet it can be used as a vehicle for 
the highest freedom." Tantra says poison can be used as medicine, but wisdom is needed. 
So do not condemn anything. Rather, use it. And do not be against anything. 

Find out ways how it can be used and transfonned. Tantra is a deep, total acceptance of 
life. It is the only approach of its kind. All over the world, in all the centuries that have 
gone by, tantra is unique. It says don’t throw anything and don’t be against anything and 
don’t create any conflict, because with any conflict you will be destructive with yourself. 
All the religions are against sex, afraid of it, because it is such a great energy. Once you 
are in it you are no more, and then the current will take you anywhere. That is why the 
fear. So create a barrier in which you and the current become two, and do not allow this 
vital energy to have any possession over you: be the master of it. 

Only tantra says that this mastery is going to be false, diseased, pathological, because you 
cannot really be divided with this current. You are it! So all divisions will be false, 
arbitrary, and basically, no division is possible because you are the current — a part and 
parcel of it, just a wave in it. You can become frozen and you can separate yourself from 
the current, but that frozenness will be deadness. And humanity has become dead. No one 
is really alive; you are just dead weights floating in the stream. Melt! 

Tantra says try to melt. Do not become like icebergs: melt and become one with the river. 
Becoming one with the river, feeling one with the river, merging in the river, be aware 
and there will be transformation. 

There IS transformation. Transformation is not through conflict; it is through awareness. 
These three techniques are very, very scientific, but then sex becomes something other 
than what you know. Then it is not a temporary relief; then it is not throwing energy out. 
Then there is no end to it. It becomes a meditative circle. 

A few more related techniques: 

"ON JOYOUSLY SEEING A LONG ABSENT FRIEND, PERMEATE THIS JOY." 
Enter this joy and become one with it — any joy, any happiness. This is just an example: 
"On joyously seeing a long absent friend..." Suddenly you see a friend you have not seen 
for many, many days or many, many years. A sudden joy grips you. But your attention 
will be on the friend, not on your joy. Then you are missing something, and this joy will 
be momentary. Your attention is focused on the friend: you will start talking, 
remembering things, and you will miss this joy and this joy will go. 

When you see a friend and suddenly feel a joy arising in your heart, concentrate on this 
joy. Feel it and become it, and meet the friend while being aware and filled with your joy. 
Let the friend be just on the periphery, and you remain centered in your feeling of 
happiness. 

This can be done in many other situations. The sun is rising, and suddenly you feel 
something rising within you. Then forget the sun; let it remain on the periphery. 

You be centered in your own feeling of rising energy. The moment you look at it, it will 
spread. It will become your whole body, your whole being. And do not just be an 
observer of it; merge into it. There are very few moments when you feel joy, happiness, 



bliss, but you go on missing them because you become object-centered. 

Whenever there is joy, you feel that it is coming from without. You have met a friend: of 
course, it appears that the joy is coming from your friend, from seeing him. That is not 
the actual case. The joy is always within you. The friend has just become a situation. The 
friend has helped it to come out, has helped you to see that it is there. And this is not only 
with joy, but with everything: with anger, with sadness, with misery, with happiness, 
with everything, it is so. Others are only situations in which things that are hidden in you 
are expressed. They are not causes; they are not causing something in you. Whatsoever is 
happening, is happening TO YOU. It has always been there; it is only that meeting with 
this friend has become a situation in which whatsoever was hidden has come out in the 
open — has come out. From the hidden sources it has become apparent, manifest. 
Whenever this happens remain centered in the inner feeling, and then you will have a 
different attitude about everything in life. 

Even with negative emotions, do this. When you are angry, do not be centered on the 
person who has aroused it. 

Let him be on the periphery. You just become anger. Feel anger in its totality; allow it to 
happen within. Don’t rationalize; don’t say that this man has created it. Do not condemn 
the man. He has just become the situation. And feel grateful towards him that he has 
helped something which was hidden to come into the open. He has hit you somewhere, 
and a wound was there hidden. Now you know it, so become the wound. 

With negative or positive, with any emotion, use this, and there will be a great change in 
you. If the emotion is negative, you will be freed of it by being aware that it is within 
you. If the emotion is positive, you will become the emotion itself. If it is joy, you will 
become joy. If it is anger, the anger will dissolve. 

And this is the difference between negative and positive emotions: if you become aware 
of a certain emotion, and by your becoming aware the emotion dissolves, it is negative. If 
by your becoming aware of a certain emotion you then become the emotion, if the 
emotion then spreads and becomes your being, it is positive. Awareness works differently 
in both cases. If it is a poisonous emotion, you are relieved of it through awareness. If it 
is good, blissful, ecstatic, you become one with it. Awareness deepens it. 

So to me this is the criterion: if something is deepened by your awareness, it is something 
good. If something is dissolved through awareness, it is something bad. 

That which cannot remain in awareness is sin and that which grows in awareness is 
virtue. Virtue and sin are not social concepts, they are inner realizations. 

Use your awareness. It is just as if there is darkness and you bring in light: the darkness 
will be no more there. Just by bringing light in, the darkness is no more there, because, 
really, it was not. It was negative, just an absence of light. But many things will become 
manifest which are there. Just by bringing in light, these shelves, these books, these 
walls, will not disappear. In darkness they were not; you could not see them. If you bring 
light in, darkness will be no more there, but that which is real will be revealed. Through 
awareness all that is negative like darkness will dissolve — hatred, anger, sadness, 
violence. Then love, joy, ecstasy, will, for the first time, become revealed to you. So, 

"ON JOYOUSLY SEEING A LONG ABSENT FRIEND, PERMEATE THIS JOY.” 

The fifth technique: 

’’WHEN EATING OR DRINKING, BECOME THE TASTE OF THE FOOD OR 
DRINK, AND BE FILLED.” 



We go on eating things; we cannot live without them. But we eat them very 
unconsciously, automatically, robot-like. If the taste is not lived, you are just stuffing. Go 
slow, and be aware of the taste. And only when you go slow can you be aware. Do not 
just go on swallowing things. Taste them unhurriedly and become the taste. 

When you feel sweetness, become that sweetness. And then it can be felt all over the 
body — not just in the mouth, not just on the tongue, it can be felt all over the body! A 
certain sweetness — or anything else — is spreading in ripples. Whatsoever you are eating, 
feel the taste and become the taste. 

This is how tantra appears to be quite the contrary from other traditions. Jainas say, "No 
taste — AS WAD." Mahatma Gandhi had it as a rule in his ashram — "AS WAD: do not 
taste anything. Eat, but do not taste; forget the taste. Eating is a necessity, but do it in a 
mechanical way. Taste is desire, so do not taste." Tantra says taste it as much as possible; 
be more sensitive, alive. And not only be sensitive — become the taste. 

With ASWAD, with no taste, your senses will be deadened. They will become less and 
less sensitive. And with less sensitivity, you will not be able to feel your body, you will 
not be able to feel your feelings. Then you will just remain centered in the head. This 
centeredness in the head is the split. Tantra says do not create any division within 
yourself. It is beautiful to taste; it is beautiful to be sensitive. And if you are more 
sensitive you will be more alive, and if you are more alive, then more life will enter your 
inner being. You will be more open. 

You can eat things without tasting; it is not difficult. You can touch someone without 
touching; it is not difficult. 

We are already doing it. You shake hands with someone without touching him because to 
touch, you have to come to the hand, you have to move to the hand. You have to become 
your fingers and your palm as if you, your soul, have come to the hand. Only then can 
you touch. You can take someone's hand in your hand and withdraw. You can withdraw; 
then the dead hand is there. It appears to be touching, but it is not touching. 

We are not touching! We are afraid to touch somebody because symbolically touch has 
become sexual. You may be standing in a crowd, in a tram, in a railway compartment, 
touching many persons, but you are not touching them and they are not touching you. 
Only bodies are there in contact, but you are withdrawn. And you can feel the difference: 
if you really touch someone in the crowd, he will feel offended. Your body can touch, but 
you must not move in that body. You must remain aloof — as if not in the body, as if 
there is only a dead body touching. 

This insensitivity is bad. It is bad because you are defending yourself against life. You 
are so much afraid of death, and you are already dead. You need not really be afraid 
because no one is going to die; you are already dead. And that is why you are afraid — 
because you have not lived. You have been missing life and death is coming. 

A person who is "alive" will not be afraid of death because he is living. 

When you are really living there is no fear of death. You can even live death. When death 
comes, you will be so sensitive to it that you will enjoy it. It is going to be a great 
experience. If you are alive you can even live death, and then death is no more there. If 
you can even live death, if you can even be sensitive to your dying body as you are 
withdrawing to the center and dissolving, if you can live even this, then you have become 
deathless. 



"WHEN EATING OR DRINKING, BECOME THE TASTE OF THE FOOD OR 
DRINK, AND BE FILLED BY THE TASTE:" When drinking water, feel the coolness. 
Close your eyes, drink it slowly, taste it. Feel the coolness and feel that you have become 
that coolness, because the coolness is being transferred to you from the water; it is 
becoming a part of your body. Your mouth is touching, your tongue is touching, and the 
coolness is transferred. Allow it to happen to the whole of your body. Allow its ripples to 
spread, and you will feel a coolness all over your body. In this way your sensitivity can 
grow, and you can become more alive and more filled. 

We are frustrated, feeling vacant, empty, and we go on talking that life is empty. But we 
are the reasons why it is empty. We are not filling it and we are not allowing anything to 
fill it. We have an armor around us — a defense armor. We are afraid to be vulnerable, so 
we go on defending against everything. 

And then we become tombs — dead things. 

Tantra says be alive, more alive, because life is God. There is no other God than life. Be 
more alive, and you will be more divine. Be totally alive, and there is no death for you. 

THE END. 



Chapter 34: "Cosmic orgasm" through Tantra 


BEGIN.... 

Before I take your questions some other points have to be clarified, because those points 
will help you understand more what tantra means. Tantra is not a moral concept. It is 
neither moral nor immoral. It is amoral. It is a science, and science is neither. Your 
moralities and concepts concerning moral behavior are irrelevant for tantra. Tantra is not 
concerned with how one should behave; it is not concerned with ideals. It is concerned 
basically with what is, with what you are. This distinction has to be understood deeply. 
Morality is concerned with ideals — how you should be, what you should be. Therefore, 
morality is basically condemning. You are never the ideal so you are condemned. Every 
morality is guilt-creating. You can never become the ideal; you are always lagging 
behind. The gap will always be there because the ideal is the impossible, and through 
morality it becomes more impossible. The ideal is there in the future, and you are here as 
you are, and you go on comparing. You are never the perfect man; something is always 
lacking. Then you feel guilt; you feel a self-condemnation. 

One thing, tantra is against self-condemnation because condemnation can never 
transfonn you. Condemnation can only create hypocrisy. Then you try to pretend, to 
show, that you are what you are not. Hypocrisy means you are the real man, not the ideal 
man, but you pretend, you try to show, that you are the ideal man. 

Then you have a split within you; you have a false face. The unreal man is bom, and 
tantra is basically a search for the real man, not for the unreal man. 

Of necessity, every morality creates hypocrisy. It will do so inevitably. Hypocrisy will 
remain with morality. It is part of it — the shadow. This will look paradoxical because 
moralists are the men who condemn hypocrisy the most, and they are the creators of it. 
And hypocrisy cannot disappear from the earth unless morality disappears. They both 
will exist together; they are two aspects of the same coin. Morality gives you the ideal 
and you are not the ideal; that is why the ideal is given to you. Then you start feeling that 
you are wrong, and that this wrongness is natural. It is given to you. You are born with it, 
and you cannot immediately do anything about it. You cannot transform it; it is not so 
easy. You can only suppress it; that is easy. 

But there are two things you can do. You can create a false face; you can pretend to be 
something you are not. That saves you. Then you can move more easily in the society — 
more conveniently. And inwardly you have to suppress the real because the unreal can be 
imposed only if the real is suppressed. So your reality goes on moving downward into the 
unconscious and your unreality becomes your conscious. Your unreal part becomes more 
dominant and the real recedes back. 

You are divided, and the more you try to pretend, the greater will be the gap. 

The child is born as one, whole. That is why every child is so beautiful. The beauty is 
because of wholeness. The child has no gap, no split, no divisions, no fragments. The 
child is one. The real and unreal are not there. The child is simply real, authentic. You 
cannot say that the child is moral. The child is neither moral nor immoral. He is just 
unaware that there is anything moral or immoral. The moment he becomes aware, a split 
starts. Then the child begins behaving in unreal ways because to be real becomes more 
and more difficult. 



This happens of necessity, remember, because the family has to regulate, the parents have 
to regulate. The child has to be civilized, educated, given manners, cultivated; otherwise 
it will be impossible for the child to move in the society. He has to be told, "Do this; don’t 
do that." And when we say, "Do this," the child's reality may not be ready to do it. It may 
not be real; there may not be any real desire within the child to do it. And when we say, 
"Don't do this or don't do that," the child's nature may like to do it. 

We condemn the real and we enforce the unreal, because the unreal is going to be helpful 
in an unreal society and the unreal is going to be convenient. Where everyone is false, the 
real is not going to be convenient. A real child will be in a basic difficulty with the 
society because the whole society is unreal. 

This is a vicious circle. We are bom in a society, and hitherto not a single society has 
existed on the earth which is real. And this is vicious! A child is born in a society, and a 
society is already there with its fixed rules, regulations, behaviors and moralities which 
the child has to learn. 

When he will grow he will become false. Then children will be born to him, and he will 
help make them false, and this goes on and on. What to do? We cannot change the 
society. Or if we try to change the society, we will not be there when the society will be 
changed. It will take an eternity of time. What to do? 

The individual can become aware of this basic split within: that the real has been 
suppressed and the unreal has been imposed. This is pain, this is suffering, this is hell. 
You cannot get any satisfaction through the unreal because through the unreal only 
unreal satisfactions are possible, and this is natural. Only through the real can real 
satisfactions happen. Through the real you can reach reality; through the real you can 
reach the truth. Through the unreal you can only reach more and more hallucinations, 
illusions, dreams, and through dreams you can deceive yourself, but you can never be 
satisfied. 

For example, in a dream, if you feel thirsty, you may dream you are drinking water. This 
will be helpful and convenient for the sleep to continue. If this dream where you dream 
you are drinking water is not there, your sleep will be broken. 

A real thirst is there. It will break the sleep; the sleep will be disturbed. Dream is a help; 
it gives you the feeling that you are drinking water. But the water is false. Your thirst is 
simply deceived; it is not removed. You may continue to sleep, but the thirst is there 
suppressed. 

This is happening not only in sleep: in your whole life this is happening. You are 
searching for things through the unreal personality which is not there, which is just a 
facade. If you do not get them, you will be in misery; if you get them, then too you will 
be in misery. If you do not get them the misery will be lesser-remember. If you get them, 
the misery will be deeper and more. 

Psychologists say that because of this unreal personality we basically never want to reach 
the goal — never want to reach — because if you reach the goal you will be totally 
frustrated. You live in hope; in hope you can continue. Hope is a dream. You never reach 
the goal, so you never come to realize that the goal is false. 

A poor man struggling for riches is more happy in the struggle because in the struggle 
there is hope. And with the unreal personality only hope is happiness. If the poor man 
gets riches, he will become hopeless. Now frustration will be the natural consequence. 
Riches will be there, but no satisfaction. He will have achieved the goal, but nothing will 



have happened. His hopes are shattered. 


That is why the moment a society becomes affluent it becomes disturbed. 

If America is so much disturbed today, it is because hopes are achieved, goals are 
achieved, and now you cannot deceive yourself any more. So if in America the younger 
generation is revolting against all the goals of the older generation, it is because of this: 
that they all proved nonsense. 

In India we cannot conceive of this. We cannot conceive of young people voluntarily 
going poor — going hippie. Voluntarily going poor? We cannot conceive of it. We still 
have hope. We are hoping for the future: that someday the country will become rich and 
then there will be heaven. Heaven is always in the hoping. 

Because of this unreal personality, whatsoever you try, whatsoever you do, whatsoever 
you see, becomes unreal. Tantra says truth can happen to you only if you are again 
grounded in the real. But to be grounded in the real you have to be very courageous with 
yourself because the unreal is convenient and the unreal is so much cultivated and your 
mind is so much conditioned, that you will become afraid of the real. 

Someone has asked, 

Question 1 

"YOU SAID YESTERDAY TO BE IN THE LOVE ACT TOTALLY - TO ENJOY, TO 
FEEL THE BLISS OF IT, TO REMAIN IN IT, AND WHEN THE BODY STARTS 
SHAKING, TO BE THE SHAKING. THEN WHAT ARE YOU TEACHING US - 
INDULGENCE?" 

This is perversion! This is the unreal personality speaking to you. 

The unreal personality is always against enjoying anything. It is always against you: you 
must not enjoy. It is always for sacrificing things, for your sacrificing yourself for others. 
It looks beautiful because you have been brought up in it: "Sacrifice yourself for others." 
This is altruism. If you are trying to enjoy yourself this is selfish. And the moment 
someone says, "This is selfish," it becomes a sin. 

But I tell you, tantra is a basically different approach. Tantra says that unless you can 
enjoy yourself you cannot help anyone to enjoy. Unless you are really contented with 
yourself, you cannot serve others; you cannot help others toward their contentment. 
Unless you are overflowing with your own bliss you are a danger to society, because a 
person who sacrifices always becomes a sadist. 

If your mother goes on talking to you and says that "I have sacrificed myself for you," 
she will torture you. If the husband goes on saying to the wife that "I am sacrificing," he 
will be a sadistic torturer. He will torture because sacrifice is just a trick to torture the 
other. 

So those who are always sacrificing are very dangerous — potentially dangerous. Be 
aware of them, and do not sacrifice. The very word is ugly. Enjoy yourself; be bliss- 
filled. And when you are overflowing with your own bliss, that bliss will reach to others 
also. But that is not a sacrifice. 

No one is obliged to you; no one needs to thank you. Rather, you will feel grateful to 
others because they have been participating in your bliss. Words like 'sacrifice', 'duty', 
'service' are ugly; they are violent. 

Tantra says that unless you are filled with light, how can you help others to be 



enlightened? Be selfish; only then can you be altruistic. Otherwise the whole concept of 
altruism is nonsense. Be happy; only then can you help others to be happy. If you are sad, 
unhappy, bitter, you are going to be violent with others and you will create misery for 
others. 

You may become a MAHATMA, a so-called great saint; that is not very difficult. But 
look at your MAHATMAS. They are trying in every way to torture everyone who comes 
to them, but their torturing is very deceptive. They torture you for your own sake; they 
torture you for your own good. And because they are torturing themselves you cannot say 
to them, "You are preaching something to us which you are not practicing." They are 
already practicing it. They are torturing themselves; now they can torture you. And when 
a torture is for your own good, that is the most dangerous torture: you cannot escape it. 
And what is wrong with enjoying yourself? What is wrong in being happy? If there is 
anything wrong it is always in your unhappiness, because an unhappy person creates 
ripples of unhappiness ah around him. 

Be happy! And the sex act, the act of love, can be one of the deepest means through 
which bliss can be attained. 

Tantra is not teaching sexuality. It is simply saying that sex can be a source of bliss. And 
once you know that bliss, you can go further because now you are grounded in reality. 
One is not to remain with sex forever, but you can use sex as a jumping point. That is 
what tantra means: you can use sex as a jumping point. And once you have known the 
ecstasy of sex, you can understand what mystics have been talking about — a greater 
orgasm, a cosmic orgasm. 

Meera is dancing. You cannot understand her; you cannot even understand her songs. 
They are sexual; their symbology is sexual. This is bound to be because in human life the 
sex act is the only act in which you come to feel a non-duality, in which you come to feel 
a deep oneness, in which the past disappears and the future disappears and only the 
present moment — the only real moment — remains. So ah those mystics who have really 
known oneness with the divine, oneness with existence itself, they have always used 
sexual terms and symbols for their experience to express it. There is no other symbology; 
there is no other symbology which comes near to it. 

Sex is just the beginning, not the end. But if you miss the beginning, you will miss the 
end also, and you cannot escape the beginning to reach the end. 


Tantra says take life naturally; do not be unreal. Sex is there as a deep possibility, a great 
potentiality. Use it! And what is wrong in being happy in it? Really, ah moralities are 
against happiness. Someone is happy, and you feel something has gone wrong. When 
someone is sad, everything is okay. We live in a neurotic society where everyone is sad. 
When you are sad, everyone is happy because everyone can sympathize with you. When 
you are happy, everyone is at a loss. What to do with you? When someone sympathizes 
with you, look at his face. The face gleams; a subtle shining comes to the face. He is 
happy sympathizing. If you are happy, then there is no possibility for this. Your 
happiness creates sadness in others; your unhappiness creates happiness. This is neurosis! 
The very foundation seems to be mad. 

Tantra says be real, be authentic to yourself. Your happiness is not bad; it is good. It is 
not sin! Only sadness is sin, only to be miserable is sin. To be happy is virtue because a 
happy person will not create unhappiness for others. Only a happy person can be a 



ground for others' happiness. 

Secondly, when I say that tantra is neither moral nor immoral I mean that tantra is 
basically a science. It looks at you, at what you are. It means that tantra is not trying to 
transfonn you, but it actually does transfonn you through reality. The difference between 
magic and science is the same as between morality and tantra. 

Magic also tries to transform things simply through words, without knowing the reality. 
The magician can say that now the rains will stop; he cannot really stop them. Or he can 
say that rains will come — but he cannot start them, he can just go on using words. 
Sometimes coincidences will be there, and then he will feel powerful. And if the thing is 
not going to happen according to his magic prophecy he can always say, "What has gone 
wrong?" That possibility is always hidden in his profession. With magic everything starts 
with "if." He can say, "If everyone is good, virtuous, then the rains will come on a 
particular day." If the rains come it is okay; if the rains are not coming then "everyone is 
not virtuous, there is someone who is a sinner". 

Even in this century, the twentieth century, a person like Mahatma Gandhi could say, 
when there was famine in Bihar, "It is because of the sin of the people living in Bihar that 
the famine has come" — as if the whole world is not sinning, only Bihar! Magic starts 
with "if," and that "if' is great and big. 

Science never starts with "if because science first tries to know what is real — what 
reality is, what the real is. Once the real is known it can be transformed. Once you know 
what electricity is, it can be changed, transfonned, used. A magician does not know what 
electricity is. Without knowing electricity, he is going to transfonn, he is thinking to 
transform! Those kind of prophecies are just false — illusions. 


Morality is just like magic. It goes on talking about the perfect man, and without 
knowing what man is — the real man. The perfect man remains as a dream. It is used just 
to condemn the real man. Man never reaches it. 

Tantra is science. Tantra says first know what the reality is, what man is, and don’t create 
values and don't create ideals right now: first know what is. Do not think of the "ought"; 
just think of the "is." And once the "is" is known, then you change it. Then you have the 
secret. 

For example, tantra says do not try to go against sex, because if you go against sex and 
try to create a state of BRAHMACHARYA — celibacy, purity, it is impossible. It is just 
magical. Without knowing what sex energy is, without knowing of what sex is 
constituted, without going deep into the reality of it, the secrets of it, you can create an 
ideal of BRAHMACHARYA. Then what will you do? You will simply suppress. And a 
person who is suppressing sex is more sexual than a person who is indulging in it because 
through indulgence the energy is released. Through suppression it is there, moving in 
your system continuously. 

A person who suppresses sex starts seeing sex everywhere. Everything becomes sexual. 
Not that everything is sexual, but now he projects. Now he projects! His own hidden 
energy is now projected. Everywhere he will look he will see sex, and because he is 
condemning himself he will start condemning everyone. 


You cannot find a moralist who is not violently condemning. He is condemning 
everyone; to him everyone is wrong. Then he feels good, his ego is fulfilled. Why is 



everyone wrong? Because he sees everywhere the same thing he is suppressing. His own 
mind will become more and more sexual, and more and more he will be afraid. This 
BRAHMACHARYA is perversion, it is unnatural. 

A different quality, a different type of BRAHMACHARYA, happens to the follower of 
tantra, but the very process is totally, diametrically opposite. Tantra first teaches how to 
move in sex, how to know it, how to feel it, how to come to the deepest possibility hidden 
in it, to the climax, how to find the essential beauty, the essential happiness and bliss that 
is hidden there. 

Once you know that secret you can transcend it because, really, in a deep sexual orgasm 
it is not sex which gives you bliss, it is something else. Sex is just a situation. Something 
else is giving you the euphoria, the ecstasy. That something else can be divided into three 
elements. But when I speak about those elements, do not think that you can understand 
them just from my words. They must become part of your experience. As concepts they 
are useless. 

Because of three basic elements in sex you come to a blissful moment. Those three are, 
firstly, timelessness: you transcend time completely. There is no time. You forget time 
completely; time ceases for you. 

Not that time ceases, it ceases for YOU; you are not in it. There is no past, no future. In 
this very moment, here and now, the whole existence is concentrated. This moment 
becomes the only real moment. If you can make this moment the only real moment 
without sex, then there is no need of sex. Through meditation it happens. 

Secondly, in sex for the first time you lose your ego, you become egoless. So all those 
who are very much egoistic, they are all always against sex, because in sex they have to 
lose their egos. You are not, nor is there the other. You and your beloved are both lost 
into something else. A new reality evolves, a new unit comes into existence in which the 
old two are lost — completely lost. The ego is afraid. You are no more there. If without 
sex you can come to a moment when you are not, then there is no need of it. 

And thirdly, in sex you are natural for the first time. The unreal is lost, the faces, the 
facades are lost; the society, the culture, the civilization, is lost. You are a part of nature. 
As trees are, as animals are, as stars are, you are a part of nature. You are in a greater 
something — the cosmos, the Tao. You are floating in it. You cannot even swim in it; 
YOU are not. You are just floating — being taken by the current. 

These three things give you the ecstasy. Sex is just a situation in which it happens 
naturally. 

Once you know and once you can feel these elements, you can create these elements 
independently of sex. All meditation is essentially the experience of sex without sex, but 
you have to go through it. It must become part of your experience, not just be there as 
concepts, ideas, thoughts. 

Tantra is not for sex, tantra is to transcend. But you can transcend only through 
experience — existential experience — not through ideology. Only through tantra does 
BRAHMACHARYA happen. This looks paradoxical, but it is not. Only through 
knowledge does transcendence happen. Ignorance cannot help you towards 
transcendence; it can only help you towards hypocrisy. 

Now I will take more questions. Someone has asked, 

Question 2 

"HOW OFTEN SHOULD ONE INDULGE IN SEX IN ORDER TO HELP AND NOT 



TO HINDER THE MEDITATION PROCESS?" 

The question arises because we go on misunderstanding. Your sex act and the tantric sex 
act are basically different. Your sex act is to relieve; it is just like sneezing out a good 
sneeze. The energy is thrown out and you are unburdened. It is destructive, it is not 
creative. It is good — therapeutic. It helps you to be relaxed, but nothing more. 

The tantric sex act is basically, diametrically opposite and different. It is not to relieve, it 
is not to throw energy out. It is to remain in the act without ejaculation, without throwing 
energy out; to remain in the act merged — just at the beginning part of the act, not the end 
part. 

This changes the quality; the complete quality is different then. 

Try to understand two things. There are two types of climaxes, two types of orgasm. One 
type of orgasm is known. You reach to a peak of excitement, then you cannot go further: 
the end has come. The excitement reaches to a point where it becomes non-voluntary. 

The energy jumps into you and goes out. You are relieved of it, unburdened. The load is 
thrown; you can relax and sleep. 

You are using it like a tranquilizer. It is a natural tranquilizer: a good sleep will follow — 
if your mind is not burdened by religion. Otherwise even the tranquilizer is destroyed. If 
your mind is not burdened by religion, only then can sex be a tranquilizing thing. If you 
feel guilt, even your sleep will be disturbed. You will feel depression, you will start 
condemning yourself and you will begin to take oaths that now you won't indulge 
anymore. Then your sleep will become a nightmare afterwards. If you are a natural being 
not too much burdened by religion and morality, only then can sex be used as a 
tranquilizer. 

This is one type of orgasm — coming to the peak of excitement. Tantra is centered on 
another type of orgasm. If we call the first kind a peak orgasm, you can call the tantric 
orgasm a valley orgasm. In it you are not coming to the peak of excitement, but to the 
very deepest valley of relaxation. Excitement has to be used for both in the beginning. 

That is why I say that in the beginning both are the same, but the ends are totally 
different. 

Excitement has to be used for both: either you are going toward the peak of excitement or 
to the valley of relaxation. For the first, excitement has to be intense — more and more 
intense. You have to grow in it; you have to help it to grow towards the peak. In the 
second, excitement is just a beginning. And once the man has entered, both lover and 
beloved can relax. No movement is needed. They can relax in a loving embrace. When 
the man feels or the woman feels that the erection is going to be lost, only then is a little 
movement and excitement required. But then again relax. You can prolong this deep 
embrace for hours with no ejaculation, and then both can fall into deep sleep together. 
This — THIS — is a valley orgasm. Both are relaxed, and they meet as two relaxed beings. 
In the ordinary sexual orgasm you meet as two excited beings — tense, full of excitement, 
trying to unburden yourselves. The ordinary sexual orgasm looks like madness; the 
tantric orgasm is a deep, relaxing meditation. Then there is no question of how often one 
should indulge. You can indulge as much as you like because no energy is lost. Rather, 
energy is gained. 

You may not be aware of it, but this is a fact of biology, of bio-energy, that man and 
woman are opposite forces. Negative-positive, yin-yang, or whatsoever you call them, 
they are challenging to each other. 



And when they both meet in a deep relaxation, they revitalize each other. They both 
revitalize each other, they both become generators, they both feel livelier, they both 
become radiant with new energy, and nothing is lost. Just by meeting with the opposite 
pole energy is renewed. 

The tantric love act can be done as much as you like. The ordinary sex act cannot be done 
as much as you like because you are losing energy in it, and your body will have to wait 
to regain it. And when you regain it, you will only lose it again. This looks absurd. The 
whole life is spent in gaining and losing, regaining and losing: it is just like an obsession. 
The second thing to be remembered: you may or may not have observed that when you 
look at animals you can never see them enjoying sex. In intercourse, they are not 
enjoying themselves. Look at baboons, monkeys, dogs or any kind of animals. In their 
sex act you cannot see that they are feeling blissful or enjoying it — you cannot! It seems 
to be just a mechanical act, a natural force pushing them towards it. If you have seen 
monkeys in intercourse, after the intercourse they will separate. Look at their faces: there 
is no ecstasy in them, it is as if nothing has happened. When the energy forces itself, 
when the energy is too much, they throw it. 

The ordinary sex act is just like this, but moralists have been saying quite the contrary. 

They say, "Do not indulge, do not 'enjoy'." They say, "This is as animals do." This is 
wrong! Animals never enjoy; only man can enjoy. And the deeper you can enjoy, the 
higher is the kind of humanity that is born. And if your sex act can become meditative, 
ecstatic, the highest is touched. But remember tantra: it is a valley orgasm, it is not a peak 
experience. It is a valley experience! 

In the West, Abraham Maslow has made this tenn "peak experience" very famous. You 
go into excitement towards the peak, and then you fall. That is why, after every sex act, 
you feel a fall. And it is natural: you are falling from a peak. You will never feel that after 
a tantric sex experience. Then you are not falling. You cannot fall any further because 
you have been in the valley. Rather, you are rising. 

When you come back after a tantric sex act, you have risen, not fallen. You feel filled 
with energy, more vital, more alive, radiant. And that ecstasy will last for hours, even for 
days. It depends on how deeply you were in it. If you move into it, sooner or later you 
will realize that ejaculation is wastage of energy. No need of it — unless you need 
children. And with a tantric sex experience, you will feel a deep relaxation the whole day. 
One tantric sex experience, and even for days you will feel relaxed — at ease, at home, 
non-violent, non-angry, non-depressed. And this type of person is never a danger to 
others. 

If he can, he will help others to be happy. If he cannot, at least he will not make anyone 
unhappy. 

Only tantra can create a new man, and this man who can know timelessness, egolessness 
and deep non-duality with existence will grow. A dimension has opened. It is not far 
away, the day is not very far away, when sex will simply disappear. When sex disappears 
without your knowledge, when suddenly one day, you realize that sex has disappeared 
completely and there is no lust, then BRAHMACHARYA is born. But this is arduous. It 
looks arduous because of too much false teaching, and you feel afraid of it also because 
of your mind's conditioning. 

Of two things we are very much afraid — sex and death — and both are basic. A really 
religious seeker will enter both. He will experience sex to know what it is because to 



know sex is to know life. And he would also like to know what death is because unless 
death is known you cannot know what eternal life is. If you can enter sex to its very 
center you will know what life is, and if you can enter into death voluntarily, to its very 
center, then the moment you touch the center of death you become eternal. Then you are 
immortal because death is something that happens just on the periphery. 

Sex and death both are basic for a real seeker, but for ordinary humanity both are taboo. 
No one talks about them, and both are basic and both are deeply related. 

They are so deeply related that even upon entering sex you enter a certain death — 
because you are dying. The ego is disappearing; time is disappearing; your individuality 
is disappearing. You are dying! Sex is also a subtle death. And if you can know that sex 
is a subtle death, death can become a great sexual orgasm. 

A Socrates entering death is not afraid. Rather, he is very much enthusiastic, thrilled, 
excited to know what death is. There is a deep welcome in his heart. Why? Because if 
you have known the small death of sex and you have known the bliss that follows it, you 
would like to know the greater death, the greater bliss that is hidden behind it. But for us 
both are taboo. For tantra, both are basic dimensions for search. One has to go through 
them. 

Someone has asked, 

Question 3 

"IF ONE EXPERIENCES KUNDALINI - THE RISING OF ENERGY UP THE 
SPINAL PASSAGE - DOES NOT IT DEPLETE ONE’S MEDITATIVE ENERGIES 
TO HAVE ORGASM?" 

All the questions are basically without understanding of what the tantric sex act is. 
Ordinarily, it is so. If your energy, your kundalini, goes up, rises and rushes up towards 
the head, you cannot have an ordinary orgasm. And if you try to have it, you will be in a 
deep conflict within, because energy is moving up and you are forcing it down. But the 
tantric orgasm is not a difficulty. It will be a help. 

Energy moving up is not contradictory to tantric orgasm. You can relax, and that 
relaxation with your beloved will help the energy move higher. 

In the ordinary sex act it is a difficulty. That is why all those techniques which are not 
tantric are against sex — because they do not know that a valley orgasm is possible. They 
know only one kind — the ordinary orgasm, and then it is a problem for them. For yoga it 
is a problem because yoga is trying to force your sex energy upwards. Your sex energy 
moving upwards is what is called kundalini. 

In the sex act it moves downwards. Yoga will say to be a celibate, because if you are 
doing both — yoga and indulging in sex — you are creating chaos in your system. On the 
one hand you are trying to pull energy up, and on the other hand you are "throwing 
energy out — down. You are creating chaos. 

That is why yoga techniques are against sex, but tantra is not against sex because tantra 
has a different type of orgasm, a valley orgasm, which can help. And no chaos, no 
conflict, is created; rather, it will be helpful. If you are escaping, if you are a man and you 
are escaping from woman or if you are a woman escaping from man, then whatsoever 
you do the other remains in your mind and goes on pulling you down. This is 
paradoxical, but this is a truth. 

While in a deep embrace with your beloved you can forget the other. 



Only then do you forget the other. A man forgets that woman exists; a woman forgets 
that man exists. Only in a deep embrace the other is no more, and when the other is no 
more your energy can flow easily. Otherwise the other goes on pulling it down. 

So yoga and ordinary techniques try to get you to escape from the other — the opposite 
sex. You have to escape. You have to be aware — continuously struggling and 
controlling. But if you are against the other sex, that very "againstness" is a constant 
strain and goes on pulling you down. 

Tantra says no strain is needed; be relaxed with the other. In that relaxed moment the 
other disappears and your energy can flow up, but it flows up only when you are in a 
valley. It flows down when you are at a peak. 

One more question: 

Question 4 

"LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT THE FULL ACT SHOULD BE SLOW AND 
UNHURRIED, BUT YOU ALSO SAID THAT ONE SHOULD NOT HAVE ANY 
CONTROL OVER THE SEXUAL ACT AND THAT ONE SHOULD BECOME 
TOTAL. THIS CONFUSES ME. PLEASE EXPLAIN THESE TWO THINGS." 

It is not control. Control is a different thing and relaxation is totally different. In sex, you 
are relaxing in it, not controlling it. If you are controlling it, there will be no relaxation. If 
you are controlling it, sooner or later you will be hurried to finish it because control is a 
strain. And every strain creates tension, and tension creates a necessity, a need, to release. 

It is not a control; you are not resisting something. You are simply not in a hurry because 
sex is not happening in order to move somewhere. You are not going somewhere. It is 
just a play; there is no goal. Nothing is to be reached, so why hurry? 

But a man who is always, in every act, present totally... If you are hurried in everything, 
you will be hurried in your sex act also, because YOU will be there. A person who is 
very much time-conscious will be hurried in his sex act also — as if time is being wasted. 
So we ask for instant coffee and for instant sex. With coffee it is good, but with sex it is 
simply nonsense. There can be no instant sex. It is not work and it is not something 
which you can hurry. Through hurry you will destroy it; you will miss the very point. 
Enjoy it because through it a timelessness is to be felt. If you are in a hurry, then 
timelessness cannot be felt. 

Tantra says go unhurriedly, slowly enjoying it just as if you are going for a walk in the 
morning — not as if you are going to the office. That is a different thing. When you are 
going to the office you are in a hurry to reach somewhere, and when you are on a walk in 
the morning you are not in a hurry because you are not going anywhere. You are simply 
going, there is no hurry, there is no goal. You can return from any point. 

This unhurriedness is basic to create the valley; otherwise the peak will be created. 

And when this is said, it does not mean that you have to control. You are not to control 
your excitement, because that is contradictory. You CANNOT control excitement. If you 
control it, you are creating a double excitement. Just relax! Take it as a play; do not make 
any end. The beginning is enough. 

In the act, close your eyes. Feel the other's body, feel the other's energy flowing towards 
you and be merged in it, melt in it. It will come. The old habit may persist for a few days; 
then it will go. But do not force it to go. Just go on relaxing, relaxing, relaxing, and if 
there is no ejaculation do not feel that something has gone wrong. A man feels that 



something has gone wrong if there is no ejaculation.; he tends to feel that something has 
gone wrong. Nothing has gone wrong! And do not feel that you have missed something: 
you have not missed. In the beginning it will be felt as if you are missing something, 
because the excitement and the peak will not be there. Before the valley comes you will 
feel that you are missing something, but this is just an old habit. Within a period, within a 
month or three weeks, the valley will start appearing, and when the valley appears you 
will forget your peaks. No peak is worth this. But you have to wait, and do not force it 
and do not control it. Just relax. 

Relaxation is a problem — because when we say, "Relax," in the mind it is translated as if 
some effort is to be made. 

Our language gives this appearance. I was reading one book. The book is entitled, YOU 
MUST RELAX! You MUST! The very "must" will not allow you to relax, because when 
it becomes a goal, you "must," and if you are not able you will feel frustrated. The very 
"must" gives you a feeling of hard effort — of an arduous journey. You cannot relax if 
you are thinking in terms of "must." 

Language is a problem. There are certain things which language always expresses 
wrongly. For example, relaxation: if I say to relax, then too it becomes an effort and you 
will ask, "How to relax?" With "how" you miss the point. You cannot ask "How?" Then 
you are asking for a technique, and technique will create effort, effort will create tension. 
So if you ask me how to relax, I will say do not do anything: just relax. Just lie down and 
wait, do not do anything! All that you can do will be the barrier; it will create the 
hindrance. 

If you start counting from one to a hundred and back from a hundred to one, you will 
remain awake the whole night. And if sometimes you have fallen asleep because of 
counting, it is not because of counting. It is because you counted and counted, and then 
you became bored — because of that boredom. It is not because of counting — only 
because of boredom. And then you forgot counting and then sleep came. But sleep 
comes, relaxation comes, only when you are not doing anything: this is the problem. 


When I say "sex act" it looks like you need an effort. You do not! Just start playing with 
your beloved or your lover; just go on playing. Feel each other, be sensitive to each other, 
just like small children playing or just like dogs playing — animals playing. Just go on 
playing, and do not think about the sex act at all. It may happen, it may not happen. 

If it happens through just playing, it will lead you to the valley more easily. If you think 
about it, then you are already ahead of yourself: you are playing with your beloved, but 
you are THINKING of the sex act. Then the playing is false. You are not here and the 
mind is in the future, and this mind will always move in the future. 

When you are in the sex act, the mind is thinking about how to finish it. It is always 
ahead of you. Do not allow it! Just play, and forget about any sex act. It will happen. 

Then allow it to happen. Then it will be easy to relax, and when it happens just relax. Be 
together. Be in each other's presence and feel happy. 

Negatively, something can be done. For example, when you get excited you breathe fast 
because excitement needs fast breathing. For relaxation it is good, helpful, if you breathe 
deeply — not fast, but slow, breathing very easily — being at ease. Then the sex act can be 
prolonged. 

Don't talk, don't say anything, because that creates disturbance. 



Don't use mind, use bodies. Use mind only to feel what is happening. Don’t think, just 
feel what is happening — the warmth that is flowing, the love that is flowing, the energy 
that is encountered. Just feel it. 

Be aware, and that too should not be made a strain. Float effortlessly. Then only will the 
valley appear, and once the valley appears YOU are transcended. 

Once you feel and realize the valley, the relaxed orgasm, it is already a transcendence. 
Then sex is not there. It has become a meditation — a SAMADHI. 

THE END. 



Chapter 35: Turning inward toward the real 


OH LOTUS-EYED ONE, SWEET OF TOUCH, WHEN SINGING, SEEING, 

TASTING, BE AWARE YOU ARE AND DISCOVER THE EVER-LIVING. 
WHEREVER SATISFACTION IS FOUND, IN WHATEVER ACT, ACTUALIZE 
THIS. 

AT THE POINT OF SLEEP, WHEN THE SLEEP HAS NOT YET COME AND THE 
EXTERNAL WAKEFULNESS VANISHES, AT THIS POINT BEING IS REVEALED. 
ILLUSIONS DECEIVE, COLORS CIRCUMSCRIBE, EVEN DIVISIBLES ARE 
INDIVISIBLE. 

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

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

The very process of civilization, education, culture, conditioning, starts with the division. 
Everyone is taught that he is two, not one, and then, of course, one begins to be identified 
with the mind and not with the body. 

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

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

If the sun which is so far away just goes dead, instantly you will be dead here. If the sun 
rays stop coming, you will be no more here. Your body cannot exist without the sun 
being there so far away. 

The sun and you are somehow deeply related. The sun must be included in your body; 
otherwise you cannot exist. You are part of its rays. 



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

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

Division is destructive, and with the division you are bound to become identified with the 
mind. You think, and without thinking there is no division. You think, and you become 
identified with your thinking. 

Then you feel as if you possess the body. This is a complete reversal of the truth. You do 
not possess the body; neither is the body possessing you. They are not two things. Your 
existence is one, a deep hannony of opposite poles. But opposite poles are not divided, 
they are joined together. Only then can they become opposite poles. And the opposition 
is good. It gives challenge, it gives stamina, it creates energy. It is dialectical. 

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

If you close your eyes to feel where you are, immediately you will feel you are in your 
head. You are not there — because when for the first moment you entered life in your 
mother's womb, when the male and female atoms met, there was no head. But life was 
started. You were there, and there was no head. In that first meeting of two alive cells, 
you were created. The head came later on, but your being was there. Where is that being? 
It is not in your head. 

Really, it is nowhere — or everywhere in your body. It is nowhere; you cannot pinpoint 
where it is. And the moment you pinpoint it you miss the whole thing. It is everywhere. 
Your life is everywhere, it is spread out all over you. And not only all over you; if you 
follow it, you will have to go to the very ends of the universe. It is everywhere! 

With the identification that "I am my mind," everything becomes false. You become 
unreal because this identity is false. This has to be broken. Tantra techniques are to break 
down this identity. The effort of tantra is to make you headless, uncentered, everywhere 
or nowhere. And why does humanity, why do human beings become false and unreal 
with the mind? Because mind is an epiphenomenon — a process which is necessary, 
useful, but secondary; a process which consists of words, not of realities. The word 
Tove’ is not love, the word 'god' is not God. But mind consists of words, of a verbal 
process, and then love itself becomes less significant than the word Tove'. For the mind, 
the word is more significant. God becomes less significant than the word 'God'. For the 



mind it is so. Words become more meaningful, significant. They become primary, and we 
start living in words. And the more you live in words the more shallow you become, and 
you will go on missing the reality which is not words. Reality is existence. 

Living in the mind is as if someone is living in a mirror. 

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

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

The first technique: 

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

We are living, but we are not aware that we are or that we are living. There is no self- 
remembering. You are eating or you are taking a bath or you are taking a walk: you are 
not aware that you are while walking. Everything is, only you are not. 

The trees, the houses, the traffic, everything is. You are aware of everything around you, 
but you are not aware of your own being — that you are. You may be aware of the whole 
world, but if you are not aware of yourself that awareness is false. Why? Because your 
mind can reflect everything, but your mind cannot reflect you. If you are aware of 
yourself, then you have transcended the mind. 

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

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

Gurdjieff used self-remembering as a basic technique in the West. The self-remembering 
is derived from this sutra. The whole Gurdjieffian system is based on this one sutra. 

Remember yourself, whatsoever you are doing. It is very difficult. It looks very easy, but 
you will go on forgetting. Even for three or four seconds you cannot remember yourself. 
You will have a feeling that you are remembering, and suddenly you will have moved to 
some other thought. Even with this thought that "Okay, I am remembering myself," you 
will have missed, because this thought is not self-remembering. In self-remembering 



there will be no thought; you will be completely empty. And self-remembering is not a 
mental process. It is not that you say, "Yes, I am." Saying "Yes, I am," you have missed. 
This is a mind thing, this is a mental process: "I am." 

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

You are walking under trees: the trees are there, the breeze is there, the sun is rising. This 
is the world all around you; you are aware of it. Stand for a moment and suddenly 
remember that you are, but don’t verbalize. Just feel that you are. 

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

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


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

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

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



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

You can practice this: relaxing in a chair or just sitting under a tree, forget everything and 
feel this "you-areness." 

No Christian, no Hindu, no Buddhist, no Indian, no Englishman, no German — simply, 
you are. Have the feeling of it, and then it will be easy for you to remember what this 
sutra says: "BE AWARE YOU ARE, AND DISCOVER THE EVER-LIVING." And the 
moment you are aware that you are, you are thrown into the current of the ever-living. 

The false is going to die; only the real will remain. 

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

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

When Ouspensky was learning with Gurdjieff, for three months he had to make much 
effort, arduous effort, in order to have a glimpse of what self-remembering is. 

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

Why? As we are, really, we are mad. Not remembering who we are, what we are, we are 
mad, but this madness is taken as sanity. Once you try to go back, once you try to contact 
the real, it will look like craziness, it will look like madness. Compared to what we are, it 
is just the reverse, the opposite. If you feel that this is sanity, that will look like madness. 
But three persisted. One of the three was P. D. Ouspensky. For three months they 
persisted. Only after the first month did they start having glimpses of simply being — of 
"I am." After the second month, even the "I" dropped, and they started having the 
glimpses of "am-ness" — of just being, not even of "I", because "I" is also a label. The 
pure being is not "I" and "thou"; it just is. 

And by the third month even the feeling of "am-ness" dissolved because that feeling of 
am-ness is still a word. Even that word dissolves. 

Then you are, and then you know what you are. Before that point comes you cannot ask, 
"Who am I?" Or you can go on asking continuously, "Who am I?", just continuously 



inquiring, "Who am I ? Who am I?", and all the answers that will be provided by the 
mind will be found false, irrelevant. You go on asking, "Who am I? Who am I? Who am 
I?" and a point comes where you can no more ask the question. All the answers fall 
down, and then the question itself falls down and disappears. And when even the 
question, "Who am I?" disappears, you know who you are. 

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

That is the right moment. 

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

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

The second technique: 

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

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

But the human mind is mischievous. It only feels dissatisfactions, discontent. It never 
feels satisfaction; it never feels content. If you are dissatisfied, you will feel it and you 
will be filled by it. When you are thirsty, you feel it: you are filled with thirst; you feel it 
in the throat. If it grows you feel it all over your body, and a moment will come when it is 
not that YOU are thirsty, you will feel that you have become the thirst. 

If you are in a desert and there is no hope of getting water, you will not feel that YOU are 
thirsty; you will feel that you have become the thirst. 

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



how it tokcs it 

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

The similar attracts the similar, and this has been for lives and lives. You miss everything 
because of your negative approach. 

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

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

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

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


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

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

But you are interested in quantity. You are interested in how to get more rich — in 
quantity, not in quality. 



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

From tomorrow morning, for the whole day, remember this: whenever you feel 
something beautiful, satisfactory, something blissful — and there are many moments in a 
twenty-four-hour day — be aware of it. There are many moments when heaven is just 
near you, but you are so attached and involved with the hell that you go on missing it. 

The sun rises, the flowers open, the birds sing and the breeze blows through the trees. It 
is happening! A small child looks at you with innocent eyes, and a subtle feeling of bliss 
enters into you.; or someone smiles and you feel blissful. 

Look all around, and try to find the blissful; be filled with it. In that moment forget 
everything. Be filled with it, taste it, and allow it to happen to your whole being. Be one 
with it. The fragrance of it will follow you. 

It will go on resounding within you the whole day, and the resounding, the echoing 
feeling, will help you to be more positive. 

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

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

Buddha said, "You yourself can choose where " 

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

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

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

Buddha said, "Then I will ask you three questions before I allow you to go. 

If the people of that province insult you, humiliate you, how will you feel it?" 
Purnakashyapa said, "I will feel they are very good if they simply insult me. Then they 
are not beating me. They are good people; they could have beaten me." 

Buddha said, "Then the second question: if they start beating you, how will you feel?" 
Purnakashyapa said, "I will feel they are very good people. They could have killed me, 
but they are simply beating me." 

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

Purnakashyapa said, "I will thank you and them. If they kill me, they will have freed me 



of a life where many errors were possible. They will have freed me so I will feel 
thankful." 

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

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

"WHEREVER THE SATISFACTION IS FOUND, IN WHATEVER ACT, 

ACTUALIZE THIS:" This is a very delicate process, but very sweet also, and the more 
you proceed in it, the sweeter it becomes. You will be fdled with a new sweetness and 
fragrance. 

Just look for the beautiful; forget the ugly. Then a moment comes when the ugly also 
becomes the beautiful. Just look to the happy moment, and a moment comes when there 
is nothing which you can call unhappy. There is no unhappy moment then. Be concerned 
with the blissful, and sooner or later there will be no misery. Everything is beautified by a 
positive mind. 

The third technique: 

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

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

For a single moment there is no mechanism, no grip of the mechanism on you, because 
you have to take a jump from one to another. Between the two if you can be awake, 
between the two if you can become aware, between the two if you can remember 
yourself, you will have a glimpse of your real being. 

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



Ordinarily, within three months, one day it happens. It is happening every day, but your 
awareness and the meeting of the gap cannot be planned. It is a happening. You just go 
on waiting, and someday it happens. 

Someday, suddenly you become aware that you are neither awake nor asleep — a very 
weird phenomenon. You may even become afraid because you have known only the two: 
you know when you are asleep, you know when you are awake. But you don’t know a 
third point in your being when you are neither. At the first impact of it you may become 
afraid and scared. Don’t get scared and don’t be afraid. Anything which is so new, 
unknown previously, is bound to give a certain fear because this moment, when you will 
have experienced it again and again, will give you another feeling also: that you are 
neither alive nor dead, neither this nor that. This is an abyss. 

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

If you continue, the well is bottomless, and it gets more and more dark. 

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

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

”AT THE POINT OF SLEEP, WHEN SLEEP HAS NOT YET COME AND 
EXTERNAL WAKEFULNESS VANISHES, AT THIS POINT BEING IS 
REVEALED:" Then you know who you are, what is your real being, what is your 
authentic existence. 

We are false while we are awake, and you know it well. You are false while you are 
awake. You smile when tears would have been more real. Your tears are also not 
believable. They may be just a facade, ceremonial, a duty. Your smile is false, and those 
who study faces can say that your smile is just a painted smile. There are no roots within; 



the smile is just on your face, just on your lips. It is nowhere else in your being. There are 
no roots, there are no limbs. It is imposed. The smile is not coming from within to 
without; the smile has been forced from without. 

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

Now psychoanalysis goes on doing this business of analyzing your dreams. They have a 
big business because you cannot analyze your own dreams. They are symbolic, they are 
not real. They say something only in metaphors. If you want to kill your mother and get 
rid of her, you are not going to kill her even in your dream. 

You will kill someone else who looks like your mother. You will kill your aunt or 
someone else, but not your mother. Even in dreams you cannot be real. Then 
psychoanalysis is needed; a professional is needed to interpret — but you may describe 
the whole thing in such a way that even psychoanalysis is deceived. 

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

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

But why this teaching? Deep down there is the possibility that everyone goes against his 
mother of necessity — because the mother has not only given birth to you, she has been 
the instrument of falsifying you; she has been the instrument of forcing you to be unreal. 

She has made you whatsoever you are. If you are a hell, she has a part in it, the greatest 
part. If you are miserable, your mother is there somewhere, hidden in you because the 
mother has given you birth, she has brought you up — or, really, she has brought you 
"down" from your reality. She has falsified you. The first untruth happened between you 
and your mother; the first lie happened between you and your mother — the first lie! 

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



Everything the mother shows, does, speaks, behaves, is significant. If the child smiles, 
and the mother loves him and gives him warmth and milk and hugs him, he is learning 
politics. He will smile while there is no smile in him because now he knows he can 
persuade the mother. He will smile a false smile. 

Then the liar is born; the politician has come into existence. Now he knows how to 
falsify, and this he leams in his relationship with his mother. This is the first relationship 
with the world. When he will become aware of his misery, of his hell, of his confusions, 
he will find that his mother is hidden somewhere. 

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

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

Ordinarily we are not concerned with dreams, we are concerned with our waking hours. 
But psychoanalysis is more concerned with your dreams, not with your waking hours, 
because it feels that in waking hours you are a greater liar. 

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

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

And all over the world human symbols are the same. You may speak a different language 
while awake, but while dreaming you speak the same language. 

All over the world the dream language is one. If sex is repressed, then the same symbols 
will come up. If the urge for food, the urge to eat, hunger, is repressed, then the same 
symbols will come — or similar ones. The dream language is one, but in dreams there are 
still problems because they are symbolic. And a Freud may interpret them in a different 



way, a Jung in a different way and an Adler still in a different way. And if you are 
analyzed by a hundred psychoanalysts, there will be a hundred interpretations. You will 
be still more confused than you were before, more confused with a hundred 
interpretations of one thing. 

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

The fourth technique, and the last: 

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

This is a rare technique, one not much used, but one of the greatest teachers in India, 
Shankara, has used it, and Shankara has based his whole philosophy on this technique. 

You know his philosophy of MAYA — illusion. Shankara says everything is illusory. 
Whatsoever you are seeing, hearing, feeling, all is illusion. It is not real because the real 
cannot be contacted by senses. You are hearing me and I am seeing you hearing me: it 
may be just a dream, and there is no way how to judge whether it is a dream or not. I may 
be just dreaming that you are here listening to me. How am I to know that this is real and 
not a dream? There is no way. 

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

Chuang Tzu said, "Because of a dream." 

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

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

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

Chuang Tzu said, "Now this is the puzzle: if Chuang Tzu can dream that he can become a 
butterfly, why not the reverse? The butterfly may dream that it has become a Chuang 
Tzu. 

So now I am disturbed. What is right and what is wrong? What is real and what is unreal? 
Was it Chuang Tzu who was dreaming of becoming a butterfly or has the butterfly now 
gone to sleep and dreamt that it has become a Chuang Tzu? If one is possible, then the 
other is possible." And it is said that Chuang Tzu never could get over this puzzle. This 
remained for his whole life. 

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

Shankara says with senses there is no possibility to know whether the thing confronting 



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

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

This whole world is MAYA, a confusion. You cannot decide; you cannot be decisive 
about it. 

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

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

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

Then the only point where you can have a center is in your own being. That is certain. 

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

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

And now this appears to be proven even by scientific research. 

For the last three centuries science was certain, and Shankara looked to be just a 
philosophical mind, poetic. For three centuries science was certain, but now, during these 
two last decades, science has become uncertain. 


Now the greatest scientists say nothing is certain, and with matter we will never be 



certain. Everything has again become uncertain. Everything looks like a flux, changing. 
Only appearance looks certain. The deeper you go, the more everything becomes 
uncertain, indefinite. Shankara says, and tantra has always been saying, that the world is 
illusory. Even before Shankara was bom, tantra was preaching one technique — that the 
whole world is illusory, so think of it as a dream. If you can think of it as a dream — and 
if you think at all, you will come to realize it as a dream — then your whole focus of 
consciousness will turn inwards, because there is a deep urge to find the truth, the real. 

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

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


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

THE END. 



Chapter 36: From maya (illusion) to reality 


The first question: 

Question 1 

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

Man is not centered in himself. He is bom centered, but the society, the family, the 
education, the culture, they push him off-center, and they put him off-center in a very 
cunning way, knowingly or unknowingly. So everyone becomes, in a sense, 

"eccentric" — off the center. There are reasons, survival reasons for it. 

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

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

But it seems difficult to create such a society. 

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

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

You live a false life. For this false life a false center is needed. That center is your ego, 
your conscious mind. That is why, no matter what you do, you will never be blissful — 
because only the real center can happen, only the real center can explode, can come to the 
climax, the optimum, of the possibility of bliss. 

The false center is a shadow game. You can play with it, you can hope with it, but 
ultimately nothing but frustration comes out of it. With a false anxiety that is bound to be 
so. 



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

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

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

Within six months the marriage was shattered again. He married a third woman and now 
he was still more cautious, but again the same thing happened. 

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

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

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

The child is forced to be off-center. He has to be disciplined; he has to learn obedience. 

That is why we give so much value to obedience. And obedience destroys everyone, 
because obedience means now you are not the center: the other is the center; you are just 
to follow him. 

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

Freedom is killed, and with freedom you lose your center. Not that the center is 
destroyed; it cannot be destroyed while you are alive. It would be good if it was 



destroyed; you would be more at ease with yourself. If you were totally false and there 
was no real center hidden within you, you would be at ease. There would be no conflict, 
no anxiety, no struggle. 

The conflict comes into existence because the real remains there. It remains in the center, 
and just on the periphery an unreal center is created. Between these two centers a 
constant struggle, a constant anxiety, tension, is created. 

This must be transformed, and there is only one way: the false must disappear and the 
real must be given its place. You must be regrounded into your center, into your being; 
otherwise you will be in anguish. 

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

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

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


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

This remembrance is not given by the society to you. This self-remembrance will detach 
you from all that is peripheral. And if you can remember, you will fall back to your own 
being, to your own center. The ego will be there just on the periphery, but you will be 
able to see it now. Like any other object, you will be able to observe it. And once you 
become capable of observing your ego, your false center, you will never be false again. 
You may need your false center because you have to live in a society which is false. You 
will be able to use it now, but you will never be identified with it. It will be instrumental 
now. You will live on your center, in your center. You will be able to use the false as a 
social convenience, a convention, but you will not be identified with it. Now you know 
you can be spontaneous, free. Self-remembering transforms you because it gives you the 
opportunity to be yourself again — and to be oneself is the ultimate and to be oneself is 
the absolute. 



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

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

You can know many things without knowing anything. You can know much about love 
without knowing love. 

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

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

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

The day you can know even in your sleep that you are, you are grounded in your center. 

Now the false is no more; it is not a burden to you. You can use it now, it is instrumental. 
You are not a slave to it, you have become the master. 

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

The yogi remembers even while he is asleep, and you are not remembering yourself 
while you are even awake. You are walking on the street, but you are not remembering 
that you are. Try, and you will feel a change of quality. Try to remember that you are. 
Suddenly a new lightness comes to you, the heaviness disappears; you become 



weightless. You are thrown off the false center to the real one again, but it is difficult and 
arduous because we are so much grounded in the false. It will take time, but no 
transfonnation is possible without self-remembering becoming effortless for you. You 
simply start remembering yourself; otherwise no transformation is possible. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

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

It is a choice, but one who is negative cannot take a jump towards choicelessness. 

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

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

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

You have heard that you enter heaven or hell. 

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

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

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

With happiness you get bored. You can move into the unknown. The unknown is 
alluring, and the choiceless is the door for the unknown. This is how one has to move: 



from the negative to the positive and from the positive to the choiceless. 


First make your mind positive. From hell move to heaven, and from heaven you can 
move to moksha — to the ultimate which is neither. From misery move to bliss, and only 
then you can move to the beyond which is beyond both. That is why the sutra said first to 
transfonn your mind from negative to positive, and this change is just a change of 
focusing. 

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

You change your outlook: look positively. And this is what is meant by the attitude of the 
atheist. I don’t call a man an atheist or theist because he believes in God or not. I call a 
man a theist if he has a positive attitude and an atheist if he has a negative attitude. It is 
not a question of saying no to God; it is a question of saying no to life. The theist is one 
who says yes and looks always from a yea-saying mind. Then everything changes totally. 
If a negative mind comes to a rose, to a garden, many roses may be there, but he will 
count only the thorns. The first thing for the negative mind is the thorns; that is 
significant. Flowers are just illusory; only thorns are real. He will count, and, of course, 
for each flower a thousand thorns exist. And once he has counted a thousand thorns he 
cannot believe in one flower. 

He will say this one flower is just illusory. How can such a beautiful flower exist with 
such ugly thorns, violent thorns? It is impossible, it is unbelievable. And even if it exists, 
it means nothing now. One thousand thorns have been counted, and the flower 
disappears. 

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

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


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

If you have a negative mind, even seven hundred are not much. You will find more; there 



is no end to it. The positive mind can be non-tense. Really, if you are positive how can 
you be tense and if you are negative how you can be non-tense? With a negative mind 
there can be no association with meditation. The negative mind is anti-meditative; it 
cannot meditate. A single mosquito is enough to destroy all meditation. With a negative 
mind, the door is closed for tranquility, for stillness, for silence. The negative mind is 
self-perpetuating for misery. How can it take a jump toward choicelessness? 
Krishnamurti goes on talking about choicelessness, and the audience is negative. They 
listen, but they never understand. And when they are not understanding, Krishnamurti 
gets disturbed because they are not understanding him. Only a positive mind can 
understand what he is saying, but a positive mind need not go anywhere — neither to any 
Krishnamurti nor to any Rajneesh, nowhere. 

Only a negative mind is in search of a teacher, of a master. 

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

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

The third question: 

Question 3 

"IN THE LAST TECHNIQUE YESTERDAY, YOU EXPLAINED THAT IN THIS 
WORLD OF MAYA, THE INNER CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SEEKER IS THE 
ONLY REAL CENTER FOR HIM. 

IN THIS REFERENCE, PLEASE EXPLAIN THE SIGNIFICANCE AND ROLE OF 
THE GURU IN THIS WORLD OF MAYA." 

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

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

In the morning when the sleep has disappeared, and with it the dream, are you worried 



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

Now you know it was a dream, and you are not ill. 

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

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

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

A guru is not a giver of doctrines. 

He is a giver of methods — of methods which can help you to come out of your sleep. 

That is why a guru is always a disturber of your dreams, and it is difficult to live with a 
guru. It is very easy to live with a teacher because he never disturbs you. Rather, he goes 
on increasing your accumulation of knowledge. He helps you to be more egoist; he 
makes you more knowledgeable. Your ego is more fulfilled. Now you know more, you 
can argue more. You can teach yourself, but a guru is always a disturber. He will disturb 
your dream and your sleep, and you may have been dreaming a very beautiful dream. 

You may have been on a trip, a beautiful trip. He will disturb it, and you will get angry. 

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

Of necessity, much suffering will be there for the disciple, and if he is not in deep 
intimacy with the guru it is impossible. 

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

In India, in the old days, we said, "ACHARYA MRITYUH." It means that the master, the 



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

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


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

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

They are always there; they won't allow a meeting of the real ones. 

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

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



I have to change his mind, to destroy it. He comes with a mind and he looks at me also 
with his mind. 

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

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

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

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

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

I said, "It is okay with me." 

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

Now this man cannot have any meeting with me. 

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

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

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

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

But because of this many problems arise. 

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

So remember this: if you meet a wrong teacher, you deserve a wrong teacher; that is why 
you meet a wrong teacher. A wrong disciple cannot meet a right teacher. You create your 



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

Think of it in this way: even in a dream there is something which can help you to come 
out of it. Even in a dream something can help you to come out of it. You can try it just 
while falling asleep. Go on repeating in the mind, "Whenever there is a dream, my eyes 
will open." For three weeks go on continuously repeating it just when you are falling 
asleep: "Whenever there is a dream, my eyes will open; suddenly I will be awakened." 

And you will be awakened. Even from a dream you can be awakened by a certain 
method. Just when falling asleep, say to yourself — if your name is Ram, say — "Ram, 
awaken me at five o'clock in the morning." Repeat it twice, and then silently fall asleep. 
Sooner or later you will get the trick. Exactly at 5:00 someone will awaken you. Even in 
dream, even in sleep, methods can be used which will awaken you. The same is the case 
for the spiritual sleep you are in. 

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

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

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

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

Now there is no need, but this could happen only because of him." 

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

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

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

If you don't trust, then no progress is possible because you feel he is going to harm you. 



You feel, in your terms, that he is going to harm you in many ways, and if you think, "I 
am to protect myself," then no further work is possible. If you mistrust your surgeon, you 
will not allow him to make you unconscious. 

You don’t know what he is going to do, and you will say, "Do the operation, but allow me 
to be conscious so I can go on seeing what you are doing. I cannot trust you." 

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

This is going to be arduous and difficult; it even takes years. But if the disciple is ready 
to surrender, it can even happen in seconds. It depends on the intensity of surrender. 
Unnecessary time is wasted because the guru has to go slowly — slowly so that you are 
prepared to trust more, and he has to do many things unnecessarily just to create trust. 

Just to do the surgery he has to create many things unnecessarily which can be discarded. 
No need to waste time and energy on them, but they are needed just to create trust. 

I quoted Saraha; Saraha is one of the eighty-four SIDDHAS — one of the eighty-four 
Buddhist mystics — who attained. 

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

That is why many problems arise whenever a teacher starts behaving in a new way. Jesus 
behaved in a new way which was not known to the Jewish community. There was 
nothing wrong in it, but this became the problem. Jews couldn’t trust him. Their masters 
of old had behaved differently and this man was behaving differently. He was not 
following the rules of the game, so they couldn’t trust him. Thus, they had to crucify him. 
And why did Jesus behave in such a way? India was behind it. He was here for many 
years before he appeared in Jerusalem. He was taught here in a Buddhist monastery, and 
he tried to follow Buddhist rules there where no Buddhist society existed. 

In a Jewish community he was behaving as if he was living in a Buddhist community, 
and that created the whole problem. He was killed, misunderstood, murdered, and the 
reason was only this — that Jews couldn’t trust him. 

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

Surrender means you leave your expectations, you allow the guru to be as he is and you 



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

THE END. 



Chapter 37: Techniques to witness the flux-like film of life 


IN MOODS OF EXTREME DESIRE, BE UNDISTURBED. 

THIS SO-CALLED UNIVERSE APPEARS AS A JUGGLING, A PICTURE SHOW. 

TO BE HAPPY, LOOK UPON IT SO. 

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

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

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

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


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

So there is no sin, just a false identification. 

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

The whole past is dust, but we are identified with the past and not with the consciousness 
that is always present. Think of it in this way: whatsoever you know is always of the past, 
and you are here and now in the present. All your knowledge is dust. "Knowing" is your 
purity, knowledge is dust. The capacity to know, the energy to know, knowing, is your 
original nature. 

Through that knowing you gather knowledge. That knowledge is dust-like. Here and 
now, this very moment, you are absolutely pure, but you are not identified with this 
purity, you are identified with the past, the accumulated past. So all meditative 



techniques are basically methods to remove yourself from the past and to allow you to 
plunge into the here and now. 

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

Buddha was in search; he went from one teacher to another. He searched, and he went to 
many teachers, all of the known teachers. He consulted them, he allowed them to work 
upon him, he cooperated. He disciplined himself in many ways, but he was not fulfilled, 
and the difficulty was this: the teachers were interested in the future, in some liberated 
state somewhere beyond death, after the life is over. 

They were interested in some God, some nirvana, some moksha -some liberated state — 
somewhere in the future, and Buddha was interested in the here and now, so there was 
really no meeting. He said to every teacher, "I am interested in the here and now, in how 
to be total, complete and pure here and now." And they would say, "Apply this method, 
do this, and if you do it rightly, someday in the future, in some future life, in some future 
state, you will attain." 

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

Many are the ways how to uncover yourself from your past, how to throw the dust and 
have a look into the mirror of your own mind. All these techniques are different ways, 
but with every technique a deep understanding is needed: remember that. These 
techniques are not mechanical because they are to uncover consciousness. 

They are not mechanical things. You can use these techniques mechanically, and if you 
use them as mechanical techniques you may gain a certain stillness of mind, but that 
won’t be the original purity. You may gain a certain silence, but that silence will he 
cultivated. That too belongs to the dust part of the mind, not to the original layer. Don't 
use them mechanically. A deep understanding is needed, and with understanding they can 
be helpful to uncover your being. 

The first technique: 

"IN MOODS OF EXTREME DESIRE, BE UNDISTURBED." 

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



This sutra says, "IN MOODS OF EXTREME DESIRE, BE UNDISTURBED." But how 
to be undisturbed? Desire means disturbance, so how to be undisturbed — and in extreme 
moments of desire? You will have to do certain experiments; only then will you 
understand what it means. You are in anger, anger grips you, you are temporarily mad, 
possessed, you are no more in your senses. Suddenly remember to be undisturbed — as if 
you are undressing. Inside, become naked, naked from the anger, undressed. 

Anger will be there, but now you have a point within you which is not disturbed. 

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

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


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

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

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

Remember this: nothing can exist without its opposite. The opposite is needed there. 

Without it, there is no possibility of it existing. If there were no center within you which 
remains unmoved, no movement would be possible there. If there were no center within 
you which remains undisturbed, no disturbance could happen to you. Analyze this and 
observe this. If there were no center of absolute undisturbance in you, how could you feel 



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

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


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

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

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

Stand before a mirror and express your anger — and be a witness to it. You are alone, so 
you can meditate on it. Do whatsoever you want to do, but in a vacuum. If you want to 
beat someone, beat the empty sky. 

If you want to be angry, be angry; if you want to scream, scream. But do it alone, and 
remember yourself as a point which is seeing all this, this drama. Then it becomes a 
psychodrama, and you can laugh at it and it will be a deep catharsis for you. Afterwards 
you will feel relieved of it — and not only relieved of it, you will have gained something 
through it. You will have matured; a growth will have come to you. And now you will 
know that even while you were in anger there was a center within you which was 
undisturbed. Now try to uncover this center more and more, and it is easy to uncover it in 
desire. 

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

This technique can be very useful, and much benefit can happen to you through it. But it 
will be difficult because when you become disturbed, you forget everything. You may 



forget that you have to meditate. Then try it in this way: don’t wait for the moment when 
anger happens to you. Don’t wait for the moment! Just close your room, and think of 
some past experience of anger when you went mad. Remember it, and re-enact it. That 
will be easy for you. 

Re-enact it again, do it again, relive it. Do not just remember it, relive it. Remember that 
someone had insulted you and what was said and how you reacted to him. React again, 
replay it. 

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

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


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

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

"IN MOODS OF EXTREME DESIRE, BE UNDISTURBED." Gurdjieff used this 
technique very much. He created situations, but to create situations a school is needed. 
You cannot do that alone. Gurdjieff had a small school in Fontainebleau, and he was a 
taskmaster. He knew how to create situations. You would enter the room, and a group 
would be sitting there. You would enter the room where a group was sitting, and 
something would be done so that you would get angry. 

And it would be done so naturally that you could never imagine that some situation was 
being created for you. But it was a device. Someone would insult you by saying 
something, and you would get disturbed. Then everyone would help the disturbance and 



you would become mad. And when you were right at the point where you could explode, 
Gurdjieff would shout, "Remember! Remain undisturbed!" 

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

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


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

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

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


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

Sex is one of the most imaginary centers in the body, so just by imagining, you can have 
a sexual orgasm. You can deceive the body. In dream, you can have a sexual release; 
even in dream, the body is deceived. You are not making love to anyone; just in dream, 
in fantasy, in imagination, you are making love. But the body can release sexual energy, 



and even a deep orgasm can be felt. What is happening? How is the body deceived? The 
body cannot know what is real and what is unreal. Once you start doing something, the 
body thinks it is real and it starts behaving in a real way. 

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

Now you know that you are not disturbed, but the anger is there, the disturbance is there. 
The disturbance is there, and yet the disturbance is not. 

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

Gurdjieff used to do it. He was able to change his face at any moment. He would be 
laughing, he would be smiling, he would be looking happy with you, and suddenly he 
would become angry without any cause. And it is reported about him that he became so 
proficient at this art that if two persons were sitting near him, one on each side, he could 
be angry with half of his face and he could be smiling with the other half of his face. 

Then one person would report, "What a beautiful man Gurdjieff is," and the other would 
say, "What an ugly man! " He would look at one person from one side smiling, and he 
would look at the other side angrily. 

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


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

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

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



You can come and tell me." 

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

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

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

The second technique: 

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

This whole world is just like a drama, so don’t be too serious about it. Seriousness will 
force you into trouble, you will get into trouble. 

Don’t be serious about it. Nothing is serious; this whole world is just a drama. 

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

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

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


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



Look at the expanse: look backwards, look forwards, look to all dimensions at what you 
are, what your life is. It looks like a long dream, and everything that you take so seriously 
this moment becomes useless the next moment. You may not even remember it. 
Remember your first love, how serious it was. Life depended on it. Now you don't 
remember it at all, it is forgotten. And whatsoever you are thinking that your life depends 
on today will be forgotten. Life is a flux, nothing remains. It is like a moving film, 
everything changing into everything else. But in the moment you feel it is very serious, 
and you get disturbed. This technique says, "THIS SO-CALLED UNIVERSE APPEARS 
AS A JUGGLING, A PICTURE SHOW. TO BE HAPPY, LOOK UPON IT SO." 

In India, we have called this world not a creation of God, but a play, a game, a LEELA. 
This concept of LEELA is beautiful, because creation seems serious. The Christian, the 
Jewish God is very serious. Even for a single disobedience, Adam was thrown out of the 
Garden of Eden — and not only was he thrown out, because of him, the whole humanity. 

He was our father, and we are suffering because of him. God seems to be so serious. He 
should not be disobeyed. And if he is disobeyed, he is going to take revenge, and the 
revenge has been so long. 

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

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


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

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



whole world is just a drama — and you will not be the same again. Just for seven days! 
You are not going to lose much because you don’t have anything to lose. 

You can try it. For seven days take everything as a drama, just as a show. These seven 
days will give you many glimpses of your buddha nature, of your inner purity. 

And once you have the glimpse you cannot be the same again. You will be happy, and 
you cannot conceive of what type of happiness can happen to you because you have not 
known any happiness. You have known only degrees of unhappiness: sometimes you 
were more unhappy, sometimes less unhappy, and when you were less unhappy you 
called it happiness. You don't know what happiness is because you cannot know. When 
you have a concept of the world in which you are taking it very seriously, you cannot 
know what happiness is. Happiness happens only when you are grounded in this attitude, 
that the world is just a play. 

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

Go to your home this night, and behave with your wife or husband or your children as if 
you are doing a part in a drama, and see the beauty of it. If you are playing a part you will 
try to be efficient, but you will not get disturbed. 

There is no need. You will do the part and go to sleep. But remember, it is a part, and for 
seven days continuously follow this attitude. Then happiness can happen to you, and 
once you know what happiness is you need not move into unhappiness, because it is your 
choice. 

You are unhappy because you have chosen a wrong attitude towards life. You can be 
happy if you choose a right attitude. Buddha pays so much attention to "right attitude." 

He makes it a base, a foundation — "right attitude." What is right attitude? What is the 
criterion? To me this is the criterion: the attitude that makes you happy is the right 
attitude, and there is no objective criterion. The attitude that makes you unhappy and 
miserable is the wrong attitude. The criterion is subjective; your happiness is the 
criterion. 

The third technique: 

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

Everything is polar, and mind moves from one polarity to another, never staying in 
between. Have you known any moment when you were neither happy nor unhappy? 

Have you known any moment when you were neither healthy nor sick? Have you known 
any moment when you were neither this nor that, when you were just in between, just in 
the middle, right in the middle? Mind moves from one pole to another immediately. If 
you are happy, sooner or later you will move to unhappiness, and you will move 
immediately: the happiness will disappear and you will be unhappy. 



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

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


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

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

When there is happiness, what do you do? Your effort is to cling to it so that the other 
pole may not enter — to CLING to it! When happiness is there you cling; when pain is 
there you escape. This is the natural attitude. If you want to change this natural law and 
transcend it, when pain is there don't try to escape. 

Remain with it. You will disturb the whole natural mechanism. You have a headache: 
remain with it. Close your eyes, meditate on the headache; remain with it. Don't do 
anything. Just be a witness; don’t try to escape. 

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

Buddha has called his whole philosophy MAJJHIM NIKAYA — the middle way, because 
of this technique. He says remain in the middle always; no matter what the polarity, 



remain always in the middle. By witnessing one remains in the middle. The moment you 
lose your witnessing you either become attached or repulsed. If you are repulsed you will 
go to the other extreme; if you are attached you will try to remain at this extreme, but you 
will never be in between. Just be a witness. Don't be attracted, don’t be repulsed. The 
headache is there; accept it. It is there as a fact. As a tree is there, as the house is there, as 
the night is there, the headache is there. Accept it and close your eyes. Don’t try to escape 
from it. 

You are happy; accept the fact. 

Don’t cling to it, and don’t try not to become unhappy; don’t try anything. If unhappiness 
comes, allow it. If happiness comes, allow it. Just remain a watcher on the hill, just 
seeing things. The morning comes, and then evening comes, and then the sun rises, and 
then the sun sets and there are stars and darkness, and again the sun rises — and you are 
just a watcher on the hill. You cannot do anything. You simply see. The morning has 
come; you note the fact, and you know that now the evening will come because the 
evening follows the morning. And when the evening comes you note the fact, and you 
know that now the morning will be coming because the morning follows the evening. 
When pain is there, you are just a watcher. You kn ow that pain has come, and sooner or 
later it will go, and the polar opposite will come. And when happiness has come, you 
know that it is not going to remain always. Unhappiness will be just hidden somewhere, 
it will be coming. You remain a watcher. If you can watch without attraction and without 
repulsion you will fall in the middle, and once the pendulum stops in the middle you can 
look for the first time at what the world is. 

While you are moving, you cannot know what the world is; your movement confuses 
everything. Once you are not moving, you can look at the world. For the first time you 
know what reality is. A non-moving mind knows what reality is; a moving mind cannot 
know what reality is. 

Your mind is just like a camera: you go on moving and taking shots, but whatsoever 
comes is just a confusion because the camera must not move. If the camera is moving, the 
pictures are going to be just a confusion. 

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

The fourth technique: 

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

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

The same is done by others, but then the same rationalization is not given. If you are 
angry, you say it was necessary to help the other. If you were not angry, the other would 
have been destroyed., he would have got a wrong habit, so it was good to give him 



punishment. 


It was just for his "good". But when someone gets angry at you, the same rationalization 
is not applicable. Then he is "mad," he is "evil." 

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

Only a just mind can leave this double standard. 

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

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

But no one is extraordinary, and if you know this you become extraordinary. Everyone is 
just like everyone else. 

The same desires that hover around you hover around everyone else. But you call your 
sex love; others' love you call sex. Whatsoever you do, you protect it. You say it is good. 
That is why you are doing it, and the same thing done by others is "not the same." And 
this happens not only to persons; it happens to races, nations. This is why the whole 
world has become a mess, because of this. 

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

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

We are something different and the other is different. 

No one is different! A religious mind knows that everyone is the same, so if you give 
rationalizations for yourself, please give the same rationalizations to others also. If you 
criticize others, then apply that same criticism to yourself. Don’t create two standards. 

One standard will transform your being totally because with one standard you become 
just and for the first time you can look straight into reality, as it is. "OBJECTS AND 
DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS. SO ACCEPTING, LET THEM BE 
TRANSFORMED": ACCEPT THEM AND THEY WILL BE TRANSFORMED." 



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

Man remains the same and the earth remains in the same misery. Only faces and labels 
change, but misery continues. It is not a question of how to change the world. The world 
is not wrong; you are wrong. The question is how to change yourself: "How to change 
myself?" is the religious quest. 

"How to change everyone else?" is political. But the politician thinks he is okay; really, 
he is the model of how the whole world should be. He is the model, he is the ideal, and it 
is up to him to change the whole. 

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

Don't condemn others. I don't mean condemn yourself — no! Just don’t condemn others. 
And if you are not condemning others, you will have a deep compassion for them, 
because the same problems are there. If someone commits a sin, a sin in the eyes of the 
society, you start condemning him, never thinking that you also have the seed to commit 
that sin within you. If someone commits a murder you condemn him, but have you not 
always been thinking to kill someone, to murder? Is not the potential seed there always? 
The man who has committed murder was not a murderer a moment before, but the seed 
was there. And the seed is with you also. 

A moment later, who knows? You may be a murderer. So don't condemn him. Rather, 
accept. Then you will feel a deep compassion for him because whatsoever he has done 
any man is capable of doing; you are capable of doing it. 

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

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

But rejection never transforms anything. It simply suppresses, and that which is 
suppressed becomes more powerful. It moves to your roots, to your unconscious deep 
down within you, and it begins functioning from there. And from that darkness of the 
unconscious it becomes more powerful. 



You cannot accept it now because you are not even conscious of it. Acceptance brings 
everything up. There is no need to suppress. 

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

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

If someone says that "If you leave all your riches you will be allowed in my Kingdom of 
God," then you can even renounce. 

A further greed becomes possible. This is a bargain. Greed has not to become non-greed; 
greed is to be transcended. You cannot change it. 

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

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

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


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

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


THE END. 



Chapter 38: Toward the authentic being 


The first question: 

Question 1 

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

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

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

This will be the verbal answer, but this is not the real answer. This is your mind arguing, 
the false ego. Right now, if you leave all of your past — if you forget your father, your 
parents, your family, your religion, your country, all which is accidental — if you forget 
all that is accidental and just remain with yourself here and now, then who are you? No 
name will come to your consciousness, no form — just a simple awareness that you are. 

You won't be able to say who you are. You will simply say, "I am." The moment you 
answer the "who," you move into the past. 

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

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

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

Then he will leam the use of "I." 

First he will become identified with "Ram," the name that others call him; then he will 
become identified with "I." This is utilitarian. You need it. Without it survival will be 
difficult. Because of this utilitarian necessity, one becomes identified. You can go 



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

This identification is natural. There is another reason why it is so easy to become 
identified. 

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

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

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


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

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

Greed is nothing but an expansion, an effort to expand the ego. But howsoever great you 



become in your ego, you can never become infinite, and you ARE infinite within. If you 
can look into the nothingness you are infinite within. That is why ego is never satisfied. 
Ultimately it is frustrating. It cannot become infinite; it will remain finite. 


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

This inner mirror, this inner mind, is pure consciousness — just consciousness. 

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

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

With a name you feel you know yourself; with your riches you feel you know yourself. 
Something around you becomes the boundary and the pure consciousness is reflected 
back. 

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

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

Go into a school, and you will see that the teacher is writing on a blackboard with white 
chalk. 

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

The world is just a blackboard, and you become visible because of it. This is an inherent 
polarity, and it is good. That is why in the East we have never said that the world is bad; 



we take it just as a school, a training. It is good because only in contrast will you be able 
to know your purity. When you come into the world you become identified. With 
identification you enter; the world starts. So you will have to fall ill to know your inner 
health. 

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

I will tell you one story. One man — very rich, the richest in his country — became 
disturbed, became frustrated. He felt that life was meaningless. He had everything that 
could be purchased, but all that could be purchased proved meaningless. Only something 
that could not be purchased could have real meaning. He had everything he could 
purchase — he could have purchased the whole world — but what to do now? He was 
frustrated and deep discontent was within. 

So he gathered all his valuables, ornaments, gold, jewels, everything, into a big bag, and 
he started on a journey just to find a man who could give him something valuable, a 
glimpse of happiness. Then be would present his whole life's earnings to him. He went 
from one teacher to another, traveled and traveled, but no one was able to give him even 
a glimpse. And he was ready to give everything — his whole kingdom. 

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

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

" Mulla Nasruddin listened. The evening was descending; it was becoming dark. Without 
answering him, Mulla Nasruddin snatched the bag from the rich man and ran away. Of 
course, the rich man followed him crying, weeping and screaming. The village streets 
were known to Mulla Nasruddin; they were not known to the rich man as he was a 
stranger, so he couldn't find him. 

From all over the village people from the whole village started following them. 

Nasruddin was just running round and round. The man was mad. He was crying, "I have 
been robbed of all my life's riches. I am a poor man! I have become a beggar!" He was 
weeping — weeping like anything. 

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

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

What happened? To have a peak, a valley is needed. To feel happiness, unhappiness is 
needed. To know the divine, the world is needed. The world is just a valley. The man was 
the same, the bag was the same. Nothing new had happened, but now he said that he was 
happy — as happy as anyone can be on this earth — and just a few minutes before he was 



miserable. Nothing had changed. The man was the same, the bag was the same, the tree 
was the same. Nothing had changed, but the man was now happy, dancing. The contrast 
had happened. Consciousness becomes identified because through identification the 
world is and through the world you can regain yourself 

When Buddha attained he was asked, "What have you achieved?" He said, "Nothing. 

On the contrary, I have lost much. I have not attained anything because now I know that 
whatsoever I have attained was always there; it was my nature. It was never taken away 
from me, so I have not achieved anything. I have achieved that which was already there, 
which was already achieved. I have lost only my ignorance." 

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

The second question: 

Question 2 

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

"If one begins to feel that life is a psychodrama, then one also feels detached and 
lonely...." Then feel it! Why create a problem? If you feel detached and lonely, then feel 
it! But we go on creating problems. 

Whatsoever happens, we will create a problem out of it. Feel lonely and detached — And 
if you can be at ease with your loneliness, it will disappear. If you start doing something 
with it to transcend it, it will never disappear; it will remain there. Now a modern trend in 
psychology and psychoanalysis says that anything can disappear if you remain with it 
without creating any problems, and this has been one of the oldest teachings of tantra. 

For the last ten or twelve years, in Japan, a small psychotherapeutic technique has been in 
use. Western psychoanalysts and psychiatrists have been studying it. It is a Zen therapy, 
and it is wonderful. If someone goes neurotic or psychotic, that man or woman is simply 
put into a lonely room and he or she is told, "Remain with yourself, whatsoever you are. 
Neurotic? Okay! Then be neurotic and live with it." And the doctors do not interfere. 

Food is provided, needs will he fulfilled, attention will be given, but there is no 
interference. The patient has to live with himself, and within ten days he starts changing. 
Western psychoanalysis works for years, and basically nothing changes. 

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


Once you accept a thing, you are already transcending it. 

One of the most original psychiatrists of England, R. D. Laing, has now proposed that if 



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

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

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

Don’t do that violence. Your prayer is going to be a depressed prayer. 

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

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

This is what is meant by "effortless effort." 

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

One man came to me just the other day and he said, "Meditation is going deep and I am 
feeling very happy, but I am suspicious. This happiness must be illusory because I have 
never felt any happiness before. I must be in a delusion; so much doubt has come to me. 
Now, please clarify my doubt." Even if happiness happens to a mind who has been 
always rejecting, he will feel a doubt about it. He will feel that something has gone 



wrong. He is happy, so he will feel something has gone wrong. Just by meditating for a 
few days this is not possible. 

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


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

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

If I love you and I say, "Don’t be angry; otherwise my love will be lost," then the sooner 
such a love is lost, the better. 

If the love is real, whatsoever you do makes no difference; the love will remain. And 
only then does it have any worth. 

So if just by looking at the world as a psychodrama, as a drama, your intensity, your 
depth of living is lost, then it is not worth preserving. It was false. Why is it lost? 

Because it was really an act in a drama, and you were thinking that it was real so you felt 
it was deeper. Now you know it was just a drama. If it was just a drama and the sincerity 
is lost, the sincerity was false. You were thinking it was real, and it was not real. Just by 
looking at life as a drama, it disappeared. 

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

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


’PLEASE SUGGEST WHAT TO DO IN THIS SITUATION." Nothing! Please don’t do 



anything. You have created a mess because of too much of your doing. You are such a 
good doer, you have confused everything around you — not only for yourself, but for 
others also. Be a non-doer; that will be compassion towards yourself. Be compassionate. 
Don’t do anything, because with a false mind, a confused mind, everything becomes more 
confused. With a confused mind, it is better to wait and not to do anything so that the 
confusion disappears. It will disappear; nothing is pennanent in this world. You need 
only a deep patience. Don’t be in a hurry. 

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

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

Buddha said, "No! You go back to the same stream." 

As Buddha had said this Ananda had to follow it, but he followed it with half a heart as 
he knew that the water would not be brought. And time was being unnecessarily wasted 
and he was feeling thirsty, but when Buddha said it he had to go. 

Again he came back and he said, "Why did you insist? That water is not drinkable." 
Buddha said, "You go again." And as Buddha said it, Ananda had to follow. 

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

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

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

Buddha said, "Please don't do anything; otherwise you will make it more impure. 

And don’t enter the stream. Just be outside, wait on the bank. Your entering the stream 
will create a mess. The stream flows by itself, so allow it to flow." 

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

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

This very waiting is a transformation. 

The third question: 

Question 3 



"THE PRACTICE OF WITNESSING MAKES ME QUIET, STILL, AND SILENT, 

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

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


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

But you become affected. Whatsoever they say goes deep in you; you become disturbed. 
Your silence is false, forced, cultivated. It is not a spontaneous flowering within you. 

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

I was reading the memoirs of someone who was a great industrialist, much worried with 
day-to-day problems. 

Someone suggested golf: "Play golf. That will be anxiety-reducing." He started playing 
golf, but he was the same man. He became so excited about his golf that he couldn’t 
sleep, he was playing the whole night. The industry was a burden, and now golf became a 
second burden — and a stronger one. He played golf, but with a serious mind, the same 
mind. 

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

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

And don’t pay attention to what others say. This is a disease. They will drive you crazy — 
the others. Who are these others and why are you so much interested in them? They drive 



you crazy and you drive them crazy because you are the other to them. 


Why pay so much importance to others' opinions? Pay attention to your own experiences 
and remain true to your own experiences. If you feel good in being serious, it is okay! If 
you feel you have become quiet and silent and still through your practice of witnessing, 
why be interested and why be disturbed by what others say? 

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

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

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

He became disturbed. His courtiers, they also became disturbed. What type of man was 
this? And he was laughing. 

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

Bodhidharma laughed and said, "Because I can laugh at myself, and it is good to show 
you my reality. I am such a man, and I don't pay more importance to my head than I pay 
to my feet; both are the same to me. Higher and lower have disappeared. And, moreover, 
I want to tell you that I don't pay any significance to what others say about me. This is 
good. The first moment that I entered, I wanted you to know what type of man I am." 
This Bodhidhanna was a rare jewel; very few have existed who can be compared to him. 
What was he showing? He is simply showing that on this path of spirituality you are to 
go alone as an individual. Society becomes irrelevant. 

Someone had come to do an interview with George Gurdjieff. The man who came was a 
big journalist. Gurdjieff s disciples were very much excited because now the story was 
going to be in a big newspaper, and their master's photo and their master's news was 
going to be published. They cared very much; they paid much attention to the journalist. 

They virtually forgot their master, and they hung around the journalist. Then the 
interview began, but really, it never began. When the journalist asked some questions to 
Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff said, "Wait a minute." 

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



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

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

Don't pay much attention to what others say and remember only one thing: don’t force 
and cultivate stillness. A cultivated stillness will be serious, ill, tense. But how can a real 
silence come to you? Try to understand this. 

You are tense, you are unhappy, you are depressed, angry, greedy, violent. A thousand 
diseases are there. Still, you can practice silence. These diseases will be within you, and 
you can create a layer of silence. You can do transcendental meditation; you can use a 
mantra. The mantra is not going to change your violence, neither is it going to change 
your greed. It is not going to change anything deep. The mantra can just give a 
tranquilizing effect. Just on the periphery, you will feel more silent. This is just a 
tranquilizer, a sound tranquilizer, and tranquilizing is possible through many ways — 
many ways. When you repeat a mantra continuously, you become sleepy. Any 
continuous repetition of a sound creates boredom and sleep. You feel relaxed, but this 
relaxation is just on the surface. Within, you remain the same. 

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

This is happening everywhere. Seekers move from one teacher to another. They go on 
moving, practicing, and when they stop their practice they find they are the same; nothing 
has happened. Nothing will happen in this way. These are cultivated silences. You have 
to go on cultivating them. 

Of course, if you go on cultivating them, they remain with you just like a habit, but if you 
break the habit they disappear. A real silence comes not by just using some superficial 
technique, but by being aware of all that you are — not only being aware, but remaining 
with the fact of what you are. 

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

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

In Zen, they call it "zazen" — just sitting and doing nothing. Whatsoever happens, 
happens; you are just sitting. Zazen means just sitting, doing nothing. In Zen monasteries, 



monks will sit for years, the whole day. 


You will think they are meditating. They are not! They are just sitting silently. And by 
silence it is not that they are using some mantra to create any silence; they are simply 
sitting. If a leg goes dead, they feel it. They are alert. If the body feels tired, they are 
alert: the body feels tired. This is how the body has to feel. If thoughts are moving, they 
know it. They are not trying to stop them; they are not trying to push them away. They 
are not doing anything. Thoughts are just there like clouds in the sky, but they know the 
clouds cannot destroy the sky: they come and go. 

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

If a bad thought comes, they don’t say, "This is bad," because the moment you say, "This 
is bad," you have a greed to change it. The moment you say, "This is bad," you have 
pushed it away; you have condemned it, and you would like to change it into something 
good. 

They simply say this is this, that is that — no condemnation, no evaluation, no 
justification. Simply, watching, witnessing. 

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

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

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

No one accepts himself; you are such enemies to yourself. You have never had any love 
for yourself; you have never been at ease with yourself. 

And this is surprising: you expect everyone to love you, and you yourself cannot even 
love yourself. You are so against yourself, you would like to shatter yourself in every 
way and create another. If you were allowed you would create another man. And you 
would not be satisfied with that either because you would still remain behind it. 

Love yourself, accept yourself, and don’t create unnecessary problems. And all problems 
are unnecessary; there are no necessary problems. I have not come across any. Remain 



with your "facticity," and transformation will happen. But it is not a result, you cannot 
force it to happen. It is a consequence, not a result. If you accept yourself and remain 
alert, it comes. You cannot force it, you cannot say that "I will force it to come." And if 
you force, a false thing will happen to you, and then that false thing can be disturbed by 
anyone -by anyone — 

The last question: 

Question 4 

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

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

Suzuki said, "When I was unenlightened I was a man, and when I became enlightened I 
became just like a cat." 

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

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

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

If you feel like being an animal, nothing is wrong in it. 

Be one, and be one totally — and be one with full alertness. That alertness will first 
uncover your animal because that is your reality. Your humanity is just false, skin-deep. 
Someone insults you, and the animal comes out — not the human being. Someone 
condemns you, and the animal comes out — not the human being. It is there, and your 
humanity is just skin-deep. If you accept everything, this skin-deep humanity will 
disappear. This is a false thing, and you can become aware of your real animal. And it is 
good to become aware of reality. If you go on being alert, within this animal you will find 
the divine. And it is always better to be a real animal than to be an unreal man. Reality is 
the point. 

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



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

THE END. 



Chapter 38: From the wave to the cosmic ocean 


SUTRAS 

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

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

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

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

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

Meditation is an inner breathing, and when I say "an inner breathing," I mean it literally; 
it is not a metaphor. Just as you are breathing air you can breathe consciousness, and 
once you start breathing consciousness in and out you are no more just a physical body. 

And with that start, beginning with a higher breathing — a breathing of consciousness, of 
life itself, as it were — you enter a different realm, a different dimension. That dimension 
is metaphysics. 

Your breathing is physical; meditation is metaphysical. So you cannot make a part of 
your life meditative. You cannot meditate in the morning and then forget it. You cannot 
go to a temple or to a church and meditate there and come out of your meditation as you 
come out of the temple. That is not possible, and if you try it you will be trying a false 
thing. You can enter a church and you come out of it, but you cannot enter meditation 
and come out of it. When you enter, you have entered. Wherever you go now meditation 
will be you. This is one of the basic, primary, elemental facts to be remembered always. 
Secondly, you can enter meditation from anywhere because the whole life is in a deep 
meditation. The hills are meditating, the stars are meditating, the flowers, the trees, the 
elements are meditating, the very earth is meditating. The whole life is meditating, and 
you can enter it from anywhere; anything can become an entrance. This has been used. 
That is why there are so many techniques; that is why there are so many religions; that is 
why one religion cannot understand another — because their entrances are different. And 
sometimes there are religions which are not known even by the name of religion. 

You will not recognize certain persons as religious because their entrance is so different. 
For example, a poet. A poet can enter meditation without going to any teacher, without 
going to any temple, without in any way being religious, so-called religious. His poetry, 
his creativity, can become an entrance; he can enter through it. Or a potter who is just 
creating earthen pots can enter meditation just by creating earthen pots. The very craft 



can become an entry. Or an archer can become meditative through his archery, or a 
gardener, or anyone can enter from anywhere. Whatsoever you can do can become a 
door. If the quality of awareness changes while you are doing something, it becomes a 
technique. So there can be as many techniques as you can imagine. Any act can become a 
door. So the act, the technique, the way, the method, is not primary, but the quality of 
consciousness that you bring to the act is the basic thing. 

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

" Kabir would laugh and he would say, "This weaving is not just weaving. I am making 
clothes — that is the outer act — but something goes on within me simultaneously that you 
cannot see. 

This is my meditation." How can a weaver be a meditator through weaving? If the quality 
of the mind that you bring to weaving is meditative, then the act is not relevant; it is 
irrelevant. 

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

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

First: 

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


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

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



silent. The waves will disappear, but the ocean will be there. 

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

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

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

Deep down they are related to one ocean. 

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

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

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

Gautam Buddha was an atheist; he didn’t believe in any God. Mahavira Vardhaman was 
an atheist; he didn’t believe in any God. But they achieved, they arrived, they realized the 
totality, the wholeness. 

If you don’t believe in any God you may not be irreligious, because God is not basic to 
religion. Non-ego is basic to religion. And even if you believe in God, with an egoist 
mind you are irreligious. With a non-egoistic mind there is no need to believe in a God. 
You fall into the divine automatically. With no ego you cannot cling to the wave; you 



have to fall to the ocean. With the ego, you go on clinging to the wave. Look at life as an 
ocean, and feel yourself just as a wave, and allow this feeling to enter in you. 

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

That is why Buddha never says that in that state, the ultimate state, there will be 
ANANDA — bliss. He never says it. 

He says that there will be no misery, that is all. To talk about bliss may mislead you, so 
Buddha says don't ask about bliss; simply try to know how you can be without misery. 
And that means how you can be without yourself. 

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

Once you detach yourself from the wave form, and you become one and feel one and 
realize oneness with the ocean, the formless, there is no death for you. 

Otherwise the fear of death will create misery. In every pain, in every anguish, in every 
anxiety, the basic fear is of death. You are afraid, trembling. You may not be conscious 
of it, but if you penetrate within you will find that every moment there is a trembling 
because you are going to die. 

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

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



If you cling to the form, if you identify yourself with the fonn, if you feel yourself as a 
wave form, you are getting into trouble by yourself. 

You are the ocean, not the wave. 

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

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

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

You are a wave, and that too not substantial; every moment you are changing. And a 
wave cannot be static, a wave has to be changing; a wave has to be constantly in 
movement. 

There can be no phenomenon like a non-moving wave. How can there be? A non-moving 
wave makes no sense. There is movement, process; you are a process, a movement. If 
you become identified with this movement and process and think yourself confined 
between birth and death, you will be in misery. Then you are taking appearance as 
reality. This is what Shankara calls MAYA — illusion. The ocean is the BRAHMAN, the 
ocean is the truth. 

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

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

I told you about breathing. A sex desire arises in you: feel it — not as your desire, but just 
as the ocean waving in you, just as life pulsating, just as life having a wave in you. 

You meet in a love act: don’t think of it as two waves meeting, don't think of it as two 
individuals meeting. Rather, think of it as two individuals merging. There are no more 
two individuals. Waves have disappeared; only the ocean has remained. Then the sex act 
becomes a meditation. Whatsoever happens to you, feel it not as if it is happening to you, 



but as if it is happening to the cosmos. You are just a part of it — just a wave on the 
surface. Leave everything to the Universe. 

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

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

And if you will see some flower flowering, you will flower with it. The whole universe 
will become you now. To be in such a deep affinity and harmony is to be in SAMADHI. 
Meditation is the way, and this hannony of oneness, this feeling of oneness with all, is 
the end, is the goal. Try it! Remember the ocean and forget the wave. And whenever you 
remember the wave and start behaving as the wave, remember, you are doing something 
wrong and you will create misery because of it. 

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

If you walk wrongly and you fall down, you will have a fracture. If you walk rightly, you 
use gravity. The energy can be used wrongly or rightly. When you feel yourself as a 
wave, you are against the universal law, you are against the reality. Then you will create 
misery for yourself. 

This is what the law of KARMA means. There is no law-giver; God is not a judge. To be 
a judge is ugly, and if God were a judge, he would be completely bored, or else he would 
have gone mad by now. He is not a judge, he is not a controller, he is not a law-giver. 

The universe has its own laws, and the basic law is that to be real is to be in bliss, to be 
unreal is to be in misery. 

The second technique: 

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

This mind is the door — this very mind. Wherever it is wandering, whatsoever it is 
thinking, contemplating, dreaming, this very mind, this very moment, is the door. This is 
a very revolutionary method because we never think that the ordinary mind is the door. 
We think that some supennind — a Buddha, a Jesus — can enter, that they have some 
superhuman mind. This very mind that you have — this mind which goes on dreaming 
and imagining relevant or irrelevant thoughts, which is crowded with ugly desires, 



passions, anger, greed, all that is condemned, which is there beyond your control, pulling 
you here and there, pushing you from here and there, constantly a madhouse — this very 
mind, says this sutra, is the door. Wherever your mind is wandering — wherever 
remember; the object is not relevant — wherever your mind is wandering, internally or 
externally, "AT THIS VERY PLACE, THIS." 


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

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

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

Sometimes it may happen, it happens, that there are so many clouds that the sky 
disappears, you cannot see it. But even if you cannot see it, it has not disappeared; it 
cannot disappear. 

There is no way to help the sky to disappear. It is there; hidden or unhidden, visible or 
invisible, it is there. 

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

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

A sex desire arises: this is a cloud. Or a greed arises to have a bigger house: this is a 
cloud. You can become so obsessed with it that you forget completely to whom it has 
arisen, to whom it has happened. Who is behind it? In what sky is this cloud moving? 
Remember that sky, and suddenly the cloud disappears. 


You need just a change of focus from the object to the subject, from the outer to the 
inner, from the cloud to the sky, from the guest to the host — just a change of focus. 



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

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

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

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

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

Change the focus; return to yourself. 

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

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

It never happens gradually that one part of your eyes has turned inward and one part is 
with the outward clouds — nor does it happen in percentages, that now you have become 
ten percent inner and ninety percent outer, now twenty percent inner and eighty percent 
outer — no! When it happens it happens a hundred percent, because you cannot divide 
your focusing. 

Either you see the objects or you see yourself — either the world or the BRAHMAN. You 
can come back to the world, you can change your focus again; you are the master. Really, 
only now are you the master — when you can change your focus as you like. 

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

Marpa's answer is exceptional, unexpected. No buddha has answered that way. Marpa 



said, "As miserable as before." 

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

But Marpa laughed. He said, "Yes, but with a difference, and the difference is that now 
the misery is voluntary. Sometimes, just for a taste of the world, I move outwards, but 
now I am the master. Any moment I can go inwards, and it is good to move in the 
polarities. Then one remains alive. I can move!" Marpa said, "I can move now. 

Sometimes I move in the miseries, but now the miseries are not something which happen 
to me. I happen to them and I remain untouched." Of course, when you move voluntarily, 
you remain untouched. 

Once you know how to change your focus inwards, you can come back to the world. 
Every buddha has come back to the world. Again he focuses, but now the inner man has a 
different quality. He knows that this is his focusing. 

These clouds are allowed to move. These clouds are not masters; they cannot dominate 
you. You allow them, and it is beautiful. Sometimes, when the sky is fdled with clouds, it 
is beautiful; the movement of the clouds is beautiful. If the sky remains itself, the clouds 
can be allowed to move. The problem arises only when the sky forgets itself and only 
clouds are there. Then everything becomes ugly because the freedom is lost. 

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

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

One university student was here some days before. 

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

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

While drawing water from a well, carrying water from a well, if you are simply doing 
this simple act, you are a buddha. So many times, if you go to Zen masters and ask them, 
"What do YOU do? What is your SADHANA? What is your meditation?" they will say, 
"While feeling sleepy, we sleep. While feeling hungry, we eat. And that is all, there is no 
other SADHANA." But this is very arduous. It looks simple: if while eating you can just 



eat, if while sitting you can just sit — not doing anything else, if you can remain with the 
moment and not move away from it, if you can be merged with the moment with no 
future, no past, if this moment now is the only existence, then you are a buddha. 

This very mind becomes a buddha-mind. 

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

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

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

It is beautiful, it is lovely, but you need to know that beauty and that loveliness as a 
master within. 

The third technique: 

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

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

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

Women are very sensitive about it; you cannot deceive them. They have a greater 
sensitivity of touch, of body touch, so they know. 

The husband may be talking beautiful things. He may have brought flowers and he may 
be saying, "I love you," but his touch will show that he is not there. And women have an 
instinctive feeling when you are with them and when you are not with them. It is difficult 



to deceive them unless you are a master. Unless you are a master of your own self, you 
cannot deceive them. But a master would not like to become a husband, that is the 
difficulty. 

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

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

You can look at me through the eyes, and when I say "through the eyes," then the eyes 
are just in between you and me. You are standing there behind the eyes, looking through 
the eyes, just as if someone looks through a window or specs. 

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

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

If I have some body odor your nose will smell it. Then three different senses report to one 
center. That is why you can coordinate. Otherwise it will be difficult: if your eyes see and 
your ears hear, it will be difficult to know whether you are hearing the same man whom 
you are seeing or two different ones, because these two senses are different and they 
never meet. 

Your eyes have never known about your ears and your ears have not heard about your 
eyes. They don’t know each other, they have never met; they have not even been 
introduced. 

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

I am one, outside you. I am one! My body and body's presence, my body odor, my 
speaking, are one. Your senses will divide me. Your ears will report if I say something, 
your nose will report if there is some odor, your eyes will report if I can be seen and am 



visible. They will divide me into parts. But again, somewhere within you, I will become 
one. Where I become one within you is your center of being. That is your awareness, and 
you have forgotten it completely. This forgetfulness is the ignorance, and the awareness 
will open the doors for self-knowledge. And you cannot know yourself in any other way. 
"WHEN VIVIDLY AWARE THROUGH SOME PARTICULAR SENSE, KEEP IN 
THE AWARENESS." Remain with the awareness; keep in the awareness; remain alert. It 
is difficult in the beginning. We go on falling asleep, and it seems arduous to look 
through the eyes. 

It is easy to look "by" the eyes. In the beginning you will feel a certain strain — if you try 
to look through the eyes. Not only will you feel a strain; the person you look at will also 
feel a strain. 

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

In India, a person who looks in such a way, penetratingly at someone, is called a 
LUCHCHA. A LUCHCHA means a seer. The word LUCHCHA comes from LOCHAN; 
LOCHAN means eyes, and LUCHCHA means one who has become eyes towards you. 

So don’t try it on someone you don’t know; he will think you are a LUCHCHA. 

First try with objects — a flower, a tree, the stars in the night. They will not feel 
trespassed upon and they will not object. 

Rather, they will like it and will feel very good and appreciated. First try with them, then 
with loving persons — your wife, your child. Sometimes take your child into your lap and 
look at him through the eyes, and the child will understand. He will understand more than 
anyone else because he is still uncrippled by the society, still unperverted, still natural. 

He will feel deep love if you look through the eyes; he will feel your presence. 

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

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


THE END. 



Chapter 40: Sudden Enlightenment and its obstacles 


The first question: 

Question 1 

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

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

If I say to you that you are ignorant and that gradually you will become wise, this is 
comprehensible, you can comprehend it. If I say to you, "No, there is no gradual growth. 
Either you are ignorant or you become enlightened, there is a sudden jump," then the 
question arises of HOW to become enlightened. If there were no gradualness, there could 
be no progress. 

If there were no degree of growth, no degrees, then you could not make progress, you 
could not proceed. From where to begin? In a sudden explosion, the beginning and the 
end are both the same. There is no gap between the beginning and the end, so from where 
to begin? The beginning is the end. 

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

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

Something is possible through gradual process, but not enlightenment — not 
enlightenment, something else. 

And that something else becomes helpful. For example, if you are making water to 
evaporate it, heating it, evaporation will come suddenly. At a certain point, at a hundred 
degrees, evaporation will happen — suddenly! There will be no gradual growth between 



water and vapor. You cannot divide; you cannot say that this water is a little vapor and a 
little water. Either it is water or it is all vapor. Suddenly the water jumps into the state of 
vapor. There is a jump — not gradual growth. But by heating you are gradually giving 
heat to the water. You are helping it to reach the hundred-degree point, the evaporating 
point. This is a natural growth. Up to the evaporating point, the water will grow in the 
sense of being more and more hot. Then evaporation will happen suddenly. 

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

The second thing to remember: even hot water is still water. So even if you become more 
clear in your mind, more pure in your perceptions, more moral, more centered, you are 
still man, not a buddha, not enlightened. 

You become more silent, more still, calmer. You feel a deep bliss, but still you are a man, 
and your feelings are really negative, not positive. 

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

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


If the misery has disappeared so completely, how can you feel blissful? If the noise and 
the anguish are so absolutely non-existent, how can you feel silence? All these 
experiences, feelings, are related to their opposites. Without their opposites they cannot 
be felt. If darkness disappears completely, how can you feel light? It is impossible. 
Buddha cannot say, "I have become light!" He cannot say, "Now I am filled with light." 
If he says such things, we will say he is not yet a buddha. He cannot utter such things. 
Darkness must be there if you want to feel light; death must be there if you want to feel 
deathlessness. You cannot avoid the opposite. It is a basic necessity for any experience to 
exist. So what is Buddha’s experience? Whatsoever we know, it is not that. It is neither 
negative nor positive, neither this nor that. And whatsoever can be expressed, it is not 
that. 

That is why Lao Tzu insists so much that truth cannot be said, and the moment you say it 
you have falsified it. Already it is untrue. Truth cannot be said because of this: it cannot 



be divided into polar opposites, and language is meaningful only with polar opposites. 
Language becomes meaningless otherwise. Without the contrary, language loses 
meaning. 

So there is a tradition which says that enlightenment is gradual, but that tradition is not 
really the truth. It is just a half-truth uttered in compassion for human minds. 

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

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

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


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

If this is so, it means that non-existence is also a sort of existence. It is difficult to 
conceive of, but it is so: non-existence is also a sort of existence. It is as if something 
moves from the visible to the invisible, as if something moves from form to formlessness. 
When Gautam Siddharth, the old man who died in Gautam Buddha, was seeking, he was 
a visible form. When the enlightenment happened, that fonn completely dissolved into 
the formless. For a moment there was a gap; there was no one. Then from that 
formlessness a new form arose. This was Gautam Buddha. Because the body continues in 
the same way, we think that there is a continuity, but the inner reality changes 
completely. Because the body continues in the same way, that is why we say "Gautam 
Buddha" — that "Gautam Siddharth has now become Gautam the awakened; he has 
become a buddha." 


But Buddha himself says, "I am not he who was seeking. I am a totally different one." 

It is difficult for the mind to conceive of this — and for the mind many things are difficult, 



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

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

Tertullian, one of the greatest Christian mystics, has said, "I believe in God because God 
is the greatest absurdity. I believe in God because mind cannot believe in God." It is 
impossible to believe in God; no proof, no argument, no logic can help the belief in God. 

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

Your mind is the problem, your logic is the problem, your arguments are the problem. 
They are on the surface. They look true, but they deceive. They are not true. For example, 
look how the mind's structure functions. The mind divides everything in two, and nothing 
is divisible. Existence is indivisible; you cannot divide it — but mind goes on dividing it. 

It says that "this" is life and "this" is death. What is the actual fact? The actual fact is that 
both are the same. You are both alive and dying this very moment; you are doing both. 
Rather, you ARE both -death and life. 

Mind divides. 

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

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



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


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

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

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


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

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

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


As it was impossible before to rise upwards, now it is impossible to flow downwards. 
It is not that a buddha tries to be non-violent; he cannot do otherwise. It is not that he 



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

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

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

And once you are cooperative and non-resistant, the higher law starts functioning. Your 
efforts will yield you, your efforts will make you more receptive. 

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

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

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

That is why medical science, Eastern or Western, has not yet been able to define what 
health is. 

They can define each disease exactly — they know thousands and thousands of diseases 
and they have defined them all — but they cannot define what health is. At the most they 
can say that when there is no disease you are healthy. But what is health? Something 
which goes beyond mind. It is something which is there: you can have it, you can feel it, 
but you cannot define it. 

You have known health, but can you define it — what it is? The moment you try to define 
it you will have to bring disease in. You will have to talk something about disease, and 
you will have to say, "No-disease is health." This is ridiculous. To define health you need 
disease? And disease has definite qualities. Health also has its own qualities, but they are 
not so definite because they are infinite. You can feel them; when health is there you 
know it is there. But what is it? Diseases can be treated, destroyed. Barriers are broken 



and the light enters. Similar is the phenomenon of enlightenment. It is a spiritual health. 
Mind is a spiritual disease, and meditation is nothing but medicine. 

Buddha is said to have said, "I am a medicine man, a VAIDYA — a physician. I am not a 
teacher and I have not come to give you doctrines. I know a certain medicine which can 
cure your diseases. And don't ask about health. Take the medicine, destroy the disease, 
and you will know what health is. Don’t ask about it." 

Buddha says, "I am not a metaphysician, I am not a philosopher. I am not interested in 
what God is, in what soul is, in what KAIVALYA, aloneness, MOKSHA, liberation, and 
NIRVANA is. I am not interested! I am simply interested in what disease is and in how it 
can be cured. I am a medicine man." His approach is absolutely scientific. He has 
diagnosed human dilemma and disease. His approach is absolutely right. 

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

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


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

You can use both expressions, they mean the same. You can call it the "ancient-most" — 
the BRAHMAN who has always been there, and you can say that you were missing it 
continuously. Or you can say that this is the most new — that which has happened only 
now and never was before. That too is right because for you this is the new. If you want 
to speak about the truth, you will have to use paradoxical expressions. The Upanishads 
say, "This is the new and this is the old. This is the most ancient and this is the most new. 
It is the far and the near both." But then language becomes paradoxical, contradictory. 
And you ask me, "WHAT IS THIS GRADUAL GROWTH AND CLARITY IF THE 
AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE IS NEVER GRADUAL, BUT SUDDEN?" This clarity is 
of the mind; this clarity is of a lessening of disease; this clarity is of the falling of 
barriers. If one barrier falls you are less burdened, your eyes are less clouded. If another 
barrier falls you are still more unburdened, your eyes become still more clear. 

But this clarity is not of enlightenment; this clarity is only of a lessening disease, not of 
health. When all barriers disappear, with those barriers your mind also disappears. Then 
you cannot say, "Now my mind is clear, it is no more." Then you simply say, "Now there 
is no mind." 



When there is no mind, then the clarity is of enlightenment. Then the clarity is of 
enlightenment! that is absolutely different. Then another dimension has opened. But you 
will have to pass through clarities of mind. Remember always that no matter how clear 
your mind becomes, it is still a barrier. No matter how transparent your mind becomes, 
even if it becomes a transparent glass and you can look to the other side, still it is a 
barrier and you will have to break it completely. So sometimes it happens that when one 
is meditating one becomes more and more clear, more sane, more still; silence is felt. 
Then one clings to meditation and thinks that everything is achieved. Great masters have 
always been emphasizing that a day comes when you have to throw your meditation also. 
I will tell you one story — one Zen story. Bokuju was meditating — meditating very 
deeply, meditating with his whole heart. His master would come every day, and he would 
just laugh and go back. Bokuju became annoyed. The master would not say anything, he 
would just come and look at him, laugh and go away. And Bokuju was feeling very good 
in meditation. 

His meditation was deepening, and he needed someone to appreciate him. He was 
waiting for the master to pat him and say, "Good, Bokuju. You did well." But the master 
just laughed. The laughter felt insulting — as if Bokuju was not progressing, and he was 
progressing. As he progressed more, the laughter grew more and more insulting. It was 
impossible to tolerate it now. 

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

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

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

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


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

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

You cannot understand it right now. Krishnamurti goes on saying that there is no need of 
any meditation, and he is right. But he is talking to wrong persons. He is right; there is no 



need for any meditation, but he is wrong because of to whom he is saying this. Those 
who cannot even understand what meditation is, how can they understand that there is no 
need for any meditation? This is going to be harmful for them because they will cling to 
this idea. They will feel that this idea is very good, there is no need of meditation, so "We 
are already enlightened." 


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

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

Whatsoever is felt through meditation, don’t think that it is enlightenment. 

These are just glimpses of a lessening disease, of a dispersing disease. You feel good. 

The disease is less, so you feel relatively healthy. Real health is not yet there, but you are 
more healthy than before and it is good to be more healthy than before. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

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

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

Rather, ask how to be dead so that you can know what happens. No one else can die for 
you; no one else's experience can be an experience for you. You will have to die. Death 
cannot be another's experience for you, it has to be your own. Similar is the case here. 
What happens when polarities disappear? In a way nothing happens. "Happening" 
dissolves because all happening is polar. 


When love and hate both dissolve — and they DO dissolve — , what happens? When you 



love, you hate also — and you hate the same person you love. Hate is just hidden, and 
when hate comes up love goes down. 

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

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


With our love, hate is inevitably present. It colors it, it changes the quality of it. Hate 
gives a passion to love, a force, an intensity, a focused quality, a concentration, while 
Buddha’s love becomes a dispersed phenomenon. Intensity is not there. It cannot burn 
you, it can only warm you. It is not a fire, it is just a glow. It is not a flame, it is just like 
the morning light when the sun has not yet risen and the night has disappeared. It is just 
the moment of interval — light without any fire, without any flame. We have felt it as 
love, and as the purest because there is no hate. Even to feel this type of love, you have to 
be a very deeply meditative mind. You need a mind which can meditate; otherwise such a 
delicate and diffuse phenomenon will not be felt. You have to be very deeply sensitive. 
You can only feel gross love, and that grossness is given by hate. If someone simply 
loves you without any hate, it will be difficult for you to feel his love. You will have to 
grow to become more transparent, delicate, sensitive. You will have to become like a 
very sensitive musical instrument; only then will the breeze sometimes come to you. And 
the breeze is so non-violent now that it will not hit you. It will be just a delicate touch. If 
you are very, very aware, you will feel it; otherwise you will miss it. 

But this is our feeling around a buddha, not Buddha’s feeling. 

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

A buddha is without moods. Now hate has gone, love has gone, anger has gone, greed 
has gone — and non-greed also, non-anger also. They have disappeared! They both have 
disappeared! He is a simple presence. If you are sensitive, you will feel love flowing 
from him, you will feel compassion. If you are not sensitive, if you are gross, if your 
meditation has not developed, you will not feel him at all. A buddha will move amidst 



you, and you will not even become aware that some phenomenon is passing — something 
rare, something which passes only once in centuries. You will not become aware! 

Or, if you are very gross, anti-meditative, you will even become angered by his presence. 
Because his presence is subtle, you may even become violent because of his presence. 

His presence may be disturbing to you. If you are very gross, anti-meditative, you will 
become an enemy of a Buddha and he will not have done anything. 

If you are open, sensitive, you will become a lover, and he will not have done anything. 
Remember this: when you become an enemy, it is you; when you become a friend, it is 
you. A buddha is a simple presence, he is available. If you become an enemy, you turn 
your back. You will simply miss something for which you may have to wait for lives to 
come again. 

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

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

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

Unless you become enlightened, your clarity of mind can be clouded at any moment. 
Before you become enlightened, you can fall back again and again. 

Nothing is certain. So Ananda said, "I am weeping for myself. I am yet unenlightened, I 
have not yet reached the goal, and you are entering nothingness." 

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

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

Jesus's followers felt that he was simply love and Jesus' enemies thought he had to be 
crucified — so it depends on you. 


It depends on you how you take it, how you are capable of taking it, how much open you 



are. But from the side of an enlightened one, nothing can he said. He can simply say that 
now he is: without doing anything he is — just a presence, a being. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

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

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

I will tell you one story. One king came to Gautam Buddha. He was a devotee, a great 
devotee, and he had come for the first time for his darshan — for his audience. In one of 
his hands, in his left hand, he had one beautiful golden ornament, priceless, with many 
jewels in it. It was the most precious that he had — a rare piece of art. He had come to 
present it to Buddha just to show his devotion. 

He came near. In his left hand was that priceless jeweled ornament; he was going to 
present it. Buddha said, "Drop it!" He was disturbed. He never expected this. He was 
shocked. But because Buddha was saying "Drop it", he dropped it. 

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

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

Mahakashyapa, Sariputta, Ananda and his other disciples were there, and they started 
laughing. The man became aware that even to say that "I present myself to you" is 
egoistic. 

Even to say, "Now I am here and I surrender to you," is not surrender. So he himself fell 
down. Buddha smiled and said, "You understand well." 

Unless you drop even this idea of surrendering, unless you drop even this idea of empty 
hands, it is not surrender. One has to drop even emptiness in the hand. It is easy to 
understand the dropping of things... but then the hands were empty and Buddha said, 
"Drop it! Don’t even cling to this emptiness!" When you do meditation, you have to drop 



thoughts. When thoughts are dropped, a thought remains and the thought is, "Now I have 
become thoughtless." There is a subtle feeling, a thought that "Now I have achieved and 
now there is no thought. Now the mind is vacant. Now I am empty." 

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

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

You will not be there when Buddha happens. 

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

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

The last question: 

Question 4 

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

The first thing to be noted, to be remembered: catharsis will happen deeply if you just 
help it to happen, if you just cooperate with it. 

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

You will have to do quite the opposite now. Only then can the suppressions be brought to 
the surface. You feel like weeping; you weep mildly. Help it along! Make it a deep 



scream! You don't know that from the very beginning you have been suppressing your 
crying, you have not cried really. From the very beginning the child wants to cry, to 
laugh. The crying is a deep necessity in him. Through crying, every day he goes through 
catharsis. 

The child has many frustrations. This is bound to be; it is of necessity. The child wants 
something, but he cannot say what, he cannot express it. The child wants something, but 
the parents may not be in a position to fulfill it. The mother may not be available there. 
She may be engaged in some other work, and he may not be cared for. At that moment no 
attention is paid to him, so he starts crying. The mother wants to persuade him, to console 
him, because she is disturbed, the father is disturbed, the whole family is disturbed. 

No one wants him to cry, crying is a disturbance; everyone tries to distract him so that he 
may not cry. We can bribe him. The mother can give him a toy; the mother can give him 
milk — anything to create a distraction or to console him — but he should not cry. 

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

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

Enjoy it and be playful about it. Enjoy and be playful. Just inquire more and more 
whether it can become deeper, whether you can help it along more — in what ways you 
can help it along more. 

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

THE END. 



Chapter 41 : Be a witness not a judge 


AT THE START OF SNEEZING, DURING FRIGHT, IN ANXIETY, ABOVE A 
CHASM, FLYING IN BATTLE, IN EXTREME CURIOSITY, AT THE BEGINNING 
OF HUNGER, AT THE END OF HUNGER, BE UNINTERRUPTEDLY AWARE. 

THE PURITY OF OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US. IN REALITY, 
KNOW NOTHING AS PURE OR IMPURE. 

Life is a paradox. To reach near you have to travel far, and that which is already achieved 
you have to achieve again. Nothing is lost. Man remains natural, man remains pure, man 
remains innocent; it is only that he forgets it. The purity is not disturbed, the innocence is 
not destroyed. Only a deep forgetfulness is there. 

That which is to be achieved you are already. In essence, nothing new is to be achieved. 
You have only to discover, uncover, unfold that which is already the case; hence, both 
the difficulty of spiritual endeavor and the simplicity. I say "both".... It is very simple if 
you can understand, but it is very difficult because you have to understand that which you 
have completely forgotten, that which is so obvious that you never become aware of it, 
that which is just like your breathing. It goes on continuously, uninterruptedly, but 
because it goes on continuously, uninterruptedly, you need not be aware of it. Y our 
awareness is not needed; it is not a basic requirement. You can forget it or you can 
remember it: it is a choice. 

SANSARA and NIRVANA, the world and the liberated state of consciousness, are not 
two things — just two attitudes, just two choices. 

You can choose either. You can be in the world because of a certain attitude, and the 
same world becomes NIRVANA, the same world becomes absolute bliss, just by 
changing the attitude. You remain the same, everything remains the same; just a change 
of focus, a change of emphasis, a change of choice, is required. It is easy. Once absolute 
bliss is achieved, you will laugh about it. Once it is known, you will not be able to 
understand why you were missing it, how you could miss it. It was there always just 
waiting to be looked at, and it was yours. 

A buddha laughs. Anyone who achieves it laughs because the whole thing seems to be 
ridiculous. You were searching for something which was never lost. The whole effort 
was absurd. But this happens only when you have achieved it, so those who have 
achieved it say it is very simple. But those who have not achieved it, they say it is the 
most arduous thing, the most difficult — really, not simply difficult, but the most 
impossible thing. 

These methods which we will be discussing are told by someone who has achieved — 
remember this. They will look too simple, and they are. To our minds things so simple 
cannot be appealing — because if techniques are so simple and the abode is so near, if you 
are already in it, if techniques are so simple and the home is so near, you will look 
ridiculous to yourself. Then why are you missing it? Rather than feel the ridiculousness 
of your own ego, you will think that such simple methods cannot help. 


That is a deception. Your mind will tell you that these simple methods cannot be of any 
help — that they are so simple, they cannot achieve anything. To achieve divine 



existence, to achieve the absolute and the ultimate, how can such simple methods be 
used? How can they be of any help? Your ego will say that they cannot be of any help. 
Remember another thing: ego is always interested in something which is difficult, 
because when something is difficult there is a challenge, and if you can overcome the 
difficulty your ego will feel fulfilled. The ego is never attracted towards anything which 
is simple — never! If you want to give your ego a challenge, then you have to have 
something difficult devised. If something is simple there is no appeal, because even if 
you can conquer it there will be no fulfillment of the ego. In the first place, there was 
nothing to be conquered, the thing was so simple. Ego asks for difficulties — some 
hurdles to be crossed, some peaks to be conquered. And the more difficult the peak, the 
more at ease your ego will feel. 

Because these techniques are so simple, they will not have any appeal to your mind. 
Remember, that which appeals to the ego cannot help your spiritual growth. Only that 
which has no appeal to your ego can be a help towards transformation. But this is what 
happens: if some teacher says that this or that is very difficult, very arduous, that only 
after lives and lives and lives will you have any possibility for any glimpse, your ego will 
feel good. 


These techniques are so simple that right now, here and now, the thing is possible. But 
then there is no contact with your ego. If I say that right now, here, this very moment you 
can achieve all that is possible to man, that you can become a Buddha or a Christ or a 
Krishna in this very moment here and now without losing a single instant, then there will 
be no contact with your ego. You will say, "This is not possible. I must go somewhere 
else to search for it." And these techniques are so simple that you can achieve all that is 
possible to human consciousness at any moment that you decide to achieve it. 

When I say that these techniques are simple, I mean many things. First, spiritual 
explosion is not caused by anything; it is not a causal phenomenon. If it were caused by 
something, then time would be needed, because time is necessary for the cause to take 
place. And if time is needed, then it cannot be the case, it cannot happen this very 
moment. Then you will have to wait for tomorrow or for another life. The next moment 
will be needed. If anything is causal, then the cause has to take place, and then after the 
cause the effect will follow,. and you cannot produce the effect right now without the 
cause; time will be needed. But a spiritual happening is not a causal phenomenon. You 
are already in that state; just a remembering is needed. It is not a causal phenomenon. 


It is just like this: in the morning somebody has suddenly awakened you, and you cannot 
recognize where you are. For a moment you may not even recognize who you are. In a 
sudden awakening from deep sleep, you may not be able to recognize the place, the time, 
but within a moment you will recognize. The more alert you will become, the more you 
will recognize who you are, where you are and what has happened. This is not a causal 
thing — just a question of alertness. With a growing alertness, you will recognize. 

All these techniques are for a growing alertness. You are already the person you long to 
be, you are already where you want to reach. You have reached your home already. You 
have never left it really. You have always been there, but dreaming, asleep. You can fall 
asleep here and then you can dream, and in your dream you can move anywhere; you can 
go to hell or to heaven or anywhere. 



Have you ever observed that whenever you are in your dream, one thing is certain? — that 
you are never in the room in which you are asleep. Have you observed that fact? You can 
be anywhere, but you will never be in the same room, on the same cot where you are. 
Because you are already there, there is no need to dream about it. Dream means you have 
to trek away. 

You may be sleeping in this room, but you will never dream of this room. There is no 
need, you are already there. 

The mind desires something which is not, so the mind moves. It may go to London, to 
New York, to Calcutta, to the Himalayas, to Tibet, to anywhere. It may go anywhere, but 
it will never be here. It can be anywhere, but never here — and you are here. This is the 
case. You are dreaming. Your divine existence is here; you are THAT. But you have 
been trekking long.... And each dream creates a new sequence of dreaming. Each dream 
creates new dreams, and you go on dreaming and dreaming and dreaming. 

All these techniques are just to make you alert so that you can come out of your dreams 
back to the place where you have always been, to the state which you have never missed. 
And you cannot miss it, it is your nature — it is SWABHAV. It is your very being, so 
how can you miss it? These techniques are just to help your alertness to grow more, to 
help it become more intense. With the intensity of awareness, everything changes. The 
more intense the awareness, the less the possibility for dreaming; you become more and 
more alert about the real. The less intense the awareness, the more you drift into 
dreaming. So the whole phenomenon is that a non-alert state of mind is the world, and an 
alert state of mind is NIRVANA. Non-alert, you are what you appear to be. Alert, you are 
what you are. 

So the whole question is one of how to change your non-alert state of mind into an alert 
state of mind, how to become more aware, how to get out of sleep and dreaming. 

That is why techniques can be of help. Even an alann clock can be of help — just an 
artificial device, just an alann clock. But if the alarm goes on, it can help to bring you out 
of your dreaming. But you can deceive it also; you can even dream about it, and then the 
whole thing is falsified. When the alann goes, you can dream, you can make a dream 
around the alarm also. You can dream that you have entered a temple and the bells are 
going on. Now you have deceived the alarm. It could have broken your sleep, but you can 
change it into dream itself; you can make it part of your dreaming. 

If you can make it part of your dreaming, if it can be absorbed into a dreaming process, 
then it cannot help you. You can dream anything, and then it will not look like an alarm. 

It will have become something else. You have entered a temple and the bells are....; now 
there is no need to wake up. You have changed the alann, the real thing, into a dream, 
and a dream cannot be disturbed by another dream, it can only be helped. 

These techniques are all artificial in a way. They are just devices to help bring you out of 
your dreaming state, but you can make them also part of your dream. Then you miss the 
point. Then you MISS the point! Try to understand this because this is very basic. And 
once understood, it will be helpful; otherwise you can go on deceiving yourself. 

For example, I say, "Take a jump into sannyas." 

That is just a device. Your old identity is broken; your old name becomes as if it belongs 
to someone else. You can look at your past more detachedly. You can be a witness. You 
are aloof, a distance is created. I give you a new name and a new robe just to create the 



distance. But you can make it part of your dreaming; then you will miss the whole point. 
You can still think in terms of the old — that the old man. A, has taken sannyas. You feel, 
"I have taken sannyas. " "I" remain the old. "I" have changed my robe, my name, but "I" 
remain the old, .and the old continues. Now this sannyas is just something added to the 
old. It is not discontinuous, it is continuous. If it is continuous, if YOU have taken 
sannyas, you the old one, if YOU have changed your robe and name, you have missed the 
point. 

You must be dead, you must not be the old now. You must feel that the old has died, that 
this is a new entity which you never knew, that this is not a growth out of the old. This is 
discontinuous with the old. Then the device will have helped. Then the alann will have 
worked and the technique is useful. You are not missing the point. All these techniques 
are such that you can miss or you can use them; it depends. But remember well, the 
techniques are just techniques. If you understand the spirit, you may become alert even 
without any technique. 

For example, the alarm clock may not be needed. 

Go deeply into it. Why do you need an alarm clock? If you want to get up early in the 
morning at three, why do you need an alann clock? Deep down you know that you can 
deceive yourself, and deep down you know that if you really want to get up at three, you 
will get up at three and no clock is needed. But with the clock, the responsibility is put 
off. Now you will not be responsible. Now if something goes wrong, the clock is 
responsible. You can sleep with ease now. Now the clock is there; you can sleep without 
any disturbance. 

But if you really want to get up early at three, you will get up early at three. No clock is 
needed. This very intensity to get up will bring the happening. This will to get up at three 
may be so intense, you may not be able to sleep at all, and there will be no need to get up; 
you will already be awake the whole night. But to sleep well the clock is needed. Then 
you can go to sleep. But you can deceive. When the alann goes off, you can deceive; you 
can dream about it. 

These techniques are helpful only because your intensity is low. If you are really intense, 
there is no need of any technique; you can be alert. But your intensity is not such. Even 
with the technique you may start dreaming, and many possibilities are there. The first 
possibility is that you will not believe that such simple techniques can be of any help. 

This is the first thing. 

Then there is no contact. Secondly, you may think that a very, very long process is 
needed, that it will come gradually. But there are certain things that only happen 
suddenly, they never come gradually. 

I am reminded that Mulla Nasruddin was asked to give his blessings to one of his 
neighbor’s sons on his birthday. So he said, "Son, I hope you live One hundred and 
twenty years plus three months." Everyone was wondering at this "plus three months." 
The son asked, "But why? It is okay — one hundred and twenty years. Why plus three 
months?" 

So Mulla Nasrudin said, "I would not like you to die so suddenly. Just one hundred and 
twenty years, and suddenly you die? I would not like you to die so suddenly; that is why 
plus three months." 

But even with "plus three months" you will die suddenly anyway. Whenever you are 
going to die, you will die suddenly. Every death is a sudden death. No death is gradual 



because either you are alive or dead. There is no gradual process. One moment you are 
alive and the next moment you are dead. There is no time process. 

Death is sudden; SAMADHI is also sudden. Spiritual explosion is also sudden. It is like 
death. It is more like death than it is like life; it is sudden. It can happen at any moment. 

If you are ready, these techniques can be of help. They will not bring it gradually; really, 
they will gradually bring you to be ready for the sudden happening. 

Remember this distinction: they are preparing you so that the sudden SAMADHI 
happens. 

These techniques are not techniques for SAMADHI; they are techniques to prepare you, 
and then SAMADHI happens. So how you use these techniques depends on you. So don’t 
think that a very long process is needed, because that may be just a trick. The mind says a 
very long process is needed so that you can postpone. You can say, "Tomorrow I will do 
it or the day after tomorrow," and you can go on postponing forever. A postponing mind 
goes on always postponing. It is not a question of whether you are going to do it 
tomorrow; there is only a question because you are not going to do it today, that is all. 
Tomorrow will again be a today, and the same mind will say, "Okay, I am going to do it 
tomorrow." 

And, remember, you never postpone for years. You postpone for one day because if you 
postpone for years you cannot deceive yourself. You say, "It is only a question of one 
day. Just today I am not doing it; tomorrow I will do it." And the gap is so small that you 
never feel you are postponing it forever. 

Tomorrow never comes, it is always today. And this mind which thinks in terms of 
tomorrow will ALWAYS think in tenns of tomorrow. And it never comes, it has never 
been, it will never be. All that you have is this very moment, so don’t go on postponing. 
Now we will enter the techniques. 


The first technique: 

"AT THE START OF SNEEZING, DURING FRIGHT, IN ANXIETY, ABOVE A 
CHASM, FLYING IN BATTLE, IN EXTREME CURIOSITY, AT THE BEGINNING 
OF HUNGER, AT THE END OF HUNGER, BE UNINTERRUPTEDLY AWARE." 

It looks so simple: at the start of sneezing, during fright, in anxiety or before hunger or 
after hunger, "BE UNINTERRUPTEDLY AWARE." Many things have to be 
understood. Very simple acts like sneezing can be used as devices, because howsoever 
simple they look, they are very complex, and the inner mechanism is a very delicate 
thing. Whenever you feel that a sneeze is coming become alert, and the sneeze may not 
come at all. It may simply disappear, because a sneeze is a non-voluntary thing — 
unconscious, non-voluntary. 

You cannot sneeze voluntarily; you cannot "will" it. How can you? How helpless man is! 
You cannot "will" a single sneeze. Howsoever you may try, you cannot bring it out. A 
single sneeze — such a small thing, but you cannot will it. It is non-voluntary; volition is 
not needed. It does not happen because of your mind; it is because of your total organism, 
your total body. 

And the second thing: when you become alert, when the sneeze is coming — you cannot 
bring it, but when it is coming — if you become alert, it may not come, because you are 
bringing something new to the process: the alertness. It may disappear, but when the 



sneeze disappears and you are alert, there is a third thing. 


First, a sneeze is non-voluntary. You bring in a new thing — alertness. When the alertness 
comes, the sneeze may not come. If really you are alert, it will not; it may not happen at 
all. Then a third thing happens. The energy that was going to be released through a 
sneeze, where does it move? It moves to your alertness. Suddenly there is a flash, a 
lightning. You become more alert. The energy, that was going to be thrown by the sneeze 
moves into alertness. Suddenly you become more alert. 

In that flash, in that lightning, even enlightenment is possible. That is why I say that these 
matters are so simple, they look absurd. Their promise seems to be too much. Just 
through sneezing, how can one become enlightened? But sneezing is not just sneezing; 
you are totally involved in it. Whatsoever you do or whatsoever happens to you is a total 
involvement. Observe again: whenever a sneeze happens, you are totally in it with the 
whole body, the whole mind. It is not just your nose in which the sneeze is happening; 
every fiber, every cell of your body is involved in it. A subtle trembling, a subtle 
wavering goes all over the body, and with it the whole body becomes concentrated. And 
when the sneeze has happened, the whole body relaxes. But it is difficult to bring 
alertness to it. If you bring alertness to it, it will not happen, and if it happens you can 
know that the alertness was not there. 

That is why you should be alert. 

"AT THE START OF SNEEZING...", because if it has started, nothing can be done. The 
arrow has gone; you cannot change it now. The mechanism has started. The energy is on 
its way to being released, it cannot be stopped. Can you stop a sneeze in the middle? 

How can you stop it in the middle? By the time you are ready, it has already happened. 
You cannot stop it in the middle. 

Just at the beginning, become alert. The moment you feel the sensation that it is coming, 
become alert. Close your eyes and be meditative. Bring your total consciousness to the 
focus just where you are feeling the sensation of an oncoming sneeze. Just at the 
beginning, remain alert. The sneeze will disappear, and the energy will be transfonned 
into more alertness. And because in the sneeze the whole body is involved, the whole 
mechanism is involved — it is a release mechanism and you are alert at this moment — 
there will be no mind, there will be no thought, no meditation. 

In a sneeze, thinking stops. That is why so many people like snuff. It unburdens them, 
their minds feel more relaxed because for a moment thinking stops. Snuff gives them a 
glimpse of no-thinking. Through snuff, when the sneeze comes, they are not minds, they 
become bodies. The head disappears for a single moment, but it feels good. 

If you become habituated to snuff, it is very difficult to leave it. 

It is more penetrating a habit than smoking; smoking is nothing before it. It penetrates 
more deeply, because smoking is conscious and sneezing is unconscious. To leave snuff 
is more difficult than to leave smoking. And smoking can be changed, substitutes can be 
found — but there is no substitute for snuff, because, really, sneezing is a very unique 
phenomenon in the body. 

The only other thing that can be compared and which has been compared is the sex act. 
Those who think in terms of physiology, they say that the sex act is just sneezing through 
the sex organ — and the similarity is there. It is not one hundred percent right because 
much more is involved in sex, greater things are involved in it. But in the beginning, just 



in the beginning, the similarity is there. 

Something is thrown out from the nose and you feel relieved, and something is thrown 
out from the sex organ and you feel relieved. And both are non-voluntary. You cannot 
move into sex with will. If you try, you will be a failure — particularly men, because 
man’s sex organ has to do something. It is active. You cannot "will" its act, and if you try, 
then the more you try, the more it will be impossible. It can happen, but you cannot make 
it happen. Because of this, in the West sex has become a problem. This half century in 
the West sex knowledge has developed, and everyone has become so conscious about it 
that the sex act is becoming more and more impossible. 


If you are alert, sex will be impossible. If a man is alert while making love, the more he is 
alert, the more it will be difficult. He will not be able to get an erection. It cannot be 
willed, and if you will it you will lose it. The same method, the same technique, can be 
used in sex. Just in the beginning, when you feel the sensation of an erection just coming 
to you but it has not yet come, you just feel the vibration, become alert. The vibration 
will be lost, and the same energy will move into alertness. 

Tantra has used this. It has tried in many ways. A beautiful naked woman will be there 
just as an object for meditation, and the seeker, the meditator, will sit before the nude 
woman meditating on her body, her fonn, her proportions, just waiting for the first 
sensation in his sex center. The moment the sensation is there, be will close his eyes. He 
will forget the woman. He will close his eyes, and he will become alert of the sensation. 
Then sex energy is being transfonned into alertness. 

He is allowed to meditate on the nude woman only up to the point when the sensation is 
felt. When he has to close his eyes and move to his own sensation and become alert there, 
the same as is done in sneezing. And why does this flash happen? Because mind is not 
there. The basic thing is that if the mind is not there and you are alert, you will have 
SATORI, you will have the first glimpse of SAMADHI. 


Thought is the barrier. So if thought disappears in any way, the thing will happen. But 
thought must disappear; only then is alertness there. Thought can disappear even in sleep; 
thought can disappear when you go unconscious; thought can disappear when you take 
some drug. Thought disappears, but then there is no alertness to be aware of the 
phenomenon that is hidden behind thought. So I define meditation as thoughtless 
consciousness. You can become thoughtless and unconscious; then there is no meaning. 
You can be conscious with thought; you are already that. 

Bring these two things together — consciousness and thoughtlessness. When they meet, 
meditation happens, meditation is born. And you can try with very small things because 
nothing is really small. Even a sneeze is a cosmic phenomenon. In existence, nothing is 
great and nothing is small. Even a minute atom can destroy the whole world, and even a 
sneeze, a very atomic phenomenon, can transfonn you. 

So don’t see things as small or big. There is nothing small and nothing big. If you have 
the penetrating eye, then very small things are vital. Between atoms universes are hidden, 
and between the universe and an atom you cannot say which is great and which is small. 
Even a single atom is a universe in itself, and the greatest universe is nothing but atoms. 
So don’t think in terms of great and small. Just try. 



Don’t say, "What can happen in a sneeze? I have been sneezing the whole life, and 
nothing has happened." 

Bring in this technique: JUST "AT THE START OF SNEEZING, DURING FRIGHT...", 
when you feel afraid and fear enters, just when you feel the fear enter, become aware and 
fear will disappear. With alertness, there can be no fear. How can, you be afraid when 
you are alert? You can be afraid only when you lose alertness. Really, a coward is not a 
person who is afraid; a coward is a person who is asleep, and a brave man is a person 
who can bring his alertness to the moments of fear. So fear disappears. 

In Japan, they train their warriors for alertness. The basic training is for alertness, and 
everything else is secondary: swordsmanship, archery, everything is secondary. It is 
known, it is said about the great Zen master Rinzai that he never succeeded — never 
succeeded in his archery — to get to the right point, to the right aim. His arrow always 
missed; it never reached to the right point. And he is known as one of the greatest 
archers, so it is asked, "How is Rinzai known as the greatest archer when he never 
succeeded in any aim and the point was always missed? His arrow never reached to the 
right point, so how is he known as one of the greatest archers?" 

The followers of Rinzai say, "It is not the end, it is the beginning. We are not concerned 
with the arrow reaching to the end, we are concerned with when the arrow starts its 
journey. 

We are concerned with Rinzai. When the arrow leaves the bow, he is alert; that is all. It is 
not the result, that is irrelevant." 

One man was a disciple to Rinzai. He was a great archer himself, he never missed his 
aim, and then he came to Rinzai to learn, so someone said, "To whom are you going to 
learn? He is not a master; he is not even a disciple. He is a failure, and you are a great 
master and you are going to Rinzai to learn?" 

So that archer said, "Yes, because I have succeeded technically. But as far as my 
consciousness is concerned, I am a failure. He is technically a failure, but as far as his 
consciousness is concerned he is the archer and the master — because when the arrow 
leaves he is alert, and that is the point." 

This archer who was a master technically had to learn, for years under Rinzai, and every 
day he was one hundred percent accurate in his aiming. Rinzai would say, "No, you are a 
failure. Technically the arrow leaves rightly. But you are not there, you are not alert. You 
loose it in your sleep." 

In Japan they have been training their warriors to be alert first, and everything else is 
secondary. A warrior is a brave man if he can be alert. And it was felt in the Second 
World War that you cannot match Japan's warriors; their bravery is incomparable. From 
where does it come? Physically they are not so strong, but in consciousness, in alertness, 
fear cannot enter. 

They are not afraid, and whenever fear comes they will try Zen methods. 

This sutra says, "DURING FRIGHT, IN ANXIETY..." When you feel anxious, much 
anxiety-ridden, try it. What is one to do? What do you ordinarily do when anxiety is 
there? What do you do? You try to solve it. You try alternatives, and you get more and 
more into it. You will create a bigger mess because anxiety cannot be solved through 
thinking. It cannot be dissolved through thinking because thinking itself is a sort of 
anxiety. So you help it to grow more. Through thinking, you cannot come out of it; you 
will go deeper into it. This technique says don’t do anything with anxiety. Just be alert. 



Just be alert! 

I will tell you one old anecdote about Bokuju, another Zen master. He lived alone in a 
cave, all alone, but during the day, or even in the night, he would sometimes say loudly, 
"Bokuju" — his own name, and then he would say, "Yes, I am here." And no one else was 
there. 

Then his disciples used to ask him, "Why are you calling 'Bokuju', your own name, and 
then saying, 'Yes sir, I am here’?" 

He said, "Whenever I get into thinking, I have to remember to be alert, and so I call my 
own name, 'Bokuju.' The moment I call 'Bokuju' and I say, 'Yes sir, I am here,’ the 
thinking, the anxiety disappears." 

Then, in his last days, for two or three years, he never called "Bokuju," his name, and 
never had to reply, "Yes sir, I am here." 


The disciples asked, "Master, now you never do this." 

So he said, "But now Bokuju is always there. He is ALWAYS there, and there is no need. 
Before I used to miss him. Sometimes the anxiety would take me, cloud me all over, and 
Bokuju was not there. So I had to remember 'Bokuju,' and the anxiety would disappear." 
Try your name. When you feel deep anxiety, just call Try this. This is a beautiful thing. 
Try your name. When you feel deep anxiety, just call your name — "Bokuju" or any 
name, but your name — and then reply to it, "Yes sir, I am here," and feel the difference. 
Anxiety will not be there. At least for a single moment you will have a glimpse beyond 
the clouds, and that glimpse can be deepened. Once you know that if you become alert 
anxiety is not there, it disappears; you have come to a deep knowing of your own self and 
the mechanism of inner working. 

"... Above a chasm, flying in battle, in extreme curiosity, at the beginning of hunger, at 
the end of hunger, be uninterruptedly aware." 

You can use anything. Hunger is there, become alert. What to do when you feel hunger is 
there? What has happened? When you feel hunger you never see it as something 
happening to you. You become the hunger. You feel, "I am hungry." The real feeling is 
that "I am hunger," but you are NOT hunger; you are only conscious of it. It is something 
happening on the boundary. 

You are the center, you have become aware of it. It is an object. You remain the subject, 
you are a witness. You are not hunger; hunger is happening to you. You were there when 
hunger was not and you will be there when hunger will have gone. So hunger is an 
accident; it happens to you. 

Become alert, then you will not be identified with it. If you feel hunger, become alert that 
hunger is there. Look at it, encounter it, face it. What will happen? The more you become 
alert, the farther away will the hunger be felt; the less alert, the nearer. If you are not 
alert, exactly at the center you will feel, "I am hunger." If you become alert, hunger is 
thrown away. Hunger is there, you are here. Hunger is an object, you are a witness. 
Fasting has been used only because of this, for this technique. Fasting in itself is of no 
use. If you are not doing this technique with the hunger, fasting is foolish — just foolish, 
of no use. Mahavira used fasting with this technique, and Jainas have been simply using 
fasting without this technique. Then it is foolish. You are just destructive, and it cannot 
be of any help. You can be hungry for months and identified with hunger, feeling that "I 
am hungry." It is useless, harmful. There is no need to go on a fast. Every day you can 



feel it, but there are problems. That is why fasting may be helpful. 

Ordinarily, we stuff ourselves with food before we feel hunger. 

In the modern world there is no need to feel hunger. You have a time fixed for your 
meals, and you take them. You never ask whether the body is feeling hungry or not; at a 
fixed hour you take your meals. Hunger is not felt. You may say, "No, when it is one 
o’clock I feel hungry." That may be a false hunger; you feel it because it is one o'clock, 
your time. Someday you can play a trick. Tell your wife or your husband to change the 
clock. It is twelve, and the clock will show that it is one. You will feel hunger. Or it is 
already one hour fast: it is two exactly, and the clock shows one; then you will feel 
hunger. You look at the clock, and you feel hunger. This is artificial, false, it is not real. 
So fasting may be helpful. If you fast, then for two or three days you will feel a false 
hunger. Only after the third or fourth day will real hunger be felt; your body will demand, 
not the mind. When mind demands, it is false. When the body demands, it is real. And 
when it is real and you become alert, you become totally different from your body. 
Hunger is a body phenomenon. Once you can feel that hunger is different from you and 
you are a witness to it, you have transcended the body. 

But you can use anything, these are just examples. This technique can be used in many 
ways; you can devise your own way. But insist on one thing: if you are trying with 
hunger, then go on at least for three months with hunger. 

Then only will you be disidentified with your body someday. Don’t change the device 
every day because a deepening is needed with any technique. 

So choose anything for three months. Stick to it, apply the technique, go on working with 
it, and always remember to be aware in the beginning. In the middle it will be very 
difficult, because once the identity is felt that YOU are hungry, you cannot change it. 

You can get changed mentally. You can say, "No, I am not hunger, I am a witness." That 
is false. This is the mind talking, this is not a feeling experience. Just try to be aware in 
the beginning, and, remember, you are not to say that "I am not hunger." This is how 
mind can deceive. You can say, "The hunger is there, but I am not hunger. I am not body, 
I am the BRAHMAN." You are not to say anything. Whatsoever you say will be false 
because you are false. 

This chanting that "I am not the body" will not help. You go on saying "I am not the 
body" because you know that you are body. If you really know that you are not the body, 
what is the use of saying "I am not the body"? There is no use, it will look stupid. Be 
aware, and then the feeling that "I am not the body" will be there. This will not be a 
thought, this will be a feeling. This will not be felt in the head, this will be felt all over 
your being. You will feel the distance — that the body is far away, that "I am absolutely 
different." 

And there is not even a possibility of mixing both. Y ou cannot. The body is the body; it is 
matter, and you are consciousness. They can live together, but they never mix. They 
cannot become mixed. 

The second technique: 

"THE PURITY OF OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US. IN REALITY, 
KNOW NOTHING AS PURE OR IMPURE. 

This is one of the basic messages of tantra. It is very difficult to conceive of it because it 



is absolutely non-ethical, non-moral. I will not say immoral because tantra is not 
concerned with morality or immorality. Tantra says it is irrelevant. This message is to 
help you to grow beyond purity and impurity, beyond division really, beyond dichotomy, 
duality. Tantra says, existence is non-dual, it is one, and all distinctions are man-created 
— all distinctions, remember. Distinctions as such are man-created. Good-bad, pure- 
impure, moral-immoral, virtue-sin: all these concepts are man-created. They are attitudes 
of man; they are not real. What is impure and what is pure? It depends on your 
interpretation. What is immoral and what is moral? It depends on your interpretation. 
Nietzsche has said somewhere that all morality is interpretation. So something can be 
moral in this country and immoral in the neighboring country, something can be moral to 
a Mohammedan and immoral to a Hindu, moral to a Christian and immoral to a Jaina. 

Or something can even be moral to the older generation and immoral to the younger 
generation. It depends; it is an attitude. Basically, it is a fiction. The fact is simply the 
fact. The naked fact is simply the fact; it is neither moral nor immoral, pure nor impure. 
Think of the earth without human beings. Then what will be pure and what will be 
impure? Everything will be — simply "be." Nothing will be pure and nothing will be 
impure; nothing will be good and nothing will be bad. With man, mind comes in. Mind 
divides. It says "this" is good and "that" is bad. This division not only creates a division 
in the world; this division creates a division in the divider also. If you divide, you are also 
divided in that division, and you cannot transcend your inner division unless you forget 
outer divisions. Whatsoever you do to the world, you have done to yourself also. 

Naropa, one of the greatest masters of Siddha Yoga, says, "An inch division, and hell and 
heaven are set apart" — an inch division! But we go on dividing; we go on labeling, 
condemning, justifying. Look at the bare fact of existence and don’t label it. Only then 
can tantra's teachings be understood. Don’t say good or bad; don’t bring your mind to the 
fact. The moment you bring your mind to the fact, you have created a fiction. Now it is 
not a fact, it is not a reality: it is your projection. This sutra says, "THE PURITY OF 
OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US. 

IN REALITY, KNOW NOTHING AS PURE OR IMPURE." 

"THE PURITY OF OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US:" Tantra says, 
"What is very pure for other teachings, a virtue, is a sin for us, because their concept of 
purity divides. For them something becomes impure." 

If you call a man a saint, you have created the sinner. Now you will have to condemn 
someone somewhere because the saint cannot exist without the sinner. And look now at 
the absurdity of our efforts: we go on trying to destroy sinners, and we conceive of and 
hope for a world where there will be no sinners — only saints. This is nonsense because 
saints cannot exist without sinners. They are the other aspect of the same coin. You 
cannot destroy one aspect of the coin, they both will exist. Sinners and saints are both 
part and parcel of one thing. If you destroy the sinners, saints will disappear from the 
world. But don’t be afraid; let them disappear because they have not proved to be of any 
worth. 

Sinners and saints are both part of one interpretation, of one attitude towards the world, 
in which one says, "This is good and that is bad." And you cannot say that "This is good" 
unless you say that "That is bad." The bad is needed to define the good. So the good 
depends on the bad, your virtue depends on sin, and your saints are impossible; they 
cannot exist without the sinners. So they must be grateful to the sinners; they cannot exist 



without them. 


In relation to them, in comparison to them, howsoever much they condemn the sinners, 
they are part and parcel of the same phenomenon. Sinners can disappear from the world 
only when saints disappear — not before that; and sin will not be there when there is no 
concept of virtue. 

Tantra says that the fact is real and the interpretation is unreal. Don’t interpret. "IN 
REALITY, KNOW NOTHING AS PURE OR IMPURE." Why? Because purity and 
impurity are OUR attitudes imposed on reality. Try this. This technique is arduous, not 
simple — because we are so much oriented towards dual thinking, based, rooted in dual 
thinking, that we are not even aware of our condemnations and justifications. If someone 
starts smoking here, you may not have consciously felt anything, but you have 
condemned. Deep down within you, you have condemned. Your look may have 
condemned or no look may have condemned. You may not have looked at the person, 
and you have condemned. 

This is going to be difficult because the habit has become so deep-rooted. You go on — 
just by your gestures, your sitting, your standing — you go on condemning, justifying, not 
even aware of what you are doing. When you smile at a person or when you don’t smile 
at a person, when you look at someone or you don’t look, you just ignore someone, what 
are you doing? You are imposing your attitudes. You say something is beautiful; then 
you will have to condemn something as ugly. 

And this dual attitude is simultaneously dividing you, so within you there will be two 
persons. 

If you say that someone is angry and anger is bad, what will you do when you will feel 
angry? You will say that this is bad, then there will be problems because you say that 
"This is bad: this anger in me is bad." Then you have started to divide yourself into two 
persons — a bad person, an evil person within, and a good person, a saint. Of course, you 
are bound to be identified with the saint within, so the devil, Satan, the evil within you is 
to be condemned. You are divided in two. Now there will be a constant fight, a conflict. 
Now you cannot be an individual; you will be a crowd, a house divided against itself. 
Now there will be no peace, no silence. You will feel only tensions and anguish. This is 
what you are feeling, but you don’t know why. 

A divided person cannot be at peace. How can he be? Where to put your devil? You have 
to destroy it, and it is you; you cannot destroy it. You are not two. The reality is one, but 
because of your divisive attitude you have divided the outer reality. Now the inner is also 
divided accordingly — so everyone is fighting with himself It is as if you are fighting 
against one hand — fighting the right hand with the left hand — and the energy is one. In 
my right hand and left hand, I am; I am flowing in both. But I can oppose one against the 
other, my right hand against my left hand, and I can create a conflict, a bogus fight. 

Sometimes I can deceive myself that the right hand has won, and now the left is down. 
But this is a deception, because I know that it is me in both and any moment I can put the 
left up and the right down. I am in both; both the hands are mine. 

So howsoever much you think you have put your saint above and crushed the devil down, 
know that at any moment you can change the positions, and the saint will be down and 
the devil will be up. That creates fear, insecurity, because you know that nothing is 
certain. You know you are so loving this moment and you have crushed your hatred 



down, but you are afraid because at any moment the hatred can come up and the love will 
be just crushed down. And it can happen at any moment because you are within both. 
Tantra says don’t divide, be undivided; only then will you be victorious. How to be 
undivided? You don’t condemn, don’t say "this" is good and "that" is bad. Just withdraw 
all conceptions of purity and impurity. Look at the world, but don’t say what it is. Be 
ignorant, don’t be too much wise. Don't label, remain silent, non-condemnatory, non- 
justifying. If you can remain silent about the world, by and by this silence will penetrate 
within. And if the division is not there outwardly, the division will disappear from the 
inner consciousness, because both CAN exist together. 

But this is dangerous for society. That is why tantra was suppressed. 

This is dangerous! Nothing is immoral, nothing is moral; nothing is pure, nothing is 
impure. Things are as they are. A real tantric will not say that a thief is bad; he will say 
that he is a thief; that is all. And by using the word 'thief there is no condemnation in his 
mind. This "thief is just a fact, not a condemnation. If someone says that "Here is a man 
who is a great saint," he will say, "Okay! He is a saint." But there is no evaluation in it. 

He will not say, "He is good", he will say, "Okay! He is a saint and that man is a thief," 
just like this is a rose and that is not a rose, this tree is high and that tree is low, night is 
dark and day is light — but without comparison. 

But this is dangerous. Society cannot exist without condemning one thing and without 
appreciating the other — society cannot exist! Society exists on duality. That is why tantra 
was suppressed. It was thought to be anti-social, but it is not. It is not! But that very 
attitude of non-duality is transcendental. It is not anti-society, it is transcendental; it is 
beyond society. 

Try this. Just move in the world without any values, just with natural facts: someone is 
this, someone is that. And then, by and by, you will feel a non-division within yourself. 
Your polarities will be coming together, your "bad" and your "good" will be coming 
together. They will merge into one, and you will become one unity. 

There will be nothing as pure, nothing as impure. Know the reality. 

"THE PURITY OF OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US:" Tantra says that 
"What is basic for others is poisonous for us." For example, there are teachings which are 
based on non-violence. They say violence is bad, non-violence is good. Tantra says that 
non-violence is non-violence, violence is violence; nothing is good and nothing is bad. 
There are teachings which are based on celibacy — BRAHMACHARYA. They say that 
BRAHMACHARYA is good, sex is bad. Tantra says sex is sex, BRAHMACHARYA is 
BRAHMACHARYA. One is a BRAHMACHARI and one is not. But these are simple 
facts, no values are attached to them. And tantra will never say that BRAHMACHARYA 
is good — the celibate is good — and that the one who is in sex is bad. Tantra will not say 
that. Tantra accepts things as they are. And why? Just to create a unity within you. 

This is a technique to create a unity within you, to have a total existence within, 
undivided, non-conflicting, not opposed. Only then is silence possible. One who is trying 
to move to some place against something can never be at peace. How can he be? And one 
who is divided within himself, fighting with himself, how can he win? It is impossible. 
You are both, so who is going to win? No one is going to win, and you will be at loss 
because you will dissipate your energy in fighting unnecessarily. 


This is a technique to create a unity in yourself. Allow valleys to disappear; don’t judge. 



Jesus says somewhere, "Judge ye not so that ye may not be judged." But this was 
impossible for the Jews to understand, because the whole Jewish conception is morality 
oriented: "This is good and that is not good." Jesus in his teaching, "Judge ye not," is 
talking in terms of tantra. If he was murdered, crucified, it is because of this. He had a 
tantra attitude — "Judge ye not." 

So don’t say that a prostitute is bad — who knows? and don’t say that a puritan is good. 
Who knows? And ultimately they both are part of one game. They are based on each 
other — on a mutual existence. So Jesus says, "Judge ye not," and this is what this sutra 
means: "Judge ye not so that ye may not be judged." 

If you are non-judging, not taking any moral standpoint, simply observing facts as they 
are, not interpreting them according to yourself, then you cannot be judged. You are 
transformed completely. Now there is no need for YOU to be judged by any divine 
power — there is no need! You have become divine yourself; you have become God 
yourself. Be a witness, not a judge. 

THE END. 



Chapter 42: Alertness through tantra -- not principles 


The first question: 

Question 1 

"IS IT NOT TRUE THAT AN IMMORAL LIFE CREATES HINDRANCES IN 
MEDITATION?" 

What is meditation? It is not your character, it is not what you do. It is what you are. It is 
not the character, it is the consciousness that you bring to whatsoever you do. The doing 
is irrelevant. Whether you are doing it consciously or not is the question, whether moral 
or immoral. Are you alert? If you are alert, meditation happens. If you are not alert, you 
live in sleep. 

You can be moral while fully asleep, there is no problem. Rather, it is better to be moral 
if you want to be fully asleep because then society will not disturb you. Then no one will 
be against you. You can sleep conveniently. The society will help you. 

You can be moral without being meditative, but the immorality will always be just 
behind you. Just like a shadow it will follow, and your morality will be just skin deep 
because your morality can only be imposed from without when you are asleep. It can 
only be pseudo, false, a facade, it cannot become your being. You will become moral 
outwardly, but inwardly you will remain immoral. And the more moral you become 
outwardly, the more immoral you will be within — in the same proportion, because your 
morality is bound to be nothing but a deep suppression. You cannot do anything else 
while asleep; you can only suppress. 


And through this morality you will also become false. You will not be a person, but 
simply a "persona" — just a pseudo entity. Misery will follow, and you will consequently 
be on the verge of explosion — explosion of all that you have suppressed. It is there 
waiting for you. And if you are really honest in being moral while asleep, you will go 
mad. Only a dishonest person can remain moral without being mad. That is what 
hypocrisy means. Hypocrites just show that they are moral, that they are not, and they 
find ways and means to be immoral, constantly remaining moral on the surface or 
pretending to be moral. Then only can you remain sane; otherwise you will go insane. 
This so-called morality leaves only two alternatives. If honest, you will become insane; if 
dishonest, you will become a hypocrite. So those who are clever, cunning, they are 
hypocrites. Those who are simple, innocent, who become victims of such teachings, go 
mad. 

While asleep, real morality cannot happen to you. And what do you mean by "real 
morality"? Something which is a spontaneous flowering out of your being, not imposed 
from without. And real morality is not in opposition to immorality; a real morality is just 
an absence of immorality, it is not in opposition. For example, you can be taught to love 
your neighbors, to love everyone, to be loving. It can become a moral attitude, but the 
hate remains within. 

You force yourself to be loving, and a forced love cannot be real, cannot be authentic. It 
is not going to fulfill either you or the other person whom you love. No one is to be 
fulfilled by this false love. 



It is just like false water. No one's thirst can be quenched by it. The hatred is there, and 
the hatred is trying to assert. And a false love cannot be a real hindrance to it. Rather, the 
hatred will penetrate the false love and will even poison it, and your loving will become 
just a sort of hatred. It is very tricky and cunning. 

A real morality happens to a person who has gone deep within himself — and the deeper 
you move, the more loving you become. It is not something forced against hatred; it is 
not something antagonistic to hatred. The deeper you move, the more love flows out of 
you. It has nothing to do with hatred at all; it is not concerned with hatred at all. The 
moment you reach to your center, you are loving without any moral imposition. You may 
not even be aware that you are loving. How you can be aware? This love will just be so 
natural that it will be just like breathing, just like your shadow following you. You will 
simply be loving. 

Tantra teaches the inner journey. Morality will happen, but that will be a consequence, 
not a prerequisite. Be clear about this distinction. Tantra says don’t be entangled with 
moral and immoral concepts. 

They are outer. Rather, move within. So the techniques are there for how to move within. 
And don’t be concerned with moral and immoral, pure and impure; don’t be concerned 
with distinctions. Just move within. Forget the outer — the outer world, the society and 
whatsoever the society has taught you. All that society teaches is bound to be dualistic, it 
is bound to be suppressive; it is bound to be a conflict within you. And if the conflict is 
there, you cannot move within. 

So forget the conflict and forget all that creates conflict. Simply move within. The deeper 
you go, the more moral you will become, but that morality will not be the morality of the 
society. You will be moral without "being moral" — without being conscious that you are 
moral, because there is nothing opposed to it within you. You are simply loving because 
you feel blissful when you are loving. It is a bliss in itself. There is no end to it; no result 
is needed. It is not that you will get into the kingdom of God if you love. It is not a 
bargain. The morality that society preaches and so-called religions preach is a bargain: 
"Do this and you will get that. If you don't do this you will not get that. You will even be 
punished. "It is a bargain. 

Tantric morality is not a bargain, it is a happening. The deeper you move, the more you 
start living in the moment. You feel that to love is bliss. It is not a step, a condition, a 
bargain towards something else; it is enough unto itself. 

You love because you feel blissful in loving. You are not doing anything for your 
neighbor; you are not obliging anyone else. It is a pleasure to be loving. It is good for you 
right here and now. There is no future heaven or hell. Just now it creates the heaven, and 
the kingdom of God enters you. And this happens with all the virtues; they flower 
spontaneously. 

Now look at the question: "IS IS NOT TRUE THAT AN IMMORAL LIFE CREATES 
HINDRANCES IN MEDITATION?" Really, the contrary is the truth. A meditative life 
creates hindrances in immoral life. Immoral life cannot create any hindrances. Immoral 
life means that you are non-meditative — nothing else; you are fast asleep. That is why 
you are doing hann to yourself. 

For tantra, the basic thing is meditation, alertness, awareness. Nothing else is more basic 
than that. When someone is immoral, it shows that he is not alert. It is just a symptom. 
The immoral life is just a symptom that he is not alert. What is ordinary teaching doing? 



Ordinary teachers will tell to this sleeping man who is immoral to be moral. He may 
change from immorality to morality, but the sleep continues. 

So the whole effort is wasted because the real disease was not immorality; immorality 
was just a symptom. The disease was non-alertness, non-meditativeness. That is why he 
was immoral. You can convert him to morality. You can create fear, and you can make 
afraid only that person who is asleep; otherwise you cannot create fear. 

You can create a fear about hell and you can create a profit motive for heaven. Both of 
these things are possible only while you are asleep. If you are not asleep, you cannot be 
threatened and you cannot be motivated because of profit. Those two things are 
meaningful only to the mind that is asleep. 

So create the fear of punishment, and a person will move from immorality to morality — 
but he will move because of fear. Create a profit motive, and then he can move from 
immorality to morality — but he will move because of lust, greed, profit motivation. 

Greed and fear are part of the sleeping mind. He remains asleep, nothing basic is 
changed. 

He is good for the society; that is okay. For the society the immoral person is a problem, 
but the moral person is not a problem. So society has solved its problems, but the man 
remains asleep. For himself, nothing is solved; he is now more convenient for the society. 
Previously, he was inconvenient. Try to observe the fact: an immoral person is 
inconvenient to the society, but he is convenient for himself. A moral person becomes 
convenient to the society, but he becomes inconvenient to himself. 

So it is only that the coin is put upside down. That is why immoral persons look more 
happy and gay, and a moral person is serious, sad, burdened. The immoral person is 
fighting with the society and the moral person is fighting with himself. 

The immoral person feels worried only because there is always a fear of being caught. He 
is afraid of being caught, but he is enjoying. If no one catches him, if there is no fear of 
being caught, he is okay. 

The moral person is caught in a struggle with himself. Nothing is okay with him; he is 
only okay with the society. Morality is a lubricant, it helps you to move easily with 
others. But then you become uneasy with yourself. Uneasiness remains either with the 
society or with yourself. Only when you become awakened does uneasiness leave you. 
Tantra is concerned with the basic disease, not with the symptoms. Morality is removing 
symptoms. So tantra says don’t be concerned with moral or immoral concepts. It does not 
mean that tantra says become immoral. How can tantra tell you to become immoral when 
tantra cannot even tell you to become moral? Tantra says the whole thing is irrelevant: 
don’t talk about morality and immorality; come to the root. You can be moral or immoral, 
but that is only the symptom. Come to the root! The root is that you are asleep — fast 
asleep. 

How to break this sleeping pattern? How to be aware and how not to fall again and again 
into sleep? That is what tantra is concerned with — and once you become alert your 
character will change. But that is a consequence. Tantra says you need not worry about 
it.; that is a consequence. Inevitably, it happens, so you need not worry about it. 

You are not to bring it, it will happen. You simply become more and more alert, and you 
will be less and less immoral. But this morality that will happen to you is not forced; it is 
not something done by you on your part. You are just trying to be alert, and it happens. 



How can an alert man be violent? How can an alert man feel hatred and anger? It may 
look paradoxical, but it is so. One who is asleep cannot be without hatred. It is 
impossible. He can only pretend that there is no anger, no hatred. He can only pretend 
that there is love, compassion, kindness, sympathy. Those are all pretensions. Quite the 
contrary happens to the one who has awakened. If anger is needed, he can only pretend. 
He cannot be angry.; he can only pretend! If anger is needed — and sometimes it is 
needed — he can only pretend. He cannot be sad, but if it is needed he can pretend that he 
is sad. Now these are impossible. 

Love is natural now, as hatred was before. Love was a pretension before. Now hatred can 
only be a pretension — if it is needed. Jesus fighting with the moneychangers in the great 
temple was pretending. He cannot be angry, but he has chosen to pretend. He cannot be 
really angry. He cannot be angry, but he can use anger — as you use love and cannot be 
loving. 

You use love for certain purposes. Your love is just to get something else; it is never 
simply love. You may be trying to get money, you may be trying to get sex, you may be 
trying to get something — ego fulfillment, a victory, a feeling that you are very powerful. 

You may be trying to get anything else, but it is never love. 

A buddha can be angry if he thinks that it is going to help. Because of his love sometimes 
he may be angry, but that is only a pretension and only fools are befooled by it. Those 
who know, they will simply laugh. As meditation deepens, says tantra, you start 
changing. And it is beautiful when change happens to you. If you "do" it, it can never be 
something very deep because doing is just on the surface. So tantra says, allow it to 
happen from the being, from the very center. Let it flow from the center towards the 
periphery; don’t force it from the periphery to the center. That is impossible. 

Tantra will not say moral or immoral. The only thing is if you are asleep try to change it. 
Allow yourself to become more and more alert, wherever you are. If you are immoral, 
tantra says, "It is okay. We are not concerned with your immorality, we are concerned 
with your sleep and with how to transform it into alertness." Don't fight with the 
immorality. Just try to transform your sleep. 

If you are moral it is okay. Tantra is not going to tell you first to become immoral and 
then to try. Neither does the immoral one have any need to transform himself into a moral 
person, nor does the moral person have to transform himself into an immoral one in order 
to get into meditation. All that they need is to change their quality of consciousness. 

So wherever you are, a sinner or a saint, for tantra there is no distinction. If you are 
asleep, then try the techniques for alertness. And don’t try to change symptoms. The 
sinner is ill and the so-called saint is also ill because both are asleep. 

The illness is the sleep, not your character. Your character is just a by-product. And 
whatsoever you do while remaining asleep will not make any basic change. Only one 
thing can change you and create a mutation and that is alertness. The question is one of 
how to become more and more alert. So whatsoever you do, make it an object of 
alertness. If you do some immoral act, do it meditatively. It will not be long before the 
act will dissolve by itself and disappear. Then you will not be able to do it — not because 
you have created an armor against it, but because now you are more alert. And how can 
you do a thing which needs sleep as a requisite? You cannot do it. 

Understand well this basic distinction between tantra and what others teach. Tantra is 
more scientific. It goes to the very root of the problem, transforms you from the very 



being — not from your outer sheath of character, of morality and immorality, of acts and 
doings. Whatsoever you do is just on the periphery; whatsoever you are is never on the 
periphery. The quality of the act, not the act itself, is meaningful for tantra. 

For example, one butcher came to Nan-in. 

He was a butcher and Nan-in was a Buddhist monk who believed in non-violence. His 
whole profession was of violence. The whole day he was killing animals. But when the 
butcher came to Nan-in, he asked him, "What am I to do? My profession is one of 
violence. So am I to leave my profession first and is it that only then I can be a new man, 
or is there some other way?" 

Nan-in said, "We are not concerned with what you do. We are concerned with what you 
are. So you go on doing whatsoever you are doing, but be more alert. While killing, 
remain alert, meditative, and go on doing whatsoever you are doing. We are not 
concerned." 

Nan-in's followers became disturbed — because here was a person who was a follower of 
Buddha, a believer in non-violence, allowing a butcher to continue. One disciple said, 
"This is not good. And we never expected that a person like you would allow a butcher to 
remain a butcher. And when he was asking, you should have told him to drop this. He 
himself was ready." 

Nan-in is reported to have said, "You can change the butcher's profession easily; he was 
himself ready. But in that way you cannot change his quality of consciousness. He will 
remain a butcher." 

He may become a saint, but the quality of the mind will remain that of a butcher. That 
will be a deception for others and for himself also. Go and look at your so-called saints. 

Many of them remain butchers. The quality, the attitude, the violence, their very look 
towards you, is condemning, violent. You are a sinner and they are saints. When they see 
you, the very look is such that you are condemned, you are thrown into hell. 

Nan-in said, "So it is not good to change his outer life; it is better to bring a new quality 
to his mind. And it is good to let him remain a butcher, because he is disturbed by his 
butchery and violence. If he becomes a saint he will remain a butcher, but then he will 
not be disturbed. His ego will be strengthened. So this is good. He is disturbed that 
violence is there, and he has become at least this much aware — that this is not good. He 
is ready to change, but just readiness to change will not help. A new quality of the mind 
has to be developed. Let him meditate." 

After one year had passed, the man came. He had become a different man. He was still a 
killer, but the man had changed although the doing remained the same. He came to Nan- 
in again and he said, "Now I am a different man. I meditated and meditated and 
meditated, and my whole life has become a meditation because you told me to meditate 
in whatsoever I am doing. I am butchering animals, but the whole day I am meditating. 
Now what do you tell me to do?" 

So Nan-in said, "Now do not come to me. Allow your awareness to make a path for you. 
You need not come to me." 


So the butcher said, "Now, only if you say remain in the profession will I pretend to be 
there. But as far as I am concerned, I am no more there. So if you allow me, I am not 
going back. But if you say to go, then it is okay. I will go and pretend, and I will 



continue." 

This is how, when your quality changes — your quality of consciousness — you become a 
different person altogether. And tantra is concerned with you, not with what you do. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

"IF ONE FOLLOWS CERTAIN LAWS OF LIFE AND CALLS THIS MORAL, THEN 
IS THERE ANY OBJECTION FROM A TANTRIC?" 

Tantra has no objections, but this having no objection is the problem. Tantra has no 
objection whatsoever; tantra is not in any way condemning. It is not concerned to tell 
you, "Do this," or "Don't do that." If you feel good, if you feel happy following certain 
principles, then follow them. But following certain principles can never lead you to 
happiness because you are not going to change through principles and through following 
them. You will remain the same. 

Principles are always borrowed, ideals are always borrowed. Someone else has given 
them to you. They are not your own; they have not grown out of your own experience. 
They are without roots. The society, the religion to which you are born, the teachers you 
happened to be near, they have given them to you. 

You can follow them and you can force yourself accordingly, but then you will be a dead 
person — not alive. You may create a certain peace around yourself, but that will be the 
peace of the cemetery — dead. You may be less vulnerable to disturbances, more closed 
in because of the principles, but then you will become less sensitive and less alive. So so- 
called principled men are always dead. 

Look at them: they look silent, still, peaceful, at ease, but a certain deadness is always 
around them. The aura of death is always there. You cannot feel the feast of life around 
them, the festivity of being alive, the celebration of being alive. You can never feel that 
around them. They have created an armor around them — a safety armor. Nothing can 
penetrate them. The walls of their principles and character stop everything, but then they 
are behind the walls, imprisoned, and they are their own prisoners. If you choose this, 
tantra has no objection. You are free to choose a life which is not a life at all. 

Once Mulla Nasruddin visited a cemetery, and he saw a very beautiful marble 
mausoleum. Inscribed on it was the name "Rothschild." Mulla is reported to have said, 
"Aha! Ahhh! This is what I call life. This is what I called living — a beautiful marble 
mausoleum." But howsoever beautiful it is, it is not life. It is marble — beautiful, rich — 
but not life. You can create a mausoleum out of your life through principles, ideals, 
impositions, but then you will be dead, although less vulnerable because death is not 
vulnerable. 


Death is a security; life is always insecure. Anything can happen to a live person; nothing 
can happen to a dead person. He is secure. There is no future, no possibility for change. 
The last thing has happened to him — death. Now nothing can happen. 

Principled personalities are dead personalities. Tantra is not interested in them. Tantra 
has no objection — if you feel good being dead, it is your choice. You can commit 
suicide, and this is a suicide. But tantra is for those who want to be more alive, and the 
truth, the ultimate, is not death, it is life. Remember that: the ultimate is not death. It is 



life — more life. Jesus has said, "Abundant life, infinite life." 

So by being dead you can never reach to the ultimate. If it is life, and "abundant life," 
then by being dead you will never be in contact with it. Just by being more alive, more 
vulnerable, more sensitive, less principled and more alert, you will reach it. Why do you 
seek principles? You may not have observed why. It is because with principles you need 
not be alert. You need not be alert! If you live through principles you need not be alert. 
Suppose I make a principle out of non-violence and then I stick to it, or I make it a 
principle to be truthful and I stick to it; then it becomes a habit. I create a habit of being 
truthful, of always speaking the truth. It becomes a mechanical habit; now there is no 
need to be alert. 

I cannot speak lies because a principle, a habit, will always create a barrier. The society 
depends on principles, on inculcating and educating the children with principles. Then 
they become incapable, really, of being otherwise. If a person becomes incapable, he is 
dead. 

Your truth can be alive only if it comes through alertness, not through principle. Each 
moment you have to be alert in order to be true. Truth is not a principle; it is something 
bom out of your alertness. Non-violence is not a principle; if you are alert you cannot be 
violent. But that is difficult and arduous. You will have to transform yourself totally. It is 
easy to create a life according to principles, rules and regulations. Then you need not 
worry. You need not worry about being more alert and aware; you can follow the 
principles. 

Then you are just like a railway train running on the tracks. Those tracks are your 
principles. You are not afraid because you cannot miss the path. Really, you don’t have 
any path.; you have just mechanical rails on which your train is running. You will reach 
the destination, you need not be afraid. You will be asleep and the train will reach. It is 
running on dead paths; they are not alive. 

But tantra says that life is not like that, it is more like a river. It is not running on iron 
rails, on tracks; really, it is like a river. The path has not even been charted before. 

As the river flows, the path is created. As the river moves, the path is created. The river 
will reach to the sea, and this is how life should be if you understand the tantra way. 

Life is like a river. There is no precharted way; there are no maps to be given to you 
which are to be followed. Just be alive and alert, and then wheresoever life leads you go 
with full confidence in it. Tantra is a trust — a trust in the life force. Allow it to lead you, 
don’t force it. Surrender to it and allow it to lead you towards the sea. Just be alert, that is 
all. While life leads you towards the sea just be alert so that you don't miss anything. 

It is very important to remember that tantra is not simply concerned with the end; it is 
also concerned with the means. It is also concerned with the path, not only the 
destination. If you are alert, even this life will be a bliss. The very movement of the river 
is a bliss in itself. Passing through the valleys, through the rocks, falling down from the 
hills, moving into the unknown is itself a bliss. 

Be alert here also, because the ocean, the ultimate, cannot just be a happening in the end. 
It cannot be. It is a growth. The river is "growing" to be the sea. It is not simply going to 
meet the sea, it is "growing" to be the sea, and this is possible only through rich 
experience, alert experiences, moving, trusting. This is how tantra looks at the search — at 
the human search. 



Of course, it is dangerous. If rivers can be run through predetennined paths, there would 
be less danger, fewer errors. But the whole beauty of aliveness would be lost. 

So don't be a follower of principles. Just be a creator of more and more consciousness. 
Those principles will happen to you, but you will never feel imprisoned in them. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

"THE SECOND SUTRA DISCUSSED YESTERDAY SAYS, 'THE PURITY OF 
OTHER TEACHINGS IS AN IMPURITY TO US. IN REALITY, KNOW NOTHING 
AS PURE OR IMPURE.’ IF NOTHING IS IMPURE, THEN HOW CAN THE 
TEACHINGS OF OTHERS BE IMPURE?" 

Really, nothing is impure, but the teaching that something is pure and something is 
impure has to be discarded. Only in that sense does the sutra mean, "The purity of other 
teachings is an impurity to us." Nothing is pure and nothing is impure, but if someone 
teaches that something is pure and something is impure, tantra says that this has to be 
discarded. Only in this sense does the sutra say that "The purity of other teachings is an 
impurity to us." This is just a discarding. It is just saying don’t make any distinctions, 
remain innocent. 

But look at the complexity of life. If I say remain innocent, and if you then try innocence, 
that innocence will not be innocent. How can it be? If you have "tried" it, it has become a 
calculated thing. 

Then it cannot be innocent. If you try it, it cannot be! So what is to be done? Just discard 
those things which create cunningness. Don’t try to create any innocence; you cannot. 

Just discard those things which create cunningness in your mind. This is negative. When 
you have discarded the root causes of cunningness, innocence will have happened to you. 
Nothing is pure or impure. But what is to be done then? Your mind is filled with 
distinctions: "This is pure and That is impure." So tantra says, "For us this is the only 
impurity. This mind filled with concepts of purity and impurity is the only impurity. If 
you can discard it, you have become pure." 

This sutra is meaningful in another sense also. There are teachings with very fixed rules. 
For example, Catholic Christian teachings or Jaina teachings in India are against sex.; 
they say that sex is impure, ugly, sin. Tantra says that nothing is ugly, nothing is impure, 
nothing is sin. Even sex can become a path; even sex can become a path toward 
salvation. It depends on you. It is not sex, it is you who determines the quality of it. 

Even prayer can become a sin — and sex can become a virtue. It depends on you. The 
value is not in the object, the value is brought to it by you. Look at it — at this 
phenomenon — in a different way. Tantra says that even sex can become salvation, but 
then come to sex without any notions of purity and impurity, good or bad, morality and 
immorality. 

Come to sex as pure energy, just energy. Move in that energy as if you are moving into 
the unknown. Don’t fall asleep: be alert! When sex brings you to the very root of your 
being, be alert. Don’t fall asleep, on the path. Be alert and experience everything, 
whatsoever is happening — the relaxation that comes, the tension that happens, the peak 
that comes, and the valley in which you are thrown back. 

Your ego dissolves for a moment; you become one with your beloved or with your 



partner. For a moment, the two are not there. The bodies are two, but deep down there is 
a communion and they have become one. Be alert! Don’t miss this moment in sleep. Be 
alert; see what is happening. This oneness is what was hidden in the sex act. The sex was 
just the outer core. Now this is the meaning — the central point. This is what you were 
longing for, this is what the hankering was for. This was for what there was the search — 
this unity, this dissolving of the ego, this feeling of oneness, this ecstasy of non-tension, 
this ecstasy of relaxation. This was the meaning, the goal, and this is what you were 
searching for through this woman and that, through this man and that. Y ou were 
searching and searching, but no woman can fulfill it, no man can give it. 

Only through a deep tantric awareness does the sex act completely disappear, and a deep 
ecstasy is revealed. So tantra says it is you: if you can bring meditation to your love, to 
your sex, the sex is transformed. 

So tantra doesn't say that this is pure or that is impure — and if you want to use the old 
tenninology of purity and impurity, then I will say that for tantra sleep is impure, 
alertness is pure, and all else is just meaningless. 

The fourth question: 

Question 4 

"IF AN EMOTIONAL DESIRE OR MOOD BECOMES EXHILARATING FOR US, 
AND IF WE DO NOT EXPRESS IT OUTWARDLY, DOES THIS ENERGY 
NECESSARILY GO BACK TO THE SOURCE AND MAKE THE PERSON FRESH 
AND ENERGETIC?" 

Not necessarily! But if you are aware, then it is so, necessarily. Any energy, any energy, 
needs roots to move, and no energy can be destroyed. Energy is indestructible. It can only 
change into different forms; it can never become nothing. So when you try to suppress 
any energy, you are doing absolute nonsense with yourself. Energy cannot be suppressed: 
it can only be transformed. A suppressed energy will become a cancer. If you feel anger, 
two ordinary routes are available: either express it or suppress it. If you express it, then it 
becomes a chain, because then you create anger in the other person and he will express it 
— and there is no end to it. Then you will express it, and it can continue for years. It 
continues! That is how everyone is living. It goes on and on. 

Those who know deeply, they say that for lives also, for lives together, it goes on and on. 
You have been angry with a person in your past life, and still in this life you are repeating 
the same pattern with the same person. 

You are not aware, you are blissfully unaware. So it is good if you think something new 
is happening. Ninety-nine percent of the time nothing new is happening; old patterns are 
just being repeated again and again. 

Sometimes you suddenly see a stranger, and you become angry. He has not done 
anything — you have not even met him before — but you feel depressed or angry or 
violent, or you want just to escape from this person. You feel bad. Why? It is some old 
pattern. Energy never dies, it remains, so if you express it, you are falling into an eternal 
chain. Someday you will have to come out of it. And the whole thing is useless, it is just 
wastage. Don't start the chain. 

Then the other ordinary alternative is to suppress it, and when you suppress it you are 
creating a wound within yourself. That will be a suffering. That will create problems. 



And the anger will go on being suppressed, and you will become a volcano of anger. 

So it may be that you are not now expressing your anger, but now your whole personality 
will become angry. There will be no eruptions, no one will see you beating someone and 
being violent, but now your whole personality will become angry because so much anger 
within poisons you. Now whatsoever you do the angry part is there. Even while you are 
loving someone, the angry part is there — in everything. If you are eating your food, the 
angry part will be there. 

You will be violent with your food, you will not be loving. If you are opening a door, the 
angry part will be there. You will be violent with the door. 

One day in the morning, Mulla Nasruddin was passing down a street shouting oaths and 
saying very angrily, "The devil will take possession of your spirit and beets will grow in 
your belly" — and so it went on and on. 

One man looked at him and said, "Mulla, whom are you cursing so much so early in the 
morning?" 

Mulla said, "Who? I don't know. But don't worry, someone will turn up sooner or later." 
If you are filled with anger, this happens: you are just waiting, and sooner or later 
someone will turn up. Inside you are bubbling with fire, just waiting for some objects, 
some medium, someone who should help you to unburden yourself. Then your whole 
personality becomes angry or violent or sexual. Y ou can suppress sex, and then the 
suppressed sex becomes your whole personality. Then wherever you look you will see 
sex, in whatsoever you touch you will see sex, whatsoever you do will be a sexual act. 
You can suppress sex very easily; it is not difficult. But then sex will spread all over you. 
Your every fiber, every cell will become sexual. 

Look at the celibates. Their minds become totally sexual; they dream about sex, they 
fight with sex; constantly they fantasize about sex. They are obsessed. 

That which could have been natural has become perverted. If you express it you create a 
chain, if you suppress you create a wound, and both are not good. So tantra says that 
whatsoever you do — for example, if you are angry, when you feel that anger is coming — 
be uninterruptedly aware. Don’t suppress it and don’t express it. Do a third thing, take the 
third alternative: be suddenly aware that anger is coming. This awareness changes the 
energy that is moving as anger into a different energy. The very energy that is known as 
anger becomes compassion. Through alertness there is the transmutation. 

The same energy which is known as sex becomes BRAHMACHARYA, spirituality, 
through awareness. Alertness is the alchemy. Through it everything changes. Try it, and 
you will come to know. When you bring alertness, awareness, to any mood, any feeling, 
any energy, it changes its nature and quality. It is never the same again, and a new route 
opens. It is not going back again to the same place where it was, from where it came; it is 
not moving outwards The horizontal movement has stopped. With alertness it becomes 
vertical, it moves upwards. That is a different dimension. A bullock cart moves 
horizontally; an airplane moves vertically — upwards. 

I would like to tell you one parable. One fakir, a Sufi, used to say that someone was 
presented an airplane, a very small aircraft, by a friend, who was a great king. 

But the man was poor. He had heard about airplanes, but he had never seen one. He knew 
only bullock carts, so he thought that this was a new device — a new type of bullock cart. 
He used his two bullocks to bring the airplane home, and then he used the airplane as a 



bullock cart. He was very happy. Of course, the small aircraft worked as a bullock cart. 
But then, by and by, just from being curious he started studying it. Then he came to 
understand that bullocks were not needed. It had a motor and it was able to go by itself, 
so he fueled it and used it as a motor car. 

But then by and by, he became aware of the wings, and he thought "Why are they 
there?" And it seemed to him that the man who had devised this machine must have been 
very intelligent, a genius; thus, he could not have added something unnecessarily. The 
wings showed that the machine could fly also. So he tried. Then the airplane came to its 
own; it became vertical. 

You are using the mind that you have as a bullock cart. The same mind can become a 
motor car; then bullocks will not be needed. It has an inbuilt mechanism, but then too it 
will be moving horizontally. However, the same mind has wings. You have not observed, 
that is why you don’t know that it has wings. It can fly! It can move upwards! And once it 
moves upwards, once your energies start moving upwards, the whole world is different. 
Your old questions simply fall down and your old problems are no more there, because 
you are now moving vertically. 


All those problems were there because you were moving horizontally. The problems of a 
bullock cart are not problems for an airplane. The road was not good, so there was a 
problem. The road was blocked, so there was a problem. Now this is not a problem 
because the road is not used at all. Whether blocked or not, whether good or not, it is 
irrelevant. 

Moral teachings are bullock-cart teachings; tantra's teaching is vertical. That's why all 
those problems are irrelevant for tantra. The energy that you know as anger, sex, greed or 
whatsoever, is moving horizontally. Once you bring your alertness to it, you have 
brought a new dimension. Just by being alert, you move upwards. 

Why? Observe the fact: when you are alert, you are always above the fact. Become alert 
about anything, and you are always above the fact. The fact is somewhere below, down, 
and you are looking from above, from a peak. Whenever you have witnessed something 
you have moved upwards, and the thing has remained below. If this attention is really 
authentic and you can be uninterruptedly aware, then the energy that was moving 
horizontally as anger, as sex, will move into this new dimension. It will come near to 
you, to the witness. Then you have started flying. And for lives and lives you have been 
using the device which is meant for flying as a bullock cart, unnecessarily creating 
problems because you were just not knowing what is possible for you. 


The fifth question: 

Question 5 

"YOU SAID THAT ONE SHOULD NEITHER SUPPRESS NOR INDULGE IN 
ANGER, BUT THAT ONE SHOULD REMAIN PASSIVELY ALERT AND 
MEDITATIVE. OBVIOUSLY, IT WILL NEED A SORT OF INNER EFFORT TO 
AVOID SUPPRESSION OR INDULGENCE, BUT THEN IS THIS NOT ALSO A 
SORT OF SUPPRESSION?" 


No! It is an effort, but not. "a sort of suppression." Every effort is not suppression. There 



are three types of effort. One is the effort which is expression. When you express your 
anger, it is an effort. Then the second type of effort is when you suppress it. When you 
express what you are doing, you are forcing your energy outwards to the person, to the 
object; you are throwing out your energy, the other is the target. Energy moves to the 
other; it is an effort. When you suppress, you return the energy back to the original 
source, to your own heart. You force it back. It is an effort, but the direction is different. 
In expression it moves away from you; in suppression it again moves near you. 

The third thing, alertness, passive alertness, is also an effort, but the dimension is 
different. The energy moves upwards. In the beginning it is an effort. When I say be 
passively alert, in the beginning even passivity is bound to be an effort. Only by and by, 
as you become more acquainted with it, will it not be an effort. And when it is not an 
effort, it becomes more passive — and the more passive, the more magnetic. 

It pulls the energy upwards. 

But in the beginning everything is going to be an effort, so don’t become a victim of 
words. It creates problems. Mystics have always been talking about effortlessness. They 
say don't make any effort. But in the beginning even this is going to be an effort. When 
we say be effortless we only mean don't force the effort. Allow it to come through 
awareness. If you force it, you will become tense. If you become tense, anger cannot 
move upwards. Tension is horizontal; only a non-tense mind can be above, hovering like 
a cloud. 

Look at the clouds floating with no effort. Just bring your witnessing in like a floating 
cloud. In the beginning it is going to be an effort, but remember only that it is going to 
become effortless. You will be forcing it and allowing it more and more. 

This is difficult because language creates the difficulty. If I tell you to relax, what will 
you do? You will make a sort of effort. But then I tell you don’t make any effort, because 
if you make any effort that will create tension and you will not be able to relax. I tell you 
to simply relax. Then you are at a loss, and you are bound to ask, "Then what do you 
mean? If I am not going to make any effort then what am I supposed to do?" 

You are not supposed to do anything, but in the beginning that non-doing will look like a 
doing. So I will say, "Okay! Make a little effort, but remember that the effort is to be left 
behind. 

Use it as a starter just in the beginning. You cannot understand non-doing; you can only 
understand doing. So use the language of doing and action. Start, but use effort only as a 
starter. And remember, the sooner you leave it behind, the better. 

I have heard that when Mulla Nasruddin became very old, he became a victim of 
insomnia, he couldn’t sleep. Everything was tried — hot baths, pills, tranquilizers, syrups 
— but nothing was of any help. Everything was of no avail. And the children were 
disturbed because Mulla would not sleep himself, and he would not allow anyone in the 
house to sleep. So the whole night had become a nightmare for the whole family. 

They searched desperately for any method, any medicine that would help Mulla to sleep, 
because the whole family was going crazy. So finally they brought a hypnotist. The 
children came very happily, and they told old Mulla, "Now you need not be worried, 
papa. This is a miracle man. He creates sleep within minutes. He knows the very magic 
of it, so don’t be worried. Now there is no fear, and you will sleep." 

The hypnotist showed a watch with a chain to Nasruddin and said, "Only very little faith 
will do the miracle. You need a little trust towards me. Just trust me, and you will fall 



like a small babe into deep sleep. Look at this watch." 

He started moving that watch left and right. Nasruddin looked at it, and the hypnotist 
said, "Left-right, left-right. 

Your eyes are becoming tired, tired, tired. You are falling asleep, asleep, asleep, asleep." 
Everyone was in joy — happy. Mulla's eyes closed, his head moved down, and he felt like 
a small babe going into deep sleep. A very rhythmic breathing came. The hypnotist took 
his fee, and he put his finger on his lips, just to indicate to the children not to be disturbed 
now. Then he sneaked out. The moment he was out, Mulla opened one eye and said, 

"That nut! Has he gone yet?" 

He was making an effort to relax, so he relaxed "like a babe." He had started breathing 
rhythmically and closed his eyes, but it was all an effort. He was helping the hypnotist. 

He thought that he was helping the hypnotist. But it was effort on his part, so nothing 
happened. Nothing could happen. He was awake. If he could have just been passive, if he 
could have heard what was being said, looked at what was being shown, the sleep would 
have happened. No effort on his part was necessary; only passive acceptance was 
necessary. But even for you to bring your mind to that passive acceptance, in the 
beginning you will need effort. 

So don’t be afraid of effort. Start with effort, and just remember that effort has to be left 
behind and you have to move beyond effort. Only when you have moved beyond will you 
be passive, and that passive awareness brings the miracle. 

With passive awareness, mind is no more there. 

For the first time your inner center of being is revealed, and there is a reason. Effort is 
needed for anything that is to be done in the world. If you want to do something in the 
world, anything, effort is needed. But if you want to do something in the inner, no effort 
is needed. Just relaxation is needed. Non-doing is the art there just as doing is the art in 
the outward, the outside world. 

This passive alertness is the key. But don’t become disturbed by language. Start with 
effort. Just keep in mind that you have to leave it, and go on leaving it. Even leaving will 
be an effort — but a moment comes when everything has gone. Then you are there, 
simply there not doing anything — just there, being. That "beingness" is SAMADHI, and 
all that is worth knowing, worth having, worth being, happens to you in that state. 


THE END. 



Chapter 43: Finding the changeless through the changing 


BE THE UNSAME SAME TO FRIEND AS TO STRANGER, IN HONOR AND 
DISHONOR. 

HERE IS THE SPHERE OF CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE. THROUGH CHANGE 
CONSUME CHANGE. 

Northrope says somewhere that the Western mind has been continuously searching for 
the theoretical component of existence — the causal link for how things happen, what is 
the cause, how the effect can be controlled, how man can manipulate nature. And the 
Eastern mind, says Northrope, has been on a different adventure. The search has been to 
find the aesthetic component of reality — not the theoretical, but the aesthetic. 

The Eastern mind has not been much involved with the search to know how to 
manipulate nature, but it has been interested in how to be one with nature — not in how to 
conquer it, but in how to be in a deep friendship, a deep participation with it. The 
Western mind has been in a conflict, a struggle; the Eastern mind has been in a mystique, 
a love relationship. I don’t know whether Northrope will agree with me or not, but my 
feeling is that science is a hatred, a relationship of hatred with nature; hence, struggle, 
fight, conquering, the language of victory. 

Religion is a love relationship; hence, no conflict, no struggle. In another way, science is 
a male attitude and religion a female attitude. Science is aggressive, religion is receptive. 
The Eastern mind is religious. 

Or, if you allow me, I will say that wherever a religious mind is, it is Eastern. The 
scientific mind is Western. It makes no difference whether a man is born in the East or 
the West. I am using East and West as two attitudes, two approaches, not as two 
geographical denominations. You can be bom in the West, but you may not belong there; 
you may be Eastern through and through. You may be born in the East, but you may not 
belong; you may be scientific, the approach may be mathematical, intellectual. 

Tantra is absolutely Eastern. It is a way of participating with reality — a way how to be 
one with it, how to dissolve boundaries, how to move in an undifferentiated realm. Mind 
differentiates, creates boundaries, definitions, because mind cannot work without 
definitions, without boundaries. The more clear-cut the boundaries, the better the 
possibility for the mind to work. So mind cuts, divides, chops everything. 

Religion is a dissolving of boundaries in order to move to the undifferentiated where 
there is no definition, where there is no limit to anything, where everything moves into 
everything else, where everything is everything else. You cannot cut, you cannot chop 
existence. The consequences are bound to be very different in each approach. By the 
scientific approach, by dividing, chopping, you can come only to dead particles, atoms, 
because life is something which cannot be cut into divisions. 

And the moment you cut it, it is no more there. It is as if someone goes to study a 
symphony by studying each single note. Each single note is part of the symphony, but it 
is not the symphony. The symphony is created by many notes dissolving into each other. 
You cannot study a symphony by studying notes. 

I cannot study you by studying your parts, You are not just a total of parts, you are more 
than that. When you divide and cut and analyze, life disappears; only dead parts are left. 



That is why science will never be capable of knowing what life is, and whatsoever is 
known through science will be about death — matter — it will never be about life. Science 
may become capable of manipulating life, of knowing the parts, the dead parts. It may be 
capable of manipulating life, but, still LIFE is not known, not even touched. Life remains 
unknowable for science. By the very method of its technology, its methodology, by the 
very approach, life cannot be known through it. 

That is why science goes on denying — denying anything else other than matter. The very 
approach debars any contact with that which is life. And the vice versa happens also: if 
you move deeply into religion, you will start denying matter. Shankara says that matter is 
illusion, it is not there; it simply appears to be. The whole Eastern approach has been to 
deny the world, matter, anything material. Why? Science goes on denying life, the divine, 
consciousness. 

Deeper religious experiences go on denying matter — all that is material. Why? Because 
of the very approach. If you look at life without differentiation, matter disappears. Matter 
is life divided, differentiated. Matter means life defined, analyzed into parts. 

So, of course, if you look at life undifferentiatedly and become part of it, in a deep 
participation, if you become one with existence as two lovers become one, matter 
disappears. That is why Shankara says that matter is illusion. If you participate in 
existence, it is. But Marx says that consciousness is just a by-product, it is not 
substantial; it is just a function of matter. If you divide life, then consciousness 
disappears, becomes illusory. Then only matter is. 

What I am intending to say to you is this: Existence is one. If you approach it through 
analysis, it appears material, dead. If you approach it through participation, it appears as 
life, as divine, as consciousness. If you approach it through science there is no possibility 
of any deep bliss happening to you, because with dead matter bliss is impossible. At the 
most it can only be illusory. Only with a deep participation is bliss possible. 

Tantra is a love technique. The effort is to make you one with existence. So you will have 
to lose many things before you can enter. You will have to lose your habitual pattern of 
analyzing things; you will have to lose the deep-rooted attitude of fighting, of thinking in 
tenns of conquering. 


When Hillary reached to the highest peak of the Himalayas, Mount Everest, all of the 
Western world reported it as a conquering — a conquering of Everest. Only in a Zen 
monastery in Japan, on a wall newspaper, it was written, "Everest has been befriended" — 
not conquered! This is the difference — "Everest has been befriended"; now humanity has 
become friendly with it. Everest has allowed Hillary to come to it. It was not a 
conquering. The very word 'conquer’ is vulgar, violent. To think in terms of conquering 
shows aggressiveness. Everest has received Hillary, welcomed him, and now humanity 
has become friendly; now the chasm is bridged. Now we are not unacquainted. One of us 
has been received by Everest. Now Everest has become part of human consciousness. 
This is a bridging. 

Then the whole thing becomes totally different. It depends on how you look at it. 
Remember this before we enter the techniques. Remember this: tantra is a love effort 
towards existence. That is why so much of sex has been used by tantra: because it is a 
love technique. It is not only love between man and woman; it is love between you and 
existence, and for the first time existence becomes meaningful to you through a woman. 



If you are a woman, then existence becomes for the first time meaningful to you through 
a man. 

That is why sex has been so much discussed and used by tantra. Think of yourself as 
absolutely asexual — as if all sex were removed from you the day you were born. 

Just think: all sex was completely removed from you the day you were born. You will be 
unable to love; you will be unable to feel any affinity with anyone. It will be difficult to 
get out of yourself. You will remain enclosed, you will not be able to approach, to go out 
to meet someone. There in existence, you will be a dead thing, closed from everywhere. 
Sex is your effort to reach out. You move from yourself; someone else becomes the 
center. You leave your ego behind, you go away from it to meet someone. If you really 
want to meet you will have to surrender, and if the other also wants to meet you he will 
also have to move out. Look at the miracle in love — at what happens. You move to the 
other and the other moves to you. He comes into you and you go into him or into her. 
You have changed places. Now he becomes your soul and you become her soul or his 
soul. This is a participation. Now you are meeting. Now you have become a circle. This 
is the first meeting where you are not enclosed in the ego. This meeting can become just 
a stepping stone toward a greater meeting with universe, with existence, with reality. 
Tantra is based not on intellect, but on heart. It is not an intellectual effort, it is a feeling 
effort. Remember this, because that will help you to understand the techniques. Now we 
will enter the techniques. 

The first technique: 

"BE THE UNSAME SAME TO FRIEND AS TO STRANGER, IN HONOR AND 
DISHONOR." 


"BE THE UNSAME SAME" — this is the base. What is happening in you? Two things 
are happening. Something in you remains continuously the same, it never changes. You 
may not have observed it, you may not have encountered it yet, but if you observe you 
will come to know that something in you remains constantly the same. Because of that 
sameness, you can have an identity. Because of that sameness, you feel yourself centered; 
otherwise you will be a chaos. You say, "My childhood." Now what has remained of it? 
WHO says, "My childhood"? Who is this "my, me, I"? 

Nothing has remained of your childhood. If your pictures of your childhood are shown to 
you for the first time, you will not be able to recognize them. Everything has changed. 
Your body is no more the same; not a single cell has remained the same. Physiologists 
says that the body is a flux, it is river-like. Every moment many cells are dying and many 
new ones are born. Within seven years your body will have changed completely. So if 
you are going to live seventy years, ten times over your body has renewed itself 
completely. 

Every moment your body is changing, and your mind. You cannot recognize a 
photograph of your childhood, and if it were possible to give you a photograph of your 
mind, of your childhood mind, it would be impossible to recognize it. Your mind is even 
more of a flux than your body. Every moment everything changes. 


Even for a single moment nothing remains the same. In the morning you were different as 
far as your mind is concerned. In the evening you are totally a different person. 



When someone would come to meet Buddha, before the person would depart, take leave 
of him, Buddha would say, "Remember, the man who has come to meet me is not the 
man who is going back. You are totally different now. Your mind has changed." Meeting 
with a buddha is, of course, bound to change your mind for better or worse, but you 
cannot be the same. 

You came here with a different mind; you will go with a different mind. Something has 
changed. Something new has been added, something has been deleted. And even if you 
are not meeting anyone, if you are just remaining by yourself, then too you cannot remain 
the same. Every moment the river is moving. 

Heraclitus has said, "You cannot step twice in the same river." The same can be said 
about man: you cannot meet the same man again — impossible! And because of this fact, 
and because of our ignorance of it, life becomes a misery — because you go on expecting 
the other to be the same. You marry a girl and you expect her to be the same. She cannot 
be! Unmarried, she was different; married, she is completely different. A lover is 
something else, a husband is something totally different. You cannot expect your lover to 
meet you through your husband. 

That is impossible. A lover is a lover; a husband is a husband. The moment a lover 
becomes a husband, everything has changed. But you go on expecting. That creates 
misery — unnecessary misery. If we can recognize this fact that mind goes on moving and 
changing continuously, we will escape many, many miseries without any cost. All you 
need is simple awareness that mind changes. 

Someone loves you and then you go on expecting love. But the next moment he hates 
you; then you are disturbed — not because of his hate, but only because of your 
expectation. He has changed. He is alive, so he is bound to change. But if you can see the 
reality as it is you will not be disturbed. The one who was in love a moment before can 
be in hate a moment later, but wait! One moment later he will be in love again. So don’t 
be in a hurry, just be patient. And if the other can also see this changing pattern, then he 
will not be fighting for changing patterns. They change; that is natural. 

So if you look at your body, it changes. If you try to understand your mind, it changes. It 
is never the same. Even for two consecutive moments, nothing is the same. Your 
personality goes on like a flux. If this is all and there is nothing which remains the same 
continuously, eternally, timelessly, then who will remember that this was "my 
childhood"? Childhood has changed, the body has changed, the mind has changed. 

Then who remembers? Then who knows about childhood and about youth and about old 
age? Who knows? 

This knower must remain the same; this witness must remain the same. Only then can the 
witness have a perspective. The witness can say, "This was my childhood, this was my 
young age, this was my old age. This moment I was in love, and this moment the love 
changed into hatred." This witnessing consciousness, this knower, is always the same. 

So you have two realms or two dimensions existing together in you. You are both — the 
changing which is always changing and the non-changing which is always remaining 
non-changing. If you become aware of these two realms, then this technique will be 
helpful: "BE THE UNSAME SAME." Remember this: "BE THE UNSAME SAME." 

You are bound to be "unsame" on the periphery, but at the center remain the same. 
Remember that which is the same. Just remembering will be enough; you need not do 
anything else. It is non-changing. You cannot change it, but you can forget it. You can be 



so engrossed, obsessed with the changing world around you — with your body, with your 
mind — that you may completely forget the center. The center is so much clouded by the 
changing flux — and, of course, there are problems: that which is constantly the same is 
difficult to remember because change creates problems. 

For example, if a constant noise goes on around you, you will not be aware of it. 

If a clock on the wall goes on, tick-tock, tick-tock the whole day, you are never aware of 
it. But if suddenly it stops, you will immediately become aware. If something is 
constantly the same, there is no need to take any notice. When something changes, the 
mind has to take notice. It creates a gap, and the pattern vibrates. You were hearing it 
continuously, so there was no need to hear it. It was there, it became part of the 
background. But if now suddenly the clock stops, you will become aware. Your 
consciousness will suddenly come to the gap. 

It is just as if one of your teeth falls out; then your tongue goes continuously to the place. 
When the tooth was there the tongue never tried to touch it. Now the tooth is not there — 
just a gap is there — then the whole day, howsoever you try, you cannot help it: the 
tongue goes to the gap. Why? Because something is missing and the background has 
changed. Something new has entered. 

Whenever something new enters, you become conscious — for many reasons. It is a 
safety measure. It is needed for your life — to survive. When something changes you have 
to become aware. It may be dangerous. You have to take notice, and you have to adjust 
again to the new situation that has come into being. But if everything is as it was, there is 
no need. You need not be aware. And this same element in you, what Hindus have called 
ATMAN, the soul, has been there always from the very beginning, if there was any 
beginning. 

And it is going to the very end, if there is going to be any end. It has been eternally the 
same, so how can you be aware of it? 

Because it is so pennanently the same, eternally the same, you are missing it. You take 
notice of the body, you take notice of the mind because they are changing. And because 
you take notice of them, you start thinking that you are them. You know only them; you 
become identified. 

The whole spiritual effort is to find the same amidst the unsame — to find the eternal in 
the changing, to find that which is always the same. That is your center, and if you can 
remember that center, only then will this technique be easy — or if you can do this 
technique, remembering will become easy. From both the ends you can travel. 

Try this technique. The technique is to "BE THE UNSAME SAME TO FRIEND AS TO 
STRANGER." To the friend and to the enemy, or to the stranger, be the "unsame same." 
What does it mean? It seems contradictory. In a way you will have to change, because if 
your friend comes to meet you, you will have to meet him differently, and if a stranger 
comes you will have to meet him differently. How can you meet a stranger as if you 
know him already? You cannot. The difference will be there, but still, deep down remain 
the same. The attitude must remain the same, but the behavior will be "unsame." You 
cannot meet an unknown person as if you know him already. 

How can you? You can pretend at the most, but pretensions will not do. The difference 
will be there. 

There is no need to pretend with a friend that he is a friend. With a stranger, even if you 



try to act as if he is a friend, it will be pretension — something new. You cannot be the 
same; unsameness will be necessary. As far as behavior is concerned you will be 
different, but as far as your consciousness is concerned you can be the same. You can 
look at the friend as at the stranger. 

It is difficult. You may have heard, "Look at the stranger as if he is a friend," but that is 
not possible if what I am saying is not possible. First look at your friend as the stranger; 
only then you can look at the stranger as at the friend. They are correlated. 

Have you ever looked at your friends as if they are strangers? If you have not, then you 
have not looked at all. Look at your wife: do you really know her? You may have lived 
with her for twenty years or even more, and the more you live with her, the more is the 
possibility that you will go on forgetting that she is a stranger — and she remains a 
stranger. Howsoever you love her, it will not make any difference. 

Really, if you love her more, the more strange she will look — because the more you love, 
the deeper you penetrate and the more you know how river-like she is, moving, changing, 
alive, every moment different. 

If you don’t look deeply, if you just stick to the level that she is your wife, that this is her 
name or that, then you have chosen a particular fragment, and you go on thinking of that 
particular fragment as your wife. And whenever she has to change, she has to hide her 
changes. She may not be in a loving mood, but she has to pretend because you expect 
love from your wife. 

Then everything becomes false. She is not allowed to change; she is not allowed to be 
herself. Then something is being forced. Then the whole relationship goes dead. The 
more you love, the more you will feel the changing pattern. Then each moment you are a 
stranger. You cannot predict; you cannot say how your husband is going to behave 
tomorrow morning. You can predict only if you have a dead husband: then you can 
predict. Predictions are possible only about things, never about persons. If some person is 
predictable, know well he is dead; he has died. His living is just false, so you can predict. 
Nothing is predictable about persons because of the change. 

Look at your friend as at a stranger; he is one! Don’t be afraid. We are afraid of strangers, 
so we go on forgetting that even a friend is a stranger. If you can look at the stranger in 
your friend also, you will never get frustrated because you cannot expect anything from a 
stranger. You take your friends for granted; hence, expectations and then frustrations — 
because no one can fulfill your expectations, no one is here to fulfill your expectations. 

Everyone is here to fulfill his own expectations; no one is here to fulfill you. Everyone is 
here to fulfill himself or herself, but you expect others to fulfill you and others expect 
you to fulfill them. Then there is conflict, violence, struggle and misery. 

Go on always remembering the stranger. Don’t forget, even your closest friend is a 
stranger — as far removed from you as possible. If this feeling happens to you, this 
knowing, then you can look at the stranger and you can find a friend there also. If a friend 
can be a stranger, then a stranger can be a friend. Look at a stranger: he doesn't know 
your language, he doesn’t belong to your country, he doesn’t belong to your religion, he 
doesn’t belong to your color. You are white and he is black or you are black and he is 
white. You cannot communicate through language; you don’t belong to the same church. 
So there is no common ground in nation, religion, race or color — no common ground! 

He is totally a stranger. But look into his eyes, and the same humanity is there, that is the 
common ground; and the same life, that is the common ground; and the same existence, 



that is the root of your being friends. 

You may not understand his language, but you can understand him. Even silence can be 
communicative. Just by your looking deep down into his eyes, the friend will be revealed. 
And if you know how to look, then even an enemy cannot deceive you. 

You can look at the friend in him. He cannot prove that he is not your friend. Howsoever 
far removed, he is near you because you belong to the same existential current, to the 
same river to which he belongs. You belong to the same earth of being. 

If this happens, then even a tree is not far away from you, then even a stone is not far 
away from you. A stone is very strange. There is no meeting ground, no possibility of any 
communication — but the same existence is there. The stone also exists, the stone also 
participates in being. He is there — I call it "he" — he also takes up space, he also exists in 
time. The sun also rises for him — as it rises for you. One day he was not, as you were 
not, and one day you will die and he will also die. The stone will disappear. In existence 
we meet. The meeting is the friendship. In personality we differ, in manifestation we 
differ; in essence we are one. 

In manifestations we are strangers, so howsoever close we come we remain far away. 

You can sit close, you can embrace each other, but there is no possibility to come more 
close. As far as your changing personality is concerned, you are never the same. You are 
never similar; you are always strangers. You cannot meet there because before you can 
meet you have changed. There is no possibility of meeting. As far as bodies are 
concerned and minds are concerned there can be no meeting, because before you can 
meet you are no more the same. 


Have you ever observed? You feel love for someone — a very deep upsurge. You are 
fdled with it, and the moment you go and say, "I love you," it has disappeared. Have you 
observed? It may not be there now, it may be just a memory. It was there, but it is not 
there now. The very fact that you asserted it, made it manifest, has made it enter into the 
realm of change. When you felt it, it may have been deep in the essence, but when you 
bring it out you are bringing it into the pattern of time and change, it is entering into the 
river. When you say, "I love you," by then it may have disappeared completely. It is so 
difficult, but if you observe, it will become a fact. Then you can look. In the friend there 
is the stranger and in the stranger the friend. Then you can remain "THE UNSAME 
SAME." You change peripherally; you remain the same in the essence, in the center. 

"IN HONOR AND DISHONOR..." Who is honored and who is dishonored? You? 

Never! Only that which is changing, and that you are not. Someone honors you; if you 
take it that he is honoring YOU, you will be in difficulty. He honors a particular 
manifestation in you, not you. How can he know you? You don't even know yourself. He 
honors a particular manifestation; he honors something which has come into your 
changing personality. You are kind, loving; he honors it. But this kindness and this love 
are just on the periphery. 

The next moment you will not be loving, you may be filled with hate. There may be no 
flowers — only thorns. You may not be so happy. You may be just sad, depressed. You 
may be cruel, angry. Then he will dishonor you. Then again the loving manifestation. 
Others come in contact not with you, but with your manifestations. 

Remember this, they are not honoring and dishonoring YOU. They cannot do either 



because they don't know you; they cannot know you. If even you are not aware of 
yourself, how can they be? They have their own formulas, they have their theories, they 
have their measurements and criteria. They have their touchstones and they say, "If a man 
is such and such we will honor him, and if a man is such and such we will dishonor 
him." So they act according to their criteria, and you are never near their touchstones — 
only your manifestations. 

They can call you a sinner one day and a saint another. They can call you a saint today, 
and the next day they may go against you, stone you to death. What is happening? They 
come in contact with your periphery, they never come in contact with you. Remember 
this, that whatsoever they are saying, it is not about you. You remain beyond; you remain 
outside. Their condemnations, their appreciations, whatsoever they do is not really 
concerned with you, just with your manifestations in time. 

I will tell you one Zen anecdote. 

One young monk lived near Kyoto. He was beautiful, young, and the whole town was 
pleased. They honored him. They believed him to be a great saint. Then one day 
everything turned upside down. One girl became pregnant, and she told her parents that 
this monk was responsible. So the whole town turned against him. They came, and they 
burned his cottage. It was morning, and a very cold morning, a winter morning, and they 
threw the child onto the mo nk . 

The father of the girl told him, "This is your child, so take the responsibility." 

The monk simply said, "Is it so?" And then the child started weeping, so he forgot about 
the crowd and began caring for the child. 

The crowd went and destroyed the whole cottage, burned it down. Then the child was 
hungry and the monk was without any money, so he had to go to beg in the city for the 
child. Who will give him anything now? Just a few moments before he was a great saint, 
and now he is a great sinner. Who will give him anything now? Wherever he tried, they 
closed their doors in his face. They condemned him completely. 

Then he reached to the same house — to the house of the girl. The girl was very much 
distressed, and then she heard the child weeping and screaming, and the monk standing 
there just saying, "Don’t give anything to me, I am a sinner. But the child is not a sinner; 
you can give milk to this child." 

Then the girl confessed that just to hide the real father of the child, she had taken the 
name of the monk. He was absolutely innocent. 

So the whole town turned around again. They fell at his feet, started asking his 
forgiveness. And the father of the girl came, took the child back with weeping eyes, tears 
rolling down, and he said, "But why did you not say so before? Why did you not refuse in 
the morning? The child does not belong to you." 

The monk is reported to have said again, "Is it so?" In the morning he had said, "Is it so? 
This child belongs to me?" And in the afternoon he said, "Is it so? This child doesn't 
belong to me?" 

This is how this sutra has to be applied in life. In honor and dishonor, you must remain 
"THE UNSAME SAME." The innermost center must remain the same, whatsoever 
happens to the periphery. The periphery is bound to change, but you must not change. 

And because you are two, the periphery and the center, that is why opposite, 
contradictory terms have been used: "BE THE UNSAME SAME..." And you can apply 
this technique to all opposites: in love and hate, poverty and richness, comfort and 



uncomfort, or in anything, remain "THE UNSAME SAME." 

Just know that the change is happening only to your periphery; it cannot happen to you, it 
is impossible. So you can remain detached, and this detachment is not forced. You simply 
know it is so. 

This is not a forced detachment; this is not any effort on your part to remain detached. If 
you TRY to remain detached, you are still on the periphery; you have not kn own the 
center. The center is detached; it has always been so. It is transcendental. It is always the 
beyond. Whatsoever happens below never happens to it. 

Try this in polar situations. Go on feeling something in you which is the same. When 
someone is insulting you, focus yourself to the point where you are just listening to him 
— not doing anything, not reacting — just listening. He is insulting you, and then someone 
is praising you. Just listen. Insult-praise, honor-dishonor: just listen. Your periphery will 
get disturbed. Look at it also; don’t change it. Look at it; remain deep in your center, 
looking from there. You will have a detachment which is not forced, which is 
spontaneous, which is natural. 

And once you have the feeling of the natural detachment, nothing can disturb you. You 
will remain silent. Whatsoever happens in the world, you will remain unmoved. Even if 
someone is killing you, only the body will be touched — not you. You will remain 
beyond. This "beyondness" leads you into existence, into that which is bliss, eternal, into 
that which is true, which is always, into that which is deathless, into life itself. You may 
call it God or you can choose your term. You can call it NIRVANA, whatsoever you like, 
but unless you move from the periphery to the center and unless you become aware of the 
eternal in you, religion has not happened to you, neither has life happened to you. 

You are missing, simply missing all. That is possible — to miss the ecstasy of living. 
Shankara says that "I call the man a SANNYASIN who knows what is changing and 
what is non- changing, who knows what is moving and what is non-moving." This, in 
Indian philosophy, is known as discrimination — VIVEK. To discriminate between these 
two, the realm of the change and the realm of the unchanging — this is called VIVEK, 
discrimination, awareness. 

This sutra can be used very, very deeply and very easily with whatsoever you are doing. 
You feel hunger? Remember the two realms. Hunger can only be felt by the periphery 
because the periphery needs food, needs fuel. You don’t need food, you don’t need any 
fuel, but the body needs them. Remember, when hunger happens it is happening to the 
periphery; you are just the knower of it. If you were not there, it would not be known. If 
the body were not there, it would not happen. By your absence only knowledge will not 
be there because the body cannot know. The body can have it, but it cannot know it. You 
know it; you cannot have it. 

So never say that "I am hungry." Always say within, "I know that my body is hungry." 
Give emphasis to your knowing. Then the discrimination is there. You are becoming old: 
never say, "I am becoming old." Just say, "My body is becoming old." Then in the 
moment of death also you will know, "I am not dying; my body is dying. 

I am changing bodies, just changing the house." If this discrimination deepens, one day, 
suddenly, there will be enlightenment. 


The second sutra: 



"HERE IS THE SPHERE OF CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE. THROUGH CHANGE 
CONSUME CHANGE." 

The first thing to understand is that everything you know about is change; except for you, 
the knower, everything is change. Have you seen anything which is not change? This 
whole world is a phenomenon of change. Even the Himalayas are changing. They say — 
the scientists who work on it — that they are growing; these Himalayas are the youngest 
mountains in the world, still a child, really, still growing. They have not yet become 
mature; they have not reached to the point from where something begins to decline. They 
are still rising. 

If you compare them with Vindhyachal, another mountain, they are just children. 
Vindhyachal is one of the oldest — and some say the oldest mountain in the world. It is so 
old, it is decreasing — coming down. For centuries, it is coming down — just dying, in its 
old age. So even a Himalaya which looks so stable, unchanging, unmoving, is changing. 

It is just a river of stones. Stones make no difference; they are also river-like, floating. 
Comparatively everything is changing. Something looks more changing, something looks 
less changing, but that is only relative. 

Nothing is unchanging that you can know. 

Remember my point: nothing that you can know is unchanging. Nothing is unchanging 
except the knower. But that is always behind. It always "knows"; it is really never 
known. It can never become the object; it is always the subject. Whatsoever you do or 
know, it is always behind. You cannot know it. When I say this, don't get disturbed. 

When I say that you cannot know it, I mean you cannot know it as an object. I can look at 
you, but how can I look at myself in the same way? It is impossible because to be in a 
relationship of knowledge two things are needed — the knower and the known. 

So when I look at you, you are the known and I am the knower, and the knowledge can 
exist as a bridge. But where to make the bridge when I look at myself, when I am trying 
to know myself? There only I am, alone — totally alone. The other bank is missing, so 
where to create the bridge? How to know myself? 

So self-knowledge is a negative process. You cannot know yourself directly; you can 
simply go on eliminating objects of knowledge. Go on eliminating the objects of 
knowledge. When there is no object of knowledge, when you cannot know anything, 
when there is nothing but the vacuum, the emptiness — and this is what meditation is: just 
eliminating all objects of knowledge — then a moment comes when consciousness is, but 
there is nothing to be conscious of; knowing is, but there is nothing to know. 

The simple, pure energy of knowing remains and nothing is left to be known. There is no 
object. 

In that state when there is nothing to be known, it is said that you know yourself in a 
certain sense. But that KNOWLEDGE is totally different from all other knowledge. It is 
misleading to use the same word for both. There have been mystics who have said that 
self-knowledge is contradictory, the very term is contradictory. Knowledge is always of 
the other; self-knowledge is not possible. But when the other is not, something happens. 
You may call it "self-knowledge," but the word is misleading. 

So whatsoever you know is change. Everywhere, even these walls, are constantly 
changing. Now physics supports this. Even the wall which looks so stationary, non- 
changing, is changing every moment. A great flux is on. Every atom is moving, every 
electron is moving. Everything is moving fast, and the movement is so fast that you 



cannot detect it. That is why the wall looks so permanent. In the morning it was like this, 
in the afternoon it was like that, in the evening it was like this, yesterday it was like this 
and tomorrow it will be like this. You look at it as if it is the same, but it is not. Your 
eyes are not capable of detecting such great movement. 

The fan is there. If the fan is moving very fast, you will not be able to see the space, it 
will look like just one circle. 

Space cannot be seen because the movement is fast, and if the movement is so fast — just 
as fast as electrons are moving — you will not see that the fan is moving at all. You will 
not be able to detect the movement. The fan will look stationary; you will even be able to 
touch it. It will be stationary, and your hand will not even be able to enter into the gaps, 
because your hand cannot move so fast as to go into the gaps. Before you move, another 
blade will have come. Before you move, still another blade will have come. You will 
always touch the blade, and the movement will be so fast that the fan will look like it is 
non-moving. So things that are non-moving are very fast moving: that is why there is the 
appearance that they are stationary. 

This sutra says that everything is change: "HERE IS THE SPHERE OF CHANGE..." On 
this sutra Buddha's whole philosophy stands. Buddha says that everything is a flux, 
changing, non-permanent, and that one should know this. Buddha's emphasis is so much 
on this point. His whole standpoint is based on it. He says, "change, change, change: 
remember this continuously." Why? If you can remember change, detachment will 
happen. How can you be attached when everything is changing? 

You look at a face; it is very beautiful. When you look at a face that is very beautiful, 
there is a feeling that this is going to remain. Understand it deeply. 

Never expect that this is going to remain. But if you know that this is changing fast, that 
this is beautiful this moment and it may be ugly the next, how can you feel any 
attachment? It is impossible. Look at a body: it is alive; the next moment it will be dead. 
All is futile, if you feel the change. 

Buddha left his palace, his family — his beautiful wife, his child — and when someone 
asked him, "Why?" he said, "Where there is nothing permanent, what is the use? The 
child will die." And the night Buddha left, the child was bom. He was just a few hours 
old. Buddha went into his wife's room to have a last look. The wife's back was towards 
the door. She was holding the child in her arms in sleep. Buddha wanted to say goodbye, 
but then he resisted. He said, "What is the use?" 

A moment came in his mind when a thought flashed that "The child is just one day old, a 
few hours old, and I must have a look." But then he said, "What is the use? Everything is 
changing. This day the child is bom, and the next day the child will die. And one day 
before he was not here. Now he is here, and one day again he will not be here. So what is 
the use? Everything is changing." He left — turned back and left. 

When someone asked, "Why have you left all that?" he said, "I am in search of that 
which never changes, because if I stick to that which changes there is going to be 
frustration. 

If I cling to that which is changing, I am stupid, because it will change, it will not remain 
the same. Then I will be frustrated. So I am in search of that which never changes. If 
there is anything which never changes, only then does life have any worth and meaning. 
Otherwise everything is futile." He based his whole teaching on change. 



This sutra is beautiful. This sutra says, "THROUGH CHANGE CONSUME CHANGE." 
Buddha would never say the second part. The second part is basically tantric. Buddha 
will say that everything is change; feel it, and then you will not cling to it. And when you 
don't cling to it, by and by, by leaving everything that changes, you will fall into yourself 
to the center where there is no change. Just go on eliminating change, and you will come 
to the unmoving, to the center — the center of the wheel. That is why Buddha has chosen 
the wheel as the symbol of his religion: because the wheel moves, but the center on 
which it moves remains unmoving. So the SANSARA — the world — moves like a wheel. 
Your personality moves like a wheel, and your innennost essence remains the center on 
which the wheel moves. It remains unmoving. 

Buddha will say life is change. He will agree with the first part. The next — the second 
part — is typically tantric: "THROUGH CHANGE CONSUME CHANGE." Tantra says 
don’t leave that which is changing; move into it. Don’t cling, but move. 

Why be afraid? Move into it, live it out. Allow it to happen, and you move into it. 
Consume it through itself. Don’t be afraid, don’t escape. Where will you escape? How can 
you escape? Everywhere there is change. Tantra says everywhere is change. Where will 
you escape? Where can you go? 

Wherever you go the change will be there. All escape is futile, so don't try to escape. 

Then what to do? Don’t cling. Live the change, be the change. Don’t create any struggle 
with it. Move with it. The river is flowing; you flow with it. Don't even swim; allow the 
river to take you. Don't fight with it, don’t waste your energy by fighting with it; just 
relax. Be in a let-go and move with the river. 

What will happen? If you can move with a river without any conflict, without any 
direction of your own, if the river's direction is your direction, suddenly you will become 
aware that you are not the river. You will become aware that you are not the river! Feel 
it. Some day try it in a river. Go there, relax, and allow the river to take you. Don't fight; 
become the river. Suddenly you will feel that the river is all around, but you are not the 
river. 

In fighting you may forget this. That is why tantra says, "THROUGH CHANGE 
CONSUME CHANGE." Don't fight. There is no need because in you the change cannot 
enter. So don’t be afraid. Live in the world. Don’t be afraid because in you the world 
cannot enter. 

Live it. Don't choose this way or that. 

There are two types of people: one that will cling to the world of change and one that will 
escape. But tantra says it is change, so to cling is futile and to escape also. What is the 
use? Buddha says, "What is the use of remaining in the world of change?" Tantra says, 
"What is the use of escaping from it?" 

Both are futile. Rather, allow it to happen. You are not concerned with it; it is happening, 
you are not even needed for it. You were not and the world was changing, and you will 
not be and the world will go on changing — so why create any fuss about it? 

"CONSUME CHANGE THROUGH CHANGE." This is a very deep message. Consume 
anger through anger, consume sex through sex, consume greed through greed, consume 
the SANSARA through the sansara. Don't fight with it, be relaxed, because fight creates 
tensions and fight creates anxiety, anguish, and you will be unnecessarily disturbed. 
Allow the world to be as it is. 

There are two types of persons. One type is those persons who cannot allow the world to 



be as it is. They are called revolutionaries. They will change it, they will struggle to 
change it. They will destroy their whole life in changing it, and it is already changing. 
They are not needed, they will only consume themselves. They will bum out in changing 
the world, and it is already changing. No revolution is really needed. 

The world is a revolution; it is changing. 

You may wonder why India has not created great revolutionaries. It is because of this 
insight that everything is already changing. Why are you disturbed to change it? You can 
neither change it nor stop the change. It IS changing. Why waste yourself? 

One type of personality always tries to change the world. In religion's eyes he is neurotic. 
Really, he is afraid of coming to himself, so he goes on and becomes obsessed with the 
world. The state has to be changed, the government has to be changed, the society, the 
structure, the economics, everything has to be changed, and he will die, and he will never 
have a moment of ecstasy in which he could know what he was, and the world will 
continue and the wheel will go on moving. It has seen many revolutionaries, and it goes 
on moving. Neither can you stop it nor can you accelerate the change. 

This is a mystic's attitude: mystics say there is no need to change the world. But mystics 
are also of two types. One will say there is no need to change the world, but there is a 
need to change oneself. He also believes in changing — not in changing the world, but 
himself 

But tantra says there is no need to change anyone — neither the world nor yourself. That 
is the deepest core of mysticism. You need not change the world and you need not 
change yourself. You are just to know that everything is changing, and to float in the 
change and relax in the change. 


And the moment there is no effort to create any change, you can relax totally — because if 
the effort is there you cannot relax. Then tension will be there because in the future 
something of value is going to happen: the world is going to change. The world is going 
to become communistic, or the earthly paradise is to come, or some utopia in the future, 
or you are going to enter into the Kingdom of God, or into MOKSHA. Somewhere in 
paradise the angels are waiting to welcome you — but "somewhere" is the future. With 
this attitude you are going to be tense. 

Tantra says forget it. The world is already changing and you are also already changing. 
Change is existence, so don’t become worried about it. It is already happening without 
you; you are not needed. You just float in it with no anxiety for the future, and suddenly 
amidst change you will become aware of a center within you which never changes, which 
has remained always as it is — the same. 

Why does it happen? Because if you are relaxed, then the changing background gives you 
the contrast, and through it you can feel the non-changing. If you are in any effort to 
change the world or yourself, you cannot look at the small unmoving center within you. 
You are so much obsessed with change, you are not able to have a look at what is the 
case. 

The change is all around. The change becomes the background, the contrast, and you are 
relaxed. 


So there is no future in your mind — no future thoughts. You are here now; this moment 
is all. Everything is changing, and suddenly you become aware of a point within you 



which has never changed. "THROUGH CHANGE CONSUME CHANGE." This is what 
is meant by "THROUGH CHANGE CONSUME CHANGE." 

Don't fight. Through death become deathless; through death allow the death to die. Don’t 
fight with it. The tantra attitude is difficult to conceive of, because our minds want to do 
something and this is a non-doing. It is just relaxing, not doing, but this is one of the most 
hidden secrets. If you can feel this, you need not bother about anything else. This one 
technique can give you all. 

Then you need not do anything because you have come to know the secret that through 
change, change can be consumed, and through death, death can be consumed, and 
through sex, sex can be consumed, and through anger, anger can be consumed. Now you 
have come to know the secret that through poison, poison can be consumed. 

THE END. 



Chapter 44: Tantra's secrets of love and liberation 


The first question: 

Question 1 

"IN REFERENCE TO YOUR STATEMENT THAT TANTRA IS A LOVE 
TECHNIQUE, PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY MODERN MAN AND WOMAN HAVE 
BECOME INCAPABLE OF LOVE.” 

Love is spontaneous. It cannot be controlled. You cannot "make" love; you cannot do 
anything about it. And the more you do, the more you will miss it. You have to allow it to 
happen. You are not needed for it. Your presence is the hindrance. The more you are 
absent, the better. When you are not, love happens. Because of their inability to be 
absent, modern man and woman have become incapable of love. 

They are capable of doing things. The whole modern mind is based on doing. 

Whatsoever can be done, modem man can do more efficiently than any man that has ever 
existed. Whatsoever can be done, we can do more efficiently. We are the most efficient 
century; we have turned everything into technology — into a problem of how to "do" it. 
We have developed one dimension and that is the dimension of doing, but in developing 
this dimension we have lost much. 

At the loss of being we have learned how to do things, so that which can be done we do 
better than anyone — better than any society that ever existed on earth. But when the 
question of love comes, a problem arises because love cannot be done. And not only is 
this so with love; we have become incapable of all that cannot be done. 


For example, meditation: we have become incapable of it; it cannot be done. Or play: we 
have become incapable of it; it cannot be done. Or joy, happiness: we have become 
incapable of them because they cannot be done. They are not acts; you cannot manipulate 
them. On the contrary, you have to let yourself go. Then joy happens to you, then 
happiness comes to you, then love enters you, then love takes possession. And because of 
this possession we have become afraid. 

Modern man, the modem mind, wants to possess everything and not be possessed by 
anything. Modem man wants to be the master of everything, and you can only be the 
master of things — not of happenings. You can be the master of a house, you can be the 
master of a mechanical device; you cannot be the master of anything which is alive. Life 
cannot be mastered; you cannot possess it. On the contrary, you have to be possessed by 
it. Only then is there contact with it. 

Love is life, and it is greater than you. You cannot possess it. I would like to repeat it: 
love is greater than you; you cannot possess it. You can only allow yourself to be 
possessed by it; it cannot be controlled. The modern ego wants to control everything, and 
you become scared of whatsoever you cannot control. You become afraid; you close the 
door. You close that dimension completely because fear enters. You will not be in 
control. 

With love you cannot be in control, and the whole trend which has led to this century was 
one of how to control. All over the world, and particularly in the West, the trend is for 
how to control nature, how to control everything, how to control energies. 



Man must become the master, and you have become the master — of course, only of those 
things which are possible to possess, and side by side you have been developing an 
incapacity for those things which cannot be possessed. You can possess money; you 
cannot possess love. And because of this we have been turning everything into a thing. 
You even go on turning persons into things because then you can possess them. If you 
love a person, you are not the master; no one is the master. Two persons love each other, 
and no one is the master — neither the lover nor the beloved. Rather, love is the master 
and both are possessed by a greater force than themselves, encircled by a greater force — 
a whirlwind. If they try to possess each other, they will miss. Then they can possess each 
other. Then the lover will become the husband and the beloved will become the wife. 
Then they can possess, but a husband is a thing and a wife is a thing. They are not 
persons. You can possess them. They are dead entities, legal labels — not alive. 

We go on turning persons into things just to possess them, and then we feel frustrated — 
because we wanted to possess the person and the person cannot be possessed. 

When you possess a person, he is no more a person; he is a dead thing, and you cannot be 
fulfilled by a dead thing. Look at this contradiction: you can be fulfilled only by persons, 
never by things, but your mind desires possessions — so you turn them into things. Then 
you cannot be fulfilled. Then frustration sets in. 

Possessiveness, the attitude to possess, has killed the capacity to love. Don't think in 
tenns of possession. Rather, think in terms of being possessed. That is what surrender 
means — being possessed: you allow yourself to be possessed by something greater than 
you. Then you will not be in control. Then a greater force will take you. Then the 
direction will not be yours. Then you cannot choose the goal. Then the future is 
unknown; you cannot be secure now. Moving with a greater force than yourself, you are 
insecure, afraid. 

If you are afraid and insecure, it is better not to move with great forces. Just work with 
lower forces than you; then you can be the master, and you can decide the goal 
beforehand. Then you will achieve the goal, but you will not get anything out of it. You 
will have just wasted your life. 

The secret of love and the secret of prayer and the secret of anything that can make you 
fulfilled is surrender — the capacity to be possessed. The problem with love exists 
because this capacity is not there. There are other reasons also, but this is the base. 

The first reason is too much emphasis on intellect, reason. So man is lopsided. Your head 
has grown and your heart has remained absolutely neglected. And love is not a capacity 
of the intellect. It has a different center; it has a different focus, source. It is in your heart, 
it is your feeling; it is not reasoning. But the whole modem education consists of 
reasoning, logic, intellect, mind. The heart is not even talked about. It is denied, really; it 
is just "a poetic fiction." 

It is not! It is a reality! Just look at it in this way: if from the very beginning a child is 
brought up without any training of the mind or the reasoning, without any intellectual 
training, will he have an intellect? He cannot! 

There have been such cases. Sometimes it has happened that wolves have brought up a 
human child. Just ten years before, one child was caught in a forest. The wolves had 
brought him up. He was fourteen years of age. He couldn’t even stand on two legs; he 
would run on all fours. He couldn’t speak a single word; he would roar like a wolf. He 
was in every way a wolf, and fourteen years of age. Those who caught him named him 



Ram. The child took six months to leam the name. Within a year the child died, and the 
psychologists who worked on him suspected that he died because of too much strain on 
the intellect. This forcing, this training to get him to stand on two feet, this memory 
training to get him to remember the name, the effort to make him a human being, killed 
him. 


He was robust in health when he was caught — more healthy than any human being ever 
is. He was just like an animal. But this training killed him. Every effort was made so that 
if you could have asked him, "What is your name?" he would be able to say "Ram." This 
was his whole intellect. After six months of constant training, punishment, creating a 
profit motive in him, the only proof that the child could give of his intellect was this 
much: he would be able to say "Ram." What happened? If someone from Mars could get 
hold of this child, he would think that humanity has no mind, no intellect, no reason. 

The same has happened to the heart. Without training it is as if it is not. It has been 
completely neglected, so your whole life energy has been forced towards the head, not 
towards the heart, and love is a functioning of the heart center. This is why modem man 
has become incapable of love: modem man has become incapable of the heart. He 
calculates, and love is not a calculation. He knows arithmetic and love is not arithmetic. 
He thinks in terms of logic and love is illogical. He always tries to rationalize everything. 
Whatsoever he is doing reason must support it, and love is not supported by reason. 
Really, when you fall in love you throw your reason completely. That is why we say man 
"falls" in love. Falls from where? Falls from the head down into the heart. 

We use this term of condemnation, "falling in love," because the head, the reason, cannot 
look at it without condemning it. It is a fall. Is love really a fall or a rising? Do you 
become more with it or do you become less? Do you expand or do you shrink? With love 
you become more! Your consciousness is more, your feeling is more; your ecstatic 
sensation is more, your sensitivity is more. You are more alive, but one thing is less: 
reasoning is less. You cannot reason it out; it is blind. As far as reason is concerned it is 
blind. The heart has its own reason — that is another thing — and the heart has its own 
eyes, but that is another thing. The eyes of reason are not there, so reason says it is a fall; 
you have fallen. 

Unless the heart center starts functioning again man will not be capable of love, and the 
whole misery of modem life is because unless he loves he cannot feel any meaning in his 
life. Fife looks meaningless. Fove gives it meaning; love is the only meaning. Unless you 
are capable of love you will be meaningless, and you will feel that you are existing 
without any meaning, futilely, and suicide will become attractive. Then you will like to 
kill yourself, to finish with yourself, to end, because what is the use of existing? 

Mere existing cannot be tolerated. Existence must have a meaning; otherwise, what is the 
use? Why go on prolonging yourself unnecessarily? Why go on repeating the same 
pattern every day? Getting out of the bed and doing the same thing, and again falling 
asleep and the next day the same pattern: why? 

You have done it so far, and what has happened? And you will do it unless death comes 
and relieves of you of your body. 


So what is the use? Fove gives meaning. It is not that through love any result comes into 
being or any goal — no! Through love every moment becomes of value in itself. Then you 



never ask this. If someone asks what is the meaning of life, know well that love is 
lacking. Whenever someone asks what is the meaning of life, he is asking because he has 
not been able to flower in a love experience. Whenever someone is in love, he never asks 
what is the meaning of life. He knows the meaning; there is no need to ask. He knows the 
meaning! The meaning is there: love is the meaning in life. 

And through love prayer is possible because prayer is again a love relationship — not 
between two individuals, but between one individual and existence itself. Then the whole 
existence becomes your beloved or lover. But it is possible only through love experience 
that you can grow into prayer or into meditation, and the ultimate ecstasy is just like love. 
That is why Jesus says that "God is love," not that "God is loving." 

Christians have been interpreting it in this way — that God is kind, loving. That is not the 
meaning. Jesus says that God is love. He simply equates God and love. You can say 
"love" or you can say "God"; they both mean the same. God is not loving; God is love 
itself. If you can love, you have entered the divine. And when your love grows to such an 
infinity that it is not concerned with anyone in particular — rather, it has become a 
diffused phenomenon; when there is no lover for you — rather, the whole existence, all 
that is, has become the lover or beloved — then it has become prayer. 


And tantra is a love method. So the first thing is how to love, and then the second thing is 
how to grow in love so that love becomes prayer. But one must start from love. And don’t 
be afraid of love because that fear shows you are afraid of the heart. The head is cunning; 
the heart is innocent. With the head you feel protected; with the heart you become 
vulnerable, open. Anything can happen. 

That is why we have become closed. The fear is there: if you are vulnerable, anything can 
happen to you; someone can deceive you. With the mind no one can deceive you; you 
can deceive others. But I tell you be ready to be deceived, but don’t close the heart. Be 
ready to be deceived, but don’t close the heart! That vulnerability to be deceived is of 
worth because you will not lose anything by it. And if you are ready to be deceived 
infinitely, only then can you believe in the heart. If you are calculative, cunning, clever, 
too much clever, then you will miss the heart, and modem man is so educated, so 
sophisticated, so clever; that is why he has become incapable of love. 

Women were not like this, but they are following modem man fast, they are copying 
modern man fast. Sooner or later they will become just like man, or they may even 
overtake him. Now they are also becoming incapable because the same head orientation, 
the same effort to be cunning and clever, is there now. 

They may form a "Women's Liberation Movement" or anything like it, but it is not heart 
oriented. It is just a copy of the same stupidity that man has been doing with himself. You 
may go to the other extreme, but if you react, even in your reaction you are following. 

A great crisis is there. It is difficult now to prevent women all over the world from 
copying man and his nonsense because man seems to be so successful. He is successful 
in a way; he has become the master of things. Now he possesses the whole world. Now 
he feels he has conquered nature, and "success succeeds; nothing succeeds like success." 
Now women feel that man has succeeded and has become the master, so they must copy 
him. But look also at the thing in which man has failed completely. He has lost his heart; 
he cannot love. Reason alone is not enough, and reason in control is dangerous. The heart 
must be higher than reason because reason is just an instrument and the heart is you. The 



heart must be allowed to use reason — not vice versa. But you have been doing that. The 
head is allowed to dominate; in its domination, the head has killed the heart. 

And thirdly, one thing more has to be remembered as to why modern man has become 
incapable of love. Love is basically a sort of madness, a sort of deep participation with 
nature, a sort of dissolving of the ego. It is primal. You are bom out of love; your every 
cell of the body is a love cell. 

Your very energy, your life energy, is a love energy. You exist in it, but there is no ego in 
that energy. You cannot feel "I." That energy is unconscious, and when you move in love 
YOU become unconscious. Only a fragment of your mind is conscious, and in that 
fragment of the mind exists the ego. 

The mind has three layers. First is the unconscious: when you are deeply asleep with no 
dreams, you are in it. The child in the mother's womb is absolutely unconscious, he is just 
part of the mother. The child is not aware that "I am separate"; he is just part of the 
mother. There is no separation, no defined existence. He is undifferentiated from the 
mother and from the existence itself. There is no fear because fear comes only when you 
become aware of yourself. The child is totally at ease; he is unconscious. 

And the second layer is of consciousness. It is a very small fragment. One tenth part of 
the unconscious has become conscious in you through training, education, society, 
family. It was needed for survival, so a part of you has become conscious. But that part 
also gets tired very soon; that is why you need sleep. In sleep you become again a child 
in the womb. You have fallen back, the conscious is no more there. It has become part of 
the unconscious. That is why sleep is so refreshing. In the morning you feel alive again, 
fresh, because you have fallen back into the mother's womb. 


You may not have observed this.... Observe someone who is deeply asleep. More or less, 
he will be in the same posture in which he was in his mother's womb. And if you can be 
in the right posture, sleep will follow more easily. If you feel any difficulty in falling 
asleep, just feel your mother's womb, as if you are in it. Imagine it, and take the posture 
in which you would have been in your mother's womb. In that posture you will fall 
deeply asleep. You need the same warmth; otherwise the sleep will be disturbed. You 
need the same wannth as there was in your mother's womb. 

That is why hot milk is good. If you sip hot milk before you go to sleep it will be good, 
because that again makes you a child. Milk is child’s food, and if it is hot you are again at 
your mother's breast. Hot milk is good for sleep only because of this reason: you fall back 
into childhood, you are reduced into a child. Sleep refreshes you. Why? Because the 
conscious mind gets tired. It is just a part, and the whole is unconscious. It has to fall 
back to the whole to become revived. It is again resurrected. That is why in the morning 
you feel good and morning looks beautiful — not only because morning is beautiful, but 
because again you have a child's eyes. The afternoon is not so beautiful. The world is the 
same, but you have lost those innocent eyes again. And the evening becomes ugly 
because you are tired. 


You have lived too much in the conscious. This conscious has ego as the center. These 
are two ordinary states which we know. The third state, that with which tantra and yoga 
are concerned, is the superconscious. "Superconscious" means that your whole 



unconscious has become conscious. In the unconscious there is no ego; you are total. In 
the superconscious, again there is no ego; you are total. But in between the two the 
conscious mind has a center — the ego. This ego is the problem, this ego creates 
problems. You cannot fall in love because then you will have to become unconscious, 
just as unconscious as you become in sleep. Or, if you want to rise to prayer, you have to 
become totally conscious like a Buddha or like a Meera. So love becomes impossible, 
prayer becomes impossible. 

The ego creates the barrier. Y ou cannot lose yourself, and love is losing, dispersing, 
dissolving, melting. If you melt into the unconscious, it is love; if you melt into the 
superconscious it is prayer — but both are a melting. So what is to be done? Remember 
this: you cannot do anything about it. Let it be deeply noted: you cannot do anything 
about love, about prayer. Your conscious mind is impotent; it cannot do anything. It has 
to be lost, it has to be put aside. And then remember surrender: whenever you want to 
move beyond yourself, surrender is the way — either in love or in prayer. 


Whenever you long to move beyond, somewhere else where you are not, then surrender, 
let-go is the path. Allow something to happen to you; don’t manipulate. And once you 
know how to allow, many things will start happening. You may not be even aware of 
what is possible for you, of what a great, tremendous energy you have closed within 
yourself which can explode and then become an ecstasy. Your whole life will be filled 
with consciousness, light and bliss, but you don’t know it. It is just as if every atom is an 
atom bomb: if one atom explodes, tremendous energy is released. And every heart is also 
an atom bomb. If it explodes in love or prayer, tremendous energy is released. 

But you have to explode and lose yourself. The seed has to lose itself; only then is the 
tree born. And if the seed resists and says, "No, I must survive," then the seed can 
survive, but the tree will never be born. And unless the tree is bom the seed will feel 
frustrated, because the tree is the meaning. The seed will feel frustrated! The seed can 
feel fulfilled only when the tree is there flowering. But then the seed has to lose itself, 
die. 

Modern man has become incapable of love because he has become incapable of death. 

He cannot die to anything. He clings to life; he cannot die to anything. 

In old English, three or four hundred years ago, this was a usual expression. The lover 
would say to the beloved, "I want to die in you." 

This was a love expression. It is beautiful! "I want to die in you." Love is a death — a 
death of the ego. Only then is your real self born, and modem man is very, very afraid of 
death. In every way, surrender is death, love is death, and life also is a continuous death. 
If you are afraid, you will miss life itself. 

Be ready to die every moment. Die to the past, die to the future, and die in the present 
moment. Don’t cling and don't resist. Don’t make any effort for life, and you will have 
abundant life. Life will happen to you if you are ready to die. This looks paradoxical, but 
this is the law. Jesus says that one who is ready to lose will gain, and one who clings will 
lose everything. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

"YOU SAID LAST NIGHT THAT THE PERIPHERY IS ALWAYS CHANGING, 



WHEREAS THE INNERMOST CENTER IS ETERNALLY UNMOVING. TO 
REALIZE THE CENTER IS IT NECESSARY THAT THE PERIPHERAL 
MOVEMENT MUST CEASE? CAN THAT BE? HOW AND WHEN?" 


You have missed the whole point. The whole point was not to make any effort to change 
the periphery. Allow the periphery to be as it is. And you cannot change it. It is the nature 
of the periphery to move and change. You cannot make it static. Nature is a flux. It is so; 
you cannot make it static. And don’t waste your time and opportunity of life trying to 
make it static. Just know it as change. 

Be the witness of it, and you will come to feel the innermost center which is not change. 
The world is change, your personality is change, your body -mind is change, but you are 
not; you are not the change. What is the use of struggling with change? No need! 

Tantra says please be reestablished in your center, be aware of the center which is 
unmoving, and allow the whole existence to move. It is not a disturbance at all. It 
becomes a disturbance only if you cling to it or if you try to make it unmoving. Then you 
are falling into absurdities, foolish efforts. They will not succeed; you will be a failure. 
Know well that life is a change, but somewhere within this change there is an unmoving 
center also. Just become aware of it. That very awareness is enough to liberate you. That 
very feeling that "I am unmoving" liberates. That is the truth. You know it, and you are 
different. 

Don't fight with shadows! And the whole life is a shadow because change is nothing but a 
shadow. The unchanging is the real; the changing is the unreal. So don’t ask whether the 
peripheral change and movement has to be forced to cease in order to realize the center. 
There is no need, and you cannot force it. It cannot cease! The world goes on; only it will 
not go on in you. You can remain in the world, and there is no need for the world to be in 
you. The world is not the disturbance. When you get involved in it, when you become the 
change, when you feel that you have become the change, then it creates problems. 


Problems are created not by the changing periphery. They are created by the 
identification that "I am this change." You have fallen ill; illness is not really the 
disturbance. When you feel that "I have fallen ill," it is a disturbance. If you can be a 
witness to that illness, if you can feel that illness is a happening somewhere on the 
periphery — that it is not happening to you, it is happening to someone else and you are 
just the witness — then death also can happen and you will be just a witness. 

Alexander was returning from India. Some friends had requested him to bring back a 
sannyasin from India. They said, "When you come with conquered possessions, don't 
forget: bring a sannyasin also. We want to see what a sannyasin is — what type of a man 
renounces the world. We want to know what has happened to one who has renounced all 
desires, what type of bliss comes to one who leaves all hankering, thirst or hunger for the 
future, for possessions and things." 

Just at the last moment Alexander remembered. In the last town from where he was to 
leave India to go back to his country, he told his soldiers to go and find a sannyasin. They 
went to the town, and they asked an old man of the town. He said, "Yes there is a 
sannyasin, a great sannyasin, but it will be difficult. It will be very difficult to persuade 
him to go with Alexander to Athens." 

But the soldiers were soldiers, so they said, "Don’t you be worried about it. 



We can force anyone. Just tell us where he is. We know how to force him, so there is no 
need to persuade. If Alexander tells even the whole town to follow him, you will have to 
follow, so what of a single sannyasin?" 

But the old man laughed, and the soldiers couldn't understand because they had never 
encountered a sannyasin. They reached the sannyasin. He was standing naked on the 
bank of the river, and they told him, "Alexander orders that you have to come with us. 
Every care will be taken, there will be no inconvenience for you; you will be the royal 
guest. But you have to come with us to Athens." 

The sannyasin laughed and he said, "It will be very difficult for your Alexander to take 
me with him. No force in this world can force me to follow. You will not be able to 
understand, but it is better that you bring your Alexander." 

Alexander was disturbed. He felt insulted, but he wanted to see this man. He came with a 
naked sword and he said, "If you say no, then immediately you lose your life. I will cut 
your head." The name of the sannyasin was — as it is reported in Alexander's records — 
Dandami. 

The sannyasin laughed and said, "You came a little late. You cannot kill me now because 
I have killed myself already. You are a little late. You can cut my head, but you cannot 
cut me because I have become a witness. So when this head will fall down on the earth, 
you will see it falling down and I will also see it falling down. 

But you cannot cut me; you cannot even touch me. So don’t waste time, you can cut! 

Raise your sword and cut my head." 

Alexander couldn’t kill that man. It was impossible because it was useless. The man was 
so beyond death, it was impossible to kill him. You can only be killed if you cling to life. 
That clinging to the changing pattern makes you a mortal. If you don’t cling, you are as 
you have always been — immortal. Immortality is your birthright; it has always been 
there. You become a mortal only if you cling. So there is no question, there is no need to 
force the changing periphery to be static. There is no need, and you CANNOT make it 
static. It will go on, the wheel will go on. All that you can do is to know that you are not 
the wheel. You are the axis, not the wheel. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

"MAN BEING AS HE IS, IS IT NOT DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO DISSOLVE CHANGE 
THROUGH CHANGE, SEX THROUGH SEX, ETCETERA, WITHOUT 
ATTACHMENTS AND WITH THEIR CONSEQUENT ANXIETY AND 
DISAPPOINTMENT?" 

Man as he is CAN do this, and this is suggested ONLY for man as he is. Tantra is a 
medicine for YOU — for those who are ill. So don’t think that it is not for you. It is for 
you and you can do it, but you will have to understand what is meant when you say that 
there is the possibility of falling into attachments, and then the consequences will be 
there and frustration. 

You have not understood. "Consume change through change" means that even if there is 
attachment don’t fight with it. Be attached, but be a witness also. 

Let the attachment be there; don't fight with it. Tantra is a non-fighting process. Don’t 
fight! Frustration will come, of course, so be frustrated. But be a witness also. You were 



attached, and you were a witness. Now the frustration has come, and you know well that 
it had to come. Now be frustrated, but be a witness. Then through attachment, attachment 
is consumed, and through frustration, frustration is consumed. 

Try this when you feel miserable. Be miserable; don't fight with it. Try this, it is 
wonderful. When there is misery and you feel miserable, close your doors and be 
miserable. Now what can you do? You are miserable, so you are miserable. Now be 
totally miserable. Suddenly you will become aware of the misery. And if you try to 
change it you will never become aware, because your effort, your energy, your 
consciousness is directed towards change, towards how to change this misery. Then you 
start thinking about how it came, and what to do now to change it. Then you are missing 
a very beautiful experience — the misery itself. 

Now you are thinking about the causes and you are thinking about the consequences and 
you are thinking about the method for how to forget it, how to go beyond it, and you are 
missing misery itself, and misery is there and that can be liberating. 

Just don’t do anything. Don’t analyze how the misery is created; don’t think about what 
consequences are going to follow. They will follow, so you can see later on. There is no 
haste. Be miserable, simply miserable, and don’t try to change it. 

Try this: see for how many minutes you can remain miserable. You will start laughing 
about the whole thing; the whole thing will look stupid, because if you are totally 
miserable, suddenly your center is beyond misery. That center can never be miserable, it 
is impossible! If you remain with the misery, the misery becomes the background, and 
your center which can never be miserable suddenly rises above, and then you are 
miserable and you are not miserable: the "same unsame." Now you are consuming misery 
through misery. This is what is meant. You are not doing anything; you are simply 
consuming misery through misery. Misery will disappear as clouds disappear, and the 
sky will be open and you will be laughing, and you have not done anything. And you 
cannot do anything; all that you can do will create more confusion and more misery. 

Who has created this misery? You, and now you are trying to change it. It will get worse. 
You are the creator of the misery. You have created it, you are the source, and now the 
source itself is trying. What can you do? Now the patient is treating himself, and he has 
created the whole thing. Now he is thinking of surgery. 

It is suicidal. Don't do anything. The inside is very deep. You have tried so many times to 
stop misery, to stop depression, to stop this and that, and nothing has happened. Now try 
this: don’t do anything; allow the misery to be there in its totality. Allow it to happen in 
its full intensity, and remain non-doing. Just be with it and see what happens. 

Life is change. Even the Himalayas are changing, so your misery cannot be unchanging. 

It will change by itself, and you will see that it is changing — that it is disappearing and it 
is going away, and you feel unburdened and you have not done anything. 

Once you know the secret you can consume anything through itself, but the secret is to be 
silently without doing anything. Anger is there, so be, just BE. Don’t do anything. If you 
can do this much, this "non-doing," if you can just be there — present, witnessing, but 
making no effort to change anything — allowing things to have their own way, you will 
consume anything. You CAN consume anything. 

The last question: 

Question 4 



"TANTRA SAYS DO NOT STRUGGLE OR SWIM, BUT LET GO AND FLOAT IN 
THE RIVER OF LIFE. BUT EXPERIENCE SHOWS THAT THE MODERN CITY 
LIFE OF SPEED AND HEAVY TECHNOLOGY CREATES CONSTANT TENSIONS 
AND EXERTIONS PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY. WHAT WILL BE TANTRA’S 
ATTITUDE ABOUT IT? IS IT NOT GOOD TO AVOID UNNECESSARY 
EXERTIONS?" 

Life has always been so, modem or primitive. 

Tensions are there, anxieties are there. Objects change, but man remains the same. Two 
thousand years back you were driving a bullock cart; now you are driving a car — but the 
driver remains the same. The bullock cart has changed — things are different now, you 
are driving a car — but the driver remains the same. He was anxious about his cart, tense 
about his cart; now you are tense and anxious about your car. Objects change, but the 
mind remains the same. 

So don’t think that because of the modern life you are so much in anxiety. It is because of 
you, not because of modern life, and you will be in anxiety anywhere, in any type of 
civilization. Go to a village for a few days — two or three days — and you will feel good 
for a while because even diseases need readjustment. But within three days you will be 
adjusted to the village, and then anxieties will start coming, disturbances will be felt 
again. Now the causes will not be the same, but you are the same. 

Sometimes it happens that you may be disturbed because of city traffic and noise, and 
you may be saying that you cannot sleep at night because there is so much traffic and 
noise. Then go to a village, and you will not be able to sleep because there is no traffic 
and no noise. You will have to come back because the village looks dead, dull — because 
there is no life. 

People go on reporting such feelings to me. 

I told one friend to go to Kashmir, to Pahalgam. He came back and said that life is dull 
there, that there is no life. You can enjoy for one or two days valleys and hills, and then 
one gets bored. He had been telling me here that city life was getting on his nerves, and 
now he said that those hills were getting boring and he began longing to come back 
home. 

You are the problem; Kashmir will not be of any help. It is not Bombay that disturbs you 
or London or New York; it is YOU! And it is not that London has created you: you have 
created London. It is not the traffic and the noise and the mad rush: you have created this 
— you and others like you. Look! The cause is within you. It is not that you are tense 
because of noise. The noise is there because you are tense, and you cannot live without it. 
That is why it is there. You need it, you cannot live without it. And in villages people are 
suffering. They want to come to Bombay or to New York or to London, and the moment 
they get the opportunity they run. And I have been listening to people who go on talking 
about the beautiful village life, but they never go to live there. They NEVER go to live 
there, they simply talk about it. 

Who prevents you? Why not go? Go to the forest — who prevents you? You will not like 
it, you cannot like it. Right now you will like it for a few days because it is a change, and 
then? Then you will get bored. 


You will find it dull, and you will like to escape from there. 



This city life is created by your mad mind. You are not becoming mad because of these 
cities; these cities are built because of your mad mind. They are built for you and by you, 
and they exist for you. And unless this mad mind changes, these cities cannot disappear, 
they will have to remain. They are your by-product. 

Remember one thing: whenever you feel that something is wrong, first find out the cause 
in yourself. Don't go anywhere. Out of a hundred times, ninety-nine times you will find 
the cause within yourself. And if you find the cause within you, ninety-nine times out of 
a hundred, the hundredth cause will disappear by itself. 

You are the cause of whatsoever is happening to you. YOU are the cause, and the world 
is just a mirror. But it is consolatory always to find the cause somewhere else. Then you 
never feel guilt, you never feel self-condemned. You can always point out that here is the 
cause, and unless this cause changes, "How can I change?" You can escape into it; this is 
a trick. So your mind always goes on projecting causes somewhere else. The wife is 
disturbed because of the husband; the mother is disturbed because of the children; the 
children are disturbed because of the father. Everyone is disturbed because of someone 
else, and everyone always thinks that the cause exists outside. 


Mulla Nasruddin was passing down a street. It was evening, and the darkness was 
descending. Suddenly he became aware that the street was empty with no traffic, and he 
became afraid. A group of people were coming toward him, and he was reading about 
DACOITS, robbers, murderers. So he created fear, he started trembling. He thought, he 
projected, that now these murderers and dacoits were coming, and they were bound to 
kill him, so how to escape them? He looked all around. 

There was a cemetery, so he jumped over the wall of the cemetery. There was a ready- 
made grave for someone, so he thought that it would be good to be dead in this grave. 
They will feel that he is dead, so there won’t be any need to murder him. 

So Mulla lay down. The group was just a marriage procession, but they saw this man 
trembling and jumping. Then they became afraid and wondered what was the matter and 
who this man was. They thought, "He seems to be up to some mischief. He is hiding 
there." So the whole procession stopped, and they jumped over the wall. Mulla became 
more afraid. Now they came near and they asked, "What are you doing here? Why are 
you here in this grave?" 

So Mulla said, "You are asking a very difficult question. I am here because of you and 
you are here because of me." 

And this is happening everywhere. You are disturbed because of someone else; he is 
disturbed because of you. 

And you are just creating everything around you, projecting, and then becoming afraid, 
scared, and making efforts to defend. And then there is misery and frustration and 
conflict and depression and fighting. 

The whole thing is stupid, and it will remain unless you change your attitude. And always 
try first to find the cause within you. How can the traffic noise disturb you? How? If you 
are against it, it will disturb. If you have the attitude that it disturbs, it will disturb. But if 
you accept it, if you allow it to happen without any reaction, then you may even start 
enjoying it. It has its own melody, its own music. You have not heard it, but that doesn’t 
mean that it doesn't have its own music. Someday forget yourself and listen to the traffic 
noise. Just listen, and don't bring in your attitudes that this is disturbing, that this is not 



good. Don’t bring in your attitudes, just listen to the melody! In the beginning it will look 
chaotic. That too is because of the mind. If you relax totally, sooner or later everything 
will fit into a harmonious whole and even the traffic noise will become music. You can 
enjoy it and you can dance to its tune. It depends on you. 

Nothing disturbs unless you think that it disturbs. For example I will tell you that many 
things have disturbed humanity because there was a certain concept that they disturb. 
When the concept changes the things remain the same, but they don’t disturb. 

For example, masturbation disturbed the whole world. Just half a century before, the 
whole world was disturbed by masturbation. Every teacher, every father, every mother 
was disturbed, and every child was disturbed. And still in the larger, ignorant world, the 
disturbance remains. And then physiologists and psychologists discovered that 
masturbation cannot disturb anyone; it is natural, and nothing is wrong with it. There is 
absolutely nothing wrong with it, but the old teaching was that if you become mad, it was 
because of masturbation. 

Everything was forced down, reduced to masturbation. And more or less every child was 
doing it, every boy was doing it, so every boy was afraid. He was doing it, and he was 
afraid that now he was going to be mad, inferior, crazy, eccentric, ill, and his life would 
be wasted. But he couldn't resist. He had to do it, and these ideas entered into the mind 
and had effects. They affected him, and many went mad, many remained inferior, many 
remained stupid because of it, and it has no relationship at all. 

Modern science, modern research says that rather it is healthy. Medical science says that 
it is good because a boy at the age of thirteen or fourteen or a girl at the age of twelve or 
thirteen becomes sexually mature. If nature were allowed they would have to get married 
immediately. They are ready to reproduce, but civilization of necessity forces that they 
will have to remain unmarried for ten years at least or even more. 

But medicine says that fourteen to twenty, these six years, are the most sexually potent. A 
boy is never so potent again as he is then. The energy is bubbling up; the whole body is 
ready to burst into sex. But the society says no, the energy should not be allowed to 
move. However, the energy is moving and the child cannot do anything, and whatsoever 
he is going to do will have effects because of the philosophy around him. He will feel he 
is doing something wrong, he will feel guilt, and that guilt will follow like a shadow. And 
many diseases will happen because of the idea, not because of the act. 

Medicine says that it is healthy because he is relieved of unnecessary energy. That 
unnecessary energy would create problems otherwise, so it is healthy. Now, particularly 
in America and England and other Western developed countries who know much more 
about physiology, masturbation is being propagated. Now there are films on how to 
masturbate to show to the children, and every teacher will be teaching sooner or later 
how to masturbate rightly. They say it is healthy, and now those who think it is healthy 
feel very healthy about it. 

I don't think it is either — it is neither healthy nor unhealthy. The idea is the thing. If it is 
healthy and the concept is stretched, it will become healthy. Now in the West they say 
not only that masturbation never affected anyone's intelligence adversely, but that the 
better the intelligence, the more masturbation will be there. 

So a boy who is masturbating more will be of higher I.Q. than the boy who is not 
masturbating. And they have reasons for saying this, because even for a boy to discover 



masturbation is a sign of intelligence: he is finding out a way. 

The society has closed the door for marriage, and the nature is forcing the energy. The 
intelligent one will find a way and the non-intelligent one will just be blocked, he will not 
be able to find the way. Now the studies show that those boys who masturbate are more 
intelligent. If this idea is spread, and it is bound to be there, sooner or later the whole 
world will be having this idea. Then masturbation will be healthy, and you will feel a 
well-being from it. 

Now every parent is afraid because the parent knows what he did when he was young. 
When his boy comes to the same age, he becomes afraid and he starts looking around at 
what the boy is doing. He is afraid, and if he catches the boy he will punish him. But the 
new knowledge says don’t punish the boy — no! Rather, teach him. If he is not 
masturbating, then go to the doctor and find out what is wrong. If this knowledge 
becomes well spread, then this will happen. 

But both are positions. BOTH are positions! And when some boy masturbates, he is very 
suggestive in that moment — because when sexual energy is being released, he becomes 
vulnerable, open, flexible, and his mind is silent. 

Any idea put in at that moment will have its effects — so if you tell him, "You are going 
to be ill because of it," he will feel ill. If you tell him, "You are going to be healthy 
because of it," he will become healthy. If you say to him, "You will be stupid for your 
whole life if you do this," he will remain a dunce. If you say, "Now this is a good sign of 
intelligence," he may develop a higher I.Q. You are simply suggesting something to him 
in a very vulnerable moment. Whatsoever you think starts happening. 

Buddha is reported to have said that every thought will become actual, so be aware. If 
you think that the traffic noise disturbs you, it will disturb you: you are ready for 
disturbance. If you think that a family life is a bondage, it will be a bondage for you: you 
are ready for this. If you think that poverty will help to make you liberated, it will help. 
Ultimately it is you who is creating a world around you, and whatsoever you think 
becomes the noosphere, the milieu, and you exist in it. 

Tantra says remember this causality, it is always within you. And if you know this, then 
you will not cause anything. If you know this, you will not cause anything for yourself. 
And when someone is not causing anything, he is liberated. Then he is not in misery and 
not in bliss. Bliss is your creation and misery is also your creation. You can change your 
misery into bliss because it is your creation. 


The liberated one, the enlightened one, is really in neither because he has ceased to cause 
anything around him. He simply is! That is why Buddha never says that the enlightened 
one is blissful. Whenever someone asked him, "Tell us something about someone who 
has gone beyond — whether he is in perfect bliss," Buddha laughed and said, "Don't ask. I 
can say only this much, that he is not in misery. I cannot say anything more. He is not in 
misery; that is all I can say." 

Why so much insistence on the negative? Because Buddha knows. When you have come 
to know that you were the cause of your misery, then you know well that the bliss also 
was caused by you. Then one ceases to cause anything. That is what NIRVANA is: a 
cessation of causing anything around you. Then you are, simply — no misery, no bliss. If 
you can understand, only this is bliss. There is no misery and no bliss, because if there is 
bliss then misery is there; you are still causing something. And if you can cause bliss, 



then you can cause misery, and you will become bored of the bliss also. 

How much can you stand it — how much? Have you ever thought about it? Twenty-four 
hours in bliss: will you be able to stand it? You will become bored, and you will go on 
seeking teachers who can teach you how to become miserable again. If the world 
becomes blissful, I cannot conceive that there won’t be any teachers. 

There will be teachers, because then people will need misery. Someone will be needed to 
tell them how to become miserable again, just for a change. Then you can go back to 
your bliss, and you will feel it more — because only then can you feel it more, when you 
have missed it. 

Teachers will be there! Now they are teaching how to become blissful; then they will 
teach how to become miserable, how to have a taste of hell. A little change will be 
helpful, healthy. 

But you are the cause, and you will become enlightened the moment you have kn own 
that the world you are living in was caused by you. When you will not cause it, it will 
have disappeared. The traffic will go on, the noise will be there, and everything will be 
there as it is, but you will not be there because you will have disappeared with the cause. 


THE END. 



Chapter 45: Remaining with the real 


AS A HEN MOTHERS HER CHICKS, MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS, 
PARTICULAR DOINGS, IN REALITY. 

SINCE, IN TRUTH, BONDAGE AND FREEDOM ARE RELATIVE, THESE WORDS 
ARE ONLY FOR THOSE TERRIFIED WITH THE UNIVERSE. THIS UNIVERSE IS 
A REFLECTION OF MINDS. AS YOU SEE MANY SUNS IN WATER FROM ONE 
SUN, SO SEE BONDAGE AND LIBERATION. 

Hui-neng had asked a person, "What is the problem? What are the roots so that man can 
be solved and man can make some efforts to know who he is?" 

Why shouldn’t he know without any effort? Why should there be any problem at all? Y ou 
are, you know you are — so why can't you know who you are? Where do you miss? You 
are conscious. You are conscious that you are conscious. A life is there; you are alive. 
Why are you not aware who you are? What becomes the barrier? What prevents you from 
this basic self-knowledge? If you can understand the barrier, the barrier can be dissolved 
very easily. 

So the real question is not how to know oneself. The real question is to know how you 
are not knowing yourself, how you are missing such an obvious reality, such a basic truth 
which is so near to you, how you go on not seeing. You must have created a device; 
otherwise it is difficult to escape from oneself. You must have created walls; you must, in 
some sense, be deceiving yourself. 

So what is that trick of escaping from oneself, of not knowing oneself? If you don’t 
understand that trick, whatsoever you do will not be of any help — because the trick 
remains, and you go on asking how to know oneself, how to know the truth, how to know 
the reality, and consequently you go on helping the barrier. 

You go on creating it also, so whatsoever you do will be of no use. 

Really, nothing positive is needed to know oneself, only something negative. In a way, 
you have only to destroy the barrier that you yourself have constructed, and the moment 
that barrier is not there you will know. Knowing happens when the barrier is not; you 
cannot make any positive effort for it. You have just to be aware of how you are missing 
it. 

So a few things have to be understood as to how you are missing it. One: you live in your 
dreams, and then dreams become barriers. Reality is not a dream. It is there, you are 
surrounded by it everywhere. Inside and outside, it is there — you cannot miss it — but 
you are dreaming. Then you move in a different dimension which is not a reality. Then 
you go on moving in a dreamworld. Then dreams become like clouds around you, and 
they create the barrier. Unless mind ceases dreaming, the truth cannot be known. And 
when you see through dreams the reality is distorted, and your eyes are fdled with 
dreams, and your ears are filled with dreams, and your hands are filled with dreams. 

So whatsoever you touch is touched through the dreams, and whatsoever you see is seen 
through dreams, and whatsoever you hear is heard through the dreams, and you distort 
everything. Whatsoever reaches you, reaches through dreams, and they change 
everything, they color everything. 

Because of the dreaming mind you are missing the reality outside and the reality inside. 



You can go on finding ways and means how to come to reality, but you will be trying that 
too through your dreaming mind. So you can dream religious dreams — you can dream 
dreams about reality, about truth, about God, about Christ and Buddha — but that too will 
be dreaming. Dreaming must cease, and dreaming cannot be used to know reality. 

What do I mean when I say "dreaming"? You are hearing right now, but a dream is there, 
and that dream is constantly interpreting what is being said. You are not hearing me; you 
are hearing yourself, because simultaneously you are interpreting — are you not? You are 
thinking about what is being said. What is the need to think? Just hear, don’t think, 
because if you think you cannot hear, and if you go on thinking and hearing, then 
whatsoever you hear is your own noise. Then it is not what is being said. Stop thinking; 
let the passage of hearing be clear of thoughts. Then that which is said will be heard. 
When looking at the flower, stop dreaming. Don't allow your eyes to be filled with 
thoughts and dreams about the past and future, with what you know about flowers. Don't 
even say that "This flower is beautiful," because then you are missing the reality. These 
words will become a barrier. You say, "This flower is beautiful," and words have come 
in: the reality is interpreted through the words. 

Don't allow words to gather around you. Look directly, hear directly and touch directly. 
When you touch someone, just touch; don’t say that the skin is beautiful, smooth. Then 
you are missing, you have moved in dream. Whatsoever the skin is, it is here now. Touch 
it and allow the skin itself to be revealed to you. You look at a beautiful face. Look at it, 
and allow the face to enter itself. Don’t interpret it, don't say anything. Don’t bring your 
past mind in. 

The first thing: dreams are created by your past mind. It is the past mind continuously 
moving around you. Don't allow the past to come in and then don’t allow the future. The 
moment you see a beautiful face, a beautiful body, immediately desire arises. You want 
to possess. You see a beautiful flower and you want to pluck it. Then you have moved. 
The flower is there, but you have moved into desire, into the future. Now you are not 
here. So either you are in the past which is not, or you are in the future which has not 
come yet, and you are missing that which is there right now. 

So the first thing to remember: words should not be allowed to exist between you and 
reality. With less words there are less barriers; with no words there are no barriers. And 
then you face reality directly; immediately you are face to face. Words destroy 
everything because they change the very meaning. 

I was reading someone's biography. 

She was describing one day after just coming out of her bed. The woman writes that 
"One day, in the morning, I opened my eyes." Then immediately, she says, "But it is not 
right to say that I opened my eyes. T didn’t do anything. The eyes opened by 
themselves." She changes the sentence and she writes, "No, it is not good to say that I 
opened my eyes. I did not do anything. There was no effort on my part; it was not an 
action at all." Then she writes, "The eyes opened by themselves." But then she feels this 
is too absurd because the eyes belong to her, so how can they open themselves? So what 
to do? 

Language never says what is. If you say, "I opened my eyes," it is a lie. If you say, "The 
eyes opened by themselves," it is a lie again, because eyes are just fragments. They 
cannot open themselves. The whole organism is involved. And whatsoever we say is like 
that. If you go to aboriginal societies in India — and there are many aboriginal tribes — 



they have a different language structure. Their language structure is more basic and more 
real, but they cannot create much poetry. Their language structure cannot be helpful for 
dreaming. 

If it is raining, we say, "It is raining." They ask, "What do you mean by 'it'? What do you 
mean by 'it'?" They have simply the word rain. What do you mean by "it"? What is 
raining? They just say "rain." Rain is the reality, but we go on adding things — and the 
more words are added, the more we are lost, far away, thrown far away from reality. 


Buddha used to say, "When you say, 'A man is walking,’ what do you mean? Where is 
the man? Only the walking is. What do you mean by 'the man’?" When we say, "A man 
is walking," it appears that there is something like a man and something like walking — 
two things added together. Buddha says there is walking. 

When you say, "The river is flowing," what do you mean? There is just flowing, and that 
flowing is the river. The walking is the man, the seeing is the man, standing and sitting is 
the man. If you eliminate all these — walking, sitting, standing, thinking, dreaming — will 
there be a man left behind? There will be no man behind. But language creates a different 
world, and by constantly moving into words we go on moving away. 

So the first thing to remember is how not to allow words unnecessarily. When there is a 
need, you can use them, but when there is no need remain empty, remain non-verbal, 
MOUNA, remain silent. There is no need to be constantly verbalizing things. 

Secondly, don’t project. Don’t verbalize, don’t project. Look at what is there. Don’t add 
things and then look. You see a face. When you say, "It is beautiful," you are putting 
something into it, or if you say, "It is ugly," you are again putting something into it. A 
face is a face. Beauty and ugliness are your interpretations. They are not there, because 
the same face may be beautiful to someone and ugly to someone else, and to a third it 
may be neither. 

He may be indifferent; he may not even look at it — at the same face. The face is simply a 
face. Don’t put things into it; don’t project. Your projections are your dreams, and if you 
project then you miss. And this is happening every day. 

You see that a face is beautiful; then desire is created. The desire is not for that face or 
that body; it is for your own interpretation, your own projection. The person that is there, 
the real person, has been used as a screen, and you have projected yourself. And then 
disillusion is bound to be there because the real face cannot be forced into unreality by 
your projection. Sooner or later the projection will have to be dropped, and the real face 
will come out, and then you will feel that you have been cheated. You will say, "What 
has happened to this face? This face was so beautiful and this person was so beautiful, 
and now everything has gone ugly." Again you are interpreting. The person remains 
whatsoever he is, but your interpretations and projections go on, and you are never 
allowing energy to assert itself. You go on suppressing it. You are suppressing inwardly 
and outwardly also. You never allow the reality to assert itself. 

I am reminded that one day a neighbor asked Mulla Nasruddin whether he could have his 
horse for a few hours. The Mulla said, "I would gladly give my horse to you, but my wife 
has gone with the horse and they will be out for the whole day." 


Just at this moment the neigh of the horse was heard from the stable, so the man looked at 
Mulla Nasruddin. Nasruddin said, "Okay, whom do you believe — me or the horse? And 



the horse is a notorious liar to boot. Whom do you believe?" 

We create an untrue world around us because of our projections, but if the reality asserts 
and the horse neighs from the stable, we ask, "Whom do you believe?" We always 
believe ourselves, not the reality that goes on asserting. It is asserting every moment, but 
we go on forcing our illusions. That is why every man feels disillusioned in the end. It is 
not because of reality. Every man and woman feels disillusioned in the end, as if the 
whole life has been a waste. But now you cannot do anything, you cannot undo it. Time 
is no more with you. Time has flown and death is near and you are disillusioned, and now 
the opportunity is lost. 

Why does everyone feel disillusioned? Not only those who are unsuccessful in life, but 
those who are successful in life, they also feel the same. It is okay if unsuccessfuls feel 
disillusioned, but even those who succeed feel this way. Napoleons and Hitlers and 
Alexanders, they also feel disillusioned. The whole life has been a waste. Why? Is the 
cause really in reality, or is the cause in the dreams which you were projecting? And then 
you could not project them and the reality asserted itself, and ultimately reality wins and 
you are defeated. 

You can win only if you are not projecting. 

So remember the second thing: look directly at things as they are. Don’t project, don't 
interpret, don’t force your mind upon things. Allow the reality to assert itself, whatsoever 
it is. This is always good, and howsoever beautiful your dreams they are bad, because 
you are bound on a journey of disillusion. And the sooner you are disillusioned, the 
better, but once one illusion is gone, immediately you start creating another to replace it. 
Allow a gap. Between two illusions, allow a gap. Allow an interval so the reality can be 
seen. This is very arduous — to look at the reality as it is. It may not be according to your 
desires. There is no need for it to be according to your desires. But then you have to live 
with reality, to live in it — and you ARE in it! It is better to come to tenns with reality 
than to go on deceiving yourself, and you are not aware how you go on projecting. 
Someone says something, and you understand something else. And you base things on 
your understanding, and then you make a house of cards out of it, you create a palace of 
cards. It was never said! Something else was meant! 

Always see what is there. Don’t be in a haste. It is better not to understand something 
than to misunderstand. It is better to remain ignorant consciously than to think that you 
know. Look into your relationships — at the husband, the wife, the friend, the teacher, the 
master, the servant — look! Everyone is thinking in his own ways, interpreting the other, 
and there is no meeting, no communication. 

Then they are fighting, in constant conflict. The conflict is not between two persons, the 
conflict is between false images. Be alert so that you don’t have any false image of 
anyone else. Remain with the real, howsoever hard, howsoever arduous and difficult, 
even if sometimes it seems impossible. But once you know the beauty of remaining with 
the real, you will never be a victim of dreaming. 

And thirdly, why do you dream? It is a substitute. Dreaming is a substitute. If you cannot 
get whatsoever you desire in reality, then you start dreaming. For example, if you have 
fasted the whole day, in the night. You will dream: you will dream about food, of being 
invited by a great emperor, or some such thing. You will be eating and eating and eating 
in your dreaming. The whole day you were fasting, and now in the night you are eating. 

If you are sexually suppressive, then your dreams will become sexual. Through your 



dreams it can be known what you are suppressing in the day. Your daytime fast will be 
shown by your dream. Dreams are substitutes, and psychologists say that it will be 
difficult for man as he is to live without dreams. And they are right in a way. As man is it 
will be difficult to live without dreams, but if you want a transformation, then you have 
to live without dreams. Why are dreams created? Because of desires. Unfulfilled desires 
become dreams. 

Study your desiring; be aware and observe it. 

The more you observe it, the more it will disappear. And then you will not create webs in 
the mind, and you will not move in a private world of your own. Dreams cannot be 
shared; even two intimate friends cannot share their dreams. You cannot invite anyone 
into your dreams. Why? You and your lover cannot both be in the same dream. Your 
dream is yours; another's dream is another’s. They are private. Reality is not so private, 
only madness is private. Reality is universal, you can share it; you cannot share dreams. 
They are your private madness — fictions. So what is to be done? 

One can, in the day, live so totally that nothing is left suspended. If you are eating, eat 
totally. Enjoy it so totally that you don’t need any dream in the night. If you are loving 
someone, love so totally that no love enters into your dreams. Whatsoever you do in the 
day, do it so totally that nothing is suspended on the mind, nothing is incomplete which 
has to be completed in dreams. Try this, and within a few months you will have a 
different quality of sleep. Dreams will go on becoming less and less, and deep sleep will 
deepen. And when in the night dreams are less, in the day projections will be less 
because, really, your sleep continues and your dream continues. With closed eyes in the 
night and with opened eyes in the day, they continue. Inside a current goes on. 

Any moment, close your eyes and wait, and you will see that the film has come back; the 
dream is running. 

It is always there, just waiting for you. It is just like the stars in the day. They have not 
disappeared, but only because of the sunlight you cannot see them. They are there 
waiting, and when the sun will set they will start appearing. 

Your dreams are just that way — moving within you even while you are awake. They are 
just waiting. Close your eyes, and they start functioning. When dreams are less in the 
night, in the day you will have a different quality of waking. If your night changes, your 
day changes; if your sleep changes, your waking changes. You will be more alert. With 
less dreams running within, you will be less asleep. You will look more directly. 

So don’t leave anything suspended, that is one thing. And whatsoever you are doing, 
remain with the act. Don’t move anywhere else. If you are taking a shower, be there. 
Forget the whole world. Now this shower is the whole universe. Everything has ceased; 
the world has disappeared. There is only you and the shower. Remain there. Move with 
each act so totally that you are neither lagging behind nor jumping ahead; you are with 
the act. Then dreams will disappear, and with less dreaming you will be more able to 
penetrate the reality. 

Now the technique. The technique is concerned with this. 

"AS A HEN MOTHERS HER CHICKS, MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS, 
PARTICULAR DOINGS, IN REALITY.” 

The key tenn is "IN REALITY." 



You are also mothering many things, but in dreams — not in reality. You are also doing 
many things, but in dream — not in reality. Don’t mother dreams, don't help dreaming to 
grow more in you; don't give your energy to dreaming. Withdraw yourself from all 
dreams. It will be difficult because you have invested so much in your dreaming. If you 
suddenly withdraw yourself totally from dreaming, you will feel as if you are sinking and 
dying, because you have always lived in a postponed dream. You have never been here 
and now, you are always somewhere else. You have been hoping. 

Have you heard the Greek parable of Pandora's box? To revenge a certain deed on the 
part of a man, Pandora was sent a box, and the box had all the diseases that are now 
rampant in humanity. They were not there before, and when the box was opened the 
diseases were released. Pandora, being afraid after seeing the diseases, closed the box. 
Only one disease remained there and that was hope; otherwise man would have 
dissipated, all these diseases would have killed him — but because of hope he continued. 
Why are you living? Have you ever asked? There is nothing to live for here and now. 
There is just hope. You are carrying a Pandora's box. Why are you living right now? Why 
do you get up every morning? Why do you start the whole day again — again and again? 
Why this repetition? What is the reason? You cannot find any reason right now for why 
you are living, and if you find something it will be something in the future — a hope that 
something is going to happen: someday "something" is going to happen. 

You don’t know when that day will come; you even don’t know what it is that is going to 
happen — but someday "something is going to happen," and so you go on prolonging 
yourself, you go on carrying yourself. 

Man lives just in hope, and this is not life because hope means dream. Unless you live 
here and now, you are not alive. You are a dead weight, and that tomorrow which will 
fulfill all your hopes is never to come. When death will come, then only will you realize 
that now there is no tomorrow, and now you cannot postpone. Then you will feel 
disillusioned, cheated — but no one has cheated you; you are the master of the whole 
mess. 

Try to live in the moment, in the present, and don’t cherish hopes, whatsoever their 
nature. They may be worldly, they may be other-worldly; it makes no difference. They 
may be religious — somewhere in future, in the other world, in heaven, in the NIRVANA, 
after death — but it makes no difference. Don't hope. Even if you feel a subtle 
hopelessness here, remain here. Don't move from the moment here and now. Don’t move! 
Suffer it, but don't allow the hope to enter in. 

Through hope dreaming enters. Be hopeless. If life is hopeless, be hopeless. Accept it, 
but don't cling to any future event. Then suddenly there will be a change. Once you 
remain in the present moment, dreams stop — because then they cannot arise. The source 
has been withdrawn. 

You cooperate with them, you mother them; that is why they arise. Don’t cooperate with 
them, don’t mother them. 

This sutra says "... MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS." Why particular knowings? 
You also mother, but you mother particular theories, not knowings; particular scriptures, 
not knowings; particular hypotheses, systems, philosophies, world views — but never 
particular knowings. This sutra says throw them away. Scriptures, theories, they are of no 
use. Have your own experience which is real, your own knowings, and mother them. 
Howsoever trivial, a real knowing is something. You can base your life upon it. 



Whatsoever they are, always think of real, particular knowings that YOU have known. 
Have you known anything? You know many things, but everything is borrowed. 

Someone has said them, someone has given them to you. Teachers, parents, society, they 
have conditioned your mind. You "know" about God, you "know" about love, you 
"know" about meditation. You don't know anything really! You have not tasted anything, 
this all is borrowed. Someone else has tasted, the taste is not your own. Someone else has 
seen, but you have your eyes and you have not used them. Someone else has experienced 
— a Buddha has experienced, a Jesus has experienced — and you just go on borrowing 
their knowings. They are false! For you, they are of no use. They are more dangerous 
than ignorance, because ignorance is yours and the knowledge is borrowed. 


It is better to be ignorant; at least the ignorance is yours. It is authentic, it is real, sincere 
and honest! Don't go on with borrowed knowledge. Otherwise you will forget that you 
are ignorant, and you will remain ignorant. 

This sutra says "... MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS." Always try to know 
something in a way that is fresh, direct, immediate. Don't believe in anyone. Your belief 
will lead you astray. Trust yourself — and if you cannot trust yourself, how can you trust 
anybody else? 

Sariputta came to Buddha, and he said, "I have come to believe in you. I have come! 

Help me to build faith in you." 

Buddha is reported to have said, "If you don't believe in yourself, how can you believe in 
me? So forget me. First have trust in yourself, believe in yourself. Only then can you 
have trust in someone else." 

So remember this: you cannot trust anybody if you cannot even trust yourself. The first 
trust is always within. Only then can it flow; only then can it overflow, it can reach to 
others. But how can you trust if you don’t know anything? How can you trust in yourself 
if you don’t have any experience? Try to trust in yourself. Don’t think that this experience 
of looking through others' eyes is only with the absolute. It is with ordinary experiences 
also. But let them be your own. They will help you to grow, they will make you mature, 
they will make you ripened. 


This is really strange: you look with others’ eyes, you live with others' lives. You call a 
rose beautiful. Really, is it your feeling or just a teaching that is spread around you that a 
rose is beautiful? Is this your knowing? Have you known it? You say that moonlight is 
good, beautiful. Is it your knowing, or is it just that poets have been singing about it and 
you are repeating it? If you are like a parrot, you cannot live your life authentically. 
Whenever you assert anything and whenever you say anything, first check within 
whether it is your knowledge and your experience. 

Throw out all that is not yours — it is of no use — and cherish and mother all that is yours, 
because only through that will you grow. "MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS, 
PARTICULAR DOINGS, IN REALITY." Always remember "in reality." Do something. 
Have you done anything ever, or have you been just following others, just following 
orders? "Love your wife": have you really loved her? Or are you just doing a duty 
because it has been said, because it has been taught, "Love your wife — or love your 
mother, love your father, love your brother," so you are loving and you are following! 
Have YOU really loved any time when you were there? Was it ever the case that no 



teaching was working and no other was being followed? Were you ever authentically in 
love? You can deceive yourself; you can say, "Yes!" But find out before you say 
anything. 

If you have loved, you would be transfonned; the particular act of love would have 
changed you. But it has not changed you because your love is false. And the whole life 
has become false. You go on doing things that are not your own. Do your own thing and 
mother it. 

Buddha is good, but you cannot follow him. Jesus is good, beautiful, but you cannot 
follow him. And if you will follow, you will become ugly. You will be a carbon copy. 
You will be false, and you will not be accepted by the existence. Nothing false is 
accepted. Love a Buddha, love a Jesus, but don’t be their carbon copies. Don’t imitate. 
Always allow your own self to move in its own way. You will become Buddha-like one 
day, but the path will be basically your own. One day you will become a Jesus, but you 
will have traveled along a different route, you will have experienced different things. One 
thing is certain: whatsoever may be the route and whatsoever may be the experience, it 
must be authentic, real, and your own. Then you will reach one day. Through falsity you 
cannot reach the truth; falsity will lead to more falsity. 

Do something, remembering well that it is you who are doing it without following 
anybody. Then even a very small act, just a smile, may become a source of SATORI, a 
source of SAMADHI, cosmic consciousness. You come back to your home and smile at 
your children. That smile is false; you are pretending. 

You are smiling because a smile is expected. It is a painted smile. Nothing else is smiling 
in you but the lips. They are manipulated; the smile is mechanical. And you can become 
so habituated in this that you may completely forget how to smile. You may laugh, but 
the laughter may not be coming from your center. 

Always remember, no matter what you are doing, observe whether your center is 
involved in it or not, because if it is not involved it is better not to do a thing. Don’t do it! 
No one is forcing you to do anything. Don’t do it! Preserve your energy for the moment 
when something real happens to you; then do it. Don’t smile, preserve the energy. The 
smile will come, and then it will change you completely. Then it will be total. Then every 
cell of your body will smile. Then it will be an explosion — nothing painted. 

And children know, you cannot deceive them. The moment you can deceive them, they 
are no more children. They kn ow when your smile is false, they can detect it; anyone 
who is real will detect it. Your tears are false, your smile is false. These are small acts, 
but you are made up of small acts. So don't think to do something big — that then you will 
do this. If you are false in small things you will always be false. 

It is easy to be false in big things. If you are false in small things, it is very easy to be 
false in big things, because big things because big things are always on exhibition. 

They are for others to see, so you can very easily be false. You can be a saint if 
saintliness is respected. Then you are on exhibition — just an exhibition piece. You can 
be a saint because it is respected and ego-fulfdling, but everything will be false. Just 
think, if a society changes its attitudes as they have been changed in Soviet Russia or in 
China, immediately, saints disappear — because there is no respect for them. 

I remember one of my friends, a Buddhist BHIKKHU who went to Soviet Russia in 
Stalin’s days. He told me that whenever somebody would shake hands with him, suddenly 



the man would shrink and would say, "You have the hands of a bourgeois." He had very 
beautiful hands. As a BHIKKHU he had never done anything; he was a beggar, a royal 
beggar, so there had been no labor. His hands were very smooth, beautiful, feminine. In 
India, whenever someone touched his hands he would say, "So beautiful!" In Russia, 
whenever someone would touch his hands, he would shrink away, and the condemnation 
would come into his eyes and he would say, "So you have bourgeois hands, the hands of 
an exploiter." He came back and told me, "I felt so condemned there that I longed to be a 
laborer." 

Saints disappeared from Russia because now there is no respect. All that saintliness 
which was there was only on exhibition; it was a showpiece, painted. Only real saints can 
exist now in Russia. 

For unreal ones there is no possibility because you will have to struggle there to be a 
saint, and the whole society will be against you. In India, the easiest way to survive and 
exist is to be a saint. Everyone respects you. You can be false, and falsity pays. 
Remember this: from the very morning, when you open your eyes, try to be real and 
authentic. Don't do anything which is false. Only for seven days, go on remembering. 
Don’t do anything which is false. Whatsoever is lost, let it be lost. Whatsoever you lose, 
lose it. But remain real, and within seven days a new life will be felt within you. The 
dead layers will be broken and a new living current will come to you. You will feel alive 
again for the first time — a resurrection. 

"MOTHER DOINGS... MOTHER KNOWINGS.... IN REALITY" - not in dream. Do 
whatsoever you like to do, but think — really, are you doing it, or is your mother doing it 
through you or your father doing it through you? Because dead men, dead parents, 
societies, old generations gone long ago are still functioning within you. They have 
created such conditionings that you go on fulfilling THEM — and they were fulfilling 
their dead fathers and mothers, and you are fulfilling your dead fathers and mothers, and 
no one is fulfilled. How can you fulfill someone who is dead? But the dead are living 
through you. 

Always observe when you do something, whether your father is doing it through you or 
you are doing it. 

When you get angry, is it your anger or is it the way your father used to be angry? You 
are just imitating. I have seen patterns going on, being repeated. If you marry, your 
marriage is going to be just approximately the same as your father's and your mother's. 
You will act like your father, your wife will act like her mother, and you will create the 
same mess again. When you get angry, observe: are you there or someone else? When 
you love, remember, are you there or someone else? When you speak something, 
remember, are you speaking or your teacher? When you make a gesture, remember, is it 
yours or is someone else present in your hand? It will be difficult, but this is SADHANA. 
This is what spiritual effort means. 

And leave all falsities. You may feel a certain dullness for a time being, because all your 
falsities will drop and the real will take time to come and assert itself. There will be a 
period of a gap. Allow that period, and don't be afraid and don’t become scared. Sooner 
or later your false selves will drop, masks will drop, and your real face will come into 
being. Only through that real face can you encounter God. That is why this sutra says, 
"AS A HEN MOTHERS HER CHICKS, MOTHER PARTICULAR KNOWINGS, 
PARTICULARS DOINGS, IN REALITY." 



The second sutra: 

"SINCE, IN TRUTH, BONDAGE AND FREEDOM ARE RELATED, THESE WORDS 
ARE ONLY FOR THOSE TERRIFIED WITH THE UNIVERSE. 


THIS UNIVERSE IS A REFLECTION OF MINDS. AS YOU SEE MANY SUNS IN 
THE WATER FROM ONE SUN, SO SEE BONDAGE AND LIBERATION." 

This is a very deep technique, one of the deepest, and only very rare minds have tried it. 
Zen is based on this technique. This technique is saying a very difficult thing — difficult 
to comprehend, not difficult to experience. But first comprehension is needed. 

This sutra says that the world and NIRVANA are not two things, they are one; that 
heaven and hell are not two things, they are one; and that bondage and liberation are not 
two things, they are one. It is difficult because we can only conceive of something easily 
if it is in terms of polar opposites. 

We say that this world is bondage, so how to get out of this world and be liberated? Then 
liberation is something which is opposite, which is not bondage. But this sutra says that 
both are the same — liberation and bondage — and unless you are freed from both you are 
not freed. Bondage binds, and liberation also. Bondage is a slavery, and liberation is also. 
Try to understand this. Look at a person who is trying to go beyond bondage. What is he 
doing? He leaves his home, he leaves his family, he leaves the riches, he leaves the things 
of the world, he leaves society just to get out of bondage, out of the fetters of the world. 
Then he creates new fetters for himself. Those fetters are negative. 


I have seen one saint who cannot touch money. He is respected — he is bound to be 
respected by those who are mad after money. He has moved to the other pole. If you put 
money in his hand, he will throw it as if there were some poison or as if you have put 
some scorpion in his hand. He will throw it and he will become scared. A subtle 
trembling comes to his body. What is happening? He has been fighting with money. He 
must have been a greedy man — too much greed. Only then can he move to this extreme. 
He may have been too much obsessed with money. He is still obsessed, but now in the 
reverse direction. However, the obsession is still there. 

I have seen one sannyasin who cannot look at any female face. He becomes afraid. He 
will always look down, he will never look up if some woman is there. What is the 
problem? He must have been too much sexual, obsessed with sex. He is still obsessed, 
but then he was running after this woman or that and now he is running from women — 
from this one and that. But he is still obsessed with women. Whether he is running after 
or running from, his obsession remains. He thinks that now he is liberated from women, 
but this is a new bondage. You cannot become liberated by reaction. The thing you go 
against will bind you negatively; you cannot escape it. If someone is against the world 
and for liberation, he cannot be liberated; he will remain in the world. 

The attitude of being against is a bondage. 

This sutra is very deep, it says "SINCE IN TRUTH, BONDAGE AND FREEDOM ARE 
RELATED..." They are not opposite, they are relative. What is freedom? You say, "Not 
bondage." And what is bondage? You say, "Not freedom." You can define them by each 
other. They are just like hot and cold, not opposite. What is hot and what is cold? They 
are just degrees of the same phenomenon — degrees of temperature — but the 



phenomenon is the same, and they are relative. If there is in one bucket cold water and in 
another there is hot water and you put in both your hands — one hand in the hot and one 
in the cold — what will you feel? A difference of degrees. 

And if at first you cool down both your hands on ice and then you put both your hands 
into the hot and the cold water, what will happen? Now again you will feel a difference. 
Your cold hand will now feel more hot in the hot water than it felt before. And if your 
other hand has become cold, much colder than the cold water, then that water will now 
look hot; you will not feel it as cool. It is relative. There are only degrees of difference, 
but the phenomenon is the same. 

Tantra says that bondage and liberation, SANSARA and MOKSHA, are not two things, 
but a relative phenomenon — of the same thing. So tantra is unique. Tantra says that you 
have to be liberated not only from bondage; you have to be liberated from MOKSHA 
also. 

Unless you are liberated from both, you are not Liberated. 

So the first thing: don't try to go against anything because you will move to something 
which belongs to it. It looks opposite, but it is not. Don’t move from sex to 
BRAHMACHARYA. If you are trying to move from sex to BRAHMACHARYA, your 
BRAHMACHARYA will be nothing but sexuality. Don't move from greed to no-greed 
because that no-greed will again be a subtle greed. That is why if a tradition teaches to be 
non- greedy, it gives you some profit motive in it. 

I was staying with a saint, and he told his followers, "If you leave greed you will get 
much in the other world. If you leave greed, you will gain much in the other world!" 
Those who are greedy, greedy for the other world, will be influenced by this. They may 
be motivated, and they will be ready to leave many things to gain. But the motive to gain 
remains; otherwise how can a greedy man move toward non-greed? Some motive must 
be there which fulfills his greed deeply. 

So don’t create opposite poles. All opposites are related; they are degrees of the same 
phenomenon. If you become aware of this, you will say that both poles are the same. If 
you can feel this, that both poles are the same, and if this feeling deepens, you will be 
liberated from both. Then you are neither for SANSARA nor for MOKSHA. Really, then 
you are not asking for anything; you have stopped asking. 

In that stopping, you are liberated. In that feeling that everything is the same, the future 
will have dropped. Where can you move now? Sex and BRAHMACHARYA both are the 
same, so where is one to move? And if greed and non-greed are the same and violence 
and nonviolence are the same, where has one to move? 

There is nowhere to move. Then movement ceases; there is no future. You cannot desire 
anything because all desires will be the same; the difference will be just of degrees. What 
can you desire? Sometimes I ask people — when they come to me, I ask them — "What do 
you really desire?" Their desire is based in them as they are. If they are greedy, they 
desire nongreed; if they are sexual, obsessed with sex, they desire BRAHMACHARYA, 
how to be beyond sex, because they are miserable in their sex. 

But this desire for BRAHMACHARYA is based, rooted, in their sexuality. They ask, 
"How to get out of this world?" The world is too much on them, they are too much 
burdened and they are clinging too much, because the world cannot burden you unless 
you cling to it. The burden is in your head — not because of the burden, but because of 
you, you are carrying it. And they are carrying the whole world; then they get burdened. 



And in this experience of misery there arises a new desire for the opposite, so then they 
start hankering for the opposite. 

They were running after money, so now they run after meditation. 

They were running after something in this world; now they are running after something 
in that world. But the running remains, and the running is the problem. The object is 
irrelevant. Desire is the problem. What you desire is meaningless. You desire, that is the 
problem, and you go on changing objects. Today you desire A, tomorrow you desire B, 
and you think you are changing. Then the day after tomorrow you desire C, and you think 
you are transformed. BUT you are the same. You desired A, you desired B, you desired 
C, and A-B-C are not you. You desire — that is you, and that remains the same. You 
desire bondage, then you get frustrated, fed up; then you desire liberation. You desire, 
and desire is the bondage. 

So you cannot desire liberation. Desire is bondage, so you cannot desire liberation. When 
desire ceases, liberation is. That is why this sutra says, "IN TRUTH, BONDAGE AND 
FREEDOM ARE RELATIVE." So don't become obsessed with the opposite. 

"These words are only for those terrified with the universe." These words of bondage and 
freedom are for those who are terrified with the universe. 

"THIS UNIVERSE IS THE REFLECTION OF MINDS." Whatsoever you see in this 
universe is a reflection. If it looks like bondage, it means it is your reflection. If it looks 
like liberation, again it is your reflection. 

"AS YOU SEE MANY SUNS IN WATER FROM ONE SUN, SO SEE BONDAGE 
AND LIBERATION." 

The sun rises, and there are many ponds — dirty and pure, big and small, beautiful and 
ugly — and one sun reflects in many ponds. One who goes on counting the reflections 
will think that there are many, many suns. One who looks not into the reflections but to 
the reality will see one. The world, as you look at it, reflects you. If you are sexual, the 
whole world seems sexual. If you are a thief, the whole world seems to be in the same 
profession. 

Once Mulla Nasruddin and his wife were fishing, and the place was restricted; only 
license holders could fish there. Suddenly a policeman appeared, so Mulla's wife said, 
"Mulla, you have the license so you run away. Meanwhile, I will escape." 

So Mulla started running. He ran and ran and ran, and the policeman followed. Of course, 
Mulla left the wife there, and the policeman followed him. Mulla ran and ran until he felt 
that now his heart would explode. But by that time the policeman caught hold of him. 

The policeman was also perspiring, and he said, "Where is your license?" So Mulla 
produced his papers. The policeman looked at them and they were okay. So he said, 

"Why are you running, Nasruddin? Why did you run away?" 

Nasruddin said, "I am going to a doctor, and he says after every meal to run for half a 
mile." 

The policeman said, "Okay, but you saw me running after you, chasing you, yelling, so 
why didn’t you stop?" 

Nasruddin said, "I thought that maybe you go to the same doctor." 


It is logical; it is what is happening. Whatsoever you see all around you is more a 
reflection of you than of any real thing there. You look at yourself mirrored everywhere. 



The moment you change, the reflection changes. The moment you become totally silent, 
the whole world becomes silent. The world is not a bondage: bondage is a reflection. And 
the world is not liberation; liberation is again a reflection. 

A Buddha finds the whole world in NIRVANA. A Krishna finds the whole world 
celebrating in ecstasy, in bliss; there is no misery. But tantra says that whatsoever you see 
is a reflection unless all seeing disappears and only the mirror is seen with nothing 
reflected in it. That is the truth. 

If something is seen, it is just a reflection. Truth is one; many can only be reflections. 
Once this is understood — not theoretically, but existentially, through experience — you 
are liberated, liberated from both bondage and liberation. 

Naropa, when he became enlightened, was asked by someone, "Have you achieved 
liberation now?" 

Naropa said, "Yes and no both. Yes, I am not in bondage, and no because that liberation 
was also a reflection of bondage. I thought about it because of bondage." 

Look at it in this way: you are ill then you long for health. That longing for health is part 
of your illness. If you are really healthy, you will not long for health. 

How will you? If you are really healthy, where is the longing? What is the need? If you 
are really healthy, you never feel that you are healthy. Only ill, diseased persons feel that 
they are healthy. What is the need? How can you feel that you are healthy? If you are 
bom healthy and you have never been ill, will you be able to feel your health? Health is 
there, but it cannot be felt. It can be felt only through contrast, through the opposite. Only 
through the opposite are things felt. If you are ill, you can feel health — and if you are 
feeling health, remember, you are still ill. 

So Naropa says, "Yes and no both. 'Yes’ because there is no bondage now, but with the 
bondage liberation has also disappeared; that is why 'No'. It was part of it. Now I am 
beyond both — neither in bondage nor in liberation." 

Don't make religion a search, a desire. Don't make MOKSHA, Liberation, NIRVANA, an 
object of desiring. It happens when there is no desiring. 


THE END. 



Chapter 46: The tantric way to freedom from desires 


The first question: 

Question 1 

"YOU SAID YESTERDAY THAT THE MOTIVATION TOWARDS LIBERATION 
OR SAMADHI IS ALSO A TENSION AND A BARRIER, BUT IS IT NOT CORRECT 
THAT IT IS NOT A DESIRE BUT AN ASPIRATION - THE INTRINSIC THIRST OF 
THE HUMAN BEING?" 

You must understand what desire means, and religions have confused you much about it. 
If you desire something of the world, they call it desire. If you desire something of the 
other world, they call it by a different name. This is absurd. Desire is desire! It makes no 
difference what the object of desire is. The object may be anything — of this world, 
material, or of another world, spiritual — but desiring remains the same. 

Every desire is a bondage. Even if you desire God, it is a bondage; even if you desire 
liberation it is a bondage. And liberation cannot happen unless this desiring goes away 
totally. So remember, you cannot desire liberation, that is impossible; that is 
contradictory. You can become desireless, and then liberation happens. But that is not a 
result of your desire. Rather, it is a consequence of no-desire. 

So try to understand what desire is. Desire means that right now you are not okay, you 
are not at ease. This very moment you are not at ease with yourself, and something else in 
the future, if fulfilled, will bring you peace. The fulfillment is always in the future; it is 
never here and now. 

This tension of the mind for the future is desire. Desire means you are not in the present 
moment, and all that is there is only the present moment. Y ou are somewhere in the 
future, and the future is not. It never has been, it will never be. All that is, is always the 
present — this moment. 

This projection of your fulfillment somewhere in the future is desire. So what that future 
fulfillment is, is irrelevant. It may be the kingdom of God, heaven, NIRVANA, it may be 
anything, but if it is in the future, it is desire. And you cannot desire in the present, 
remember; that is not possible. In the present you can only be, you cannot desire. How 
can you desire in the present? 

Desire leads into the future, into fantasy, dreaming. That is why so much insistence by 
Buddha for no-desire — because only in no-desire do you move into reality. With desire 
you move into dreams. The future is a dream, and when you project into the future you 
are going to be frustrated. You are destroying reality right now for future dreams, and 
this habit of the mind will remain with you. It is being strengthened every day. So when 
your future comes it will come in the form of the present, and your mind will again move 
to some other future. Even if you could reach God, you will not be satisfied. The way you 
are, it is impossible. Even in the presence of the divine, you will have moved away into 
the future. 


Your mind is always moving into the future. This movement of the mind in the future is 
desire. Desire is not concerned with any object, with whether you desire sex or you desire 
meditation — it makes no difference. Desiring is the thing — that you desire. It means you 
are not here. It means you are not in the real moment, and the present moment is the only 



door into existence. The past and future are not doors, they are walls. 

So I cannot call any desire spiritual. Desire as such is worldly. Desire is the world. There 
is no spiritual desire; there cannot be. That is a trick of the mind, a deception. You don't 
want to leave desiring, so you change the objects. First you were desiring wealth, 
prestige, power. Now you say you don’t desire and that these are worldly things. You 
condemn them, and those who desire them are condemned in your eyes. Now you desire 
God, the kingdom of God, NIRVANA, MOKSHA, the eternal, SATCHITANANDA, the 
brahman. Now you desire these, and you feel very good. You think you are transfonned, 
but you have not done anything. You remain the same. 

You are just playing tricks with yourself, and now you are in a greater mess because you 
think that this is not desiring. You remain the same. The mind remains the same; the 
functioning of the mind remains the same. You are not yet here. The objects of desire 
have changed, but the running, the dreaming, remains, and the dreaming is the desire — 
not the object. 


So try to understand me. I say that every desire is worldly because desire is the world. So 
it is not a question of changing the desire, it is not a question of changing objects. It is a 
question of a mutation, of a revolution from desire to no-desire; from desire to no-desire, 
not from old desires to new desires, from worldly desire to otherworldly desires, from 
material desires to spiritual desires — no! From desire to no-desire is the revolution! 

But how to move from desire to no-desire? You can move only if there is some desire. If 
some profit motive, some greed, some gain is there, only then can you move from desire 
to no-desire. But then you are not moving at all. I say that with no-desire you will attain 
eternal bliss. This is right — that with no-desire eternal bliss happens — but if I say to you 
that with no-desire you will gain eternal happiness, you will make it an object of the 
desire and then you will have missed the point completely. 

It is not a result, it is a consequence of deep understanding. So try to understand that with 
desire there is misery, and don't think that you know it already. You don't know; 
otherwise how can you move into desire? You have not yet become aware that desire is 
misery, desire is hell. Be aware When you desire something be aware. Then move with 
the desire in full alertness, and then you will reach hell. 

Every desire leads to misery, whether fulfilled or not. 

If fulfilled, it leads sooner; unfulfilled it takes time — but every desire leads to misery. Be 
alert of the whole process, and move with it. There is no hurry because nothing can be 
done in a hurry, and spiritual growth is not possible in a hurry. Move slowly, patiently. 
Watch every desire and then watch how every desire becomes a door to hell. If you are 
watchful, sooner or later you will realize that desiring is hell. The moment that realization 
happens, there will be no desire. Suddenly desires will disappear, and you will be in a 
state of no-desire. I don’t say desirelessness, I simply say "no-desire." 

You cannot practice it, remember; only desires can be practiced. How can you practice 
no-desire? You cannot practice it, you can only practice desires. But if you are alert, you 
will become aware that they lead to misery. And when each desire leads to misery, when 
this becomes a realization to you — not mere opinion and knowledge, but a realized fact 
— desiring disappears, it becomes impossible. How can you lead yourself into misery? 
You are always "leading yourself to happiness" — thinking that you are — and always 
moving into misery. This has been happening for lives and lives. You always think this or 



that is the door of heaven, and when you have entered you always realize that this is hell. 
And this has been without any exception; it is always the case. 

Move with mindfulness in every desire, and allow every desire to lead you to misery. 

Then, suddenly, one day the maturity will happen to you, this ripeness will happen to 
you: you will realize that every desire is misery. 

The moment you realize it, desiring disappears. There is no need to do anything now; 
desiring simply falls away, withers away, and you are in a state of no-desire. In that no- 
desire NIRVANA is, the perfect, the absolute bliss is. You may call it God, the kingdom 
of God or whatsoever you choose to call it, but remember well that it is not a result of 
your desiring. It is a consequence of non-desiring, and non-desiring cannot be practiced. 
Those who "practice" non-desiring, they are deluding themselves. There are many all 
over the world — BHIKKHUS, sannyasins — who are practicing non-desiring. You 
cannot practice non-desiring; no negative thing can be practiced. Underneath they are 
desiring, they are hankering after God, the peace that will happen, the bliss that is waiting 
for them somewhere in the future beyond death. They are desiring, and they call only 
their desiring "spiritual desire." 

You can deceive yourself very easily. Words are very deceptive and you can rationalize. 
You call a poison "ambrosia," and when you call it ambrosia it appears as ambrosia. 
Words hypnotize; that is one thing. But this feeling, this realization that desire is misery, 
must be yours. 

Mary Stevens has written somewhere that she was visiting a friend's home, and her 
friend's daughter was blind. 

Mary Stevens was very puzzled because the girl would say, "He is ugly, I don't like him"; 
and "The color of this dress is beautiful." 

As she was blind, Mary Stevens asked, "How do you feel that someone is ugly and that a 
color is beautiful?" 

The girl said, "My sisters say this to me." This is knowledge. 

Buddha has said that desire is misery and you go on repeating. This is knowledge. You 
are desiring, and you have never seen that desire is misery. You have simply heard 
Buddha. This will not do. You are simply wasting your life and opportunity. Your own 
experience can change you; nothing else changes. Knowledge cannot be borrowed. If 
borrowed, it is just a fake. It looks like knowledge, but it is not. But why do we follow a 
Buddha or a Jesus — why? Because of our greed. We look at Buddha’s eyes, and they are 
so peaceful that greed arises, desire arises for how to attain this. Buddha is so blissful — 
every moment in ecstasy. A desire arises for how to be Buddhalike. We also desire such 
states. 

Then we go on asking how Buddha achieved this, how it happens. The "how" creates 
many problems because then Buddha will say that in "no-desire" it happens. And he is 
right, it HAS happened in no-desire. But when we hear that in no-desire it happens, we 
start practicing no-desire, we start leaving desires, and the whole effort is a desire to be 
Buddha-like. 


Buddha was not trying to be like someone else; he was not asking to be a buddha. He was 
simply trying to understand his own misery — and the more understanding dawned upon 
him, the more misery disappeared. Then one day he came to understand that desire is 



poison. If you have desire you have fallen a victim; now there is no possibility of your 
ever being happy. You can only hope — have hope and frustration, then more hope and 
more frustration: this will be your circle. And when you become more frustrated you 
hope more, because that is the only consolation. You go on moving in the future because 
in the present you always have frustration, and the frustration is coming because of your 
past. 

In the past this present was the future, and you hoped for it. Now it is a frustration. Then 
you hope again for the future, and when it will become the present you will again become 
frustrated. Then you will hope again. Then more frustration, more hope, and with more 
hope, still more frustration. This is a vicious circle. This is what the wheel of SANSARA 
is. 

But no buddha can give you his own eyes. And it is good that be cannot give them to 
you; otherwise you will remain a fake always, eternally. Then you will never become 
authentic. It is good to suffer because only through suffering will you become authentic 
and real. So the first thing: move with your desires so that you can understand what they 
really are. 

Experience whatever suffering is hidden there. Let it be revealed to you. Only that is 
austerity — only that is TAPASCHARYA. 

Naropa has said that if you can be alert every desire leads you to NIRVANA, and this is 
the meaning, because if you are alert, you know that every desire is misery. And when 
you have searched every nook and corner of desiring, suddenly you stop. In that stopping 
is the happening, and it is always there. That happening is always waiting for you, just 
waiting to meet you in the present. But you are never in the present, you are always 
dreaming. Reality sustains you. Because of the real you are alive; because of the real you 
exist. But you go on moving in the unreal. The unreal is very hypnotizing. 

I have heard one Jewish joke. Two old friends met after many, many years. Then one 
friend said to the other, "I have not seen you in twenty-five years. How is your son, your 
boy Harry?" 

The other said, "There is a son; he is a great poet. All over the land his voice is heard, his 
songs are sung, and those who know poetry say that sooner or later he is going to become 
a Nobel laureate." 

The other friend said, "Marvelous! And tell me about your second son, Benny. How is 
he?" 

The friend said, "I am so happy about my second son. He is a leader, a great political 
leader. Thousands and thousands follow him, and I am sure that sooner or later he is 
going to be the prime minister of this land." 


Then the friend said, "My! So fortunate you are! And what about your third son Izzie?" 
The father became very sad and said, "Izzie? He is still Izzie. He is a tailor. But I tell you 
that if it was not for Izzie we would all be starving." 

But the father was sad because Izzie is just a tailor. And the poet and the great politician, 
the great leader — they are dreams. Izzie is the reality — the tailor. "But if not for Izzie, 
we would all be starving," he said. 

You could not exist were it not for this moment. THAT is real. But you are never happy 
about it. You are happy in your dreams for the future about Nobel laureates, prime 
ministers. Right now, "Izzie is just a tailor." Your reality is where you are grounded; your 



dreams are not your ground. They are false. Come to tenns with your reality in the 
present moment. Encounter it, face it whatsoever it is, and don’t allow the mind to move 
into the future. The future is desire. If you can be here and now, you are a buddha. If you 
cannot be here and now, then everything is just dream stuff. 

And you will have to come back because dreams cannot lead you anywhere. They can 
only lead you to hope and frustration, but nothing real happens through them. But 
remember my point that you cannot imitate. You will have to pass through suffering. 
Suffering is the path. It purifies you, it makes you alert, it makes you aware. 

The more you are aware, the less you are desire-filled. If you are perfectly aware, no- 
desire happens, and meditation means nothing else but perfect awareness. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

"PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW IT IS POSSIBLE THAT ONE CAN BE SPIRITUALLY 
TRANSFORMED BY BEING TOTAL IN ACTIONS THAT ARE OF ANGER, 
HATRED AND VIOLENCE." 

Yes, you can be totally transformed through anger, through hatred, through violence. And 
there is no other way — because you exist in violence, in anger, in greed, in passion. 

From where you exist, ONLY from there, does the way start. I will not tell you to create 
non-greed against your greed; I will tell you to be greedy totally, but with a fully alert 
mind — to be violent, to be angry, but be total so that you suffer totally, so that you can 
feel the whole poison of it. You must pass through this fire. No one else can pass for you; 
no proxy is possible. You will have to pass through it, and you always think that someone 
else will do it. 

Christians go on thinking that through Jesus there is salvation. It has not happened yet. 
The world remains the same. Two thousand years have passed since Jesus was crucified, 
but we go on hoping that someone else will suffer and we will reach to bliss. No! 
Everyone has to carry his own cross. Jesus was crucified; he reached the goal. You 
cannot reach. 

You will have to pass through that crucifixion yourself. And this is the crucifixion — that 
anger is there, passion is there, violence is there, greed is there, jealousy is there. 

What are you doing with them? The society teaches to create the anti pole. Greed is there, 
so suppress it and create a non-greedy mind. Anger is there, so suppress it. Don't be 
angry. Push the energy back and smile. What happens? Anger goes on being accumulated 
within, and you go on becoming more and more angry, because more and more energy is 
accumulated within as anger — suppressed. It becomes your unconscious reservoir, and 
against this anger you go on smiling. That smile becomes false, because while anger is 
knocking within how can you smile? You can smile, but then it will be just a false thing. 
So you are divided into two — a false smile and a real anger. The false smile becomes 
your personality and the real anger remains your soul. You are divided against yourself, 
and a constant fight will be there. And you cannot be happy with the false smile. No one 
else is deceived. You cannot be happy with a real anger hidden behind always trying to 
come out. A false smile and a real anger — this is the situation. All that is good is false 
and all that is bad is real. The real you carry within and the false you show outside. This 
is schizophrenic, and every man has become schizophrenic, divided — not only divided, 



but constantly fighting with himself. 


The whole life and energy is wasted and dissipated in this fight. And the fight is stupid, 
but this is happening. 

What I am suggesting is, don’t create any falsity around you. The false will never lead 
you to the real; the false will lead you to more that is false. Don't do the false, and allow 
the real total expression. When I say this you may become scared, because violence is 
there and you may want to kill someone. So do I mean to go and kill? No! Meditate on it. 
Close your room and allow your violence. You can express it on a pillow, on a picture, 
on anything. There is no need to go and kill someone, because that is not going to help. 
That will create more problems and a chain. 

On the pillow, write the name of your enemy or your friend — and remember, we are 
more angry at our friends than at our enemies. Just put a picture of your wife or husband 
on a pillow, and bring your violence out. Beat the pillow, kill the pillow, and do 
whatsoever you feel. And don't feel that you are doing a stupid thing. This is what you 
want to do with the real object, and that will be more stupid. Don't think that this is silly. 
This is how you are: you are silly, and you cannot change by just repressing it. Look at 
this silliness: see that this is how you are. Allow yourself full expression; act it out. And 
if you can be real, you will realize for the first time what anger, what violence is hidden 
within you. 

You are a volcano, and this can erupt from you at any moment. 

In any situation, the volcano may erupt. It is erupting every day. Someone kills someone, 
and just a day before he was as normal as you. No one ever suspected that he was going 
to be a murderer. No one suspects about you, and you have so many thoughts in your 
mind to murder. You have thought, you have planned it many times. The idea to murder 
someone else or yourself has come to you. It has happened to you if you are not 
absolutely idiotic. Psychologists say that an intelligent man is bound to think of suicide at 
least ten times in his life — at least ten times! — and ten thousand times you think to 
murder someone. You never do it, that is another thing. But you can do it; the possibility 
is always there. 

Make your anger a total act in meditation, and then see what happens. You will feel it 
coming from your whole body. If you allow it, then every cell of your body will be in it. 
Every pore, every fiber of the body will become violent. Your whole body will be in a 
mad situation. It will go mad, but allow it, and don't withhold. Move with the river, and 
after the cyclone is over, you will feel for the first time a deep center within you. A subtle 
calmness will happen. When the anger has gone, there will be no repentance because you 
have not done it to anyone. There will be no guilt. You will be unburdened. 

When this anger is thrown out and silence comes, that silence is real — not forced. 

You can sit down like a buddha in PADMASANA, in a yogic posture. You can force 
yourself, but the monkey within you goes on jumping. Now only the body is static. The 
mind is more mad than it ever was before. Whenever you sit for meditation, you feel 
what is happening. You are never so noisy within when you are not meditating, so why 
does so much noise happen whenever you meditate? Why does the mind go so vagrant? 
Why do so many thoughts come in a cloud? It is because your body is static, and through 
this staticness of your body you can feel the monkeyness of the mind more. The contrast 
is there. 



But forced silence is of no use. Either you will not succeed in it or if you will succeed 
you will move into sleep. A forced silence, if successful, becomes sleep. It is good as far 
as sleep is concerned; otherwise it is useless. A real silence always happens only when 
some pent-up energy is released totally. The disturbance was because of that pent-up 
energy. That forced energy was trying to erupt, that was the problem, that was the 
disturbance within. When it is released, you are unburdened. 

Then every fiber in your being is relaxed. In that relaxedness you can say that you are in 
a state of no-anger. It is not against anger; it is simply absence of anger. Remember, the 
real is always the absence, not the opposite — NOT the opposite! It is always the absence 
— an absence of greed, an absence of sex, an absence of jealousy — but in that absence, 
your reality flowers because the diseases have gone. 

Now your inner health can flower. And once it starts flowering you will not accumulate 
anger. You accumulate anger only because you are missing yourself. 

Really, you are not angry at anyone else, you are angry within yourself. But you go on 
projecting that anger onto others; otherwise you will go mad, so you go on finding 
excuses. Really, you are angry because you are missing yourself, you are missing your 
destiny. That which is possible for you is not happening, and that is why you are angry. 
Nothing is happening to you, and time goes on flowing. Death is coming nearer, and you 
remain as unfulfilled as ever, and there seems to be no possibility to be fulfilled. Because 
of this, because you are not realizing your potentialities, because you have not become 
that which you can become, you are angry, violent. And then you go on finding excuses. 
You throw your anger on this, on that. Really, it is not a question of anger, and if you 
make it a question of anger, your diagnosis is wrong. It is a question of self-realization. 
Why is one violent? Why is one destructive? Because he is angry against himself, against 
his very being — because he is. And then he feels to be against the whole world. 

A buddha is silent, non-violent, not because he has practiced it, but because now he has 
realized himself. Now the flower has come to its total flowering, so nothing is there to 
release. 

He is fulfilled. Simple gratefulness to the existence remains. Now there is no complaint; 
nothing is wrong. When you really flower, everything is okay; all is good. Because of 
this Buddha couldn’t see problems. All is good! That is why Buddha is not a 
revolutionary. To be a revolutionary, you must be able to see misery, you must be able to 
feel the whole mess around, the hell. To be a revolutionary, you must have a feeling that 
everything is wrong. Only then are you a revolutionary. Buddha was here in this land, 
Mahavira was here in this land, but they were not revolutionaries. Why? This question 
arises: why? 

When one is at ease with oneself, all is good. He cannot be destructive, he can only be 
creative. His revolution can only be a creative one, and you cannot see anything creative. 
When someone destroys something, only then does it become news; only then can you 
see it. 

A Lenin is seen as a revolutionary, not as a buddha. All over the world now there are 
revolutionaries, and they go on growing. And the reason? It is because fewer and fewer 
persons are realizing their potentiality. They are violent and they want to destroy — 
because if there is no meaning in their lives how can they feel that there can be meaning 
in others' lives? A Mahavira is even aware not to kill an insect, not even to kill a 
mosquito, because he has realized himself. Now he kn ows what is possible even for a 



mosquito. 


A mosquito is not just a mosquito; this is a possibility. An infinite possibility is there: this 
mosquito can become divine. He cannot destroy it, it is impossible. He can only help. He 
is only concerned with how to help so that the potential becomes the actual. 

You are just seeds. A great destiny is hidden, but nothing is being realized. The potential 
is wasted; the seed remains the seed. You feel anger. The modern generation is much 
angrier than older generations because there is more awareness of the possibility and less 
fulfillment. Now the new generation knows what is possible much more than the older 
generation. This generation is alive to the fact that much is possible. But nothing is 
happening and nothing is becoming actual, so there is more frustration. If you cannot be 
creative, at least you can be destructive; you feel your power in being destructive. Anger, 
violence, are destructive forces. They are there because creativity is not there. 

Don't go against them. Rather, help them to be released. Don't suppress them; allow them 
to evaporate from you. Then that which you think is opposite is absent. When they have 
evaporated, you will suddenly realize that silence is there, that love is there, compassion 
is there. They are not to be cultivated. They are just like a stream hidden in rocks. You 
remove the rocks and the stream starts flowing. The stream is not against the rocks, not 
the opposite of the rocks. 

Just the absence of the rocks, and an opening happens and the stream starts flowing. 

Love is in you like a stream, anger is in you like a rock. Remove it. But you go on forcing 
it inside, more inside. Then you are forcing the stream as well to go more inside. Throw 
this rock. There is no need to hit someone with it. Y ou want to hit someone because you 
don't know how to throw it without hitting anyone. That is what I am teaching: to throw it 
without hitting anyone. There is no need to hit anyone. And if you can throw this rock 
without hitting anyone, everyone will profit out of it. You may not be throwing it on 
others' heads, but it was always there and others feel it. 

When you are angry, howsoever you suppress it your anger is felt. Y ou vibrate it; around 
you a subtle sadness happens. Everyone becomes alert that some disease has entered. 
Everyone wants to leave you; you become repulsive. Your very attitude gives a bad odor 
to you. 

You may not be aware, but biochemists say that when someone is in love or in anger or 
in sex, different odors are released from the body — actually, not metaphorically. When 
you are in anger, a bad odor is released from your body. When you are in love, the 
quality is different. In sexual passion, a different odor is released. 

Animals are attracted by odor — because when the female is ready, a subtle odor is 
released from her sex glands and the male is attracted. 

Without that odor the female is not ready. That is why you see dogs smelling: they can 
smell sex. If you are sexual, you are also releasing a subtle odor. If you are angry, then 
too — because different chemicals are released in the blood system. Consciously no one 
may notice, but unconsciously everyone notices it. You are a burden — repulsive, 
destructive. Throw this poison out of your system. 

So remember this: it is good to release in the vacuum. And the sky is big enough, it will 
not return it back to you. It will simply absorb it, and you will be released. So do 
anything meditatively and totally, even anger, even violence, even sex. It is easy to 
conceive of how to be angry alone, but you can also create a sexual orgy alone 



meditatively. And you will have a different quality after that. 

While all alone, just close your room and move as if in the sex act. Allow your whole 
body to move. Jump and scream; do whatsoever you feel like doing. Do it totally. Forget 
everything — societal inhibitions, etcetera. Move in the sex act alone meditatively, but 
bring your total sexuality to it. 

With the other, the society is always present because the other is present. And it is so 
difficult to be in such a deep love that you can feel as if the other is not present. Only in a 
very deep love, in a very deep intimacy, is it possible to be with your lover or beloved as 
if he is not or she is not. 


This is what intimacy means: if you are as if alone with your lover or beloved or your 
spouse in the room with no fear of the other, then you can move in the sex act totally; 
otherwise the other is always an inhibiting presence. The other is looking at you: "What 
will she think? What will be think? What are you doing? Behaving like an animal?" 

One lady was here just a few days before. She came to complain against her husband. 

She said, "I cannot tolerate it. Whenever he loves me, he starts behaving like an animal." 
When the other is present, the other is looking at you: "What are you doing?" And you 
have been taught that there are some things which you can do and some things which you 
are not to do. It inhibits; you cannot move totally. 

If love is really there, then you can move as if you are alone. And when two bodies 
become one, they have a single rhythm. Then the two-ness is lost, and sex can be released 
totally. And it is not like in anger; anger is always ugly, but sex is not always ugly. 
Sometimes it is the most beautiful thing possible — but only sometimes. When the 
meeting is perfect, when the two become one rhythm, when their breaths have become 
one and their PRANA, energy, flows in a circle, when the two have disappeared 
completely and the two bodies have become one whole, when the negative and positive, 
the male and female, are no more there, then sex is the most beautiful thing possible. 

But that is not always the case. 

If it is not possible, you can bring your sex act to a climax of frenzy and madness while 
alone, in a meditative mood. Close the room, meditate in it, and allow your body to move 
as if you are not controlling it. Lose all control! 

Spouses can be very helpful, and particularly in tantra: your wife, your husband or your 
friend can be very helpful if you both are experimenting deeply. Then allow each total 
uncontrol. Forget civilization as if it never existed; move back into the Garden of Eden. 
Throw that apple — the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Be Adam and Eve in the Garden of 
Eden before they were expelled. Move back! Just be like innocent animals, and act out 
your sexuality in its totality. You will never be the same again. 

Two things will happen. Sexuality will disappear. Sex may remain, but sexuality will 
disappear completely. And when there is no sexuality, sex is divine. When the cerebral 
hankering is not there, when you are not thinking about it, when it has become a simple 
involvement — a total act, a movement of your whole being, not only of the mind — it is 
divine. Sexuality will disappear first, and then sex may also disappear, because once you 
know the deeper core of it, you can achieve that core without sex. 

But you have not known that deeper core, so how can you achieve it? The first glimpse 
comes through total sex. 



Once known, the path can be traveled in other ways also. Just looking at a flower, you 
can be in the same ecstasy in which you are when you meet with your spouse in a climax. 
Just watching the stars, you can move in it. 

Once you know the path, you know it is within you. The spouse only helps you to know 
it, and you help your spouse to know it. It is within you! The other was just a 
provocation. The other was just a challenge to help you know something which was 
always within you. 

And this is what is happening between a master and a disciple. The master can become 
only a challenge to you to show that which has always been hidden in you. The master is 
not giving you anything. He CANNOT give; there is nothing to give. And all that can be 
given is worthless because it will only be a thing. 

That which cannot be given but which can only be provoked is worthwhile. A master is 
just provoking you. He challenges you to help you to come to a point where you can 
realize something which is already there. Once you know it, there is no need of a master. 
Sex may disappear, but first sexuality disappears. Then sex becomes a pure, innocent act; 
then sex also disappears. Then there is BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy. It is not opposite 
to sex; it is just its absence. And remember this difference. This is not in your awareness. 
Old religions go on condemning anger and sex as if both are the same or as if both belong 
to the same category. 

They do not! Anger is destructive; sex is creative. All old religions go on condemning 
them in a similar way, as if anger and sex, greed and sex, jealousy and sex are similar. 
They are not! Jealousy is destructive — ALWAYS! It is never creative; nothing can come 
out of it. Anger is always destructive, but not so with sex! Sex is the source of creativity. 
The divine has used it for creation. Sexuality is just like jealousy, anger and greed: it is 
always destructive. Sex is not — but we don't know pure sex, we know only sexuality. 

A person who is looking at a pornographic picture or one who is going to see a film, a 
movie of sexual orgies, is not seeking sex; he is seeking sexuality. There are persons I 
know who cannot make love to their wives unless they first go through some dirty 
magazines or books or pictures. When they see these pictures, then they are excited. The 
real wife is nothing to them. A picture, a nude picture, is more exciting to them. That 
excitement is not in the gut; that excitement is in the mind, in the head. 

Sex transferred to the head is sexuality; thinking about it is sexuality. Living it is a 
different thing, and if you can live it you can go beyond it. Anything lived totally leads 
you beyond. So don’t be afraid of anything. LIVE IT! If you think it is destructive to 
others, move in it alone, do not do it with others. If you think it is creative, then find a 
partner, find a friend. 

Become a couple, a tantric couple, and move in it totally. If you still feel that the other's 
presence is inhibiting, then you can do it alone. 

The last question: 

Question 3 

"DOES AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON EVER DREAM? CAN YOU TELL US 
SOMETHING ABOUT THE QUALITY AND NATURE OF AN ENLIGHTENED 
PERSON’S SLEEP?” 


No, an enlightened person cannot dream. And if you like dreams very much, never 



become enlightened. Beware! Dreaming is part of sleep. The first thing is that for 
dreaming to happen you have to move into sleep. For ordinary dreams you have to move 
into sleep. In sleep you become unconscious. When you are unconscious, dreams can 
happen. They happen only in your unconsciousness. 

An enlightened person is conscious even while asleep. He cannot become unconscious. 
Even if you give him an anaesthetic — chloroform or something like that — only his 
periphery goes to sleep. He remains conscious; his consciousness cannot be disturbed. 
Krishna says in the Gita that while everyone is asleep the yogi is awake. It is not that 
yogis are not going to sleep in the night; they also sleep, but their sleep has a different 
quality. Only their bodies sleep, and then their sleep is beautiful. It is a rest. 

Your sleep is not a rest. It may even be an exertion, and in the morning you may feel 
more exhausted than you ever felt in the evening. 

A whole night's sleep, and in the morning you feel more exhausted — what is happening? 
You are a miracle! 

The whole night was an inner tunnoil. Your body was not at rest because the mind was 
so active. And the activity of the mind is bound to be an exertion for the body, because 
without the body the mind cannot act. The activity of the mind means parallel activity of 
the body, so the whole night your body is moving and is active. That is why in the 
morning you feel more exhausted. 

What does it mean for someone to become enlightened? It means one thing: now he is 
perfectly conscious. Whatsoever goes on in his mind, he is aware. And the moment you 
are aware, certain things completely stop. Just through awareness they stop. It is just like 
this room is dark and you bring a candle: the darkness will disappear. Everything will not 
disappear. These bookcases will be here, and if we are sitting here we will be here. By 
bringing the candle only darkness disappears. 

When someone becomes enlightened, now he has an inner light. That inner light is 
awareness. Through that awareness sleep disappears — nothing else. But because sleep 
disappears, the quality of everything changes. Now whatsoever he is going to do will be 
in his perfect alertness, and that which needs unconsciousness as a prerequisite now 
becomes impossible. 

He cannot be angry — not because it is a decision not to be angry; he CANNOT be angry. 

Anger can exist only when you are unconscious. Now unconsciousness is not there, so 
the base is not there and anger is not possible. He cannot hate: hate exists only when you 
are unconscious. He becomes love — not because of any decision on his part. When light 
is there, when consciousness is there, love flows; it is natural. Dreaming becomes 
impossible because dream needs, first of all, unconsciousness, and he is not unconscious. 
Buddha's disciple, Ananda, said to him, after sleeping and living in the same room, in the 
same place with Buddha, "This is a miracle; this is very strange. You never move in your 
sleep." Buddha always remained in one posture the whole night. The way he would sleep 
in the beginning, that would be the way he would come out of it, and his hand would 
remain in the exact place where it was put. 

You might have seen Buddha's picture showing him sleeping. His posture is called "the 
lying posture." He would remain in this same posture the whole night. Ananda watched 
him for years. Whenever he would look at Buddha sleeping, he would be the same the 
whole night. So Ananda asked, "Teh me, what are you doing the whole night? You 
remain in one posture." 



Buddha is reported to have said, "Only once did I move in my sleep, but then I was not a 
buddha. Just before, just a few days before the enlightenment happened, I moved in my 
sleep. But then suddenly I became aware and I wondered, ’Why am I moving?' I moved 
unconsciously without any knowing on my part. 

But after enlightenment there is no need. If I want I can move, but there is no need. And 
the body is so relaxed..." 

Consciousness penetrates even in sleep. But you can have a fixed posture the whole night 
and you will not be enlightened. You can practice it; it is not difficult. You can force 
yourself; then within a few days you will be able to do this. But that is not the point. If 
you look at a Jesus moving, do not think, "Why is he moving?" It depends. If Jesus 
moves in his sleep, he is conscious. If he wants to move, he moves. 

For me, it happens quite the reverse. Before coming to awareness I slept always in one 
posture the whole night. I do not remember ever moving. But since then I have been 
moving the whole night. Even five minutes are enough for me in one posture. I have to 
move again and again. I am so aware that it is not a sleep at all really. So it depends. But 
you can never deduce anything from the outside. Always, this is only possible from the 
inside. 

For an enlightened one, awareness will remain there even in his sleep, and then dreams 
are not possible. They require unconsciousness — that is one thing — and they require 
suspended experiences: that is the second thing. And for an enlightened one there is no 
suspended experience — no incomplete experience. Everything is complete. He has eaten 
his food; now he is not thinking about eating again. 

When he feels hungry he will eat again, but meanwhile there is no thought of eating. 

He has taken his bath; now he is not thinking of the bath tomorrow. When the time 
comes, if he is alive, he will take it. If the situation permits it will happen, but there is no 
thinking. Acts are there, but not any thinking about them. 

What are you doing? You are constantly rehearsing — constantly rehearsing for tomorrow 
as if you are an actor and you are to show someone. Why are you rehearsing? When the 
time comes, you will be there. 

The enlightened person lives in the moment, in the act, and he lives so totally that it is not 
incomplete. If something is incomplete, then it will be completed in a dream. Dream is a 
completion. It happens because the mind cannot allow anything to be incomplete. If 
something is incomplete, there is an inner uneasiness. It wonders how to complete it. 

Then in a dream you complete it, and you are at ease. Even if it is completed in a dream, 
for the mind it is a relaxation. 

What are you dreaming? You are just completing your incomplete acts which you could 
not complete in the day. In the day you may have wanted to kiss a woman, and you could 
not kiss. Now you will kiss her in your dream, and your mind will feel relaxed; a tension 
is released. 

Your dreaming is nothing but your incompleteness, and an enlightened person is 
complete. 

Whatsoever he is doing, he is doing it so wholly, so totally, that nothing remains 
suspended. There is no need for any dreaming. Dreaming in the night will cease and 
thinking in the day will cease. 

It is not that he will become unable to think. He can think if he needs. If you ask him a 



question he will think immediately, but no rehearsal is needed. First you think and then 
you reply, but his reply is his thinking. He thinks and replies. That is also not good to say, 
because actually there is no gap. It is simultaneous. He thinks out loud, but there is no 
rehearsal, no thinking, no dreaming. He lives life. With thinking and dreaming you miss 
life. 

THE END. 



Chapter 47: Tantric meditation with light techniques 


CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP 
THE VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES "LIVINGNESS" IN YOU. 

OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING. 

FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE. 

Man can be considered in three ways: in terms of the normal, the abnormal and the 
supernormal. Western psychology is basically concerned with the abnormal, the 
pathological, with the man who has fallen down from the normal, who has fallen down 
from the nonn. Eastern psychology, tantra and yoga, consider man from the standpoint of 
the supernonnal — of the one who has gone beyond the nonn. Both are abnonnal. One 
who is pathological is abnormal because he is not healthy, and one who is supernonnal is 
abnormal because he is MORE healthy than any normal human being. The difference is 
of negative and positive. 

Western psychology developed as part of psychotherapy. Freud, Jung, Adler and other 
psychologists were treating the abnormal man, the man who is mentally ill. Because of 
this the whole Western attitude towards man has become erroneous. Freud was studying 
pathological cases. Of course, no healthy man would go to him — only those who were 
mentally ill. They were studied by him, and because of that study he thought that now he 
understood man. Pathological men are not really men, they are ill, and anything based on 
a study of them is bound to be deeply erroneous and harmful. 

This has proved harmful because man is looked at from a pathological standpoint. If a 
particular state of mind is chosen and that state is ill, pathological, then the whole image 
of man becomes disease-based. Because of this attitude, the whole Western society has 
fallen down — because the ill man is the base, the perverted has become the foundation. 
And if you study only the abnormal, you cannot conceive of any possibility of 
supernormal beings. A buddha is impossible for Freud, not conceivable. He must be 
fictitious, mythological. A buddha cannot be a reality. Freud has only come in contact 
with ill men who are not even nonnal, and whatsoever he says about nonnal man is based 
on the study of abnormal man. It is just like a physician who is doing a study. No healthy 
man will go to him, there is no need. Only unhealthy people will go. By studying so 
many unhealthy people, he creates a picture in his mind of man, but that picture cannot 
be of man. It cannot be because man is not only illnesses. And if you base your concept 
of man on illnesses, the whole society will suffer. 

Eastern psychology, particularly tantra and yoga, also has a concept of man, but that 
concept is based on the study of the supernormal — Buddha, Patanjali, Shankara, 
Nagarjuna, Kabir, Nanak — on persons who have reached to the peak of human 
potentiality and possibility. The lowest has not been considered, only the highest. 

If you consider the highest your mind becomes an opening; you can grow because now 
you know higher reaches are possible. If you consider the lowest, no growth is possible. 
There is no challenge. If you are normal you feel happy. It is enough that you are not 
perverted, that you are not in a mental asylum. You can feel good, but there is no 
challenge. 

But if you seek the supernonnal, the highest possibility that you can become, if someone 
has become that possibility, if that possibility has become actual in someone, then a 



possibility for growth opens. You can grow. A challenge comes to you, and you need not 
be satisfied with yourself. Higher reaches are possible and they are calling you. This must 
be understood deeply. Only then will the psychology of tantra be conceivable. 

Whatsoever you are is not the end. You are just in the middle. You can fall down, you 
can rise up. Your growth has not finished. You are not the end product; you are just a 
passage. Something is constantly growing in you. 

Tantra conceives of and bases its whole technique on this possibility of growth. And 
remember, unless you become that which you can become, you will not be fulfilled. You 
MUST become that which you can become — it is a must! Otherwise you will be 
frustrated, you will feel meaningless, you will feel that there is no purpose in life. You 
can carry on, but there can be no joy in it. 

And you may succeed in many other things, but you will fail with yourself. And this is 
happening. Someone becomes very rich and everyone thinks that now he has succeeded. 
Everyone except himself thinks that he has succeeded. He knows his failure. Wealth is 
there, but he has failed. You are a great man, a leader, a politician. Everyone thinks that 
they have succeeded, but they have failed. This world is strange: you succeed in 
everyone's eyes except your own. 

People come to me daily. They say they have everything, but now what? They are 
failures, but where have they failed? As far as outward things are concerned they have 
not failed, so why do they feel this failure? Their inner potentiality has remained potent. 
They have not flowered. They have not achieved what Maslow calls "self-actualization." 
They are failures — inner failures, and ultimately, what others say is meaningless. What 
you feel is meaningful. If you feel that you are a failure, others may think that you are a 
Napoleon or an Alexander the Great, but it makes no difference. Rather, it depresses you 
more. Everyone thinks that you are a success, and now you cannot say that you are not — 
but you know you are not. You cannot deceive yourself. As far as self-actualization is 
concerned you cannot deceive. Sooner or later you will have to call upon yourself and 
look deeply into yourself at what has happened. The life is wasted. 

You have given up an opportunity and gathered things which mean nothing. 
Self-actualization refers to the highest peak of your growth, where you can feel a deep 
content, where you can say, "This is my destiny, this is for what I was meant, this is why 
I am here on earth." Tantra is concerned with that self-actualization — with how to help 
you grow more. And remember, tantra is concerned with you, not with ideals. Tantra is 
not concerned with ideals; it is concerned with you as you are and as you can become. 

The difference is great. All teachings are concerned with ideals. They say become like 
Buddha, become like Jesus, become like this or that. They have ideals, and you have to 
become like those ideals. Tantra has no ideal for you. Your unknown ideal is hidden 
within you; it cannot be given to you. You are not to become Buddha, there is no need. 
One Buddha is enough, and no repetition is of any value. Existence is always unique, it 
never repeats; repetition is boredom. Existence is always new, eternally new, so even a 
Buddha is not repeated — such a beautiful phenomenon left unrepeated. 

Why? Because even if a Buddha is repeated it will create boredom. What is the use? Only 
the unique is meaningful; copies are not meaningful. Only if you are firsthand is your 
destiny fulfilled. If you are secondhand, you have missed. 

So tantra never says be like this or that; there is no ideal. 



Tantra never talks about ideals; hence, the name "tantra." Tantra talks about techniques — 
never about ideals. It talks of HOW you can become; it never says what. It exists because 
of that how. Tantra means technique; the very word tantra means technique. It is 
concerned with "how" you can become, it is not concerned with what. That "what" will 
be supplied by your growth. Just use the technique, and by and by your inner potentiality 
will become actual. The uncharted possibility will become opened, and as it opens you 
will realize what it is. And no one can say what it is. Unless you become it, no one can 
predict what you can become. 

So tantra gives you only techniques — never ideals. This is how it is different from all 
moral teachings. Moral teachings always give ideals. Even if they talk about techniques, 
those techniques are always for particular ideals. Tantra gives no ideal to you; you ARE 
the ideal, and your future is unknown. No ideal from the past can be of any help because 
nothing can be repeated, and if it is repeated it is meaningless. 

Zen monks say to remember and be alert. If you meet Buddha in your meditation, kill 
him immediately; don't allow him to stand there. Zen monks are Buddha’s followers, and 
yet they say kill Buddha immediately if you meet him in your meditation, because the 
personality, the ideal of Buddha may become so hypnotizing that you may forget 
yourself, and if you forget yourself you have missed the path. 

Buddha is not the ideal; you are the ideal, your unknown future. That has to be 
discovered. 

Tantra gives you techniques of discovery. The treasure is within you. So remember this 
second thing: it is very difficult to believe that you are the ideal — difficult for you to 
believe because everyone is condemning you. No one accepts you, not even you yourself. 
You go on condemning yourself. You always think in terms of being like someone else, 
and that is false, dangerous. If you go on thinking like that you will become a fake and 
everything will be phoney. Do you know from where the word 'phoney' comes? It comes 
from telephone. In the early days of the telephone, the transmission was so false, so 
unreal, that a real voice and a phoney voice were heard from the telephone — a phoney 
voice that was mechanical. The real voice was lost — just in those beginning days. From 
there comes the word phoney. If you are imitating someone else, you will become 
phoney, you will not be real. A mechanical device will be there all around you, and your 
reality, your real voice, will be lost. So don't be phoney, be real, 

Tantra believes in you. That is why there are so few believers in tantra — because no one 
believes in himself. Tantra believes in you and says that you are the ideal, so don't imitate 
anyone. Imitation will create a pseudo personality around you. You can go on moving 
with that pseudo personality thinking it is yourself, but it is not. 

So the second thing to remember is that there is no fixed ideal. You cannot think in terms 
of the future; you can only think in terms of the present — just the immediate future in 
which you can grow. No fixed future is there, and it is good that there is no fixed future; 
otherwise there would be no freedom. If there were a fixed future, man would be a robot. 
You have no fixed future. You have multi possibilities; you can grow in many ways. But 
the only thing that will give you ultimate contentment is that you grow — that you grow 
in such a way that every growth produces further growth. Techniques are helpful because 
they are scientific. You are saved from unnecessary wandering, unnecessary groping. If 
you don't know any techniques, you will take many lives. You will reach the goal 
because the life energy within you will move unless it comes to the point where no 



movement is possible. It will go on moving to the highest peak, and that is the reason 
why one goes on being bom again and again. Left to yourself you will reach — but you 
will have to travel very, very long, and the journey will be very tedious and boring. 

With a master, with scientific techniques, you can save much time, opportunity and 
energy. And sometimes within seconds you can grow so much that within lives even you 
will not be able to grow that much. If a right technique is used growth explodes, and 
these techniques have been used in millions of years of experiments. 

They were not devised by one man; they were devised by many, many seekers, and only 
the essence is given here. In these one hundred and twelve techniques, all techniques 
from all over the world have been covered. Nowhere does there exist any technique 
which has not been covered in this one hundred and twelve; they are the whole spiritual 
search in essence. But all the techniques are not for everyone, so you will have to try 
them out. Only certain techniques will be helpful to you, and you will have to find them 
out. There are two ways: either by your own trial and error, until you stumble upon 
something which starts working and you start growing, and then you move in it; or you 
surrender to some teacher and he finds out what will suit you. These are the two ways. 
You can choose. Now the technique. 

The first technique: 

"CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS RISING FROM CENTER TO 
CENTER UP THE VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES 'LIVINGNESS’ IN YOU." 

Many yoga methods are based on this. First understand what it is; then the application. 
The vertebrae, the spine, is the base of both your body and mind. Your mind, your head, 
is the end part of your spine. The whole body is rooted in the spine. If the spine is young, 
you are young. If the spine is old, you are old. If you can keep your spine young, it is 
difficult to become old. Everything depends on your spine. 

If your spine is alive, you will have a very brilliant mind. If the spine is dull and dead, 
you will have a very dull mind. The whole yoga tries in many ways to make your spine 
alive, brilliant, filled with light, young and fresh. 

The spine has two ends: the beginning is the sex center and the end is SAHASRARA, the 
seventh center at the top of the head. The beginning of the spine is attached to the earth, 
and sex is the most earthly thing in you. From the beginning center in your spine you are 
in contact with nature, with what Sankhya has called PRAKRATI — the earth, the 
material. From the last center, or the second pole, SAHASRAR, in the head, you are in 
contact with the divine. These are the two poles of your existence. First is sex and second 
is the SAHASRAR. There is no word for SAHASRAR in English. These are the two 
poles. Either your life will be sex oriented or SAHASRAR oriented. Either your energy 
will be flowing down from the sex center back to the earth, or your energy will be 
released from the SAHASRAR into the cosmos. From the SAHASRAR you flow into the 
BRAHMAN, into the absolute Existence. From sex you flow down into the relative 
existence. These are the two flows, the two possibilities. Unless you start flowing 
upwards, your misery will never end. You may have glimpses of happiness, but only 
glimpses — and very illusory ones. 

When the energy starts moving upwards you will have more and more real glimpses. 


And once it reaches the SAHASRAR and is released from there, you will have the 



absolute bliss with you. That is NIRVANA. Then there is no glimpse; you become the 
bliss itself. So the whole thing for yoga and tantra is how to move energy upwards 
through the vertebrae, through the spinal column, how to help it move against gravity. 

Sex is very easy because it follows gravitation. The earth is pulling everything down, 
back; your sex energy is pulled by the earth. You may not have heard it, but astronauts 
have felt this — that the moment they move beyond the earth's gravity they don’t feel 
much sexuality. As the body loses weight, sexuality dissolves, disappears. 

The earth is pulling your life energy down and this is natural, because the life energy 
comes from the earth. You eat food and you are creating life energy within you; it comes 
from the earth, and the earth is pulling it back. Everything goes to its source. And if it 
continues to move in this way, life energy going back again and again, and you are 
moving in a circle, you will go on moving for lives and lives. You can go on moving this 
way infinitely unless you take a jump just like the astronauts. Like the astronauts, you 
have to take a jump and move beyond the circle. Then the pattern of earth's gravitation is 
broken. It can be broken! 

The techniques for how it can be broken are here — for how the energy can move 
vertically and rise up within you, reaching new centers; for how new energies can be 
revealed within you, making you a new person with every move. 

And the moment the energy is released from your SAHASRAR, the opposite pole of sex, 
you are no more man. Then you don’t belong to this earth; you have become divine. That 
is what is meant when we say Krishna is God or Buddha is God. Their bodies are just like 
yours — their bodies will have to fall ill and they will have to die — everything happens in 
their bodies as it happens to you. Only one thing is not happening in their bodies which is 
happening to you: the energy has broken the gravitation pattern. 

But that you cannot see, it is not visible to your eyes. But sometimes when you are sitting 
by the side of a Buddha, you can feel this. Suddenly you feel an upsurge of energy within 
you, and your energy starts moving upwards. Only then do you know that something has 
happened. Just by being in contact with a buddha your energy begins to move upwards 
towards the SAHASRAR. A buddha is so powerful that even the earth is less powerful; it 
cannot pull your energy downwards. Those who have felt this around a Jesus, a Buddha, 
a Krishna, have called them God. They have a different source of energy which is 
stronger than the earth. 

How can the pattern be broken? This technique is very useful for breaking the pattern. 
First understand something basic. One, if you have observed at all you must have 
observed that your sex energy moves with imagination. Just through imagination your 
sex center starts functioning. 

Really, without imagination it cannot function. That is why if you are in love with 
someone it functions better — because with love imagination enters. If you are not in love 
it is very difficult. It will not function. 

This is the reason why male prostitutes were not found in the old days, only women 
prostitutes. It is difficult for a male prostitute if he has no love, and how can he have love 
just because of money? You can pay a man to have intercourse with you, but if he has no 
imagination for you he cannot function. Women can function because their sex is passive. 
Really, their functioning is not needed. They can be totally detached; they may not be 
feeling anything at all. Their bodies can just be there like corpses. With a prostitute you 
are not making love with a real body — only with a dead corpse. But women can easily be 



prostitutes because their sex is passive. 

The sex center functions through imagination. That is why even in dreams you can get 
erections and ejaculations. They are actual. Dreams are just imagination. It has been 
observed that every man, if physically fit, will have at least ten erections in the night. 
With every movement of the mind, with only a slight thought of sex, the erection will 
come. Your mind has many energies, many faculties, and one is will. But you cannot will 
sex. For sex will is impotent. If you try to love someone, you will feel you have gone 
impotent. 

So never try. Will never functions with sex; only imagination will function. Imagine, and 
the center will start to function. Why am I emphasizing this fact? Because if imagination 
helps the energy to move, then you can move it upwards or downwards just by 
imagination. You cannot move your blood by imagination; you cannot do anything else 
in the body by imagination. But sex energy can be moved by imagination. You can 
change its direction. 

This sutra says, "CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS" - t hink of yourself, 
your being, as light rays - "FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE VERTEBRAE" - 
up your spine — "AND SO RISES 'LIVINGNESS’ IN YOU." Yoga has divided your 
spine into seven centers. The first is the sex center and the last is SAHASRAR, and 
between these two there are five centers. Some systems divide into nine, some into three, 
some into four. Division is not very meaningful, you can make your own division. Just 
five centers are enough to work with; the first is the sex center, the second is just behind 
the navel, the third is just behind the heart, the fourth is behind your two eyebrows, just 
in between, in the middle of the forehead. And the fifth, SAHASRAR, is just on the peak 
of your head. These five will do. 

This sutra says, "CONSIDER YOURSELF...", which means imagine yourself — close 
your eyes and imagine yourself just as if you are light. This is not just imagination. 

In the beginning it is, but it is reality also because everything consists of light. Now 
science says that everything consists of electricity, and tantra has always said that 
everything consists of light particles — and you also. That is why the Koran says that God 
is light. YOU are light! Imagine first that you are just light rays; then move your 
imagination to the sex center. Concentrate your attention there and feel that light rays are 
rising upwards from the sex center, as if the sex center has become a source of light and 
light rays are moving in an upsurge — upwards towards the navel center. Division is 
needed because it will be difficult for you to connect your sex center with the 
SAHASRAR. So smaller divisions will be of help. If you can connect, no divisions are 
needed. You can just drop all divisions from your sex center onwards, and the energy, the 
life force will rise up as light towards the SAHASRAR. But divisions will be more 
helpful because your mind can conceive of smaller fragments more easily. 

So just feel that the energy — just the light rays — is rising up from your sex center to 
your navel like a river of light. Immediately you will feel a warmth rising in you. Soon 
your navel will become hot. You can feel the hotness; even others can feel that hotness. 
Through your imagination the sex energy will have started to rise. When you feel that 
now the second center at the navel has become a source of light, that the rays are coming 
and being collected there, then start to move to the heart center. 

As the light reaches the heart center, as the rays are coming, your heartbeat will be 



changed. Your breathing will become deeper, and a warmth will come to your heart. Go 
on upwards. 

"CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP 
THE VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES 'LIVINGNESS’ IN YOU." And as you will feel 
warmth, just side by side you will feel a "livingness," a new life coming to you, an 
inward light rising up. Sex energy has two parts: one is physical and one is psychic. In 
your body everything has two parts. Just like your body and mind, everything within you 
has two parts — one material and the other spiritual. Sex energy has two parts. The 
material part is semen; it cannot rise upwards, there is no passage for it. Because of this, 
many physiologists of the West say that tantra and yoga methods are nonsense and they 
deny them completely. How can sex energy rise up? There is no passage and sex energy 
cannot rise. They are right and still wrong. Semen, the material part, cannot rise — but 
that is not the whole of it. Really, it is only the body of sex energy, it is not the sex 
energy. The sex energy is the psychic part of it, and the psychic part can rise. And for 
that psychic part, the spinal passage is used — the spinal passage and its centers. But that 
has to be felt and your feelings have gone dead. 

I remember somewhere that a certain psychotherapist wrote about a patient, a woman. 

He was telling her to feel something, but the psychotherapist felt that whatever she did 
she was not feeling, but thinking about feeling — and that is a different thing. So the 
therapist put his hand on the woman's hand and pressed it, telling her to close her eyes 
and relate what she felt. She said immediately, "I feel your hand." 

But the therapist said, "No, this is not your feeling. This is just your thinking, your 
inference. I have put my hand in your hand; you say you are feeling my hand. But you 
are not. This is inference. What do you feel?" 

So she said, "I feel your fingers." 

The therapist again said, "No, this is not feeling. Don’t infer anything. Just close your 
eyes and move to the place where my hand is; then tell me what you feel." 

Then she said, "Oh! I was missing the whole thing. I feel pressure and warmth." 

When a hand touches you, a hand is not felt. Pressure and warmth are felt. The hand is 
just inference, it is intellect, not feeling. Warmth and pressure, that is feeling. Now she 
was feeling. We have lost feeling completely. You will have to develop feeling; only then 
can you do such techniques. Otherwise, they will not function. You will just 
intellectualize, you will just think that you are feeling, and nothing will happen. That is 
why people come to me and say, "You tell us this technique is so significant, but nothing 
happens." 

They have tried, but they are missing a dimension — the feeling dimension. So first you 
will have to develop that, and there are some methods which you can try. 

You can do one thing. If you have a small child in your house, follow the child around 
for one hour every day. It will be better and more fulfilling than following a buddha. 
Allow the child to move on all fours, and you also move on all fours. Just follow the 
child moving on all fours, and you will feel for the first time a new life energy coming to 
you. You will again become a child. Look at the child and just follow. He will go to 
every comer; he will touch everything — not only touch, he will taste everything, he will 
smell everything. Just follow, and do whatsoever he is doing. 

You were also a child once; you have done this. The child is feeling. He is not 
intellectualizing, he is not thinking. He feels a smell, so he moves to that comer from 



where it is coming. He sees an apple, so he tastes it. Just taste like a child. Watch when 
he is eating the apple, look at him: he is totally absorbed in it. The whole world has 
dropped, the world is no more there — only the apple. Even the apple is not and the child 
is not — only the eating. Just follow a small child for one hour. That hour will be so 
enriching, you will become again a child. 

Your defense mechanisms will drop, your armor will drop, and you will start looking at 
the world as a child looks — from the feeling dimension. 

When you feel that now you can feel, not think, you will enjoy the texture of the carpet 
on which you are moving like a child, the pressure, the wannth — and just by innocently 
following a child. Man can learn much from children, and sooner or later your real 
innocence will erupt. You were once a child and you know what it means to be one. You 
have simply forgotten. 

The feeling center must start functioning; only then will these techniques be of any help. 
Otherwise you will go on thinking that energy is rising, but there will be no feeling. And 
if there is no feeling, imagination is impotent, futile. Only a feeling imagination will give 
you a result. You can do many other things and there is no need to make a specific effort 
to do them. When you go to sleep just feel your bed, feel the pillow — the coldness. Just 
turn onto it; play with the pillow. 

Close your eyes and listen to the noise of the air conditioner, or of the traffic or of the 
clock or anything. Just listen. Don’t label, don't say anything. Don’t use the mind. Just 
live in the sensation. In the morning, in the first moment of waking, when you feel that 
now sleep has gone, don't start thinking. For a few moments you can again be a child — 
innocent, fresh. Don't start thinking. Don’t think about what you are going to do and when 
you are starting for the office and what train you are going to catch. 

Don't start thinking. You will have enough time for all that nonsense. Just wait. For a few 
moments just listen to the noise. A bird is singing or the wind is passing through the trees 
or a child is crying or the milkman has come and is making sounds or the milk is being 
poured. With anything that happens, feel it. Be sensitive to it, open to it. Allow it to 
happen to you, and your sensitivity will grow. 

When taking a shower, feel it all over the body — every drop of water touching you. Feel 
the touch, the coldness, the wannth! Try this the whole day whenever you have the 
chance, and everywhere there is a chance — everywhere! When just breathing, feel the 
breath — its movement within and its going out — just feel it! Just feel your own body. 
You have not felt it. 

We are so afraid of our own bodies. No one touches his own body in a loving way. Have 
you ever given any love to your own body? The whole civilization is afraid of anyone 
touching himself because from childhood touching has been denied. It appears to be 
masturbatory to touch oneself in a loving way. But if you cannot touch yourself in a 
loving way your body will go dull and dead. It has gone so. Touch your eyes with your 
palms. Feel the touch, and your eyes will feel fresh and alive immediately. Feel your 
body all over. Feel your lover’s body, your friend's body. Massage is good. Two friends 
can massage each other and feel each other's bodies. 

You will become more sensitive. 

Create sensitivity and feeling. Then it will be easy for you to do these techniques, and 
then you will feel "livingness" arising in you. Don’t leave this energy anywhere. Allow it 



to come to the SAHASRAR. Remember this: whenever you do this experiment, don't 
leave it in the middle. You have to complete it. Take care that no one disturbs you. If you 
leave this energy somewhere in the middle, it can be harmful. It has to be released. So 
bring it to the head and feel as if your head has become an opening. 

In India we have pictured SAHASRAR as a lotus — as a thousand- petalled lotus. 
'SAHASRAR' means a thousandpetalled — an opening of a thousand petals. Just 
conceive of the lotus with a thousand petals, opened, and from every petal this light 
energy is moving into the cosmos. Again, this is a love act — not with nature now, but 
with the ultimate. Again, it is an orgasm. 

There are two types of orgasms: one is sexual and the other spiritual. The sexual comes 
from the lowest center and the spiritual from the highest center. From the highest you 
meet the highest and from the lowest you meet the lowest. Even while actually in the sex 
act, you can do this exercise; both the partners can do this. Move the energy upwards, 
and then the sex act becomes tantra SADHANA; it becomes meditation. 

But don’t leave the energy somewhere in the body at some center. 

Someone may come and you will have some business, or some phone call will come and 
you will have to stop. So do it at such a time that no one will disturb you, and don’t leave 
the energy in any center. Otherwise that center where you leave the energy will become a 
wound, and you may create many mental illnesses. So be aware; otherwise don’t do this. 
This method needs absolute privacy and no disturbance, and it must be done completely. 
The energy must come to the head, and it should be released from there. 

You will have various experiences. When you will feel that the rays are starting to come 
up from the sex center, there will be erections or sensations at the sex center. Many, 
many people come to me very afraid and scared. They say that whenever they start 
meditation, when they start to move deep, there is an erection. They wonder, "What is 
this?" They are afraid because they think that in meditation sex should not be there. But 
you don’t know life's functioning. It is a good sign. It shows that energy is now there 
alive. Now it needs movement. So don't become scared and don't think that something is 
wrong. It is a good sign. When you start meditation the sex center will become more 
sensitive, alive, excited, and in the beginning the excitement will be just the same as any 
sexual excitement — but only in the beginning. As your meditation becomes deeper, you 
will feel energy flowing up. 

As the energy flows, the sex center becomes silent, less excited. 

When the energy will really move to the SAHASRAR, there will be no sensation at the 
sex center. It will be totally still and silent. It will have become completely cool, and the 
warmth will have come to the head. And this is physical. When the sex center is excited, 
it becomes hot; you can feel that hotness, it is physical. When the energy will move, the 
sex center will become cooler and cooler and cooler, and the hotness will come to the 
head. 

You will feel dizzy. When the energy comes to the head, you will feel dizzy. Sometimes 
you may even feel nausea because for the first time energy has come to the head and your 
head is not acquainted with it. It has to become tuned. So don’t become afraid. Sometimes 
you may immediately become unconscious, but don’t be afraid. This happens. If so much 
energy moves suddenly and explodes in the head, you may become unconscious. But that 
unconsciousness cannot remain for more than one hour. Within one hour the energy 
automatically falls back or is released. You cannot remain that way for more than one 



hour. I say one hour, but in fact it is exactly forty-eight minutes. It cannot be more than 
that. It never has been in millions of years of experiments, so don’t be afraid. If you do 
become unconscious, it is okay. After that unconsciousness you will feel so fresh that it is 
as if you have been in sleep for the first time, in the deepest sleep. 


Yoga calls it by a special name — YOGA TANDRA: yogic sleep. It is very deep; you 
move to your deepest center. But don’t be afraid. And if your head becomes hot, it is a 
good sign. Release the energy. Feel as if your head is opening like a lotus flower — as if 
energy is being released into the cosmos. As the energy is released, you will feel a 
coldness coming to you. You have never felt the coldness that comes after this hotness. 
But do the technique completely; never do it incompletely. 

The second technique: 

”OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING.” 

This is a very similar method with a slight difference: "OR IN THE SPACES 
BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING." Between one center and another, as rays are 
coming, you can feel it like lightning — just a jump of light. For some people the second 
will be more suitable and for others the first. This is why there is a modification. There 
are people who cannot imagine things gradually and there are people who cannot imagine 
in jumps. If you can think and imagine gradually, then the first method is good. But if 
you try the first method and you suddenly feel that from one center the rays jump directly 
to the second, then don't do the first method. The second is better for you. "FEEL THIS 
AS LIGHTNING" — like a spark of light jumping from one center to the next. And the 
second is more real because, really, light jumps. 

There is no gradual step-by-step growth. Light is a jump. 

Look at the electric light. You think it is constant, but that is illusory. There are gaps, but 
the gaps are so small that you cannot detect them. Electricity comes in jumps. One jump, 
and then there is a gap of darkness. Another jump, and then there is a gap of darkness. 

But you never feel the gap because the jump is so fast. Otherwise, every moment there is 
darkness. Again there is a jump, light comes, then again darkness. Light jumps, it never 
travels. For those who can conceive of jumps, the second modification is best. "OR IN 
THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING." Just try it. If you feel good 
with the rays coming gradually, it is okay. If you don’t feel good and rays are jumping, 
then forget about rays. Think of this as lightning in the sky, in the clouds, just jumping 
from one place to another. 

For women the first technique will be easier and for men the second. The feminine mind 
can conceive of gradualness more easily and the male jumps more easily. The male mind 
is "jumpy"; it jumps from one thing to another. There is a subtle uneasiness in the male 
mind. The female mind has a gradual process, it is not jumpy. That is why female and 
male logic are very different. A man goes on jumping from one thing to another, and for 
women this is inconceivable. For them there must be growth — gradual growth. 

But choose. Try these, and choose whichever you feel is good for you. 

Two or three things more about this method. With lightning you may feel such hotness 
that it may seem unbearable. If you feel that, don't try it. Lightning can give you much 
heat. If you feel this, that it is unbearable, then don’t try this. Then with the first method, 



if you are at ease, then it is good. Otherwise with uneasiness don’t try it. Sometimes the 
explosion can be so great that you may become afraid of it, and once afraid you will 
never be able to do it again. Then fear enters. 

So one has to be aware always not to become afraid of anything. If you feel that fear will 
come and it is too much for you, don’t try it. Then the first method with light rays is best. 
If you feel that even with light rays too much hotness is coming to you — and it depends 
because people differ — then conceive of the rays as cool, imagine them as cool. Then 
instead of feeling warmth you will feel a coldness with everything. That too will be 
effective. So you can decide; try and decide. Remember, with this technique, and with 
others also, if you feel very uneasy or anything unbearable, don't do it. There are other 
methods, and this one may not be for you. With unnecessary disturbance inside, you will 
create more problems than you will solve. 

In India, because of this, we have developed a particular yoga which we call SAHAJ 
YOGA. 

SAHAJ means spontaneous, easy, natural. Always remember SAHAJ. If you feel any 
technique spontaneously coming to you, if you feel more affinity with it, if you feel better 
with it — more healthy, more alive, more at home — then that is the method for you. 

Move with it; you can trust it. Don't create unnecessary problems. And the inner 
mechanism is very complex. If you do something which is too much for you, you may 
destroy many things. So it is better to move with something which feels hannonious to 
you. 

The third technique: 

"FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE.” 

This again is concerned with light: ’’FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT 
EVER-LIVING PRESENCE." If you have taken any drugs such as LSD or some such 
thing, the whole world around you becomes a light phenomenon of colors that are 
translucent, alive. This is not because of LSD. The world is such, but your eyes have 
become dull. The LSD is not creating a colorful world around you; the world is already 
colorful, nothing is wrong with the world. It is a rainbow of colors — a mystery of colors 
and translucent light. But your eyes have become dull. That is why you can never feel it 
in such colorfulness. 

LSD is just clearing your eyes. It is not making the world colorful; it is just helping your 
dullness to go chemically, and then the whole world erupts before you. 

It is a new thing. Even an ordinary chair becomes a marvelous phenomenon. Just a shoe 
on the floor takes on new colors, a new youth. Ordinary traffic noise becomes musical. 
Trees you have always seen but never looked at are born anew though you have always 
passed them by and you know you have seen them. Every leaf of a tree is a miracle. 

And this is how reality is. It is not LSD which is creating this reality. LSD is just 
destroying your dullness, your insensitivity, and you look at the world as one should 
really look. But LSD can give you only a glimpse, and if you depend on it, sooner or later 
even LSD will not be able to remove your dullness. Then you will need greater doses, 
and then you will become immune to greater doses. And, really, if you then leave LSD or 
other drugs, the world will be duller than it has ever been. Then you will become even 
more insensitive. 

Just a few days ago a girl came to see me. She said she could not feel any orgasm in the 



love act. She has tried many men, but she cannot feel any orgasm. The peak never comes, 
and she has become frustrated. So I asked her to tell me her whole love and sex life — the 
whole story. Then I discovered that she had been using an electric vibrator. Now in the 
West they are using these. Once you use an electric vibrator as a male penis, then no male 
can satisfy you because an electric vibrator is, after all, an electric vibrator. 

Then your vagina and clitoris will go dead, dull, and then orgasm will become 
impossible. Then there won’t be any possibility of any orgasm. You will now need a more 
powerful electric vibrator, and this can go to such an extreme that your total sexual 
mechanism will become stony. And this is happening to our every sense. If you use any 
outer device, you will become dull. 

LSD will make you dull ultimately because with it you are not growing. If YOU grow, 
then it is a different process. Then you become more sensitive, and as you become more 
sensitive the world becomes different. Now you can sense many things you never sensed 
before because you were not sensitive. 

This technique is based on inner sensitivity. First grow in sensitivity. Just close your 
doors, make the room dark and light a small candle. Sit near the candle with a very loving 
attitude — rather, with a prayerful attitude. Just pray to the candle, "Reveal yourself to 
me." Take a bath, throw cold water on your eyes, then sit in a very prayerful mood before 
the candle. Look at it and forget everything else. Just look at the small candle — the flame 
and the candle. Go on looking at it. After five minutes you will feel that many things are 
changing in the candle. They are not changing in the candle, remember; your eyes are 
changing. 

With a loving attitude, with the whole world closed out, with total concentration, with a 
feeling heart, just go on looking at the candle and the flame. 

Then you will discover new colors around the flame, new shades which you were never 
aware were there. They are there; the whole rainbow is there. Wherever light is, the 
rainbow is there because light is all color. You need a subtle sensitivity. Just feel it and 
go on looking at it. Even if tears start flowing, go on looking at it. Those tears will help 
your eyes to be more fresh. 

Sometimes you may feel that the flame, the candle, has become mysterious. It is not the 
ordinary candle you brought with you; it has taken on a new glamor, a subtle divineness 
has come into it. Go on doing this. You can also do this with many other things. 

One of my friends was telling me that a group of five or six persons had been 
experimenting with rocks. I had told them how to experiment, and then they reported to 
me. They were experimenting with rocks on the bank of a lonely river. They were trying 
to feel them with their hands, with their faces, touching the rocks with their tongues, 
smelling the rocks. In every way possible they were feeling the rocks — just ordinary 
rocks which they found on the bank. 

They tried this for a whole hour, everyone with a rock. And then, my friend reported, 
there was a miracle. Everyone said, "Could I keep this rock? I have fallen in love with 
it!" An ordinary rock! If you have a sympathetic relationship with it, you will fall in love. 
And if you don’t have that sensitivity, then even with a very beautiful person you are with 
a rock; you cannot fall in love. 


Sensitivity must grow. Your every sense must become more alive. Then you can 



experiment with this technique. "FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER- 
LIVING PRESENCE." Everywhere light is — in many, many shapes, forms, light is 
happening everywhere. Look at it! And everywhere light is because the whole 
phenomenon is based on the foundation of light. Look at a leaf or a flower or a rock, and 
sooner or later you will feel rays coming out of it. Just wait patiently. Don’t be in a hurry 
because nothing is revealed when you are in a hurry. In a hurry you are dull. Wait silently 
with anything, and you will discover a new phenomenon which was always there, but of 
which you were not alert — not aware of it. 

"FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE," and your 
mind will become completely silent as you feel the presence of the ever-living existence. 
You will be just a part in it, just a note in the great symphony. No burden, no tension... 
the drop has fallen into the ocean. But great imagination will be needed in the beginning, 
and if you are also trying with other sensitivity training it will be helpful. 

You can try many ways. Just take someone's hand into your hand. Close your eyes and 
feel the life in the other. Feel it, and allow it to move towards you. Feel your own life and 
allow it to move towards the other. Sit near a tree and touch the bark of the tree. 

Close your eyes and feel the life arising in the tree, and you change immediately. 

I have heard about one experiment. A doctor was experimenting with people to see 
whether their feelings changed their biochemistry. Now he has reported that feeling 
changes biochemistry immediately. He experimented with a group of twelve persons. He 
collected their urine before the experiment, and the urine was ordinary, normal. 

Each person was put under a different stress. One was shown a film of horror, anger, 
violence, cruelty — it was just a film — for thirty minutes he was shown a film of horror. 
Of course, with the film his emotions changed. He felt stress. To another a very joyful 
film was shown. He felt happy. And so on went the experiment for twelve persons. Then 
their urine was taken again and the urine analysis showed that everyone's urine was 
different now. The chemicals had changed in the body. The person who felt horror was ill 
now; the person who felt hope, happiness, joy, was healthy now. His urine was different, 
the chemicals of the body were different. 

You are not aware of what you are doing with yourself. When you go to see a murder 
film, you don’t know what you are doing. You are changing your body chemistry. If you 
are reading a detective novel, you don’t know what you are doing. You are killing 
yourself. You will become excited, you will become afraid, a tension will come to you. 

That is how you enjoy the detective novel. The more tense you become, the more you 
enjoy it. The more the suspense over what is going to happen, the more you get excited — 
and you are changing your body chemistry. 

All these techniques also change your body chemistry. If you feel the whole world as 
filled with life, light, then you are changing your body chemistry. And this is a chain 
reaction. When your body chemistry changes, you can look at the world and it will look 
more alive. And if it looks more alive, your body chemistry will change again, and then it 
becomes a chain. 

If this method is done for three months, you will be living in a different world because 
you will be different now. 


THE END. 



Chapter 48: The potentiality of the seed 


The first question: 

Question 1 

"LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT A KRISHNA, A CHRIST, A BUDDHA, THEY ARE 
THE CLIMAX OF HUMAN POSSIBILITY AND GROWTH, AND THEN YOU SAID 
THAT YOGIC AND TANTRIC PSYCHOLOGY PUT NO IDEAL BEFORE MAN 
AND THAT TO HAVE AN IDEAL IS A MISTAKE ACCORDING TO TANTRA. IN 
THIS REFERENCE PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 
AN INSPIRATION AND AN IDEAL. WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF 
INSPIRATION IN A SEEKER’S LIFE? PLEASE TELL WHETHER EVEN BEING 
INSPIRED BY A GREAT MAN IS A MISTAKE ON THE PATH OF A 
MEDITATOR." 

A Buddha, a Krishna or a Christ, they are not ideals for YOU; you are not to follow them. 
If you follow them you will miss them, and your own buddhahood will never be 
achieved. Buddhahood is the ideal, not Buddha. Christhood is the ideal, not Jesus. 
Buddhahood is different from Gautam Buddha; christhood is different from Jesus. Jesus 
is only one of the christs. You can become a christ, but you can never become a Jesus. 
You can become a buddha, but you can never become Gautam. Gautam became a buddha 
and YOU can become a buddha. Buddhahood is a quality, it is an experience! Of course, 
when Gautam became a buddha, Gautam had his own individuality. You have your own 
individuality. When you will become a buddha, these two buddhas will not be the same. 
The inner most experience will be the same, but the expression will be different — 
absolutely different. 

No comparison is possible. Only at the innermost core will you be the same. 

Why? Because at the innermost core there is no individuality. The individual is on the 
periphery. The deeper you move, the more the individual dissolves. At the innennost core 
you are as if no one. At the innennost core you are just a deep void, a nothingness — a 
SHUNYA, a zero. And because of this nothingness there is no difference, because two 
nothings cannot be different. But two somethings are bound to be different. Two 
"somethings" can never be the same and two "nothings" can never be different. When 
one becomes just absolutely nothing, a zero point, that is similar in a Jesus, in a Krishna, 
in a Buddha. When you will reach to the ultimate, you will reach to this SHUNYA — this 
nothingness. 

But your personality, your expression of that ecstasy, is bound to be different. A Meera 
will dance; a Buddha can never dance. It is impossible to conceive of Buddha dancing, it 
looks absurd. But Meera sitting under a bodhi tree like a Buddha also looks absurd. She 
will lose everything, she will not be a Meera at all; she will be imitation. The real Meera 
can only be conceived of as dancing in ecstasy in her own love madness. That is her 
expression. The innermost core is the same. With Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree and 
Meera dancing in mad ecstasy, the innennost core is the same. In the dancing Meera and 
in the silently sitting Buddha who is just like a statue, the innermost core is the same but 
the periphery is different. 

The dancing and the silent sitting are just on the periphery. If you move within Meera, as 



you go deeper the dance will cease, the Meera will cease. If you go deep into Buddha, the 
sitting will cease, the Buddha will cease as an individual. 

You can become a buddha, but you can never become a Gautam buddha: that is what is 
meant. Don’t make them your ideals; otherwise you will start imitating them. And what 
can you do if you imitate? You can force something from without, but that will be a fake 
phenomenon. You will become pseudo — just painted. You will look Buddha-like — more 
than Buddha. You can look, but that will be just a look, an appearance; deep down you 
will remain the same — and this will create a duality, a conflict, an inner anguish, and you 
will be in suffering. 

You can be in bliss only where you are authentically yourself. You can never feel any 
happiness when you are acting as someone else. So remember tantra's message: YOU are 
the ideal. You are not to imitate anyone; you are to discover yourself. Looking at a 
buddha, there is no need to imitate him. When you are looking at a buddha, the 
possibility hits deep in you that something of the beyond can happen. Buddha is just a 
symbol that something has happened to this man — and if it can happen to this man, it can 
happen to EVERY man. Then the whole possibility of humanity is revealed. 

In a Jesus, in a Meera, in Chaitanya, just a possibility is revealed, the future is revealed. 

You need not be whatsoever you are. Something more is possible. So Buddha is just a 
symbol of the future. Don't imitate him; rather, let his life, his being, the phenomenon 
that is happening, become a new thirst in you, that is all. You must not be content with 
yourself as you are right now. Let Buddha become a discontent in you, a thirst to 
transcend, to go beyond, to move into the unknown. When you reach to the peak of your 
own being, you will know what happened to Buddha under the bodhi tree or what 
happened to Jesus on the cross or what happened to Meera when she was dancing in the 
streets. You will know, but your expression will be your own. You are not going to be a 
Meera or a Buddha or a Jesus. You are going to be yourself, and you have never been 
before. You are unique. 

So nothing can be said; you are not predictable. No one can say what will happen, how 
you will manifest it. Whether you will sing, dance, paint or remain silent no one can say. 
And it is good that nothing can be said, nothing can be predicted. That is the beauty. If it 
is predictable that you will be like this or that, then you will become a mechanical thing. 
Predictions are possible only about mechanical devices. Human consciousness is 
unpredictable; that is its freedom. So when tantra says don’t follow ideals, it doesn’t mean 
to deny Buddha. No, it is not a denial. Really, it is how you can find your own 
buddhahood. 

Following another, you will miss it. Following your own path, you can gain it, you can 
achieve it. 

Someone came to a Zen master, Bokuju. Bokuju's master was very famous, well known, 
a very great man, so someone asked "Are you really following your master?" 

Bokuju said, "Yes, I am following him." 

But the man who asked the question was disturbed because it was well known all over 
the country that Bokuju was not following his master at all. So the man said, "Are you 
trying to deceive me? Everyone knows and you are also aware that you are not following 
your master at all, and still you say that you are following. What do you mean?" 

Bokuju said, "I am following my master — because my master never followed his master. 
This is what I have learned from him. He was himself!" 



This is how a Buddha, a Jesus is to be followed. This is how! They are unique! If you are 
really following them, YOU must be unique. 

Buddha never followed anyone, and he achieved enlightenment only in that moment 
when he had completely stopped following. When he became himself, when he left all 
paths, all teachings, all doctrines, then he could achieve. If you follow him, you are not 
following him. It is not paradoxical, it only looks so. If you follow him as a dead routine, 
if you imitate him, you are not following him. He never followed anyone, and only then 
could he become the peak. 

Understand him, don't follow him; and then a subtle following will happen. But that is 
inner — not an imitation. 

In Nietzsche's great work THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA, the last message of 
Zarathustra to his disciple is "Beware of me. Now I have told everything that was to be 
told to you. Now beware of me. Don’t follow me; just forget me. Leave me and go 
away." 

This is the last message of all the great masters. No great master would like to make you 
a puppet because then he is killing you. He is a murderer then. He will help you to be 
yourself. And if you cannot be yourself in the intimacy and communication with your 
master, then where will you be yourself? 

The master means an opportunity for you to be yourself. Only small minds, narrow minds 
who pretend to be masters and who are not masters, will try to impose themselves on 
you. Great masters will help you to grow on your own path, and great masters will create 
every barrier so that you don’t become a victim of following. They will create every 
barrier! They will not allow it because your tendency will be to follow. It is easy, 
imitation is easy; to be authentic is arduous. And when you imitate you don’t feel 
responsible for it, the master is responsible. No great master has ever allowed anyone to 
imitate. He will create every hindrance so that you cannot imitate him. He will throw you 
by every means to yourself. 


I am reminded of one Chinese saint who was celebrating his master's enlightenment day. 
Many followers had come. They said, "But we never heard that this man was your 
master. We never knew that you belonged to this man." That old man was dead. They 
said, "Only today did we come to hear and know that you are celebrating your master's 
enlightenment day. This man was your master? But how? We never saw you with him!" 
The saint replied, "I had been with him, but he had refused. He had refused to become my 
master, and because of his refusal I could become myself. Now, whatsoever I am is 
because of his refusal. I am his disciple. He could have accepted me; then I would have 
thrown all responsibility on his shoulders. But he refused, and he was the last man. There 
was no comparison. When he refused, I could not go to anyone else because he was the 
only shelter. If he had refused, then there was no meaning, no purpose in going 
anywhere. I left going to anyone. He was the last. If he would have accepted me, I would 
have forgotten myself. But he refused, and he refused very rudely. The refusal became a 
shock and a challenge, and I decided that now I would not go to anyone. If this man had 
refused, then there was no one worth going to. Then I started working on my own, and 
only then did I realize by and by why he had refused. He had thrown me to myself, and 
only then did I know that he had accepted me. 



Otherwise why should he refuse?" 

This looks contradictory, but this is how the deeper dynamism of consciousness works. 
Masters are mysterious. You cannot judge them; you cannot be sure what they are doing 
unless the whole thing happens. Then only retrospectively will you be able to know what 
they were doing. Now it is impossible. On the middle path you cannot judge what is 
happening, what is being done. But one thing is certain: imitation cannot be allowed. 
Inspiration is a different thing. Through inspiration you start on the journey, not on any 
effort of copying. You move on your own path. Inspiration is just a challenge. A thirst 
arises, and then you move. 

Tantra says be inspired, but don’t become imitators. Always remember that you are your 
own goal. No one else can be, and unless you achieve that point from where you can say, 
"I have achieved my destiny and now I am fulfilled," don’t stop. Go on transcending, go 
on being in discontent, go on moving. And if you don’t make any ideal, then you can be 
enriched by everyone. The moment you become obsessed with an ideal, you are closed. If 
you become obsessed with Buddha, then Jesus is not for you, then how can Mohammed 
be for you? Then you are obsessed with an ideal; then you are trying to copy it. Then all 
the contrary ones, all the different ones are inimical in your mind. How can a follower of 
Mahavira conceive of being open to Mohammed? It is impossible. 

He is totally different. Not only different, they are contraries. They look like polar 
opposites. If you put both in your mind you will be in deep conflict, so you cannot put 
both. 

That is why followers are always enemies of others' followers. They create enmity in the 
world. A Hindu cannot conceive that Mohammed can be enlightened; a Mohammedan 
cannot conceive that Mahavira can be enlightened; a follower of Krishna cannot conceive 
that Mahavira can be enlightened, that Jesus can be enlightened. Jesus looks so sad and 
Krishna looks so blissful. Krishna’s bliss and Jesus' sadness are total opposite poles. 

Jesus' followers cannot conceive of Krishna being enlightened. So much misery in the 
world and he is playing on his flute? It looks to be too selfish. The whole world is 
suffering, and he goes on dancing with his GOPIS? 

The followers of Jesus will think this to be profane — but I say "followers." A Jesus and a 
Buddha and a Krishna can exist together without any problem, without any conflict. 
Rather, they will enjoy each other very much — but not the followers. Why? Why is this 
so? This will be so because there is a deep psychological reason. The follower is not 
concerned with Mohammed or Mahavira; he is concerned with himself. If he thinks both 
are good, he will be in difficulty. Then whom to follow and what to do? Mohammed is 
with his sword in his hand and Mahavira says that even to kill an insect means that for 
lives you will suffer. 

Mohammed is with his sword, so what to do? Mohammed goes to war, and Mahavira 
escapes from life completely. He escapes so much that he is afraid even to breathe, 
because while you breathe, many lives — many, many lives — are killed through it. He is 
afraid to breathe and Mohammed goes to war. 

How can a follower of either make accommodations for the opposite? Then his heart will 
be divided and he will be in constant conflict. To avoid this, he says that everyone else is 
wrong and only this is right. But this is his problem. This is created because he is trying 
to imitate. There is no need. If you are not an imitator, then you can taste the water of 
many rivers and many wells, and there is no problem if the taste differs. Rather, it is 



beautiful. You are enriched by this. Then you are open to Mohammed and Mahavira and 
Christ and Zarathustra and everyone. They all inspire you towards yourself. They are not 
ideals; they all help you to be yourself. They are not pointing towards themselves, they 
are pointing towards you in different ways, in different methods. They are pointing to one 
goal, and that is YOU 

Laura Huxley has written a book. The name of the book is YOU ARE NOT THE 
TARGET. But I tell you, you ARE the target of all these — of Buddha, of Mahavira, of 
Krishna, of Christ. They all indicate towards you. You are the target, you are the goal. 
Through you life is trying, striving, to achieve a unique peak. 

Be happy about it! Be grateful about it! Life is trying to achieve a unique goal through 
you, and that goal can be achieved only through you. No one else can achieve it. You are 
meant for it, you are destined for it. So don't waste time following others. But that doesn’t 
mean not to get inspired. Really, if you are not following anyone you can become 
inspired easily. If you are following, you have become dead. You will not get inspired. 
Inspiration is an openness; following is being closed. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

"YOU SPOKE OF WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY BEING ROOTED IN FREUDIAN 
CONCEPTS OF PATHOLOGY AND OF EASTERN PSYCHOLOGY USING THE 
SUPERNORMAL AS THE BASE FROM WHICH TO EVALUATE A MAN. BUT AS I 
LOOK AROUND ME IN THE MODERN WORLD, I SEE THAT MOST PEOPLE FIT 
FREUD’S CATEGORIES OF PATHOLOGY. ONE IN A MILLION FITS THE 
CATEGORY OF SUPERNORMAL AND A SMALL NUMBER ACTUALLY FIT THE 
SOCIETAL IDEAL OF NORMAL. WHY IS THERE SO MUCH PATHOLOGY 
NOWADAYS AND WHAT WOULD YOU CONSIDER TO BE THE DEFINITION OF 
NORMAL?" 

Many things will have to be understood. It is not so — it is not that very few are there 
who achieve their peaks. Many are there, but you don’t have the eyes to see them. 
Whenever you look around you, you see that which you can see. How can you see that 
which you cannot see? Your capacity to see determines many things. You hear that which 
you can hear, not that which is there. 

If a buddha passes, you may not be able to recognize. And you really were there when 
Buddha passed, but you missed him. You were there! You were there when Jesus was 
alive, but you crucified him. It is difficult to see because you see in your own ways. You 
have concepts, you have categories, you have attitudes. Through them you look at a 
Buddha and a Jesus. 

Jesus looked like a criminal to you. When Jesus was crucified he was crucified with two 
other criminals; on each side there was a thief. Three persons were crucified together, and 
Jesus was just between two thieves. Why? He was considered to be an immoral criminal 
somehow and you were there to judge. Even if Jesus comes right now, you will judge 
again in the same way because your judgment, your criteria, have not changed. 

Jesus lived and stayed with anyone and everyone. He stayed in a prostitute's house, and 
the whole village went against him. But his values were different. The prostitute came, 
washed his feet with her tears and said, "I am guilty. I am a sinner and you are my only 



hope. If you come to my home, I will be relieved of my guilt. I will become alive again. 

If Jesus could come to my house, then I am accepted." 

So Jesus went. He stayed there, but the whole town went against him. What type of man 
is he, staying with a prostitute? But for Jesus love is the value, and no one has given such 
a loving invitation ever. 

He couldn’t say no. And if Jesus had said no, he could not have been an enlightened man. 
Then he would have just been seeking after social respectability. He was NOT seeking 
after respectability. 

In another village, the whole town came to Jesus with a woman who had sinned. In the 
Old Testament it is written that if someone sins she should be stoned to death. It is not 
that HE should be, it is that SHE should be stoned to death, because only women sin; 
man never sins — because all these scriptures are written by men. And this was a great 
problem, so they asked Jesus about it. They were playing a trick, because if Jesus would 
have said, "No, don’t kill this woman, don’t be the judges," then they could say, "You are 
against the scriptures." And if Jesus would have said, "Yes, kill this woman, stone her to 
death," then they would say, "Where has gone your message 'Love your enemy’ and 
where has gone your message 'Judge ye not that ye should be not judged’?" 

So they were playing a trick. They were creating a dilemma — a logical dilemma. 
Whatsoever Jesus would have said, he would be trapped. But you cannot trap an 
enlightened man, it is impossible. It is impossible, and the more you try to trap him you 
will get trapped with him. So Jesus said, "The scripture is absolutely correct. But come 
forwards only those who have never sinned. Take these stones in your hands and murder 
this woman, but only those who have never sinned." 

The crowd started disappearing. Those who were standing in front went back — because 
who will stone this woman? 

But they became enemies of Jesus. And when I say "they," I mean you. You have always 
been here. You cannot recognize, you cannot see. You are blind! That is why you always 
feel that the world is bad and there is no enlightenment — that everyone is pathological. It 
is not so, but you can only see pathology because you are pathological. You can 
understand illness because you are ill. You cannot understand health because you have 
never been healthy. The language of health simply escapes you. 

I have heard about one Jewish mystic, Baal Shem. Someone came and asked Baal Shem, 
"Which is more significant, which is more valuable — wealth or wisdom?" 

The man was asking the question for a reason, so Baal Shem laughed and said, "Of 
course, wisdom is more significant, more valuable." 

Then the man said, "Then, Baal Shem, the second question: I always see you, the wise 
man, waiting on the wealthy. You always go to rich people's houses. I have never seen 
any wealthy man waiting on you, the wise one, and you say that wisdom is more valuable 
than wealth. Then explain this phenomenon to me." 

Baal Shem laughed and said, "Yes, wise men go to the wealthy ones because they are 
wise and they know the value of wealth, and the wealthy ones are just wealthy — simply 
wealthy and nothing else — and they cannot understand the value of wisdom. 

Of course, I go — because I understand the value of wealth. And those poor idiots? They 
are just wealthy — nothing else. They cannot understand the value of wisdom, so they 
never come to me." 



If you see a saint going to a palace, you will say, "Okay! This man is not the saint." It is 
finished because you look through your own eyes. Wealth has meaning for you. You can 
only follow a saint who renounces wealth because you are wealth obsessed. You look 
through you, and whatsoever you say is more about you than about anyone else. It is 
always about you; you are the reference. When you say that Buddha is not enlightened, 
you don't mean that. You simply mean, "For me he does not look enlightened." 

But who are you? And does his enlightenment depend in any way on your attitude, your 
approach, your standpoint? You have fixed categories of thought and you go on using 
them. To you pathology is recognizable, but enlightenment is not. And you cannot 
understand that which is higher than you — remember. You can only understand that 
which is lower than you or at the most on the same level. You cannot understand the 
higher, that is impossible. To understand the higher you will have to move higher. You 
can understand the lower. 

Look at it in this way: a madman cannot understand you. It is impossible for a madman to 
understand you; he looks through his madness. But you can understand a madman. 

He is lower than you. The normal human being can understand abnormals who have gone 
below, pathological, but he cannot understand higher ones. Even a Freud is afraid. 

Jung has written in his memoirs that once it happened to him that he wanted to analyze 
Freud's dreams. He was one of Freud's greatest disciples. They were traveling to the 
United States on a ship, so for many days they were together. One day Jung gathered 
courage. He was the most intimate disciple in those days, and he asked Freud, "I would 
like to analyze your dreams, so just tell me any dream. For many, many days we will be 
together, so I will analyze it." 

What did Freud say? Freud said, "What do you mean? If you analyze my dreams I will 
lose my authority. I cannot tell you my dreams. "He was so afraid because in his dreams 
the same pathology, the same illnesses will be revealed as he is revealing in others' 
dreams. He said, "I cannot lose my authority. I cannot tell you about my dreams." 

Freud, the greatest psychologist of this age, is prone to all the illnesses that anyone else 
is. When Jung said that "I am going to leave you," he fell from his chair and became 
unconscious. He swooned. For hours he was unconscious because he was so shocked just 
by the idea of a disciple leaving him, just by a disciple saying, "I am going to leave you." 
If you say to a buddha, "I am going to leave you," can you conceive of him falling down 
and becoming unconscious? Even with all of the ten thousand disciples leaving him, he 
will be happy — so happy that he will feel it will be good if you go. 

Why? Your psychologists are also like you. They are not from above. They have the 
same problems, so one psychologist goes to another psychologist to be analyzed. It is not 
like one doctor going to another doctor to be treated. For doctors it is okay; they can be 
forgiven. But for psychologists it seems absurd. One psychologist going to another to be 
analyzed? What does it mean? He is an ordinary man. Psychology is just a profession. 
Buddha is not in any profession, he is not an ordinary man. He has awakened to a new 
reality; he has reached to a new state of being. Now he can look from a peak. He can 
understand you, but you cannot understand him. And howsoever he tries, it is really 
impossible to make you understand him. You will go on misunderstanding him unless 
you are caught not by his words, but by his personality — unless you are caught by his 
magnetism, not by his words. Unless you become just like an iron piece and you are 
caught by his magnetism, you will not be able to understand him; you will 



misunderstand. That is why you cannot see. But the world always has its enlightened 
persons. Pathology is recognized because we are pathological, so we can see and 
understand it. 

Secondly, even if there is only one — only a single human being who has ever achieved 
enlightenment throughout human history, even if there is only one buddha, he is enough 
to show you the possibility. 

If it can happen to one human being, why can it not happen to you? If one seed can 
become a flower, then every seed has the potentiality to become a flower. You may be 
just a seed, but now you know your future. Now you are aware that much more is 
possible. 

But with the human mind the reverse is happening. It has been happening always. You 
see a cocoon and then it breaks, and then the butterfly moves. With man it seems to be 
quite the reverse. Man is bom as the butterfly, and then he enters the cocoon. Every child 
is more buddha-like than he will ever be again. Look at a child, look at the eyes. They are 
more buddha-like than any adult's eyes. The way he sits, the way he moves — the grace, 
the beauty, the living in the moment, even his anger is beautiful. It is so total, and 
whenever anything is total it is beautiful. 

Look at a child in anger jumping and screaming. Just look! Don't be concerned with 
yourself, that he is disturbing you. Just look at the phenomenon. The anger is beautiful — 
because the child is so totally in it that nothing is left behind. He IS the anger, and he is 
so authentic that nothing is being suppressed. He is not withholding, he has moved and 
become anger. Look at the child when he loves, when he welcomes you, when he comes 
near to you: he is like a buddha. But soon you will help him, the society will help him to 
enter the cocoon, and then he will die in it. 


Prom the cradle we enter into the grave immediately. That is why so much pathology is 
there — because no one is allowed to be natural. The pathology is forced. You are caged, 
imprisoned in a dead pattern, and then your spontaneous being suffers and you cannot 
come out of it. That is why so much pathology is there. This pathology is man-created — 
and the more man becomes civilized, the more pathological he becomes. So now this is a 
criterion: if in your country there are less madmen, know well that you are less civilized. 
If in your country the madmen are growing, and everyone is going insane and everyone is 
going to the psychoanalyst, know well you are the most civilized country in the world. 
When any country achieves the optimum, everyone will have become mad. Civilization 
drives you mad because it is not allowing you to be your natural self. Everything is 
suppressed, and with suppression everything is disturbed. You cannot even breathe 
naturally; anything else is out of the question. Even your breath is unnatural. You cannot 
breathe deeply because the society does not allow you deep breathing. 

Breathe deeply, because if you take deep breaths you cannot suppress your instincts. If 
you want to suppress anything, you can observe the changes in breathing in yourself. If 
you are angry and you want to suppress it, what will you do? Immediately you will stop 
breathing. 

With anger breathing goes deep, because anger will need a hot flow of blood in you, 
anger will need more oxygen. Anger will need some chemical changes within you, and 
through breathing those changes happen. So whenever you feel angry and you want to 



repress it, you will not be able to breathe naturally. You will take shallow breaths. 

Look at a child and tell him not to do something. Immediately his breathing will be 
shallow. Then he will not be able to breathe deeply, because if he takes deep breaths he 
cannot follow your commands. Then he will do whatsoever he likes to do. So no one is 
even taking deep breaths. If you take deep breaths, your sex center is massaged from 
within and the society is against this. Take slow breaths, shallow breaths. Don’t go deep, 
then the sex center is not hit! 

Really, civilized man has become incapable of deep sexual orgasm because he cannot 
take deep breaths. In the love act your breathing must be so deep that your whole body 
becomes involved. Otherwise you will not achieve orgasm, and then you will feel 
frustrated. So many people come to me and they say, "There is no pleasure in sex. We go 
on doing it like a mechanical act, and energy is only lost. After it we feel frustrated, 
depressed." The reason is not sex, the reason is only that they are not getting into it 
totally. It becomes local, so only semen is released. Then they feel weak, and nothing is 
gained through it. 


If the whole body is involved like an animal, if every cell of the body is excited and starts 
shaking, if the whole body becomes like an electric force and feeling moves, if you 
become egoless, headless, and thinking is not there, if you are the body moving in a 
rhythm, vibrating in a rhythm, then you will have a deep pleasure out of it. You will feel 
relaxed — in a certain sense, fulfilled. 

But this cannot happen because you cannot take deep breaths. You are so afraid... Look 
at the body. The body has two poles. One pole is for intake — your head is for intake. The 
upper pole is for intake of food, air, impressions, thoughts, anything. You take in from 
the upper part; this is one pole. The lower body is for release. It is not for intake, you 
cannot take anything in from the lower. The lower body is to release, to relax. You take 
from the upper, and from the lower you release it. 

But the civilized man only takes in — never releases. That creates pathology. You go 
mad. It is just like eating food and then continuing to store it, never defecating. You will 
go mad. The other pole has to be used. If someone is a miser, automatically he becomes 
constipated. Look at any miser: he will be suffering from constipation. Miserliness is a 
sort of spiritual constipation. So go on hoarding, don’t leave anything. 

Those who are against sex without knowing what they are doing are misers. 

They go on taking in food, but they will not release the sex energy. Then they will go 
mad. There is no need to release it only from the sex center. There is another possibility 
— to release it from SAHASRAR, the highest center at the top of the head. That is what 
tantra teaches. But it must be released, you cannot hoard it. Nothing can be hoarded in 
the world. The world is a movement, it is a river. Take in and give out. If you take in and 
never give out, you will become mad. 

That is what is happening: everyone is taking and no one is giving. You become afraid 
when a moment of giving comes. You want just to take — even with love. You want that 
someone should love you. The basic need is that you should love someone, then you will 
be released. If someone loves you that will not help, because then you are taking in again. 
Both of these poles must be balanced; then health happens. And that is what I call a 
nonnal being. A normal being is one whose taking in and giving out is parallel, balanced. 
He is normal. 



I call that man abnormal whose taking in is too much and whose giving out is 
unbalanced. He is not giving out at all. Even if he gives sometimes, it has to be forced. It 
is not his own. You can snatch something from him, you can force him to give, but he 
will not give. His giving out is just like an enema, it is not natural. You can force, so he 
will defecate. 

But HE is not defecating, he is not ready. It is abnormal to just go on hoarding 
everything. Then he will go mad, because the whole system is disturbed. This is 
abnormal, and supernormal is the one who gives and never takes in. 

These are three things — the abnormal one who takes in and never gives out, the normal 
one whose give and take are balanced, and the supernormal who never takes in and only 
gives. A buddha is a giver; a madman is a taker. He is at the opposite pole of a buddha. If 
both poles are balanced, you are a normal man. At least be normal, because if you cannot 
be normal you will fall down and you will become abnormal. 

That is why DANA — giving — is so much emphasized in all religions. Give! Whatsoever 
it is, give, and don’t think in terms of taking. Then you will become supernormal. But that 
is a very far-off thing. First be normal, be balanced. Whatsoever you take in, give it back 
to the world. You just be the passage. Don’t hoard. Then you will never become mad, you 
will never be neurotic, schizophrenic, psychotic or whatsoever you may call it. 

My definition of a normal man is one who is balanced — absolutely balanced. Nothing is 
retained. He takes the breath in and then he allows it to move out. The incoming breath 
and the outgoing breath are just the same — balanced. Try to be balanced, and always 
remember that you must give back that which you have received. 

You will be alive, healthy, silent, peaceful, happy. A deep rhythm will happen to you, 
and this rhythm happens through a balance of give and take. 

But we go on thinking in terms of taking in more and more. Whatsoever you take in 
without giving it out again will create disturbance, tension, suffering. You will become a 
hell. Before you take something in, always think to release something out. Have you 
observed that you always emphasize the breath that goes in? You never emphasize the 
breath that goes out. You take the breath in, and then the body throws the breath out. 
Reverse it: you will be more normal. Emphasize the outgoing breath. Throw the breath 
out as much as you can, and let the body take in. 

When you take in and you have not released, your lungs become filled with carbon 
dioxide. Then you go on taking in, and you never release the entire lungs. You go on 
forcing the carbon dioxide inwards. Then your breathing becomes shallow, and the entire 
lungs are filled with carbon dioxide. First throw it out, and forget about taking in. The 
body will take care of that itself. The body has its own wisdom, and it is more wise than 
you. Throw the breath out and forget taking in. Don’t be afraid, you are not going to die. 
The body will take in, and it will take in as much as is needed. As much as you have 
thrown out it will take in, and the balance will be there. If you take in, then you will 
disturb the balance because the hoarding mind is there. 


I have stayed in many, many houses and I see that people have collected so many things 
that they cannot live, there is no space to live — and they go on hoarding. They go on 
hoarding, and they think that someday the things will be needed. Whatsoever is not 
needed, don’t hoard it. And if something is needed more by someone else than you, it is 



better to give it. Be a giver, and you will never be pathological. All the old civilizations 
were based on DANA — on giving, and this modern civilization is based on hoarding. 
That is why more people are going abnonnal, neurotic. Everyone is asking from where to 
get, and no one is asking where to go and give, to whom to give. 

The last question: 

Question 3 

"DAILY IN EACH OF YOUR TALKS, YOU SPEAK OF AWARENESS - TOTAL 
AWARENESS, UNINTERRUPTED AWARENESS, ETCETERA. YOU ALSO SAID 
THAT IT CANNOT BE ACHIEVED BY THE MIND, BY REPEATING A THOUGHT 
- THAT IT IS TO BE FELT. BUT HOW CAN ONE FEEL UNLESS ONE ACHIEVES 
IT? WHAT IS THAT FEELING WHICH IS THE PRECURSOR OF ACHIEVEMENT? 
HOW TO IMAGINE OR PROJECT THAT WHICH HAS NOT YET HAPPENED? 
DOES THAT TOO HAPPEN BY EXCLUDING MIND? WHAT IS THE WHOLE 
PROCESS? HOW CAN IT BE MADE FEASIBLE?" 

When I say that awareness cannot be attained by mind, I mean that you cannot attain it by 
thinking about it. You can go on thinking about and about, but you will be moving in a 
circle. 

When I say that it cannot be attained by the mind, I mean that it cannot be attained by 
thinking. You have to practice it, you have to DO it. It can be attained only by doing, not 
by thinking; that is the first thing. So don't go on thinking about what awareness is, how 
to achieve it or what will be the result. Don’t go on thinking; start doing it. 

When walking on the street, walk with awareness. It is difficult and you go on forgetting, 
but don’t be afraid. Whenever you remember again, be alert. Take every step with full 
alertness, knowingly, remaining with the step, not allowing the mind to move somewhere 
else. While eating, eat; chew with awareness. Whatsoever you are doing, don’t do it 
mechanically — and that is different. And when I say that it can be felt only, the meaning 
is this: for example, I can raise my hand mechanically, but then I can also raise my hand 
with full alertness. My mind is conscious that my hand is being raised. Do it, try it — 
once mechanically and then with alertness. You will feel the change. The quality changes 
immediately. 

Walk with alertness, and you walk differently; a different grace comes to your walking. 
You move more slowly, more beautifully. If you walk mechanically — only because you 
know how to walk and there is no need to be alert, then the walking is ugly, there is no 
grace in it. Do whatsoever you are doing with alertness, and feel the difference. 

When I say "feel," I mean observe. First do it mechanically and then with awareness, and 
feel the difference. And you will be able to feel the difference. 

For example, if you eat with awareness, then you cannot eat more than is needed by the 
body. People go on coming to me and they say, "Put us on a diet. My weight is constantly 
increasing, the body is constantly hoarding. Put us on a diet." 

I tell them, "Don’t think of diet, think of consciousness. By dieting nothing will happen. 
You cannot do it. You will do it one day and the next day it will go. You cannot continue 
it. Rather, eat with awareness." 

The quality changes. If you eat with awareness, you will chew more. With unconscious, 
mechanical habits, you simply go on pushing things into your stomach. You are not 



chewing at all, you are just stuffing. Then there is no pleasure, and because there is no 
pleasure you need more food in order to get the pleasure. There is no taste, so you need 
more food. 

Just be alert and see what happens. If you are alert, you will chew more, you will feel the 
taste more, you will feel the pleasure of eating, and much more time will be taken. If you 
take half an hour to eat your meal, then by taking the same quantity of a meal with full 
awareness you will need one and a half hours — thrice the time. In half an hour you will 
have eaten only one-third of the quantity, and you will feel more fulfilled; you will have 
enjoyed the meal more. 

And when the body enjoys, it tells you when to stop. When the body has not enjoyed at 
all, it never says when to stop, so you go on. Then the body becomes dull. You never 
hear what the body is saying. 

You are eating without being there; that creates the problem. Be there, and every process 
will be slowed down. The body will itself say, "No more!" And when the body says it, 
that is the right moment. If you are aware, you cannot trespass the body's order. You will 
stop. So allow your body to say something. The body is saying things every moment, but 
you are not there to hear it. Be alert and you will hear it. 

And when I say, "feel it," I know it is difficult. How can you feel awareness without 
being aware? I am not saying that you can feel Buddha's enlightenment right now, but 
one has to start somewhere. You may not get the whole ocean, but a drop — just a drop — 
will give you the taste, and the taste is the same. If even for a single moment you become 
aware, you have tasted buddhahood. It is momentary, a glimpse of it, but now you know 
more. And this will never happen to you through thinking; it will happen only through 
feeling. 

The emphasis is on feeling because the emphasis is on a "lived" experience. Thinking is 
false, you can go on thinking about love and creating theories. You can even get a 
doctorate on the thesis of love, on what love is, and without ever being in love. 

You may not know what love is; you may have never felt it. You can grow in knowledge 
without in any way growing in being. And these are two different dimensions. You can 
go on growing in knowledge. Your head will go on growing bigger and bigger, but you 
will remain the same tiny self. 

Then nothing is growing really — only accumulation. When you start feeling things, you 
grow, your being grows. And one has to start somewhere, so start! There will be errors, 
there are bound to be. You will go on forgetting, it is natural. But don’t get frustrated, 
don’t throw the effort away saying, "I cannot do it." You CAN do it! The same possibility 
exists in you that existed in Jesus or Buddha. You are the seed; you are not lacking 
anything at all. You are just an arrangement, you are just a chaotic whole; everything is 
there. You can become a buddha, but a reorganization of your qualities is needed. 

Right now you are chaotic because there is no arrangement. The arrangement comes in 
when you start being aware. Just by your being aware things start falling in line, and this 
chaos that you are becomes a symphony. 


THE END. 



Chapter 49: Conscious doing 


IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE THE ENTIRE SKY 
ENDLESSLY CLEAR ENTER SUCH CLARITY. 

SHAKTI, 

SEE ALL SPACE AS IF ALREADY ABSORBED IN YOUR OWN HEAD 
IN THE BRILLIANCE. 

WAKING, SLEEPING, DREAMING, KNOW YOU AS LIGHT. 

AS I LOOK IN YOUR EYES I never see you there — as if you are absent. You exist 
absently, and this is the core of all suffering. You can be alive without being at all 
present, and if you are not present your existence will become a boredom. And this is 
what has happened. So when I look in your eyes I don’t find you there. You have yet to 
come, you have yet to be. The situation is there, and the possibility is there — you can be 
there any moment — but yet you are not. 

To become aware of this absence is to begin the journey towards meditation, towards 
transcendent. If you are aware that somehow you are missing... you exist but you don't 
know why, you don’t know how, you don’t know even who exists within you. This 
unawareness creates all suffering, because, unknowingly, whatsoever you do will bring 
suffering. It is not what you do that is basic; it is whether you do it with your presence or 
with your absence that is significant. 

Whatsoever you do, if you can do it with your total presence, your life will become 
ecstatic; it will be a bliss. If you do something without your presence there, absently, 
your life will be a suffering — bound to be. 

Hell means your absence. 

So there are two types of seekers: one type of seeker is always in search of what to do. 
That seeker is on a wrong path, because the question is not of doing at all. The question is 
of being — what to be, how to be. So never think in terms of action and doing, because 
whatsoever you do, if you are absent it will be meaningless. 

Whether you move in the world or you live in a monastery; whether you function in the 
crowd or you move to an isolated spot in the Himalayas will make no difference. You 
will be absent here and you will be absent there, and whatsoever you do — in the crowd 
or in the isolation — will bring suffering. If you are not there, then whatsoever you do is 
wrong. 

The second type, and the right type of seeker, is not in search of what to do, he is in 
search of how to be. The first thing is how to be. 

One man came to Gautam Buddha. He was filled with much compassion, with much 
sympathy, and he asked Gautam Buddha, 'What can I do to help the world?’ 

Buddha is reported to have laughed and said to the man, 'You cannot do anything 
because you are not. How can you do anything when you are not? So don’t think of the 
world. Don’t think of how to serve the world, how to help others.’ Buddha said, 'First be 
— and if you are, then whatsoever you do becomes a service, it becomes a prayer, it 
becomes compassion. 

Your presence is the turning point. Your being is the revolution.’ 

So these are the two paths: the path of action and the path of meditation. They are 



diametrically opposite. The path of action is basically concerned with you as a doer. It 
will try to change your actions; it will try to change your character, your morals, your 
relationships, but never you. The path of meditation is diametrically opposite. It is not 
concerned with your actions; it is directly and immediately concerned with you. What 
you do is irrelevant. What you are is relevant. And that is basic and primary, because all 
action springs from you. 

Remember, your actions can be changed and modified, can even be replaced by 
diametrically opposite actions, but they are not going to change you. Any outward 
change will not bring the inner revolution, because the outward is superficial and the 
innennost core remains untouched; by what you do it remains untouched. But the vice 
versa brings the revolution: if the innermost core is different, the surface automatically 
changes. So think a basic question; only then can we enter these techniques of 
meditation. 

Don’t be concerned with what you are doing. That may be a trick, that maya be a device 
to escape from the real problem. For example, you are violent. You can make every effort 
to be non-violent, thinking that by being non-violent you will become religious; by 
becoming non-violent you will come closer to the divine. 

You are cruel, and you may make every effort to be compassionate. 

You can do it, and nothing will change and you will remain the same. Your cruelty will 
become a part of your compassion — and that is more dangerous. Your violence will 
become a part of your non-violence — that is more subtle. You will be violently non-v 
iolent. Your non-violence will have all the madness of violence, and through your 
compassion you will be cruel. 

You can even kill through your compassion; people have killed. There are so many 
religious wars — they are fought in the mood of compassion. You can kill very 
compassionately, very non-violently; lovingly you can kill and murder, because you are 
killing for the sake of the person you are killing. You are killing him for himself, for his 
own sake, to help him. 

You can change your actions, and this effort to change the actions may be just a device to 
escape the basic change. The basic change is this — first you must be. You must become 
more alert, more conscious of your being, only then a presence comes to you. 

You never feel yourself, and even sometimes when you feel, you feel through others — 
through excitement, through stimulation, through reaction. Someone else is needed, and 
via someone else you can feel yourself. This is absurd. Alone, without excitement, with 
no one there to become a mirror, you fall in sleep, you get bored. 

You never feel yourself. There is no presence. You live absently. 

This absent existence is the non-religious mind. To become filled with your own 
presence, with the light of your own being, is to become religious. So remember this as a 
basic point: that my concern is not with your actions. What you do is irrelevant. What 
you are — absent, present, aware, unaware — that's my concern. And these techniques we 
will enter are techniques to make you more present, to bring you here and now. 

Either someone else is needed for you to feel yourself, or the past is needed — through the 
past, through past memories, you can feel your identity. Or the future is needed — you 
can project in your dreams. You can project your ideals, future lives, moksha. Either you 
need past memories to feel that you are, or you need a future projection, or someone else, 
but you alone are never enough. This is the disease, and unless you alone become 



enough, nothing will be enough for you. And once you alone have become enough unto 
yourself, you have become victorious, the struggle is over. Now there will be no suffering 
any more. A point of no return has come. 

Beyond this point there is beatitude, eternal bliss. Before this point you are bound to 
suffer, but the whole suffering, strangely, is your own doing. It is a miracle that you 
create your own suffering. No one else is creating it. 

If someone else is creating it then it is difficult to go beyond it. If the world is creating it 
then what can you do? But because you can do, it means no one else is creating your 
suffering — it is your own nightmare. And these are the basic elements of it. 

The first thing: you go on thinking that you are, you believe that you are. This is simply a 
belief. You have never encountered yourself, you have never come face to face with 
yourself; you have never met yourself, there has been no meeting. You simply believe 
that you are. Throw this belief totally. Know well that you are yet to be, that you are not, 
because with this false belief you will never be able to transfonn. On this false belief 
your whole life will become false. 

Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, 'Don't ask me what to do. You cannot do anything, 
because to do something first you will be needed. And you are not there, so who will do 
it? You can think about doing, but you cannot do anything.’ 

These techniques are to help you, to bring you back; to help you to create a situation in 
which you can meet yourself. Much will have to be destroyed — all that is wrong, all that 
is false. Before the real arises the false will have to leave; it must cease. And these are the 
false notions — that you are. These are the false notions — that you are a soul, atma, you 
are Brahma. Not that you are not, but these notions are false. 


Gurdjieff had to insist that there is no soul in you. Against all the traditions he insisted, 
'Man has no soul. Soul is simply a possibility — it can be, it may not be. It has to be 
achieved. You are simply a seed.’ 

And this emphasis is good. The possibility is there, the potentiality is there, but it is not 
yet actual. And we go on reading the Gita and the Upanishads and the Bible, and we go 
on feeling that we are the soul — the seed thinking that it is the tree. The tree is hidden 
there, but it is yet to be uncovered. And it is good to remember that you may remain a 
seed, and you may die a seed — because the tree cannot come, the tree cannot sprout by 
itself. You have to do something consciously about it, because only through 
consciousness it grows. 

There are two types of growth. One is unconscious, natural growth: if the situation is 
there, the thing will grow. But the soul, the atma, the innermost being, the divine within 
you, is a different type of growth altogether. It is only through consciousness that it 
grows. It is not natural, it is supernatural. 

Left to nature itself it will not grow; just left to evolution it will never evolve. You have 
to do something consciously, you have to make a conscious effort about it, because only 
through consciousness it grows. Once the consciousness is focused there, the growth 
happens. These techniques are to make you more conscious. 


Now we will enter the techniques. 



The first technique: 


IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE 
THE ENTIRE SKY 
ENDLESSLY CLEAR, 

ENTER SUCH CLARITY. 

IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE THE ENTIRE SKY ENDLESSLY CLEAR, ENTER 
SUCH CLARITY. 

Mind is confusion; there is no clarity. And mind is always crowded, always cloudy; never 
the open sky, cloudless, empty. Mind cannot be that. You cannot make your mind clear; 
it is not the nature of the mind to be so. Mind will remain unclear. If you can leave the 
mind behind, if you can suddenly transcend the mind and come out of it, clarity will 
happen to you. You can be clear, but not the mind. There is not such a thing as a clear 
mind; never has been and never will be. Mind means the unclarity, the confusion. 

Try to understand the structure of the mind, and then this technique will be clear to you. 
What is mind? A continuous process of thought, a continuous procession of thoughts — 
associated, non-associated, relevant, irrelevant — many multi-dimensional impressions 
gathered from everywhere. The whole life is a gathering, a gathering of the dust. And this 
goes on and on. 

A child is bom. A child is clear because the mind is not there. The moment mind appears, 
the unclarity, the confusion enters. A child is clear, a clarity, but he will have to gather 
knowledge, information, culture, religion, conditionings — necessary, useful. 

He will have to gather many things from everywhere, from many sources — opposite, 
contradictory sources. From thousands and thousands of sources he will gather. Then the 
mind will become a market-place, a crowd, and because of so many sources, confusion is 
bound to be there. And whatsoever you gather, nothing is certain, because knowledge is 
always a growing affair. 

I remember, someone related an anecdote to me. He was a great searcher, and he told me 
this about his professor who taught him for five years in a medical college. The professor 
was a great scholar of his subject. The last thing he did was to gather his students and tell 
them, ' One thing more I have to teach you. Whatsoever I have taught you is only fifty 
percent correct, and the remaining fifty percent is absolutely wrong. But the trouble, is, I 
don’t know which fifty percent is correct and which fifty percent is incorrect — I don’t 
know.’ 

The whole edifice of knowledge is such. Nothing is certain, no one knows, everyone is 
groping. Through groping we create systems, and there are thousands and thousands of 
systems. Hindus say something, Christians say something else, Mohammedans still 
something else — all contradictory, all contradicting each other; no agreement, no 
certainty — and all these sources are the sources for your mind. You collect: your mind 
becomes a junk-yard; confusion is bound to be there. 

Only a person who doesn’t know much can be certain. The more you know, the more 
uncertain you will become. 

People, primitive people, were more certain and apparently appeared to be more clear. 
There was no clarity — simply unawareness of facts which could contradict them. If the 
modern mind is more confused, the reason is that the modern knows more. If you know 



more you will be more confused, because now you have more knowledge, and the more 
you know, the more uncertain you become. Only idiots can be certain, only idiots can be 
dogmatic, only idiots will never hesitate. The more you know, the more the earth is taken 
away from your feet, the more hesitant you become. What I mean to say is, the more the 
mind grows, the more you will know the nature of the mind is confusion. 

When I say only idiots can be certain, I don’t mean that a Buddha is an idiot — because he 
is not uncertain. Remember the difference. He is not certain, he is not uncertain — he is 
simply clear. With the mind, uncertainty; with the idiotic mind, certainty. With no mind 
both disappear — certainty and uncertainty. 

Buddha is a clarity, a space, open space. He is not certain — there is nothing to be certain. 
He is not uncertain, because there is nothing to be uncertain. Only one who is seeking 
certainty can be uncertain. Mind is always uncertain and always seeking certainty; 
always confused and always seeking clarity. 

A Buddha is one who has dropped the mind; and with the mind all confusion, all 
certainty, all uncertainty, everything is dropped. 

Look at it in this way: your consciousness is just like the sky and your mind is just like 
the clouds. The sky remains untouched by the clouds. They come and go; no scar is left 
behind. The sky remains virgin: no record, no footprints, nothing of the clouds, no 
memory. They come and they go; the sky remains undisturbed. This is the case within 
you also: the consciousness remains undisturbed. Thoughts come and go, minds evolve 
and disappear. And don’t think that you have one mind; you have many minds, it is a 
crowd. Your minds go on changing. 

You are a communist, so you have a certain type of mind. You can leave it and you can 
become anti-communist. Then you have a different mind; not only different, quite the 
opposite. You can go on changing your minds just like your dress. And you go on 
changing. You may not be aware of it — these clouds come and go. Clarity can be 
achieved if you become aware of the sky; if your focus changes. You are focused on the 
clouds if you are unfocused on the sky. Unfocus on the clouds and focus on the sky. 

This technique says: 

IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE 
THE ENTIRE SKY 
ENDLESSLY CLEAR, 

ENTER SUCH CLARITY. 

Meditate on the sky; a summer sky with no clouds, endlessly empty and clear, nothing 
moving in it, in its total virginity. 

Contemplate on it, meditate on it, and enter this clarity. Become this clarity, this space- 
like clarity. 

If you meditate on open unclouded sky, suddenly you will feel that the mind is 
disappearing, the mind is dropping away. There will be gaps. Suddenly you will become 
aware that it is as if the clear sky has entered in you also. There will be intervals. For a 
time being, thoughts will cease — as if the traffic has ceased and there is no one moving. 
In the beginning it will be only for moments, but even those moments are transfonning. 
By and by the mind will slow down, bigger gaps will appear. For minutes together there 



will be no thought, no cloud. And when there IS no thought, no cloud, the outer sky and 
the inner become one, because only the thought is the barrier, only the thought creates the 
wall; only because of the thought the outer is outer and the inner is inner. When the 
thought is not there, the outer and the inner lose their boundaries, they become one. 
Really, boundaries never existed there. They appeared only because of the thought, the 
barrier. 

To meditate on the sky is beautiful. Just lie down so you forget the earth; just lie down on 
your back on any lonely beach, on any ground, and just look at the sky. But a clear sky 
will be helpful — unclouded, endless. And just looking, staring at the sky, feel the clarity 
of it — the uncloudedness, the boundless expanse — and then enter that clarity, become 
one with it. 

Feel as if you have become the sky, the space. 

In the beginning, if you only meditate on the open sky, not doing anything else, intervals 
will start appearing, because whatsoever you see enters you. Whatsoever you see stirs 
you within; whatsoever you see is pictured, reflected. 

You see a building. You cannot simply see it; something immediately starts happening 
within you. You see a man, a woman; you see a car — you see anything. It is not just 
outside, something has started within, the reflection, and you have started reacting to it. 

So everything you see moulds you, makes you, modifies you, creates you. The without is 
constantly related with the within. 

To look into the open sky is good. Just the expanse is beautiful, with no boundaries there. 
Your own boundaries will disappear, because the no-boundary sky will reflect within 
you. And if you can stare without blinking your eyes it will be good. If you stare without 
blinking your eyes... because if you blink your eyes your thought-process will continue. 
Stare without blinking the eyes. Stare in the emptiness, move into that emptiness, feel 
that you have become one with it, and any moment the sky will enter within you. 

First you enter into the sky and then the sky enters you. And there is a meeting: the inner 
sky meeting the outer sky. In that meeting is realization. In that meeting there is no mind, 
because the meeting can happen only when the mind is not there. 

In that meeting you are for the first time not your mind. There is no confusion. Confusion 
cannot exist without the mind. There is no misery, because misery also cannot exist 
without the mind. 

Have you observed this fact anytime or not — that misery cannot exist without your 
mind? You cannot be miserable without your mind. The very source is not there. Who 
will supply you with this misery? Who will make you miserable? And the same is true 
from the opposite direction also: you cannot be miserable without your mind and you 
cannot be blissful with your mind. The mind can never be the source of bliss. 

So if the inner and outer sky meet and mind disappears, even for a moment, you will be 
filled with a new life. The quality of that life is absolutely different. It is life eternal, 
uncontaminated by death, uncontaminated by any fear. In that meeting you will be here 
and now, in the present — because past belongs to thoughts, future belongs to thoughts. 
Past and future are part of your mind. Present is existence — it is not part of your mind. 
This moment doesn’t belong to your mind. The moment that has gone belongs; the 
moment that has to come belongs to your mind. This moment never belongs to you. 
Rather, you belong to this moment. You exist here, right now here. Your mind exists 
somewhere else, always somewhere else. 



Unload yourself. 

I was reading one Sufi mystic. 


He was travelling on a lonely path, the way was deserted, and he saw a fanner with his 
bullock-cart. The cart was stuck in mud. The road was rough. The farmer was carrying a 
big load of apples in his bullock-cart, but somewhere on the rough road the tailboard of 
the wagon became unfastened and the apples were scattered. But he was not aware of it; 
the farmer was not aware of it. 

When the cart got stuck in the mud, first he tried to bring it out somehow, but all efforts 
were in vain, so he thought, 'Now I must unload my cart, then maybe I can pull it out.’ He 
looked back. Hardly a dozen apples were left — the load was already unloaded. You can 
feel his misery. The Sufi reports in his memoirs that that exasperated fanner made a 
remark. He said, 'Stuck, by heck! Stuck! — and not a damn thing to unload!’ The only 
possibility was that if he could unload the cart it could come out; but now — nothing to 
unload! 

Fortunately you are not stuck in such a way. You can unload — your cart is too much 
loaded. You can unload the mind, and the moment the mind is not there, you fly; you 
become capable of flying. 

This technique — to look into the clarity of the sky and to become one with it — is one of 
the most practised. Many traditions have used this. And particularly for the modern mind 
it will be very useful, because on earth nothing is left. On earth nothing is left to meditate 
on — only the sky. 

If you look all around, everything is man-made, everything is limited, with a boundary, a 
limitation. Only the sky is still, fortunately, open to meditate on. 

Try this technique, it will be helpful, but remember three things. One: don’t blink — stare. 
Even if your eyes start to feel pain and tears come down, don’t be worried. Even those 
tears will be a part of unloading; they will be helpful. Those tears will make your eyes 
more innocent and fresh — bathed. You just go on staring. 

The second point: don’t think about the sky, remember. You can start thinking about the 
sky. You can remember many poems, beautiful poems about the sky — then you will miss 
the point. You are not to think 'about' it — you are to enter it, you are to be one with it — 
because if you start thinking about it, again a barrier is created. You are missing the sky 
again, and you are again enclosed in your own mind. Don’t think about the sky. Be the 
sky. Just stare and move into the sky, and allow the sky to move in you. If you move into 
the sky, the sky will move into you immediately. 

How can you do it? How will you do it — this moving into the sky? Just go on staring 
further away and further away. Go on staring — as if you are trying to find the boundary. 
Move deep. Move as much as you can. That very movement will break the barrier. And 
this method should be practised for at least forty minutes; less than that will not do, will 
not be of much help. 


When you really feel that you have become one, then you can close the eyes. When the 
sky has entered in you, you can close the eyes. You will be able to see it within also. 
Then there is no need. So only after forty minutes, when you feel that the oneness has 
happened and there is a communion and you have become part of it and the mind is no 



more, close the eyes and remain in the sky within. 

The clarity will help the third point: ENTER SUCH CLARITY. The clarity will help — 
the uncontaminated, unclouded sky. Just be aware of the clarity that is all around you. 
Don't think about it; just be aware of the clarity, the purity, the innocence. These words 
are not to be repeated. You have to feel them rather than think. And once you stare into 
the sky the feeling will come, because it is not on your part to imagine these things — 
they are there. If you stare they will start happening to you. 

The sky is pure, the purest thing in existence. Nothing makes it impure. Worlds come and 
go, earths are there and then disappear, and the sky remains pure. The purity is there. You 
need not project it; you are simply to feel it — to be vulnerable to it so you can feel it — 
and the clarity is there. Allow the sky to happen to you. You cannot force it; you can only 
allow it to happen. 

All meditations are really allowing something to happen. Never think in terms of 
aggression, never think in tenns of forcing something. 

You cannot force anything. Really, because you have been trying to force, you have 
created all misery. Nothing can be forced, but you can allow things to happen. Be 
feminine. Allow things to happen. Be passive. The sky is absolutely passive: not doing 
anything at all, just remaining there. Just be passive and remain under the sky — 
vulnerable, open, feminine, with no aggression on your part — and then the sky will 
penetrate you. 

IN SUMMER WHEN YOU SEE 
THE ENTIRE SKY 
ENDLESSLY CLEAR, 

ENTER SUCH CLARITY. 

But if it is not summer what will you do? If the sky is clouded, not clear, then close your 
eyes and just enter the inner sky. Just close your eyes, and if you see some thoughts, just 
see them as if they are floating clouds in the sky. Be aware of the background, the sky, 
and be indifferent to thoughts. 

We are too much concerned with thoughts and never aware of the gaps. One thought 
passes, and before another enters there is a gap — in that gap the sky is there. Then, 
whenever there is no thought, what is there? The emptiness is there. So if the sky is 
clouded — it is not summer-time and the sky is not clear — close your eyes, focus your 
mind on the background, the inner sky in which thoughts come and go. Don’t pay much 
attention to thoughts; pay attention to the space in which they move. 

For example, we are sitting in this room. 

I can look at this room in two ways. Either I can look at you, so that I am indifferent to 
the space you are in, the roominess, the room you are in — I look at you, I focus my mind 
on you who are here, and not on the room in which you are — or, I can change my focus: 

I can look into the room, and I become indifferent to you. You are there, but my 
emphasis, my focus, is on the room. Then the total perspective changes. 

Just do this in the inner world. Look at the space. Thoughts are moving in it: be 
indifferent to them, don’t pay any attention to them. They are there; note it down that they 
are there, moving. The traffic is moving in the street. Look at the street and be indifferent 
to the traffic. Don't look to see who is passing; just know that something is passing and 



be aware of the space in which it is passing. Then the summer sky happens within. 

There is no need to wait for the summer, because our minds are such that they can find 
any excuse. They will say, 'Summer is not here, and even if it is summer, the sky is not 
clear.’ 

The second technique: 

SHAKTI, 

SEE ALL SPACE AS IF 

ALREADY ABSORBED IN YOUR OWN HEAD 
IN THE BRILLIANCE. 

SEE ALL SPACE AS IF ALREADY ABSORBED IN YOUR OWN HEAD IN THE 
BRILLIANCE. Close your eyes for this technique. When you do it, close your eyes and 
feel as if the whole space is absorbed in your own head. 

It will be difficult in the beginning. It is one of the advanced techniques, so it will be 
good to proceed towards it in steps. Do one thing. If you want to do this technique, start 
in steps. 

First: while going to sleep, when just ready to sleep, lie down on your bed, close your 
eyes and feel where your feet are. If you are six feet tall, or five feet tall, just feel where 
your feet are, the demarcation. Then just imagine one thing: you have become six inches 
longer. Your height has lengthened, it has become six inches more. Just with closed eyes 
feel this. In imagination, feel that your height has become six inches more. 

Then the second step: feel your head, where it is, just inside, and then feel that your head 
has also become six inches longer. When you can feel this, everything will be easy. Then 
you make it more. You feel that you have become twelve feet all; or, that you have filled 
the whole room. Now in your imagination you are touching the walls — you have filled 
the whole room. Then, by steps, feel that the whole house has come within you. And 
once you know the feel, it is very easy. If you can grow six inches taller, everything is 
easy then. If you can feel that you are not five foot, but you are five foot six, then nothing 
is difficult; this technique will be easy. 

For three days go on feeling that; then for three days more, feel that you have filled the 
whole room. 

It is just a training of imagination. Then for three days the whole house is within you; 
then for three days you have become the sky. Then this technique will be very easy. 

SHAKTI, 

SEE ALL SPACE AS IF 

ALREADY ABSORBED IN YOUR OWN HEAD 
IN THE BRILLIANCE. 

Then you can close your eyes and feel that the whole sky, the whole space, is absorbed 
by your head. The moment you can feel this, the mind disappears, because the mind 
needs a very narrow space. With such vastness the mind cannot exist; it simply 
disappears. In such vastness mind is impossible. Mind can only be narrow, limited. In 
such infinite space there is no place for the mind to exist. 



This technique is good. Suddenly the mind explodes and the space is there. Within a 
three month period you can feel this. Your whole life will be different. But grow towards 
it in steps, because sometimes through this technique people become crazy, they lose 
balance. It is so tremendous, the impact is so tremendous — suddenly if you become 
aware that your head has absorbed the whole space, and then you see stars and moons 
moving within you, the whole universe, you may become dizzy. In many traditions this 
technique is used very cautiously. 

One of the Indian mystics of this century, Ramteerth, used this technique, and many 
suspect, many of those who know suspect that because of this technique he committed 
suicide. 

For him it was not a suicide, because for him — one who has known that the whole space 
has come within him — suicide is impossible, it cannot happen. No one is there to commit 
suicide. But for others, for those who were watching from outside, it was a suicide. 

He started feeling that the whole universe was moving within him, within his head. His 
disciples thought that he was talking poetry. Then they started feeling that he had gone 
mad, because he started claiming that he was the universe and everything was within 
him. And then one day he just jumped from a mountain cliff into a river. Before jumping 
he wrote a beautiful poem saying, 'I have become the universe. Now I feel this body as a 
burden, unnecessary, so I give it back. Now no boundary is needed. I have become the 
unbounded Brahma.’ 

Someone with a psychiatric training will think that he has gone mad, it is just neurosis, 
but one who knows deeper dimensions of human consciousness will say he has become a 
mukta, an enlightened one. But to the ordinary mind it is a suicide. 

With such techniques there is danger. That’s why I say grow towards them gradually, 
because you don’t know — anything is possible. Sometimes you are not aware of your 
own potentiality, sometimes you don’t know how ready you are, and something can 
happen. So do it in steps. 

First try your imagination with small things: just that the body has become bigger or has 
become smaller. 

You can go both the ways. You are five feet six: feel you have become four feet, three 
feet, two feet, one foot; you have become just a seed. This is just a training; just a 
training so that you can feel whatsoever you want to feel. Your inner mind is absolutely 
free to feel; nothing can hinder it from feeling anything. It is your feeling. You can grow 
and you can be small. Suddenly you become aware that it is you. 

And if you can work well through this, you can come out of your body very easily. If you 
can grow and become small through imagination, you are capable of coming out of your 
body. You simply imagine that you are standing outside of your body and you will stand 
— but not immediately. 

First work with small steps, and then when you feel that you are at ease and you don’t 
become scared, then feel that you have filled the whole room — actually you will feel the 
touch of the walls. And then feel that the whole house has come within you — you will 
feel it within you. And then go on. Then, by and by, let the sky be felt in the head. And 
once you feel the sky in your head, absorbed there, the mind simply disappears. It has no 
business to do there. 

For this technique it is good to be with someone: to be with a teacher, or to be with a 
friend. Don’t do it alone. Someone must be there to take care of you, to watch you. This is 



a school method. Where many people are working in a school, it is very easy, less 
harmful, less dangerous — because sometimes when the sky explodes within, for many 
days you may not become aware of your body. 

You may not come out, you may be so absorbed in the feeling, because time disappears; 
you cannot feel how much time has elapsed. The body disappears, you cannot feel the 
body. You become the sky. Someone must take care of your body; very loving care will 
be needed. 

So with a master, or with a group, this technique is less harmful and less dangerous. And 
with a group that knows what is possible — what can happen and what should be done... 
because if in such a state of mind you are suddenly awakened, you may go mad, because 
time will be needed for your mind to come back. If suddenly brought back to the body, 
your nervous system cannot bear it. It is not made for that. It has to be trained. So don't 
do it alone. You can do it in a group, with a few friends, in a lonely place. And do it in 
steps, not suddenly. 

The third technique: 

WAKING, 

SLEEPING, 

DREAMING, 

KNOW YOU AS LIGHT. 

WAKING, SLEEPING, DREAMING, KNOW YOU AS LIGHT. First start with waking. 
Yoga and Tantra divide the life of man’s mind into three divisions — the life of the mind, 
remember. They divide mind into three divisions: waking, sleeping, dreaming. These are 
not the divisions of your consciousness, these are the divisions of your mind, and the 
consciousness is the fourth. 

They have not given any name to it in the east; they call it simply the fourth, turiya. 

These three have names. These are the clouds, they can be named — a waking cloud, a 
sleeping cloud, a dreaming cloud. They are all clouds, and the space in which they move 
— the sky — in unnamed, left simply as the fourth. 

Western psychology has only recently become aware of the dreaming dimension. Really, 
only with Freud, dreaming became important. But with Hindus, this is one of the most 
ancient concepts: that you cannot really know a man unless you know what he is doing in 
his dreams. Because whatsoever he is doing in his waking hours is more or less bound to 
be acting, false, because in the waking state of his mind he is forced to do many things. 
He is not free. The society is there, rules are there, moralities are there. He is constantly 
struggling with his own desires: suppressing them, modifying them, moulding them in 
the mould the society allows. And the society never allows you to be your total being; it 
chooses. That is what a culture means — culture means a choice. 

Every culture is a conditioning: a choice of certain things and a denial of certain things. 
Your total being is not accepted anywhere; it is not — nowhere. Certain aspects are 
accepted here, certain aspects are accepted there, in this country or that, but nowhere is 
the total human being accepted. So the waking consciousness is bound to be false, 
pseudo, artificial, forced. You are not real there — just actors; not spontaneous — 
manipulated. 



ONly in dreams are you free; only in dreams are you authentically yourself. 

You can do whatsoever you like in your dreams. No one is concerned; you are alone. No 
one can penetrate, no one can look into your dreams. And no one is bothered: what you 
do in your dreams is your business, no one is concerned. They are absolutely private. 
Because they are absolutely private and related to no one, you can be free. So unless your 
dreams are known, your real face cannot be known. Hindus have been aware of it: 
dreams must be penetrated. But they are still clouds — private of course, freer, but still 
clouds, and one has to go beyond them also. 

These are the three states: waking and sleeping and dreaming. Dreaming became very 
primary with Freud. Now sleeping has been touched. Now many sleep labs are working 
in the west to know what sleep is, because it seems to be very strange that we don’t know 
what sleep is. What really happens to you in sleep is not yet known scientifically. 

And if we cannot know what sleep is, it will be difficult to know what man is, because 
for one third of his life he will be sleeping. One third of your life! If you are going to live 
for sixty years, for twenty years you will be sleeping. It is such a major part. What are 
you doing while you are asleep? Something mysterious is going on, and it is so essential 
that life is not possible without it. 

Something deep is happening, but you are not aware. 

Waking, you are a different person; dreaming, you are again a different person. In deep 
sleep, you are again a different person. You can't remember even your name while deep 
asleep. You don’t know whether you are a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Hindu. Out 
of your deep sleep you can't answer who you are; rich or poor — no identity, no image. 

In the waking layer you exist with the society. In the dreaming layer you exist with your 
own desires. In deep sleep you exist with nature, deep in the womb of nature. And yoga 
and Tantra say that only beyond these three you exist in Brahma, in the cosmic whole. So 
these three must be crossed, passed, transcended. 

There is one difference. The western psychology is now interested in studying these 
states. Eastern seekers were interested in these states, but not in studying them. They 
were interested only in how to transcend them. This technique is a transcendental 
technique. 

WAKING, 

SLEEPING, 

DREAMING, 

KNOW YOU AS LIGHT. 

Very difficult. You have to start with waking. How can you remember in dreams? Can 
you create a dream consciously? Can you manipulate a dream? Can you have your own 
dreams of your own wishes? You cannot. How impotent man is! You cannot even create 
a dream of your own. They too happen to you; you are helpless. 

But there are certain techniques through which dreams can be created, and those 
techniques are very helpful in transcending, because if you can create, then you can 
transcend. But one has to start with waking. 

While waking — moving, eating, working — remember yourself as light. As if in your 
heart a flame is burning, and your body is nothing but the aura around the flame. Imagine 
it. In your heart a flame is burning, and your body is nothing but a light aura around the 



flame; your body is just a light around the flame. Allow it to go deep within your mind 
and your consciousness. Imbibe it. 

It will take time, but if you go on thinking about it, feeling it, imagining it, within a 
certain period you will be able to remember it the whole day. While awake, moving on 
the street, you are a flame moving. No one else will be aware of it in the beginning, but if 
you continue it, after three months others will also become aware. And only when others 
become aware can you then be at ease. Don't say to anyone. Simply imagine a flame, and 
your body as just the aura around it. Not a physical body, but an electric body. Go on 
doing it. 

If you persist, within three months, or somewhere near about then, others will become 
aware that something has happened to you. They will feel a subtle light around you. 

When you come near them, they will feel a different warmth. If you touch them, they will 
feel a fiery touch. 

They will become aware that something strange is happening to you. Don't say to anyone. 
When others become aware, then you can feel at ease, and then you can enter the second 
step, not before it. 

The second step is to take it into dreaming. Now you can take it into dreaming. It has 
become a reality. Now it is not an imagination. Through imagination you have uncovered 
a reality. It is real. Everything consists of light. You are light — unaware of the fact — 
because every particle of matter is light. 

The scientists say it consists of electrons. It is the same thing. Light is the source of all. 
You are also condensed light: through imagination you are simply uncovering a reality. 
Imbibe it — and when you have become so filled with it, you can carry it into dreams, not 
before. 

Then, while falling asleep, go on thinking of the flame, go on seeing it, feeling you are 
the light. Remembering it... remembering... remembering... you fall down asleep. And the 
remembrance continues. In the beginning you will start having some dreams in which 
you will feel you have a flame within, you are light. By and by, in the dreams also you 
will move with the same feeling. And once this feeling enters the dreams, dreams will 
start disappearing. Dreams will start disappearing: there will be less and less dreams and 
more and more deep sleep. 

When in all your dreaming this reality is revealed — that you are light, a flame, a burning 
flame — all dreams will disappear. 

Only when dreams disappear can you carry this feeling into sleep, never before. Now you 
are at the door. When dreams have disappeared and you remember yourself as a flame, 
you are at the door of sleep. Now you can enter with the feeling. And once you enter 
sleep with the feeling that you are a flame, you will be aware in it — the sleep will now 
happen only to your body, not to you. 

This technique is to help you go beyond these three states. If you can be aware that you 
are a flame, a light, that sleep is not happening to you, you are conscious. You are 
carrying a conscious effort. Now you are crystallized around that flame. The body is 
asleep, you are not. 

This is what Krishna says in Gita: that yogis never sleep. While others are asleep, they 
are awake. Not that their bodies never sleep. Their bodies sleep — but only bodies. Bodies 
need rest, consciousness needs no rest; because bodies are mechanisms, consciousness is 
not a mechanism. Bodies need fuel, they need rest. That's why they are born, they are 



young, then they become old, and then they die. Consciousness is never born, never 
becomes old, never dies. It needs no fuel, it needs no rest. It is pure energy, perpetual 
eternal energy. 

If you can carry this image of flame and light through the doors of sleep, you will never 
sleep again, only the body will rest. And while the body is sleeping, you will know it. 

Once this happens, you have become the fourth. Now the waking and the dreaming and 
the sleeping are parts of the mind. They are parts, and you have become the fourth — one 
who goes through all of them and is none of them. 

Really, this is so simple. If you are in the waking state, and then you move into dreams, 
you cannot be either. If you are the waking state, then how can you dream? And if you 
are the dreaming state, how can you fall into sleep where there is no dream? You must be 
a traveller, and these states must be stations, so you can move from here and there and 
come back again. Again in the morning you will move into the waking state. 

These are states, and the one who moves within these states is you. But that you is the 
fourth — and that fourth is what you call the soul. That fourth is what you call divine, that 
fourth is what you call the immortal element, the life eternal. 

WAKING 

SLEEPING, 

DREAMING, 

KNOW YOU AS LIGHT. 

This is a very beautiful technique. But try it first in the waking. And remember, when 
others become aware, then only have you succeeded in it. They will become aware. Then 
you can enter into dream, and then into sleep, and then you can awaken to that which you 
are — the fourth. 


THE END. 



Chapter 50: Moving to the roots 


Question 1 

LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT BY CHANGING THE OUTER, THE INNER 
REMAINS UNCHANGED, UNTRANSFORMED. BUT IS IT NOT TRUE THAT THE 
RIGHT FOOD, RIGHT LABOUR, RIGHT SLEEP, RIGHT ACTIONS AND 
BEHAVIORS ARE ALSO IMPORTANT FACTORS FOR INNER 
TRANSFORMATION? ISN’T IT A MISTAKE TO IGNORE THE OUTER 
COMPLETELY? 

THE OUTER CANNOT CHANGE THE INNER, but the outer can help, or it can hinder. 
The outer can create a situation in which the inner can explode more easily. The thing to 
be remembered is this: that the outer transformation is not the inner. Even if you have 
done everything and the situation is there, the inner is not going to explode. The situation 
is necessary, it is helpful, but it is not the transformation. And those who get involved 
with the outer.... 

The outer is a vast phenomenon. You can go on changing for lives and you will never be 
satisfied, and something or other will remain to be changed, because unless the inner 
changes, the outer can never be perfect. You can go on changing it and polishing it and 
conditioning it. You will never feel satisfied. You will never come to a situation where 
you can feel, 'Now, the field is ready.’ So many have wasted their lives. 

If your mind becomes obsessed with the outer — with the food, with the clothes, with the 
behavior... I am not saying to neglect them. No, what I am saying is, don’t get obsessed 
with them. 

They can be helpful, but they can become great hindrances if your mind becomes 
obsessed. Then it becomes an escape, then you are just postponing the inner change. And 
you can go on changing the outer. The inner is not even touched by it, the inner remains 
the same. 

You might have heard one old Indian fable. In 'Panchtantra' it is said that a mouse was 
very much afraid of a cat; constantly in fear, anxiety. He couldn’t sleep: he would dream 
about the cat and he would tremble. A magician, just out of pity, transformed the mouse 
into a cat. The outer was changed, but immediately the mouse within the cat now became 
afraid of a dog. The anxiety was the same; only the object had changed. Previously it was 
the cat, now it was the dog. The trembling continued, the anguish remained, the dreams 
were still of fear. 

So the magician changed the cat into a dog. Immediately the dog became afraid of the 
tiger, because the mouse within remained the same. The mouse was not changed; only 
bodies, the outer. The same anxiety, the same disease, the same fear remained. The 
magician changed the dog into a tiger. Immediately the mouse within the tiger became 
afraid of a hunter. So the magician said to the mouse, 'Now be a mouse again, because I 
can change your bodies, I cannot change you. You have the heart of a mouse, so what can 
I do?’ The heart of a mouse. 

You can go on changing the outer, but the heart of the mouse remains the same. 

And that heart creates the problems. The shape will change, the fonn will change, but the 
substance will remain the same. And it makes no difference whether you are afraid of a 



cat, or of a dog, or of a tiger. The question is not of whom you are afraid; the question is 
that you are afraid. 

The emphasis is — my emphasis is — that you must remain aware that your outer effort 
should not become a substitute for the inner transformation. One thing. Take every help 
that can be taken. It is good to have right food, but it is nonsense and madness to become 
obsessed with food. It is good to have right behavior, but it is neurotic to become 
obsessed with it. You should not become mad about anything. 

In India there are many sects of sannyasins who are obsessed with food. The whole day 
they are thinking only of food: what to eat and what not to eat; who should prepare the 
food and who should not prepare the food. Once I was travelling with a sannyasin. He 
would take only milk, and only cow's milk, and only from those cows which were white; 
otherwise he would go without food. This man is mad. 

Remember this: that the inner is important, significant. The outer is helpful, it is good, 
but you must not become focused with it. It must not become so important that the inner 
is forgotten. The inner must remain the inner and the central, and the outer, if possible, 
should be changed just as a help. 


Don't ignore it completely. There is no need to ignore it, because really the outer is also 
part of the inner. It is not something opposite to it, it is not something contrary to it, it is 
not something imposed upon you — it is you. But the inner is the central, and the outer is 
the periphery. So give as much importance as a periphery needs, as a circumference 
needs, as a boundary needs — but the boundary is not the house. So take care of it, but 
don’t become mad after it. 

Our mind is always trying to find escapes. If you can become involved with food, with 
sex, with clothes, with the body, your mind will be at ease, because now you are not 
going towards the inner. Now there is no need to change the mind. Now there is no need 
to destroy the mind, to go beyond the mind. With the change of food, the same mind can 
exist. You may eat this or that — the same mind can exist. Only when you move 
inwards... the more inner you reach, the more this mind which you have has to cease. The 
inward path is the path towards no-mind. 

The mind becomes afraid. It will try to find some escape — something to do with the 
outer. Then the mind can exist as it is. Whatsoever you do makes no difference. It is 
irrelevant what you do — this mind can exist, and this mind can find ways for how to 
remain the same. And sometimes, when you struggle with the natural outlet, your mind 
will find some perverted outlets which are more dangerous. 

Rather than being a help, they will become hindrances. 

I have heard that Mulla Nasrudin fell down his stairs. His leg was fractured, so it was put 
in a plaster cast, and he was told that for three months he was not to go up and down the 
stairs. After three months he came to the doctor and the plaster was removed. Mulla 
asked, 'Now can I go up and down the stairs?’ 

The doctor said, 'Now you can go. You are absolutely okay.’ 

Mulla said, 'Now I am so happy, doctor. You cannot believe how happy I am. It was so 
awkward to go up and down the drain-pipe the whole day. For three months, every day 
going up and down the drain-pipe — it was so awkward, and the whole neighborhood was 
laughing at me. But you had told me not to go up and down the stairs, so I had to find a 
way.’ 



This is what everyone is doing. If one outlet is blocked, then a perversion is bound to 
happen. And you don't know the ways of the mind — =they are very cunning and very 
subtle. People come to me with their problems. The problem seems to be obvious — it is 
not. All problems seem to be obvious, clear — it is not so. Deep down something else is 
hidden, and unless that something else is known, discarded, gone beyond, the problem 
will remain. It will change its shape. 

Someone is smoking too much and he wants to stop it. But smoking in itself is not a 
problem; the problem is something else. 

You can stop smoking, but the problem will remain, and it will have to come out in 
something else. When do you smoke? When you are anxious, nervous, you start smoking, 
and smoking helps you. You feel more confident, you feel more relaxed. 

Just by stopping the smoking, your nervousness is not going to change. You will feel 
nervous, you will feel anxious; the anxiety will come. Then you will do something else. 
And you can find something which is a beautiful substitute; it looks so different. You can 
do anything. You can just use a mantra instead of smoking, and whenever you feel 
nervous you can say, RAM, RAM, RAM — anything continuously. 

What are you doing with smoke? It is a mantra. You smoke in and out, you smoke in and 
out — it becomes a repetitive thing. Because of the repetition you feel relaxed. Repeat 
anything and the same will happen. But if you are using a mantra and saying, RAM, 
RAM, RAM, no one is going to say that you are doing something wrong. And the 
problem is the same. 

The problem has not changed; only you have changed the trick. Previously you were 
doing it with smoke; now you are doing it with a word. Repetition helps; any nonsense 
thing will help. You just have to repeat it continuously. When you repeat a thing it gives 
relaxation, because it creates a sort of boredom. Boredom is relaxing. You can do 
anything that creates a sort of boredom. 

Boredom is relaxing. You can do anything that creates boredom. 

If you are smoking, everyone will say that it is wrong. And if you are chanting a mantra, 
no one is going to say that it is wrong. But if the problem is the same, I am saying that it 
is also wrong — rather, more dangerous than the previous one, because with smoking you 
were aware that it was wrong. Now, with this chanting of the mantra you are not aware, 
and this disease that you are unaware is more dangerous and more harmful. 

You can do anything on the surface, but unless deeper roots are changed, nothing 
happens. So with the outer remember this: be aware of it, and move from the surface 
towards the roots and find the root — why are you nervous? Someone is eating too much 
food. It can be stopped. You can force yourself to not eat too much. But why is one 
eating too much food? Why? Because this is not a bodily need, so somewhere the mind is 
interfering. Something has to be done with the mind; it is not a question of the body. Why 
do you go on stuffing yourself? 

Too much obsession with food is a love need. If you are not loved well, you will eat 
more. If you are loved and you can love, you will eat less. Whenever someone loves you, 
you cannot eat more. Love fills you so much, you don't feel empty. When there is not 
love, you feel empty; something has to be stuffed in — you go on forcing food. 


And there are reasons, root reasons, for it, because the first encounter of the child with 



love and food is simultaneous. From the same breast, from the same mother, he gets food 
and love — food and love become associated. If the mother is loving, the child will never 
take too much mild. There is no need. He is always secure in his love; he knows that 
whenever there is a need the food will come, the milk will be there, the mother will be 
there. He feels secure. But if the mother is non-loving, then he is insecure. Then he 
doesn't know whether, when he feels hungry, food will come, because there is no love. 

He will eat more. And this will continue. It will become an unconscious root. 

So you can go on changing your food — eat this, eat that, don’t eat this — but it makes no 
difference, because the basic root remains there. Then if you stop stuffing yourself with 
food, you will start stuffing with something else. And there are many ways. If you stop 
eating too much you may start accumulating money. Then again you have to be filled by 
something; then you go on accumulating money. 

Observe deeply, and you will see that a person who accumulates money is never in love, 
cannot be, because the money accumulation is really a substitute. With money he will 
feel secure now. When you are loved there is no insecurity; in love all fears disappear. In 
love there is no future, no past. 

This moment is enough, this very moment is eternity. You are accepted. There is no 
anxiety for the future, for what will happen tomorrow — there is no tomorrow in love. 

But if love is not there, then the tomorrow is there. What will happen? Accumulate 
money, because you cannot rely on any person. So rely on things, rely on money and 
wealth. There are people who say, 'Donate your money. Don’t accumulate money. Be 
non-attached to money.’ But these are superficial things, because the inner need will 
remain the same — then he will start accumulating something else. 

Stop one outlet and you will have to create another — unless roots are destroyed. So don’t 
be too much concerned with the outer. Be aware of whatsoever your outer personality is. 
Be aware of it, be alert, and from the periphery always move towards the roots to find 
what the cause is there. Howsoever disturbing, move to the roots. Once you come to 
know the roots, once the roots are exposed.... Remember this law: the roots can exist only 
in darkness — not only the roots of trees, but the roots of anything. They can exist only in 
darkness. Once they are brought to light, they die. 

So move with your periphery; dig it deep and go to the roots, and bring the roots to 
consciousness, to light. Once you have come to the root, it simply disappears. You have 
not to do anything about it. You have to do something only because you don’t know what 
the problem is. 

A problem rightly understood disappears. Right understanding of a problem, a root 
understanding of the problem, becomes the disappearance of it. The first thing. 

The second thing: whatsoever you do is superficial; it is not you in your totality. So don’t 
judge a man by his actions, because action is very atomic. You see a person in anger, and 
you can judge that this man is filled with hatred, violence, vengeance. But a moment later 
the anger disappears; the man becomes as loving as possible, and a different perfume, a 
different flowering, comes to his face. The anger was atomic. Don’t judge the whole man. 
But this love is also atomic. Don’t judge the whole man by this love. 

Whatsoever you have done is not your total sum. Your actions remain just atomic — part 
of you of course, but your totality transcends them. You can be different immediately. 
And whatsoever is known about you by your behavior, by your actions, by your doings, 
you can contradict. You may have been a saint: you can become a sinner this very 



moment. No one could imagine that you, a saint, could do this. You can do it. It is not 
inconceivable. You may have been a sinner up to this moment, and the next moment you 
can jump out of it. 

What I am saying is, your inner is so vast and so great that by your outer it cannot be 
judged. Your outer remains superficial, accidental. I will repeat it. 

Your outer remains accidental, your inner is the essence. So remember to uncover the 
inner, and don’t get entangled with the outer. 

One thing more: outer is always of the past. It is always dead, because whatsoever you 
have done, you have done. It is always of the past, it is never alive. The inner is always 
alive, it is here and now, and the outer is always dead. If you know me — whatsoever I 
have done and said — you know my past, you don’t know me. I am here, the living. That 
is my inner point, and whatsoever you know about me is just the outer. It is dead, it is no 
more there. 

Observe it in your own consciousness. Whatsoever you have done is not a bondage on 
you. It is no more really; it is just a memory. And you are greater than that. Your infinite 
possibilities are there. It was only accidental that you are a sinner or you are a saint. It 
was only accidental that you are a Christian or a Hindu. But your innermost being is not 
accidental; it is essential. 

The emphasis on the inner is the emphasis on the essential. And that inner remains free, it 
is freedom. The outer is a slavery, because you can know the outer only when it has 
happened; then you cannot do anything about it. What can you do about your past? It 
cannot be undone, you cannot move backwards. You cannot do anything with the past; it 
is a slavery. 

If you understand it rightly, then you can understand the theory of karma, the theory of 
actions. 

This theory — one of the most essential parts of Hindu realization — is that unless you go 
beyond kannas, you are not free; unless you have gone beyond all actions, you will 
remain in bondage. Don’t pay much attention to the outer, don't get obsessed with it. Use 
it as a help, but continuously remembering that the inner has to be discovered. 

These techniques we are discussing here are for the inner, for how to discover it. I will 
tell you one thing. There have been traditions.... For example, one of the most important 
religious traditions has been Jainism. But Jainism pays too much attention to the outer; 
too much, so much so that they completely forget that there is anything like meditation, 
that there is anything like a science of yoga. They forget it completely. 

They are obsessed with food, with clothes, with sleep, with everything — but with no 
effort towards meditation. Not that in their tradition originally there was no meditation, 
because no religion can be born without it, but they got obsessed somewhere with the 
outer. It became so important that they forgot completely that this whole situation is just 
a help; it is not the goal. 

What you eat is not the goal. What you are is the goal. It is good if your eating habits 
help you to uncover the being. It is good. But if you become just obsessed with eating, 
continuously thinking about it, then you have missed the point. 

Then you are a food-addict. You are mad, neurotic. 

Question 2 



ISN’T IT TRUE THAT ALL MEDITATION TECHNIQUES ARE REALLY DOINGS 
WHICH LEAD THE SEEKER TO HIS BEING? 


In a way, yes; and in a deeper way, no. Meditation techniques are doings, because you 
are advised to do something. Even to meditate is to do something, even to sit silently is to 
do something, even to not do anything is a sort of doing. So in a superficial way, all 
meditation techniques are doings. But in a deeper way they are not, because if you 
succeed in them, the doing disappears. 

Only in the beginning it appears like an effort. If you succeed in it, the effort disappears 
and the whole thing becomes spontaneous and effortless. If you succeed in it, it is not a 
doing. No effort on your part is needed then. It becomes just like breathing — it is there. 
But in the beginning the effort is bound to be, because the mind cannot do anything 
which is not an effort. If you tell it to be effortless, the whole thing seems absurd. 

In Zen, where much emphasis is paid to effortlessness, the masters say to the disciples, 
'Just sit. Don’t do anything.’ And the disciple tries. Of course, what can you do other than 
trying? The disciple tries to just sit, and he tries to just sit, and he tries to not do anything, 
and then the master hits him on his head with his staff and he says, 'Don’t do this! I have 
not told you to try to sit, because that becomes an effort. 

And don’t try not to do anything, because that is a sort of doing. Simply sit!’ 

If I tell you to simply sit, what will you do? You will do something, which will make it 
not a simple sitting; an effort will enter. You will be sitting with an effort; a strain will be 
there. You cannot simply sit. It looks strange, but the moment you try to sit simply, it has 
become complex. The very effort to simply sit makes it complex. So what to do? 

Years pass, and the disciple goes on sitting and being blamed, condemned by the master 
that he is missing the point. But he simply goes on, goes on, goes on, and every day he is 
a failure, because the effort is there. And he cannot deceive the master. But one day, just 
patiently sitting, even this consciousness to sit simply disappears. One day suddenly he is 
sitting — like a tree or like a rock — not doing anything. And then the master says, 'This 
is the right posture. Now you have attained it. Now remember this. This is the way to sit.’ 
But it takes patience and long effort to achieve effortlessness. 

In the beginning, effort will be there, doing will be there, but only in the beginning as a 
necessary evil. But you have to remember constantly that you have to go beyond it. A 
moment must come when you are not doing anything about meditation — just being there 
and it happens; just sitting or standing and it happens; not doing anything, just being 
aware, it happens. 


All these techniques are just to help you to come to an effortless moment. The inner 
transfonnation, the inner realization, cannot happen through effort, because effort is a 
sort of tension. With effort you cannot be relaxed totally; the effort will become a barrier. 
With this background in mind, if you make effort, by and by you will become capable of 
leaving it also. 

It is just like swimming. If you know about swimming, you know that in the beginning 
you have to make effort — but only in the beginning. Once you know the feel of it, once 
you know what it is, the effort has gone; you can swim effortlessly. And even a good 
swimmer cannot say what swimming is, what exactly he is doing. He cannot explain to 
you what he is doing. Really, he is not doing anything. He is simply allowing himself to 



be in a deep responsive relationship with the water, with the river. He is not doing 
anything really. And if he is still doing, he is still not an expert swimmer — he is still 
amateur, still learning. 

I will tell you one anecdote. In Burma, one Buddhist monk was ordered to make a design 
for the new temple, particularly for the gate. So he was making many designs. He had 
one very talented disciple, so he told that disciple to be near him. While he made the 
design the disciple was simply to watch, and if he liked it he had to say that it was okay, 
it was right. If he didn’t like it then he had to say no. 

And the master said, 'When you say yes, only then will I send the design. If you go on 
saying no, I will discard the design and will create a new one.’ 

Hundreds of designs were discarded in this way. Three months passed. Even the master 
became afraid, but he had given his word so he had to keep it. The disciple was there, the 
master would make the design, and then the disciple would say no. The master would 
start another one. 

One day the ink was just about to be finished, so the master said, 'Go out and find more 
ink.’ The disciple went out. The master forgot him, his presence, and became effortless. 
His presence was the problem. The idea was constantly in his mind that the disciple was 
there, judging. He was constantly wondering whether he was going to like it or not, 
whether he would discard it again. This created an inner anxiety and the master could not 
be spontaneous. 

The disciple went out. The design was completed. The disciple came in and he said 
'Wonderful! But why couldn’t you do it before?’ 

The master said, 'Now I understand why — because you were here. Because of you — I 
was making an effort to get your approval. The effort destroyed the whole thing. I 
couldn’t be natural, I couldn’t flow, I couldn’t forget myself because of you.’ 

Whenever you are doing meditation, the very effort that you are doing it, the very idea of 
succeeding in it, is the barrier. 

Be conscious of it. Go on doing, and be conscious of it. A day will come... just through 
patience a day comes when effort is not there. Really, you are not there, only meditation 
is. It may take a long time. It cannot be predicted, no one can say when it will happen. 
Because if something is to be achieved by effort, it can be predicted — that if you do this 
much effort you will succeed — but meditation is going to succeed only when you 
become effortless. That’s why nothing can be predicted. Nothing can be said about when 
you will succeed. You may succeed this very moment, and you may not succeed for lives. 
The whole thing hinges on one thing — when your effort drops and you become 
spontaneous, when your meditation is not an act but becomes your being, when your 
meditation is just like love.... 

You cannot do anything about love, or can you? If you do anything, you falsify it. It will 
become artificial. It will not go deep. You will not be in it. It will become an acting. Love 
IS — you cannot do anything about it. 

You cannot do anything about meditation also. But I don’t mean don’t do anything, 
because then you will remain whatsoever you are. You have to do something, perfectly 
conscious that by only doing you will not achieve. Doing will be needed in the 
beginning. One cannot leave it; one has to go through it. But one has to go through it, one 
has to transcend it, and an effortless floating has to be achieved. 



The path is arduous and very contradictory. You cannot find anything more contradictory 
than meditation. Contradictory because it has to be started as an effort and it has to end as 
effortlessness. But it happens. You may not be able to conceive logically hot it happens, 
but in experience it happens. A day comes when you just get fed up with your effort. It 
falls. 

It happened to Buddha this way. For six years he was making every effort possible. No 
human being has been so obsessed with becoming enlightened. He did everything that he 
could do. He moved from one teacher to another, and whatsoever he was taught, he did it 
perfectly. That was the problem, because no teacher could say to him, 'You are not doing 
well, that’s why you are not achieving.’ That was impossible. He was doing better than 
any master, so the masters had to confess. They said, 'This much we have to teach. 
Beyond this we don’t know, so you go somewhere else.’ 

He was a dangerous disciple — and only dangerous disciples achieve. He studied 
everything that was possible. Whatsoever he was told, he would do it — absolutely as it 
was told. And then he would come to the master and say, 'I have done it, but nothing has 
happened. So what next?’ 

The teachers would say, 'You go somewhere else. There is one teacher in the Himalayas 
— go there.’ Or, 'There is one teacher in some forest — go there. 

We don’t know more than this.’ 

He went around and around for six years. He did all that can be done, all that is humanly 
possible, and then he got fed up. The whole thing appeared futile, fruitless, meaningless. 
One night he relaxed all efforts. He was sitting under the Bodhi tree, and he said, 'Now 
everything is finished. In the world there is nothing, and in this spiritual search also there 
is nothing. Now there is nothing for me to do. Everything is finished. Not only this world, 
but the other world also. Suddenly all efforts dropped. He was empty. Because when 
there is nothing to do, the mind cannot move. The mind moves only because there is 
something to do — some motivation, some goal. The mind moves because something is 
possible, something can be achieved, the future. If not today then tomorrow, but the 
possibility is there that one can achieve it — the mind moves. 

That night Buddha came to a dead point. Really, he died that very moment, because there 
was no future. Nothing was to be achieved, and nothing could be achieved — 'I have done 
everything. The whole world is futile and this whole existence is a nightmare.’ Not only 
the material world became futile, but the spiritual also. He relaxed. Not that he did 
something to relax. This is the point to understand: there was nothing to be tense, 
therefore he relaxed. There was no effort on his part to relax. 


Under the Bodhi tree he was not trying relaxation. There was nothing to do, nothing to be 
tense, nothing to desire, no future, no hope. He was absolutely hopeless that night — 
relaxed. Relaxation happened. You cannot relax, because something or other is still there 
to be achieved. That goes on stirring your mind; you go on spinning and spinning around 
and around. Suddenly the spinning stopped, the wheel stopped — Buddha relaxed and fell 
asleep. 

In the morning when he awoke, the last star was setting. He looked at the last star 
disappear, and with that last star disappearing, he disappeared completely, he became an 
enlightened one. Then people started asking, 'How did you achieve this? How? What 



was the method?' 

Now you can understand Buddha's difficulty. If he said that he had achieved through 
some methods, then he was wrong, because he achieved only when there was no method. 
If he said that he had achieved through effort, then he was wrong, because he achieved 
only when there was no effort. But if he said, 'Don’t make any effort and you will 
achieve,’ then too he was wrong, because to his no-effort those six years of effort were 
the background. Without that effort, that six years' arduous effort, this state of no-effort 
could not have been achieved. Only because of that mad effort he came to a peak and 
there was nowhere further to go; he relaxed and fell down in the valley. 


This has to be remembered for many reasons. Spiritual effort is the most contradictory 
phenomenon. Effort has to be made, with full consciousness that nothing can be achieved 
through effort. Effort has to be made only to achieve no-effort, only to achieve 
effortlessness. But don’t relax your effort, because if you relax you will never achieve 
that relaxation which came to Buddha. You go on doing every effort, so automatically a 
moment comes when just by sheer effort you reach a point where relaxation happens to 
you. 

For example, you may take it in a different way. As I see it, in the west, ego has been the 
central point: the fulfillment of the ego, the development of the ego, the achievement of a 
strong ego, has been the whole western effort. In the east, it has been how to achieve 
egolessness, how to be a non-ego, how to forget, surrender, dissolve yourself completely 
so that you are not. The east has been trying for egolessness. The west has been trying for 
the perfect ego. 

But this is the contradictoriness of things: if you don’t have a very developed ego, you 
cannot surrender. You can surrender only if you have a perfectly clearcut ego. Otherwise 
you cannot surrender, because who will surrender? So to me, both are half and both are in 
misery — east and west both. Because the east has taken egolessness, which is the end 
part, and the beginning part is missing. 


Who will surrender the ego? The peak is not there, so who will create the valley? The 
valley is created only around a peak. The greater the peak, the deeper the valley. If you 
don’t have an ego, or a very lukewarm one, surrender is not possible. Or, your surrender 
will be a lukewarm surrender, just so-so. Nothing will happen out of it; there will be no 
explosion. 

In the west, the beginning part has been emphasized. So you can go on growing with 
your ego. It will create more and more anxiety. And when you have really created it, you 
don't know what to do with it, because the end part is not there. 

To me, the spiritual search is both. Create a very great peak, create a perfect ego, just to 
dissolve it. That seems absurd — just to dissolve it, just to achieve a deep surrender, just 
to lose it somewhere. And you cannot lose something which you don’t have. So in my 
view, humanity has to be trained for these two things together: help everyone to create a 
perfect ego, a fulfilled ego — but this is only half the journey — and then, help them to 
surrender it. 

The greater the peak, the deeper will be the valley. The higher the ego, the deeper you 
will move in your surrender. And this is for everything. On the spiritual path, remember 
this continuous contradictoriness. Don't forget it even for a single moment. Become 



perfect egoists so that you can surrender, so that you can dissolve, melt. 

Do every effort that you can do, just to reach a point where effort leaves you and you are 
totally effortless. 

Question 3 

YOU SAID LAST NIGHT THAT THE MORE THE MIND GROWS, THE MORE WE 
KNOW THAT THE NATURE OF THE MIND IS CONFUSION. BUT ISN’T IT TRUE 
THAT THIS GROWTH OF THE MIND ALSO LEADS TO CLARITY? 

Whatsoever I was just saying is related to this. 

Yes, it leads to clarity, because only when you have a very mature mind do you become 
aware that you are confused. Even to become aware that mind is confusion, a very 
developed mind is needed. Those who are not aware that their mind is confusion are 
really not mature minds. They are childish, juvenile, still developing. Only a very mature 
mind can become aware of the quality of the mind, that it is confusion. And when you 
have developed the mind, only then is meditation possible, because meditation is the 
opposite goal. 

Meditation means no-mind. But how can you achieve a no-mind if you have not achieved 
a mind? So achieve a mind just to lose it. And don't think that if ultimately one has to 
reach the state of no-mind, then what is the use of achieving a mind? — because if you 
don’t achieve a mind, the ultimate is not going to happen to you. It can happen only if the 
mind is there. So I am not against mind, I am not against intellect. Really, I am not 
against anything. I am for everything, because everything can be used to reach the 
opposite pole. 


There is a polarity, and the opposite pole cannot be reached if the polarity is not there. A 
madman cannot meditate. Why? Because he has no mind. But this no-mind is not the no- 
mind of Buddha. No-mind can have two dimensions: below mind and above mind. The 
above mind is also no-mind, and the below mind is also no-mind. You can fall down 
from the mind: the mind is not there, but it is not meditation. You have to go beyond 
mind, only then is the Buddha's no-mind achieved. And always remember it, because 
they are so similar you can misunderstand the whole thing. They are so similar. 

For example, a child is innocent. A saint is also innocent — a Jesus or a Krishna — but 
their innocence is not childish. It is childlike, not childish; because a child is innocent 
only because he is ignorant. He is innocent only as a negative thing, just the absence. 
Sooner or later everything will erupt; he is a volcano waiting to erupt. The innocence is 
just the silence before the volcano erupts. 

A saint is one who has gone beyond. The eruption has happened; the volcano is silent 
again. But this silence is different. The first silence was very pregnant; something was 
present there. The silence was just on the surface; deep down that child was getting ready 
to be disturbed. The saint has passed the disturbance. The cyclone has gone. This silence, 
the innocence, appears similar, but there is a deep difference. 


So sometimes an idiot can also appear to be saint-like. And idiots are saint-like. They are 
not cunning; to be cunning, intelligence is needed. They are not calculating; to be 



calculating, mind is needed. Idiots are simple, innocent, non-cunning, non-calculating. 
They cannot deceive anyone. Not that they would not like to; they cannot. The very 
capacity is not there. They look like saints, and sometimes saints look like idiots, because 
the same thing has happened again, in a different, altogether different, dimension. 

You can fall down below the mind: then too a no-mind happens, but it is not meditation. 
You have simply lost even that mind which was going to become a step towards 
meditation. So I am not against mind. Develop mind, develop intellect, but remember 
well — this is just a means, and a means which has to be forsaken, thrown away. It has to 
be used like a boat. You reach the other shore, you leave the boat. You forget about the 
boat completely. 

Question 4 

WE VERY OFTEN FEEL THAT WE CREATE OUR OWN SUFFERINGS. IN SPITE 
OF THIS, WHY DO WE CONTINUE CREATING THEM? AND WHEN AND HOW 
DOES ONE STOP CREATING ONE’S OWN SUFFERING? 

The first thing, and very basic to be understood, is that whenever you say WE VERY 
OFTEN FEEL THAT WE CREATE OUR OWN SUFFERING, this is not the case. You 
never really feel that you are the creator of your own suffering. 

You may think so, because you have been taught so; because for centuries and centuries 
teachers have been teaching that you are the creator of your own suffering and no one 
else is responsible. 

You have heard these things, you have read these things. They have become your blood 
and bone, they have become your unconscious conditionings, so sometimes you repeat 
like a parrot WE CREATE OUR OWN SUFFERING. But this is not your feeling, this is 
not your realization, because if you realize it, then the other thing is impossible. Then you 
cannot say, IN SPITE OF THIS, WHY DO WE CONTINUE CREATING IT? 

If you really feel, and if it is your own feeling that you are the creator of your own 
suffering, any moment you can stop — unless you want to create it, unless you enjoy it, 
unless you are a masochist. Then everything is okay, then there is no question. If you say, 
'I enjoy my suffering,’ then it is okay; you can go on creating it. But if you say, 'I suffer 
and I want to go beyond it. I want to stop it completely — and I understand that I am the 
creator,’ then you are wrong. You don’t understand it. 

Socrates is reported to have said that knowledge is virtue. And there has been a long 
discussion for these two thousand years over whether Socrates is right or wrong — 
knowledge is virtue. Socrates says that once you know something, you cannot do 
contrary to it. If you know that anger is suffering, you cannot be angry. 

This is what Socrates means — knowledge is virtue. You cannot say, 'I know anger is 
bad; still I move in it. What to do about it now?’ Socrates says that the first thing is 
wrong. You don’t know that anger is bad; that’s why you go on moving in it. If you know, 
you cannot move in it. How can you move against your own knowledge? 

I know that if I put my hand in the fire it is going to be painful. If I know, I cannot put my 
hand in. But if somebody else has told me, if I have heard through the tradition, if I have 
read in the scriptures that fire bums, and I have not known fire, and I have not known any 
similar experience, only then can I put my hand into fire — and that too only once. 

Can you conceive it? That you have put your hand into fire and you have been burned 



and you have suffered, and again you go and ask, 'I know that fire burns, but in spite of it 
I go on putting my hand into the fire. What to do about it?’ Who will believe that you 
know? And what type of knowledge is this? If your own experience of suffering and 
burning cannot stop you, nothing is going to stop you. Now there is no possibility, 
because the last possibility has been missed. But no one can miss it; that is impossible. 
Socrates is right, and all those who have know, they will agree with Socrates — that 
agreement has a very deep point in it. Once you know.... But remember — the knowledge 
must be yours. 

A borrowed knowledge won’t do; borrowed knowledge is useless. Unless it is your own 
experience, it is not going to change you. Others' experiences are of no help. 

You have heard that you are the creator of your own suffering, but this is just in the mind. 
It has not entered your being, it is not your own knowledge. So when you are discussing, 
you can discuss about it cerebrally, but when the actual phenomenon happens, you will 
forget, and you will behave in the way you know, not in the way others know. 

When you are at ease, cool, collected, silently discussing anger, you can say it is poison, 
it is a disease, evil. But when someone makes you angry then a complete change occurs. 
Not it is not an intellectual discussion, now you are involved. And the moment you are 
involved, you become angry. Later on again, retrospectively, when you again get cool, 
the memory will come back, your mind will again start functioning, and you will say, 
'That was wrong. It was not good of me to do that. I know anger is wrong.’ 

Who is this 'I'? — just intellect, just the superficial mind. You don't know — because 
when someone pushes you into anger, you throw this mind away. It is useful as far as 
discussion is concerned, but when a real situation arises, only the real knowledge will 
help. When there is no situation, you can go on. Even in a discussion the real situation 
can arise. 

The other can go on contradicting you so much that you become angry and then you will 
forget. 

Real knowledge means that which has happened to you. You have not heard about it, not 
read about it, you have not collected information about it — it is your own experience. 
And then there is no question, because after that you cannot go against it. Not that you 
will have to make an effort not to go against it; simply you cannot go against it. 

How can I? When I know this is a wall and I want to go out of this room, how can I try to 
pass through the wall? I know this is a wall, so I will search for the door. Only a blink 
man will try to go out through the wall. I have got eyes. I see what is a wall and what is a 
door. 

But if I try to enter the wall and tell you, 'I know very well where the door is, and I know 
this to be a wall, but in spite of this, how can I stop myself from trying to enter the wall?’ 
then that means that as far as I am concerned that door looks false. Others have told me 
that it is the door, but as far as I am concerned, I know that door is false. And others have 
told me that this is a wall, but as far as I see, I see the door here in this wall, and that is 
why I try. 

In this situation you have to make a clearcut distinction between what you know and 
what you have gathered as knowledge. Don’t rely on information. From the greatest 
source — even if you collect from the greatest source — information is infonnation. 


Even if a Buddha says it to you, it is not your own, and it is not going to help you in any 



way. But you can remain thinking that it is your knowledge, and this misunderstanding 
will waste your energy, time and life. 

The basic thing is not to ask what to do so that suffering is not created. The basic thing is 
to know that you are the creator of your suffering. Next time whenever a real situation 
arises and you are in suffering, remember to find out whether you are the cause of it. And 
if you can find out that you are the cause of it, the suffering will disappear, and the same 
suffering will not appear again — impossible. 

But don’t deceive yourself. You can — that's why I say it. When you are suffering you can 
say, 'Yes, I know I have created this suffering,’ but deep down you know that someone 
else has created it. Your wife has created it, your husband has created it, someone else 
has created it, and this is simply a consolation because you cannot do anything. You 
console yourself: 'No one has created it, I have created it myself, and by and by I will 
stop it.’ 

But knowledge is instant transfonnation; there is no 'by and by.’ If you understand that 
you have created it, it will drop immediately. And it is not going to come up again. If it 
comes again, it means the understanding has not gone deep. 

So there is no need to find out what to do, and how to stop. 

The only need is to go deep and to find out who is really the cause of it. If others are the 
cause then it cannot be stopped, because you cannot change the whole world. If you are 
the cause, only then can it be stopped. 

That’s why I insist that only religion can lead humanity towards non-suffering. Nothing 
else can lead, because everyone else believes that the suffering is caused by others; only 
religion says that suffering is caused by you. So religion makes you the master of your 
destiny. You are the cause of your suffering, hence you can be the cause of your bliss. 


THE END. 



Chapter 51: Come back to existence 


IN RAIN DURING A BLACK NIGHT 

ENTER THAT BLACKNESS AS THE FORM OF FORMS. 

WHEN A MOONLESS RAINY NIGHT IS NOT PRESENT, 

CLOSE EYES AND FIND BLACKNESS BEFORE YOU. 

OPENING EYES, SEE BLACKNESS. 

SO FAULTS DISAPPEAR FOREVER. 

WHEREVER YOUR ATTENTION ALIGHTS, 

AT THIS VERY POINT, 

EXPERIENCE. 

Once a doctor, a very well known historian and an eminent scholar, was staying in a 
village. The postmaster, the old postmaster of the village, became curious about this old 
man, this doctor. He was curious to know what kind of doctor he is, so one day he asked, 
'What kind of doctor are you sir?’ 

The man said, 'Doctor of Philosophy.’ 

The old man had never heard about it. He was puzzled and he said, 'I have never heard of 
any case of this disease here.’ 

Don’t laugh about it, because that old postmaster was right in a way — philosophy is a 
kind of disease. Of course, doctors of philosophy are not doctors; rather, they are the 
perfect victims of a disease. 

Philosophy is not a specific disease, so you cannot think of it in terms of cases. It is born 
with the human being. It is as old as humanity or the human mind. And every human 
being is a victim, more or less — because thinking leads nowhere; or, it leads you in 
circles, vicious circles. You move much, and if you are expert you can move fast, but you 
reach nowhere. 


This has to be understood very deeply, because if you cannot understand and feel this, 
you cannot take a jump into meditation. Meditation means the very anti approach — anti 
to philosophy. Philosophy means thinking and meditation means a state of non-thinking. 
They are polar opposites. 

This is just human — to think about questions and to try to find out answers. But 
philosophy comes to no answers. Science comes to certain answers, religion comes to 
certain answers, but philosophy comes to no answers. And all the answers that 
philosophy appears to come to are just facades: if you dig deep in them you will find 
more questions and nothing else. So every answer leads to more questions — and this 
goes on and on. 

Science comes to certain answers, because science depends not on thinking but on 
experimentation. Thinking is used as a help only, but the base is experimentation. That’s 
why science has given some answers. Philosophers, known and unknown, have been 
working and working for centuries, but not a single answer, not a single conclusion has 
been achieved. It cannot be achieved. The very nature of thinking is such that if you use 
thinking as a help towards experimentation, something can be achieved; that’s why 
science comes to certain answers. 

But religion also comes to certain answers, because religion is also experimentation. 



Science experiments with the object, religion experiments with the subject, but both are 
experimentations and both depend on experiment. 


Between these two is philosophy — just pure thinking, abstract thinking, with no 
experiment. You can go on, you can go on, but you reach nowhere. Abstract thinking, 
speculative thinking, is thinking ad infinitum. You can enjoy, you can enjoy the journey, 
but there is no goal. 

Religion and science are similar in a way — both believe in experiment. Religious 
experiment is of course deeper than scientific, because in science the experimenter 
himself is not involved. He is working with tools, working with things, working with 
objects; he remains aloof, he remains out of the experiment. Religion is a deeper science, 
because the experimenter himself becomes the experiment. There are no tools which are 
apart from him, no objects which are outside him. He is both — his tools, his objects, his 
method; he is everything. And he has to work upon himself. 

It is arduous. Because you are involved, it is arduous. And because you are involved, the 
experiment will become experience. In science, the experiment will remain an 
experiment will remain an experiment. The scientist will not be touched by it, will not be 
transfonned by it. The scientist will remain the same. But in religion, passing through the 
experiment, you will be a different man altogether. You cannot come out the same; you 
are bound to change. That's why religious experiment becomes experience. 

Remember this: you can go on thinking about God, about soul, about the other world, and 
you may make believe that you know something about God just by thinking 'about'. 

That will be false. You cannot know anything about God — the word 'about' is absurd. 
You can know God, but you cannot know 'about' — that 'about' creates philosophy. 

How can you know about God? Or, for example, how can you know about love? You can 
know love, you cannot about love, because 'about' means someone else knows and you 
believe in his knowledge. You collect and gather opinions. You say, 'I know something 
about God.’ All knowledge which is 'about' is false, dangerous, because you can be 
deluded by it. 

You can know God, you can know love, you can know yourself, but forget that 'about'. 
That 'about' is philosophy. The Upanishads say something, the Vedas say something, the 
Bible says something, the Koran says something, but for you, all that will become 
'about'. Unless it becomes your experience it is futile, wasted. 

This point must go deep within you, because you can go on thinking, and the mind is 
such that you can start thinking about meditation. You can make anything an object for 
meditation, for thinking. Even about meditation you can think, and you can go on 
thinking about it — nothing will happen. 

I am talking about so many methods. There is a danger: you may start thinking about 
these methods, you may become knowledgeable. That won’t do, that is of no use. Not 
only is it of no use, it is dangerous — because meditation is experience, knowing 'about' 
is worthless. 


Remember this word 'experience'. Life's problems, all the problems of life, are 
existential, they are not speculative. You cannot solve them by thinking; you can solve 
them only by living them. Through living the future opens. Through thinking the future 
never opens. On the contrary, even the present closes. 



You may not have observed: whenever you think, what happen? Whenever you think, 
you are closed. All that is present drops. You move on a dream-path in your mind. One 
word creates another, one thought creates another, and you go on moving. The more you 
move in thinking, the further away you go from existence. Thinking is a way to go away. 
It is a dream-way; it is dreaming in concepts. Come back to the earth. Religion is very 
earthly in this sense; not worldly but very earthly, substantial. Come back to existence. 
Life's problems can be solved only when you become deeply rooted in existence. Flying 
in thoughts you move away from the roots, and the further away you are, the less is the 
possibility of solving anything. Rather, you will confuse everything, and everything will 
become more entangled. And the more entangled, the more you will think, and the further 
away you will move. Beware of thinking! 

Now we will enter the techniques. 

The first technique: 

IN RAIN DURING A BLACK NIGHT, 

ENTER THAT BLACKNESS AS THE FORM OF FORMS. 


There has been one very old esoteric school about which you may not have heard. The 
school was known as the school of Essenes. Jesus was taught in that school; he belonged 
to the Essenes group. That Essenes group is the only group all over the world who thinks 
of God as absolute darkness. The Koran says God is light, the Upanishads say God is 
light, the Bible says God is light. The Essenes group is the only tradition in the world 
which says that God is absolute blackness, absolute darkness, just an infinite black night. 
This is very beautiful; strange, but very beautiful — and very meaningful. You must 
understand the meaning, then this technique will be very helpful, because this is the 
technique used by the Essenes to enter darkness, to become one with it. 

Reflect. Why has God been symbolized everywhere as light? Not because God is light, 
but because man is afraid of darkness. This is human fear — we like light and we are 
afraid of darkness, so we cannot conceive God as darkness, as blackness. This is human 
conception. We conceive God as light because we are afraid of darkness. 

Our gods are created out of our fear. We give them shape and fonn. That shape and form 
is given by us — it shows something about us, not about our gods. They are our creations. 
We are afraid in darkness, so God is light. But these techniques belong to the other 
school. 


Essenes say that God is darkness, and there is something in it. One thing: darkness is 
eternal. Light comes and goes and darkness remains. In the morning the sun will rise and 
there will be light; in the evening the sun will set and there will be darkness. For darkness 
nothing will rise — it is always there. It never rises and never sets. Light comes and goes; 
darkness remains. Light always has some source; darkness is without source. That which 
has some source cannot be infinite; only that which is sourceless can be infinite and 
eternal. Light has a certain disturbance; that's why you cannot sleep in light. It creates a 
tension. Darkness is relaxation, total relaxation. 

But why are we afraid of darkness? Because light appears to us as life — it is; and 



darkness appears to be death — it is. Life comes through light, and when you die it 
appears you have fallen into eternal darkness. That's why we paint death as black, and 
black has become a color for mourning. God is light, and death is black. But these are our 
fears projected. Actually, darkness has infinity; light is limited. Darkness seems to be the 
womb out of which everything arises and into which everything falls. 

Essenes took this standpoint. It is very beautiful and very helpful also, because if you can 
love darkness you will become unafraid of death. If you can enter into darkness — and 
you can enter only when there is no fear — you will achieve total relaxation. 

If you can become one with darkness, you are dissolved, it is a surrender. Now there is no 
fear, because if you have become one with darkness, you have become one with death. 
You cannot die now. You have become deathless. Darkness is deathless. Light is born 
and dies; darkness simply is. It is deathless. 

For these techniques, first you will have to remember that there should be no fear in your 
mind about darkness, about blackness, otherwise how can you do this experiment? First 
the fear must be dropped. So do one thing as a preliminary step: sit in darkness, put off 
the lights, feel darkness. Have a loving attitude towards it; allow the darkness to touch 
you. Look at it. Open your eyes in a dark room or in a dark night; have a communion, be 
together, imbibe a relationship. You will become afraid — then these techniques cannot 
be of any help, you cannot do them. 

First a deep friendship with darkness is needed. Sometimes in the night when everyone 
has gone to sleep, remain with the darkness. Don't do anything, just remain with it. And 
just remaining with it will give you a deep feeling towards it, because it is so relaxing. 
You have not known it simply because of the fear. If you are not feeling sleepy, you will 
put on the light immediately, you will start reading or doing something, but you will not 
remain with the darkness. Remain with it. If you can remain with it, you will have new 
openings, new contacts with it. 


Man has closed himself completely against darkness. There were reasons, historical 
reasons — because the night was very dangerous, and man was in the caves or in the 
jungles. In the day he was more secure: he could see all around, and no wild animals 
could attack him; or, he could make some arrangements, some defence — at least he could 
escape. But in the night everywhere was darkness and he was helpless, so he became 
afraid — and that fear has gone into the unconscious; still we are afraid. 

We are not living in caves now and we are not at the mercy of wild animals, no one is 
going to attack us — but the fear is there, it has gone deep, because for millions of years 
the human mind was afraid. Your unconsciousness is not your own; it is collective, it is 
hereditary, it has come down to you. The fear is there, and because of that fear you can 
have no communion with darkness. 

One thing more: because of this fear, man started to worship fire. When fire was 
discovered, fire became a god. Not that fire is a god, but because of the fear of darkness. 
In the day there was light and no fear — man was more protected. In the night there was 
darkness, so when fire was discovered, of course, fire became a god — the greatest. The 
Parsees still go on worshipping fire. The worship of fire came into being because of the 
fear of darkness. In the night the fire became the friend, the protector, the divine security. 



That fear is still there. You may not be aware of it, because no situations are there in 
which you can become aware of it, but one day put off the light in the night and sit — and 
the primitive fear will come to you. In your own house you will start feeling that some 
wild animals are around. Some noise will come, and you will become afraid of wild 
animals — some danger is around. That danger is not around; that is in your unconscious. 
So first you have to overcome your unconscious fear, and then you can enter these 
techniques, because these techniques are concerned with darkness. And Shiva is giving 
all the techniques that are possible. 

My own experience with these techniques is very beautiful. If you can do them they are 
wonderful. You will enter such a deep relaxation that you have never known. But first 
uncover your unconscious fears and try to live and love darkness. It is very blissful. Once 
you know, and once you are in contact with it, you are in contact with a very deep cosmic 
phenomenon. 

So whenever you have the opportunity to be in the dark, and awake.... Because you can 
do two things: either you can put on the light or you can go to sleep. Both are tricks to 
escape the darkness. If you are asleep then you are not afraid, because you are not 
conscious. Or, if you are conscious, then you will put on the light. Don’t put on the light 
and don't go to sleep. 

Remain with darkness. 

Many fears will be felt. Feel them. Be aware of them. Bring them to your conscious. 

They will come by themselves, and as they come, you remain just a witness.. They will 
disappear, and very soon a day will come when you can be in darkness with total 
surrender, with no fear. With a total let-go you can be in darkness. Then a very beautiful 
phenomenon happens. Then you can appreciate the saying of Essenes that God is 
darkness, absolute darkness. 

IN RAIN DURING A BLACK NIGHT, 

ENTER THAT BLACKNESS AS THE FORM OF FORMS. 

All fonns arise out of darkness and dissolve into darkness. Worlds come, are created out 
of darkness, and they fall back into darkness. Darkness is the womb, the cosmic womb. 
The undisturbed, the absolute stillness is there. 

Shiva says that it will be good to do this technique in a rainy night when everything is 
black, when clouds are there and no stars can be seen and the sky is completely dark. In a 
black night when there is no moon... ENTER THAT BLACKNESS AS THE FORM OF 
FORMS. Be a witness to that blackness, and then dissolve yourself into it. It is the form 
of all forms. You are a form — you can dissolve into it. 

When there is light, you are defined. I can see you, the light is there. Your body has a 
definition. You are defined, you have boundaries. Boundaries exist because of the light. 

When the light is not there, boundaries are dissolved. In blackness nothing is defined, 
everything merges into every other thing. Fonns disappear. 

That may be one of the causes of our fear — because then you are not defined, then you 
don’t know who you are. The face cannot be seen, the body cannot be known. Everything 
merges into a formless existence. That may be one of the causes of fear — because you 
cannot feel your defined existence. Existence becomes vague and fear enters, because 
you don’t know now who you are. The ego cannot exist: undefined, it is difficult to exist 



as an ego. One feels afraid. One wants light to be there. 

Contemplating, meditating, merging, it will be easier to merge into darkness than to 
merge into light, because light gives distinctions. Darkness takes away ah distinctions. In 
the light you are beautiful or ugly, rich or poor. The light gives you a personality, a 
distinctness — educated, uneducated, saint or sinner. The light reveals you as a distinct 
person. Darkness envelops you, accepts you — not as a distinct person; it simply accepts 
you without any definitions. You are enveloped and you become one. 

The darkness is doing it always, but because you are afraid you cannot understand it. put 
aside your fear and become one. 

ENTER THAT BLACKNESS AS THE FORM OF ALL FORMS. 

ENTER THAT BLACKNESS. 

.. How can you enter blackness? Three things. One: stare into blackness. Difficult. It is 
easy to stare at a flame, at any source of light, because it is there as an object, pointed; 
you can direct your attention to it. Darkness is not an object; it is everywhere, it is ah 
around. You cannot see it as an object. Stare into the vacuum. Ah around it is there; you 
just look into it. Feel at ease and look into it. It will start entering your eyes. And when 
the darkness enters your eyes you are entering into it. 

Remain with open eyes when doing this technique in the dark night. Don't close your 
eyes, because with closed eyes you have a different darkness. That is your own, mental; it 
is not real. If is not real. Really, it is a negative part; it is not positive darkness. Here is 
light: you close your eyes and you can have a darkness, but that darkness is simply the 
negative of the light. Just as when you look at the window and then you close your eyes 
you have a negative figure of the window. Ah our experience is of light, so when we 
close our eyes we have a negative experience of light which we call darkness. It is not 
real, it won’t do. 

Open your eyes, remain with open eyes in darkness, and you will have a different 
darkness — the positive darkness that is there. Stare into it. Go on staring into darkness. 
Your tears will start, your eyes will get sore, they will hurt. 

Don't get worried, just go on. And the moment the darkness, the real darkness which is 
there, enters in your eyes, it will give you a very deep soothing feeling. When real 
darkness enters in you, you will be filled by it. 

And this entering of darkness will empty you of ah negative darkness. This is a very deep 
phenomenon. The darkness that you have within in a negative thing; it is against the 
light. It is not the absence of light; it is against the light. It is not the darkness that Shiva 
is speaking of as the form of ah forms — the real darkness that's there. We are so afraid of 
it that we have created many sources of light just as protection, and we live in a lighted 
world. Then we close our eyes and the lighted world reflects negatively inside. We have 
lost contact with the real darkness that is there — the darkness of the Essenes, or the 
darkness of Shiva. We have no contact with it. We have become so much afraid of it that 
we have turned ourselves completely away. We are standing with our backs to it. 

So this will be difficult, but if you can do it, it is miraculous, it is magical. You will have 
a different being altogether. When darkness enters you, you enter into it. It is always 
reciprocal, mutual. You cannot enter into any cosmic phenomenon without the cosmic 
phenomenon entering in you. You cannot rape it, you cannot force any entry. If you are 



available, open, vulnerable, and if you give way for any cosmic realm to enter in you, 
then only will you enter into it. 

It is always mutual. You cannot force; you can only allow it. 

It is difficult to find real darkness in cities now; difficult in our houses to find real 
darkness. With the unreal light we have made everything unreal. Even our darkness is 
polluted, it is not pure. So it is good to move to some remote place only to feel darkness. 
Just go to a very remote village where there is no electricity, or move to a mountain peak. 
Just be there for one week to experience pure darkness. 

You will come back a different man, because in those seven days of absolute darkness, 
all the fears, all the primitive fears, will come up. You will have to face monsters, you 
will have to face your own unconscious. The whole humanity will... it will be as if you 
are passing through the whole passage that has passed, and deep from your unconscious 
many things will arise. They will look real. You may get afraid, scared, because they will 
be so real — and they are just your mental creations. 

Many madmen in our mad asylums are suffering not from anything else but just from the 
primitive fears inside them which have erupted. The fears are there; the madmen are 
afraid, scared every moment of their lives. And we don’t yet know how to allow those 
primitive fears to evaporate. If madmen can be helped to meditate on darkness, madness 
will disappear. 

But only in Japan do they work a little towards this. 

With their madmen they behave absolutely differently. If someone goes mad, psychotic 
or neurotic, the Japanese method is to allow him to live in isolation for three weeks or for 
six weeks, as the case may need. They just allow him to live in isolation. No doctor, no 
psychoanalyst goes to him. Food is supplied, his needs are taken care of, and he is left 
alone. 

In the night there is no lighten darkness he is alone — suffering of course, passing 
through many phases. Every care is taken, but no companionship is given to him. He has 
to face his own madness immediately and directly. And within three to six weeks, the 
madness starts disappearing. Nothing has been done really; he has simply been left alone. 
This is the only measure that has been taken. 

Western psychiatrists have become amazed. They can't understand really how it can 
happen, because they work for years. They psychoanalyze, they treat, they do everything, 
but they never leave the man alone. They never leave him to face his inner unconscious 
totally on his own. Because the more help you give, the more you make him helpless, 
because the more he depends on you. And the question is of an inner encounter; no one 
can help really. So those who know, they will leave you to face yourself. 

You have to come to terms with your unconscious. And this meditation on darkness will 
absorb all your madness completely. 

Try it. Even in your home you can try it. Every night, for one hour remain with darkness. 
Don't do anything, just stare into darkness. You will have a melting feeling, and you will 
feel that something is entering you and you are entering into something. 

Staying, living with dar kn ess for three months, for one hour a day, you will lose all 
feeling of individuality, of separation. Then you will not be an island; you will become 
the ocean. You will be one with darkness. And darkness is so oceanic: nothing is so vast, 
nothing is so eternal. And nothing is so near you, and of nothing are you so scared and 



afraid. It is just by the corner, always waiting. 


IN RAIN DURING A BLACK NIGHT, 

ENTER THAT BLACKNESS AS THE FORM OF FORMS. 

Stare so that it enters in your eyes. 

Secondly: lie down and feel as if you are near your mother. The darkness is the mother, 
the mother of all. Think: when there was nothing, what was there? You cannot think of 
anything else than darkness. If everything disappears, what will be there still? Darkness 
will be there. 

Darkness is the mother, the womb, so lie down and feel that you are lying in the womb of 
your mother. And it will become real, it will become warm, and sooner or later you will 
start feeling that the darkness, the womb, is enveloping you from everywhere. You are in 
it. 

And thirdly: moving, going to work, talking, eating, doing whatsoever, carry a patch of 
darkness within you. 

The darkness that has entered in you, just carry it. As we were discussing about the 
method of carrying a flame, carry darkness. And as I said to you that if you carry a flame 
and feel you are light, your body will start radiating a certain strange light and those who 
are sensitive will start feeling it, the same will happen with darkness. 

If you carry darkness within you, your whole body will become so relaxed and calm, so 
cool, that it will be felt. And as when you carry light within you some people will become 
attracted to you, when you carry darkness within you some people will simply escape 
from you. They will become afraid and scared. They will not be able to bear so silent a 
being; it will become unbearable to them. 

If you carry darkness within you, those who are afraid of darkness will try to escape from 
you; they will not come near you. And everyone is afraid of darkness. You will start 
feeling that friends are leaving you. Your family will get disturbed when you enter, 
because you enter like a pool of coolness, and everyone is agitated and excited. It will be 
difficult for them to look into your eyes, because your eyes will become deep like 
valleys, an abyss. If someone looks into your eyes he will become dizzy, such a deep 
abyss will be felt there. 

But you will feel many things. It will be impossible for you to get angry. Carrying 
darkness within, you cannot be angry. 

Carrying a flame you can be angry very easily, more easily than ever, because the flame 
can excite you. Carrying a flame you will feel more sexual than ever, because the flame 
will excite you, it will create passion. But carrying darkness within you, you will feel a 
deep asexuality happening to you. You will not feel sexual; you will not be able to easily 
get into anger. Passion will disappear. You will not feel that you are a man or a woman. 
You will feel that those words have become irrelevant, meaningless. You simply are. 
Carrying darkness within for the whole day will help you very much, because then when 
you contemplate and meditate on darkness in the night, the inner darkness that you have 
carried the whole day will help you to meet — the inner will come to meet the outer. 

And just be remembering that you are carrying darkness — you are filled with darkness, 
every pore of the body, every cell of the body is filled with darkness — you will feel so 
relaxed. Try it. You will feel so relaxed. Everything in you will be slowed down. You 



will not be able to run, you will walk, and that walk also will be slowed down. You will 
walk slowly, just as a pregnant woman walks. You will walk slowly, very carefully. You 
are carrying something. 

And quite the opposite will happen when you are carrying a flame: your walk will 
become faster; rather, you would like to run. 

There will be more movement, you will become more active. Carrying darkness you will 
be relaxed. Others will start feeling that you are lazy. 

In the days when I was at university, I was doing this experiment for two years. I became 
so lazy that even to get out of bed in the morning was difficult. My professors became 
very much disturbed about it, and they thought something had gone wrong with me — 
either I was ill, or I had become absolutely indifferent. One professor who loved me very 
much, the head of my department, became so worried that on my examination days he 
would come to fetch me from the hostel in the morning just to lead me to the examination 
hall so that I could be there on time. Every day he would see that I had entered the hall, 
and only then would he feel okay and go home. 

Try it. It is one of the most beautiful experiences in life to carry darkness in your womb, 
to become dark. Walking, eating, sitting, doing whatsoever, remember, the darkness is 
filled in you; you are filled with it. And then see how things change. You cannot get 
excited, you cannot be very active, you cannot be tense. Your sleep will become so deep 
that dreams will disappear and the whole day you will move as if intoxicated. 

Sufis have used this method, a particular sect of Sufis, and those Sufis are known as 
drunken Sufis. They are drunk with this darkness. They make holes in the ground, and 
they lie down in the holes every night, and they meditate lying down in their holes — 
meditating darkness, becoming one with it. 

And their eyes will show you that they are intoxicated. You can feel from their eyes such 
deep relaxation, such a relaxed vibration, that it can happen only if you are deeply 
intoxicated or feeling very sleepy. Only then can your eyes show that expression. They 
are known as drunken Sufis — and they are drunk with darkness. 

The second technique: 

WHEN A MOONLESS RAINY NIGHT IS NOT PRESENT 
CLOSE EYES AND FIND BLACKNESS BEFORE YOU. 

OPENING EYES, SEE BLACKNESS. 

SO FAULTS DISAPPEAR FOREVER. 

I said that if you close your eyes the blackness will be false, so what to do if there is no 
moonless night, no dark night? If there is a moon and the moonlight is there? This sutra 
gives a key. 

WHEN A MOONLESS RAINY NIGHT IS NOT PRESENT 
CLOSE EYES AND FIND BLACKNESS BEFORE YOU. 

This blackness will be false in the beginning. You can make it real, and the method to 
make it real is — OPENING EYES, SEE BLACKNESS. First close your eyes, see 
blackness. Then open the eyes, and the blackness that you have seen within, see it 



without. If it disappears without, that means that your blackness that you have seen 
within was false. 

This is a little bit more difficult. In the first you carry the real darkness within. In the 
second you carry the false out — go on carrying it. 

Close your eyes, feel darkness; open your eyes, and with open eyes see the darkness out. 
This is how you throw the inner false darkness out — go on throwing it. It will take at 
least three to six weeks, and then one day suddenly you will be able to carry the inner 
darkness out. The day you can carry the inner darkness out, you have come upon the 
inner real darkness. The real can be carried; the false cannot be carried. 

And it is a very magical experience. If you can carry the inner darkness out, even in a 
lightened room you can carry it out, and a patch of darkness spreads before you. The 
experience is very weird, because the room is lightened. Or even in sunlight... if you have 
come to the inner darkness you can bring it out. Then a patch of darkness comes before 
your eyes. You can go on spreading it. 

Once you know that it can happen, you can have darkness, dark as the darkest night, in 
the full sunny day. The sun is there, but you can spread the darkness. The darkness is 
always there; even while the sun is there the darkness is there. You cannot see it; it is 
covered by the sunlight. Once you know how to uncover it, you can uncover it. 

In Tibet they have many methods just like this. They can bring things from the inner 
world to the outer world. You may have heard of one very famous technique; they call it 
'heat yoga'. The night is cold, ice-cold, snow is falling, and a Tibetan monk, a Tibetan 
lama, can sit under the open sky with snow falling all around, the temperature below 
zero, and he can start perspiring. 

This is a medical miracle. How is he perspiring? He is bringing the inner heat out. 

And the inner coolness or inner cold can also be brought out. In Mahavir’s life it is 
related.... No one has tried to explain it up to now. Jains think that he was just doing an 
austerity; it is not so. It is related that whenever it was summer, the hot season, and the 
sun was burning hot, he would always stand somewhere where there was no shade, no 
tress, none at all. He would stand in the burning sun in the days of summer, and in winter 
he would find a cool place, the coolest — under a tree, a shady tree, or near a river, or just 
where the temperature had gone below zero. 

In the cold season he would find a cool place to meditate, and in the hot season he would 
find the hottest place to meditate. People thought that he was mad, and his followers 
think he was just doing austerities. It is not so. He was really trying some inner 
techniques like this. 

When it was hot he was trying to bring his inner cold — and it can be felt only in a 
contrast. When it was cold outside he was bringing his inner heat — and it can be felt only 
when there is a contrast. He was not a body enemy, he was not against his body, as Jains 
think. They think that he was killing his body, because if you can kill your body, you can 
kill your desire. This is sheer nonsense. He was doing nothing of the sort. 

He was bringing the inner out, and he was protected by the inner. Just as Tibetan lamas 
can create heat and they can perspire while snow is falling, Mahavir would stand under a 
hot burning sun and he would not perspire. He was bringing his inner cold, and that inner 
cold would come out and protect his body. 

Similarly you can bring your inner darkness, and that feeling is very cool. If you can 



bring it, you are protected by it: no excitement, no passion will disturb you. Try it. These 
three things: stare in darkness with open eyes and allow the darkness to enter within. 
Secondly: feel darkness as a mother's womb all around; live with it; forget yourself more 
and more in it. And thirdly: carry a patch of darkness in your heart wherever you go. 

If you can do this, the darkness will become the light. You will be enlightened through 
darkness. 

WHEN A MOONLESS RAINY NIGHT IS NOT PRESENT, CLOSE EYES AND FIND 
BLACKNESS BEFORE YOU. OPENING EYES, SEE BLACKNESS. 

That's the method. First feel it inside, feel it deeply so you can perceive it out. Then open 
the eyes suddenly and feel it out. It will take time. 

SO FAULTS DISAPPEAR FOREVER. 

And if you can bring the inner darkness outside, faults disappear forever, because if the 
inner darkness is felt, you have become so pool, so silent, so unexcitable, that faults 
cannot remain with you. 


Remember this: faults can exist only if you are prone to be excited, if you tend to be 
excited. They don't exist in themselves; they exist in your capacity to get excited. 
Someone insults you, and you have no darkness within to absorb the insult; you become 
inflamed, you get angry, you get fiery, and then everything is possible. You can be 
violent, you can kill, you can do what only a madman can do. Anything is possible — you 
are now mad. Someone praises you: you again go mad to the other extreme. 

All around you there are situations, and you are not capable of absorbing. Insult a 
Buddha: he can absorb it, he can simply swallow it, digest it. Who digests that insult? An 
inner pool of darkness, silence. You throw anything poisoned; it is absorbed. No reaction 
comes out of it. 

Try this, and when someone insults you, just remember that you are filled with darkness, 
and suddenly you will feel there is no reaction. You pass through a street; you see a 
beautiful woman or a man — you get excited. Feel that you are filled with darkness; 
suddenly the passion will disappear. You try it. This is absolutely experimental, there is 
no need to believe it. 

When you feel that you are filled with passion or desire or sex, simply remember the 
inner darkness. For a single moment close your eyes and feel darkness and see — the 
passion has disappeared, the desire is no more there. 

The inner darkness has absorbed it. You have become an infinite vacuum into which 
anything can fall and it will not return. You are now like an abyss. 

That's why Shiva says: SO FAULTS DISAPPEAR FOREVER. These techniques appear 
so simple — they are. But don’t leave them without trying them because they appear so 
simple. They may not challenge your ego, but still try them. It always happens that we 
never try simple things, because we think they are so simple they cannot be true. And 
truth is always simple, it is never complex. There is no need for it to be complex. Only 
lies are complex. They cannot be simple, because if they are simple they will be caught 
immediately. 



And because something appears simple we think nothing is possible out of it. Not that 
nothing is possible out of it, but because our ego gets challenged only when something is 
very difficult. Many schools and many systems have simply complicated their methods 
because of you. There is no need, but they have to create complexities, unnecessary 
hurdles, to make them difficult so that you feel good because your ego is challenged. If 
something is very difficult and only few can do it, then you feel, 'Now, this is something 
to do, because only a few can do it; rarely can someone do it.’ 

These methods are absolutely simple. Shiva is not taking you into account. He is simply 
describing the exact method as it is — as simply as possible, as telegraphically as 
possible, only the bare essentials. 

So don’t seek any ego challenge. These techniques are not to send you on an ego trip. 
They may not challenge you, but if you can try them, they will transform you. And 
challenge is not good, because with challenge you get feverish, you get mad. 

The third technique: 

WHEREVER YOUR ATTENTION ALIGHTS, 

AT THIS VERY POINT, 

EXPERIENCE. 

WHEREVER YOUR ATTENTION ALIGHTS, AT THIS VERY POINT, 
EXPERIENCE. What? What experience? In this technique, firstly you have to develop 
attention. You have to develop a sort of attentive attitude, only then will this technique 
become possible, so then wherever your attention alights you can experience — you can 
experience yourself. Just by looking at a flower you can experience yourself. Then 
looking at a flower is not looking at the flower only, but at the looker also — but only if 
you know the secret of attention. 

You also look at a flower, and you may think you are looking at the flower, but you have 
started thinking about the flower, and the flower is missed. You are no more there, you 
have gone somewhere else, you have moved away. By attention is meant that when you 
are looking at a flower, you are looking at a flower and not doing anything else — as if 
the mind has stopped, as if now there is no thinking and only a simple experience of the 
flower there. You are here, the flower is there, and between you two there is no thought. 


Suddenly — if this is possible — suddenly, from the flower your attention will come back, 
bounce back to yourself. It will become a circle. You will look at the flower and the look 
will come back; the flower will reflect it, rebounce it. If there are no thoughts, this 
happens. Then you are not looking at the flower only, you are looking at the looker also. 
Then the looker and the flower have become two objects and you have become a witness 
of both. 

But first attention has to be trained, because you have no attention at all. Your attention is 
just flickering, moving from this to that, from that to something further. Not for a single 
moment are you attentive. Even if I am talking here, you never hear all my words. You 
hear one word, then your attention goes somewhere else; then you come back, you hear 
another, then your attention goes somewhere else. You hear a few words, and you fill the 
gaps, and then you think you have heard me. 



And whatsoever you carry with yourself, it is your own business, it is your own creation. 
Just a few words you have heard from me, and then you have fdled the gaps, and 
whatsoever you fill in the gaps changes everything. I say a word, and you have started 
thinking about it. You cannot remain silent. If you can remain silent while hearing, you 
will become attentive. 

Attention means a silent alertness with no thoughts interfering. 

Develop it. You can develop it only by doing it; there is no other way. Do it more and 
you will develop it. Doing anything, being anywhere, try to develop it. 

You are travelling in a car, or in a train. What are you doing there? Try to develop 
attention; don’t waste time. For half an hour you will be in a train: develop attention. Just 
be there. Don't think. Look at someone, look at the train or look outside, but be the look, 
don't think anything. Stop thinking. Be there and look. Your look will become direct, 
penetrating, and from everywhere your look will be reflected back and you will become 
aware of the looker. 

You are not aware of yourself because there is a wall. When you look at a flower, first 
your thoughts change your look; they give their own color. Then that look goes to the 
flower. It comes back, but then again your thoughts give it a different color. And when it 
comes back it never finds you there. You have moved somewhere else, you are not there. 
Every look comes back; everything is reflected, responsed, but you are not there to 
receive it. So be there to receive it. The whole day you can try it on many things, and by 
and by you will develop attentiveness. With that attentiveness do this: 

WHEREVER YOUR ATTENTION ALIGHTS, 

AT THIS VERY POINT, 

EXPERIENCE. 

Then look anywhere, but simply look. 

The attention has alighted — and you will experience yourself. But the first requirement is 
to have the capacity to be attentive. And you can practise it. There is no need for it to 
take some extra time. 

Whatsoever you are doing — eating, taking a bath, standing under a shower — just be 
attentive. But what is the problem? The problem is that we do everything with the mind, 
and we are planning continuously for the future. You may be travelling in a train, but 
your mind may be arranging other journeys; programming, planning. Stop this. 

One Zen monk, Bokuju, has said, 'This is the only meditation I know. While I eat, I eat. 
While I walk, I walk. And while I feel sleepy, I sleep. Whatsoever happens, happens. I 
never interfere.’ 

That’s all there is — don’t interfere. And whatsoever happens, allow it to happen; you be 
simply there. That will give you attentiveness. And when you have attention, this 
technique is just in your hand. 

WHEREVER YOUR ATTENTION ALIGHTS, 

AT THIS VERY POINT, 

EXPERIENCE. 


You will experience the experiencer; you will fall back to yourself. From everywhere you 



will be rebounded; from everywhere you will be reflected. The whole existence will 
become a mirror; you will be reflected everywhere. The whole existence will mirror you, 
and only then can you know yourself, never before. 


Unless the whole existence becomes a mirror for you, unless every part of existence 
reveals you, unless every relationship opens you.... You are such an infinite phenomenon 
— ordinary mirrors won't do. You are such a vast existence within, that unless the whole 
existence becomes a mirror you will not be able to get a glimpse. When the whole 
universe becomes a mirror, only then will you be mirrored. In you exists the divine. 

And the technique to make existence a mirror is this: create attention, becomes more 
alert, and then wherever your attention alights — wherever, on any object you alight — 
suddenly experience yourself. This is possible, but right now impossible, because you 
don't fulfill the basic requirement. 

You can look at a flower, but that is not attention. You are just running near the flower, 
around and around. You have seen the flower while running; you have not been there for 
a single moment. Then the whole life becomes meditative. 

WHEREVER YOUR ATTENTION ALIGHTS, 

AT THIS VERY POINT, 

EXPERIENCE. 

Just remember yourself. 

There is a deep reason because of which this technique can be helpful. You can throw a 
ball and hit the wall — the ball will come back. When you look at a flower or at a face, a 
certain energy is being thrown — your look is energy. And you are not aware that when 
you look, you are investing some energy, you are throwing some energy. 

A certain quantity of your energy, of your life energy, is being thrown. That’s why you 
feel exhausted after looking in the street the whole day: people passing, advertisements, 
the crowd, the shops. Looking at everything you feel exhausted and then you want to 
close your eyes to relax. What has happened? Why are you feeling so exhausted? You 
have been throwing energy. 

Buddha and Mahavir both insisted that their monks should not look too much; they must 
concentrate on the ground. Buddha says that you can only look up to four feet ahead. 
Don't look anywhere. Just look on the path where you are moving. To look four feet 
ahead is enough, because when you have moved four feet, again you will be looking four 
feet ahead. Don’t look more than that, because you are not to waste energy unnecessarily. 
When you look, you are throwing a certain amount of energy. Wait, be silent, allow that 
energy to come back. And you will be surprised. If you can allow the energy to come 
back, you will never feel exhausted. Do it. Tomorrow morning, try it. Be silent, look at a 
thing. Be silent, don't think about it, and wait patiently for a single moment — the energy 
will come back; in fact, you may be revitalized. 

People continuously ask me... I go on reading continuously so they ask me, 'Why are 
your eyes still okay? You must have needed space long ago.’ 

You can read, but if you are reading silently with no thought, the energy comes back. 

It is never wasted. You never feel tired. My whole life I have been reading twelve hours a 



day, sometimes even eighteen hours a day, but I have never felt any tiredness. In my eyes 
I have never felt anything, never any tiredness. Without thought the energy comes back; 
there is no barrier. And if you are there you reabsorb it, and this reabsorption is 
rejuvenating. Rather than your eyes being tired they feel more relaxed, more vital, filled 
with more energy. 

THE END. 



Chapter 52: Enter this moment 


Question 1 

THE OTHER NIGHT YOU SAID THAT PHILOSOPHIES ARE ANTI-MEDITATION. 
BUT ON THE OTHER HAND YOU AGREE THAT THE EASTERN PHILOSOPHIES 
SUCH AS TANTRA, YOGA AND VEDANT, ARE THE WRITINGS OF 
ENLIGHTENED SAGES. WHY DO THE ENLIGHTENED SAGES LEAVE BEHIND 
THEM A STRONG STRUCTURE OF PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEMPLATION, IF 
PHILOSOPHIES ARE ANTI-MEDITATION? 

Philosophy is not darshan. Darshan is the eastern term. Darshan means perception, 
philosophy means thinking. Herman Hesse has coined a new word to translate darshan 
into western languages. He calls it 'philosia' — 'sia' from 'to see’. 

Philosophy means to think, and darshan means to see. Both are basically different; not 
only different, but diametrically opposite. Because when you are thinking you cannot see. 
You are so fdled with thoughts that perception is blurred, perception is clouded. When 
thinking ceases, you become capable of seeing. Then your eyes are opened, they become 
unclouded. Perception happens only when thinking ceases. 

For Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the whole western tradition, thinking is the base. 
For Kanad, Kapil, Patanjali, Buddha, and the whole eastern tradition, seeing is the base. 
So Buddha is not a philosopher, not at all; neither is Patanjali, nor Kapil or Kanad. They 
are not philosophers. They have seen the truth; they have not thought about it. 

Remember well that you only think when you cannot see. 

If you can see, there is no reason to think. Thinking is always in ignorance. Thinking is 
not knowledge, because when you know, there is no need to think. When you don't know, 
you will the gap by thinking. Thinking is groping in the dark. So eastern philosophies are 
not philosophies. To use the word philosophy for eastern darshan is absolutely wrong. 
Darshan means to see, to attain the eye, to realize, to know — immediately, directly, 
without the mediation of thinking and thought. 

Thinking can never lead to the unknown. How can it lead? It is impossible. The very 
process of thinking has to be understood. When you think, what do you really do? You 
go on repeating old thoughts, memories. If I ask you a question — does God exist? — you 
can think about it. What will you do? All that you have heard, all that you have read, all 
that you have accumulated about God, you will repeat. Even if you come to a new 
conclusion, the newness of it will only be apparent, not real. It will be simply a 
combination of old thoughts. You can combine many old thoughts and create a new 
structure, but that structure will be apparently new, not new at all. 

Thinking can never come to any original truth. Thinking is never original; it cannot be. It 
is always of the past, of the old, of the known. Thinking cannot touch the unknown; it is 
repetitively moving in the circle of the known. You don’t know truth, you don’t know 
God. 

What can you do? You can think about it. You will move in circles, around and around. 
You can never come to any experience of it. 

So the eastern emphasis is not on thinking, but on seeing. You cannot think about God, 
but you can see. You cannot come to any conclusion about God, but you can realize. It 



can become an experience. You cannot get to it through information, through knowledge, 
through scriptures, through theories and philosophies; no, you cannot get to it. You can 
get into it only if you throw all knowledge. All that you have heard and read and 
collected, all the dust that your mind has collected, the whole past, must be put aside. 
Then your eyes are fresh, then your consciousness is unclouded, and then you can see it. 
It is here and now — you are clouded. You have not to go somewhere else to find the 
divine or the truth — it is here. It is right there where you are. And it has always been so 
— only you are clouded, your eyes are closed. So the question is not to think more; the 
question is how to come to a non-thinking consciousness. That's why I say that 
meditation and philosophy are anti each other. Philosophy thinks, meditation comes to a 
no-thinking consciousness. And eastern philosophies are not really philosophies. In the 
West, philosophies exist; in the East, only religious realizations. 

Of course, when a Buddha happens, or a Kanad or a Patanjali happens, when someone 
comes to realize the absolute, he makes statements about it. 

Those statements are different from the Aristotelan statements, from western 
philosophical conclusions. The difference is this: a Kanad, a Buddha, first comes to 
realize — the realization is the first thing — and then he makes statements about it. 
Experience is primary, and then he expresses it. Aristotle, Hegel and Kant, they think, 
and then through thinking and logical argument and dialectics, they reach particular 
conclusions. These conclusions are reached through thinking, through mind, not through 
any practice of meditation. Then they make assertions, then they make statements. The 
source is different. 

For a Buddha, his statements are only as a vehicle to communicate. He never says that 
through his communication you will achieve the truth. If you can understand Buddha, 
that doesn't mean you have achieved the truth; that simply means you have gathered 
knowledge. You will have to pass through meditations, deep ecstasies, deep pools of the 
mind, only then will you come to the truth. 

So truth is reached through a certain existential experience. It is existential, it is not 
mental. You must change to know it and to be it. If you remain the same and go on 
collecting information, you will become a great scholar, a philosopher, but you will not 
be enlightened. You will remain the same man; there will have been no mutation. 

That's why I said that philosophy is one dimension Meditation is quite the contrary, the 
very opposite, the polar-opposite dimension. 

So don't think about life; rather, live it in depth. And don’t think about ultimate problems; 
rather, enter this very moment in the ultimate. And the ultimate is not in the future. It is 
always there, tunelessly there. 

Someone else has also asked a similar question. He has asked: 

Question 2 

CAN PROBLEMS BE SOLVED THROUGH THINKING? 

Yes, certain problems can be solved through thinking — only those problems which are 
created by thinking can be solved by it. But no real problem can be solved by it, no lived 
problem can be solved by it. It is not created by it; it is there in life itself. Thinking will 
not be of much help. Only in one way can thinking help you, and that is that through 
thinking and thinking and thinking, you will stumble upon the truth that thinking is futile. 



And the moment you realize that thinking is futile for existential problems, it has helped 
you in a way. It is through thinking that you have come to this realization. 

But problems which are created by thinking can be solved by thinking itself. For 
example, a mathematical problem: it can be solved by thinking, because the whole 
mathematics is created by thinking. For example, if there is no man on earth, will there be 
mathematics? There will be no mathematics. With the disappearance of human mind, 
mathematics will disappear. There is no mathematics in life and existence. 

In the garden, trees are there, but when you count ONE, TWO, THREE, three trees are 
not there, because the THREE is a mental thing. The trees are there, but the figures are 
not there. The figure three is in your mind. If you are not there, the trees will be there, but 
not three trees, only trees. The THREE is a quality given by the mind, it is a projected 
quality. 

Mind creates mathematics, so any problem of mathematics will be solved by mind, it will 
be solved by thinking. Remember, you cannot solve a mathematical problem through 
non-thinking. No meditation will be of help, because meditation will dissolve the mind, 
and with the mind the whole mathematics will dissolve. So there are problems which are 
created by the mind; they can be solved. But there are problems which are not created by 
the mind, but are existential. Those problems cannot be solved by the mind. You will 
have to move deep in existence itself. 

For example, love. It is an existential problem. You cannot solve it by thinking; rather, 
you will get more puzzled. The more you think, the less you will be in touch with the 
source of the problem. Meditation will be of help. It will give you insight, it will lead you 
to the unconscious roots of the problem. If you think about it, you will remain on the 
surface. 

So remember, life problems cannot be solved by thinking. On the contrary, really, 
because of too much thinking you are missing all solutions, and more problems are 
created. 

For example, death. Death is not a problem created by thinking; you cannot solve it by 
thinking. Whatsoever you think, how can you solve it? You can console, and you can 
think that consolation is a solution — it is not. You can deceive yourself; that's possible 
through thinking. You can create explanations, and through explanations you can think 
that you have solved it. You can escape the problem through thinking, but you cannot 
solve it. And see the distinction clearly. 

For example, death is there. Your beloved dies, or your friend, or your daughter — the 
death is there. Now what can you do? You can think about it. You can think and you can 
say that the soul is immortal — because you have read it. In the Upanishads it is said that 
the soul is immortal, only the body dies. You don’t know it at all, because if you really 
know, there is no problem — or is there a problem? If you really know that the soul is 
immortal, then death has not occurred; there is no problem at all. But the problem is 
there: death has occurred, and you are disturbed and deep in sorrow. Now you want to 
escape this sorrow. Now somehow you want to forget this sorrow. 

You can take the explanation that the soul is immortal — now this is a trick. Not that the 
soul is not immortal — I am not saying that — but for you this is a trick. You are trying to 
deceive yourself. You are in sorrow, and now you want to escape this sorrow, so this 
explanation will be helpful. 



Now you can console yourself that the soul is immortal, no one dies, only the body — just 
as if one changes the clothes, or one changes the abode — so from one house to another 
the soul has gone. You can go on thinking, but you don’t know anything about it. You 
have heard, you have collected infonnation; but through these explanations you will be at 
ease. You can forget the death. 

Really this is no solution to the problem. Nothing has been solved. The next day someone 
else will die and the same problem will be there. Again someone will die and the same 
problem will be there. And deep down you know that you will have to die. You cannot 
escape death — and the fear is there. But you can go on postponing, and you can go on 
escaping through explanations. This won’t do. 

Death is an existential problem. You cannot solve it through thinking. You can create 
only fake solutions. What to do then? Then there is another dimension — the dimension 
of meditation; not of thinking, not of mentation. You just encounter the situation. 

Death has occurred. Your beloved is dead. Don’t move in thinking. Don’t bring the 
Upanishads and the Gita and the Bible. Don’t ask the Christs and Buddhas. Leave them 
alone. Death is there: face, encounter. Be with this situation totally. Don't think about it. 
What can you think? You can only repeat old rubbish. The death is such a new 
phenomenon, it is so unknown, that your knowledge is not going to help in any way. 

So put aside your mind. Be in a deep meditation with death. 

Don’t do anything, because what can you do which can be of any help? You don’t know. 
So be in ignorance. Don’t bring false knowledge, borrowed knowledge. Death is there; 
you be with it. Face death with total presence. Don’t move in thinking, because then you 
are escaping from the situation, you are becoming absent from here. Don’t think. Be 
present with the death. 

Sadness will be there, sorrow will be there, a heavy burden will be on you — let it be 
there. It is part — part of life, and part of maturity, and part of the ultimate realization. 
Remain with it, totally present. This will be meditation, and you will come to a deep 
understanding of death. Then death itself becomes eternal life. 

But don’t bring the mind and knowledge. Remain with death; then death will reveal itself 
to you, then you will know what death is. You will move into the inner mansions of it. 
Then death will take you to the very center of life — because death is the very center of 
life. It is not against life; it is the very process of life. But mind brings the contradiction 
that life and death are opposites. Then you go on thinking, and because the root is false, 
the opposition is false, you can never come to any conclusion which can be true and real. 
Whenever there is a lived problem, be with the problem without your mind — that's what 
I mean by meditation — and just being there with the problem will solve it. 

And if you have really been there, death will not occur to you again, because then you 
know what death is. 

We never do this — never with love, never with death, never with anything that is 
authentically real. We always move in thoughts, and thoughts are the falsifiers. They are 
borrowed, not your own. They cannot liberate you. Only the truth which is your own can 
become your liberation. And you can only come to your own truth through a very silent 
presence. With any problem, that fails. Thinking will not solve the real problems, but 
thinking can solve unreal problems created by thinking itself — because those problems 
follow the rules of logic. Life doesn't follow the rules of logic. Life has its own hidden 
laws, and you cannot force logic on them. 



One point more about this: wherever you bring the mind, the mind dissects, analyzes. 
Reality is one, and mind always divides. And when you have dived a reality, you have 
falsified it. Now you can struggle for your whole life — nothing will be achieved, because 
basically the reality was one and the mind divided into two, and now you are working 
with the division. 

For example, as I was saying, life and death are one, but for the mind they are two and 
death is the enemy of life. It is not, because life cannot exist without death. If life cannot 
exist without death, how can death be the enemy? It is the basic situation. 

It makes life possible. Life grows in it; it is the soul. Without it life is impossible. But 
mind, thinking, divides it and puts it as a polar opposite. Then you can go on thinking 
about. Whatsoever you think will be false, because in the beginning you have committed 
a sin — the sin of division. 

When you meditate, divisions disappear. When you meditate, there cannot be divisions, 
because how can you divide in silence? 

We are here. Everyone is thinking in his own mind something or other; then we are 
different, everyone is different, because your thought is yours, and my thought is mine. In 
my mind I have my own dreams and you have your own. There are many individuals 
here, but if we all are meditating — neither you are thinking nor I am thinking, the 
thinking has ceased — then there will not be so many individuals. Really, there will not be 
individuals at all. If we are all meditating then limitations have disappeared. 

When I am meditating and you are meditating, there are not two persons, there cannot be, 
because two silences become one. They cannot be two, because how can you demark one 
silence from another silence? You cannot demark. You can demark one thought from 
another, one mind from another, but two silences are simply one — just like two zeros. 
Two zeros are not two; two zeros are one. You can put a thousand zeros, but they are 
one. 

Meditation is creating a zero within — all limitations, all divisions disappear. 

And that gives you the real eye, the third eye, darshan. Now you have the real eyes to see. 
For these real eyes reality is clear, open, revealed. And with the reality revealed, there are 
no problems. 

Question 3 

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GAZING AT AN OPEN CLEAR SKY, 
GAZING AT AN ENLIGHTENED MASTER’S PHOTO, AND GAZING AT THE 
DARKNESS? 

The technique of gazing is not concerned really with the object; it is concerned with 
gazing itself. Because when you stare without blinking your eyes, you become focused, 
and the nature of the mind is to be constantly moving. If you are really gazing, not 
moving at all, the mind is bound to be in a difficulty. 

The nature of the mind is to move from one object to another, to move constantly. If you 
are gazing at darkness or at light or at something else, if you are really gazing, the 
movement of the mind stops. Because if the mind goes on moving, your gaze will not be 
there; you will go on missing the object. When the mind has moved somewhere else, you 
will forget, you will not be able to remember what you were looking at. The object will 
be there physically, but for you it will have disappeared because your are not there; you 
have moved in thought. 



Gazing means, TRATAK means, not allowing your consciousness to move. And when 
you are not allowing the mind to move, in the beginning it struggles, struggles hard, but 
if you go on practising gazing, by and by the mind loses struggling. 

For moments it stops. And when mind stops there is no mind, because mind can exist 
only in movement, thinking can exist only in movement. When there is no movement, 
thinking disappears, you cannot think, because thinking means movement — moving from 
one thought to another. It is a process. 

If you gaze continuously at one thing, fully aware and alert... because you can gaze 
through dead eyes. Then you can go on thinking — only eyes, dead eyes, not looking at... 
just with dead men's eyes you can look, but your mind will be moving. That will not be 
of any help. Gazing means not only your eyes, but your total mind focused through the 
eyes. 

So whatsoever the object.... It depends: if you like light, it is okay. If you can like 
darkness, good. Whatsoever the object, deeply it is irrelevant. The question is to stop the 
mind completely in your gaze, to focus it, so the inner movement, the fidgeting, stops; the 
inner wavering stops. You are simply looking at, not doing anything. That deep looking 
will change you completely. It will become a meditation. 

And it is good; you can try it. But remember that your eyes and your consciousness 
should meet in the focusing. You must be really looking through the eyes; you must not 
be absent there. Your presence is needed — totally present. Then you cannot think, then 
thinking is impossible. There is only one danger: you may become unconscious, you may 
fall asleep. 

Even with open eyes it is possible that you may fall asleep. Then your gaze will become 
stony. 

In the beginning the first trouble will be that you will be looking at, but you will not be 
present. This is the first barrier. Your mind will move. Your eyes will be fixed, your 
mind will be moving — there will be no meeting of the eyes and the mind. This will be 
the first difficulty. If you win over it, the second difficulty will be that gazing with no 
movement, you will fall asleep. You will move into auto-hypnosis, you will be 
hypnotized by yourself. That's natural, because our mind knows only two states: either 
the constant movement or sleep. The mind knows only two states naturally: constant 
movement, thinking, or falling into sleep. And meditation is a third state. 

The third state of meditation means your mind is as silent as a deep sleep, and as alert 
and aware as in thinking — both these must be present. You must be alert, completely 
alert, and as silent as if deep in sleep. So Patanjali's Yoga Sutras say that meditation is a 
sort of deep sleep, with only one difference — that you are alert. Patanjali equates 
sushupti and samadhi: deep sleep and ultimate meditation. The difference is only that in 
deep sleep you are not aware, and in meditation you are aware, but the quality of both is 
deep silence — unrippled, unwavering silence, unmoving silence. 

In the beginning it may happen that through staring you may fall asleep. 

So if you have become capable of bringing your mind to your focus and the mind is not 
moving, then remain alert, don’t fall asleep. Because if sleep comes, you have fallen in 
the abyss, the ditch. Just between these two ditches — constant thinking and sleep — is the 
narrow bridge of being in meditation. 

Question 4 



YOU HAVE SAID THAT SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS WITH THE OBJECTIVE, AND 
RELIGION WITH THE SUBJECTIVE. BUT NOW THERE IS A NEW GROWING 
SCIENCE, PSYCHOLOGY, OR MORE ACCURATELY, DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY, 
WHICH IS BOTH SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE. SO SCIENCE AND RELIGION 
MEET IN DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY. 

They cannot meet. Depth psychology, or the study of psychic phenomena, is again 
objective. And the method of depth psychology is the method of objective science. 

Try to see the distinction. For example, you can study meditation in a scientific way. You 
can observe someone who is meditating, but then this has become objective for you. You 
meditate and I observe. I can bring all the scientific instruments to observe what is 
happening to you, what is happening there in you, but the study remains objective. I am 
outside. I am not meditating. You are meditating; you are an object to me. 

Then I can try to understand what is happening to you. Even through instruments much 
can be known about you, but that will remain objective and scientific. So really, 
whatsoever I am studying is not the real thing that is happening to you, but the effects 
that your body is recording. 


You cannot penetrate a Buddha, what is happening to him, because really nothing is 
happening there. The deepest center of an enlightened man is nothingness. Nothing is 
happening there. And if nothing is happening, how can you study it? You can study 
something. You can study the Alpha waves; what is happening to the mind, to the body, 
to the chemistry, you can understand. But really deep down, when someone becomes 
enlightened, there is not anything happening. All happening has ceased. 

This is what is meant — the world has ceased. Now there is no sansar, no happening. He 
is as if he is not. That’s why Buddha says, 'Now I have become a no-atman, no-self. 

There is no one inside me. I am just an emptiness. The flame has disappeared, and the 
house is vacant.’ Nothing is happening. What can you record about it? At the most you 
can record that nothing is happening. If something happens it can be recorded 
objectively. 

The method of science remains objective, and science is very much afraid of the 
subjective, for many reasons. Science and the scientific mind cannot believe in the 
subjective, because firstly, it is private and individual and no one can enter in it. It cannot 
become public and collective, and unless something is public and collective, nothing can 
be said about it. The person who is saying may be deceived, or may be deceiving others. 
He may be a liar. 

Or, he may be just in an illusion, not a liar. He may be thinking and believing that this 
has happened to him, and this may be just a delusion, a self-deception. 

So for science the truth must be objective. Others must be able to participate in it, so we 
can judge whether it is happening or not. Secondly, it must be that it can be repeated; it 
must be repeatable. If we heat water it evaporates at a certain degree — it must be 
repeatable. So we repeat and repeat and again and again it evaporates at a certain degree. 
If it evaporates only once at a hundred degrees and never gain, or sometimes at ninety 
and sometimes at eighty, it cannot become a scientific fact. It must be repeatable, and the 
same conclusion should be achieved through many repeated experiments. 

But the subjective realization is not repeatable — it is not even predictable. And you 



cannot invite it; it happens. You cannot force it. You may achieve a deep meditation, you 
may have a very elated peak experience, but if someone says, 'Repeat it here,’ you may 
not be able to repeat it. On the contrary, because someone says, and you make an effort to 
repeat it, this very effort may become the barrier. Even the presence of observers may be 
distracting. You may not be able to repeat it. 

Science needs objective, repeatable experiments. And psychology, if it wants to be a 
science, must follow scientific rules. 

Religion is subjective. It is not concerned with proving any fact; rather, it is concerned 
with coming to an individual experiencing of it. And the deepest must remain individual, 
and the ultimate must remain private; it cannot become collective. Because unless 
everyone has come to the status of an enlightened one, it cannot become collective. You 
have to grow to achieve it. 

So science and religion really cannot meet, because their approaches are different. 
Religion is absolutely private — the concern of the individual with himself Because of 
this, those countries which in the past have been more religious than others have 
remained individualistic. For example, India. India is individualistic. Sometimes it 
appears even selfish. Everyone is concerned with himself, his own growth, his own 
enlightenment; not concerned with others, indifferent to others, indifferent to society, 
social conditions, poverty, slavery. Everyone is concerned with himself, with growing to 
the ultimate peak. It also looks selfish. 

Western countries are more socialistic, less individualistic. That’s why the very concept 
of communism was impossible with the Indian mind. We have given a Buddha and a 
Patanjali, but we couldn’t give a Marx. It had to come from the West where the society, 
the collective whole, is more important than the individual; where science is more 
important than religion; where that which happens objectively is more important than that 
which happens in your absolute privacy. 

That which happens in the privacy is dream-like for the West. 

Look at this: that which happens publicly we have called maya, illusion. Shankara says 
the whole world is illusion; only that which happens deep down within you, the ultimate, 
the Brahma that happens there is real, and everything is unreal. Quite the opposite is the 
western scientific attitude: that which happens within you is illusory; that which happens 
outside is the real. The reality is there outside, and the dream-world is there inside. 

These are the two attitudes — so different, the approach so diametrically opposite, that 
there can be no meeting. There is no need also. Their dimensions are different, their 
spheres are different. They never trespass on each other; there is no conflict at all. And 
there need be no conflict. Science works with the objective world, and religion works 
with the individual, subjective world. They never cross each other. There cannot be any 
conflict. 

And to me, when you are working with the outside world, work with a scientific attitude. 
When you are working with yourself, work with a religious attitude. And don’t create any 
conflict; there is no need. Don’t bring science for the inner world, and don’t bring religion 
for the outer world. 

If you bring religion to the outer world, you will create chaos. In India we have created it 
— it is a mess. If you bring a scientific attitude for the inner, you will create madness — 
the West has created it. 



Now the West is completely neurotic. And both have made the same mistake. Don't 
confuse the two, and don't try to bring the outer to the inner, or the inner to the outer. Let 
the subjective be subjective and let the objective be the objective. While you move 
outwards be scientific and objective, and while you move inwards be religious and 
subjective. 

There is no need to create any conflict. There is none. The conflict arises only because 
we want to impose one attitude on both realms. We want either to be scientific totally, or 
to be religious totally — that's wrong. With the objective, the subjective approach will be 
false, dangerous, harmful, and vice versa. 

Question 5 

YOU HAVE SPOKEN ABOUT SO MANY METHODS AND TECHNIQUES. THE 
YEARNING TO SUCCEED IN THEM IS VERY GREAT. HOW CAN WE 
OVERCOME OUR GREAT IMPATIENCE? 

Two things to be remembered. One: spirituality cannot be an outcome of desire, because 
desire is the root cause of all our anxiety and anguish. And you cannot direct your desires 
to the spiritual realm. But it happens, it is natural, because we know only one movement 
— that is desire. We desire the things of the world. Someone desires riches, someone 
desires fame, someone desires prestige and power, or something else. We desire things of 
the world, and through this desiring we are frustrated. 

And we are bound to be frustrated — it is irrelevant whether a desire is fulfilled or not. 

If it is not fulfilled, obviously we will be frustrated. If it is fulfilled, then too we will be 
frustrated, because whenever a desire is fulfilled, the desire is fulfilled, but the hope, the 
promise, is not fulfilled. You can get as much wealth as you desire, but the wealth was 
not desired really; something else was desired through it — that is never fulfilled. 

You can achieve wealth, but the hope that was lingering around — the dream of 
happiness, of bliss, of some ecstatic life — that is not fulfilled. If wealth is not achieved 
you will feel frustrated. If wealth is achieved then too you will feel frustrated, because 
the promise is not fulfilled, the dream is not fulfilled. Everything is there. The means are 
there, and the end has escaped. The end is always elusive. 

Through desire one comes to deep frustration. When this frustration happens you start 
looking for something absolutely other than this world — religious yearning is born, a 
religious longing, but again you start desiring. You become impatient; you want to 
achieve this and that. The mind has not changed. The object of desire is different: it was 
wealth, now it is meditation. It was power and prestige, now it is silence and peace. 
Before it was something, now it is something else. But the mind, the mechanism, the very 
working of your being, is the same. You were desiring A, now you are desiring B — but 
the desiring is there. 


And desiring is the problem, not what you desire; that is not the problem. What you 
desire is not the problem — that you desire is the problem. Now you are again desiring 
and you will be frustrated again. If you achieve, you will be frustrated. If you don’t 
achieve, you will be frustrated. The same will happen to you, because you have not been 
able to see the point, you have missed the point. 

You cannot desire meditation, because meditation happens only when there is no desire. 
You cannot desire liberation, nirvana, because it happens only in a desire less state. It 



cannot be made an object of desire. So to me, and to all those who know, desiring is the 
world; not that you desire worldly things. Desiring, the very phenomenon of desiring, is 
the world. 

And when you desire, impatience is bound to be there, because the mind doesn’t want to 
wait, the mind doesn’t want to postpone. It is impatient. Impatience is the shadow of 
desire. The more intense the desire, the more impatience will be there. And impatience 
will create disturbance. So how will you achieve meditation? Desire will create 
movement of the mind, and then desiring will create impatience, and impatience will 
bring you to more disturbances. 

So it happens, and I observe it daily, that a person who was living a very worldly life was 
not ordinarily so disturbed. When he starts to meditate, or to seek the religious 
dimension, he becomes more disturbed, more than ever. 

The reason is that now he has an even keener desire, more impatience. And with the 
worldly things, things were so real and objective that he could wait for them. They were 
always in his reach. Now in the spiritual realm things are so elusive, so far away, they 
never seem to be in reach. Life seems to be very short, and now the object of desires 
seems to be infinite — there is more impatience and then more disturbance. And with a 
disturbed mind, how can you meditate? 

So this is the puzzle. Try to understand it. If you are really frustrated and you have come 
to feel that all that is outside is futile — money or sex or power or prestige just futile — if 
you have come to this realization, then a deeper realization is also needed. If these things 
are futile, then desiring is even more futile: you desire and desire and nothing happens — 
and your desiring creates the misery. 

Look at the fact that desiring creates misery. If you don’t desire, there is no misery. So 
drop desiring. And don't create a new desire; simply drop desiring. Don't create a 
spiritual desire. Don't say, 'Now I am going to seek God. Now I am going to find this and 
that. Now I am going to realize the truth.’ Don’t create a new desire. If you create, it 
shows you have not understood your misery. 

Look at the misery that desire creates. Feel that desire is misery and drop it. No effort is 
needed to drop it. 

Remember, if you make an effort you will create another desire. That’s why you need 
some other desire, because then you can leave it. If some other desire is there, you can 
hang onto it. You can cling to the new desire and you can leave the old one. To leave the 
old is easy if some new is to be gained, but then you are missing the whole point. Simply 
leave desire because it is misery, and don't create a new desire. 

Then there will be no impatience. Then meditation is not be practised really; it will start 
happening to you, because a non-desiring mind is in meditation. Then you can play with 
these techniques. And I say play. Then you can play with these techniques; there is no 
practice. Practice is not a good word the very word is wrong. Then you can play with 
these techniques, and you can enjoy playing, because there is no desire to achieve 
something and there is no impatience to reach somewhere. 

You can play, and through play, when meditation is a play, everything is possible. And 
everything is possible immediately, because you are not disturbed, you are not impatient, 
you are not in any hurry, you are not going somewhere, not reaching somewhere. You are 
here and now. If meditation happens, okay. If it doesn't happen, it is still okay. Nothing is 
wrong with you because there is no desire, no expectation, no future. 



And remember, when meditation or no-meditation are similar to you, meditation has 
happened to you. 

You have reached. Now the goal has come, the ultimate has descended in you. This will 
look strange — that I say don’t make meditation a practice, rather make it a play, a fun. 
Enjoy it while doing it, not for any result. 

But our minds are very serious, deadly serious. Even if we play, we make it a serious 
thing. We make it a work, a duty. Play just like small children. Play with meditation 
techniques, and then much more is possible through them. Don't be serious about them; 
take them as fun. But we make everything serious. Even if we are playing, we make it 
serious. And with religion we have always been very serious. Religion has never been 
fun, that's why the earth has remained irreligious. Religion must become a fun and a 
festivity,, a celebration — a celebration of the moment, enjoying whatsoever you are 
doing; enjoying so much and so deeply that mind ceases. 

If you really understand me, these 112 techniques will show you that everything can 
become a technique — if you really understand. That's why there are 112. Everything can 
become a technique if you understand the quality of the mind which brings meditation. 
Then whatsoever you do can become a technique. Be playful, celebrate it, enjoy it. Move 
so deeply in it that time ceases. 

But time cannot cease if desire is there. Really, desire is time. When you desire, future is 
needed, because desire cannot be fulfdled here and now. 

Desire can be fulfdled only in the future somewhere, so you will need future to move. 
And then time destroys you. You miss eternity. Eternity is here. 

So take meditation as a fun, a festivity, a celebration of anything. You are just digging 
outside in the garden — it can become a technique. Simply dig and enjoy and celebrate 
the very act. Become the act and forget the actor. The 'I' is not there, only the action 
remains, and you are present to the action, blissfully present. Then ecstasy is there — no 
impatience, no desire, and no motivation. 

If you bring motivation, desire and impatience to meditation, you will destroy the whole 
thing. And then the more you do, the more frustrated you will feel. You will say, 'I am 
doing so much and nothing is happening.' People come to me. They say, 'I am doing this 
and I am doing that, and for so many months and for so many years, and nothing has 
happened.’ 

One seeker from Holland was here, and he was doing a particular technique three 
hundred times every day. So he told me, 'For two years I have been doing this technique 
three hundred times every day. Not a single day has been missed. I have left everything, 
because I have to do this three hundred times every day — and nothing has happened.’ 
And he was just on the verge of a nervous breakdown, because of the technique. 

So I said, 'The first thing is to leave this. 

Do anything whatsoever, but don't do this. You will go mad.' He was deadly serious 
about it. It was a life-and-death problem for him. It had to be achieved. 

And he said, 'Who knows how many days are left? Time is short, and I must achieve it in 
this life. I don’t want to be born again. Life is much a misery.’ 

He will be bom again and again. The way he is doing, he will go more and more mad. 

But it is wrong — the whole attitude is wrong. Take meditation as a play, a fun, enjoy it, 
and then the very quality changes. Then it is not something you are doing as a cause to 



gain some effect. No, you are enjoying it here and now. It is the cause and it is the effect, 
both. It is the beginning and it is the end. 

And then you cannot miss meditation. You cannot miss it, it will happen to you, because 
now you are ready to take it in. You are open. No one has said that meditation should be 
taken as a fun, but I say it. Make it a play. Just like small children, play with it. 

Question 6 

THE OTHER DAY YOU SAID THAT DARKNESS IS MORE FUNDAMENTAL TO 
EXISTENCE, WHILE MOST RELIGIONS HOLD THE CONTRARY VIEW. WILL 
YOU KINDLY SHED SOME MORE LIGHT ON THIS QUESTION, PARTICULARLY 
IN VIEW OF WHAT MODERN SCIENCE HAS TO SAY ABOUT IT? DOES IT NOT 
SAY THAT THE LAST DIVISIBLE COMPONENTS OF MATTER ARE JUST 
ELECTRIC ENERGY? 

Again the same division — light and darkness. 

They are two if you look at them through the mind. They are one if you meditate upon 
them. Whether you meditate on light or on darkness, it makes no difference. If you 
meditate, the other is dissolved into it. Then light is nothing but less darkness and 
darkness is nothing but less light; the difference is of degree. They are not two things 
opposed to each other; rather, two degrees of one phenomenon. And that one 
phenomenon is neither light nor darkness. That one of which these two are degrees is 
neither light nor darkness; or, it is both. You can enter into it from light, you can enter 
into it from darkness. 

Many religions have used light because it is more comfortable, easier. Darkness is 
difficult, more uncomfortable, and if you try to enter through darkness, you have chosen 
a more arduous path. That’s why many religions have chosen light. But you can choose 
either; it depends on you. If you are adventurous, courageous, choose darkness. If you are 
afraid, and don’t want to go on an arduous path, choose light. Because both belong to one 
phenomenon which appears at one point as light, at another point as darkness. 

For example, this room is filled with light. But it is not filled with the same light for 
everyone, or is it? If my eyes are weak then the light is not as light as it is for you. I see it 
as a little darker. Imagine if someone from Mars or from some other planet comes, who 
has very penetrating eyes. 

Then where you see light, he will see much light, more light then you see. And where 
you see darkness, he will see light. There are animals and birds who see in the night 
where you cannot see. For them it is light, for you it is darkness. 

So what is light? And what is darkness? — one phenomenon. And how much you can 
penetrate into it, and how much it can penetrate into you... it depends on that penetration 
whether you call it light or darkness. These polar opposites just appear to be opposites. 
They are not, they are relative degrees of one phenomenon. So scientists say that the last 
divisible components of matter are just electric energy. But they don’t say they are light; 
they say electric energy. Darkness is also electric energy, and light is also electric energy. 
Electric energy is not synonymous with light. If you give it the name electric energy, then 
light is one expression and darkness is another. 

But there is no need to move into scientific discussion about it. It is useless. Rather, think 
about your own mind, what you like. If you feel at ease with light, enter through light. 
That is your door. If you feel at ease with darkness, enter through darkness. And both 



will lead to the same. 

Many methods in these 112 are concerned with light; a few are concerned with darkness. 
And Shiva is trying to explain all the methods possible. He is not talking to particular 
types; he is talking to all types. 

But there are a few persons who will like to enter through darkness. For example, a 
feminine mind, more passive, more receptive, will like to enter through darkness; it will 
be more acceptable. A male mind will like the light more. 

You may not have observed the fact that many poets of the past and the present, many 
philosophers, and many others who have a deep insight into the human mind, have 
always compared the female with darkness, and the male with light. Light is aggressive, a 
male element; darkness is receptive, a female element. Darkness is like a womb. 

So it depends: if you like darkness, good, enter through it. If you like light, enter through 
it. Sometimes even the opposite becomes appealing. You can try that also. There is no 
danger in trying anything, because every path leads to the same goal. 

But don’t go on thinking about what to choose. Don't waste time; rather, try. Because you 
can go on thinking forever about what will be suitable, what to do and what not to do, 
and why so many religions have insisted on light, and so few on darkness. Don’t get 
worried about these things; they don’t help. Rather, you think about your own type, about 
what will be suitable for you, in what you will feel more comfortable, and then start it. 
And then forget all others, because all of these 112 methods are not for you. Even if you 
choose one method, for you it is enough. 

You need not go through 1 12 methods; one method will do. So just be receptive and 
aware so that you can catch the method that is for you. Y ou need not get worried about 
every other method; that is unnecessary. Choose one, play with it, and if you feel good 
and something is happening, then move into it and forget all the other 1 1 1 . If you feel 
you have chosen wrongly, then throw it, choose another, and play with it. If you try this 
with four or five or six methods, you will fall upon the right one. But don’t be serious — 
just play. 


THE END. 



Chapter 53: From death to deathlessness 


FOCUS ON FIRE 

RISING THROUGH YOUR FORM 

FROM THE TOES UP 

UNTIL THE BODY BURNS TO ASHES 

BUT NOT YOU. 

MEDITATE ON THE MAKE-BELIEVE WORLD AS BURNING TO ASHES AND 
BECOME BEING ABOVE HUMANAS, 

AS SUBJECTIVELY, 

LETTERS FLOW INTO WORDS AND WORDS INTO SENTENCES, 

AND AS, OBJECTIVELY, 

CIRCLES FLOW INTO WORLDS AND WORLDS INTO PRINCIPLES, 

FIND AT LAST THESE CONVERGING IN OUR BEING 

All the enlightened ones, all the religions, agree on one thing only. Their disagreements 
are many, but there is one agreement amongst all, and that is that man, because of his 
ego, is closed to the reality. The ego is the only barrier; the feeling that I AM. 

On this point Buddhas and Christs and Krishnas all agree. And because they all agree it 
seems to me that this is the basic thing in all religious endeavor. All else is accidental; 
this is essential — that you are debarred because of your own ego. 

What is this ego? Of what does it consist? How does it arise? And why does it become so 
important? 

Look at your mind — because you cannot understand the phenomenon of ego 
theoretically; you can only understand it existentially. Look at your mind, observe it, and 
you will come to a deep understanding. And if you can understand what the go is, there is 
no problem; it can be dropped easily. 

Rather, there is no need to drop it. If you can understand it, the very understanding 
becomes the dropping, because the ego is created through your non-understanding, it is 
created through your sleepiness. 

If you become alert about it, if you focus your consciousness towards it, it disappears. It 
disappears — just as when you bring light in a room and the darkness disappears. Even if 
you bring light to look at darkness, to see what darkness is... if you bring light it 
disappears. The ego exists because you have never been alert to your existence; it is a 
shadow of your non-alertness. So really, there is no need to drop it. If you can look at it, 
it drops by itself. 

What is it? Have you ever felt any moment when there is no ego? Whenever you are 
silent, the ego is not. Whenever your mind is in turmoil, chattering, restless, the ego is 
there. Whenever you are relaxed, silent and calm, the ego is not. Just now, if you are 
silent, where is the ego? You will be there, but no feeling of T. So try to understand it 
existentially. 

Right now as I am speaking, you can observe the fact that if you are silent, totally alert, 
you are there, but with no feeling of T. And just the contrary happen: if you are troubled, 
in conflict, in anxiety, you feel a centered ego within you. When you are in anger, in 



passion, violent, aggressive, you feel a crystallized ego within you. 


Whenever you are in love, in compassion, it is not there. 

That's why we cannot love, because with the ego, love is impossible. That’s why we go 
on talking so much about love, but we never are in love. And whatsoever we call love is 
more or less sex, it is not love; because you cannot lose your ego, and love cannot exist 
unless the ego has disappeared. Love, meditation, God, they all require one thing — the 
ego must not be there. That's why Jesus is right in saying that God is love, because both 
phenomena happen only when the ego is not. 

If you know love, there is no need to know God — you have known him already. Love is 
just another name for it. If you know love, there is no need to go into meditation — you 
have gone already. Love is just another name for it. So many techniques of meditation are 
needed, and so many teachers, and so many schools of meditation are needed, because 
there is no love. If love exists, there is no need to practice anything, because the thing has 
happened already. And the thing is the disappearance of the ego. 

So the first thing to be understood: whenever you are silent, the ego is not. And don't 
believe in me. I am not talking about a theory; this is a fact. You need not take my 
opinion; you can observe it in yourself. And there is no need to postpone it for the future; 
right now you can observe the fact that if you are silent, you are — but with no limitation, 
with no center. 

You exist without the center, there is no crystallized I. The presence is there, the 
consciousness is there, but there is no one who can say 'I am’. 

When you are silent, the ego is not. And when you are not silent, the ego is. So ego is the 
disease, all diseases combined together, hence the emphasis to surrender the ego. The 
emphasis is to surrender the disease. 

Secondly: if in silence, for even a single moment you have the glimpse of your existence 
as egoless, then you can analyze it, and then you can enter the phenomenon of ego, of 
what it is. Thew mind is accumulated past. The mind is never here, it is never now. It is 
always from the past. It is accumulation. Mind is memory: all the experiences that you 
have gone through, all the information that you have come across, all the knowledge that 
you have gathered, heard, listened to, read — that is accumulated. The mind is constantly 
accumulating. 

The mind is the greatest accumulator; it goes on accumulating. Even while you are not 
conscious it goes on accumulating; even while you are asleep the mind is accumulating. 
You may not be aware of it. While you are asleep, and there is noise in the road, the mind 
is accumulating. You can be hypnotized in the morning and you can be asked about it, 
and you will say everything, you will relate everything — whatsoever the mind has 
accumulated in the night. Even if you have fallen in a coma, or you are unconscious, or 
you have fallen in a fit, the mind is accumulating. 


The mind doesn't need your consciousness to accumulate; it goes on accumulating. Even 
while you were in the womb of your mother the mind was accumulating. And through 
hypnosis the memories of your days in the womb of your mother can be awakened. You 
don’t remember anything about taking birth, but the mind was accumulating. Whatsoever 
was happening, the mind was accumulating. And now it can be awakened again. Through 
hypnosis the memory can be brought again to your focus. And millions of memories are 



being accumulated — this accumulation is the mind. Memory is the mind. 

How is the I, the ego, created? The consciousness is within you, and around the 
consciousness all these memories are accumulated on the periphery. They are useful, and 
you cannot survive without them, they are needed, but then a new thing happens between 
these two, an epi-phenomenon. 

Consciousness is within, you are within, without the I. There is no I within. You are, 
without a center. On the periphery, every moment knowledge, experience, memories, 
accumulate. This is the mind. And whenever you look at the world, you look through the 
mind. Whenever you pass through a new experience, you look through the memories, you 
interpret it through the memories. You look at everything through the past. The past 
becomes a mediator. 

Constantly looking through the past, you get identified with it — that identification is the 
ego. 

Let me put it in this way: the identification of the conscious with the memories is the ego. 
You say 'I am a Hindu' or 'I am a Christian’ or 'I am a Jain’. What are you doing? No one 
is born as a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Jain. You are simply born as a human being. Then 
you are taught, then you are conditioned to think that you are a Christian, a Hindu, or a 
Jain. This is a memory. You have been taught that you are a Christian. This is a memory, 
and now, whenever you look through this memory, you feel, 'I am a Christian.’ 

Your consciousness is not Christian; it cannot be. It is simply consciousness. You have 
been taught that you are a Christian. This teaching is accumulated on the periphery. Now 
you look through the glasses and the whole world is colored. Those glasses stick too 
much and too deeply with you, and you are never away from them, you never put them 
aside. You have become so accustomed to them that you have forgotten that there are 
spectacles on your eyes. Then you say, 'I am a Christian.’ 

Whenever you get identified with any memory, any knowledge, any experience, any 
name and fonn, that I is bom. Then you are young, you are old; you are rich, you are 
poor; you are beautiful or you are not beautiful; you are educated or you are not 
educated; you are respected or you are not respected — then you go on getting identified 
with things which accumulate around you and the ego is born. 

Ego is identification with the mind. 

That’s why when you are silent the ego is not, because when you are silent the mind is 
not functioning. That’s what silence means. Whenever the mind is functioning you are not 
silent. You cannot be — the functioning of the mind is the inner noise, the chattering, the 
constant chattering within you. When the chattering stops, or it is not there, or you have 
gone beyond it, or you have gone within, moved within, there is silence, and in that 
silence there is no ego. 

But it happens only sometimes, and only for a moment, that you are silent. That’s why 
you feel that those situations in which this happens are lovely. You start desiring those 
situations. You go to a hill, and while the sun is rising in the morning you look at it. 
Suddenly you have an upsurge of joy. You feel blissful, a beatitude descends upon you. 
What has happened really? Because of the silent morning, and the silent rising of the sun, 
and the greenery, and the hill, suddenly your inner chattering has stopped. The 
phenomenon is so great — all around you such beauty, such peace and tranquility — that 
you have stopped for a moment. In that stopping you have realized a non-ego state — for 
a single moment of course. 



This can happen through many situations. In sex it happens, in music it can happen; in 
anything which is so great that you are overwhelmed, overpowered, and your constant 
chattering is put aside, forced aside for a moment, it will come again. 

Whenever you are egoless, accidentally or through some practice, you feel a subtle bliss 
which you have not felt before. 

The bliss is not coming from outside. It is not coming from the hills or from the rising 
sun or from beautiful flowers; it is not coming from the sex act. It is not coming from 
outside. The outside is only creating an opportunity — it is coming from inside. So if you 
repeat the outer situation again and again, it will not come, because you will get immune 
to it, you will get accustomed to it. 

The same hill and the same morning... again you go there and you don’t feel. You feel 
something is missing. Because for the first time it was so new that it stopped your mind 
completely. The wonder was so great and the miracle was so new, you couldn't continue 
with the past chattering. It stopped — just in awe it stopped — but next time you go there 
you know everything. There is no awe, no mystery — the mind continues. This happens 
with every experience. In any experience, if you feel a joy, it will be destroyed if you 
repeat it, because then, in a repeated experience, you cannot put aside the mind. 

So the second thing to remember is that mind is accumulation. Your consciousness is just 
hidden behind this accumulated past, and you are identified with it. Whenever you say 'I 
am this, I am that’, you are creating the ego. 

Thirdly: if you can understand this, then the third point is not difficult, and that third 
point is that mind has to be used. 

There is no need to get identified; you can use it as an instrument — and it is an 
instrument. There is no need to get identified with it. Remain always above it. 

And really, you are always above it, because you are here, now, always present, and mind 
is always past. You are always ahead of it. It is just lagging behind you; it is a shadow. 
This very moment is a new thing; your mind cannot have it. A moment later it will be 
absorbed in the memory; then the mind can have it. Every single moment you are free. 
That’s why Buddha has emphasized the moment so much. He says, 'Remain in the 
moment and there will be no mind.’ But the moment is very atomic, it is very subtle; you 
can miss it easily. The mind is always the past — whatsoever you have known — and the 
reality that is passing just now is not part of the mind. It will become part of the mind a 
moment later. 

If you can be aware of the reality here and now, you will remain always transcendental to 
the mind. And if you can remain transcendental to the mind — always above, never 
entangled in it, using it, but never getting involved in it, using it as an instrument, never 
getting identified with it — the ego will disappear. You will be egoless, and when you are 
egoless, nothing else is to be done. Then all else happens to you. You have become 
vulnerable, you have become open. Then the whole existence happens to you, then all the 
ecstasies are yours, then suffering is impossible. 

Suffering comes through the ego. Bliss comes through the egoless gate. 

Now we will enter the techniques — because these techniques are concerned with being 
egoless. Very simple techniques, but if you understand this background then you can do 
them, and much becomes possible through them. 



The first technique: 


FOCUS ON FIRE 

RISING THROUGH YOUR FORM 

FROM THE TOES UP 

UNTIL THE BODY BURNS TO ASHES 

BUT NOT YOU. 

FOCUS ON FIRE RISING THROUGH YOUR FORM, FROM THE TOES UP, UNTIL 
THE BODY BURNS TO ASHES BUT NOT YOU. A very simple technique and very 
wonderful, very easy to do, but some basic requirements are to be fulfilled beforehand. 
Buddha liked this technique very much; he initiated his disciples into this technique. 
Whenever someone was initiated by Buddha, the first thing was this: he would tell him 
just to go to the burning place and observe a body being burned, a dead body being 
burned. For three months he was not to do anything, but just sit there and watch. So the 
seeker would go to the burning place of the village. He would stay there for three months, 
day and night, and whenever a dead body would come there he would just sit and 
meditate. He would just look at the dead body; then the fire would be created and then 
the body would start burning. And for three months continuously he would not do 
anything else — just look at dead bodies being burned. 


Buddha said, 'Don't think about it. Just look at it." And it is difficult not to come upon the 
thought that sooner or later your body is going to be burned. Three months is a long time, 
and continuously, day and night, whenever there was a body to be burned, the seeker was 
to meditate. Sooner or later he would start seeing his own body on the burning pyre. He 
would start seeing himself being burned. 

It will be helpful; if you want to do this technique, go to the burning place. Watch — not 
for three months — but at least watch one body being burned; observe it. Then you can do 
this technique easily with yourself. Don’t think: simply watch the phenomenon, watch 
what is happening. 

People go to burn their relatives’ bodies, but they never watch. They start talking of other 
things, or about death; they argue and discuss. They do many things. They talk many 
things and gossip, but they never watch. It should be made a meditation. No talking 
should be allowed there, because it is a rare experience to see someone you loved being 
burned. You are bound to feel that you are also burning there. If you are seeing your 
mother being burned, or your father, or your wife, or your husband, you are bound to see 
yourself also there in the flames. That experience will help for this technique. The first 
thing. The second thing: if you are very much afraid of death you cannot do this 
technique, because the very fear will protect you. 

You cannot enter into it. Or, you can just imagine on the surface, but your deep being 
will not be in it. Then nothing will happen to you. So remember, the second thing: 
whether you are afraid or not, death is the only certainty. 

It makes no difference whether you are afraid or not; it is irrelevant. In life, nothing is 
certain except death. Everything is uncertain; only death is not accidental. And look at 
the human mind. We always talk about death as if it is an accident. Whenever someone 



dies we say his death was untimely. Whenever someone dies we start talking as if it has 
been an accident. Only death is not an accident — only death. Everything else is 
accidental. Death is absolutely certain. You have to die. 

And when I say you have to die, it seems in the future, very far away. It is not so — you 
have already died. The moment you were born, you died. With birth, death has become a 
fixed phenomenon. One part of it has already happened — the birth; now only the second, 
later part has to happen. So you are already dead, half-dead, because once one is bom, 
one has come into the realm of death, entered into it. Now nothing can change it, now 
there is no way to change it. You have entered into it. You are half-dead with birth. 
Secondly: death is not going to happen in the end; it is already happening. It is a process. 
Just as life is a process, death is a process. 

We create the n — but life and death are just like your two feet, your two legs. Life and 
death are both one process. You are dying every moment. 

Let me put it in this way: whenever you inhale, it is life, and whenever you exhale, it is 
death. The first thing a child does is to inhale. A child cannot exhale. The first thing is 
inhalation. He cannot exhale, because there is no air within his chest; he has to inhale. 

The first act is inhalation. And the old man, while dying, will do the last act, which will 
be exhalation. Dying, you cannot inhale — or can you? When you are dying, you cannot 
inhale. The last act cannot be inhalation; the last act will be exhalation. The first act is 
inhalation and the last is exhalation. Inhalation is birth and exhalation is death. But every 
moment you are doing both — inhaling, exhaling. Inhalation is life, exhalation is death. 
You may not have observed, but try to observe it. Whenever you exhale, you are more at 
peace. Exhale deeply and you will feel a certain peace within. Whenever you inhale, you 
become intense, you become tense. The very intensity of inhalation creates a tension. 

And the normal, ordinary emphasis is always on inhalation. If I tell you to take deep 
breaths, you will always start with inhalation. 

Really, we are afraid of exhaling. That's why breathing has become shallow. You never 
exhale, you go on inhaling. 

Only the body goes on exhaling, because the body cannot exist with inhalation alone. It 
needs both: life and death. 

Try one experiment. The whole day, whenever you remember, exhale deeply and don’t 
inhale. Allow the body to inhale; you simply exhale deeply. And you will feel a deep 
peace, because death is peace, death is silence. And if you can pay attention, more 
attention, to exhalation, you will feel egoless. With inhalation you will feel more egoistic; 
with exhalation you will feel more egoless. Pay more attention to exhalation. The whole 
day, whenever you remember, exhale deeply and don’t inhale. Allow the body to inhale; 
you don’t do anything. 

This emphasis on exhalation will help you very much to do this experiment, because you 
will be ready to die. A readiness is needed, otherwise the technique will not be of much 
help. And you can be ready only if you have tasted death in a certain way. Exhale deeply 
and you will have a taste of it. It is beautiful. 

Death is just beautiful, because nothing is like death — so silent, so relaxing, so calm, so 
unperturbed. But we are afraid of death. And why are we afraid of death? Why is there so 
much fear of death? We are afraid of death not because of death — because we don't 
know it. How can you be afraid of something you have never encountered? How can you 
be afraid of something that you don't know? At least you must know it to be afraid of it. 



So really you are not afraid of death; the fear is something else. You have never really 
lived — that creates the fear of death. 

The fear comes because you are not living, so you are afraid — 'I have not lived yet, and 
if death happens then what? Unfulfilled, unlived, I will die.’ The fear of death comes only 
to those who are not really alive. If you are alive, you will welcome death. Then there is 
no fear. You have known life; now you would like to know death also. But we are so 
afraid of life itself that we have not know it, we have not entered deep into it. That 
creates the fear of death. 

If you want to enter this technique you must be aware of this deep fear. And this deep 
fear must be thrown away, purged, only then can you enter the technique. This will help: 
pay more attention to exhalation. And really, if you can pay all attention to exhalation 
and forget inhaling.... Don’t be afraid that you will die; you will not die — the body will 
take inhalation by itself. The body has its own wisdom: if you deeply exhale, the body 
will take a deep inhalation by itself. You need not interfere. Then a very deep relaxation 
will spread all over your consciousness. The whole day you will feel relaxed, and an 
inner silence will be created. 

You can deepen this feeling more if you do another experiment. Just for fifteen minutes 
in the day exhale deeply. Sit in a chair or on the ground, exhale deeply, and while 
exhaling close the eyes. 

When the air goes out, you go in. And then allow the body to inhale, and when the air 
goes in, open the eyes and you go out. It is just the opposite: when the air goes out, you 
go in; when the air goes in, you go out. 

When you exhale, space is created within, because breath is life. When you exhale 
deeply, you are vacant, life has gone out. In a way you are dead, for a moment you are 
dead. In that silence of death, enter within. Air is moving out: you close your eyes and 
move within. The space is there and you can move easily. 

Remember, when you are inhaling, to move inwards is very difficult, because there is no 
space to move. While exhaling you can move within. And when the air goes in, you go 
out; open the eyes and move out. Create a rhythm between these two. Within fifteen 
minutes you will feel so deeply relaxed, and you will be ready to do this technique. 

Before doing this technique, do this for fifteen minutes so that you are ready — not only 
ready, but welcoming, receptive. The fear of death is not there, because now death 
appears like relaxation, death appears like a deep rest. Death appears not antagonistic to 
life, but the very source of it, the very energy of it. Life is just like ripples on the face of a 
lake, and death is the lake itself. When ripples are not there the lake is there. And the lake 
can exist without the ripples, but the ripples cannot exist without the lake. 

Life cannot exist without death. Death can exist without life, because it is the source. 
Then you can do this technique. 

FOCUS ON FIRE 

RISING THROUGH YOUR FORM 

FROM THE TOES UP... 

Just lie down. First conceive of yourself as dead; the body is just like a corpse. Lie down, 
and then bring your attention to the toes. With closed eyes move inwards. Bring your 
attention to the toes and feel that the fire is rising from there upwards, everything is being 



burned. As the fire rises, your body is disappearing. Start from the toes and move 
upwards. 

Why start from the toes? It will be easier, because the toes are very far away from your I, 
from your ego. Your ego exists in the head. You cannot start from the head, it will be 
very difficult, so start from the far away point. The toes are the most far away point from 
the ego. Start the fire from there. Feel that the toes are burned, only ashes remain, and 
then move slowly, burning everything that the fire comes across. Every part — the legs, 
the thighs — will disappear. 

And just go on seeing that they have become ashes. The fire is rising upwards, and the 
parts it has passed are no more there; they have become ashes. Go on upwards, and lastly 
the head disappears. Everything has become... the dust has fallen unto dust... UNTIL 
THE BODY BURNS TO ASHES BUT NOT YOU. 

You will remain just a watcher on the hill. 

The body will be there — dead, burned, ashes — and you will be the watcher, you will be 
the witness. This witness has no ego. 

This technique is very good to reach the egoless state. Why? — because so many things 
are implied in it. It appears simple; it is not so simple. The inner mechanism is very 
complex. First thing: your memories are part of the body. Memory is matter; that's why it 
can be recorded. It is recorded in the brain cells. They are material, part of the body. 

Your brain cells can be operated on, and if certain brain cells are removed, certain 
memories will disappear from you. Memories are recorded in the brain cells. Memory is 
matter; it can destroyed. And now scientists say it can be replanted, it can be transplanted 
again. 

Sooner or later we will find ways so that when a person like Albert Einstein dies we will 
be able to save his brain cells. And those brain cells will be able to be transplanted into a 
child, and that child will have all the memories of Albert Einstein without going through 
all those experiences. It is part of the body, memory is part of the body, and if the whole 
body is burned and has become ashes, you will not have any memory. 

Remember, this is the point to understand: if the memory is still there, then the body 
remains and you have been playing tricks. If really you go deep in the feeling that the 
body is dead, burning, and the fire has completely destroyed it, you will not have any 
memory in that moment. 

In that moment of watching, there will be no mind. Everything will have stopped — no 
movement of thought, just watching, just seeing what has happened. 

And once you know this, you can remain in this state continuously. Once you have 
known that you can separate yourself from the body.... This technique is just a method to 
separate yourself from the body, just to create a gap between you and the body, just for a 
few moments to be out of the body. If you can do this, then you can remain in the body 
and you will not be in the body. You can go on living as you were living before, but you 
will not be the same again. 

This technique will take at least three months. Go on doing it. It is not going to happen in 
one day, but if you go on doing it every day for one hour, within three months, some day 
suddenly your imagination will have helped and the gap will be created, and you will 
actually see the body gone to ashes. Then you can watch. 

In that watching you will realize a deep phenomenon — that the ego is a false entity. It 
was there because you were identified with the body, with the thoughts, with the mind. 



You are neither — neither the mind nor the body. You are different from all that 
surrounds you; you are different from your periphery. 

Apparently the technique seems simple, but it can bring you a deep mutation. But first go 
and meditate on the burning ghat, on the burning ground, so you can see how the body 
bums, how the body turns to dust again — so you can imagine easily. 

Then start from the toes and move very slowly. And before doing this technique, pay 
more attention to exhalation. Right before entering the technique, for fifteen minutes 
exhale and close the eyes; allow the body to inhale and open the eyes. For fifteen minutes 
feel a deep relaxation and then enter into it. 

The second technique: 

MEDITATE ON THE MAKE-BELIEVE WORLD AS BURNING TO ASHES, AND 
BECOME BEING ABOVE HUMAN. 

If you can do the first, the second will be very easy. If you can come to imagine that your 
body is burning, it is not difficult to imagine that the whole world is burning — because 
your body is the world, and through your body you are related to the world. Really, only 
for your body are you related to the world — the world is extended body. If you can think 
and imagine that your body is burning, there is no difficulty in imagining it with the 
whole world. And the sutra says it is a make-believe world — just because you believe, it 
is there. The whole world is burning, disappearing. 

But if you feel the first is very difficult, you can even start with the second. The second is 
very easy if you can do the first. And there is no need really to do the second if you have 
done the first. With your body, everything disappears automatically. But you can do the 
second directly also, if the first is very difficult. 


I said start with the toes because they are very far away from the head, from the ego, but 
you may not even feel like starting from the toes. Then move still further away: start with 
the world, and then move nearer and nearer towards yourself. Start with the world and 
then come nearer. And when the whole world is just burning, it will be easy for you to 
bum in that whole burning world. 

The second is: 

MEDITATE ON THE MAKE-BELIEVE WORLD AS BURNING TO ASHES AND 
BECOME BEING ABOVE HUMAN. 

If you can see the whole world burning, you have gone above human, you have become 
superhuman. You have come to know a superhuman consciousness. You can imagine it, 
but a training of imagination is needed. jOur imaginations are not very trained. They are 
very untrained, because there is no schooling for imagination. Intellect is trained, schools 
and colleges exist and a major part of life is spent in training the intellect. Imagination is 
not trained. And imagination has a very wonderful dimension of its own. If you can train 
your imagination, you can do wonders through it. 

Start with small things, because it is difficult to jump to bigger things and you may be a 
failure. For example: this imagination that the whole world is burning — it cannot go very 



deep. First, you know it is imagination, and even if in imagination you think that the 
flames are everywhere, you will feel that the world is not burned, it is there still, because 
it is only your imagination. 

You don’t kn ow how imagination can become real. You have to feel it first. 

Try a simple experiment before you enter this technique. Just close both your hands 
together, close your eyes, and just imagine that now your hands cannot be opened, they 
have gone dead, locked, and you cannot do anything to open them. In the beginning you 
will feel that you are just imagining and you can open them. But for ten minutes go on 
thinking that you cannot open them, you cannot do anything, your hands cannot be 
opened. And then after ten minutes try to open them. 

Out of ten, four persons will immediately succeed, forty percent of people will 
immediately succeed: after ten minutes they cannot open their hands — the imagination 
has become real. Howsoever they struggle... and the more they struggle to open, the more 
difficult it will be. You will start perspiring. You are seeing your own hands and you 
cannot open them. They are locked! 

But don’t be afraid. Just close your eyes again, and again imagine that now you can open 
them; only then will you be able to open them. Forty percent will succeed immediately. 
Those forty percent can move in this technique easily; there is no problem for them. 

For the other remaining sixty percent it will be difficult, it will take time. Those who are 
very sensitive can imagine anything and it will happen. And once they feel that 
imagination can become real, then they have a feeling and they can move. 

Then you can do many things with your imagination. Already you are doing it without 
knowing it. Already you are doing it, but you are not aware. 

A certain disease comes to the city — a French ’flu comes — and you become a victim of 
it. You can never think that out of one hundred cases, seventy percent are just because of 
imagination. Because the ’flu is there you start imagining that now you are going to fall 
prey to it — and you will fall. Many diseases are just caught through your imagination, 
many problems you create because of your imagination. You can also solve them once 
you know that it is you who are creating them. Train your imagination a little, and then 
this technique will be very helpful. 

The third technique: 

AS, SUBJECTIVELY, 

LETTER FLOW INTO WORDS AND WORDS INTO SENTENCES, 

AND AS, OBJECTIVELY, 

CIRCLES FLOW INTO WORLDS AND WORLDS INTO PRINCIPLES, 

FIND AT LAST THESE CONVERGING IN OUR BEING. 

That too is an imaginative technique. The ego is always afraid — afraid of being 
vulnerable, open; afraid something may enter and destroy it. So the ego creates a citadel 
around it; you start living in a walled prison. Nothing should be allowed to enter in you. 
You are afraid — if something comes in and disturbs, then what to do? — so it is better not 
to allow anything to come in. 


All communication stops. Even with those you love or you think that you love, there is 



no communication. 

Look at a wife and husband talking. They are not talking to each other; there is no 
communication. Rather, they are avoiding each other through words. They are talking so 
that the communication can be avoided. In silence they will become vulnerable, in 
silence they will come closer, because in silence the ego, the wall, will not be there. So 
the husband and wife, they will never be silent. They will be talking about something or 
other just to fill in time, and just so as not to be open to each other. We are so afraid of 
the other. 

I have heard about Mulla Nasrudin, that one day as he was just walking out of his house 
his wife said, 'Nasrudin, have you forgotten what day today is?' 

Nasrudin knew about it — it was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary — so he said, 'I 
know it. I know it well.’ 

The wife persisted, 'Then how are we going to celebrate it?’ 

So Nasrudin said, 'Darling, I don’t know.’ And then he scratched his head, puzzled, and 
said, 'How would it be if we keep two minutes' silence to celebrate it?' 

You cannot remain silent with someone; you begin to feel restlessness. In silence, the 
other enters you. You are open, your doors are open, your windows are open. You are 
afraid. You go on talking, you go on creating devices to remain closed. 


The ego is an enclosure, it is a prison, and the prison is accepted because we feel so 
insecure. The prison gives a certain feeling of security: you are protected, guarded. To do 
this technique, this third technique, the first and most basic thing is: know well that life is 
insecurity. There is no way to make it secure. Whatsoever you do is not going to help. 
You can create only a fiction of security — life remains insecure. It is the very nature of 
it, because death is involved in it, so how can life be secure? 

And think for a moment: if life is really secure, it will be already dead. An absolutely 
totally secure life cannot be alive, because the very adventure is lost. If you are protected 
from all dangers you will be dead. In the very being of life there is adventure, danger, 
insecurity. Death is involved. 

I love you. I have entered a dangerous path. Now nothing can be secure, but now I will 
try to make everything secure. For tomorrow, I will kill everything that is alive, because 
only then can I feel secure tomorrow also. Love is transformed into marriage — marriage 
is a security. Love is insecure — the next moment everything can change. And you have 
invested so much, and in the next moment the beloved leaves you, or the friend leaves 
you, and you are left in a vacuum. Love is insecure. You cannot fix the future, you cannot 
predict. So live is killed and a secure substitute is found — that is marriage. 


With marriage you can be secure; it is predictable. The wife will be your wife the next 
day; the husband will be your husband in the future also — but just because you have 
secured it. And now there is no danger. It is dead. The relationship is dead now, because 
only dead things can be permanent; alive things are bound to be changing. Change is the 
very quality of life, and in change is insecurity. 

Those who want to enter deeper realms of life must be ready to be insecure, must be 
ready to be in danger, must be ready to move into the unknown, and must not try in any 
way to fix the future. The very effort will kill everything. And remember this also: that 
insecurity is not only alive, it is beautiful. Security is dull, ugly. Insecurity is alive and 



beautiful. You can be secure if you close your doors and windows and everything. 

Neither light enters nor air enters; no one enters. You are secure in a way, but you are not 
living, you have already entered your tomb. 

This technique is possible if you are vulnerable, open, not afraid, because this technique 
is allowing the whole universe to enter in you. 

AS, SUBJECTIVELY, 

LETTERS FLOW INTO WORDS AND WORDS INTO SENTENCES, 

AND AS, OBJECTIVELY, 

CIRCLES FLOW INTO WORLDS AND WORLDS INTO PRINCIPLES, 

FIND AT LAST THESE CONVERGING IN OUR BEING. 

Everything converging in my being. 

.. I am standing under the open sky, and the whole existence, from everywhere, from 
every nook and corner, is converging in me — your ego cannot exist. In that openness 
where the whole existence is converging in you, you cannot exist as an I. You will exist 
as an open space, but not as a crystallized I. 

To do this technique start with a small step. Just sit under a tree. The breeze is blowing 
and the leaves of the tree are rustling. The wind touches you, it moves around you, it 
passes. But don't allow it just to pass you; allow it to move within you and pass through 
you. Just close your eyes, and as it is passing through the tree and there is a rustling of 
the leaves, feel that you are also like a tree, open, and the wind is blowing through you — 
not by your side but right through you. 

The rustling of the tree will enter in you, and you will feel that from every pore of your 
body the air is passing. It is really passing through you. It is not only imagination, it is a 
fact — you have forgotten. You are not only breathing through the nose, you are breathing 
through the whole body — from every pore of it, from millions of pores. If you are 
allowed to breathe through your nose, but all the pores of your body are closed, painted, 
you will die within three hours. You cannot be alive just by breathing through the nose. 
Every cell of your body is a living organism, and every cell is breathing. 

The air is really passing through you, but you have lost the contact. So sit under a tree 
and feel. 

In the beginning it will look like imagination, but soon it will turn into a reality. It is a 
reality — that the air is passing through you. Then sit under a rising sun, and not only feel 
that the rays of the sun are touching you, but that they are entering you and passing 
through you, so you become vulnerable, you begin to feel open. 

And this can be done with everything. For example, I am speaking here and you are 
hearing me. You can hear just through the ears, or you can hear through the whole of the 
body. You can just try it right here, just with a change of the emphasis: you are not 
hearing my words through the ears only, you are hearing me through the whole of your 
body. And when you really hear, and when you really listen, it is the whole body that 
listens. It is not only a part, it is not a fragmented energy that listens, it is the whole of 
you. The whole of your body is involved in listening — then my words are passing 
through you; from every cell, from every pore, you are drinking them. They are being 
absorbed from everywhere. 

You can do this. Just go and sit in a temple. Many worshippers will be coming and going, 



and the bell of the temple will be hit again and again. Just listen with the whole of your 
body. The bell is ringing and the whole temple is agog; every wall of it is reflecting. 

To reflect this, in order to feel that the sound is converging on you, we created a round 
shape. So from everywhere the sound is thrown back, it converges upon you from 
everywhere, and you can listen to it through your whole body — every pore, every cell, 
listening, drinking, absorbing it, and it is passing through you. You have become porous; 
everywhere the door is open. You are not a barrier now to anything — the air, or the 
words, or the sound, or the rays, or anything. You are not a barrier, you don’t resist 
anything. 

When you come to feel that now you don’t resist, you are not in a struggle, suddenly you 
will become aware that the ego is not there, because the ego exists only when you 
struggle. It is a resistance. Whenever you say no, the ego comes into existence; whenever 
you say yes, the ego is not there. So I call a man an ASTIK, a real theist, who has said 
yes to the whole existence; there is no 'no’ in him, no resistance. He accepts everything, 
he allows everything to happen. Even if death comes, he will not close his door. The 
doors will remain open. 

This openness has to be brought, only then can you do this technique, because this 
technique is saying that the whole existence is falling, converging on you — no resistance, 
welcoming, allowing it to converge. You will simply disappear, you will become a space, 
infinite space, because this infinite universe cannot converge on such a narrow atomic 
thing as the ego. 

It can converge only when you have become infinite like it, when you have yourself 
become an infinite space. But this happens. Slowly you have to become more and more 
sensitive and you have to become aware of your resistances. 

We are very resistant. If I touch you, you can feel that you are resisting the touch, you are 
creating a barrier, so my warmth cannot enter you, my touch cannot enter you. We don’t 
allow each other to touch. If someone touches you, you become alert and the other says 
'Excuse me’. There is resistance everywhere. If I look at you, you resist, because the look 
can enter in you, it can penetrate deep, it can stir you, and then what will you do? 

And this is not only with strangers. There is no need even with strangers, because no one 
is a stranger or everyone is a stranger. Just by living under one roof, how can the 
strangeness be destroyed? Do you know your father who has given you birth? He is a 
stranger. Do you know your mother? She remains a stranger. So either everyone is a 
stranger, nor no one is a stranger. But we are afraid and create barriers everywhere. These 
barriers make us insensitive; then nothing can enter into us. 

People come to me and they say, 'No one loves. No one loves me.’ And I touch that man 
and I feel he is afraid even of touch. There is a subtle withdrawal. I take his hand in my 
hand and he has withdrawn. He is not there in the hand; only a dead thing is in my hand 
— he has withdrawn. 

And he says, 'No one loves me.’ How can anyone love you? And even if the whole world 
loves, you will not feel it, because you are closed. Love cannot enter you; there is no 
gate, no door. And you are suffering in your own prison. 

If the ego is there, you are closed — for love, for meditation, for God. So first try to be 
more sensitive, more vulnerable, open, allowing things to happen to you. Only then can 
the divine happen, because that is the last happening. If you cannot allow ordinary things 



to happen to you, how can you allow the ultimate? Because when the ultimate happens to 
you, you will be no more. You will be simply no more. 

Kabir has said, 'When I was seeking you, you were not there. And now, when you are 
there, where is that seeker Kabir? He is no more. So what type of meeting is this?’ Kabir 
wonders, 'What type of meeting is this? When I was there, the divine was not. Now the 
divine is there, but I am not. So what type of meeting is this?’ 

But really this is the only meeting, because two cannot meet. Ordinarily we think two are 
needed to meet — how will the meeting be there if there is only one? So the ordinary 
logic says that for a meeting at least two are needed, the other is needed. But for a real 
meeting, for a meeting which we call love, for a meeting which we call prayer, for a 
meeting which we call samadhi, ecstasy, one is needed. When the seeker is there, the 
sought is not; and when the sought has come, the seeker has disappeared. 


Why is this so? — because the ego is the barrier. When you feel you are, you are so much 
that nothing can enter in you. You are filled with your own self. When you are not, then 
everything can pass through you. You have become so vast that even the divine can pass 
through you. The whole existence is now ready to pass through you, because you are 
ready. 

So the whole art of religion is how not to be, how to dissolve, how to surrender, how to 
become an open space. 

THE END. 



Chapter 54: The fire of awareness 


Question 1 

A MEDITATOR WHO IS VULNERABLE, PASSIVE, OPEN AND RECEPTIVE, 
FEELS THAT WITH THESE CHARACTERISTICS HE SUFFERS DUE TO THE 
INFLUENCE OF THE NON-MEDITATIVE, NEGATIVE AND TENSE VIBRATIONS 
AROUND HIM. PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW HE CAN PRESERVE HIS VULNERABLE 
PSYCHE FROM THE HARMFUL VIBRATIONS. 

If you are really vulnerable, nothing is negative for you — because the negative is your 
interpretation. Nothing is harmful to you — because the harmful is your interpretation. If 
you are really open, then nothing can harm you, nothing can be felt as harmful. You feel 
something is negative and something is harmful because you resist, because you are 
against it, because there is no acceptance of it. This has to be deeply understood. 

The enemy exists there because you are protecting yourself against him. The enemy is 
there because you are not open. If you are open, then the whole existence is friendly; it 
cannot be otherwise. Really, you will not even feel it as friendly — it is simply friendly. 
There is no feeling even that it is friendly, because that feeling can exist only with the 
contrary feeling of enmity. 

Let me put it in this way: if you are vulnerable, it means you are ready to live in 
insecurity. Deep down it means you are ready even to die. You will not resist, you will 
not oppose, you will not stand in the way. If death comes, there will be no resistance. 

You will simply allow it to happen. You accept existence in its totality. Then how can 
you feel it as death? 

If you deny, then you can feel it as the enemy. If you don’t deny, how can you feel it as 
the enemy? The enemy is created by your denial. The death cannot harm you, because the 
hann is your interpretation. Now no one can harm you; it has become impossible. 

This is the secret of Taoist teaching. Lao Tzu's basic teaching is this: if you accept, the 
whole existence is with you. It cannot be otherwise. If you deny, you create the enemy. 
The more you deny, the more you defend, the more you protect, the more enemies are 
created. The enemies are your creation. They are not there outside; they exist in your 
interpretation. 

Once you can understand this, then this question can never arise. You cannot say, T am 
meditative, I am vulnerable, open. So now how am I to defend myself against negative 
vibrations around me?’ Nothing can be negative now. What does the negative mean? The 
negative means that which you want to deny, that which you don't want to accept, that 
which you think is harmful. Then you are not open, then you are not in a meditative state. 
This question arises only intellectually, this is not a felt question. You have not tasted 
meditation, you have not known it. You are simply thinking, and that thinking is just a 
supposition. You suppose, 'If I meditate and become open, then I will be in insecurity. 

The negative vibrations will enter in me and they will be harmful. Then how am I to 
defend myself? This is a supposed question. Don’t bring supposed questions to me. They 
are futile, irrelevant. 

Meditate, become open, and then you will never bring this question to me, because in the 
very opening, the negative will have disappeared. Then nothing is negative. And if you 



think that something is negative, you cannot become open. The very fear of the negative 
will create the closure. You will be closed; you cannot open. The very fear that 
something can harm you... how can you become vulnerable? That's why I emphasize the 
fact that unless the fear of death disappears from you, you cannot become vulnerable, you 
cannot be open. You will remain closed in your own mind, in your own imprisonment. 
But you can go on supposing things, and whatsoever you suppose will be wrong, because 
the mind cannot know anything about meditation, it cannot penetrate that realm. When it 
ceases completely, meditation happens. So you cannot suppose anything, you cannot 
think about it. Either you know it, or you don't know it — you cannot think about it. 

Be open — and in the very opening of yourself, all that is negative in existence 
disappears. Even death is not negative then. Nothing is negative. Your fear creates the 
negativity. Deep down you are afraid; because of that fear you create safety measures. 

Against those safety measures the enemy exists. 

Look at this fact — that you create the enemy. Existence is not inimical to you. How can 
it be? You belong to it, you are just a part of it, an organic part. How can existence be 
inimical to you? You are existence. You are not separate; there is no gap between you 
and the existence. 

Whenever you feel that the negative, the death, the enemy, the hate, is there, and if you 
are open, unguarded, existence will destroy you, you feel that you have to defend 
yourself. And not only defend — because the best way to defend is to be aggressive, to 
offend. You cannot be simply defensive. When you feel that you have to defend yourself, 
you become offensive, because to offend, to be aggressive, is the best way to defend 
yourself. 

The fear creates the enemy, and then the enemy creates defence, and then defence creates 
offence. You become violent. You are constantly on guard. You are against everybody. 
This point has to be understood: that if you are in fear, you are against everybody. 
Degrees may differ, but then your enemy and your friend are both your enemy. The 
friend is a little less, that's all. Then your husband or your wife is also your enemy. You 
have made an arrangement, that's all. You have become adjusted. Or it may be that you 
both have a common and a greater enemy, and against that common and greater enemy 
you both have become joined, you both have become one party, but the enmity is there. 


If you are closed, the whole existence is inimical to you. Not that it is so. It appears to 
you that it is inimical. When you are open, the whole existence has become your friend. 
Now, when you are closed, even the friend is the enemy. It cannot be otherwise. Deep 
down you are afraid of your friend also. 

Somewhere, Henry Thoreau or someone else has written that he prayed to God, 'I will 
take care of my enemies, but you take care of me from my friends. I will fight with my 
enemies, but protect me from my friends.’ 

Just on the surface is friendship; deep down is enmity. Your friendship may be just a 
facade to hide the enemy. If you are closed you can create only the enemy, because when 
you are open only then is the friend revealed. When you are open totally to someone, the 
friendship has happened. It cannot happen in any other way. 

How can you love when you are closed? You live in your prison, I live in my prison, and 
whenever we meet, only the prison walls touch each other and we are hiding behind. We 
move in our capsules: the capsules touch each other, the bodies touch each other, but 



deep down we remain isolated. 

Even while making love, when your bodies have entered into each other, you have not 
entered. Only bodies are meeting; you remain still in your capsule, in your cell. You are 
just deceiving yourselves that there is communion. 

Even in sex, which is the deepest relationship, communion is not. It cannot happen 
because you are closed. Love has become an impossibility. And this is the reason — you 
are afraid. 

So don’t ask such questions; don’t bring false questions. If you have known openness, you 
cannot feel that something can be harmful to you. Now nothing is harmful. That's why I 
say even death is a blessing. Your approach has become different. Now wherever you 
look, you look with an open heart — that open heartedness changes the quality of 
everything. And you cannot feel that something is going to be harmful; you cannot ask 
how to defend — there is no need. The need arises because you are closed. 

But you can go on supposing questions. People come to me and they say, 'Okay, if we 
have realized God, then what?’ They start with the question — if? There are no 'ifs'. In 
existence you cannot raise such questions. They are absurd, stupid, because you don’t 
know what you are saying. 'If I have realized God, then what?’ 

That 'then what?’ never arises, because with the realization, you are no more, only the 
God is. And with the realization, there is no future, only the present is. And with the 
realization, there is no worry, because you have become one with existence. So the 
question 'then what?’ never arises. This question arises because of the mind which is in 
constant worry, constant struggle, constantly thinking for the future. 


Question 2 

WHEN I BECOME MORE AND MORE AWARE, MY ATTENTION DEVELOPS 
AND THERE REMAINS A FEELING THAT I EXIST, I AM PRESENT, I AM 
AWARE. PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW THIS FEELING CAN BE DISSOLVED INTO AN 
EGOLESS STATE OF JUST AWARENESS. 

This is again a supposed question. WHEN I BECOME MORE AND MORE AWARE, 
MY ATTENTION DEVELOPS AND THERE REMAINS A FEELING THAT I EXIST, 

I AM PRESENT, I AM AWARE. This never happens, because as awareness grows, I 
decreases. In full awareness, you are, but there is no sense that I AM. In words, at the 
most, this can be said — that you feel a subtle AMNESS, but there is no I. 

You feel existence, and you feel it in abundance, a fulfilled moment, but the I is not there. 
You cannot feel I EXIST; you cannot feel I AM PRESENT; you cannot feel I AM 
AWARE. That I is part of unawareness, inattention; part of your sleeping state. It cannot 
exist. It cannot exist when you are really alert and aware and conscious. 

This is how supposed questions can arise. You can go on thinking about them, and 
nothing will be solved. If this happens — that you feel I AM; I AM AWARE — then you 
only have to note one thing, and that is that you are not alert, you are not aware. Then 
these feelings — I AM AWARE, I AM CONSCIOUS, I EXIST — these are thoughts, you 
are thinking them. They are not realized moments. You can think I AM AWARE; you 
can go on repeating I AM AWARE — that will not do. 



Awareness is not this repetition. And when you are aware, there is no need to repeat I 
AM AWARE. You are simply aware; the I is no more. 

Try awareness. Right now be alert. Where is the I? You are — rather, you are more 
intensely — but where is the I, the ego? In the very intensity of consciousness, the ego is 
no more. Later on, when you lose awareness and thinking starts, you can feel I AM, but 
in the moment of awareness there is no I. Right now experience it. Silently you are here, 
you can feel your presence, but where is the I? The I never arises. It arises only when 
retrospectively you think. When you lose awareness the I arises immediately. 

Even if for a single moment you can experience simple awareness, you are, and the I is 
not there. When you lose awareness, when the moment has slipped, gone, and you are 
thinking, the I comes back immediately. It is part of the thought process. The very 
concept of I is a thought, it belongs to thinking. I AM is a thought. 

When you are alert and there is no thought, how can you feel that I AM? The AMNESS 
is there — but that too is not a thought, it is not thinking. It is there existentially, it is a 
fact. But you can turn the fact into thinking immediately, and you can think about this 
gap that existed where there was no I. And the moment you think, the I has come back. 
With thinking, the ego enters — thinking is the ego. 

With no-thinking, the ego is not. 

So whenever you want to ask a question, first make it existential. Before giving me the 
question, test whether whatsoever you are asking is relevant or not. Such questions look 
relevant, just verbally, but they are like this: I say that the light has been put on, and then 
I ask, ' The light has been put on and still the dar kn ess remains, so what is to be done with 
darkness?’ The only thing is that the light is still off, it has not been put on, otherwise 
how can the darkness remain? And if the darkness is there, then the light is not there. 

And if the light is there, then the darkness is not there. They cannot be both together. 
Awareness and the ego cannot be together. If awareness has come on, if it is there, the 
ego has disappeared. This is simultaneous; there is not even a single second's gap. The 
light is on and the darkness has disappeared. It is not that it disappears by and by, in 
steps, gradually. You cannot see it going outside; you cannot say that now the darkness is 
going out. 

The light is there, and the darkness is immediately not there. There is not a single 
moment's gap, because if there is a gap then you can see darkness moving out. And if 
there is a single moment's gap, then there is no reason why there can't be a gap of one 
hour. There is no gap. The act is simultaneous. Really, the coming of the light and the 
going out of the darkness are two aspects of one phenomenon. 


The same happens with awareness: when you are aware, the ego is not. But the ego can 
go on playing tricks, and the ego can say, T am aware.’ The ego can say, 'I am aware,' 
and can n you. Then the question will arise. And the ego wants to accumulate everything, 
even awareness. The ego not only wants wealth, power, and prestige; it wants meditation 
also, it wants samadhi also, it wants enlightenment also. 

The ego wants everything. That which is possible must be possessed. The ego wants to 
possess everything — even meditation, samadhi, nirvana. So the ego can say, 'Now I have 
achieved meditation,’ and then the question will arise. The meditation has been achieved, 
the awareness has come, but the ego remains, the misery remains. The whole burden of 
the past remains. Nothing changes. 



The ego is a very subtle braggart. Be aware of it. It can deceive you. And it can use 
words, it can verbalize things. It can verbalize anything, even nirvana. 

I have heard that once it happened that two butterflies were winging their way through 
the canyons of New York. Just passing near the Empire State Building, the male butterfly 
said to the female, 'You know, if I wanted to, just with one blow I could cause this 
Empire State Building to collapse.’ 

One wise man happened to be there who heard this remark, so he called that male 
butterfly and asked, 'What were you saying? You know very well that you cannot cause 
that Empire State Building to collapse with a single blow. 

You know it well, there is no need to tell you, so why did you say such a thing?’ 

The male butterfly said, 'Excuse me, sir. I am very sorry. I was just trying to influence 
my girl friend.’ 

The wise man said, 'Don’t do it,’ and dismissed the butterfly. 

The male butterfly went back to his girl friend. Of course, the girl friend asked, 'What 
was the wise guy saying to you?’ 

So the male braggart said, 'He begged me and said, "Don’t do it!" He was so afraid, 
trembling, nervous. He had heard that I was going to cause this Empire State Building to 
collapse, so he said, "Don’t do it~’" 

The same is happening continuously. Those words were uttered by the wise man with a 
very different meaning. He meant, 'Don’t say such things,’ but the ego exploited him. 
Your ego can exploit anything, it is deeply cunning. And it is so experienced in cunning 
— experiences of millennia — that you cannot even detect where the cunning enters. 
People come to me and they say, 'The meditation has happened. Now what to do about 
my worries?’ This is how the ego goes on playing tricks — and they are not even aware of 
what they are saying. 'The meditation has happened, the kundalini has arisen — so what 
to do? The worries still continue.’ 

Your mind wants to believe things, so without doing anything you go on believing, 
deceiving — wish-fulfillments. 

But the reality doesn’t change by your wish- fulfillments: the worries continue. You can 
deceive yourself, you cannot deceive the worries. They will not just disappear because 
you say, ' The meditation has happened and the kundalini has arisen, and now I have 
entered the fifth body.’ Those worries will not even hear what you are saying. But if 
meditation really happens, where are the worries? How can they exist in a meditative 
mind? 

So remember this: that when you are aware, you are, but you are not the ego. Then you 
are unlimited, then you are infinite expanse, but with no center. There is no focused 
feeling of I; just unfocused existence, beginning nowhere, ending nowhere — just infinite 
sky. And when this I disappears, automatically the YOU disappears, because the YOU 
can exist only in reference to the 1. 1 am here; that’s why you are there. If this I disappears 
from me, you are no more there. You cannot be. How can you exist? 

I don’t mean that you will not be there bodily, that you will not be there physically. You 
will be there as you are, but for me, you cannot be you. The you is meaningful in 
reference to my I; my I creates YOU. One part disappears; the other disappears for me. 
Then simple existence is there; all the barriers have dissolved. With the ego disappearing, 
the whole existence becomes one. The ego is the divider — and the ego exists because 
you are inattentive. 



The fire of awareness will destroy it. 

Try it more and more. Suddenly become alert. Walking on the street, immediately stop, 
take a deep breath, become alert for a moment. And when I say alert, I mean simply alert 
of whatsoever is happening — the traffic noise, people passing and talking, everything 
that is all around. Simply become alert. You are not there in that moment: existence is 
and the beauty of it. 

Then the traffic noise doesn't appear to be noise, it doesn’t look like a disturbance, 
because there is no one to resist it and fight it. It simply comes to you and passes; it is 
heard and heard no more. It comes and passes. There is no barrier against which it can 
strike. It cannot make a wound in you, because all wounds are made in the ego. It will 
pass. There will be no barrier to it on which it can strike; there will be no fight, no 
disturbance. 

Remember this: the noise on the street is not the disturbance. When the noise of the street 
struggles against you, when you have a fixed notion that it is a disturbance, it becomes 
disturbance. When you accept it, it comes and passes. And you are simply bathed by it; 
you come out of it more fresh. And nothing tires you then. The only tiring thing, that 
which goes on dissipating your energy, is this resistance which we call the ego. 

But we never look at it in this way. The ego has become our life, the very gist of it. 

Really, there is no ego. If I say to someone.... Many times it happens. If I say to someone 
to dissolve this ego, immediately he stares at me as if with the question, the nude 
question, that 'If ego is dissolved, then where is life? Then I am no more’. 

I have heard that one very great politician, a big leader of a country, was asked, 'You 
must be getting tired. The whole day, wherever you move, there is a crowd of autograph 
seekers.’ 

That politician, that leader said, 'It almost kills me — but this is only half of the truth.’ He 
must have been a very rare, honest man. He said, ' It almost kills me — but almost. If there 
was no one seeking my autograph, it would kill me completely. This continuous crowd 
almost kills me, but the other thing would be more dangerous. It would kill me 
completely if there was no one to ask for my autograph.’ 

So howsoever tiring the ego, howsoever wearing, you still feel it is life, and if the ego is 
not there, you feel life will disappear from your mind. You cannot conceive how life can 
exist without you, without there always being a reference point of I. It is logical in a way, 
because we have never lived without it. We have lived through it, we have lived around 
it; we know only one type of life, which is based on ego. We don’t know any other life. 
And because we have lived through it, we have not been really able to live. 

We are simply struggling to live, and the life never happens to us, it just by-passes us. It 
is always just in the reach, in the hope — just tomorrow, the next moment, and we will be 
living. But it never comes, it is never achieved. It always remains a hope and a dream — 
but we go on moving. And because it is not coming, we move fast. That too is logical: if 
life is not happening to us, the mind can think only one thing — that we are not moving 
fast enough. So make hurry, be in a speed. 

Once it happened that one of the great scientists, T.H. Huxley, was going to deliver a talk 
somewhere in London. He came to the station, to the suburban station, but the train was 
late, so he jumped into a cab and told the driver, 'Hurry! Go at top speed!’ 

They were racing fast, when suddenly he realized that he had not given the address. But 
then he also remembered that he had himself forgotten the address. So he asked the 



driver, 'Cabby, do you know where I am supposed to be going?’ 

He said, 'No, sir. But I am going as fast as possible.’ 

This is happening. You are going as fast as possible. Where are you moving? Why are 
you moving? What is the destination? — the hope that someday life will happen to you. 
And why is it not happening right now? You are alive — why is it not happening right 
now? Why is the nirvana always in the future, always in the tomorrow? Why is it not 
today? And the tomorrow never comes — or whenever it comes it will always be the 
today and you will miss again. 

But we have lived only in this way. We know only one dimension of living — this so- 
called living we are already living — just dead, not alive at all, just pulling together 
anyhow, just waiting. 

With the ego it will always remain a waiting — and a hopeless waiting. You can do it fast, 
you can make haste, but you will never reach anywhere: just by hurrying you will 
dissipate energy and you will die. And you have done that so many times. You have 
always been in a hurry, and in that hurry dissipating energy, and then only death comes 
and nothing else. You are hurrying for life, and only death comes and nothing else. But 
the mind, because it is accustomed to only one dimension, because it has known only one 
way — which is not even a way, but just appears to be a way — will say that if there is no 
ego, where is life? 

But I say to you, if there is ego, there is no possibility of life, only promises. The ego is a 
perfect promise-maker. It goes on promising you. And you are so unaware — no promise 
is ever fulfilled, but again you believe. When the new promises are given, you again 
believe. 

Look back! The ego promised many things, and nothing has been achieved through it. All 
the promises have fallen down. But you never look back, you never compare. When you 
were a child there were promises for youth: life will be there when you are young. 
Everyone was saying it, and you also were hoping that when you become young, all that 
was to happen would happen. 

Now those days have passed, the promise remains unfulfilled, but you have forgotten. 
You have forgotten the promise, you have forgotten that is has not been fulfilled. It is so 
painful to look at it that you never look at it. 

Now you hope for the old age — that in old age the sannyas will flower, the meditation 
will happen to you. Then the worries will be over: your children will have gone to the 
college, and everything will have become established. Then there will be no 
responsibility on you. Then you will be able to seek the divine. Then, in the old age, the 
miracle is going to happen. And you will die unfulfilled. 

It is not going to happen, because it never happens in the hope, it never happens with the 
hope. It never happens with the promise of the ego. It can happen right now. It can only 
happen right now. But then a very intense awareness is needed, so that you can throw all 
the promises, and all the hopes, and all the future programs, and all the dreams, and look 
directly here and now at what you are. 

In that returning to yourself — your consciousness not moving somewhere ahead but 
returning to yourself — you become a circle of consciousness. This moment becomes 
eternal. You are alert and aware. In that alertness, in that awareness, there is no I; simple 
existence, simple being. And simplicity comes out of that awareness. 

Simplicity is not a loin-cloth, simplicity is not living in poverty, simplicity is not 



becoming a beggar. 


Those are very complex and very cunning things, very calculated. Simplicity is born 
when you have achieved a simple existence where no I exists. Out of that, simplicity 
arises; you become humble. Not that you practise it, because a practised simplicity can 
never be simplicity. A practised humbleness is just a hidden ego. 

It happens: if you can be aware, it starts flowing through you. You become humble; not 
against the ego, because a humbleness against the ego is again a different sort of ego — a 
more subtle ego and more dangerous, more poisonous. It is humbleness as the absence of 
ego; not as the opposite of the ego, just the absence. The ego has disappeared. You have 
come to yourself and known that there is no ego: simplicity arises, humbleness arises — 
they simply flow. You have not done anything for them; they are by-products — by- 
products of intense awareness. 

So this type of question is foolish. If you feel that you are aware and still the I remains, 
know well that you are not aware. Make effort to be aware. And this is the criterion: 
when you are aware, the I is not; when you are aware, the I is not; when you are aware, 
the I is not found there. This is the only criterion. 

Question 3 

ONE DAY YOU EXPLAINED ABOUT THE IMBALANCE OF OBJECT-CENTERED 
WESTERN CULTURE AND SUBJECT-CENTERED EASTERN CULTURE, AND 
YOU ALSO MENTIONED THAT NOWHERE IN ANY CULTURE IS THE TOTAL 
HUMAN BEING ACCEPTED. 

DO YOU VISUALIZE SUCH A COMING CULTURE WHICH WILL BE ABLE TO 
ACCEPT AND DEVELOP THE HUMAN BEING IN HIS TOTALITY - OBJECTIVE 
AS WELL AS SUBJECTIVE? 

This one-sided development has occurred as a natural fallacy, as a very natural fallacy. 
Try to understand the natural fallacy, because many things depend on it. 

Whenever something is said, the opposite of it is denied. Whenever something is said, 
something is simultaneously denied. If I say 'God is within;, 'God is without’ is denied. I 
have not mentioned it at all. But if I say 'God is without’, then 'God is within’ is denied. 

If I say, 'To be silent you have to move inwards,’ it is implied that if you move outwards, 
you will never be silent. So whatsoever is said in language always negates something. 
This means that language can never cover the whole of life. Or, if you try to cover the 
whole of life, language becomes illogical, irrational. If I say, 'God is within and God is 
without,’ it becomes meaningless. If I say, 'Everything is God,’ it becomes meaningless. 

If I say, 'Whether you go out or whether you go in, silence can be achieved,’ no meaning 
is carried then because I am saying both — both the opposites simultaneously. I am 
putting them together; they negate each other — and then nothing is said. 

It has been tried. It has been tried many times that the whole of life be covered by 
linguistic expression. 

It has never been successful, and it cannot be. You can do it, but then your assertions 
become mystic; they don’t carry any meaning. Logic has some requirements to be 
fulfilled — and language is logic. 

If you ask me, 'Are you here?’ and I say, 'Yes, in a sense I am here, and in a sense I am 
not here,’ or I say, 'Both yes and no,’ then if you love me you will call me a mystic; if you 



don't love me, you will call me a madman — because how can both be? Either I am here 
— then I must say yes; or I am not here — then I must say no. But if I say yes and no both 
together, I am taking a jump out of the logical structure of the language. 

Language is always a choice. Because of this, all the cultures, all the societies, all the 
civilizations become one-sided. And no culture can exist without language. Really, 
language creates the culture. Man is the only language animal; no other animal creates 
any culture or society or civilization. Only man creates culture and civilization and 
society. And with language, choice enters; and with choice, imbalance. No animal is 
imbalanced, remember. Only man is imbalanced. All animals exist in deep balance: trees 
and rocks and everything. Everything is balanced; only man is imbalanced. What is the 
problem? — that man lives through language. Language creates choice. 

If I say to someone that he is both beautiful and ugly, the sentence carries no meaning. 

Ugly and beautiful both? — what do you mean? If I say, 'You are beautiful,’ it is 
meaningful. If I say, 'You are ugly,’ it is meaningful. But if I say, 'You are both. You are 
wise and foolish both,’ it cannot carry any meaning. But reality is so. Really, no one is 
simply ugly and no one is simply beautiful. Wherever beauty exists, ugliness exists; 
wherever ugliness exists, beauty exists. They are part of one whole. And wherever 
wisdom exists, foolishness exists. You cannot find a wise man who is not also a fool, and 
you cannot find a fool who is not also a wise man. 

It may be difficult for you to conceive, because whenever you say, 'This man is a fool,’ 
you stop searching, you are closed, you have closed the door. You say, 'This man is a 
fool.’ Now you are not going to search for his wisdom. And even if his wisdom is 
revealed to you, you will not listen to it. You will say, 'This man is a fool. How can he be 
a wise man? It is impossible; something wrong has happened. He must have done it in a 
foolish way. This is something accidental. He cannot be wise.’ If you decide that this man 
is wise and then something foolish comes out of him, you cannot believe it, or you will 
have come explanations and you will rationalize it — that this must be wise. 

Life is both together, but language divides. Language is a choice. Because of this, every 
culture creates its own choice-pattern. 

In the east they developed technology, they developed scientific research; they developed 
all that is now developed in the west. Live thousand years ago they developed everything, 
and then they felt the meaninglessness of it — as it is now felt in the west. They felt that it 
was useless. 

When they felt that it was useless, they turned to the opposite extreme. They said, 'Now 
turn within. Whatsoever is without is illusory, it leads nowhere. Turn within.’ Then 
science stopped growing, then technology stopped. Not only stopped: when they turned 
within, they started condemning all that was without. 'Just live the life which is in! Leave 
all that is without!’ They became against the world, life-negative, denying all that is 
material... only the spiritual, the pure spiritual. 

Life is both. Really, to say life is both is not right. Life is one. That which we call 
material is just one expression of the spiritual, and that which we call spiritual is nothing 
but one expression of the material. Life is one. The within and without are not two 
opposite things, just two poles of one existence. 

But whenever a society reaches to the extreme of one choice — because one choice is 
bound to be extremist — immediately you will miss the other, and that which you miss, 
you feel more. That which you have, you can forget, but that which you miss, you feel 



more. So the east, at the peak of scientific and technological development, felt the 
absurdity of it: it is useless, you cannot attain silence through it, you cannot attain bliss 
through it, so throw it away, renounce it, move inward, move to the inner world. 

And then this inner movement automatically became a denial of the outer. 

In the west that is happening now. Now the west has attained to a technological height; 
now the meaninglessness is felt. Now India has gone to the depths of poverty. It was 
bound to happen, because the eastern mind started moving inwards. When you move 
inwards at the cost of all that is without, you are going to be poor, and you are going to 
be in bondage, and you are going to be in disease and suffering. That is bound to be so. 
Now India is not interested in meditation, India is not interested in the inner world, India 
is not interested in the nirvana. India is interested in the modem technology. The Indian 
student is interested in engineering, in medical science. The Indian genius is going to the 
west to leam the know-how, the atomic energy. And the western genius is interested in 
coming to the east to know what meditation is, to know how to move in the inner space. 
And they have achieved. For the first time in the history of man they have kn own how to 
move in the outer space. They have reached the moon. Now that they have reached the 
moon the thing has become absurd. Now they are asking, 'What will come out of it? 

Even if we have gone to the moon, what has happened? — man remains in the same 
misery.’ The moon is not going to help, because you can transfer man to the moon, but he 
remains the same man. 

So movement in the outer space seems to be of no use, a wastage of energy. How to 
move in the inner space? 

Now they turn to the east, and the east is turning to the west — again the choice. If the 
west turns to the east completely, within two or three centuries the west will become 
poor. Look at the hippies — they are already doing that. And if the new western 
generation turns absolutely hippie, then who is going to work for the technology, and 
who is going to work for the industry, and who is going to work for the civilization that 
the west has achieved? It takes centuries and centuries to achieve something; you can 
lose it within a generation. 

If the generation denies and says, 'We are not going to the universities,’ what can you do? 
The old generation — how long can it prolong it? Twenty years and everything can 
disappear, just through the denial of the new generation — 'I am not going to the 
university-’ And they are leaving, they are becoming dropouts. They say, 'What is the 
use of big cars, of big houses, of a big technology, when there is no love? When there is 
no peace of mind, what is the use of all this wealth? What is the use of this high standard 
of living when there is no life? So leave this!’ 

Within two centuries the west can go to the very depths of poverty. It has happened in the 
east. In the days of the Mahabharat, almost the same technology was developed in the 
east. 

Then it was found to be of no use. And if the Indian mind turns to technology, within two 
generations religion will disappear — it has already disappeared — and just the word 
'meditation’ will look out of date. If you talk about the inner, people will think you are 
not in your senses: 'What do you mean by the inner? There is no inner.’ 

This happens because of the language — because language is a choice, and the mind 
moves to the extreme. And when it moves to one extreme, the other is lost. And with the 



other, many qualities disappear, and when they disappear you feel the hunger for them. 
Then you again move to the other extreme. Then something else is lost. 

So no total culture has been born yet, and it cannot be bom unless man learns to remain 
silent, unless silence becomes the very core of human mind. Not language but silence — 
because in silence you are whole, in language you are always part. Unless humanity starts 
living through silence — not through language, not through mind, but through the totality 
of the being — no total culture is possible. Only total human beings can constitute a total 
culture. 

The human being is partial and fragmented. Every human being is just a fragment of that 
which he can be, that which he should be. He is just a fragment of his potentiality. These 
fragmentary human beings create fragmentary societies. Fragmentary societies have 
always been there. 

But now it seems possible that we may become aware of this whole nonsense of turning 
to extremes. And if this awareness becomes intense, and we don’t move to the opposite, 
but rather we start to look at the whole.... 

For example, myself. I am not against the material, I am not against the spiritual. I am not 
for the spiritual, and I am not for the material. I am for both. There is no choice for me 
between the material and the spiritual, the inner and the outer. I am for both, because if 
you accept both, only then you become total and whole. But this is difficult to 
understand, to grasp, because of the heritage. 

Whenever you see a spiritual man, you start looking to see whether he is poor or not. He 
must be poor, he must be living in a hut, he must be starving. Why? Why should he be 
poor and why should he be starving? — because the inner has to be chosen against the 
outer; that has become a part of the heritage. If you see a man living in luxury, you 
cannot believe that he is spiritual. How can he be spiritual? 

What is wrong in luxury? And how is spirituality against luxury? Really, spiritually is the 
ultimate luxury. Really, only a spiritual man can be in luxury. He knows how to relax, 
and he knows how to enjoy, and he knows how to carry bliss wherever he moves. But the 
heritage has gone into the very cells of your brain. If you see a spiritual man walking in 
poverty, you feel that he must be authentic. 

How is poverty related to spirituality? And why? We have been choosing extremes. This 
is difficult to understand because of a long tradition — and you are not even aware. 
Someone was just here, and he told me that in Wardha where Vinoba lives, it is very hot 
now the whole day — and he will not use a fan, he will not use a cooler, he will not use an 
air-conditioner. Impossible! How can a spiritual man use an air-conditioner? He cannot 
even use a fan. The man who had come from there was very much impressed. He said, 
'See, what a great spiritual man! He is not even using a fan.’ 

Then I asked, 'What is he doing?’ 

He said, 'The whole day, from ten to five, for seven hours, he goes on putting cold cloths 
on his head and on his stomach.’ 

Seven of Vinoba’s hours wasted every day! — and what is the cost of a fan or a cooler or 
an air-conditioner? And Vinoba’s seven wasted hours every day...? But if there was a fan, 
this man would have felt that Vinoba is not spiritual. And somehow Vinoba is also 
agreeing with this type of attitude — that Vinoba’s seven hours every day are not 
important. 

Fife is very short, and a genius like Vinoba is wasting seven hours unnecessarily. But he 



himself also feels that technology is somehow anti-spiritual. The outside and the inside — 
he has chosen the inside. But if you are choosing the inside, even putting on the wet cloth 
is outside. 

It is doing the same thing, only in a very primitive way. What are you doing? You are 
creating a sort of cooling. And you are wasting seven hours for it! This is at a very great 
cost. But we will say, 'No, this is austerity, this is spirituality, and this man is great.’ This 
has gone to the very cells of our brains. 

I accept life in its totality. The outer and the inner both are there, and they both belong to 
me. And they must be balanced. You need not choose one at the cost of the other. And if 
you choose, you are falling a victim — victim of an extreme — and you will suffer for it. 
Create a balance. The outer and the inner are not opposed. They are movements of the 
same energy, two banks of the same river, and the river cannot flow with only one bank. 
You can forget the other, but the other will be there. And the river can exist only if the 
other is there. You can forget it completely: then hypocrisy is bom, because 
unnecessarily you have to go on hiding the other. There is no need. The river cannot 
flow. 

Life flows between the inner and the outer, and both are essential. Life cannot exist with 
one. And the two are not really two. The two banks of the river only appear two; if you 
go deep in the river they are joined — the same ground is appearing as two banks. The 
outer and the inner are the same ground, the same phenomenon. 

If this insight goes deep, and human beings. 

.. and I am interested in human beings, not in cultures, not in societies, not in 
civilizations. If human beings become total and balanced, it is possible that some day 
humanity can become a balanced society. And only then will man be at ease. And only 
then will it be possible to grow without any unnecessary difficulty. 

Now, rarely it happens that someone grows — rarely. Almost all the seeds are wasted. In 
millions, one seed grows and comes to flower. This seems sheer wastage. But if society is 
balanced — nothing is denied, nothing is chosen, but the whole is accepted in a deep 
hannony — then many will grow. Really, quite the reverse will be the case: it will happen 
rarely that someone will not grow. 


THE END. 



Chapter 55: Only the unreal dissolves 


FEEL: MY THOUGHT, I-NESS, INTERNAL ORGANS - ME. 

BEFORE DESIRE AND BEFORE KNOWING, 

HOW CAN I SAY I AM? 

CONSIDER. DISSOLVE IN THE BEAUTY. 

Once a visitor asked many people in a small town about the mayor: 'What type of man is 
your mayor?’ 

Said the priest, 'He is no good.’ 

Said the filling-station attendant, 'He is a bum.’ 

And said the barber, 'I never in my life voted for that rascal.’ 

Then the visitor met the mayor, a much maligned man, and the visitor asked, 'What pay 
are you getting for your job?’ 

Said the mayor, 'My goodness, I am not getting any pay for it. I have accepted this job 
just for the honor of it!’ 

This is the situation of the ego — only YOU think about your ego, no one else. Only you 
think that your ego is enthroned; for everyone else it is not so. No one agrees with your 
ego except you; everyone else is against it. But you go on living in a dream, in a 
delusion. You create your own image. You feel that image, you protect that image, and 
you think the whole world exists for it. This is a delirium, a madness. This is not reality. 
The world is not existing for you. No one is concerned with your ego; no one at all. 
Whether you are or you are not, it makes no difference. You are just a wave. The wave 
comes and goes; the ocean is not worried about it. 

But you think yourself very important. 

Those who want to dissolve the ego have first to recognize this fact. And unless you can 
put aside your egoistic structure, you will not be able to see the reality, because 
whatsoever you see, whatsoever you perceive, your ego distorts it. It tries to manipulate 
everything for itself. And nothing is for it, because reality cannot help anything which is 
false. Remember that. 

Reality cannot support anything which is not, and your ego is the most impossible thing, 
the greatest falsity. It is not there; it is your creation, your imaginative creation. The 
reality cannot help it. The reality is always shattering it, always destroying it. Whenever 
your ego comes in contact with reality, the reality proves shocking. Just to defend 
yourself against these shocks which are always coming, continuously coming to destroy 
your ego, by and by you avoid seeing reality. 

Rather than lose your ego, you try to avoid seeing the reality. And then around your ego 
you create a false world which you think is the reality. Then you live in your own world. 
You are not in contact with the real world, you cannot be, because you are afraid. You 
are living in a glasshouse of the ego. The fear is there: whenever the reality comes in 
contact, your ego may be destroyed, so it is better not to come in contact with the reality. 
We go on escaping from reality just to protect, to defend, this impossible ego. 


Why do I call it impossible? Why do I say it is false? Try to understand this. The reality 



is one: the reality exists as a whole, as a totality. You cannot exist alone, or can you? If 
the trees are not existing you will not be able to exist, because they are producing oxygen 
for you. If the air disappears you will simply die, because that air is giving you vitality, 
life. If the sun goes out you will be no more here, because thew warmth, the rays, they 
are your life. 

Life exists as a cosmic totality. You are not alone, and you cannot exist alone. You exist 
in a world. You exist not as an atomic, separate, isolated existence; you exist in the 
cosmic whole as a wave. You are interrelated. And the ego gives you the feeling that you 
are individual, alone, separate, isolated. The ego gives you the feeling that you are in 
island — you are not. That's why the ego is false. It is unreal, and the reality cannot 
support it. 

So there are only two ways. If you come in contact with reality, if you become open to it, 
your ego will dissolve. Or, you have to create your own dream-world, and then live in it. 
And you have created that world. Everyone is living in his own dream. 

People come to me and I look at them, and I see that they are fast asleep, dreaming. Their 
problems are out of their dreams, and they want to solve them. They cannot be solved 
because they are not real. 

How can you solve an unreal problem? If it exists, it can be solved — but it is nowhere; it 
cannot be solved. An unreal problem — how can it be solved? It can be solved only by an 
unreal answer. But that unreal answer will create other problems which again will be 
unreal. And then you fall ad nauseum; there is no end to it. 

If you want to come to meet reality.... And to meet reality is to meet God. God is not 
something hidden somewhere in the sky; it is the reality around you. God is not hidden; 
you are hidden in an unreality. God is the nearest immediate presence, but you are hidden 
in a capsule of your own unreal world and you go on protecting it — and the center of it is 
the ego. 

The ego is unreal, because you are not isolated; you are one with reality. You exist as an 
organic part of it. You cannot be separated from it. If separated, not even for a single 
moment can you be alive. Every breath, and you are bridged with the cosmos; every 
moment you are moving in and out, meeting the real and coming back. 

You are a pulsation, not a dead entity, and that pulsation exists in a deep hannony with 
the real. But you have forgotten that pulsation. You have created a dead ego, a concept — 
I AM — and this I AM is always against the whole: defending itself, struggling, in 
conflict, in war. Hence the emphasis of all religions to dissolve the ego. 

The first thing: it is unreal; that's why it can be dissolved. 

Nothing real can be dissolved. How can you dissolve it? If something is real, it cannot be 
destroyed; it will remain. And it will remain whatsoever you do. Only unreal things can 
be dissolved. They can disappear, they can simply evaporate into nowhere, into 
nothingness. Your ego can dissolve because it is unreal. It is just a thought, a notion; it 
has no substance to it. 

Secondly: you cannot even carry this ego continuously for twenty-four hours. It is so 
unreal that you have to constantly fuel it, feed it. While you are asleep, the ego is not 
there. That's why in the morning you feel so fresh, because you have been in a deep 
contact with reality. The reality has rejuvenated you, revitalized you. 

In deep sleep, your ego is not. Your name, your form, all have dissolved. You don’t know 
who you are — educated or uneducated, poor or rich, a sinner or a saint — you don’t know. 



In deep sleep you have fallen back to the cosmic whole; the ego is not there. In the 
morning you feel vitalized, fresh, young. Energy has come to you from some deep 
source. You are again alive. But if in the night there are dreams and dreams and dreams, 
in the morning you feel tired because in the dreams the ego persists. In the dreams the 
ego persists, it is there, so it is not allowing you to fall into the original source. You will 
feel tired in the morning. 

In deep sleep, the ego is not. 

When you are in deep love, the ego is not. When you are relaxed, silent, the ego is not. 
When you are absorbed in something so totally that you have forgotten, the ego is not. 
Listening to music, you have forgotten that you are — the ego is not. And really, the 
peace that comes to you is not coming through music; it is coming because you have 
forgotten the ego. The music is instrumental. 

Looking at a beautiful sunrise or sunset, you forget yourself. Then suddenly you feel that 
something has happened to you. You are not there; something greater than you is there. 
This presence of the great... Jesus calls it God — that word is just symbolic. Mohammed 
calls it God — that word is just symbolic. 'God’ means greater than you — a moment when 
you feel that something greater than you is happening to you. And you can feel this only 
when you are not. While you are there, the greater cannot happen to you, because you are 
the barrier. 

In any moment, if you are absent, the God is present there. Your absence is the presence 
of the divine. Remember it always: your absence is the presence of the divine; your 
presence is the absence of the divine. So really the question is not how to reach God, the 
question is not how to attain God; the question is how to be absent. 

You need not worry about the divine, you can forget it completely. There is no need to 
remember even the word god. 

It is irrelevant, because the basic thing is not God, the basic thing is your ego. If it is not 
there, God happens to you. And if you try, if you make effort to reach God, to attain God, 
or to be liberated, you may miss, because this whole effort may be ego-centered. 

That’s the problem for the spiritual seeker. It may be just the ego which is thinking to 
attain God. You cannot be satisfied by your worldly successes. You have achieved; in the 
outer world you have reached a certain status, position, prestige. You are powerful, you 
are rich, knowledgeable, respected, but your ego is not satisfied. The ego is never 
satisfied. And the reason? — the same. A real hunger can be satisfied. The hunger of the 
ego is false; it cannot be satisfied. Whatsoever you do will be futile. Because the hunger 
is false, no food can satisfy it. If the hunger is real, it can be satisfied. 

All natural hungers can be satisfied — it is nothing, not a problem at all — but unnatural 
hungers cannot be satisfied. In the first place they are not hungers — how can you satisfy 
them? And they are unreal; just emptiness exists there. You go on throwing food, and you 
are throwing food into an abyss, a bottomless abyss. You will not reach anywhere. The 
ego cannot be satisfied. 

I have heard that when Alexander was coming to India someone said to him, 'Have you 
ever meditated upon the fact that there is only one world, and if you win it then what will 
you do?’ 

And it is reported that upon hearing this Alexander became very sad and he said, 'I have 
not thought about it, but it makes me very very sad. 



Really, there is only one world and I am going to win it. And when I have won it, what 
am I going to do then?' 

Even this whole world will not quench your thirst, because the thirst is false, unreal. The 
hunger is not natural. 

The ego can go in search of God. In almost ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this has 
been my feeling — that the ego is in search. And then the search is bound to be doomed 
from the very beginning, because the ego cannot meet the divine, and the ego is making 
every effort to reach it. Remember well, your meditation, your prayer, your worship, 
should not be an ego-trip. If it is, you are unnecessarily wasting your energy. So be 
perfectly aware. 

And this is only a question of awareness. If you are aware, you can find out how your ego 
moves and works. It is not difficult; no particular training is needed. You can close your 
eyes and you can see what the search is. You can ask the question whether you are really 
seeking the divine, or whether it is again just an ego-trip — because it is respectable, 
because people think you are religious, because deep down you think, 'How can I be 
satisfied — I — unless I possess God?’ 

Is God going to be your possession? The Upanishads say that one who says that he has 
achieved God, has not achieved, because the very assertion that 'I have achieved God’, is 
an ego-assertion. The Upanishads say that one who claims that he has known, has not 
known. 

The very claim shows that he has not known, because the claim that 'I have known’, 
comes from the ego. And the ego cannot know. The ego is the only barrier. 

Now we will enter the techniques. First: 

FEEL: 

MY THOUGHT, 

I-NESS, 

INTERNAL ORGANS 
- ME. 

A very simple and a very beautiful technique. Feel: MY THOUGHT, I-NESS, 
INTERNAL ORGANS — ME. The first thing is not to think but to feel. These are two 
different dimensions. And we have become so intellect-oriented that even when we say 
that we are feeling, really we are not feeling, we are thinking. Feeling has completely 
stopped; it has become a dead organ in you. Even when you say, 'I love,’ it is not a 
feeling, it is again a thought. 

And what is the difference between feeling and thought? If you feel, you will feel 
yourself centered near the heart. If I say, 'I love you,’ this very feeling of love will flow 
from my heart, the center will be near the heart. If it is just a thought, it will come from 
my head. When you love someone, try to feel whether it is coming from the head, or 
whether it is coming from the heart. 

Whenever you deeply feel, you are headless. In that moment there is no head; there 
cannot be. The heart becomes your whole being — as if the head has disappeared. In 
feeling, the center of being is the heart. 

While you are thinking, the center of being is the head. But thinking proved very useful 



for survival, so we have stopped everything else. All other dimensions of our being have 
been stopped and closed. We are just heads, and the body is just a situation for the head 
to exist. We go on thinking; even about feelings we go on thinking. So try to feel. You 
will have to work on it, because that capacity, that quality, has remained retarded. You 
must do something to re-open that possibility. 

You look at a flower and immediately you say it is beautiful. Ponder over the fact, linger 
over the fact. Don’t give a hurried judgement. Wait — and then see whether it is just from 
the head that you have said it is beautiful, or whether you have felt it. Is it just a routine 
thing, because you know a rose is beautiful, supposed to be beautiful? People say it is 
beautiful, and you have also said many times that it is beautiful. 

The moment you see the rose, the mind supplies you; the mind says it is beautiful. 
Finished. Now there is no contact with the rose. There is no need; you have said. Now 
you can move to something else. Without any communion with the rose... the mind didn’t 
allow you even a glimpse of the rose. The mind came in between, and the heart couldn’t 
come in touch with the rose. Only the heart can say whether it is beautiful or not, because 
beauty is a feeling, it is not a concept. 


You cannot say from the head that it is beautiful. How can you say? Beauty is not 
mathematics, it is not measurable. And beauty is not really just in the rose, because to 
someone else it may not be beautiful at all; and someone else may just pass without 
looking at it; and to someone else it may even be ugly. The beauty doesn’t exist simply in 
the rose; the beauty exists in a meeting of the heart with the rose. When the heart meets 
with the rose, beauty flowers. When the heart comes in deep contact with anything it is a 
great phenomenon. 

If you come in deep contact with any person, the person becomes beautiful. The deeper 
the contact, the more beauty is revealed. But beauty is a phenomenon that happens to the 
heart, not to the mind. It is not a calculation, and there is no criterion by which to judge 
it. It is a feeling. 

So if I say, 'This rose is not beautiful,' you cannot argue about it. There is no need to 
argue. You will say, 'That is your feeling. And the rose is beautiful — this is my feeling.’ 
There is no question of argument. Heads can argue. Hearts cannot argue. It is finished, it 
is a full stop. If I say, 'This is my feeling,’ then there is no question of argument. 

With the head, argument can continue and we can come to a conclusion. With the heart, 
the conclusion has already happened. With the heart, there is no procedure towards the 
conclusion; the conclusion is immediate, instantaneous. 

With the head, it is a process — you argue, you discuss, you analyze, and then you come 
to a conclusion about whether this is so or not. With the heart, it is an immediate 
phenomenon — the conclusion comes first. Look at it: with the head, conclusion comes in 
the end. With the heart, conclusion comes first, and then you can proceed to find the 
process — but that is the work of the head. 

So when such techniques have to be practised, the first difficulty will be that you don’t 
know what feeling is. Try to develop it. When you touch something, close your eyes; 
don’t think, feel. For example, if I take your hand in my hand and I say to you, 'Close 
your eyes and feel what is happening,’ immediately you will say, 'Your hand is in my 
hand.’ But this is not a feeling, this is a thinking. 

Then I again say to you, 'Feel. Don’t think.’ Then you say, 'You are expressing your 



love.’ That too is again thinking. If I insist again, 'Just feel, don’t use your head. What are 
you feeling right now?’ only then will you be able to feel and say, 'The warmth.’ Because 
love is a conclusion. 'Your hand is in my hand’ — this is a head-oriented thought. 

The actual feeling is that a certain warmth is flowing from my hand to your hand, or from 
your hand to my hand. Our life energies are meeting and the point of meeting has become 
hot, it has become warm. This is the feeling, the sensation, the real. 

But we go on with the head continuously. That has become a habit; we are trained for it. 
So you will have to re-open your heart. 

Try to live with feelings. Sometimes in the day when you are not doing any particular 
business — because in business, in the beginning it will be difficult to live with feeling. 
There, head has proved very efficient, and you cannot depend on feeling. While you are 
at home playing with your children, the head is not needed, it is not a business — but 
there too you are with the head. Playing with your children or just sitting with your wife, 
or not doing anything, relaxing in a chair, feel. Feel the texture of the chair. 

Your hand is touching the chair: how are you feeling it? The air is blowing, the breeze is 
coming in. It touches you. How do you feel? Smells are coming from the kitchen. How 
do you feel? Just feel. Don’t think about them. Don’t start brooding that this smell shows 
that something is being prepared in the kitchen — then you will start dreaming about it. 
No, just feel whatsoever is the fact. Remain with the fact; don’t move in thinking. You are 
surrounded from everywhere. Everywhere so much is converging on you. The whole 
existence is coming to meet you from everywhere, from all your senses it is entering you, 
but you are in the head, and your senses have become dead; they don’t feel. 

A certain growth will be needed before you can do this, because this is an inner 
experiment. 

If you cannot feel the outer, it will be very difficult for you to feel the inner, because the 
inner is the subtle. If you cannot feel the gross, you cannot feel the subtle. If you cannot 
hear the sounds, then it will be difficult for you to hear the inner soundlessness — it will 
be very difficult. It is so subtle. 

You are just sitting in the garden, the traffic is passing by and there are many noises and 
many sounds. You just close your eyes and try to find the most subtle sound there around 
you. A crow is cawing: just concentrate yourself on that crow's noise. The whole traffic 
noise is going on. The sound is such, it is so subtle, that you cannot be aware of it unless 
you focus your awareness towards it. But if you focus your awareness, the whole traffic 
noise will go far away and the noise of the crow will become the center. And you will 
hear it, all the nuances of it — very subtle, but you will be able to hear it. 

Grow in sensitivity. When you touch, when you hear, when you eat, when you take a 
bath, allow your senses to be open. And don't think — feel. 

You are standing under the shower: feel the coolness of the water falling on you. Don’t 
think about it. Don’t immediately say, 'It is very cool. It is cold. It is good.’ Don’t say 
anything. Don’t verbalize, because the moment you verbalize, you miss feeling. The 
moment words come in, the mind has started to function. 

Don’t verbalize. Feel the coolness and don’t say that it is cool. There is no need to say 
anything. But our minds are just mad; we go on saying something or other. 

I remember, I was working in a university, and there was a lady professor who would 
always be saying something or other. It was impossible for her to be silent in any 



situation. One day I was standing on the verandah of the college and the sun was setting. 
It was tremendously beautiful. And she was just standing by my side, so I told her, 
'Look!' She was saying something or other, so I said, 'Look! Such a beautiful sunset.’ So, 
very reluctantly she conceded. She said, 'Yes, but don’t you think there should be a little 
more purple just on the left?’ It was not a painting; it was a real sunset! 

We go on saying things, not even aware of what we are saying. Stop verbalizing; only 
then can you deepen your feelings. If feelings are deepened, then this technique can work 
miracles for you. 

FEEL: 

MY THOUGHT, 

Close your eyes and feel the thought. A continuous flow of thoughts is there, a 
continuum, a flux; a river of thoughts is flowing. Feel these thoughts, feel their presence. 
And the more you feel, the more will be revealed to you — layers upon layers. Not only 
thoughts that are just on the surface; behind them there are more thoughts, and behind 
them there are still more thoughts — layers upon layers. 


And the technique says:FEEL: MY THOUGHT. And we go on saying, 'These are my 
thoughts.’ But feel — are they really yours? Can you say 'my'? The more you feel, the less 
will it be possible for you to say that they are yours. They are all borrowed, they are all 
from the outside. They have come to you but they are not yours. No thought is yours — 
just dust gathered. Even if you cannot recognize the source from where this thought has 
come to you, no thought is yours. If you try hard, you can find from where this thought 
has come to you. 

Only the inner silence is yours. No one has given it to you. You were born with it, and 
you will die with it. Thoughts have been given to you; you have been conditioned to 
them. If you are a Hindu, you have a different type, a different set of thoughts; if you are 
a Mohammedan, of course, a different set of thoughts; if you are a communist, again a 
different set of thoughts. They have been given to you, or you may have taken them 
voluntarily, but no thought is yours. 

If you feel the presence of thoughts, the crowd, you can feel this also — that they are not 
yours. The crowd has come to you, it has gathered around you, but it doesn’t belong to 
you. And if this can be felt — that no thought is mine — only then you can throw the 
mind. If they are yours, you will defend them. And the very feeling that 'this thought is 
mine’ is the attachment. 

Then I give it roots in myself. Then I become the soil and the thought can remain rooted 
in me. If anything that I can see is not mine is uprooted, then I am not attached to it. The 
feeling of 'mine’ creates attachment. 

You can fight for your thoughts, you can even become a martyr for your thoughts. Or, 
you can become a killer, a murderer for your thoughts. And thoughts are not yours. 
Consciousness is yours, but thoughts are not yours. And why will this help? — because if 
you can see that thoughts are not yours, then nothing is yours because thought is the root 
of all. The house is mine and the property is mine and the family is mine — these are the 
outer things. Deep down the thoughts are mine. Only if thoughts are mine can all these 
things, the superstructure, be mine. 



If thoughts are not mine then nothing matters, because this too is a thought — that you are 
my wife, or you are my husband. This too is a thought. And if basically thought itself is 
not mine, then how can the husband be mine? Or how can the wife be mine? Thoughts 
uprooted, the whole world is uprooted. Then you can live in the world and not live in it. 
You can move to the Himalayas, you can leave the world, but if you think that your 
thoughts are yours, you have not moved a single inch. Sitting there in the Himalayas, you 
will be as much in the world as here because thoughts are the world. 

You carry your thoughts to the Himalayas. You leave the house — but the real house is 
inner, and the real house is built by the bricks of thought. It is not the outer house. 

So this is strange, but this happens every day: I see a person who has left the world but 
still he remains a Hindu. He becomes a sannyasin and still he remains a Hindu or remains 
a Jain. What does it mean? He renounces the world but he doesn't renounce the thoughts. 
He is still a Jain, he is still a Hindu — the thought-world is carried still. And that thought- 
world is the real world. 

If you can see that no thought is yours.... And you will see, because you will be the seer 
and thoughts will become the objects. When you silently look at the thoughts, thoughts 
will be the objects and you will be the looker. You will be the seer, the witness, and 
thoughts will be flowing before you. 

And if you look deeply and feel deeply, you will see that there are no roots. Thoughts are 
floating like clouds in the sky; they have no roots in you. They come and go. You are just 
a victim, and you unnecessarily become identified with them. About every cloud that 
passes by your house you say, 'This is my cloud.’ Thoughts are like clouds: in the sky of 
your consciousness they go on passing and you go on clinging to each one. You say, 

'This is mine’ — and this is only a vagrant cloud that is passing. And it will pass. 


Go back in your childhood. You had certain thoughts, and you used to cling to them and 
you used to say that they were your thoughts. Then the childhood disappeared, and with 
that childhood those clouds disappeared. Now you don’t even remember. Then you were 
young: then other clouds which are attracted when you are young came to you and then 
your started clinging to them. 

Now you are old: those thoughts are no more there, you don’t even remember them. And 
they were so significant that you could have died for them, and now you don’t even 
remember. Now you can laugh at the whole nonsense that you once thought that you 
could die for them, you could become a martyr for them. Now you are not ready to even 
give a single penny for them. They don’t belong to you now. Now those clouds have gone 
but other clouds have come, and you are clinging to them. 

Clouds go on changing but your clinging never changes. That’s the problem. And it is not 
that only when you are no longer a child they will change; every moment they are 
changing. A minute ago you were filled with certain clouds; now you are filled with other 
clouds. When you came here, certain clouds were hovering on you; when you leave this 
room, other clouds will be hovering on you — and you go on clinging to every cloud. If in 
the end you find nothing in your hand, it is natural because nothing can come of clouds — 
and thoughts are just clouds. 



This sutra says: FEEL. Be established in feeling first. Then MY THOUGHT. Look at that 
thought which you have always been calling MY — MY THOUGHT. Established in 
feeling, looking at thought, the MY disappears. And MY is the trick because out of many 
MY’S, out of many ME’S, the I evolves — this is MINE, this is MY. So many MINE'S; 
out of them the I evolves. 

This technique starts from the very root. Thought is the root of all. If you can cut the 
feeling of MY at the very root, it will not appear again, it will not be seen anywhere 
again. But if you don’t cut it down there, you can go on cutting everywhere and it is 
useless; it will go on appearing again and again. 

I can cut it. I can say, 'My wife? No, we are strangers, and marriage is just a social 
formality.’ I cut myself away. I say, 'No one is my wife’ — but this is very superficial. 
Then I say, 'MY religion,’ Then I say, 'MY sect.’ Then I say, 'This is MY religious book. 
This is the Bible. This is the Koran. This is MY book.’ Then the MY continues in some 
other field and you remain the same. 

MY THOUGHT, and then I-NESS. First look at the traffic of thought, the process of 
thought, the river-like flow of thought, and find out whether any thought belongs to you 
or whether they are just passing clouds. And when you have come to feel that no thought 
is yours, to attach MY to any thought is an illusion, then the second thing; then you can 
move deeper. 

Then be aware of I-ness. Where is this I? 

Raman used to give a technique to his disciples: they were just to enquire, 'Who am I?’ In 
Tibet they use a similar technique, but still better than Raman's. They don’t ask, 'Who am 
I?’ They ask, 'Where am I?’ — because the WHO can create a problem. When you 
enquire, 'Who am I?’ you take it for granted that you are; the only question is to know 
who you are. You have presupposed that you are. That is not contested. It is taken for 
granted that you are. Now the only question is WHO you are. Only the identity is to be 
known, the face is to be recognized, but it is there — unrecognized it is there. 

The Tibetan method is still deeper. They say to be silent and then search within for where 
you are. Go on in the inner space, move to every point and ask, 'Where am I?’ You will 
not find it anywhere. And the more you seek, the more it will not be there. And asking 
'Who am I?’ or 'Where am I?’ a moment comes when you come to a point where you are, 
but no I — a simple existence has happened to you. But it will happen only when thoughts 
are not yours. That is a deeper realm — I-NESS. 

We never feel it. We go on saying I. The word I is used continuously — the most used 
word is I — but you have no feeling. What do you mean by I? When you say I, what do 
you mean? What is connoted through this word? What is expressed? I can make a 
gesture. 

Then I can say, 'I mean this.’ I can show my body — 'I mean this.’ But then it can be 
asked, 'Do you mean your hand? Do you mean your leg? Do you mean your stomach?’ 
Then I will have to deny, I will have to say no. Then the whole body will be denied. Then 
what do you mean when you say I? Do you mean your head? Deep down, whenever you 
say I, it is a very vague feeling, and the vague feeling is of your thoughts. 

Established in feeling, cut from thoughts, face I-ness, and as you face it, you find that it 
exists not. It was only a useful word, a linguistic symbol — necessary, but not real. Even a 
Buddha has to use it, even after his enlightenment. It is just a linguistic device. But when 
a Buddha says I, he never means I, because there is no one. 



When you face this I-NESS it will disappear. Fear can grip you at this moment, you can 
be scared. And it happens to many who move in such techniques deeply that they become 
so afraid that they run out of it. So remember this: when you feel and face your I-NESS 
you will be in the same situation as you will be when you die — the same. Because I is 
disappearing, and you feel death is occurring to you. You will have a sinking sensation, 
you will feel you are sinking down and down. And if you get afraid, you will come out 
again and you will cling to thoughts because those thoughts will be helpful. Those clouds 
will be there: you can cling to them, and then the fear will leave you. 


Remember, this fear is very good, a very hopeful sign. It shows that now you are going 
deep — and death is the deepest point. If you can go into death you will become 
deathless, because one who goes into death cannot die. Then death is also just around; 
never in the center, just on the periphery. When I-NESS disappears you are just like 
death. The old is no more and the new has come into being. 

This consciousness which will come out is absolutely new, uncontaminated, young, 
virgin. The old is no more — and the old has not even touched it. That I-NESS disappears, 
and you are in your pristine virginity, in your absolute freshness. The deepest layer of 
being has been touched. 

So think of it in this way: thoughts, then below them I-NESS, and thirdly: 

FEEL: 

MY THOUGHT, 

I-NESS, 

INTERNAL ORGANS 
- ME. 

When thoughts have disappeared or you are not clinging to them — if they are passing it 
is none of your business, you are aloof and detached and unidentified, and the I-NESS 
has disappeared — then you can look at the internal organs. These internal organs.... This 
is one of the deepest things. We know the outer organs. With hands I touch you, with 
eyes I see you — these are the outer organs. 

The internal organs are those through which I feel my own being. The outer are for 
others. 

I know about you through the outer. How do I know about me? Even that I am — how do 
I know about it? Who gives me the sensation of my own being? There are internal 
organs. When thoughts have stopped and when I-NESS is no more, only then, in that 
purity, in that clarity, can you see the internal organs. 

Consciousness, intelligence — they are internal organs. Through them I am aware of my 
own being, of my own existence. That's why if you close your eyes, you can forget your 
body completely, but your own feeling that you are, remains. And it is conceivable that 
when a person dies.... It is a fact. When a person dies, for us he is dead, but it takes a little 
time for him to recognize the fact that he is dead because the internal feeling of being, 
remains the same. 

In Tibet they have special exercises for dying and they say one must be ready to die. One 
of the exercises is this: whenever someone is dying, the master or the priest or someone 
who knows the bardo exercises will go on saying to him, 'Remember, be alert, you are 



leaving the body.’ Because even when you have left the body it will take time to 
recognize that you are dead because the internal feeling remains the same; there is no 
change. 

The body is only to touch and feel others. Through it you have never touched yourself, 
through it you have never known yourself. You know yourself through some other organs 
which are internal. 

But this is the misery — that we are not aware of those internal organs and our image in 
our own eyes is created by others. Whatsoever others say about me is my knowledge 
about myself. If they say I am beautiful or if they say I am ugly, I believe in it. 
Whatsoever my senses say to me through others, reflected through others, is my belief of 
myself. 

If you can recognize the internal organs you are freed from society completely. That is 
what is meant when it is said in old scriptures that a sannyasin is not part of the society, 
because now he knows himself through his own internal organs. Now his knowledge 
about himself is not based upon others, it is not a reflected thing. Now he doesn't need 
any mirror to know himself. He has found the inner mirror, and he knows through the 
inner mirror. And the inner reality can be known only when you have come to the inner 
organs. 

INTERNAL ORGANS. You can then look through those internal organs. And then — the 
ME. It is difficult to express it in words, that's why ME is used. Any word will be wrong 

— ME is also wrong — but the I has disappeared. So remember, this ME doesn’t have 
anything to do with I. When thoughts are uprooted, when I-NESS has disappeared, when 
internal organs are known, the ME appears. Then for the first time my real being is 
revealed — that real being is called ME. 

The outer world is no more, thoughts are no more, the feeling of ego is no more, and I 
have come to recognize my own internal organs of knowing, consciousness, intelligence 

— or whatsoever you call it — awareness, alertness. 

Then, in the light of this internal organ, ME is revealed. 

This ME doesn’t belong to you. This ME is your innermost center, unknown to you. This 
ME is not an ego. This ME is not against any YOU. This ME is cosmic. This Me has no 
boundaries. In this ME everything is implied. This ME is not the wave. This ME is the 
ocean. 

FEEL: MY THOUGHT, I-NESS, INTERNAL ORGANS. Then there is a gap, and 
suddenly the ME is revealed. When this ME is revealed, then one comes to know, ' Aham 
Brahmasmi. I am the God.’ This knowing is not any claim of the ego; the ego is no more 
there. You can mutate yourself through this technique, but first get established in feeling. 

The second technique: 

BEFORE DESIRE AND BEFORE KNOWING, 

HOW CAN I SAY I AM? 

CONSIDER. 

DISSOLVE IN THE BEAUTY. 

BEFORE DESIRE AND BEFORE KNOWING, HOW CAN I SAY I AM? 

A desire arises: with the desire, the feeling that I AM arises. A thought arises: with the 



thought, the feeling that I AM arises. Look for it in your own experience. Before desire 
and before knowing, there is no ego. 

Sit silently. Look within. A thought arises: you get identified with the thought. A desire 
arises: you get identified with the desire. In the identification you become the ego. Then 
think: there is no desire and there is no knowledge and no thought — you cannot get 
identified with anything. 

The ego cannot arise. 

Buddha used this technique and he said to his disciples not do anything else but just one 
thing: when a thought arises, not it down. Buddha used to say that when a thought arises, 
note down that a thought is arising. Just inside, note it: now a thought is arising, now a 
thought has arises, now a thought is disappearing. Just remember that now the thought is 
arising, now the thought has arisen, now the thought is disappearing, so that you don't get 
identified with it. 

It is very beautiful and very simple. A desire arises. You are walking on the road; a 
beautiful car passes by. You look at it — and you have not even looked and the desire to 
possess it arises. Do it. In the beginning just verbalize; just say slowly, 'I have seen a car. 
It is beautiful. Now a desire has arisen to possess it.’ Just verbalize. 

In the beginning it is good; if you can say it loudly, it is very good. Say loudly, 'I am just 
noting that a car has passed, the mind has said it is beautiful, and now desire has arisen 
and I must possess this car.’ Verbalize everything, speak loudly to yourself and 
immediately you will feel that you are different from it. Note it. 

When you have become efficient in noting, there is no need to say it loudly. Just inside, 
note that a desire has arisen. A beautiful woman passes; the desire has come in. Just note 
it — as if you are not concerned, you are just noting the fact that is happening — and then 
suddenly you will be out of it. 


Buddha says, 'Note down whatsoever happens. Just go on noting, and when it disappears, 
again note that now that desire has disappeared, and you will feel a distance from the 
desire, from the thought.' 

This technique says: 

BEFORE DESIRE AND BEFORE KNOWING, 

HOW CAN I SAY I AM? 

And if there is no desire and if there is no thought, how can you say I AM? How can I 
say I AM? Then everything is silent, not a ripple is there. And without any ripple how 
can I create this illusion of I? If some ripple is there I can get attached to it and through it 
I can feel I AM. When there is no ripple in the consciousness, there is no I. 

So before desire, remember; when the desire comes in, remember; when the desire goes 
out, go on remembering. When a thought arises, remember. Look at it. Just note that a 
thought has arisen. Sooner or later it will go because everything is momentary, and there 
will be a gap. Between two thoughts there is a gap, between two desires there is a gap, 
and in the gap there is no I. 

Note a thought in the mind and then you will feel that there is an interval. Howsoever 
small, there is an interval. Then another thought comes; then again there is an interval. In 
those intervals there is no I — and those intervals are your real being. Thoughts are 



moving in the sky. In those intervals you can look between two clouds, and the sky is 
revealed. 


CONSIDER. 

DISSOLVE IN THE BEAUTY. 

And if you can consider that a desire has arisen and a desire has gone and you have 
remained in the gap and the desire has not disturbed you.... It came, it went. It was there, 
and it is now not there, and you have remained unperturbed, you have remained as you 
were before it. There has been no change in you. It came and it passed like a shadow. It 
has not touched you; you remain unscarred. 

Consider this movement of desire and movement of thought but no movement in you. 
CONSIDER AND DISSOLVE IN THE BEAUTY. And that interval is beautiful. 
Dissolve in that interval. Fall in the gap and be the gap. It is the deepest experience of 
beauty. And not only of beauty, but of good and of truth also. In the gap you are. 

The whole emphasis has to go from the filled spaces to the unfilled spaces. You are 
reading a book. There are words, there are sentences, but between the words there are 
gaps, between the sentences there are gaps. In those gaps you are. The whiteness of the 
paper you are, and the black dots are just clouds of thought and desire moving on you. 
Change the emphasis, change the gestalt. Don't look at the black dots. Look at the white. 
In your inner being, look at the gaps. Be indifferent to the filled spaces, the occupied 
spaces. Be interested in the gaps, the intervals. Through those intervals you can dissolve 
into the ultimate beauty. 


THE END. 



Chapter 56: Discovering the emptiness 


Question 1 

IN MEDITATION, WHEN THE T DROPS TEMPORARILY AND AN EMPTINESS 
IS CREATED WITHIN, AFTER IT A FRUSTRATION IS FELT WHEN THAT 
EMPTINESS IS NOT FILLED BY THE ENTRY OF THE UNKNOWN. HOW CAN 
ONE LEARN TO LIVE WITH THAT EMPTINESS? 

Emptiness is the unknown. Don’t wait and don't hope that something is going to fill the 
emptiness. If you are waiting, hoping, desiring, you are not empty. If you are waiting that 
something, some unknown force, will descend upon you, you are not empty — this hope 
is there, this desire is there, this longing is there. So don’t desire for something to fill you. 
Simply be empty. Don’t even wait. 

Emptiness is the unknown. When you are really empty the unknown has descended upon 
you. It is not that first you become empty and then the unknown enters. You are empty, 
and the unknown has entered. There is not a single moment's gap. The emptiness and the 
unknown are one. 

In the beginning it appears to you as emptiness; that is only appearance, because you 
have always been filled by the ego. Really, you are feeling the absence of the ego; that's 
why you feel empty. First the ego disappears — but the feeling that the ego is no more 
creates the feeling of emptiness. Just the absence... something was there, and now it is not 
there. The ego has gone, but the absence of the ego is felt. First the ego will disappear, 
and then the absence of the ego will disappear. 

Only then will you be really empty. And to be really empty is to be really filled. 

That inner space which is created by the absence of the ego is the divine. The divine is 
not to come from somewhere else; you are already that. Because you are filled with the 
ego you cannot realize it, you cannot see it, you cannot touch it. A filmy barrier of the 
ego prevents you. 

When the ego has dropped, the barrier has dropped. The curtain is no more there. 

Nothing is to come; whatsoever is to come is already there. Remember this: that nothing 
new is going to come to you. Whatsoever is possible is already there, actual. So the 
question is not of achieving; the question is only of discovering. The treasure is there, 
just covered — you uncover it. 

When he became a realized man, Buddha was asked so many times, 'What have you 
gained? What have you achieved?’ 

Buddha is reported to have said, 'I have not achieved anything. Rather, on the contrary, I 
have lost myself. And that which I have achieved was already there, so I cannot say I 
have achieved it. I was unaware of it. Now I have become aware. But I cannot say I have 
achieved it. Rather, on the contrary, now I wonder how it was possible that I didn’t know 
it before. And it was always there just by the corner — just a turning was needed.’ 

The divinity is not a future. Your divinity is the present. It is here and now. 

This very moment you are that — unaware, not looking in the right direction, or not tuned 
to it, that’s all. 

A radio is there: the waves are passing right now, but if the radio is not tuned to a 
particular wave, the wave is unmanifest. You tune the radio and the wave becomes 



manifest. A tuning is needed. Meditation is a tuning. When you are tuned, that which is 
unmanifest becomes manifest. 

But remember, don't desire, because the desire will not allow you to be empty. And if you 
are not empty nothing is possible, because the space is not there, so your own unmanifest 
nature cannot be revealed. It needs space to be revealed. And don’t ask how to live with 
emptiness. That is not the real question. Just be empty. You are not yet empty. 

If once you know what emptiness is, you will love it. It is ecstatic. It is the most beautiful 
experience possible to mind, to man, to consciousness. You will not ask how to live with 
emptiness. You are asking that as if emptiness is something like a misery. It appears so to 
the ego. The ego is always afraid of emptiness, so you ask how to live with it as if it is 
some enemy. 

Emptiness is your innermost center. All the activity is on the periphery; the innennost 
center is just a zero. All the manifest is on the periphery; the deepest core of your being is 
the unmanifest vacuum. Buddha has given it a name — shunyata. 

It means nothingness or emptiness. That’s your nature, that’s your being, and out of that 
nothingness everything comes, and everything goes back to it. 

That emptiness is the source. Don’t ask to fill it, because whenever you ask to fill it you 
will create more and more ego — ego is the effort to fill the emptiness. And even this 
desire that now something must descend upon you — a god, a divinity, a divine power, 
some unknown energy — this is again a thought. Whatsoever you can think about God is 
not going to be God; it is simply going to be a thought. 

When you say the unknown, you have made it the known. What do you know about the 
unknown? Even to say that it is the unknown, you have known some quality about it — 
the quality of its being unknown. The mind cannot conceive the unknown. Even the 
unknown becomes known, and whatsoever the mind says is going to be just a 
verbalization, a thought process. 

God is not the word 'God’. The thought of God is not God. Ans when there is no thought, 
only then will you come to feel and realize what it is. Nothing else can be said about it. It 
can only be indicated. And all indications are erroneous because they are all indirect. 

This much can be said — that when you are not.... And you are not, only when there is no 
desire, because you exist with desire. Desire is the food through which you exist. Desire 
is the fuel. 

When there is no desire, no longing, no future, and when you are not, that emptiness is 
the fullness of existence. In that emptiness the whole existence is revealed to you. You 
become it. 

So don’t ask how to live with emptiness. First be empty. There is no need to ask how to 
live with it. It is so blissful — the deepest bliss it is. When you ask how to live with 
emptiness, you are really asking how to live with oneself. But you have not known 
yourself. Enter more and more into it. 

In meditation sometimes you feel a sort of emptiness; that is not really emptiness. I call it 
just a sort of emptiness. When you are meditating, for certain moments, for a few seconds 
you will feel as if the thought process has stopped. In the beginning these gaps will come. 
But because you are feeling as if the thought process has stopped, this is again a thought 
process, a very subtle thought process. What are you doing? You are saying inside, 'The 
thought process has stopped.’ But what is this? This is a secondary thought process which 
has started. And you say, 'This is emptiness.’ You say, 'Now something is going to 



happen.’ What is this? Again a new thought process has started. 

Whenever this happens again, don't become a victim of it. When you feel a certain 
silence is descending, don't start verbalizing it, because you are destroying it. Wait — not 
for something — simply wait. 

Don't do anything. Don't say, 'This is emptiness.’ The moment you have said, you have 
destroyed it. Just look at it, penetrate into it, encounter it, but wait — don’t verbalize it. 
What is the hurry? Through verbalization the mind has again entered from a different 
route, and you are deceived. Be alert about this trick of the mind. 

In the beginning it is bound to happen, so whenever this happens again, just wait. Don’t 
fall in the trap. Don’t say anything — remain silent. Then you will enter, and then it will 
not be temporary, because once you have known the real emptiness you cannot lose it. 
The real cannot be lost; that is its quality. 

Once you have known the inner treasure, once you have come in contact with your 
deepest core, then you can move in activity, then you can do whatsoever you like, then 
you can live an ordinary worldly life, but the emptiness will remain with you. You cannot 
forget it. It will go on inside. The music of it will be heard. Whatsoever you are doing, 
the doing will be only on the periphery; inside you will remain empty. 

And if you can remain empty inside, doing only on the periphery, whatsoever you do 
becomes divine, whatsoever you do takes on the quality of the divine because now it is 
not coming from you. Now it is coming directly from the original emptiness, the original 
nothingness. If then you speak, those words are not yours. 

That’s what Mohammed means when he says, 'This Koran is not said by me. It has come 
to me as if someone else has spoken through me.’ It has come out of the inner emptiness. 
That’s what Hindus mean when they say, 'The Vedas are not written by man, they are not 
human documents, but the divine, the God himself has spoken.’ 

These are symbolic ways of saying something which is very mysterious. And this is the 
mystery: when you are deeply empty, whatsoever you do or speak is not from you — 
because you are no more. It comes from the emptiness. It comes from the deepest source 
of existence. It comes from the same source from which this whole existence has come. 
Then you have entered the womb, the very womb of existence. Then your words are not 
yours, then your acts are not yours. It is as if you are just an instrument — an instrument 
of the whole. 

If emptiness is felt only momentarily, and then it comes and goes like a flash, it is not 
real. And if you start thinking about it, even the unreal is lost. Not to think in that 
moment takes great courage. It is the greatest control I know. When the mind becomes 
silent and when you are falling empty, it takes the greatest courage not to think, because 
the whole past of the mind will assert. The whole mechanism will say, 'Now think!’ 

In subtle ways, indirect ways, your past memories will force you to think — and if you 
think, you have come back. 

If you can remain silent in that moment, if you are not tempted by the mechanism of your 
memory and mind.... This is really the satan — your own mind which tempts you. 
Whenever you are falling empty, the mind tempts you and creates something to think 
about — and if you start thinking, you are back. 

It is said that when one of the great masters, Bodhidhanna, went to China, many disciples 
gathered around him. He was the first Zen master. One disciple, who was to become his 



chief disciple, came to him and said, 'Now I have become totally empty.’ 

Bodhidharma slapped him immediately and said, 'Now go and throw this emptiness also! 
Now you are filled with emptiness — throw this also. Only then will you be really empty. 
You understand? You can be filled by the idea of emptiness. Then it will hover on you, it 
will become a cloud. He said, 'Throw this emptiness also, and then come to me.’ If you 
say you are empty, you are not empty. Now this word 'empty' has become meaningful 
and you are filled with it. The same I say to you — throw this emptiness also. 

Question 2 

YOU HAVE TALKED ABOUT TRANSFORMATION AND MUTATION OF MAN’S 
MIND, OF MAN’S UNCONSCIOUS INTO SUPERCONSCIOUS, AND YOU HAVE 
SAID THAT SPIRITUALITY IS AN EXISTENTIAL EXPERIMENTATION. BUT 
LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT THE EGO IS A FALSE ENTITY AND IT HAS NO 
SUBSTANCE AND REALITY TO IT. THEN DOES IT MEAN THAT THE WHOLE 
SPIRITUAL EXPERIMENTATION IS AN EXISTENTIAL TRANSFORMATION OF 
THE EGO WHICH IS NON-EXISTENTIAL? 

No. 

The spiritual transfonnation is not the transformation of the ego; it is the dissolution of it. 
You are not going to transform the ego, because howsoever transformed, the ego will 
remain the ego. It may become superior, more refined, more cultured, but the ego will 
remain the ego. And more cultured; it becomes more poisonous. The more subtle, the 
more you will be in its grip, because you will not be able to be aware of it. You are not 
even aware of such a gross ego. When it becomes subtle you will not be aware of it; there 
will be no possibility. 

There are ways to refine the ego, but those ways are not of spirituality. Morality exists on 
those methods. And that is the difference between morality and religion. Morality exists 
on methods of refining the ego; morality exists on respectability. So we say to a person, 
'Don't do this. If you do this, your respect is at stake. Don’t do this. What will others 
think about you? Don’t do this. You will not be honored. Do this and everyone will honor 
you.' 

The whole morality depends on your ego, a subtle ego. Religion is not a transfonnation 
of the ego, it is a transcendence. You simply leave the ego. And it is not that you leave it 
because it is wrong. Remember this distinction. Morality always says, 'Leave that which 
is wrong, and do that which is right,’ Religion says, 'Leave that which is false — not 
wrong, but false. 

Leave that which is unreal, and enter the real.’ With spirituality, truth is the value, not 
right. Because right may itself be false, and in a false world we need false rights to 
oppose wrongs. 

Spirituality is not a transfonnation of the ego, it is a transcendence. You go beyond the 
ego. And this going beyond is really an awakening; it is a deep alertness to see whether 
the ego exists or not. If it exists, if it is a part, a real part of your being, you cannot go 
beyond it. If it is false, only then is transcendence possible. You can awaken out of a 
dream. You cannot awaken out of reality, or can you? You can transcend a dream, but 
you cannot transcend reality. 

The ego is a false entity. And what do we mean when we say that the ego is a false 
entity? We mean that it exists only because you have not encountered it. If you encounter 



it, it will not exist. It exists in your ignorance; because you are not aware, it is there. If 
you become aware, it will not be there. If you become aware and some entity disappears 
just by your becoming aware, it means it was false. The real will be revealed in 
awareness and the false will disappear. 

So really this too is not right to say — leave your ego — because whenever it is said to 
leave your ego, it gives a sense that the ego is something and you can leave it. You can 
even start struggling to throw this ego. The whole effort will be absurd. 

You cannot throw it, because only a reality can be thrown. You cannot fight with it. How 
can you fight with a shadow? And if you fight, remember, you will be defeated. Not 
because the shadow is very powerful, but because the shadow is not; you cannot defeat it. 
You will be defeated by your own stupidity. 

Fight with a shadow and you cannot win — that is certain. You will be defeated. That too 
is certain, because you will dissipate your own energy in the fight. Not that the shadow is 
very powerful, but because the shadow is not. You are fighting with your own self, 
wasting your energy. Then you will be exhausted and you will fall down. And you will 
think that the shadow has won and you are defeated — and the shadow has not been there 
at all. If you fight with the ego you will be defeated. Rather, enter and try to find out 
where it is. 

It is said that the Emperor of China asked Bodhidharma, 'My mind is very restless. I am 
in constant inner turmoil. Give me some peace or give me some secret key to how I can 
enter into the inner silence.’ 

So Bodhidhanna said, 'You come early in the morning, four o'clock, when there is no 
one here. When I am alone here in my hut you come. And remember, bring your restless 
mind with you. Don't leave it at home.’ 

The king was very much disturbed, thinking that this man was mad. He says, 'Bring your 
disturbed mind with you. 

Don’t leave it at home, otherwise who am I going to silence? I will make it still, but bring 
it! Remember well.’ 

The emperor left, but more disturbed than ever. He had been thinking that this man was a 
sage, a wise man, and he would give him some key, but whatsoever he said seemed to be 
foolish — how can one leave one’s mind at home? He couldn’t sleep. The eyes of 
Bodhidharma and the way he had looked at him... he was hypnotized — as if a magnet 
was pulling. He couldn’t sleep the whole night, and at four he was ready. He didn’t really 
want to go because this man was mad. And going so early, in darkness, when no one was 
there — this man could do anything. 

But still, he was so attracted that in spite of himself he went. And the first thing that 
Bodhidharma asked.... He was sitting before his hut with his staff in his hands, and he 
said, 'Okay. So you have come. Where is your restless mind? Have you brought that? I 
am ready to silence it.’ The emperor now said, 'What are you talking about? How can one 
forget the mind? It is always there.’ 

Bodhidharma said, 'Where? Where is it? Show it to me so I can silence it, and you can go 
back.’ 

The emperor said, 'But it is not something objective. I cannot show it to you, I cannot put 
it in my hand. It is within me.’ 

So Bodhidhanna said, 'Okay, close your eyes and try to find out where it is. And the 
moment you catch hold of it, open your eyes and tell me and I will still it.’ 



In that silence and with this madman, the emperor closed his eyes. He tried and tried. 

And he was afraid also, because Bodhidhanna was sitting with his staff — any moment he 
would hit. He tried and tried and tried. He looked everywhere, in every nook and corner 
of his being — where is that mind which is restless> And the more he looked, the more he 
realized that the restlessness had disappeared. The more he tried to search... like a 
shadow it was not there. 

Two hours passed, and he was not even aware of what had happened. His face became 
silent, he became like a Buddha statue, and then with the rising sun Bodhidhanna said, 
'Now open your eyes. It is enough. Two hours are more than enough. Now can you tell 
me where it is?' 

The emperor opened his eyes. He was as silent as a human being can be. He bowed down 
his head at Bodhidharma’s feet and said, 'You have already silenced it.’ 

Emperor Wu has written in his autobiography, 'This man is miraculous, magical. Not 
doing anything he silenced my mind. And I also didn’t do anything. I just entered myself 
and tried to find where it is. Of course he was right: first locate it, where it is. And just 
the effort to locate it, and it was not found there.’ 

You will not find the ego. If you go in, if you search for it, you will not find it there. It 
has never existed. It is just a false substitute. 

It has some utility, that’s why you have invented it. Because you don’t know your real 
being, the real center, and without a center it is difficult to function, you have created a 
fiction, a fictitious center, and you function through it. 

The real center is hidden. You have created a false center — the ego is a false center, a 
substitute center. Without a center it is difficult to exist, difficult to function. You need a 
center to function. And you don’t know your real center, so the mind has created a false 
center. Mind is very skilled in creating substitutes. It always gives you a substitute if you 
cannot find the real, because otherwise you will go mad. Without a center you will go 
mad. You will get scattered, you will become fragmented; there will be no unity. So the 
mind creates a false center. 

It is just like in dreaming. You dream you are feeling thirsty. Now if this thirst becomes 
penetrating, the sleep will be disturbed, because then you will have to get up to drink 
water. Now your mind will give a substitute: the mind will create a dream. You need not 
get up, the sleep need not be disturbed — you dream that you are drinking water. From 
the fridge you are taking water and drinking. The mind has given you a substitute. Now 
you feel okay. The real thirst has not been quenched, simply deceived. But now you feel 
that you have drunk, you have taken water. 

Now you can sleep; the sleep can continue undisturbed. 

In dreams the mind is constantly giving you substitutes just to protect sleep. And the 
same is happening while you are awake. The mind is giving you substitutes just to protect 
your sanity; otherwise you will be scattered in fragments. 

Unless the real center is known, the ego has to function. Once the real center is known, 
there is no need to dream about water. When you have got the real water you can drink it. 
There is no need to dream about it. Meditation brings you to the real center. And with 
that very happening, the utility for the false disappears. 

But this must be kept in consciousness — that the ego is not your real center. Only then 
can you start a search for the real. And spirituality is not a transfonnation of it. It cannot 



be transformed. It is unreal, it is simply not. You cannot do anything with it. If you are 
aware, alert, if you watch it within yourself, it disappears. Just the flame of your 
awareness and it is not there. Spirituality is a transcendence. 

Question 3 

IF THE EGO IS UNREAL, THEN DOES IT NOT MEAN THAT THE UNCONSCIOUS 
MIND, THE ACCUMULATION OF MEMORIES IN THE BRAIN CELLS, AND THE 
PROCESS OF TRANSFORMATION THAT IS THE SUBJECT MATTER OF 
SPIRITUALITY, IS ALSO UNREAL, A DREAM PROCESS? 

No. Ego is unreal; brain cells are not unreal. Ego is unreal; memories are not unreal. 

Ego is unreal; thought process is not unreal. Thought process is a reality. Memories are 
real, brain cells are real, your body is real. Your body is real, your soul is real. These are 
two realities. But when your soul gets identified with the body, the ego is formed — that 
is unreality. 

It is just like this. I am standing before a mirror: I am real, the mirror is real, but the 
reflection in the mirror is not real. I am real, the mirror is also real, but the reflection in 
the mirror is a reflection, it is not a reality. Brain cells are real, consciousness is real, but 
when consciousness gets involved, attached, identified with the brain cells, the ego is 
formed. That ego is unreal. 

So when you have awakened, when you have become enlightened, your memory is not 
going to disappear. The memory will be there. Really, it will be more crystal-clear. Then 
it will function more accurately because there will be no disturbance from the false ego. 
Your thought process will not disappear. Rather, for the first time you will be capable of 
thinking. Before that you were simply borrowing things. Then you will really be able to 
think. But then you, not the thought process, will be the master. 

Before, the thought process was the master. You couldn’t do anything about it. It 
continued on its own; you were just a victim. You wanted to sleep and the mind 
continued thinking. 

You wanted to stop it, but it would not stop. Really, the more you tried to stop it, the 
more stubborn it became. It was your master. When you become enlightened it will be 
there, but then it will be instrumental. Whenever you need it, you will be able to use it. 
Whenever you don’t need it, it will not crowd your consciousness. Then it can be called 
and then it can also be stopped. 

Mind cells will be there, the body will be there, memory will be there, thought process 
will be there. Only one thing will not be there — the feeling of I will not be there. This is 
difficult to understand. 

Buddha walks, Buddha eats, Buddha sleeps, Buddha remembers. He has memory, his 
brain cells function beautifully. But Buddha has said, 'I walk, but no one walks in me. I 
talk, but no one talks in me. I eat, but no one eats in me.’ The inner consciousness is no 
more the ego. So when Buddha feels hungry, he cannot feel like you. You feel, 'I am 
hungry.’ When Buddha feels hungry, he feels, 'The body is hungry. I am just the 
knower.’ And that knower is without any feeling off 

The ego is the false entity, the only false entity — everything else is real. Two realities 
can meet, and in their meeting, a third epi-phenomenon can be created. When two 
realities meet, something false can happen. But the false can happen only if there is 
consciousness. If there is no consciousness, the false cannot happen. 



Oxygen and hydrogen meet: a false water cannot happen. The false can happen only 
when you are conscious, because only consciousness can err. Matter cannot err, matter 
cannot be false. Matter is always true. Matter cannot deceive and cannot be deceive — 
only consciousness can. With consciousness is the possibility to err. 

But remember another thing: matter is always real, never false, but also never true. The 
matter cannot know what truth is. If you cannot err, you cannot know what truth is. Both 
the possibilities open simultaneously. Human consciousness can err and can know that it 
has erred and can move away from it. That is the beauty of it. The danger is there, but 
danger is bound to be there. With every growth new dangers come in. For matter, there is 
no danger. 

Look at it in this way. Whenever a new thing grows in existence, a new thing evolves, 
now dangers come with it into existence. For a stone there is no danger. There are small 
bacteria. In those bacteria sex doesn’t exist in the way it exists in man or in animals. They 
simply divide their bodies. When one bacterium grows bigger and bigger, when it grows 
to a certain extent, its body automatically divides into two. The parent body divides into 
two. Now there are two bacteria. Those bacteria can live eternally — because there is no 
birth, so there is no death. 

And the reverse process also happens. 

If food is not available, two bacteria will come nearer and nearer and they will become 
one, their bodies will become one. No birth, no death. With sex entered birth; with birth 
entered death; with birth entered individuality; with individuality entered ego. 

Every growth has its own potential dangers, but they are beautiful. If you can understand, 
there is no need to fall into them, and you can transcend them. And when you transcend, 
you mature and you achieve a greater synthesis. If you fall a victim, the greater synthesis 
is not achieved. 

Spirituality is the peak, the last, the ultimate synthesis of all growth. The false is 
transcended and the real absorbed. And only the real remains; all the false drops away. 
But don’t think that the body is unreal — it is real. Brain cells are real, the thought process 
is real. Only the relationship between the consciousness and the thought process is 
unreal. That is a tie. You can untie it. And the moment you untie it, you have opened the 
door. 

Question 4 

HOW CAN ONE KNOW THAT THE SPIRITUAL SEARCH IN WHICH ONE IS 
INVOLVED IS NOT AN EGO-TRIP, BUT IS AN AUTHENTIC RELIGIOUS 
SEARCH? 

If you don't know, if you are confused, then know well that this is an ego-trip. If you are 
not confused, if you know well that this is authentic, if there is no confusion at all, then it 
is authentic. And it is not a question of deceiving someone else. 

It is a question of deceiving or not deceiving oneself. If you are confused, in doubt, it is 
an ego-trip, because the moment the authentic search is there, there is no doubt. Faith 
happens. 

Let me put it in some other way. Whenever you phrase such problems, the very confusion 
exactly shows that you are on the wrong path. Someone comes to me and he says, 'Tell 
me. I don’t know whether my meditation is going deep or not.’ 

So I say, 'If it is going deep, there is no need to come and ask me. The depth is such an 



experience, you will know it. And if you cannot know your depth, who is going to know 
about it? You have come to ask me only because you are not feeling the depth. Now you 
want someone else to certify you. If I say, "Yes, your meditation is going very deep," you 
will feel very good — this is an ego-trip.' 

When you are ill, you know that you are ill. It may sometimes happen that illness may be 
very very hidden. You may not be aware of it. But the reverse never happens: when you 
are perfectly healthy, you know it. It is never hidden. When you are healthy, you know it. 
It may be that for your illness you may not be so aware, but for health — if health is there 
— you are aware of it, because the very phenomenon of health is a phenomenon of well- 
being. If you cannot feel your health, who is going to feel it? For your ill-health there 
may be experts to tell you what type of disease you have; there is no expert to tell you 
about your health. 

There is no need. But if you ask whether you are healthy or nor, you are unhealthy; that 
much is certain. This very confusion shows it. 

So when you are on a spiritual search, you can know whether it is an ego-trip or an 
authentic search. And the very confusion shows that this is not an authentic search; this is 
a sort of ego-trip. What is the ego-trip? You are less concerned with the real 
phenomenon; you are more concerned with possessing it. 

People come to me and they say, lYou know, and you can know about us. Tell us 
whether our kundalini has arisen or not.’ They are not concerned with kundalini, not 
concerned really; they need a certificate. And sometimes I play and I say, 'Yes, your 
kundalini has arisen,’ and immediately they are so happy. The person came very very 
gloomy and sad, and when I say, 'Yes, your kundalini is awakened,’ he is happy like a 
child. 

He goes away happy, and when he is just going out of my room, I call him back and I 
say, 'I was just playing. It is not real. Nothing has happened to you.’ He is again sad. He 
is not really concerned with any awakening; he is simply concerned with feeling good: 
now his kundalini has awakened, now he can feel superior to others. 

And this is how many so-called gurus go on exploiting, because you are for your ego. 
They can give you certificates, they can tell you, 'Yes, you are already awakened. 

You have become a Buddha.’ And you are not going to deny. If I say this to ten persons, 
out of ten, nine are not going to deny it. They will just feel happy. They were in search of 
such a guru who would say that they are awakened. 

False gurus exist because of your need, because no authentic guru is going to say this to 
you, or give you any certificate — because any certificate is a demand from the ego. No 
certificate is needed. If you are experiencing it, you are experiencing it. If the whole 
world denies it, let them deny. It makes no difference. If the real experience is there, what 
does it matter who says that you have achieved and who says you have not achieved? It is 
irrelevant. But it is not irrelevant, because your basic search is the ego. You want to 
believe that you have achieved all. 

And this happens many times: when you become a failure in the world, when you are in 
misery in the world, when you cannot succeed there and when you feel that your 
ambition remains unfulfilled and life is passing, you turn to spirituality. The same 
ambition now asks to be fulfilled here. And it is easy to be fulfilled here — easy, because 
in spirituality you can deceive yourself easily. In the real world, in the world of the 
matter, you cannot deceive so easily. 



If you are poor, how can you pretend that you are rich? And if you pretend, no one is 
deceived. And if you go on insisting that you are rich, then the whole society, the whole 
crowd around you, will think you have gone mad. 


I once knew a man who started thinking that he was Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru. His family, 
his friends, everyone tried to persuade him, 'Don't talk such nonsense, otherwise you will 
be thought to be mad.’ 

But he said, 'I am not talking nonsense. I am Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru.’ 

He started signing 'Jawaharlal Nehru’. He would send telegrams to circuit houses, to 
officials, to collectors, to commissioners saying that, 'I am coming — Pundit Jawaharlal 
Nehru.’ 

He had to be caught and chained in his house. I went to meet him. He lived in my village. 
He said, 'You are a man of understanding. You can understand. These fools, no one 
understands me — I am Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru.’ 

So I said, 'Yes, that’s why I have come to meet you. And don’t be afraid of these fools, 
because great men like you have always suffered.’ 

He said, 'Right.' He was so happy. He said, 'You are the only man who can understand 
me. Great men have to suffer.’ 

In the outer world, if you try to deceive yourself you will be thought mad, but in 
spirituality it is very easy. You can say that your kundalini has arisen. Just because you 
have a certain pain in your back, your kundalini has arisen. Because your brain is feeling 
a little unbalanced, you think centers are opening. Because you have a headache 
constantly, you think the third eye is opening. You can deceive and no one can say 
anything, and no one is interested. 

But there are false teachers who will say, 'Yes, this is the method.’ And you will feel very 
happy. 

An ego-trip means that you are not interested in really transforming yourself; you are 
only interested in claiming. And the claim is easy, you can purchase it cheaply. And it is 
a mutual thing. When a guru, a so-called guru, says that you are an awakened man, of 
course he has made you awakened, so you have to pay respect to this guru. This is a 
mutual thing. You pay respect to him. And now you cannot leave that guru, because the 
moment you leave that guru what will happen to your awakening, your kundalini? You 
cannot leave. That guru depends on you because you give respect and honor to him, and 
then you will depend on him because no one else is going to believe that you are 
awakened. You cannot leave. This is a mutual bluff. 

If you are really in search it is not so easy. And you don’t need any witness. It is difficult 
and arduous; it may take even lives. And it is painful, it is a long suffering, because much 
has to be destroyed, much has to be transcended, long-established chains have to be 
broken. It is not easy. It is not a child's play. It is arduous, and suffering is bound to be 
there because whenever you start changing your pattern, all that is old has to be dropped. 
And all your investments are in the old. You will have to suffer. 

When you start looking inwards for your ego and you don’t find it, what will happen to 
your image that you have lived with? You have always thought you were a very good 
man, moral, this and that — what will happen to that? When you find that you are 
nowhere to be found, where is that good man? Your ego implies all that you have thought 
about yourself. 



Everything is implied in it. It is not something that you can throw easily. It is you, your 
whole past. When you drop it you become like a zero, as if you never existed before. For 
the first time you are born; no experience, no knowledge, no past — just like an innocent 
child. Daring is needed, courage is needed. 

Authentic search is arduous. Ego-trip is very easy. And it can be fulfilled very easily, 
because nothing is really fulfilled. You start believing; you start believing that something 
has happened to you. You are simply wasting time and energy and life. So if you are 
really with a master, he will constantly pull you back from your trip. He will have to 
watch that you don't become mad, that you don’t start thinking in dreams. He will have to 
pull you back. 

And it is a very very difficult thing, because whenever you are pulled back you take 
revenge on the master. 'I was going so high, and was just on the verge of exploding, and 
he says, "Nothing is happening. You are just imagining.'" You are pulled back to the 
earth. 

With a real master it is difficult to be a disciple. And disciples almost always go against 
their masters, because they are on their ego-trips and the master is trying to bring them 
out of that. And these disciples create false masters. They have a need, such a great need, 
that anyone who fulfills their need will become their master. 

And it is easy to help your ego grow, because you are for it. It is very difficult to help 
your ego to disappear. 

Remember well, and check every day and every moment that your search is not an ego- 
trip. Go on checking it. It is subtle, and the ways of the ego are very very very cunning. 
They are not on the surface. The ego manipulates you from within; deep down from the 
unconscious. But if you are alert, the ego cannot deceive you. If you are alert, you will 
come to know its language, you will come to know its feeling, because it is always going 
after experience. This is the key word. 

The ego is always looking for the experience — sexual or spiritual, it makes no 
difference. The ego is greedy to experience this and to experience that: to experience 
kundalini and to experience the seventh body. The ego is always after experiences. The 
real search is not a greed for any experience, because any experience is going to frustrate 
you, is bound to frustrate you — because any experience is going to be repetitive. Then 
you will get fed up with it; then you will again demand some new experience. 

The search for the new will remain with the ego. You will meditate, and if you are only 
meditating just to get a new thrill, because your life has become boring — you are fed up 
with your ordinary routine life, so you want to get some thrill.... You may get it, because 
man gets whatsoever he tries to find. 

That is the misery — whatsoever you desire, you will find. And then you will repent. You 
will get the thrill. Then what? Then you get fed up with it also. Then you want to take 
LSD or something else. Then you go on moving from this master to that, from this 
ashram to that, just in search of a new thrill. 

The ego is a greed for new experiences. And every new experience will become old, 
because whatsoever is new will become old — then again.... Spirituality is not a search for 
experience really. Spirituality is a search for one's being. Not for any experience — not 
even for bliss, not even for ecstasy — because experience is an outer thing; howsoever 
inner, it is outer. 

Spirituality is the search for the real being that is inside you: I must know what my reality 



is. And with that knowing, all greed for experiencing ceases. And with that knowing, 
there is no urge — no urge to move for any new experience. With the knowing of the 
inner true reality, the authentic being, all search ceases. 

So don’t move for an experience. All experiences are just tricks of the mind, all 
experiences are just escapes. Meditation is not an experience, it is a realization. 
Meditation is not an experience; rather, it is a stopping of all experience. Because of this, 
those who have really tried to express the inner happening — for example, Buddha — they 
say, 'Don't ask what happens there.’ 

Of, if you insist, they will say, 'Nothing happens there.’ 

If I say to you that nothing will happen in meditation, what will you do? You will stop 
meditating. If nothing is going to happen there, what is the use? — that shows you are on 
an ego-trip. If I say nothing happens there, and you will say, 'Okay, I have known many 
happenings and I have known many experiences, and every experience proved to be 
frustrating....’ You pass through it and then you know it was nothing. And then an urge to 
repeat, and then repetition also becomes a boredom. Then you move to something else.... 
This is how you have been moving for lives and lives; for thousands and thousands of 
lives you have been moving for experience. You say, 'I have known experience. Now I 
don’t want any new experience. I want to know the experience.’ The whole emphasis 
changes. 

Experience is something outside you. The experiencer is your being. And this is the 
distinction between true spirituality and false: if you are for experiences, the spirituality 
is false; if you are for the experiencer, then it is true. But then you are not concerned 
about kundalini, not concerned about chakras, not concerned about all these things. They 
will happen, but you are not concerned, you are not interested, and you will not move on 
these by-paths. You will go on moving towards the inner center where nothing remains 
except you in your total aloneness. 

Only the consciousness remains, without content. 

Content is the experience. Whatsoever you experience is the content. I experience misery 
— then the misery is the content of my consciousness. Then I experience pleasure — then 
pleasure is the content. Then I experience boredom — then boredom is the content. And 
then you can experience silence — then silence is the content. And then you can 
experience bliss — then bliss is the content. So you go on changing the content. You can 
go on changing ad infinitum, but this is not the real thing. 

The real is the one to whom these experiences happen — to whom boredom happens, to 
whom bliss happens. The spiritual search is not WHAT happens, but to WHOM it 
happens. Then there is no possibility for the ego to arise. 


THE END. 



Chapter 57: Searching for freedom 


TOSS ATTACHMENT FOR BODY ASIDE, 

REALIZING I AM EVERYWHERE. 

ONE WHO IS EVERYWHERE IS JOYOUS. 

THINKING NO THING 
WILL LIMITED-SELF UNLIMIT. 

I have heard a story about an old doctor. One day his assistant phoned him because he 
was in very great difficulty — his patient was choking himself to death. A billiard ball 
was stuck in his throat, and the assistant was at a loss for what to do. So he asked the old 
doctor, 'What am I supposed to do now?’ The old doctor said, 'Tickle the patient with a 
feather.’ 

After a few minutes the assistant phoned again, very happy and jubilant, and said, 'Your 
treatment proved wonderful — the patient started laughing and he spat the ball out. But 
tell me from where you learned this remarkable technique.’ 

The old doctor said, 'I just made it up. This has always been my motto: When you don’t 
know what to do, do something.’ 

But this will not do as far as meditation is concerned. If you don’t know what to do, don’t 
do anything, because mind is very intricate, complex, delicate. If you don’t know what to 
do, it is better not to do anything, because whatsoever you do without knowing, is going 
to create more complexities than it can solve. It may even prove fatal, it may even prove 
suicidal. 

If you don’t know anything about the mind.... And really, you don’t know anything about 
it. 

Mind is just a word. You don’t know the complexity of it. Mind is the most complex 
thing in existence; there is nothing comparable to it. And it is the most delicate — you can 
destroy it, you can do something which cannot then be undone. These techniques are 
based on a very deep knowledge, on a very deep encounter with the human mind. Each 
technique is based on long experimentation. 

So remember this, don’t do anything on your own, and don’t mix two techniques, because 
their functioning is different, their ways are different, their bases are different. They lead 
to the same end, but as means they are totally different. Sometimes they may even be 
diametrically opposite. So don’t mix two techniques. Really, don’t mix anything — use the 
technique as it is given. 

Don’t change it, don’t improve it, because you cannot improve it, and any change you 
bring to it will be fatal. And before you start doing a technique, be fully alert that you 
have understood it. If you feel confused and you don’t know really what the technique is, 
it is better not to do it, because each technique is to bring about a revolution in you. 

These techniques are not evolutionary. By evolution I mean that if you don’t do anything 
and just go on living, in millions of years the meditation will happen automatically to 
you, in millions of lives you will evolve. In the natural course of time, you will come to 
the point to which a Buddha comes through a revolution. 

These techniques are revolutionary. Really, they are shortcuts; they are not natural. 



Nature will lead you to Buddhahood, to enlightenment — you will come to it one day — 
but then it is up to nature; you cannot do anything about it except just go on living in 
misery. It will take a very long time; really, millions of years and lives. 

Religion is revolutionary. It gives you a technique which can shorten the lengthy process, 
and with which you can take a jump — a jump which will avoid millions of lives. In a 
single moment you can travel millions of years. So it is dangerous, and unless you 
understand it rightly, don't do it. Don’t mix anything on your own. Don’t change. 

First try to understand the technique absolutely rightly. When you have understood it, 
then try it. And don’t use this old doctor's motto that when you don't know what to do, do 
something. No, don't do anything. Non-doing will be more beneficial to you than any 
doing. This is so because the mind is so delicate that if you do something wrongly it is 
very difficult to undo it — very difficult to undo it. It is very easy to do something wrong, 
but very difficult to undo it. Remember this. 

The first technique: 

TOSS ATTACHMENT FOR BODY ASIDE, 

REALIZING I AM EVERYWHERE. 

ONE WHO IS EVERYWHERE IS JOYOUS. 

TOSS ATTACHMENT FOR BODY ASIDE, REALIZING I AM EVERYWHERE. 

ONE WHO IS EVERYWHERE IS JOYOUS. Many points have to be understood. First: 
TOSS ATTACHMENT FOR BODY ASIDE. There is a deep attachment to the body - 
bound to be, it is natural. You have been living in the body for many, many lives, from 
the very beginning. Bodies have changed, but you were always with a body, you were 
always embodied. 

There have been certain moments and times when you were not embodied, but then you 
were not conscious. When you die from one body, you die in unconsciousness and then 
you remain unconscious. Then you are born again in a new body, but then too you are 
unconscious. The gap between one death and another birth is unconscious, so you don’t 
know how you will feel when not embodied. You don't know who you are when you are 
not in a body. You know only one phenomenon, and that is of embodiment; you have 
always known yourself in the body. 

This has been so long, so continuous, that you have forgotten that you are different from 
it. This is a forgetfulness — natural, bound to happen in the circumstances — hence the 
attachment. You feel you are the body — this is the attachment. You feel that you are not 
anything other than the body, not anything more than the body. You may not agree with 
me at this point, because many times you think that you are not the body, you are the 
soul, the self. But this is not your knowing; this is simply what you have heard, what you 
have read, and what you have believed without knowing. 


So the first thing to be done is that you have to realize the fact that really this is your 
knowing — that you are the body. Don’t deceive yourself, because deception will not 
help. If you think that you already know that you are not the body, then you cannot toss 
aside the attachment, because really for you there is no attachment, you already know. 
Then many difficulties arise which cannot be solved. A difficulty has to be solved at the 



beginning. Once you lose the beginning, you can never solve it; you have to come back 
again to the beginning. So remember well, and realize well that you don’t know yourself 
as anything other than the body. This is the first basic realization. 

This realization is not there. Your mind is befogged by whatsoever you have heard; your 
mind is conditioned by the knowledge of others — it is borrowed, it is not real. Not that it 
is false — those who have said it, they have known it — but for you it is false unless it 
becomes your own experience. So whenever I say something is false, I mean it is not 
your experience. It may be true for someone else, but it is not true for you. And truth is 
individual in this sense — that truth is truth only when experienced; not experienced, it is 
untrue. There are no universal truths. Every truth has to be individual before it becomes 
true. 

You know, you have heard; this is part of your knowledge, part of an inheritance — that 
you are not the body — but it is not real for you. 

First toss aside this unreal knowledge. Face the fact that you know yourself only as the 
body. That will create a great tension in you — it was just to hide that tension that you 
gathered this knowledge. You go on believing that you are not the body and you go on 
living as the body, so you are divided, and your whole being becomes non- authentic, 
pseudo. 

Really this is a paranoid condition. You live as the body and you think and talk as the 
soul — then there is a struggle and a conflict and then you are constantly in an inner 
turmoil, a deep unease which cannot be bridged. So first encounter the fact you don't 
know anything about the soul, the self — all that you know is about the body. 

This will release a very uneasy condition in you. All that is hidden will come up to the 
surface. In realizing this fact that you are the body, you will literally start perspiring. In 
realizing this fact that you are the body, you will feel very uneasy, strange, but that 
feeling has to be gone through; only then can you know what attachment to the body 
means. 

Teachers go on saying that you should not be attached to your body, but the basic thing — 
what the attachment to the body is — is unknown to you. Attachment to the body is a deep 
identification with the body, but first you have to realize what this identification is. So 
put aside all your knowledge that has given you an illusory sense that you are the soul. 

Realize that you know only one thing, and that is the body. How does this create and how 
does this release hidden turmoil and a hidden hell within you? 

The moment you realize you are the body, for the first time you realize the attachment. 
For the first time you grip the fact in your consciousness that this body which is bom, and 
this body which is gong to die, is you. For the first time you realize the fact that these 
bones, this bones — this is you. For the first time you realize the fact that this sex, this 
anger — this is you. So all the false images fall. You become real. 

The reality is painful, very painful — that’s why we go on hiding it. It is a deep trick. You 
go on thinking about yourself as the self, and everything that you don’t like, you throw on 
the body. So you say sex belongs to the body, love belongs to you. Then you say greed 
and anger, they belong to the body; compassion belongs to you. Compassion belongs to 
the self, and cruelty belongs to the body. Forgiveness belongs to the self, and anger 
belongs to the body. So whatsoever you feel is wrong, ugly, you throw to the body, and 
whatsoever you feel is beautiful, you go on being identified with. You create a division. 
This division will not allow you to know what attachment is, and unless you know what 



attachment is and unless you suffer the misery of it and the hell of it, you cannot put it 
aside. 

How can you put it aside? You can put something aside only when it proves a disease, 
when it proves a heavy burden, when it proves a hell; only then can you put it aside. 

Your attachment has not proved a hell yet. Whatsoever Buddha says and Mahavir says is 
irrelevant. They may go on saying that attachment is hell, but this is not your feeling. 
That's why you again and again ask how to be detached, how to be not attached, how to 
go beyond attachment. You go on asking this 'how' only because you don’t kn ow what 
attachment is. If you know what attachment is, you will simply jump out of it. You will 
not ask 'how'. 

If your house is on fire you will not ask anyone, you will not go seeking a master to ask 
how to come out of it. If the house is on fire you will simply get out of it. Y ou will not 
lose a single moment. You will not search for the teacher, you will not consult the 
scriptures. And you will not try to choose in what ways one has to come out, what means 
have to be adopted, and which door is the right door. These things are irrelevant when the 
house is on fire. When you know what attachment is, the house is on fire. You can put it 
aside. 

To enter in this technique, first you have to throw the false knowledge of the self so that 
attachment with the body is revealed in its totality. It is going to be very difficult; it is 
going to be a deep anxiety and anguish to face it. 

It is not going to be easy, it is arduous, but once you face it, you can put it aside. And 
there is no need to ask how. It is absolutely a fire, a hell. You can jump out of it. 

This sutra says: 

TOSS ATTACHMENT FOR BODY ASIDE, 

REALIZING I AM EVERYWHERE. 

And the moment you toss aside the attachment, you will realize you are everywhere. 
Because of this attachment you feel you are limited by the body. It is not the body which 
is limiting you; it is your attachment to it. It is not the body which is making a barrier 
between you and the reality; it is your attachment to it. Once you know what the 
attachment is not there, there is no body to you. Rather, the whole existence becomes 
your body; your body becomes a part of the total existence. Then it is not separate. 

Really, your body is nothing but existence comes to you, existence reached to you. It is 
the nearest existence to you, that's all — and then it goes on spreading. Your body is just 
the nearest corner of it, and then the whole existence is there — it goes on spreading. 

Once your attachment is not there, there is no body to you; or, the whole existence has 
become your body. You are everywhere. 

In the body you are somewhere; without the body you are everywhere. In the body you 
are confined to a particular space; without the body you have no confinement. 

That's why those who have known, they say the body is the imprisonment. Not that the 
body is the imprisonment; really, the attachment to it is the imprisonment. Once your 
eyes are not focused on the body, you are everywhere. 

This looks absurd. To the mind who is in the body, this looks absurd, a madness — how 
can one be everywhere? To a Buddha, whatsoever we say — that 'I am here’ — really 



looks like madness. How can you be somewhere? Consciousness is not a space concept. 
That's why if you close your eyes and try to find out where in your body you are, you will 
be at a loss. You cannot find out where you are. 

There have been many religions and many sects which have preached that you are in the 
navel. Some say that you are in the heart, some say that you are in the head, some say 
that you are in this center and that center, but Shiva says you are nowhere. That's why if 
you close your eyes and try to find out where you are, you cannot say. You are, but there 
is no 'where' to you. Simply you are. 

In deep sleep you are not aware of the body. YOu are. In the morning you will say that 
the sleep was very deep, very blissful. You were aware of a deep bliss running 
throughout, but you were not aware of the body. In deep sleep where are you? When you 
die, where do you go? Continuously people ask, 'When someone dies, where does he 
go?’ But the question is absurd, foolish. 

It is related to our embodied consciousness — because we think that we are somewhere, 
so then when we die, where do we go? — nowhere. 

When you die, you are not somewhere, that’s all. You are not confined to a space, that’s 
all. But if you have a desire to be confined, you will be confined again. Your desire leads 
you to new confinements. But when you are not in the body, you are nowhere, or, 
everywhere — this depends on which word appeals to you. 

If you ask Buddha, he will say you are nowhere. That’s why he chooses the word 
'nirvana'. Nirvana means you are nowhere. Just like a flame which has gone out — how 
can you say where the flame is then? He will say it is nowhere. The flame has simply 
ceased to be. Buddha uses a negative term — nowhere. That's what nirvana means. When 
you are not attached to the body you are in nirvana, you are nowhere. 

Shiva chooses a positive term — he says everywhere — but both the tenns mean the same. 
If you are everywhere, you cannot be somewhere. If you are everywhere, it is saying 
almost the same thing as saying that you are nowhere. 

But in the body we are attached, and we feel that we are confined. This confinement is a 
mental act; it is your own doing. And you can confine yourself to anything. You have a 
valuable diamond. Your being can be confined to it, and if the diamond is stolen you may 
commit suicide or you may go mad. 

What has happened? There are so many persons without a diamond: no one is 
committing suicide, no one is feeling any difficulty without a diamond, but what has 
happened to you? 

Once you were also without a diamond; there was no problem. Now you are again 
without a diamond, but there is a problem. How is this problem created? It is your own 
doing. Now you are attached, confined. The diamond has become your body. Now you 
cannot live without it; it is impossible to live without it. 

Wherever you get attached, it becomes a new imprisonment. And whatsoever we are 
doing in life is this: we go on creating more and more imprisonments, bigger and bigger 
jails to live in. Then we go on decorating those jails so that they look like home, and then 
we forget completely that they are jails. 

This sutra says that if you toss aside the attachment with the body, realization happens 
that I AM EVERYWHERE. You have an oceanic feeling, your consciousness exists 
without any location. Your consciousness exists without being tethered anywhere. You 
become just like a sky, enveloping all; everything is in you. Your consciousness has 



expanded to the infinite possibility. And then the sutra says: 

ONE WHO IS EVERYWHERE IS JOYOUS. 

Confined to a place you will be in misery, because you are always bigger than where you 
are confined. This is the misery — as if you are forcing yourself into a small bowl; the 
ocean is being forced into a small pot. 

The misery is bound to be there. This is the misery, and whenever this misery has been 
felt, the search for enlightenment arises, the search for the Brahma. Brahma means the 
infinite one. The search for moksha means the search for freedom. In a limited body you 
cannot be free; somewhere you will be a slave. Nowhere or everywhere you can be free. 
Look at the human mind: whatsoever the direction, it is always for freedom, searching for 
freedom. It may be political, it may be economic, it may be psychological, it may be 
religious — whatsoever the direction, but the human mind is always groping for freedom. 
Freedom seems to be the deepest need. Wherever human mind finds any barrier, any 
slavery, any limitation, it fights against t. The whole human history is a fight for freedom. 
Dimensions may be different. A Marx, a Lenin, they are fighting for economic freedom. 

A Gandhi, a Lincoln, they are fighting for political freedom. And there are thousands and 
thousands of slaveries, and the fight goes on. But one thing is certain — that somewhere, 
deep down, man is searching continuously for more and more freedom. 

Shiva says, and all the religions say, that you can become politically free, but the struggle 
will not cease. Only one type of slavery will be no more, but there are other types of 
slaveries there, and when you are politically free then you will become aware of other 
slaveries. 

Economic slavery can cease, but then you will become aware of other slaveries — sexual, 
psychological. This struggle cannot cease unless you begin to feel and know that you are 
everywhere. The moment you feel you are everywhere, freedom is attained. 

This freedom is not political, this freedom is not economical, not sociological. This 
freedom is existential. This freedom is total. That's why we have called it moksha, total 
freedom. And then only can you be joyous. Joy or bliss is possible only when you are 
totally free. 

Really, to be totally free means joy. The joy is not a consequence, it is the very 
happening. When you are totally free you are joyous, you are blissful. This bliss is not 
happening as an effect. Freedom is bliss, slavery is misery. The moment you feel limited 
you are miserable; wherever you feel limited you feel miserable. When you feel 
unlimited, misery disappears. So misery exists in barriers, and bliss exists in a no-barrier 
land, in a no-barrier existence. 

Whenever you feel this freedom, joy happens to you. Even now, whenever you feel a 
certain freedom, even if it is not total, joy comes to you. You fall in love with somebody: 
a certain joy, a certain bliss happens to you. Why does it happen? Really, whenever you 
are in love with somebody, you have tossed aside your own attachment to the body. In a 
deep sense, now the other's body has also become your body. 

You are not confined to your own body now; somebody else's body has also become your 
body, it has also become your home, it has also become your abode. You feel a freedom 
Now you can move into the other and the other can move into you. In a limited way a 



barrier has fallen You are more than before. 

When you love someone you are more than you ever were; your being has increased, 
expanded. Y our consciousness is not limited like it was before; it has reached a new 
realm. You feel a certain freedom in love. It is not total, and sooner or later you will feel 
again confined. You feel extended, but still finite. So those who really love, are sooner or 
later bound to fall into prayer. 

Prayer means a greater love. Prayer means a love with the whole existence. You now 
know the secret. You know a key, a secret key — that you loved a person, and the 
moment you loved, the doors opened and the barriers dissolved, and at least for one 
person more your being was expanded, increased. Now you know the secret key. If you 
can fall in love with the whole existence, you will not be the body. 

In deep love you become bodiless. When you are in love with someone you don’t feel 
yourself as a body. When you are not loved, when you are not in love, you feel yourself 
more as a body, you become more aware of the body. The body becomes a burden; you 
have to carry it. When you are loved, the body has lost weight. 

When you are loved and you are in love, you don’t feel gravitation has any effect on you. 
You can dance, you can fly really. In a deeper way the body is no more — but this is in a 
limited way. The same can happen when you are in love with the total existence. 

In love, joy comes to you. It is not pleasure. Remember, joy is not pleasure. Pleasure 
comes to you through the senses; joy come to you through being non-sensuous. Pleasures 
comes to you through the body; joy comes to you when you are not the body. When for a 
moment the body has disappeared and you are simply consciousness, then joy comes to 
you. When you are the body, pleasure can happen to you. It is always through the body. 
Pain is possible, pleasure is possible through the body. Joy is possible only when you are 
not the body. 

It happens ordinarily also, accidentally also. You are listening to music and suddenly 
gravitation is lost. You are so absorbed in it, you have forgotten your body. You are filled 
with music and you have become one with music. There is not a listener to it: the listener 
and the listened have become one. Only music exists; you are no more. You have 
expanded. Now you are flowing with musical notes, now there is no limit to you. The 
notes are dissolving into silence, and you are also dissolving into silence with them. The 
body is forgotten. 

Whenever the body is forgotten, it is tossed aside unknowingly, unconsciously, and joy 
happens to you. 

Through Tantra and Yoga you can do it methodologically. Then it is not an accident; then 
you are the master of it. Then it is not happening to you; then you have the key in your 
hands and you can open the door whenever you want. Or, you can open the door forever 
and throw away the key; no need to close the door again. 

Joy happens in ordinary life also, but you don't know how it happens. The happening is 
always when you are not the body — remember this. So whenever you again feel any 
moment of joy, become aware of whether you are the body in that moment or not. You 
will not be. Whenever joy is, the body is not. Not that the body disappears — the body 
remains, but you are not attached to it. You are not attached to it, you are not tethered to 
it. You have jumped out. 

You may have jumped out because of music, you may have jumped out because of a 
beautiful sunrise, you may have jumped out because a child was laughing, you may have 



jumped out because you were in love. Whatsoever the cause, but you have jumped out for 
a moment — out of the body. The body is there, but tossed aside; you are not attached to 
it. Y ou have taken a flight. 

Through this technique, you know that one who is everywhere cannot be miserable; he is 
joyous, he is joy. So the more you become confined, the more miserable. Expand, push 
your boundaries away, and whenever you can, leave the body aside. 

You look in the sky and clouds are floating: move with the clouds, leave the body here on 
the earth. And the moon is there: move with the moon. Whenever you can forget the 
body, don’t miss the opportunity — go on a journey. And then you will become 
accustomed to what it means to be out of the body. 

And this is only a question of attention. Attachment is a question of attention. If you pay 
attention to the body, you are attached. If the attention has moved away, you are not 
attached. 

Look, for example: you are playing on the sports-grounds; you are playing hockey or 
volley-ball or something else. When you are deep in play, your attention is not on the 
body. Someone has hit your feet and the blood is flowing — you are not aware. The pain 
is there, but you are not there. The blood is flowing but you are out of the body. Your 
consciousness, your attention, may be flying with the ball, may be running with the ball. 
Your attention is somewhere else. The game finishes: suddenly you come back to the 
body, and the blood is there and the pain. And you wonder how it happened — when it 
happened and how it happened and how you were not aware of it. 

To be in the body, your attention is needed to be there. So remember it — wherever your 
attention is, you are there. If your attention is in the clouds, you are there. If your 
attention is in the flower, you are there. 

If your attention is in money, you are there. Your attention is your being. And if your 
attention is nowhere, you are everywhere. 

So the whole process of meditation is to be in such a state of consciousness where your 
attention is nowhere, there is no object to it. When there is no object to it, there is no 
body to you. Your attention creates the body. Your attention is your body. And when 
attention is nowhere, you are everywhere — joy happens to you. It is not good to say that 
it happens to you — you are it. It cannot leave you now; it is your very being. Freedom is 
joy, that's why so much hankering after freedom. 

The second technique: 

THINKING NO THING 
WILL LIMITED-SELF UNLIMIT. 

That's what I was saying. If there is no object to your attention, you are nowhere; or, you 
are everywhere, you are free. You have become freedom. This second sutra says: 
THINKING NO THING - OR, THINKING NOTHING - WILL LIMITED-SELF 
UNLIMIT. 

If you are not thinking, you are unlimited. Thinking gives you a limit, and there are many 
types of limits. You are a Hindu — it gives a limit. Hindu, to be a Hindu, is to be attached 
to a thought, to a system, to a pattern. You are a Christian — then again you are limited. A 
religious man cannot be a Hindu or a Christian. And if someone is a Hindu or a Christian, 



he is not religious — impossible — because these are thoughts. 

A religious man means not thinking thoughts; not limited by any thought, by any system, 
by any pattern; not limited by the mind, living in the unlimited. 

When you have a certain thought, that thought becomes your barrier. It may be a 
beautiful thought — still it is a barrier. A beautiful prison is still a prison. It may be a 
golden thought but it makes no difference, it imprisons you all the same. And whenever 
you have a thought and you are attached to it, you are always against someone, because 
barriers cannot exist if you are not against someone. A thought is always a prejudice; it is 
always for and against. 

I have heard about a very religious Christian man who was a poor farmer. He belonged to 
the Society of Friends, he was a Quaker. Quakers are non-violent; they believe in love, in 
friendship. He was coming from the city to his village on his mulecart, and suddenly, 
apparently without any cause, the mule stopped and he would not budge. He tried, he 
persuaded the mule in Christian ways, he persuaded the mule in a very friendly way, a 
non-violent way. He was a Quaker: he couldn’t beat the mule, he couldn’t use strong 
words, he couldn't abuse, scold, but he was fdled with anger. But how to beat the mule? 
He wanted to beat him, so he said to the mule, 'Behave rightly, because I am a Quaker — 

I cannot beat you, I cannot scold you, I cannot be violent — but remember, mule, that I 
can sell you to someone who is not a Christian!’ 

The Christian has his own world, and the non-Christian is opposite. 

The Christian cannot conceive that the non-Christian can reach the kingdom of God. A 
Hindu cannot conceive, a Jain cannot conceive, that others can enter into that realm of 
bliss — impossible. Thought creates a limitation, a barrier, a boundary, and all those who 
are not for are taken to be against. One who is not in agreement with me is against me. 
How can you be everywhere? You can be with the Christian; you cannot be with the non- 
Christian. You can be with the Hindu, but you cannot be with the non-Hindu, with the 
Mohammedan. Thought is bound to be somewhere against — against someone or 
something. It cannot be total. Remember: thought cannot be total; only no-thought can be 
total. 

Secondly: thought is always from the mind, it is always a by-product of the mind. It is 
your attitude, your speculation, your prejudice; it is your reaction, your formulation, your 
concept, your philosophy, but it is not existence itself. It is something about the 
existence; it is not existence itself. 

A flower is there. You can say something about it; that is a thought. You can say it is 
beautiful, you can say it is ugly, you can say it is sacred, but whatsoever you say about 
the flower is not the flower. The flower exists without your thoughts, and whenever you 
are thinking about the flower, you are creating a barrier between you and the flower. 

The flower doesn’t need your thoughts. 

It exists. Drop your thoughts, and then you can drop yourself into the flower. Whatsoever 
you say about a rose is meaningless, howsoever meaningful it appears, it is meaningless. 
What you say is not needed. It is not giving any existence to the flower. It is creating a 
film between you and the flower; it is creating a limitation. So whenever there is thought, 
you are debarred; the door is closed to existence. 

This sutra says: 



THINKING NO THING 
WILL LIMITED-SELF UNLIMIT. 


If you don’t think, if you simply are, fully alert, aware, but without any clouds of thought, 
you are unlimited. The body is not the only body — a deeper body is the mind. Body 
consists of matter; mind also consists of matter — subtle, more refined. Body is the outer 
layer, mind is the inner layer. And it is easy to be detached from the body. It is more 
difficult to be detached from the mind, because with the mind you feel you are more 
yourself. 

If someone says that your body looks ill, you don’t feel offended. You are not so 
attached; it is a little away from you. But if someone says your mind seems to be 
pathological, ill, you feel offended. He has insulted you. With the mind you are nearer. If 
someone says something about your body you can tolerate it. If someone says something 
about your mind, it is impossible to tolerate it, because he has hit deeper. 


The mind is the inner layer of the body. Mind and body are not two: the outer layer of 
your body is the body and the inner layer is the mind. Just as if you have a house: you 
can see the house from the outside, and you can see the house from the inside. From the 
outside the outer layer of the walls will be seen; from the inside the inner layer. The mind 
is your inner layer. It is nearer to you, but it is still a body. 

In death your outer body drops, but you carry the inner, subtle layer with you. You are so 
attached to it that even death cannot separate you from your mind. Mind continues. That's 
why your past births can be known, because you are still carrying all the minds that you 
ever had. They are there. If you were a dog once, the dog mind is still with you. If you 
were a tree once, the tree mind is still with you. If you once were a woman or a man, you 
carry those minds. All the minds are carried by you. You are so attached to them that you 
never lose the grip. 

In death the outer dissolves, but the inner is carried. It is a very subtle material thing. 
Really, just vibrations of energy, thought vibrations. You carry them, and according to 
your thought pattern that you carry, you enter a new body. According to the thought 
pattern, the desire pattern, the mind, you again create a new body for yourself. The blue- 
print is in the mind, and the outer layer is again accumulated. 


The first sutra is to put aside the body. The second sutra is to put aside the mind, the 
inner body. Even death cannot separate you — only meditation can separate. That's why 
meditation is a greater death, it is a deeper surgery — deeper than death itself. That’s why 
so much fear. People go on talking about meditation but they will never do it. They will 
talk, they can write about it, they can preach about it, but they will never do it. A deep 
fear exists about meditation, and the fear is of death. 

Those who do meditation, they come one day or another to the point where they are 
scared, thrown back. They come to me and they say, 'Now we cannot enter more. It is 
impossible.’ A point comes where one feels that one is dying. And that point is of a 
deeper death than any death, because now the innermost is being separated; the most 
inner identity is being shattered. One feels one is dying; one feels now one is moving into 
non-existence. A deep abyss opens, infinite emptiness opens. One is scared, runs back to 
cling to the body so that one is not thrown, because the earth beneath is moving, is being 



removed. A valley is opening, a nothingness. 

So people, even if they try, they always try superficially; they play with meditation. They 
are unconsciously aware that if they move deep they will be no more. And that's right, the 
fear is true — you will not be yourself again. 

Once you have known that abyss, that shoonya, the void, you will not be the same again. 
You come back, but you are resurrected, a new man. The old has disappeared. You 
cannot find even a trace of it, of where it has gone. The old was the identity with the 
mind. Now you cannot be identified with the mind. Now you can use the mind, you can 
use the body, but they have become instruments; you are above them. Whatsoever you 
do, you can do, but you are not one with them. This gives freedom. But this can happen 
only when THINKING NO THING. 

Hmm — this is very paradoxical — THINKING NO THING. You can think about things. 
How can you think about no thing? What does this 'no thing’ mean? And how can you 
think about it? Whenever you think about something it becomes a thing, it becomes an 
object, it becomes a thought, and thoughts are things. How can you think no thing? You 
cannot, but in the very effort — the effort to think no thing — thinking will be lost, 
thinking will be dissolved. 

You may have heard about Zen koans. Zen masters give an absurd puzzle to the seeker to 
think about — and it is something which cannot be thought. It is given knowingly just to 
stop thinking. For example, they say to the seeker: 'Go and find out what your original 
face is: the face you had when you were not bom. Don’t think about this face which you 
have got; think of the face you had before birth.’ 


How can you think about it? There was no face before birth; the face comes with the 
birth. The face is part of the body. You have no face; only the body has a face. Close 
your eyes and you have no face. You know about your face through the mirror. You have 
not seen it yourself, and you cannot see it, so how can one think about the original face?> 
But one can try; the very effort will help. 

The seeker will try and try — and it is impossible. He will come to the master again and 
again, asking, 'Is this the original face?’ And before he says it to the master, the master 
says, 'It is wrong. Whatsoever you bring is going to be wrong.’ 

For months together the seeker comes again and again. He finds something, imagines 
something, and he sees the face — 'The original face is like this?’ And the master says, 
'No.’ And every time this 'No, no’, and by and by he becomes more and more puzzled. 

He cannot think. He tries and tries and tries and fails — that failure is the basic thing. One 
day he comes to a total failure. All thinking stops in that total failure and he comes to 
realize that the original face cannot be thought. Thinking stops. 

And whenever this last time happens to a seeker, when he comes to the master, the 
master says, 'Now there is no need. I see the original face.’ The eyes have become vacant. 
The seeker has come not to say something, but just to be near the master. 

He has not found any answer. There was none. He has come for the first time without the 
answer. There is no answer to it. He comes silently. 

Every time he had come he had some answer. The mind was there, the thought was there 
— he was limited by that thought. He had found or imagined some face — he was limited 
by that face. Now he has become original; now there is no limit. Now he has got no face, 



no idea, no thought. He has come without any mind. This is the state of no-mind. 

In this state of no-mind, the limited-self unlimits. The limits are dissolved. Suddenly you 
are everywhere, suddenly you are everyone. Suddenly you are in the tree and in the stone 
and in the sky and in the friend and in the enemy — suddenly you are everywhere. The 
whole existence has become just a mirror — you are everywhere, mirrored. This state is 
the state of bliss. Now nothing can disturb you, because nothing exists except you. Now 
nothing can destroy you; nothing exists except you. Now there is no death, because even 
in death you are. Now nothing is opposed to you. Alone, you exist. 

This aloneness Mahavir has called KAIVALYA, total aloneness. Why alone? — because 
everything is involved, absorbed, has become you. You can express this state in two 
ways. You can say, 'Only I am. Aham Brahmasmi — I am the God, the divine, the total. 
Everything has come unto me; all the rivers have dissolved into my ocean. 

Alone I exist. Nothing else exists.’ Sufi mystics say this, and Mohammedans could never 
understand why Sufis say such things. A Sufi says, 'There is no God. Alone I exist.’ Or, 

'I am the God.’ This is a positive way of saying that now no separation is there. Buddha 
uses a negative way. He says, 'I am nor more. Nothing exists.’ 

Both are true, because when everything is included in me, there is no sense in calling 
myself. The I is always opposed to the YOU; I is always opposed to THOU. In relation to 
YOU it is meaningful. When there is no YOU, I becomes meaningless. So Buddha says 
there is no I, nothing exists. Either everything has become you, or you have become a 
non-being and you dissolve into everything. 

Both the expressions are true. Of course, no expression can be totally true, that’s why the 
opposite expression is always also true. Every expression is partial, part; that’s why the 
opposite expression is also true — that too is part of it. Remember this. Whatsoever you 
express may be true and the opposite also may be true — the very opposite. Really, it is 
bound to be true, because every expression is only a part. 

And there are two types of expression: you can choose the positive or you can choose the 
negative. If you choose the positive, the negative seems to be untrue. It is not; it is 
complementary. It is not really opposed to it. So whether you say Brahma — the total — or 
you say Nirvana — the nothingness — it is the same. 

Both connote the same experience, and the experience is this — thinking no thing, you 
come to know it. 

Some basic things have to be understood about this technique. One: thinking, you are 
separated from existence. Thinking is not a relation, it is not a bridge, it is not a 
communication — it is a barrier. Non-thinking you are related, bridged; you are in 
communion. When you are talking to someone, you are not related. The very talk 
becomes a barrier. The more you talk, the further away you move. If you are with 
someone in silence, you are related. If the silence is really deep and there are no thoughts 
in your mind and both the minds are totally silent, you are one. 

Two zeros cannot be two. Two zeros become one. If you add two zeros they don’t 
become two, they become a bigger zero — one. And, really, a zero cannot be bigger — 
more big, or less big. A zero is simply a zero. You cannot add something to it, you cannot 
deduct something from it. A zero is whole. When ever you are silent with someone, you 
are one. When you are silent with existence, you are one with it. 

This technique says be silent with existence and then you will know what God is. There 



is only one dialogue with existence and that is in silence. If you talk with existence, you 
miss. Then you are enveloped in your own thoughts. 

Try this as an experiment. Try it with anything as an experiment — even with a rock. 

Be silent with it — take it in your hand and be silent — and there will be a communion. 
You will move deep into the rock and the rock will move deep into you. Your secrets will 
be revealed to the rock and the rock will reveal its secrets to you. But you cannot use 
language with it. The rock doesn’t know any language. Because you use language, you 
cannot be related to it. 

And man has lost silence completely. When you are not doing anything, then too you are 
not silent; the mind goes on doing something or other. Because of this constant inner talk, 
this continuous inner chattering, you are not related to anything. Not even to your 
beloved ones are you related, because this chattering goes on. 

You may be sitting with your wife: you are chattering in your own mind; she is chattering 
in her own mind. Both are chattering. They are far away from each other, poles away. It 
is as if one is on one star, and the other on another star, and there is infinite space 
between them. Then they feel that the intimacy is not there, and then they blame each 
other — 'You don’t love me.’ 

This is not the question really. Love is not possible. Love is a flower of silence. It flowers 
only in silence, because it flowers in communion. If you cannot be without thoughts, you 
cannot be in love. And then to be in prayer is impossible — but even if we do prayer we 
chatter. To us, prayer is just chattering with God. 


We have become so conditioned to chattering that even if we go to the church or to the 
temple we continue chattering there also. We chatter with God, we talk with God. This is 
absolute nonsense. God, existence, cannot understand your language. Existence 
understands only one language — that is of silence. And silence is neither Sanskrit nor 
Arabic nor English nor Hindi. Silence is universal; it doesn’t belong to anyone. 

There are at least four thousand languages on earth, and everyone is enclosed in his own 
language. If you don’t know his language you cannot be related to him. You cannot be 
related. If I don’t understand your language and you don’t understand my language, we 
cannot be related. We are strangers. We cannot penetrate each other, we cannot 
understand, we cannot love. This is happening only because we don’t know a basic 
universal language — that is silence. 

Really only through silence is one related. And if you know the language if silence then 
you can be related to anything, because rocks are silent, trees are silent, the sky is silent 
— it is existential. It is not only human, it is existential. Everything knows what silence is; 
everything exists in silence. 

If a rock is there in your hand, the rock is not chattering within itself and you are 
chattering — that’s why you cannot be related to the rock. And the rock is open, 
vulnerable, inviting. 

The rock will welcome you, but you are chattering and the rock cannot understand the 
chattering — that becomes the barrier. So even with human beings you cannot be in a 
deep relationship; there can be no intimacy. Language, words, destroy everything. 
Meditation means silence: not thinking about anything. Not thinking at all, just being — 
open, ready, eager to meet, welcoming, receptive, loving, but not thinking at all. Then 



infinite love will happen to you, and you will never say that no one loves you. You will 
never say it, you will never feel it. Now, whatsoever you do, you will say this and you 
will feel this. You may not even say it. You may pretend that someone loves you, but 
deep down you know. 

Even lovers go on asking each other, 'Do you love me?’ In so many ways they go on 
enquiring continuously. Everyone is afraid, uncertain, insecure. In many ways they try to 
find out whether really the lover loves them. And they can never be certain, because the 
lover can say, 'Yes, I love you,’ but it will not give any guarantee. How can you be at 
ease? How can you kn ow whether he is deceiving you or not? He can argue, he can 
convince you. He can convince you intellectually, but the heart will not be convinced. So 
lovers are always in agony. They cannot be convinced of the fact that the other loves. 
How can you be convinced? 

Really there is no way to convince through language. 

And you are asking through language, and while the lover is there you are chattering in 
the mind, questioning, arguing. You will never be convinced, and you will always feel 
that you have not been loved, and this becomes the deepest misery. And this is happening 
not because someone is not loving you. This is happening because you are closed in a 
wall. You are closed within your thoughts; nothing can penetrate. The thoughts cannot be 
penetrated unless you drop the. If you drop them the whole existence penetrates you. 

This sutra says: 

THINKING NO THING 
WILL LIMITED-SELF UNLIMIT 

You will become unlimited. You will become whole. You will become universal. You 
will be everywhere. And then you are joy. Now you are nothing but misery. Those who 
are cunning, they go on deceiving themselves that they are not miserable, or they go on 
hoping that something will change, something will happen, and they will achieve at the 
end of life — but you are miserable. 

You can create faces, deceptions, false faces; you can go on smiling continuously, but 
deep down you know you are in misery. That is natural. Confined in thoughts you will be 
in misery. Unconfined, beyond thoughts — alert, conscious, aware, but unclouded by 
thoughts — you will be joy, you will be bliss. 


THE END. 



Chapter 58: In your hands 


Question 1 

TECHNIQUES ARE SHORTCUTS, REVOLUTIONS, BUT ARE NOT THESE 
AGAINST TAO, SWABHAV, THE NATURE? 

They are. They are against tao, they are against swabhav. Any effort is against shabhav, 
tao; effort as such is against tao. If you can leave everything to swabhav, tao, nature, then 
no technique is needed, because that is the ultimate technique. If you can leave 
everything to tao, that is the deepest surrender possible. You are surrendering yourself, 
your future, your possibilities. You are surrendering time itself, all effort. This means 
infinite patience, awaiting. 

If you can surrender everything to nature then there is no effort, then you don't do 
anything. You just float. You are in a deep let-go. Things happen to you, but you are not 
making any effort for them — you are not even seeking them. If they happen, it is okay; if 
they don’t happen, it is okay — you have no choice. Whatsoever happens, happens; you 
have no expectations and of course, no frustrations. 

Life flows by, you flow in it. You have no goal to reach, because with the goal effort 
enters. You have nowhere to go, because if you have somewhere to go, effort will come 
in; it is implied. You have nowhere to go, nowhere to reach, no goal, no ideal; nothing is 
to be achieved — you surrender all. 

In this surrendering moment, in this very moment, all will happen to you. 

Effort will take time; surrender will not take time. Technique will take time; surrender 
will not take time. That’s why I call it the ultimate technique. It is a no-technique. You 
cannot practise it — you cannot practise surrender. If you practise, it is not surrender. 

Then you are relying on yourself; then you are not totally helpless; then you are trying to 
do something — even if it is surrender, you are trying to do it. Then technique will come 
in, and with technique time enters, future enters. 

Surrender is non-temporal; it is beyond time. If you surrender, this very moment you are 
out of time, and all that can happen, will happen. But then you are not searching for it, 
not seeking it; you are not greedy for it. You have no mind for it at all: whether it 
happens or not, it is all the same to you. 

Tao means surrender — surrender to swabhav, to nature. Then you are not. Tantra and 
Yoga are techniques. Through them you will reach to swabhav, but it will be a long 
process. Ultimately after every technique you will have to surrender, but with techniques 
it will come in the end; with tao, in tao, it comes in the beginning. If you can surrender 
right now, no technique is needed, but if you cannot, and if you ask me how to surrender, 
then a technique is needed. So, rarely in millions and millions of men, one can surrender 
without asking how. If you ask 'how', you are not the right type who can surrender, 
because the 'how' means you are asking for a technique. 


These techniques are for all those who cannot get rid of this 'how'. These techniques are 
just to get rid of your basic anxiety about 'how' — how to do it. If you can surrender 
without asking, then no technique is needed for you. But then you would not have come 



to me, you could have surrendered any time, because surrender needs no teacher. A 
teacher can teach only technique. 

When you seek, you are seeking technique; every seeking is a seeking for technique. 
When you go to someone and ask, you are asking for a technique, for a method. 
Otherwise there is no need to go anywhere. The very search shows that you have a deep 
need for technique. These techniques are for you.Not that without technique it cannot 
happen. It can happen, but it has happened to very few persons. And those few persons 
are also really not rare: in their past lives they have been struggling with techniques, and 
they have struggled so much with techniques that now they are fed up, they are bored. A 
saturation point comes when you have asked again and again 'How? How? How? — and 
ultimately the 'how' falls. Then you can surrender. 

In every way technique is needed. A Krishnamurti, he can say that no technique is 
needed — but this is not his first life. And he couldn’t have said this in his past life. Even 
in this very life many techniques were given to him, and he worked on them. You can 
come to a point through techniques where you can surrender — you can throw all 
techniques and simply be — but that too is through techniques. 


It is against tao, because you are against tao. You have to be deconditioned. If you are in 
tao then no technique is needed. If you are healthy then no medicine is needed. Every 
medicine is against health. But you are ill; medicine is needed. This medicine will kill 
your illness. It cannot give you health, but if the illness is removed, health will happen to 
you. No medicine can give you health. Basically every medicine is a poison — but you 
have gathered some poison; you need an antidote. It will balance, and health will be 
possible. 

Technique is not going to give you your divinity, it is not going to give you your nature. 
All that you have gathered around your nature it will destroy. It will only decondition 
you. You are conditioned, and right now you cannot take a jump into surrender. If you 
can take it, it is good — but you cannot take it. Your conditioning will ask, 'How?' Then 
techniques will be helpful. 

When one lives in tao, then no yoga, no tantra, no religion is needed. One is perfectly 
healthy; no medicine is needed. Every religion is medicinal. When the world lives in total 
tao, religions will disappear. No teacher, no Buddha, no Jesus will be needed, because 
everyone will be a Buddha or a Jesus. But right now, as you are, you need techniques. 
Those techniques are antidotes. 

You have gathered around yourself such a complex mind that whatsoever is said and 
given to you, you will complicate it. 

You will make it more complex, you will make it more difficult. If I say to you, 
'Surrender,' you will ask, 'How?' If I say, 'Use techniques,’ you will ask, 'Techniques? 
Are not techniques against tao?’ If I say, 'No technique is needed; simply surrender and 
God will happen to you,’ you will immediately ask, 'How?’ — your mind. 

If I say, 'Tao is right here and now: you need not practise anything, you simply take a 
jump and surrender,’ you will say, 'How? How can I surrender?’ If I give you a technique 
to answer your 'how', your mind will say, 'But is not a method, a technique, a way, 
against swabhav, against tao? If divinity is my nature, then how can it be achieved 
through a technique? If it is already there, then the technique is futile, useless. Why waste 
time with the technique?’ Look at this mind! 



I remember, once it happened that one man, a father of a young girl, asked composer 
Leopold Godowsky to come to his house and give an audition to his daughter. She was 
learning piano. Godowsky came to their house; patiently he heard the girl playing. When 
the girl finished, the father beamed, and he cried in happiness and asked Godowsky, 'Isn't 
she wonderful?' 

Godowsky is reported to have said, 'She is wonderful. She has an amazing technique. I 
have never heard anyone play such simple pieces with such great difficulty. She has an 
amazing technique. Playing such simple pieces with such great difficulty, I have never 
seen anyone do before!’ 

This is what goes on happening in your mind. 

Even a simple thing you will make complicated, you will make difficult for yourself. And 
this is a way of defence, this is a defence measure, because when you create difficulty 
you need not do it — because first the problem must be solved and then you can do it. 

If I say surrender, you ask how. Unless I answer your 'how', how can you surrender? If I 
give you a technique, your mind immediately creates a new problem. 'Why the 
technique? Swabhav is there, tao is there, God is within you, so why this endeavor, this 
effort?’ Unless this is answered, there is no need to do anything. 

Remember, you can go on in this vicious circle continuously for ever and ever. You will 
have to break it somewhere and come out of it. Be decisive, because only with decision is 
your humanity born. Only with decision do you become human. Be decisive. If you can 
surrender, surrender. If you cannot surrender, then don’t create philosophical problems; 
then use some technique. 

In both the ways the surrender will happen to you. If you can surrender right now, it is 
okay. If you cannot surrender, then pass through techniques — that training is needed. It is 
needed because of you, not because of swabhav, not because of tao. Tao needs no 
training. It is needed because of you. And the techniques will destroy you. You will die 
through the techniques, and the innennost nature will evolve. 

You have to be shattered completely. If you can shatter it in a jump — surrender. If you 
cannot, then piecemeal — through techniques work on it. 

But remember one thing: your mind can create problems which are tricks — tricks to 
postpone, to postpone decision. If the mind is not settled, you don’t feel guilty. You feel, 
'What can I do? Unless something is absolute, clearcut, transparent, what can I do?’ Your 
mind can create clouds around you, and your mind will not allow you to be transparent 
ever — unless you decide. With decision clouds disappear. Mind is very diplomatic, mind 
is political, and it goes on playing politics on you. It is very tricky, cunning. 

I have heard, once Mulla Nasrudin came to visit his son and daughter-in-law. He had 
come for three days, but then he stayed for one week. Then the one week passed, and he 
stayed for one month. Then the young couple started worrying — how to get rid of the old 
man? So they discussed how to get rid of him, and they hit upon a plan. 

The husband said, 'Tonight you prepare soup, and I will say that there is too much salt in 
it, it cannot be eaten, it is impossible to eat. And you have to say that there is not enough 
salt in it. We will argue and we will start quarrelling, and then I will ask my father what 
his opinion is, what he says. If he agrees with me, then you get mad and tell him to go 
away. 


If he agrees with you, I will get sore and I will tell him to go away immediately.’ 



The soup was prepared, and as it was planned, they started quarrelling and arguing. And 
then the climax came. They were just on the verge of hitting each other and Nasrudin was 
sitting silently watching. And then the son turned towards him and said, 'Pa what do you 
say? Is there too much salt or not?’ 

So Nasrudin dipped his spoon in the soup, tasted it, meditated a moment upon the taste, 
and then said, 'It suits me perfectly.’ He didn’t take any side. The whole plan was futile. 
Your mind goes on working in this way. It will never take any side, because the moment 
you take a side, action has to be there. It will not take any side; it will go on arguing. It 
will never decide anything; it will be always in the middle. Whatsoever is said will be 
argued, but it will never become a decision. And you can argue ad infinitum; there is no 
end to it. Only decision will give you action, and only action will become transfonnation. 
If you are really interested in a deep revolution within you, then decide — and don’t go on 
postponing. Don’t be too philosophical; that is dangerous. For a seeker it is dangerous. 

For one who is not seeking really but just passing time, it is good, it is a good game. 
Philosophy is a good game if you can afford it. But I don’t see that anyone can afford it 
because it is wasting time. 


So be decisive. If you can surrender, then surrender. Then there is no 'how' to it. If you 
cannot, then practise some technique, because only then through technique will you come 
to a point where surrender will happen. 

Question 2 

IN THE NATURAL COURSE, AFTER MILLIONS OF YEARS AND LIVES, ONE 
WILL BE ENLIGHTENED. BUT WE MIGHT HAVE ALREADY PASSED 
THROUGH MILLIONS OF YEARS AND LIVES AND YET ARE NOT 
ENLIGHTENED. WHY? 

You cannot ask why. You can ask why only if you are doing something. If nature is dong 
something you cannot ask why; it is up to nature. And nature is not responsible; it is not 
going to answer you. It is completely silent. And for nature, millions of lives are nothing; 
for nature it may be just seconds. To you, millions of lives and years is a long history; for 
nature it is nothing. Nature is not worried, and nature is not interested in you particularly. 
Nature goes on working — someday it will happen, but you cannot ask why, because 
nature is silent. 

If you are worried about why it has not happened yet, then you have to do something. If 
worry has entered you, then you have to do something. Only your doing will help you to 
come to a point where enlightenment can happen. Nature's ways are very patient, slow. 
There is no hurry, because for nature there is no limit to time. It is eternal. There is no 
beginning and no end. 

But man has come to a point: he has become conscious, he has started asking. 

A tree never asks — even the Bodhi tree under which Buddha became enlightened. The 
tree will never ask, 'Why have I not become enlightened? — because I have also been 
existing for as many millions of years as you have existed, Gautam. Why?’ The tree will 
never ask. The tree is absolutely natural. The questioning makes man unnatural. The 
unnatural has entered in you: you have started questioning why — why it has not 
happened yet. 

This questioning is good, because it can lead you to a decisive moment where you can 



start working upon yourself. And man cannot leave it to nature, because man has become 
conscious. You cannot leave it to nature now. That's why man has created religions. No 
animal has any religion. There is no need: they are not asking, they are not in a hurry. In 
nature everything is unhurried — moving so slowly as if not moving at all; continuously 
repeating the same pattern, infinitely repeating the same circle. 

Man has become conscious. Man has become conscious of time, and the moment you 
become conscious of time, you are thrown out of eternity. Then you are in a hurry. So as 
man's consciousness evolves more, he is more hurried, he becomes more and more time 
conscious. Go to a primitive society: they are not time conscious. The more civilized a 
society, the more time conscious. 

A primitive society is nearer nature: unhurried, it moves slowly. Just as nature moves, it 
moves. The more you become civilized, the more you become conscious of time. Really, 
time can be the criterion: how civilized a society is can be known by how time conscious 
it is. Then you are in a hurry, then you cannot wait, then you cannot leave it to nature. 
You have to take it in your own hands. 

And man can take it in his own hands: he can do something and the process can be 
finished sooner. It can even be finished in a single moment. All that millions of years 
have not done, have not been able to do, you can do in a single moment. In that single 
moment you can become so intense that millions of years and millions of lives are 
travelled simultaneously. 

That's possible — because it is possible you are worried. Your worry is a symptom that 
something which is possible you are not making actual — that is the worry, that is the 
human dilemma. You can do it and you are not doing it — that creates an inner worry, 
anguish. When you cannot do it the question never arises, there is no worry. The worry 
shows that it is possible now that you can jump — many lives which are unnecessary you 
can just by-pass — and you are not by-passing. You have become conscious, and you 
have come above nature. 

Consciousness is a new phenomenon. You have come above nature and now you can 
consciously evolve. 

Conscious evolution is revolution. You can do something about it. You are not just a 
victim, not just a puppet. You can take your destiny in your hands. That is possible, and 
because it is possible and you are not doing anything, it creates inner anxiety. And the 
more you become aware that this is possible, the more the anxiety will be felt. 

A Buddha is very worried; you are not so worried. Buddha was very worried, in deep 
anguish, suffering. Unless he attained he would live in hell, because he was perfectly 
aware that something was absolutely possible, was just at hand, just by the corner, and he 
felt, 'Still I am missing it. If I just stretch my hand it will happen — and my hand is 
paralyzed. Just a step and I will be out of it — and I cannot take that step. I am afraid of 
taking a jump.’ 

When you are near the goal, and you can feel it and you can see it and still you go on 
missing, then you feel anguish. When you are very far away and you cannot feel it, you 
cannot see it, you are not even aware that there is a goal, you are perfectly unaware of 
any destiny, then there is no anxiety. 

Animals are not in anguish. They appear happy — happier then man. What is the reason? 
Trees are even more happy than animals. They are perfectly unaware of what can happen, 
of what is possible, of what is just near at hand. They are blissfully unaware. There is no 



anxiety. 


They drift. Man becomes anxious, and the greater a man, the more anxiety will be there. 
If you simply live, you are living an animal existence. Religious anguish arises the 
moment you become aware that something is possible — IThe seed is there and I have to 
do something. I have to do something and the seed will sprout. The flowers are not very 
far away, and I can reap this crop’ — but still nothing is happening. A very impotent state 
is felt. 

That was the Buddha’s condition before he became a Buddha. He was just on the verge of 
committing suicide. You will have to pass through that. And you cannot leave it to 
nature; you have to do something about it — and you can do. And the goal is not very far. 
So don’t be depressed if you feel anxiety. If you feel a very tense anguish within you, a 
suffering, agony, don’t feel depressed about it — that's a good sign. That shows you are 
becoming more and more aware of that which is possible, and now you will never be at 
ease unless it becomes actual. 

Man cannot leave it to nature because man has become conscious. Only a very minor part 
of his being is conscious, but that changes everything. And unless your total being 
becomes conscious, you cannot know again the simple happiness of the animal or of the 
trees. There is only one way to know it now: to become more and more alert, more and 
more aware, and more and more conscious. 

You cannot regress. There is no process for going back; no one can go back. You can 
either remain where you are and suffer, or you have to go forward and go beyond 
suffering. You cannot go back. 

Total unconsciousness is blissful, total consciousness is blissful — and you are in 
between. A part of you has become conscious, and the major part of you is still 
unconscious. You are divided. You have become two, you are not one. The integration is 
lost. Animals are integrated and then saints are integrated. Man is disintegrated: a part 
remains animal and a part has become saintly. There is a struggle, conflict, and 
whatsoever you do you can never do with one heart. 

So there are two ways. One is just to deceive yourself — that is to become totally 
unconscious again. You can take drugs, you can take alcohol, you can take intoxicants — 
you fall back to the animal world. You drug the part that has become conscious; you 
become totally unconscious. But this is a temporary deception; you will arise again. The 
effect of the chemical will be lost and your consciousness will become conscious again. 
The part which you have forcibly suppressed with alcohol or drugs or something else will 
arise again, and then you will feel more suffering, because then you can compare. You 
will feel more suffering. 

You can go on drugging yourself. There are many methods — not only chemical. 

There are religious methods. You can use a japa, a mantra: you can chant it and create an 
intoxicating effect. You can do many things which can make you unconscious again, but 
that is going to be temporary, you will have to come out — and you will come out with a 
deeper suffering with you, because then you will be able to compare. If in 
unconsciousness this is possible, what will be possible in total consciousness? You will 
become more hungry for it, you will feel more starved. 

Remember one thing: totality is bliss. If you are unconscious totally then too it is bliss, 
but you are not aware of it. Animals are happy but they are not aware of their happiness. 



So it is futile. It is just like when you are asleep you are happy, and whenever you are 
awake you are unhappy. Totality is bliss. 

You can be total in consciousness also. Then there will be bliss and you will be perfectly 
aware of it. This is possible through sadhana, through methods, through practising 
techniques which increase your consciousness. You are not enlightened because you have 
not done anything for it, but you have become aware that you are not enlightened. This 
has been done by nature; in millions of years nature has made you aware. 

You may not be aware of the fact that man has stopped growing as far as body is 
concerned. We have skeletons that are millions of years old, but there is no visible 
change; they are similar to our skeletons. 

So for millions of years there has been no growth in the body, it has remained the same. 
Even the brain has not grown; it has remained the same. As far as body is concerned, 
evolution has done whatsoever could have been done. In a sense, man is now responsible 
for his own growth. And the growth is not going to be of the physical; the growth is 
going to be of the spiritual. 

The skeleton of a Buddha and your skeleton are not basically different, but you and 
Buddha are absolutely different. Evolution is working horizontally; methods, techniques, 
religions, they work vertically. Your body has stopped: it has come to a point, an omega 
point. Now there is no further growth for it. Horizontally, evolution has stopped; now a 
vertical evolution starts. Now, wherever you are, you have to take a jump vertically. That 
vertical evolution will be of consciousness, not of body. And you are responsible for it. 
You cannot ask nature why, but nature can ask you why you are not enlightened yet, 
because everything is provided now. Your body has all that which is needed; you have a 
Buddha’s body. Exactly whatsoever is needed for the buddha to happen to you, you have 
got. Only a new arrangement, a new synthesis of all the elements that are given, and the 
buddha will happen to you. Nature can ask you why you are not enlightened yet, because 
nature has provided you with everything. 

And nature asking you will not be irrelevant, but you asking nature is absurd. 

You cannot be allowed to ask. Now you are aware and you can do something. All the 
elements are given to you. The hydrogen is there, the oxygen is there, the electricity is 
there; you have to just make certain efforts and experiments and the water will happen. 
All that is needed for you to be enlightened is with you, but it is scattered. You have to 
combine it, synthesize it, you have to make a hannony of it, and suddenly the flame will 
arise which becomes enlightenment. All these techniques are for that. You have got 
everything; just a know-how is needed, what to do, so that enlightenment happens to you. 
Question 3 

YOU SAY THAT MILLIONS OF LIVES AND MILLIONS OF YEARS OF NATURAL 
EVOLUTION CAN BE AVOIDED THROUGH REACHING TOTAL AWARENESS 
AND TOTAL FREEDOM CAN IT NOT BE ARGUED THAT KARMA, WITH ITS 
NATURAL FORCES OF CAUSE AND EFFECT, SHOULD NOT BE INTERFERED 
WITH BY ANY SHORTCUTS, OR IS IT ALSO THE WAY OF DIVINITY TO BRING 
SUCH A POSSIBILITY WITHIN THE REACH OF THE EVOLVING WORLD, THE 
EVOLVING SOUL? 


Everything can be argued, but argument leads nowhere. You can argue, but how is that 
argument going to help you? You can argue that the natural process of karma should not 



be interfered with — don’t interfere then. But then be happy in your misery — and you are 
not. You want to interfere. If you can rely on the natural process, it is just wonderful — 
but then don’t make any complaint. 

Don't ask, 'Why is this so?’ It is so because of the natural process of karma. You are 
suffering? — you are suffering because of the natural process of karma, and otherwise is 
not possible; don’t interfere. 

This is what the doctrine of fate, of kismat is — the doctrine of believing in fate. Then you 
are not to do anything: whatsoever is happening is happening, and you have to accept it. 
Then too it becomes a surrender, and you need not do anything. But the total 
acceptability is needed. Really there is no need to interfere, but can you be in such a state 
where you don’t interfere? You are constantly interfering with everything. You cannot 
leave it to nature. If you can leave it, then nothing else is needed and everything will 
happen to you. But if you cannot leave it, then interfere. And you can interfere, but the 
process has to be understood. 

Really, meditating is not interfering in the process of karma; rather, it is taking a jump 
out of it. Exactly it is not interfering; it is taking a jump out of the vicious wheel, out of 
the vicious circle. The circle will go on, and the process will come to an end by itself. 

You cannot put an end to it, but you can be out of it, and once you are out of it, it 
becomes illusory. 

For example, Raman died of cancer. His disciples tried to persuade him to go for 
treatment. He said, 'Okay. If you like it and if it will make you happy, then treat me. 

But as far as I am concerned it is okay.’ The doctors were surprised, because his body 
was suffering, it was in deep pain, but his eyes were without any pain. His body was 
suffering deeply, but he was not suffering. 

The body is part of the karma, it is part of the mechanical circle of cause and effect, but 
the consciousness can be beyond it, it can transcend it. He was just a witness. He was 
seeing that the body was suffering, that the body was going to die, but he was a witness. 
He was not interfering with it, not interfering at all. He was just watching whatsoever 
was happening, but he was not in the vicious circle, he was not identified, he was not 
within it then. 

Meditation is not an interference. Really, without meditation you are interfering every 
moment. With meditation you go beyond; you become a watcher on the hill. Deep down 
in the valley things go on, they continue, but they don’t belong to you. You are just an 
onlooker. It is as if they are happening to somebody else, or as if they are happening in a 
dream, or in a film on the screen. You are not interfering. You are just not within the 
drama itself — you have come out. Now you are not an actor, you have become a 
spectator. This is the only change. 

And when you are just a witness, the body will complete immediately whatsoever, has to 
be completed. If you have many karmas for suffering, and now that you have become a 
witness you are not going to be reborn again, the body will have to suffer in this life all 
the suffering that would have been in many lives. 

So it happens many times that an enlightened man has to suffer many bodily ills, because 
now there is no future birth, no future life. This is going to be the last body, so all the 
karmas and the whole process has to be completed, finished. 

So it happens that if we look at Jesus' life through eastern eyes, then the crucifixion is a 



different phenomenon. To the western mind there is no succession of lives, no rebirth, no 
reincarnation, so they don't really have a very deep analysis of the crucifixion. They have 
a myth that Jesus suffered for us, his suffering was a salvation for us. But this is absurd; 
and this is not true to the facts also, because if Jesus' suffering has become a salvation for 
you, then why is humanity still suffering? It is suffering more than it ever suffered before. 
After Jesus' crucifixion humanity has not entered into the kingdom of God. If he suffered 
for us, if his crucifixion was a repentance of our guilt and sin, then he is a failure, 
because the guilt continues, the sin continues, the suffering continues. Then his suffering 
was in vain, then the crucifixion didn’t succeed. 

Christianity has simply a myth. But the eastern analysis of human life has a different 
attitude. Jesus' crucifixion was all his suffering accumulated through his own karmas. 

And this was his last life, he would not enter the body again, so the whole suffering had 
to be crystallized, concentrated, in a single point. 

That single point became the crucifixion. 

He did not suffer for anyone else — no one can suffer for anyone else. He suffered for 
himself, for his past kannas. No one can make you free, because you are in the bondage 
because of your karmas, so how can Jesus make you free? He can make himself a slave, 
he can make himself a free man, he can liberate himself. Through the crucifixion the 
account of his own karmas closed. He was finished, the chain had come to an end. Cause 
and effect — they had come to an ed. This body would not be bom again; he would not 
enter into another womb. If he was not an enlightened person, then he would have had to 
suffer all this for many lives. It became concentrated in one point, in one life. 

You cannot interfere, and if you interfere you will create more misery for yourself. Don’t 
interfere with karmas, but go beyond, be a witness to them Take them as a dream, not 
real; just look at them and be indifferent. Don't get involved. Your body suffers — look at 
the suffering. Your body is happy — look at the happiness. Don’t get identified — that's all 
that meditation means. 

And don’t find alibis, don’t find excuses. Don't say that this can be argued. You can argue 
anything, you are free to, but remember that your argument may be suicidal. You can 
argue against yourself, and you can create an argument which is not going to help you, 
which is not going to transform you, rather, which is going to become a hindrance. 

We go on arguing. 

Just today one girl came to meet me. She asked me, 'Tell me, is there really a God?' She 
was ready to argue that there is no God. I looked at her face, her eyes. She was tense, 
filled with argument; she wanted to fight about the point. Really deep down she wanted 
that there is no God, because if there is God you are in trouble. If there is God then you 
cannot remain whatsoever you are; then a challenge comes. God is a challenge. It means 
you cannot be satisfied with yourself; something higher than you is possible. A higher 
state, an absolute state of consciousness is possible. That’s what God means. 

So she was ready to argue, and she said, 'I am an atheist and I don’t believe in God.’ 

I told her, 'If there is no God, how can you not believe in him? And God is irrelevant. 
Your belief and your disbelief, your argument for and your argument against is related to 
you; it is not related to God. Why are you concerned? If there is no God, why have you 
travelled so long, and why have you come to me to argue about something which is not? 
Forget and forgive him. Go to your home, don’t waste your time. If he is not, then why 
are you worried? Why this effort to prove that he is not? This effort shows something 



about you. You are afraid. If God is, then it is a challenge. If God is not, then you can 
remain whatsoever you are; there is no challenge to life.' 


A person who is afraid of challenges, risks, dangers, of changing himself, of mutation, 
will always deny that there is God. The denial is his mind; the denial shows something 
about him, not about God. 

I told her that God is not a thing which can be proved or disproved. God is not an object 
about which we can take some opinion for or against. God is a possibility within you. It 
is not something without; it is a possibility within you. If you travel to that possibility, he 
becomes real. If you don’t travel up to that point, he is unreal. And if you argue against 
him then there is no point in travelling; you remain the same. And this becomes a vicious 
circle. 

You argue that God is not, and because of it you never travel towards him — because it is 
an inner travel, an inner journey. You never travel, because how can you travel towards 
the point which is not? So you remain the same. And when you remain the same you 
never meet, you never encounter God. You never come to any feeling, to any vibration 
from him. Then it is proved more for you that he is not. And the more it is proved, the 
more you are far away, the more you are falling, the more the gap increases. 

So it is not a question of whether God is nor not, I told her. It is a question of whether 
you want to grow or not. If you grow, your total growth will be the meeting, your total 
growth will be the communion, your total growth will be the encounter. 

I told her one anecdote. 

One windy morning, just as the spring was ending, a snail started travelling upwards on a 
cherry tree. Some sparrows which were just on a neighboring oak started laughing, 
because it was not the season and there were no cherries on the tree, and this poor snail 
was making so much effort to reach the top. They laughed at his expense. 

Then one sparrow flew down, came near to the snail and said, 'Darling, where are you 
going? There are no cherries yet on the tree.’ 

But the snail never even paused; she continued her upward journey. Without pausing, the 
snail said, 'But they will be there when I reach. They will be there when I reach there. It 
will take a long time for me to reach to the top, and by that time cherries will be there.’ 
God is not, but he will be there by the time you reach. It is not something which is 
already there — it is never there. It is a growth. It is your own growth. When you reach to 
a point where you are totally conscious, God is. But don’t argue. Rather than wasting 
your energy in arguing, use your energy in transforming yourself. 

And energy is not much. If you divert your energy into argument you can become a 
genius in arguing. But then you are wasting, it is at a great cost, because the same energy 
can become meditation. You can become a logician: you can make very logical 
arguments, you can find very convincing proofs or disproofs, but you will remain the 
same. 

Your arguments are not going to change you. 

Remember one thing: whatsoever changes you is good. Whatsoever gives you growth, 
expansion, increase in consciousness, is good. Whatsoever makes you static and 
whatsoever protects your status quo is not good; it is fatal, suicidal. 

Question 4 



SOMETIMES I FEEL IN A STATE OF NON-DOING, VERY PASSIVE, BUT MAY 
AWARENESS OF WHAT IS HAPPENING AROUND ME SEEMS LESS. IN FACT, I 
FEEL DETACHED FROM THINGS AROUND ME. THIS SOMEHOW MEANS 
FALSE PASSIVITY, AS I IMAGINE ON-DOING SHOULD BE SYNONYMOUS 
WITH INCREASED AWARENESS. CAN YOU PLEASE DEFINE THIS STATE? 

Ordinarily we are in a feverish state — active, but feverishly. If you become passive the 
fever will be lost. If you become passive, non-doing, if you relax within yourself, activity 
will be lost, fever will be lost, and the intensity that comes through fever will not be 
there. You will feel a little dull, you will feel as if your awareness is decreasing. It is not 
decreasing; only the feverish glow is decreasing. 

And it is good, so don't be afraid of it, and don’t think that this passivity is not real. This 
is being said by your mind which needs and wants the feverish activity and the glow that 
comes through fever. Fever is not awareness, but in fever you can have a very unhealthy 
awareness, alertness. That is diseased; don’t ha nk er for it. Allow it to go, fall into 
passivity. 


In the beginning it will look like your awareness is decreasing rather than increasing. 
Allow it to decrease, because whatsoever decreases with passivity was feverish, that's 
why it decreases. Allow it to decrease. A moment will come when you will gain a 
balance. In that point of balance there will be no increase and no decrease. That is a 
healthy point; now the fever has gone. 

On that point of balance, whatsoever awareness you have, that is real, that is not feverish. 
And if you can wait for that moment to come.... It is difficult, because in the beginning 
you feel that you are losing grip, you are becoming really dead; your activity, your 
alertness, everything has gone — you are relaxing into death. It appears that way because 
whatsoever you know about life is feverish. It is not really life but just a fever, just a state 
of tension, just a state of hyper-activity. So in the beginning.... And you know only one 
state — this state of fever. You don't know anything else so how can you compare? 

When you become passive, relaxed, you will feel that something is lost. Allow i to be 
lost. Remain with passivity. A balancing point will come soon when you will be right at 
the point where there is no fever. Y ou will be simply your own self — not pushed by 
someone else into activity, not pulled by someone else into activity. Now activity will 
start happening to you, but it will be spontaneous, it will be natural. 

You will do something, but you will not be pulled and pushed. 

And what is the criterion by which to know whether this activity is not forced on you, is 
not feverish? This is the point: if the activity is spontaneous you will not feel any tension 
through it, you will not feel any burden. You will enjoy it. And the activity will become 
an end unto itself; there will be no end. This will not be a means to reach somewhere 
else; it will be just an overflow of your own energy. And this overflow will be here and 
now; it will not be for something in the future. You will enjoy it. 

Whatsoever it is — digging a hole in the garden, or pruning the trees, or just sitting, or 
walking, or eating — whatsoever you are doing will become absolute in itself, total 
action. And after it you will not be tiered; rather, you will feel refreshed. A feverish 
activity tires you; it is ill. A natural activity nourishes you; you feel more energetic, more 
vital after it. You feel more alive after it. It gives you more life. 



But in the beginning when you start becoming passive and you fall into non-doing, it is 
bound to be felt that you are losing awareness. No, you are not losing awareness. You are 
simply losing a feverish type of mentation, a feverish type of alertness. You will settle 
into passivity and a natural awareness will happen. 

This is the difference between a feverish alertness and natural awareness; this is the 
difference: in feverish alertness there is a concentration; it excludes everything. 

You can concentrate on a thing. You are listening to me. If it is a feverish alertness then 
you listen to me and you are totally unaware of anything else. But if it is a passive 
awareness, not feverish, but balanced, natural, then if a car passes by, you hear that car 
also. You are simply aware. You are aware of everything; of whatsoever is happening 
around you. And this is the beauty of it — that the car passes by and you hear the noise 
but it is not a disturbance. 

If you are feverishly attentive and you hear the car, you will miss listening to me; it will 
be a disturbance, because you don't k now how to be totally, simply aware of everything 
that is happening. You know only one way: how to be alert of one thing at the cost of 
everything else. If you move to something else then you lose the contact with the first 
thing. If you are listening to me in a feverish mind, then anything can disturb you. 
Because your alertness goes there, then you are cut off from me. It is one-pointed; it is 
not total. A natural, passive awareness is just total; nothing disturbs it. It is not 
concentration, it is meditation. 

Concentration is always feverish, because you are forcing your energy to one point. 
Energy by itself flows in all directions. If has no direction in which to move; it simply 
enjoys flowing all over. We create conflict because we say, 'This is good to listen to; that 
is bad.’ 

If you are doing your prayer and a child starts laughing, it is a disturbance — because you 
cannot conceive of a simple awareness in which the prayer continues and the child goes 
on laughing and there is no conflict between the two; they both are part of a bigger 
whole. 

Try this: be totally alert, totally aware. Don’t concentrate. Every concentration is tiring, 
you feel tired, because you are forcing energy unnaturally. Simple awareness is inclusive 
of all. When you are passive and non-doing then everything happens around you. 

Nothing disturbs you and nothing by-passes you. Everything happens and you know it, 
you witness it. 

A noise comes: it happens to you, it moves within you, then it passes, and you remain as 
you were. Just as in an empty room: if there was no one here the traffic would go on 
passing, the noise would come into this room, then it would pass==and the room would 
remain unaffected, as if nothing had happened. In passive awareness you remain 
unaffected. Everything goes on happening; just passes you, but never touches you. You 
remain unscarred. In feverish concentration everything touches you, impresses you. 

One more point about this. In the eastern psychology we have a word, SANSKAR — 
conditioning. If you are concentrating on something you will be conditioned, you will get 
a sanskar, you will get impressed by something. If you are simply aware — passively 
aware, not concentrating, not focusing yourself, just being there — nothing conditions 
you. 


Then you don’t accumulate any sanskar, you don’t accumulate any impressions. You go 



on remaining virgin, pure, unscarred; nothing touches you. If one can be passively aware, 
he passes through the world but the world never passes through him. 

One Zen monk, Bokuju, used to say, 'Go and cross the stream, but don't allow the water 
to touch you.’ And there was no bridge over the stream near his monastery. 

Many would try, but when they crossed, of course the water would touch them. So one 
day one monk came and he said, 'You give us puzzles. We try to cross that stream; there 
is no bridge. If there was a bridge, of course we could have crossed the stream and the 
water would not have touched us. But we have to pass through the stream — the water 
touches.’ 

So Bokuju said, 'I will come and I will cross and you watch.’ And Bokuju crossed. Of 
course, water touched his feet, and they said, 'Look, the water has touched you!’ 

Bokuju said, 'As far as I know, it has not touched me. I was just a witness. The water was 
touching my feet, but not me. I was just witnessing.’ 

With passive alertness, with witnessing, you pass through the world. You are in the 
world, but the world is not in you. 

THE END. 



Chapter 59: Watching from the hills 


SUPPOSE YOU CONTEMPLATE SOMETHING 
BEYOND PERCEPTION, 

BEYOND GRASPING, 

BEYOND NOT BEING. 

- YOU. 

I AM EXISTING. 

THIS IS MINE. 

THIS IS THIS. 

OH BELOVED, 

EVEN IN SUCH KNOW ILLIMITABLY. 

Man is Janus-Faced — animal and divine both. Animal belongs to his past, divine belongs 
to his future, and this creates the difficulty. The past has passed, it is no more; just a 
shadow of it lingers on. And the future is still the future, it has not yet come; it just a 
dream, just a possibility. And between these two exists man — the shadow of the past and 
the dream of the future. He is neither and he is both. 

He is both because the past is his — he was animal. He is both because the future is his — 
he can be divine. And he is not both, because the past is no more and the future is yet to 
be. 

Man exists as a tension between these two: that which was and that which can be. This 
creates a conflict, a constant struggle to realize, to be something. In a sense, man is not. 
Man is just a step from the animal to the divine — and a step is nowhere. It was 
somewhere and it will be somewhere, but right now it is nowhere, just hanging in the air. 
So whatsoever man is doing — whatsoever I say — he is never satisfied in it, never 
content, because two diametrically opposite existences meet in him. 

If the animal is satisfied then the divine is in discontent. If the divine is satisfied then the 
animal is in discontent. A part is always in discontent. 

If you move to the animal, in a way you satisfy part of your being, but immediately in 
that satisfaction dissatisfaction arises, because the opposite part, your future, is just 
contrary to it. The satisfaction of the animal is the dissatisfaction of the possibility of 
your future. If you satisfy your divine possibility the animal revolts; it feels hurt. A 
definite discontent arises within you. You cannot satisfy both, and satisfying one, the 
other is dissatisfied. 

I remember one anecdote. One sports car enthusiast reached the pearly gates, and St. 

Peter welcomed him. He had come with his Jaguar, and the first thing he asked St. Peter 
was this: 'Are there beautiful highways in heaven?’ 

St. Peter said, 'Yes, they have the most beautiful highways, but there is one difficulty — 
in heaven they don’t allow automobiles.’ 

The speed-fiend said, 'Then it is not for me. Then please arrange for me to be sent to the 
other place. I would like to go to hell. I cannot leave my Jaguar.’ 

So it was arranged. He reached hell, he came to the gates, and Satan welcomed him and 
said that he was very happy to see him. He said, 'You are just like me; I am also a lover 
of Jaguars.’ 



The speed-fiend said, 'Fine, give me the map of your highways.’ 


Satan became sad. He said, 'Sir, we don’t have any highways down here — that is the hell 
of it!’ 

This is the situation of man. Man is Janus-faced, a double being, split in two. If you 
satisfy one thing, then something becomes frustrating to your other part. If you do 
otherwise, then the other part is dissatisfied. Something is always lacking. And you 
cannot satisfy both, because they are diametrically opposite. 

And everyone is doing this impossible thing, trying to do this — to have a compromise 
somewhere so both heaven and hell can meet; so body and soul, the lower and the higher, 
the past and the future, can somewhere meet and have a compromise. We have been 
doing that for many lives. It has not happened, and it is not going to happen. The whole 
effort is absurd, impossible. 

These techniques are not concerned with creating a compromise within you. These 
techniques are to give you a transcendence. These techniques are not to satisfy the divine 
against the animal. That is impossible. That will create more turmoil within you, more 
violence, more struggle. These techniques are not to satisfy your animal against the 
divine. These techniques are just to transcend the duality. They are neither for the animal 
nor for the divine. 

Remember, that is the basic difference between other religions and tantra. Tantra is not a 
religion, because religion basically means: for the divine against the animal — so every 
religion is part of the conflict. 

Tantra is not a struggle technique, it is a transcendence technique. It is not to fight with 
the animal, it is not for the divine. It is against all duality. It is neither for nor against 
really. It is simply creating a third force within you, a third center of existence where you 
are neither animal nor divine. For tantra that third point is ADVAITA, that third point is 
non-duality. 

Tantra says you cannot reach the one by fighting through duality. You cannot come to a 
non-dual point by choosing one thing in the struggle in duality. Choice will not lead you 
to the one; only a choiceless witnessing. 

This is very foundational to tantra, and because of this tantra was never really understood 
rightly. It has suffered a long, a centuries-old misunderstanding, because the moment 
tantra says it is not against the animal, you start feeling as if tantra is for the animal. And 
the moment tantra says it is not for the divine, you then start thinking that tantra is against 
the divine. 

Really, tantra is for a choiceless witnessing. Don’t be with the animal, don’t be with the 
divine, and don’t create a conflict. Just go back, just go away, just create a gap between 
you and this duality and become a third force, a witnessing, from where you can see both 
the animal and the divine. 

I told you that the animal is the past and the divine is the future, and past and future are 
opposed. 

Tantra is in the present. It is neither past nor future. Just this very moment, don’t belong 
to the past and don’t hanker for the future. Don’t long for the future and don’t be 
conditioned by the past. Don’t allow the past to become a hangover and don’t create any 
projections in the future. Remain true to this very moment, here and now, and you 



transcend. Then you are neither animal nor divine. 

For tantra, to be such is to be God. To be such, in this suchness of the moment, where 
past is unrelated and future is not created, you are free, you are freedom. 

These techniques are not religious in this sense, because religion is always opposed to the 
animal. Religion creates a conflict. So if you are really religious you will become 
schizophrenic, you will be split. All religious civilizations are split civilizations. They 
create neurosis, because they create inner conflict. They divide you into two, and one part 
of your being becomes the enemy. Then your whole energy is dissipated fighting with 
yourself. 

Tantra is not religious in that sense, because tantra doesn’t believe in any conflict, in any 
violence. And tantra says don’t fight with yourself. Just be aware. Don’t be aggressive and 
violent with yourself. Just be a witness, a watcher. In the moment of witnessing you are 
neither; both the faces disappear. In that moment of witnessing you are not human. You 
simply are. 

You exist without any label. You exist without any name. You exist without any 
category. You are without being anyone in particular — a simple amness, a pure being. 
These techniques are for that pure being. 

Now I will discuss the techniques. 

The first technique: 

SUPPOSE YOU CONTEMPLATE SOMETHING 
BEYOND PERCEPTION, 

BEYOND GRASPING, 

BEYOND NOT BEING 
- YOU. 

SUPPOSE YOU CONTEMPLATE SOMETHING BEYOND PERCEPTION - that 
which cannot be seen, which cannot be perceived. But can you imagine something which 
cannot be seen? Imagination is always of that which can be seen. How can you imagine 
something, how can you suppose something, which cannot be perceived? 

That which you can perceive you can imagine. You cannot even dream something which 
is not capable of being seen and perceived. That's why even your dreams are shadows of 
reality. Even your imagination is not pure imagination, because whatsoever you can 
imagine you have kn own somehow. You can create new combinations, but all the 
elements of the combination are known and perceived. 

You can imagine a golden mountain flying in the sky like a cloud. You have not 
perceived such a thing ever, but you have perceived a cloud, you have perceived a 
mountain, you have perceived gold. These three elements can be combined. Imagination 
is not original; it is always a combination of something you have perceived. 


This technique says: 

SUPPOSE YOU CONTEMPLATE SOMETHING 
BEYOND PERCEPTION 



It is impossible, b ut that's why it is worth doing, because in the very effort something 
will happen to you. Not that you will become capable of perceiving — if you try to 
perceive something which cannot be perceived, all perception will be lost. In the very 
effort, if you try to see something which you have never seen, all that you have ever seen 
will disappear. 

If you persist in the effort, many images will come to you — you have to discard them, 
because you know that you have seen this; this can be perceived. You may not have seen 
it actually as it is, but even if you can imagine it, it can be perceived. Discard it. Go on 
discarding. This technique says to persist for that which cannot be perceived. 

What will happen? If you go on discarding, it is going to be an arduous effort, because 
many images will bubble up. Your mind will supply many images, many dreams; many 
conceptions will come, many symbols. Your mind will create now combinations, but go 
on discarding unless something happens which cannot be perceived. What is that? 

If you go on discarding, nothing will happen to you as an object; only the screen of the 
mind will be there with no image, with no symbol, with no dream on it, no picture on it. 
In that moment a metamorphosis happens. 

When the screen is simply there without any image, you become aware of yourself. You 
become aware of the perceiver. When there is nothing to be perceived, the whole 
attention changes. The whole consciousness reflects back. When you have nothing to see, 
for the first time you become aware of your own self. You start seeing yourself. 

This sutra says: 

SUPPOSE YOU CONTEMPLATE SOMETHING 
BEYOND PERCEPTION, 

BEYOND GRASPING, 

BEYOND NOT BEING 
- YOU. 

Then you happen to yourself. For the first time you will become aware of the one who 
has been perceiving, who has been grasping, who has been knowing. But this subject is 
always hidden in objects. You know certain things but you never know the knower. The 
knower is lost in knowledge. 

I see you, then I see someone else, and this procession goes on. From birth to death I will 
see this and that and that, and I will go on seeing and seeing. And the seer, the one who 
was seeing this procession, is forgotten; it is lost in the crowd. The crowd is of objects, 
and the subject is lost. 

This sutra says if you try to CONTEMPLATE SOMETHING BEYOND PERCEPTION, 
BEYOND GRASPING — which you cannot grasp by the mind — BEYOND NOT 
BEING... Immediately the mind will say that if there is something which cannot be seen 
and cannot be grasped, it is not. The mind will immediately react that if something is not 
seeable, not perceivable, not graspable, then it is not. 

The mind will say that it doesn’t exist. Don’t become a victim of the mind. 

This sutra says: ... BEYOND PERCEPTION, BEYOND GRASPING, BEYOND NOT 
BEING. The mind will say that this is nothing, this cannot exist, this is a not-being. The 
sutra says, don't believe in it. There is something which is being beyond not-being, which 
exists and which cannot be perceived, and which is not graspable: that is you. 



You cannot perceive yourself, or can you? Can you imagine any situation in which you 
can encounter yourself, in which you can know yourself? You can go on using the word 
'self-knowledge', which is absolutely absurd, because you cannot know the self. The self 
is always the knower. It cannot be reduced to a known, it cannot be reduced to an object. 
For example, if you think that you can know the self, then the self that you know will not 
be your self, but the one who is knowing the self will be the self. You will always remain 
the knower; you cannot become the known. You cannot put yourself in front of you; you 
will always recede back. Whatsoever you know cannot be yourself — this means that you 
cannot know it. You cannot know it the way you know other things. 

I cannot see myself the way I see you. Who will see? Because every relationship of 
knowledge, seeing, perception, melans that there are at least two things: the known and 
the knower. Self-knowledge is not possible in this sense, because there is only one. 

There the knower and the known are one; the observer and the observed are one. You 
cannot convert yourself into an object. 

So the word 'self-knowledge' is just wrong, but it connotes something, it says something 
which is true. You can know yourself in a very different sense, in an altogether different 
sense than from how you know other things. When there is nothing to be known, when 
all objects have disappeared, when all that can be perceived and grasped is no more, 
when you have discarded all, suddenly you become aware of yourself. And this 
awareness is not dual: there is no object and no subject. There is simply subjectivity. 

This awareness is a different type of knowing. This awareness gives you a different 
dimension of existence. You are not divided in two. You are aware of yourself. You are 
not perceiving, you cannot grasp it, and yet it is existential — the most existential. 

Try to think in this way. We have energy: that energy goes on moving to objects. Energy 
cannot be static. Remember it as one of the ultimate laws: energy cannot be static, it is 
dynamic. It cannot be otherwise. Dynamism is its very nature — energy moves. When I 
see you, my energy moves towards you. When I perceive you, a circle is made. My 
energy moves to you, then it comes back to me — a circle is made. 

If my energy moves to you and doesn’t come back, I will not know you. 

A circle is needed: the energy must go and then come back to me. With its coming back it 
bring you to me. I know you. Knowledge means that energy has made a circle. It has 
moved from the subject to the object, and then it has moved again and come back to the 
original source. If I go on living in this way — making circles with others — I will never 
know myself, because my energy is filled with energies of others. It brings those images, 
it delivers those images to me. This is how you gather knowledge. 

This technique says to allow the object to disappear from there. Allow your energy to 
move in a vacuum, in emptiness. It goes from you, but there is no object to be grasped by 
it, not object to be perceived by it. It moves and comes back to you through emptiness; 
there is no object. It brings no knowledge to you. It comes vacant, empty, pure. It brings 
nothing. It brings only itself. It comes virgin — nothing has entered into it; it remains 
pure. 

This is the whole process of meditation. You are sitting silently, your energy is moving. 
There is no object with which it can be contaminated, with which it can become 
entangled, with which it can become impressed, with which it can become one. Then you 
bring it back to yourself. There is no object, no thought, no image. Energy moves, the 



movement is pure, and then it comes back to you — virgin. As it left you it comes; it 
carries nothing. 

An empty vehicle, it comes to you, it hits you. There is no knowledge carried by it; it is 
coming only by itself. In that penetration of pure energy you become aware of yourself. 
If your energy is bringing something else, then you will become aware of that something. 
You look at a flower. The energy is bringing the flower to you — the image of the flower, 
the smell of the flower, the color of the flower. The energy is bringing the flower to you. 
It is introducing you to the flower. Then you become acquainted with the flower. The 
energy is covered by the flower. You never become acquainted with the energy, the pure 
energy which is you. You are moving to the other and coming back to the source. 

If there is nothing to impress it, if it comes unconditioned, if it comes as it had gone, if it 
brings itself, nothing else, you become aware of yourself. This is a pure circle of energy 

— energy moving not to something else, but within you, creating a circle within you. 

Then there is no one else, only you moving within yourself. This movement becomes 
self-knowledge, self-illumination. Basically, all meditation techniques, all of them, are 
different variations of this. 

SUPPOSE YOU CONTEMPLATE SOMETHING 
BEYOND PERCEPTION, 

BEYOND GRASPING, 

BEYOND NOT BEING 

- YOU. 

If this can happen, then for the first time you will become aware of yourself, of your 
being, of your existence — the subjectivity. 


Knowledge is of two kinds: knowledge of objects, and knowledge of the subjectivity. 
Knowledge of the known, the knowable, and knowledge of the knower. And a man can 
know millions and millions of things, he can become acquainted with the whole world, 
but if he is not aware of the knower he is ignorant. He may be knowledgeable, but he is 
not wise. He may have collected much information, much knowledge, but the basic thing 
which makes one a knower is lacking — he is not aware of himself. 

In the Upanishads there is a story. Svetaketu, a young boy, came back from his master to 
his home. He had passed all his examinations, and he had passed well. All that the master 
could give him, he had collected. He had become very egoistic. 

When he reached his father's house, the first thing the father asked Svetaketu was this: 
'You seem to be too filled with knowledge, and your knowledge is making you very 
egoistic — the way you walk, the way you have entered the house. I have only one 
question to ask you. Have you known that who knows all? Have you known that by 
knowing which everything is known? Have you known yourself?’ 

Svetaketu said, 'But there was no course for it in the school, and the master never 
discussed it. I have known everything that can be known. You ask me anything and I will 
answer you. But what type of question are you raising? It was never discussed.’ 


The father said, 'Then you go back, and unless you know that by knowing which 



everything is known, and without knowing which nothing is known, don’t come back. 
First know yourself.' 

Svetaketu went back. He asked the master, 'My father says I cannot be allowed to go 
back home, I cannot be welcomed there, because he says that in our family we have been 
Brahmins not only by birth. We have been knowers, knowers of Brahma, Brahmins, not 
only by birth but by real authentic knowledge. So he said, "Unless you become a real 
Brahmin, not by birth, but by knowing the Brahma, by knowing the ultimate, don’t enter 
the house. You are not worthy of us." So now teach me that.’ 

The teacher said, 'All that can be taught I have taught you. And that is something which 
cannot be taught. So you do one thing: you simply be available for it. It cannot be 
directly taught. You simply be receptive; some day it will happen. You take all the cows 
of the ashram...’ The ashram had many cows; they say four hundred. 'You take all the 
cows to the forest. Remain with the cows: stop thinking, stop verbalizing, just become a 
cow. Remain with the cows, love them, and be silent as cows are silent. When the cows 
become one thousand, come back.’ 

So Svetaketu went with four hundred cows to the forest. There was no use in thinking, 
there was no one to talk to. By and by his mind became just like a cow. 

He sat silently under the trees, and for many years he had to wait, because only when the 
cows became one thousand could he come back. By and by language disappeared from 
his mind. By and by society disappeared from his mind. By and by he became not a 
human being at all. His eyes became just like cows’. 

And the story is very beautiful. The story says he forgot how to count — because if 
language disappears and verbalizations disappears.... He forgot how to count, he forgot 
when he had to return. The story is beautiful. The cows said, 'Svetaketu, now we are one 
thousand. Now let us go back to the master's house. He must be waiting.' 

Svetaketu came back, and the master said to the other disciples, 'Count the cows.’ 

The cows were counted and the disciples said, 'Yes, there are one thousand cows.’ 

And the master is reported to have said, 'Not one thousand, one thousand and one — that’s 
Svetaketu.’ 

He was standing amidst the cows, silent, just being there, with no thought, with no mind. 
Just like a cow — pure, simple, innocent. And the master said, 'You need not enter. Now 
go back to your father's house. You have known; it has happened to you. Why have you 
come again to me? It has happened to you.' 

It happens: when there is no object in the mind to know, the knower happens to you. 
When the mind is not filled by thoughts, when there is not a single ripple, when there is 
not a single wave, you are there alone. 

There is nothing other than you. Obviously you become aware of your self; for the first 
time you become filled by yourself. A self-illumination happens. 

This sutra is one of the foundational ones. Try it. It is arduous, because the habit of 
thinking, the habit of clinging to objects, to that which can be perceived and that which 
can be grasped, is so deep-rooted, so ingrained, that it will take time and a very persistent 
effort not to be involved in objects, not to be involved in thoughts, but to just become a 
witness and discard them and say, 'No, not this, not this.’ 

The whole technique of the Upanishads is condensed in two words; NETI, NETI — not 
this, not this. Whatsoever comes to the mind, say, 'Not this.’ Go on saying and discarding 



and throwing all the furniture out. The room has to be empty, totally empty. When 
emptiness is there, then that happens. If something else is there you go on being 
impressed by it, and you cannot know yourself. Your innocence is lost in objects. A 
thought-ridden mind is moving outwards. You cannot be related to yourself. 

The second technique: 

I AM EXISTING. 

THIS IS MINE. 

THIS IS THIS. 

0 BELOVED, 

EVEN IN SUCH KNOW ILLIMITABLY. 

1 AM EXISTING. You never enter deeply into this feeling. I AM EXISTING. You are 
existing, but you never dig deep into this phenomenon. 

Shiva says: I AM EXISTING. THIS IS MINE. THIS IS THIS. OH BELOVED, EVEN 
IN SUCH KNOW ILLIMITABLY. 

I will tell you one Zen anecdote. Three friends were walking along a road. Evening was 
just falling and the sun was setting when they become aware of a monk standing on a 
nearby hill. They started talking about the monk, wondering what he was doing there. 

One of them said, 'He must be waiting for his friends. He must have gone for a walk 
from his hermitage and his friends are left behind, so he is waiting for them to come.’ 

The other denied that and said, 'This is not right, because if a person waits for someone, 
sometimes he will look backwards. But he is not looking backwards at all. So my 
assumption is this — that he is not waiting for anyone. Rather, he must have lost his cow. 
Evening is coming near, and the sun is setting, and soon it will be dark, so he is looking 
for his cow. He is standing there on the hilltop, and looking for where the cow is in the 
forest.’ 

The third one said, 'This cannot be right, because he is standing so silently, not moving at 
all, and it seems that he is not looking at all; his eyes are closed. He must be in prayer. He 
is not looking for any lost cow or waiting for some friends who have been left behind.;’ 
They couldn’t decide. They argued and argued and then they said, 'We must go to the top 
of the hill and ask the man himself what he is doing.’ 


So they reached the monk. The first one said, 'Are you waiting for your friends who are 
left behind to come?’ 

The monk opened his eyes and said, 'I am not waiting for anyone. And I have neither 
friends nor enemies to wait for.’ He closed his eyes again. 

The other one said, 'Then I must be right. Are you looking for your cow which is lost in 
the forest?’ 

He said, 'No, I am not looking for anyone — for any cow or anyone. I am not interested in 
anything except myself.’ 

So the third one said, ' Then certainly, definitely, you are doing some prayer or some 
meditation.’ 

The monk opened his eyes and said, 'I am not doing anything at all. I am just being here. 

I am just being here, not doing anything at all. I am just being here.’ 

This is what Buddhists say meditation is. If you do something, it is not meditation — you 



have moved far away. If you pray, it is not meditation — you have started chattering. If 
you use some word, it is not prayer, it is not meditation — the mind has entered in. That 
man said the right thing. He said, 'I am just being here, not doing anything.’ 

This sutra says this: I AM EXISTING. Go deep into this feeling. Just sitting, go deep into 
this feeling — I AM EXISTING, I AM. Feel it, don’t think it, because you can say it in the 
mind — I AM — and it is futile. Your head is your undoing. 

Don’t go on repeating in the head I AM, I AM EXISTING. It is futile, it is useless. You 
miss the point. 

Feel it deep down in your bones. Feel it all over your body. Feel it as a total unit, not in 
the head. Just feel it — I AM. Don’t use the words 'I am’. Because I am relating to you, I 
am using the words. 'I am’. And Shiva was relating to Parvati, so he had to use the words 
'I am existing’. Don’t. Don’t go on repeating. This is not a mantra. You are not to repeat I 
AM EXISTING, I AM EXISTING. If you repeat this you will fall asleep, you will 
become self-hypnotized. 

If you go on repeating a certain thing, you become auto-hypnotized. First you get bored, 
then you feel sleepy, and then your awareness is lost. You will come back from it very 
much refreshed, just like after a deep sleep. It is good for health, but it is not meditation. 
If you are suffering from insomnia you can use chanting, a mantra. It is as good as any 
tranquillizer, or even better. You can go on repeating a certain word: repeating constantly 
in a monotonous tone you will fall asleep. 

Anything that creates monotony will give you deep sleep. So psychoanalysts and 
psychologists go on telling people who suffer from insomnia to just listen to the tick-tock 
of the clock. Go on listening to it and you will fall asleep, because the tick-tock becomes 
a lullaby. 

The child in the mother's womb sleeps continuously for nine months, and the heart of the 
mother goes on. 

.. tick-tock. That becomes a conditioning, a deep conditioning — the continuous repetition 
of the heart. That's why whenever someone takes you near his heart, you feel good. Tick- 
tock — you feel sleepy, relaxed. Anything that gives monotony gives relaxation; you can 
fall asleep. 

In a village you can sleep more deeply than in a city, because a village is monotonous. 
The city is not monotonous. Every moment something new is happening; the traffic 
noises go on changing. In a village everything is monotonous, the same. Really, in a 
village there is no news, nothing happens; everything moves in a circle. So villagers sleep 
deeply, because life around them is monotonous. In a city, sleep is difficult, because life 
around you is very sensational; everything changes. 

You can use any mantra: RAM, RAM, AUM, AUM — anything. You can use Jesus 
Christ; you can use Ave Maria. You can use any word and monotonously chant it; it will 
give you deep sleep. You can even do this: Raman Maharshi used to give the technique 
WHO AM I? And people started using it as mantra. They would sit with closed eyes and 
they would go on repeating. 'Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?’ It had become a mantra. 
That was not the purpose. 

So don’t make it a mantra, and sitting, don’t say, 'I am existing.’ There is no need. 
Everyone knows, and you know already that you are existing; there is no need, it is futile. 


Feel it — I AM EXISTING. Feeling is a different thing, totally different. Thinking is a 



trick to escape from feeling. It is not only different, it is a deception. 

What do I mean when I say to feel I AM EXISTING? I am sitting in this chair. If I start 
feeling I AM EXISTING, I will become aware of many things: the pressure on the chair, 
the touch of the velvet, the air passing through the room, the noise touching my body, the 
blood circulating silently, the heart, the breathing that goes on continuously, and a subtle 
vibrating feeling of the body. Because the body is a dynamism; it is not a static thing. 
You are vibrating. Continuously there is a subtle trembling and while you are alive it will 
continue. The trembling is there. 

You will become aware of all these multidimensional things. And the more you become 
aware of the many things that are happening.... If right now you become aware of 
whatsoever is happening within you and without, this is what is meant by I AM 
EXISTING. If you become aware in this way, thinking will stop, because when you feel 
you are existing it is such a total phenomenon that thinking cannot continue. 

In the beginning you will feel thoughts floating. By and by, the more you get rooted in 
existence, the more and more you settle down in the feeling of being, the thoughts will be 
far away, you will feel a distance — as if those thoughts are not now happening to you, 
but they are happening to someone else, very very far away. 

There is a distance. And then, when you are really rooted, grounded in the being, mind 
will disappear. You will be there with not a single word, not a single mental image. 

Why does this happen? — because mind is a particular activity for relating with others. If 
I am to relate with you I will have to use my mind, language, words. It is a social 
phenomenon; it is a group activity. So even if you are talking while alone, you are not 
alone — you are talking to someone. Even when you are alone, when you are talking you 
are talking to someone; you are not alone. How can you talk alone? Someone is present 
in the mind and you are talking to him. 

I was reading the autobiography of a professor of philosophy. He relates that one day he 
was going to take his daughter, who was five years old, to school, and after leaving her at 
the school he was going to go to the university to deliver his lecture. So he was preparing 
his lecture on the way, and he forgot all about his daughter who was sitting just by his 
side in the car, and he started lecturing loudly. The girl listened for a few moments and 
then she asked, 'Daddy, are you talking with me or without me?’ 

Even when you are talking it is never without, it is always with — with someone. He may 
not be present, but to you he is present; for your mind he is there. All thinking is a 
dialogue. Thinking as such is a dialogue, it is a social activity. 

That’s why if a child is brought up without any society, he will not know any language. 
He will not be able to verbalize. It is society which gives you language; without society 
there is no language. Language is a social phenomenon. 

When you get grounded within yourself, there is no society, there is no one. You alone 
exist. Mind disappears. You are not relating to anyone, not even in imagination, so mind 
disappears. You are there without the mind, and this is what meditation is — being 
without the mind. Being perfectly alert and conscious, not unconscious, feeling existence 
in its totality, in its multidimensionality, but the mind has suddenly disappeared. 

And with the mind many things disappear. With the mind, your name, with the mind, 
your form; with the mind, that you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Parsee; with the 
mind, that you are good or bad; with the mind, that you are a saint or a sinner; with the 
mind, that you are ugly or beautiful — everything disappears. All that is labelled on you 



suddenly is not there. You are in your pristine purity. In your total innocence you are 
there; in your virginity — grounded, not floating, rooted in that which is. 

With the mind you can move into the past. With the mind you can move into the future. 
Without mind you cannot move into the past or into the future. Without mind you are 
here and now — just this moment is all eternity. 

Nothing exists except this moment. Bliss happens. You need not go in any search. Rooted 
in the moment, rooted in the being, you are blissful. And this bliss is not something 
which is happening really to you — you are it. 

I AM EXISTING. Try it. And you can do it anywhere. Just riding in a bus, or travelling 
in a train, or just sitting, or lying down on your bed, try to feel existence as it is; don't 
think about it. Suddenly you will become aware that you have not known many things 
which are continuously happening to you. You have not felt your body. You have your 
hands, but you have not ever felt it — what it says, and what it continuously goes on 
informing you; how it feels. 

Sometimes it is heavy and sad, sometimes it is happy and light. Sometimes everything 
flows in it, sometimes everything is dead. Sometimes you feel it alive, dancing, 
sometimes as if there is no life in it — frozen, dead; hanging on you, but not alive. 

When you start feeling your being, you will come to know the moods of your hands, of 
your eyes, of your nose, of your body. It is a big phenomenon; there are subtle nuances. 
The body goes on telling you and you are not there to hear it. And existence all around 
you goes on penetrating you in subtle ways, in many ways, in different ways, but you are 
not aware. You are not there to receive it, to welcome it. 

When you start feeling existence, the whole world becomes alive to you in a totally new 
way; you have not known it. 

Then you pass through the same street and the street is not the same, because now you 
are grounded in existence. You meet the same friends but they are not the same, because 
you are different. You come back to your house and the wife you have lived with for 
years is not the same. 

Now you are aware of your own being, you become aware of the other's being. When the 
wife becomes angry, you can enjoy even her anger, because now you can feel what is 
happening. And if you can feel it, anger my not look like anger; it may become love. If 
you can feel it deep down, then anger shows that she still loves you. Otherwise she would 
not be angry; she would not bother. She still waits for you the whole day. She is angry 
because she loves you. She is not indifferent. 

Remember, anger or hate or not the real opposites of love — indifference is the real 
opposite. When someone is indifferent to you, love is lost. If someone is not even ready 
to be angry with you, then everything is lost. But ordinarily if your wife is angry you 
react more violently, you become aggressive. You cannot understand the symbolic 
meaning of it. You are not grounded in yourself. You have not really known your own 
anger; that's why you cannot understand others' anger. 

If you know your own anger, if you can feel it in its total mood, then you know others’ 
anger also. You are angry only when you love someone, otherwise there is no need. 

Through anger the wife is saying that she still loves you, she is not indifferent to you. She 
has been waiting, waiting, and now the whole waiting has become anger. 

She may not say it directly, because the language of feeling is not direct. And that has 



become a big problem today — because you cannot understand the language of feeling, 
because you don’t know your own feelings. You are not grounded in your own being. 

You can understand only words, you cannot understand feelings. Feelings have their own 
way of expression, and they are more basic, more real. 

Once you get acquainted with your own existence, you will become aware of others' 
existence also. And everyone is so mysterious, and everyone is such a deep abyss to be 
known — an infinite possibility of being penetrated and known. And everyone is waiting 
that someone should penetrate, go deep, and feel his or her heart. But because you have 
not known your own heart, you cannot know anyone else's. The nearest heart remains 
unknown, so how can you know others; hearts? 

You move as a zombie, and you move in a crowd of zombies; everyone is fast asleep. 

You have only this much alertness: that you pass through fast-asleep people and without 
any accident you come to your home, that's all. This much alertness you have got. This is 
the minimum which is possible to man, that's why you are so bored, so dull. 

Life is just a long heaviness, and deep down everyone is waiting for death, in order to be 
delivered from life. Death seems to be the only hope. 

Why is this happening? Life can be infinite bliss. Why is this so boring? You are not 
grounded in it. You are uprooted; uprooted, and living at the minimum. And life really 
happens when you live at the maximum. 

This sutra will give you a maximum of existence. Thought can give you only a minimum; 
feeling can give you the maximum. Through mind there is no way to existence; through 
heart is the only way. 

I AM EXISTING. Feel it through the heart. And feel THIS EXISTENCE IS MINE. THIS 
IS MINE. THIS IS THIS. This is very beautiful I AM EXISTING. Feel it, be grounded in 
it; then know THIS IS MINE — this existence, this overflowing being is mine. 

You go on saying that this house is mine, this furniture is mine. You go on talking about 
your possessions, and you never know what you really possess. You possess total being. 
You possess the deepest possibility, the center-most core of existence in you. Shiva says: 

I AM EXISTING. Feel this. THIS IS MINE. 

This too is not to be made a thought; remember that continuously. Feel it — this is mine, 
this existence — and then you will feel gratitude. How can you thank God? Your 
thankfulness is superficial, formal. And look what a misery... even with God we are 
formal. 

How can you be grateful? You have not known anything to be grateful for. 

If you can feel yourself rooted in existence, merged in it, overflowing with it, and allow 
even dancing with it, then you will feel, 'This is mine. This existence belongs to me. This 
whole mysterious universe belongs to me. This whole existence has been existing for me. 
It has created me. I am a flower of it.' 

This consciousness that has happened to you is the greatest flower that has happened to 
the universe. And for millions and millions of years this earth was preparing for you to 
exist. 

THIS IS MINE AND THIS IS THIS. To feel, 'This is what life is, THIS IS THIS - this 
suchness. I was unnecessarily worried. I was unnecessarily a beggar, unnecessarily 
thinking in tenns of begging. I am the master.’ 

When you are rooted, you are one with the whole, and the existence exists for you. You 
are not a beggar; you become an emperor suddenly. THIS IS THIS. 



OH BELOVED, 

EVEN IN SUCH KNOW ILLIMITABLY. 

And while feeling this, don't create a limit to it. Feel it illimitably. Don’t create a 
boundary to it; there is none. It ends nowhere. The world begins nowhere; the world ends 
nowhere. Existence has no beginning and no end. You also don't have any beginning; you 
also don’t have any end. 

Beginning and end are because of the mind — mind has a beginning and mind has an end. 

Go backwards, travel backwards into your life: there comes a moment where everything 
stops — there is a beginning. You can remember back to when you were three years of 
age, or, at the most, two years of age — that is rare — but then memory stops. You can 
travel backwards to when you were two years of age. What does it mean? And you 
cannot remember anything previous to that, previous to that age of two years. Suddenly 
there is a blank, you don’t know anything. 

Do you remember anything about your birth? Do you know anything about the nine 
months in your mother's womb? You were, but the mind was not there. Mind started 
around the age of two; that's why you can remember back to that age. Then there is no 
mind, memory stops. Mind has a beginning, mind has an end, but you are beginningless. 
If in deep meditation, in such meditation you can come to feel existence, then there is no 
mind — a beginningless, endless flow of energy, of cosmic force; an infinite ocean around 
you, and you are just a wave in it. The wave has a beginning and an end — the ocean has 
none. And once you kn ow that you are not the wave but the ocean, all misery has 
disappeared. 

What is deep down in your misery? — deep down there is death. You are afraid of some 
end which is going to be there. It is absolutely certain; nothing is so certain as death — the 
fear, the trembling. Whatsoever you do, you are helpless. 

Nothing can be done — death is going to be there. And that goes on and on inside in the 
conscious and unconscious mind. Sometimes it erupts in the conscious — you become 
afraid of death. You push it down, and then it continues in the unconscious. Every 
moment you are afraid of death, of the end. 

Mind is going to die, you are not going to die — but you don't know yourself. You know 
something which is just a created thing: it has a beginning, it is going to have an end. 

That which begins must end. If you can find within your being something which never 
begins, which simply is, which cannot end, then the fear of death disappears. And when 
the fear of death disappears, love flows through you, not before it. 

How can you love when there is going to be death? You can cling to someone, but you 
cannot love. You can use someone, but you cannot love. You can exploit someone, but 
you cannot love. 

Love is not possible if fear is there. Fear is the poison. Love cannot flower with fear deep 
inside. Everyone is going to die. Everyone is standing in a queue waiting for his time. 
How can you love? Everything seems nonsense. Love appears nonsense if death is there, 
because death will destroy everything. Even love is not eternal. Whatsoever you do for 
your beloved, for your lover, you cannot do anything because you cannot avoid death — it 
is just waiting behind everything. 



You can forget it, you can create a facade, and you can go on believing that it is not 
going to be there, but your belief is just superficial — deep down you know it is going to 
be there. And if death is there, then life is meaningless. You can create artificial 
meanings, but they won’t help much. Temporarily, for some moments, they can help, and 
again the reality erupts and the meaning is lost. You can just deceive yourself 
continuously, that's all — unless you come to know something which is beginningless and 
endless, which is beyond death. 

Once you come to know it, then love is possible, because then there is no death. Love is 
possible. Buddha loves you, Jesus loves you, but that love is absolutely unknown to you. 
That love has come because fear has disappeared, and your love is just a mechanism to 
avoid fear. So whenever you love, you feel fearless. Someone gives you strength. 

And this is a mutual phenomenon: you give strength to someone and someone gives 
strength to you. Both are weak, and both are seeking someone, and then two weak 
persons meet and they help each other to be strong — this is just wonderful! How does it 
happen? It is just a make-believe. You feel that someone is there behind you, with you, 
but you know no one can be with you in death. And if someone cannot be with you in 
death, how can he or she be with you in life? Then it is just postponing, just avoiding 
death. 

And because you are afraid, you need someone to make you fearless. 

It is said, somewhere Emerson has written, that even the greatest warrior is a coward 
before his wife. Even a Napoleon is a coward, because the wife knows that he needs her 
strength, he needs her in order to be himself. He depends on her. When he comes back 
from the war, from the fighting, he is trembling, afraid. He rests in her, he relaxes in her. 
She consoles him; he becomes just like a child. Every husband is a child before the wife. 
And the wife? — she depends on the husband. She lives through him. She cannot live 
without him;he is her life. 

This is a mutual deception. Both are afraid — death is there. They both try to love each 
other and forget death. Lovers become, or appear to be, fearless. Lovers even sometimes 
can face death very fearlessly, but that is just appearance. 

Our love is part of fear — just to escape from it. Real love happens when there is no fear 
— when death has disappeared, when you know you never begin and you are never going 
to end. Don't think it. You can think it, because of the fear. You can think, 'Yes, I know I 
am not going to end, there is no death, the soul is immortal.’ You can think because of 
fear — that will not help. 

If you move deep in meditation it will happen. Fear will disappear, because you know 
yourself endlessly. You go on spreading endlessly — back into the past, forward into the 
future, and this very moment, this present moment, in the depth of it you are there. 

And because you are afraid, you need someone to make you fearless. 

It is said, somewhere Emerson has written, that even the greatest warrior is a coward 
before his wife. Even a Napoleon is a coward, because the wife knows that he needs her 
strength, he needs her in order to be himself. He depends on her. When he comes back 
from the war, from the fighting, he is trembling, afraid. He rests in her, he relaxes in her. 
She consoles him; he becomes just like a child. Every husband is a child before the wife. 
And the wife? — she depends on the husband. She lives through him. She cannot live 
without him;he is her life. 



This is a mutual deception. Both are afraid — death is there. They both try to love each 
other and forget death. Lovers become, or appear to be, fearless. Lovers even sometimes 
can face death very fearlessly, but that is just appearance. 

Our love is part of fear — just to escape from it. Real love happens when there is no fear 
— when death has disappeared, when you know you never begin and you are never going 
to end. Don't think it. You can think it, because of the fear. You can think, 'Yes, I know I 
am not going to end, there is no death, the soul is immortal.’ You can think because of 
fear — that will not help. 

If you move deep in meditation it will happen. Fear will disappear, because you know 
yourself endlessly. You go on spreading endlessly — back into the past, forward into the 
future, and this very moment, this present moment, in the depth of it you are there. 

You simply are — you never begin, you are never going to end. 

FEEL THIS ILLIMITABLY - infinitely. 

THE END. 



Chapter 60: Liberation from yourself 


Question 1 

YOU SAY THAT RELIGION IS TOTAL FREEDOM OR MOKSHA, AND YOU 
ALSO STRESS THE IMPORTANCE OF SURRENDER IN RELIGION. BUT ARE 
NOT FREEDOM AND SURRENDER CONTRADICTORY IN TERMS? 

They appear contradictory but they are not. And they appear so because of the language; 
existentially they are not. Try to understand two things. First: you cannot be free 
remaining as you are, because as you are is your bondage. Your ego i s the bondage. You 
can be free only when this ego point disappears — this ego point is the bondage. 

When there is no ego, you become one with existence, and only that oneness can be 
freedom. While you exist separate, this separation is false. Really, you are not separate; 
you cannot be. You are part of existence — and not a mechanical part, but an organic part. 
You cannot exist for a single moment separated from existence. You breathe it every 
moment; it breathes you every moment. You live in a cosmic whole. 

Your ego gives you a false feeling of separate existence. Because of that false feeling, 
you start fighting existence. When you fight you are in bondage. When you fight you are 
bound to be defeated, because the part cannot win against the whole. And because of this 
fight with the whole, you feel in bondage; everywhere limited. Wherever you move, a 
wall comes. That wall is nowhere in existence — it moves with your ego, it is part of your 
separate feeling. 

Then you struggle against existence. In that struggle you will be defeated constantly; in 
that defeat you feel bondage, limitation. 

By surrender it is meant that you surrender the ego, you surrender the separating wall, 
you become one. That is reality, so whatsoever you are surrendering is just a dream, a 
concept, a false notion. You are not surrendering reality; you are just surrendering a false 
attitude. The moment you surrender this false attitude you become one with existence. 
Then there is no conflict. 

And if there is no conflict you have no limitation; nowhere there comes a bondage, a 
boundary. You are not separate. You cannot be defeated, because there is no one to be 
defeated. You cannot die, because there is no one to die. You cannot be in misery, 
because there is no one to be in misery. The moment you surrender the ego, the whole 
nonsense is surrendered — misery, bondage, dukkha, hell — everything is surrendered. 
You become one with existence. This oneness is freedom. 

Separation is bondage. Oneness is freedom Not that you become free, remember this — 
you are no more. So it is not that you become free — you are no more. Really, when you 
are not, freedom is. How to express it is a problem. When you are not, freedom is. 

Buddha is reported to have said, 'You are not going to be in bliss. When you are not, the 
bliss is. You are not going to be liberated. 

You are going to be liberated from yourself.’ 

So freedom is not freedom of the ego. Freedom is freedom from the ego. And if you can 
understand this — that freedom is freedom from the ego — then surrender and freedom 
become one, then they mean one. But if you take the ego as the standpoint from which to 
think, then the ego will say, 'Why surrender? — because if you surrender, then you cannot 



be free. Then you become a slave. When you surrender, you become a slave.’ 

But really, you are not surrendering to someone. This is the second point to be 
understood: you are not surrendering to someone; you are simply surrendering. There is 
no one who will take your surrender. If there is someone and you surrender to him, then it 
is a sort of slavery. Really, there is not even a god to whom you are surrendering. And 
when we talk about a god, that is just to find you something to help you to surrender. 

In Patanjali's lYoga Sutras', God is talked about just to help you to surrender. There is no 
God. Patanjali says there is no God, but it will be difficult for you to surrender to one ; it 
will be difficult for you to simply surrender. To help surrender, God is talked about. So 
God is just a method. This is rare, very scientific — God is just a method to help you 
surrender. There is no one who is going to take your surrender. If there is someone and 
you surrender, then it is a slavery, a bondage. 

This is a very subtle and deep point: there is no God as a person; God is just a way, a 
method, a technique. 

Patanjali relates many techniques. One of them is ISHWARA PRANIDHAN — the idea 
of God. There are many methods to reach the surrender; one method is the idea of God. 
That will help your mind to surrender, because if I say, 'Surrender,' you will ask, 'To 
whom?’ If I say, 'Simply surrender,’ it will be difficult for you to conceive. Try to 
understand in a different way. If I say to you, 'Simply love,’ you will ask, 'Whom? What 
do you mean by "simply love"? If there is no one to be loved, how to love?’ If I say, 

'Pray,' then you will ask, 'To whom? Worship to whom?’ Your mind cannot conceive 
non-duality. It will ask, it will raise a question, 'To whom?’ 

Just to help your mind, so that the mind's question is satisfied, Patanjali says that God is 
just a way, a technique. Worship, love, surrender — to whom? Patanjali says, 'To God.’ 
Because if you surrender, then you will come to know that there is no God — or you 
yourself are that to which you have surrendered. But this will happen when you have 
surrendered. God is just a trick. 

It is said that even to surrender to a god who is nowhere seen, who is invisible, is 
difficult, so scriptures say, 'Surrender to the guru, to the master.’ The master is visible 
and a person, so then the question becomes relevant — if you surrender to a master then it 
is a slavery, because a person is there and you are surrendering to him. 

But then too you will have to understand again a very subtle point — even more subtle 
than the notion o God. A master is a master only when he is not. If he is, then he is not a 
master. A master becomes a master only when he is not. He has achieved non-being; 
there is no one. 

If someone is sitting here in this chair, then there is no master; then it is going to become 
a slavery. But if there is no one sitting in this chair, a non-being, one who is not centered 
anywhere, one who has surrendered — not to anyone, but simply surrendered and 
achieved non-being, has become a non-person — who is simply there, not concentrated in 
an ego, diffused, not concentrated anywhere, then he can become a master. So when you 
are surrendering to a master, again you are surrendering to nobody. 

This is a deep question for you. When you are surrendering, if you can understand that 
this is simply surrendering, not a surrender — surrendering, not a surrender.... A surrender 
is to someone. A surrendering is something on your part. So the basic thing is 
surrendering — the act, not the object. The object should not be important, but the one 
who is surrendering is important. The object is just an excuse — just an excuse. 



If you can understand, then there is no need to surrender to anyone — you can simply 
surrender. Then there is no need to love someone — you can simply love. 


You are significant, not the object. If the object is significant, you will create a bondage 
out of it. So even a god who is not, will become a bondage; even a master who is not, will 
become a bondage. But that bondage is created by you; it is a misunderstanding. 
Otherwise surrendering is freedom They are not contradictory. 

Question 2 

WHILE 'THIS IS THIS’ ALSO INCLUDES THIS IS THAT,’ AND THAT IS 
BRAHMA,’ HOW IS IT THAT THE SUTRA EMPHASIZES ONLY THIS IS THIS’? 

For a very particular reason — because tantra, deep down, is interested only in the here 
and now. THIS IS THIS means that which is here and now. THAT goes a little further 
away. 

Secondly, for tantra there is no division between this and that. Tantra is non-dualistic. 
This is the world, and that is Brahma. This is the mundane, the material, and that is 
consciousness, the spiritual. For tantra there is no distinction like this. THIS is all — 
THAT is included in it. This very world is divine. 

And tantra makes no distinction and no categorization of higher and lower: THIS means 
the lower, and THAT means the higher; THIS means that which you can see and touch 
and know, and THAT means the invisible that you cannot see and cannot touch, you can 
only infer. For tantra there is no distinction of higher and lower, of visible and invisible, 
of matter and mind, of life and death, of world and Brahma — no distinction. 


Tantra says THIS IS THIS, and THAT is included in it. But the emphasis on THIS is 
beautiful. It says here and now, whatsoever is, this is all. And everything is in it; nothing 
is excluded. The near, the intimate, the ordinary, is all. 

It is a very well known saying of Zen mysticism that if you can become just ordinary, 
you have become extraordinary. Only the person who is at ease with his ordinariness is 
extraordinary. Because everyone hankers to be extraordinary, so the desire to be 
extraordinary is very ordinary. Everyone — you cannot find a person who is not trying to 
be extraordinary in some way, so the desire, the lust to be extraordinary, is a part, a basic 
part of the ordinary mind. Zen masters say, 'So to be ordinary is the most extraordinary 
thing in the world. To be just ordinary. It is rare. Very rarely it happens that someone is 
simply ordinary. 

One Japanese emperor was in search of a master, so he went from one teacher to another, 
but no one could satisfy him, because one old man had said that the real master would be 
most ordinary. He went on searching, but he couldn’t find an ordinary man. He came 
back to the old man who was just on his dying bed, and he said, 'You have put me to 
great trouble. The way you defined the master — that he will be simple, ordinary — has 
become a problem for me. I have been searching all over the country, and no one satisfies 
me. 

So give me some clue how to find the master.’ 

The dying man said, 'You have been searching in wrong places. You have been 
searching in wrong places! You have been going to persons who are in some way 
extraordinary, and then you try to find the ordinary. Move in the ordinary world. And 



really you are still trying to find the extraordinary. Now you define him as ordinary, but 
you are still searching for the extra-ordinary. Now the definition has changed. Now you 
define him as the most ordinary, but the rare, the exceptional. You are still in this search. 
Don’t do that, and the moment you are ready and not searching in this way, the master 
will come to you. 

The next morning while he was sitting, he tried to understand what the old man had said, 
and he felt that he was right. The desire left him. A beggar appeared — and he was the 
master. And he had known that beggar his whole life. He was always coming, that beggar 
was coming daily to the palace, so the emperor asked the beggar, 'How did it happen that 
I couldn’t recognize you before?’ 

The beggar said, 'Because you were searching for the extra-ordinary. I was here, but you 
were searching THERE. You missed me continuously.’ 

Tantra says THIS not THAT, particularly in this technique. There are techniques in 
which THAT is discussed, but THIS is most tantric — this, here and now, the most 
intimate. 

Your wife, your husband, THIS, your friend, the beggar, may be the master. But you are 
not looking at THIS; you are looking at THAT, there, somewhere in the clouds. You 
cannot even conceive that near you can be that quality of being. You cannot conceive; 
because you think you already know the near, so you search for it far away. You already 
feel that you know THIS, so now the only thing to be found is THAT. 

This is not true. You don’t know THIS, you don’t know the near. The near is as unknown 
as the far away. Have a look around you. You are not acquainted with anybody. You 
don’t have any knowledge of anybody. Do you know the tree you pass every day? Do you 
know your friend with whom you have lived your whole life? Or do you know yourself, 
who is the nearest? Do you know your body, the breath that comes and goes 
continuously? Do you know it? Nothing is known. Even THIS is not known, so why 
hanker after THAT? 

This technique says, if THIS is known, THAT will be known automatically, because 
THAT is implied in THIS. The far away is hidden in the near, in the intimate. But the 
human mind hankers for the far away. This is an escape. It is an escape to think of the far 
away, because then you can go on thinking forever, and you can go on postponing the 
living, because life is THIS. If you think about it and if you contemplate about it, you 
will have to change yourself. 


I am reminded of one anecdote. Once it happened, a Zen master was appointed as a 
preacher in a temple. No one knew that he was a Zen master. The congregation gathered 
and the first sermon was delivered. Everyone was thrilled; it was just beautiful. No one 
had heard such a thing before. The next day an even greater crowd came to the temple, 
but the master repeated the same sermon. So they got bored — 'What type of man is he?’ 
Then on the third day they came again, not in so great a number, but the master repeated 
the same sermon again. So many left just in the middle; only very few were left, and 
those few were there only to ask. 'Have you got only one sermon? And are you going to 
deliver it every day?’ One spokesman blurted out and asked the priest, 'What type of 
preaching is this? Thrice we have heard you, and you go on repeating exactly the same 
thing, in exactly the same words. Don’t you have any other lectures, any other sermons?’ 
The priest said, 'I have quite a few, but you have not done anything about the first one. 



Unless you do something about the first one, I am not going to deliver the second. It is 
unnecessary.’ 

The crowd stopped coming. No one would come near the temple, because the moment 
anyone would come, the Zen priest would start the first sennon. It is said that people 
stopped passing that way, that temple — ' That priest is there, and if you happen to be 
there he will give you the same sermon again.’ 


He must have been a very deep knower of the human mind. The human mind wants to 
think but never wants to do anything — action is dangerous. Thinking is good, because 
you go on being the same. If you think about the far away, the distant, there is no need to 
change yourself. The Brahma, the absolute, cannot change you, but the neighbor, the 
friend, the wife, the husband — if you look at them, you will have to change yourself. 

And it is a trick not to look at them. 

You look at the THAT to forget the THIS — and THIS is the life, and THAT is simply a 
dream. You can think about God, because that thinking is impotent; it is not going to do 
anything. You will continue thinking about God and you will remain the same. This is a 
trick to remain the same. If you think about your wife, if you think about your child, if 
you penetrate deep in the intimate near, you cannot remain the same — action will come 
out of it. 

Tantra says, 'Don’t go far away. He is here, this very moment, just near you. Be open, 
and look at the THIS, and the THAT will take care of itself.’ 

Question 3 

YOU HAVE SAID THAT TANTRA TEACHES MAN TO TRANSCEND BOTH HIS 
CRAVING FOR HIS ANIMALISTIC PAST, AND ALSO HIS CRAVING FOR THE 
DIVINE. DOES IT MEAN THAT DIVINITY IS PART OF THE WORLD, AND THAT 
TOO HAS TO BE TRANSCENDED? AND WHAT IS IT THAT GOES BEYOND 
BOTH? 

You will have to understand many things. 

First: the nature of desire. Divinity is not what you call it. The god that you talk about is 
not the god of reality; it is the god of your desire. So it is not a question of whether the 
divine is part of the world. That is not the question. The real question is, can you desire 
the divine without making him part of the world? 

Look at it in this way. It has been said again and again that unless you leave desiring, you 
cannot attain to him, the ultimate. You cannot attain to the divine if you don’t leave 
desiring. Leave desiring and you can attain to him. You have heard it many times, but I 
wonder whether you understand it or not. More or less, you will be misunderstanding it. 
Hearing this, you start desiring the divine — and that is to miss the whole point. 

If you leave desiring, the divine will happen to you. Then you start desiring the divine, so 
your divine will be part of the world. That which can be desired is the world. This is how 
I define it: that which can be desired is the world. So the divine cannot be desired, and if 
you desire it, it has become part of the world. 

When desiring stops, the divine happens. When you are not desiring anything, the divine 
is there — then the whole world is divine. You will not find the divine somewhere in 
contradiction, in opposition to the world — contrary to the world. When you are not 
desiring, everything is divine; when you are desiring, everything is the world. 



Your desiring creates the world: whatsoever you desire becomes the world. This is not 
the world that you see — the trees, and the sky, and the sea, and the rivers, and the earth, 
and the stars. This is not the world — that which you desire is the world. 

A flower is there in the garden. The moment you pass the tree, and you look at the 
flower, and the smell of the flower comes to you, look within. If you are not desiring that 
flower, if there is not even a slight urge to possess it, not even a slight ripple of desire to 
have it, that flower becomes divine. You will have the divine face through it. But if the 
desire is there to possess it, or a jealousy arises about the owner of the tree, you have 
created a world; the divine has disappeared. It is your desire that changes the quality of 
existence; your desire makes it the world. When you are non-desiring, the whole world 
becomes divine. 

Now I will read this question again. YOU HAVE SAID THAT TANTRA TEACHES 
MAN TO TRANSCEND BOTH HIS CRAVING FOR HIS ANIMALISTIC PAST, AND 
ALSO HIS CRAVING FOR THE DIVINE. 

Tantra teaches only to transcend craving. It is irrelevant what you crave — that you crave 
is the point. You can go on changing the objects. You crave money, you crave power, 
you crave prestige — you crave for the world. Then you change. You get fed up with it, 
you are bored. Or, you have attained whatsoever you craved, and now you are not 
fulfilled; you feel frustrated. 

You start a new craving. 

Now you crave the divine. You crave moksha, nirvana, liberation — now you crave for 
the god. The object has changed; you have not changed — your craving remains the same. 
It was running after prestige and power and money. Now it is running after divine power. 
It is running after the ultimate, moksha, the absolute freedom, but the craving is there. 
Ordinarily, religious people go on changing their objects of desire. Desire remains the 
same, unchanged. And it is not the objects which create the problem; it is the desire, the 
craving, which creates the problem. Tantra says it is futile to go on changing objects. It is 
wasting time and life and energy. Changing objects won’t help — drop craving. Don’t 
crave. Don’t crave for freedom, because craving is bondage. Don’t crave for the divine, 
because craving is the world. Don’t crave for the inner, because craving is the outer. So it 
is not a question of transcending this craving or that — simply drop craving. Don’t crave, 
don’t desire. Just be yourself. 

When you don't desire, what happens? When you don't crave, what happens? You are 
non-moving; all movement ceases. You are not in a hurry to reach anywhere. You are not 
serious. There is no hope and there is no frustration. You don’t expect anything; nothing 
can frustrate you. There is no desire; you cannot be a failure. Of course, there is not going 
to be any success either. 


When you are not craving, not desiring, what happen? You are simply left alone, moving 
nowhere. There is no goal, because craving creates the goal. There is no future, because 
craving creates the future. There is no time, because craving needs time to move. Time 
stops. Future drops. And when there is no craving, mind drops, because mind is nothing 
but craving, and because of that craving you have to plan and think and dream and 
project. 

When there is no craving, everything drops. You are simply in your purity. You exist 
without moving anywhere; inside, all ripples disappear. The ocean remains, but the 



waves are not there. This is what divineness is for tantra. 

So look at it in this way: craving is the barrier. Don’t think of the object, otherwise you 
will be deceived by yourself. You will change one object for another, and then time will 
be wasted. Again you will get frustrated, and then you will again change the object. You 
can go on changing objects infinitely, unless you realize that it is not the object which 
creates the problem, it is your craving. But craving is subtle and the object is gross. The 
object can be seen, and craving can be seen only when you go deep down and meditate 
upon it; otherwise, craving is not seen. 

You can marry a woman or a man with great dreams and hope, and the greater the 
dreams, the greater the hope, the greater will be the frustration. 

An ordinary arranged marriage cannot be such a failure as a love-marriage is bound to be, 
because with an ordinary arranged marriage there is not much hope, there is not much 
dreaming. It is business-like; there is no romance, no poetry. There is no peak to it; you 
are travelling on plain ground. So arranged marriages never fail. They cannot fail, 
because there is no point. How can you fail in an arranged marriage? You were never on 
a height, so you cannot fall. Love-marriages fail. Only love-marriages can fail, because 
with a great poetry, with a great dreaming force, they come up. They touch heights, on 
the waves you rise high, and then you will have to fall down. 

So old countries, those who have knowledge, experience, they have come to settle for 
arranged marriages. They don't talk about love-marriages. In India they never talk about 
love-marriages. They have also tried in the past, and then they felt that a love-marriage is 
going to be a failure. Because you expect too much, you will be frustrated, and the 
proportion of frustration will be the same. Whatsoever you desire and dream gives you 
expectations — they cannot be fulfilled. 

You marry a woman; if it is a love-marriage, you expect much. Then you get frustrated. 
The moment you get frustrated, immediately you start thinking about another woman. So 
if you say to your wife, 'I am not interested in any other woman,’ and she feels you have 
become indifferent to her, you cannot convince her — it is impossible, it is unnatural. 

The moment you become indifferent to your wife, the wife knows instinctively that you 
have become interested in someone else. 

This is how mind functions. You become aware of the woman that you have married, and 
you feel the frustration is coming because of her — 'This was not a right choice.’ This is 
ordinary logic. 'This was not a right choice. This woman is not for me. I have chosen a 
wrong partner, so the conflict has arisen.’ Now you will try to find another partner. 

You can go on that way ad infinitum. You may marry all the women on the earth, and 
still you will be thinking in the same way — that 'This woman is not right for me’. And 
the subtle craving which is creating all trouble is not seen. It is subtle. The woman is 
seen; the craving is not seen. It is not the woman or the man who is frustrating you; it is 
your craving, your desire, which is frustrating you. 

If you can come to understand this, you have become wise. If you go on changing 
objects, you are ignorant. If you can come to feel yourself and the craving which is 
creating the whole thing, you have become wise. Then you don’t go on changing one 
object for another; you simply drop the very effort to possess, to desire, to crave. 

The moment this craving is not there, the whole world becomes divine. It has always 
been so, only your eyes were not open to see. Your eyes were filled with craving. 



Eyes filled with craving, the divine appears as the world. Open eyes, unfilled, unclouded 
by craving, the world appears as the divine. 

The world and the divine are not two things, not two existences, but two ways of looking 
at the same thing, two approaches to the same thing, two outlooks, two types of 
perception. One perception clouded with craving, another perception unclouded with 
craving. If you can look unclouded, and your eyes are not filled with tears of frustration 
and dreams of hope, there is nothing like the world; only the divine exists — existence is 
divine. This is what tantra means. And when tantra says transcend both, tantra is not 
concerned with either this or that — tantra is concerned only with transcendence, so there 
is no craving. 

AND WHAT IS IT THAT GOES BEYOND BOTH? That cannot be said, because the 
moment anything is said about it, it comes within the two. Whatsoever can be said about 
God will be false, just because it is said. 

Language is dualistic. There is no non-dual language; cannot be. Language is meaningful 
only because of dualism. I say Tight'; immediately in your mind bubbles up the word 
'darkness' or 'black'. I say 'day', and immediately in your mind comes 'night'. I say 
love', and just behind it is hidden 'hate'. If I say light and there is no darkness, how will 
you define it? 

We can only define words because of their opposite terms. 

I say light, and if you ask me what light is, I say that which is not darkness. If someone 
asks you what mind is, you say that which is not body. If someone asks what body is, you 
have to say that which is not mind. All terms are circular, so, basically meaningless, 
because neither you know anything about the mind, nor do you know anything about the 
body. When I ask about the mind, you define it with the body, and the body is undefined. 
When I ask you about the body, you define it with the mind, which is itself undefined. 
This is good as a game. Language is good as a game — language is a game. But we never 
feel that the whole thing is absurd, circular; and nothing is defined, so how can you 
define anything? When I ask about the mind, you bring in the body — and the body is 
undefined. With an indefined term, you define mind. And then when I ask, 'What do you 
mean by body?’ you have to define it with the mind. This is absurd — but there is no other 
way. 

Language exists through the opposite, so language is dualistic. It cannot be otherwise. So 
nothing can be said about the non-dual experience. Whatsoever is said will be wrong. It 
can be indicated, symbols can be used for it, but silence is the best. That which can be 
said about it is silence. Everything else can be defined, talked about — not the ultimate. 
You can know it, taste it, you can be it, but nothing can be said about it. 

Only negatively we can say something, but only negatively. We cannot say what that is; 
we can only say what that is not. 

The whole mystic tradition is simply using negative terms for it. If you ask what that 
ultimate is, they will say, 'That ultimate is not this, not that. It is neither life nor death. It 
is neither light nor darkness. It is neither near nor far. It is neither I nor you.’ They will 
say in this way, but this makes no sense. 

Drop craving and you come to know it face to face. And the experience is so deep and 
individual, non-verbal, non-linguistic, that even when you come to know it, you cannot 
say anything about it. You will become silent. Or, at the most, you can say this that I am 
saying. You can say, 'Nothing can be said about it.’ 



Then what is the point of talking so much? Then why do I go on saying something to you 
if nothing can be said? Just to bring you to that point where nothing can be said. Just to 
push you to that abyss where you can take a jump out of language. Up to that point, 
language can be helpful. Up to the point when you take the jump, language can be 
helpful, but the moment you have taken the jump, it is silence, it is beyond language. 

So I can push you to the very end of the world through language — to the very end of the 
world — but not a single inch into the divine through language. But this pushing you up to 
the very end will be helpful, because then you can see with your own eyes that there is 
this blissful abyss beyond. 

And then that beyond will call you by itself; then the beyond will attract you; then the 
beyond will become a magnet, a pull. It is impossible then for you to come back, to 
retreat. The abyss is so enchanting — the abyss of silence — that before you know, you 
will have taken a jump. 

That's why I go on talking, knowing well that all that I am saying will not help you to 
know it. But it will help you to take a jump. It is methodological. It will look 
contradictory, paradoxical, if I say that all language that I am using, or that the mystics 
have ever used, is to bring you to the temple of silence; to force you into silence, to call 
you unto silence. It looks paradoxical. Then why use language? I can use silence also, but 
then you will not understand. 

When I have to talk to madmen. I have to use a mad language. It is because of you I am 
using language. It is not that anything can be expressed by it; only your inner chattering 
can be destroyed by it. It is just as if you have a thorn in your foot — another thorn can 
pull it out. The other one is also a thorn. Your mind is filled with words, with thorns. 
What I am trying to do is to pull those words out of you. What I am using are also words. 
You are filled with poison. What I am giving you is again a dose of poison, just an 
antidote. It is also a poison. But a thorn can pull out another thorn — then they both can 
be thrown. 


When I have talked to you to the point where you are ready to be silent, throw all that I 
have said to you; it is useless, it is even dangerous to carry it. When you have come to 
realize that language is useless, dangerous, that inner verbalization is the only barrier, 
and when you are ready to be silent, then remember well — don't carry whatsoever I have 
said to you. Because the truth cannot be said, and all that can be said cannot be true. Be 
unburdened of it. 

The last thing Zarathustra said to his disciples is very beautiful. He had taught them. He 
had given them glimpses. He had stirred their souls. He had challenged them to the 
ultimate adventure. The last thing he said to them was, 'Now I am leaving you. Now 
beware of Zarathustra.’ 

So they asked, 'What are you saying? Beware of Zarathustra? You are our teacher, our 
master, our only hope.’ 

And Zarathustra said, 'All that I have said to you, now beware of it. Don’t cling to me, 
otherwise I will become a bondage to you.’ 

When one thorn has pulled out your thorn, throw the other one also with it. When I have 
prepared you to move into silence, then beware of me. Then whatsoever I have said has 
to be thrown; it is rubbish, of no use. It has utility only up to the point before you are 
ready to take a jump into silence. Nothing can be said about that which transcends both. 



Only this much can be said — and this is too much really. 


If you can understand, this is enough to indicate towards it. 

I am saying this — that if your mind becomes totally vacant of words, you will know it. 
When you are not burdened with thoughts, you will realize it, because it is already there. 
It is not something which is going to happen; it has already happened within you. You 
are just an expression of it. But you are so much engrossed, involved, with thoughts, with 
clouds, that you miss the key. You are too concentrated on the clouds; you have forgotten 
the sky. Allow the clouds to disperse, and the sky has always been there just waiting for 
you. The beyond is waiting for you. Just drop the duality and it is there. 

Question 4 

YOU HAVE SAID THAT ONE WHO IS IN FEAR CANNOT LOVE, NOR CAN HE 
REACH GODHOOD. BUT HOW IS ONE TO GET RID OF HIS FEAR ACCORDING 
TO TANTRA? 

Why do you want to get rid of fear? Or have you become afraid of fear? If you have 
become afraid of fear, this is a new fear. This is how mind goes on creating the same 
pattern again and again. I say, 'Don't desire and then you will reach the divine.' So you 
ask, 'Really, if we don’t desire, then will we reach the divine?’ You have started desiring 
the divine. 

I say to you, 'If there is fear, love cannot be,’ so you become afraid of fear. You ask, 

'How can one get rid of fear?’ This is again a fear, and more dangerous than the first one, 
because the first one was natural; the second one is unnatural. 

And it is so subtle that you are not aware of what you are asking — how to get rid of fear? 
The question is not of getting rid of anything; the question is only of understanding. 
Understand fear, what it is, and don’t try to get rid of it, because the moment you start 
trying to get rid of anything, you are not ready to understand it — because the mind which 
thinks to get rid of is already closed. It is not open to understand, it is not sympathetic. It 
cannot contemplate quietly; it has already decided. Now the fear has become the evil, the 
sin, so get rid of it. Don’t try to get rid of anything. 

Try to understand what fear is. And if you have fear, then accept it. It is there. Don’t try 
to hide it. Don’t try to create the opposite. If you have fear, then you have fear. Accept it 
as part of your being. If you can accept it, it has disappeared already. Through 
acceptance, fear disappears; through denial, fear increases. 

You come to a point where you know that you are afraid, and you come to understand, 
'Because of this fear, love cannot happen to me. So, okay, what can I do? The fear is 
there, so only one thing will happen — I will not pretend love. Or, I will say to my 
beloved or my lover that it is because of fear that I am clinging to you. Deep down I am 
afraid. I will become frank about it; I will not deceive anyone, nor myself. I will not 
pretend that this is love. 

I will say this is simply fear. Because of fear, I cling to you. Because of fear, I go to the 
temple, or to the church, and pray. Because of fear, I remember God. But then I know 
that this is not prayer, this is not love, this is only fear. I am fear, so whatsoever I do, it is 
there. I will accept this truth.’ 

A miracle happens when you accept a truth. The very acceptance changes you. When you 
know that there is fear in your being and you cannot do anything about it, what can you 



do? All that you can do is pretend, and pretensions can go to the very extreme, to the 
other extreme. 

A very fearful man can become a very brave man. He can create an armour around him. 
He can become a dare-devil, just to show that he is not afraid; just to show others that he 
is not afraid. And if he can go into danger, he can deceive himself that he is not afraid. 
But even the bravest man is afraid. His whole bravery is just around him; deep down he 
trembles. Not to be aware of it, he takes a jump into danger. He becomes engaged with 
the danger so that he is not aware of the fear, but the fear is there. 

You can create the opposite, but this is not going to change anything. You can pretend 
that you are not afraid — that makes no change again. The only transformation that can 
happen is that you become simply aware that ' I am fear. My whole being is trembling, 
and whatsoever I do is because of the fear.’ 

You have become true to yourself. 

Then you are not afraid of fear. It is there, a part of you; nothing can be done about it. 
You have accepted it. Now you don't pretend, now you don’t deceive anyone, nor 
yourself. The truth is there, and you are not afraid of it. The fear starts disappearing, 
because a person who is not afraid to accept his fear has become fearless — that is the 
deepest fearlessness that is possible. He has not created the opposite, so there is no 
duality in him. He has accepted the fact. He has become humble before it. He doesn't 
know what to do — no one knows — and nothing can be done, but he has stopped 
pretending; he has stopped using masks, faces. He has become authentic in his fear. 

This authenticity, and this fearlessness to accept the truth, changes you. And when you 
don’t pretend, don't create a false love, don't create a deception around you, don't become 
a pseudo-person, you have become authentic. In this authenticity, love arises; fear 
disappears, love arises. This is the inner alchemy of how love arises. 

Now you can love. Now you can have compassion, sympathy. Now you don't depend on 
anyone, because there is no need. You have accepted the truth. There is no need to 
depend on anyone; there is no need to possess and be possessed. There is no hankering 
for the other. You accept yourself — through this acceptance, love arises. 

It fills your being. You are not afraid of fear, you are not trying to get rid of it. Simply it 
disappears when accepted. 

Accept your authentic being and you will be transformed. Remember: acceptability, total 
acceptability, is the most secret key of tantra. Don’t reject anything. Through rejection 
you will be crippled. Accept everything — whatsoever it is. Don’t condemn it, and don’t 
try to get rid of it. 

There are many things implied in it. If you try to get rid of it, you will have to cut your 
being into departments, fragments, parts. You will be crippled. When you throw one 
thing, something else is also thrown with it — the other part of it — and you become 
crippled. Then you are not total. And you cannot be happy unless you are total and 
whole. To be whole is to be holy. To be in fragments is to be ill and diseased. 

So I will say, try to understand fear. Existence has given it to you. It must have some 
deep meaning, and it must have some hidden treasure, so don’t throw it. Nothing is given 
without any meaning. Nothing exists within you which cannot be used in a higher 
symphony, in a higher synthesis. 

All that exists in you, whether you understand it or not, can become a step. Don’t think of 
it as a hindrance; allow it to become a step. You can take it that it is hindering the path — 



it is not hindering. If you can ride above it, if you can use it, stand on it, a new view of 
the path will be revealed to you on a higher level. 


You will be able to look deep into the possibility, into the future, into the potentiality. 
Fear is there for certain purposes. Try to understand this. One: if there is no fear, you will 
become too egoistic, and there will be no going back. If there is no fear, as you are, you 
will never try to merge into existence, into the cosmos. Really, if there is no fear you will 
not be able to survive at all. So it is doing something for you. Whatsoever you are, it is 
playing a role in it. 

But if you try to hide it, destroy it, create the opposite of it, you will be divided and you 
will become fragmentary, disintegrated. Accept it and use it. And the moment you know 
that you have accepted it, it disappears. Just try to think: if you accept your fear, where is 
it? 

One man came to me and he said, 'I am very much afraid of death.’ He had cancer, and 
death was very near; any day it could happen. And he could not postpone it. He knew it 
was going to happen. Within months it would be there, or even within weeks. 

He was really physically, literally, trembling, and he said, 'Just give me one thing: how 
can I get rid of this fear of death? Give me some mantra, or something which can protect 
me and give me courage to face death. I don’t want to die trembling in fear.’ The man 
said, 'I have been to many saints. Many things they have given. They were very kind. 
Someone has given me a mantra, someone has given me some sacred ashes, someone has 
given me his picture, someone has given something else, but nothing helps. 

Everything is in vain. Now I have come to you as the last resort. Now I will not go to 
anyone any more. Give me something.’ 

So I told him, 'Still you are not aware. Why are you asking for something? — just to get 
rid of fear? Nothing will help. I cannot give you anything, otherwise, as others have 
proved failures, I will also prove a failure. And they gave you something because they 
don’t know what they are doing. I can say only one thing to you. Accept it. Tremble if 
trembling is there — what to do? Death is there, and you feel a trembling, so tremble. 
Don’t reject it, don’t suppress it. Don’t try to be brave. There is no need. Death is there. It 
is natural. Be afraid totally.’ 

He said, 'What are you saying? You have not given me anything. Rather, on the contrary, 
you say to accept.’ 

I said, 'Yes, you accept. You just go and die peacefully with total acceptance.’ 

After three or four days he came again, and said, 'It works. I couldn’t sleep for so many 
days, but for these four days I slept deeply, because it is right, you are right.’ He said to 
me, 'You are right. Fear is there, death is there, nothing can be done. All the mantras are 
just hocus-pocus; nothing can be done.’ 

No doctor can help, no saint can help. Death is there, a fact, and you are trembling. It is 
just natural. A stonn comes and the whole tree trembles. It never goes to any saint to ask 
how not to tremble when a storm is passing by. 

It never goes for a mantra to change it, to protect it. It trembles. It is natural; it is so. 

And the man said, 'But a miracle has happened. Now I am not so afraid.’ If you accept, 
fear starts disappearing. If you reject, resist, fight, you give energy to fear. That man died 
peacefully, unafraid, fearless, because he could accept fear. Accept fear and it disappears. 
Question 5 



BY THE USE OF TECHNIQUES SIMILAR TO THE SECOND TECHNIQUE YOU 
DISCUSSED YESTERDAY, I HEAR SOME SOUNDS LIKE THE FLOWING OF A 
RIVER OR A STREAM. MAY I KNOW WHAT THAT SOUND IS? IF I HAVE 
UNDERSTOOD RIGHTLY, THERE SHOULD BE NO THOUGHTS OR SOUND, 
AND THERE SHOULD BE COMPLETE SILENCE. THEN WHAT IS THIS SOUND? 

In the beginning, before silence happens to you, sound will happen. So this is a good 
sign. Words, language, verbalization, disappear; the second layer is of sound. But don't 
fight with it; enjoy it. It will become musical, beautiful, You will be filled by its music, 
and you will become more alive through it. 

When mind disappears, a natural inner sound appears. Allow it to happen. Meditate on it, 
Don’t fight with it; just be a witness to it — it will deepen. And if you don’t fight with it, 
and don’t create any struggle, it will disappear by itself, and when it disappears, you will 
fall into silence. Words — sound — silence. Words are human, sounds are natural, silence 
is cosmic. 


So this is a good sign. This is what is called nada, the inner sound. Hear it, enjoy it, be a 
witness to it. It will disappear. And don’t be disturbed and feel that it should not be there. 
If you say it should not be there, or if you hurry to get rid of it in any way, you will come 
to the first layer again — to the words. Remember this. If you fight with this second layer 
of sound, you have started thinking about it and words have entered. If you say anything 
about this sound, you have lost the second deeper layer, and you are thrown back again to 
the first. You have come to the mind. 

Don’t say anything, don’t think about it. Don’t even say that this is sound. Just listen to it. 
Don’t create any word around it. Don’t give it any name or form. Let is be as it is. Allow 
it to flow, and you be a witness. The stream flows, and you are sitting on the bank, just a 
witness — not even knowing the name of the stream, not knowing where it is going, not 
knowing from where it is coming. 

Just sit near by the sound, and sooner or later it will disappear, and when it disappears 
there will be silence. This is a good sign — you have touched a second layer — but if you 
try to think about it, you will lose it; you will be thrown back to the first. If you don’t 
think about it and can enjoy in witnessing, you will go deeper to the third layer. 


THE END. 



Chapter 61: Techniques to become one with the whole 


EACH THING IS PERCEIVED THROUGH KNOWING. 

THE SELF SHINES IN SPACE THROUGH KNOWING. 

PERCEIVE ONE BEING AS KNOWER AND KNOWN. 

BELOVED, 

AT THIS MOMENT 

LET, MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM, 

BE INCLUDED. 

I have heard one anecdote. In a conservative party rally, Lord Mancroft was invited to 
speak. He came right on time, reached the rostrum and said to the public — he was 
looking a little flustered — he said, 'Forgive me for shortening my speech a little, but the 
fact is that my house is on fire.’ 

And that fact is everybody's fact. Your house is also on fire, but you don’t even seem a 
little flustered. 

Everybody's house is on fire, but you are not aware — not aware of death, not aware that 
your life is just passing through your hands. Every moment you are dying, every moment 
you are losing an opportunity which cannot be regained. The time that is lost, is lost: 
nothing can be done to regain it, and your life becomes shorter and shorter every 
moment. 

This is what I mean when I say that your house is also on fire. But you don’t seem even a 
little flustered. You don’t even seem to be worried about it. You are not aware of the fact 
that the house is on fire. The fact is there, but your attention is not there. And everybody 
thinks that there is enough time to do something. There is not enough time, because 
whatsoever has to be done is so much that the time is never enough. 


Once it happened that the Devil was waiting for years and years and nobody was coming 
to hell. He was waiting to welcome people, but the earth was running so well and people 
were so good that no one was coming to hell. Of course he became very worried. He 
called an emergency council. His greatest disciples gathered together to discuss the 
situation. Hell was passing through a great crisis and this could not be tolerated. 
Something had to be done. So he asked for advice: 'What should we do?’ 

One disciple suggested, 'I would go to the earth and I would talk to people and try to 
convince them that there is no God and religions are false, and whatsoever the Bible, the 
Koran and the Vedas say is nonsense.’ 

The Devil said, 'This won’t do, because we have been doing this since the very beginning 
and it has not influenced people very much. Through such teaching you can convince 
only those who are already convinced. So it is of no use; it is not of much use.’ 

Then the second disciple, subtler than the first, said, 'I will go and teach people and try to 
convince people that whatsoever the Bible, the Koran and the Vedas say is right. There is 
heaven, there is God, but there is no Devil and no hell, so don’t be afraid. And if we can 
make them less afraid, they will not bother about religion at all, because all religion is 
based on fear.’ 



The Devil said, 'Your proposal is a little better. 


You may be able to, you may succeed in convincing a minority, but the majority will not 
listen to you. They are not as much afraid of hell as they are greedy of heaven. Even if 
you convince them that there is no hell, they will still want to enter into heaven, and they 
will try to be good for that. So this also won’t do much.’ 

Then the third disciple, the subtlest of them all, said, 'I have an idea. Give me a chance to 
try it. I will go and say that whatsoever religion says is absolutely true — there is God and 
there is Devil and there is heaven and there is hell — but there is no hurry.’ 

And the Devil said, 'Right? You have the right system. You go!’ 

And it is said that since then there has never been a crisis in hell. Rather, they are worried 
about the over-population. 

This is how our minds are functioning: we always think there is no hurry. These 
techniques we are talking about will be of no use if your mind thinks there is no hurry. 
Then you can go on postponing and death will come first. That day will not come when 
you think there is a hurry, when you think that now the moment has come. You can go on 
postponing. This is what we have been doing with our lives. 

You have to be decisive to do something. You are in a crisis — the house is on fire. Life is 
always on fire because death is always there hidden behind it; any moment and you may 
not be any more. 

And you cannot argue with death. You cannot do anything. When death happens, it 
happens. Time is very short. Even if you live for seventy years or for a hundred years, it 
is very short. What you have to do with yourself to transfonn, to mutate, to become a 
new being, is such a great work. Don’t go on postponing. 

Unless you feel it as an emergency, a deep crisis, you will not do anything. Unless 
religion becomes a very critical process for you, and you feel that unless something is 
done to transform you, your whole life is just wasted.... If you feel this very keenly and 
deeply and honestly, only then will these techniques be of any help. Because you can 
understand them — understanding is of no use unless you do something about it. Really, 
unless you do something about it, you have not understood them, because understanding 
must become action. If it is not becoming action then it is only acquaintance, not 
understanding. 

Try to understand this distinction. Acquaintance is not understanding. Acquaintance will 
not force you to actions. It will not force you to any change. It will not force you to do 
something about it. You will gather it in the mind; it will become information. You will 
become more knowledgeable. But at death everything stops. You go on collecting many 
things, never doing anything about them. They become just a burden on you. 
Understanding means action. 

When you understand a thing, immediately you start working on it, because if it is right 
and you feel it is right, you have to do something about it. Otherwise everything remains 
borrowed, and borrowed knowledge cannot become understanding. You can forget that it 
is borrowed — you would like to forget that it is borrowed, because to feel that it is 
borrowed means that your ego is hurt. So you go on forgetting that it is borrowed. By and 
by you start feeling that it is your own. That is very dangerous. 

I have heard an anecdote. The congregation of a church was very bored by the minister. 

A point came when the members of the church said directly to the minister, 'Now you 



have to leave.' 

The minister said, 'Give me one more chance, only one chance, and if then you say so, I 
will leave.’ 

So next Sunday the whole town gathered in the church to see what that minister was 
going to do now that only one chance was given to him. They never suspected, they 
never imagined, that such a beautiful sermon was going to be delivered on that day. They 
had never heard such a thing. 

Surprised, delighted, they enjoyed it, and when the sennon was finished they gathered 
around the minister and they said, 'You need not leave. You remain here. We have never 
heard such a thing before — never in our lives. Be here and remain here, and of course, 
with an increase in your stipend.’ 


But then one man, a very prominent member of the congregation, asked, 'Tell me one 
thing only. When you started your lecture you raised your left hand with two fingers 
raised, and when you closed your lecture you raised your right hand, again with two 
fingers raised. So what is the meaning of this symbol?' 

The minister said, 'The meaning is easy. Those fingers are symbolic of quotation marks. 
That sermon was not mine — it was borrowed.’ 

Always remember those quotation marks. It is very good to forget them, you feel good, 
but all that you know is within quotation marks; it is not your own. And you can drop 
those quotation marks only when something has become your own experience. 

These techniques are to change knowledge into experience. These techniques are to 
change acquaintance into understanding. That which belongs to a Buddha or to a Krishna 
or to a Christ, through these techniques can belong to you — that can become your own. 
And unless it becomes your own, no truth is true. It may be a grand lie, a beautiful lie, 
but no truth is true unless it becomes your experience — individually, authentically your 
own. 

Three things. First: always remember that your house is on fire. Second: don’t listen to 
the Devil. He will constantly say to you that there is no hurry. And thirdly: remember, 
acquaintance is not understanding. 

Whatsoever I am saying here will make you acquainted. 

It is needed, but it is not enough. It starts you on a journey, but it is not the end. Do 
something so that knowledge doesn’t remain knowledge, doesn’t remain as memory, but 
becomes your experience and your life. 

Now the first technique: 

EACH THING IS PERCEIVED THROUGH KNOWING. 

THE SELF SHINES IN SPACE THROUGH KNOWING. 

PERCEIVE ONE BEING AS KNOWER AND KNOWN. 

Whenever you know something, it is known through knowing. The object comes to your 
mind through the faculty of knowledge. You look at a flower. You know this is a rose 
flower. Thew rose flower is there and you are inside. Something from you comes to the 
rose flower, something from you is projected on the rose flower. Some energy moves 
from you, comes to the rose, takes its form, color and smell, and comes back and informs 



you that this is a rose flower. 

All knowledge, whatsoever you know, is revealed through the faculty of knowing. 
Knowing is your faculty. Knowledge is gathered through this faculty. But knowing 
reveals two things: the known and the knower. Whenever you are knowing a rose flower, 
your knowledge is half if you forget the knower who is knowing it. So while knowing a 
rose flower there are three things: the rose flower — the known; and the knower — you; 
and the relationship between the two — knowledge. 

So knowledge can be divided into three points: knower, known and knowing. 

Knowing is just like a bridge between two points — the subject and the object. Ordinarily 
your knowledge reveals only the known; the knower remains unrevealed. Ordinarily your 
knowledge is one-arrowed: it points to the rose but it never points to you. Unless it starts 
pointing to you, that knowledge will allow you to know about the world, but it will not 
allow you to know about yourself. 

All the techniques of meditation are to reveal the knower. George Gurdjieff used a 
particular technique just like this. He called it self-remembering. He said that whenever 
you are knowing something, always remember the knower. Don’t forget it in the object. 
Remember the subject. Just now you are listening to me. When you are listening to me, 
you can listen in two ways. One: your mind can be focused towards me — then you forget 
the listener. Then the speaker is known but the listener is forgotten. 

Gurdjieff said that while listening, know the speaker and also know the listener. Your 
knowledge must be double-arrowed, pointing to two points — the knower and the known. 
It must not only flow in one direction towards the object. It must flow simultaneously 
towards two directions — the known and the knower. This he called self-remembering. 
Looking at a flower, also remember the one who is looking. Difficult, because if you do 
try it, if you try to be aware of the knower, you will forget the rose. 

You have become so fixed to one direction that it will take time. If you become aware of 
the knower, then the known will be forgotten. If you become aware of the known, then 
the knower will be forgotten. 

But a little effort, and by and by you can be aware of both simultaneously. And when you 
become capable of being aware of both, this Gurdjieff calls self-remembering. This is one 
of the oldest techniques that Buddha used, and Gurdjieff again introduced it to the 
western world. 

Buddha called is samyak smriti — right-mindfulness. He said that your mind is not in a 
right-mindfulness if it knows only one point. It must know both. And then a miracle 
happen: if you are aware of both the known and the knower, suddenly you become the 
third — you are neither. Just by endeavoring to be aware of both the known and the 
knower, you become the third, you become a witness. A third possibility arises 
immediately — a witnessing self comes into being — because how can you know both? If 
you are the knower, then you remain fixed to one point. In self-remembering you shift 
from the fixed point of the knower. Then the knower is your mind and the known is the 
world, and you become a third point, a consciousness, a witnessing self. 

This third point cannot be transcended, and that which cannot be transcended is the 
ultimate. That which can be transcended is not worthwhile, because then it is not your 
nature — you can transcend it. 



I will try to explain it through an example. In the night you sleep and you dream. In the 
morning you wake and the dream is lost. While you are awake there is no dream; a 
different world comes into your view. You move in the streets, you work in a factory or 
in an office. Then you come back to your home, and again you fall asleep at night. Then 
this world that you knew while you were awake disappears. Then you don’t remember 
who you are. Then you don’t know whether you are black or white, poor or rich, wise or 
foolish. You don’t know anything. You don't know if you are young or old. You don't 
know if you are man or woman. All that was related with the waking consciousness 
disappears; you enter the world of dreams. You forget the waking world; it is no more. In 
the morning, again the dreaming world disappears. You come back. 

Which is real? — because while you are dreaming, the real world, the world that you 
knew when you were awake, is no more. You cannot compare. And while you are awake, 
the dreaming world is no more. You cannot compare. Which is real? Why do you call the 
dreaming world unreal? What is the criterion? 

If you say, 'Because it disappears when I am awake,’ this cannot be the criterion, because 
your waking world disappears when you are dreaming. And really, if you argue this way, 
then the dreaming world may be more real, because while you are awake you can 
remember the dream, but while you are dreaming you cannot remember the waking 
consciousness and the world around it. 

So which is more real and more deep? The dreaming world completely washes away the 
world that you call real. Your real world cannot wash away the dreaming world so 
totally; it seems more solid, more real. And what is the criterion? How to say? How to 
compare? 

Tantra says that both are unreal. Then what is real? Tantra says that the one who knows 
the dreaming world and the one who knows the waking world, he is real — because he is 
never transcended. He is never cancelled. Whether you dream or whether you are awake, 
he is there, uncanceled. 

Tantra says that the one who knows the dream, and the one who knows that now the 
dream has stopped, the one who knows the waking world, and the one who knows that 
now the waking world has disappeared, is the real. Because there is no point when it is 
not; it is always there. That which cannot be cancelled by any experience is the real. That 
which cannot be transcended, beyond which you cannot go, is your self. If you can go 
beyond it, then it was not your self. 

This method of Gurdjieffs, which he calls self-remembering, or Buddha’s method, which 
he calls right-mindfulness, or this tantra sutra, lead to one thing. They lead within you to 
a point which is neither to known nor the knower, but a witnessing self which kn ows 
both. 

This witnessing self is the ultimate, you cannot go beyond it, because now whatsoever 
you do will be witnessing. 

Beyond witnessing you cannot move. So witnessing is the ultimate substratum, the basic 
ground of consciousness. This sutra will reveal it to you. 

EACH THING IS PERCEIVED THROUGH KNOWING. 

THE SELF SHINES IN SPACE THROUGH KNOWING. 

PERCEIVE ONE BEING AS KNOWER AND KNOWN. 



If you can perceive in yourself one point which is both knower and known, then you have 
transcended object and subject both. Then you have transcended the matter and mind 
both; then you have transcended the outer and inner both. Y ou have come to a point 
where the knower and the known are one. There is no division. 

With the mind, division will remain. Only with the witnessing self, division disappears. 
With the witnessing self you cannot say who is the known and who is the knower — it is 
both. But this has to be based on experience, otherwise it becomes a philosophical 
discussion. So try it, experiment. 

You are sitting near a rose flower: look at it. The first thing to do is be totally attentive, 
give total attention to the rose, so that the whole world disappears and only the rose 
remains there — your consciousness is totally attentive to the being of the rose. If the 
attention is total then the world disappears, because the more the attention is concentrated 
on the rose, the more everything else falls away. The world disappears; only the rose 
remains. 

The rose becomes the world. 

This is the first step — to concentrate on the rose. If you cannot concentrate on the rose, it 
will be difficult to move to the knower, because then your mind is always diverted. So 
concentration becomes the first step towards meditation. Only the rose remains; the 
whole world has disappeared. Now you can move inwards; now the rose becomes the 
point from where you can move. Now see the rose, and start becoming aware of yourself 

— the knower. 

In the beginning you will miss. When you shift to the knower, the rose will drop out of 
consciousness. It will become faint, it will go away, it will become distant. Again you 
will come to the rose, and you will forget the self. This hide-and-seek play will go on, but 
if you persist, sooner or later a moment will come when suddenly you will be in between. 
The knower, the mind, and the rose will be there, and you will be just in the middle, 
looking at both. That middle point, that balancing point, is the witness. 

Once you know that, you have become both. Then the rose — the known, and the knower 

— the mind, are just two wings of you. Then the object and the subject are just two wings; 
you are the center of both. They are extensions of you. Then the world and the divine are 
both extensions of you. You have come to the very center of being. And this center is just 
a witness. 

PERCEIVE ONE BEING AS KNOWER AND KNOWN. 


Start by concentrating on something. When the concentration has come to be total, then 
try to move inwards, become mindful of yourself, and then try to balance. It will take 
time — months, even years. It depends on how intense is your effort, because it is the 
most subtle balancing to come between the two. But it happens, and when it happens you 
have reached the center of existence. In that center you are rooted, grounded, silent, 
blissful, in ecstasy, and duality is no more. This is what Hindus have called samadhi. 

This is what Jesus called the kingdom of God. 

Just understanding is verbally will not be of much help, but if you try, from the very 
beginning you will start to feel that something is happening. When you concentrate on 
the rose, the world will disappear. This is a miracle — when the whole world disappears. 



Then you come to understand that it is your attention which is basic, and wherever you 
move your attention, a world is created, and from wherever you remove your attention, 
the world drops. So you can create worlds through your attention. 

Look at it in this way. You are sitting here. If you are in love with someone, then 
suddenly only one person remains in this hall; everything else disappears, it is not there. 
What happens? Why does only one person remain when you are in love? The whole 
world drops really; it is phantom-like, shadows. 

Only one person is real, because now your mind is concentrated on one person, your 
mind is totally absorbed in one person. Everything else becomes shadow-like, a shadow 
existence — it is not real for you. 

Whenever you can concentrate, the very concentration changes the whole pattern of your 
existence, the whole pattern of your mind. Try it — on anything. You can try it on a 
Buddha statue or a flower or a tree or anything. Or just on the face of your beloved or 
your friend — just look at the face. 

It will be easy, because if you love some face it is very easy to concentrate. And really, 
those who tried to concentrate on Buddha, on Jesus, on Krishna, they were lovers; they 
loved Buddha. So it was very easy for Sariputta or for Modgalayan or for the other 
disciples to concentrate on Buddha's face. The moment they looked at Buddha's face they 
were easily flowing towards it. The love was there; they were infatuated. 

So try to find a face — any face you love will do — and just look in the eyes and 
concentrate on the face. Suddenly the whole world drops; a new dimension has opened. 
Your mind is concentrated on one thing — then that person or that thing becomes the 
whole world. 

When I say this, I mean that if your attention is total towards anything, that thing 
becomes the whole world. You create the world through your attention. Your world you 
create through your own attention. 

And when you are totally absorbed, flowing like a river towards the object, then suddenly 
start becoming aware of the original source from where this attention is flowing. The 
river is flowing; now become aware of the origin. 

In the beginning you will get lost again and again; you will shift. If you move to the 
origin, you will forget the river and the object; the sea towards which it is flowing. It will 
change: if you come to the object, you will forget the origin. It is natural, because the 
mind has become fixed to either the object or to the subject. 

That's why so many persons go into retreat. They just leave the world. Leaving the world 
basically means leaving the object, so that they can concentrate on themselves. It is easy. 
If you leave the world and close your eyes and close all your senses, you can be aware of 
yourself easily, but again that awareness is false because you have chosen one point of 
duality. This is another extreme of the same disease. 

First you were aware of the object — the known, and you were not aware of the subject — 
the knower. Now you are fixed with the knower and you have forgotten the known, but 
you remain divided in duality. And this is the old mind again in a new pattern. Nothing 
has changed. 

That's why my emphasis is not to leave the world of the objects. Don’t leave the world of 
the objects. Rather, try to become aware of both the subject and the object 
simultaneously, the outer and the inner simultaneously. 



If both are there, only then can you be balanced between them. If one is there you will get 
obsessed with it. 

Those who go to the Himalayas and close themselves, they are just like you standing in a 
reverse position. You are fixed with the objects, they are fixed with the subject. You are 
fixed with the outer, they are fixed with the inner. Neither you are free nor they, because 
you cannot be free with the one. With the one you become identified. You can be free 
only when you become aware of the two. Then you can become the third, and the third is 
the free point. With one you become identified. With two you can move, you can shift, 
you can balance, and you can come to a midpoint, an absolute midpoint. 

Buddha used to say that his path is a middle path — majjhim nikaya. It has not been really 
understood why he insisted so much on calling it the middle path. This is the reason: 
because his whole process was of mindfulness — it is the middle path. Buddha says, 

'Don’t leave the world, and don’t cling to the other world. Rather, be in between. Don’t 
leave one extreme and move to the other; just be in the middle, because in the middle 
both are not. Just in the middle you are free. Just in the middle there is no duality. You 
have come to one, and the duality has become just the extension of you — just two 
wings.’ 

Buddha’s middle path is based on this technique. 

It is beautiful. For so many reasons it is beautiful. One: it is very scientific, because only 
between two can you balance. If there is only one point, imbalance is bound to be there. 
So Buddha says that those who are worldly are imbalanced, and those who has renounced 
are again imbalanced in the other extreme. A balanced man is one who is neither in this 
extreme nor that; he lives just in the middle. You cannot call him worldly, you cannot 
call him other-worldly. He is free to move; he is not attached to any. He has come to the 
midpoint, the golden mean. 

Secondly: it is very easy to move to the other extreme — very easy. If you eat too much 
you can fast easily, but you cannot diet easily. If you talk too much you can go into 
silence very easily, but you cannot talk less. If you eat too much, it is very easy not to eat 
at all — this is another extreme. But to eat moderately, to come to a midpoint, is very 
difficult. To love a person is easy; to hate a person is easy. To be simply indifferent is 
very difficult. From one extreme you can move to the other. 

To remain in the middle is very difficult. Why? Because in the middle you have to lose 
your mind. Your mind exists in extremes. Mind means the excess. Mind is always 
extremist: either you are for or you are against. You cannot be simply neutral. Mind 
cannot exist in neutrality: it can be here or there — because mind needs the opposite. 

It needs to be opposed to something. If it is not opposed to anything it disappears. Then 
there is no functioning for it; it cannot function. 

Try this. In any way become neutral, indifferent — suddenly mind has no function. If you 
are for, you can think; if you are against, you can think. If you are neither for nor against, 
what is left to think? Buddha says that indifference is the basis of the middle path. 
UPEKSHA indifference — be indifferent to the extremes. Just try one thing: be 
indifferent to the extremes. A balancing happens. 

This balancing will give you a new dimension of feeling where you are both the knower 
and the known, the world and the other world, this and that, the body and the mind. You 
are both, and simultaneously neither — above both. A triangle has come into existence. 
You may have seen that many occult, secret societies have used the triangle as their 



symbol. The triangle is one of the oldest occult symbols just because of this — because 
the triangle has three angles. Ordinarily you have only two angles, the third is missing. It 
is not there yet, it has not evolved. The third angle is beyond both. Both belong to it, they 
are part of it, and still it is beyond and higher than both. 

If you do this experiment you will help to create a triangle within yourself. The third 
angle will arise by and by, and when it comes then you cannot be in misery. 

Once you can witness, you cannot be in misery. Misery means getting identified with 
something. 

But one subtle point has to be remembered — then you will not even get identified with 
bliss. That’s why Buddha says, 'I can say only this much — that there will be no misery. 
In samadhi, in ecstasy, there will be no misery. I cannot say that there will be bliss.’ 
Buddha says, 'I cannot say that. I can simply say there will be no misery.’ 

And he is right, because bliss means when there is no identification of any type — not 
even with bliss. This is very subtle. If you feel that you are blissful, sooner or later you 
will be in misery again. If you feel you are blissful, you are preparing to be miserable 
again. You are still getting identified with a mood. 

You feel happy: now you get identified with happiness. The moment you get identified 
with happiness, unhappiness has started. Now you will cling to it, now you will become 
afraid of the opposite, now you will expect it to remain with you constantly. You have 
created all that is needed for misery to be there and then misery will enter, and when you 
get identified with happiness, you will get identified with misery. Identification is the 
disease. 

At the third point you are not identified with anything: whatsoever comes and passes, 
comes and passes; you remain a witness, just a spectator — neutral, indifferent, 
unidentified. 


The morning comes and the sun rises and you witness it. You don’t say, 'I am the 
morning.’ Then when the noon comes, you don’t say, 'I have become the noon.’ You 
witness it. And when the sun sets and darkness comes and the night, you don’t say, 'I am 
the darkness and the night.’ You witness it. You say, 'There was morning, then there was 
noon, then there was evening and now there is night. And again there will be morning 
and the circle will go on and I am just an onlooker. I go on witnessing.’ 

If the same becomes possible with your moods — moods of the morning and moods of the 
noon and moods of the evening and the night, and they have their own circle, they go on 
moving — you become a witness. You say, 'Now happiness has come — just like a 
morning. And now night will come — the misery. The moods will go on changing around 
me, and I will remain centered in myself. I will not get attached to any mood. I will not 
cling to any mood. I will not hope for anything and I will not feel frustrated. I will simply 
witness. Whatsoever happens, I will see it. When it comes, I will see; when it goes, I will 
see.’ 

Buddha uses this many times. He says again and again that when a thought arises, look at 
it. A thought of misery, a thought of happiness arises — look at it. It comes to a climax — 
look at it. Then it starts falling down — look at it. Then it disappears — look at it. 


Arising, existing, dying, and you remain just a witness; go on looking at it. This third 
point makes you a witness, SAKSHI, and to be a witness is the highest possibility of 



consciousness. 


The second technique: 

BELOVED, 

AT THIS MOMENT 

LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM, 

BE INCLUDED. 

BELOVED, AT THIS MOMENT LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM, BE 
INCLUDED. 

This technique is a little difficult, but if you can do it, then very wonderful, beautiful. 
Sitting, don’t divide. Sitting in meditation, be inclusive of all — your body, your mind, 
your breath, your thinking, your knowing, everything. Be inclusive of all. Don’t divide, 
don’t create any fragmentation. Ordinarily we are fragmenting; we go on fragmenting. 
We say, 'The body is not me.’ There are techniques which can use that also, but this 
technique is totally different; rather, the opposite. 

Don’t divide. Don’t say, 'I am not the body.’ Don’t say, 'I am not the breath.’ Don’t say, 'I 
am not the mind.’ Just say, 'I am all’ — and be all. Don’t create any fragmentation within 
you. This is a feeling. With closed eyes include everything that exists in you. Don’t get 
yourself centered anywhere — be uncentered. The breath comes and goes, the thought 
comes and moves. The form of your body will go on changing. You have not observed 
this. 


If you sit with closed eyes, you will feel that sometimes your body is big, sometimes your 
body is small; sometimes it is very heavy, sometimes just light, as if you can fly. You can 
feel this increasing and decreasing of the form. Just close your eyes and sit and you will 
feel that sometimes the body is very big — filling the whole room; sometimes it is so 
small — just atomic. Why does this form change? As your attention changes, the fonn of 
the body changes. If you are inclusive, it will become big; if you exclude — this is not I, 
this is not I — then it will become very minute, very small, atomic. 

This sutra says: 

BELOVED, 

AT THIS MOMENT 

LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM, 

BE INCLUDED. 

Include everything in your being and don’t discard anything. Don’t say, 'This is not I,’ 
say, 'I am,’ and include everything in it. If you can do this just sitting, wonderful, 
absolutely new happenings will happen to you. Y ou will feel there is no center; in you 
there is no center. And with the center gone, there is no self, there is no ego; only 
consciousness remains — consciousness like a sky covering everything. And when it 
grows, not only your own breath will be included, not only your own fonn will be 
included; ultimately the whole universe becomes inclusive to you. 

Swami Ramteerth used this technique for his own sadhana. 



A moment came when he started saying, ' The whole world is in me, and the stars move 
in me.’ Somebody was talking to him and he said, 'It is very beautiful here in the 
Himalayas.’ Ramteerth was staying in the Himalayas, and the man said to him, 'It is very 
beautiful here in the Himalayas.’ And Ramteerth is reported to have said, 'Himalayas? 

The Himalayas are in me.’ 

The man must have thought that he was mad. How could the Himalayas be in him? But if 
you practise this meditation, you can feel that the Himalayas are in you. Let me explain 
how it is possible. 

Really, when you look at me you cannot look at the one who is here sitting in the chair. 
Really, you are looking at a picture of me which is in you, in your mind. How can you 
know me here on this chair? Your eyes carry just a picture. Not even a picture — just rays 
of light enter in your eyes. And then the eyes don’t go themselves to the mind; just rays 
passing through the eyes go inside. And your nervous system which carries those rays 
cannot carry them as rays; it transforms them into chemicals. So only chemicals travel, 
and these chemicals are decoded and you see me in your mind. 

You have never been out of your mind. The whole world that you know, you decode it in 
your mind, you know it in your mind. All the Himalayas and all the suns and the stars 
and the moons, they are there in your mind in a very subtle existence. 

If you close your eyes and feel that everything is inclusive, you will know that the whole 
world is moving within you. And once you feel this — that the whole world is moving 
within you — all your individual misery is lost. You are no more an individual. You have 
become the absolute, the non-individual. You have become the whole existence. 

This technique expands your consciousness. Now in the west, many drugs are being used 
to expand consciousness — LSD, marijuana, and other drugs. In India also, in the old 
days, they were used, because they give a false feeling of expansion. All those who use 
drugs, for them this technique will be beautiful, very helpful, because their hankering is 
for expansion. 

When you take LSD, you are no more confined in yourself, you have become inclusive of 
all. There have been cases.... One girl jumped from a seven-storey building because she 
felt that she could not die, death was impossible. She felt that she could fly, and she felt 
that there were no barriers, there was no fear. She jumped out of a seven-storey building 
and died, shattered. But in her mind, under the influence of the drug, there was no 
limitation, no death. 

Expansion of consciousness has become a fad, because when you expand you feel high. 
The whole world, by and by, becomes included in you. You become great, infinitely 
great, and with greatness, with expansion, all your individual miseries fall. 

But through LSD or marijuana or other drugs, this is only a false feeling. 

Through this technique, this feeling becomes real — really the whole world comes within 
you. There are two reasons for this. One: our individual consciousness is not really 
individual; deep down it is collective. We look like islands, but all the islands deep down 
are connected to the earth. We look like islands, different — I am conscious, you are 
conscious — but your consciousness and my consciousness somewhere deep down is one. 
It is connected to the earth, the basic ground. 

That’s why many things happen which look inexplicable. If you meditate alone it will be 
more difficult to enter into it, but if you meditate with a group it is very easy, because the 
whole group works as a unit. In meditation camps I have felt and observed that after two 



or three days your individuality is no more; you become part of a greater consciousness. 
And very subtle waves are being felt, very subtle waves start moving, and the group 
consciousness evolves. 

So when you dance, you are not really dancing, but the group consciousness is dancing; 
you are just a part of it. The rhythm is not only within you, the rhythm is also without 
you. The rhythm is all around you. In a group you are not. The superficial phenomenon 
of being islands is forgotten and the deeper phenomenon of being one is realized. 

In a group you are nearer to the divine; alone you are further away, because again you 
become concentrated on the ego, on the superficial difference, on the superficial 
separation. This technique helps, because really you are one with the universe. It is only a 
question of how to dig it or how to fall into it and realize it. 

Being with a friendly group always gives you energy. Being with someone who is 
antagonistic, you always feel that your energy has been drained out. Why? If you are 
with a friendly group, in a family, and you are sitting, relaxing, just being together, you 
feel energized, vitalized. Meeting a friend, you feel more alive than you were before. Just 
passing an enemy, you feel that you have lost some energy, you feel tired. What 
happens? 

When you are meeting a friendly sympathetic group, you forget your individuality; you 
drop down to the basic level where you can meet. When someone is antagonistic, you 
become more individual, egoistic; you cling to your ego. Because of that clinging you 
feel tired. All energy comes from the roots; all energy comes with the feeling of a 
collective being. 

In the beginning, doing this meditation you will feel a collective being arising, and then 
ultimately a cosmic consciousness arises. When all differences are lost, all boundaries 
disappear and existence remains as one piece, one unit, one whole; then everything is 
included. 

This effort to include everything starts from your own individual existence. Include. 

BELOVED, 

AT THIS MOMENT 

LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM, 

BE INCLUDED. 

The basic point is to remember inclusiveness. Don't exclude. This is the key for this sutra 
— inclusiveness, include. Include and grow. Include and expand. Try it with your body, 
and then try it with the outside world also. 

Sitting under a tree, look at the tree, then close your eyes and feel that the tree is within 
you. Look at the sky, then close your eyes and feel that the sky is within you. Look at the 
rising sun, then close your eyes and feel that the sun is rising within you. Feel more 
inclusive. 

A tremendous experience will happen to you. When you feel that the tree is within you, 
immediately you will feel more young, more fresh. And this is not imagination, because 
the tree and you both belong to the earth. You both are rooted in the same earth and 
ultimately rooted in the same existence. So when you feel that the tree is within you, the 
tree IS within you — this is not an imagination — and immediately you will feel the effect. 
The tree's aliveness, the greenery, the freshness, the breeze passing through it, will be felt 



within you in your heart. Include more and more existence and don’t exclude. 

In many ways, many world teachers have been teaching this. 

Jesus says, 'Love your enemy as yourself.’ This is an experiment in inclusiveness. Freud 
used to say, 'Why should I love my enemy as myself? He is my enemy, so why should I 
love him as myself? And how can I love?’ His question seems relevant, but he is not 
aware of why Jesus says to love your enemy as yourself. It is not for any social politics, 
not for any change in society, not to create a better society, but to give you an expanded 
feeling of being and consciousness. 

If you can include the enemy within yourself, he cannot harm you. That doesn’t mean that 
he cannot kill you: he can kill you, but he cannot hann you. The harm comes when you 
exclude him. The moment you exclude him, you become the ego, separate, alone, cut off 
from existence. If you include the enemy within you, then everything is included. When 
the enemy can be included, then why not the tree and why not the sky? 

The emphasis for the enemy is that if you can include the enemy in your being, you can 
include everything; then there is no need to exclude anything. If you feel that your enemy 
is included within you, then even your enemy will give you vitality, energy. He cannot be 
hannful to you. He can kill, you, but even while he is murdering you, he cannot harm 
you. That harm comes from your own mind when you exclude. 

But the case with us is totally diametrically opposite — even friends are not included. 

Enemies are excluded, and even friends are not included. Even your lover, your beloveds, 
are not included. While being with your lover, you are not merging in him or her. You 
remain separate, you control yourself. You don’t want to lose your identity. Because of 
this, love has become impossible. 

Unless you lose identity how can you love? You want to remain yourself, and your lover 
wants to remain himself, and no one is ready to merge, no one is ready to include. Both 
exclude, both are bracketed in themselves: there is no meeting, no merging, no 
communion. If even lovers are not included, then it is bound to be that your existence is 
the poorest possible. You are alone, poor, a beggar. With the whole existence included, 
you are the emperor. 

So remember this: make it a style of life to include. Not only meditation, but a style of 
life, a way of living. Try to include more and more. The more you include, the more you 
expand, the more your boundaries recede to the very corners of existence. One day only 
you are; the whole existence is included. This is the ultimate of all religious experience. 

BELOVED 
AT THIS MOMENT 

LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM, 

BE INCLUDED. 


THE END. 



Chapter 62: Right now is the goal 


Question 1 

YESTERDAY YOU SAID THAT ONE SHOULD HURRY TOWARDS THE GOAL 
BECAUSE WHATEVER TIME WE HAVE IS VERY LITTLE. HOWEVER, SOME 
TIME AGO YOU ALSO SAID THAT THE WHOLE PROCESS OF ATTAINING THE 
GOAL SHOULD BE AN EFFORTLESS PLAY. HOW WOULD YOU RECONCILE 
THE TWO WORDS 'HURRY' AND 'PLAY'? - BECAUSE THE ONE WHO 
HURRIES NEVER GETS THE JOY OF PLAYING. 

The first thing: don’t try to reconcile different techniques. When I say don't be in a hurry, 
forget time completely, don't be serious, don’t make any effort, surrender, be in a let-go, 
this is a different technique. This is suitable only for a part of humanity — all cannot do 
this technique — and the type of person who can do this cannot do the opposite one. 

This technique is for the feminine mind. All females are not necessarily feminine, and all 
males are not necessarily male, so when I say a feminine mind, I don’t mean females. A 
feminine mind means a mind who can surrender, who can be receptive like a womb, who 
can be open, passive. Half of the humanity can be of this type, but the other half is totally 
opposite. As man and woman are the two halves of humanity, in just the same way the 
feminine mind and the masculine mind are the two halves of the human mind. 

The feminine mind cannot make effort. If it makes effort it will never reach anywhere. 
The effort will be the undoing for it; it will only create anguish and tension and no 
achievement. 

The very working of the feminine mind is to wait and allow things to happen. 

Just like a woman: even if she is in love, she will not take the initiative. And if a woman 
takes the initiative, you have every reason to be afraid and escape, because that attitude is 
the male attitude — in the feminine body there is a masculine mind, and you will be in 
difficulty. If you are really male, immediately the woman will lose attraction. If you are 
feminine — male in the body but feminine in the mind — only then can you allow the 
woman to take initiative and you will be happy. But then physically she is a woman and 
you are a man; mentally you are feminine and she is masculine, she is male. 

A woman will wait. She will never utter the words 'I love you’ before you have uttered 
them and you have committed yourself. In the very waiting is the feminine power. The 
male mind is aggressive. It has to do something. It has to move and go and take initiative. 
The same happens on the spiritual path. If you have an aggressive mind, a male mind, 
effort is necessary. Then make hurry; then don’t lose time and opportunity. Then create 
an urgency and crisis so that you can put all your being into your effort. When your effort 
has become total you will achieve. If your mind is feminine, then there is no hurry at all. 
There is no time. 

You may or may not have observed that women have no sense of time — they cannot 
have. 

So the husband is standing outside the house and he is honking the horn and saying, 
'Come down!’ And the wife says, 'I have told you a thousand times that I am coming in 
one minute. Continuously for two hours I have been telling you that I am coming in one 
minute. So don’t get mad. Why are you honking the horn?’ 



The feminine mind cannot have a sense of time. It is the male, aggressive mind who is 
time- worried, time-conscious. They are totally different. 

The feminine is not in any hurry — there is no hurry. Really, there is nowhere to reach. 
That's why women cannot become great leaders, great scientists, great warriors — they 
cannot become. And if sometimes there are freak women, they have a male mind. For 
example, Joan of Arc, or Laxmi Bai: they are only feminine in body; the mind is not 
feminine at all. It is masculine. 

For the feminine mind there is no goal, and our world is man-oriented. So women cannot 
be really great in a man-oriented world, because greatness is related to the goal. Some 
goal has to be achieved; then you become great — and the feminine mind is not after any 
goal. Here and now she is happy. Here and now she is unhappy. There is nowhere to 
move. 

The feminine mind exists in the moment. That's why the feminine curiosity is never for 
the far-away; it is always about the neighborhood. She is not interested in what is 
happening in Vietnam. 

She is interested in what is happening in the other house — the intimate, the here. The 
man looks absurd: 'Why are you worried about what Nixon is doing or what Mao is 
doing?’ The woman is interested in the love affairs that are going on in the neighborhood. 
She is curious about the near; the far is meaningless. Time doesn’t exist. 

Time exists for those who have a goal to reach. Remember, time can exist only when you 
have to reach somewhere. If you don’t have to reach anywhere, what is the meaning of 
time? Then there is no hurry. 

Look at this situation from a different angle. The east is feminine and the west is 
masculine. The east has never been concerned much about time; the west is mad after 
time. The east has been very leisurely: moving slowly as if not moving at all; no change, 
no revolution. Such a silent evolution that it creates no noise anywhere. The west is just 
mad: every day revolution is needed, and everything has to become a revolution. Unless 
everything is changing, it seems we are not going anywhere; we have become static. If 
everything is changing and everything remains in an upheaval, then the west feels that 
something is happening. And the east thinks that if there are upheavals, it means we are 
diseased. Something is wrong; that’s why there is change. If everything is okay, there is 
no need for any revolution, for any change. 

The eastern mind is feminine. 

That’s why in the east, we have praised all the feminine qualities: compassion, love, 
sympathy, non-violence, acceptance, contentment — all feminine qualities. In the west, all 
the masculine qualities are praised: will, willpower, ego, self-esteem, independence, 
rebellion — these are the values praised there. In the east — obedience, surrender, 
acceptance. The basic attitude is feminine in the east and masculine in the west. 

These techniques are not to be compromised, are not to be in any way synthesized. The 
technique of surrender is for the feminine mind. The technique of effort, will, endeavor, 
is for the masculine mind. And they are bound to be polar opposites, so if you make any 
synthesis between the two you will create a hodge-podge — meaningless, absurd, and 
even dangerous. It will not be of use for anyone. 

So remember this. These techniques many times will look contradictory, because they are 
meant to be for different types of mind, and there is no effort to make any synthesis. So if 
you feel something is contradictory, don’t get uneasy about it — it is. And only very small 



minds become afraid of contradiction — very small minds, petty minds. They become 
uneasy, they feel a discomfort. They think everything must be non-contradictory, 
everything must be consistent. This is nonsense, because life is inconsistent. 

Life is contradictory itself, so truth cannot be uncontradictory; only lies can be 
uncontradictory, only lies can be consistent. 

Truth is bound to be inconsistent, because it has to cover everything that is in life. It has 
to be total. And life is contradictory. There is man and there is woman: what can I do and 
what can Shiva do? And man is totally the polar opposite to woman; that's why they are 
attracted. Otherwise there would be no attraction. Really, the opposite type of being, the 
difference, creates the attraction. The polar opposite becomes a magnetic force. That's 
why when man and woman meet there is happiness, because when two polar opposites 
meet they negate each other. They negate each other because they are opposites. They 
negate each other, and for a single moment when man and woman really meet — not just 
bodily, but totally; when their beings meet in love — for a single moment both disappear. 
Then there is neither man nor woman; pure existence exists — that's the bliss of it. 

The same can happen within you also, because deep analysis shows that within you also 
there is a polarity. Now modern deep psychoanalytic approaches have revealed that the 
conscious mind and the unconscious mind are polar opposites within you also. If you are 
a man, your conscious mind is masculine, your unconscious mind is feminine. If you are 
a woman, your conscious mind is feminine, your unconscious mind is masculine. The 
unconscious is the opposite of the conscious. In deep meditation there comes a deep 
orgasm, an intercourse, a love, between your conscious and unconscious — they become 
one. 

When they become one you attain to the highest bliss possible. 

So man and woman can meet in two ways. You can meet a woman outside you: then this 
meeting can be only momentary, very momentary. For a single second the peak conies, 
and then things start falling away. There is another meeting of man and woman that 
happens within you: your conscious and unconscious mind meet. When this happens, this 
meeting can be eternal. The sexual pleasure is also a glimpse of the spiritual — only 
momentary — but when the real meeting happens within, then it becomes samadhi, then it 
becomes a spiritual phenomenon. 

But you have to start from your conscious mind, so if your conscious mind is feminine, 
surrender will be helpful. And remember, being a woman is not necessarily synonymous 
with having a feminine mind. That creates the difficulty. Otherwise everything would be 
very easy: then women would follow the path of surrender and men would follow the 
path of will. But it is not so easy. There are women who have masculine minds — their 
very approach towards life is aggressive. And they are growing every day. 

The women's lib. movement will create more and more masculine women. They will be 
more and more aggressive, and the path of surrender will not be for them then. And 
because women are becoming competitive with man, man is regressing from aggression; 
he is becoming more and more feminine. 

More and more the path of surrender will be useful for man in the future. 

So you have to decide about yourself. And don't think in terms of valuation. Don't think 
that you are a man, so how can you have a feminine mind? You can have, and nothing is 
wrong in it; it is beautiful. And don’t think that you are a woman, so how can you have a 



masculine mind? Nothing is wrong in it; it is beautiful. Be authentic towards your own 
mind. Try to understand what type of mind you have, then follow the path that is for you, 
and don't try to create any synthesis. 

Don't ask me how I am going to reconcile these two. I am not going to. I am never for 
reconciliation, and I am not for non-contradictory statements. They are stupid and 
childish. Life is contradictory, and that's why life is alive. Only death is consistent and 
non-contradictory. Life lives through opposition, through encountering the opposite pole, 
and this opposition, challenge, creates energy. It releases energy, and life moves through 
it. This is what Hegelians say: a dialectical movement — thesis, antithesis, and then the 
synthesis again becomes a thesis and creates its own antithesis, and this goes on. Life is 
not monotonous. It is not logical. It is dialectical. 

You must understand the difference between logical and dialectical. The question is 
because you think life is logical, so you ask how you will reconcile, because logic always 
reconciles; logic cannot tolerate the contradictory. 

Logic cannot tolerate the contradictory. Logic has to somehow explain that it is not 
contradictory, and if it is contradictory then both cannot be true; then one must be wrong. 
Both can be wrong, but both cannot be true. Logic tries to find non-contradiction 
everywhere. 

Science is logical. That’s why science is not totally true to life, cannot be. Life is 
contradictory, illogical. It works through the opposite. It is not afraid of the opposite; it 
uses the opposite. The opposites are only apparently opposite; deep down they work 
together. It is dialectical, not logical. It is a dialogue between the opposites — a 
continuous dialogue. 

Think for a single moment: if there is no contradiction, life will be dead, because from 
where will come the challenge? From where will come the attraction? From where will 
the energy be released? It will be monotonous, dead, Life is possible only because of 
dialectics, because of the opposite. Man and woman is the basic opposition, and then the 
challenge creates the phenomenon of love. And the whole life moves around love. If your 
lover and you become so totally one that there is no gap at all, you both will be dead. 

You will not be able to exist then. You both will disappear from this dialectical process. 
You can only exist in this life if oneness is never total, and you have to move away again 
and again to come near. 

That's why lovers fight. That fight creates dialectics. The whole day they will fight. They 
will go far away from each other, they will become enemies. This means that they have 
now come to be really polar opposites; they have moved as far away as possible. The 
lover starts thinking how to kill this woman, and the woman starts thinking how to get rid 
of this man. They have moved to the very farthest comer possible. And then again in the 
evening they are making love. 

When they are far away, so far away, again the attraction comes. Again they look from 
such a faraway point that they feel attracted. Then they have become simply man and 
woman again, not lovers. Then they are man and woman, strangers. They will fall in love 
again. They will come near. A point will come when they will become one for a single 
moment, and that will be their happiness, their joy. 

But the moment they have become one, the process to go away starts again. In the very 
moment when the wife and husband are one, if they can be a witness to it, they will see 
they have started being separate again. The very moment the peak comes, the process 



starts to be different, to be separate, to be opposite. This goes on moving — again and 
again you come near and go away. 

This is what I mean — life creates energy through polarities. Without polarities life 
cannot exist. If two lovers really become one, they disappear from life. 

They are liberated really. They will have no rebirth again; there will be no life in future. 

If two lovers can become so totally one, their love has become the deepest meditation 
possible. They have achieved what Buddha achieved under the Bodhi tree. They have 
achieved what Jesus achieved on the cross. They have achieved non-duality. Now they 
cannot exist. 

Existence as we know it is dual, dialectical, and these techniques are for you who exist in 
duality. So there will be many contradictions, because these techniques are not 
philosophy; these techniques are meant to be done and lived. They are not mathematical 
formulas; they are actual life processes. They are dialectical, they are contradictory. So 
don't ask me to reconcile them. They are not the same, they are opposite. 

Try to find out what is your type. Can you relax? Can you let go? Can you be in a passive 
moment, not doing anything? — then all the techniques which require will are not for you. 
If you cannot relax, and if I say to you to relax and you immediately ask me how to relax, 
that 'how' shows your mind. That 'how' shows that you cannot relax without making an 
effort. Even for relaxation you need some effort, so you ask 'how;. Relaxation is 
relaxation; there is no 'how' to it. If you can relax, you know how to relax. You simply 
relax. There is no effort, no method. 

Just as in the night, you go to sleep. 

You never ask how to go to sleep. But there are persons who have insomnia. If you say to 
them, 'I just put my head on the pillow, and it’s okay, I am asleep,’ they cannot believe 
you. And their suspicion is meaningful. They cannot believe you; you are deceiving — 
because they also put their head on the pillow. They go on putting their head the whole 
night — nothing happens. 

They are going to ask how — how to put the head on the pillow? There must be a secret 
which you are not telling them. You are deceiving; the whole world is deceiving them. 
Everybody says, 'We just go to sleep. There is no 'how' to it. There is no technology.' 
They cannot believe you, and you cannot blame them. You say, 'We simply put down our 
heads, close our eyes, put off the light, and we are asleep.’ 

They also do the same procedure, they do the same ritual, and they do it more correctly 
than you have ever done, but nothing happens. The light is off, they have closed eyes, 
lying on their bed — nothing is happening. Once you lose the capacity to relax, then 
technique is needed. Then they need technique; then without technique they will not be 
able to sleep. 

So if you have a mind which can relax, then surrender is for you. And don’t create any 
problems — then simply surrender. At least half of you can do this. You may not be 
aware, but fifty percent is the possibility, because masculine and feminine minds exist in 
a proportion. 

They are always fifty-fifty, almost fifty-fifty, in every realm, because a man cannot exist 
without a woman opposing him. There is a deep balance in nature. 

Do you know? — one hundred and fifteen boys are bom to one hundred girls, because 
boys are weaker than girls — so by the time they are sexually mature fifteen boys will 



have died. One hundred and fifteen boys are bom for every one hundred girls. Girls are 
stronger: they have more stamina, more resistance. Boys are weak, they don’t have so 
much resistance, so one hundred and fifteen boys are born for one hundred girls. Then 
fifteen boys die. The moment they become sexually mature, by the age of fourteen, the 
number will be the same. For each man a woman exists, for each woman a man exists, 
because there is an inner tension. They cannot exist without it; that polar opposite is 
needed. 

And similar is the case with the inner mind also. The existence, the nature, needs a 
balance, so half of you are feminine and can be deeply in surrender very easily. But you 
can create problems for yourself. You may feel that you can surrender, but you think, 
'How can I surrender?’ You feel that your ego may be hurt. You become afraid of 
surrendering, because it has been taught to you: 'Be independent. Remain independent. 
Don’t lose yourself. Don’t give your control to someone else. Always be in control.’ 

This has been taught; these are taught difficulties. 

So you can feel that you can surrender, but then other problems arise which have been 
given to you by society, culture and education. And they create problems. If you really 
feel that surrender is not for you, then forget it. It is not to be worried about. Then put all 
your energy in effort. 

So these are the two extremes. One: if you are a really feminine mind, you have nowhere 
to go. There is no goal, no God to be achieved, no future heaven — nothing. Don’t be in 
any hurry now, remain true to the moment, and all that can be achieved by the male mind 
through hurry, effort, you will achieve here and now without any effort. Right now you 
are at the goal, if you can relax. 

The male mind will have to run round about and round about until it is tired completely, 
and then it falls down; only then it can relax. Aggression, effort, endeavor, are necessary 
for the male mind to be exhausted. When that exhaustion happens, then it is possible for 
it to relax and to surrender. That surrender will come only in the end; for the feminine 
mind it is always in the beginning. You reach the same happening but the ways of 
reaching are different. 

So when I said yesterday, 'Don’t waste time,’ I said it to the male mind. If I said be in a 
hurry and create such an emergency that your total energy and being becomes pinpointed, 
concentrated, and only in that concentrated effort your life will become a flame, this is 
for the male mind, the masculine mind. 

For the feminine mind, relax and you are already a flame. 

Because of this, you have Mahavir, you have Buddha, you have Jesus, Krishna, Ram, 
Zarathustra, Moses, but you don’t have a similar list of women. Not because women have 
not achieved such a state of mind. They have achieved, but their ways are different. And 
this whole history has been recorded by man, and man can understand only the masculine 
mind. Man cannot understand the feminine mind. That’s the problem. It is really very 
difficult. 

A man cannot understand that a woman, just by being a simple housewife, can achieve 
something which a Buddha achieves with so much difficulty, so arduously. A man cannot 
conceive, it is impossible for him to conceive that a woman can achieve just by being a 
housewife: living moment to moment, enjoying moment to moment, just near and here 
and now, and not bothering about anything else — no goal, no spirituality; just loving the 
children, loving the husband, just being an ordinary woman, but blissful. No need to 



make such arduous effort as a Mahavir is making — twelve years of long arduous effort. 
But man will appreciate Mahavir, because he can appreciate effort. 

If you achieve a goal without the effort, for man it is not worth it. He cannot appreciate it. 
He can appreciate someone, a Tensing, a Hillary, reaching the Everest — not because 
Everest is worth it, but because so much effort is needed and it is so dangerous. 

And if you say that you are already on the Everest he will laugh, because Everest is not 
meaningful — the effort to reach it is meaningful. The moment Everest becomes easy to 
reach, for the masculine mind all attraction is lost. There is nothing to be achieved on the 
Everest. When Hillary and Tensing reached there, nothing was there to be achieved, but 
the masculine mind feels such a glory. 

When Hillary reached, I was in a university; all the professors were just thrilled. I asked 
one woman professor, 'What do you say about Hillary and Tensing who have reached 
Everest?’ 

She said, 'I cannot understand why there is so much fuss about it. What is the point? 

What have they gained by reaching there? Even reaching to the market, to a shop, would 
have been better.’ 

For the feminine mind it is useless. Going to the moon? — why such danger? There is no 
necessity. But for the masculine mind, it is not the goal. Really, the effort is the thing, 
because then he proves that he is masculine. They very effort, the very aggression, and 
the very possibility of death, gives him the thrill. 

Danger is very appealing to the masculine mind. For the feminine mind it has no appeal 
at all. Because of this, human history is really half-recorded. The other half has been 
totally unrecorded, left unrecorded. We don’t know how many woman became Buddhas; 
it is impossible to know, because our measurement, our criterion, cannot be applied to the 
feminine mind. 


So first decide about your own mind. First meditate about your own mind — what type of 
mind you have got — then forget all those methods which don’t belong to you. And don’t 
try to reconcile them. 

Question 2 

YOU HAVE SAID, 'LEARN TO INCLUDE MORE AND MORE OF EXISTENCE 
INTO YOUR BEING. DRAW ENERGY FROM THE ROOT SOURCE OF ALL 
EXISTENCE. BE INCLUSIVE EVEN OF YOUR ENEMY.’ HOW CAN I BE 
INCLUSIVE OF MY ENEMY WHILE AT THE SAME TIME GOING FULLY INTO 
THE EMOTION OF HATRED? DOES THIS NOT LEAD TO SUPPRESSION? 

I have said to be inclusive even of your enemy, but I have not said to start from the 
enemy. Start from the friend. As you are right now, you are not even inclusive of the 
friend. Start from the friend. Even that is difficult — to include the friend into your being, 
to allow him to enter in you and penetrate you, to be open to him, vulnerable. Start from 
the friend. Start from the lover, the beloved. Don’t jump to the enemy. 

And why do you jump to the enemy? — because then you can say, 'It is impossible, it 
cannot be done,’ so you can discard it. Start from the first step. You start from the last. 
How can the journey become possible? You always start from the last step. The first has 
not been taken yet, so the last is only in the imagination. And you feel it is impossible. Of 
course, it is impossible. How can you start from the end? The enemy is the last point to 



be included. 


If you can include your friend it becomes possible, because only friends become enemies. 
You cannot make someone an enemy without making him first your friend. Or can you? 
Friendship will be needed first if you want to make someone your enemy. Friendship will 
be the first step. 

Buddha is reported to have said, 'Don't make friends, because that is the first step 
towards making enemies.’ Buddha says, 'Be friendly; don’t make friends. If you make 
friends you have already taken the first step; now it is not very far from when you will 
make the enemy.’ 

Include the friend. Start from the near, begin from the beginning. Only then is it possible. 
You don’t feel any difficulty. When you have to include the friend and be inclusive of the 
friend, it is difficult, because it is not a question of the friend or the enemy. It is a 
question of your opening. Even for the friend you are closed; even with the friend you 
remain guarded; even with the friend you have not revealed your being totally, so how 
can you include him? 

You can include him only when there is no fear, when you are not afraid, when you can 
allow him to move within you, and you are not making any security arrangements. Even 
with the beloved you are closed; you have not opened your mind. Still there are a few 
things which are secret, private. If you have privacy you cannot be open, you cannot be 
inclusive, because then the privacy can be known, then your secrets can become public. 

It is not easy to include even a friend, so don’t think it is difficult to include an enemy — it 
is impossible right now. 

That’s why Jesus' teaching became impossible, and Christians became pseudo. They had 
to, because Jesus says, 'Love your enemies,’ and you are not even capable of loving your 
friends. He gives you an impossible goal. You are bound to become hypocrites, pseudo; 
you will not be authentic. You will talk about loving — loving your enemies — and you 
will hate your friends. I am not saying that. 

So the first thing: don’t think of the enemy right now. That’s a trick of your mind. Think 
of the friend. The second thing: the question is not to include someone; the question is to 
be inclusive. That’s a quality of your consciousness. Create the inclusiveness, create the 
quality. 

How can you create the quality? — for that is the technique. You are sitting near a tree. 
Look at the tree. It is outside you, but if it is really outside you, you cannot know it. 
Something of it has already travelled within you; that’s how you can know the tree is 
there. It is green. But do you know that the green exists in you, not in the tree? When you 
close your eyes, the tree is not green. 

Now scientists say this — that the color is given by you. Everything in nature is colorless; 
there exists no color. Color comes into being when rays travelling from a particular 
object meet your eye. 

Then the color is created. So color is given by your eye. It is a meeting of the tree and 
you where green-ness happens. The flowers are there in bloom: the scent comes to you, 
and you smell it. But that fragrance also is given by you; it is not in nature. Only waves 
are coming towards you which you translate as smell. It is your nose which smells it. If 
you are not there, there will be no smell. 



There have been philosophers like Berkeley or Nagarjuna, Shankara, who say the world 
is unreal, it exists in your mind, because whatsoever we know about the world is really 
given by us. Because of this, Immanuel Kant, a German thinker and philosopher, says 
that the thing-in-itself cannot be known. Whatsoever we know is not the thing; it is our 
projection. 

Your face looks beautiful to me. Your face is neither beautiful nor ugly; it is my attitude. 
It is I who make you beautiful or ugly. It depends on me: it is my feeling. If you are alone 
in the world and there is no one to say that you are ugly or beautiful, you will not be 
either. Or will you be? If you are alone on the earth, will you be beautiful or ugly? Will 
you be intelligent or foolish? You will be nothing. Really you cannot exist alone on the 
earth. You cannot be. 

If you are sitting near a tree, meditate. Open your eyes and look at the tree, and then close 
your eyes and look at the tree within. If you try it — again open the eyes, meditate on the 
tree and then close the eyes and look at the tree within — in the beginning the tree within 
will be a faint shadow of the tree without, but if you go on continuing, by and by it will 
come to have the same reality and being as the tree without. 


And if you continue and persist, which is difficult, a moment comes when the outer tree 
becomes just a shadow of the inner. The inner becomes more beautiful, more alive, 
because now your inner consciousness is the soil for it. Now it is rooted in the inner 
consciousness. Now it is feeling on the consciousness, really. It is something rare. 

So when Jesus or people like Jesus talk about the kingdom of God, they talk in such 
colorful language that we think that either they are mad, or just in hallucination. They are 
neither. They have learned how to include existence. Their own inner consciousness has 
become now a life-giving phenomenon. Now whatsoever is planted within becomes 
alive. It is more colorful, more fragrant, more vital — as if it doesn’t belong to this world, 
this mundane world; it belongs to some other world. Poets know this a little. Mystics 
know it very deeply, but poets also know it a little. They have a glimpse. They can feel 
the world included in them. 

Try it — to be inclusive. This is what I mean when I say to be inclusive: let the tree go in 
and be rooted there. Let the flower go in and allow it to flower there. You cannot believe 
it, because there is no way unless you experience it. Concentrate on a bud, a bud of a rose 
flower. Concentrate on it, go on concentrating on it, and allow it to be transferred to the 
inner. 

And when really your inner experience of the bud has become so real that the outer, the 
real bud, the so-called real bud, appears to be just a shadow of it — the real idea is now 
inside, the real essence is inside, and the outer is just a faint copy — when you have come 
to this point, close your eyes and concentrate on the inner bud. 

You will be amazed, because the inner bud will start opening. It will become a flower, 
and such a flower that you have not known. And you cannot meet that flower outside. 
Now this is a rare phenomenon when something starts growing within you, opening, 
blooming. 

In this way be inclusive, and then by and by allow your boundaries to expand. Include 
your lovers, your friends, your family, include strangers, and then by and by you will be 
able to include the enemy. That will be the last point. And when you can include the 
enemy and you can allow him to enter in you and be rooted there and become part of 



your consciousness, then nothing is inimical to you. Then the whole world has become 
your home. Then nothing is strange, no one is alien, and you are at ease in it. 

But be aware of the cunning mind. The mind will always say to you something which 
you cannot do, and when you cannot do it, the mind will say, 'These are absurd things. 
Leave them.’ The mind will set a target which cannot be reached. Always remember that, 
and don’t be a victim of your own mind. Always start from somewhere which is possible; 
don’t jump to the impossible. If you can grow in the possible, the impossible is only the 
other end of it. It is not opposite to it; it is only the other end. It is the same spectrum — 
the other end of the spectrum. 

Question 1 

ONE QUESTION MORE IS INCLUDED IN IT: HOW CAN I BE INCLUSIVE OF MY 
ENEMY WHILE AT THE SAME TIME GOING FULLY INTO THE EMOTION OF 
HATRED? DOES THIS NOT LEAD TO SUPPRESSION? 

This is a subtle point to be understood deeply. 

While you hate, I don’t say suppress it, because whatsoever is suppressed is dangerous. 
And if you suppress something you cannot be open ever. Then you create a private world 
which will not allow you to include others. You will always be afraid of this which you 
have suppressed, because any moment this can come out. So first thing: don’t suppress 
anger, hatred, or anything. But there is no need to express it on someone. 

You express it on someone because you feel the other is responsible — that is wrong. The 
other is not responsible; only you are responsible. You feel hate because you are hateful, 
and the other only gives you an opportunity, nothing else. If you come and abuse me, you 
simply give me an opportunity to bring out whatsoever is in me. If there is hate, hate 
comes out. If there is love, then love will come out. If there is compassion, then 
compassion will come out. You are just an opportunity for me to be revealed. 

If hate comes out, don’t feel that the other is responsible. He is just instrumental. We have 
a beautiful word in Sanskrit for it — ninnit — instrumental. He is not the cause; the cause 
is always within. He is just the instrument to bring the cause out. So just be thankful to 
him — be thankful that he makes you aware of your own hidden hate. He is a friend. You 
convert him into an enemy because you impose all responsibility on him. You think that 
he is creating the hatred. 

No one can create anything in you, remember that forever. 

If you go to Buddha and abuse him, he is not going to hate you, he is not going to be 
angry with you. Whatsoever you do, you cannot make him angry. Not because your effort 
is less, but because the anger is not there; you cannot bring it out. The other is not the 
source of hate, so don’t throw it on him. Just be thankful to him, be grateful to him, and 
the hate that is within you, throw it out unto the sky. The first thing. 

The second thing: be inclusive about hate also. That’s a deeper realm, a deeper 
dimension. Be inclusive of hate also. 

What do I mean when I say this? Whenever there is something bad, whenever something 
which you call bad, evil, happens, you never include it in yourself. Whenever something 
good happens, you include it. If you are loving, you say, 'I am love.’ When you hate, you 
never say, 'I am hate.’ When you have compassion, you say, 'I am compassion.’ When 
you are angry, you never say, 'I am anger.’ You always say, 'I am angry’ — as if anger has 



happened to you; as if you are not anger — it is just a happening from outside, something 
accidental. And when you say, 'I am love,' it seems something essential; not something 
accidental that has happened to you, not something that has come from without. It is 
coming from within. 

Whatsoever is good, you include it. And whatsoever is bad, you don't include it. 

Be inclusive of the bad also. Because you are hate, you are anger, and unless you feel this 
deeply — that 'I am hate’ — you will never go beyond it. 

If you can feel, 'I am anger,’ a subtle process of transformation sets in immediately. What 
happens when you say, 'I am anger’? Many things happen. First: when you say, 'I am 
angry,’ you are different from the energy you call anger. This is not true, and from an 
untrue base nothing true can happen. This is not true — this anger is you; this is your 
energy. It is not something separate from you. 

You separate it because you create a false image of yourself — that you are never angry, 
that you are never hateful, that you are always loving, that you are always kind and 
sympathetic. You have created a false image of yourself. This false image is your ego. 
This ego goes on saying to you, 'Cut anger, cut hate, they are not good.’ Not because you 
know they are not good, but because they don’t give you the image; they don’t feed your 
ego and your image. 

You are a good man, respectable, nice, cultured — you have an image. Sometimes you 
fall down from the image — those are accidents. You regain your image again. Those are 
not accidents. Really, they are more true about you. When you are angry, your true self is 
revealed more truly than when you are smiling falsely. When you show your hate, you 
are more authentic than when you pretend love. 


The first thing is to be authentic, true. Include hate, include anger, include everything that 
is in you. What will happen? If you include everything, your false image will fall forever, 
and that’s very good. That’s just beautiful that you are relieved of the false image, because 
it goes on creating complexities. With the image falling your ego will fall, which is a 
door to spirituality. 

When you say, 'I am anger,’ how can you have your ego? When you say, 'I am hate, I am 
jealousy, I am cruelty. I am violence,’ how can you have the ego? The ego can be had 
easily when you say, 'I am Brahma. I am the supreme God.’ Then it is easy. 'I am atma, 
the supreme self — then it is easy. But when you say, 'I am jealousy, hate, anger, passion, 
sex,’ you cannot have the ego. With the false image the ego falls; you become true, 
natural. Then it is possible to understand your reality. Then you can approach your anger 
without any anti-attitude. It is you. You have to understand that it is your energy. 

And if you can be understanding about your anger, the very understanding changes and 
transforms it. If you can understand the whole process of anger and hate, in the very 
process of understanding it disappears, because a basic ingredient to be angry and to be 
hateful is to be ignorant about it, to be unaware about it, to be unalert about it. So 
whenever you are not alert, you can be angry. 

When you are alert, you cannot be angry. The alertness absorbs all energy which 
becomes anger. 

Buddha has said again and again to his monks, 'I don’t say not to be angry. I say while 
you are angry, be alert.’ This is really one of the fundamentals for mutation. 'I don’t say 



not to be angry. I say: while angry, be alert.' Try it. When anger comes, be alert. Look at 
it. Observe it. Be conscious of it. Don’t be sleepy. And the more alert you are, the less 
anger. In a moment when you are really alert, anger is not — the same energy becomes 
alertness. 

Energy is neutral. The same energy becomes anger. The same energy becomes hate. The 
same energy becomes love. The same energy becomes compassion. The energy is one; 
these are all expressions. And there are basic situations in which energy can become a 
particular mood. If you are unalert, energy can become anger, energy can become sex, 
energy can become violence. If you are alert, it cannot become — the alertness, 
awareness, consciousness, doesn't allow it to move in those grooves. It moves on a 
different plane — the same energy. 

Buddha says, 'Walk, eat, sit. Whatsoever you do, do, but do fully conscious, mindful, 
aware that you are doing it.’ 

Once it happened that Buddha was walking and a fly came and sat on his head, on his 
forehead. He was talking to some monks, so without really paying any attention to the 
fly, he just waved his hand and the fly left his forehead. 

Then he became aware that he had done something not fully aware, because his 
awareness was towards the monks to whom he was talking, so he said to the monks, 
'Excuse me for a single minute.’ He closed his eyes and he raised his hand again. The 
monks were amazed at what he was doing, because now there was no fly. He raised his 
hand again and waved his hand near the spot where the fly was — it was not there now. 

He brought his hand back and then he opened his eyes and said, 'You can ask now.’ 

But those monks said, 'We have forgotten what we were asking. Now we want to ask you 
what you did. There was no fly — it was there previously — so what did you do?’ 

Buddha said, 'I did as I should have done before — fully consciously raising the hand. It 
was not good of me. Something had been done unconsciously, automatically, robot-like.’ 
Such alertness cannot become anger, such alertness cannot become hate — impossible. So 
first include hate, anger, all that is thought to be bad. Include it in yourself, include it in 
your image, so that your ego falls down. You come down on the ground from the sky. 
You become true. 

Then don’t throw it on someone else. Let it be there; express it to the sky. Be fully alert. 

If you are angry, move in a room, be alone, and be angry and express your anger — and 
be alert. Do whatsoever you would have done with the person who was instrumental. 

You can take his picture there, or just put a pillow there and say, 'You are my father,’ and 
give a good beating. Be fully alert. Be fully alert about what you are doing, and do it. 

It will be a deep realization. The anger will be expressed, and you will be alert. And you 
will be able to laugh; you will be able to know what stupid things you are doing. But you 
could have done this to your real father — you are only doing it to the pillow. And if you 
really do it authentically, you will feel very kindly, very loving towards your father. 

When you come out of the room and when you look at your father's face you will feel 
very sympathetic, very loving. You would even like to ask him to forgive you. 

This is what I mean by being inclusive. No suppression is meant. Suppression is always 
dangerous, poisonous. With whatsoever you suppress, you are creating inner complexes 
which will continue and which will make you ultimately mad. Suppression is bound to 
become madness. Express, but don’t express on anyone. There is no need. That is stupid, 
and creates a vicious circle. Express alone meditatively, and be alert while expressing. 



THE END. 



Chapter 63: No map to follow 


TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER, 

LIGHTNESS BETWEEN THEM OPENS INTO HEART 
AND THERE PERMEATES THE COSMOS. 

KIND DEVI, 

ENTER ETHERIC PRESENCE 

PERVADING FAR ABOVE AND BELOW YOUR FORM. 

Once it happened in a church that after a very long dry sermon, the minister announced 
that there would be a meeting, a brief meeting of the board, right after the benediction. 
After the services a stranger approached the minister; he was the first man. The minister 
thought, 'There has been some misunderstanding,’ because the man was absolutely a 
stranger. He didn’t even look like a Christian; his appearance was that of a Mohammedan, 
so the minister said, 'It seems you have misunderstood the announcement. There is going 
to be a meeting of the board.’ 

The stranger said, 'So I have also heard — and if there was someone here more bored than 
me then I would like to meet him.’ 

But this seems to be the situation of everyone. Look at people's faces, or at your own face 
in a mirror, and you will feel you are the most bored, and it seems impossible that there 
can be someone else who is more bored than you. The whole life seems to be a long 
boredom — dry, dreary, meaningless; somehow you are carrying it as a burden. 

Why has this happened? Life is not meant to be a boredom. Life is not meant to be a 
suffering. 

Life is a festival, a celebration, a peak of joy — but that is only in poetry, in dreams, in 
philosophies. Sometimes a Buddha, a Krishna, appears to be in a deep celebration, but 
they look like exceptions. Really, unbelievable; not readjust ideal. It seems they never 
happen. They are our wish-fulfillments, myths, dreams and hopes, but not realities. The 
reality seems to be our face — bored, in anguish, and with suffering impressed on it — and 
the whole life is just a 'carrying on anyhow’. 

Why has this happened? And this must not be the basic reality of life, this cannot be, 
because this happens only to man. The trees, the stars, the animals, the birds... nowhere 
else does it happen. Except for man, no one is bored. And even if sometimes pain 
happens, it is momentary; it never becomes an anguish. It never becomes a constant 
obsession; it is not always on the mind. It is a momentary thing, an accident; it is not 
carried over. 

Animals can be in pain, but they are not in suffering. Pain looks like an accident; they get 
over it. They don’t carry it. It doesn’t become a wound. It is forgotten and forgiven. It 
goes into the past; it never becomes a part of the future. When pain becomes a constant 
thing, a wound, not an accident but a reality, essential, as if you cannot exist without it, 
then it becomes a problem — and that problem has arisen only for the human mind. 


Trees are not in suffering. There seems to be no anguish. Not that death doesn't occur to 
them; death occurs, but it is not a problem. Not that painful experiences are not there; 



they are there, but they don't become life itself. Just on the periphery they happen and 
disappear. Deep down in the inner core, life remains celebrating. 

A tree goes on celebrating. Death will happen, but it happens only once. It is not carried 
over constantly. Except for man, everything is in a festive mood. Only man is bored — 
boredom is a human phenomenon. What has gone wrong? Something must have gone 
wrong. 

In a way this can be a good sign also. Boredom is human. You can define the human 
being through boredom. Aristotle has defined the human being as rational. That may not 
be exactly true; it is not a hundred percent true, because the difference is only of degree. 
Animals are also rational — less rational, but not absolutely irrational. There are animals 
which are just below the human mind. They too are rational in their own way; not as 
much as man, but not completely devoid of reason. The difference is only of degrees, and 
man cannot be defined by reason alone. But through boredom you can define him: he's 
the only bored animal. 

And this boredom can come to such a climax that man can commit suicide. Only man can 
commit suicide; no animal commits suicide. That is an absolutely human phenomenon. 

When boredom comes to such a point that even hope becomes impossible, then you drop 
dead by yourself, because then there is no sense in carrying all this. You can carry this 
boredom, this pain, because somewhere the tomorrow is yet hopeful. This is bad today, 
but tomorrow something will happen. Because of that hope you go on carrying. 

I have heard, once it happened one Chinese emperor sentenced his prime minister to 
death. The day the prime minister was to be hanged, the emperor came to see him to say 
a good-bye. He had been his devoted servant for many many years, but he had done 
something which irritated the emperor so much that he had sentenced him to death. But 
remembering that this was going be the last day, the emperor came to meet him. 

When the emperor came, he saw the prime minister weeping, and tears were rolling down 
from his eyes. He couldn't imagine that death could be the cause, because he was a brave 
man, so he asked, 'It is impossible to imagine that you are weeping because you are 
going to die this evening. It is impossible to conceive. You are a brave man, and I have 
known your bravery so many times, so it must be something else. What is it? If I can do 
something I will do it.’ 

The prime minister said, 'Now nothing can be done and it is of no use to say to you, but 
if you insist, then I am still your servant — I will obey you and tell you.’ 


The emperor insisted, so the prime minister said, 'It is not my death, because that is not 
of much importance — man has to die one day; any day death will be — but I am weeping 
because I have seen your horse standing outside.’ 

The emperor asked, 'Because of the horse? Why?’ 

The prime minister said, 'I was looking for my whole life for this type of horse, because I 
have learned one ancient secret — that I can teach horses to fly — but only of a particular 
type. This is the type, and this is my last day. I am not worried about my death, but just 
that one ancient art will be lost with me. That’s why I am weeping.’ 

The emperor was thrilled, excited — if the horse could fly, this would be something — so 
he said, 'How many days will it take?’ 

The prime minister said, 'At least one year — and then this horse will start flying.’ 

So the emperor said, 'Okay, for one year I will make you free, but remember, if in one 



year the horse is not flying, you will be again sentenced and hanged. But if the horse is 
flying, you will be forgiven. And not only forgiven, I will give you half of my kingdom, 
because I will be the first emperor in history who has a flying horse. So come out of the 
jail and don’t weep.’ 

The prime minister rode, happy and laughing, on the horse to his house. But the wife was 
still weeping and crying and she said, 'I have heard, the news has reached before you — 
but one year only? And I know you know no art, and this horse cannot fly. 

This is just a trick, a deception, so if you could ask for one year why couldn’t you ask for 
ten years?' 

The prime minister said, 'That would be too much. As it is, it is already too much. The 
horse flying is already too much. Then asking for ten years would have been obviously a 
trick. But don't weep.’ 

But the wife said, 'It makes me still more sad that now I will be living with you and after 
one year you will be hanged. This one year is going to be a suffering.’ 

The prime minister said, 'Now I will tell you one ancient secret you don’t know. In this 
one year the king can die, the horse can die, I can die. Or, who knows? — the horse can 
learn to fly! One year!’ 

Just hope — and man lives through hope because he is so bored. When boredom comes to 
a point where you cannot hope, when hopelessness is absolute, you commit suicide. 
Boredom and suicide are both human. No animal can commit suicide, no tree can commit 
suicide. 

Why has this happened? What is the reason behind it? Has man forgotten completely 
how to live, how to celebrate, how to be festive? While the whole existence is festive, 
how has man retreated out of it and created a sad milieu around him? 

It has happened. Animals live through instinct; they don’t live through awareness. They 
live through instinct, mechanically. Nothing has to be learned. They are bom with 
whatsoever they need to know. 

Their life runs on a smooth instinctive plane; there is no learning. They have an inbuilt 
program, a blueprint in their cells, for all that they need to live and be happy, so they go 
on living mechanically. 

Man has lost instinct; now there is no blueprint to live. You are born without any 
blueprint, without any inbuilt program. No mechanical lines are available for you to 
move on. You have to create your own path. You have to substitute instinct with 
something which is not instinct, because instinct has dropped. You have to substitute 
your instinct with intelligence, with awareness. You cannot live mechanically. You have 
gone beyond that stage where mechanical life is possible — it is not possible for you. You 
cannot live like animals and you don’t know how t live in some other way — this is the 
problem. 

You don’t have a natural inbuilt program to follow. Without a program you have to face 
existence. And boredom, suffering, is bound to be your destiny if you cannot create such 
awareness that you can live through awareness rather than living through instinct. You 
have to learn everything. This is the problem. No animal needs to learn anything. You 
have to learn everything, and unless you learn it, you cannot live it. You have to learn 
how to live. No animal needs it. 

This learning is the problem. You learn many things: you learn how to earn money, you 
learn mathematics, you leam history, you learn science, but you never learn how to live. 



That is creating the boredom. The whole of humanity is bored because a basic thing 
remains untouched. And it cannot be left to instinct, because there are now no instincts to 
live. For man, instinct has dropped; that door is closed. You have to build your own 
program. You are born without a map. 

This is good, because existence thinks you are so responsible you will create your own 
map. This is a glory. This is magnificent. This makes man the highest, the peak of 
existence, because existence leaves you free. No animal is free: he has to live and follow 
a particular program that existence gives to him. When he is bom, he is born with a 
program — he has to follow it. He cannot go astray, he cannot choose. There are no 
alternatives given to him. For man, all alternatives are open, and with no map to move 
with. 

If you don't leam how to live, your life will become a dreary affair. This has happened. 
Then you can go on doing many things and still you will feel you are not alive — dead. 
Deep down something is dead, not alive. You go on doing things because you have to. 
Just to live you go on doing things, but that 'just to live’ is not life. There is no dance in 
it, no song in it. It has become a business. There is no play in it, and obviously you 
cannot enjoy it. These techniques of tantra are to teach you how to live. They are to teach 
you not to depend on animal instinct, because it is no more there. 

It has become so faint it cannot work for you, it cannot function. 

It has been noted, observed, that if a human child is brought up without the mother, he 
will never be able to learn love, he will never be able to love. For his whole life he will 
remain without love, because now there is no instinct; he has to learn it. Even love has to 
be learned. A human child who is brought up without love cannot learn it. He will not be 
able to love. If a mother is not there, and if a mother doesn’t become a source of 
happiness, of ecstasy, then no woman can become a source of happiness and ecstasy for 
that child. When he becomes mature, grown-up, he will not be attracted to women, 
because now instinct is not functioning. 

This will not happen to animals: in the right moment they will start functioning. They 
will become sexual; they will move towards the opposite sex — that is instinctive, 
mechanical. With man nothing is mechanical. If you don’t teach a human child language, 
he will not leam it. If you don’t teach it, he is not going to have it. It is not natural; there 
is no instinct for it. Whatsoever you are is because of your learning. Man is less nature 
and more culture. Animals are simply nature. 

Man is less natural and more cultural, but one dimension, the basic and the most 
foundational, remains uncultured — that is the dimension of being alive. You take it as if 
you already have it; it is taken for granted — that is wrong. 

You don’t know how to live, because just to breathe is not synonymous with living. Just 
to eat and sleep and just carry on the bodily affairs is not synonymous with living. You 
are existing, that’s right, but you re not alive. 

A Buddha is alive, not simply existing. That aliveness can come only if you leam it, if 
you become aware of it, and if you search for it and if you create situations in which it 
can evolve. Remember this: for man, mechanical evolution is not. Conscious evolution 
has taken place, and now you cannot do anything about it — you have to move into 
conscious evolution. You cannot fall back. You can stick where you are — then you will 
get bored. 

That’s what is happening. You are not moving. You go on accumulating physical things, 



so things are moving, not you. Your riches go on accumulating, they are growing — your 
ha nk balance is growing, not you. You are not increasing at all. On the contrary, you may 
be shrinking, decreasing, but you are not increasing. Unless you do something 
consciously, you are lost. A conscious effort is needed. It is not asked from the animals 
because they are not responsible. So you have to understand one very basic thing: with 
freedom comes responsibility. And you can be free only if you are responsible. 

Animals are not responsible, but they are also not free. They are not free; they have to 
follow a particular pattern. 

They are happy because nothing can go wrong. They are following a predetermined 
course: they are following a pattern which has been worked out in millennia, in centuries 
of evolution. It has been worked out and found correct. They are following that. There is 
no possibility of going wrong. 

There is every possibility for you to go wrong, because there is no plan, there is no map, 
there is no pattern. Your life ahead is not charted. You are free. But then a great 
responsibility falls on you, and that responsibility is to choose rightly, to work rightly, 
and to create your future through your effort. Really, the human being has to create 
himself through his own effort. 

What existentialists in the west say is true. They say man is born without an essence, or 
you can say without a soul. Sartre, Marcel, Heidegger, they say that man is born without 
an essence. He is born as an existence, and then through his own effort he creates the 
essence. He is born only as a possibility, and then through his own effort he creates the 
soul. He is bom only as a form, and then through his own conscious effort he creates the 
substance. 

Just the contrary is the case for all nature: every animal, every plant, is bom with an 
essence, with a soul, with a program, with a fixed destiny. Man is born as an opening 
with no fixed destiny — this creates burden, this creates responsibility. 

This gives you fear, anguish, anxiety. And then wherever you are, if you don't do 
anything you get stuck. That getting stuck creates boredom. 

You can be alive, happy, festive, joyful, only when you are moving when you are 
growing, when you are increasing, when you are creating the soul; really when you are 
pregnant with the divine, and when the divine is growing in your womb, when you are 
going to give birth. 

For tantra, God is not the beginning, God is in the end. God is not the creator, but the 
ultimate peak, the omega point, of evolution. It is the last, not the first; not the alpha but 
the omega. And unless you become pregnant and unless you carry a child within you, you 
will be bored, because then your life is futile — nothing is going to come out of it; no fruit 
is going to come out of it. That creates boredom. 

You can make this opportunity a source of evolution, or you can miss the opportunity and 
can make it a point of suicide. It depends on you. 

Because man can commit suicide, only man can grow spiritually. No animal can grow 
spiritually. Because man can destroy himself, he can also create. Remember, both the 
possibilities move simultaneously. No animal can destroy himself — impossible. You 
cannot conceive of a lion thinking about suicide, to jump from a cliff and end the whole 
thing — no, impossible. No lion can think of it. Howsoever brave, no lion can think of 
ending himself, destroying himself. 



He's not free. 

You can conceive of destroying yourself. It is impossible to find a human being who has 
not thought many times to destroy himself. And if you can find a human being who has 
not thought of committing suicide, then either he is animal or God. That is very basically 
human — the possibility to destroy. But that also opens another door; simultaneously both 
the doors open — you can create also. You can create yourself, because you can destroy 
yourself. 

No animal can create himself. You can create yourself, and unless you start creating, you 
will be destroying. Unless you create yourself, start creating.... And it is not a thing to 
create yourself, it is a process — you have to go on creating. Unless you reach to the 
ultimate, you have to go on creating. Unless the God is bom within you, you have to go 
on creating. If you are not creating, you will be bored — uncreative life is boredom. All 
these techniques are to help you to create, to be reborn, to become pregnant. Now I will 
take the techniques. 

The first technique. This technique is very easy and really wonderful. You can do it, 
anyone can do it. There is no question of type: anyone can do this technique, and for 
everyone this will be helpful. Even if you cannot move very deeply in it, then too it will 
be helpful. It will refresh you. 

Whenever you are bored, it will immediately refresh you. 

Whenever you are tired, it will immediately revitalize you. Whenever you are in a mood 
where you feel fed up with the whole thing, immediately a new surge of energy will flow 
within you. So for everyone, even if you are not meditation on it, it will be helpful, a 
medical help. It will give you health. And it is very easy to do; no prerequisites. 

The sutra is: 

TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER, 

LIGHTNESS BETWEEN THEM OPENS INTO HEART 
AND THERE PERMEATES THE COSMOS. 

Before entering the technique, some introductory remarks about it. First, something has 
to be understood about the eye, because the whole technique depends on it. 

The first thing: whatsoever you are, whatsoever you appear from without, is false, but 
you cannot deceive your eyes. You cannot create false eyes. You can create a false face; 
you cannot falsify your eyes. That is impossible — unless you become a perfect master 
like a Gurdjieff. Unless you become a perfect master of all your energies, you cannot 
falsify your eyes. No ordinary human being can do that. You cannot falsify your eyes. 
That's why if someone looks in your eyes, stares in your eyes, you feel offended, because 
he is trying to find the real thing. And at that point you cannot do anything — your eyes 
will reveal the true self. So it is not good manners to stare in anybody's eyes. 

Even while talking you go on avoiding the eyes. Unless you are in love with someone, 
unless someone is ready to be true with you, you cannot stare. There is a limit. 
Psychologists have observed that thirty seconds is the limit. With a stranger you can stare 
for thirty seconds, not more. If you stare more, you have started being aggressive, and the 
other will immediately start to feel uneasy. You can stare from a far-away point, because 
then no one is aware. If you are a hundred feet away I can go on staring at you, but if you 



are just two feet away it becomes impossible. 

In a crowded train, or in a crowded elevator, sitting or standing just close together, you 
never look at each other's eyes. You can touch the body — that is not so offensive — but 
you never look into each other's eyes because that will be too much, too near, and you 
will penetrate the real man. The first thing to remember: eyes have no personality. They 
are pure nature. They have no personality. 

The second thing to remember: you move into the world almost only through the eyes; 
they say eighty percent. Those who have been working with eyes, the psychologists, they 
say that eighty percent of contact with the world is through the eyes. Eighty percent of 
your life moves out through the eyes. 

That's why whenever you see a blind man, you feel pity. You never feel so much pity and 
sympathy when you see a deaf man, but when you see a blind man, suddenly you feel 
sympathy and compassion. 

Why? — because he is eighty percent non-alive. A deaf man is not so non-alive. Even if 
your feet are cut and your hands are cut, you will not be so unalive, but a blind man is 
eighty percent closed; he lives only twenty percent. 

Through your eyes eighty percent of your energy moves out. You are moving into the 
world through the eyes. So when you get tired, the first thing is the eyes. Later on, other 
parts of the body will be affected; the eyes will be the first to be drained of energy. If you 
can refresh your eyes, you can refresh your whole body, because they are eighty percent 
of your energy. If you can revitalize your eyes, you have revitalized yourself. 

In a natural surrounding you never feel as tired as you feel in an unnatural city, because 
in a natural surrounding your eyes are continuously fed. The greenery, the fresh 
atmosphere — everything relaxes your eyes and feeds them. In a modern city everything 
exploits your eyes and nothing feeds them. So move to a remote village, or to a hilltop 
where nothing artificial is in the milieu, where everything is natural, and you will see a 
different type of eyes. The twinkling, the quality, will be different — fresh, animal-like, 
penetrating, alive, dancing. 

In a modern city, eyes are dead; just living on the minimum. They don’t know what 
festivity is. They don’t know what freshness is. The eyes are unaware of any life flowing 
through them; they are just being exploited. 

Eighty percent of your energy moves from your eyes, so you have to be perfectly aware, 
and you have to learn an art about this movement, this energy, and the possibility of the 
eyes. 

In India we have been calling blind men PRAJNA-CHAKSHU — wisdom-eye — for a 
particular reason, because every misfortune can be transfonned into a great opportunity. 
Eighty percent of the energy moves through the eyes, and when a person is blind, he is 
eighty percent not alive; with the world eighty percent of his contact is lost. 

He is very poor as far as the world without is concerned, but if he can use this 
opportunity — this opportunity of being blind — then he can use this eighty percent of his 
energy for his inner world; this eighty percent that you cannot use ordinarily unless you 
know the art. So eighty percent of his energy is with him, it is a reservoir, and the energy 
that normally moves out can move within. If he knows how to allow it to move within, he 
will become a wisdom-eye. 

A blind man is not a PRAJNA-CHAKSHU, a wisdom-eye, just by being blind, but he can 
be. He doesn’t have ordinary eyes, but he can get the eyes of wisdom. The possibility is 



there. We named him PRAJNA-CHAKSHU just to make him aware that he should not be 
sorry that he doesn't have eyes. He can create an inner eye, and eighty percent of energy 
is with him which is not with those who have eyes. 

He can move it. He can use it. 

Even if the blind man is not aware, he becomes more silent than you are. He becomes 
more relaxed. Look at a blind man. He is more silent. His face is more relaxed. He seems 
to be at ease with himself; no discontent. This will not be the case with a deaf man. He 
will be more restless than you, and he will become cunning. But a blind man is never 
cunning, never restless, never calculative; basically trusting, in a deep faith with 
existence. 

Why does this happen? — because the eighty percent of energy, even if he doesn’t know 
anything about it, is moving within. It becomes a constant fall, just like a waterfall. Even 
unaware, it goes on falling on his heart. The same energy that moves out, goes on falling 
on his heart — that changes the quality of his being. In ancient India the blind man was 
very much respected — very much respected. In deep respect we called him PRAJNA- 
CHAKSHU, wisdom-eye. 

The same you can do with your eyes, and this technique is for that: to help your energy 
which moves out to fall back upon yourself, upon your own heart center. If it falls on the 
heart, you become as light as possible. You feel as if the whole body has become a 
feather; as if gravitation has absolutely no effect on it. And immediately you are 
connected with the deepest source of your being, which revitalizes you. 

For tantra, deep sleep revitalizes you not because of sleep, but just because the energy 
which was moving out, moves in. 

If you know the secret, then what an ordinary man is doing in six hours or eight hours 
sleep, you can do within minutes. What an ordinary man is doing in eight hours, really he 
is not doing. He is allowing nature to do something, and he is not aware of what it is. A 
mysterious process is happening in your sleep. One of the basic things is that your energy 
is not moving out; it goes on falling on your heart, and that revitalizes you. You are in a 
deep bath with your own energy. 

Something more about this moving energy. You might have observed that whenever 
there is a dominant man, he always stares in your eyes. Whenever there is a dominated 
man, he looks down. Slaves, servants, or anyone who is inferior to someone, will never 
stare in the eyes of the superior. But the superior can stare. Kings can stare, but standing 
before a king, standing in the audience of the king, you are not supposed to stare. That 
would be an offence. You have to look down. 

Really, with your eyes your energy moves. It can become a subtle violence. And not only 
in man, even in animals. When two strangers meet, two animals meet, they stare each 
other in the eye just to judge who is going to be the superior and who is going to take the 
role of the inferior. And once one animal looks down, the thing is decided. Then they will 
not fight; the thing is over. It is now taken for granted who is superior. 


Even children play the game of staring into each other's eyes, and whoever looks away is 
defeated. And they are right. When two children stare into each other's eyes, whosoever 
becomes first uncomfortable and starts fidgeting and starts looking away and avoiding 
the look of the other, is defeated. The one who goes on staring is stronger. If your eyes 



can defeat the other's eyes, it is a subtle indication that you are stronger than the other. 

On the stage when someone comes to speak or to act, he becomes very afraid, a great 
trembling happens. Even with those who are long in the profession, old actors... even 
when they come on the stage a fear grips them, because so many eyes are staring; there is 
so much aggressive energy. There is so much energy from the thousands of people 
staring at them that they suddenly start trembling deep down. A fear grips them. A subtle 
energy is flowing through the eyes, a very subtle energy. The subtlest, the most refined of 
physical forces, is flowing through the eyes. And the quality of the energy changes with 
you. 

From the eyes of a Buddha a different type of energy is flowing. From the eyes of a 
Hitler a totally different type. If you look at Buddha’s eyes, they accept you, they 
welcome you, they become a door. If you look at Hitler's eyes, they reject you, they 
condemn you, they push you away, they throw you away. For Hitler, his eyes are like 
weapons; for Buddha, his eyes are compassion. 

The quality of the eyes changes. Sooner or later we must come to measure the eye- 
energy, and then there will be no need to know much about the man. Just the eye-energy 
and its quality will show what type of man is hidden behind. Sooner or later that will be 
possible. 

This sutra, this technique: 

TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER, 

LIGHTNESS BETWEEN THEM OPENS INTO HEART 
AND THERE PERMEATES THE COSMOS. 

TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER... Use both your palms, put them on your 
eyes, and allow the palms to touch the eyeballs — but just like a feather, with no pressure. 
If you press you miss the point, you miss the whole technique. Don’t press; just touch like 
a feather. You will have to adjust, because in the beginning you will be pressing. Put less 
and less pressure until you are just touching with no pressure at all — just your palms 
touch the eyeballs. Just a touch, just a meeting with no pressure, because if the pressure is 
there, then the technique will not function. So — LIKE A FEATHER. 

Why? Because a needle can do something which a sword cannot do. If you press, the 
quality has changed — you are aggressive. And the energy that is flowing through the 
eyes is very subtle: a small pressure and it starts fighting and a resistance is created. If 
you press, then the energy that is flowing through the eyes will start a resistance, a fight; 
a struggle will ensue. 

So don't press; even a slight pressure is enough for the eye-energy to judge. 

It is very subtle, it is very delicate. Don’t press — like a feather, just your palm is 
touching, as if not touching. Touching as if not touching, no pressure; just a touch, a 
slight feeling that the palm is touching the eyeball, that's all. 

What will happen? When you simply touch without any pressure, the energy starts 
moving within. If you press, it starts fighting with the hand, with the palm, and moves 
out. Just a touch and the energy starts moving within. The door is closed; simply the door 
is closed and the energy falls back. The moment energy falls back, you will feel a 
lightness coming all over your face, your head. This energy moving back makes you 



light. 

And just between these two eyes is the third eye, the wisdom-eye, the PRAJNA- 
CHAKSHU. Just between these two eyes is the third eye. The energy falling back from 
the eyes hits the third eye. That's why one feels light, levitating, as if there is no 
gravitation. And from the third eye the energy falls on the heart. It is a physical process: 
just drip, drip, it drops, and you will feel a very light feeling entering in your heart. The 
heartbeats will slow down, the breathing will slow down. Your whole body will feel 
relaxed. 

Even if you are not entering deep meditation, this will help you physically. Any time in 
the day, relax on a chair — or if you don’t have any chair, when just sitting in a train — 
close your eyes, feel a relaxed being in the whole of your body, and then put both your 
palms on your eyes. 

But don’t press — that's the very significant thing. Just touch like a feather. 

When you touch and don’t press, your thoughts will stop immediately. In a relaxed mind 
thoughts cannot move; they get frozen. They need frenzy and fever, they need tension to 
move. They live through tension. When the eyes are silent, relaxed, and the energy is 
moving backwards, thoughts will stop. You will feel a certain quality of euphoria, and 
that will deepen daily. 

So do it many times in the day. Even for a single moment, touching will be good. 
Whenever your eyes feel exhausted, dry of energy, exploited — after reading, seeing a 
film, or watching TV — whenever you feel it, just close the eyes and touch. Immediately 
there will be the effect. But if you want to make it a meditation, then do it for at least 
forty minutes. And the whole thing is not to press. Because it is easy for a single moment 
to have a feather-like touch; it is difficult for forty minutes. Many times you will forget 
and you will start pressing. 

Don’t press. For forty minutes, just remain aware that your hands have no weight; they 
are just touching. Go on being aware that you are not pressing, only touching. This will 
become a deep awareness, just like breathing. As Buddha says to breathe with full 
awareness, the same will happen with touching, because you have to be constantly 
mindful that you are not pressing. 

Your hand should just be a feather, a weightless thing, simply touching. 

Your mind will be totally there, alert, near the eyes, and the energy will be flowing 
constantly. In the beginning it will be just dropping in drops. Within months you will feel 
it has become a river-like thing, and within a year you will feel it has become a flood. 

And when it happens - TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER, LIGHTNESS 
BETWEEN THEM — when you touch you will feel lightness. You can feel it right now. 
Immediately, the moment you touch, a lightness comes. And that LIGHTNESS 
BETWEEN THEM OPENS INTO THE HEART; that lightness penetrates, opens into the 
heart. In the heart, only lightness can enter; nothing heavy can enter. Only very light 
things can happen to the heart. 

This lightness between the two eyes will start dropping into the heart, and the heart will 
open to receive it - AND THERE PERMEATES THE COSMOS. And as the falling 
energy becomes a stream and then a river and then a flood, you will be washed 
completely, washed away. You will not feel that you are. You will feel simply the 
cosmos is. Breathing in, breathing out, you will feel you have become the cosmos. The 
cosmos comes in and the cosmos goes out. The entity that you have always been, the ego, 



will not be there. 

This technique is very simple, without any danger, so you can experiment with it as you 
like. But because it is so easy, you may not be able to do it. 

The whole thing depends on touch without pressure, so you will have to leam it. Try it. 
Within a week it will happen. Suddenly some day when you are just touching with no 
pressure, immediately you will feel what I am saying — a lightness and an opening in the 
heart, and something dropping from the head into the heart. 

The second technique: 

KIND DEVI, 

ENTER ETHERIC PRESENCE 

PERVADING FAR ABOVE AND BELOW YOUR FORM. 

KIND DEVI, ENTER ETHERIC PRESENCE PERVADING FAR ABOVE AND 
BELOW YOUR FORM. The second can be done only if you have done the first. It can 
be done separately also, but then it will be very difficult. But if you do the first, then it is 
good to do the second and very easy. 

Whenever this happens — that you feel light, levitating, as if you can fly — suddenly you 
will become aware that around your body fonn there is a bluish light. But that you can 
see only when you feel that you can levitate, that your body can fly, that it has become 
light, completely free of any burden, completely free of any gravitation towards the earth. 
Not that you can fly; that is not the point. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes it happens 
that it comes to such a balancing point that your body goes up. But that is not the goal, 
and don’t think about it at all. This much will do: if you feel with closed eyes that your 
body has gone up. 

When you open your eyes you will see you are just sitting on the ground, so don’t become 
worried about it. If with closed eyes you feel as if your body has gone up and you feel 
there is no weight to it, this is enough. 

For meditation this is enough. But if you are trying to learn levitation, then it is not 
enough. But I am not interested in that, and I will not tell you anything about it. This 
much is enough — that you feel that your body has no weight, it has become weightless. 
Whenever you feel this weightlessness, just with closed eyes become aware of the fonn 
of your body. Just with closed eyes, feel your toes and their form, and the legs and their 
form, and then the form of the whole body. If you are sitting in siddhasana, just like a 
Buddha, then feel the form while sitting like a Buddha. Just inside try to feel the form of 
your body. It will become apparent, it will appear before you, and you will 
simultaneously become aware that just around the fonn there is a bluish light. 

Do it with closed eyes in the beginning. And when this light goes on spreading and you 
feel an aura, a bluish aura, all around the fonn, then sometimes while doing it in the night 
with no light in a dark room, open your eyes and you will see it exactly around your body 
— a bluish form, just light, blue light, all around your body. If you want to see it actually, 
not with closed eyes but with open eyes, do it in a dark room with no light at all. 


This bluish fonn, this bluish light, is the presence of the etheric body. You have many 



bodies. This technique is concerned with the etheric body, and through the etheric body 
you can enter into the highest ecstasy. There are seven bodies, and every body can be 
used to enter into the divine; every body is just a door. 

This technique uses the etheric body, and the etheric body is the easiest to realize. The 
deeper the body, the more difficult; but the etheric body is just near you, just near the 
physical. It is just near. The second form is of the etheric — just around you, just around 
your body. It penetrates your body and it is also around your body just like a hazy light, a 
blue light, hanging all around like a loose robe. 

KIND DEVI, 

ENTER ETHERIC PRESENCE 

PERVADING FAR ABOVE AND BELOW YOUR FORM. 

Far above, below — everywhere around your form. If you can see that blue light around 
you, thinking will stop immediately, because for the etheric body, no thinking is needed. 
And the blue light is so calming, so soothing, so relaxing. Even ordinarily blue light is so 
soothing. Why? — because it is the light of your etheric body. The blue sky is so 
soothing. Why? — because it is the color of your etheric body. And the etheric body is 
very soothing. 

Whenever someone loves you, whenever someone touches you with deep love, he 
touches your etheric body. 

That's why you feel it as such a soothing thing. It has even been photographed. Two 
lovers in deep love, making love: if their intercourse can continue for a certain limit, 
beyond forty minutes, and there is no ejaculation, around both the bodies, deep in love, a 
blue light appear. It has even been photographed. 

And sometimes there have been very strange phenomena, because this light is a very 
subtle electric force. All around the world, many times it has happened that a new couple, 
staying in a new room on their honeymoon, or on their first night when they don’t know 
each other's body and they don't know what is possible.... If both the bodies are in a 
certain vibration of love, of attraction, of deep involvement and commitment — open, 
vulnerable to each other, ready to become one space — then sometimes it has happened 
accidentally that their bodies have become so electrified, their etheric body becomes so 
alive, that things in the room start falling. 

Very strange phenomena: a statue is there on the table — suddenly it falls down. The 
glass on the table suddenly breaks. There is no one else, only the couple making love, 
and they have not even touched the glass. Or suddenly something catches fire. These 
cases have been reported to many police stations all around the world, and much 
investigation has been done, and then it was found that two persons in deep love can 
create such an electric force that it may affect things around them. 


That force also comes through the etheric body. Your etheric body is your electric body. 
Whenever you are overflowing with energy, you have a bigger range to your etheric 
body. Whenever you are sad, depressed, you don't have any etheric body near your body. 
It recedes back into the body. So with a sad person, depressed person, you will also feel 
sad. If a really sad person enters in this room, you will feel that something has gone 
wrong, because his etheric body affects you immediately. He becomes an exploiter, 



because his own etheric forces are so depressed they start feeding on others. 

A sad person will make you sad, a depressed person will make you depressed, an ill 
person will make you ill, because it is not only that which you see that he is; something 
hidden is constantly working. Even if he has not said anything, even if he is smiling 
outwardly, if he is depressed he will exploit you. Your etheric body will lose its energy — 
he will exploit, he will feed on you. When someone is happy and he enters, immediately 
you feel a happiness around you, because he is throwing so much etheric force. He is 
really giving you a feast; he is feeding you. He has so much he is overflowing. 

When a Buddha moves around, or a Christ, or a Krishna, they are constantly giving you a 
feast, constantly you are guests. And when you come after seeing a Buddha, you feel so 
refreshed, so alive, so vitalized, so rejuvenated. 

What has happened? Buddha may not have said anything. Even a darshan, just a look, 
and you feel something has changed within you, something has entered within you. 

What is entering? He is so overflowing with his energy.... And whosoever is at peace 
with himself is always overflooded, because his energy is not wasted in unnecessary 
nonsense in which you are wasting your energy. He is always overflooded, and 
whosoever comes can take. Jesus says, 'Come unto me. If you are heavily burdened, 
come unto me. I will unburden you.’ Really he is not doing anything; it is just his 
presence. 

It is said that whenever a god-man, a teerthankara, an avatar, a Christ, moves on the 
earth, around him a particular milieu is created. Jain yogis have even measured it. They 
say it is twenty-four miles. Twenty-four miles is the radius around a teerthankara, and for 
twenty-four miles in the whole radius everyone is flooded with his energy: knowing, not 
knowing, friend or enemy, following him or opposing him, it makes no difference. 

If following, you are flooded more, because you are more open; if opposing, you are 
flooded, but not so much because you are closed — but the energy is flooding. A single 
man is such a reservoir; a single man, if undisturbed, silent, at ease, at home, is such a 
reservoir that for twenty-four miles around him in all directions a milieu is created. 

And in that milieu you are on a constant feast. 

This happens through the astral body. The astral body is your electric body. The body 
that we see is the physical, the material. This is not really life. Life comes to this body 
because of the electric, the etheric body. That is your prana, that is your vitality. 

So Shiva says: 

KIND DEVI, 

ENTER ETHERIC PRESENCE... 

First you will have to become aware of the fonn that surrounds your physical form, and 
when you have become aware, then help it to grow, help it to increase and expand. What 
can you do? 

Just sitting silently, looking at it; not doing anything, just looking at the bluish form 
around you; not doing anything, just looking at it, you will feel it is increasing, spreading, 
becoming bigger and bigger. Because when you are not doing anything, the whole energy 
goes to the etheric. Remember this. When you are doing anything, the energy is taken out 
of the etheric. 

Lao Tzu says, 'Non-doing, no one is stronger than me. Not doing anything at all, and no 



one is stronger than me. Those who are strong by doing can be defeated.’ Says Lao Tzu, 

'I cannot be defeated, because my energy comes from non-doing.’ So the secret is not 
doing anything. 

What was Buddha doing under the Bodhi tree? — not doing anything. He was not doing 
in that moment. He was not. 

Just sitting he achieved the ultimate. It looks puzzling. We are doing so much effort and 
nothing is achieved, and Buddha was not doing anything under the Bodhi tree and he 
achieved the ultimate. 

When you are not doing anything, your energy is not moving out. It goes to the etheric. It 
is accumulated there. Your etheric body becomes an electric reservoir. And the more it 
grows, the more you become silent. The more you become silent, the more it grows. And 
once you know how to give energy to the etheric body and how not to waste it 
unnecessarily, you have come to realize, you have come to know about a secret key. 

Then you can be festive. Really, only then can you be festive. As you are now, drained of 
energy, how can you be festive? How can you celebrate? How can you blossom? Flowers 
are part of the luxury. When the tree is overflowing with energy, then flowers come. 
Flowers are always luxury. 

If the tree is starved, flowers won’t come, because even for the leaves there is not enough 
food. There is a hierarchy: first the roots will be fed, because they are the most basic. If 
they disappear, then there is no possibility for the flowers. Then the trunk will be fed, 
then the branches will be fed. If everything goes okay and energy is still there, then the 
leaves will be fed, and if still the food is there and the tree is totally satisfied and no food 
is needed, no energy is needed to exist and survive, suddenly it blooms. 

The overflowing energy becomes flowers. Flowers are a feast for others. It is a 
presentation. It is a gift from the tree to you. 

And the thing happens in man also. A Buddha is a tree which has flowered. Now the 
energy is so overflowing that he has invited all and sundry to come and share. 

First try the first technique and then try the second. You can do it separately also, but it 
will be more difficult to realize the bluish fonn of the ethereal body. 


THE END. 



Chapter 64: Choicelessness is bliss 


Question 1 

IS IT THAT THERE ARE ONLY TWO ALTERNATIVES BEFORE MAN - A LIFE 
OF ABIDING SORROW AND SUFFERING OR ONE OF DIVINITY AND BLISS - 
AND THIS CHOICE LIES WITH HIM? HOW IS IT THAT MOST HAVE CHOSEN 
THE PATH OF SORROW AND SUFFERING? 

It is a very significant question, but very delicate also. The first thing to be understood is 
that life is very paradoxical, and because of that many things happen. These are the two 
alternatives: either man can be in heaven or hell. And there is no third possibility. Either 
you can be in deep suffering, or you can be without suffering and in deep bliss. These are 
the only two possibilities, two openings, two doors, two modes of being. 

Then the question necessarily arises why man chooses to be in suffering. Man never 
chooses to be in suffering, man always chooses to be in bliss — and there comes the 
paradox. If you choose to be in bliss, you will be in suffering, because to be in bliss 
means to be choiceless. This is the problem. If you choose to be in bliss you will be in 
suffering. If you don't choose, if you simply remain a witness, non-choosing, you will be 
in bliss. So it is not a question of choosing between bliss and suffering; deep down it is a 
question of choosing between choosing and non-choosing. 

Why does it happen that whenever you choose you are in suffering? — because choice 
divides life: something has to be cut and thrown away. 

You don’t accept the total. You accept something in it and you deny something, that's 
what choice means. And life is a totality. If you choose something and deny something, 
that which you deny will come to you, because life cannot be divided. And that which 
you deny, just because you deny it, becomes a powerful thing over you. You really 
become afraid of it. 

Nothing can be denied. You can only close your eyes to it. You can only escape. You can 
become inattentive towards it, but it is always there hidden, waiting for the moment to 
assert. So if you deny suffering — if you say you are not going to choose suffering — then 
in a subtle you have chosen it. Now it will always be around you. One thing. 

Life is totality — the first thing; and life is change — the second thing. These are basic 
truths. You cannot divide life. Secondly: nothing is stagnant, and nothing can be. So 
when you say, T am not going to suffer. I am going to choose a blissful mode of living,’ 
you will cling to happiness. And whenever you cling to something, you want it, you hope 
it to be permanent. And nothing can be permanent in life. Life is a flux. 

So when you cling to happiness, you are again creating suffering, because this happiness 
will pass away; nothing can remain. It is a river, and the moment you cling to a river, you 
are creating a situation in which you will be frustrated, because the river will move. 

Sooner or later you will find that the river has gone far away. It is not now with you: your 
hands are empty and your heart is frustrated. 

If you cling to bliss, there will be moments of bliss, but they are going to pass away. Life 
is a flux. Nothing can be permanent here except you. Except you, nothing is eternal here, 
and if you cling to a changing thing, when it is gone you will suffer. And it is not only 
that when it is gone you will suffer; if you have the mind of clinging, while it is there you 



will not be able to enjoy it, because you will be constantly afraid that it is going to be 
lost. 

If you cling you will miss the opportunity also. Later on you will suffer and right now 
you will not enjoy, because the fear is just around the corner — sooner or later it has to 
go. The guest has come to your house, and you know he is a guest and tomorrow morning 
he will leave. You start suffering for the future — tomorrow morning he will leave — and 
that pain, that suffering, that anguish, comes upon you right now. You cannot be happy 
while the guest is in your home. While the guest is with you, you cannot be happy 
because you are already in anxiety and anguish that tomorrow morning he will leave. So 
while he is there you will not be happy, and when he is gone you will be unhappy. This is 
what is happening. 

The first thing: life cannot be divided. If you divide, only then can you choose. 

And that which you choose is flux-like — sooner or later ut will be gibe — and that which 
you have denied will fall over you; you cannot escape it. You cannot say, 'I will live only 
in the days and I will escape the nights.’ You cannot say, 'I will live only with the 
ingoing breath and I will not allow the outgoing breaths.’ 

Life is a rhythm of opposites. The breath comes in and goes out: between these two 
opposites — ingoing and outgoing — you exist. Suffering is there, happiness is there. 
Happiness is just like the ingoing breath, suffering is just like the outgoing breath; or day 
and night — the rhythm of opposites. You cannot say, 'I will live only if I am happy. 
When I am not happy, I will not live.’ You can take this attitude, but this attitude will 
make you suffer more. 

No one chooses suffering, remember. You ask why man has chosen to suffer. No one has 
chosen to suffer. You have chosen not to suffer, you have chosen to be happy, and you 
have chosen strongly. You are doing everything to be happy and that’s why you are in 
suffering, why you are not happy. 

So what is to be done? Remember that life is total. You cannot choose — the whole life 
has to be lived. There will be moments of happiness and there will be moments of 
suffering, and both have to be lived; you cannot choose. Because life is both — otherwise 
the rhythm will be lost, and without rhythm there will be no life. 


It is just like music. You hear some music: there are notes, sounds, and after each sound 
there is silence, a gap. Because of that gap, that interval of silence, and the sound — 
because of both the opposites — music is created. If you say, 'I will choose only sounds 
and I am not going to take the gaps,’ there will be no music. It will be a monotonous 
thing, it will be dead. Those gaps give life to sound. This is the beauty of life — that 
through opposites it exists. Sound and silence, sound and silence — that creates music, the 
rhythm. The same is with life. Suffering and happiness are two opposites. You cannot 
choose. 

If you choose you have become a victim; you will suffer. If you become aware of this 
totality of the opposites and the way that life functions, you don’t choose — the first thing. 
And when you don’t choose there is no need to cling, there is no meaning in clinging. 
When suffering conies you enjoy the suffering, and when happiness comes you enjoy the 
happiness. When the guest is at home you enjoy him, when he has gone you enjoy the 
suffering, the absence, the pain. I say enjoy both. This is the path of wisdom: enjoy both, 
don’t choose. Whatsoever falls upon you, accept it. It is your fate, it is how life is, and 



nothing can be done about it. 

If you take this attitude, there is no choosing. You have become choiceless. And when 
you are choiceless, you will become aware of yourself, because now you are not worried 
about what happens, so you are not outgoing. 

You are not worried about what is happening around you. Whatsoever happens you will 
enjoy it, you will live it, you will go through it, you will experience it, and you will gain 
something out of it, because every experience is an expansion of consciousness. 

If there is really no suffering you will be poor for it, because suffering gives you depth. A 
man who has not suffered will always remain on the surface. Suffering gives you depth. 
Really, if there is no suffering you will be saltless. You will be nothing, just a boring 
phenomenon. Suffering gives you tone, a keenness. A quality comes to you which only 
suffering can give, which no happiness can give. A man who has remained always in 
happiness, in comfort, who has not suffered, will not have any tone. He will be just a 
lump of being. There cannot be any depth. Really, there cannot be any heart. The heart is 
created through suffering; through pain you evolve. 

If a man has only suffered and he has not known any happiness, then too he will not be 
rich, because richness comes through opposites. The more you move in opposites, the 
higher, the deeper you evolve. A man who has simply suffered will become a slave. He 
who has not known any moments of happiness will not be really alive. He will become an 
animal; he will just exist anyhow. There will be no poetry, no song in the heart, no hope 
in the eyes. He will settle down to his pessimistic existence. 

There will be no struggle, no adventure. He will not move. He will be simply a stagnant 
pool of consciousness, and a stagnant pool of consciousness is not conscious — by and by 
he will become unconscious. That's why if there is too much pain you fall unconscious. 

So just happiness will not be of much help, because there will be no challenge. Just pain 
will not be of much growth, because there will be nothing to struggle, to hope, to dream; 
there will be no fantasy. Both are needed, and life exists between both as a very delicate 
tension, a subtle tension. 

If you understand this, then you don't choose. Then you know how life functions, how 
life is. This is the way, this is the way of life — it moves through happiness, it moves 
through suffering and gives you tone, and gives you meaning, and gives you depth. So 
both are good. 

I say both are good. I don’t say choose between the two — I say both are good, don’t 
choose. Rather, enjoy both; rather, allow both to happen. Be open without any resistance. 
Don't cling to one and don’t resist the other. 

Let no-resistance be your motto: I will not resist life. Whatsoever life gives to me, I will 
be ready to take it, available, and I will enjoy it. The nights are also good and beautiful, 
and suffering has a beauty of its own. No happiness can have that beauty. Darkness has 
its own beauty; day has its own beauty. 

There is no comparison and there is no choice. Both have their own dimensions to work 
in. 

The moment this consciousness arises in you, you will not choose. You will be just a 
witness, and you will enjoy — this choicelessness will become bliss. This choicelessness 
will become bliss. Bliss is not contrary to suffering; bliss is a quality which you can bring 
to anything whatsoever — even to suffering. 



A Buddha cannot suffer, but that doesn’t mean that suffering doesn’t happen to him. 
Remember, suffering happens as much to Buddha as it happens to you, but he cannot 
suffer because he knows the art of enjoying it. He cannot suffer because he remains 
blissful. Even in suffering he remains festive, meditative, alive, enjoying, open, non- 
resistant. Suffering happens to him, but he is not touched. Suffering comes and goes, just 
like a breath coming in and going out. He remains himself. The suffering cannot push 
him aside. The suffering cannot push him off his feet. Nothing can push him — neither 
suffering nor happiness. You exist like a pendulum: everything pushes you — everything. 
You cannot even be really happy, because happiness will also kill you. You get so 
involved in it. 

I remember, once it happened that a poor schoolmaster — very old, poor, retired — won a 
lottery. The wife was afraid and she thought, 'This is going to be too much for the old 
man. 

Five thousand dollars is too much for him. Even a five dollar note gives him so much 
happiness, so five thousand dollars may kill him.’ 

She ran to the church, to the nearby church, and went to the priest and told him what had 
happened. She said, 'The old man is out, but he is just coming back, this is his time to 
return, so do something. Five thousand dollars — just the news will kill him!’ 

The priest said, 'Don’t be afraid. 1 kn ow the human mind and the way it functions. I know 
the psychology. 1 will come.’ 

So the priest came to the house. The moment they arrived the old man also arrived, so the 
priest started. He said, 'Suppose you won a lottery of five thousand dollars — what would 
you do?’ 

The old man thought about it, pondered over it, and he said, '1 would give half of the 
money to the church.’ 

The priest fell down dead, ft was too much. 

Even happiness will kill you, because you get so involved. You cannot remain out of 
anything. Suffering or happiness, whatsoever comes to your door, you get so involved in 
it you are just pushed off your feet. You are no more there. Just a breeze comes in the 
house and you are no more there. 

What I am saying is that if you don’t choose, if you remain alert and aware that this is 
how life is — days and nights come and go, suffering and happiness — you just witness. 
There is no clinging to happiness, no hankering for happiness, and no escape from 
suffering. 

You remain in yourself — centered, rooted. This is what bliss is. 

So remember, bliss is not something opposite to suffering. Don’t think that when you 
become blissful there will be no suffering — nonsense. Suffering is part of life. It ceases 
only when you are not. When you completely disappear from the body, suffering ceases. 
When there is no birth, suffering ceases. But then you are lost in the totality, then you are 
no more — just a drop has fallen into the ocean and is no more. 

While you are, suffering will continue. It is part of life. But you can become aware: then 
suffering happens somewhere around you, but it never happens to you. But then 
happiness also never happens to you. Don’t think that happiness will go on happening to 
you and suffering will not happen — both will not happen to you. They will just happen 
around, just on the periphery, and you will be centered in yourself. You will see them 
happening, you will enjoy them happening, but they will happen around you; they will 



not happen to you. 

This becomes possible if you don't choose. That’s why I said this is delicate, subtle. 
Because of the paradoxical life, you choose happiness and you fall in suffering. You try 
to escape from suffering, and more and more suffering is invited. So you can take it as an 
ultimate law: whatsoever you choose, the opposite will be your fate, say it as an ultimate 
law: whatsoever you choose, the opposite will be your fate. 


So whatsoever is your fate, remember, you have chosen it by choosing the opposite. If 
you are suffering, you have chosen your suffering by choosing happiness. Don’t choose 
happiness and suffering disappears. Don’t choose at all. Then nothing can happen to you, 
and everything is a flux except you. That has to be understood very deeply. 

Only you are the constant factor in existence, nothing else. Only you are the eternity, 
nothing else. Your awareness is never a flux. Suffering comes, you witness it. Then 
happiness comes, you witness it. Then nothing comes, you witness it. Only one thing 
remains constant — witnessing — and witnessing is you. 

You were a child.... Or, if you move even further backwards, once you were just an 
atomic cell. You cannot even imagine it — just an atomic cell in your mother's womb, not 
even visible to the naked eyes. If that cell comes before you and you encounter it, you 
will not be able to recognize that once you were that. Then you were a child, then you 
became young, and now you are old, or lying on your deathbed. Many things happened. 
Your whole life has been a flux; nothing remained the same for even two moments. 
Heraclitus says you cannot step twice in the same river — and this he says for the river of 
life. You cannot have two similar moments. The moment that has gone cannot be 
repeated. It is gone forever; you cannot have it again. 

The same cannot exist. In such a great flux, only one thing within you remains the same 
— the witnessing. 

If you could have witnessed in your mother's womb, the quality of consciousness would 
have been the same. If you could have witnessed when you were a child, the quality of 
witnessing would have been the same. Young or dying, while just dying on your bed, if 
you can witness, the quality of consciousness will be the same. 

The only one thing deep down within you is your witnessing self, your consciousness — 
that remains the same; everything else changes. And if you cling to any object of the 
world of change, you will suffer. Nothing can be done about it. You are trying to do the 
impossible, that's why you suffer. I know you never choose, but that is not the point. If 
you suffer, you have chosen it indirectly. 

Once you become aware of this indirectness of life, this paradoxical quality of life, you 
will stop choosing. When choice falls, the world has disappeared. When choosing falls, 
you have entered the absolute. 

But that is possible only when the choosing mind disappears completely. A choiceless 
awareness is needed and then you will be in bliss. Rather, you will be the bliss. And I 
will repeat again: suffering will continue to happen, but now nothing can make you 
suffer. Even if you are suddenly thrown into hell, just by your presence there, for you it 
will be a hell no more. 


Someone asked Socrates where he would like to go, so Socrates said, T don’t know 



whether there is a hell and a heaven. I don’t know whether they are there or not, but I will 
not choose between them. My only prayer will be this: allow me to be alert wherever I 
am. Let me be fully aware wherever I am. Whether it is hell or heaven, that is irrelevant.' 
Because if you are fully alert, hell disappears — hell is your being not aware. If you are 
fully aware, heaven appears — heaven is your being fully aware. 

Really there are no such geographical places as hell or heaven. And don’t go on thinking 
in childish terms that someday you will die and God will send you to heaven or hell 
according to your doings, according to whatsoever you have done on earth. No, you carry 
your hell and heaven within you. Wherever you move, you carry your hell or heaven with 
you. 

Even God cannot do anything. If suddenly you meet him, he will look like a hell. You 
carry your hell within you; you project it wherever you are. You will suffer. The 
encounter will be just death-like, intolerable. You may become unconscious. Whatsoever 
happens to you, you carry within you. The seed of consciousness is the seed of the whole 
existence. 

So remember, if you suffer you have chosen it: consciously, unconsciously, directly, 
indirectly, you have chosen it. It is your choice and you are responsible. 

No one else is responsible. 

But in our mind, in our confused mind, everything is upside-down. If you suffer, you 
think you suffer because of others. You suffer because of you. No one can make you 
suffer. That is impossible. And even if someone makes you suffer, it is your choice to be 
in suffering through him. You have chosen him and you have chosen a particular type of 
suffering through him. No one can make you suffer — it is your choice. But you always 
go on thinking that if the other changes, or if the other is doing something else, you will 
not suffer. 

I have heard. Mulla Nasrudin was filling out a report because he had crashed his car into 
a parked car. He was filling out a report, and many things were asked. When he came to 
the part where it was asked what the driver of the other vehicle could have done to avoid 
the accident, he filled it, 'He should have parked the car somewhere else. The car was 
parked there; he should have parked it somewhere else — because of him the accident has 
happened.’ 

And this is what you are doing. Always the other is responsible: he should have done 
something or other and there would have been no suffering. No, the other is not 
responsible at all. You are responsible, and unless you take this responsibility 
consciously upon you, you will not change. The change will become possible, easily 
possible, the moment you realize that you are responsible for it. 


If you have suffered, it was your choice. This is what the law of karma is, nothing else: 
you are wholly responsible. Whatsoever happens — suffering or happiness, hell or heaven 
— whatsoever happens, ultimately you are totally responsible. This is what the law of 
karma is: total responsibility is with you. 

But don’t be afraid, don’t be scared by it, because if the total responsibility is with you, 
then suddenly a door of freedom opens — because if you are the cause of your suffering, 
you can change. If others are the cause, then you cannot change. Then how can you 
change? Unless the whole world changes, you will suffer. And there seems to be no way 
to change others — then suffering cannot end. 



But we are so pessimistic that even such beautiful doctrines as the law of karma we 
interpret in such a way that they don’t free and liberate us, but rather, on the contrary, 
they make us more burdened. In India the law of karma has been kn own for at least five 
thousand years or even more, but what have we done? It is not that we have taken 
responsibility upon ourselves; we have thrown all the responsibility on the law of karma 
— that it is happening because of the law of karma and we cannot do anything, nothing 
can be done; because of the past lives this life is such. 

The law of karma was to free you. It was giving you total freedom towards yourself. 

No one else can make any suffering for you — this was the message. If you are suffering 
you have created it. You are the master of your fate, and if you want to change it, 
immediately you can change it and the life will be different. But the attitude.... 

I have heard, once two friends were talking. One was a bon a fide optimist, the other a 
bonafide pessimist. Even the optimist was not too happy about the situation. The optimist 
said, 'If this economic crisis continues and these political catastrophes continue and the 
world remains the same as it is, immoral, then we are going to be reduced to begging 
soon.’ 

Even he was not too hopeful about it — the optimist. When he said, 'We are going to be 
reduced to begging,’ the pessimist said, 'From whom? From whom are you going to beg 
if this condition continues?’ 

You have a mind, and you goon bringing your mind to everything. Really, you transfonn 
the quality of every teaching and doctrine. You defeat Buddhas and Krishnas so easily 
because you convert the whole thing; you color it in your own way. 

You are totally responsible for whatsoever you are and for whatsoever world you are 
living in. It is your creation. If this goes deep in you, you can change everything. You 
need not suffer. Don’t choose, be a witness, and bliss will happen to you. Bliss is not a 
dead state. Suffering will go on continuing around you. 

So it is not a question of what happens to you; it is a question of how you are. The total 
ultimate meaning comes from you, not from the happening. 

Question 2 

LAST NIGHT YOU TALKED ABOUT BOREDOM. HOW CAN WE HOPE FOR AN 
ENLIGHTENED SOCIETY WHEN IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN SOCIETY MOST 
PEOPLE MUST PERFORM BORING, MONOTONOUS AND REPETITIVE TASKS? 

Again: nothing is boring, nothing is repetitive and monotonous — you are, and you bring 
your quality to everything that you do. No act is boring in itself, and no act can be non- 
boring in itself — it is you who make it boring or non-boring. And the same act can be a 
boredom to you this moment and the next moment it may become a blissful thing. Not 
that the act has changed; your mood, the quality you bring to the act, has changed. So 
remember, you are not bored because repetitive acts have to be done. Rather, on the 
contrary, you are bored — that’s why they appear repetitive. 

For instance, children want to repeat things. They go on playing the same game again and 
again. You get bored. What are they doing? The same game again and again? They go on 
asking for the same story. They enjoy it again and again, and they say, 'Tell me that story 
again.’ 

What is the matter? You cannot conceive it. It looks stupid. It is not. They are so alive 
that nothing is repetitive for them. You are dead and everything is repetitive for you. 



They go on repeating the same game. The whole day they can go on, and if you stop them 
they will scream and cry and they will resist you, saying, 'Don’t destroy our game.’ And 
you cannot understand what they are doing the whole day. 

They have a different quality of consciousness. Nothing is repetitive for them. They 
enjoy it so much that the very enjoyment changes the quality, and then they enjoy it again 
— and they enjoy it more, because now they know the know-how. The third time they 
enjoy it even more, because now they are acquainted with everything. They go on 
enjoying; their enjoyment goes on increasing. Your enjoyment goes on decreasing. 

What is the matter? Is the act itself boring, or is something wrong with your mode of 
being, your mode of consciousness? 

Look at it from another angle. Two lovers will go on repeating the same acts every day. 
They will kiss and they will hug — they are the same acts. And they would like to go on 
doing that ad infinitum. If you give them time, they will go on repeating to the very end 
of existence. Looking at two lovers, you will get bored. What are they doing? — the same 
thing every day? And if you give them the whole day, they will go on hugging, loving, 
embracing, kissing. What are they doing? 

Lovers have again become children. That’s why love is so innocent — it makes you a 
child again. Now they are enjoying the game. 

They are again children. The whole nonsense of maturity they have thrown. They are 
planing with each other's body, and to them nothing is repetitive. Each kiss is something 
absolutely new, unique. It was never so before, it will never be the same again. Each 
moment of love has its own individual existence, non-repetitive; that's why they goon 
enjoying. 

The economic law of diminishing returns doesn't apply to it. For love, there is no law of 
diminishing returns; rather, increasing returns. That's why economists cannot understand 
love, mathematicians cannot understand love. All those who are efficient in calculation 
cannot understand love, because this is absurd: it defies all laws, all mathematics — it 
goes on increasing. 

When I was a student, when my teacher of economics explained to us about the law of 
diminishing returns, I asked him about love, 'What do you say about love?’ He became 
disturbed, and when I said that just the contrary — the law of increasing returns — applies 
to love, he said to me, 'You go out of the class. You cannot understand economics.’ He 
said, 'This law is universal.’ I said,' Don’t say it is universal, because what about love?’ 
Two lovers appear to us as if they are repeating. To them, they are not repeating. But to a 
prostitute the law of economics will apply, because for her, love is not love, it is a 
commodity — something to be sold, something which can be purchased. 

So if you go and kiss a prostitute, for her it is boredom, repetition, and some day she will 
say. 'This is nonsense. I am bored of being kissed and kissing the whole day. It is 
intolerable.’ She will say that it is a repetitive act. 

That’s what I want to show you — the distinction. For a lover it is not repetitive; for a 
prostitute it is repetitive. So, really, the act itself is not repetitive; it is your quality that 
you bring to it. Whatsoever you do, if you love it, it will never be repetitive. If you love 
your doings, your acts, there will be no boredom. But you don’t love. 

I go on talking to you every day. I can goon ad infinitum. I love it. It is not repetitive for 
me. From eternity to eternity I can goon talking with you. Communication, to 
communicate with your heart, is love to me. It is not a repetitive act, otherwise I would 



get bored. 

I have heard, one small child went with his father and mother to the church one Sunday, 
and then the next and the next. On the third Sunday this little child asked his father, 'The 
God must be getting bored, because there are the same faces every day in the church. For 
three Sundays we have been coming here — the same faces! The God must be bored, 
seeing them turning up again and again every Sunday.’ 

But the God is not bored. The whole existence has been repeating continuously. It looks 
like repetition to us, but if there is a being, a total being, something like a God, he is not 
bored. 

If he is bored there is no need to continue. He can stop. He can say, 'No more!’ He can 
say, 'Finished!' But he is not bored. Why? 

He loves — whatsoever is happening is his love. He is a creator, not a worker, not a 
laborer. He is a creator. 

A Picasso is not bored, he is a creator. If your act becomes creation, you will not be 
bored. And your act becomes creation if you love it. But the basic difficulty is that you 
cannot love whatsoever you do because you hate yourself — that's the problem. So 
whatsoever you do, you hate it, because basically you hate yourself. 

You have not yet accepted yourself, you have not yet thanked existence for your 
existence. From your heart there is no thank-you towards God. Really, you have a grudge 
— 'Why have you created me?’ Deep down you go on asking. 'Why have I been thrown 
into existence? What is the purpose?’ Think, if suddenly God meets you, what will be the 
first question you will ask? You will ask, 'Why have you created me? To suffer? To be in 
agony? To be unnecessarily wandering through lives and lives? Why did you create me? 
Answer!’ 

You have not accepted yourself so how can you accept your acts? Love yourself. Accept 
yourself as you are. Because action is secondary — it flows from your being. If I love 
myself then whatsoever I do, I love it. And if I don’t love it, I stop it. What is the need to 
continue? 

But you don’t love, and the source is unloved so the products of that source cannot be 
loved. 

Whatsoever you do — you may be an engineer or you may be a doctor or a chemist or a 
scientist — whatsoever you do, you will bring hate to it. Your hate makes it repetitive. 
You hate it, and you go on finding excuses for why you are doing it. You say, 'I am 
doing it for my wife, for my children.’ And your father was doing it for you, and his 
father was doing it for him, and your children will do it for their children, and no one will 
enjoy life. 

These are tricks. You are simply a coward. You cannot escape from it, because it gives 
you security, safety, income, bank balance. Because you are a coward, you cannot stop 
doing it and you cannot start doing that which you love. Then you go on putting 
everything on your children, on your wife, and they are also doing the same. 

Ask the child. He is going to the school, he is bored. He says, 'I am going for my father. 
He feels happy. If I don’t go he feels very miserable.’ And your wife? — she is doing 
everything just for you and the children. No one is really existing for himself. No one 
loves himself enough to exist for himself. Then everything goes wrong. The source is 
poisoned, and then all that comes out of that source is poisoned. 

And don’t think that if you change your job, you will love it. No, you will bring your 



quality to the new job also. In the beginning it may be a sensation, something new, but 
sooner or later you will settle down and it will be the same. 

Change yourself, love yourself, and love whatsoever you do; howsoever small it makes 
no difference. 

I am reminded of an anecdote. It happened that when Abraham Lincoln became 
President, on the first day when he was inaugurating the senate, someone who was very 
jealous of his power, his prestige, his success, stood and said to Abraham Lincoln, 
'Lincoln, don’t forget that your father was a shoemaker.’ 

It was absolutely irrelevant, absurd, and the man who said this added, 'Your father was a 
shoemaker, and he used to make shoes for my family. Don’t forget him.’ 

It was just to insult him, and the whole senate laughed because everyone was jealous. 
Deep down everyone was feeling, 'This chair belongs to me, and this man has usurped 
it.’ Of course, whenever someone succeeds, he succeeds in some cunning way; only you 
succeed rightly. This is how we adjust to others' successes — it was cunning, by some 
wrong techniques somehow he has reached. This is how w can tolerate it and console 
ourselves. So the whole senate laughed. 

But Abraham Lincoln said something which is beautiful. He said, 'It is so good of you to 
remind me of my father. I know he was a shoemaker — but I have never seen such a 
shoemaker. He was unique, he was a creator, because he loved shoemaking. And I cannot 
think myself as successful as he was, because I don’t love this presidency as much as he 
loved shoemaking. 

He enjoyed it, he was blissful. I will never be as blissful in this presidency as he was just 
as a shoemaker. 

'But why have you remembered him this moment? I know,’ said Abraham Lincoln, 'that 
my father was making shoes for your family, but they never complained, so I hope the 
shoes were alright. But you remember him in this moment, without any relevance — I feel 
some shoe is still pinching. I am his son, I can repair it.’ 

If you love yourself, if you love your work, you live in a different milieu. In that milieu 
nothing is repeated. Repetition appears only to a bored mind. Don’t say that you are bored 
because of repetitive acts. Acts appear repetitive because you are bored — then 
whatsoever you do will appear repetitive. 

But look at life — life enjoys repetition. The seasons move in a circle. The sun moves in a 
circle — every day, every morning, it arises. And the summer comes and the winter 
comes and the rains come and they go on moving. In a deep way the whole existence is 
repetitively moving. It seems creation is just like a child's play. The trees are not bored, 
and the sky is not bored. The sky never says, 'Now, again the clouds?’ For so many many 
millennia the sky has been seeing the clouds — every rainy season the clouds come and 
they start moving. Look at life? It is repetitive. 

The word is not good; the word 'repetitive' is not good. 

Rather it will be better to say it goes on playing the same game. It enjoys it so much that 
it wants to repeat it again. And it goes on increasing; it goes on moving towards a climax. 
Why does man get bored with repetition? Not because repetition is boring, but because 
you are so bored that everything will be boring. 

Once it happened that Sigmund Freud was asking a patient questions; just the preliminary 
basic questions that he asked before the psychoanalysis could start. He asked, 'Look at 



the book-case, and what does it immediately remind you of?’ 

The man looked at the books, not really looking at all, and he said, 'It reminds me of a 
woman, a beautiful woman.’ This was good for Freud, because it was falling under his 
theory that everything is sexual, so he said, 'Okay.' Then he took his handkerchief and 
said, 'Look at this. What does this remind you of immediately? Whatsoever comes to 
your mind." 

The man laughed and said, 'A beautiful woman.’ 

Freud was overjoyed. Really that was his theory — that every man is basically concerned 
with sex and nothing else. Man thinks of woman, woman thinks of man, and that is all 
thinking. So he said, 'Look at the door.’ There was no one at the door, there was no one 
even moving in the street. He said, 'Look, there is no one. This absence — what do you 
feel? What do you immediately remember?’ 

The man said, 'A beautiful woman.’ 


Now even Freud was a little disturbed whether this man was just deceiving him or not, so 
he said, 'It seems too much. Everything makes you remember a woman-’ 

The man said, 'That is not the point. Whether it is a bookcase or a handkerchief or an 
empty door is not the point. Really, I never think of anything except of women. I never 
think of anything else, so whatsoever you say is irrelevant. I think only of women. It is 
not that everything reminds me of them; I am thinking only of women — it is not a 
question of any reminding.’ 

So really it is not a question that this act makes you bored or that act makes you bored, or 
repetition or monotony or tedious jobs make you bored. The real thing is that you are 
bored whether you do something or not. If you are simply relaxing in a chair you will be 
bored. Not doing anything you will be bored. You will say, 'There is nothing to do and I 
am bored. Nothing to do — I am bored.’ The whole week you are bored because of the 
tedious job, and on the week-end you are bored because there is nothing to do. The whole 
life you are bored because of doing a repetitive job in a factory, in an office, in a shop. 
Then when you retire you are bored, because now there is nothing to do. 

It is not a question of anything else. Something is not creating boredom in you; you are 
bored, and you go on bringing your boredom to everything that you touch. 

You have heard of King Midas — whatsoever he touched became gold. You are also a 
King Midas — whatsoever you touch becomes boredom. You have an alchemical touch: 
you can change everything into a boredom; everything, I say. 

Don’t think of changing j obs, actions; think of changing the quality of your 
consciousness. Be more loving to yourself. The first thing to remember is to be more 
loving to yourself. The moralists have poisoned the whole world. They say, 'Don’t love 
yourself. This is selfishness.’ They say, 'Love others, don’t love yourself. The love of the 
self is sin.’ 

And I say to you that this is absolute nonsense — and not only nonsense; it is dangerous 
nonsense. Unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody, it is impossible, because a 
man who is not in love with himself cannot be in love with anybody. If you are in love 
with yourself, only then can your overflowing love reach somebody. 

A man who has not loved himself will hate himself, and if you yourself hate yourself, 
how can you love anybody? You will hate others also. You can only pretend. And when 
you cannot love yourself, how do you expect others to love you? Everyone is condemned 



in his own eyes. The whole moralistic teaching gives you only one thing: techniques of 
self condemnation — how to condemn yourself, how you are bad, a criminal, guilty, a 
sinner. 

Christianity says that your being a sinner is not a question of what you do/ you are bom a 
sinner. 

It is not a question of whether you do some sin or not; no, you are a bom sinner. Man is 
bom in sin. Adam, the first man, committed the sin, and you are descendants. The sin has 
been committed, nothing can be done. Now it cannot be undone, and you are bom into 
sin — Adam’s sin. 

If you are bom in sin, how can you love yourself? If your very being is guilt, how can 
you love yourself? And if you cannot love yourself, you cannot love anybody. The love 
must happen at home first — you are the home — and only when it overflows can it reach 
to others. And when it overflows, it overflows into your acts, into whatsoever you do. 
Whether you paint or make a shoe or anything — just cleaning the street — whatsoever 
you do, if you are in deep love, if you are in deep love with yourself, it flows into 
everything you do. It flows even when you are not doing anything. It goes on flowing, it 
becomes your very existence, and then nothing is boring. 

People come to me; sometimes very sympathetically some friends ask me, 'The whole 
day you are sitting in one room, not even looking out of the window. Don’t you get 
bored?' I am with myself. Why should I get bored? They say, 'Just sitting alone, don’t 
you get bored?’ 

If I hate myself I will get bored, because you cannot live with a person you hate. You get 
bored with yourself. You cannot be alone. Even if you are alone for a few moments you 
get fidgety, you get uncomfortable, an uneasiness comes into your being. 

You long to meet someone, because you cannot remain with yourself. The company is so 
boring — your own company. You cannot look at your own face. You cannot touch your 
hand lovingly; no — impossible. 

They ask me — and their asking is relevant to their own reference, because they will get 
bored if they are alone — they ask me, 'Don’t you go out sometimes?’ There is no need. 
Sometimes they ask me, 'People come to you with the same problem again and again. 
Don’t you get bored?’ 

Because everyone has the same problem. You are so unoriginal you cannot even create 
an original problem. Everyone has the same problem. Some are related with your love, 
with your sex, with your peace of mind, with your confusion, or something else — some 
psychology, some pathology, something — but man can be easily divided into seven 
categories, and there are the same questions, the seven basic questions, and people go on 
asking them. So friends ask me, 'Don’t you get bored?’ 

I never get bored, because each individual is unique to me, and because of the individual, 
the problem he brings is not a repetition because the context is different, the individual is 
different. You come with your love problem, another comes with his love problem: both 
look similar but they are not, because two individuals are so different — their difference 
changes the quality of the problem. 

So if you categorize, you can categorize into seven categories, but I never categorize. 

Each individual is so unique that he cannot be put with anyone else. No category can be 
made. But then you have to have a very keen awareness to penetrate to the very root 



where the individual is unique. Otherwise, on the surface everyone is alike. 

Just on the surface everyone is alike, with the same problems, but if you penetrate deep, 
if you are alert and ready to move with the person to the deeper core of his being, the 
deeper you go, the more original, individual and unique a phenomenon comes into being. 
If you can see to the very center, this person before you is unrepeatable. He has never 
been before, he will never be again. He is just unique. And the mystery then overfills you 
— the mystery of the unique person. 

Nothing is a repetition if you know how to penetrate, how to be loving and alert. 
Otherwise everything is repetitive. You are bored because you have a consciousness 
which creates boredom. Change the consciousness, and there will be no boredom. But 
you go on changing objects — that will not make any difference. 


THE END. 



Chapter 65: Life is a mystery, not a problem 


PUT MINDSTUFF 

IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE FINENESS 
ABOVE, BELOW AND IN YOUR HEART. 

CONSIDER ANY AREA OF YOUR PRESENT FORM 
AS LIMITLESSLY SPACIOUS. 

Life is not a problem but a mystery. For science life is a problem, but for religion it is a 
mystery. A problem can be solved, a mystery cannot be solved — it can be lived but it 
cannot be solved. Religion offers no solutions, no answers. Science offers answers; 
religion has none. 

This is the basic difference, and before you make any effort to understand what religion 

is, this basic difference in the very approach of a religious mind and a scientific mind is 
to be deeply understood. 

When I say that science looks at life as a problem, as something which can be solved, the 
whole approach becomes intellectual. Then the mind is involved, not you. You are out of 

it. The mind manipulates, the mind tackles, the mind penetrates and analyses. The mind 
argues, doubts, experiments, but you as a totality are out of it. Hence this very puzzling 
phenomenon: a scientist may be a very keen intellectual as far as his own department of 
research is concerned, but in ordinary life he will be just as ordinary a human being as 
anyone else — nothing special, just ordinary. In his own branch of knowledge he may be 
a genius, but in life he is just ordinary. 

Science includes only your intellect, not your totality. 

An intellect has a violence, it is aggressive. That is why very few women can be 
scientists — aggression is not natural to them. Intellect is male, aggressive, violent: that is 
why men are more scientific and women are more religious. Intellect tries to dissect, 
divide, analyze, and whenever you dissect an alive thing, the life disappears. Only dead 
parts are left in your hands. 

That is why science never touches life. Really, whatsoever it touches becomes dead. 
When science says there is no soul or there is no God it is meaningful, not because their 
is no soul or no God, but because this shows that the very approach of the scientific mind 
is such that you cannot touch life anywhere. Wherever science touches, death happens. In 
the very method, in the very way, in the very approach of division, analysis, dissection, 
life is bracketed out. 

One thing: intellect is violent and aggressive, so the ultimate outcome through intellect 
can only be death, not life. It is partial, not total, and parts are dead. Life is an organic 
unity. You can know life through synthesis, not through analysis. The greater the 
synthesis the higher the forms of life that evolve. God is the ultimate synthesis, the total 
unity, the wholeness of existence. God is not a puzzle but the ultimate synthesis of all 
that is — matter is the ultimate analysis of all that is. 

So science comes to atomic materiality and religion comes to cosmic consciousness. 

Science moves downwards to the last, lowest denominator and religion moves upwards to 
the highest denominator. They move in opposite dimensions. So science transforms 



everything into a problem, because if you have to tackle it scientifically, you first have to 
decide whether it is a problem or not. Religion takes mystery as the base. There is no 
problem, life is not a problem. The emphasis is that it cannot be solved. A problem means 
something solvable, something which can be known, something knowable. It may not be 
known right now, but it is not unknowable. At the most it may be unknown, but that 
unknownness will disappear and it will be transfonned into a known thing. 

So really, religion cannot ask a question like, "What is life?" This is absurd. Religion 
cannot ask such a question as, "What is God?" This is nonsense. The very approach of 
religion is not to create problems. Religion can ask how to be more alive, how to be in 
the very current of life, how to live abundantly; religion can ask how to be a God — but it 
cannot ask what God is. 

We can live mysteries, we can become one with them, we can lose ourselves in them, we 
can have a totally difference existence, the very quality changes — but nothing is solved, 
because nothing can be solved. And all that appears to be solvable, all that appears to be 
knowable, is only because we are taking it in fragments. 

If we look at the whole then nothing is knowable, we just go on pushing the mystery 
backwards. All our questions are temporary, they appear to be answers only to lazy 
minds. If you have a penetrating mind you will come again upon the same mystery, only 
it has been pushed back, a step back. Just behind the answers the question is hidden. You 
have simply created a facade of an answer, just a curtain over the mystery. 

If you can feel the distinction, then from the very beginning religion takes on a different 
shape, a different color and a different view. The whole perspective changes. These 
techniques that we are discussing here are not to solve anything — they don’t take life as a 
problem. Life is there. It has been a mystery and will remain a mystery. Whatsoever we 
do we cannot demystify it, because to be mysterious is the very quality of it. That life is 
mysterious is not something accidental, it is not something which can be separated, it is 
the very life itself. So to me, the more you enter into the mysterium, into the mysterious, 
the more religious you become. 

A really religious man will not say that he believes in God; he will not say that God 
exists. These things seem to be very superficial, they seem to be like answers given to 
certain questions. A religious man cannot utter such profanities — that God is. It is such a 
profound phenomenon, such a mysterious thing, that to say anything will be profane. 

So whenever someone asked Buddha whether God existed or not, he remained silent. 

You are asking a thing which cannot be answered. Not that there is no God, but to answer 
such a thing will make it answerable. Then life will become a problem which can be 
answered. Then the mystery disappears. So Buddha said, "Don’t ask me any metaphysical 
questions." 

Questions can only be physical. Physics can answer them. Metaphysical questions are not 
there, they cannot be, because metaphysics means the mystery. 

These techniques are to help you to move more deeply into mystery, not into knowledge. 
Or you can look at it in a different way: these techniques are to help you to be 
unburdened of your knowledge. They are not to help you to increase your 
'knowledgeability', because 'knowledgeability' is the barrier. The door is then closed for 
the mystery. The more you know, the less you are capable of penetrating deep into life. 
The original wonder must be recaptured, because in a childlike sense of wonder nothing 
is known and everything becomes a mystery. And if you move into the mystery, the 



deeper you move, the deeper the mystery becomes. Then a moment comes when you can 
say that you don’t know anything. That is the right moment. 

Now you have become meditative. When you can feel a deep ignorance, when you 
become aware that you don’t know anything, you have come to the right balancing point 
from where the door of the mystery can open. 

If you know, then the door is closed; if you are ignorant, fully alert that you don’t know 
anything, the door suddenly opens. The very feeling that you don’t know opens the door. 
So take these techniques not as knowledge, but as a help to make you more innocent. 
Ignorance is innocent, knowledge is always a sort of cunningness, cleverness. If you can 
use your knowledge to be ignorant again, then you have used it rightly. This is the only 
use of all the scriptures, of all the knowledge, of all the Vedas — to make you childlike 
again. 

Now the first technique: 

PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE FINENESS 
ABOVE, BELOW AND IN YOUR HEART. 

Three things. First, if knowledge is important then the head is the center; if childlike 
innocence is important then the heart is the center. The child lives in the heart; we live in 
the head. The child feels; we think. Even when we say that we feel, we think that we feel. 
Thinking becomes primary for us, feeling becomes secondary. Thinking is the tool for 
science, feeling is the tool for religion. 

You must start to be a feeling organism again. And both the dimensions are different. 
When you think, you remain separate; when you feel, you melt. 

Think about a flower, a rose flower. When you think, you are separate, there is a gap, a 
distance, a space. For thinking, space is needed; for thoughts to move, distance is needed. 

Feel the flower and the gap disappears, the distance drops. Because for feeling, distance 
is the barrier. The closer you come, the more you feel. A moment comes when even 
closeness appears to be a sort of distance — and then melting happens. Then you cannot 
feel the boundaries of where you are and where the flower is, of where you end and 
where the flower begins. Then boundaries melt into each other: the flower enters you in a 
way, you enter the flower in a way. Feeling is losing the boundaries; thinking is creating 
the boundaries. That is why thinking always insists on definitions, because without 
definitions you cannot create boundaries. 

Thinking says define first, and feeling says don't define. If you define, feeling stops. 

The child feels; we think. The child comes close to existence, he melts and allows the 
existence to melt into him. We are isolated, imprisoned in the head. We are like islands. 
This sutra says to come back to the heart center. Start feeling things. It will be a great 
experiment if you start feeling things. Whatsoever you do, give a certain amount of your 
time and energy to feeling. You are sitting here, you can listen to me — but that will be 
part of thinking. You can also feel me here but that will not be a part of thinking. If you 
can feel my presence, then definitions are lost. Then really, if you come to a moment of 
feeling, you don’t know who is speaking and who is listening. 

This can happen right this very moment. Then the speaker becomes the listener and the 
listener becomes the speaker. Then really they are not two, rather, they are two poles of 
one phenomenon: on one pole is the speaker, on another pole is the listener. But these are 
just poles, isolated. They are not real. The real thing is just in-between these two — the 



life, the flow. Whenever you feel, something other than your ego becomes important. 
Object and subject lose their definitions. A flow, a wave, exists — on one pole the 
speaker, on another pole the listener, but the life is the wave. 

Head gives you clarity, and because of this clarity much confusion has come into being 
because the head defines clearly, marks boundaries, makes maps. With reason, 
everything is clear-cut: no vagueness, no mystery is allowed. All that is vague is rejected, 
only the clear is real. Reason gives you a clarity, and because of clarity, a great 
misunderstanding arises. Clarity is not reality. Reality is always unclear, vague. Concepts 
are clear, reality is mysterious; concepts are rational, reality is irrational. 

Words are clear, logic is clear life is not clear. The heart gives you a melting vagueness. 

It reaches reality more intimately, but it is not clear. And because we have chosen clarity 
as the goal, we have been missing reality. You must have unclear eyes to enter reality 
again. 

You must be vague, you must be ready to enter into something which cannot be 
conceptualized, into something which is not logic, into something which is staggering 
and real, staggering and alive. 

Clarity is dead. It remains fixed. Life is a flux, nothing is fixed, nothing remains the same 
the next moment. How can you be clear about it? If you insist too much on clarity you 
will lose contact with it. That is what has happened. 

This sutra says that the basic thing is to come back to the heart center — but how to come 
to it? PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSABLE FINENESS ABOVE, BELOW 
AND IN YOUR HEART. 

The word Tnindstuff is not a good translation of the original Sanskrit word CHITT. But 
English has no other equivalent. So it is good in a way, it carries the meaning, not of 
'mind’ but of Tnindstuff . 

Mind means mentation, thinking, thought, and tnindstuff means the background upon 
which these thoughts float — just as in the sky the clouds move. Clouds are the thoughts 
and the sky is the background upon which they move. That sky, consciousness, has been 
called mindstuff. Your mind can be without thoughts; then it is chitt, then it is pure mind. 
When it has thoughts it is impure mind. 

If your mind can be without thought, then it is very subtle, the subtlest thing possible in 
existence. You cannot conceive of a more subtle possibility. Consciousness is the most 
subtle thing. 

So when there are no thoughts in the mind, you have pure mind. The pure mind can move 
towards the heart, the impure mind cannot. By impurity I don’t mean any immoral 
thoughts in the mind, by impurity I mean all thoughts — thought as such is impure. 

Even if you are thinking of God it is an impurity, because the cloud is moving. The cloud 
is very white, but the cloud is there and the purity of the space is not there. A cloudless 
sky is not there. A cloud may be a black cloud, a sexual thought moving in the mind, or 
the cloud may be a white cloud, beautiful, a prayer moving in the mind, but in both cases 
the pure mind is not there. It is impure, clouded. And if the mind is clouded you cannot 
move in the heart. 

This has to be understood because with thoughts you cling to the head. Thoughts are the 
roots, and unless those roots are cut you cannot fall back to the heart. 

The child remains in the heart only up to the moment that thoughts crystalize, that 
thoughts start floating in his mind. Then they take root; then through education, culture, 



cultivation, they become rooted; then by and by the consciousness moves from the heart 
to the head. The consciousness can remain in the head only if there are thoughts. This is 
basic. If there are no thoughts, consciousness immediately drops back to its original 
innocence in the heart. 

Hence so much emphasis on meditation, so much emphasis on non-thinking, on 
thoughtless awareness, on choiceless awareness, or on Buddha’s 'right mindfulness’, 
which is just mindfulness without any thought, just being aware. 

What happens then? A very great phenomenon happens because when the roots are cut, 
immediately consciousness drops back to the heart, to the original place where it had 
been. You become a child again. 

Jesus said, "Only those who are like children will enter into the kingdom of my God." He 
refers to those persons whose consciousness has come back to the heart. They have 
become innocent, childlike. 

But the first basic requirement is to PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE 
FINENESS.... 

Thoughts can be expressed. There is not a single thought which is inexpressible, nor can 
there be. If it is inexpressible you cannot think it; if you can think it, it is expressible. 
There is not a single thought which you can say is inexpressible. The moment you can 
think it, it has become expressible — you have already expressed it to yourself. 
Consciousness, pure consciousness, is inexpressible. That is why mystics go on saying 
that they cannot express what they know. Logicians always raise the question that if you 
know, then why can’t you say it? And their argument has meaning and significance. If 
you really say that you know then why can’t you express it? 

For a logician, knowledge must be expressible — that which can be known can be made 
known to others, there is no problem. If you have known it, then where is the problem? 
You can make it known to others. 

But the mystic's knowledge is not of thoughts. He has not known it as a thought, he has 
known it as a feeling. So really, it is not good to say, "I know God." It is better to say, "I 
feel." It is not good to say, "I have known God." It is better to say, "I have felt him." That 
is a more accurate description of the phenomenon because the 'knowledge' is through the 
heart it is like feeling, it is not like knowledge. 

PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE FINENESS.... Mindstuff, 
consciousness, CHITT, is inexpressible. If a single thought is moving, it is expressible. 
So, to PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE FINENESS means to come to a 
point where you are conscious, but not conscious of any thought; where you are alert, but 
there is no thought moving in the mind. This is a delicate point and very difficult — you 
can miss it easily. 

We know two states of mind. One is when thoughts are there. When thoughts are there, 
you cannot move to the heart. Then we know another state of mind — when thoughts are 
not there. When thoughts are not there, you fall asleep. Then too, you cannot move to the 
heart. Every night, for a few moments, for a few hours, you fall out of thinking. Thoughts 
cease, but you don't reach to the heart because you are unconscious. So a very delicate 
balance is needed. Thoughts must cease as they cease in deep sleep, when there is no 
dream — and you must be as alert as you are while awake. 


These two points must meet. Mind must be as thoughtless as it is in deep sleep, but you 



must not be asleep, you must be perfectly alert, aware. 

When awareness and this thoughtlessness meet, it is meditation. That is why Patanjali 
says that samadhi is like SUSHUPTI. The highest ecstasy, samadhi, is like the deepest 
sleep, with only one difference: in it you are not asleep. But the quality is the same — 
thoughtless, dreamless, undisturbed, without a single ripple, totally calm and quiet, but 
alert. When you are aware and there is no thought, you will feel a sudden transformation 
in your consciousness. The center changes. You are thrown back. You are thrown to the 
heart. And from the heart, when you look at the world, there is no world, there is only 
God. From the head, when you look towards existence, there is no God, there is only 
material existence. 

Matter, material existence, the world, and God are not two things, two outlooks, two 
perspectives. They are the same phenomenon looked at from two centers of being. 

PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE FINENESS, ABOVE, BELOW AND 
IN YOUR HEART. Be totally in it, merged, immersed. Be simply consciousness, above, 
below, in the heart; the whole heart surrounded by simple consciousness; not thinking 
anything in particular, just being aware, with no word, with no verbalization, not thinking 
at all, just being. 

Put mindstuff above, below, and in your heart, and everything will become possible to 
you. 

All the doors of perception will be cleansed and all the doors of mysteries will be opened. 
Suddenly there will be no problem, and suddenly there will be no misery — it is as if the 
darkness has disappeared completely. Once you know this you can move back to the head 
but you will not be the same. Now you can use the head as an instrument. You can work 
with it, but now you are not identified with it, and even while working with it and 
looking at the world through it, you will know that whatsoever you are seeing is because 
of the intellect. Now you are acquainted with a higher standpoint, a deeper view — and 
any moment you want to you can drop back. 

Once you know the passage and how consciousness drops back; how your age, your past, 
your memory and your knowledge, disappear and you become a newborn child again — 
once you know this secret, this passage, you can travel to that point as many times as you 
like, and you can be refreshed again and again. If you have to move to the head, you can 
use it; you can move in the ordinary world, working but not getting involved in it, 
because deep down you know that that which is known by the intellect is partial. It is not 
the whole truth. And a partial truth is more dangerous than a lie, because it appears to be 
true and you can be deceived by it. 

Some more points. When you move to the heart, you look at existence as a total being. 

The heart is not departmental, the heart is not a fragment of you, the heart means you in 
your totality. Mind is a fragment, hand is a fragment, leg is a fragment, stomach is a 
fragment, the whole body taken in parts is fragmented. The heart is not a fragment. That 
is why my hand can be cut off and I will be alive. Even my brain can be removed and I 
will be alive, but if the heart is gone, I am gone. 

Really, my whole body can be removed but if my heart is beating I am alive. The heart 
means your wholeness, so when the heart fails, you are no longer there. All other things 
are just parts, disposable. If the heart is beating you will remain intact. The center of the 
heart is the very core of your existence. I can touch you with my hand. That touch will 
give me a certain knowledge about you, about your skin, whether it is smooth or not. The 



hand will give a certain knowledge to me, but that knowledge will be partial because the 
hand is not my wholeness. I can see you. My eyes will give a certain knowledge from a 
different standpoint but that will not be the whole. I can think about you — again the same 
thing. But I cannot feel you in part. If I feel you at all I feel you in your wholeness. That 
is why, unless you know through love, you never know the wholeness of any person. 

Only love can reveal the whole personality to you, the whole being, the essential, the 
total. 

Because love means knowing through the heart, feeling through the heart. So to me, 
feeling and knowing are not two fragments of your being. Feeling is your whole being 
and knowing is just a fragment of it. 

To religion love is the highest knowledge. That is why religion is expressed more in 
poetic terms than in scientific ones. Scientific terms cannot be used, they belong to the 
realm of knowing. Poetry can be used. And those who have come to know reality through 
love, whatsoever they say becomes poetry. The Upanishads, the Vedas, the sayings of 
Jesus or Buddha or Krishna, they are all poetic statements. 

It is not just a coincidence that all the old religious scriptures are written in poetry. It has 
a significance. It shows that there is some affinity between the world of a poet and the 
world of a mystic. The mystic is also using the language of the heart. 

The poet is only a mystic in certain moments of flight, just as when you jump you can go 
away from the gravitation of the earth, but you again come back to it. A poet means a 
person who has been for some seconds on a flight into the world of the mystics. He has 
had some glimpses. A mystic is one who has gone beyond gravitation completely, who 
lives in the world of love, who lives through the heart. This has become his very abode. 
For the poetic person it is just a glimpse: sometimes he falls down from the head to the 
heart. 

But this is just for the time being — again he goes back to the head. So if you see a 
beautiful poem, don’t try to see the poet who has written it because you will not meet the 
same person. You will be disappointed because you will meet a very ordinary man. He 
had a glimpse. For certain moments reality was revealed to him and he came down to the 
heart. But he doesn't know the passage. He is not the master of it. It has been a happening 
and he cannot move to it by his own will. 

When Coleridge died he left about forty thousand incomplete poems. He really 
completed only seven poems in his whole life. He became a great poet, one of the 
greatest in the world, but he was asked many times, "Why do you go on piling up 
incomplete poems, and when are you going to complete them?" He said, "I cannot do 
anything. Sometimes a few lines come to me and then they stop. So how can I complete 
them? I will wait. I will have to wait. If it happens again and the glimpse comes to me, 
and I again have the world revealed to me, the reality, then I will complete it. But on my 
own I can do nothing." He must have been a very sincere poet. To find such sincere poets 
is difficult, because the tendency of the mind is to supply. If three lines have come then 
you will supply the fourth, and the fourth will kill all the three because it will come from 
a very lower state of mind — when you are back on the earth. 


When you jumped, and you were freed for some moments from gravitation, you had a 
different dimension of being. 



A poet moves on the earth but sometimes he jumps. In those jumps he has glimpses. A 
mystic lives in the heart. He doesn’t move on the earth, the heart has become his abode. 

So he doesn’t really create poetry but whatsoever he does becomes poetic, whatsoever he 
says becomes poetry. Really, a mystic cannot use prose because his prose is also poetry — 
it is coming through the heart, it is coming through love. 

PUT MINDSTUFF IN SUCH INEXPRESSIBLE FINENESS, ABOVE, BELOW AND 
IN YOUR HEART. The heart is your total being, and when you are total you can know 
the total — remember this. Only the similar can know the similar. When you are 
fragmentary you cannot know the total. As within, so without. When you are total within, 
the total reality without is revealed to you; you have become capable of knowing it, you 
have earned the right to know it. When you are fragmented within, the reality is 
fragmented without. So whatsoever you are within will be the without for you. 

Deep in the heart the whole world is different, the gestalt is different. I am looking at 
you. If I am looking at you through the head, through intellect, through one of my parts 
of knowing, then a few friends are here, individuals, egos — separate. But if I am looking 
at you through the heart, then individuals are not here. 

Then just an oceanic consciousness is here and individuals are just waves. If I look at you 
through the heart, then you and your neighbor are not two, then the reality is between you 
and your neighbor. You are just two poles, and the real is just in-between. Then here 
there is an ocean of consciousness in which you exist as waves. But waves are not 
separate, they are linked together. And you are melting every moment into the other, 
whether you know it or not. 

The breath that was within you just a moment ago has left you — now it is moving into 
your neighbor. Just a moment before, it was your life and you would have died without it, 
and now it is moving into your neighbor. It is his life now. Your body is continuously 
radiating vibrations, you are a radiator, so your life energy is constantly moving into the 
neighbor and his life energy is moving into you. 

If I look at you from my heart, if I look at you with loving eyes, if I look at you totally, 
then you are just radiating points, and life is moving continuously from you to others and 
from others to you.... 

And not only just in this room, this whole universe is a constant flux of life energy. It 
goes on moving. There are no individual units, it is a cosmic whole. But through intellect 
the cosmic never appears, only fragments, atomic fragments, appear. And this is not a 
question which can be comprehended through intellect. 

If you try to comprehend through intellect it will be impossible to comprehend it. It is a 
totally different outlook, from a different point of existence. 

If you are total within, the totality without is revealed to you. Some have called that 
revelation God-realization: some have called it moksha, liberation; some have called it 
nirvana, cessation. Different words, altogether different words, but they signify the same 
core, the same essence. 

One thing is basic to all these expressions — the individual disappears. You may call it 
God-realization, then you are no longer an individual; you can call it liberation, then you 
are no longer a self; you can call it cessation — as Buddha has called it — then just as a 
lamp, a flame, ceases to be, disappears, disperses, you cannot find it anywhere again, you 
cannot locate it, it has gone into non-being, so the individual disappears. But this point 
has to be pondered over. Why do all religions say that the individual, the self, the ego, 



disappears when you realize the truth? If all religions emphasize this, this means that the 
self must be illusory — otherwise how can it disappear? The self must not be there really, 
only then can it disappear. This may seem paradoxical, but this is so: only that which is 
not can disappear. That which is will persist in being, it cannot disappear. 

Just because of the head a false entity has come into being — the individual. 

If you come down to the heart, the false entity disappears. It was a creation of the head. 
From the heart the cosmic is, the individual is not; the whole is, the parts are not. And 
remember, when you are not, you cannot create a hell; when you are not, you cannot be 
in misery; when you are not, there can be no anxiety, no suffering. All anxiety, all 
suffering, exists because of you — the shadow of the shadow. The self is unreal, the ego is 
unreal, and because of that unreal self many unreal shadows are created. They follow 
you, you go on fighting with them, but you will never be victorious because the base goes 
on being hidden within you. 

Swami Ramteerth has said somewhere that he was staying in a house, in a poor villager's 
house. The small child of the villager was playing just in front of the hut, and the sun was 
rising and the child saw his shadow. He tried to catch it, but the more he moved, the more 
the shadow would move ahead. The child started crying. He was a failure. He tried in 
every way to catch it, but it was impossible. To catch a shadow is impossible — not 
because a shadow is such a difficult thing to catch, it is impossible because the child was 
moving to catch it. When he was moving, the shadow moved ahead. You cannot catch a 
shadow because a shadow has no substance, and only a substance can be caught. 
Ramteerth was sitting there. He was laughing and the child was crying, and the mother 
was at a loss about what to do. 

How to console the child? So she said to Ramteerth, "Swamiji, can you help me?" 
Ramteerth went to the child, caught the child's hand and put it on his head — the shadow 
was caught. Now that the child had put his hand on his head, the shadow was caught. The 
child started laughing. Now he could see that his hand had caught the shadow. 

You cannot catch a shadow, but you can catch yourself. And the moment you catch 
yourself, the shadow is caught. 

Suffering is just a shadow of the ego. We are all like that child, fighting with suffering, 
anxiety, anguish, and trying to disperse them. We can never be victorious. It is not a 
question of strength — the whole effort is absurd, impossible. You must catch the self, the 
ego, and once you catch it, suffering suddenly disappears. It was just a shadow. 

There are persons who start fighting with the self. It has been taught, "Disperse the self, 
be egoless, and you will be in bliss," so they start fighting the self, the ego. But if you 
fight you are still believing that the self exists. Your fight will give food to it, it will 
become an energy-giving thing to it, you will be feeding it. This technique says don’t 
think of the ego, just move from the head to the heart and the ego will disappear. The ego 
is a projection of the head. Don't fight with it. You can go on fighting for lives together, 
but if you remain in the head you cannot win. 


Just change the standpoint, just move from the head to a different standpoint, to a deeper 
standpoint of the being, and the whole thing changes because now you can look from a 
different perspective. From the heart there is no ego. Because of this we have become 
afraid of the heart. We never allow it to have its own way, we always interfere with it, we 



always bring mind into it. We try to control the heart through the mind because we have 
become afraid — if you move to the heart, you lose yourself. And this losing is just like 
death. Hence the incapacity to love, hence the fear of falling in love. Because you lose 
yourself, you are not in control. Something greater than you grips you and takes 
possession. Then you are not on sure ground and you don’t know where you are moving. 
So the head says, "Don’t be a fool, move with reason. Don’t be mad." 

Whenever someone is in love everyone thinks that he is mad. He himself thinks that 
something has gone crazy, "I am not in my senses!" Why does it happen? Because now 
there is no control. Something is happening that he cannot control, he cannot manage and 
manipulate. Rather, something is manipulating him, a greater force has taken him over. 
He is possessed.... 

But unless you are ready to be possessed there can be no God for you. Unless you are 
ready to be possessed there is no mystery for you, and no bliss, no benediction. 

One who is ready to be possessed by love, by prayer, by the cosmos, means one who is 
ready to die as an ego. Only that one can know what life really is, what life has to give. 
What is possible becomes immediately actual, but you must put yourself at the stake. 

This technique is beautiful. It doesn’t say anything about your ego. It doesn’t say anything 
about it. It simply gives you a technique, and if you follow the technique, the ego will 
have disappeared. 

The second sutra: 

CONSIDER ANY AREA OF YOUR PRESENT FORM AS LIMITLESSLY 
SPACIOUS. 

This is the same, through a different door. The basic essential is the same, that is, to 
destroy limits. Mind creates limits. If you don't think, you move into the unlimited. Or, 
from a different door, you can try with the unlimited and you will fall from the mind. The 
mind cannot co-exist with the unlimited, with the undefined, unbordered, infinite. The 
mind cannot exist with the unbordered, so if you can try something limitless, the mind 
will disappear. 

This technique says, CONSIDER ANY AREA OF YOUR PRESENT FORM AS 
LIMITLESSLY SPACIOUS. Any area. You can just close your eyes and imagine that 
your head has become infinite. Now there are no boundaries to it. It goes on and on and 
on and there is no boundary to it. Your head has become the whole cosmos, without any 
boundaries. If you can imagine this, suddenly thoughts will stop. 

If you can imagine your head as infinite, thinking will not be there. Thinking can exist 
only in a very narrow mind. The narrower it is, the better for thinking. The greater the 
mind, the less the thinking, and when the mind becomes total space, there is no thinking 
at all. 

Buddha is sitting under his Bodhi tree. Can you imagine what he is thinking? He is not 
thinking at all. His head is the whole cosmos. He has become spacious, infinitely 
spacious. This technique is good for those who can imagine, it will not be good for all. 
For those who can imagine, and for whom the imagination becomes so real that you 
cannot really say whether it is imagination or real, it will work. Otherwise it will not be 
of much use. But don’t be afraid, because at least thirty per cent of people are capable of 
such imagination. These people are very powerful. 

If your mind is not very educated it will be easy for you to imagine. If it is educated then 
the creativity is lost, then your mind is just a storage space, a bank. And the whole 



education system is a banking system. They go on banking and dumping stuff onto you. 
Whatsoever they feel has to be dumped onto you, they do. They use your mind for 
storage-then you cannot imagine. Then whatsoever you do is just repeating that which 
has been taught to you. 

So those who are uneducated, they can use this technique very easily. And those who 
have come out of university without being distorted by it, they can also use it. 

Those who are really still alive, even after so much education, they can do it. Women can 
do it more easily than men. All those who are imaginative, dreamers, they can do it very 
easily. 

But how to know whether you can do it or not? 

You can do a small experiment before entering it. Just lock both your hands together and 
close your eyes. For five minutes, any time, relax in a chair, lock both your hands 
together, and just imagine that the hands are so locked that even if you try, you cannot 
open them. It will look absurd to you because they are not locked but you just go on 
imagining that they are. 

For five minutes go on thinking, and then say three times in your mind, "Now I will try to 
open my hands but I know it is impossible. They are locked and they cannot be opened." 
Then try to open them. Thirty per cent of you will not be able to open your hands. They 
will be really locked, and the more you try, the more you will feel that it is impossible. 
You will start perspiring — you cannot open your own hands. Then this method is for 
you. Then you can try this method. 

If you can easily open your hands and nothing has happened, this method is not for you. 
You will not be able to do it. But don’t get scared if your hands do not open, and don’t try 
too much, because the more you try, the more difficult it will be. Just close your eyes 
again and imagine that now your hands are unlocked. 

You will need five minutes again to go on imagining that when you try to open them, 
they will open immediately. 

Unlock the same way as you locked them, just through imagination. And if this is 
possible, that your hands become locked just by imagination and you yourself cannot 
open them, then this technique will work miracles for you. And in these one hundred and 
twelve techniques there are many which work with imagination. For all those techniques 
this hand-locking experiment will be good. Just remember, experiment whether or not the 
technique is for you. 

CONSIDER ANY AREA OF YOUR PRESENT FORM AS LIMITLESSLY 
SPACIOUS. Any area.... You can consider the whole body. Just close your eyes and 
consider that the whole body is spreading, spreading, spreading, and then the boundaries 
are lost. It has become infinite. What will happen? You cannot even conceive of what 
will happen. If you can conceive that you have become the cosmos — that is the meaning, 
the infinite — all that is bound up with your ego will not be found there. Your name, your 
identity, all will be lost. Your poorness or richness, your health or your disease, your 
miseries — all will be lost, because they are part of the finite body. With an infinite body 
they cannot exist. And once you know this, come back to your finite body. But now you 
can laugh. And even in the finite you can have the sense, the feel of the infinite. 


Then you can carry it. 

Try. And it will be good if you try from the head, because that is the base of all illness. 



Close your eyes, lie down on the ground or sit on a chair and relax. Just look within the 
head. Feel the walls of the head spreading, expanding. If you feel that it will be very 
staggering, then try it slowly. First think that your head has come to occupy the whole 
room. You will actually feel your skin touching the walls. If you can lock your hands, 
this will happen. You will feel the coolness of the walls which your skin is touching. You 
will feel the pressure. 

Go on moving. Your head has gone beyond — now the house has come within your head, 
then the whole town has come within your head. Go on spreading. Within three months, 
slowly, you can come to the point where the sun rises in your head, it starts moving in 
your head. Your head has become infinite. This will give you a deep freedom such as you 
have never known. And all the misery that belongs to this narrow mind will disappear. In 
such a state, Upanishadic seers could say, 'AHAM BRAHMASMI’ — "I am the Divine, I 
am the Absolute." In such ecstasy 'ANALAHAK' was uttered. 

Mansoor cried in ecstasy, "ANALAHAK, ANALAHAK — I am the God." 

Mohammedans couldn’t understand him. Really, no sectarian will be able to understand 
such things. They thought he had gone mad, but he was not mad, he was the sanest 
person possible. 

They thought he had become an egoist. He said, "I am the God." So they killed him. 
While he was being killed, with his hands cut off, he was laughing and he was saying, 
"ANALAHAK, AHAM BRAHMASMI — I am the God." Someone asked, "Mansoor, 
why are you laughing? You are being murdered." He said, "You cannot murder me. I am 
the whole." 

You can murder only a part. How can you murder the whole? Whatsoever you do to it 
cannot make any difference. 

Mansoor is reported to have said, "If you really wanted to kill me, you should have come 
at least ten years before. Then I was. Then you could have killed me, but now you cannot 
kill me, because I am no more. I myself have killed the ego which you could have killed 
and murdered." 

Mansoor was practising certain Sufi methods of this type, the type in which one goes on 
expanding until the expanse becomes so infinite that one is no more. Then the whole is 
and the individual is not. In these past few decades, these past two or three decades in the 
West, psychedelic drugs have become very significant. And the attraction is really one of 
expansion, because under the influence of the drug your narrowness, your limitations, are 
lost. But it is a chemical change, nothing spiritual happens out of it. It is just a forced 
violence on the system — you force the system to break. 

You can have a glimpse that you are no longer confined to anything, that you have 
become infinite, liberated. 

But this is because of the chemical enforcement. Once back, you will be again in the 
narrow body, and now this body will feel more narrow than before. Again you will be 
confined to the same imprisonment, but now the imprisonment will be more intolerable 
because you have had a glimpse. And because that glimpse was through a chemical you 
are not master of it, you will become a slave, you will become addicted. Now you will 
need it more and more. 

This technique is a spiritual psychedelic. If you practise it, a spiritual change will take 
place which will not be chemical and of which you will be the master. 

Take it as a criterion: if you are the master, then the thing is spiritual. If you are the slave, 



then beware — the thing may appear to be spiritual, but it cannot be. Anything that 
becomes addictive, powerful, enslaving, imprisoning, is leading you towards more 
slavery, more 'unfreedom' — whatsoever the appearance. 

So take it as a criterion that whatsoever you do, your mastery must grow through it. You 
must become more and more the master of it. It is said, and I repeat it again and again, 
that when meditation has really happened to you, you will not need to do it. If you still 
need to do it, it has not yet really happened. Because that too has become a slavery. Even 
meditation must disappear. A moment must come when you need not do anything. Then 
just as you are, you are Divine; just as you are, you are the bliss, the ecstasy. 

But this technique is good for expansion, for expanding the consciousness. Before trying 
it, try the hand-locking experiment, so that you can feel. If your hands become locked, 
you have a very creative imagination, it is not impotent. Then you can work miracles 
through it. 


THE END. 



Chapter 66: Enlightenment -- the most ordinary 


The first question: 

Question 1 

LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT WHEN THERE ARE NO THOUGHTS IN THE 
MIND, THE MIND BECOMES AN EMPTY SPACE AND THE DOORS TO ALL THE 
MYSTERIES ARE OPENED. I FEEL THIS INNER SPACE DEEPLY AND CLEARLY 
BUT THERE IS NOTHING SPECIAL THAT I FEEL AS MYSTERY. 

WILL YOU EXPLAIN WHAT YOU MEAN BY THE MYSTERY AND HOW IT IS 
FELT? 

The inner emptiness itself is the mystery. You cannot feel it and you cannot know it. You 
become it. You are IT. When the inner space is there, then you are not. You cannot 
observe it. If you observe it, then the inner space has not yet appeared. Who will observe 
it? If you can observe it you are separate from it, so it is not inner, it is outer. It is 'out' to 
you. The inner has not yet become empty, it is filled. The ego is there — in a very subtle 
form; as an observer or onlooker, it is there. The inner is not empty yet, because when the 
inner is empty, you are not. 

So the first thing to remember is that you will not be a witness to the mystery, you will be 
the mystery. You will not be able to observe it because you cannot be separate, there 
cannot be any duality. 

One thing... when the inner is really empty, you are not, because you are the thing by 
which the inner is filled. Because of you it is not empty; because of you the space is 
covered, occupied. When you dissolve, when you simply disappear, only then the inner 
emptiness is there. 

So you will not be a witness to the mystery. Until you are not, the mystery will not be 
revealed; when you are not, the mystery will be revealed. So if you say that you feel 
inner emptiness it means you are not the emptiness; emptiness is something that is 
happening to you, around you, but you are not empty. So really this emptiness is just a 
'thought' of emptiness — that is why you can say that now your inner space has become 
empty. This is a thought: this emptiness is not real, this emptiness is just part of the mind. 
The observer is there so the object must be there. You can make emptiness an object, a 
thought. 

It is reported that Bokuju became empty like this. He must have come across this type of 
emptiness. He came to his master and he said, "Now there is nothing, I have become 
empty." The master said, "Go out and throw this nothingness also. This nothingness is 
still something, why are you carrying it? If you have really become nothing you will not 
be able to report it. Who will carry it? Who will feel in it a certain achievement?" The 
master said to Bokuju, "You have done well, you have become empty, now go and throw 
out this emptiness also." 

You can be filled with emptiness — that is the problem. And if you are filled with 
emptiness you are not empty. 

The second thing... what do I mean by mystery? Whatsoever you understand, I don’t 
mean, because you think that a mystery will be something very amazing, staggering, 
shocking, that you will be thrown off the ground. 



That is not the point. Mystery is the simple pure existence with nothing amazing about it, 
nothing staggering. You will not be pushed aside, not thrown, not shocked, not puzzled. 
Mystery is nothing mysterious really. This very ordinary existence — accept it as it is 
without creating any problem. When you don't create a problem this existence is the 
mystery; when you create the problem you are destroying the mystery. Now you are in 
search of a solution, some answer. The same mind goes on. If you hear me talking about 
the mystery then you think about something very special. There is nothing special in 
existence. Only for the ego does the word 'special' exist. 

It is reported that when Lin Chi achieved enlightenment he laughed. His disciples asked, 
"Why are you laughing?" He said, "I am laughing for this. I was endeavoring for 
thousands and thousands of lives for this — it is so ordinary." 

This is the mystery — nothing special. 

It is said of Do-zen, another Zen master, that when he achieved enlightenment disciples 
asked him, "What was the first thing that you wanted to do after it?" Do-zen is reported 
to have said, "I wanted a cup of tea." 

It was so ordinary. But for the ego these things are not appealing. If I say that 
enlightenment is so ordinary that you would like to have a cup of tea after it, then you 
will feel that the whole thing is nonsense — why endeavor? Then the ego comes in. 

The ego wants something special, something rare, something that does not usually 
happen, that has happened only to you, which has not happened to just anyone. The ego 
wants something special, extraordinary. 

Reality is not extraordinary; it is happening everywhere. And if it has not happened to 
you than that is special! Because it is there, always present. Not for a single moment is it 
absent. Enlightenment is happening every moment, it is the very core of existence — but 
you are deaf and blind. It is nothing special. 

To be a Buddha, to be enlightened, is the most ordinary phenomenon. When I say 
'ordinary' I mean: it must be so. If it looks very extraordinary it is because of you, 
because you create so many hurdles — and you love them. First you create the obstacle, 
and then you try to cross it. And then you feel very elated. In the first place, there is no 
obstacle. But your ego will not feel good — you must create a long route to come to the 
point that was the nearest, the most intimate one. And you had never missed it! 

So don’t seek something mysterious. Just be simple and innocent. And then the whole 
existence opens to you. You will not go mad, you can simply smile at the absurdity of the 
whole thing that was so near but you could not attain it. And there was no barrier. It was, 
in a sense, always within you. It was a miracle how you went on missing it. 


If the emptiness is real, all that is there, the whole of it, the reality, will be opened to you. 
Not that it is closed right now, it is open. You are closed. Your mind is occupied. When 
your mind is empty, unoccupied, you will be open to it, and there will be a meeting. And 
then everything is beautiful in its total ordinariness. Hence it is said that one who has 
known becomes absolutely ordinary. He is one with the reality. To be hankering for the 
special is the way of the ego, and all the ways of the ego create gaps and distances 
between you and the real. Be empty and everything will have happened to you. 

Not that you will have must to report: there is nothing to be reported. It is thought that 
Buddhas and Krishnas or those who have attained the ultimate, cannot describe it because 
it is so simple. Complex things can be described, remember. Simple things cannot be 



described. The more complex a thing is, the easier the description is, because in a 
complexity you can divide, contrast, compare. With a simple thing you cannot do 
anything. 

For example, if I ask you, "What is yellow?" what will you say? Yellow is so simple, 
there is nothing complex about it. If I ask, "What is water?" you can say, "H20." It is 
complex: there is hydrogen, there is oxygen, so you can define it. But if I ask you, "What 
is yellow?" at the most you can say that yellow is yellow. 

But that is a tautology, it makes no sense. What will you do if I say, "What is yellow?" 
You may indicate a yellow flower, you may indicate a yellow sun rising, but you are not 
saying anything, you are indicating. 

A simple thing can only be indicated; a complex thing can be defined, divided, analyzed. 
Buddhas are silent, not because they have encountered a very complex reality, they are 
silent because of a phenomenon so simple that it can only be indicated, not defined. So 
they can lead you towards it but they cannot say anything about it. 

That mystery is not a complex thing, it is very simple, the simplest possible. But you can 
only meet with it when you have also become simple. If you are complex, you cannot 
meet it. There is no meeting ground. Only when you have become simple, totally simple, 
innocent, empty, the reality and you meet. Then there is a reflection of it in you. It echoes 
in you. It enters into you. 

But don’t wait for anything special. Nirvana is nothing special. When I say this, what is 
happening to your mind? When I say this nirvana is nothing special, what do you feel? 
How do you feel? You feel a little disappointed. In the mind the question must be arising 
— then why struggle? Then why make any effort? Then why meditate? Then why these 
techniques? 

Look at that mind, that mind is the problem. The mind wants something special. 

And because of that desire the mind goes on creating special things. In reality there is 
nothing special: either the whole of reality is special or nothing is special. 

Because of this desire, the mind has created heavens, paradises. And it is not satisfied 
with one, it goes on creating many. Christians have one heaven, Hindus have seven — 
because there are so many good people, there must be a hierarchy. The supreme good, 
where should they go? There is no end to it. In Buddha's days there was a sect who 
believed in seven hundred heavens. You have to place the egos: the highest ego must go 
to the highest heaven. 

I was looking at a book of the Radha swamis. They say there are many divisions — 
fourteen divisions. Only their guru has reached to the last. Buddha is somewhere in the 
seventh, Krishna somewhere in the fifth, Mohammed somewhere in the third. Only their 
guru has reached to the fourteenth. And everyone else is given a place, categorized. Only 
their guru is special. This is the desire to be special. And everyone is according to his 
desire. 

I have heard an anecdote. In a Sunday school the priest was giving a religious lesson to 
the very small boys of the neighborhood. He talked much about what good people would 
achieve — the crowns of glory and a heavenly reward. Those who are good would be 
crowned in heaven. Then at the end of his talk he said, "Who will get the biggest 
crown?" There was silence for a while, then a little boy, the hatmaker's son, stood up 
confidently and said, "The one who has the biggest head." 



This is what we are all doing. Our definition of the biggest head may differ but we have a 
conception of something special in the end, and because of that 'special' we go on 
moving. But remember, because of that 'special' you are not moving anywhere at all, you 
are moving in desires. And a movement in desire is not a progress, it is circular. 

If you can still meditate — knowing well that nothing special is going to happen, that you 
will just come to a reconciliation with the ordinary reality, that you will be in harmony 
with this ordinary reality — if with this mind you can meditate, then enlightenment is 
possible this very moment. But with this mind you won't feel like meditating — you will 
say, "Leave everything if nothing special is going to happen." 

People come to me and they say, "I have been meditating for three months and nothing 
has happened yet." A desire... and that desire is the barrier. It can happen in a single 
moment if desire is not there. 

So don’t desire the mysterious. Really, don't desire anything. Just be at ease, at home with 
reality as it is. Be ordinary — to be ordinary is wonderful. Because then there is no 
tension, no anguish. To be ordinary is very mysterious because it is so simple. To me, 
meditation is a play, a game; it is not a work. But to you it goes on being work; you think 
in terms of work. 

It will be good to understand the distinction between work and play. 

Work is end-oriented, not enough in itself. It must lead somewhere, to some happiness, to 
some goal, to some end. It is a bridge, a means. In itself it is meaningless. The meaning is 
hidden in the goal. 

Play is totally different. There is no goal to it, or, it itself is the goal. Happiness is not 
beyond it, outside it; to be in it is to be happy. It will not give you any happiness outside 
of it, there is no meaning beyond it — all that is there is intrinsic, internal. You play, not 
because of any reason, but because you enjoy it right now. It is purposeless. 

That's why only children can play really; the more you grow, the less capable you 
become of playing. Because of more and more purpose, more and more you ask why, 
why should I play? More and more you become end-oriented: something must be 
achieved through it, in itself it has no meaning. Intrinsic value loses meaning for you. 
Only children can play because they don't think of the future. They can be here 
timelessly. 

Work is time; play is timeless. Meditation must be like play, not end-oriented. You must 
not meditate to achieve something because then the whole point is lost. Y ou cannot 
meditate at all if you are meditating for something. You can meditate only if you are 
playing with it, enjoying it, if nothing is to be achieved out of it, if it is beautiful in itself. 
Meditation for meditation's sake. 

.. then it becomes timeless. And then the ego cannot arise. 

Without desire, you cannot project yourself into the future, without desire you cannot 
start expectations, and without desire you will never be disappointed. Without desire, 
time really disappears: you move from one moment of eternity to another moment of 
eternity. There is no sequence... and then you will never ask why nothing special is 
happening. 

For myself, I have not come to know the mystery yet. The very play is the mystery; being 
timeless, desireless, is the mystery. And to be ordinary is the 'goal', if you allow me to 
use the word. To be ordinary is the goal. If you can be ordinary you are liberated, then 



there is no S ANSAR for you, no world for you. 

This whole world is a struggle to be extraordinary. Some try it in politics, some try it in 
economics, some try it in religion. But the lust remains the same. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

NOT ONLY IN MEDITATION BUT IN ROUTINE LIFE ALSO, I CONSTANTLY 
FEEL A ONENESS WITH THE EXISTENCE, EGOLESSNESS, TIMELESSNESS. 
YET I FEEL MYSELF ORDINARY. AND I DO NOT FIND IN ME THE TOTAL 
TRANSFORMATION ABOUT WHICH YOU TALK VERY OFTEN. 

This is good. This is the goal. You should not create a problem out of it. You should 
relax and be ordinary. 

But why do you feel it? Why do you feel that you remain ordinary? Somewhere there 
must be the desire to be extraordinary, to be not ordinary. 

Only in contrast to that can you feel ordinary, and then a certain sadness will follow. But 
why not be ordinary? What do I mean when I say, "Be ordinary?" I mean that whatsoever 
the case is — be. 

One young man came to me just a few days ago, and he said, "I am an egoist and 
whenever I listen to you, I feel that I am wrong. So how to be egoless?" I told him, "You 
be simply egoistic, and accept the fact that you are so and don't struggle. Don't try to be 
egoless. You are an egoist, so feel it and be it." 

He felt very disappointed because really he was searching for a new way for the ego. He 
was searching for egolessness. And I said, "Be whatsoever you are," so that that desire 
would be cut and the ego couldn’t move. And I told him, "For three months don't come to 
me and don’t fight the ego — accept it, it is there. It is part of you, it is how you are. Don’t 
fight with it, and don’t think in terms of the contrary, how to be egoless, because that is 
the way of the ego. Accept it. Acceptance is the death." 

But the young man said, "But every religion says be egoless, and I want to be egoless." 
Who is this' I’ that wants to be egoless? The ways of the ego are very subtle. When I was 
talking to him I felt he was not listening to me. If I gave him some technique to do to be 
egoless, he would be ready and accepting, receptive, because then the ego could start 
work. 

But I was saying, "Don’t talk about egolessness, just be whatsoever you are. And for 
three months don’t struggle, then come to me." 

He tried. After three months he came again and he said to me, "It has been very hard to 
accept, but because you told me, I tried. Now give me some technique, give me some key 
to go beyond this ego." The whole effort was false, because if you accept then there is no 
desire to go beyond. 

Whenever you feel yourself to be ordinary you try to be extraordinary in some way. But 
everyone is ordinary: to be ordinary is to be real. It may be that to you someone looks 
extraordinary because you compare him with yourself, but a genius in himself is as 
ordinary as anybody, and he feels himself ordinary. A rose flower is ordinary, a lotus 
flower is ordinary, but if the rose starts comparing and starts thinking about how to be a 
lotus flower then problems arise. And if the lotus starts thinking about the beautiful 
perfume that comes from the rose flower, then the rose flower becomes extraordinary. 
When you compare, in comparison extraordinariness happens — otherwise everything is 



ordinary. In itself everything is as it is. Don’t compare and don’t hanker after it. If you 
hanker then meditation will disappoint you, because meditation will bring you to a point 
where you feel your total ordinariness. Be receptive to it, welcome it. It is good. 

It shows that meditation is progressing, deepening. But somewhere the desire for the 
extraordinary is still there and that is creating the barrier. 

If that desire disappears, you will not feel yourself as ordinary. You will simply be. How 
can you feel that you are ordinary? You will simply be, and to be, to be so simple that 
you don’t feel whether you are ordinary or extraordinary, is to attain. 

It is good, don’t be disappointed by it. If you are disappointed then remember that you are 
carrying a desire, and that desire is creating poison. Why is there this madness? Why 
does it come and happen to everyone? This whole world is mad because of this: everyone 
is trying to be something special, somebody. 

Life happens to you only when you are nobody. When you are so empty that there is no 
one, then the whole of life flows through you without any barrier, without any obstacle, 
without any hindrance. Then the flow is total and complete. 

When you are somebody, you become a rock, you disturb the flow — life cannot move 
through you. There is a struggle, a resistance, and of course you create much noise. And 
you may think that because you are creating so much noise that you are something 
extraordinary. 

Be an empty vessel, passage, with no resistance, so that life can flow through it, flow 
through it easily. Then no noise will be created. You may not be able to feel that you are, 
because you only feel that you are when you fight. 

The more you fight, the more you feel. 

Life flows so smoothly through you that you may even completely forget that you exist. 
There is no barrier, no resistance, no rejection, no negation. And you are so welcoming 
that you even forget that you are. 

It was heard about one Zen master that he would call his own name many times during 
the day. In the morning he would call, "Bokuju?" and then he would say, "Yes sir, I am 
here." Bokuju was his name. And his disciples would ask why he did this. He would say, 
"I go on forgetting. I have become so smooth that I have to remind myself — 'Bokuju?' 
And then I say, 'Yes sir, I am here.’" 

Life can become such a smooth flow, such a silent river, that no noise is created. But if 
you are bent upon being something, somebody, extraordinary, special, then life cannot 
flow through you. Then there is a constant struggle between life and you, between your 
small ego and the cosmos. 

This is creating madness. The whole earth has become a mad planet. And this madness 
cannot be helped by treatments, therapies, because it is so basic a style of life that it is not 
a pathology. This is how we are living. Our whole style of life is mad. So you cannot be 
helped through therapies unless the whole life-style changes. 

There are only two life-styles: ego-oriented and egoless-oriented. You must be 
somebody... this is one way of life. 

Then madness is the outcome. Really, the madman is the most extraordinary man. He has 
achieved extraordinariness because now he is completely uprooted from reality, he is not 
concerned with the reality at all. Now he lives isolated in himself, he has created his own 
world. Now the dream is the real and the real has become just a dream. Everything is 



upside down. 

You cannot convince a madman that he is wrong, because he is very logical. Madmen are 
very rational and logical. 

One madman used to come out of his house every day in the morning and chant some 
mantras and make some gestures. So, whosoever was passing would ask, naturally, what 
he was doing. And the madman would say, "I am protecting this neighborhood from 
ghosts." So the person who was asking would say, "But there are no ghosts in this 
neighborhood." And the man would say, "See, because of my chanting mantras, there are 
no ghosts." 

He is rational, you cannot convince him — ghosts are not there because of his chanting. 
But he lives now in his own subjective dream-world and you cannot pull him out. 

If you think yourself somebody — nobody can be somebody that is not in the nature of 
things — but if you think yourself somebody, then a part of you has gone mad. That 
somebodiness is your madness. And the more this cancer of somebodiness grows, the 
more you will be cut off from reality. 

A Buddha is a nobody. 

All his doors are open. The wind comes and blows, the rains come and blow, the sun-rays 
enter and pass, the life flows, but he is not there. This is what I mean when I say 
meditation has happened to you. And this is very ordinary, natural, real. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

YOU ARE OFTEN SAYING THAT THIS IS GOOD OR BAD, OR THIS IS RIGHT OR 
WRONG. IS THIS A LANGUAGE JUST FOR US AS WE ARE NOT ABLE TO 
REALIZE THE ONENESS OF EVERYTHING, OR IS THERE SUCH A THING AS 
GOOD AND BAD? 

No, it is simply a language. For me there is nothing good and nothing bad. But this will 
be too dangerous for you. Truth can be dangerous. Really, only truth can be dangerous — 
lies are never so dangerous because they are not potential. They have no force in them. 
Truth can be very shattering. It is the truth that there is no good, no bad, that nothing is 
right, nothing is wrong. Everything is as it is, all condemnation, division, is futile — but 
this will be dangerous for you. This will be too much for you, you will misunderstand it. 
You cannot understand it; when there is nothing good, nothing bad, you cannot 
understand it, and you will have your own interpretation of it. 

If I say there is nothing good, nothing bad, you will think that now whatsoever you have 
been thinking of up to now as bad, there is no need to think of it as such. So it will 
become a licence for you and you will start double thinking. 

You will think that for yourself there is nothing good, nothing bad, but for others you will 
not allow the same. If you can allow the same for others also, then you have understood; 
then it is not a licence, it is a freedom. But the mind must be one; there should not be 
double standards. 

Why do I say that there is nothing good and nothing bad? Because goodness and badness 
are interpretations, they are not reality. 

If there is a flower outside in the garden, you can call it beautiful and somebody else can 
call it ugly. The flower is neither. The flower exists there as it is in its authenticity. And it 
is not bothered about your interpretations. But to you it is either beautiful or not. That 
beauty and ugliness is interpretation, not reality. It is your mind which says that it is 



beautiful or ugly. The flower will not be affected by it, but you will be. If you say that it 
is beautiful, your behavior will be of one kind; if you say that it is ugly, your behavior 
will be different. You will be affected by your interpretation. 

And I am talking to you, so I have to constantly remember that whatsoever I say, your 
behavior will be affected. Unless you come to a point where the whole emphasis has 
changed from doing to being, when you are not interested in doing and you are only 
interested in being, you cannot understand what I mean when I say that there is nothing 
good or bad. 

Things are as they are. 

But it is only possible to understand this when you are deeply centered in the being. And 
if you are centered in the being, then whatsoever you do will be good. Then there is no 
danger. But right now you are not centered in the being, you are centered on the 
periphery. You are continuously choosing what to do and what not to do. 

Really, you have not asked the question, "What to be?" You have always been asking 
what to do and what not to do and whether it will be good or not. Y ou never ask the 
question, "What to be?" And unless being becomes more important than doing, there is 
good and there is bad — for you. Then something has to be done and something has not to 
be done. 

How do I make this difference and why? If there is really no good and no bad then how 
and why is this difference made? 

To me, this is again a difference I make for you: I call something good if it leads to your 
being, where everything will become good, and I call something bad if it leads you away 
from the being. If you go on being away from yourself, everything will become bad. 

To help you to come to yourself, to your home, I call something good and bad, or, 
something right and wrong. It is better to use the words 'right’ and 'wrong’ than the words 
'good’ and 'bad’ because I am more concerned with techniques of how to bring yourself 
to your being. 

So, a technique can be right if it brings you to your being; a technique can be wrong if it 
doesn’t bring you to your being or if it becomes a hindrance, or moves you into by-paths, 
or moves you on ways which will become cul-de-sacs and will not lead you anywhere. 
But if you ask me, ultimately there is nothing good, nothing bad, nothing right, nothing 
wrong. And if you can understand this right now, then start living in a way where nothing 
is wrong and nothing is right — and this is for you as far as you are concerned with 
others, and for others as far as they are concerned with you. 

Jesus says, "Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you." This is the basic 
principle of 'one standard’ and this is the whole of the teaching of all those who want to 
help you to come to yourself — there is one standard where nothing is good and nothing 
is bad, not only for you but for everyone. 

It is easy to say that to steal is not bad if you are stealing, but if someone else is stealing 
something from you then it becomes difficult to say that stealing is not bad. 

I have heard about a thief. For the fourth time he was caught and the judge asked him, 
"You get caught again and again, what is the matter? If you are not so efficient, why go 
on doing it?" The man said, "It is not a question of efficiency. I am alone and the work is 
too much." So the judge said, "Then why don’t you have a companion, a partner?" The 
thief said, "Morals have become so low that you cannot depend on any partner." 



Even a thief thinks in terms of morality, for others — "Morals have gone so low that you 
cannot depend on a partner. So I have to do all the work myself and the work is too 
much." 

This is the deepest teaching of all the knowers: there is nothing to choose. Everything is 
accepted. If you can accept it in its totality, you are transfonned. But if you are cunning 
and want to deceive yourself, then this total acceptability will be dangerous. 

So, I say many things to you just because of you. And just in-between I also go on 
communicating that which I would really like to say to you. But it can be given only very 
indirectly. You are so dangerous, so suicidal, that you can commit something which will 
be harmful to you. 

I am talking about a higher truth — not only a higher truth, but an ultimate truth. Naropa, 
in his song, says that only an inch difference sets heaven and hell apart. An inch 
difference between what is good and what is bad sets heaven and hell apart. 

And you will have to live in anguish because you have created the division. Bring all the 
dualities nearer, closer, and let them merge. Let the good and bad merge into each other, 
the darkness and the light merge into each other, life and death merge into each other. 
Then there is ADVAIT, then there is oneness. That oneness brings freedom, 
transfonnation. 

The fourth question: 

Question 4 

IT IS OUR IMAGINATION, THROUGH AUTO-SUGGESTIONS, THAT HAS 
ESTABLISHED US IN THE WORLD OF THE FINITE, IN THE WORLD OF NAMES 
AND FORMS, IN THE WORLD OF PAINS AND PLEASURES. 

CAN THE SAME INSTRUMENT BE USED TO REACH THE INFINITE, THE 
ABSOLUTE, THE BLISSFUL? THE SAME INSTRUMENT IN THE REVERSE 
ORDER? 

You have come to this house, soon you will be going back, and the same path will be 
used again — but in the reverse order. While you were coming here your face was 
towards me and when you go back, your back will be towards me. But the path will be 
the same. No other path is needed to go back home. Only the direction changes. 

The way which you have traveled to come into darkness will be the way, is the way, the 
only way. You will have to travel back that way. The way that has brought you into 
misery and anguish will be the way which will lead you towards bliss and ecstasy. There 
is no other way, there is no need. And remember, don’t follow any other way otherwise 
you will never reach home. 

You have to be alert to follow the same path again. The only change is in the direction — 
it is a total about-turn. Hypnosis, auto-suggestion, they create this world; de-hypnosis, 
de-auto-suggestion will lead you back to the real. There is no finite world, the world is 
infinite. It is your super-imposition, your hypnosis, that makes it look finite. Withdraw 
your hypnosis and the world is infinite — it has always been so. 

All techniques of meditation are similar to hypnosis. This creates a problem. It creates a 
problem when people go on asking about the difference between hypnosis and 
meditation. 

There is no difference. The path is the same but the direction is different. 



In hypnosis you are falling more and more asleep, losing awareness; in meditation you 
are coming out of sleep, gaining awareness. It is the same path. In hypnosis you are 
conditioning yourself, in meditation you are unconditioning yourself — but the process is 
the same. Meditation is hypnosis in reverse. So whatsoever you have done with yourself 
you have to undo it. That's all. 

Try to do a very simple experiment which will be revealing: you can hypnotize yourself. 
Close your room and make it completely dark, then put a small candle just in front of 
your eyes. Then without blinking your eyes, stare at the flame, and just go on thinking 
that you are falling asleep, you are falling asleep. A deep sleep is descending upon you — 
just let this thought be floating there, within. Go on staring at the candle and let this 
thought be there as a cloud hovering over you. You are falling asleep, you are falling 
asleep. When you do it, you have to say, "I am falling asleep. Sleep is descending. My 
limbs are relaxing." 

You will immediately feel a subtle change, and within three minutes you will feel that the 
body has become heavy. Any moment you can fall. The lids of the eyes are heavy and 
now it is very difficult to go on staring at the flame. The eyes want to close. Everything 
has become numb. 


Now you can feel that this is what hypnosis is: being more sleepy, falling into 
unawareness, becoming more unconscious. Feel the feel of it, what is happening, how 
your mind has become cloudy. The clarity has gone, aliveness has gone, you are 
becoming dead. Your body feels more weighty. This will give you the sensation of how 
your consciousness can become unconsciousness. 

Try this for seven days so that you can feel completely what it is, and how you descend 
into the well. With more and more darkness, more sleep, more unconsciousness, at the 
last moment suddenly you will not be there and the flame will have disappeared. You are 
fast asleep. You can feel the grave. 

Then after one week try the other experiment. Have the same room, the same flame, the 
same way of staring, but a different thought in the mind, "I will become more alert, I am 
becoming more and more alert, more alive, more alert. The body is becoming more and 
more weightless." Let this thought be there and go on staring at the flame — you will feel 
a sudden surge of life awareness and consciousness. 

Within seven days you can come to a point where you will feel so alert that you will feel 
as if the body is not. On one pole the whole spectrum is deep sleep where you forget 
yourself completely; on the other pole there is deep awareness where everything is 
forgotten, you remember only yourself. 


Then there are many mid-stages. The stage we are in is just in the middle — half asleep, 
half awake. So whatsoever you do, you are doing it half asleep, half awake. Both the 
processes are the same, they are the same process. 

Thought in an intense state becomes reality; thought condensed becomes a thing. One 
thought kept continuously in the consciousness transforms you, becomes a seed. So if 
you are struggling to be more and more alert, you are deconditioning yourself, moving in 
the other direction. Gurdjieff calls it self-remembering — he says, "Continuously 
remember yourself." Buddha says, "Don't forget yourself whatsoever you are doing; 
continuously go on hammering that you are doing it." And he is so particular that he says 



to his monks, "While you are walking and your left foot comes up, remember that your 
left foot is coming up: now the foot is going down, now the right one is coming up, now 
the right is going down. Remember that the breath is coming in, that the breath is going 
out. Remember continuously, whatsoever is happening and use every happening as a 
situation to remember. Don’t do anything in an unconscious state, a sleepy state." And 
Buddha says that this is enough. If you can work like this for twenty-four hours, sooner 
or later you will have de-hypnotized yourself. You will have become aware, alert. 
Hypnosis and meditation are the same process in diametrically opposite directions. 

You can use hypnosis to awaken you; you can use hypnosis to fall deep into sleep. And if 
you become master of the art of hypnosis, you have got the key to open all the doors of 
life. 

If you are not the master of the key of hypnosis, then you are a victim of many, many 
forces. This is worth understanding: if you don't know what hypnosis is then you are a 
victim. Everybody is trying hypnosis on you — I say everybody! They may not be doing 
it knowingly, but everybody is trying. There are different ways, methods. The whole 
world is filled with hypnotic tricks: the same advertisement in the newspaper, on the 
television and on the radio. It goes on hammering, it becomes a hypnotic thing. 

In the mind you go on repeating, "Lux is the best soap." You go on repeating it. 

Wherever you move it is written on the walls; in films you see it, on the T.V. screen it is 
there, on the radio it is there, in magazines, in newspapers, in anything: "Lux Toilet 
Soap." It goes on and on. You become hypnotized by it. Then you go to the shop and the 
man behind the counter asks you, "What soap do you need?" You say, "Lux Toilet 
Soap." You are asleep. You are not saying it consciously, it has been hammered in and 
now it is built in. 

Crores of rupees are spent on advertising just to hypnotize you. Those advertisements 
have to be repeated continuously. Repetition is the way. Then there is imprint, and you 
become unconscious about it; then suddenly it comes out of your mouth, "Lux Toilet 
Soap." 

And you think that you are choosing. You are not the chooser. 

The whole education system is hypnotic. That's why for the teacher a higher place is 
needed. It must be measured scientifically because there is a particular point — the way I 
am sitting here is at a wrong point, this is not right. Your eyes should be in a tension 
looking at me, in much tension, not relaxed — then you are easily hypnotized. 

Hitler used every proportion. He had an expert committee to measure how much distance 
from the audience and how much height was needed so that the eyes are correctly at a 
tension where they become easily hypnotized and sleepy. And then all the lights would 
be put off — in Hitler's lecture hall the only lights would be on Hitler. Nobody could see 
anywhere else, and so you were forced to look only at him. In a particular situation a 
particular tension was created. In this tension he would go on saying something for a 
while. The things that he wanted to put into you would be said later on, when the whole 
audience had become sleepy. Then the words would simply move into the unconscious 
and start functioning. 

Now they have invented subliminal advertisements in films. As you watch a film, 
between two scenes, just for a fraction of a second, the advertisement will be flashed. 

You will not be able to read it, you will not even know what has happened. Simply 
watching the film, suddenly for a few seconds the advertisement will be there — but you 



will not be continuously aware of it. 


Only two persons in a hundred can feel that something has happened. Only those who 
have very keen eyes can feel that something was in-between. Ninety-eight per cent will 
not feel it, but the unconscious has read it. It has entered you. 

There was one experiment about it in an American film. They flashed a particular brand 
of cold drink on the screen, something new. Only two per cent of the people became 
aware that there was an advertisement, ninety-eight per cent were fully unaware, but in 
the interval many people went out and asked for the drink. They were not aware that 
there had been an advertisement because it had been so fast. 

Hypnosis is all around. Education uses it, politics uses it, the market uses it — everyone is 
using it. And if you are not aware then you are a victim. Become aware. If you become 
aware, you can use it; not to hypnotize others, but to de-hypnotize yourself. And if you 
can become completely de-hypnotized, you are free, you are liberated. 

And there is no conflict between meditation and hypnosis. The conflict is in the 
directions — the process is the same. 


THE END. 



Chapter 67: Neither mind nor matter 


FEEL YOUR SUBSTANCE, BONES, FLESH, BLOOD, SATURATED WITH THE 
COSMIC ESSENCE. 

FEEL THE FINE QUALITIES OF CREATIVITY PERMEATING YOUR BREASTS’ 
AND ASSUMING DELICATE CONFIGURATIONS. 

Philosophers all over the world have been arguing for centuries about what basic stuff the 
universe is made of, what the substance is. There have been propositions, systems, that 
say that matter is the basic reality and mind is just an outgrowth, that matter is basic and 
mind is just a by-product, that mind is also material, only subtle. Charwak proposed this 
in India, Epicurus in Greece, and even today, Marxists and other materialists go on 
talking in terms of matter. Just opposite to this, there has been a second system of 
thinking which says that mind rather than matter is the basic stuff, and that matter is 
nothing but a form of mind. Vedanta and other idealist philosophies of the world have 
reduced everything to mind. 

Just at the beginning of this century, it was thought that the materialists had become 
victorious because physics and other scientific investigations were proving, or appeared 
to be proving, that matter was the basic substance. But just two or three decades ago the 
whole thing changed completely. One of the greatest scientists of this age, Eddington, 
said, "Now we can say that the universe appears to be more like a thought than like a 
thing." 

And as the physicists, Max Planck and Einstein, worked deeper, they came to realize that 
the deeper one penetrates matter, the more matter disappears — something more than 
matter, more beyond than matter, appears to be there. You can call it mind more easily 
than matter because it is a form of energy. One thing is certain: it is not material in the 
old sense at all. 

For Tantra, for yoga, there has been no choice. Tantra doesn't say that either matter or the 
mind is the basic reality. Tantra has a third standpoint, and I think that that standpoint is 
ultimately going to win. Tantra says mind and matter are both fonns of something which 
we can call 'X'. Neither matter nor mind is substantial but a third entity, which exists in 
both but which is not confined to either, is the real — these two are the manifestations. 
Matter and mind are not realities, but forms of a third reality, a basic reality, which 
remains hidden. Whenever it manifests itself, it manifests itself either as matter or as 
mind. 

So the whole conflict between mind and matter, and their followers, is baseless, because 
the ultimate substratum that physics has now come to know is really neither like matter 
nor like mind. The division has disappeared, the duality has disappeared. The behavior of 
the basic substance is very vague: sometimes it behaves like matter, and sometimes it 
behaves like mind. 

You may be surprised to know that physics cannot say anything about individual atoms — 
they are unpredictable, just like any human being. Nothing can be said about the 
individual atom and how it is going to behave. It appears that it has a certain 
independence; no causality can predict how it is going to behave. We can predict mass 



behavior, but we cannot predict the behavior of an individual atom. Sometimes it behaves 
in cause-effect terms, like matter, and sometimes it behaves like mind, as if it has a will 
of its own, as if it has a choice. 

With Tantra, this idea of physics fits very well. But why does Tantra say that the basic 
reality is the third, the unknown, the 'X’? Not because Tantra is interested in propounding 
any theory about reality, no. It is proposed just as a help for SADHANA, just as a help 
for spiritual growth. If it is so — that the reality is the third, and mind and matter are just 
two manifestations — then you can enter the reality through two doors: either from matter 
or from mind. If you try to enter from matter, then there are certain techniques to use. 
Hatha Yoga is a technique to enter the reality through matter, through the body. You 
have to do something with the body, you have to transfonn the body, you have to 
crystalize certain chemical phenomena in the body, and then you will enter into the 
reality. 

Or, you can enter directly through the mind. 

Raja Yoga and other methods are used to enter through the mind. And for Tantra, both 
are right. 

You cannot say to Tantra, "How can a body posture, a particular body posture, be helpful 
to enter reality?" Tantra says it can be helpful. A certain body posture is not a mere body 
posture, because body is the manifestation of the reality. So when you give your body a 
certain posture, you are giving the reality a certain form. And there are postures with 
which you can easily enter into yourself. A certain food can be helpful. A certain practice 
of breathing can be helpful. These are material things — food, breathing, body. But you 
can enter through them. 

And similar is the case with mind: just working with mind also you can enter. Many 
times the question may have arisen in your mind about Shiva telling Parvati certain 
techniques which look just imaginary. The question is bound to arise — how can 
imagination be helpful? 

Even imagination is a mode of reality because the mind is a manifestation of reality. And 
when you change the imagination in the mind, you are changing the mode of reality. For 
Tantra nothing is unreal. Even a dream has its own reality — and it affects you. So a 
dream is not a mere dream. A dream is as real as anything else because it affects you, it 
changes you. Y ou are different because you dreamed it; you will never be the same 
because a certain dream has happened. 

So if you dream that you are a thief, in the morning you will say that it makes no 
different, it was just a dream. But for Tantra it is not so. A dream of stealing, of theft, has 
changed you. Your reality is different in the morning; you cannot be the same. Whether 
you recognize it or not, it has affected you. It will affect your behavior, your future — it 
has become a seed. 

Even a dream is not irrelevant. And you think that dreams are just dreams. That is not so, 
because you cannot create a dream consciously, you cannot choose a dream. It happens to 
you as anything else happens to you. Can you choose a dream? Can you think about a 
dream that you will dream tonight? Can you choose it? Can you will it? You cannot will 
it, because to will a dream will need many changes in your reality. Only then will a 
dream come. A dream is just like a flower. A rose flower comes on a rose bush, and you 
cannot change the flower unless you change the whole process, from the seed onwards. 
You cannot just change the flower. A dream is a flowering. If you can change the dream, 



you can change reality. 

So, many times, many techniques will appear imaginary — but they are also real. And 
Tantra is trying to change your imagination. If the imagination can be changed, then the 
hidden reality behind it will automatically be different. 

The techniques that we will discuss today start from your imagination, from your 
dreaming, from your mind. 

Three things have to be remembered. One: whatsoever happens to your mind is not 
superficial — it is happening because of you, it is happening because you happen to be in 
a certain situation. So two things can be done: either change the situation, then you will 
have to start from the body because body is the situation; or if you are not starting with 
the situation, then change the happening. It will persist, it will not be easy to change it, 
but if you make an effort and you go on making the effort, if you are stubborn and are not 
defeated, then the very effort will change it. 

One thing is certain: you may not achieve the goal that you were thinking of, but the fact 
that you make this effort will bring a change. You will be different: whether you succeed 
or fail, you will be different. The very effort will be counted. 

Thirdly, don't think that mind is just mind, and don’t think that dreaming is just dreaming. 
If you can direct your dreaming — and now there is a therapy in the West called 'Directed 
Daydreaming’ — if you can direct your dreaming, you are directing yourself. And many 
things will become different. 

There is an old Tibetan technique called 'The Lion's Roar'. If you are angry, sexual, filled 
with hatred, jealousy, then the Tibetan master will give you this technique, 'The Lion's 
Roar'. You have to sit before a mirror, and you are to imagine that you are a lion, not a 
man. 

You have to make your face like a lion, you have to put your tongue out, and you have to 
roar. And you have to practise it so that the imagination becomes so true that you forget 
that you are a man daydreaming that he is a lion. And when the point comes when you 
have really fallen prey to your own imagination, and you have become the lion, and a real 
roar comes out of you, suddenly you are transformed. In that roar, all hatred, anger, sex, 
disappears, and you will fall into a deep silence such as you have not known before. In 
old Tibetan monasteries they have a special room with many mirrors. Whenever someone 
is suffering from something like anger, hatred, or jealousy, he is to be sent to that 
mirrored room and he has to remain there until he comes to a climax. And when he 
comes to the climax, the whole monastery will know, because a real lion will be roaring 
there. To us, he has gone mad. The whole monastery will gather and welcome the man, 
and he will come out a totally different man. It may take three days, it may take seven 
days. Food will be supplied to him, but he is not allowed to come out. He has to persist in 
imagining that he is a lion, until from the very roots of the unconscious the roar comes. 
The whole body is involved, every cell of it; every cell in it roars, and in that roar 
everything is thrown out. It is the deepest catharsis possible. And you will never see that 
man angry again because now the poison is not there. 

For the first time the face will become human. 

Your face cannot be human because so much is suppressed there. The jealousy, the 
hatred, the anger that you have suppressed, is there — layers upon layers are just hidden 
under the skin. They are making your face. But they can be released — just by this 



daydream, a directed daydream. 

In the West they now have another technique they call psychodrama. That too is one of 
the oldest Buddhist methods — to become a part of a drama, to act it so totally that you 
forget that you are simply acting. The acting becomes action, and you are not the actor, 
you become a real doer in it. It changes you. 

Tantra says that if you can change dreaming, imagination, if you can change your mind 
and the pattern of it, the reality behind will be different. Because it is deeply rooted in 
reality, you can move through the mind. These techniques are just to change the way and 
the style in which your mind has been behaving up to now. 

The first technique: 

FEEL YOUR SUBSTANCE, BONES, FLESH, BLOOD, SATURATED WITH THE 
COSMIC ESSENCE. 

Try with simple experiments. For seven days try one simple experiment: feel your blood, 
your bones, your flesh, your body, filled with sadness — every cell of the body sad; dark 
night around you; very heavy, depressed; not a single ray of light; no hope, gloomy, just 
as if you are going to die. 

Life is not throbbing in you; you are just waiting for death. It is as if death has already 
settled, or is settling. For seven days contemplate on the feeling that death has entered 
throughout the body; it has penetrated deep to the bone, to the very marrow. Go on 
thinking in this way, don’t disturb this mood. And then, after seven days, see how you 
feel. 

You will be just a dead weight. All feeling will have disappeared, the body will not be 
felt as alive. And what have you done? You have been eating, you have been doing 
everything the same as you have always been doing; the only change has been in the 
imagination — there is a new pattern of imagination around you. 

If you succeed in it.... You will succeed. Really, you have already succeeded in it; you 
are doing it, you are expert in doing this, unknowingly. That's why I say start with 
sadness. If I say be filled with bliss, it will be very difficult. You cannot conceive of it. 
But if you can do it with sadness, then you will become aware that if sadness can happen 
to you, why not happiness? If you can create a sad milieu around you and become a dead 
thing in it, then why can't you create an alive milieu around you and be alive, dancing? 
The other becomes conceivable. 

Secondly, you will become aware that whatever sadness you have been suffering was not 
real. You were the creator of it, you were the author; unknowingly you have been doing 
this. 

It seems difficult to believe that your sadness is your imagination, because then the whole 
responsibility falls on you. Then no one else is responsible, then you cannot throw it on 
God, on fate, on others, on society, on wife, on husband — you cannot throw it anywhere. 
You are the creator, and whatsoever is happening to you, you are creating it. 

Try it for seven days, consciously. And then, I say, you will never be sad again — because 
you will have known the key. 

Then for seven days try just being in a stream of bliss — floating in it, every breath giving 
you ecstasy: just feel it. Start with sadness for seven days and then for seven days move 
to the contrary. And when you move to the direct opposite, you will feel it better because 



the contrast will be there. 

Then only can you try this experiment — because it is deeper than happiness. Sadness is 
the surface, happiness is the middle, and this is the last core, the innermost core, the 
cosmic essence. FEEL YOUR SUBSTANCE, BONES, FLESH, BLOOD, SATURATED 
WITH THE COSMIC ESSENCE, with eternal life, with Divine energy, with cosmic 
essence. But don’t start it directly because then you will not be able to touch it. Start from 
sadness, then move to happiness, and then try the origin, the very origin of life — the 
cosmic essence. And feel yourself filled with it. 

In the beginning you will become aware again and again that you are simply imagining it, 
but don't stop. 

Even imagination is good. Even that you can imagine something worthwhile is good. 

You are imagining, and in the very imagination you are changing. It is you who are 
imagining. Go on imagining, and by and by you will forget completely that you are 
imagining it — it will have become a reality. 

One of the greatest books ever written is the Buddhist scripture, 'Lankawatar Sutra’. 
Buddha says again and again to his disciple Mahamati, he goes on saying again and 
again, "Mahamati, this is only mind. Hell is mind. Heaven is mind. The world is mind. 
Enlightenment is mind." Mahamati asks again and again, "Just mind? Just mind? Even 
nirvana, enlightenment, just mind?" And Buddha says, "Just mind, Mahamati." 

When you understand that everything is just mind, you are freed. Then there Then there 
is no bondage, then there is no desire. In 'Lankawatar Sutra’, Buddha says that the whole 
world is just like a magical world, a city of Gandharwa, as if a magician has created a 
world. Everything appears to be there, but it is there only because of the thought form. 
But don’t start with outer reality, that is too far. That too is mind, but it is very away from 
you. Start from the very near, you own moods; and you will be the master if you can feel 
and know that they are your own creation. 

Whenever you start thinking in terms of sadness, you become sad, and you become 
receptive to all the sadness around you. 

Then everybody helps you to be sad. Everybody helps, the whole world is always ready 
to help you, whatsoever you do. When you want to be sad, the whole world is helpful, 
cooperative. You have become receptive. Really, you fall to a certain wave-length where 
only sadness can be received. So even if someone comes to cheer you up, he will make 
you more sad. He will not look friendly, he will not look understanding; you will feel that 
he is insulting you because you are so sad and he is trying to cheer you up. He thinks 
your sadness is superficial. He is not taking you seriously. 

And when you are ready to be happy, you are on a different wave-length. Now you are 
attuned to all the happiness that this world can give, now everywhere flowers start 
flowering, now every sound and noise becomes musical — and nothing has happened. 

The whole world remains the same, but you are different. You have a different pattern of 
looking, a different attitude, a different perspective; through that perspective a different 
world comes to you. 

But start with sadness because you are expert in that. I was reading a sentence of some 
old Hassid mystic — I liked it very much. He says there are certain people, who, if their 
whole life becomes a bed of roses, will not be happy until they develop some allergy 
towards the roses. Roses cannot make them happy... only when they become allergic will 
they start feeling alive. 



They can be attuned only to sadness, to illness, to disease, they cannot be aware of 
anything else. They go on finding sadness. They are searchers after wrong — something 
wrong, something sad, depressed, dark. They are death-oriented. 

I have been meeting hundreds and hundreds of persons deeply, intimately, closely. When 
they start talking about their sadness I have to be serious — otherwise they will not feel 
that I am sympathetic, they will not feel good about it. Then they will never turn to me 
again. I have to be sad with their sadness and serious with their seriousness to help bring 
them out of it., and this is their own creation, and they are making every effort to create 
it. And if I try to bring them out, they create every type of barrier — not knowingly of 
course, because no one will do it knowingly. 

This is what the Upanishads call ignorance. Unknowingly you go on disturbing your own 
life, you go on creating more problems and anxieties, and whatsoever happens will not 
make any difference because you have a pattern — whatsoever happens. There are 
persons who come to me and say, "We are lonely." So they are unhappy. And the next 
moment someone comes and says he cannot find a place where he can be lonely. So he is 
unhappy. Then there are persons who have too much work on their minds, so they are 
unhappy, and there are persons who have no work, so they are unhappy. 

A person who is married is unhappy, a person who is not married, he is unhappy. It 
seems it is impossible for man to be happy. That's what I mean when I say you are 
experts — you are very efficient in finding ways and means to be unhappy. And you 
always succeed. 

Start from sadness, and for seven days be completely unhappy for the first time. That will 
transfonn you totally. Because once you know that consciously you can be unhappy, you 
will become conscious whenever you become unhappy. Then you will know what you 
are doing: it is your own doing. And if you can be unhappy by your own mind, then why 
can’t you be happy? There is no difference, the pattern is the same. And then you can try 
this. 

FEEL YOUR SUBSTANCE, FLESH, BLOOD, BONES, SATURATED WITH THE 
COSMIC ESSENCE. Feel as if the Divine is flowing through you: you are not, but the 
cosmic exists in you, God exists in you. When you feel hungry, he feels hungry — then to 
give food to the body becomes worship. When you feel thirsty, he feels thirsty — the 
cosmic in you. When you feel sleepy, he feels sleepy, he wants rest, relaxation. When 
you are young, he is young in you. When you fall in love, he falls in love. Be saturated 
with him, and be TOTALLY saturated with him. Don’t make any distinction. Good or 
bad, whatsoever happens is happening to him. You just withdraw, you are no longer 
there, only he is there. 

So good or bad, hell or heaven, whatsoever happens, happens to him. All the 
responsibility is thrown onto him and you are no more. The 'no-moreness' that this 
technique can bring you is the ultimate in religion. 

But you have to be saturated with it. And you don’t know any saturation, you don’t feel 
your body as porous, you don’t feel that in your body a life energy is flowing. You think 
of yourself as something solid, dead, closed. Life can happen only when you are 
vulnerable, open, not closed. Life moves through you, and whatsoever happens is 
happening to the life energy, not to you — you are just a fragment. And all the boundaries 
that you have created around you are false, they are not real. 

You cannot exist alone. If you are alone on the earth, can you exist? You cannot exist 



alone. You cannot exist without the stars. Somewhere Eddington says that the whole 
existence is like a spider's web — the whole existence is a spider's net. If you touch the 
net anywhere, the whole vibrates; if you touch existence anywhere, the whole vibrates. It 
is one. If you touch a flower you have touched the whole cosmos; if you look into your 
neighbors eyes you have looked into the cosmos. Because the whole net is one. You 
cannot touch any part without touching the whole, and no part can exist without the 
whole. 

When you start feeling this, the ego will disappear. The ego exists only when you take a 
certain part as the whole. 

When you make a part the whole, the ego exists. When you come to know the right 
proportion, that the part is part, and the whole is whole, the ego disappears. Ego is just a 
misunderstanding. 

And this technique, to feel oneself saturated with the cosmic, is just wonderful! 

From the very early morning, when you feel life awakening, when you feel that the sleep 
has gone, the first thought must be of this saturation — now the Divine is opening, 
coming back out of sleep, not you. So Hindus, who have been one of the most penetrating 
races in the world, will start their first breath with the name of God. Now it has become a 
formality and the essential has been lost, but this was the root of it — that at the moment 
you become alert in the morning you must not remember yourself, you must remember 
the Divine. The Divine must become the first remembrance — and the last, at night, when 
you are falling asleep. The Divine must be remembered: he must be the first and the last. 
And if he is really the first in the morning and the last at night, he will be with you the 
whole day, in the middle also. 

You must drop into sleep saturated with him. You will be surprised, because the quality 
of your sleep will be different. While falling into sleep tonight, please don’t you fall into 
sleep, let the Divine fall into sleep. While you are preparing the bed, prepare it for the 
Divine — the guest is coming. 

And while you are lying on the bed, let the Divine be there, not you — treat yourself as 
the guest. And while dropping into sleep go on feeling that the Divine exists, he saturates 
every breath, he pulsates in the blood, he beats in the heart. Now he is tired after a whole 
day of work, now he wants to sleep. 

And in the morning you will feel that you have been sleeping in a different way. The 
quality of the sleep will be cosmic, because the meeting will be deep at the source. 

When you feel yourself as Divine, you fall into the abyss because then there is no fear. 
Otherwise, even in the night while you are sleeping you are afraid to fall deeply into it. 
Many people are suffering from sleeplessness — not because of any other tension, but 
because they are afraid to fall asleep, because sleep appears like an abyss, a bottomless 
thing. I have known a few persons who are afraid. 

One old man came to me and said that he could not sleep because he was afraid. I asked, 
"Why are you afraid?" He said, "I am afraid because if I really sleep, and I die, I will not 
be conscious, alert. And I can die because now I am old — and I don’t like the idea of 
dying in sleep. At least let me be aware and alert of what is happening." 

You go on clinging to something so that you cannot fall into sleep, but when you feel that 
the Divine is there, you have accepted. Then the abyss is also Divine. 


Then you fall very deeply into the very original sources of your being — and the quality 



will be different. And when you arise in the morning and you feel that sleep has gone, 
remember that the Divine is arising. The whole day will be different. 

And be saturated — whatsoever you do, or you don't do, let the Divine do it — simply 
allow it to be done. Eat, sleep, work, but let the Divine do it. Only then can you be 
saturated, can you become one with it. And once you feel, even for a single moment — 
even for a single moment, I say — that the peak has come, that you are not, that the 
Divine has saturated you completely, you are enlightened. In that single moment, that 
timeless moment, you will become aware of the whole mystery of life. Then there is no 
fear and then there is no death. Now you have become life itself. It goes on and on; it 
never ends, it never begins. Then life is ecstasy. 

And the concepts of MOKSHA, of heaven and paradise, are just childish, because they 
are not really something geographical. They are symbols of this ultimate state of being: 
when the individual has dissolved into the cosmos or when the individual has allowed the 
cosmos to dissolve into him; when the two have become one, when mind and matter, 
both the manifestations, have come back to the original source, the third. The whole 
search is for that. That is the only search, and you will not be satisfied until this is 
achieved. 

Nothing can be a substitute for it. You can go on moving for lives and lives, but unless 
this is achieved, your search will be constantly haunting you. You cannot rest. 

This technique can be very helpful and there is no danger in it; you can practise it without 
a master. Remember this: all the techniques that start with the body are dangerous 
without a master — because the body is a very complex phenomenon, very complex. It is 
a mechanism, and without someone who knows exactly what is going on, it is dangerous 
to start — you may disturb the mechanism, and then it will be difficult to repair it. All the 
techniques that start directly from mind are based on imagination, and are not dangerous 
because the body is not touched at all. They can be done even without a master — 
although it will be difficult because you don’t have any self-confidence. A master is not 
really going to do anything, but he becomes a catalytic agent. He is not going to do 
anything — really nothing can be done — but with just his presence, your confidence and 
trust are touched, and it helps. With just the feeling that the master is there, you move 
confidently. Because he is present, you are not afraid; because he is with you, you can 
move into the unknown, the uncharted. But with body techniques he is very necessary, 
because the body is a mechanism and you can do something which cannot be easily 
undone. 

You can harm yourself. 

One man came to me, he was doing SIRSHASAN — standing on his head for hours 
together. In the beginning it was very good and he felt very relaxed and cool the whole 
day. But then problems followed, and he became very disturbed when the coolness 
disappeared and he became hot all over. He became almost mad. And because he thought 
that SIRSHASAN helped in the beginning, and he became very cool, and felt very 
collected, silent, relaxed, he did it more because now he felt so disturbed. He thought 
more SIRSHASAN would help him — and SIRSHASAN was really the cause. 

The mind mechanism, the brain, needs only a certain amount of blood to circulate 
through it; if less blood is circulating, you will be in difficulty. And with everyone it is 
different. It depends. That’s why you cannot sleep without pillows. If you try to sleep 
without pillows, you cannot sleep, or you will sleep less because more blood flows into 



the head. Those pillows help you. Your head is high so less blood flows, and for sleep, 
less blood is needed. If more blood flows, then the brain is alert, it cannot relax. If you do 
too much of SIRSHASAN, your sleep may be completely lost. You may not be able to 
sleep at all. And there are dangers. It has been recorded that seven days is the longest you 
can go without sleep. Only seven days, after that you will go mad, because very subtle 
tissues of the brain will break, and they cannot be replaced easily. 

While you are standing on your head in SIRSHASAN, all the blood is flowing 
downwards towards the head. So I have not seen anyone doing SIRSHASAN who is in 
any way intelligent. If a person is doing much SIRSHASAN, he is bound to become 
stupid, because the very subtle tissues of the brain will be destroyed. With so much blood 
passing through, delicate tissues cannot exist. 

So it has to be decided by a master who knows how much will be helpful to you — a few 
seconds, or a few minutes. And this is just an example. All the bodily postures, asanas, 
techniques, have to be done with a master. They are never to be done alone because you 
don’t know your body. Your body is such a big thing, you cannot even conceive of it. The 
small head, your head, has seven crores of cells in it. And those seven crores of cells are 
interrelated. Scientists say that the interrelationship is as complex as the whole universe. 
Old Hindu seers have said that the whole cosmos exists in the head in miniature. The 
whole complexity of the universe is there in miniature. If the whole relationship of all the 
cells can be understood, you have understood the whole complexity of the universe. You 
are not aware of any cells, and about any relationship you are not aware. And it is good 
that you are not aware, otherwise you will go mad with such a big war going on. It can go 
on only unconsciously. The blood circulates, but you are not aware of it. 


Only just three centuries ago it was discovered that blood circulates in the body. Before 
that it was thought that the blood was static, not circulating. Circulation is a very recent 
concept. And man has been in existence for millions of years but no one could feel that 
the blood was circulating. You cannot feel it. Much speed, much work is going on there. 

It is a big factory, your body, and one of the most delicate ones. It is constantly repairing 
itself, constantly renewing itself. For seventy years, if you don’t make any trouble for it, it 
will run smoothly. We have not created any mechanism up to now that can take care of 
itself for seventy years. So when you start any work on your body remember to be near a 
master who knows about what he is telling you to do. Otherwise don’t do it. 

But with imagination there is no problem. It is a simple phenomenon. You can start it. 

The second technique: 

FEEL THE FINE QUALITIES OF CREATIVITY PERMEATING YOUR BREASTS 
AND ASSUMING DELICATE CONFIGURATIONS. 

A few important points before I enter this.... 

Shiva is talking to Parvati, to Devi, his consort, so this technique is specifically for 
women. There are a few points to be understood. One: the male body and the female 
body are similar, but still, different in many, many ways. And the difference is always 
complementary. 


Whatsoever is positive in the male body will be negative in the female body; and 



whatsoever is positive in the female body will be negative in the male body. That is why 
when they meet in deep orgasm, they become one organism. The positive meets the 
negative, the negative meets the positive, and both become one — one circle of electricity. 
Hence, so much attraction for sex, so much appeal. This appeal is not because man is a 
sinner or immoral, it is not because the modern world has become too licentious, it is not 
because of obscene films and literature — it is very deep rooted, very cosmic. 

The attraction is because both male and female are half circuits, and there is an inherent 
tendency in existence to transcend whatsoever is incomplete and to become complete. 
This is one of the ultimate laws — the tendency towards completion. Wherever you feel 
something is lacking, you feel that you would like to fill it, to make it complete. Nature 
abhors incompleteness, any type of incompleteness. The male is incomplete, the female is 
incomplete, and they can have only one moment of completion — when their electric 
circuits become one, when the two are dissolved. That's why the two most important 
words in all languages are love and prayer. In love you become one with a single 
individual; in prayer you become one with the whole cosmos. And love and prayer are 
similar as far as their inner workings are concerned. 


Male and female bodies are similar, but their positive and negative poles are different. 
When a child is born in the mother's womb, for a few weeks, at least for six weeks I 
think, he is neutral — he is neither male nor female. He has the tendency, but the body is 
still just in the middle. Then after six weeks the body will become either male or female. 
If it becomes female, then the polarity of sex energy will be near the breasts, the positive 
pole — because the female vagina is the negative pole. If the child is male, the sex center, 
the penis, will be the positive pole, and the breasts are also there — the whole mechanism 
is there — but they are negative. In the female body a counterpart to the penis exists, the 
clitoris, but it is non-functional — it has no function. 

Physiologists have been raising questions about why there are breasts in the male body 
when there appears to be no need because a child is not going to be fed. What is the 
need? They are negative poles. Hence so much attraction of the male mind towards 
female breasts — they are positive electricity. So much poetry, literature, painting, 
sculpture, everything, is concerned with female breasts. Really, it seems man is less 
concerned with the whole of the feminine body, and more concerned with the breasts. 
And this is not something new. The oldest primitive paintings in the caves are of breasts, 
so emphatically of breasts that the whole body is just around them. 

Breasts are basic. 

This technique is for women because their positive electricity pole is in the breasts. 
Really, as far as the vagina is concerned, it is more or less insensitive. The breasts are the 
most sensitive parts, and the whole creativity of the feminine body is around the breasts. 
That is why Hindus have been saying that unless a woman becomes a mother she is not 
fulfilled. The same is not true for men — no one will say that unless a man becomes a 
father he is not fulfilled. To be a father is accidental. It may be, it may not be. It is not 
very basic, and a man can remain without being a father without losing anything. But a 
woman will lose something because her whole creativity, her whole functioning, comes 
only when she becomes a mother. When her breasts become the center of her being she 
becomes total. And she cannot come to the breasts unless a child is there to call. So men 
marry women to get wives, and women marry men to become mothers — not to get 



husbands. Their basic sole interest is to have a child who will call their womanhood. So 
really, husbands are always afraid, because the moment a child is born they move to the 
periphery of the woman's interest — the child becomes the center. So fathers always feel 
jealous because the children come in-between. And now the woman is more interested in 
the children than in the father of the children. 

He has become a peripheral existence — necessary for survival but non-essential. Now 
the basic need has been fulfilled. 

In the West now there is a trend, a fashion, not to feed children directly from the breasts. 
This is very dangerous because it means that the woman will not come to the creative 
center of her being. When a man loves a woman he can lover her breasts, he will love 
them, but he cannot call them mother. Only a small child can call them mother. Or if the 
love is very deep — so deep that the husband becomes just like a child — then it is 
possible. Then the woman forgets completely that she is just a consort and she becomes a 
mother to her lover. Then there will be no need for a child; she can become a mother and 
the center of being can happen near the breasts. 

This technique says: FEEL THE FINE QUALITIES OF CREATIVITY PERMEATING 
YOUR BREASTS AND ASSUMING DELICATE CONFIGURATIONS. The whole 
creativity of feminine existence is rooted in motherhood. That is why women are not 
interested in any other type of creativity. Man is a creator; woman is not a creator. She 
has not painted, she has not created great poetry, she has not written big books, she has 
not created great religions — she has not done anything really. But man goes on creating, 
he is mad. He goes on inventing, creating, making, constructing. Tantra says that this is 
because man is not a creator by nature — he remains unfulfilled, tense. 

He wants to become a mother, he wants to become a creator, so he creates poetry, he 
creates books, he creates many things, he will 'mother' many things. But a woman is at 
ease. If she can really become a mother she is fulfilled, she is not interested. It is only 
when a woman cannot become a mother, cannot love, cannot really come to the peak of 
her creativity, that she will start thinking about doing something else. So basically, 
uncreative women will become creators — poets and painters — but they will always be 
second-rate, they cannot be first-rate. It is just as impossible for them to be creators of 
paintings and poetry and other things, as it is impossible for man to create a child. He 
cannot become a mother, that is biologically impossible. And he feels the gap. To fill the 
gap he goes on doing many things — but still even a great creator is not as fulfilled, or 
only very rarely, as a woman is if she really becomes a mother. 

A Buddha is fulfilled because he has created himself. He is reborn, he has given rebirth to 
himself, he is a new man, he is both father and mother to himself now. He can feel 
fulfilled. 

A woman can feel fulfilled more easily. Her creativity is just around the breasts. That’s 
why all over the world, women are concerned so much with their breasts — it is as if their 
whole existence is concentrated there. They are always alert about their breasts — hiding 
or exhibiting, but always concerned. 

The breasts are their most secret part, their treasure, their center of being; of being 
mother, of being a creator. 

Shiva says: FEEL THE FINE QUALITIES OF CREATIVITY PERMEATING YOUR 
BREASTS AND ASSUMING DELICATE CONFIGURATIONS. Just concentrate on 



the breasts, become one with them, forget the whole body. Move your total 
consciousness to the breasts and many phenomena will happen to you. If you can do this, 
if you can concentrate totally near the breasts, the whole body will lose weight, and a 
very sweet, deep sweetness will envelop you. It will pulsate around you, within you, 
above, below, everywhere — a deep feeling of sweetness. 

Really, all the techniques that have been developed have been developed more or less by 
man, so they always give centers which are easier for men to follow. As far as I know, 
only Shiva has given some techniques which are basically for women. A man cannot do 
this. Really if a man tries to concentrate near the breasts he will become very uneasy. Try 
it. Even within five minutes you will start perspiring and you will become very uneasy, 
because male breasts are negative, they will give you negativity. You will feel uneasy, 
uncomfortable, that something is going wrong in the body, ill. 

But female breasts are positive. If women concentrate near the breasts, they will feel very 
happy, very blissful, a sweetness will pervade all over their being and their body will lose 
gravity. 

They will feel light, as if they can fly. And with this concentration many things will 
change: you will become more motherly. You may not become a mother but you will 
become more motherly. To everyone your relationship will become motherly — more 
compassion, more love will happen. But this concentration near the breasts should be 
done very relaxedly, not tensely. If you are tense about it there will be a division between 
you and the breasts. Relax and melt into them, and feel that you are no more, that only 
the breasts are there. 

If man has to do the same he will have to do it with the sex center, not with the breasts. 
Hence the importance of the first chakra in all kundalini yogas. He has to concentrate just 
at the root of the penis — there he has the creativity, there he is positive. And remember 
this always: never concentrate on anything negative because with the negative everything 
negative will follow. With the positive, everything positive will follow. 

When the two poles of man and woman meet, negative is in the upper part of man, 
positive is in the lower; and negative is in the lower part of woman and positive in the 
upper. These two poles of positive and negative meet and a circle is created. That circle is 
blissful, but it is not ordinary. In ordinary sexual acts, the circle does not happen — that is 
why you feel so attracted towards sex, and so repelled also. 

You feel so much for it, you need it so much, you ask for it so much, but when it is given, 
when it is there, you feel frustration — nothing happens. It is possible only when both the 
bodies are very relaxed and very open to each other without any fear, without any 
resistance. Then the let-go is so complete that the electricities can merge and meet and 
become a circle. 

Then there is a very strange phenomenon.... Tantra has recorded it but you may not have 
heard of it. This phenomenon is a very strange one. When two lovers really meet and 
become a circle then a flickering happens. For a moment the lover becomes the beloved 
and the beloved becomes the lover, and the next moment, again the lover is lover and the 
beloved is the beloved. The male becomes the female for a moment, then the female 
becomes the male for the moment — because the energy is moving, and it has become one 
circle. So it will happen that the male will be active for a few minutes and then he will 
relax and the female will become active. That means that now the male energy has passed 
to the female body and she will act while the male will remain passive. And this will go 



on. Ordinarily you are man, and woman. In deep love, in deep orgasm, it will happen that 
for moments man will become woman, and the woman will become man. It will be felt, 
absolutely felt and recognized, that the passivity changes. 

In life there is rhythm; in everything there is rhythm. 

When you take a breath, the breath goes in — then for a few seconds it stops, there is no 
movement. Then again it moves, out it goes — and again there is a stop, a gap, no 
movement. Movement, no movement, movement. When your heart beats, there is one 
beat, gap, another beat, gap. The beat means male, the non-beat gap means female. 

Life is rhythm. When two persons meet, male and female, it becomes a circle: there will 
be gaps for both. You will be a woman and suddenly there will be a gap and you are no 
longer a woman, you have become a man. You will be man and woman and man. When 
these gaps are felt you can feel that you have achieved a circle. This circle is represented 
in Shiva's symbol-the shiva-linga. This circle is represented by the yoni of Devi and linga 
of Shiva. It is a circle. It is one of the peak phenomena of two high energies meeting. 

This technique will be good. FEEL THE FINE QUALITIES OF CREATIVITY 
PERMEATING YOUR BREASTS AND ASSUMING DELICATE 
CONFIGURATIONS. Simply relax, move into the breasts, let your breasts become your 
whole being. Let the whole body be just a situation for the breasts to exist, your body has 
become secondary, just a background, and the breasts are emphasized. And you are 
totally relaxing in them, moving in them. Then your creativity will arise. The feminine 
creativity arises only when the breasts become active. Merge into them and you will feel 
creativity arising. 


What does it mean when creativity arises? You will have many visions around you. 
Buddha and Mahavir have said in their past lives that when they are born their mothers 
will see certain visions, certain dreams. Because of those dreams, it could be predicted 
that a Buddha was going to be born. Sixteen visions would follow each other. 

I have been experimenting with this. If a woman really melts into her breasts, certain 
visions will follow in a certain sequence. She will start seeing certain things. To different 
women there will be different sequences, but I will tell you a few. One, there will be 
figures, human figures, and if the woman is going to give birth to a child, then the figure 
of the child will appear. If total melting has happened in the breasts then the woman can 
see what type of child is going to be born to her. The figure will appear, and then it will 
be more clear. If she is not going to be a mother soon or she is not pregnant, then very 
unknown scents, perfumes will happen around her. The breasts can become sources of 
very delicate perfumes which are not of this world, which cannot be created chemically; 
sounds, harmonious sounds will be heard; all the realms of creativity can appear in new 
and many configurations. All that has happened to great painters and poets will happen to 
the woman if she can melt into her breasts. 

And this will be so real that it will change her total personality — she will become 
different. 

And if she goes on with these visions, by and by they will drop, and a moment will come 
when nothingness, void, emptiness will happen — SHUNYATA will happen. This 
SHUNYATA is the highest of meditations. 

So remember this: if you are a woman, don’t concentrate on the third eye. It will be better 



for you to concentrate near the breasts — on the breasts, right on the two nipples of the 
breasts. Concentrate there. And the second thing: don't concentrate on one breast — 
concentrate on both simultaneously. If you concentrate on one, your body will 
immediately be disturbed. Even paralysis is possible if you concentrate on only one. So 
just concentrate on both simultaneously, melt into them and allow whatsoever happens to 
happen. Just go on watching and don’t get attached to any rhythm because the rhythms 
will be very beautiful, just heavenly. Don’t get attached. Go on watching them and be a 
witness. A moment will come when they will start disappearing — and when 
SHUNYATA, nothingness, happens, when just space, just space remains and the breasts 
have disappeared, then you are under the Bodhi tree. 


THE END. 



Chapter 68: If you get serious you lose the point 


The first question: 

Question 1 

IT HAS BEEN SAID THAT NO DESIRE, NEITHER WORLDLY NOR RELIGIOUS, 
CAN LEAD TOWARDS FREEDOM. BUT A POSITIVE IMAGINATION OF 
HAPPINESS AND BLISS IS ALSO A SORT OF DESIRE. THEN ISN’T IT TRUE 
THAT IMAGINATION IS ALSO DESIRE AND HENCE CREATES TENSIONS? 

Imagination is not desire. Imagination is just a play. 

Desire is a totally different thing. You can base your imagination on desire, you can 
project your imagination through desire — then it will be a bondage. If you simply play 
with imagination without any desire — not to reach anywhere, not to get anything out of 
it, but just as a game, then it is not desire and not binding. These techniques of 
imagination can be helpful only if you are playing with them. If you get serious, you lose 
the point. 

But the question is relevant because, really, you cannot conceive of anything which you 
can do without desire. Even if you are playing, you can play only to reach somewhere, to 
get something, to win. If there is nothing in the future, you will lose interest. You will 
say, "Then why? Then why play at all?" 

We are so end-oriented that we turn everything into a means. This must be remembered: 
meditation is the ultimate play, it is not a means to something, it is not a means to 
enlightenment. Enlightenment happens in it, but it is not a means to it. 

It is not a means to ultimate freedom. Ultimate freedom happens in it, but it is not a 
means to it. You cannot use it as a cause to effect something. This has been one of the 
most puzzling things — all through the centuries, those who have known go on insisting 
on meditation for meditation's sake. Don't desire anything out of it, enjoy it in itself, don't 
move out of it — and the consequence will be enlightenment. Remember, consequence — 
not effect. Meditation is not a cause, but if you are deep in meditation, enlightenment 
happens. Really, being deep in the play is enlightenment. 

But the mind always turns everything into work. It says, "Do something because this will 
be the profit from it." Imaginary or real, the mind needs something to hang onto, to 
project onto. Only then can it devote itself. That is how mind functions — it functions in 
the present for the future. The future may be illusory, it may not ever happen, but if the 
mind can hope for the future then it can work. This is what is called desire: working in 
the present for the future. The end is always somewhere else; the means are here but the 
end is somewhere else. This division of end and means, this gap, is desire. If you are 
playing, there is no desire because the end is here and the means are also here. While 
playing there is no future; you are simply merged so much in it that the future disappears. 


Look at children playing. Look at their faces, at their eyes. Now they are in eternity. They 
are happy because they are playing. Happiness will not result in an end, it is here right 
now. Moment to moment they are happy — not that something great is going to happen 
later on — it is happening already. They are in eternity. But their minds are still not 
developed. We will force them to develop because this play will not be of much help in 



the world. They will have to learn work. They will have to divide means and end. They 
will have to create a gap between this moment and the future, and we will teach them to 
sacrifice the present for the future. This is the way of the world, the way of the market, 
the way of desire. Desire makes everything utilitarian. 

In meditation you will become a child again, playing, with no idea of the future, enjoying 
this very moment, enjoying the very act in itself, intrinsically. Then imagination is not 
desire. Then you can play with it, and it is one of the most beautiful things possible. And 
this playing, this being in the moment, totally absorbed, is enlightenment. The moment it 
happens you are transformed. 

So enlightenment is never in the future, it is always in the present; and it is not a work to 
be done, it is a game to be played. 

That is the meaning of the Indian concept of LEELA. God is playing; he is not engaged 
in work. 

This world is not utilitarian, it is just a play of energy. Energy enjoys itself playing; it 
divides itself and then plays the game of hide and seek. So, really, Indian seers have 
never said that God is the creator, they say that God is the player — because the very 
word 'creation’ carries much seriousness about it, as if there is some end and something 
has to be achieved. God creating the world? This is absurd. Because it means that 
something is lacking, so God is creating the world to achieve something. Or it means that 
there is a future, so God also lives in desire. 

Jains and Buddhists could not understand the Hindu concept of LEELA, so they 
completely denied God. Because if God creates the world, then he desires — so Jains and 
Buddhists say that if God desires, then God is part of the world. He himself is not free, he 
himself is not liberated. So they completely denied the concept of God because they say 
that God means one who is beyond desire. And they say that Mahavir is a God, he is 
beyond desire, but Brahma is not a God because he creates the world, he desires the 
world. They couldn’t follow the concept of LEELA. 

The concept of LEELA is totally different from the concept of creation. God is just 
playing and you cannot ask "Why?" because a play has no "Why?" to answer. If children 
are playing can you ask, "Why are you playing?" They will say, "We are playing, so we 
are playing." 

Playing is good in itself — the energy is moving, abundant energy is overflowing. 

The more you grow the less you play. Why? Because now your energy is not so 
overflowing. Now you have become economical. Now you know that you have a certain 
amount of energy and you have to channel that energy for work, to achieve something. 
Children are just overflowing. Their energy is so much that they have to play. The play is 
just overflowing energy, too much energy moving. Then they enjoy the very moment. A 
child is jumping, running, but not to reach some goal. Running itself is a beautiful 
experience of vital energy, an experience of vitality, an experience of being alive, of 
overflowing so abundantly that you can throw out the energy without any economical 
mind behind it. 

God means absolute energy, infinite energy. God cannot be economical. He has so much, 
so infinitely much, that he can only play. And this play goes on and on, there is no end to 
it. There cannot be because the energy is infinite. And you cannot ask "Why?" Energy 
moves, there is no "Why?" to it. If God created the world you can ask, "Why? Why have 
you created the world?" But if he is simply playing you cannot ask "Why?" 



When you also become a player, you become Divine. If you are a worker you are human; 
if you are a player you have become Divine. Then you share in the game. That's why we 
have called Krishna the absolute AVATAR. 

We have not called Ram the absolute AVATAR, we call him a partial AVATAR — a 
partial coming of the Divine to the world. But Krishna we call an absolute coming. The 
difference is that Ram is serious. He is still utilitarian, end-oriented: this is right and that 
is wrong. Only in work do right and wrong exist: this should be done and that should not 
be done, this is good and that is bad. For Krishna everything has become a play so 
everything is arbitrary — just rules of the game. 

If you follow the rules, and if you follow them knowing that this is a game and that the 
rules have to be followed, it is good. If you don’t follow, nothing is wrong; really, you are 
playing the reverse game of not following. If you obey, you follow the game of 
obedience; if you don't obey, you follow the game of disobedience, the game of 
rebelliousness. But nothing is wrong. What you want to play is your choice. And if you 
are not serious and are happy whatsoever you do, you are enlightened. 

There are rules because a game has to be played with others. If you are playing alone 
there is no question of rules; then you can change your rules any moment you like. But 
because you are playing with others, rules have to be followed so that you can play with 
them. There isn't any other reason behind it. Morality is a rule, love is a rule, society is 
just a rule — agreed-upon rules that we are going to play a game so we will agree. 

If you don't want to play the game then you can be rebellious, but don't be serious about 
it. Then play the game of being rebellious. And if someone kills you, murders you, or 
crucifies you, you know that you were playing the game of a rebellious leader, so you 
have been killed. There is no condemnation. You were not with the established rules, so 
the established rules were against you — it is okay. Then nothing is wrong, and you don’t 
have to complain. 

Once you become aware that the concept of work, utility, reaching somewhere, the goal, 
is the bondage, it doesn’t mean that you stop playing the dame in the market — you go on 
playing. But you know that this is a game. It doesn’t mean that you divorce your wife — 
you go on playing the game of marriage. But know well that this is a game. Don't get 
serious about it. And if you want to play the game of divorce, you can play it, but 
remember, don’t get serious about it. Divorce or marriage — these are alternative games; 
being a worldly man or becoming a sannyasin — these are alternative games. But don’t be 
serious about it. Be light-hearted, festive. And whatsoever you choose, you can play; and 
whatsoever consequences follow, you will welcome them because there is nothing 
serious about them. 

Once this deepens in your consciousness — and it will deepen if you start playing with 
meditation — it will be a good beginning. 

Because in meditation you alone are the player. That's why it can be a good beginning, 
the right beginning. You are alone playing the game so you can forget society and society 
will not come to interfere. This is a solo game, meditation, a solo game. You play alone. 
So whatsoever you want to play you can play, but forget the ends. If there are ends you 
have also turned meditation into a work. Just play it, enjoy it, love it. It is beautiful in 
itself. There is no need for any other end to beautify it. 

People come to me and they say, "We are enjoying meditation, but tell us what is going 



to happen. What will be the end result?" I tell them, "This IS the end result — that you are 
enjoying. Enjoy it more!" But they go on insisting, "Tell us something about it. What will 
be the end result? Where will we reach to?" They are not concerned at all where they are: 
they are always concerned with where they will reach to. The mind cannot exist in the 
present so it goes on giving you excuses to move into the future. These excuses are the 
desires. So if you desire to be a god, to be a buddha, your meditation will be a sort of 
desire, and then it is not meditation. If you don't desire anything, you just enjoy being 
here, you just celebrate being alive, you enjoy the inner energy playing in imagination, in 
visions, in emptiness, whatsoever you choose, and you are totally one with this moment 
of enjoyment, then it is meditation. 

Then there is no desire, and, with no desire, the world drops. With a non-desiring, playful 
mind you have entered. You are already in it. 

But this has to be hammered into your mind again and again because your mind is a 
transfonner. It transforms anything into a desire — anything — it can transfonn even non- 
desire into a desire. People come to me and they say, "How does one achieve the state of 
non-desire?" How to achieve the state of non-desire? Now this has become the desire. 
Your mind has a transforming mechanism: whatsoever you put in will come out as a 
desire. 

Be alert of this and enjoy moments so much that no energy is left to move into the future. 
Then, any day, any moment, it will happen to you that suddenly all the darkness falls; 
suddenly all that is a burden disappears; suddenly you are freed. But the emphasis should 
be more and more on play, the present, here and now — and less and less on the future. 
The second question: 

Question 2 

YESTERDAY, YOU SAID THAT MIND IS REALITY, DREAM IS REALITY. THEN 
WHY DO GURUS LIKE YOU TAKE THE TROUBLE TO TEACH US THAT MIND 
IS THE ONLY BARRIER, MIND IS THE ONLY OBSTACLE? 

Gurus and disciples are mind phenomena. Because your mind needs gurus, there are 
gurus. You create them. Because you want to be taught, there are teachers. You need 
them. 

This is a game. 

When I say marriage is a game, don’t think that I would not say that 'guru and disciples' 
is not a game. It is a game. Some people enjoy it, so they play it. If you enjoy it, play it 
deeply; if you don’t enjoy it, forget it. But this is one of the most beautiful of games. It 
goes even deeper than marriage. 

It is one of the most beautiful, most refined of games — and only when a culture reaches 
the peak does this dame develop, never before. So, really, only in India has the game 
developed. The game of the guru and the disciple came into being here. Now the West is 
discovering it for the first time because now the West is reaching to a peak. This game is 
the most luxurious. It is not ordinary, so only people who can afford it can play it. And if 
you know that this is a beautiful game and you enjoy it, you can play it. But don’t get 
serious about it. And disciples can be forgiven if they are serious, but when teachers are 
serious it is absurd. It cannot be forgiven if they are not even aware that this is a game. 

In reality all games disappear, but for the mind, games exist. By this I am not saying that 



you should stop playing, I am only saying that you should become aware that this is a 
play and then if you enjoy it go on playing it. If you don’t enjoy it, then stop. Once you 
become aware that everything in life, every relationship, is a sort of game, you are 
already free, because you are in bondage only because of the seriousness. 

You are in bondage because you think everything is so serious. Nothing is so serious. But 
it is difficult to conceive of this whole life as a game. 

Why is it so difficult? Because then the ego falls flat. If everything is a game, the ego 
cannot stand. The ego needs food. Seriousness is the food. It feeds on it. So when you 
become a disciple, if you are just playing, your ego cannot get strong through it because 
you know that this is a play. 

What is there to be so egoistic about? People start thinking that they are disciples of a 
very great guru. The guru may not be great or he may be great, that is not the point — but 
the disciple thinks, "I am the disciple of the greatest guru." That becomes a vitamin and 
the ego grows on it, becomes stronger. 

That's why disciples go on fighting about gurus. No one can believe that his guru is 
number two, he is always number one. And it is not about whether he is number one or 
not — that is not the point — it is because you can be number one only if your guru is 
number one. The ego of the disciple depends on the height of the guru. If someone says 
something against your guru, why do you feel so hurt? Your ego is hurt. YOUR guru 
means YOUR ego, embodied, and if someone says something against your guru, you 
cannot tolerate it. It is impossible because it is a direct hit at your ego. 

But for disciples it can be tolerated. 

They are ignorant and whatsoever they do, they will do wrongly. That is agreed upon. 

But so-called gurus are also playing the game very seriously. They cannot laugh; it is 
impossible for them to laugh about the whole game. A guru is really a guru when he 
knows that the whole thing is a game and that in the game he is helping to make you 
more aware. And a moment will come when you will also laugh, a moment will come 
when you will be able to look back — and then you will feel very grateful because for you 
it was so serious and for the guru it was never anything. But he was playing the game so 
seriously with you and making every effort — as if he was leading you somewhere. 
Remember, it is 'as if because there is nowhere to lead you to. You have to be here. So 
all the efforts which appear to be leading you somewhere are just devices. You cannot be 
led anywhere. You are already at home, you have never left it. You are rooted in the 
reality, in the truth. So all these games of leading, guidance, guru-dom, are to bring you 
to situations where you will find everything that you wanted to find already there. 

But you cannot understand non-seriousness. The ego doesn’t know that language. Every 
religion is born as a play, and every religion becomes a church, very serious, deadly 
serious. Every religion is born as a dance, as a song, as a festivity, and then everything 
goes dead and serious. 

Religion cannot be serious really. It must be ecstatic. It must be the highest peak of bliss. 
How can it be serious? 

Christians go on thinking and believing that Jesus never laughed. Look at Krishna — you 
cannot find any common ground between them. Not that Jesus was like that, but 
Christians have made him serious because only around a serious Jesus is a serious church 
possible. And then the whole game of popes — so serious, so burdened. Jesus must have 



been a very light-hearted man, laughing, enjoying, eating, drinking, dancing. He must 
have loved life very deeply. 

That was the sin. That was the reason why he was crucified. Those who crucified him 
were very serious. They were the old established church. Really, they did not crucify 
Jesus — they crucified the festivity of him. And there would have been no Christianity if 
he had not been crucified, because he was a very joyous man. The moment Jews crucified 
him the whole thing became very serious. Death became the point. And the figure on the 
cross is of course very serious — dead. And Christianity arose around the dead body and 
the cross. The cross became the symbol — not Jesus laughing in a village, drinking at a 
party, eating with friends, or staying in a prostitute's home. No, they were not to become 
the symbols. The cross became the symbol, and with the cross, seriousness — dead 
seriousness. And because of that cross and the crucified Jesus, Christianity went against 
life. 

Ah that is alive became sin. 

And every religion goes on doing this in its own way. 

Those who are very sophisticated will not do it in this way, they will do it in another way. 
We have not transformed Krishna — India is a very sophisticated land, it will not do such 
a thing — but we have never taken him to our heart. He is just a myth, beautiful. 

The Gita became more important than Bhagvad. Krishna’s life is not so important for 
Hindus, but his message delivered on the war field is very important. Why? Because it is 
a serious thing. A war field is nearer to death than to life. Krishna's life is very much 
alive, but that has become a myth and nobody bothers about it. His few words uttered on 
the war field have become more important than his whole life. And then there are pundits 
who go on explaining that his life is just symbolic, it is not real. His playing with the 
GOPIS is not real — GOPIS are just symbols of senses, not real. They are not real women 
of bone and flesh, no. GOPIS are not women, they are symbolic. And pundits are very 
efficient in doing such tricks. They say that Krishna is the soul and the GOPIS are the 
senses of the body — the senses are dancing around the soul. This is a sophisticated 
country. They kill Krishna, they crucify Krishna, but in a very sophisticated way. His 
festivity is killed; it becomes symbolic, meaningless. And his whole real life is pushed 
aside. 


He was dancing with real women, but that is shocking because we cannot conceive of 
Krishna dancing with real women. We can allow him to dance with symbolic women but 
not with real women. We will be shocked. Life shocks us. We have become so dead that 
anything alive shocks us. 

Every religion is born in festivity — and when the festivity dies know well that the 
religion is dead. Whenever a new religion is born, all the old religions will be against it 
because again the festivity will be there. Just as when a child is bom — every child is 
bom as a player, festive, alive, celebrating, irresponsibly celebrating, not believing in the 
future, believing in the here and now — the whole society will be against him; the whole 
society will try to put him right before he goes astray. He must be put on the right track. 
The same happens with every new religion. So when I talk of meditation as a dance, or 
when I talk about SANNYAS as an inner celebration and happiness, an affirmation of 
life, of course all those who belong to old traditions will say, " Y ou call this 
SANNYAS?" And in a way they are right because whatsoever they have been believing 



that SANNYAS is, is not this. They have been believing in dead men — the more dead, 
the more they say, "Now this is real renunciation." When life has been renounced, they 
call it SANNYAS — but I call it SANNYAS when life is being lived in its totality. 


But this is how it will be always. When I am no more, you will turn it into a serious thing. 
You will give explanations of what the real meaning is. But the real meaning is always 
obvious, there is no need to give any explanation. All explanations are to explain away — 
to bring in something which was not there. 

Gurus, disciples, awakened ones and ignorant ones... this is a great play, a cosmic play. 
Ignorant ones need awakened ones; awakened ones cannot play solo, alone — they need 
ignorant ones. But the master knows that this is a play and is not serious about it. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

YOU SAID LAST NIGHT THAT A CHANGE IN THE OUTER OR INNER AND 
PHYSICAL OR MENTAL ASPECTS CAN BRING A CHANGE IN 
CONSCIOUSNESS. THAT MEANS THAT CHANGES ON THE PERIPHERY ALSO 
AFFECT THE CONSCIOUSNESS, THE CENTER. BUT THEN WHY DO YOU 
EMPHASIZE CHANGING THE CENTER, INSTEAD OF CHANGING THE OUTER, 
THE PERIPHERY? 

This is the trouble: you go on catching the words and missing the meaning. 

The periphery also belongs to you; it is part of the center. The periphery is part of the 
center, it is the outer part of the center, but it is not different from the center. Can you 
create a periphery without the center? Or can you create a center without the periphery? 
They are not separate, they are one. The periphery is the center looked at from without. 

If you change your periphery, the center will also be affected for two reasons: firstly, the 
periphery is part of the center, and secondly, what will change the periphery but the 
center? What will change the periphery? The center will change the periphery. 

But my emphasis on starting the work from the center is still there because if you start 
changing the periphery it will take a longer time to reach to the center. That which can be 
done in a single moment may take many lives, because you have to travel from the 
periphery to the center — backwards from the superficial to the depth. If you start work 
from the center, the periphery automatically changes. When the center is different, the 
periphery will follow it because the periphery cannot go away from you. For example, I 
will not tell you to try to be non-violent at the periphery — it is an unnecessary wastage of 
time and effort. Be non-violent at the heart, be compassionate, loving, at the heart — and 
the periphery will follow. You can forget it completely because whatsoever happens at 
the periphery comes from the center, so if at the center you are compassionate, the 
periphery will follow. And this compassion will be totally different because the periphery 
will not know that this is compassion; the periphery will not feel elated that this is 
compassion; the periphery will be blissfully unaware — the compassion will follow you 
like a shadow. 

This is the easiest course. 

What I mean is this: if you want to change a tree, change the roots. Of course, the leaves 
of the tree are also the tree, and you can also try to change the leaves. If you change the 



leaves the roots will be affected but it is going to be a very long process because the flow 
is from the roots to the leaves, the flow is not from the leaves to the roots. You are 
following a reverse direction from that of nature. If you go on changing the leaves, after 
many, many lives you may affect the pattern of the roots, but this is going to be 
unnecessarily long. You can do it immediately if you change the pattern at the roots. The 
leaves will change and will become different. 

So when I emphasize the center, I don’t mean that the periphery is separate from the 
center. And when I emphasize the center, I don’t mean that you cannot affect the center 
from the periphery — you can, but this is the longest route possible. If you choose to 
travel the long route it is up to you. Nothing is wrong in it. If you enjoy the journey, then 
the long route is good. If you just want to see the side views then the long route is good. 
Otherwise start from the center. 

It is like this: we are sitting here and you are listening to me, so a center is created in this 
room — you become the periphery, I become the center. A group soul exists. You are 
centered towards me. 

If someone wants to affect this room and this group soul, it is better to start from me than 
from you. Because if I change my mind, effects will come soon, but if someone starts 
from you, it is going to be a very long effort. Because for one thing, you are many and 
first he has to change you one by one, and then he must try to change me through you. 
This is going to be very long, and it may not succeed ever. The other is easier. If he 
changes me and if you are attached to me as the center, immediately there will be effects. 
In your body, in your being, the same phenomenon is happening. There is the center and 
there is the periphery of your life. With a direct hit at the center the periphery will follow 
— it has to follow, there is no other way to go. Changing the periphery is a piecemeal 
affair: you change one fragment and ninety-nine other fragments remain as the old; then 
when you move to another fragment, those ninety-nine others will change the one you 
tried to change — they will make it again the old. The whole pattern will be against it. I 
can change one habit — much effort will be needed — but not your whole pattern because 
your center goes on giving you all the old habits. I have changed only one habit and there 
are thousands of habits. This changed habit is just from the surface, forced. The moment 
you become unaware, all the other habits and the pattern will change it again into the old. 

So much effort is wasted working on the periphery. 

I have seen people who have been working their whole life for ordinary things. For 
example, someone has been trying for his whole life to stop smoking — this has been the 
whole aim, the only aim, and he has not achieved it. I tell such a person that even if you 
achieve it, what is achieved? The while life is lost just in trying to stop smoking. It is not 
worth it. When you reach to the Divine source, to God, you will only be able to say that 
you have stopped smoking. This won't be worth telling. And the whole life has been 
spent trying to stop smoking and even that has not been achieved. This is piecemeal 
work. And the problem is not smoking: you are fighting against a current by changing a 
small wave — and the whole river goes on flowing. If you change a wave, the whole river 
will change the wave back again into itself, because the pattern, the built-in pattern, goes 
on being flashed from the center to the periphery. It is a built-in program: whatsoever is 
happening on the periphery has happened already in the center. That's why it is 
happening there. The periphery comes to know about things which have been happening 
very deeply. 



Move to the cause and don't be too much concerned with the effect. 

This is scientific. Change the center. Don’t try to stop smoking, don't try to stop this and 
that — follow the deepest pattern. 

Why is smoking there? Why is this obsession with sex there? Why is this obsession with 
money there? Why are you a miser? Why do you go on clinging to dead money? Y ou can 
donate it — it will not make any difference. Donating will not help, you will again gather. 
And donating in itself will be an investment for the future, it will be part of your ha nk 
balance. You cannot donate just in play, can you? You can donate very seriously when it 
is said that the donation will lead you to heaven. Then you can donate. To me a donator 
who is giving his money for some future end in paradise is more clinging to his money 
than a person who can throw away all his fortune in a game of cards. This person is less 
greedy. He can play with it, and his achievement is deeper. He may look immoral 
because morality is created by the donators. They will say, "You are wasting money." 
They never waste money; they always invest it. And this man is mad, immoral, wasting 
money. But this man is less greedy, and this man can move deeper more easily than the 
greedy man who is donating for some paradise or something. 

You can change outer things, but even the change will deep down have the same pattern. 
The pattern has to be uprooted and transformed. That’s why I emphasize starting from the 
center. But don’t think that I mean that if you cannot start from the center, don't start from 
the periphery. That is not what I mean. 

If you can't start from the center, please start from the periphery. Something is better than 
nothing. It will take much time, or you may not ever be able to do it, but still the very 
effort will be good. 

I am reminded of an incident. In a waiting room of an airport, a young woman was crying 
steadily. Everyone around was aware of it, but no one know what to do. Then one fellow 
took courage. He came near the woman, tried to console her, said some soothing things, 
put his arm around her, and asked, "What can I do? Is there anything I can do to help you 
to stop crying?" But she was not listening. She continued crying, so he squeezed her a 
little more tightly and then again asked, "Is there anything I can do to stop you from 
crying?" The woman said at last, "I am afraid not. This is hay fever, but, still, please, keep 
on trying." 

That's what I say to you. From the periphery it is difficult because it is like hayfever. It is 
almost impossible, but please, keep on trying. Something may happen. Who knows? 

But if you are really interested, start from the center. 

The fourth question: 

Question 4 

WHY SHOULD THERE BE A DIFFERENCE IN TECHNIQUES FOR MEN AND 
WOMEN? 

Because they are different. They are as different as possible. They are polar opposites. 
Really, the more relevant question would be this: Why should there be similar 
techniques? 

There are techniques which are being used by both men and women, not because they are 
suited to women, but really because special techniques were never developed for them. 


They have been a neglected part of humanity. All the techniques were developed by men. 



Basically man was experimenting with himself: he knew about his energy pattern, his 
routes of energy, his passages of energy. He worked on these. And then he was talking to 
other men — so techniques were developed by men for men. Women were never 
considered. 

Women cannot enter a Mohammedan mosque. They are not to be a part of Islam really: 
the mosque exists only for men. For many years Buddha insistently denied women 
initiation. Mahavir initiated many women, he never denied them initiation, but no 
techniques were developed for them. All the techniques were for men. Women worked 
through them. That's why the results were never so miraculous, never; they were always 
so-so, bound to be. Really, there is no need for three hundred religions in the world, there 
is only need for two religions: one for men and one for women. And those two religions 
need not be in conflict, they can be married together. They will become one. There is no 
need of any conflict. If a man and a woman can fall in love and live together as a single 
unit, those two religions can fall in love — they should. 

The whole physiology, the whole psychology, every layer of the feminine consciousness 
is different from man’s — not only different, just the opposite. For example, kundalini 
yoga... it is not for women at all. 

But many will be shocked if I say that. And women particularly will be shocked. They 
will think that something has been taken out of their hands. It is not for them at all 
because kundalini is based on the positive sex center for man. The positive sex center is 
at the root of the penis — for men not for women. For women that center is negative, and 
energy cannot be raised from a negative center. So almost always it is the case — this is 
my observation — that whenever women say they are feeling kundalini arising in the, 
they are imagining. It cannot happen but they are very imaginary, more imaginary than 
men. So if I work with ten women and ten men, nine women will feel the energy arising 
and only one man will feel the energy arising. This is miraculous because it cannot 
happen! They go on coming to me and I say, "Okay, it is happening." What to do? It is 
impossible, scientifically impossible, because energy can come only from a positive pole. 
Totally different techniques should be developed, totally different techniques — but 
because man and woman live so near, so close together, they go on forgetting that they 
are different. Nothing is similar, and it is good that nothing is similar, because that's why 
they can become one circle of energy. They are complementary, they fit into each other. 
But because they fit that doesn’t mean that they are similar — they fit because they are not 
similar. 


And whenever two similar types of bodies and minds try to fit into each other, this is 
perversion. So I say that homosexuality is a perversion. In the West, now, it has become 
more and more prevalent. Now homosexuals think they are progressive: they have their 
clubs, parties, institutions, magazines, propaganda, everything. And their number is 
rising. In certain countries it has come to near about forty per cent. Sooner or later 
homosexuality will become a pattern all over, a normal pattern. Now even certain states 
in America are allowing homosexual marriage. If people insist, you have to allow it 
because the government has to serve the people. If two men want to live together in 
marriage, it is no one's business to create obstacles. It's okay. If two women want to live 
together, married, it's no one's business. It's their own affair. But this is basically 
unscientific. It is their affair, but unscientific. It is their affair and no one needs to 



interfere, but their minds are unenlightened about the very basic pattern of human energy 
and its movement. Homosexuals cannot develop spirituality. It is very difficult. Their 
whole pattern of energy movement is disturbed. The whole mechanism is shocked, 
perverted. And now if homosexuality grows too much in the world, very different 
techniques will have to be developed, unknown before, to help them to move towards 
meditation. 

When I say a man and woman are two counterparts of one whole, I mean they are 
complementary. 

And the complementariness is possible only when their opposite poles meet. Look at it in 
this way: the vagina is the negative pole in the feminine body and the breasts are the 
positive pole. This is the rod of magnetism: the positive pole near the breasts, the 
negative pole near the vagina. For man the negative pole is at the breasts, and the positive 
pole is at the penis. So when breasts meet — male and female — negative and positive are 
meeting; and when sex centers meet in coitus, negative and positive are meeting. Now 
both magnetic rods are meeting at their opposite poles, now there is a circle — the energy 
can flow, the energy can move. But this circle will happen only when a man and woman 
are in love. If they are not in love, then only their sex centers will meet — one positive 
pole will meet with one negative pole. There will be an exchange of energy, but linear. A 
circle cannot be made. That's why without love you never feel satisfied. 

Sex without love becomes just a trifle. It is not deep moving. Energy moves, but in a line 
— a circle is not made. And when a circle is there you become one, not before. When you 
are deep in love, then breasts also meet, never before. So the sex act is very easy, the love 
act is more complex. The sex act is just physical — two energies meeting and dissipating. 
Hence, if there is only sex, sooner or later you will feel frustrated: you waste energy and 
nothing is gained. 

The gain happens only when there is a circle. If the circle is totally there, then both the 
partners will come out of the sex act more energetic, more alive, more charged, with 
more energy flowing. If there is only the sex act, both partners will come out of it 
discharged, faint. They have lost energy. Sleep will follow because all they are feeling is 
weak. 

In this 'one pole meeting’, men are at more of a loss than women. That’s why women can 
become prostitutes — because the positive pole is man and the negative pole is woman. 
Energy flows from man to woman but not vice versa. So a woman can be in twenty or 
thirty sex acts in one night, a man cannot. A man cannot be in two. It depends on age, 
how his energy is moving — because nothing is gained. So to me, if prostitution is bad it 
is not because of prostitution, it is because a circle is impossible. You are not charged. 
You simply waste your energy. If there is love, then man and woman meet on two poles. 
Man gives to the woman and the woman returns it back. This is reciprocal, mutual. 

For females, meditation will be good if it starts from the breasts. That is their positive 
pole. Because of this, many strange things become possible, happen. Man always likes to 
enter the woman immediately. He is not interested in foreplay because his positive pole is 
always ready. And women are always reluctant to enter into the sex act immediately, 
without any foreplay, because their negative pole is not ready. 

And it cannot be ready. Unless the man starts loving the woman from the breasts, the 
negative pole will not be ready. They can yield but they will not participate. And man 



thinks the sex act is simple. Why waste time? Enter the woman immediately — and he is 
finished within minutes. But the woman was not a part, she was not aroused. That's why 
women have a hankering that their lovers should touch their breasts, love their breasts — 
a deep hankering. Only when their breasts have become filled with energy does their 
second pole of the magnetic rod, which is negative, respond. Then they are alive to it, 
then they can participate, then communication is possible — and then they will melt. 
Foreplay is a must. 

Marriages become dry because in the beginning when you meet a new woman you play 
with her body before. You are not certain whether she will allow you a direct approach, 
so you play. You just feel the ground to see whether she is ready. But when she is your 
wife, you take her for granted — there is no need. Wives are so dissatisfied with their 
husbands, not because their husbands are not loving but because they are wrongly loving. 
They don’t think that a woman exists in a different way; that her body responds in a 
different way just opposite to them. 

This concentration at the breasts, melting into them, will give a new feeling to the female 
meditator — a new feeling about her own body, because now from the center she can feel 
the whole body vibrating. 

Just by loving the breasts of a woman she can be brought to a deep orgasm because the 
negative pole will automatically go on responding. 

There are many other things. If you start from the breasts, meditating on the nipples, don’t 
follow the route that you have read in books because that is meant for men. Simply don't 
follow any chart, just allow the energy itself to move. It will happen in this way: with just 
a vague suggestion your breasts will become filled with energy, they will radiate energy, 
they will become hot, and then immediately your vagina will respond. And only after 
your vagina responds and vibrates, will your kundalini start working. The route will be 
different and the way the kundalini will arise will be different. 

In man it arises very actively, forcibly. That’s why they have called it a serpent rising. 
Very forcibly, suddenly, with a jerk, the serpent unfolds. And it is felt on many points. 
Those points are called chakras. Wherever there is resistance, the snake forces itself. Just 
as the penis enters the vagina, so the passage is similar for man. When the energy arises it 
is as if the penis inside is moving. 

And the snake is a phallic symbol. Really, not to use direct language, not to call it penis, 
they have called it a snake. You must have heard the story of the Garden of Eden where 
the serpent persuaded Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. 

Now scholars are working and they say that this serpent is also just a phallic symbol, 
used so as not to say it directly. So it is not a question, really, of eating the Fruit of 
Knowledge; it is a question of sexuality. 

The same symbol has been used similarly in India: the serpent rises just like a penis 
erecting in jerks, and moving inwards. 

This will not be the feeling for woman. The feeling will be quite the opposite. As a 
woman feels when the penis has entered the vagina — the melting sensation, the 
welcoming, the vagina giving way, vibrating very, very delicately, in a very receptive 
mood, loving, welcoming — the same will be the phenomenon inside. When the energy 
rises, it will be a receptive, passive rise, as if a passage is opening — not a serpent rising, 
but a door opening, and a passage opening, and something giving way. It will be passive 
and negative. With men something is entering; with women something is opening, not 



entering. 

But no one has worked on it, never before, because no one has taken any cognisance of 
women. But for the future, I think that now it is a must — the feminine body should not be 
neglected. Much research and work is needed, but it is very difficult to work because of 
so much puritanical, moralistic nonsense. It is very difficult to work and to create a map 
of how the feminine body will respond to the phenomena. 

But this is how I feel it will be; everything will be just the opposite. 

It must be so. It cannot be similar. But the ultimate thing will be the same. 


THE END. 



Chapter 69: You are unknown to yourself 


ABIDE IN SOME PLACE ENDLESSLY SPACIOUS, CLEAR OF TREES, HILLS, 
HABITATIONS. THENCE COMES THE END OF MIND PRESSURES. 

CONSIDER THE PLENUM TO BE YOUR OWN BODY OF BLISS. 

Man is bom alone and dies alone, but between these two points he lives in society, he 
lives with others. 

Aloneness is his basic reality; society is just accidental. And unless man can live alone, 
can know his aloneness in its total depth, he cannot be acquainted with himself. All that 
happens in society is just outer: it is not you, it is just your relations with others. You 
remain unknown. From the outside you cannot be revealed. 

But we live with others. Because of this, self-knowledge is completely forgotten. You 
know something about yourself, but indirectly — it is said to you by others. It is strange, 
absurd, that others should tell you about yourself. Whatsoever identity you carry is given 
to you by others; it is not real, it is just a labelling. A name is given to you. That name is 
given as a label because it will be difficult for society to be related to a nameless person. 
Not only is the name given, the very image that you think yourself to be is given by 
society: that you are good, that you are bad, that you are beautiful, that you are 
intelligent, that you are moral, a saint, or whatsoever. The image, the fonn, is also given 
by society, and you don’t know what you are. 

Neither your name reveals anything, nor the form that society has given to you. You 
remain unknown to yourself. 

This is the basic anxiety. You are there, but you are unknown to yourself. This lack of 
knowledge about oneself is the ignorance, and this ignorance cannot be destroyed by any 
knowledge which others can give to you. They can say to you that you are not this name, 
you are not this form, you are 'soul eternal’, but that too, is given by others, that too is not 
immediate. Unless you come to yourself directly, you will remain in ignorance. And 
ignorance creates anxiety. You are not only afraid of others, you are afraid of yourself — 
because you don’t know who you are and what is hidden in you. What is possible, what 
will erupt out of you the next moment, you don’t know. You go on trembling and life 
becomes a deep anxiety. There are many problems which create anxiety, but those 
problems are secondary. If you penetrate deeply, then every problem will ultimately 
reveal that the basic anxiety, the basic anguish, is that you are ignorant of yourself — of 
the source from where you come, of the end to where you are moving, of the being whom 
you are right now. 

Hence every religion says to move into solitude, into aloneness, so that you can for a time 
leave society and all that society has given to you, and face yourself directly. 

Mahavir lived for twelve years alone in the forest. 

He would not speak during those days, because the moment you speak you have moved 
into society. Language is society. He remained completely silent, he would not speak. 

The basic bridge had been cut so that he would be alone. When you don’t speak you are 
alone, deeply alone. There is no way to move to the other. For twelve long years he lived 
alone without speaking. What was he doing? He was trying to find out who he was. It is 
better to put away all labels, it is better to move away from others so that there is no need 



for the social image. He was destroying the social image. He was throwing away all the 
garbage that society had given; he was trying to be totally naked, without any name, 
without any fonn. That;s what Mahavir;s nakedness means. It was not just throwing away 
the clothes. It was deeper. It was the nudity of being totally alone. You also use clothes 
for society: they are to hide your body, or they are to cover you in the eyes of others, 
because society doesn't approve of your whole body. So whatsoever society doesn’t 
approve of, you have to hide. Only particular parts of the body are allowed to be in the 
open. The society chooses you in parts. Your totality is not approved of, not accepted. 

The same is happening with the mind — not only with the body. Your face is approved of, 
your hands are approved of, but your whole body is not approved of, particularly the 
parts of the body that can give any hint of sex. 

They are disapproved of, not accepted. Hence the importance of clothes. And this is 
happening with the mind also: your total mind is not accepted, only parts of it. So you 
have to hide the mind and suppress it. You cannot open your mind. You cannot open 
your mind to your deepest friend because he will judge. He will say, "This is what you 
think? This is what goes on in your mind?" So you have to give him only that which can 
be accepted — a very minute part — and all else that is in you has to be hidden 
completely. That hidden part creates many diseases. The whole psychoanalysis of Freud 
consists only of bringing the hidden part out. It takes years before the person is healed. 
But the psychoanalyst is not doing anything, he is simply bringing the suppressed part 
out. Just to bring it out becomes a healing force. 

What does it mean? It means the suppression is the illness. It is a burden, a heavy burden. 
You wanted to confess to someone; you wanted to tell, to express; you wanted someone 
to accept you in totality. That is what love means — you will not be rejected. Whatsoever 
you are — good, bad, saint, sinner — someone will accept you in your totalness, he will 
not reject any part of you. That;s why love is the greatest healing force, it is the oldest 
psychoanalysis. Whenever you love a person you are open to him, and just by being 
open, your cut, divided parts are brought together. 

You become one. 

But even love has become impossible. Even with your wife you cannot tell the truth. 

Even with your lover you cannot be totally authentic, because even his or her eyes are 
judging. He or she also wants an image to be followed, an ideal — your reality is not 
important, the ideal is important. You know that if you express your totality you will be 
rejected, you will not be loved. You are afraid, and because of this fear love becomes 
impossible. Psychoanalysis brings the hidden part out, but the psychoanalyst is not doing 
anything, he is simply sitting there listening to you. No one has listened to you it seems. 
That is why you now need professional help. No one is ready to listen to you. No one has 
the time. No one has much interest in you. So professional help has come into being — 
you are paying someone to listen. And then year in, year out, he will listen to you every 
day, or twice a week, or thrice a week, and you will be healed. This is miraculous! Why 
should you be healed just by listening? It is because someone pays attention to you 
without any judgement and you can tell anything that is in you. And just by telling, it 
comes up and becomes a part of the conscious. When you cut off something, deny 
something, prohibit something, suppress something, you are creating a division between 
the conscious and the unconscious, the accepted and the rejected. This division has to be 
thrown. 



Mahavir moved into aloneness so that he could be as he was with no fear of anybody. 
Because he didn’t have to show a face to anybody he could throw away all the masks, all 
the faces. Then he could be alone, totally naked, as he is under the stars, by the river and 
in the forest. No one would judge him and no one would say, :You are not allowed to be 
like this. You should behave. You should be like this." Leaving society means leaving the 
situation where suppression has become inevitable. So nudity means to be as one is, with 
no barriers, no withholding. Mahavir moved into silence, into loneliness, and he said, 
"Unless I find myself — not the self that others have given to me, that is false, but the self 
that I am born with — I will not return to society. Unless I know who I am I will not 
return to society. Unless I have come directly face to face with my reality, unless I have 
encountered the essential in men, not the accidental, I will not speak, because it is useless 
to speak." 

You are the accidental. Whatsoever you think you are is the accidental part. For example, 
you are bom in India. You could have been bom in England or in France or in Japan. 

That is the accidental part. But just by being born in India, you have a different identity. 
You are a Hindu. You think yourself a Hindu — but you would have thought yourself a 
Buddhist in Japan, or a Christian in England, or a communist in Russia. 

You have not done anything to be a Hindu, it is just an accident. Wherever you were you 
would have joined yourself with the situation. You think yourself religious but your 
religion is just accidental. 'If you have been born in a communist country, you would not 
have been religious, you would have been as irreligious there as you are religious here. 
You are born into a Jain family so you don;t believe in God without your having 
discovered that there is no God. But just by the side of your house another child is born 
on the same day, and he is a Hindu. He believes in God and you don;t. This is accidental, 
it is not essential. It depends on circumstances. You speak Hindi, someone speaks 
Gujarati, someone speaks French — these are accidents. Language is accidental. Silence 
is essential; language is accidental. Your soul is essential; your self is accidental. And to 
find the essential is the search, the only search. 

How to find the essential? Buddha moved in silence for six years. Jesus also moved into a 
deep forest. His followers, the apostles wanted to go with him. They followed him and at 
a certain moment, at a certain point, he said, "Stop. You should not come with me. Now I 
must be alone with my God." He moved into the wilderness. When he came back he was 
a totally different man; he had faced himself. 

Loneliness becomes the mirror. Society is the deception. That;s why you are always 
afraid of being alone — because you will have to know yourself, and you will have to 
know yourself in your nudity, in your nakedness. 

You are afraid. To be alone is difficult. Whenever you are alone, you immediately start 
doing something so you are not alone. You may start reading the newspaper, or you may 
put on the T.V., or you may go to some club to meet some friends, or you may go to visit 
some family — but you must do something. Why? Because the moment you are alone 
your identity melts, and all that you know about yourself becomes false and all that is 
real starts bubbling up. 

All religions say that man must move into solitariness to know himself. One need not be 
there forever, that is futile, but one has to be in solitude for a time, for a period. And the 
length of the period will depend on each individual. Mohammed was in solitude for a few 



months; Jesus for only a few days; Mahavir for twelve years and Buddha for six years. It 
depends. But unless you come to the point where you can say, "Now I have know the 
essential," it is a must to be alone. 

This technique is concerned with loneliness. 

ABIDE IN SOME PLACE ENDLESSLY SPACIOUS, CLEAR OF TREES, HILLS, 
HABITATIONS. THENCE COMES THE END OF MIND PRESSURES. 

Before we enter this technique three other points about loneliness must be understood. 
One: to be alone is basic, foundational — that is how your being is. In the mother;s womb 
you are alone, totally alone, and psychologists say that the hankering for nirvana, for 
enlightenment, for salvation, for paradise, is really a deep imprinted memory of the 
experience of the mother;s womb. 

You have known it — the total aloneness — and the bliss of it. You were alone, you were 
God. No one else was there. No one disturbed you, no one interfered. Alone, you were 
the master. With no conflict the peace was intrinsic. Silence was there, no language. You 
were deep in yourself. You are not consciously aware of the fact but it is deeply 
imprinted, it is there hidden in the unconscious. 

Because of this, psychologists say that everyone thinks that life in childhood was 
beautiful. And ever country and every race thinks that somewhere in the past was the 
Golden Age — somewhere in the past, life was blissful. Hindus call it SATYA-YUG, age 
of truth. In the past, somewhere, the very, very past, before history began, everything was 
beautiful and blissful. There was no conflict, no strife, no violence. Only love prevailed. 
That was the Golden Age. Christians say that Adam and Eve lived in Eden, in the garden, 
in absolute innocence and blissfulness. Then came the fall. So the Golden Age is before 
the fall. Every country, every race, every religion, believes that the Golden Age was 
somewhere in the past. And the strangeness is that howsoever deeply into the past you 
move, this was always believed to be so, always. 

In Mesopotamia a stone has been found which is six thousand years old. There is an 
inscription on it. If you read it you will feel that it is the editorial of today's morning 
newspaper. 

The inscription says that this age is the age of sin. Everything has gone wrong. The son 
doesn’t believe in the father, the wife doesn't believe in the husband. Darkness has set. 
Where are those days, the days of the past, those golden days? This is a six thousand- 
year-old inscription! Lao Tzu says that in the days of the past, in the days of the ancients, 
everything was beautiful. Then Tao prevailed, then there was nothing wrong, and 
because there was nothing wrong, no one preached. There was nothing wrong to be 
changed, transformed, and there was no priest, no preacher, no moral leaders, because 
everything was so right. Lao Tzu says that in those days, those old days, there was no 
religion. There was no need because Tao prevailed. Everyone was so religious that there 
was no need for religion. There were no sages then, because there were no sinners. 
Everyone was such a sage that, naturally, no one was aware of who was a sage and who 
was a sinner. 

Psychologists say that this past never existed. This past is just the deep memory within 
every individual of the womb. It existed. Really, Tao was in the womb, and everything 
was beautiful, everything was as it should be. Completely unaware of the world, the child 
is moving in bliss. The situation of the child in the womb is just as it is for Vishnu on his 
SHESHNAGA. Hindus believe that Vishnu is lying on his couch, a serpent couch, 



floating on the ocean of bliss. 


Really, that is the child’s position in the womb. The child floats. The mother's womb is 
just like the ocean. And you may be surprised to know that the water in which the child 
floats in the mother's womb has the same constituents as the ocean water — very similar, 
the same salts, everything. It is ocean water, soothing. And the womb always keeps the 
right temperature for the child. The mother may be shivering with cold, that makes no 
difference. For the child it is always the same temperature in the womb. He is wann, 
blissfully floating, with no worries, no anxieties, no responsibilities, alone. He is not 
aware of the mother; mother doesn’t exist for him. This SANSKAR, this imprint, is 
carried on by you. This is the basic reality, how you were before you entered society, and 
this will be the reality again when you go out of society and die. You will again be alone. 
And between these two points of loneliness your life is filled with many events. But those 
events are accidental. Deep down you remain alone because that is your basic reality. 
Around that aloneness many things happen: you get married, you become two, then you 
have children and you become many. Everything goes on happening — but just on the 
periphery. The deep stratum remains totally alone. That is your reality. You may call this 
your ATMA, your essence. 

In deep solitude this essence has to be recaptured. 

So when Buddha says that he has achieved nirvana, really he has achieved this loneliness, 
this basic reality. Mahavir says he has achieved KAIVALYA. The very word 
KAIVALYA, means loneliness, the alone. Just below the turmoil of events that aloneness 
is there. It runs through you like a thread running in a mala. The beads are apparent, but 
the thread is not. But the beads are hanging on the thread, and the beads are many and the 
thread is one. Really, the mala is a symbol of this reality. The thread is the reality and the 
beads are just the events which go on hanging on it. And unless you penetrate and come 
to the basic thread, you will be in anguish, you will be in suffering. 

You have a history — that history is accidental. And you have a nature — that nature is 
non-historical. You are born on a certain date, to certain parents, in a certain society, in a 
certain age. You are educated in a certain way. Then you enter a particular profession, 
you fall in love with a woman, you have children. These dramas are beads, events, 
history, but deep down you are always alone. And if you forget yourself completely 
because of these events you have missed the very purpose of being here. Then you have 
lost yourself in the drama and you have forgotten the actor who was not part of it, who 
was just playing the role. All these things are roles. 

Because of this India does not have written histories. 

Really, it is very difficult to be certain about when Krishna was born, when he died; 
when Ram was born, when he died — or whether he was ever born or not or is just a 
myth. We have not written his history, and this is the reason: we in India are concerned 
with the thread and not with the beads. Really, in the religious world, Christ is the first 
historical person, but had he been born in India he would not have been historical. We in 
India are always looking for the thread, the beads are irrelevant. But the West is more 
oriented towards events, facts — temporal things — than to the essential and the eternal. 
History is the drama. In India, we say that Ramas and Krishnas go on being born in every 
age. They have been repeated many times before and they will be repeated many times 
afterwards. So there is no need to carry on the records. When they are born is irrelevant. 



What their being is — the thread — that is the meaningful. So we are not concerned if they 
were really historical persons or not, we are not concerned with outer things that happen 
to a being, we are concerned with the being itself and whether anything happens to it or 
not. 

When you move into solitude you are moving to the thread; when you move into 
solitude, you are moving into nature. If you are really alone, not even thinking of others, 
you will feel the world of nature around you for the first time. 

You will become attuned to it. Right now you are attuned to society. If you fall from this 
attunement to society, you will be attuned to nature. When the rains come — they are 
always coming but you cannot understand the language of the rains — they don’t say 
anything to you, they don’t mean anything to you; at the most some utilitarian thing about 
water being needed is realized. So there is some use, but you don't have any dialogue, 
you cannot understand the language of the rains, the rain has no personality for you. But 
if you leave society for a time and remain in aloneness, you will start feeling a new 
phenomenon: the rains will come and they will talk to you. Then you will feel their 
moods — some day the rain is very angry and some day it is very soothing and loving. 
Some day the whole sky is depressed, and some day it is dancing. Some day the sun rises 
as if without any will of its own, forced, doing the work; and some day on its own — now 
it is not a work but a play. 

You will feel all the moods around you. Nature has its own language but it is silent, and 
unless you are silent you cannot understand it. 

The first layer of attunement is with society, the second layer of attunement is with 
nature, and the third layer, the deepest, is with Tao or DHARMA. That is the pure 
existence. Then the tree, then the rains, then the clouds, they are also left behind. 

Then, just existence.... Existence has no moods. Existence is always the same. Existence 
is always the same: always festive, exploding with energy. But one has first to move from 
society to nature — then from nature to existence. When you are attuned with existence 
you are totally alone, but this aloneness is different from that of the child in the womb. 
The child is alone, but it is not that he is really alone, he is unaware of anything else. He 
is enclosed in darkness, that's why he feels alone. The whole world exists around him but 
he is not aware of it. His aloneness is that of ignorance. When you become consciously 
silent, one with existence, your aloneness will not be surrounded by darkness, it will be 
surrounded by light. 

For the child in the womb the world is not, because he is unaware. For you the world will 
not be, because the world and you have become one. 

When you reach the deepest being you are alone again because the ego is lost. The ego is 
given by society. It can persist a little even when you are in nature although it will not be 
as much as it is in society. When you move alone, your ego starts disappearing — because 
it is always in relationship. Look at this phenomenon: with every individual your ego 
changes. If you are talking to your servant, look inside, look at the ego, see how it is. If 
you are talking to your friend, look within, see how the ego is. 

You are talking to your beloved, look within, see whether the ego is or is not. If you are 
talking to an innocent child, look within — the ego will not be there because it will be 
stupid to be an egoist with an innocent child. You will feel that this would be stupid, so 
while playing with children you become a child. The child doesn’t know the language of 



ego. And being egoistic with a child you will look awkward. So when you play with 
children they pull you down. They bring you back to your own childhood. When you are 
talking with a dog, or playing with a dog, the ego that the society has given to you cannot 
exist because with a dog there is no question of ego. If you are walking with your dog — a 
very beautiful and costly dog — and someone crosses the street, even the dog seems to 
give you ego. But the dog is not giving you ego, it is the man who is passing. You 
become straight, you feel elated because you have a very beautiful dog and the man looks 
jealous. 

The ego is there. If you move into a forest the ego disappears. Hence the insistence of all 
religions to move, at least for a time, into the world of nature. 

This sutra is simple: ABIDE IN SOME PLACE ENDLESSLY SPACIOUS - on some 
hilltop from where you can see endlessly, from where the vision never comes to any end. 
If you can see endlessly and there is no end to your vision, the ego will dissolve. Ego 
needs limits, boundaries. 

The more defined the boundaries, the easier it is for the ego to exist. 

ABIDE IN SOME PLACE ENDLESSLY SPACIOUS, CLEAR OF TREES, HILLS, 
HABITATIONS. THENCE COMES THE END OF MIND PRESSURES. 

Mind is very subtle. You can live on a hilltop where there is no one, but if you can see a 
cottage deep down in the valley you will start talking with that cottage, you will be in 
relationship with it — the society has come. You don’t know who lives there, but someone 
lives there, and that becomes the boundary — you will start dreaming about who lives 
there and your eyes will search each day to see who lives there. The cottage will become 
a symbol of humanity. So the sutra says WITHOUT HABITATIONS — even without 
trees, because it has been known that people who live alone start talking with trees. They 
make friendships, they create a dialogue. You cannot understand the difficulty of a man 
who has gone to be lonely. He wants someone so he will say "Hello" to the tree and 
"How are you?" And trees are beings. If you are really honest, they will start replying, 
there will be a response. So you can create a society. 

The meaning is this: be in some place and be alert that you don’t create a society again. 
You may start tending a tree, loving a tree. You may feel that the tree is feeling thirsty so 
you should bring some water — you have started a relationship and with a relationship 
you are not alone. 

So this is the emphasis: move to such a place but have it in your mind that you are not 
going to create any relationship. Leave all relationship and the world of relationship 
behind, and be alone there. In the beginning it is going to be very difficult because your 
mind is created by society. You can leave society but where will you leave the mind? The 
mind will follow you like a shadow. The mind will haunt you. The mind will start 
torturing you. Faces will come in your dreams — they will try to pull you. You will try to 
meditate but thoughts will not cease. You will start thinking of your house, you will start 
thinking of your wife, of your children. It is human. 

And it does not happen to you only — it has happened to Buddha and to Mahavir. It has 
happened to everyone. Even a Buddha is bound to think of Yashodhara during six long 
years of loneliness. In the beginning, when the mind was following him, he must have 
been sitting under a tree pretending to meditate, and Yashodhara must have followed 
him. He loved that woman. And he must have felt guilty because he had left her — and 
without saying anything to her. Nowhere is it mentioned that he thought about 



Yashodhara, but I say he must have thought of her. It is so human; it is so natural. To 
think that he never thought again of Yashodhara would be very inhuman and would not 
be fair to Buddha. Only by and by, after a long struggle, would he have been able to 
throw off the mind. 


But mind will persist because it is nothing but society — society internalized. Society has 
entered into you — that is your mind. You can escape from society, the outer reality, but 
the inner will follow you. 

Many times Buddha must have been talking with Yashodhara, with his father, with the 
small child he left behind. The face of his child must have followed him. It was there in 
his mind when he left. The night he left he went into Yashodhara's room, just to see the 
child for the last time. The child was only one day old. Yashodhara was sleeping and the 
child was clinging to her breast. He looked at the child. He wanted to take the child into 
his hands because this was his last opportunity. He had not touched him yet and now he 
might never return so there would be no meeting. He was leaving the world. He wanted 
to touch and kiss the child but then he became afraid because if he took the child up in 
his hands, Yashodhara might be awakened. Then it would be very difficult for him to 
leave — she would start weeping and crying. He had a human heart. It was beautiful that 
he thought of it: that if she started crying it would be very difficult for him to leave. Then 
all that he had created in his mind — that this world was useless and futile — would 
disappear. He would not be able to see Yashodhara crying. He loved that woman. So he 
left. He moved out of the room without making any noise. 


This man could not leave Yashodhara and the child easily. No one could. When he was 
begging it was bound to come to his mind — his palace and everything. He was a beggar 
of his own accord. The past would persist, it would hammer the mind again and again, 
"Come back." Many times he would think, "I have made a mistake." It is bound to be so. 
Nowhere is this recorded and sometimes I think about making a diary about what 
happened to Buddha’s mind during those six years — a diary about what happened to his 
mind, what was going on. 

Mind will follow like a shadow wherever you go. So it is not going to be easy. It has 
never been easy for anyone. It will be a long struggle to make yourself again and again 
alert; again and again to be a witness; again and again not to fall a victim. And to the very 
last the mind follows. Unless you are desperate, unless you feel that you are incurable, 
that nothing can be done, the mind will go on haunting you. It will try in every way. It 
will create fantasies, reveries, dreams; it will create all types of allurements, seductions. 

It is written in the lives of all the seers that Satan comes, the Devil comes, to seduce. No 
one comes — only your mind. Your mind is the only Devil and no one else. It will try in 
every way. It will say to you, "I will give you the whole world, come back." It will make 
you depressed, "You are a fool — the whole world is enjoying and you have come to this 
hilltop. You are mad. All this religious stuff is humbug, come back. Look, the whole 
world is not insane and they are enjoying." And the mind will give such beautiful 
pictures of everyone who is enjoying and the whole world will be more attractive to you 
than ever. All that you have left behind will pull you backwards. 

This is the basic struggle. And this is just because the mind is a mechanism of habits, of 
mechanical persistence. On the hilltop the mind will feel like hell — nothing is good 



there, everything is wrong. The mind will create negativity all around you, "What are you 
doing here? Have you gone mad?" The world that you have left behind will become more 
and more beautiful to your eyes and the place that you are in will become more and more 
ugly. But if you persist and you remain aware that this is what the mind is doing, this is 
what the mind is bound to do, and if you don’t get identified with the mind, a moment 
comes when the mind leaves you, and with it all the pressures. When the mind leaves 
you, you are unburdened, because it is the only burden. Then there is no worry, no 
thought, no anxiety, you have entered the womb of existence. Unworried, you float. A 
deep silence explodes within you. 

The sutra says, THENCE COMES THE END OF MIND PRESSURES. In such solitude, 
in such loneliness, one thing more has to be remembered: the crowd exerts a deep 
pressure on you, whether you know it or not. 


Now, after working on animals, scientists have come to a very basic law. They say that 
every animal has a certain space as his territory. If you enter that space then the animal 
becomes tense and he will attack you, Every animal has a certain space around him. He 
will not allow anybody to enter, because the moment someone enters, he feels the 
pressure. You hear many birds singing in the trees. You don’t know what they are doing. 
Scientists say now, after years of study, that whenever a bird is singing in the trees he is 
doing many things. One, he is calling for his girlfriend. Another, he is alerting all the 
male competitors that this is his territory — don’t enter it. And if someone enters the 
territory a fight will ensue. And the girlfriend will just wait and see who wins, because 
whoever gets the territory will get her/ She will just wait, and the one who wins will stay 
there and the one who is defeated will have to leave. By many means every animal 
creates territory: by sound, by singing, by body odor. No other competitor should enter 
that territory. 

You may have seen dogs pissing all around. Scientists say that they create their territory 
by pissing. The dog will go and piss on this pole and on that pole. He will not piss on one 
place — why? You can do it on one place, why move so much? He is creating territory. 
His urine has a particular odor and with it he creates a territory. 

No one should enter, it is dangerous. He lives secluded in his own territory, master of it. 
There are many studies going on. They have tried putting many animals in one cage with 
all their needs fulfilled — better than they can fulfil them themselves in a forest. But they 
go mad because they don't have space. When someone is always around they are tense, 
afraid, ready to fight. This constant readiness to fight gives such tensions that there heart 
failures or they go mad. Animals even commit suicide because the pressure becomes so 
much. And many abnonnalities develop which are never found in the wild state. 

Monkeys in the wild are totally different. When caged in a zoo they start behaving 
abnormally. In the beginning it was thought that it was the bondage that was creating the 
problem. Now it is known that it is not the bondage. If you give them the proper space 
that they need in a cage they are happy. Then there is no problem. But they have an 
intrinsic feeling of space. When someone enters that space, pressure comes to their 
minds. Their minds start to be tense, strained; they cannot sleep right, they cannot feed 
right, they cannot love right. 

Because of these studies, scientists now say that the whole of humanity is going crazy 
and mad because of too much over-population. The pressure is so great. You are never 



left alone: in the train, in the bus, in the office, everywhere, crowds and crowds. 


Man also has a need of space, to be left alone. But there is no place, you are never alone. 
When you come to your home, your wife is there, the children are there, and the relatives 
keep on coming. And they still think that the guest is God! You are already crazy because 
the pressure is too much all around you. You cannot say to anyone, "Leave me alone." If 
you say to your wife, "Leave me alone," she will get angry, "What do you mean?" She 
has been waiting for you the whole day. Mind needs space to be relaxed. 

This sutra is really beautiful and very scientific. THENCE COMES THE END OF MIND 
PRESSURES. 

When you move alone on a solitary hilltop you have space all around you, endless space. 
The pressure of the crowd, the pressure of others around you, leaves you. Y ou will sleep 
more deeply. You will have a different quality of awakening in the morning. You will 
feel free. An inner pressure circle is not there. You will feel unimprisoned, unfettered. 
This is good. But we have become so addicted to crowds that only for a few days — three 
or four days — will you feel good, then the desire will arise to go again to the crowd. 
Every holiday you go on, you want to come back after three days. Because of the pattern, 
the habit, you feel useless. Alone, you feel useless, alone you cannot do anything, and 
even if you do something, no one will know about it, no one will see you doing it, no one 
will appreciate it. 

You cannot do anything alone because all your life you have been doing something for 
others. You feel useless. 

So remember, if you ever try this solitary madness, drop the idea of utility. Be useless. 
Only then can you be alone. Because really, utility has been forced on your mind by 
society. Society says, "Be of some utility. Don’t be useless." Society want you to be an 
economic unit, a thing, efficient, utilitarian. Society doesn’t want you to be just a flower. 
No, even if you are a flower then you must be worth being sold. Society needs you to be 
in the market, you must have some utility. Only then are you of use, otherwise not. 
Society goes on preaching that use is the goal of life, the purpose of life. This is 
nonsense. 

I am not saying be useless. I am saying that this use is not the goal. You have to live in 
society, to be useful to it, but to remain capable of being useless at any moment. That 
capacity must be retained otherwise you become a thing and not a person. When you 
move into solitariness, aloneness, this will become a problem. You will feel yourself 
useless. 

I have been working with many people. Sometimes I suggest that they go for three weeks 
or three months into total loneliness, silence. And I tell them that after seven days they 
will want to come back and their mind will find all the reasons for not being there so that 
they can come back. 

I tell them not to listen to those arguments and to make it a point that for the time they 
have decided upon they will not leave. They say to me that they are going of their own 
will, so why should they leave? I tell them that they don’t know themselves. This will not 
be there for more than three to seven days; afterwards they will long to return, because 
society has become alcoholic, it is an intoxicant. In sober moments you can think about 
being alone, but when you are alone, within three days you will think, "What am I 
doing?" Remember, use is for society. Society uses you and you use society. This is a 



reciprocal relationship. 

But life is not for use. It is non-utilitarian, purposeless, it is a play, a celebration. So when 
you move into solitariness to do this technique, be prepared from the very beginning that 
you are going to be useless, and enjoy it, don’t feel sad about it. You cannot conceive of 
what arguments the mind will bring. You will say, "The world is in such trouble and you 
are sitting in silence here. Look what is happening in Vietnam and what is happening in 
Pakistan and what is happening in China; and your country is dying, there is no food, 
there is no water. What are you doing here meditation? What is the use? Will it bring 
socialism to the country?" Mind will bring beautiful arguments; mind is the great arguer. 
It is the Devil — it will try to persuade you, it will convince you that you are wasting 
time. 

But don't listen to it. From the very beginning be prepared, "I am going to waste time. I 
will not be of any use. I will simply enjoy being here." 

And don’t be concerned with the world. The world goes on. It is always in trouble. It has 
been always in trouble and it will remain always in trouble. That is the way of the world. 
You cannot do anything so don't try to be a great world reformer, a revolutionary, a 
messiah. Don't try. 

You simply be yourself and enjoy your solitariness, just like a rock or a tree or a river. 
Useless! What is the use of a rock just lying there under the rains, under the sun, under 
the stars? What is the use of this rock? No use — the rock enjoys itself being that way. 

Just be a rock. There are rock gardens in Japan, in Zen monasteries; they make rock 
gardens particularly for this. There are no trees in the garden, just sand and rock. A 
solitary rock, just sits there, and the master says to the disciple, "Go, and be just a rock, 
just like that rock. Don’t be bothered about the world. That rock remains there whatsoever 
happens to the world. It is not worried. It is always in meditation." 

Unless you are really prepared to be useless, you cannot be solitary, you cannot be in 
solitude. And once you know the depth of it you can come back to society. You must 
come back because solitariness is not a style of life — it is just a training. 

It is not a way of life, it is just a deep relaxation to change the perspective. It is just 
falling out of step with society to have a look at yourself, who you are, alone. So don’t 
think that this is a style of life. Many have made it a style of life. They are in error. They 
are absolutely in error. They have made a medicine food. It is not a style of life, it is just 
medicinal. You fall out for a time being just to have a perspective, a distance, to see what 
you are and what society is doing to you. When you are out of it, you can have a better 
look. You can observe. Without being concerned, without being in it, you can become an 
observer from the hilltop, you can become a witness. You are so far away. Unprejudiced, 
undisturbed, you can look. 

So note it, this is not a way of life. I am not saying leave the world and become hennits 
somewhere in the Himalayas — no. But sometimes leave, relax, be useless, be alone, exist 
like a rock, be independent, free from the world, be a part of nature — and you will be 
rejuvenated, reborn. Then come back and move in society and in the crowd again. And 
try to carry that beauty, that silence that happened to you when you were alone. Now 
carry it, don't lose contact with it. Move deep into the crowd but don't become a part of it. 
Let the crowd be there outside you — you remain alone. 

And when you become capable of being alone in the crowd, you have achieved real 
aloneness. 



It is easy to be alone on a hilltop. The whole of nature helps you, and nothing is a barrier. 
To be back in the market-place, in the shop, in the office, in the family, and to remain 
alone — that is an achievement. Then it is something you have achieved and it is not just 
accidental, something that happened because of the hills. Now the quality of 
consciousness has changed. So remain alone in the crowd. The crowd will be there 
outside but don't allow it to enter in. Protect whatsoever you have gained. Defend it, don't 
allow it to be disturbed. And whenever you feel that the feeling has become dull, that you 
are missing it, that society has disturbed it, that the dust has gathered around, that the 
fresh spring is no longer fresh, that it is polluted — move again. Fall out of society to 
renew it, to make it alive again. Then come back and move in the crowd. And then a 
moment will come when that original spring will remain fresh and no one will be able to 
pollute it or contaminate it. Then there is no need to move anywhere. 

So this is just a technique, not a style of life. Don't become a monk, don’t become a nun, 
don't move to a monastery to live there forever. That is nonsense. If you live forever in a 
monastery you will never be able to know whether you have attained what you have 
attained, or whether the monastery has just given it to you. It may be accidental, not 
essential. 

The essential has to be tested. The essential has to be set against society; it has to be 
brought to the touch-stone. And when it never breaks, when you can depend on it, when 
nothing can change it, then it has become a crystallization. 

The second technique: 

CONSIDER THE PLENUM TO BE YOUR OWN BODY OF BLISS. 

This second technique is concerned with the first. Consider space to be your own body of 
bliss. Meditating on a hilltop with endless space before you, you can do it. Consider it to 
be filled with your own body of bliss. 

There are seven bodies. The bliss body is the last body, so the more you enter within, the 
more you feel yourself to be blissful. You are nearing the bliss body, the layer of bliss. It 
is just around your essential soul, which is the first body from within outwards, or the last 
body from without inwards. Just around your being, the essential soul, is the layer of 
bliss. It is called the bliss body. Sitting on a hilltop, looking at the endless sky, feel that 
the whole space, the whole plenum, is filled with your bliss body. Feel that your bliss 
body has increased and the whole space is filled with it. 

How will you feel it? You don’t know what bliss is so how to imagine it? It will be better 
to try first to feel that the whole space is filled with silence, not with bliss. Feel it filled 
with silence. Nature will be helpful about it because in nature even noises are silent. 

In cities even silence is noisy. Natural sounds are silent because they don't disturb. They 
are harmonious. So don't think that silence is necessarily soundlessness. No, a musical 
sound can be silence because it is so harmonious — it doesn’t disturb you. Rather, it 
deepens your silence. So when you move into nature, the breeze blowing, the stream, the 
river, the wind or whatsoever sounds there are, are harmonious, they make a whole. They 
are not disturbing. You can listen to them and the very listening will deepen your silence. 
So first feel that the whole space is filled with silence; feel deeply that it is growing more 
and more silent, that the sky has become silence around you. 

And when you feel that the sky has become silence, only then should you try to be filled 
with bliss. As silence deepens you will have the first glimpse of bliss. As tension 
increases, you have the first glimpse of misery, strain; as silence deepens you will feel at 



ease, at home, relaxed, and the first glimpse of bliss will come to you. And when that 
glimpse comes, then you can imagine that the whole space is now filled with that bliss. 
CONSIDER THE PLENUM TO BE YOUR OWN BODY OF BLISS. The whole sky 
becomes your body of bliss. 

You can do it separately, there is no need to join it to the first, but the same requirements 
are needed — endless space, silence, no human beings around you. 

Why this insistence on no human beings around you? Because the moment you see a 
human being you will start reacting in the old ways. You cannot see a human being 
without reacting. Something or other will happen to you immediately. He brings you 
back to your old patterns. If you don’t see human beings you forget that you are human, 
and to forget that you are human, part of society, is good. It is good to remember that 
simply you are, even if you don’t know what. You don’t belong to anybody, to any 
society, to any group, to any religion. This non-belonging will be helpful. 

So it will be good if you move alone somewhere and do this, practise this. Alone this 
technique will be helpful, but remember to start with something that you can feel. I have 
seen people doing techniques which they cannot feel. If you cannot feel, if you don’t have 
any experience, even a glimpse, then the whole thing becomes false. A man came to me 
and he said, "I am practising that God is everywhere." So I asked him, "How can you 
practise? What do you imagine? Have you any taste, any feeling of God? Only then will 
it be easy to imagine. Otherwise, you will be simply thinking that you are imagining and 
nothing will happen." 

Remember this for any technique you do — at the start you must do something you are 
acquainted with; you may not be totally acquainted with it, but a little glimpse will be 
necessary. 

Only then can you progress, step by step. But don’t jump into something which is 
absolutely unknown to you because then you cannot feel it and you cannot imagine it. 
Because of this, many masters, particularly Buddha, completely dropped the word 'God’. 
Buddha said, "You cannot work with it. It is the very end, and you cannot bring the end 
into the beginning. So begin from the very beginning." He said, "Forget the end, the end 
will follow automatically." And he said to his disciples, "Don’t think of God. Think of 
compassion. Think of love." So he doesn’t say that one should feel that God is 
everywhere, one should simply feel compassion for everyone who is there — for the tree, 
for human beings, for animals. Simply feel compassion. Feel sympathetic, create a love... 
because love you know, howsoever little. There has been something like love in 
everybody’s life. You may not have loved, but someone may have loved you, your 
mother at least. You must have looked into her eyes: she loved you. 

"Just be motherly to existence," Buddha says, "and feel deep compassion. Feel that the 
whole world is filled with your compassion. Then everything else will follow." 
Remember this as a basic law: always start with something you can feel because only 
then can the unknown enter through it. 


THE END. 



Chapter 70: Aloneness is pain 


The first question: 

Question 1 

CONFRONTATION OF ONESELF IN ALONENESS IS VERY FEARFUL, VERY 
PAINFUL. WHAT TO DO? 

It is fearful and it is painful, and one has to suffer it. Nothing should be done to avoid it, 
nothing should be done to divert the mind, nothing should be done to escape fonn it. One 
has to suffer it and go through it. This suffering, this pain, is just a good sign that you are 
near a new birth, because every birth is preceded by pain. It cannot be avoided, and it 
should not be avoided because it is part of your growth. This pain and this suffering is 
kn own traditionally as TAPASHCHARYA, austerity. This is the meaning of TAPAS — 
arduous austerity, effort. 

But why is this pain there? This should be understood because understanding will help 
you to go through it, and if you go through it knowingly, you will come out of it more 
easily, and sooner. 

Why is there pain when you are alone? The first thing is that your ego gets ill. Your ego 
can exist only with others. It has grown in relationship, it cannot exist alone. So if the 
situation is one in which it can exist no more, it feels suffocated, it feels just on the verge 
of death. This is the deepest suffering. You feel just as if you are dying, but it is not you 
who is dying but only the ego which you have taken to be yourself, with which you have 
become identified. 

It cannot exist because it has been given to you by others. It is a contribution. 

When you leave others you cannot carry it with you. Think of it in this way: when you 
are in society, people think you are a very good person. This goodness cannot exist when 
you are lonely and alone because this is what people thought about you. Now those 
people are there no more. Your image cannot be helped. It has become foundationless. 

By and by it will disappear and you will feel very bad because you were such a good 
person and now you are no more. And not only good people will suffer, if you are a bad 
person that too was given by others to you. That too is a way of getting attention. When 
many people consider you bad they give you attention. They cannot be indifferent to you, 
they have to be aware of you. You are somebody, a bad man, dangerous. When you move 
into loneliness, you become nobody. That bad image will disappear and you were feeding 
on it, your ego was feeding on it. So bad men and good men are not basically different — 
both are gaining their egos. Their mediums differ, but their goals are the same. 

The bad depends on others, the good also. They exist in society. The saint and the sinner, 
they exist in society. Alone you are neither a saint nor a sinner. So in aloneness all that 
you know about yourself will fall; by and by it will disappear. You can prolong your ego 
for a certain period — and that too you will have to do through imagination — but you 
cannot prolong it for long. 

Without society you are uprooted; the soil is not there from where to get food. This is the 
basic pain. You are no longer sure who you are: you are just a dispersing personality, a 
dissolving personality. But this is good, because unless this false you disappears, the real 
cannot emerge. Unless you are completely washed and become again clean, the real 



cannot emerge. 

This false you is occupying the throne. It must be dethroned. By living in solitariness all 
that is false can go. And all that is given by society is false — really, all that is given is 
false, all that is born with you is real. All that is you by yourself, not contributed by 
someone else, is real, authentic. But the false must go. And the false is a great 
investment: you have invested so much in it, you have been looking after it so much. All 
your hopes hang on it. So when it starts dissolving you will feel fearful, afraid, trembling. 
What are you doing to yourself? You are destroying your whole life, the whole structure. 
There will be fear. But you have to go through this fear, only then will you become 
fearless. I don't say you will become brave, no. I say you will become fearless. Bravery is 
just part of fear. Howsoever brave you are, the fear is hidden behind. I say fearless. You 
will not be brave, there is no need to be brave when there is no fear. Bravery and fear 
both become irrelevant. They are both aspects of the same coin. 

So your brave men are nothing but you standing on your head — just in SHIRSHASAN. 
Your bravery is hidden within you and your fear is on the surface; their fear is hidden 
within and their bravery is on the surface. So when you are alone you are very brave, 
when you think about something you are very brave, but when a real situation comes you 
are fearful. It is said about soldiers, the greatest of them, that before going to the front 
they are as afraid as anyone. 

The inside is trembling, but they will go. They will push this trembling aside into the 
unconscious; and the more the inner trembling is there, the more they will create a facade 
that they are brave around them. They will create an armor. You look at that annor — it 
looks brave, but deep down they are fdled with fear. One becomes fearless only when 
one has gone through the deepest fear of all — that is the dissolving of the ego, the 
dissolving of the image, the dissolving of the personality. 

This is death because you don’t know if a new life is going to emerge out of it — during 
the process you will know only death. Only when you are dead as you are, as the false 
entity, only then will you know that the death was just a door to immortality. But that 
will be the end. During the process you are simply dying. Everything that you cherished 
so much is being taken away from you — your personality, your ideas, all that you 
thought was beautiful. 


All is leaving you. You are being denuded. All the roles and robes are being taken away. 
In the process fear will be there, but this fear is basic, necessary, inevitable — one has to 
pass through it. Y ou should understand it, but don’t try to avoid it, don’t try to escape 
from it because every escape will bring you back again, you will move back into the 
personality. 

Those who go into deep silence and solitude, they always ask me, "There will be fear, so 
what to do?" I tell them not to do anything, just to live the fear. If trembling comes, 
tremble, why prevent it? If an inner fear is there, and you are shaking with it, so shake 
with it. Don’t do anything. Allow it to happen. It will go by itself. If you avoid it — and 
you can avoid it. You can start chanting Ram, Ram, Ram; you can cling to a mantra so 
that your mind is diverted. You will be pacified and the fear will not be there — you have 
pushed it into the unconscious. It was coming out — which was good, you were going to 
be free from it — it was leaving you and when it leaves you, you will tremble. That is 
natural because from every cell of the body, of the mind, some energy which has always 



been there pushed down, is leaving. There will be a shaking, a trembling; it will be just 
like an earthquake. The whole soul will be disturbed by it but let it be. Don't do anything. 
That is my advice. Don't even chant the name of Ram. 

Don't try to do anything with it because all that you can do will again be suppression. Just 
by allowing it to be, by letting it be, it will leave you — and when it has left, you will be 
altogether a different man. 

The cyclone has gone and you will now be centered, centered as you never were before. 
And once you know the art of letting things be, you will know one of the master keys 
which opens all the inner doors. Then whatsoever the case is, let it be, don’t avoid it. 

If just for three months you can be in total solitude, in total silence, not fighting with 
anything, allowing everything to be, whatsoever it is, within three months the old will be 
gone and the new will be there. But the secret is allowing it to be, howsoever fearful, 
painful, howsoever apparently dangerous, deathlike. Many moments will come when you 
will feel as if you will go mad if you don’t do something and involuntarily you will start 
to do something. You may know that nothing can be done, but you will not be in control 
and you will start to do something. 

It is just as if you are moving through a dark street in the night, midnight, and you feel 
fear because there is no one around and the night is dark and the street is unknown — so 
you start whistling. What can whistling do? You know it can do nothing. Then you start 
singing a song. You kn ow nothing can be done by singing a song, the darkness cannot be 
dispelled, you will remain alone, but still, it diverts the mind. 

If you start whistling, just by whistling you gain confidence and you forget the darkness. 
Your mind moves into whistling and you start feeling good. 

Nothing has happened. The street is the same, the darkness is the same, the danger, if 
there is any, is there, but now you feel more protected. All is the same, but now you are 
doing something. You can start chanting a name, a mantra, Ram, Ram, that will be a sort 
of whistling. It will give you strength. But that strength is dangerous, that strength will 
again become a problem, because that strength is going to be your old ego. You are 
reviving it again. 

Remain a witness, and allow whatsoever happens to happen. Fear has to be faced to go 
beyond it. Anguish has to be faced to transcend it. And the more authentic the encounter, 
the more face to face, the more looking at things as they are, the sooner the happening 
will be there. 

It takes time only because your authenticity is not intense. So you may take three days, 
three months, or three lives — it depends on the intensity. Really, three minutes can also 
do — three seconds can also do. But then you will have to pass through a tremendous hell, 
with such an intensity that you may not be able to bear it, to tolerate it. If one can face 
whatsoever is hidden in oneself, it passes, and when it has gone, you are different. 
Because all that has left you was part of you before, and now it is no longer a part. 


So don’t ask what to do. There is no need to do anything. Non-doing, witnessing, 
effortlessly facing whatsoever is, not even making a slight effort, just allowing it to be... 
remain passive and let it pass. It always passes. When you do something, that is the 
undoing because then you interfere. 

And who will interfere? Who is afraid? The same which is the disease will interfere. The 



same ego which has to be left behind, will interfere. 

I told you that the ego is part of the society. You left the society but you don't want to 
leave the part that society has given to you. It is rooted in society; it cannot live without 
society. So either you have to leave it or you have to create a new society in which it can 
live. 

So you can create an alternative society. That is one of the greatest tricks of the mind. It 
has always been so. You can create a different society. You can create an ashram. 

Twenty people who think they want to live in solitude can create a monastery — then the 
monastery has become an alternative society. So they move from society but they create 
another society, so basically nothing changes. They remain the same. Rather on the 
contrary, they may become more egoistic because now they are the chosen few, the elect. 
They have left the world but they have created another world, and the same pattern of 
relationship moves again. Then there is the chief, then there are the disciples, then there 
is a master, and all hierarchy and everything comes in, in miniature form. 

And then there are good disciples, there are bad disciples, there are successful ones and 
the unsuccessful ones... so it is the same. In a small group the whole society is there. 

That will not do. Now this is happening in the West. A great number of young people are 
leaving society because they feel that society is rotten, decadent, dying, and they feel it is 
so decadent that it cannot be changed. This is a very new thing. Young people always 
think that the society is rotten, but they think it can be changed, transfonned, so a 
revolution is needed. Only in the last stage of a society or civilization does this happen — 
people start thinking that nothing can be done, that revolution is nonsense, that society is 
so dead that no one can revive it, that you cannot change it. So you just drop out of it. 
You cannot do anything, the house is on fire — so you simply escape from it. This is what 
is happening in the West: hippies, beatniks, yippies, others, all dropping out of society. 
But they are creating another society, an alternative society. Hippies themselves have 
become an alternative society. 

In ordinary society if you have long hair, others will look at you as if you have gone 
astray. Something is wrong. In the hippie society if you have short hair, you are wrong! 
Something is wrong with you. What is the difference? 

In ordinary society if you live in a dirty way you are wrong — you are unmannerly, 
uncultivated, uneducated, unacceptable. 

But in a hippie society if you live very cleanly then something is wrong with you. Then 
you are still clinging to the old mind which said that cleanliness is next to God, God has 
died a long time ago, now the second thing, cleanliness, has also died. It cannot exist 
without God. 

The same condemnation and the same appreciation is there. You can create an alternative 
society with just the opposite rules but it makes no difference — your ego can be fed 
again. It has been transplanted. A new soil has been fonned. 

To be solitary means not to create an alternative society. Just move out of society, and 
then whatsoever society has given you will leave you. It can exist only in a milieu, in the 
social milieu, it cannot exist out of it. You will have to drop it It will be painful because 
you are so adjusted to it, everything is so arranged. It has become such a comfort to be 
adjusted, where everything is convenient. When you change and move alone, you are 
leaving all comforts, all conveniences, all that society can give — and when society gives 
something to you, it also takes something from you: your liberty, your soul. 



So it is an exchange — and when you are trying to get to your soul in its purity you have 
to stop the bargaining. It will be painful, but if you can pass through it, the highest bliss is 
just near. Society is not as painful as loneliness; society is tranquillizing; society is 
convenient, comfortable. 

But it gives you a sort of sleep. If you move out of it inconvenience is bound to be there. 
All types of inconveniences will be there. Those inconveniences have to be suffered with 
the understanding that they are part of solitude, part of regaining yourself. 

This is TAPAS, this is austerity, and you will come out of it new, with a new glory and 
dignity, a new purity and innocence. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT TOTAL ALONENESS IS THE ESSENTIAL 
NATURE, IS THE ULTIMATE REALITY OF MAN. ANOTHER DAY YOU 
EXPLAINED THAT INDIVIDUALITY IS FALSE AND MAN IS A WAVE IN THE 
ORGANIC WHOLE OF EXISTENCE. HOW IS A RECONCILIATION POSSIBLE 
BETWEEN ALONENESS AND WHOLENESS? 

There is no need of reconciliation. Aloneness is wholeness. But aloneness doesn’t mean 
individuality. You are an individual because of society. When you are totally alone you 
will not be an individual. 

An individual means a part of a society, a unit of a society. When you are in the crowd 
you are an individual; when you move out of the crowd not only is the crowd dropping 
behind, the individual also is dropping behind. That individuality was given to you. 
Individuality and society are two poles of one phenomenon. Alone you are not an 
individual; the individual has to exist in a pattern of society. It is just as when I said that 
alone you are neither good nor bad, alone you are neither sage nor sinner, alone you are 
neither beautiful nor ugly, alone you are neither wise nor foolish. 

Both the dualities drop. The dichotomy drops. 

The individual exists in society; the individual is the unit of society. Alone you are not an 
individual, so don't think that you will become an individual when alone. No, you will 
not be an individual. If there is no society how can you be an individual? You will be 
there, and that aloneness will be wholeness. The ego will drop, and it is the ego that gives 
you the feeling of individuality. 

Alone doesn’t mean that you are an individual, alone means that now the dichotomy of 
society and individual is no longer there. This will give you wholeness. You are not part 
of anything now. You have become the whole. 

This is difficult to express because in language it appears absurd. You cannot imagine 
how you will not be an individual if you are alone, because if you think and imagine 
yourself on a hilltop, sitting alone somewhere in a Himalayan cave, you will think of 
yourself as an individual — because you don't know what aloneness is. Aloneness means 
that all thought, all mind, all individuality that was given by society has been left behind. 
You will become just a space, an emptiness, nobody. Sitting in a Himalayan cave there 
will be no one who is sitting, just a space. 

Buddha was meditating under a tree. It was a full moon night and some young people had 
come to the forest. They had brought much alcohol with them and a young prostitute. 



But they took so much alcohol and they became so intoxicated that the prostitute 
escaped. When they became aware that the girl had left them, they started to search for 
her. Where did she go? 

In their search they reached Buddha who was sitting under a tree meditating. So they said 
to him, "You must have seen a young, beautiful, nude girl passing by here because this is 
the only way and it is a full moon night. So you must have seen a beautiful young girl, 
nude, passing by. Did you see her?" 

Buddha opened his eyes and said, "Someone passed by, but I cannot say whether the one 
who passed was a woman or a man. I cannot say whether the person who passed was 
beautiful or ugly. And I cannot say whether the person who passed was clothed or naked. 
Someone did pass — I heard the foot-steps." 

They were amazed and they said, "This is impossible!" Buddha said, "I would not have 
believed this myself before. When I was a part of society it would have been impossible, 
but now that I have left society I have left all the conceptions of society as well. Now 
only nature happens around me. So I heard the sound of someone passing; there was just 
a sound which reached into my inner space, that is all. Someone passed." 

You become a silent inner space. You are not an individual because you are not a mind. 
To drop the mind solitude is suggested. And with the mind everything drops. 

A moment comes when you don’t know who you are — and that is the moment from 
where real knowledge will start. 

A moment comes when you forget completely who you are, and all that you knew before 
is no longer there, all the old leaves have fallen. Now this is the moment, and now there 
will be an interval for a time being. This interval will be of much anguish because the old 
has left and the new has not yet come. When the old leaves drop from the tree, the tree 
will be naked for a few days, just waiting for the new to emerge. The new leaves are 
coming, they are on the way, the old have left a place. Now that the place is vacant the 
new are flowing towards the space and sooner or later they will emerge. But you will 
have to wait. While meditating in aloneness, society will drop, the mind will drop, the 
ego will drop and there will be a gap. You will have to pass through that gap also. Now 
the tree is awaiting for the new leaves to come, but one cannot do anything. What can the 
tree do? Nothing can be done to bring them sooner, they will take their own course. 

It is good that the old have dropped — because now the place is there. Space is there for 
the new to emerge. Now there will be no barrier. 

So there is an autumn of the inner mind. Leaves will drop. It will be painful. You have 
lived with those old leaves for so long that you will feel that you are losing something. 

And then there will be a winter of waiting, an inner winter, when you will be nude — with 
no leaves, a naked tree against the sky. And you don’t know what is going to happen. 

Now everything has stopped. Now no bird comes to sing on your branches; now no one 
comes to sit under you, under your shadow to wait, to relax. Now you are not in any way 
aware of whether you are dead or whether a new life is going to happen to you. This is 
the gap, the interval. 

Christian mystics have called it the dark night of the soul — before the sunrise. All 
artificial lights have been put off. The night has become very dark. And the moment 
nearest to the sunrise will be the darkest. 

So there is a winter of the inner soul when there are no leaves, and no birds sing, and no 
one comes to wait under you and relax. You feel dead. Everything has stopped. All 



movement is gone. This has to be passed — because then there will be spring, new leaves 
will come, new life, new flowers. A totally new dimension will appear within you. 

But remember the autumn, remember the winter — only then is spring possible. The 
autumn is also part of the spring — if you can understand — it is making the way for the 
spring to happen. So autumn is not against spring, it is just the beginning of it. And the 
gap is also necessary, because in the gap you become ready. The old has left. You are not 
tormented by it now, not burdened by it. 

You are pregnant — but pregnancy is waiting, the new child is growing. Before it 
emerges, manifests itself in the world, it will have to hide deep in the unconscious, 
because every seed has to go deep into darkness, underneath, hidden. Only then does life 
happen to it. If you put the seed in the sunlight nothing will happen to it. It needs deep 
darkness, a womb. So there will be winter while you are pregnant: all movement ceases, 
you just have to carry the burden, consciously, understandingly, lovingly, hoping, 
praying, waiting. 

And then there will be spring. It has been always so. Man is also a tree. 

And remember, aloneness is wholeness, they are not contradictory. Ego is part, ego is 
fragmented, ego cannot be whole, ego is against the whole. In aloneness ego disappears. 
You become one with the whole and the boundary disappears. When you are really alone 
you are the cosmos, you are Brahma. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

IN THE FIRST TECHNIQUE TAKEN LAST NIGHT IT IS SAID THAT TO ABIDE IN 
LONELINESS IS TO MINIMIZE RELATIONSHIP. BUT ON PREVIOUS 
OCCASIONS YOU SAID THAT ONE SHOULD MAXIMIZE THE RELATIONSHIP 
WITH LIMITLESS EXPANSION. 

Do either. Either expand yourself so much that nothing remains unrelated to you, then 
you will disappear; or be so totally alone that nothing remains related to you, then too 
you will disappear. 


You are in the middle, where something is related and something is not related, where 
someone is a friend and someone is an enemy, where someone belongs to you and 
someone doesn’t belong to you, where there is a choice. You are in the middle. Move to 
either extreme. Become related to everyone, to everything that exists and you will 
disappear. It is so tremendous a phenomenon to be related to everything that you cannot 
exist, you will be flooded. Your ego is so narrow, it can exist with only a few 
relationships — and that in those too it is against something, otherwise it could not exist. 
If you are friendly to everything that is in the world, you disappear. If you want to exist 
as an ego you can be friendly; but you must also be inimical to someone. You must love 
someone and you must hate. Then you can exist between these two contradictions — the 
ego can exist. Either love everything that is and you will disappear, or hate it and you 
will disappear. They look contradictory. They are not. The technique is the same. The 
technique is the same whether you love all or whether you hate all. The hatred of 
everything is kn own in the East as VAIRAGYA, as renunciation. This is hatred of 
everything, withdrawing your love completely, feeling that everything is useless, not 
worth anything. 



If you can hate so totally you will become total — then you cannot exist. You can exist 
only when two contradictions are there: love and hate. 

Between these two you balance. It is just like a man walking on a rope. He has to balance 
between right and left. If he moves to the left completely he will fall; if he moves 
completely to the right he will fall. So whether you move to the right or to the left makes 
no difference. Choose one. You will fall down from the rope. 

If you want to be a man on a rope, you have to balance, sometimes to the left, sometimes 
to the right. And really the balance is a science. Whenever you lean to the left you will 
immediately have to lean to the right because the left will create the possibility of falling. 
To counter-balance it you will have to lean to the right, and when you lean to the right 
the possibility comes that you can fall. So you will have to lean to the left. That is why 
you go on moving between love and hate, between friend and enemy, between this and 
that, like and dislike, attraction and repulsion. You are moving on a rope, continuously. If 
you don’t understand this your life will be a total misunderstanding. 

I have been studying many, many people and this is one of the basic problems of all. 

They love, then they hate, and they cannot understand why they hate when they love also. 
This is how they balance — and this balancing gives you the ego, your personality. If you 
really want to be without the ego, choose either extreme. Move to the left, love, and don’t 
balance it by the right — you will fall from the rope. 

Or move to the right, hate, and hate totally, and don’t move to the left. You will fall from 
the rope. 

Mahavir says be detached from everything — that is hate. And Krishna says love. That is 
why Jains can never understand the message of Krishna. Impossible. And Hindus have 
not taken any note of Mahavir. They have not even mentioned his name in their 
scriptures. Not a single mention. They have not even taken note because he says be so 
unattached from everything that it becomes hatred. Krishna says love, and love so deeply 
that hate falls completely from the mind. Both are the same. They look contradictory to 
you. They are not. 

Either you lean to the left or to the right — it makes no difference, you will fall to the 
ground, you will not be on the rope. That is certain. That rope is the ego or the world, the 
SANSAR, and you are balancing yourself. Many people love me but I know that sooner 
or later they will balance and they will hate. And when they hate they get disturbed. They 
should not get disturbed because that is how they can be on the rope. But the cannot hate 
long. Again they will have to balance. 

In the morning you love, in the evening you hate, in the morning you love again. Unless 
you are ready to leave the ego the balancing will continue. It can continue infinitely — 
infinitely it can continue. The rope is endless. But once you get fed up with the whole 
game, once you feel that this is nonsense — balancing each time with hate and love and 
each time moving to the opposite direction again and again; this is nonsense — then you 
can move to one, either love or hate, and drop from the rope. 

And once you drop from the rope, you are enlightened. The balance is SANSAR, the 
world. 

The fourth question: 

Question 4 

MAN HAS AN INHERENT LONGING TO ENTER INTO THE WOMB. KINDLY 



EXPLAIN WHETHER OR NOT MAN’S LUST FOR THE SEXUAL ACT, 
PENETRATION, SYMBOLIZES HIS INHERENT LONGING FOR THIS RETURN. 


Yes. It is part of it. Everything in nature wants to return to the source. This is one of the 
laws. Whatsoever happens in-between is irrelevant, every circle comes to the end or to 
the very beginning — to the original source. 

Man is bom out of the womb. Whenever he is in distress or depression, whenever there is 
too much responsibility in the world, too much burden, things become heavy, he wants to 
return back to the womb. Hence this attraction, lust, to enter the woman. You cannot 
enter, you cannot become a child again, so the sexual act becomes a symbolic act. The 
penetration becomes symbolic. You are again in the womb. That is why sex is so 
relaxing, so soothing. All the tensions are gone, your mind is unburdened. In this moment 
at least you are ecstatic. It is a catharsis: you are purged of much dirt. 

So sex becomes a release, a relaxation. And the woman becomes a womb. This is part of 
the attraction, part of the lust. You may not be aware of it, but all that we have created for 
comfort is womb-like. In a room, closed, at body temperature, silent, you can relax 
easily. 

It is womb-like. And if all the qualities of the womb are there, in your sleeping room, you 
will sleep deeply. Even a clock on the wall helps you. It goes on tick-tock, tick-tock. It is 
the same as the heart of the mother going tick-tock, tick-tock, for the child in the womb. 
He goes on listening to it. The tick-tock rhythm is helpful; the mattress, the pillows, all 
the things we use are really womb-like. Now scientists are of the mind that sooner or 
later we will make exactly womb-like sleeping chambers, exactly the same, because they 
will give you the deepest sleep possible. 

The ultimate conception of nirvana is also womb-like. In the womb the child is so free, 
free of all responsibilities. He never comes to know any desire. Before the desire is there 
it is fulfilled. That is what Hindus call KALPAVRIKSHA. In heaven there are trees 
under which you sit and when a desire comes to your mind, immediately it is fulfilled. 
There is no gap, no time gap, between desire, demand, and supply. There is no time gap. 
When the desire is there it is fulfilled. 

This is happening in the womb, it is KALPAVRIKSHA, the wish-fulfilling tree. A child 
never becomes aware that he is hungry — before there is hunger, it is fulfilled. The child 
never becomes aware that he is thirsty — before there is thirst, the thirst is fulfilled. He 
never becomes aware of any strife, any strain; he is silently served by the cosmos around 
him. 

Psychologists say that that is why the child in the womb cannot be conscious. Because 
for consciousness, strife is needed, struggle is needed. Consciousness grows only when 
there is demand, then a time gap, and then supply. That time gap makes you conscious. If 
there is no time gap, if whatsoever you need is fulfilled immediately, you will fall asleep. 
So the child is asleep for nine months together — not for a single moment does he become 
alert. There is no need to be alert. All needs are fulfilled. There is no pain, no suffering, 
no tension, so alertness is not possible. 

The child sleeps, and when he is born it is such a shock that Freud says that no one ever 
recovers from it. It is traumatic. It remains like a wound in you. And I think he is right. 
When the child is born it is a shock! He is thrown out of the Garden of Eden, out of 
paradise. Everything was so beautiful — it was so beautiful that he was asleep. It was so 



comfortable that there was no need to be awake for even a single moment. It was a dream 
land, and now he has been thrown out forcibly. There is every possibility that the 
unconsciousness of the child struggles to remain in the womb. It is difficult to say 
whether it is so or not, but there is every possibility that the unconsciousness of the child 
struggles to remain in the womb. He creates every difficulty in coming out. Hence the 
pain and the struggle. 

He is being thrown out, expelled. And the first moment out of the womb is bound to be 
the greatest suffering that the child will ever suffer again. Even death will not be such a 
suffering. Because in the first moment on his own he will have to breathe — and the 
world has started with all its worries. Now he will be the center and he will be 
responsible and he will have to carry his own burden. He is thrown out of the mother. He 
will have to breathe and to cry when he is hungry. And now nothing is certain: whether 
when he is hungry he will be fulfilled or not, is not certain. It will depend. He has 
become dependent. Now for every need he has to struggle. But then we provide every 
comfort for our children, in every way, so the shock is not so much, not too much. The 
mother goes on fulfilling his needs immediately. 

Because of this the child comes to feel that he is the center of the world and the whole 
world has to follow him. Just a cry and the whole world has to fall at his feet. This gives 
a very egoistic beginning. So every child is very egoistic. And then other shocks are 
bound to follow because this is only the first birth, just the beginning of births. Those 
who know human phenomena deeply say that the whole life is a continuous birth. There 
are many births. A day will come when the mother will refuse to breast-feed the child. 
Now he has to depend on foods. He has to chew it. 

Responsibility grows. Now the food has to be chewed, digested. The milk was something 
else. The child was not doing anything, simply sucking. He was a sucker. 

Every day responsibilities will grow and he will be thrown away, away from the mother. 
And the further away he is thrown, the more the world surrounds him. The world is 
hostile — the womb was never hostile, it was so friendly,. The world is not friendly: there 
is competition, and everyone is interested in himself and no one is interested in you. The 
world is not your mother. 

When a child moves to the school he is moving into a hostile world, with traumas and 
traumas and many shocks. And it goes on. The ultimate break happens when the child 
falls in love with a woman. He is becoming grown up. This is the last break with the 
mother; now the last link is broken. But still this man-child will go on behaving as if his 
wife is his mother. She is not. She is interested in herself, and he is interested in himself. 
Both are interested in themselves. They are egos. And every husband goes on trying to 
get the wife to behave like his mother. That is the struggle. She cannot behave like that — 
she has her own interests. The mother was totally devoted. 

So every man is frustrated with his wife because no wife can be a mother. It is not a 
question of good and bad wives — no wife can be a mother. Every man is frustrated. 

I have not yet seen a man who is not frustrated with his wife. It seems impossible not to 
be frustrated because the desire is so impossible. 

But the husband feels good when he enters the woman, the wife. Again he is in the 
womb. This is a symbolic penetration. In those few moments he forgets all the worries, 
the world, everything. He is again a child. Look at a man deep in love with his wife, or 



beloved — his face will look like a child. All the tensions have gone. So it is not just 
coincidence that when in love the wife will call the husband 'baby'. 

I was just reading an anecdote. It was midnight and a house was on fire. At the last 
moment a woman was pulled out of it. She was mad and crying, "My baby has remained 
inside." And then suddenly the baby appeared — on the balcony stood a three hundred 
and sixty pound man and he said, "Don’t get worried, I am alive and I am coming." And 
the whole crowd was wondering what the matter was! 

But they were deep in love, just lying together, and the man was a baby at that moment. 

In all ways mind is seeking a womb-like state again, but you cannot enter the womb, 
even in a sexual act. You just seem to be. 

The only possibility of entering the womb again is not physical, it is psychological, or, on 
deeper layers, spiritual. If you can be one with the cosmos you will be in the womb again, 
and this is something which cannot be taken away from you. 

Then the whole existence becomes a mother. So to me, those religions that have said that 
God is not a father but a mother, are more scientific. Those who have called their God 
'father' are not so scientific. Because a father is not a very essential thing. It is just 
accidental. 'Father' has not always existed. The word 'mother' is very very much older 
than 'father'. Even the word 'uncle' is older than 'father'. Because five thousand years 
back there was no marriage — groups lived together. The child knew his mother but he 
didn't kn ow who the father was, so all the male members of the group were uncles. 

'Uncle' is an older word than 'father.' All the males were uncles because there was no 
certainty who the father was. 

Father is a later arrival. When one male dominated a woman and pushed away all the 
other males, father came into being. And it is not certain whether it is going to remain, 
because the family is dispersing. It is not something eternal, just institutional. The father 
seems to be going; in the future he cannot say. For father there is no hope! He will drop. 
Uncles will again become important. Mother is basic; father is social and can be 
discarded. It depends on the institution, on the way society thi nk s. But mother cannot be 
discarded. So those religions that think of God as the Mother are really deeper — when 
you enter God the mother, and become one with it, you have entered the eternal womb. 

Now there will be no pain, there will be no suffering. Now you will never be thrown out. 
The last question: 

Question 5 

YOU SAID WE ARE CONCERNED WITH THREADS, NOT THE ESSENCE. BUT 
WHOM DO YOU MEAN BY 'WE ARE’? BECAUSE AS WE ARE WE ARE 
CONCERNED WITH BEADS, WITH EVENTS. WE LIVE IN EVENTS. 

When I say that we are concerned with the thread, with the essence, the foundational, the 
real, by 'we' I don't mean you. You as you are, no. But you as you can be, yes. You are 
double, and that which you are right now is not the real. It is just a false thing, just an 
image which can be discarded easily. The real you is that which can be known only when 
all the masks are thrown away. So when I say 'we' are concerned with the thread, I 
include you in your reality — not as egos, but as souls. You are two: one as you appear to 
be and one as you are. The appearance is concerned with events, concerned with beads, 
the superficial. The inner, the one that you are, is not concerned with events: it is not 
concerned with time at all. It is concerned with the eternal. 



I will tell you a story of one of Buddha’s past lives, when he was not yet a Buddha; in that 
life Buddha was as ignorant as anyone. He heard about a man who had become 
enlightened. So he went to touch his feet and to have a DARSHAN. He touched the feet 
of the enlightened one, and when he was rising, he was amazed to see the enlightened 
man touching his feet. 

He said, "What are you doing? I am ignorant, unenlightened, a sinner, and you are 
enlightened, the purest light I have ever seen. Why should you touch my feet? I have 
come to touch your feet. Why should you touch my feet?" 

The enlightened one laughed and said, "I am not touching your feet. I am touching the 
feet of the essential, of the soul that is hidden within you. That is already enlightened. 

You may know it, later on, and when you know, remember. One day you will come to 
know the reality before which I have bowed down. You don't know it right now, your 
own treasure you don’t know, but I know my treasure and the moment I have known my 
treasure, I have known everybody else's treasure." 

The enlightened one said to Buddha, "The moment I became enlightened I knew the 
essential reality of all. You can go on deluding yourself, that is up to you, but I can 
penetrate and I can see the purest light within you. Remember me when you realize it." 
And when Buddha became enlightened in his next life, he said to his disciples, "I didn’t 
understand what that awakened one was saying. It was a mystery. But now I can see what 
he meant. Now the appearance has come. And whatsoever I am now I was at the moment 
also. He must have bowed to this." 

So when I say 'we', I include you in your possibility, not in your appearance. Your 
appearance is just a dream. But you are not aware of it because if you become aware that 
you are dreaming, the dream has ceased. 

You are not aware of the real you. If you become aware, the appearance will disappear. 

I am aware. So you can understand my difficulty — I see you as enlightened ones. You 
are already that. You are just playing the game of being ignorant, just trying to deceive 
yourself, but whatsoever you do makes no difference to the innermost reality. It remains 
innocent, pure, absolutely pure. You are here. If I look at your surface, you have to be 
taught many things. But if I look to your inner, there is no need to teach you anything, 
there is no need to do anything. That is what I mean when I say, "We are concerned with 
the thread, the essence, not with the beads, the events, the outer." 

Remember this. Some day when you become enlightened you will kn ow what my 
meaning was when I said 'we', and who was included. It is certain that you are not 
included as you are here, just before me, the appearance, no — but as you have always 
been and as you will always be when this curtain is thrown away, when these clouds 
disappear and the sun rises. I can see the sun behind the clouds. 

You are so identified with the clouds that you cannot even believe me. If I say you are 
already enlightened, how can you believe it? You will say I must be deceiving you or 
playing a trick. This is the truth, but truth is difficult to understand. And you have to 
travel long before you come to yourselves, you have to travel long before you come to 
realize that your home is the goal, that you have been always in the place that you wanted 
to reach. 



THE END. 



Chapter 71: Forget the periphery 


IN ANY POSITION GRADUALLY PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE 
ARMPITS INTO GREAT PEACE. 

FEEL YOURSELF AS PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR. 

Life without is a cyclone — a constant conflict, turmoil, struggle. But it is only so on the 
surface — just as on the surface of the ocean are waves, maddening noise, constant 
struggle. But this is not all of life. Deep down there is also a center — soundless, silent, no 
conflict, no struggle. In the center, life is a noiseless flow, relaxed, a river moving with 
no struggle, with no fight, no violence Towards that inner center is the search. You can 
get identified with the surface, with the outer. Then anxiety and anguish follows. This is 
what has happened to everyone: we are identified with the surface and with the struggle 
that goes on there. 

The surface is bound to be disturbed, nothing is wrong in it. And if you can be rooted in 
the center, the disturbance on the surface will become beautiful it will have a beauty of 
its own. If you can be silent within, then all the sounds without become musical. Then 
nothing is wrong; it becomes a play. But if you don't know the inner core, the silent 
center, if you are totally identified with the surface, you will go mad. And everyone is 
almost mad. 

All religious techniques, techniques of yoga, meditation, Zen, are basically to help you to 
be again in contact with the center; to move within; to forget the periphery; to leave the 
periphery for a time being and to relax into your own being so deeply that the outer 
disappears completely and only the inner remains. 

Once you know how to move backwards, how to step down into yourself, it is not 
difficult. It becomes as easy as anything. But if you don’t know, if you know only the 
mind clinging to the surface, it is very difficult. Relaxing into one's self is not difficult: 
non-clinging to the surface is. 

I have heard a Sufi story. Once it happened that a Sufi fakir was traveling. It was a dark 
night and he lost his way. It was so dark he couldn’t even see where he was moving — 
then suddenly he fell into an abyss. He was terrified. He didn’t know what was down 
there in the darkness or how deep the abyss was. So he caught hold of a branch and 
started praying. The night was cold. He cried but there was no one to listen, only his own 
voice echoed back. And the night was so cold that his hands were becoming frozen and 
he knew that sooner or later he would have to leave the branch — it was going to be 
difficult to keep on holding it. His hands were getting so frozen that they were already 
slipping from the branch. Death was absolutely near. Any moment he would fall and die. 
And then the last moment came. You can understand how terrified he was. Dying 
moment by moment, then the last moment came and he saw the branch slipping out of his 
hand. And his hands were so frozen that there was no way to hold on, so he had to fall. 
But the moment he fell he started dancing — there was no abyss, he was on clear ground. 

And he had suffered all night.... 

This is the situation. You go on clinging to the surface, afraid that if you leave the surface 
you will be lost. Really, clinging to the surface you are lost. But deep down there is 
darkness and you cannot see any ground; you cannot see anything else than the surface. 



All these techniques are to make you courageous, strong, adventurous, so that you can 
stop the holding on and fall within yourself. That which looks like an abyss, dark, 
bottomless, is the very ground of your being. Once you leave the surface, the periphery, 
you will be centered. 

This centering is the aim. Once you are centered you can move to the periphery but you 
will be totally different. The quality of your consciousness will have changed altogether. 
Then you can move to the periphery but you will never be the periphery again — you will 
remain at the center. And remaining centered at the periphery is beautiful. Then you can 
enjoy it; it will become a beautiful play. Then there is no conflict; it is a game. Then it 
will not create tensions within you and there will be no anguish and no anxiety around 
you. And any moment that it becomes too much, too heavy on you, you can go back to 
the original source — you can have a dip. Then you will be refreshed, rejuvenated, and 
you can move to the periphery again. Once you know the way.... And the way is not long. 
You are not going anywhere else than into your own self, so it is not long. 

It is just near. The only barrier is your holding on, holding to the periphery, afraid that if 
you leave it you will be lost. The fear feels just as if you are going to die. Moving to the 
inner center is a death — death in the sense that your identity with the periphery will die, 
and a new image, a new feeling of your being will arise. 

So if we want to say in a few words what Tantra techniques are, we can say that they are 
a deep relaxation into oneself, a total relaxation into oneself. 

You are always tense, that is the holding, the clinging. You are never relaxed, never in a 
state of let-go. You are always doing something: that doing is the problem. You are never 
in a state of non-doing, when things are happening and you are just there not doing 
anything. Breath comes in and goes out, the blood circulates, the body is alive and 
throbbing, the breeze blows, the world goes on spinning around — and you are not doing 
anything. You are not a doer. You are simply relaxed and things are happening. When 
things are happening and you are not a doer, you are totally relaxed. When you are a doer 
and things are not happening but are being manipulated by you, you are tense. 

You relax partially while you are asleep, but it is not total. Even in your sleep you go on 
manipulating, even in your sleep you don’t allow everything to happen. Watch a man 
sleeping: you will see that he is very tense, his whole body will be tense. 

Watch a small child sleeping, he is very relaxed. Or watch an animal, a cat — a cat is 
always relaxed. You are not relaxed even while asleep; you are tense, struggling, moving, 
fighting with something. On your face there are tensions. In dreams you may be fighting, 
protecting — doing the same things as when you were awake, repeating them in an inner 
drama. You are not relaxed; you are not in a deep let-go. That's why sleep is becoming 
more and more difficult. And psychologists say that if the same trend goes on, soon the 
day will come when no one will be able to sleep naturally. Sleep will have to be 
chemically produced because no one will be able to fall naturally into sleep. The day is 
not very far. You are already on the way towards it because even while asleep you are 
only partially asleep, partially relaxed. 

Meditation is the deepest sleep. It is total relaxation plus something more; you are totally 
relaxed and yet alert. Awareness is there. Total sleep with awareness is meditation. Fully 
alert, things are happening but you are not resisting, not fighting, not doing. The doer is 
not there. The doer has gone into sleep. Only a witness is there a 'non-doer alertness' is 
there. Then nothing can disturb you. 



If you know how to relax then nothing can disturb you. If you don’t know how to relax 
then everything will disturb you. I say everything. It is not really something else that 
disturbs you, everything else is just an excuse. 

You are almost always ready to be disturbed. If one thing doesn't disturb you, then 
something else will; you will get disturbed. You are ready, you have a tendency to get 
disturbed. If all the causes are withdrawn from you even then you will get disturbed. You 
will find some cause, you will create some cause. If nothing comes from without, you 
will create something from within — some thought, some idea — and you will get 
disturbed. You need excuses. Once you know how to relax nothing can disturb you. Not 
that the world will change, not that things will be different. The world will be the same. 
But you don’t have the tendency, you don’t have the madness; you are not constantly 
ready to be disturbed. Then all that happens around you is soothing — even the traffic 
noise becomes soothing if you are relaxed. Even the market-place becomes soothing. It 
depends on you. It is an inner quality. The more you go towards the center the more the 
quality arises and the more you move towards the periphery the more you will be 
disturbed. If you are too disturbed or if you are prone to be disturbed that shows only one 
thing: that you are existing near the periphery — nothing else. It is an indication that you 
have made your abode near the surface. And this is a false abode because your real home 
is at the center, the very center of your being. 

Now we will enter the techniques. 

IN ANY EASY POSITION GRADUALLY PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE 
ARMPITS INTO GREAT PEACE. 


This is a very simple method but it works miraculously — try it. And anyone can try it, 
there is no danger. The first thing is to be in an easy relaxed position — relaxed in a 
position that is easy for you. Don’t try a particular position or ASANA. Buddha sits in a 
particular posture. It is easy for him. It also can become easy for you if you practise it for 
a time being, but in the very beginning it will not be easy for you. And there is no need to 
practise it: start from any posture that comes easy to you right now. Don’t struggle with 
the posture. You can sit in an easy chair and relax. The only thing is your body must be 
in a relaxed state. 

So just close your eyes and feel all over the body. Start from the legs — feel whether there 
is some tension or not. If you feel there is some tension, do one thing: make it more tense. 
If you feel there is some tension in the right leg, then make that tension as intense as 
possible. Bring it to a peak — then suddenly relax so that you can feel how the relaxation 
settles there. Then go all over the body just looking everywhere for some tension. 
Wherever you feel the tension make it more so, because it is easy to relax when it is 
intense. In just a mid-state it is very difficult because you cannot feel it. It is easy to move 
from one extreme to another, very easy, because the very extreme creates the situation to 
move to the other. 

So if you feel some tensions in the face then strain all the face muscles as much as 
possible, create tension and bring it to a peak. Bring it to a point where you feel that no 
more is possible — then suddenly relax. In this way see that all parts of the body, all the 
limbs are relaxed. 

And be particular about the face muscles, because they carry ninety per cent of the 



tensions — the rest of the body carries only ten per cent. All your tensions are in the mind 
so the face becomes the storage. So strain your face as much as possible, don't be shy 
about it. Make it intensely anguished, anxious — and then suddenly relax. Do it for five 
minutes so that you can feel that every limb in the whole body is relaxed. This is an easy 
posture for you. 

You can do it sitting, or lying in bed or howsoever you feel is easy for you. IN ANY 
EASY POSITION GRADUALLY PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE ARMPITS 
INTO GREAT PEACE. 

The second thing: when you feel that the body has got to an easy posture, don't make 
much fuss about it. Just feel that the body is relaxed, then forget the body. Because really, 
remembering the body is a sort of tension. That’s why I say don't make much fuss about 
it. Relax it and forget it. Forgetting is relaxation. Whenever you remember too much, that 
very remembering brings a tension to the body. 

You may not have observed this, but there is a very easy experiment to try. 

Put your hand on your pulse and count it. Then close your eyes, bring your attention to 
your pulse for five minutes, and then count. The pulse will now be beating faster because 
the attention for five minutes gives tension to it. So really, whenever a doctor counts your 
pulse it is never the real count — it is always more than it was before the doctor started 
counting it. Whenever the doctor has taken your hand in his hand you have become alert. 
And if the doctor is a lady doctor you will be more alert, and it will go faster. So 
whenever a lady doctor counts your pulse reduce it by ten. Then that will be exactly your 
pulse count — otherwise there will be ten more counts per minute. 

Whenever you bring your consciousness to any part of the body, that part becomes tense. 
You become tense when someone observes you; the whole body becomes tense. When 
you are alone you are different. When someone enters the room you are not the same. 

The whole body is going at a faster rate. You have become tense. So don’t make much 
fuss about relaxation or you will be obsessed with it. For five minutes simply relax easily 
and forget. Your forgetting will be helpful and it will bring a deeper relaxation to the 
body. 

.... GRADUALLY PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE ARMPITS INTO GREAT 
PEACE. Close your eyes and just feel the area between the two armpits: the heart area, 
your chest. First feel it just between the two armpits with your total attention, total 
awareness. 

Forget the whole body, remember just the heart area between the two armpits, the chest, 
and feel it filled with great peace. The moment the body is relaxed, peace automatically 
happens in your heart. The heart becomes silent, relaxed, harmonious. And when you 
forget the whole body and bring your attention just to the chest and consciously feel it 
filled with peace, much peace will happen immediately. 

There are areas in the body, particular centers, where particular feelings can be created 
consciously. Between the two annpits is the heart center, and the heart center is the 
source of all the peace that happens to you, whenever it happens. Whenever you are 
peaceful, the peace is coming from the heart. The heart radiates peace. That is why 
people all over the world, every race, without any distinction of cat, religion, country, 
cultured or uncultured, have felt this: that love arises from somewhere near the heart. No 
scientific explanation exists. Whenever you think of love you think of the heart. Really, 
whenever you are in love you are relaxed, and because you are relaxed you are filled with 



a certain peace. That peace arises from the heart. So peace and love have become joined, 
associated. Whenever you are in love you are peaceful; whenever you are not in love you 
are disturbed. Because of peace the heart has become associated with love. 

So you can do two things. 

You can search for love, then sometimes you will feel peace. But this path is dangerous, 
because the other person whom you love has become more important than you. And the 
other is the other, and you are becoming in a way dependent. So love will give you peace 
sometimes but not always. There will be many disturbances, many moments of anguish 
and anxiety, because the other has entered. Whenever another enters there is bound to be 
some disturbance, because you can meet with the other only on your surface. The surface 
will be disturbed. Only sometimes when the two of you will be so deeply in love with no 
conflict, only then will you sometimes be relaxed and the heart will glow with peace. 

So love can only give you glimpses of peace but nothing really established, rooted. No 
eternal peace is possible through it, only glimpses. And between two glimpses there will 
be deep valleys of conflict, violence, hatred and anger. 

The other way is to find peace not through love, but directly. If you can find peace 
directly — and this is the method for it — your life will become filled with love. But now 
the quality of love will be different. It will not be possessive; it will not be centered 
around one. It will not be dependent and it will not make any one dependent on you. 

Your love will become just a lovingness, a compassion, a deep empathy. And now no 
one, not even a lover, can disturb you, because your peace is already rooted and your 
love comes as a shadow of your inner peace. 

The whole thing has become reversed. So Buddha is also loving but his love is not an 
anguish. If you love you will suffer, if you don’t love you will suffer. If you don't love 
you will suffer the absence of love; if you love you will suffer the presence of love. 
Because you are on the surface and whatsoever you do can only give you momentary 
satisfaction — then again the dark valley. 

First be established in peace on your own, then you are independent, then love is not your 
need. Then you will never feel imprisoned when you are in love; you will never feel that 
love has become a sort of dependence, a slavery, a bondage. Then love will be just a 
giving: you have too much peace so you want to share it. Then it will be just a giving 
with no idea of return; it will be unconditional. And it is one of the secrets that the more 
you give, the more it happens to you. The more you give and share, the more it becomes 
your own. The deeper you enter into the treasury, which is infinite, the more you can go 
on giving to everybody. It is inexhaustible. 

But love must happen to you as a shadow of inner peace. Ordinarily the reverse is the 
phenomenon: peace happens to you just as a shadow of love. Love must happen to you as 
a shadow of peace, then love is beautiful. Otherwise love also creates ugliness, it 
becomes a disease, a fever. 

.... PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE ARMPITS INTO GREAT PEACE. 


Become aware of the area between the annpits and feel that it is filled with great peace. 
Just feel peace there and you will feel it is filled. It is always filled but you have never 
been alert about it. This is only to increase your alertness, to bring you nearer home. And 
when you feel this peace you are farther away from the surface. Not that things will not 



be happening there — but when you try this experiment and when you are filled with 
peace you will feel a distance; the noise is coming from the street but there is a great 
distance now, a great space. It happens, but it brings no disturbance; rather, it brings you 
a deeper silence. This is the miracle. The children will be playing, someone will be 
listening to the radio, someone will be quarrelling and the whole world will be going 
around, but you feel that a great distance has come between you and everything. That 
distance comes because you have retreated from the periphery. Things are happening on 
the periphery and they will appear to you as if they are happening to someone else. You 
are not involved. Nothing disturbs you so you are not involved — you have transcended. 
This is the transcendence. 

And the heart is naturally the source of peace. You are not creating anything. You are 
simply coming to a source which is always there. This imagining will help you become 
aware that the heart is filled with peace — it is not that the imagining will create the 
peace. 

This is the difference between the Tantra attitude and Western hypnosis. Hypnotists think 
that you are creating it by imagination but Tantra thinks that you are not creating it by 
imagination, you are simply becoming attuned to something that is already there. 

Because whatsoever you can create by imagination cannot be permanent: if it is not a 
reality then it is false, unreal, and you are creating a hallucination. So it is better to be 
disturbed and real than to be in a hallucination of peace, because that is not a growth, you 
are simply intoxicated by it. Sooner or later you will have to come out because sooner or 
later the reality will shatter the illusion. Reality has to shatter all illusions; only a greater 
reality cannot be shattered. 

A greater reality will shatter the reality which is on the periphery, hence Shankara and 
others say that the world is illusion. Not that the world is illusion, but they have come to 
know a higher reality and from that altitude this world looks dreamy. It is so far away, 
the distance is so infinite that it cannot be felt as real. The noise on the street will be as if 
you are dreaming about it — it is not real. It cannot do anything. It just happens and 
passes and you remain untouched. And when you are untouched by reality how can you 
feel that it is real? The reality is felt only when it penetrates you deeply. The deeper the 
penetration, the more you feel it as real. 


Shankara says the whole world is unreal. He must have come to a point from where the 
distance is so vast, so tremendously vast, that all that happens there becomes just like a 
dream. It comes but no reality comes with it because it cannot penetrate. Penetration is 
the proportion of reality. If I throw a stone at you it hits you. The hit penetrates you and 
that penetration makes the stone real. If I throw a stone and it touches you but doesn't 
penetrate you, deep down you will hear the thud of the falling stone on you, but there will 
be no disturbance. You will feel it as false, unreal, MAYA, illusory. But you are so near 
the periphery that if I throw a stone at you, you will be hurt. Not the body — the body will 
be hurt in either case. If I throw a stone at a Buddha the body will be hurt as your body 
will be hurt, but Buddha is not on the periphery, he is rooted in the center. And the 
distance is so great that he will hear the thud of the stone without being hurt. The being 
will remain untouched, unscarred. This unscarred being will feel the stone as if it is 
something thrown in a dream. It is illusory. So Buddha says that nothing has substance to 
it, everything is 'substanceless', without any substance. The world is empty of substance 



— which is the same thing as Shankara saying that the world is illusory. 

Try this. Whenever you are able to feel the peace between your two armpits filling you, 
pervading your heart center, the world will look illusory. 

This is a sign that you have entered meditation — when the world feels and appears to be 
illusory. Don't think that the world is illusory, there is no need to think it — you will feel 
it. It will suddenly occur to your mind, "What has happened to the world?" The world has 
suddenly gone dreamy. It is there, a dreamlike existence, without any substance. It looks 
so real, just like a film on the screen. It can even be three dimensional. It looks like 
something, but it is a projected thing. Not that the world is a projected thing, not that it is 
really unreal — no. The world is real but you create the distance, and the distance gets 
more and more. And you can understand whether the distance is getting more and more 
or not by knowing how you are feeling about the world. That's the criterion. That is a 
meditative criterion. It is not a truth that the world is unreal — if the world has become 
unreal, you have become centered in the being. Now the surface and you are so far away 
that you can look at the surface as being something objective, something other than you. 
You are not identified. 

This technique is very easy and will not take much time if you try it. With this technique 
it sometimes even happens that with the very first effort you will feel the beauty and the 
miracle of it. So try it. But if you don't feel anything with the first effort, don't be 
disappointed. Wait. 

And go on doing it. And it is so easy that you can go on doing it any time. Just lying on 
your bed at night you can do it; just in the morning when you feel that you are now 
awake you can do it. Do first and then get up. Even ten minutes will be enough. Ten 
minutes at night just before falling asleep, do it. Make the world unreal, and your sleep 
will be so deep that you may not have slept like that before. If the world becomes unreal 
just before falling asleep, dreaming will be less. Because if the world has become a 
dream then dreams cannot continue. And if the world is unreal, you are totally relaxed 
because the reality of the world will not impinge itself upon you, hammer on you. 

I have suggested this technique to people who suffer from insomnia. It helps deeply. If 
the world is unreal, tensions dissolve. And if you can move from the periphery, you have 
already moved to a deep state of sleep — before the sleep comes you are already deep into 
it. And then in the morning it is beautiful because you are so fresh, so young; your whole 
energy is vibrating. It is because you are coming back to the periphery from the center. 
And the moment you become alert that now sleep is no more, don’t open your eyes. First 
do this experiment for ten minutes, then open the eyes. The body is relaxed after the 
whole night and is feeling fresh and alive. You are already relaxed; so it will not take 
much time. 

Just relax. Bring your consciousness to the heart just between the two armpits: feel it 
filled with deep peace. For ten minutes remain in that peace, then open the eyes. The 
world will look totally different because that peace will also be radiated from your eyes. 
And the whole day you will feel different — not only will you feel different but you will 
feel that people are behaving differently with you. To every relationship you contribute 
something. If your contribution is not there, people behave differently because they feel 
you are a different person. They may not be aware of it. But when you are filled with 
peace everyone will behave differently towards you. They will be more loving and more 



kind, less resistant, more open, closer. A magnet is there. Peace is the magnet. When you 
are peaceful people come nearer to you; when you are disturbed everyone is repelled. 

And this is so physical a phenomenon that you can observe it easily. Whenever you are 
peaceful you will feel everyone wants to be closer to you because that peace radiates, it 
becomes a vibration around you. Circles of peace move around you and whosoever 
comes near wants to be nearer to you — like you want to move under the shadow of a tree 
and to relax there. 

A person who is peaceful within has a shadow around him. Wherever he goes everyone 
would like to be closer to him, open, trusting. A person who has inner turmoil, conflict, 
anguish, anxiety, tensions, repels persons. 

Whosoever come near becomes afraid. You are dangerous. To be near you is dangerous. 
Because you will give whatsoever you have, you are constantly giving it. So you may 
want to love someone but if you are very disturbed within, even your lover will be 
repelled and he will want to escape from you because you will drain his energy and he 
will not feel happy with you. And whenever you leave him, you will leave him tired, 
exhausted, because you don;t have a life-giving source, you have a destructive energy 
within you. 

So not only will you feel you are different, others will also feel that you are different. 
Your whole life-style can change if you move a little closer to the center — and the whole 
outlook and the whole outcome. If you are peaceful the whole world becomes peaceful to 
you. It is just a reflection. Whatsoever you are is reflected all over. Everyone becomes a 
mirror. 

The second technique: 

FEEL YOURSELF AS PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR. 

Tantra and yoga both think that your narrowness is the problem. Because you have made 
yourself so narrow, so tightly narrow, you feel always in bondage. The bondage is not 
coming from anywhere else: the bondage is coming from your narrow mind. And it goes 
on being narrower and narrower and you are very confined. That confinement gives you 
the feeling of bondage. You have an infinite soul and an infinite being but that infinite 
being feels imprisoned. 

So whatsoever you do, you feel limitations everywhere. Wherever you move, a point of 
cul de sac comes. You cannot move beyond it. Everywhere there is a boundary. There is 
no open sky to fly. But that boundary is created by you — that boundary is your own 
creation. You have created it for certain reasons: for security, safety. You have created a 
boundary. And the narrower the boundary, the more you feel secure. If you have a very 
large boundary you cannot watch over all of it, you cannot be alert and watchful 
everywhere. It becomes vulnerable. Narrow the boundary and you can watch it, you can 
remain closed, you are not vulnerable, you feel safe. The safety, the security has created 
the boundary. But then you feel a bondage. 

This is how the mind is paradoxical. You go on asking for more safety and you go on 
asking for more freedom. Both cannot be together. If you want freedom you will have to 
lose safety, security — in any case the safety is just illusory, it is not really there. Because 
death is going to happen — whatsoever you do, you are going to die. All your safety, 
security, is just a facade, nothing will help. But afraid of insecurity you create 
boundaries, you create big walls around you and then the open sky is closed. And then 
you suffer! And then you say, "Where is the open sky?" and "I want freedom and I want 



to move!" But you have created these boundaries. 


So this is the first thing to remember before you do this technique otherwise it will not be 
possible to do it. With your boundaries intact you cannot do it. Unless you stop creating 
boundaries you will not be able to feel or do it. 

.... PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR. No boundaries, becoming infinite, 
becoming one with infinite space.... This will be impossible with your mind. How can 
you feel it? How can you do it? First you will have to stop doing certain things. 

The first thing is that if you are too concerned about security and safety then remain in 
bondage. Really, prison is the most secure place. No one can harm you there. No one out 
of prison is as secure, as guarded, as the prisoners. You cannot kill, you cannot murder a 
prisoner. It is difficult. He is more guarded than a king. You can murder a president or a 
king, it is not so difficult. Every day they go on killing them. But you cannot kill a 
prisoner. He is so safe that those who want to be safe, really, must be in prisons, they 
must not live outside. To live out of a prison is dangerous, it is full of hazards. Anything 
can happen. So we have created mental prisons around us, psychological prisons around 
us, and we carry those prisons with us, they are portable. You need not remain with them, 
they move with you. Wherever you go, your prison goes with you. 

You are always behind a wall. 

Only sometimes, rarely, do you stretch your hand out of it to touch someone. But only a 
hand — you never come out of your prison. So whenever we meet, it is simply meeting 
hands out of prisons. Out of windows we stretch a hand, afraid, scared, and ready any 
moment to withdraw the hand. Both the parties are doing the same — only hands touch. 
And now psychologists say that even that is just an appearance, because hands have their 
own armor around them. No hand is ungloved. Not only Queen Elizabeth uses gloves, 
you also have gloves so that no one can touch you. Or even if someone touches, there is 
only a hand, dead. You are already withdrawn, afraid. Because the other creates fear. As 
Sartre says, "The other is the enemy." The other will look like an enemy if you are so 
annored. With an armored person there can be no friendship. Friendship is impossible, 
love is impossible, communion is impossible. You are afraid. Someone may make you a 
possession, someone may overpower you, someone may make you a slave... afraid of 
this, you have created a prison, a safety wall around you. Cautiously you move, 
cautiously you take every step. Life becomes a drudgery, life becomes a boredom. If you 
are too cautious, life cannot be an adventure. If you are protecting yourself too much, 
hankering after security too much, you are already dead. 

So remember one basic law: life is insecurity. And if you are ready to live in insecurity, 
only then will you be alive. 

Insecurity is freedom. If you are ready to be insecure, constantly insecure, you will be 
free. And freedom is the door to the Divine. 

Afraid, you create a prison — you become dead, more and more dead. And then you call, 
"Where is God?" And then you question, "Where is life? What does life mean? Where is 
bliss?" Life is there waiting for you, but you have to meet it on its own terms. You cannot 
have your own terms, life has its own terms. And the basic tenn is: remain insecure. 
Nothing can be done about it. You can only create an illusion and in that illusion you can 
waste your life. Nothing can be done about it. Whatsoever you do is just a deception. 



If you fall in love you become afraid that this woman can leave you or this man can leave 
you. Fear enters immediately. You were never afraid when you were not in love. Now 
you are in love: life has entered and insecurity has entered with it. One who never loves 
anybody is never afraid that anyone will leave him. The whole world can leave him, he is 
not afraid. You cannot hann him. He is secure. The moment you love someone, 
insecurity has entered because life has entered. And with life, death has entered. The 
moment you love you have become afraid: this person can die, this person can leave, this 
person can love somebody else! Now to make things secure, you must do something — 
you must get married. So a legal bondage is made so that it is now difficult for this 
person to leave you. 

\Now society will protect you, the law will protect you, the policeman, the judge, will all 
protect you. Now if this person wants to leave, you can drag him to the court, and if he 
wants a divorce he will have to prove something against you. Even then it will take three 
or five years. Now you have created safety around you. But the moment you are married 
you are dead. The relationship is not alive. Now it has become a law, not a relationship. 
Now it is a legal phenomenon, not an alive thing. The court cannot protect life; the law 
can only protect laws. Now marriage is something which is dead. It can be defined. Love 
cannot be defined. Marriage is definable, love is indefinable. Now you have come under 
the world of definitions. 

But the phenomenon is already dead. The moment you wanted it to be secure, the 
moment you wanted to enclose it so that no new thing happens to it, you are imprisoned 
in it. Then you will suffer. Then you will say that this wife has become a bondage to you. 
The husband will say this wife has become a bondage to him. And then you fight because 
you have each become an imprisonment for the other. Now you fight. Now love has 
disappeared, there is only conflict. That is what happens because of the hankering for 
security. 

And this has happened in everything. Remember it as something basic: life is insecure. 
This is the very nature of it. So when there is love, suffer the fear that the beloved can 
leave you, but don;t create security. 

Then love will grow. The beloved can die and you cannot do anything, but that will not 
kill love. Security can kill. Love will grow more. 

Really, if man were immortal, I say love would be impossible. If man were immortal it 
would be difficult to love anybody. It would be so dangerous to fall in love. Death is 
there and life is just like a dew drop on a trembling leaf. Any moment the breeze will 
come and the dew drop will fall and disappear. Life is just a wavering. Because of that 
wavering, because of that movement, death is always there. It gives intensity to love. 
Love is possible only because there is death. Love becomes intense because there is 
death. Think... if you know your beloved is going to die the next moment, all meanness 
will go, all conflict will go. And this one moment will become eternity. And there will be 
so much love that your whole being will be poured into it. But if you know the beloved is 
going to live, there is no hurry. You can fight and you can postpone the loving for later 
on. If life is eternal, if the body is immortal, you cannot love. 

Hindus have a beautiful myth. They say in heaven where Indra rules — Indra is the king 
of heaven — there is no love. There are beautiful girls, more beautiful than on the earth, 
and deities. They have sex but there is no love because they are immortal. 

So it is recorded in one of the Indian stories that Urvashi, the chief of the heavenly girls, 



asked permission of Indra to move to earth for a few days to love a man. 

"What nonsense!: Indra said. "You can love here! And you will not find such beautiful 
persons on the earth." Urvashi said, "They are beautiful but they are immortal, so there is 
no chann. They are really dead." 

They are really dead because there is no death to make them alive. They will always be 
there. They cannot die, so how can they be alive? That aliveness exists against death. A 
man is alive because death is there constantly, fighting. Against the background of death 
life exists. 

So Urvashi said, "Give me permission to move to the earth. I want to love someone." 
Pennission was given so she came down to earth and fell in love with Pururuwa, a young 
man. 

But there was a condition from Indra. Indra made the condition that she could go to the 
earth, she could love someone, but she must tell the man who loved her not to ask 
anything about who she was. This is difficult for love because love is curious. Love 
wants to know everything about the beloved, everything. The whole unknown has to be 
made known. The whole mystery has to be entered and penetrated. So Indra cunningly 
made a condition which Urvashi didn’t understand the craftiness of. So she said, "Okay. I 
will tell my lover not to be curious about me, not to ask who I am. And if he asks, 
immediately I will leave him, I will come back." And she said to Pururuwa, "Don’t ever 
ask anything about me, who I am. The moment you ask I will have to leave earth." 

But love is curious. Because of this Pururuwa must have become more curious about who 
she was. He could not sleep. He would go on looking at Urvashi. Who is she? Such a 
beautiful woman, made of dreamy stuff, doesn’t look earthly, doesn’t look substantial. 
Perhaps she comes from somewhere else, some unknown dimension. He became more 
and more curious. But he also became more and more afraid, because she might leave. He 
became so afraid that in the night when he went to sleep he would take a fragment of her 
saree in his hand because he was not confident about himself. Any moment he could ask, 
the question was always there. Even in his sleep he could ask. And Urvashi said that even 
in sleep he could not ask about her. So he slept with a part of her saree in his hand. 

But one night he couldn’t contain himself — and he thought that now she loved him so 
much that she would not leave. So he asked. And Urvashi had to disappear — only a 
fragment of her saree remained in Pururuwa's hand. And it is said that he is still searching 
for her. 

In heaven there cannot be love because there is no life really. Life exists here on earth, 
where death exists. Whenever you make anything secure, life disappears. Remain 
insecure, that is the very quality of life itself. Nothing can be done about it. And it is 
beautiful! 

Just think if your body was immortal — it would be ugly. 

You will start finding ways and means of committing suicide. And if it is impossible, 
against the law, you will suffer so much you cannot even imagine. Immortality is a very 
long thing. Now in the West they go on thinking about euthanasia because people are 
now living longer. So a person who reaches the age of a hundred wants the right to kill 
himself. And really, the right will have to be given. We made it a law not to commit 
suicide when life was very short. Really in Buddha's age to be forty or fifty was much. 
The average life was just about twenty. In India, just two decades ago the average life 
was twenty-three. Now in Sweden the average life is eighty-three. So people can very 



easily live to be a hundred and fifty. In Soviet Russia there are fifteen hundred people 
who have reached the mark of a hundred and fifty. Now if they say they have the right to 
kill themselves, because now it is too much, we will have to give them the right. It cannot 
be denied them. Sooner or later suicide will be one of the birth rights. You cannot deny it 
if a person wants to die — not for any reason, just because now life has no meaning. It has 
been too long already. A person living at a hundred doesn't feel like living. Not that he is 
frustrated, not that there is no food. Everything is there, but life has no meaning. 

So think of immortality. Life will be totally meaningless. The meaning comes with death. 

Love has meaning because love can be lost. Then it throbs, vibrates, pulsates. It can be 
lost! You cannot be certain about it! You cannot think anything about it for tomorrow 
because it may not be there. You have to love the lover and the beloved with the view 
that tomorrow may never be there at all. Then love becomes intense. 

So first, withdraw your efforts to create a secure life. Just by withdrawing, your walls 
around you will fall. Lor the first time you will feel rains coming to you directly, the 
wind blowing at you directly, the sun rising to you directly. You will be under the open 
sky. It is beautiful. And if it looks horrible to you it is only because you have become 
accustomed to living in a prison. You will have to get accustomed to this new freedom. 
This freedom will make you more alive, more flowing, more open, more rich, more 
radiant. But the more radiant you are, the higher the peak of your aliveness, the deeper 
will be the death near you. Just near. You can rise only against death, the valley of death. 
The peak of life and the valley of death are always near and in proportion. 

That's why I always say that Nietzsche's dictum is to be followed. It is a very religious 
dictum. Nietzsche says, "Live dangerously." Not that you have to seek danger positively, 
there is no need to seek danger positively. Don’t create protections. Don't create walls 
around you. 

Live naturally, and that will be dangerous, dangerous enough. There is no need to seek 
any danger. 

Then you can do this technique. LEEL YOURSELL AS PERVADING ALL 
DIRECTIONS, PAR, NEAR. Then it is very easy. If walls are not there, you will already 
be feeling yourself pervading everywhere. Then there is no point at where you end. You 
simply begin in the heart and end nowhere. You have a center and no periphery. The 
periphery goes on expanding — on and on. The whole space is surrounded by it. Stars 
move in it. Earths are born and dissolve. Planets arise and set. The whole cosmos 
becomes your periphery. In this vastness where will your ego be? In this vastness where 
will your suffering be? In this vastness where will your mean mind be? The mediocre 
mind, where will it be? It cannot be there in such vastness, it simply disappears. It can 
exist only in a narrow field. It can exist only when it is walled, enclosed, encapsulated. 
The encapsulation is the problem. Live dangerously and be ready to live in insecurity. 
And the beauty is that even if you decide not to live in insecurity, you will! You cannot 
do anything! 

I have heard about a king. He was very afraid of death.... 

Kings are more afraid. They are more afraid because they have exploited so many people; 
they have pushed, crushed; they have played many political games on so many people. 
They have made many enemies. 


A real king has no friend. He cannot have. Because the closest friend is also an enemy, 



just waiting for an opportunity to kill him, to be in his place. A man in power cannot have 
any friends. A Hitler, a Stalin, a Nixon, they cannot have friends. They just have enemies 
who are parading around them as friends and just waiting for the right chance to push 
them aside from the throne. Whenever they get the chance they do everything. Just a 
moment ago they were friendly, but their friendliness is a strategy. Their friendliness is a 
tactic. A man who is in power cannot have friends. So Lao Tzu says, "If you want 
friends, don’t be in power." Then the whole world will be friendly to you. If you are in 
power, then you are your only friend, everyone is your enemy. 

.... So the king was very afraid. He was very scared of death, it was all around. He was 
haunted by the idea that everyone around him was going to kill him. He couldn't sleep. 

So he asked his wise men, his counsellors, what to do. They told him to make a palace 
with only one door. At the door he should put seven rings of military men: the first 
watching the palace, the second watching the first, the third ring watching the second. 
With only one door no one could enter and the king would be safe. 

The king built the palace with only one door and with seven rings of soldiers watching 
each other. The news spread all over and another king from a nearby state came to see it. 

He was also afraid. News had reached him that his neighbor had built such a secure 
palace that it was impossible to kill him. He came to visit his neighbor and together they 
appreciated very much the idea of only one door and every safety; no danger. 

While they were looking at the door a beggar just sitting at the corner of the street started 
laughing. So the king, the owner of the palace, asked the beggar, "Why are you 
laughing?" The beggar replied, "I am laughing because you have made one error. You 
should go inside and close, seal this door also. This door is dangerous, someone can enter 
it. A door means that somebody can enter. So you do one thing: go inside and let this 
door be also closed. Then you will be really safe because death cannot enter." But the 
king said, "That means I would be already dead if I closed this door also." The beggar 
said, "You are already ninety-nine per cent dead — you are only as much alive as this 
door. That is the danger, this much alive. Leave this aliveness also." 

Everyone in his own way is creating a palace around him where nothing can enter and he 
can remain in peace. But then you are already dead. And peace happens only to those 
who are alive; peace is not a dead thing. Remain alive, live dangerously, live a vulnerable 
life, open, so that everything can happen to you. And let everything happen to you. The 
more that happens to you the richer you will be. 


Then you can practise this technique. This technique is then very easy, you will not even 
need to practise it. Just think, and you will be pervading the whole space. 


THE END. 



Chapter 72: Falling in love with an enlightened person 


The first question: 

Question 1 

YOU SAID THAT LOVE IS POSSIBLE ONLY WITH DEATH. THEN WILL YOU 
PLEASE EXPLAIN BUDDHA’S LOVE. 

For an ignorant person love is always part of hate, it always goes with hate. For the 
ignorant mind hate and love are just two aspects of the same coin. For the ignorant mind 
love is never pure. 

And that is the misery of love — because the hate becomes a poison. You love a person 
and you hate the same person also. But you may not be doing both simultaneously so you 
are not aware of it. When you love a person you forget about the hatred part, it goes 
below, it goes into the unconscious and it waits there. Then when your love is tired, it 
falls into the unconscious and the hate part conies up. Then you hate the same person. 

And when you hate you are not aware that you also love — now the love has gone deep 
down into the unconscious. This goes on, just like night and day. It goes on moving in a 
circle. It becomes a misery. 

But for a Buddha, for one who is enlightened, the dichotomy, the dualism, disappears. 
Everywhere — not only as far as love is concerned — the whole life becomes a oneness. 
Then there is no dichotomy, the opposite doesn’t exist. 

So really, to call Buddha’s love 'love' is not good, but we have no other tenn. Buddha 
himself never used the word 'love’. He used the word 'compassion’. 

But that too is not very good. Because your compassion is always mixed with your 
cruelty, your non-violence is always mixed with your violence — whatsoever you do will 
have its opposite just nearby. You exist between contradictions; hence the tension, the 
anguish, the anxiety. You are not one; you are always two. You are a crowd, divided into 
many fragments, and those fragments are opposing each other. Your being is a tension; 
Buddha's being is a deep relaxation. Remember, tension exists between two opposite 
poles, and relaxation is just in the middle, where two opposing poles are no longer 
opposing. They negate each other — and there is a transcendence. So Buddha's love is 
basically different from what you know as love. 

Your love is a dis-ease; Buddha’s love is total relaxation. There is no head part to it, so 
the quality of it changes completely. Many things will be in Buddha’s love which cannot 
be in ordinary love. First, it cannot be hot. The hotness comes from hate. It is not passion, 
rather it is compassion. It is not hot, it is cool. To us, a cool love means something which 
has gone wrong. Buddha’s love is cool, there is no heat to it. It is not like the sun, it is like 
the moon. It will not create passion in you, it will create a deep coolness. 

Secondly, Buddha's love is not really a relationship — your love is a relationship. 

Buddha’s love is his state of being. 

Really, he does not love you, he IS love. This distinction must be understood clearly. If 
you love a person, your love is an act, you do something, you behave in a certain way, 
you create a relationship, a bridge. Buddha's love is just his being, it is just how he is. He 
is not loving towards you, he is just love. He is just like a flower there in the garden — 
you pass by and the perfume comes to you. It is not that the flower is sending its perfume 
to you especially — when there was no one passing by, the perfume was there. And if no 



one ever passes by, the perfume will still be there. 

When your lover is not with you, when your beloved is not with you, the love disappears, 
the perfume is not there. It is an effort on your part, it is not simply your being. You have 
to do something to bring it out. When no one is there and Buddha is sitting alone under 
his Bodhi tree, then too he is a lover. It looks absurd that then too he is a lover. There is 
no one to be loved but still he is a lover. This being a lover is his state. And because it is 
his state, it is never a tension. Buddha cannot get tired of his love. You will get tired, 
because it is something you are doing. So lovers get tired of each other if there is too 
much love. They get tired, they need gaps, intervals, to recuperate. If you are with your 
lover for twenty-four hours he will get fed up because it is too much attention. 

Twenty-four hours of doing something is too much. 

Buddha is not doing something, he is not tired of his love. It is his very being, it is just as 
if he is breathing. As you are never tired of breathing, you are never tired of being, so he 
is not tired of his love. 

And then the third thing follows: you will be aware that you love, Buddha will not be at 
all aware. Because awareness needs the contrary. Buddha is so filled with love that he 
will not be aware. If you ask him he will say, "I love you." But he is not aware of it. It is 
flowing so silently from him, it has become so intrinsic a part, that he cannot be aware of 
it. Y ou will become aware that he loves, and if you are open and receptive you will 
become more aware that he loves you more. It depends on your capacity, on how much 
you can receive. But to him it is not a gift. He is not giving anything to you — he is this 
way, he happens to be this way. Whenever you become aware of your total being, 
enlightened, liberated, the dichotomy from your life drops. Then there is no duality. Then 
life becomes a harmony — nothing is against anything. 

Because of this harmony, much peace happens. There is no disturbance. Disturbance is 
not created from without, it is within you. The contradiction goes on creating the 
disturbance although you may find excuses without. For example, watch what happens 
with your lover, or a friend, a deep friend, very intimate, close. 

Live with him, and just watch what is happening to you. When you meet you are very 
elated, ecstatic, dancing. But how much can you dance? And how ecstatic can you feel? 
Minutes later you are down, the elation has gone, and after a few hours you are bored, 
you are thinking of escaping to somewhere else. And after a few days you will be 
fighting. Just watch what is happening. This is all coming from within, but you will find 
excuses outside. You will say that now this man is not as loving as he was when he came; 
now this man is disturbing me, he is making me angry. And you will always find that he 
is doing something to you, you will never be aware that your dichotomy, your duality of 
mind, the opposites within, are doing something. We are never aware of our own 
workings of the mind. 

I have heard that a very famous, glamorous, Hollywood actress went to a studio for her 
photograph. The photograph had been taken the day before. The photographer presented 
the photograph to her, but she was annoyed, furious. She said, "What have you done? 

You have taken my photographs before and they were heavenly!" The photographer said 
to the actress, "Yes, but you have forgotten that I was twelve years younger when I took 
your photographs. I was twelve years younger, you forget that." 

We never look within at what is happening. If the photograph is not okay to you, 
something is wrong with the photographer. 



It is not that twelve years have passed and you are older — it is an inner process, the 
photographer is not concerned at all. But the photographer must have been a very wise 
man! He said, "You forget that I was twelve years younger then." 

Buddha's love is totally different, but we don’t have any other word for it. The best that 
we have is 'love'. But, if you can remember this, then the quality changes completely. 
And note one thing, think about it deeply. If Buddha is your lover, will you be satisfied? 
You will not be. Because you will feel that it is cold, that there is no passion in it. You 
will feel that he loves you as he loves everyone — you are nothing special. You will feel 
that his love is not a gift — he is this way, that is why he is loving. 

You will feel his love to be so natural that you will not be satisfied with it. Think inside. 
You cannot be satisfied with a love which is without hate. And you cannot be satisfied 
with a love which is with hate. This is the problem. Either way you will be unsatisfied. If 
love is with hate, you will be unsatisfied, always ill, because the hate part will disturb 
you. If love is without hate, you will feel that it is cold. And it is happening to Buddha so 
naturally that even if you were not there it would be happening — so it is nothing special 
for you. So your ego will feel unsatisfied. And it is my feeling that if you have a Buddha 
or a non-Buddha to choose as your lover, you will choose the non-Buddha. 

.. because you can understand his language. The non-Buddha is at least just like you. You 
will be fighting, you will be quarrelling, the whole thing will be just a mess, a mad mess, 
but still you will choose a non-Buddha. Because Buddha will be so high that you cannot 
understand the way that Buddha loves unless you rise. 

With a non-Buddha, with an ignorant person, you need not transform yourself. You can 
remain the same. He is not a challenge. Really just the contrary happens to lovers. When 
two lovers meet and fall in love, they both try to convince each other that they are very 
high. They bring out the best that is within them. They appear to be on the peak. But it 
takes much arduous effort! You cannot remain on this peak. So when you start settling 
down you come back down to the earth. 

So lovers are always frustrated with each other because they thought the other was just 
divine, and when they settle, when everything becomes just mundane, just ordinary, they 
think the other was deceiving. No, he was not deceiving, he was just presenting himself 
in his best colors. That is all. He was not deceiving anybody, he was not consciously 
doing anything. He was just presenting himself in his best colors. And the same was done 
by the other. But you cannot go on presenting yourself like that for long because it 
becomes arduous, difficult, heavy. So you come down. 

When two lovers settle, when they start to take each other for granted, then they appear 
very mean, very mediocre, very ordinary — just the opposite to what they appeared to be 
before. 

Then they were angels; now they appear to be just disciples of the devil. You fall down, 
you come to your ordinary level. 

Ordinary love is not a challenge, but it is rare to fall in love with someone who is 
enlightened. Only very fortunate ones fall in such a love. It is rare. It happens only when 
you have been searching for an enlightened person for lives together. Only if this has 
happened do you fall in love with an enlightened person. Fall in love with an enlightened 
person is in itself a great achievement — but then there is a problem. The problem is that 
the enlightened person is a challenge. He cannot come down to your level, that is not 
possible, that is impossible. You have to go to his peak; you have to travel, you have to 



be transformed. 

So love becomes a SADHANA if you fall in love with a Buddha. It becomes a 
SADHANA, the greatest SADHANA that is possible. Because of this, whenever there is 
a Buddha or a Jesus, or a Lao Tzu, many around them are able to reach to peaks in one 
life that they could not have reached in many lives. But the secret is if they can fall in 
love. It is not unimaginable, it is imaginable. You may have been there in the time of 
Buddha, you must have been somewhere around. Buddha might have passed through 
your village or town and you may not have even heard him, you may not have seen him. 
Because even to hear a Buddha or to see a Buddha or to come near to him, a certain love 
is needed, a certain search is needed on your part. 


When someone falls in love with an enlightened person it is meaningful, very 
meaningful. But arduous will be the path. It is easy to fall in love with an ordinary 
person, there is no challenge, but with an enlightened person the challenge will be much, 
and the path will be difficult, because you will have to travel all above. And those things 
will be disturbing. His love will be cold, his love will look as if it is for everyone, his 
love will not have the hatred part. 

This has been my experience. Many people fall in love with me, and then they start to 
play the game — the ordinary game. Knowingly or unknowingly, they start to play it. In a 
way it is natural. They start expecting things from me, ordinary expectations, and their 
mind works in the duality. For example, if you love me you will feel happy if you can 
make me happy. This is how love feels, it wants to make the other happy. If you can 
make me happy, you will feel happy — but you cannot make me happy, I am already. 

If you fall in love with me, you will feel dejected, you will feel very disappointed 
because you cannot make me happy, you cannot make me more happy, there is nothing 
more. If you cannot make me happy you will feel unhappy, and so you will try to make 
me unhappy! Because at least if you can do that, that too will be a satisfaction. You will 
try to make me unhappy — unknowingly, you are not alert, you are not aware of it. 

If you are aware you will not do it. But you will try — your unconscious mind will try to 
make me unhappy. If you can make me unhappy then you can be certain that you can 
make me happy also. But if you cannot make me unhappy you are totally disappointed. 
Then you will feel that you are not related to me at all, because this is what relationship 
means to you. 

Ordinary love is a disease because the duality goes on persisting. And to understand the 
love of an enlightened person is difficult. Intellectually there is no way to understand it. 
You have to fall in love. And then you have to be alert about your own mind because that 
mind will go on disturbing. 

Buddha became enlightened, then he came back to his home — he came back after twelve 
years. His wife, whom he had loved very much, was very angry, furious. All these twelve 
years she had been waiting and waiting — someday this man will come back. And she had 
much revenge in her mind because this man had done an injustice to her, he was unfair. 
Suddenly one night he had disappeared. At least he could have said something, then it 
would have been fair, but without saying anything he simply disappeared, leaving her 
and their small child. For twelve years she waited, and then Buddha came. She was 
furious, she was mad. 

Buddha's nearest, closest disciple was Anand. Anand had always followed him like a 



shadow. 


When Buddha was entering the palace he said to Anand, "Please don’t come with me." 
Anand asked why, because he had an ordinary mind, he was not enlightened. He became 
enlightened only when Buddha died. He said, "Why? Are you still thinking in terms of 
wife and husband? That you are going to meet your wife? Are you still thinking in terms 
of wife and husband?" He was shocked. How can a Buddha, an enlightened person, say, 
"Don’t come with me. I am going to meet my wife?" 

Buddha said, "That is not the point. She will get more furious seeing that I have come 
with someone. She has been waiting for twelve years. Let her be mad alone. She belongs 
to a very ancient family, very cultured So she will not be angry before you, she will not 
express anything — and she has been waiting for twelve years. So let her explode, don't 
come with me. I am not a husband to her now, but she is still a wife. I have changed, bust 
she has not changed." 

Buddha went alone. Of course she was furious, she started crying and weeping and 
screaming and saying things. And Buddha listened. She asked again and again, "If you 
loved me at all, why did you leave? Why did you go away? And without telling me. If 
you loved me at all, tell me this." And Buddha said, "If I didn’t love you, why should I 
have come back?" 

But these are two different things, totally different. She was not ready to hear what he 
would say. 

She went on insisting, "Why did you leave me alone? You tell me that you never loved 
me, then everything is settled." And Buddha said, "I did love you. I still love you. That is 
why I have come back after twelve years." But this love is different: she was angry and 
Buddha was not angry. If he had also been angry because she was screaming and 
weeping and crying, she could have understood. If he had also been angry and had beaten 
her, she could have understood. Then everything would have been okay. He was the old 
man. The twelve years would have disappeared completely and they would have loved 
again. There was no problem. But he was standing silently and she was mad. Only she 
was mad, he was smiling. This was too much! What type of love is this? It must have 
been very hard for her to understand. 

Just to taunt Buddha she told her son, who was not twelve years old, "This is your father, 
look at him, an escapist. You were just one day old when he escaped. This is your father. 
He is a beggar, and he gave birth to you. Now ask about the heritage. Spread your hands 
before him, he is your father. Ask him what he has to give to you." She was taunting 
Buddha, she was angry, naturally. And Buddha called Anand who was standing outside 
and said, "Anand, come and bring my begging bowl." When the begging bowl was given 
to Buddha, he gave it to his son, Rahul, and said, "This is my heritage. I initiate you into 
SANNYAS." This was his love. But Yashodhara got more mad. She said, "What are you 
doing? If you love your son, you will not make him a beggar, a SANNYASIN." Buddha 
said, "I make him a beggar because I love him. I know what real heritage is, and that I am 
giving to him. My father was not so wise, but I know what is worth giving and I am 
giving it." 

These are two different dimensions, two different languages, never meeting anywhere. 

He is loving. He must have loved his wife; that is why he came back. He must have loved 
his son; that is why he initiated him. But no father can understand this. 

When Buddha's father heard about this — he was an old man, ill — he came running out 



and he said, "What have you done? Are you bent on destroying my whole family? You 
escaped from the house, you were my only son. Now my hopes are on Rahul, he is your 
only son. And you have initiated him into SANNYAS. So my family is cut. Now there is 
no possibility for the future. What are you doing? Are you an enemy?" 

And Buddha said, "Because I love my son, I give him what is worth giving. Neither your 
kingdom nor your family and its tree is significant. It will make no difference to the 
world whether this tree goes on growing further or not. But the phenomenon of 
SANNYAS that Rahul is initiated into is something significant. I also love my son." 

Two fathers talking. 

... Buddha’s father was again pleading to him, "You come back. I am your father. I am 
old. I am angry. You have disappointed me. But still I have a father's heart and I will 
forgive you. Come, my doors are open. Come back. Throw this sannyas, come back, my 
doors are open. This kingdom is yours, I am waiting. I am very old but I have a deep love 
for you and I can forgive." This is love. 

Then there is the other father, Gautam Buddha himself, giving initiation to his son to 
leave the world. That too is love. 

But both loves are so different that it is not good to call them by one name, one word — 
but we don't have any other. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT LOVE IS ALIVE BECAUSE IT IS INSECURE, AND 
MARRIAGE IS DEAD BECAUSE IT IS SECURE. BUT ISN’T IT TRUE THAT LOVE 
IN THE SPIRITUAL DEPTH BECOMES MARRIAGE? 

No! It never becomes marriage. The deeper it goes the more love it becomes, but never a 
marriage. By marriage I mean an outer bond, a legal sanction, social approval. And I say 
that love never becomes a marriage because it is never secure. It remains love. It becomes 
more love, more and more, but the more it is, the more insecure it is. There is no security. 
But if you love, you don’t care about security at all. When you don’t love, only then you 
care about security. When you love, the very moment is so much that you don't care 
about the next moment, you don't care about the future. 

What happens tomorrow is not your concern — because what is happening right now is so 
much. It is too much. It is unbearably much. You don't care. Why does security come to 
the mind? It comes because of the future. Really, you are not rooted in the present. You 
are not living in the present. You are not enjoying it. It is not a bliss. The present is not a 
bliss. Then you hope for the future, then you plan for the future, then you want to make 
every security for the future. 

Love never wants to make any security, it is secure in itself. That is the point. It is so 
secure in itself that it never thinks about any security; what will happen in the future is 
not a concern at all — because the future is going to grow out of the present, and if the 
present is so alive, so blissful, the future will grow out of it. Why worry about it? 

When the present is not a bliss, when it is a misery, then you are worried about the future. 
Then you want to make it secure, safe. But remember, no one can make anything secure. 
That is not in the nature of things. The future will remain insecure. You can do only one 
thing: live the present more deeply. That is all you can do. If any security happens 
through that, that is the only security. And if it is not happening, it is not happening — 
nothing can be done. 



But our mind works in a completely suicidal way. The more miserable the present is, the 
more you think about the future and want to make it secure. 

And the more you move into the future, the more the present will be miserable. Then you 
are moving in a vicious circle. This circle can be broken, but the only way to break it is to 
live the present moment so deeply that this moment becomes the eternity in its depth. The 
future is going to be born out of it — it will take its own course, you need not worry about 
it. 

So I say that love never thinks of security because love is so secure in itself. Love is 
never afraid of insecurity. If it is there at all, if love is there at all, it is not afraid of 
insecurity. Life is insecure, but love is not afraid of insecurity. Rather, love enjoys 
insecurity because it gives color to life, changing seasons and moods. It gives tone. It is 
beautiful. The changing life is beautiful because there is always something to discover, 
there is always something to encounter which is new. 

Really, two lovers move in a constant discovery of each other. And the landscape is 
infinite. A loving heart is an infinite landscape. You can never finish it. There is no end 
to it. It goes on and on. It is as spacious as space itself. Love is not worried about 
insecurity, love can enjoy it. It gives a thrill. Only those who cannot love are afraid of 
insecurity, because they are not rooted in life. Those who cannot love are always secure 
in life. They waste their life just making it secure — and it is never secure. 

It cannot be. 

Security is the quality of death; safety is the quality of death. Life is insecure, and love is 
not afraid of it. Love is not afraid of life, insecurity, because it is so grounded. If you are 
not grounded and you feel a cyclone coming, you will be afraid. But if you are grounded 
you will welcome the cyclone, it will become an adventure. If you are rooted, the passing 
cyclone will become a challenge. You will be shaken to the very roots by it; every fibre 
will become alive. Then when the cyclone has gone you will not think that it was bad, a 
misfortune. You will say it was fortunate, a blessing, because all the deadness has been 
taken away by the cyclone. All that was dead has moved with it and all that was alive has 
become more alive. 

Look at the trees after the cyclone has gone. They are vibrating with life, pulsating with 
life, radiant, vital; energy is filling them. Because the cyclone gave then an opportunity to 
feel their roots, to feel their 'groundedness.’ It was an opportunity to feel themselves. 

So one who is rooted in love is never afraid of anything. Whatsoever comes is beautiful, 
a change — insecurity. Whatsoever happens is beautiful. But it never becomes a marriage. 
When I say it never becomes a marriage I don’t mean that lovers should not marry, but 
that marriage should not become a substitute for love. It should only be the outer garb, it 
should not be the substitute. 

And it will never become a marriage because lovers never take each other for granted. 
What I mean is that it is deeply psychological — lovers never take each other for granted. 
Once you start taking the other for granted, the other has become a thing. Now he is not a 
person. So marriage reduces the partners into things. A husband is a thing, a wife is a 
thing — predictable, very predictable. 

I have been staying in many families all over this country and I have come to know many 
wives and many husbands. They are not persons at all. They are predictable. If the 
husband asserts a sentence it can even be said what the wife will say. How the wife will 



react is predictable. And if the wife says something mechanically the husband will reply 
to it mechanically. It is certain. They are playing the same role again and again. Their life 
is just like a gramophone record when something goes wrong, when the needle sticks at a 
point and it goes on repeating. It is as predictable as that. You can tell what is going to 
happen again and again — the husband and wife are stuck somewhere, they have become 
phonograph records. Then they go on repeating. That repetition creates boredom. 

I was staying with a family. The husband said to me, "I have become afraid to be alone 
with my wife. Only when someone else is there are we both happy. We cannot even go 
for a holiday without taking someone with us because that someone gives something 
new. 

Otherwise we know what is going to happen. It is so predictable that it is not worth 
anything. We know it already." 

It is just as if you are reading the same book, again and again and again.... Lovers are not 
predictable. That is the insecurity. You don't know what is going to happen — and that is 
the beauty. You can be fresh and young and alive. But we want to make a thing of each 
other because a thing can be manipulated easily. And you need not be afraid of a thing. 
You know its whereabouts, its behavior. You can plan beforehand what to do and what 
not to do. By marriage I mean an arrangement in which two persons fall to the level of 
things. Love is not an arrangement: it is a moment to moment encounter, alive. Full of 
danger of course, but life is so. Marriage is safe, there is no danger; love is unsafe. You 
never know what is going to happen, the next moment is unknown, remains unknown. 

So love is entering every moment into the unknown — that is what Jesus means when he 
says, "God is love." God is as unknown as love. And if you are not ready to be alive and 
in love and insecure, you cannot move into God, because that is a greater insecurity, a 
greater unknownness. So love prepares you for prayer. If you can love, and remain with 
an unknown person without reducing him to a thing, without becoming predictable, 
encountering moment to moment, you are getting ready for prayer. 


Prayer is nothing but love — love for the whole existence. You are living with existence 
as you are living with your lover: you don’t know the mood, you don’t know the season, 
you don't know what is coming. Nothing is known. You go on uncovering it — it is an 
endless journey. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

CAN ONE WHO IS NOT ENLIGHTENED LIVE IN TOTAL INSECURITY AND NOT 
BE ANXIOUS, DEPRESSED AND MISERABLE? 

Total insecurity and the capacity to live in it are synonymous with enlightenment. So one 
who is not enlightened cannot live in total insecurity, and one who cannot live in total 
insecurity cannot become enlightened. These are not two things, they are just two ways 
of saying the same thing. So don't wait until you have become enlightened to live in 
insecurity, no! Because then you will never become enlightened. 

Start living in insecurity — that is the way towards enlightenment. And don’t think about 
total insecurity. Start from where you are. As you are you cannot be total in anything, but 
one has to make a start. In the beginning it will create anxiety, in the beginning you will 
feel miserable — but only in the beginning. If you can pass the beginning, if you can 
tolerate the beginning, the misery will disappear, the anxiety will disappear. 



The mechanism has to be understood. Why do you feel anxiety when you feel insecure? 

It is not because of insecurity, but because of the demand for security. 

When you feel insecure you feel anxious, anxiety arises. It is not arising because of 
insecurity, it is arising because of the demand to make life a security. If you start living 
insecurely and don't demand security, the anxiety will disappear when the demand goes. 
The demand is creating the anxiety. 

Insecurity is the very nature of life. It is an insecure world for a Buddha; for a Jesus it is 
also insecure. But they are not anxious because they have accepted the fact. They have 
become mature enough to accept a reality. 

This is my definition of maturity and immaturity. A person I call immature is one who 
goes on fighting against reality for fictions and dreams. This man is immature. Maturity 
means coming to terms with reality, throwing away dreams, and accepting the reality as it 
is. Buddha is mature. He accepts. It is so. For example, although there is death, an 
immature person goes on thinking that everyone may die but he is not going to die. An 
immature person goes on thinking that by the time he dies something will be discovered, 
some medical elixir, which means he will not die. An immature person goes on thinking 
that it is not the rule to die. Of course, many have died, but in everything there are 
exceptions, and he goes on thinking that he is an exception. 

Whenever someone dies you feel sympathetic, you feel, "Poor man, he has died." But it 
never comes to your mind that his death is your death also. 

No, you by-=pass it. You just don't touch such delicate matters. You go on thinking that 
something or other will save you — some mantra, some miracle-maker guru. Something 
will happen and you will be saved. You are living in stories, children's stories. A mature 
person is one who looks at the fact and accepts that life and death are together. Death is 
not the end, it is the very peak of life. It is not something like an accident which happens 
to life, it is something which grows in the very heart of life. It grows and comes to a 
peak. So he accepts and then there is no fear of death. He accepts that security is not 
possible. You can create a facade, you can have a bank balance, you can donate much 
money to have some security in heaven, you can do everything, but deep down you know 
nothing is really secure. The bank can cheat you, and no one knows that the priest is not a 
cheat, the greatest cheat. No one knows. They write letters.... 

In India, there is a Mohammedan sect, the head priest of which writes letters to God. You 
donate a particular amount of money and he will write a letter. The letter will be put with 
you in your tomb, in your grave. It will be put with you so you can produce the letter. 

The money goes to the priest, the letter goes with you. But nothing is secure. 

A mature person comes to terms with reality, he accepts it as it is. he doesn’t demand. 

He is not a demander. He doesn’t say, "It should be so." He looks at the fact and says, 
"Yes, it is so." This coming to terms with reality will make it impossible for you to be 
miserable — because misery comes when you demand. Really, misery is nothing else than 
an indication that you are moving against reality. And reality cannot be changed by you, 
you will have to be changed by reality. You will have to come to terms. You will have to 
yield. 

This is what the meaning of surrender is: you will have to yield. The reality cannot yield, 
the reality is as it is. Unless you yield, you will suffer. The misery is created by you 
because you go on fighting. It is just as if the current of a river is flowing towards the sea 



and you are trying to swim upcurrent. You feel the river is against you. The river is not 
against you. It has not even heard about you. It doesn’t know you at all. The river is 
simply flowing to the sea. It is a river's nature to flow to the sea, to move to the sea and to 
fall into it. You are trying to move upstream. 

And there may be some foolish fellows sitting or standing on the bank who go on 
inspiring you, "You are doing well. You shouldn’t be worried because sooner or later the 
river will have to yield. You are simply great, go on doing it! Those who are great, they 
have won over the river." There are always foolish people who go on giving you 
inspiration, giving you more enthusiasm. 

But no Alexander, no Napoleon, no great man, no one has ever been able to go upstream. 
Sooner or later the stream takes over. But when you are dead, you cannot enjoy the bliss 
that was possible while you were alive; the bliss of surrendering, of accepting, of 
becoming so one with the stream that there is no conflict. 

But those foolish people on the bank will say, "You have yielded, you are defeated, you 
are a failure." Don't listen to them, just enjoy the inner freedom that comes with yielding. 
Don't listen to them. 

When Buddha stopped trying to flow upstream, all those that knew him said, "You are an 
escapist. You are a failure. You have accepted defeat." Don’t listen to what others say. 
Feel the inner feeling. Feel what is happening to you. If you feel good flowing with the 
stream, this is the way. This is Tao for you. Don't listen to anybody, just listen to your 
own heart. Maturity accepts, whatsoever there is. 

I have heard an anecdote. A Mohammedan, a Christian and a Jew were asked a question. 
The question was the same. Someone asked all three, "What would you do if a tidal wave 
forces the ocean onto the land and you are drowned in it?" The Christian said, "I will 
make the sign of the cross on my heart, and pray to God to allow me into heaven, to open 
the doors." The Mohammedan said, "I will take the name of Allah, and will say that this 
is KISMAT, this is fate — and drown." 

The Jew said, "I will thank God and accept his will and leam to live under water." 

This has to be done. One has to accept the will of existence, the will of the universe, and 
learn how to live in it. This is the whole art. A mature person accepts whatsoever is here, 
doesn't demand, doesn’t talk about any heaven. The Christian was doing, he was asking, 
he was saying, "Open the doors of heaven." But he was also not a pessimist who simply 
accepts and is drowned. The Mohammedan was doing that. The Jew accepted, welcomed 
rather, and said, "This is the will, now I must learn how to live under water. This is God's 
will." 

Accept the reality as it is and learn how to live in it with a yielding heart, with a 
surrendered ego. 

The last question: 

Question 4 

YOU SAID YESTERDAY THAT LIFE EXISTS WITH DEATH. THEN PLEASE 
EXPLAIN WHAT IS THE NEED OF TRANSCENDENCE. 

This is the need. There is the need. Life exists with death... if you can understand this, 
you have transcended. 

You accept life, you don’t accept death. Or do you? You accept life but you reject death, 
and because of that you are always in trouble. You are in trouble because death is part of 
life. When you accept life, death is going to be there, but you reject death. When you 



reject death you have rejected life also because they are not two. So you will be in 
trouble. Either accept the whole, or reject the whole. 

That is transcendence. 

And there are two ways of transcending. Either accept both, life and death together, or 
reject both, life and death together — then you have transcended. These are the two ways, 
the negative and the positive. The negative says, "Reject both." The positive says, 

"Accept both" but the emphasis is that BOTH should be there, whether accepted or 
rejected. When both are there they negate each other, just like minus and plus. They 
negate each other, and when they are not, you have transcended. You are either attached 
to life or attached — sometimes — to death, but you never accept both. I have come across 
many people who are so dejected about life that they have started to think about 
committing suicide. First they are attached to life, then life frustrates — not that life 
frustrates, attachment frustrates, but they think life is frustrating — so they become 
attached to death. Now they start thinking about how to destroy themselves, how to 
commit suicide, how to die. But the attachment is there. Previously it was to life, now it 
is to death. So a person who is attached to life and a person who is attached to death are 
not different. Attachment is there and that attachment is the problem. Accept both. 

Just think. What will happen if you accept both, life and death? Immediately a silence 
will come to the mind, because they negate each other. 

Life and death both disappear when you accept them — then you have transcended, you 
have gone beyond. Or reject both — it is the same thing. 

Transcendence means going beyond duality. Attachment means remaining within duality, 
attached to one against the other. When you accept both or reject both, attachment falls. 
Your tie is unlocked. Suddenly you float into a third dimension of being, where neither 
life is nor death. That is nirvana, that is moksha — where both the dualities are not, but 
oneness, isness, is. And unless you transcend, you will always be in misery. 

You can change your attachment from this to that, but you will be in misery. Attachment 
creates misery. Rejection also creates misery. Whatsoever you choose, it is up to you. 

You can choose a positive path, like Krishna. He says "Accept. Accept both." Or you can 
choose a path like Buddha, who says, "Reject both." But do something with both 
together, then transcendence follows immediately. Even if you THINK of both, there will 
be transcendence. And if you can do it in real life, a new being is born. That being doesn’t 
belong to the earth of duality, that being belongs to an unknown realm — the realm of 
nirvana. 


THE END. 



Chapter 73: Fear of transformation 


THE APPRECIATION OF OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS IS THE SAME FOR AN 
ENLIGHTENED AS FOR AN UNENLIGHTENED PERSON. THE FORMER HAS 
ONE GREATNESS: HE REMAINS IN THE SUBJECTIVE MOOD, NOT LOST IN 
THINGS. 

BELIEVE OMNISCIENT, OMNIPOTENT, PERVADING. 

Many people seem to be interested in meditation, but that interest cannot be very deep 
because so very few are transformed through it. If the interest is really deep, it becomes a 
fire by itself. It transforms you. Just through intense interest you start becoming different. 
A new center of being arises. So many people seem to be interested but nothing new 
arises in them, no new center is bom, no new crystallization is achieved. They remain the 
same. 

That means they are deceiving themselves. The deception is very subtle but it is bound to 
be there. If you go on taking medicine, having treatments, and the illness remains the 
same — rather on the contrary, it goes on increasing — then your medicine, your 
treatment, is bound to be false. Maybe deep down you don't want to be transfonned. That 
fear is very real — the fear of transformation. So on the surface you go on thinking that 
you are deeply interested, but deep down you go on deceiving. 

The fear of transformation is just like the fear of death. It is a death, because the old will 
have to go and the new will come into being. You will be there no more, something 
totally unknown to you will be born out of you. 

Unless you are ready to die, your interest in meditation is false, because only those who 
are ready to die will be reborn. The new cannot become a continuity with the old. The old 
must be discontinued. The old must go. Only then can the new come into being. The new 
is not an outgrowth of the old, the new is not continuous with it — the new is totally new. 
And it comes only when the old dies. There is a gap between the old and the new — that 
gap gives you the fear. You are afraid. You want to be transformed but simultaneously 
you want to remain the old. This is the deception. You want to grow, but you want to 
remain you. Then growth is impossible; then you can only deceive; then you can go on 
thinking and dreaming that something is happening, but nothing will happen because the 
basic point has been missed. 

So there are many people all over the world who are very interested in meditation, 
moksha, nirvana, and nothing is happening. There is so much noise about it but nothing 
real is happening. What is the matter? 

Sometimes the mind is so cunning that because you don't want to be transformed, the 
mind will create a superficial interest so that you can say to yourself, "You are interest, 
you are doing whatsoever can be done." And you remain the same. And if nothing 
happens, you think that the technique you are using is wrong, the guru you are following 
is wrong, the scripture, the principle, the method, is wrong. 

You never think that even with a wrong method transformation is possible if the real 
interest is there; even with a wrong method you will be transfonned. If you are really 
interested in transformation, you will become different even if following a wrong guru. If 
your soul and your heart is in your effort, no one can mislead you except yourself. And 



nothing is a barrier to your progress except your own deceptions. 

When I say that even a wrong master, a wrong method, a wrong principle, can lead you 
to the real, I mean that the real transfonnation happens when you are intensely involved 
in it, not through any method. The method is just a device, the method is just a help, the 
method is secondary — your being involved in it is the fundamental thing. But you go on 
doing something — not even doing, you go on talking about doing. And words create an 
illusion: because you think so much about it, you read so much about it, you listen so 
much about it, that you start feeling you are doing something. So-called religious persons 
have developed many deception devices. 

I have heard that a motorist, driving along a road, saw the school building on fire. The 
teacher of the small school of that small village was Mulla Nasruddin. He was sitting 
under a tree. The motorist called to him, "What are you doing there? The school building 
is on fire!" Mulla Nasruddin said, "I know about it." 

The motorist was much excited. He said, "Then why are you not doing something?" 

Mulla Nasruddin said, "Ever since it started I have been praying for rain. I am doing 
something." 

Prayer is a trick to avoid meditation, and the so-called religious mind has developed 
many types of prayer. Prayer can also become a meditation — when it is not only a 
prayer, it is a deep effort, a deep involvement. Prayer can also become meditation, but 
ordinarily prayer is just an escape. To avoid meditation, people go on praying. To avoid 
doing anything they pray. Prayer means that God must do something. Someone else must 
do. Prayer means that we are passive — something must be done to us. Meditation is not 
prayer in that sense: meditation is something you do to yourself. And when you are 
transformed, the whole universe behaves differently to you, because the universe is 
nothing but a response to you, whatsoever you are. If you are silent, the whole universe 
responds to your silence in thousands and thousands of ways. It reflects you. Your silence 
is multiplied infinitely. If you are blissful, the whole universe rejects your bliss. If you 
are in misery, the same happens. The mathematics remains the same, the law remains the 
same: the universe goes on multiplying your misery. Prayer won’t do. Only meditation 
can help because meditation is something to be done authentically by you, it is a doing on 
your part. 


So the first thing I would like to say to you is be constantly alert that you are not 
deceiving yourself. You may be doing something and still deceiving yourself. 

I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin once came running into a post office, grasping the 
postmaster by the lapel, shook him, and said, "I have gone crazy. My wife has 
disappeared!" The postmaster felt sorry and he said, "Really, she has disappeared? 
Unfortunately this is a postal department — you have to go to the police department to 
report this disappearance." Mulla Nasruddin shook his head negatively and said, "I am 
not going to be caught again. In the past my wife also disappeared and when I reported it 
to the police department, they found her. I am not going to be caught again. If you can 
take the report, take it, otherwise I am going." 

He wants to report to feel good, to feel that he has done whatsoever can be done. But he 
doesn't want to report to the police department because he is afraid. 

You go on doing things just to feel good, just to feel that you are doing something. But 
really you are not ready to be transformed. So all that you do just passes as useless 



activity — not only useless, harmful also, because it is a wastage of time, energy, and 
opportunity. These techniques of Shiva are only for those who are ready to do. You can 
ponder over them philosophically — that means nothing. 

But if you are actually ready to do, then something will start happening to you. They are 
alive methods, not dead doctrines. Your intellect is not needed; your totality of being is 
required. And any method will do. If you are ready to give it a chance, any method will 
do. You will become a new man. 

Methods are devices, I will repeat again. If you are ready, then any method can do. They 
are just tricks to help you to take the jump, they are just like jumping boards. From any 
jumping board you can jump into the ocean. The jumping boards are insignificant: what 
color they are, what wood they are made of is irrelevant. They are simply jumping boards 
and you can take a jump from them. All these methods are jumping boards. Whatsoever 
method takes your fancy, don't go on thinking about it, do it! 

Difficulties will arise when you start doing something — if you don’t do anything there 
will be no difficulty. Thinking is very easy doing because you are not really traveling, but 
when you start doing something, difficulties arise. So if you see that difficulties have 
arisen, you can feel that you are on the right track — something is happening to you. Then 
old barriers will break, old habits will go, there will be change, there will be disturbance 
and chaos. All creativity comes out of chaos. You will be created anew only if all that 
you are becomes chaotic. So these methods will destroy you first, then only will a new 
being be created. 

If there are difficulties, feel fortunate — that shows growth. No growth is smooth... and 
spiritual growth cannot be smooth, that is not its nature. Because spiritual growth means 
growing upwards, spiritual growth means reaching into the unknown, reaching into the 
uncharted. Difficulties will be there. But remember that with each difficulty that is passed 
you are crystalized. You become more solid. You become more real. For the first time 
you will feel something centering within you, something becoming solid. 

As you are now you are just a liquid phenomenon, changing every moment, nothing 
stable. Really you cannot claim any T — you don't have one. You are many 'I's' just in a 
flow, a river-like flow. You are a crowd, not an individual yet. But meditation can make 
you an individual. 

This word 'individual' is beautiful: it means indivisible. Right now as you are, you are 
divided. You are only many fragments clinging together anyhow without any center 
being there, without any master in the house, with only servants. And for a moment any 
servant can become the master. 

Every moment you are different because you are not — and unless you are, the Divine 
cannot happen to you. To whom can it happen? You are not there. People come to me 
and they say, "We would like to see God." I ask them, "Who will see? You are not there. 
God is always there, but you are not there to see. 

It is just a passing thought that you want to see God." The next moment they are not 
interested; the next moment they have forgotten all about it. A persistent, intense effort 
and longing is needed. Then any method will do. 

Now, we should enter the methods. 

The first method: 

THE APPRECIATION OF OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS IS THE SAME FOR AN 



ENLIGHTENED AS FOR AN UNENLIGHTENED PERSON. THE FORMER HAS 
ONE GREATNESS: HE REMAINS IN THE SUBJECTIVE MOOD, NOT LOST IN 
THINGS. 

There is a very beautiful method. You can start it as you are; no other prerequisite is 
needed. The method is simple: you are surrounded by persons, things, phenomena — 
every moment something is around you. Things are there, events are there, persons are 
there — but because you are not alert, you are not there. Everything is there but you are 
fast asleep. Things move around you, persons move around you, events move around 
you, but you are not there. Or, you are asleep. 

So whatsoever happens in your surroundings becomes a master, becomes a force over 
you; you are dragged by it. You are not only impressed, conditioned by it, you are 
dragged by it. 

Anything can catch you, and you will follow it. Somebody passes — you look, the face is 
beautiful — and you are carried away. The dress is beautiful, the color, the material is 
beautiful — you are carried away. The car passes — you are carried away. 

Whatsoever happens around you, catches you. You are not powerful. Everything else is 
more powerful than you. Anything changes you. Y our mood, your being, your mind, 
depend on other things. Objects influence you. 

This sutra says that enlightened persons and unenlightened persons live in the same 
world. A Buddha and you both live and move in the same world — the world remains the 
same. The difference is not in the world, the difference happens in the Buddha: he moves 
in a different way. He moves among the same objects but he moves in a different way. 

He is his own master. His subjectivity remains aloof and untouched. That is the secret. 
Nothing can impress him; nothing from the outside can condition him; nothing can 
overpower him. He remains detached; he remains himself. If he wants to go somewhere, 
he will go, but he will remain the master. If he wants to pursue a shadow, he will pursue 
it, but it is his own decision. 

This distinction must be understood. By 'detachment’ I don’t mean a person who has 
renounced the world — then there is no sense and no meaning in detachment. A detached 
person is a person who is living in the same world as you — the difference is not in the 
world. A person who renounces the world is changing the situation, not himself. And you 
will insist on changing the situation if you cannot change yourself. That is the indication 
of a weak personality. 

A strong person, alert and aware, will start to change himself... not the situation in which 
he is. Because really the situation cannot be changed — even if you can change the 
situation, there will be other situations. Every moment situations go on changing so every 
moment the problem will be there. 

This is the difference between the religious and the non-religious attitude. The non- 
religious attitude is to change the situation, the surrounding. It doesn’t believe in you, it 
believes in situations: when the situation is okay, you will be okay. You are dependent on 
the situation: if the situation is not okay, you will not be okay. So you are not an 
independent entity. For communists, Marxists, socialists, and all those who believe in 
changing the situation, you are not important; really, you don’t exist. Only the situation 
exists and you are just a mirror which reflects the situation. The religious attitude says 
that as you are you may be a mirror, but this is not your destiny — you can become 
something more, someone who is not dependent. 



There are three steps of growth. Firstly, the situation is the master, you are just dragged 
by it. You believe that 'you are’, but you are not. Secondly, 'you are’, and the situation 
cannot drag you, the situation cannot influence you because you have become a will, you 
are integrated and crystalized. Thirdly, you start influencing the situation: just by your 
being there, the situation changes. 


The first state is that of the unenlightened; the second state is of the person who is 
constantly aware but as yet unenlightened — he has to be alert, he has to do something to 
be alert. The alertness has not become natural yet so he has to fight. If he loses 
consciousness or alertness for a single moment, he will be in the influence of the thing. 

So he has to stand on his toes continuously. He is the seeker, the SADHAK, the one who 
is practising something. The third state is that of the SIDDHA, the enlightened one. He is 
not trying to be alert, he simply is alert — there is no effort to it. Alertness is just like 
breathing: it goes on, he does not have to maintain it. When alertness becomes a 
phenomenon like breathing, natural, SAHAJ, spontaneous, then this type of person, this 
type of centered being, automatically influences situations. Situations change around him 
— not that he wishes them to change, but he is powerful. 

Power is the thing to be remembered. You are powerless so anything can overpower you. 
And power comes through alertness, awareness: the more alert, the more powerful; the 
less alert, the less powerful. Look... while you are asleep even a dream becomes powerful 
because you are fast asleep, you have lost all consciousness. Even a dream is powerful, 
and you are so weak that you cannot even doubt it. Even in an absurd dream you cannot 
be skeptical, you will have to believe it. 

And while it lasts, it looks real. You may see just absurd things in the dream, but while 
you are dreaming, you cannot doubt. You cannot say this is not real; you cannot say this 
is a dream; you cannot say this is impossible. You simply cannot say it because you are 
so fast asleep. When consciousness is not there even a dream affects you. While awake, 
you will laugh and you will say, "It was absurd, impossible, this cannot happen. This 
dream was just illusory." But you have not noticed that while it was there you were 
influenced by it, you were totally taken over by it. Why was a dream so powerful? The 
dream was not powerful — you were powerless. Remember this: when you are powerless 
even a dream becomes powerful. 

While you are awake, a dream cannot influence you, but reality, the so-called reality 
around, does. An awakened person, an enlightened person, has become so alert that your 
reality also cannot influence him. If a woman passes, a beautiful woman, you are 
suddenly carried away. Desire has arisen, the desire to possess. If you are alert, the 
woman will pass by, but the desire will not arise — you have not been influenced, you 
have not been taken over. When this happens for the first time, when things move around 
you and you are not influenced, you will feel a subtle joy of being. For the first time 
really you feel that you are; nothing can drag you out of you. 

If you want to follow, that is another thing. That is your decision. But don’t deceive 
yourself. You can deceive. You can say, "Yes. The woman is not powerful, but I want to 
follow her, I want to possess her." You can deceive. Many people go on deceiving. But 
you are deceiving nobody except yourself — then it is futile. Just take a close look: you 
will know the desire is there. The desire comes first, and then you start rationalizing it. 



For an enlightened person, things are there and he is there but there is no bridge between 
him and the thing. The bridge has broken. He moves alone. He lives alone. He follows 
himself. Nothing else can possess him. Because of this feeling we have called this 
attainment MOKSHA — total freedom, MUKTI. He is totally free. 

Ah over the world, man has searched for freedom; you cannot find a man who is not 
hankering after freedom in his own way. Through many paths man tries to find a state of 
being where he can be free, and he resents anything that gives him a feeling of bondage. 
He hates it. Anything that hinders, that makes him imprisoned, he fights. He struggles 
against it. Hence so many political fights, so many wars, revolutions; hence so many 
continuous family fights — wife and husband, father and son, all fighting each other. The 
fight is basic. The fight is for freedom. The husband feels confined, the wife has 
imprisoned him — now his freedom is cut. 

And the wife feels the same. They both resent each other, they both fight, they both try to 
destroy the bondage. The father fights the son because every stage of growth in the son 
means more freedom for him. And the father feels he is losing something: power, 
authority. In families, in nations, in civilizations, man is hankering after only one thing — 
freedom. 

But nothing is achieved through political fights, revolutions, wars. Nothing is achieved. 
Because even if you get freedom, it is superficial — deep down you remain in bondage. 

So every freedom proves a disillusionment. Man longs so much for wealth, but as far as I 
understand it, it is not a longing for wealth, it is a longing for freedom. Wealth gives you 
a feeling of freedom. If you are poor, you are confined, your means are limited — you 
cannot do this, you cannot do that. You don’t have the money to do it. The more money 
you have, the more you feel you have freedom, you can do anything you like. But when 
you have all the money and you can do all that you wish, imagine, dream about, suddenly 
you feel this freedom is superficial, because inside your being knows well that you are 
powerless and that anything can attract you. You are impressed, influenced, possessed by 
things and persons. 

This sutra says that you have to come to a state of consciousness where nothing 
impresses you, you can remain detached. 

How to do it? Throughout the whole day the opportunity is there to do it. That is why I 
say this method is good for you to do. Any moment you can become aware that 
something is possessing you. Then take a deep breath, inhale deeply, exhale deeply, and 
look at the thing again. While you are exhaling look at the thing again, but look just as a 
witness, as a spectator. If you can achieve the witnessing state of mind for even a single 
moment, suddenly you will feel you are alone, nothing can impress you; at least in that 
moment nothing can create desire in you. Take a deep breath and exhale it whenever you 
feel that something is impressing you, influencing you, dragging you away from you, 
becoming more important than yourself. And in that small gap created by the exhalation 
look at the thing — a beautiful face, a beautiful body, a beautiful building, or anything. If 
you feel it is difficult, if just by exhaling you cannot create a gap, then do one thing more: 
exhale, and stop inhalation for a single moment so the exhalation has thrown all the air 
out. Stop, don't inhale. Then look at the thing. When the air is out, or in, when you have 
stopped breathing, nothing can influence you. In that moment you are unbridged — the 
bridge is broken. Breathing is the bridge. Try it. It will be only for a single moment that 
you will have the feeling of witnessing, but that will give you the taste, that will give you 



the feeling of what witnessing is. 


Then you can pursue it. Throughout the whole day, whenever something impresses you 
and a desire arises, exhale, stop in the interval, and look at the thing. The thing will be 
there, you will be there, but there will be no bridge. Breathing is the bridge. Suddenly 
you will feel you are powerful, you are potential. And the more powerful you feel, the 
more YOU will become. The more things drop, the more their power over you drops, the 
more crystalized you will feel. Individuality has begun. Now you have a center to refer 
to, and any moment you can move to the center and the world disappears. Any moment 
you can take shelter in your own center, and the world is powerless. 

This sutra says, THE APPRECIATION OF OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS IS THE SAME 
FOR AN ENLIGHTENED AS FOR AN UNENLIGHTENED PERSON. THE FORMER 
HAS ONE GREATNESS: HE REMAINS IN THE SUBJECTIVE MOOD, NOT LOST 
IN THINGS. He remains in the subjective mood, he remains within himself, he remains 
centered in consciousness. Remaining in the subjective mood has to be practised. As 
many opportunities as you can get, try it. And every moment there is an opportunity, 
every single moment there is an opportunity. Something or other is impressing you, 
dragging you out, pulling you out, pushing you in. 

I am reminded of an old story. A great king, Bharthruhari, renounced the world. He 
renounced the world because he had lived in it totally and he had come to realize that it 
was futile. 

It was not a doctrine to him, it was a lived reality. He had come to the conclusion through 
his own life. He was a man of strong desire, he had indulged in life as much as possible, 
then suddenly he realized it was useless, futile. So he left the world, he renounced it, and 
he went to a forest. 

One day he was meditating under a tree. The sun was rising. Suddenly he became aware 
that just on the road, the small road which passed nearby the tree, lay a very big diamond. 
As the sun was rising, it was reflecting the rays. Even Bharthruhari had not seen such a 
big diamond before. Suddenly, in a moment of unawareness, a desire arose to possess it. 
The body remained unmoved, but the mind moved. The body was in the posture of 
meditation, SIDDHASANA, but the meditation was no longer there. Only the dead body 
was there, the mind had moved — it had gone to the diamond. 

Before the king could move, two men came from different directions on their horses and 
simultaneously they became aware of the diamond lying on the street. They pulled out 
their swords, each one claiming that he had sene the diamond first. There was no other 
way to decide so they had to fight. They fought and killed each other. Within moments 
two dead bodies were lying there next to the diamond. Bharthruhari laughed, closed his 
eyes, and went into meditation again. 

What happened? He again realized the futility. 

And what happened to these two men? The diamond became more meaningful than their 
whole life. This is what possession means: they threw away their life just for a stone. 
When desire is there, you are no more — desire can lead you to suicide. Really, every 
desire is leading you to suicide. When you are in the power of a desire, you are not in 
your senses, you are just mad. 

The desire to possess arose in Bharthruhari's mind also; in a fragment of a moment the 
desire arose. And he might have moved to get it but before he could, the other two 



persons came and fought, and there were two dead bodies lying on the road with the 
stone there in its own place. Bharthruhari laughed, closed his eyes, and went into his 
meditation again. For a single moment his subjectivity was lost. A stone, a diamond, the 
object, became more powerful. But again the subjectivity was regained. Without the 
diamond the whole world disappeared, and he closed his eyes. 

For centuries meditators have been closing their eyes. Why? It is only symbolic that the 
world has disappeared, that there is nothing to look at, that nothing is worth anything, 
even to look at. You will have to remember continuously that whenever desire arises, you 
have moved out of your subjectivity. This is the world, this movement. Regain, move 
back, get centered again! You will be able to do it: the capacity is there with everyone. 

No one ever loses the inner potential, it is always there. You can move. If you can move 
out, you can move in. If I can go out of my house, why can I not come back within it? 

The same route is to be traveled; the same legs are to be used. If I can go out, I can come 
in. Every moment you are moving out, but whenever you move out, remember — and 
suddenly come back. Be centered. If you feel it difficult in the beginning then take a deep 
breath, exhale, and stop. In that moment look at the thing which was attracting you. 
Really, nothing was attracting you, YOU were attracted. That diamond lying there on the 
road in the lonely forest was not attracting anybody, it was simply lying there being 
itself. The diamond was not aware that Bharthruhari had been attracted, that someone had 
moved from his meditation, from his subjectivity, had come back into the world. The 
diamond was not aware that two persons had fought for it and lost their lives. 

So nothing is attracting you — YOU get attracted. Be alert and the bridge will be broken 
and you will regain balance inside. Go on doing it more and more. The more you do, the 
better. And a moment will come when you will not need to do it because the inner power 
will give you such a strength that the attraction of things will be lost. It is your weakness 
which is attracted. Be more powerful and nothing will attract you. Only then for the first 
time are you master of your own being. 


That will give you real freedom. No political freedom, no economic freedom, no social 
freedom, can be of much help. Not that they are not desirable, they are good, good in 
themselves, but they will not give you the things which the innermost core of your being 
is longing for — the freedom from things, from objects, the freedom to be oneself without 
any possibility of being possessed by anything or anybody. 

The second technique is similar in a way, but it is from a different dimension. 

BELIEVE OMNISCIENT, OMNIPOTENT, PERVADING. 

This too is based on inner power, inner strength. It is very seed-like. Believe that you are 
omniscient, all-knowing; believe that you are omnipotent, all-powerful; believe that you 
are pervading, all-pervading.... How can you believe it? It is impossible. You know you 
are not all-knowing, you are ignorant. You know you are not all-potent, you are 
absolutely powerless, helpless. You know you are not all-pervading, you are confined in 
a small body. So how can you believe it? And if you believe it, knowing well that this is 
not the case, the belief will be useless. You cannot believe against yourself. You can 
force a belief, but it will be useless, meaningless. You know it is not so. A belief becomes 
useful only when you know that it is so. 

This has to be understood. A belief becomes powerful if you know that this is the case. 



True or untrue is not the point. If you know that this is the case, a belief becomes truth. If 
you know that this is not the case, then even a truth cannot become a belief. Why? Many 
things have to be understood. 

Firstly, whatsoever you are is your belief: you believe in that way, you have been brought 
up in that way; you have been conditioned in that way, so you believe in that way. And 
your belief influences you. It becomes a vicious circle. For example, there are races 
where man is less powerful than woman, because those races believe that a woman is 
stronger, more powerful, than man. Their belief has become a fact. In those races, man is 
weaker and woman is stronger. The women do all the work that ordinarily, in other 
countries, men would do, and men do the work that in other countries women would do. 
Not only that, their bodies are weak, their structure is weak. They have come to believe 
that this is so. The belief creates the phenomenon. Belief is creative. 

Why does this happen? Because mind is more powerful than matter. If mind really 
believes something, matter has to follow. Matter cannot do anything against the mind 
because matter is dead. Even impossibilities happen. Jesus says, "Faith can move 
mountains." Faith CAN move mountains. If it cannot, it only means that you don't have 
faith — not that faith cannot move mountains. Your faith cannot move them because you 
don’t have the faith. 


Now much research is going on on this phenomenon of belief, and science is coming to 
many unbelievable conclusions. Religion always believed in them but science is finally 
coming to the same conclusions. It has to because many phenomena are being 
investigated for the first time. For example, you may have heard about placebo 
medicines. There are hundreds and hundreds of 'pathies' in the world — allopathy, 
ayurvedic, unani, homeopathy, naturopathy — hundreds, and they all claim that they can 
cure. And they do cure. Their claims are not false. This is the rare thing — their diagnosis 
is different, their treatment is different. There is one illness and there are a hundred and 
one diagnoses, and a hundred and one treatments, and every treatment helps. So the 
question is bound to be raised whether it is really the treatment that helps or the belief of 
the patient. This is possible. 

In many ways, in many countries, in many universities, in many hospitals, they are 
working. Just water or something non-medicinal is given but the patient believes that a 
medicine has been given. And not only the patient, the doctor also believes it, because he 
also is not aware. If the doctor is aware whether it is medicine or not, it will have an 
effect, because the doctor gives a belief to the patient more that a medicine. So when you 
pay more and you have a greater doctor, you get well better and sooner. 

It is a question of belief. If the doctor gives you a four-penny medicine, just four pennies, 
you know well that nothing is going to happen. How can such a big patient with such a 
disease, such a great phenomenon, be cured by four pennies? Impossible! The belief 
cannot be created. Every doctor has to create around him an aura of belief. It helps. So if 
the doctor knows that it is just water that he is giving, he will not give his belief with 
faith. His face will show, his hands will show, his whole attitude and behavior will show 
that he is giving just water, and the unconscious of the patient will be affected. The 
doctor must believe. The more he believes the better, because his belief is infectious. The 
patient looks at the doctor. If the doctor feels confident — "Don’t worry, this is a new 
treatment, a new medicine and this is going to help you. It is a hundred per cent certain. 



There is no doubt about it" — if the whole personality of the doctor gives the impression 
of a hundred per cent hope, then already, even before taking the medicine, the patient is 
being cured. The cure has already started. Now they say that whatsoever you use, thirty 
per cent of the patients will be cured almost immediately; whatsoever you use — 
allopathy, naturopathy, homeopathy, or any 'pathy' — whatsoever you do, thirty per cent 
of the patients will be cured immediately. 

Those thirty per cent are believers. 

That's the ratio. If I look at you, into you, thirty per cent are potential, are ones who can 
immediately be transfonned. Once they get the belief, it will immediately start working. 
One third of humanity can be immediately transfonned, changed, to new orders of being 
without any difficulty. The question is only how to create the belief in them. Once the 
belief is there, nothing can debar them. You may be one of those fortunate ones, one of 
the thirty per cent. But a great misfortune has happened to humanity, and that is that 
those thirty per cent are condemned. Society, education, civilization, all condemn them. 
They are thought to be stupid people. No, they are more potential people. They have a 
great power but they are condemned, and impotent intellectual people are praised — 
because they can praise with language, words, reason, they are praised. Really, they are 
simply impotent. They cannot do anything in the real world of inner being, they can just 
go on with their mind. But they possess the universities, they possess the news media, 
they are the masters in a way. And they are artists in condemnation. They can condemn 
anything. And this thirty per cent of potential humanity, those who can believe and can 
get transformed, they are not so articulate — they cannot be. They cannot reason, they 
cannot argue, that's why they can believe. But because they cannot argue their case they 
have themselves become self-condemning. 

They think something is wrong. If you can believe, you start feeling that something is 
wrong with you; if you can doubt, you think something is great with you. But doubt is not 
a force. Through doubt no one ever got to the innermost being, to the ultimate ecstasy, no 
one, ever. 

If you can believe, then this sutra will be helpful. BELIEVE OMNISCIENT, 
OMNIPOTENT, PERVADING. You are that already so just by believing it, all that is 
hiding you, all that is covering you, will fall down immediately. But even for those thirty 
per cent it will be difficult because they are also conditioned to believe in something 
which is not the case. They are also conditioned to doubt; they are also trained to be 
skeptical; and they know their limitations, so how can they believe? Or, if they believe, 
people will think they are mad. If you say that you believe that inside you is the all- 
pervading, the omnipotent, the Divine, the all-powerful, then people will look at you and 
think you have gone crazy. How can you believe such things unless you are mad? 

But try something. Start from the very beginning. Get a little feeling of this phenomenon, 
then belief will follow. If you want to use this technique, do this. Close your eyes and just 
feel that you have no body, feel as if the body has disappeared, melted away. Then you 
can feel your all-pervadingness. With the body it is difficult. That's why many traditions 
go on teaching that you are not the body because with the body, limitation comes in. 

It is not difficult to feel that you are not the body, because you are not the body. It is just 
a conditioning, it is just a thought that has been forced upon your mind. Your mind has 
been impregnated with the thought that you are the body. 



There are phenomena which demonstrate this. In Ceylon, Buddhist monks walk on fire. 
They do in India also, but the Ceylonese phenomenon is very rare — they walk for hours 
and they are not burned. 

It happened once, just a few years ago, that a Christian missionary went to see the fire- 
walk. They do it on the night when Buddha became enlightened, a full moon night — 
because they say that on that day it was revealed to the world that the body is nothing, 
matter is nothing; that the inner being is all-pervading and the fire cannot burn it. But to 
do this for one year the monks who walk on the fire purify their bodies, through 
PRANAYAMA, breathing processes, and fasting. They meditate to purify their minds, 
empty their minds. For one year continuously they prepare. They live in isolated cells just 
feeling that they are not in their bodies. For one year continuously a group of fifty or 
sixty monks goes on thinking that they are not their bodies. A year is a long time. 
Thinking every moment only one thing — that they are not their bodies — continuously 
hammering that the body is illusory, they come to believe it. Then too they are not forced 
to walk on the fire. 

They are brought to the fire and then whosoever thinks that he will not be burned, jumps 
into it. A few remain doubting, hesitating — they are not allowed to jump because this is 
not a question of fire burning or not, this is a question of their doubt. If they hesitate a 
little they are stopped. So sixty are prepared and sometimes twenty, sometimes thirty 
people jump into the fire and they dance in it for hours together without getting burned. 

A missionary came to see it in nineteen-fifty. He was very surprised but he thought that if 
belief in Buddha could do this miracle, then why not belief in Jesus? So he thought for a 
while, hesitated a little, but then, with the idea that if Buddha could help, Jesus would 
also help, he jumped. He got burned, badly burned; he had to be hospitalized for six 
months. And he couldn’t understand the phenomenon. It was not a question of Jesus or 
Buddha, it was not a question of belief in someone, it was a question of belief. And that 
belief has to be hammered into the mind. Unless it reaches to the very core of your being, 
it will not start working. 

That Christian missionary went back to England to study about hypnosis, mesmerism, 
and allied phenomena, and what happens during fire-walking. Then they invited two 
monks to Oxford University to give a demonstration. The monks went. They walked on 
fire. The experiment was tried many times. 

Then the two monks saw that one professor was looking at them, and he was looking so 
deeply and he was so involved that his eyes, his face, were ecstatic. The two monks went 
to the professor and said to him, "You can also come with us." Immediately he ran with 
them, jumped into the fire, and nothing happened, he was not burned. The Christian 
missionary was also present, and he knew well that this professor was a professor of 
logic, a man who is professionally doubtful, whose profession is based on doubt. So he 
said to the man, "What! You have done a miracle. I couldn't do it, and I am a believer." 
The professor said, "In that moment I was a believer. The phenomenon was so real, so 
fantastically real, it gripped me. It was so clear that body is nothing and mind is 
everything and I felt so ecstatically in tune with the two monks that when they invited 
me, there was not a single hesitation. It was simple to walk, it was just as if there was no 
fire." 

There was no hesitation, no doubt — that is the key. 

So first try this experiment. Sit with closed eyes for a few days just thinking that you are 



not your body — not only thinking but feeling that you are not your body. And if you sit 
with closed eyes a distance is created. Your body goes on moving away and away. You 
go on moving inwards. A great distance is created. Soon you can feel that you are not the 
body. If you feel you are not the body, then you can believe you are all-pervading, 
omnipotent, omniscient, all-knowing, all-powerful. 

This all-powerfulness or this all-knowingness is not concerned with so-called knowledge: 
it is a feeling, an explosion of feeling — that you KNOW. This has to be understood, 
particularly in the West, because whenever you say that you know, they will say, "What? 
What do you know?" Knowledge must be objective. You must know something. And if it 
is a question of knowing something you cannot be all-pervading, no one can be, because 
there are infinite facts to be known. No one can be all-knowing in that sense. 

That's why in the West they laugh when Jains claim that Mahavir was SARVAGYA, all- 
knowing. They laugh, because if Mahavir was all-knowing, then he must have known all 
that science is discovering now and even that which science will discover in future. But 
that doesn’t seem to be the case. He says many things which are obviously contradictory 
to science, which cannot be true, which are not factual. His knowledge, if it is all- 
pervading, should never be erroneous. But there are errors. 

Christians believe that Jesus was all-knowing. But the modern mind will laugh because 
he was not all-knowing — all-knowing in the sense of knowing all about the facts of the 
world. He didn’t know that the earth was circular, that the earth was a globe — he didn't 
know. He knew that the earth was flat ground. He didn’t know that the earth had been in 
existence for millions and millions of years, he believed that God created it just four 
thousand years before him. 

As far as facts, objective facts are concerned, he was not all-knowing. 

But this word 'all-knowing' is totally different. When the Eastern sages say 'all-knowing', 
they don’t mean knowing all about the facts — they mean all-conscious, all-aware, fully 
inside, fully conscious, enlightened. They are not concerned with knowing something, 
they are concerned only with the pure phenomenon of knowing — not knowledge, but the 
very quality of knowing. When we say that Buddha knows we don’t mean that he knows 
what Einstein knows. He doesn't know that. He is a knower. He knows his own being and 
that being is all-pervading. That feeling of isness is all-pervading. And in that knowing 
nothing remains to be known, that is the point. Now there is no curiosity to know 
anything. All questions have dropped. Not that all answers have been achieved, all 
questions have dropped. Now there is no question to be asked. All curiosity has gone. 
There is no problem to be solved. This inner quietness, this inner silence, filled with inner 
light, is infinite knowing. This is what is meant by omniscient. It is subjective awakening. 
This you can do. But it will not happen if you go on adding more knowledge to your 
mind. You can go on adding knowledge for lives together — you will know something 
but you will never know all. The all is infinite; it cannot be known in that way. Science 
will always remain incomplete, it can never be complete — that's impossible. 

It is inconceivable that it can be complete. Really, the more science knows, the more it 
comes to know that more has to be known. 

This all-knowingness is an inner quality of awakening. Meditate, and drop your thoughts. 
When you don’t have any thoughts you will feel what this omniscience is, what this all- 
knowledge is. When there is no thought, consciousness becomes pure, purified; in that 



purified consciousness you don’t have any problem. All questions have dropped. You 
know yourself, your being, and when you know your being, you have known all, because 
your being is the center of everybody's being. Really your being is everybody's being. 
Your center is the center of the universe. In this sense, Upanishads have declared, 
"AHAM BRAHMASMI — I am the Brahman, I am the Absolute." Once you kn ow this 
little phenomenon of your being you have known the infinite. You are just like a drop of 
the ocean: if even one drop is known, all the secrets of the ocean become revealed. 
BELIEVE OMNISCIENT, OMNIPOTENT, PERVADING. But this will come through 
faith, this you cannot argue with yourself. You cannot convince yourself with some 
argument, you will have to dig deep within you for such feelings, for sources of such 
feelings. 

This word 'believe' is very significant. It doesn’t mean that you have a conviction, 
because conviction means a rational thing: you are convinced, you have argued it over, 
you have proofs for it. 

Belief means you don’t have any doubts about it, not that you have proofs. Conviction 
means you have proofs. You can prove, you can argue. You can say, "This is so." You 
can reason it out. Belief means you don't have any doubts. You cannot argue it, you 
cannot rationalize, you will be defeated if you are asked. But you have an inner 
grounding — you feel it is so. It is a feeling, not a reasoning. 

But remember that such techniques can work only if you work with your feeling, not with 
your reasoning. So it has happened many times that very ignorant people, uneducated, 
uncultured, reach heights of human consciousness and those who are very cultured, 
educated, reasonable, rational, miss. 

Jesus was just a carpenter. Friedrich Nietzsche writes somewhere that in the whole New 
Testament there was only one person really worth something, who was cultured, 
educated, philosophically knowledgeable, wise — that man was Pilate, the Roman 
governor who ordered Jesus to be crucified. Really he was the most cultured man, the 
governor-general, the viceroy. And he knew what philosophy was: at the last moment, 
when Jesus was going to be crucified, he asked, "What is truth?" It was a very 
philosophical question. Jesus remained silent — not because this puzzle was not worth 
answering, Pilate was the only person who could have understood deep philosophy — 
Jesus remained silent because he could speak only to those who could feel. 

Thinking was not of any use. He was asking a philosophical question. It would have been 
good if he had asked in a university, in an academy, but asking Jesus a philosophical 
question was meaningless. He remained silent because it was futile to answer. No 
communication was possible. But Nietzsche, himself a man of reason, condemns Jesus. 
He said he was uneducated, uncultured, unphilosophical — and he couldn't answer, that's 
why he remained silent. Pilate asked a beautiful question. If he had asked it of Nietzsche, 
Nietzsche would have talked about it for years together. "What is truth?" This one 
question is enough to talk about and discuss for years. All of philosophy is just this 
business: "What is truth?" One question and all the philosophers are involved in it. 
Nietzsche's criticism is really a criticism by reason, a condemnation by reason. Reason 
has always condemned the dimension of feeling because feeling is so vague, so 
mysterious. It is there, and you cannot say anything about it. Either you have got it or you 
haven't got it; either it is there or it is not there. You cannot do anything about it and you 
cannot discuss it. You also have many beliefs but those beliefs are just convictions; they 



are not beliefs because you have doubts about them. You have crushed those doubts by 
your arguments, but they are there. You are sitting on top of them, but they are there. 

You go on fighting with them, but they are not dead. They cannot be. That’s why your 
life may be that of a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Christian, or a Jain, but it is only 
because of conviction. Faith is not there. 

I will tell you an anecdote. Jesus told his disciples to go by boat to the other ba nk of a 
lake where they were staying. And he said, "I will be coming later." They went. When 
they were just in the middle of the lake a great wind came and there was much turmoil 
and they were afraid. The boat was rocking and they started crying and screaming. They 
started crying, "Jesus, save us!" The bank where Jesus was was very far away, but Jesus 
came. It is said that he came running on the water. And the first thing he said to his 
disciples was, "Men of little faith, why are you crying? Don't you believe?" They were 
scared. Jesus said, "If you believe, then come out of the boat and walk towards me." He 
was standing on the water. They saw with their own eyes that he was standing on the 
water, but still it was difficult to believe. They must have thought in their minds that it 
was a trick, or it was maybe just an illusion, or this was not Jesus. Maybe it was just the 
Devil, luring them or something. So they started looking at each other, "Who will walk?" 
Then one disciple got out of the boat and walked. Really, he could walk. He couldn’t 
believe his own eyes. He was walking on the water. 

When he came close to Jesus he said, "How? How is it happening?" Immediately the 
whole miracle disappeared. The "How?" — and he was under water. Jesus pulled him out 
and said, "Man of little faith, why do you ask how?" 

But reason asks "Why?" and "How?" Reason asks, reason questions. Faith is the 
dropping of all questions. If you can drop all questions and believe, then this technique 
can work miracles for you. 


THE END. 



Chapter 74: The greater the sensitivity, the greater the detachment 


The first question: 

Question 1 

WITH DEEPENING MEDITATION, ONE BECOMES MORE AND MORE 
SENSITIVE TO OBJECTS, EVENTS AND PERSONS. BUT DUE TO THIS 
HEIGHTENED SENSITIVITY ONE FEELS A SORT OF DEEP INTIMACY WITH 
EVERYTHING, AND THIS USUALLY BECOMES A CAUSE OF SUBTLE 
ATTACHMENTS. HOW TO BE SENSITIVE AND YET DETACHED? 

How to be sensitive and yet detached? These two things are not contraries, they are not 
opposites. If you are more sensitive, you will be detached; or, if you are detached, you 
will become more and more sensitive. Sensitivity is not attachment, sensitivity is 
awareness. Only an aware person can be sensitive. If you are not aware you will be 
insensitive. When you are unconscious you are totally insensitive — the more 
consciousness, the more sensitivity. A Buddha is totally sensitive, he has optimum 
sensitivity, because he will feel and he will be aware to his total capacity. But when you 
are sensitive and aware you will not be attached. You will be detached, because the very 
phenomenon of awareness breaks the bridge, destroys the bridge, between you and 
things, between you and persons, between you and the world. Unconsciousness, 
unawareness, is the cause of attachment. 

If you are alert, the bridge suddenly disappears. When you are alert there is nothing to 
relate you to the world. The world is there, you are there, but between the two the bridge 
has disappeared. 

The bridge is made of your unconsciousness. So don’t think and feel that you become 
attached because you are more sensitive. No. If you are more sensitive you will not be 
attached. Attachment is a very gross quality, it is not subtle. 

For attachment you need not be aware and alert. There is no need. Even animals can be 
attached very easily, rather, more easily. A dog is more attached to his master than any 
man can be. The dog is completely unconscious so attachment happens. That is why in 
the countries where human relationship has become poor, such as in the West, man goes 
on seeking relationship with animals, with dogs, with other animals, because the human 
relationship is no longer there. Human society is disappearing and every man feels 
isolated, alienated, alone. The crowd is there but you are not related to it. You are alone 
in the crowd and this aloneness scares. One becomes afraid and fearful. 

When you are related, attached to someone, and someone is attached to you, you feel you 
are not alone in this world, in this strange world. Someone is with you. That feeling of 
belonging gives you a sort of security. When human relationship becomes impossible 
then men and women try to make relationships with animals. In the West they are very 
deeply related to dogs and other animals, but here in the East, although you may be 
worshipping cows you are not related to them. 

You may go on saying that you worship the cow as a divine animal, but your cruelty has 
no end. 

In the East you are so cruel with your animals that the West cannot even conceive of how 
you can go on thinking that you are non-violent. All over the world, particularly in the 



West, there are many societies to protect animals from the cruelty of men. You cannot 
beat a dog in the West. If you beat it, it will be a criminal act and you will be punished 
for it. What is happening really, is that human relationship is dissolving — but man 
cannot live alone. He must have a relationship, a belonging, a feeling that someone is 
with him. Animals can be very good friends because they get so attached; no one, no 
man, can get that attached. 

For attachment, awareness is not necessary; rather, awareness is the barrier. The more 
aware you become the less you will be attached, because the need for attachment 
disappears. Why do you want to be attached to someone? Because alone you feel you are 
not enough. You lack something. Something is incomplete in you. You are not a whole. 
You need someone to complete you. Hence, attachment. If you are aware, you are 
complete, you are a whole; the circle is now complete, nothing is lacking in you — you 
don’t need anyone. You, alone, feel a total independence, a feeling of wholeness. 

That doesn’t mean that you will not love persons; rather, on the contrary, only you can 
love. 

A person who is dependent on you cannot love you: he will hate you. A person who 
needs you cannot love you. He will hate you because you become the bondage. He feels 
that without you he cannot live, without you he cannot be happy, so you are the cause of 
both his happiness and unhappiness. He cannot afford to lose you. This will give a 
feeling of imprisonment: he is imprisoned by you and he will resent it, he will fight 
against it. Persons hate and love together, but this love cannot be very deep. Only a 
person who is aware can love, because he doesn’t need you. But then love has a totally 
different dimension: it is not attachment, it is not dependence. He is not dependent on 
you and he will not make you dependent on him; he will remain a freedom and he will 
allow you to remain a freedom. Y ou will be two free agents, two total, whole beings, 
meeting. That meeting will be a festivity, a celebration — not a dependence. That meeting 
will be a fun, a play. 

That is why we have called Krishna’s life KRISHNA-LEELA, the play of Krishna. He 
loves so many persons but there is no attachment. The same is not true on the part of the 
GOPIS and the GOPALS, the friends and the girl friends of Krishna. The same is not 
true. They have become attached, so when Krishna moves from Brindavan to Dwaraka, 
they weep and cry and suffer. Their anguish is great because they think that Krishna has 
forgotten them. 

He has not forgotten, but there is no pain because there was no dependence; he is as 
whole and happy in Dwaraka as he was in Brindavan and his love is flowing as much in 
Dwaraka as it was in Brindavan. The objects of love have changed but the source of love 
remains the same. So whosoever comes near him receives the gift. And this gift is 
unconditional: nothing is required as a return, nothing is asked as a return. 

When love comes through an aware consciousness it is just a pure gift with no condition, 
and the person who is giving it is happy because he is giving it. The very act of giving is 
his bliss, his ecstasy. 

So remember that if you feel that through meditation you have become more sensitive, 
then automatically you will become less attached, more detached. Because you will be 
more grounded in yourself, you will be more centered in yourself, you will not use 
somebody else as your center. What does attachment mean? Attachment means that you 
are using someone else as your center of being, Majanu is attached to Laila: he says he 



cannot live without Laila. That means the center of being has been transferred. If you say 
that you cannot live without this or that, then your soul is not within you. Then you are 
not existing as an independent unit, your center has moved somewhere else. 

This movement of the center from yourself to something else, to the other, is attachment. 

If you are sensitive, you will feel the other, but the other will not become the center of 
your life. You will remain the center and out of this centering the other will receive many 
gifts from you. But they will be gifts, they will not be bargains. You will simply give 
because you have too much, you are an overflowing. And you will be thankful that the 
other has received it. That will be enough and that will be the end. 

That is why I go on saying that the mind is a great deceiver. Y ou think that you are 
meditating and that that is why you have become sensitive. Then the question of why you 
get attached arises. If you get attached, that is a clear symptom that the sensitivity is not 
because of awareness. Really, it is not sensitivity at all. It may be sentimentalism: that is 
a totally different thing. You can be sentimental: you can cry and weep over small things, 
you can be touched, and a storm can be created very easily within you — but that is 
sentimentalism, not sensitivity. 

Let me tell you a story. Buddha was staying in a village. A woman came to him, weeping 
and crying and screaming. Her child, her only child, had suddenly died. Because Buddha 
was in the village, people said, "Don’t weep. Go to this man. People say he is infinite 
compassion. If he wills it, the child can revive. So don’t weep. Go to this Buddha." The 
woman came with the dead child, crying, weeping, and the whole village followed her — 
the whole village was affected. 

Buddha's disciples were also affected; they started praying in their minds that Buddha 
would have compassion. He must bless the child so that he will be revived, resurrected. 
Many disciples of Buddha started weeping. The scene was so touching, deeply moving. 
Everybody was still. Buddha remained silent. He looked at the dead child, then he looked 
at the weeping, crying mother and he said to the mother, "Don’t weep, just do one thing 
and your child will be alive again. Leave this dead child here, go back to the town, go to 
every house and ask every family if someone has ever died in their family, in their house. 
And if you can find a house where no one has ever died, then from them beg something 
to be eaten, some bread, some rice, or anything — but from the house where no one has 
ever died. And that bread or that rice will revive the child immediately. You go. Don't 
waste time." 

The woman became happy. She felt that now the miracle was going to happen. She 
touched Buddha’s feet and ran to the village which was not a very big one, very few 
cottages, a few families. She moved from one family to another, asking. But every family 
said, "This is impossible. There is not a single house — not only in this village but all 
over the earth — there is not a single house where no one has ever died, where people 
have not suffered death and the misery and the pain and the anguish that comes out of it." 


By and by the woman realized that Buddha had been playing a trick. This was 
impossible. But still the hope was there. She went on asking until she had gone around 
the whole village. Her tears dried, her hope died, but suddenly she felt a new tranquility, 
a serenity, coming to her. Now she realized that whosoever is bom will have to die. It is 
only a question of years. Someone will die sooner, someone later, but death is inevitable 



She came back and touched Buddha’s feet again and said to him, "As people say, you 
really do have a deep compassion for people." No one could understand what had 
happened. Buddha initiated her into SANNYAS, she became a BHIKKHUNI, a 
SANNYASIN. She was initiated. 

Anand asked Buddha, "You could have revived the boy. He was such a beautiful child 
and the mother was in such anguish." But Buddha said, "Even if the child was 
resurrected, he would have had to die. Death is inevitable." Anand said, "But you don’t 
seem to be very sensitive to people, to their misery and anguish." Buddha replied, "I am 
sensitive; you are sentimental. Just because you start weeping, do you think you are 
sensitive? You are childish. You don't understand life. You are not aware of the 
phenomenon." 

This is the difference between Christianity and Buddhism. Christ was reported to have 
done many miracles of reviving people. When Lazarus was dead, Jesus touched him and 
he came back to life. 

We in the East cannot conceive of Buddha touching a dead man and bringing him back to 
life. To ordinary persons, to the ordinary mind, Jesus would look more loving and 
compassionate than Buddha. But I say to you that Buddha is more sensitive, more 
compassionate, because even if Lazarus was revived, it made no difference. He still had 
to die. Finally Lazarus had to die. So this miracle was of no use, of no ultimate value. 

One cannot conceive of Buddha doing such a thing. 

Jesus had to because he was bringing something new, a new message to Israel. And the 
message was so deep that people would not understand it so he had to create miracles 
around it — because people can understand miracles but they cannot understand the deep 
message, the esoteric message. They can understand miracles, so through miracles they 
might become open and able to be receptive to the message. Jesus was carrying a 
Buddhist message to a land which was not Buddhist; an Eastern message to a country 
which had no tradition of enlightenment, of many Buddhas. 

We can conceive that Buddha was more sensitive than his disciples who were weeping 
and crying. They were sentimental. 

Don’t misunderstand your sentimentality for sensitivity. Sentimentality is ordinary; 
sensitivity is extraordinary. It happens through effort. It is an achievement. You have to 
earn it. Sentimentality is not to be earned; you are bom with it. 

It is an animal inheritance which you already have in the cells of your body and your 
mind. Sensitivity is a possibility. You don’t have it already. You can create it, you can 
work for it — then it will happen to you. And whenever it happens, you will be detached. 
Buddha was totally detached. The dead child was there but he didn’t seem to be affected 
at all. The woman, the mother, was miserable and he was playing a trick on her. This man 
seems to be cruel and this playing of a trick seems to be too much for a mother whose 
child has died. He gave her a riddle, and he knew well that she would come back empty- 
handed. But I say again that he has real compassion because he was helping this woman 
to grow, to be mature. Unless you can understand death you are not mature; and unless 
you can accept death, you don’t have a center within your being. When you accept death 
as a reality, you have transcended it. 

Buddha used the situation. He was less concerned with the dead child and more 
concerned with the alive mother because he knew that the dead child would come back to 
life again — there was no need for the miracle. But if the child was revived the mother 



might have lost an opportunity. For lives together she might not again have a meeting 
with a Buddha. So in the East only third-rate SADDHUS have been doing miracles; the 
first-rate have never done any — they work on a higher level. 

Buddha is also doing a miracle but the miracle is being done on a very high level. The 
mother is being transformed. 

But it is difficult to understand because our minds are gross and we only understand 
sentimentality, we cannot understand sensitivity. Sensitivity means an alertness which 
feels everything that happens around. And you can feel only when you are not attached. 
Remember this: if you are attached you are no longer there to feel, you have moved out 
of you. So if you want to know the truth about someone don’t ask his friends. They are 
attached. And don’t ask his enemies. They are also attached, in the reverse order. Ask 
someone who is neutral, neither a friend nor an enemy. Only he can say the truth. 

Friends cannot be believed, enemies cannot be believed; but we believe either the friends 
or the enemies. Both are bound to be wrong because they don’t have a neutral witnessing, 
they don’t have a detached view. They cannot stand aloof and look because they have an 
investment in the person. Friends have an investment and enemies have an investment. 
They see according to particular viewpoints, and with those viewpoints they are attached. 
The moment you feel you are attached, you have taken a viewpoint. The totality is lost; 
only a fragmentary thing is in your hands. And fragments are always lies because only 
the whole is true. 

Meditate, become more sensitive, and take it as a criterion that you will go on becoming 
more and more detached. 

If you feel that attachment is growing, then you are erring somewhere in your meditation. 
These are the criteria. And to me, attachment cannot be destroyed and detachment cannot 
be practised. You can only practise meditation — and detachment will follow as a 
consequence, as a by-product. If meditation really flowers within you, you will have a 
feeling of detachment. Then you can move anywhere and you will remain untouched, 
unafraid. Then when you leave your body, you will leave it unscratched. Your 
consciousness will be absolutely pure, nothing foreign has entered into it. When you are 
attached, impurities enter into you. This is the basic impurity: that you are losing your 
center and somebody else or something else is becoming your center of being. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

IF FAITH CAN MOVE THE MOUNTAINS, WHY CAN YOU NOT HEAL YOUR 
OWN BODY? 

I don’t have any body. 

This feeling that you have a body is absolutely wrong. The body belongs to the universe; 
you don’t have it, it is not yours. So if the body is ill or if the body is healthy the universe 
will take care of it. And a person who is in meditation should remain a witness, whether 
the body is healthy or ill. 

The desire to be healthy is part of ignorance. The desire not to be ill is also part of 
ignorance. And this is not a new question — this is one of the oldest questions. 

It has been asked of Buddha; it has been asked of Mahavir. Ever since there have been 
enlightened persons, the unenlightened have always asked this question. 

Look... Jesus said faith can move mountains, but he died on the cross. He couldn’t move 



the cross. You or someone like you must have been present there waiting. The disciples 
were waiting because they knew Jesus, and he had been saying again and again that faith 
could move mountains. So they were waiting for some miracle to happen — and Jesus 
simply died on the cross. But this was the miracle: he could be a witness to his own 
death. And the moment of witnessing one's own death is the greatest moment of being 
alive. 

Buddha died of food poisoning. He suffered for six months continuously. And there were 
many disciples who were waiting for him to do a miracle. But he suffered silently and 
died silently. He accepted death. There were disciples there who were trying to cure him, 
many medicines were given to him. 

A great physician of those days, Jeevak, was Buddha’s personal physician. He used to 
move with him wherever he went. Many times people must have asked, "Why does this 
Jeevak go with you?" But it was Jeevak's own attachment. Jeevak was moving with 
Buddha because of his own attachment, and the disciples who were trying to help 
Buddha's body remain alive longer in this world, even if only for a few days more, were 
also attached. 


For Buddha himself, illness and health were the same. That doesn’t mean that illness will 
not give pain. It will! Pain is a physical phenomenon, it will happen. But it will not 
disturb the inner consciousness. The inner consciousness will remain undisturbed, it will 
remain as balanced as ever. The body will suffer, but the inner being will remain just a 
witness of the whole suffering. 

There will be no identification — and this I call the miracle. This is possible through faith. 
And no mountain is bigger than identification — remember. The Himalayas are nothing; 
your identification with your body is a greater mountain. The Himalayas may be moved 
or not moved through faith, that is irrelevant, but your identification can be destroyed. 

But we cannot conceive of anything which we do not know, we can think only according 
to our minds. We think according to where we are; the pattern remains the same. 
Sometimes my body is ill, and people come to me and they say, "Why are you ill? Y ou 
should not be ill; an enlightened person should not be ill." But who told you that it is so? 

I have never heard about any enlightened person who was not ill. Illness belongs to the 
body. It has no concern with your consciousness or whether you are enlightened or not. 
And sometimes it happens that enlightened persons are more ill than unenlightened ones. 
There are reasons. 

... Now that they don’t belong to the body, they don’t co-operate with the body; deep 
down they have broken themselves from the body. So the body remains but the 
attachment and the bridge is broken. 

Many illnesses happen because of the separation that has happened. They are in the body 
but their co-operation is no longer there. That is why we say an enlightened person will 
never be born again — because now he cannot make any bridge with any body again. The 
bridge is broken. While he is in the body, then too, really, he is dead. 

Buddha attained enlightenment when he was near about forty. He died when he was 
eighty so he lived forty years more. On the day he was dying, Anand started crying and 
said, "What will happen to us? Without you we will fall into darkness. You are dying and 
we have not yet become enlightened. Our own light is not yet lit and you are dying. Do 
not leave us!" 



Buddha is reported to have said, "What? What are you saying, Anand? I died forty years 
before. This existence was just a phantom existence, a shadow existence. It was running 
along somehow, but the force was not there. It was just a momentum from the past." 

If you are pedalling a bicycle, and then you stop and there is no pedalling, you are not 
giving any co-operation to the cycle, it will go on moving for a little whole just because 
of the momentum, the energy that you gave it in the past. 


The moment someone becomes enlightened, the co-operation is broken. Now the body 
will take its own course. It has a momentum. From many lives in the past, momentum has 
been given to it. It has a life span of its own which will be completed, but now, because 
the inner force is no longer with it, the body is prone to be more ill than ordinarily. 
Ramakrishna died of cancer; Raman died of cancer. To the disciples it was a great shock, 
but because of their ignorance they could not understand. 

One thing more has to be understood. When a person becomes enlightened, this is going 
to be his last life. So all the past kannas and the whole continuum has to be fulfilled in 
this life. The suffering — if he has anything to suffer — will become intense. For you there 
is no hurry, your suffering will be spread out over many lives. But for a Raman this is the 
last. All that is there from the past has to be completed. There will be an intensity of 
everything, of all karmas. This life will become a condensed life. 

Sometimes it is possible — this is difficult to understand — to suffer in a single moment 
the sufferings of many lives. In a single moment, the intensity becomes much because 
time can be condensed or spread out. 

You know already that sometimes when you sleep you see a dream, and when you are 
awake again you know that you have been asleep for only a few seconds. 

But you have seen such a long dream. It is possible that even a whole life can be seen in a 
single dream. 

What has happened? In such a small period of time how could you see such a long 
dream? There is not a single layer of time as we ordinarily understand — there are many 
layers of time. Dream time has its own existence. Even while awake time goes on 
changing. It may not change according to the clock because a clock is a mechanical 
thing, but psychological time goes on changing. 

When you are happy, the time flows fast. When you are unhappy, the time slows down. A 
single night can be eternity if you are in suffering, and a whole life can become a single 
moment if you are happy and blissful. 

When a person becomes enlightened, everything has to be closed: this is a closing time. 
Many millions of lives have to be closed and all the accounts have to be cleared, because 
there will be no chance any more. After his enlightenment and enlightened person lives 
in a different time altogether and whatsoever happens to him is qualitatively different. 

But he remains a witness. 

Mahavir died of stomach pain, something like an ulcer — for many years he suffered. His 
disciples must have been in difficulty because they have created a story around it. They 
could not understand why Mahavir should suffer, so they have created a story which 
shows something about the disciples, not about Mahavir. 


They say that a person who had a very evil spirit, Goshalak, was the cause of Mahavir's 



suffering. He threw his evil force on Mahavir and Mahavir absorbed it only because of 
his compassion — and that is why he suffered. This shows nothing about Mahavir but 
something about the difficulty of the disciples. They cannot conceive of Mahavir 
suffering so they had to find a cause somewhere else. 

One day I was suffering from a cold — it is my constant companion. So somebody came 
and he said, "You must have taken somebody else's cold." That doesn’t show anything 
about me, it shows something about him. It is difficult for him to conceive of me 
suffering. So he said, "You must have somebody else's cold." I tried to convince him, but 
it is impossible to convince disciples. The more you try to convince them, the more they 
believe that they are right. In the end he said to me, "Whatsoever you say I am not going 
to listen. I know! You have taken somebody else's illness." 

What to do? The body's health and illness is its own affair. If you want to do something 
about it, you are still attached to it. It will take its own course; you need not be much 
worried about it. 

I am only a witness. The body is born, the body will die; only the witnessing will be 
there. It will remain forever. Only witnessing is something absolutely eternal — 
everything else goes on changing, everything else is a flux. 


The third question: 

Question 3 

LAST NIGHT YOU EXPLAINED IN DETAIL ABOUT HOW SEEKERS DECEIVE 
THEMSELVES BY NOT MAKING EARNEST AND SINCERE EFFORTS TOWARD 
MEDITATION. BUT WITH MANY OF THE SEEKERS WHO EARNESTLY ASK 
YOU FOR MEDITATION TECHNIQUES, YOU SIMPLY SAY TO THEM TO LEAVE 
EVERYTHING TO YOU AND THAT YOU WILL LOOK AFTER THEIR SPIRITUAL 
PROGRESS. BUT MANY SEEKERS FEEL DISSATISFACTION ABOUT THEIR 
SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION THAT WAY. IN THIS CASE, PLEASE EXPLAIN 
HOW THESE SEEKERS ARE DECEIVING THEMSELVES. 

Firstly, when they ask for a technique, I give them a technique. This is a technique: 
LEAVE EVERYTHING TO ME. This is one of the most powerful techniques possible. 
And don’t think that it is easy; it is very difficult, sometimes impossible. It is difficult to 
leave everything to somebody, but if you can, in that very surrender your ego has 
disappeared; in that very surrender, your past has disappeared; in that very surrender a 
new point is bom — you are different. Up to now you were living with your own ego; 
from now onwards you will be living without the ego, you will be following a path of 
surrender. 

So don't think that this is not a technique! It is a technique — one of the very basic 
techniques. And I don't give it to any and everybody. I give it only to particular persons 
who are very egoistic, because for them any technique will create trouble. 

Their ego will exploit it. They will become more egoistic through it. They can practise 
anything else except this, but by that practise their ego is not going to be destroyed; 
rather, it will be more fulfilled. They will become great 'meditators'. They can renounce 
the world, but their ego will be strengthened whatsoever they do. Whenever I feel that 
this seeker has such a subtle ego that any method will be poisonous to him, then only do I 
say, "Leave everything to me." Not that this is going to be the end, but this is going to be 
the beginning. And this is going to be the right beginning for all those who are ego- 



centered. If they can leave everything to me, then I will start giving them other 
techniques — but only then. Then other techniques will not prove poisonous. Once the 
ego is not there those techniques will transform them. And if their surrender is so total 
that nothing is left to be transformed, then there will be no need for any other technique. 
This too is possible, and this is possible only for those who are very egoistic; only they 
can surrender totally. 

This will look confusing, paradoxical — but remember, you can leave something only if 
you have it. If you don’t have a very strong ego, what can you leave? What can you 
surrender? It is just like asking a beggar to surrender all his riches. He will be ready, he 
will say, 'Okay,’ but his okay means nothing. 

It is absolutely futile because he has nothing to lose. And if you have a very strong ego, 
that means a very concentrated ego, crystallized, you can leave it totally because it will 
be difficult to leave it in parts. It is so concentrated and crystalized that it will be difficult 
to leave it in fragments. Either you can leave it or not. It is one of the paradoxes of life 
that for surrender a very authentic ego is needed to be there in the first place. So to me, a 
right education will consist in creating strong egos, to the very extreme, where a great 
suffering is bom out of them, and then — surrender. Only the is surrender possible. 

This has been my experience. Persons coming from the West have stronger egos than the 
Eastern persons because in the West there is no concept of surrender, no concept of 
obedience, no concept of gum and disciple. Really, the Western mind cannot conceive of 
what a gum is. And they cannot conceive of someone surrendering to anybody. The 
whole Western education, culture and civilization is based on ego, ego-fulfillment. And 
Western psychologists say that to be mentally healthy, you must have a strong ego. So all 
the Western psychologies help the ego to be strong: a child's ego must be strengthened in 
every way otherwise he will become mentally ill. But Eastern religions say that unless 
you leave the ego you cannot know the ultimate truth, you cannot know what life's 
mystery is. 

Both seem to be contradictory, but they are not. To me, the Western training must be 
there in the beginning with every person all over the world. Every person should be given 
a strong ego. By the age of thirty-five you should reach to the peak of your ego; at the 
age of thirty-five it should be at its peak, strong, as strong as possible. Only then will 
surrendering happen. So whenever Western seekers come to me and I tell them to leave 
things to me, they are very hesitant, resistant. And it seems impossible, but sometimes, 
when surrender happens, they achieve a much deeper realization. 

With Eastern persons surrender is not very difficult. They are ready. You say, 

'Surrender,' they say, 'Yes.' There is not a single hesitation on their part. They don’t have 
very strong, developed egos. They can surrender it — but that surrender is impotent. It 
will not help. So it almost always happens that with the Eastern person I immediately 
give him a technique to work on, so that it helps his ego. With Western persons I 
immediately say, 'Surrender.' They have already reached that point within them so they 
can surrender; their very hesitancy shows that they can surrender. But their surrender is 
going to be a struggle, and when it is a struggle it is a SADHANA. When it is a struggle 
it means something; it is going to transform them. 

So firstly, when I say, "leave everything to me," this is a technique; and I say it only to 
persons who have very developed egos. 



Secondly... BUT MANY SEEKERS FEEL DISSATISFACTION ABOUT THEIR 
SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION THAT WAY. Right, these are the people to whom I 
say, 'Surrender.’ They feel very dissatisfied. They want something to do, they don’t want 
to surrender. I know they will feel dissatisfied because their ego will resist; it will try in 
every way not to surrender. But that cannot be helped. They will have to pass through 
this dissatisfaction, and they will have to understand that leaving everything to me is just 
the beginning. If they cannot do that, I am not going to give them any technique right 
now. They can leave me, or leave everything to me. There is no other alternative. Once I 
say to someone, "Leave everything to me," I am not going to give any technique to him. I 
know that it will be difficult and arduous — but it has to be so. The more difficult, the 
more arduous, the better, because that means he has a more evolved ego, and it is 
struggling. He will have to come some day — to me or to someone else, it is irrelevant — 
and he will have to surrender it. 

The master is not so relevant; the surrendering is relevant. Where you surrender is of no 
significance. You can surrender to a stone Buddha. That will do. Surrendering transforms 
you. It is putting your ego aside, unburdening yourself; living for the first time not out of 
the past but moving into the present, fresh and young, unburdened. 


And the third thing: IN THIS CASE, PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW THESE SEEKERS ARE 
DECEIVING THEMSELVES. They can deceive themselves. They can say to me, "Yes, 
we leave everything to you," and go on withholding everything. They can deceive 
themselves that they have surrendered and they can go on insisting on their own ways. 
Surrender cannot be partial, it can be only total — and then you cannot set your 
conditions, your likes and dislikes. 

It happened just a few days ago. A man came to me and he said, "I will leave everything 
to you. Whatsoever you say, I will do." I told him, "Repeat it again slowly, "Whatsoever 
you say, I will do.’" He repeated it. I told him to repeat it again and go more slowly. He 
became a little disturbed and said, 'Why?’ And he also became aware of why I was 
saying go slowly. He said, "You may be right. I should not say this, because it is very 
difficult to leave everything to you and it will be difficult to follow whatsoever you say." 
So I told him to make it conditional, to be exact so that he could not change. He said, 
"Right, Whatsoever I like — give me the freedom to choose." 

This is how you can deceive. Inside YOU remain the master; you go on choosing what to 
do and what not to do. And as it happens, whatsoever you choose is going to be wrong 
because the mind that is choosing is wrong, otherwise there would have been no need to 
come to me. 

When I say surrender it means that now you will not choose, now I will choose and you 
will follow. And if you can follow totally, the day is not far away when I will say, "Now 
there is no need. Now you can choose." 

You must disappear: the surface, the superficial ego must disappear. Then your own 
being comes into being. I am not going to keep you following me forever and ever. That 
is not a very happy business. When your ego is no longer there, your own guru, the inside 
master, has come into being. The outer guru is nothing but a representative of the inner 
one. Once the inner is there, the outer is not needed. And your own guru will say to you, 
"Now follow yourself. Move alone. Now you don’t need anybody to guide you, the inner 
guide has come into being. Now you have your own inner light. You can see through it. It 



will show you the path." 

But right now, as you are, it is not possible. You don’t have any light. You cannot see. 
And wherever your mind leads you it will be wrong. This mind has been leading you for 
lives and it always leads you into particular patterns. It has old habits and it leads you 
accordingly. It is a mechanical thing. Just to create a break, surrender is needed. If you 
surrender to something, even for a few days, there will be a gap between now and your 
past. A new force has entered within you. Now you cannot continue with the past; your 
way, as it has always been, cannot be any more. 

A turning will happen. This gap is what is meant by surrender. 

But you can deceive. You can say, "Yes, I surrender," and you may not have surrendered. 
Or you may think that you have surrendered but unconsciously you are fighting. Not only 
in surrender, but in everything where a 'let-go' is needed, we fight. 

In the West much research is going on about the phenomenon of sex, because people are 
becoming less and less capable of deep orgasms. They have sex but no ecstasy comes out 
of it. It has become a boring affair. They feel only frustrated, only weakened through it. 
And then it becomes a routine. They don’t know what to do. A deep ecstasy through the 
orgasm is its significance. If it doesn’t happen it is futile and useless and even harmful. 
Many schools of psychology go on working on the questions: "What has happened to 
man? Why is he not achieving orgasm through sex? Why is there so much 
dissatisfaction?" All the researches indicate that the reason is that man cannot surrender 
— that is why he cannot achieve orgasm. Even while making love, while deep in sex, your 
mind remains in control. You go on controlling. You are not in a 'let-go'. You are afraid 
to let go because if you allow the sex energy to move uncontrolled you don’t know where 
it will lead. You may go mad, you may even die. That is the fear. So you remain in 
control. 

You go on manipulating your body. 

This manipulation from the mind doesn't allow the whole body to become a flow of 
energy. Then sex becomes a local affair, the whole body is not involved, the whole body 
is not in an inner dance; the ecstasy is missed. You lose energy and you don’t gain 
anything — there is bound to be frustration. So psychologists say that you will not achieve 
a deep ecstasy unless you are in a deep 'let-go', unless the mind is not there and the ego is 
not there; unless the body has taken over with its own force, its own momentum, and is 
moving by its own unconscious sources; unless YOU are not there. That ecstasy can give 
you a first glimpse of the ultimate ecstasy that happens in a total 'let-go' of your ego with 
the Divine, with the universe. 

Samadhi, the ultimate goal of all yoga and Tantra, is a deep orgasm with the universe 
itself, with the existence itself. The guru is just trying to help you, to bring you to a point 
where you can at least surrender the ego. Then a deep ecstasy will happen between you 
and your master. Wherever there is a 'let-go', ecstasy happens — that is the law. 

So if you can surrender to a guru, don’t listen to anybody. Even if the whole world says 
that this guru is wrong, don’t listen to it. If you can surrender, this guru is right. You will 
achieve an ecstatic moment through him. And if the whole world says that this guru is 
right, and you cannot surrender, he is useless for you. 

So wherever you have the feeling of surrendering, there is your guru, your master. 

Search for the place, search for the person in whose presence you can allow a 'let-go', in 



whose presence you can drop your mind even for a time. Once this force from the outside 
enters into you, your path will be different, your life will have taken a new turning. 

You can deceive yourself: you can go on thinking that you have surrendered but you 
know well inside that you have not surrendered. And remember: you cannot deceive a 
master — he knows. And he will go on insisting unless the 'let-go’ really happens. You 
can manoeuvre, you can play a game, but you cannot deceive a master. You can put your 
head to his feet but that gesture means nothing. It may be just a superficial gesture, you 
are not bowing down at all. But if bowing down really happens, the master can work. 

So whenever I say, "Surrender," or "Leave it to me and I will take care," I mean it. 

Exactly whatsoever I say I mean it. I want to create a gap within you, a discontinuity with 
the past. Once the gap is there, you will sooner or later become capable of going on your 
own. But before that, if you go on your own, you will continue the past story. Nothing 
new is possible. For the new, something from the outside must enter you, must push you 
onto a new path. 

The last question: 

Question 4 

YOU SAID THAT JESUS DIDN’T KNOW THAT THE EARTH IS ROUND. 

SO FOR CHRISTIANS WHO BELIEVE THAT JESUS WAS GOD, THIS SEEMS 
VERY STRANGE. ISN’T IT IMPLIED THAT AN ENLIGHTENED ONE LIKE JESUS, 
WHO KNEW DEEP OCCULT SCIENCES, MUST ALSO KNOW MANY 
ASTRONOMICAL AND ASTROLOGICAL FACTS ABOUT PLANETS, THE 
UNIVERSE, AND THE INTER-RELATIONSHIP OF CELESTIAL BODIES? PLEASE 
EXPLAIN. 

No, Jesus was not concerned. When Jesus said that the world was flat, he was using the 
knowledge that was prevalent in those days. He was not concerned about whether the 
world was round or flat; it was meaningless to him. He was more concerned about those 
persons who were living on this 'flat' or 'round’ earth. 

The concern has to be understood. It is absolutely futile for Jesus to discuss these things. 
What difference does it make? For example, you know from the geography books that the 
world is round. If your geography books were teaching that the world is flat, as they were 
teaching in the past, what difference will it make to you? Will you be a better man? Will 
you be more meditative on a 'flat' world or on a 'round' earth? What difference will it 
make to your being and the quality of your consciousness? It is irrelevant. 

Jesus was concerned with your consciousness, and he will not unnecessarily argue about 
things which are useless. Only unenlightened persons are dragged into unnecessary 
things. If you had told Jesus that the world was round, he would have said yes. 

It makes no difference to him because that was not his concern. The prevalent idea was 
that the world was flat. And really, to the ordinary mind, the world is still flat. It looks 
flat. The roundness is a scientific fact, but Jesus was not a scientist. 

For example, I know that it is a scientific fact that the sun never rises and never sets. The 
earth is moving around, the sun is not moving. But still I sue the words 'sunset' and 
'sunrise’. Sunrise is basically wrong. The very word is wrong, because the sun never 
rises. Sunset is wrong, the sun never 'sets’. So after two thousand years, someone can say 
that this man was unenlightened because he said 'the sun rises', 'sunrise', 'sunset'. Didn’t 
he know these small things? 

But if I am to change every word then I will be fighting unnecessarily and that is not 



going to help anybody. Jesus simply used the prevalent knowledge — and the prevalent 
idea was that the earth was flat. He was not concerned about it. If he were here today, he 
would say that the earth is round. But even that is not exactly scientific, because the earth 
is not exactly round. Now they say it is like an egg, not exactly round. The shape is like 
an egg. But who knows? — the next day they may change and say that this is not so. 
Science goes on changing, because as it becomes more accurate, as it attains to more 
knowledge, as more facts are known, as more experiments are done, things change. 

But a person like Jesus or Buddha is not concerned about these facts. 

Remember one thing: science is concerned with facts, religion is concerned with truth. 
Facts are not its concern, truth is its concern. Facts are about objects, truth is about you, 
your consciousness. So every enlightened person has to use the prevalent knowledge 
about facts. But you should not judge Jesus or Buddha by that — you are judging 
wrongly. They can be judged only by what they have said about the truth, about the 
intrinsic truth of human consciousness. About that they are always absolutely right 
although their language differs. 

A Buddha speaks in one language, Jesus in a different one, Krishna in another. They use 
different factual knowledge, they use different techniques, devices, but the central core of 
their teaching is the same. And that, if you allow me to say it, is how to attain to total 
awareness. 

Awareness is the basic teaching of all the enlightened ones. They use many parables, 
techniques, devices, symbols, myths, but those are irrelevant. You can cut them away, 
you can put them aside and just bring out the basic core. The basic core of all the 
awakened persons is awareness. So Jesus goes on telling his disciples how to be more 
awake — not to be sleeping, not to move in dreams, but to be alert, awake. 

He used to tell a parable. He said that it happened once that a great lord, a great master, a 
very rich man, went on a far-away journey. 

He told his servants that they had to be always alert because he would be back any 
moment, ANY moment. And whenever he came back, the house should be ready to 
receive him. He could come back, any moment. The servants had to be alert, they 
couldn’t even sleep. Even at night they had to be ready because the master could come 
any moment. 

Jesus used to say that you have to be alert every moment because any moment the Divine 
can descend into you. You may miss. If the Divine knocks at your door and you are fast 
asleep, you will miss. You have to be alert. The guest can come at any moment, and the 
guest is not going to inform you beforehand that he is coming. 

Jesus said just like the servants of that master, remain alert continuously, remain aware, 
waiting, watchful because any moment the Divine can penetrate you. And if you are not 
alert, he will come, knock and go back. And that moment may not repeated soon; no one 
knows how many lives it may take before the Divine will again knock at your door. And 
if you have become habitually asleep, you may have missed that knock many times 
already and you may miss it again and again. 

Be alert. That is the basic core. All else is only to be used to reach it. So just because 
Jesus says the earth is flat, he doesn’t become unenlightened. And just because you know 
the earth is round, you don't become enlightened. It is not so easy! 


THE END. 



Chapter 75: The search for the rhythm of the opposites 


IMAGE SPIRIT SIMULTANEOUSLY WITHIN AND AROUND YOU UNTIL THE 
ENTIRE UNIVERSE SPIRITUALIZES. 

WITH YOUR ENTIRE CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE VERY START OF DESIRE, OF 
KNOWING, KNOW. 

O SHAKTI, EACH PARTICULAR PERCEPTION IS LIMITED, DISAPPEARING IN 
OMNIPOTENCE. 

IN TRUTH FORMS ARE INSEPARATE. INSEPARATE ARE OMNIPRESENT 
BEING AND YOUR OWN FORM. REALIZE EACH AS MADE OF THIS 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 

One of the greatest poets, Walt Whitman, is reported to have said, "I contradict myself 
because I am big, I contradict myself because I contain all the opposites, because I am 
all." The same thing can be said about Shiva, about Tantra. 

Tantra is the search for the rhythm of opposites, of contradictions. Contradictory, 
opposite standpoints become one in Tantra. This has to be deeply understood, only then 
will you be able to understand why there are so many contradictory, different techniques. 
Life is a rhythm between opposites: male and female, positive and negative, day and 
night, birth and death. Between these opposites moves the river of life. The opposites are 
the banks — they appear to be contradictory, but they are co-operative. The appearance is 
false. Life cannot exist without this rhythm between the opposites. And life contains all. 
Tantra is neither for this nor for that — Tantra is for all. Tantra has no standpoint of its 
own really. All standpoints that are possible are contained in it. 

It is big. It can contradict itself because it contains all. It is not partial, it is the whole. 
Hence it is holy. 

All partial standpoints are bound to be profane; they cannot be holy if they don't contain 
the opposite. They may be logical and rational, but they cannot be alive. Wherever life 
exists, it exists through its opposite. It cannot exist alone, the opposite is a must. 

In Greek mythology, two gods are at polar opposites: Apollo and Dionysius. Apollo is 
the god of order, discipline, virtue, morality, culture, and Dionysius is the god of 
disorder, chaos, freedom, nature. Both are polar opposites. Almost all religions are more 
or less based on the Apollonian standpoint. They believe in reason, they believe in order, 
they believe in virtue, they believe in discipline, control... really they believe in the ego. 
But Tantra is basically different: it contains both. It contains the Dionysian standpoint 
also. It believes in nature, it believes in chaos, it believes in laughing and dancing and 
singing; it is not just serious, it is both. It is BOTH serious and non-serious. Nietzsche 
writes in one of his letters, "I can believe only in a dancing god." He couldn’t find any 
dancing god. Had he known something about Shiva then the story of his life would have 
been totally different. Shiva is the dancing god. Nietzsche knew only about the Christian 
god. That is the only standpoint — very serious. 

Sometimes the seriousness of the Christian god looks absurd, childish, because the 
opposite is denied completely. You cannot conceive of a Christian god dancing. 
Impossible! Dancing looks too earthly. And you cannot conceive of a Christian god 
laughing — or can you? It is impossible. The Christian god cannot laugh. Laughter will 



look too worldly. The Christian god is the very spirit of seriousness and Nietzsche 
couldn’t believe in it. 

And I think that no one can believe in such a god because it is half, it is not the whole. 
Only persons like Billy Graham can believe in it. Somewhere Billy Graham says very 
seriously that when you are reading sexy magazines you must remember that God is 
looking at you. This looks foolish. You are reading a sexy magazine and God is reading 
you reading the sexy magazines! This very attitude is stupid. It is stupid because it 
doesn't contain the opposite. You will become stupid and dead if the opposite is denied. 
But if you can move to the opposite easily with no contradiction, if you can be serious 
and you can be laughing, if you can sit like a Buddha and you can dance like a Krishna 
and there is no inherent opposition between these two — you can move from being a 
Buddha towards being a Krishna easily and smoothly — if you can do this, you will be 
alive. And if you can do this you will be a Tantric, because Tantra is the basic search for 
the rhythm which exists between the opposites, for the river which flows between the 
opposites. 


So Tantra goes on working on all and every technique possible. Tantra is not for 
someone, it is for all. Every type of mind can move through Tantra. Every type of mind 
cannot be Christian, every type of mind cannot be Hindu, every type of mind cannot be 
Buddhist. A particular type of mind will be attracted by Buddha, a particular type by 
Jesus, a particular type by Mohammed. Shiva contains all. Shiva can have an appeal for 
every type possible. The total, the whole has been included, it is not a partial standpoint. 
That is why Tantra has no sect. You cannot create a sect around the whole you can create 
a sect only around a fragment. You can live the whole, but you cannot create a sect. A 
sect can be created only when you are for something and against something else. If both 
the opposites are contained, how can you create a sectarian mind? Tantra is the essential 
religion, it is not a sect. Hence so many techniques. 

People keep on coming to me and asking, "There are so many techniques and one 
technique contradicts the other?' Yes, it contradicts the other because it is not meant for a 
particular mind. In these hundred and twelve techniques, all the types, all the possible 
types of humanity have been included. Please don't be concerned with all the techniques, 
otherwise you will get confused. You simply find that which suits you, that which 
appeals to you. Towards it you will feel a deep affinity, an attraction; you will fall in love 
with it. 

Then forget all the remaining one hundred and eleven techniques Forget them. You just 
stick to the one that works for you. In these one hundred and twelve techniques, only one 
technique is for you. If you try many techniques you will get confused, because to try so 
many techniques you will need a very big mind which can absorb contradiction. That is 
not possible right now. One day it may become possible. You can become so complete, 
so total, that you can move easily with many techniques. Then there will be no problem. 
But then there will also be no need! Right now is the need. Find your technique. 

I can be helpful to you in finding which technique will be suitable for you. And if you 
feel that other techniques are contradictory to the technique that suits you, don't think 
about them. They are contradictory. But they are not for you. At least they are not for you 
now. One day it may become possible that when you don't have the ego within, you can 
move to the opposite without any problem. The ego creates the problem. It is stuck 



somewhere, it clings to something, it is not liquid, it cannot flow. And Shiva is flowing in 
all directions. 

So remember, don't start thinking about these techniques: that this technique is against 
that. Shiva is not trying to create a system, he is not a system-maker. Shiva is giving all 
the techniques without any systematizing. They cannot be systematized, because a system 
means that the contradictory, the opposite, must be denied. 

And here the opposite is included. It is both Apollo and Dionysius; it is both serious and 
laughing; it is both immanent and transcendent; it is both earthly and unearthly — because 
it is all. 

Now we should enter the techniques: 

The first technique: 

IMAGINE SPIRIT SIMULTANEOUSLY WITHIN AND AROUND YOU UNTIL THE 
ENTIRE UNIVERSE SPIRITUALIZES. 

First you must understand what imagination is. It is condemned very much nowadays. 

The moment you hear the word "imagine' you will say this is useless, we want something 
real, not imaginary. But imagination is a reality, it is a capacity, it is a potentiality within 
you. You can imagine. That shows that your being is capable of imagination. This 
capacity is a reality. Through this imagination you can destroy or you can create yourself. 
That depends on you. Imagination is very powerful. It is potential power. 

What is imagination? It is getting into an attitude so deeply that the very attitude becomes 
reality. For example, you may have heard about a technique which is used in Tibet. They 
call it heat yoga. The night is cold, snow is falling, and the Tibetan lama will be standing 
naked under the open sky. The temperature is below zero. You would simply start dying, 
you would freeze. But the lama is practicing a particular technique. That technique is that 
he is imagining that his body is a burning fire and he is imagining that he is perspiring — 
the heat is so much that he is perspiring. 

. And he actually starts perspiring although the temperature is below zero and even the 
blood should freeze. He starts perspiring. What is happening? This perspiration is real, 
his body is really hot — but this reality is created through imagination. 

You just try some simple technique so that you can feel how reality can be created 
through imagination. Unless you feel it, you cannot work with this technique. Just count 
your pulse. Sit in a closed room and count your pulse. And then for five minutes just 
imagine that you are running. Imagine that you are running, it is hot, you are taking deep 
breaths, you are perspiring, and your pulse rate is going high. After imagining this for 
five minutes again count your pulse. You will see the difference: your pulse rate will be 
high. You have worked it just by imagination, you were not really running. 

In old Tibet, Buddhist monks used to do exercise only through imagination. And those 
techniques can be of much use for modern man, because it is difficult to run in the street, 
difficult to have a long walk, difficult to find a lonely street. You can just lie down on the 
floor in your room and imagine that for one hour continuously you are taking a long fast 
walk. Just in imagination go on walking. And now even medical experts say that the 
effect would be the same as if it were a real walk. Once you get in tune with your 
imagination, the body starts functioning. 



You are already doing many things without knowing that it is your imagination working. 
Many times you create many illnesses just through imagination; you imagine that now 
this disease is there, infectious, it is all over the place. You have become receptive, now 
there is every possibility that you will fall ill — and that illness is real. But it has been 
created through imagination. Imagination is a force, an energy, and the mind moves 
through it. And when the mind moves through it, the body follows. 

It happened once in a university hostel in the United States that four students were trying 
an experiment in hypnosis. Hypnosis is nothing but imagination power. When you 
hypnotize a person, he is really falling into deep imagination, and whatsoever you 
suggest will start happening. So they suggested many things to a boy that they had 
hypnotized. Four boys tried hypnosis on one. They tried many things and whatsoever 
they said, the boy immediately followed. When they said, "Jump," the boy started 
jumping. When they said, "Weep," the boy started weeping. When they said, "Tears are 
flowing from your eyes," tears started flowing. Then just as a joke they said, "Now lie 
down. You are dead!" And the boy lay down and he was dead. 

This happened in nineteen fifty-two. After that they made a law against hypnosis in the 
United States. No one should try hypnosis unless some research work is involved; unless 
some medical institute, or some psychological department of some university authorizes 
you. 

Only then can you experiment. Otherwise it is dangerous — the boy simply believed, 
imagined, that he was dead, and he was dead. 

If death can occur through imagination, why not life, why not more life? 

This technique is based on the power of imagination. IMAGINE SPIRIT 
SIMULTANEOUSLY WITHIN AND AROUND YOU UNTIL THE ENTIRE 
UNIVERSE SPIRITUALIZES. 

Just sit in a lonely place where no one will disturb you — a lonely secluded room will do. 
Or if you can get somewhere outside it will be better, because when you are near nature 
you are more imaginative. When there are only man-made things around you, you are 
less imaginative. Nature is dreaming, and it gives you a dreaming force. Alone you 
become more imaginative: that's why you are afraid when you are alone. It is not that 
ghosts are going to trouble you, but alone your imagination can work. And your 
imagination can create ghosts or anything you want it to. When you move alone, your 
imagination is more potential; when someone else is there, your reason is in control 
Because without reason you cannot be related to the others; to others goes on working. 
When there is no one there, the mind goes on working. When there is no one there, the 
mind relaxes and you regress to a deeper imaginative layer of the being. When you are 
alone, imagination starts functioning. 

Many experiments have been done with sensory deprivation. 

If a person can be deprived of all sensory stimuli — if you are closed in a soundproof 
room with no light entering it, no possibility of being related to any other human being, 
no pictures on the walls, nothing in the room to which you can relate — after one, two or 
three hours you will start relating to yourself. You will become imaginative. You will 
start talking to yourself. You will question and you will answer. A monologue will start 
in which you will be divided. Then suddenly you will start feeling many things which 
you cannot understand. You will start hearing sounds, but the room is soundproof, no 
sound can come in. Now you are imagining. You may start smelling perfumes, but no 



perfume is there. Now you are imagining. After thirty-six hours of sensory deprivation, 
you cannot make any difference between what is real and what is imaginary — 
impossible. After thirty-six hours of sensory deprivation, imagination becomes reality 
and reality becomes illusory. 

That is why seekers in the old days would move to the mountains, to the lonely places, 
where they could lose the distinction between the real and the unreal. Once the 
distinction is lost, your imagination is in full force. Now you can use it and you can be 
creative through it. 

For this technique sit in a lonely place: if the surrounding is natural, it is good, it not, then 
a room can also do. Then close your eyes and imagine a spiritual force is felt within and 
without. 

Within you a river of consciousness is flowing and it is going all over the room, 
overflowing. Within and without, around you, everywhere, spirit is present, energy is 
present. And don't only imagine it only in the mind, start feeling within the body — your 
body will start vibrating. When you feel that the body has started vibrating, it shows that 
the imagination has started functioning. Feel that the whole universe by and by is 
spiritualized — everything, the walls of the room, the trees around you, everything has 
become no-material, it has become spiritual. Matter is no more. 

That is the reality also. Physicists say that matter is illusory and energy is real, and 
wherever you see solid things, that solidity is just an appearance, it is not there. As 
physics enters deeper into the world of matter, matter disappears. Only energy, 
immaterial energy, remains indefinable. 

Through imagination you are reaching to a point where, by your conscious effort, you are 
destroying the structures of the intellect, the patterns of the intellect. You feel that there is 
no matter, only energy, only spirit, within and without. Soon you will feel that within and 
without have disappeared. When your body becomes spiritual and you feel it is energy, 
then there is no distinction between the within and the without. The boundaries are lost. 
Now there is only a flow, an ocean, vibrating. 

This is the real also — you are reaching to the real through imagination. 

What is imagination doing? Imagination is only destroying the old concepts, matter, old 
patterns of the mind which go on looking at things in a certain way. Imagination is 
destroying them. And then the reality will be revealed. 

IMAGINE SPIRIT SIMULTANEOUSLY WITHIN AND AROUND YOU UNTIL THE 
ENTIRE UNIVERSE SPIRITUALIZES - until you feel that all distinctions have 
disappeared, all boundaries have dissolved and the universe has become just an ocean of 
energy. That is the fact, also. But the deeper you proceed in the technique, the more 
scared you will become. You will feel as if you are going mad. Because your sanity 
consists of distinctions, your sanity consists of this so-called reality and when the reality 
starts disappearing, you will feel that simultaneously your sanity is disappearing. Saints 
and insane persons move in a world which is beyond our so-called reality. They both 
move, but the insane persons fall and saints go beyond. The difference is very small but it 
is very great also. If without any effort on your part you lose your mind and the 
distinctions, the real and the unreal, you will become insane. But if you destroy the 
concepts with conscious effort, you will become "un-sane," not insane. That "un-sanity" 
is the dimension of religion. It is beyond sanity. But conscious effort is needed. 



You should not be a victim, you should remain a master. When it is your effort which is 
destroying the patterns of the mind, you look into the unpattemed reality. 

The unpatterned reality is the only reality; the patterned reality is just imposed. That's 
why now anthropologists say that every society, every culture, looks at the same reality 
but finds a different reality there, because their patterns, their concepts are different. 

There are many cultures in the world, primitive cultures. They look at the same world in 
a very different way; their interpretation is totally different. The reality is the same for us 
and for them, but the pattern looked through is different. For example, Buddhists say that 
there is no substance in the world, the world is a process. There is nothing substantial. 
Everything is in movement — or even that may not be the right thing to say. Movement is 
the only thing. When we say that everything is in movement, again there is the old fallacy 
— it is as if there is something which is moving. Buddha says there is nothing which is 
moving — only movement is there. That is all that there is. So in a Buddhist country like 
Thailand or Burma, they don't have any corresponding word for "is" in their languages. 
When the Bible was translated into Thai for the first time, it became a problem to 
translate it because in the Bible it is said that "God is." You cannot say that "God is" in 
Burmese or in Thai; you cannot say it. 

Whatsoever they say will mean, "God is becoming." Everything is moving, nothing is. 
When a Burmese looks at the world, he looks at movement. When we look, when 
particularly the Greek-oriented Western mind looks, there is no process, only substance. 
There are dead things, not movements. Even when you look at a river, you see the river 
as "is." The river is not there — the river just means a movement, something which is 
constantly becoming. And a point never comes where you say it has become, it is a 
process without end. When we look at a tree, we see the tree "is". The Burmese language 
has nothing to say. They can only say that the tree is becoming, the tree is flowing, the 
tree is growing, the tree is in process. If the child is brought up with this pattern in the 
mind — then everything is a process — the world, the reality, will be totally different. For 
you it is different and the reality is one and the same. But what mind do you bring to it to 
interpret it? Then it changes. 

Remember one basic thing: unless the pattern of your mind is thrown away, unless you 
are "de-patterned", unless your conditioning is thrown away and you are deconditioned, 
you will not know what reality is — you will know only interpretations. Those 
interpretations are the workings of your own mind. Unpatterned reality is the only reality. 
And this technique is to help you to unpattem, to decondition, to dissolve from the mind 
the words which have gathered there. 

You cannot look because of them. Whatsoever looks real to you let it be dissolved. 
Imagine energy, not substance, nothing static, but process, movement, rhythm, dance, 
and go on imagining until the entire universe spiritualizes. If you persist, within three 
months of intensively working for just one hour every day, you can move to this feeling. 
Within three months you can have a different feeling of the whole existence around you. 
Matter is no longer there, only immaterial, oceanic existence, just waves, vibrations. 
When this happens then you know what God is. That ocean of energy is God. God is not 
a person. God is not somewhere sitting on a throne in heaven. The whole creative energy 
of existence is God. But we have a pattern of thinking. We say God is the creator. God is 
not the creator. Rather, God is the creative force, the very creation itself. 

It has been forced again and again on our minds that somewhere in the past, God created 



the world — and then and there creation finished. Christians have a story that within six 
days God created the world and on the seventh day he rested. That’s why the seventh day, 
Sunday, is a holiday. God took a holiday on that day. In six days he created the world, 
forever and ever — and since then there has been no creation. Since the sixth day there 
has been no creation. This is a very dead concept. Tantra says God is the very creativity. 

Creation is not a historical event that happened somewhere in the past — it is happening 
every moment, God is creating every moment. But again language creates a problem and 
we say, "God is creating." It feels that God is someone who goes on creating. No, the 
very creativity that goes on moving and moving every moment, that very creativity is 
God. So you are in creation every moment. This is a very alive concept. It is not that God 
has created something somewhere and since then there has been no dialogue between 
man and God, there has been really no connection, no relationship — he created and the 
thing was finished. Tantra says that every moment you are being created, eery moment 
you are in deep relationship with the divine, with the source of creativity. This is a very 
alive concept. 

Through this technique you will have glimpse of the creative force, within and without. 
And once you can feel the creative force and the touch, the impact of it, you will become 
totally different, you will never be the same again. God has entered you. You have 
become an abode. 

The second technique: 

WITH YOUR ENTIRE CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE VERY START OF DESIRE, OF 
KNOWING, KNOW. 

The basic thing about this technique is ENTIRE CONSCIOUSNESS. If you can bring 
your entire consciousness to anything, it will become a transforming force. The 
transfonnation happens whenever you are entire in it — in anything. 

But that is difficult, because wherever we are, we are only there in part, never in entirety. 
You are here listening to me. This very listening can become a transfonnation. If you are 
entirely here, this very moment here and now, if listening is your entirety, that listening 
will become a meditation: you will enter a different realm of ecstasy, a separate reality. 
But you are not entire. That is the problem with the human mind, it is always partial. A 
part is listening. Other parts may be somewhere else, or may be asleep, or may be 
thinking about what is being said, or arguing inside. That creates a division and division 
is a dissipation of energy. So when doing anything bring your entire being to it. When 
you are not holding anything back, not even a minor part is separate, when you have 
taken a jump, total, whole, your whole being has come into it, then any act becomes 
meditative. 

It is reported that one day Rinzai was working in his garden — Rinzai was a Zen master — 
and somebody approached. The man had come to ask some philosophical questions. He 
was a philosophical seeker. He didn’t know that the man who was working in the garden 
was Rinzai himself. He thought he must be a gardener, a servant, so he asked, "Where is 
Rinzai?" Rinzai said, "Rinzai is always here." Of course, the man thought that this 
gardener seemed to be mad because he said that Rinzai was always here. 


So he thought it would not be good to ask anything of this man again and he started 



moving off to ask someone else. Rinzai said, "Don’t go anywhere, because you will not 
find him anywhere. He is always here." But he escaped from this madman. 

Then he inquired from others and they said, "The first man you met is Rinzai." So he 
came back and said, "Forgive me, I am sorry, I thought you were mad. I have come to 
inquire about something. I want to now what truth is. What should I do to know it?" 
Rinzai said, "Do whatsoever you want to do, but do it entirely." 

The point is not what you do, that is irrelevant. The point is that you do it entirely. 

"For example," Rinzai said, "when I am digging this hole in the earth, my entirely is there 
in the act of digging. There is no Rinzai left behind. The whole has gone into the digging. 
Really there is no digger left, only the digging. If the digger is left, then you are 
divided." 

You are listening to me. If the listener is left, then you are not entire. If there is only 
listening and there is no listener left behind you are entire, here and now. Then this very 
moment becomes a meditation. In this sutra Shiva says, WITH YOUR ENTIRE 
CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE VERY START OF DESIRE, OF KNOWING, KNOW. If a 
desire arises within you, Tantra doesn’t say to fight it. That is futile. No one can fight a 
desire. It is foolish also, because whenever you start fighting with something within you, 
you are fighting with yourself, you will become schizophrenic, your personality will be 
split. 

And all these so-called religions have helped humanity to by and by become 
schizophrenic. Everybody is split, everybody is divided and fighting with himself 
because so-called religions have told you, "This is bad. Don’t do this." If the desire 
comes, what to do? You go on fighting with the desire. Tantra says don’t fight the desire. 
But that doesn’t mean that you become a victim of it. That doesn’t mean that you indulge 
in it. Tantra gives you a very subtle technique. When desire arises, be alert just at the 
beginning with your entirety. Look at it with your entirety. Become the look. Don’t leave 
the looker behind. Bring your total consciousness to this arising desire. This is a very 
subtle method, but wonderful. Miraculous are its effects. 

Three things have to be understood. Firstly, when desire has already arisen you cannot do 
anything. Then it will take its full course, it will complete its circle, and you cannot do 
anything. Just in the beginning something can be done — the seed should be burned then 
and there. Once the seed has sprouted and the tree has started growing, it is difficult, 
almost impossible, to do something. Whatsoever you do will create more anguish, 
dissipation of energy, frustration, weakness. When the desire arises, just at the beginning, 
just at the first glimpse, the first flicker that a desire is arising, bring your total 
consciousness, the entirety of your being to look at it. 

Don't do anything. Nothing else is needed. With the entire being the look is so fiery that 
the seed is burned, with no struggle, with no conflict, with no antagonism. Just a deep 
look with the entire being and the arriving desire disappears completely. And when a 
desire disappears without a fight, it leaves you so powerful, with such immense energy, 
with such tremendous awareness, you cannot imagine it. If you fight, you will be 
defeated. Even if you are not defeated and you defeat the desire, that too will amount to 
the same thing. No energy will be left. You will feel frustrated whether you win or get 
defeated. In both cases you will be weak in the end, because the desire was fighting with 
your energy and you were fighting with the same energy. The energy was coming from 
the same source, you were taking from the same source — so the source will be weakened 



whatsoever the result. But if the desire disappears just in the beginning, without any 
conflict — remember, this is basic — without any fight, with just a look, not even an 
antagonistic look, not even with a mind to destroy, with no enmity, just a total look, in 
the intensity of that total look the seed is burnt. And when the desire, arising desire, 
disappears, just like smoke in the sky, you are left with tremendous energy — that very 
energy is bliss. That will give you a beauty of its own, a grace. 

The so-called saints who are fighting their desires are always ugly. 

When I say ugly, I mean they are always mean, fighting. Their whole personality 
becomes graceless. And they are always weak, always lacking energy, because all their 
energy is used up in the inner fight. A Buddha is totally different. And the grace that has 
come to Buddha's personality is the grace of desires disappearing without any struggle or 
fight, without any inner violence. 

WITH YOUR ENTIRE CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE VERY START OF DESIRE, OF 
KNOWING, KNOW. In that very moment simply know, look, see. Don’t do anything. 
Nothing else is needed. All that is needed is that your total being should be there present. 
Your total presence is needed. This is one of the secrets of achieving the ultimate 
enlightenment without any violence. And remember, you cannot enter into the kingdom 
of God with violence. No, those doors shall never open for you, howsoever much you 
knock. Knock and go on knocking. You may break your head but those doors will never 
open. But for those who deep inside are non-violent and not fighting with anything, those 
doors are always open, they were never closed. Jesus said, "Knock and the doors shall be 
opened unto you." I say to you that there is no need even to knock. Look, the doors are 
open. They have always been open. They were never closed. Just take a deep look, entire, 
total, whole. 

The third technique: 

O SHAKTI, EACH PARTICULAR PERCEPTION IS LIMITED, DISAPPEARING IN 
OMNIPOTENCE. 


Whatsoever we see is limited, whatsoever we feel is limited, all perceptions are limited. 
But if you can become aware, then every limited thing is disappearing into the unlimited. 
Look at the sky. You will see a limited part of it, not because the sky is limited by 
because your eyes are limited, your focus is limited. But if you can become aware that 
this limitation is because of the focus, because of the eye, it is not the sky that is limited, 
then you will see the boundaries melting into the unlimited. Otherwise existence is 
unlimited, otherwise everything is melting into something else. Everything is losing its 
boundary, every moment waves are disappearing into the ocean — and there is no end to 
anything and there is no beginning. Everything is everything else also. 

Limitation is forced by us. It is because of us, because we cannot see the infinite, that we 
divide it. We have done it in everything. You make a fence around your house and you 
say, "This land belongs to me and beyond the fence is somebody else’s land." But deep 
down your land and your neighbor's land are one. The fence is just because of you. The 
land is not divided, the neighbors and you are divided — because of your mind. 

Nations are divided because of your mind. Somewhere India ends and Pakistan starts, but 
just a few years back India was where Pakistan now is. At that time India used to 



continue up to the limits of Pakistan, the present day limits. 

But now Pakistan is divided, there is a barrier. But the land remains the same. 

I have heard a story that happened when India and Pakistan were divided. There was a 
madhouse, a mad asylum, just on the boundary of India and Pakistan. The politicians 
were not very worried about where the madhouse went, to Pakistan or to India, but the 
superintendent was very worried. So he asked where the madhouse was going to be, 
whether it was going to be in India or in Pakistan. Somebody from Delhi informed him 
that he should ask the inmates, the madmen, and take a vote as to where they wanted to 
go- 

The superintendent was the only man who was not insane and he tried to explain. He 
gathered all the madmen together and told them, "Now it is up to you, wherever you want 
you can go. If you want to go to India, you can go to India. If you want to go to Pakistan, 
you can go to Pakistan." But the madmen said, "We want to remain here. We don’t want 
to go anywhere." He tried and tried to explain. He said, "You will remain here. Don’t 
worry about it. You will remain here, but where do you want to go?" Those madmen 
said, "People say we are mad, but you look more mad. You say you will remain here, and 
we will remain here, so why worry about going anywhere?" The superintendent was at a 
loss as to how to explain the whole thing. 

There was only one way. He erected a wall, and divided the madhouse into two equal 
parts. 

One part became India, another part became Pakistan. And it is reported that sometimes 
madmen from the Pakistan madhouse came over the wall, and the madmen from India 
they also jumped over the wall, and they're still much confused about what is happening. 
"We are in the same place, and you have gone to Pakistan, and we have gone to India, 
and no one has gone anywhere!" 

Those madmen are bound to be at a loss, they will never be able to understand, because 
in Delhi and Karachi there are bigger madmen. 

We go on dividing. Life, existence, is not divided. All demarcations are man-made. They 
are useful, if you don't go mad about them, and if you know that they are just artificial, 
man-made, utilitarian, not real, not true, that they are just myths, that they help but they 
don’t go any deeper. 

O SHAKTI, EACH PARTICULAR PERCEPTION IS LIMITED, DISAPPEARING IN 
OMNIPOTENCE. So, whenever you see anything limited, always remember that beyond 
the limit it is disappearing, the limitation is disappearing. Always look beyond and 
beyond. 

This you can make a meditation. Just sit under a tree and look, and whatsoever comes 
into your view, just go beyond, look beyond, and don't stop anywhere. Just find where 
this tree is melting. This tree, this small tree just in your garden, has the whole of 
existence in it. It is melting every moment. If the sun does not rise tomorrow this tree will 
die, because this tree's life is bound together with the life of the sun. 

The distance between them is very long — for the sun-rays to reach earth takes time, ten 
minutes' time. Ten minutes' time is very long, because light travels at a very fast speed, 
tremendous. Light travels one hundred and eighty-six lahk miles in one second and it 
takes ten minutes for light to reach this tree from the sun. The distance is tremendous, 
vast. But if the sun is no longer there, the tree will immediately disappear. They exist 



together. The tree is melting every moment into the sun and the sun is melting into the 
tree. Every moment the sun is entering into the tree, making it alive.... The other things is 
as yet unknown to science, but religion says another thing is also happening — because in 
life nothing can exist without response. If the sun is giving life to the tee, the tree must be 
giving life back to the sun, because in life there is always a response. And energy 
equalizes. The tree must be giving life to the sun. They are one. Then the tree has 
disappeared, the limitation has disappeared. 

Wherever you look, look for the beyond and don’t stop anywhere. Go on and on and on, 
until you lose your mind, until you lose all your limited patterns. Suddenly you will be 
illumined. The whole existence is one. That oneness is the goal. And suddenly mind is 
tired of pattern, limitation, boundary — and as you insist on going beyond, as you go on 
pulling it beyond and beyond, the mind slips, suddenly it drops, and you look at existence 
as a vast oneness, everything melting into each other, everything changing into the other. 


O SHAKTI, EACH PARTICULAR PERCEPTION IS LIMITED, DISAPPEARING IN 
OMNIPOTENCE. You can make a meditation out of it. Sit for one hour and work it out. 
Don't create any limitation anywhere. Whatsoever the limitation just try to find the 
beyond, and move and go on moving. Soon the mind becomes tired because mind cannot 
cope with the unlimited. Only with the limited can it be related. With the unlimited, it 
cannot be related: it gets bored, it gets tired, it says, "Enough, now stop!" But don’t stop, 
go on moving. A moment will come when mind is left behind and only consciousness is 
moving. In that moment you will have the illumination of oneness, of non-duality. That is 
the goal. That is the highest peak of consciousness. And that is the greatest ecstasy 
possible to human mind, and the deepest bliss. 

The fourth technique: 

IN TRUTH FORMS ARE INSEPARATE. INSEPARATE ARE OMNIPRESENT 
BEING AND YOUR OWN FORM. REALIZE EACH AS MADE OF THIS 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 

In truth fonns are inseparate. They appear separate, but every form is joined together 
with other forms. Our reality is a co-existence. It is really an inter-reality, an inter- 
subjectivity. For example, think of yourself alone on this earth. What will you be? The 
whole of humanity has disappeared, you are left alone after a third world war, alone in 
the world, alone on this big earth. Who will you be? 

The first thing is that it is impossible to conceive of yourself alone. 

It is impossible, I say, to conceive of yourself alone. You will try and try and you will see 
that someone is just standing there — your wife, your children, your friends — because 
you cannot exist alone, even in imagination. You exist with others. They give you 
existence. They contribute. You contribute to them and they contribute to you. 

Who will you be? Will you be a good man or a bad man? Nothing can be said, because 
goodness and badness exist in relation. Will you be beautiful or ugly? Nothing can be 
said. Will you be man or woman? Nothing can be said, because whatsoever you are, you 
are related to someone else. Will you be wise or foolish? By and by you will see that 
every form has disappeared. And with these other forms, all forms within you have also 
disappeared. You are neither foolish nor wise, neither good nor bad, neither ugly nor 



beautiful, neither man nor woman. Then what will you be? If you goon eliminating all 
forms, soon you will realize that only nothing remains. We see forms as separate, but 
they are not. Every form is linked with others. Forms exist in a pattern. 

This sutra says, IN TRUTH FORMS ARE INSEPARATE. INSEPARATE ARE 
OMNIPRESENT BEING AND YOUR OWN FORM. Even your form and the form of 
the whole existence is inseparate. You are one with it. You cannot be without it. And the 
other thing is also true but difficult to conceive: the universe cannot be without you. 

The universe cannot be without you just as you cannot e without the universe. You have 
been existing in many, many forms always and you will exist always in many, many 
forms. But you will be there. You are an intrinsic part of this universe. You are not alien, 
you are not a stranger to it, you are not an outsider. You are an insider, an intrinsic part. 
And the universe cannot afford to lose you because if it loses you, it will lose itself. 
Forms are not separate, they are inseparate. They are one. Only the appearance gives 
demarcations and boundaries. This can become a realization if you ponder over it, 
penetrate into it; it becomes a realization, not a doctrine, not a thought, but a realization 
that, "Yes, I am one with the universe and the universe is one with me." 

This is what Jesus was saying to the Jews. But they felt offended because Jesus said, "I 
and my father in heaven are one." Jews felt offended. What was he claiming? Was he 
claiming that he and God are one? This was blasphemy. He must be punished. But he 
was simply teaching a technique, nothing else. He was simply teaching a technique that 
forms are not separate, that you and the whole are one — "I and my father in heaven are 
one." But this was not a claim, this was just a suggested technique. And when Jesus said, 
"I and my father are one," he didn’t mean that you and the father and the Divine are 
separate. 

When he said 'I', every 'I' is represented. Whenever T exists, that 'I' and the Divine is 
one. But it can be misunderstood, and both Jews and Christians misunderstood. Even 
Christians misunderstood, because they say he was the only begotten son of God, the 
only begotten son, so that no one else can claim that he also is a son of God. 

I was reading a very funny book. The title is THREE CHRISTS. In a madhouse, there 
were three men, and all the three claimed that they were Christ. This is an actual fact not 
a story. So one psychoanalyst studied all three. Then the thought came to his mind that it 
would be very funny to introduce them to each other to see what would happen — how 
they would introduce themselves and what their reaction would be. So he brought all 
three together and left them in a room to introduce themselves. The first one said, "I am 
the only begotten son, Jesus Christ." The other laughed and in his mind he thought he 
must be mad! He said, "How can you be? I am Jesus Christ. You are also part of that 
whole. A fragment of that consciousness is in you also. But Jesus Christ, the only son of 
God — that I am." 

The third thought that both were foolish, that both had gone insane. He said, "What are 
you talking about? Look at me. The son of God is here." 

Then the psychoanalyst asked them separately, "What is your reaction?" They all said, 
"Both the others are mad. The other two have gone crazy." 

And this is not only the case with madmen, (f you ask Christians what they think about 
Krishna, because he claims that he is God, they will say that there is only one, one 
penetration of the beyond, and that is Jesus Christ. At only one time in history did God 
penetrate into the world, and that was with Jesus Christ. Krishna is good, a great man but 



not Divine, not God himself. 

If you ask Hindus, they will laugh at Jesus. The same madness goes on, and the reality is 
that everyone is the only begotten son of God — everyone. The otherwise is not possible. 
You come from the same source, whether you are Jesus or Krishna or A, B, C, anybody 
or anybody, you come from the same source. And every 'I', every consciousness, is 
immediately related to the Divine. Jesus was giving only a technique. He was 
misunderstood. 

This technique is the same. In truth fonns are inseparate. Inseparate are omnipresent 
being and your own fonn. Realize each as made of this consciousness. Not only realize 
that you are made of this consciousness, realize that everything around you is made of 
this consciousness. Because it is very easy to realize that you are made of this 
consciousness, it can give you a very egoistic feeling, it can be a deep fulfillment to the 
ego. But realize that the other is also, then it become a humbleness. When everything is 
Divine you cannot have any egoistic mind. 

When everything is Divine, you are humbled. Then there is no question of your being 
somebody, or something above, then the whole of existence is Divine, and wherever you 
look, you look at the Divine. The looker and the looked-at are both Divine because fonns 
are not separate. Underneath all forms is hidden one formlessness. 


THE END. 



Chapter 76: Buddha's inner orgasm 


The first question: 

Question 1 

WE HAVE ALWAYS HEARD THAT TANTRA IS BASICALLY CONCERNED 
WITH SEX ENERGY AND SEX CENTER TECHNIQUES, BUT YOU SAY THAT 
TANTRA IS ALL-INCLUSIVE. IF THERE IS ANY TRUTH IN THE FORMER 
STANDPOINT, THE MAJORITY OF TECHNIQUES IN VIGYANA BHAIRAVA 
SEEM TO BE NON-TANTRIC. IS THIS TRUE? 

The first thing is to understand sex energy. As you understand it, it is just a part, one part, 
one fragment of the life force, but as Tantra understands it, it is just synonymous with 
life. It is not a part, not a fragment — it is life itself. So when Tantra says "sex" energy it 
means "life" energy. 

The same is true about Freudian concepts of sex energy. Freud was also very much 
misunderstood in the West. It appeared to people that he was reducing life to sex, but he 
was doing the same thing that Tantra has been doing for so long. Life is sex. The word 
"sex" is not confined to reproduction, the whole play of life energy is sex. Reproduction 
is just a part of that play. Wherever two energies are meeting — negative and positive — 
sex has entered. 

It is difficult to understand. For example: you are listening to me. If you ask Freud, or if 
you ask Tantra masters, they would say that listening is passive, feminine, and speaking 
is male. Speaking is a penetration of you and you are receptive to it. Between a speaker 
and a listener a sex act is happening because the speaker is trying to penetrate you and 
the listener is receiving. 

The energy in the listener has become feminine, and if the listener has not become 
feminine there will be no phenomenon of listening. That is why the listener has to be 
totally passive. He should not think while listening because thinking will make him 
active. He should not go on arguing within between argument will make him active. 
While listening, he should be simply listening, not doing anything else. Only then can the 
message penetrate and become illumined. But then the listener has become feminine. 
Communication happens only when one party has become male and the other party has 
become female, otherwise there can be no communication. Wherever negative and 
positive meet, sex has happened. It may be on the physical plane — positive and negative 
electricity meet and sex has happened. Wherever polarities meet, opposites meet, it is 
sex. So sex is a very wide, a very spacious tenn, it is not concerned only with 
reproduction. Reproduction is only one type of phenomenon which is included in sex. 
Tantra says that when the ultimate bliss and ecstasy comes inside you, it means your own 
positive and negative pole have come to a meeting — because every man is both man and 
woman, and every women is both man and woman. You are bom not only from woman 
or from man, you are born out of a meeting of the opposites. Your father has contributed, 
your mother has contributed. You are half your mother and half your father and they both 
co-exist within you. 

When they meet within, ecstasy happens. 

Buddha sitting under his Bodhi tree is in a deep inner orgasm. The inner forces have met, 



they have melted into each other. Now there will be no need to seek a woman outside 
because the meeting has happened with the inner woman. And Buddha is non-attached to, 
or detached from, woman outside, not because he is against woman, but because the 
ultimate phenomenon has happened within. Now there is no need. An inner circle has 
become whole, now it is complete. That is why such grace comes to Buddha's face. It is 
the grace of being complete. Now nothing is lacking, a deep fulfillment has happened, 
now there is no further journey. He has achieved the ultimate destiny. The inner forces 
have come to a meeting and now there is no conflict. But it is a sexual phenomenon. 
Meditation is a sexual phenomenon, that is why Tantra is said to be sex-based, sex- 
oriented — and all these hundred and twelve techniques are sexual. 

Really, no meditative technique can be non-sexual. But you have to understand the 
wideness of the tenn "sex". If you don’t understand you will be confused, and 
misunderstanding will follow. 

So whenever Tantra says "sex-energy" it means the "elan-vital", the life-energy itself. 
They are synonymous. Whatsoever we call sex is just one dimension of life-energy. 

There are other dimensions. And really it should be so. 

You see a seed sprouting, somewhere flowers are coming on a tree, the birds are singing 
— the whole phenomenon is sexual. It is life manifesting itself in many ways. When the 
bird is singing it is a sexual call, an invitation. When the flower is attracting butterflies 
and bees it is an invitation, because the bees and butterflies will carry the seeds of 
reproduction. Stars are moving in space.... No one has yet worked on it but it is one of the 
oldest Tantra concepts that there are male planets and female planets — otherwise there 
would be no movement. It must be so because the polarity is needed, the opposite is 
needed to create magnetism, to create attraction. Planets must be male and female. 
Everything must be divided into these two polarities. And life is a rhythm between these 
two opposites. Repulsion and attraction, coming nearer and going far... these are the 
rhythms. 

Tantra uses the word "sex" wherever the opposites meet. It is a sexual phenomenon. And 
how to make your inner opposites meet, is the whole purpose of meditation. So all these 
hundred and twelve methods are sexual. There cannot be anything else, there is no 
possibility. But try to understand the wideness of the term "sex". 

The second question: 

Question 2 

YOU SAID THAT EXISTENCE IS A WHOLENESS, THAT EVERYTHING IS 
RELATED, THAT THINGS ARE MELTING INTO EACH OTHER, THAT THE TREE 
CANNOT BE WITHOUT THE SUN AND THE SUN ALSO CANNOT EXIST 
WITHOUT THE TREE. 

IN REFERENCE TO THE ABOVE, PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW IGNORANCE AND 
ENLIGHTENMENT ARE RELATED TO EACH OTHER. 

They are related. Enlightenment and ignorance are two polar opposites. Enlightenment 
can exist only because there is ignorance. If ignorance disappeared from the world, 
enlightenment would disappear simultaneously. But because of our dualistic thinking we 
always think that opposites are opposites. They are complementary, they are not really 
opposite. They are complementary because one cannot exist without the other. So they 
are not enemies. Birth and death are not enemies because death cannot exist if there is no 



birth. Birth creates the base for death to exist but if there were no death, birth could not 
exist. 

Death creates the base — so whenever someone is dying, someone else is being born. At 
one point there is death, at the next point immediately there is birth. They look opposite, 
they work in opposition as far as the surface is concerned, but deep down they are friends 
helping each other. It is easy to understand about ignorance and enlightenment because 
we think that when a man becomes enlightened, ignorance has disappeared completely. 
This is the ordinary standpoint about enlightenment — that ignorance has disappeared 
completely. No. That is not right. Rather, on the contrary, when a person becomes 
enlightened, enlightenment and ignorance have both disappeared. 

Because if one is there the other is bound to be there; one cannot exist without the other. 
They exist together or they disappear together. They are aspects of one thing, two faces 
of one coin. You cannot make one face of the coin disappear and retain the other. 

So when a person becomes a Buddha, really, at that moment both have disappeared — 
ignorance and enlightenment both. Just consciousness is left, pure being is left, and the 
conflicting, opposing, helping opposites have disappeared. That is why when Buddha is 
asked what happens to an enlightened man, he remains silent many times. He says, 

"Don't ask this because whatsoever I say will be untrue. Whatsoever I say will be untrue. 
If I say that he has become silent it means the opposite of silence must exist there, 
otherwise how can you feel silence? If I say he has become blissful, then anguish must 
exist side by side. How can you feel bliss without anguish?" Buddha says, "Whatsoever I 
say will be untrue." So he remains consistently silent about the state of an enlightened 
person, because all our terms are dual. If you say light, and if someone insists, "Define 
it," how are you going to define it? You will have to bring darkness in, only then can you 
define it. You will say that light is where darkness is not — or something like that. 

One of the greatest thinkers of the world, Voltaire, used to say that you can communicate 
only if you define your terms first. 

But that is impossible. If you have to define light, you will have to bring darkness in. And 
then if it is asked what darkness is, you will have to define it by light, which is undefined. 
All definitions are circular. They used to say, "What is mind?" and the definition was, 
"Not matter." And, "What is matter?" and the definition was, "Not mind." Both terms are 
undefined and you are playing a trick with yourself. You define one term by another term 
which itself needs definition. The whole language is circular and the opposite is 
necessary. 

So Buddha says, "I will not even say that the enlightened person exists." Because 
existence is possible only if non-existence is also present. So, he will not even say that 
you exist after enlightenment, because existence has to be defined by non-existence. 
Nothing can be said then because all language consists of the polar opposite. That is why 
in the Upanishads it is said that if someone says that he is enlightened, know well that he 
is not. Because how can he feel that he is enlightened? Some ignorance must have 
remained because a contrast is needed. 

If you write on a blackboard with white chalk — the blacker the board the whiter will be 
the writing. You cannot write on a white board with white chalk. If you do, there will be 
no writing. The contrast is needed. If you feel that you are enlightened that shows that the 
blackboard is right there — only then could you feel it. 



If the blackboard has really disappeared, the writing would have also disappeared. It 
happens simultaneously. So a Buddha is neither ignorant nor wise, he simply is. You 
cannot put him on any pole of any duality. Both the poles have disappeared. 

When they disappear how does it happen? When both poles meet they negate each other 
and disappear. In another way you can say Buddha is both the most ignorant person and 
the most enlightened. The polarity has come to its extreme point, there has been a 
meeting, and the meeting has cancelled both. The minus and plus have come together. 
Now there is neither minus nor plus, because they cancel each other. The minus has 
cancelled the plus and the plus has cancelled the minus, they have both disappeared and a 
pure being, an innocent being is left. You cannot say it is wise, you cannot say it is 
ignorant — or, you can say it is both. 

Enlightenment means the point from where you take a jump into the non-dual. Before 
that point is duality. Everything is divided. 

Someone asked Buddha, "Who are you?" He laughed and said, "It is difficult to say." But 
the man insisted. He said something can be said because you are. Something meaningful 
can be asserted because you are. But Buddha said, "Nothing can be said. I am, but even 
to say this leads me into untruth." Then the man took another route. He asked "Are you a 
man or a woman?" Buddha said, "It is difficult to say. 

Once I was a man, but then my whole being was attracted towards women. When I was a 
man, my mind was filled with women, and when women disappeared from my mind, my 
man also disappeared with them. Now I cannot say. I don’t know who I am and it is 
difficult to define." 

When duality is no more, nothing can be defined. So if you are aware that you have 
become wise it means that foolishness persists. If you think that you have become 
blissful, it means that you are still in the world, in the realm of anguish. If you say that 
you feel a very deep well-being, a health, that means that disease is still possible. The 
opposite will follow you; if you carry one the other will follow. You have to drop both. 
And the dropping happens when both meet. So the basic science of all religion is how to 
allow your inner opposites to meet so that they disappear and not a trace is left. You will 
disappear with the disappearance of the opposite. You as you are will no longer be there 
and something totally new and unknown, something unimaginable, will come into being. 
That something is called Brahma, you can call it God. Buddha prefers the term "nirvana". 
The word "nirvana" simply means cessation of all that was, total cessation of the past. 
And you cannot use your past experience and knowledge to define this new. This new is 
indefinable. 

Ignorance and enlightenment are also part of duality. 

For us Buddha looks enlightened because we are in ignorance. For Buddha himself he is 
neither. It is impossible for him to think in tenns of duality. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

WILL YOU PLEASE TELL US WHY KRISHNAMURTI IS AGAINST 
TECHNIQUES, WHEREAS SHIVA IS FOR SO MANY TECHNIQUES. 

Being against techniques is simply a technique. Not only Krishnamurti is using that 
technique, it has been used many times before. It is one of the oldest techniques, nothing 
is new about it. 



Two thousand years ago Bodhidhanna used it. He introduced into China what is now 
known as Chan or Zen-Buddhism. He was a Hindu monk, a monk from India. He 
believed in no-technique. Zen is based on no-technique. Zen masters say that if you do 
something you will miss, because who will do? You? You are the disease, and out of you 
nothing else can be born. Who will make the effort? Your mind, and your mind has to be 
destroyed — and you cannot destroy the mind itself with help from the mind. Whatsoever 
you do, your mind will be more strengthened. 

So Zen says there is no technique, no method, there is no scripture and there can be no 
guru. But the beauty is that Zen has created the greatest of gurus and Zen masters have 
written the best scriptures in the world. And through Zen thousands and thousands of 
people attained nirvana — but they say there is no technique. 


So it has to be understood that no-technique is really one of the foundational techniques. 
The emphasis is on "no" so that your mind is negated. Mind can have two attitudes — yes 
or no. These are the two possibilities, the two alternatives, just as they are in everything. 
No is the feminine and yes is the male. So you can use the method of no, or you can use 
the method of yes. If you follow the method of yes, then there are many methods — but 
you have to say yes and there can be many yes's. If you follow no, then there are not 
many methods, only one, because there cannot be many no's. 

Look at this point: there are so many religions in the world, so many types of theists. 
There are at least three hundred religions in existence right now. So theism has three 
hundred temples, churches, scriptures. But there is only one type of atheism, there cannot 
be two. Atheists have no sects. When you say there is no God, the thing is finished. You 
cannot differentiate between two no's, you cannot make any difference. But when you 
say, "Yes there is God," then there is a possibility of difference. Because my yes will 
create my own God and your yes will create your own God. Your yes may be said to 
Jesus, my yes may be said to Krishna — but when you say no, then all no's are similar. 
That is why on the earth there are no sects in atheism. 

Atheists are all alike. They don’t have any scripture, they don't have any church. 

When they don’t have any positive attitude there is nothing to differ about, a simple no is 
enough. The same has happened about techniques: no has only one technique, yes has 
one hundred and twelve, or many more even are possible. You can create new 
combinations. 

Someone has said that the method I teach, the dynamic method of meditation, is not 
included in these one hundred and twelve methods. It is not included because it is a new 
combination, but all that is in it is there in the hundred and twelve methods. Some parts 
are in one technique, some other part is in some other technique. These hundred and 
twelve are the basic methods. You can create thousands out of them. There is no end to it. 
Any number of combinations is possible. 

But those who ay there is no method can have only one method. You cannot create much 
out of no. So Bodhidhanna, Lin Chi, Bokuju, Krishnamurti, have only one method. 

Really Krishnamurti comes just after a succession of Zen masters. He is talking Zen. 
Nothing is new about it. But Zen always looks new, and the reason is because Zen doesn't 
believe in scriptures, doesn’t believe in tradition, doesn’t believe in techniques. 

So whenever no arises again it is fresh and new. Yes believes in tradition, in scriptures, in 
masters. Whenever yes is there, it will have a long beginningless tradition. Those who 



have said yes, Krishna or Mahavir, they go on saying that they are not saying anything 
new. 

Mahavir says, "Before me twenty-three TEERTHANKARAS have taught the same." And 
Krishna says, "Before me, this seer gave this message to that seer, that seer gave the 
message to that and it has been coming down. I am not saying anything new." 

Yes will always be old, eternal. No will always look new, as if it has suddenly come into 
being. No cannot have traditional roots. It is unrooted. That is why Krishnamurti looks 
new. He is not. 

What is this technique of "denying technique"? It can be used. It is one of the subtlest 
ways to kill and destroy the mind. Mind tries to cling to something that is a support; mind 
needs support to be there, it cannot exist in a vacuum. So it creates many types of 
supports — churches, scriptures, Bible, Koran, Gita — then it is happy, there is something 
to cling to. But then with this clinging the mind remains. 

This technique of no-technique insists on destroying all supports. So it will insist that 
there is no scripture. No Bible can be of help because the Bible is nothing but words; no 
Gita can be of any help because whatsoever you come to know through Gita will be 
borrowed, and truth cannot be borrowed. No tradition is of any help because truth has to 
be achieved authentically, individually. You have to come to it, it cannot be transferred to 
you. No master can give it to you because it is not something like property. It is not 
transferable, it cannot be taught because it is not infonnation. 

If a master teaches you, you can leam only words, concepts, doctrines. No master can 
make you a realized one. That realization has to happen to you and it has to happen 
without any help. If it happens through some help then it is dependent and then it cannot 
lead you to ultimate freedom, to MOKSHA. 

These are the parts of this no-technique. Through these criticisms, negations and 
arguments, supports are destroyed. Then you are left alone with no guru, no scripture, no 
tradition, no church, nowhere to move, nowhere to go, nowhere to be dependent. You are 
left in a vacuum. And really, if you can conceive of this vacuum and are ready to be in it, 
you will be transformed. But mind is very cunning. If Krishnamurti says to you that these 
are things — no support, no clinging, no master, no scripture, no technique — you will 
cling to Krishnamurti. There are many clinging to him. The mind has again created a 
support and then the whole point is lost. 

Many people come to me and they say, "Our minds are in anguish. How to come to the 
inner peace, how to attain the inner silence?" And if I give them some technique they say, 
"But techniques cannot help because we have been listening to Krishnamurti." Then I ask 
them, "Then why have you come to me? And what do you mean when you ask, 'How to 
attain silence?’ You are asking for a technique and you are still going to listen to 
Krishnamurti. 

Why? If there is no master and if the real cannot be taught, then why are you going on 
listening to him? He cannot teach you anything. But you go on listening to him and you 
are being aught. And you have now started to cling to this no-technique. So whenever 
someone gives you technique, you will say, 'No, we don’t believe in techniques.’ And you 
are still not silent. So what has happened? Where have you missed the train? If you really 
need no-technique, if you don’t have any technique — you must have attained. But you 
have not attained." 



The basic point has been missed; the basic point is that for this no-technique technique to 
work you must destroy all support, you must not cling to anything. And it is very 
arduous. It is almost impossible. That is why so many people for these last forty years 
have been listening to Krishnamurti but nothing has happened to them. It is so arduous 
and difficult, almost impossible to remain unsupported, to remain totally alone and to be 
alert that the mind is not allowed to create any support. Because mind is very cunning, it 
can create subtle supports again and again. You may throw away Gita, but then you fill 
the space with Krishnamurti's books. You may laugh at Mohammed, you may laugh at 
Mahavir, but if someone laughs at Krishnamurti you get angry. Again in a roundabout 
way you have created a support, you are clinging. 

Non-clinging is the secret of this method. 

If you can do it, it is good; if you cannot do it, then don't deceive. Then there are 
methods. Use them! Then be clear that you cannot be alone so you will take someone’s 
help. Help is possible. Through help also, transformation is possible. 

These are the opposites — no and yes, these are opposites. You can move from either but 
you must decide about your own mind and its working. If you feel that you can be 
alone.... 

Once it happened that when I was staying in a village a man came and he said to me, "I 
am confused. My family is trying to arrange a marriage for me." He was a young man, 
just fresh from university. He said, "I don’t want to be involved in all that. I want to 
become a SANNYASIN, I want to renounce all. So what is your advice?" I told him, "I 
never went to ask anybody, but you have come to take my advice. When you have come 
to take advice it shows that you need support, that you need. It will be difficult for you to 
live without a wife. That too is a support," 

You cannot live without a wife, you cannot live without your husband, but you think you 
can live without a guru? Impossible! Your mind needs support in every way. Why do you 
go to Krishnamurti? You go to learn, you go to be taught, you go to borrow knowledge. 
Otherwise there is no need. Many times it has happened that friends will say, "It would 
be good if you and Krishnamurti meet." 

So I tell them, "You go and ask Krishnamurti and if he wants to meet, I will come. But 
what is going to be there? What will we do? What will we talk about? We can remain 
silent. What is the need? But they say, "It would be good if you both meet. It would be 
good for us. We will be happy to listen to what you say." 

So I tell them a story. 

Once it happened that a Mohammedan mystic, Farid, was traveling. When they came 
near the village of Kabir, another mystic, the followers of Farid said that it would be very 
good if they both meet. And when it became known to Kabir's disciples, they also 
insisted that, As Farid was passing, they should invite him in. So Kabir said, "It is okay." 
Farid also said, "It is okay. We will go, but don't say anything when I enter Kabir's hut, 
remain quite silent." 

For two days Farid stayed in Kabir's hut. There was total silence. They sat silently for 
two days and then Kabir came to the edge of his village to give a send-off to Farid — and 
in silence they departed. The moment they departed the followers of both started asking. 
The followers of Kabir asked him, "What was this? It became a boredom. You were 
sitting silently for two days, not even a single word was spoken, and we were so eager to 
hear." Farid’s followers also said, "What was this? It seems weird. For two days 



continuously we were watching and watching and waiting and waiting for something to 
come out of this meeting. 


But nothing came out." 

Farid is reported to have said, "What do you mean? Two persons who know, cannot talk; 
two persons who don't know, can talk much, but it is useless, even harmful. The only 
possibility is one person who knows, talking to one who doesn’t know" And Kabir 
said, "Whoever uttered a single word would have proved that he didn’t know." 

You go on asking for advice, you go on searching for supports. Realize it will that if you 
cannot remain without support, then it is good to find a support, a guide, knowingly. If 
you think that there is no need, that you are enough unto yourself, then stop seeking 
Krishnamurti or anybody. Stop going and remain alone. 

It has happened also to persons who were alone but the phenomenon is very rare. 
Sometimes to one person in millions it happens — and that too is not without any cause. 
That person may have been seeking for many lives; he may have been finding many 
supports, many masters, many guides, and now a point has come where he can be alone. 
Only then it happens. But whenever it happens to a person, that he achieves the ultimate 
alone, he starts saying that it can happen to you also. It is natural. 

Because it happened to Krishnamurti alone, he goes on saying that it can happen to you. 

It cannot happen to you! You are in search of support and that shows that alone you 
cannot do it. So don’t be deceived by yourself! Your ego may feel good that, "I don’t need 
any support!" Ego always thinks in terms of, "I alone am enough," but that ego will not 
help. 

That will become the greatest barrier possible. No-technique is a technique but only for 
very specific people; for those who have struggled in many lives and have now come to a 
point where they can be alone, that technique is a help. And if you are that type of 
person, I know well you will not be here. So I am not worried about that person, he will 
not be here. He cannot be here. Not only here, he cannot be anywhere with any master, 
listening, seeking, searching, practicing. He will not be found anywhere. So we can leave 
him, we need not discuss him. 

These techniques are for you. So this is how I will conclude. Krishnamurti is talking for 
the person who cannot be there and I am talking for persons who are here. Whatsoever 
Krishnamurti is saying is absolutely right but the persons to whom he is saying it are 
absolutely wrong. The person who can be alone, who without any method, any support, 
any scripture, any guru, can reach, is not going to listen to Krishnamurti because there is 
no need, there is no meaning. And those who are going to listen, they are not of that type, 
they will be in deep difficulty — and they are. They need support and their mind goes on 
thinking that there is no need for support. They need a guru and their mind goes on 
saying that the guru is a barrier. They need techniques and logically they have concluded 
that techniques cannot help. They are in deep trouble, but the trouble is created by 
themselves. 


Before you start doing something you must try to understand what type of mind you have 
got, because ultimately the guru is not meaningful, ultimately our mind is meaningful. 
The ultimate decision is going to come through your mind, the destiny is to be fulfilled 
through your mind — so understand it, without any ego confusing you. Just understand if 



you need support, guidance, techniques, methods to work with. If you need them, find 
them. If you don’t need them, there is no question: be alone, unclinging, move alone, 
unclinging. The same will happen through both ways. 

Yes and no are two opposites and you have to find out what your path is. 

The last question: 

Question 4 

YOU SAID THAT SHIVA IS NOT A SYSTEM-MAKER AND SECTS CANNOT 
FORM AROUND HIS TEACHINGS. BUT PERSONS LIKE BUDDHA, MAHAVIR, 
JESUS, GURDJIEFF, SEEM TO BE GREAT SYSTEM-MAKERS. WHY DO THEY 
HAVE TO BE SYSTEM-MAKERS? PLEASE EXPLAIN THE PRO’S AND CON’S OF 
SYSTEM-MAKING. ARE YOU A MULTI-SYSTEM-MAKER? 

There are two possibilities: you can create a system to help people, create multi-systems 
to help people, or the other, you can try to destroy systems to help people. Again the yes 
and no. Again the polar opposites. And in both ways you can help people. 

Bodhidharma is a system-destroyer, Krishnamurti is a system-destroyer, the whole 
tradition of Zen is system-destroying. 

Mahavir, Mohammed, Jesus, Gurdjieff, are great system-makers. The problems is always 
that we cannot understand these two contradictory things simultaneously together: we 
think that either one can be right but both cannot be. If system-makers are right, then our 
mind says that system-destroyers must be wrong. Or if the system-destroyers are right, 
then system-makers must be wrong. No, both are right. 

A system means a pattern to follow, a clear-cut map to follow so that no doubt arises, no 
indecisiveness arises and you can follow with absolute faith. Remember this: a system is 
created to create faith, to create trust. If everything is clear, then there will be trust more 
easily. If all your questions are answered mathematically, then you will be in a state of no 
doubt and you can proceed. So sometimes Mahavir answers your absurd questions also. 
They are futile questions, meaningless, but he will answer. And he will answer in such a 
way that it helps you to have trust, because that quality of trust is needed. 

When someone tries to penetrate into the unknown a deep trust is needed otherwise it 
will be impossible to move. It will be so dangerous you will get scared. It is dark, the 
path is not clear, everything is chaos and every step leads you into more and more 
insecurity. Hence system-making is needed so that everything is planned: you know 
everything about heaven and hell and the ultimate moksha, and from where you will 
move, from where you will pass. 

Every inch has been mapped. That gives you a security, a feeling, that everything is okay. 
People have been there before and you are not moving into a no-man's land, you are not 
moving into the unknown. A system makes it appear as if it is known. That is to help you, 
just to give you support. And if you have faith then you will have energy to move. If you 
are doubtful, you will dissipate energy and movement will be difficult. 

System-makers have tried to answer all types of questions and they have created a neat 
and clean map. With that map in your hand you feel everything is okay, you can proceed. 
But I tell you, every system is just artificial. Every system is just to help you. It is not 
true. No system can be true. It is a device. But it helps because your whole personality is 
so untrue that even untrue devices help. You live in lies and you cannot understand truth. 
A system means less lies and then even less lies and then by and by, by and by, you will 



come nearer and nearer to the truth. When the truth is revealed to you the system will 
become meaningless, it will simply drop. 

When Sariputta became enlightened, came to the ultimate goal, he looked back from that 
point and saw that the whole system had disappeared. Whatsoever he had been taught 
was not there. So he said to Buddha, "The whole system that was taught to me has 
disappeared." Buddha said to him, "Keep silent, don’t tell the others! It has disappeared, it 
has to disappear because it was never there, it was a make-believe — but it helped you to 
come to this point. 

Don’t tell those who have not come yet, because if they know that there is no knowledge 
where they are going to they will drop. They cannot go into the unknown unguarded, 
alone they cannot go." 

It happens many times. It has been my own experience that people come to me and they 
say, "Now meditation is going deep but we are scared." An ultimate feeling is bound to 
come when you feel a "dying" fear, as if death is approaching near. When meditation 
comes to its peak it is death-like. I tell them, "Don’t worry, I am with you." Then they 
feel okay. I cannot be there — impossible! No one can be there. This is untrue. No one 
can be there, you will be alone. That point is one of total aloneness. But when I say, "I 
will be there, you don't worry, you go ahead," they feel okay and they move. If I say, 
"You will be alone and no one is going to be there," they will step back. The point has 
come where fear is bound to be there. The abyss is there and they are going to fall — I 
must help them to fall. So I say that I am there, you just take the jump. And they take the 
jump! After the jump they will come to know that no one was there, but now, now the 
whole thing is finished. They cannot come back. This is a device. 

All systems are devices to help: to help people who are full of doubts, to help people who 
have no trust, to help people who have no confidence. To help people to move into the 
unknown without fear, systems are created. 

In those systems everything is just like a myth, that is why there are so many systems. 
Mahavir creates his own — that system is created according to the needs of his followers. 
So he creates a system. It is a myth, but very helpful, because many moved through it and 
reached to the truth. And when they reached they knew that the system was false — but it 
worked. 

Buddha defines truth as "That which works". His definition of truth is "That which 
works". If a lie can work, it is true, and if a truth cannot work, it is false. 

There are so many systems, and every system helps. But every system cannot help 
everybody. That is why the old religions insisted that a person should not be converted 
into a new religion, because although the mind can after a time be conditioned in a 
system and can be changed, deep down you will never change, and a new system will 
never become useful for you. A Hindu can become a Christian, a Christian can become a 
Hindu, but after the age of seven the mind is almost fixed, conditioned, so if a Hindu 
becomes a Christian he will remain a Hindu deep down and the Christian system will not 
help him. And he has lost contact with his own system which might have worked. 

Hindus and Jews have always been against conversion. Not only against conversion — if 
someone wants to enter into their religion voluntarily, they will resist. They will say, 

"No, follow your own path." 


Because a system is a great unconscious phenomenon; it has to be deep in the 



unconscious, only then can it help. Otherwise it cannot help and it is an artificial thing. It 
is just like language. You can never speak any language as you speak your mother- 
tongue, it is impossible. Nothing can be done about it. Howsoever efficient you become 
in somebody else's language it will remain superficial. Deep down your mother-tongue 
will continue to influence it. Your dreams will be in your mother-tongue; the unconscious 
will function with the original language. Anything can be imposed on and above it, but it 
cannot be replaced. 

Religious systems are like language, they are language. But if they penetrate deep, they 
help because you feel confident. The system is irrelevant but the confidence is relevant. 
You feel trusting so you move with a sure step — you know where you are moving. And 
this knowing helps. 

But there are system-destroyers also and they also help. There is a rhythmic circle, just 
like day and night — again day comes, again night comes. They help because sometimes 
it happens that when there are so many systems people get confused, and rather than 
moving with the maps, the maps become so heavy that they cannot carry them. It happens 
always. 

For example, a tradition, a very long tradition, is helpful because it will give confidence 
because it is so long. 

But because it is so long it is heavy also, it has become a dead weight. So rather than 
helping you to move, you cannot move because of it. You have to be unburdened. So 
there are system-destroyers who destroy the system from your mind and unburden you 
and help you to move. They both help, but it depends. It depends on the age, it depends 
on the person who is to be helped. 

In this age systems have become very heavy and confused. For many reasons the whole 
point has been lost. Before, each system lived in its own world: a Jain was born Jain, 
lived Jain, died Jain. He did not study Hindu scriptures, it was prohibited. He did not go 
to the mosque or the church, that was a sin. He lived in the walls of his system. Nothing 
alien ever penetrated his mind, so no confusion was there. 

But all that has been destroyed and everyone is acquainted with everything else. Hindus 
are reading the Koran and Mohammedans are reading the Gita. Christians are moving to 
the East and the East is moving to the West. Everything is confused. The confidence that 
used to come from a system is no longer there. Everything has penetrated your mind and 
things are jumbled up. Jesus is not alone there, Krishna has penetrated and Mohammed 
has also penetrated. And they have contradicted each other within you. Now nothing is 
certain. 

The Bible says this, the Gita says exactly the contrary. Mohammed says this, Mahavir is 
just the opposite. 

They have contradicted. You are no longer anywhere. You don’t belong, you are simply 
standing there confused. No path is yours. In such a state of mind, system-destroying can 
be helpful. Hence the great appeal of Krishnamurti in the West. He does not have so 
much appeal in the East because the East is still not as confused as the West, because the 
East is still not as educated about others. The West is obsessed about knowing about 
others. They know too much. Now no system is real, they know that everything is a 
make-believe, and once you know it, it will not work. 

Krishnamurti appeals to them because he says leave all systems. If you can leave all 
systems you will become unconfused — but it depends on you. It may happen, as it 



happens almost always, that all the systems will remain there and this new system of 
destroying all systems will also enter. So one more disease is added. 

Jesus goes on speaking, Krishna goes on speaking — and then Krishnamurti also enters. 
Your mind becomes the Tower of Babel — so many tongues and you cannot understand 
what is happening. You just feel crazy. 

If you can believe in a system, so far so good; if you cannot believe in any system, then 
drop all. Then be completely clean, unburdened. But don’t be just in the middle of these 
two alternatives. And it appears that everyone is just in the middle. Sometimes you move 
to the right, sometimes to the left, then again to the right and then to left — just like the 
pendulum of a clock. 

You go from this side to that, this side to that. This movement may appear to you that 
you are proceeding. You are not proceeding anywhere. Every step cancels some other 
step, because when you move to the right and then to the left you go on contradicting 
yourself. In the end you are just confused, puzzled, a chaos. 

Either be unburdened completely — that will be helpful. You will be clean, innocent, 
childlike, and you can fly — or if that understanding seems too dangerous to you, if you 
are afraid of unburdening because that will lead you into a vacuum, into an emptiness, if 
that unburdening looks dangerous and you are scared, then choose a system. But there are 
many who go on saying to you that everything is the same — the Koran says the same, the 
Bible says the same, the Gita says the same, their message is the same. These people are 
the great confusers. The Koran, the Bible, the Gita, they don't say the same, they are 
systems. Clear-cut systems. Different. Not only different, but sometimes contradictory 
and opposite. 

For example, Mahavir says that non-violence has to be the key. If you are violent, even 
slightly violent, the door of ultimate reality is closed for you. This is a technique. To 
become totally non-violent needs a complete cleansing of your mind and body — both. 
You have to be purified completely, only then will you become non-violent. This process 
of becoming no-violent will purify you so totally that the very process will become the 
end. 


Just the opposite is Krishna’s message. He says to Arjuna, "Don’t be afraid of killing 
because the soul cannot be killed. You can kill the body but you cannot kill the soul. So 
why be afraid? And the body is already dead, so that which is dead will be dead and that 
which is alive will remain alive. You need not be concerned. It is just a play." He is also 
right, because if you can come to realize this point — that the soul cannot be destroyed — 
then the whole life becomes a play, a fiction, a drama. And if the whole life becomes a 
drama, even murder and suicide become a drama to you, not just in thinking, but you 
realize the fact that everything is just a dream. Death too will make you a witness, and 
that witnessing will become transcendence... you will transcend the world. The whole 
world becomes a drama — there is nothing good, nothing bad, just a dream. You need not 
worry about it. 

But these two things are totally different. They lead to the same point ultimately but you 
should not mix them. If you mix them, you will suffer. System-makers have been there to 
help you, system-destroyers have been there to help you. But it seems that no one has 
been able to help. You are such, so adamant and so cunning, you always find some 
loopholes to escape through. 



Buddha and Krishna and Jesus — every century they go on teaching certain things. You 
go on listening but you are very clever. 

You listen and yet you don't listen. And you always find something, some hole, from 
where you can escape. Now the trick of the modern mind is that if there is a system, if 
Gurdjieff is teaching, then people will go to him and say, "Krishnamurti says no 
system." These same people will go to Krishnamurti — Krishnamurti teaches no-system — 
and they will say, "But Gurdjieff says that without a system nothing can be done." So 
while near Gurdjieff they use Krishnamurti as a loophole to escape; while near 
Krishnamurti they use Gurdjieff as a trick to escape. But they are not deceiving anybody, 
they are simply destroying themselves. 

Gurdjieff can help, Krishnamurti can help, but they cannot help against you. You must be 
certain about certain things. One, either you need help or you don’t need it. Second, either 
you can move into the unknown without any fear or you cannot. And third, without any 
method, without any technique, without any system, can you proceed a single inch or 
can’t you? These three things you have to decide within you: analyze your mind, open it, 
look into it and decide what type of mind you have got. If you decide that you cannot do 
it alone then you need a system, a master, a scripture, a technique. If you think that you 
can do alone then there is no need for anything else. You are the master, you are the 
scripture, you are the technique. But be honest, and if you feel that it is impossible to 
decide — it is not easy to decide — if you feel confused, then first try a master, a 
technique, a system. 

And try it hard, to the very extreme, so that if something is going to happen, it happens. If 
nothing is going to happen then you come to a point where you can decide that now you 
will have all, you will be alone. That too will be good. 

But my suggestion is that you should always start with a master, a system, a technique, 
because in both ways it will be good. If you can achieve through it, it is good; if you 
cannot achieve through it, then the whole thing becomes futile and you can drop it and 
then you can proceed alone. Then you will not need Krishnamurti to tell you that no 
master is needed, you will kn ow it. Then you will not need any Zen teaching to tell you 
to throw away your scriptures and bum them, you will have already burned them. 

So it is good to proceed with a master, with a system, with a technique — but be sincere. 
When I say be sincere I mean that you should do whatsoever you can do with a master, so 
that if something can happen, it happens. If nothing can happen, then you can conclude 
that this is not the path for you and you can move alone. 


THE END. 



Chapter 77: Become each being 


FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 

SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING. 

THIS CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS AS EACH BEING, AND NOTHING ELSE EXISTS. 
THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS 
ONE. 

Existence as such is one. The human problem arises because of human self- 
consciousness. Consciousness gives everyone a feeling that they are separate, and the 
feeling that you are separate from existence creates all the problems. Basically this 
feeling is false, and whatsoever is based on a falsity will create anguish, will create 
problems, will create confusion. And whatsoever you do, if it is based on this false 
separateness, it will go wrong. 

So from the very beginning the problem of human anguish has to be tackled: how does it 
arise? Consciousness gives you a feeling that you are the center of your being, and 
consciousness makes you aware that others are 'other’, that you are different from them. 
This difference is just because you are conscious. While you are asleep there is no 
difference — you are again merged with the universe. Hence so much bliss comes out of 
sleep. In the morning you feel refreshed, rejuvenated, again alive, fresh. 

What is happening in deep sleep? You are losing your ego, you are losing yourself, you 
are falling into a unity with the universe. 

That falling back int the unity makes you fresh and alive, and in the morning you feel 
blissful. All the anguish disappears; all conflict, all disturbance, disappears; all fear, all 
death disappears — because death is possible only if you are separate. If you are not 
separate, then death is impossible. Who is going to die if you are not separate? Who can 
suffer if you are not separate? So all Tantra, yoga and other methods of meditation are 
just to make you aware that separateness is false and inseparateness is real. And if you 
can become aware of that you will be totally different, because the center will have 
disappeared from you and it will take its right place in the universe. You will be just a 
wave on this vast ocean. You will not be separate so you will not be afraid. You will not 
feel insecure. You will not feel the anguish of approaching death and annihilation. All 
that disappears with the ego. 

Hindus have always believed that samadhi is conscious sleep. In sleep it happens 
automatically that you are no more. The existence is, and you are no more; but you are 
deeply unconscious so you don’t know what is happening. If this same phenomenon can 
happen consciously, you become enlightened. Buddha moves to the same source, to the 
same source that you move every night in deep sleep, in dreamless sleep. But Buddha 
moves to that source consciously, alert, aware. He knows where he is moving to, he 
knows what is happening, and when he comes back from that deep source, he comes 
totally different. 

The old has disappeared and a new being, a new energy has arisen out of it. Of this being, 
the center is the universe; and with this transfer of the center, all your worry, all your 
anguish, all your hell disappears, simply disappears. It is not solved, it is simply not 



there. It cannot exist there without the ego.] 

So how to be consciously deep asleep? How to move into sleep consciously? How to 
remain alert while you are losing the ego? The ego is a by-product, a by-product of your 
whole upbringing, a by-product of the natural course of life. It has to be there. There is no 
other way. No being can evolve without being involved with the ego. But a point comes 
when the ego can be dropped and should be dropped, and the being should transcend it. 
The ego is just like the shell of the egg. It is needed, it protects. Just like the shell of a 
seed, it is needed, it protects. But the protection can become dangerous also, if it protects 
too much. If it goes on protecting and doesn’t allow the seed to sprout, then it becomes a 
hindrance. It must dissolve into the earth so that the inner life evolves out of it. It must 
die. 

The seed must die. Every man is bom as a seed. The ego is the outer covering; it protects 
the child. If a child is bom without the ego, without the feeling that "I exist", he cannot 
survive. He will to be able to protect himself, he will not be able to struggle, he will not 
be able in any way to exist. 

He needs a strong center. Even if it is false, it is needed. But a moment comes when this 
help becomes a hindrance. It protects you from outside, but it become so strong that it 
will not allow you, the inner being, to spread, to go beyond it, to sprout. So ego is needed 
— and then ego-transcendence is needed. 

If someone dies with the ego, he has died as a seed. He has died without really attaining 
the destiny that was possible, without attaining existence consciously These techniques 
are for how to destroy this seed. 

The first technique: 

FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 

SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH BEING. 

FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN 
CONSCIOUSNESS. In reality it is so, but it is not felt so. You feel your consciousness as 
yours, and others' consciousnesses you never feel. At the most you infer that others are 
also conscious. You infer because you think that because you are conscious, other beings 
like you must be conscious. This is a logical inference; you don't feel them as conscious. 
It is just like when you have a headache you feel your headache, you have a 
consciousness of it. But if someone else has a headache, you infer — you cannot feel the 
other's headache. You simply infer that whatsoever he is saying must be true and he must 
have something like you. 

But you cannot feel it. 

The feeling can come only if you become conscious about others' consciousnesses — 
otherwise it is a logical inference. You believe, you trust, that others are saying 
something honestly, and whatsoever they are saying is worth believing because you also 
have similar types of experiences. 

There is a logical school which says that nothing can be known about the other, it is 
impossible. At the most there can be an inference but nothing certain can be known about 
others. How can you know that others have pain like you, that others have anxieties like 
you? Others are there but we cannot penetrate them, we can only just touch their surface. 



Their inner being remains unknown. We remain closed in ourselves. 

The world around us is not a felt world, it is just inferred — logically, rationally. The 
mind says it is there but the heart is not touched by it. That is why we behave with others 
as if they are things not persons. Our relationship with persons is also as it is with things. 
A husband behaves towards his wife as if she is a thing: he possesses her. The wife 
possesses the husband just like a thing. If we behaved with the other as if they were 
persons then we would not try to possess them, because only things can be possessed. 

A person means freedom. A person cannot be possessed. If you try to possess them, you 
will kill them, they will become things. 

Our relationship with others is really not an 'I-thou' relationship, deep down it is just an 
T-if relationship. The other is just a thing to be manipulated, to be used, exploited. That 
is why love becomes more and more impossible, because love means taking the other as 
a person, as a conscious being, as a freedom, as something as valuable as you are. 

If you behave as if everything is a thing, then you are the center and things are just to be 
used. The relationship becomes utilitarian. Things have no value in themselves — the 
value is that you can use them, they exist for you. You can be related to your house — the 
house exists for you. It is a utility. The car exists for you, but the wife doesn't exist for 
you and the husband doesn’t exist for you. The husband exists for himself and the wife 
exists for herself. A person exists for himself; that is what being a person means. And if 
you allow the person to be a person and don’t reduce him to being a thing, you will by 
and by start feeling him. Otherwise you cannot feel. Your relationship will remain 
conceptual, intellectual, mind to mind, head to head — but not heart to heart. 

This technique says, FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR 
OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. This will be difficult because first you have to feel the person 
as a person, as a conscious being. Even that is difficult. 

Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." 

This is the same thing — but the other must first become a person for you. He must exist 
in his own right, not to be exploited, manipulated, utilized, not as a means but an end in 
himself. First, the other must become a person; the other must become a 'thou', as 
valuable as you are. Only then can this technique be applied. FEEL THE 
CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. First 
feel that the other is conscious, and then this can happen — you can feel that the other has 
the same consciousness that you have. Really, the 'other' disappears, only a 
consciousness flows between you and him. You become two poles of one consciousness 
flowing, of one current. 

In deep love it happens that the two persons are not two. Something between the two has 
come into being and they have just become two poles. Something is flowing between the 
two. When this flow is there you will feel blissful. If love gives bliss, it gives bliss only 
because of this: that two persons, just for a single moment, lose their egos — the 'other' is 
lost and oneness comes into being just for as ingle moment. If it happens, it is ecstatic, it 
is blissful, you have entered paradise. Just a single moment, and it can be transforming. 
This technique says that you can do this with every person. In love you can do it with one 
person, but in meditation you have to do it with every person. Whosoever comes near 
you, simply dissolve into him and feel that you are not two lives, but one life, flowing. 


This is just changing the gestalt. Once you know how, once you have done it, it is very 



easy. In the beginning it seems impossible because we are so stuck in our own egos. It is 
difficult to lose it, difficult to become a flow. So it will be good if in the beginning you 
try with something that you are not very scared or afraid of. 

You will be less afraid of a tree so it will be easier. Sitting near a tree, just feel the tree 
and feel that you have become one with it, that there is a flow within you, a 
communication, a dialogue, a melting. Sitting near a flowing river just feel the flow, feel 
that you and the river have become one. Lying under the sky, just feel that you and the 
sky have become one. In the beginning it will be just imagination but by and by you will 
feel that you are touching reality through imagination. 

And then try it with persons. This is difficult in the beginning because there is a fear. 
Because you have been reducing persons to things, you are afraid that if you allow 
someone to be so intimate he will also reduce you to a thing. That is the fear. So no one 
allows much intimacy: a gap is always to be kept and guarded. Too much closeness is 
dangerous because the other can convert you into a thing, he can try to possess you. That 
is the fear. You are trying to convert others into things, and others are trying to convert 
you — and no one wants to be a thing, no one wants to become a means, no one wants to 
be used. 

It is the most degrading phenomenon to be reduced to just a means to something, not 
valuable in yourself. But everyone is trying. Because of this there is a deep fear and it 
will be difficult to start this technique with persons. 

So start with a river, with a hill, with the stars, with the sky, with trees. Once you come to 
know the feeling of what happens when you become one with the tree; once you come to 
know how blissful you become when you become one with the river, how without losing 
anything you gain the whole existence — then you can try it with persons. And if it is so 
blissful with a tree, with a river, you cannot imagine how much more blissful it will be 
with a person, because a person is a higher phenomenon, a more highly evolved being. 
Through a person you can reach higher peaks of experience. If you can become ecstatic 
with even a rock, with a person you can feel a Divine ecstasy happening to you. 

But start with something that you are not much afraid of, or, if there is a person you love, 
a friend, a beloved, a lover, of whom you are not afraid, with whom you can be really 
intimate and close without any fear, with whom you can lose yourself without getting 
scared deep down that he may turn you into a thing — if you have someone like that, then 
try this technique. Lose yourself consciously into him. When you lose yourself 
consciously into someone, that someone will lose himself into you; when you are open 
and you flow into the other, the other starts flowing into you and there is a deep meeting, 
a communion. 

Two energies melt into each other. In that state there is no ego, no individual — simply 
consciousness. And if this is possible with one individual, it is possible with the whole 
universe. What saints have called ecstasy, samadhi, is just a deep love phenomenon 
between a person and the whole universe. 

FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN 
CONSCIOUSNESS. SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH 
BEING. We are always concerned with our own self. Even while we are in love, we are 
concerned with our own self, that is why love becomes a misery. It can become heaven 
but it becomes a hell, because even lovers are concerned with their own selves. The other 
is loved because he gives you happiness, the other is loved because you feel good with 



him, but the other is still not loved as if he is something valuable in himself or herself. 
The value comes through your enjoyment. You are gratified, you are satisfied in some 
way, that is why the other has become significant. This is also using the other. 

Concern for the self means exploitation of the other. And religious consciousness can 
come into existence only when the concern for the self is lost, because then you become 
non-exploitive. With existence your relationship becomes one, not of exploitation, but of 
sheer sharing, sheer bliss. You are not using, you are not being used — it becomes a sheer 
celebration of being. 


But concern for the self has to be thrown away... and it is very deep-rooted. It is so deep- 
rooted that you are not even aware of it. In one of the Upanishads it is said that the 
husband loves his wife, not for the wife, but for himself; and the mother loves the child, 
not for the child, but for herself. The concern for the self is so deep-rooted that 
whatsoever you do, you do for yourself. This means that you are always gratifying the 
ego, feeding the ego, feeding a false center which has become a barrier between you and 
the universe. 

Lose the concern for the self. If even sometimes, even for a few moments, you can lose 
concern for the self and can become concerned with the other, with the other's self, you 
will be entering a different reality, a different dimension. Hence so much emphasis on 
service, love, compassion. Because compassion, love, service, mean concern for the 
other's self, not your own. 

But look... human mind is so cunning that it has converted service, compassion and love 
into concerns for the self. A Christian missionary serves, and his service is sincere. 
Really, no one else can serve so deeply and intensely as a Christian missionary. No 
Hindu can do that, no Mohammedan can do that, because Jesus has emphasized service 
so much. A Christian missionary is serving poor people, ill people, diseased people, but 
deep down he is concerned with himself not with them. 

This service is just a method to reach heaven. He is not concerned with them, he is not 
really concerned with them at all, he is concerned with his own self. Through service he 
can achieve a greater self, so he is doing service. But he has missed the basic point, 
because service means the concern for the other — the other is the center and you have 
become the periphery. 

Try it some time. Make someone the center — then his happiness becomes your 
happiness, his misery becomes your misery. Whatsoever happens, happens to him and 
flows to you. But he is the center. If once, even once, you can feel that the other is the 
center and you have become just a periphery to him, you have entered a different type of 
existence, a different dimension of experience. Because in that moment you will feel a 
deep bliss, unknown before, unexperienced before. Just by making the other the concern, 
you will lose all misery. In that moment there will be no hell for you; you have entered 
paradise. 

Why does it happen? It happens because the ego is the root of all misery. If you can 
forget it, if you can dissolve it, all misery dissolves with it. 

FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN 
CONSCIOUSNESS. SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH 
BEING. Become the tree, become the river, become the wife, become the husband, 
become the child, become the mother, become the friend — it can be practiced every 



moment of life. 


But in the beginning it will be difficult, so do it for a least one hour every day. In that 
hour, whatsoever passes around you, become that. You will wonder how it can happen. 
There is no other way to know how it can happen — you have to practice it. 

Sit with the tree and feel that you have become the tree. And when the wind comes and 
the whole tree starts shaking and trembling, feel that shaking and trembling in you; when 
the sun rises and the whole tree becomes alive, feel that aliveness in you; when a shower 
of rain comes and the whole tree is satisfied and content, a long thirst, a long awaiting 
has disappeared and the tree is completely satisfied and content, feel satisfied and content 
with the tree, and then you will become aware of the subtle moods, of the nuances of a 
tree. 

You have seen that tree for many years, but you don't know its moods. Sometimes it is 
happy; sometimes it is unhappy. Sometimes it is sad, dead, worried, frustrated; 
sometimes it is very blissful, ecstatic. There are moods. The tree is alive and it feels. And 
if you become one with it, then you will feel it. Then you will feel whether the tree is 
young or old; whether the tree is dissatisfied with its life or satisfied; whether the tree is 
in love with existence or not — is anti, against, furious, angry; whether the tree is violent 
or there is a deep compassion in it. As you are changing every moment, the tree is also 
changing — if you can feel a deep affinity with it, what they call empathy. 


Empathy means you have become so sympathetic that really you become one. The moods 
of the tree become your moods. And then, if this goes deeper and deeper and deeper, you 
can talk, you can have a communication with the tree. Once you know its moods you 
start understanding its language, and the tree will share its mind with you. It will share its 
agonies and ecstasies. 

And this can happen with the whole universe. 

For at least one hour every day try to be in empathy with something. In the beginning you 
will look foolish to yourself. You will think, "What kind of stupidity am I doing?" You 
will look around and you will feel that if someone looks or someone sees or someone 
comes to know, they will think you have gone crazy. But only in the beginning. Once you 
enter this world of empathy the whole world will look crazy to you. They are missing so 
much unnecessarily. Life gives in such abundance and they are missing it. They are 
missing because they are closed: they don’t allow life to enter into them. And life can 
enter you only if you enter life through many, many ways, through many paths, through 
multi-dimensions. Be in empathy for at least one hour every day. 

This was the meaning of prayer in the beginning of every religion. The meaning of prayer 
was to be in an affinity with the universe, to be in a deep communication with the 
universe. In prayer you are talking to God — God means the totality. 

Sometimes you may be angry with God, sometimes thankful, but one thing is certain — 
you are in communication. God is not a mental concept, it has become a deep, intimate 
relationship. That is what prayer means. 

But our prayers have gone rotten because we don’t know how to communicate with 
beings. And if you cannot communicate with beings, you cannot communicate with the 
Being — Being with a capital 'B’ — it is impossible. If you cannot communicate with a 
tree, how can you communicate with the total existence? And if you feel foolish talking 



to a tree, you will feel more foolish talking to God. 

Leave one hour aside every day for a prayerful state of mind, and don't make your prayer 
a verbal affair. Make it a feeling thing. Rather than talking with the head, feel it. Go and 
touch the tree, hug the tree, kiss the tree; close your eyes and be with the tree as if you are 
with your beloved. Feel it. And soon you will come to a deep understanding of what it 
means to put the self aside, of what it means to become the other. 

FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN 
CONSCIOUSNESS. SO, LEAVING ASIDE CONCERN FOR SELF, BECOME EACH 
BEING. 

The second technique: 

THIS CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS AS EACH BEING, AND NOTHING ELSE EXISTS. 

Scientists used to say in the past that only matter existed, nothing else. Great systems of 
philosophy arose based on the concept that only matter existed. 

But even those who believed that matter existed had to concede that there was something 
like consciousness. Then what was it? They said that consciousness was just an epi- 
phenomenon, just a by-product of matter. It was nothing but matter in disguise, 
something very subtle but still material. But this half century has seen a very great 
miracle happen. 

Scientists tried and tried to find out what matter was, but the more they tried, they more 
they came to realize that there was nothing like matter. Matter was analyzed and it was 
found that it had disappeared. Nietzsche had said just a hundred years before, "God is 
dead." With God dead there can be no consciousness because God means the totality of 
consciousness. But within a hundred years matter is dead — and it is dead not because 
religious people believe it so but because scientists have come to a definite conclusion 
that matter is just appearance. It appears to be as it is because we cannot see very deeply. 
If we can see deeply it disappears, and then energy is left. 

This phenomenon of energy, this non-material energy force, has been known by mystics 
since long ago.In the Vedas, in the Bible, in the Koran, in the Upanishads — ah over the 
world mystics have penetrated into existence and have always concluded that matter is 
just an appearance; deep down there is no matter, only energy. With this science now 
agrees. 

And the mystics have said one thing more which science has yet to agree with — but with 
which it will have to agree one day! The mystics have come to another conclusion also. 
They say that when you penetrate deep into energy, energy also disappears and only 
consciousness remains. 

So these are the three layers. Matter is the first layer, the surface. If you penetrate the 
surface then the second layer becomes apparent: you can perceive the second layer which 
is energy. Then if you penetrate energy, the third layer becomes illumined — that third 
layer is consciousness. In the beginning, science said that mystics were just dreaming, 
because science saw only matter and nothing else. Then science tried to penetrate, and 
the mystics' second layer was uncovered: matter is just apparent — deep down it is 
nothing but energy. And the mystics' other claim is: penetrate more into energy and 
energy also disappears, then there remains only consciousness. That consciousness is 
God. That is the deepest-most core. 



If you penetrate into your body, these three layers are there. Just on the surface is your 
body. The body looks material, but deep down there are currents of life, PRANA, vital 
energy. Without that vital energy your body would be just a corpse. It is alive, with 
something flowing in it. That flowing 'something’ is energy. But deeper, still deeper, you 
are aware, you can witness. 

You can witness both your body and your vital energy. That witnessing is your 
consciousness. 

Every existence has three layers. The deepest is the witnessing consciousness. In the 
middle is vital energy and just on the surface is matter, a material body. 

This technique says, THIS CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS AS EACH BEING, AND 
NOTHING ELSE EXISTS. WHAT ARE YOU? Who are you? If you close your eyes 
and try to find out who you are, ultimately you are bound to come to a conclusion that 
you are consciousness. Everything else may belong to you, but you are not that. The body 
belongs to you, but you can be aware of the body — and that which is aware of the body 
becomes separate. The body becomes an object of knowledge and you become the 
subject. You can know your body .Not only can you know, you can manipulate your 
body, you can activate it or make it inactive. You are separate. You can do something 
with your body. 

And not only are you not your body, you are not your mind either. You can become 
aware of your mind also. If thoughts move, you can see them, and you can do something 
with them: you can make them disappear completely, you can become thoughtless. Or, 
you can concentrate your consciousness on one thought and not allow it to move from 
there. You can focus yourself on it and make it remain there. Or, you can allow a 
riverlike flow of thoughts. You can do something with your thoughts. 

You can even dissolve them completely until there is no thought — but still you are. You 
will know that there are no thoughts, that a vacuum has come into being; but you will be 
there, witnessing that vacuum. 

The only thing you cannot separate yourself from is your witnessing energy. That means 
you are that. You cannot separate yourself from it. You can separate yourself from 
everything else: you can know that you are not your body, not your mind, but you cannot 
know that you are not your witnessing because whatsoever you do you will be the 
witness. You cannot separate yourself from witnessing. That witnessing is consciousness. 
And unless you come to a point from where separation becomes impossible, you have not 
come to yourself. 

So there are methods by which the seeker goes on eliminating. He goes on eliminating — 
first the body, then the mind, and then he comes to the point where nothing can be 
eliminated. In the Upanishads they say, NETI, NETI. This is a deep method: "This is not, 
that is not." So the seeker goes on knowing, "This is not, this is not me, this is not I." He 
goes on and on until ultimately he comes to a point where he cannot say. "This is not I." 
Just a witnessing self remains. Pure consciousness remains. This pure consciousness 
exists as each being. 

Whatsoever is in existence is just a phenomenon of this consciousness, just a wave, just a 
crystallization of this consciousness — and nothing else exists. 

But this has to be felt. Analysis can be helpful, intellectual understanding can be helpful, 
but it has to be FELT that nothing else exists, only consciousness. Then behave as if only 



consciousness exists. 

I have heard about Lin Chi, a Zen master. As he was sitting one day in his hut someone 
came to see him. The man who came was angry. He may have been fighting with his wife 
or with his boss or something — but he was angry. He pushed open the door in anger, he 
threw down his shoes in anger and then he came, very respectfully, and bowed down to 
Lin Chi. Lin Chi said, "First go and ask forgiveness from the door and from the shoes." 
The man must have looked at Lin Chi very strangely. There were other people also sitting 
there and they started laughing. Lin Chi said, "Stop!" and then said to the man, "If you 
don't do it then leave. I will have nothing to do with you." The man said, "It will look 
crazy to ask forgiveness from the shoes and from the door." Lin Chi said, "It was not 
crazy when you expressed anger. Will it now be crazy? Everything has a consciousness. 
So you go, and unless the door forgives you, I am not going to allow you in." 

The man felt awkward but he had to go. Later on he became a monk himself and became 
enlightened. When he became enlightened, he related the whole anecdote and he said, 
"When I stood before the door, asking forgiveness, I felt awkward, foolish. But then I 
thought that if Lin Chi says so, there must be something in it. I trusted Lin Chi, so I 
thought that even if it was foolish do it. In the beginning whatsoever I was saying to the 
door was just superficial, artificial; but by and by I started to get wann. And Lin Chi was 
waiting and he said that he would watch. If the door forgave me, only then could I come 
in; otherwise I had to stay there until I had persuaded the door and the shoes to forgive 
me. By and by I became warm. I forgot that many people were looking. I forgot about 
Lin Chi — and then the concern became sincere and real. I started to feel the door and the 
shoes were changing their mood. And the moment I realized that the door and the shoes 
had changed and that they are feeling happy, Lin Chi immediately said that I could come. 
I had been forgiven." 

This incident became a transforming phenomenon in his life because for the first time he 
became aware that everything is really a crystallization of consciousness. If you cannot 
see it, it is because you are blind. If you cannot hear it, it is because you are deaf. There is 
nothing the matter with the things around you. Everything is condensed consciousness. 
The problem is with you — you are not open and sensitive. 

This technique says, THIS CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS AS EACH BEING, AND 
NOTHING ELSE EXISTS. Live with this notion. Be sensitive to this and wherever you 
move, move with this mind and this heart — that everything is consciousness and nothing 
else exists. 

Sooner or later, the world will change its face. Sooner or later, objects disappear and 
persons start appearing everywhere. Sooner or later, the whole world will be suddenly 
illumined and you will know that you were living in a world of dead things just because 
of your insensitivity. Otherwise everything is alive — not only alive, everything is 
conscious. 

Everything deep down is nothing but consciousness. But if you leave it as a theory, if you 
believe in it as a theory, then nothing will happen. You will have to make it a way of life 
a style of life — behaving as if everything is conscious. In the beginning it will be an 'as 
if, and you will feel foolish, but if you can persist in your foolishness, and if you can 
dare to be foolish, soon the world will start revealing its mysteries. 

Science is not the only methodology to use to enter the mysteries of existence. Really, it 
is the crudest methodology, the slowest. A mystic can enter existence in a single moment. 
Science will take millions of years to penetrate that much. The Upanishads say that the 



world is illusory, that matter is illusory, but only after five thousand years can science say 
that matter is illusory. The Upanishads say that deep down energy is conscious — science 
will take another five thousand years more. Mysticism is a jump; science is a very slow 
movement. The intellect cannot jump; it has to argue — argue every fact, prove, disprove, 
experiment. 

But the heart can jump immediately. 

Remember, for the intellect a process is necessary, then comes the conclusion — process 
first, then the conclusion — logical. For the heart, conclusion comes first, then the 
process. It is just the reverse. That is why mystics cannot prove anything. They have the 
conclusion, but they don’t have the process. 

You may not be aware, you may not have noticed, that mystics simply talk about 
conclusions. If you read the Upanishads you will find only conclusions. When for the 
first time they were translated into Western languages, Western philosophers couldn’t see 
the point — because there was no argument. How do you reach this conclusion? What is 
the proof? On what premises do you declare, "There is Brahma"? The Upanishads don’t 
say anything, they simply come to a conclusion. The heart reaches a conclusion 
immediately. And when the conclusion is reached, you can create the process. That is the 
meaning of theology. 

Mystics reach the conclusion and theologians create the process. Jesus reached the 
conclusion and then the theologians — St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas — they created the 
process. That is secondary. The conclusion has been reached, now you have to find the 
proofs. The proof is in the life of the mystic. He cannot argue about it. He himself is the 
proof — if you can see it. If you cannot see, then there is no proof. 

Then religion is absurd. 

Don't make these techniques theories. They are not. They are jumps into experience, 
jumps into conclusion. 

The third technique: 

THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS 
ONE. 

The first thing is that you have the guide within you but you don’t use it. And you have 
not used it for so long, for so many lives, that you may not even be aware that a guide 
exists within you. I was reading Castaneda's book. His master, Don Juan, gives him a 
beautiful experiment to do. It is one of the oldest experiments. 

On a dark night, on a very hilly track, dangerous, without any light, Castaneda's master 
said, "You simply believe in the inner guide and start running." It was dangerous. It was a 
hilly track, unknown, with trees, bushes, abysses. He could fall anywhere. Even in the 
daylight he had to be alert walking there, and at night everything was dark. He could not 
see anything and his master said, "Don’t walk, run!" He couldn’t believe it! It was simply 
suicidal. He became scared — but the master ran. He ran off just like a wild animal, and 
came running back. And Castaneda could not understand how he was doing it. Not only 
was he running in this darkness, but each time he came running directly to him, as if he 
could see. Then by and by Castaneda gathered courage. If this old man could do this, why 
not he? He tried, and by and by he felt an inner light coming in. 



Then he started running. 

You only ARE whenever you stop thinking. The moment you stop thinking, the inner 
happens. If you don’t think, everything is okay — it is as if some inner guide is working. 
Your reason has misguided you. And the greatest misguidance has been this: you cannot 
believe in the inner guide. 

First, you have to convince your reason. Even if your inner guide says, "Go ahead," you 
have to convince your reason and then you miss opportunities. Because there are 
moments... you can use them or you can miss them. Intellect takes time, and while you 
are pondering, contemplating, thinking, you miss the moment. Life is not waiting for you. 
One has to live immediately. One has to be really a warrior — as they say in Zen — 
because when you are fighting in the field with your sword, you cannot think. You have 
to move without thinking. 

Zen masters have used the sword as a technique for meditation, and they say in Japan that 
if two Zen masters, two meditative persons, are fighting with those swords, there can be 
no conclusion. No one can be defeated and no one is going to win, because both are not 
thinking.. The swords are just not in their hands, they are in the hands of their inner 
guide, the non-thinking inner guide, and before the other attacks, the guide knows and 
defends. You cannot think about it because there is no time. The other is aiming at your 
heart. 

In a flash of a moment the sword will penetrate to the heart. There is no time to think 
about it, about what to do. When the thought, "penetrate the heart" occurs to him, 
simultaneously the thought, "defend" must occur to you — simultaneously, with no gap — 
only then can you defend. Otherwise you will be no more. 

So they teach swordsmanship as a meditation and they say, "Be moment to moment with 
the inner guide, don't think. Allow the inner being to do whatsoever happens to it. Don't 
interfere with the mind." This is very difficult because we are so trained with our minds. 
Our schools, our colleges, our universities, the whole culture, the whole pattern of 
civilization, teach our heads. We have lost contact with the inner guide. Everyone is bom 
with that inner guide but it is not allowed to work, to function. It is almost paralyzed, but 
it can be revived. 

This sutra is for that inner guide. THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF 
GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS ONE. Don’t t hink with the head. Really, don’t 
think at all. Just move. Try it is some situations. It will be difficult, because the old habit 
will be to start thinking. You will have to be alert: not to think, but to feel inwardly what 
is coming to the mind. You may be confused many times because you will not be able to 
know whether it is coming from the inner guide or from the surface of the mind. But soon 
you will know the feeling, the difference. 


When something comes from the inner, it comes from your navel upwards. You can feel 
the flow, the warmth, coming from the navel upwards. Whenever your mind thinks, it is 
just on the surface, in the head, and then it goes down. If your mind decided something, 
then you have to force it down. If your inner guide decides, then something bubbles up in 
you. It comes from the deep core of your being towards the mind. The mind receives it, 
but it is not of the mind. It comes from beyond — and that is why the mind is scared about 
it. For reason it is reliable because it comes from behind — without any reason with it, 
without any proofs. It simply bubbles up. 



Try it in certain situations. For example, you have lost your path in a forest. Try it. Don't 
think — just close your eyes, sit down, be meditative, and don't think. Because it is futile 
— how can you think? You don’t know. But thinking has become such a habit that you go 
on thinking even in moments when nothing can come out of it. Thinking can think only 
about something which is already known. You are lost in a forest, you don’t have any 
map, there is nobody you can ask. What are you thinking about? But still you think. That 
thinking will be just a worry, not a thinking. And the more you get worried, the less the 
inner guide can be competent. 

Be unworried. Sit down under a tree, and just allow thoughts to drop and subside. 

Just wait, don’t think. Don’t create the problem, just wait. And when you feel a moment 
of non-thinking has come, then stand up and start moving. Wheresoever your body 
moves, allow it to move. You just be a witness. Don't interfere. The lost path can be 
found very easily. But the only condition is, "Don't interfere with the mind." 

This has happened many times unknowingly. Great scientists say that whenever a great 
discovery has been made, it was never made by the mind; it was always made by the 
inner guide. 

Madame Curie was trying and trying to solve a mathematical problem. She did her best, 
all that was possible. Then she got fed up. For days together, weeks together, she had 
been working and nothing had come out. She was feeling just mad. No path was leading 
to the solution. Then one night, just exhausted, she fell down and slept. And in the night, 
in a dream, the conclusion bubbled up. She was so concerned with the conclusion that the 
dream was broken, she awoke. Immediately she wrote down the conclusion — because 
there was no process in the dream, just a conclusion. She wrote it down on a pad and then 
slept again. In the morning she was puzzled; the conclusion was right, but she didn’t 
know how it had been achieved. There was no process, no method. Then she tried to find 
the process; now it was an easier affair because the conclusion was in the hand, and it is 
easy to go back from the conclusion. 

She won the Nobel Prize because of this dream — but she always wondered how it 
happened. 

When your mind gets exhausted and cannot do any more, it simply retires. In that 
moment of retirement the inner guide can give hints, clues, keys. The man who won the 
Nobel Prize for the inner structure of a human cell, saw it in a dream. He saw the whole 
structure of the human cell, the inner cell, in a dream, and then in the morning he just 
made a picture of it. He himself couldn’t believe that it could be so, so he had to work for 
years. After years of work he could conclude that the dream was true. 

With Madame Curie it happened that when she came to know this inner process of the 
inner guide, she decided to try it. Once there was a problem which she wanted to solve, 
so she thought, "Why worry about it, and why try? Just go to sleep." She slept well, but 
there was no solution. So she was puzzled. Many times she tried: when there was a 
problem immediately she would go to sleep. But there was no solution. First, the intellect 
has to be tried, completely; only then can the solution bubble up. The head has to be 
completely exhausted otherwise it goes on functioning, even in a dream. 

So now scientists say that all the great discoveries are intuitive, not intellectual. This is 
what is meant by the inner guide. 

THIS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. 



BE THIS ONE. Lose the head and drop into this inner guide. It is there. Old scriptures 
say that the master or the guru — the "outer" guru — can be helpful only in finding the 
inner guru. That is all. Once the outer guru has helped you to find the inner guru, the 
function of the outer guru is no more. 

You cannot reach to the truth through a master; you can reach only to the inner master 
through a master — and then this inner master will lead you to the truth. The outer master 
is just a representative, a substitute. He has his inner guide and he can feel your inner 
guide also, because they both exist on the same wavelength — they both exist in the same 
tuning and the same dimension. If I have found my inner guide, I can look into you and 
feel your inner guide. And if I am really a guide to you, all my guidance will be to lead 
you to your inner guide. 

Once you are in contact with the inner guide, I am no longer needed. Now you can move 
alone. So all that a guru can do is to push you down from your head to your navel, from 
your reasoning to your intuitive force, from your argumentative mind to your trusting 
guide. And it is not like this with only human beings, it is so with animals, with birds, 
with trees, with everything. The inner guide exists, and many new phenomena have been 
discovered which are mysteries. 

There are a number of cases. For example, the mother fish dies immediately after she lays 
the egg. 

Then the father helps the egg to be fertilized, and then he dies. The egg remains alone 
without a mother and without a father. It matures. Then a new fish is born. This fish 
doesn't know anything about father, mother, parents; she doesn’t know from where they 
came. But although this particular fish lives in a particular part of the sea, she will move 
to the part from where the father and mother came to lay the eggs. She will move to the 
source. This has been happening again and again, and when she wans to lay an egg she 
will come to this bank, lay the egg, and die. So there is no communication between 
parents and their children but the children somehow know where they have to go, where 
they have to move — and they never miss. And you cannot misguide them. It has been 
tried, but you cannot misguide them. They will reach to the source. Some inner guide is 
working. 

In Soviet Russia they have been experimenting with cats, with rats, and with many small 
animals. A cat, a mother cat, was separated from her children and the children were taken 
deep down into the sea; she could not know what was happening to her children. Every 
type of scientific instrument was attached to the cat to measure what was going on within 
her mind and her heart, and then one child was killed, deep in the sea. Immediately the 
mother became aware. Her blood-rate changed. She became puzzled and worried, her 
heartbeat increased. 

. as soon as the child was killed. And the scientific instrument said that she was feeling 
severe pain. Then after a while everything became normal. Then another child was killed 
— again the change. And the same with the third child. It happened every time, exactly at 
the same time, without any time-gap. What was happening? 

Now Soviet scientists say the mother has an inner guide, an inner feeling-center and it is 
joined to her children, wherever they are. And she immediately feels a telepathic 
relationship. The human mother will not feel so much. This is puzzling. It should be quite 
the otherwise: the human mother should feel more because she is more evolved. But she 
will not because the head has taken everything into its hands and the inner centers are all 



lying paralyzed. 

THIS CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GUIDANCE OF EACH ONE. BE THIS 
ONE. Whenever you are puzzled in a situation and you cannot see how to get out of it, 
don't think; just be in a deep non-thinking and allow the inner guide to guide you. In the 
beginning you will feel afraid, insecure, but soon, when you come every time to the right 
conclusion, when you come every time to the right door, you will gather courage and you 
will become trusting. 

If this trust happens, I call it faith. This really is religious faith — the trust in the inner 
guide. Reasoning is part of the ego. It is you believing in yourself. 

The moment you go deep within you, you have come to the very soul of the universe. 
Your inner guide is part of the Divine guidance. When you follow it, you follow the 
Divine; when you follow yourself, you are complicating things, and you don’t know what 
you are doing. You may think yourself very wise. You are not. 

Wisdom comes from the heart, it is not of the intellect. Wisdom comes from the 
innennost depth of your being, it is not of the head. Cut your head off, be headless — and 
follow the being, whatsoever, wheresoever it leads. Even if it leads into danger, go into 
danger, because that will be the path for you and your growth. Through that danger you 
will grow and become mature. Even if the inner guide leads you to death, go into it, 
because that is going to be the path for you. Follow it, trust it, and move with it. 

THE END. 



Chapter 78: The inner guide 


The first question: 

Question 1 

SOME OF THE TECHNIQUES IN THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE METHODS 
SEEM TO BE END RESULTS AND NOT TECHNIQUES, SUCH AS THOSE THAT 
SAY TO "BECOME UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS" OR "BE THIS ONE" ETC. IT 
SEEMS THAT WE NEED TECHNIQUES TO ACHIEVE THESE TECHNIQUES. 
WERE TECHNIQUES LIKE THESE MEANT FOR VERY ADVANCED PERSONS 
WHO COULD JUST BECOME COSMIC AT A MERE SUGGESTION? 

Such techniques were meant, not for very advanced persons, but for very innocent 
persons — simple, innocent, trusting. Then just a suggestion is enough. You have to have 
something to do because you cannot trust. You don't have faith. Unless you do something, 
nothing can happen to you because you believe in action. If something happens to you 
suddenly without any doing on your part, you will be scared and you will not believe it. 
You may even bypass it; you may not even record in the mind that it happened. Unless 
you DO, you cannot feel something happening to you — this is the way of the ego. But 
for an innocent person, for an innocent, open mind, just a suggestion is enough. Why? 
Because really, the innermost being is not something to be achieved in the future — it is 
here and now, it is already the case. Whatsoever is to be attained is here, present in you 
right this very moment. If you can trust without any effort, it can become revealed. It is 
not a question of time, of you having to work it out. 

It is not somewhere far away that you have to travel to. It is you. You may call it God, 
you may call it nirvana or whatsoever you like — it is you already. So even a suggestion , 
if believed totally, can reveal it to you. That’s why so much significance is given to 
SHRADDHA, trust, faith. If a person can believe in the master, just a hint, a suggestion, 
an indication — and in a flash everything will be revealed. 

The basic point to be understood is this: there are things which you cannot attain right 
now because time will be needed to produce them. They are not with you. If I give you a 
seed, it cannot immediately become a tree. Time will be needed, and you will have to 
wait and work. Then the seed cannot become the tree immediately. But you are really the 
tree already. It is not a seed which has to be worked, it is a tree hidden in darkness, it is a 
tree which is covered, it is a tree which you are inattentive too — that’s all. Your 
inattention is the cover. You are not looking at it, that’s all. You are looking somewhere 
else and that’s why you are missing it. In a trusting moment the master can tell you, just 
by a suggestion, that it is here. And if you can believe, if you can look in that dimension 
in trust, it will be revealed to you. 

These techniques are not for advanced people; they are for simple, innocent people. 
Advanced people are, in a way, difficult. 

They are not innocent, they have been working, they have attained something, and they 
have a subtle ego behind it. They know something so they are not innocent, they cannot 
believe. You will have to argue and convince them — and then too they will have to make 
some efforts. By an innocent mind, I mean a mind which is not arguing. It is just like a 
small child. The child goes with his father hand in hand, he is not afraid. Whatsoever the 



father is leading, he must be leading in the right direction. The father knows — so the 
child need not worry about it. He is not thinking of the future, what is going to happen is 
not his concern. He is enjoying the very journey; the end is not the problem at all. For the 
father it may be a problem. He may be afraid. He may be wondering whether they have 
lost the path or not, whether they are on the right path or not. But for the child it is not a 
problem. He knows that the father knows. That's all. And wherever the father leads, he 
will follow — and he is happy at this very moment. 

A trusting disciple, an innocent mind is just like a child — and the master is more than a 
father. Once the disciple surrenders, he trusts. Then at any moment, when the master 
feels that the disciple is tuned, that the disciple is in harmony, he will just give a hint. 

I have heard about a Zen master, Bokuju. He struggled hard to attain enlightenment, but 
nothing happened. 

Really, with a hard struggle sometimes nothing will happen, because the hard struggle is 
through the ego. And through hard struggle the ego becomes more hard. He did 
whatsoever could be done but the goal was no nearer. Rather, on the contrary, it was 
further away; further away than when he had started the journey. He was puzzled, 
confused, so he came to his master. The master said, "For a few years just completely 
stop any effort, any goal, any destination. Just forget, and live moment to moment near 
me. Don’t do anything. Simply eat, sleep, walk, and just be near me. And don't raise any 
question... just see me, my presence. And don't make any effort because nothing is to be 
achieved. Forget the achieving mind because the achieving mind is always in the future — 
that's why it goes on missing the present. Just forget that you have to achieve anything." 
Bokuju believed in his master. He started living with him. For a few days, a few months, 
ideas floated in, thoughts came, and sometimes he would become uneasy and would 
think, "I am wasting time. I am not doing anything. How can it happen without doing 
anything? If it couldn’t happen through such hard effort, how is it going to be easily 
attained by not doing anything?" But, still, he believed in the master. By and by the mind 
slowed down, and in the present of his master he started to feel a subtle calm flowing — a 
silence would fall from the master onto him. 

He started feeling a merging. Years passed. He completely forgot that he was. The master 
became the center and he started to live like a shadow. 

Then the miracle is possible — this happening itself is the miracle. One day, suddenly, the 
master called his name, "Bokuju, are you here?" Just this, "Bokuju, are you here?" And 
he said, "Yes, master." And, it is said, he became enlightened. 

There was nothing like a technique, not even a suggestion — just, "Bokuju, are you 
here?" The total presence had been called, "Are you here, not moving anywhere, not gone 
somewhere else? With total intensity, are you present here?" And Bokuju said, "Yes, 
master." In that "yes" he became totally present there. 

It is said that the master started laughing and Bokuju started laughing, and the master 
said, "Now you can go. Now you can move out there and help people by your presence." 
Bokuju never taught any method. He would simply ask this much, "Just be near. Remain 
present." And whenever a disciple was in tune, he would call the name of the disciple and 
ask, "Are you here?" This was the whole technique. 

But this technique will need a grounding of your mind, a deep innocence. There are many 
techniques which are simple, the simplest possible: just a saying, "Be this one" — just a 
hint. But it must have been said by the master in a certain moment. "Be this one" cannot 



always be said. 


It must have been said in a certain tuning, when the disciple was totally one with the 
master, or totally with the universe, merged. Then the master says, "Be this one" — and 
suddenly the focus will change and the last part of the ego will dissolve. 

These methods worked in the past but now it is difficult, very difficult, because you are 
so calculating, you are so clever. And being clever is just against being innocent. You are 
so calculating, you know too much arithmetic. This calculation goes on and on in the 
mind: whatsoever you do, it is always calculated, planned. You are never innocent, never 
open, receptive; you believe too much in yourself. Hence you go on missing. These 
methods won’t be helpful for you unless you prepare. That preparation can be very long, 
and you are very impatient. 

This age is basically the most impatient age that has ever happened on this earth. 
Everyone is impatient, everyone is too time-conscious, and everyone wants to do 
everything immediately. Not that it cannot be done — it can be done immediately. But 
with such time-consciousness it is impossible. People come to me and they say that they 
have come only for one day. The next day they are going to Sai Baba, and after meeting 
him they will go to Rishikesh, and then they will go somewhere else. Then they return 
frustrated and they think there is nothing India can give. It is not a question of whether 
India can give something or not, the question is always whether you can receive it or not. 

You are in such a hurry and you want something immediately. Just like instant coffee, 
you think of instant meditation, instant nirvana. It is not possible. Nirvana cannot be 
packed, cannot be made instant. Not that it is impossible to make it instant, it can become 
instant — but it can become instant only with the mind which is not after the instant. 
That's the problem. It can become instant. Immediately, this moment, it can happen. Not 
even a single moment is needed. But only to one who is relaxed about time completely, 
to one who can wait for infinity — for him it will happen instantly. 

This looks paradoxical but this is the case. If you can wait for eternity, you will not need 
to wait at all. But if you cannot wait for even a single moment, you will have to wait for 
eternity. You will have to wait because the mind which says, "Let it happen 
immediately," is a mind which has already moved from the moment. It is running, it is 
standing nowhere, it is just on the move. A mind which is on the move, on the way, 
cannot be innocent. 

You may not be aware of it but innocent people are always without time-consciousness. 
Time lingers slowly. There is no hurry to go anywhere, they are not running. They are 
enjoying moment to moment. They are chewing each moment. And each moment has its 
own ecstasy to deliver. But you are in such a hurry that it cannot be delivered. While you 
are here, your hands are in the future, your mind is in the future — you will miss this 
moment. 

And this will be always the case; you will always miss the now. And NOW is the only 
time! The future is false, the past is just memory. The past is no more, the future is yet to 
be — and all that ever happens is the now. Now is the only time. 

So if you can be prepared to slow down a little, to become non-calculating, playing like 
children, here and now, then these simple techniques can work miracles. But this century 
is too time-conscious. That’s why you ask, IT SEEMS THAT WE NEED TECHNIQUES 
TO ACHIEVE THESE TECHNIQUES. No. These are techniques, not end-results. They 



look like end-results because you cannot conceive of how they can work. They can work 
in particular mind; they cannot work in other types of mind. And really, those who know, 
they say that all the techniques will ultimately bring you to the innocence where the 
phenomenon happens. When the phenomenon happens, it will be because the techniques 
will have brought you to that innocence — if the innocence is there. 

But it is difficult now because nowhere is innocence taught; everywhere we are teaching 
cleverness. Universities are not to make you innocent, they are to make you clever, 
cunning, calculating. The more clever you are, the better you will be in the struggle of 
life. You can gain much wealth, prestige, power, if you are calculating. If you are 
innocent, you will prove to be stupid; if you are innocent, then you will be nowhere in 
this competitive world. 

This is the problem: in this competitive world you may not be anywhere, but in that non- 
competitive world of nirvana, if you are innocent, you will be somewhere. If you are 
calculating you will not be anywhere in the world of nirvana, but in this world you will 
be somewhere. And we have chosen this world to be our goal. 

Old universities differed completely, their orientation was totally different. Nalanda, 
Takshila — they did not teach calculation, they did not teach cleverness. They were 
teaching innocence. Their orientation was different from Oxford or Kashi or Cambridge. 
Their orientation was totally different — they were creating a different type of mind. So it 
almost always happened that a person who studied in Takshshila or Nalanda would 
become a BHIKKHU, a SANNYASIN, in the end. By the time he graduated from 
university he would renounce this world. Those universities were anti-world; they were 
preparing for some other dimension. They were preparing you for something else which 
cannot be measured in terms of this world. These techniques were for those type of 
people. Either they were innocent by their nature or they were training themselves to be 
innocent. 

When Jesus said to his followers, "If someone hits you on one cheek, you give him the 
other," what is he intending to do? He is trying to make you innocent. Only a foolish 
person would do this. When someone hits you on one cheek, a calculating mind will say, 
"Hit him hard, immediately." 

And a really calculating mind will say, "Before someone hits you, hit him. Because 
attack is the best defense." Ask Machiavelli — he is the cleverest mind. He says, "Before 
someone attacks you, you attack him, because attack is the best defense. Once someone 
has attacked you, you are already weak; he has already gained over you. Now the race is 
not equal. He is ahead of you. So don’t allow the enemy to go ahead. Attack before 
anybody attacks you." 

This is a calculating mind; this is a clever mind. Machiavelli was read by every prince 
and every king in medieval Europe — but he was such a clever person that no king would 
employ him. He was read — his book was the bible for power-politics, every prince 
would read his book The Prince and they would follow it — but no king was ready to 
employ him because he was such a clever man. It was better to keep him away — he was 
dangerous; he knew too much. He said, "Virtue is not good, but pretending to be virtuous 
is. Don’t be virtuous, but pretend always that you are virtuous. That is the real good 
because then you gain from both the ends: from vice you gain, and from virtue also." 

This is the calculating mind. Go on pretending that you are virtuous, and always praise 
virtue. But never be really virtuous. Always praise virtue so others know that you are a 



virtuous person. Always condemn vice — but don’t be afraid to use it. 


Jesus says, "When someone hits you on one cheek, give him the other. And if someone 
takes your coat, snatches it, give him your shirt also. And if someone forces you to carry 
his load for one mile, tell him that you are ready to carry it for two miles." This is patent 
foolishness, but very meaningful. If you can do this, these techniques will be for you. 
Jesus is preparing his disciples for sudden enlightenment. Just think about it. If you can 
be so innocent, so trusting, that if the other is hitting you, he must be hitting you for your 
good — so give him the other cheek also, and let him hit it. The other's goodness is 
believed in, trusted in; no one is your enemy. When Jesus says, "Love your enemies," this 
is the meaning. No one is your enemy; don't see the enemy anywhere. That doesn't mean 
that there will not be enemies and there will not be people who will exploit you. There 
will be. They will exploit you. But be exploited — and don’t be cunning. Just look at that 
dimension: be exploited but don’t be cunning. Be exploited but don’t be mistrusting, don’t 
disbelieve, don’t lose faith. That is more valuable than anything others can cheat you of. 
Nothing else is so valuable. 

But how do our minds function? If one man deceives you, the whole of humanity is evil. 
If one man is dishonest or you think that he is dishonest, then you don't believe in man at 
all. Then the whole of humanity has become dishonest. 

If one Jew is a miser, then the whole race of Jews is miserly. If one Mohammedan is 
bigoted, then all Mohammedans are. Just one is enough for us to lose our faith in all. 

Jesus says, "Even if all are dishonest, you should not lose faith, because faith is more 
valuable than what these dishonest people can take from you by their dishonesty." So 
really, if you lose faith you are losing something; otherwise nothing is lost. 

For such innocent people these techniques are enough, they will not ask for anything 
more. You say, and it happens to them. Just on hearing the master many have become 
illumined — but in the past, not in this age. 

I have heard a story about Rinzai. He was a very poor BHIKKHU, a poor SANNYASIN, 
a beggar. As he was sleeping in his hut a thief entered. There was nothing in the hut 
except a blanket that he himself was using. He was sleeping on the floor, covered with 
his blanket. Then he became very uncomfortable and stared to think, "What an 
unfortunate fellow! He has come so far from the village to find something, and there is 
nothing in my hut. What misery! How to help him? The only thing is this blanket." And 
he was under it and the thief would not have the courage to snatch the blanket, so he 
slipped out from under it, left it there and slipped into a dark corner. The thief took the 
blanket and went away. The night was very cold, but Rinzai was happy that the thief had 
not gone back empty-handed. 


Then he sat at the window of his hut. The night was cool, and the full moon was in the 
sky. He wrote a small haiku, a small poem. In the haiku he said, "If I could have given 
this moon to that thief, I would have." This mind! What has he lost? Just a blanket. What 
has he gained? The whole world, all that can be gained. He has gained innocence, trust, 
love. 

For this man no technique is needed. His master would say, "Just look. Be aware. Be 
alert." And that would do. 



The second question: 

Question 2 

HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE DICTATES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 
MIND AND THAT OF THE INNER GUIDE? HOW CAN ONE RECOGNIZE THAT 
THE INNER GUIDE HAS COME INTO FUNCTION? 

The first thing: because of Freud, much misunderstanding has arisen around the word 
"unconscious". Freud completely misunderstood it, misinterpreted it. And he has become 
the very basis of modern knowledge about mind. To Freud, unconscious meant simply 
the repressed conscious, the suppressed part of the conscious. So all that is evil and bad, 
immoral, has been suppressed. Because the society cannot allow it, it has to be 
suppressed within. For Freud, that repressed part is the unconscious — but not for 
mystics. Freud is not a mystic; he has not entered his own unconscious. He has been 
simply observing cases of patients: ill people, abnormal people, mad, insane, 
pathological. 

He has been studying the pathological mind, and through the study of the pathological 
mind — and that, too, from without — he concluded that just underneath the conscious 
there is an unconscious mind. That unconscious mind carries all that has been suppressed 
from the childhood, all that society has condemned. The mind has suppressed it, just to 
forget that it is there. 

But it is there — and it goes on functioning. And it is very powerful: it goes on changing 
the conscious, it goes on playing tricks with the conscious. The conscious is really 
impotent before it, because whatsoever is repressed is repressed only because it is so 
powerful that society cannot cope with it. So society has been repressing it and society 
doesn't know what else to do with it. For example, sex. It is so powerful that if you don't 
repress it you won't know what to do with it. It will lead you into dangerous paths. And it 
is such a forceful energy that the whole society will become chaotic if it is allowed 
completely .No marriage could exist, no love could exist, everything could be just a chaos 
if it was allowed total freedom — because then man would behave like an animal. If there 
were no marriage, no family, the whole society would be destroyed. Society depends on 
the unity of the family; the family depends on marriage; marriage depends on sex- 
suppression. Everything that is natural, forceful, has been inhibited, tabooed — so forcibly 
that you feel guilty about it and you go on fighting with it. 

Society has not only created policemen outside, it has created inner policemen, your 
conscience — a double arrangement so that you don’t go astray so that you cannot be 
natural, you have to be unnatural. 

Now modern psychologists say that insanity is part of civilization — no civilization can 
be without madness. But mad people are suffering because you have forced such an order 
over them that their natural instincts are crushed. They have been crippled. It may be that 
your madmen are more powerful than you, that's why their inner instincts have revolted 
and they have thrown their conscience, their mind, everything, overboard. That’s why 
they are mad. A better concept of humanity, a better organization, a better discipline with 
more knowledge and wisdom, may use them. They may prove geniuses; they may prove 
very talented people. They are. But they have such a force in them that they cannot 
repress themselves. And society will not allow them to move because they are wild. 

Freud came to the conclusion that civilization needs the unconscious, the repressed part. 



But really, for Tantra and yoga this unconscious is not the unconscious, it is just between 
the conscious and the unconscious, a small boundary. It is subconscious. The conscious 
has forced something down, but the conscious knows about it. It is not really 
unconscious, you know about it. You may not want to recognize it, you may not want to 
be attentive to it, because you are afraid that if you give it attention it will come up. 

You have forced it into darkness but you are conscious bout it. The Freudian unconscious 
is not really unconscious, it is only subconscious. It is not dark night, it is in the light, 
you can see it. 

Tantra talks about the real unconscious which is not suppressed by you but which is your 
deepest being. And your conscious is just one part of it which has come into light, the 
one-tenth part which has seen the light, which has become conscious. Nine parts, nine- 
tenths, are just hidden underneath. That unconscious is really your source of life-energy, 
of being. Your conscious mind is one-tenth of the whole mind and this conscious mind 
has created its own center: that center is the ego. This center is false because it doesn’t 
belong to the whole mind, it is not the center of the whole mind. It is just a center of the 
conscious part, a fragment. The fragment has created its own center and that center goes 
on pretending it is the center of the whole being. No, your total mind has a center: that 
center is called the guide. That center is in the unconscious and it will be revealed only 
when five fragments, or half of the mind, come into light. Then the center which is the 
guide will be revealed. It is hidden in the unconscious. 

So you need not be afraid of the unconscious; it is the Freudian unconscious you are 
afraid of. It is something to be afraid of. But this Freudian unconscious can be thrown out 
in catharsis. 

Hence my great insistence on catharsis. This Freudian unconscious can be thrown out in 
catharsis: whatsoever you wanted to do and you have not done, do it, meditatively. Don’t 
do it to anyone because that will create a chain of events — and you will not be in control. 
Just do it in a vacuum. If you are angry, do it in a vacuum. If you feel sexuality, throw it 
into the sky. If you feel anything, just allow it to move from your inwards outwards. 
Express it. A meditative catharsis will relieve you of the Freudian unconscious. With the 
technique that I am teaching — if it is followed — the Freudian unconscious will simply 
disappear. And only when this Freudian unconscious disappears can you penetrate the 
real unconscious. It is just in-between, between the conscious and the unconscious. You 
just go on throwing your rubbish things into a room and you close it; you go on 
accumulating a junkyard — Freudian unconscious is just a junkyard. Don’t throw it in — I 
say, throw it out. When it moves in, you will become pathological, you can go insane. 
When it moves out you will become fresh, young, unburdened. For this age, catharsis is a 
must. No one can reach the inner guide without catharsis. And once you are in deep 
catharsis you need not be afraid. Then the real unconscious will start revealing itself; then 
it will penetrate into your conscious, and then for the first time you will become aware of 
your vast territory. 

You are not such a small fragment, you have a very vast being, and this vast being has a 
center — that center is the inner guide. 

How to differentiate between the unconscious and the inner guide? How to differentiate 
between the Freudian unconscious and the inner guide? It will be difficult if you don’t go 
through catharsis. But you can feel a difference by and by because the Freudian 



unconscious is just a repressed thing. If something appears in you with a violent force, 
know well that this violent force is coming because you have repressed it in the first 
place. If something simply appears in you without any violence, just bubbles up silently, 
easily, without any sounds, even soundlessly, then know that this is the real unconscious. 
From the guide something is coming to you. But you will become proficient only when 
you go through catharsis. Then you will know what is happening. Whenever anything 
comes from the Freudian unconscious you will feel disturbed, it will make you uneasy, 
uncomfortable; and whenever something comes from the guide you will feel such 
serenity, you will feel so happy, so at ease, so at home, that you cannot imagine it. You 
will simply feel that this is the thing. Your total being is in harmony with it, there is no 
resistance. You know this is the right, this is the good, this is the truth — and nobody can 
convince you otherwise. With the Freudian unconscious you can never be serene, you can 
never be still and calm; you will be disturbed. 

It is a sort of disease that has come up — and there will be a fight with it. So it is better if 
you pass through deep catharsis, then the Freudian unconscious will become silent, by 
and by. 

And just as bubbles come up from a riverbed, come up to the very surface of the water, 
you will feel bubbles coming up from the very bed of your being. They will come to your 
conscious mind. But their very coming will give you a deep tranquility — a feeling that 
nothing can be more right than this. But before it happens you have to unburden yourself 
of the Freudian unconscious. And that can happen only if you are in a let-go, because the 
innennost being is so nonviolent that it will not assert itself. The Freudian unconscious 
will want to assert itself; every moment it is trying to assert itself and you are pushing it 
back. This is the difference. It wants to assert itself, it wants to become active, it wants to 
lead you somewhere, it wants to manipulate you — and you are resisting it, fighting it. 

The real unconscious, the guide, is not assertive. If you allow it, if you invite it, 
prayerfully, it will come to you just like an invited guest. You have to be in a let-go. Only 
then will it come. When it feels you are ready, when it feels it will not be denied, 
rejected, when it feels it will be welcomed, then it will come to you. So, you have to do 
two things: catharsis for the Freudian unconscious, and training in let-go and surrender 
for the real guide, the real unconscious. 

These two things done, you will know the difference. 

The difference really cannot be taught to you — you will know it. When it happens, you 
will know it. How do you know the difference between when there is pain in your body 
and when the whole body feels a well-being? When the whole body is filled with well- 
being and when your head has a headache, how do you feel what the difference is? You 
simply know it. Y ou cannot define it, you simply know it: you know what a headache is 
and you know what well-being is. 

The real guide will always give you a feeling of well-being, and the Freudian 
unconscious will always give you a feeling of headache. It is a turmoil, it is an inner 
conflict, it is anguish, it is pain suppressed. So whenever it comes you will feel painful all 
over. 

Because of this Freudian unconscious, many things have become painful which are not 
naturally painful For example, sex. Because society has repressed sex, it has become 
painful. One of the most blissful things in natural life is sex. But it has become painful. If 
you move into sex you will feel frustrated, you will feel guilty, at the end you will feel 



weakened. And you will decide never to have sex again. This is not because of natural 
sex, this is because of the unconscious. Sex has become painful. It has been so repressed 
that it has become ugly and painful Otherwise it is one of the most natural ecstasies. 

If a child is never taught that sex is bad and a sin he will enjoy it, and every time he will 
feel a deep well-being flowing all over the body. 

Men feel more well-being than women — because women are repressed more. No one 
requires that a boy should be a virgin but everyone requires, even the boy himself, that 
the girl he is going to marry should be a virgin. Even playboys require that the girl should 
be a virgin. Women's unconscious has been repressed ore than men's, that's why only a 
few women achieve orgasm. And that, too, in the West — in the east not more than five 
per cent of women, at the most, achieve any enjoyment in sex. Ninety-five percent are 
simply fed up with it. That's why when sadhus and monks teach that sex is sin, women 
always agree. They gather in multitudes around monks because the thing appeals to them, 
it is right. Because they are so suppressed they have never known any bliss out of it. In 
India, while making love, woman are not supposed to move, be active. They have to lie 
still like a corpse. If they are active their man will become suspicious: they are enjoying 
sex and this is not the sign of a good woman. A good woman is one who doesn’t enjoy. In 
the East they will say that if you want to marry, marry a good woman, and if you want to 
enjoy, then have a friendship with a bad woman — because only bad women can enjoy. 
This is unfortunate. The woman is not supposed to move, to be active, she should be just 
dead. 

How can she achieve orgasm when the energy is not moving? 

And if she cannot enjoy it she is bound to be against the husband and she is bound to 
think that the husband is evil. Every day Indian women come to me and they say that 
they are fed up with sex and their husbands are forcing them again and again to have sex. 
They don’t like it, they are disgusted. And why are the husbands not so disgusted? Why 
are the women disgusted? The reason is that they have a greater repressed unconscious 
about sex than men. 

Sex will become painful. If you have suppressed it, it is a headache. Anything can 
become a headache — just suppress it, that is the trick. It will become a suffering. And 
anything can become blissful — just express it, don’t suppress it. 

This Freudian unconscious is all that you know right now. You don’t know about the real 
unconscious, the Tantra unconscious — that's why you are afraid. And afraid, you cannot 
let go. Afraid, you cannot lose control. You know that if you lose control, immediately 
the suppressed instincts will take over. Immediately, whatsoever you have repressed will 
come to the mind and it will insist on being acted out. That's why you are afraid. 

Catharsis is needed first so the fear goes. And then you can let go. And if you let go, a 
very silent force will start flowing to your conscious mind and you will feel a well-being, 
you will feel that you are at home, you will feel that everything is good, you will feel that 
you are blessed. 


HOW CAN ONE RECOGNIZE THAT THE INNER GUIDE HAS COME INTO 
FUNCTION? This will be the first sign: you will start feeling good, good about yourself. 
Remember, you always feel bad about yourself. I almost never come across a person who 
feels good about himself. Everyone is condemning himself, everyone thinks he is bad. 



And when you think you are bad how do you suppose that someone else is going to love 
you? And when no one loves you, you feel frustrated. But you yourself don’t love you. 
You have never touched your hand lovingly, you have never felt your body lovingly, you 
have never thanked God that he has given you such a beautiful body, such a beautiful 
organism. No, you just feel disgusted. And the religions, the so-called religions have 
taught you to feel condemned — this body is a bag of sins. You are carrying a burden. 
When the unconscious is released you will feel suddenly that you are accepted, you are 
not bad. Nothing is bad. The whole of life becomes deep down a blessing. You feel 
blessed. And the moment you feel blessed, all others around you become blessed; you 
can bless them, you can feel happy. Because you feel condemned, you feel bad about 
yourself and you think the same about others. How can you love another's body if you 
condemn your own body? If you are against your own body, how can you love another 
body? You will condemn — deep down you will condemn. 

Really, religions have prepared you to become just ghosts. They don’t want you to be 
with the body, they want you to be just unembodied spirits. Everything has been so 
condemned. .and you have taken it for granted. I have seen in scriptures, in many 
scriptures, that it written that your body has nothing but blood, fat, phlegm — just to 
condemn it. I don’t know what these persons who were writing these scriptures wanted. 
Did they want gold to be there? Why is blood bad? Blood is life! But they have 
condemned it and we have accepted the condemnation. They must be mad, insane. 

Jains always say that their TEERTHANKARAS never urinated, they don’t defecate. Such 
bad things. But why is urine bad? What do you want to urinate instead of urine? And 
what is bad in it? But it is such a bad thing. And psychologists say that because the sex 
center and the urinating organ are the same in man, sex has become condemned. And in 
woman the sex center is just in the middle, on one side defecation and on the other side 
urination, sex cannot be good if it is between two such bad things. The condemnation of 
sex has come because we have condemned defecation. But why? Why condemn it? What 
is bad? But we accept condemnation and when we accept, then there are problems. 

Your whole body is condemned by neurotic people. They may have written scriptures but 
that doesn’t make any difference. They may have been great leaders — neurotics almost 
always are. 

They are great leaders because they are so fanatic that they can immediately get a 
following. And there are always people who worship fanaticism. Anyone who says 
something strongly will have people falling at his feet saying he is the right leader, and 
he may be just neurotic, just mad. These neurotic people have condemned you and you 
have accepted them, you have been conditioned by them. 

When the unconscious flows in you, a subtle well-being will come. You will feel good: 
everything is good, and everything is Divine. Your body comes from the Divine, your 
blood also, your urine also. Everything is Divine. When the unconscious flows in you, 
everything is Divine, everything becomes spiritual. Nothing is bd, nothing is condemned. 
This will be the feeling, and then you will fly. You will become so light you cannot walk. 
Then nothing is a burden on your head. Then you can enjoy small things in a very great 
way. Then every trivial things becomes a beauty. But that beauty is given by you — 
whatsoever you touch becomes golden because deep down you are so fdled with bliss. 
This will be the first thing that will happen to you — a goodness about yourself. And, 
when the unconscious starts flowing into your conscious, the second thing will be that 



you will become less world-oriented, less intellectual, more total. Then if you are happy 
you will not just simply say that you are happy — you will dance. 

Just saying, "I am happy," is pale, meaningless. I see people who say, "I am happy" — but 
just look at their faces! I know people who say, "I love you," but their body is not 
expressing anything. Words are dead but we have substituted them for life. When the 
unconscious flows in you, this will be the difference: you will live with your total being. 
When you feel happy, you will dance. Then you will not simply say, "I am happy"-you 
will be happy: that's the difference. You will not say, "I am happy" — there is no need to 
say it because you will be happy. Then there will be no need to say to someone, "I love 
you" — you will be love. Your whole being will show the feeling, you will vibrate with 
love. Anybody passing nearby will feel that you love; anyone just touched by your hand 
will feel a subtle energy has entered into him. There is a wannth in your presence, a 
happiness. 

This will be the second thing. First, you will feel a goodness about yourself and about 
everything; and second, you will become total. When the guide takes you, you will be 
total. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

WHEN THAT INTUITION STARTS FUNCTIONING, IS SURRENDER THE ONLY 
TECHNIQUE FOR THAT INTUITION, OR THE INNER GUIDE? DOES A PERSON 
LIVING THROUGH INTUITION ALWAYS SUCCEED? HOW DO YOU VALUE 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE? IS IT NOT TRUE THAT THE PERSON LIVING 
INTUITIVELY WILL BECOME WEAK INTELLECTUALLY? 

Surrender is the only technique for the inner being to become active. 


DOES A PERSON LIVING THROUGH INTUITION ALWAYS SUCCEED? No, but 
he is always happy — whether he succeeds or not. And a person not living intuitively is 
always unhappy whether he succeeds or not. Success is not the criterion because success 
depends on many things. Happiness is the criterion because happiness depends only on 
you. You may not succeed because others are competitors there. Even if you are working 
intuitively, others may be working more cunningly, more cleverly, more calculatingly, 
more violently, more immorally. So success depends on many other things; success is a 
social phenomenon. You may not succeed. 

Who can say that Jesus succeeded? Crucifixion is not a success, it is the greatest failure. 

A man crucified when he was just thirty-three — what type of success is this? No one 
knew about him. Just a few villagers, uneducated people, were his disciples. He had no 
position, no prestige, no power. What type of success is this? Crucifixion cannot be said 
to be a success. But he was happy. He was totally blissful — even when being crucified. 
And those who were crucifying him would remain alive for many years but they would 
remain in misery. So really, who was undergoing crucifixion? That is the point. Those 
who crucified Jesus, were they undergoing crucifixion? Or was Jesus, who was crucified? 
He was happy. How can you crucify happiness? He was ecstatic. 


How can you crucify ecstasy? You can kill the body but you cannot kill the soul. Those 



who crucified him, they lived, but their life was nothing but a long slow crucifixion — 
misery and misery and misery. 

So the first thing is that I don’t say that if you follow the inner guide you will always 
succeed — in the sense that the world recognizes success; but in the sense that a Buddha 
or a Jesus recognizes success, you will succeed. But that success is measured by your 
happiness, your bliss — whatsoever happens is irrelevant, you will be happy. Whether the 
world says that you have been a failure, or the world makes you a star, a success, it 
doesn't make any difference. You will be happy whatsoever the case; you will be blissful. 
Bliss is success to me. If you can understand that bliss is success, then I say you will 
succeed always. 

But to you bliss is not success; success is something else. It may even be misery. Even if 
you know that it is going to be a misery, you long for success. Ask political leaders — 
they are in misery. I have not seen any political leader who is happy. They are just 
miserable, but still they are trying for higher posts, trying to get still higher on the ladder. 
And those who are already above him are in misery, and he knows it. But we are ready to 
be miserable if success comes to us. So what is success to us? Success is egoistic 
fulfillment, not bliss. 

It is just so that people will say that you have succeeded. You may have lost everything — 
you may have lost your soul; you may have lost all that innocence that gives bliss; you 
may have lost all that peace, silence, that brings you nearer to the Divine; you may have 
lost all, and become just a madman — but the world will say you are a success. 

For the world, ego gratification is the success; for me it is not. For me, to be blissful is 
success — whether anyone knows about you or not. It is irrelevant whether anyone knows 
about you or not, whether you live totally unknown, unheard of, unnoticed. But if you are 
blissful, you have succeeded. 

So remember this distinction because there are many people who would like to be 
intuitive, who would like to find the inner guide, just to succeed in the world. For them 
the inner guide will be a frustration. In the first place, they cannot find it. In the second 
place, even if they can find it, they will be miserable. Because what they are aiming at is 
recognition by the world, ego fulfillment — not bliss. 

Be clear in the mind — don’t be success-oriented. Success is the greatest failure in the 
world. So don’t try to succeed otherwise you will be a failure. Think of being blissful. 
Every moment think of being more and more blissful. Then the whole world may say you 
are a failure but you will not be a failure. You have attained. 


Buddha was a failure in the eyes of his friends, family, wife, father, teachers, society — he 
was a failure. He had become just a beggar. What type of success is this? He could have 
been a great emperor: he had the qualities, he had the personality, he had the mind. He 
could have been a great emperor but he became a beggar. He was a failure — obviously. 
But I say to you he was not a failure. If he had become an emperor then he would have 
been a failure because he would have missed the real life. What he attained under the 
Bodhi Tree was the real and what he lost was unreal. 

With the real you will succeed in the inner life; with the unreal... I don’t know. If you 
want to succeed in the unreal then follow the path of those who are working in 
cunningness, cleverness, competition, jealousy, violence. Follow their path, the inner 
guide is not for you. If you want to gain something of the world, then don't listen to the 



inner guide. 

But ultimately you will feel that although you have won the whole world, you have lost 
yourself. Jesus says, "And what does a man get if he loses his soul and gains the whole 
world?" Who will you call a success: Alexander the Great or Jesus the Crucified? So if — 
and that 'if has to be understood well — if you are interested in the world, then the inner 
guide is not a guide for you. If you are interested in the inner dimension of being then the 
inner guide, and only the inner guide, can help. 


THE END. 



Chapter 79: Sunyawad -- the philosophy of emptiness 


SUPPOSE YOUR PASSIVE FORM TO BE AN EMPTY ROOM WITH WALLS OF 
SKIN - EMPTY. 

GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR 
MIND FROLICS INFINITELY. 

SWEET HEARTED ONE, MEDITATE ON KNOWING AND NOT-KNOWING, 
EXISTING AND NOT-EXISTING. THEN LEAVE BOTH ASIDE THAT YOU MAY 
BE. 

ENTER SPACE, SUPPORTLESS, ETERNAL, STILL. 

These techniques are concerned with emptiness — they are the most delicate, the most 
subtle. Even to conceive of emptiness seems impossible. Buddha used all these four 
techniques for his disciples and BHIKKHUS, and because of these four techniques he 
was totally misunderstood. Buddhism got completely uprooted from Indian soil just 
because of these four techniques. 

Buddha said that there is no God. If there is God, you cannot be totally empty. You may 
not be there but the God will be there, the Divine will be there. And your mind can 
deceive you, because your Divine may be just your mind playing tricks. Buddha said that 
there is no soul, because if there is any soul, ATMA, you can hide your ego behind it. 
Your ego will be difficult to leave if you feel that there is some self within you. Then you 
cannot be totally empty because you will be there. 

Just to prepare the ground for these techniques of emptiness, Buddha denied everything. 
He was not an atheist but he appeared to be an atheist because he said that there is no 
God, he said there is no soul, he said there is nothing substantial in existence — existence 
is empty. 

But this was just to prepare the ground for these techniques. Once you enter emptiness 
you have entered all — you may call it the Divine, you may call it God, or ATMA, soul, 
whatsoever you like — but you can enter the truth only when you are totally empty. 
Nothing should be left of you. 

Hindus thought that Buddha was destroying religion, that he was teaching irreligion. And 
people who heard him, even they couldn’t follow, because whenever you go somewhere, 
you go to seek something — you never go to seek emptiness. So those who went to hear 
him were seeking something — nirvana, moksha, the other world, heaven, truth — but 
they were seeking something. They had come to gratify their ultimate desire: to find the 
truth. That is the last desire. And unless you are completely desireless, you cannot know 
the truth; the very condition of knowing is to be totally desireless. 

So one thing is certain, you cannot desire truth. If you desire it, the very desire will 
become the barrier. There were masters before Buddha who were teaching, "Don't desire, 
be desireless." But they were talking about God, about the kingdom of God, heaven, 
paradise, moksha, the ultimate freedom and liberation — and they were saying, "Be 
desireless." Buddha felt that you cannot be desireless if there is something to be attained. 
You may pretend that you are desireless, but this pretension, desirelessness, is also from 
some desire to be fulfilled. 



It is false. The masters say that you cannot attain to ultimate bliss with desire, and you 
want to attain ultimate bliss — so you start being desireless, you try to be desireless, so 
that you can attain the ultimate bliss. But the desire is there. You are trying to be 
desireless just because of the desire. So Buddha said that there is no God to be attained. 
Even if you desire, there is no one to be attained... so be desireless. There is no moksha 
somewhere, there is no goal. Life is meaningless and goal-less. 

His emphasis is beautiful and wonderful — no one has tried that way. He destroyed all the 
goals just to help you to be desireless. If the goals are there, how can you be desireless? 
And if you are not desireless, you will not attain to the goal — this is the paradox. He 
destroyed all the goals — not that those goals are not there, they are there and they can be 
attained — but if you want to attain them, if you desire to attain them, it becomes 
impossible. The very basic condition is you must be desireless — then the ultimate 
happens to you. So Buddha says there is nothing to be desired, desires are futile. Drop all 
desires and when there is no desire you will be empty. 

Just imagine, if there is no desire within you, what will you be? You are nothing but a 
bundle of desires. If all desires go, you simply disappear. Not that you will not exist — 
you will exist, but as an emptiness. 

You will be there, just like a vacant room: no one is there, just a SUNYA, a nothingness. 
Buddha has called this nothingness ANATMA, ANATTA, no-soulness. You will not feel 
any center, that "I am"; there will be just "am-ness", no "I" to it, because "I" is nothing 
but accumulated desires, condensed desires, crystallized desires — many, many desires 
have become your "I". 

It is just as in physics. Physicists say that if you analyze matter, then matter is nothing but 
atoms; there is nothing to join the atoms, each atom is surrounded by vacant space. If you 
have a rock in your hand, there is no rock, just atoms of energy, and between two atoms, 
infinite space. Even a rock is spacious, porous. They say that soon we will be able to pull 
that space out from anything. 

H.G. Wells has written a story. 

In the twenty-first century, a passenger starts calling for coolies in a big station. Other 
passengers who are traveling in the same compartment with this passenger cannot 
understand, because he has no luggage, just a packet of cigarettes and a small matchbox. 
That is all his luggage. And he goes on calling for coolies. A big group gathers and a 
passenger asked, "Why? Why are you calling? You don't have anything. You can carry 
this matchbox and this packet of cigarettes yourself. What are you going to do with these 
two dozen coolies?" The passenger laughs and he says, "Try, try that matchbox. 

That matchbox is not ordinary. One railway engine is condensed into it." 

It is possible soon. Space can be pulled out and then it can be again forced in, and the 
engine will take its shape again. Then big things can be carried without much problem. 
The weight will remain the same but the shape, the form, will become smaller and 
smaller. A matchbox can contain a railway engine, but the weight will remain the same, 
because space has no weight. Y ou can pull out the space but you cannot pull out the 
weight. The weight will remain the same because weight is contained by the atoms, not 
by the space. They say that the whole earth can be condensed into the form, the shape, of 
one apple, but the weight will remain the same. And if you pull apart all these atoms; if 
you take one atom out, and then another, and then another; if you take all the atoms out, 
nothing will be left behind — so matter is just an appearance. 



Buddha has analyzed the human mind in a simpler way: he is one of the greatest 
scientists possible. He says your ego is nothing but desires, atomic desires. There are 
millions of desires; they make you. If you go on pulling out desires one by one, a moment 
will come when there is no desire left, you have disappeared... just space, just vacant 
space remains. And this, Buddha says, is nirvana. This is the cessation of your being 
completely; you are no more. And Buddha says this is silence: unless you are completely 
gone, silence cannot descend on you. 

Buddha says you cannot be silent because you are the problem; you cannot be peaceful 
because you are the disease; and you can never be blissful because you are the only 
barrier. The bliss can come at any moment but you are the barrier. When you are not, 
bliss will be there; when you are not, peace will be there; when you are not, silence will 
be there, when you are not, ecstasy will be there. When your inner being is totally empty, 
this emptiness itself is bliss. That's why Buddha's teachings are called SUNYAWAD, the 
philosophy of emptiness, or the philosophy of zero. 

These four techniques are to attain this state of being, or you can call it this state of no- 
being — there is no difference. You can give it a positive term, as Hindus and Jains have 
called it, soul, or you can give it a more appropriate but negative term, as Buddha has 
called it, ANATTA, no-selfness or no-soulness. It depends on you. But whatsoever you 
call it, there is no one to be named and called, there is just infinite space. That's why I say 
that these are the ultimate techniques, the most delicate, the most difficult — but the most 
wonderful. And if you can work with any of these four techniques, you will gain the 
unattainable. 

The first technique: 

SUPPOSE YOUR PASSIVE FORM TO BE AN EMPTY ROOM WITH WALLS OF 
SKIN - EMPTY. 

SUPPOSE YOUR PASSIVE FORM TO BE AN EMPTY ROOM WITH WALLS OF 
SKIN. 

.. but inside, everything empty. This is one of the most beautiful techniques. Just sit in a 
meditative posture, relaxed, alone, your backbone straight and the whole body relaxed — 
as if the whole body is hanging on the backbone. Then close your eyes. For a few 
moments go on feeling relaxed, more relaxed, becoming calmer and calmer and calmer. 
Do this for a few moments, just to be in tune. And then suddenly start feeling your body 
is just walls of skin and there is nothing inside, there is no one inside, the house is vacant. 
Sometimes you will feel thoughts passing, clouds of thoughts moving, but don’t think that 
they belong to you. You are not. Just think that they are roaming in a vacant sky — they 
don't belong to anyone, they don’t have any roots. 

Really this is the case: thoughts are just like clouds moving in the sky. They don’t have 
any roots and they don’t belong to the sky, they simply roam in the sky. They come and 
they go and the sky remains untouched, uninfluenced. Feel that your body is just walls of 
skin and there is no one inside. Thoughts will still continue — because of old habit, old 
momentum, old cooperation, thoughts will go on coming. But just think that they are 
rootless clouds moving in space — they don’t belong to you, they don’t belong to anybody 
else. There is no one to whom they can belong — you are empty. It will be difficult, but 
because of the old habits, nothing else. 



Your mind would like to catch some thought, be identified with it, move with it, enjoy it, 
indulge in it. Resist! Just say there is no one to indulge, there is no one to fight, there is 
no one to do anything with this thought. Within a few days, a few weeks, thoughts will 
slow down, they will become less and less. The clouds will start disappearing, or, even if 
they come, there will be great gaps of cloudless sky when there will be no thought. One 
thought will pass. Then another will not come for a period. Then another will come and 
then there will again be an interval. In those intervals you will know for the first time 
what emptiness is. And the very glimpse of it will fill you with such deep bliss you 
cannot imagine. 

Really it is difficult to say anything about it, because whatsoever is said in language will 
refer to you, and you will not be there. If I say that you will be filled with happiness it 
will be nonsense. You will not be there, so how can I say you will be filled with 
happiness? Happiness will be there. Just within the four walls of your skin, happiness 
will be there, vibrating — but you will not be there. A deep silence will descend on you, 
because if you are not, no one can create a disturbance. You always go on thinking that 
somebody else is disturbing you; the traffic noise on the road, children playing around 
you, the wife working in the kitchen... somebody is disturbing you. 

Nobody is disturbing you; you are the cause of the disturbance. Because you are there, 
anything can disturb you. If you are not there, then disturbances will come and pass 
through the emptiness without touching it. You are there — very touchy, a wound; 
anything immediately hurts you. 

I have heard about a scientific story. It happened after the third world war that all were 
dead; now there was no one on the earth, only trees and hills were there. One big tree 
thought to create a great noise, as it used to create in the past. It fell down from a big 
rock, it did everything that was possible, but there was no noise. Because for noise your 
ears are needed, for sound your ears are needed. If you re not there, sound cannot be 
created. It is impossible. I am speaking here. I am making sound because you are here. If 
no one is here, I may go on speaking, but sound cannot be created. But I can create it 
myself because I myself can hear it. If no one is there to hear, sound cannot be crated, 
because sound is a reaction of your ears. 

If no one is there on the earth, the sun will rise but it cannot create light. It seems absurd. 
We cannot conceive of it because we always think that the sun will rise and there will be 
light. Your eyes are needed. Without your eyes, the sun cannot create light. It may go on 
rising but it will be futile because the rays will pass in emptiness. 

There will be no one who can react and who can say that this is light. Light is a 
phenomenon of your eyes. You react. Sound is a phenomenon of your ears. You react. 
What do you think... a rose is there in the garden, but if no one passes, will there be 
perfume? A rose alone cannot create perfume. Impossible. You and your nose are needed 
— someone to react and interpret that this is perfume, this is rose-perfume. However hard 
a rose tries, without a nose it will not be a rose at all. 

The disturbance on the street is not there really, it is within your ego. Your ego reacts and 
says that this is a disturbance. It is your interpretation. Sometimes in a different mood 
you may enjoy it. Then it will not be a disturbance. You may enjoy it in a different mood. 
And then you will say, "This is beautiful. What music!" But in a sad moment even music 
will become a disturbance. But if you are not there, just space, emptiness, there can be 
neither disturbance nor music. Things will just pass through you, unnoticed. Because 



unstruck, there is no wound to react, there is no one to respond; not even an ego will be 
created. This is what Buddha calls nirvana. 

And this technique can help you. 

SUPPOSE YOUR PASSIVE FORM TO BE AN EMPTY ROOM WITH WALLS OF 
SKIN — EMPTY. Sit in a passive state, inactive, not doing anything.... Because whenever 
you do something the doer comes in. 

Really there is no doer. Only because of the doing you imagine that there is one. Buddha 
is difficult only because of this. Only because of linguistic forms have problems arisen. 
We say a man is walking. If you analyze this sentence, it means that there is someone 
who is walking. But Buddha says there is only a process of walking, there is no one who 
is walking. You are laughing. Because of language it appears that there is someone who 
is laughing. Buddha says there is laughter but no one inside who is laughing. When you 
laugh, remember this, and find out who laughs. You will never find anyone — there is 
simply laughter. There is no one behind it doing it. When you are sad, there is no one 
who is sad, there is simply sadness. Look at this. Simply sadness. It is a process: simply 
laughter, simply happiness, simply unhappiness. There is no one behind it. 

Only because of language do we go on thinking in terms of two. If there is movement, we 
say there must be someone who has moved — the mover. We cannot conceive of 
movement alone. But have you ever see the mover? Have you ever seen the one who 
laugh? Buddha says there is life, the process of life, but no one inside who is alive. And 
then there is death, but no one dying. For Buddha you are not a duality — the language 
creates a duality. I am speaking, there is no one who is speaking. It is a process. It 
belongs to no one. 


But for us this is difficult because our mind is deeply rooted in dualism. Whenever we 
think of some activity, we conceive of some actor inside, some doer. That's why a 
passive, inactive form is good in meditation because then you can fall into emptiness 
more easily. Buddha says, "Don’t meditate. Be in meditation." The difference is vast. I 
will repeat. Buddha says, "Don’t meditate. Be in meditation." Because if you meditate, 
the doer has come in — you will go on thinking that you are meditating. Then meditation 
has become an act. Buddha says, "Be in meditation." That means be totally passive, don’t 
do anything, and don't think that there is any doer. That's why sometimes, when the doer 
is lost in the doing, you feel a sudden upsurge of happiness. It comes because you have 
become one. With a dancer a moment comes when dance takes over the dancer 
disappears — then happens a sudden blessing, a sudden beatitude, a sudden ecstasy. He is 
filled with unknown bliss. What has happened? Only the doing remained and the doer 
was no more. 

At the war-front, soldiers sometimes attain to very deep bliss. It is difficult to conceive of 
because they are so near death — at any moment they can die. In the beginning it makes 
them afraid; they tremble in fear. But you cannot continue trembling and fearing every 
day, continuously. One becomes accustomed, one accepts death — then the fear 
disappears. 

And when death is so near and with any wrong movement you may be dead immediately, 
the doer is forgotten, and only duty remains, only doing remains. And one has to be so 
deeply in the doing that one cannot go on remembering that "I am". That "I am" will 



create trouble. You will miss. You will not be totally in the activity. And life is at stake 
so you cannot afford duality. Action becomes total. When action is total, you suddenly 
feel you are happy as you have never been before. Warriors have kn own very deep 
springs of joy that ordinary life cannot give to you. That may be the reason why war is so 
appealing. And that may be the reason why KSHATRIYAS, warriors, have attained to 
moksha more than brahmins; because brahmins are always thinking and thinking — much 
mental activity. Twenty-four Jain TEERTHANKARAS, Ram, Krishna, Buddha, were all 
KSHATRIYAS, warriors. They have attained to the highest peak. 

No businessman has ever been heard to attain to that peak. He lives in such security that 
he can afford to be dual. Whatsoever he is doing, it is never total. Profit cannot be a total 
activity. You can enjoy it, but it is never a life-and-death problem. You can play with it, 
but nothing is at stake. It is a game. A business is playing a game, the game of money. 

The game is not very dangerous so businessmen almost always remain mediocre.. Even a 
gambler may attain to higher peaks of bliss than a businessman, because a gambler 
moves into danger. 

He stakes everything that he has got — in that moment of total stake the doer is lost. 

That may be the reason why gambling is so appealing, war is so appealing. As far as I 
understand, behind whatsoever is appealing, there must be some ecstasy lurking 
somewhere, some hint of the unknown somewhere, some glimpse of the deep mystery of 
life hidden somewhere there. Otherwise nothing can be appealing. 

Passivity.... Any posture that you take in meditation should be passive. In India we have 
evolved the most passive ASANA, the most passive posture, that is SIDDHASANA. And 
the beauty of it is that in this SIDDHASANA posture, as Buddha sits, the body is in the 
deepest of passive states. Even while lying down you are not so passive; even while 
sleeping, your posture is not so passive, it is active. Why is a SIDDHASANA so passive? 
For many reasons. In this posture the body is locked, closed. The body has an electric 
circle: when the circle is closed and locked, the electricity moves round and round inside 
the body, it does not leak out. Now it is a proved scientific phenomenon that in certain 
postures your body leaks energy. When the body is leaking energy, it has to create energy 
continuously. It is active. The body dynamo has to work continuously because you are 
leaking. When energy is leaking from the outside body, the inside body has to be active 
to replace it. So the most passive state will be when no energy is leaking. 


Now in Western countries, particularly in England, they treat patients just by making a 
circle of their body electricity. In may hospitals these techniques are being used and they 
are very helpful. A person lies on the floor on a net of wires. The net of wires is just to 
make a circle of his body electricity. Just half an hour is enough, and he will feel so 
relaxed, so filled with energy, so strong, that he cannot believe that when he came he was 
so weak. 

In all the old cultures, people used to sleep in a particular direction in the night just so 
that energy didn’t leak out — because the earth has a magnetic force. To use that magnetic 
force you have to lie in a particular direction — then the force in the earth will magnetize 
you the whole night. If you are lying opposite to it the force is fighting with you and your 
energy will be destroyed. Many people in the morning feel very depressed, very 
weakened. This should not be so, because sleep is meant to rejuvenate you, to give you 
more energy. But there are many people who are energetic when they go to bed but in the 



morning they are just dead. There can be many reasons for it but this may be one: they 
are lying in the wrong direction. If they are lying against the earth magnet they will feel 
dissipated. 

So now scientists say that the body has an electric circuit which can be locked, and they 
have studied many yogis sitting in SIDDHASANA. 

In that state the body is leaking the minimum energy; energy is preserved. When energy 
is preserved the inner batteries need not work, there is no need for any activity. So the 
body is passive. In this passivity, you can become more empty than if you are active. 

In this SIDDHASANA posture your backbone is straight and the whole body is also 
straight. Now many studies have been done. When your body is straight, totally straight, 
you are least influenced by the gravitation of the earth. That's why if you sit in a posture 
which is inconvenient, which you call inconvenient, the inconvenience is caused because 
your body is affected by more gravitation. If you are sitting straight then gravitation is 
least effective, because it can pull only your backbone, nothing else. That's why it is 
difficult to sleep while standing. It is almost impossible to sleep while standing in a 
SHIRS HAS ANA, on your head. For sleep you have to lie down. Why? Because then the 
earth has the maximum pull on you — and the maximum pull makes you unconscious. For 
sleep you have to lie down on the ground, so the earth's gravitation touches the whole of 
your body and pulls every cell of it. Then you become unconscious. Animals are more 
unconscious than man because they cannot stand erect. Evolutionists say that man could 
evolve because he could stand erect, on two feet. The gravitation pull is less. Because of 
that he could become a little more aware. 


In siddhasana, the gravitational pull is at its minimum. The body is inactive and passive, 
closed inside, it has become a world unto itself. Nothing is moving out, nothing is 
coming in .Eyes are closed, hands are locked, feet are locked — energy moves in a circle. 
And whenever energy moves in a circle, it creates an inner rhythm, an inner music. The 
more you hear that music, the more you feel relaxed. 

SUPPOSE YOUR PASSIVE FORM TO BE AN EMPTY ROOM - just like an empty 
room — WITH WALLS OF SKIN — EMPTY. Go on dropping into that emptiness. A 
moment will come sometime when you feel everything has disappeared; that there is no 
one, nobody, the house is vacant, the lord of the house has disappeared, evaporated. In 
that gap, in that interval, when you are not present inside, the Divine will be present. 
When you are not, God is. When you are not, bliss is. So try to disappear. Try to 
disappear from within. 

The second technique: 

GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR 
MIND FROLICS INFINITELY. 

GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR 
MIND FROLICS INFINITELY. This second technique is based on the dimension of 
play. That has to be understood. If you are inactive, it is good to fall into deep emptiness, 
into the inner abyss. But you cannot be empty the whole day and you cannot be passive 
the whole day. 



You will have to do something. Activity is a basic requirement, otherwise you cannot be 
alive. Life means activity. So you can be inactive for a few hours, but for twenty-four 
hours you will have to be active. And meditation should be something which becomes 
your style of life, it should not be a fragment. Otherwise you will gain it and lose it. If 
you are inactive one hour then for twenty-three hours you will be active. The active 
forces will be more, and they will destroy whatsoever you attain in your inactivity. The 
active forces will destroy it. And the next day you will again do the same: for twenty- 
three hours you will accumulate the doer and in one hour you will have to drop it. It will 
be difficult. So your mind must change its attitude about work and activity. Hence the 
second technique. 

Work should be considered as play, not as work. Work should be considered as play, just 
a game. You should not be serious about it; you should be just like children playing. It is 
meaningless, nothing is to be achieved; just the very activity is enjoyed. You can feel the 
distinction if you play sometimes. When you work it is different: you are serious, 
burdened, responsible, worried, anxious, because the result, the end-result, is the motive. 
The work itself is not worth enjoying. The real thing is just in the future, in the result. In 
play there is no result, really. The very process is blissful. 

And you are not worried, it is not a serious thing. Even if you look serious, it is just 
pretending. In play you enjoy the very process; in work the process is not being enjoyed 
— the goal, the end, is important. The process has to be tolerated anyhow. It has to be 
done because the end has to be achieved. If you could achieve the end without this, you 
would drop activity and jump to the end. 

But in play you would not do that. If you could achieve the end without playing, then the 
end would be futile. It has meaning only through the process. For example, two football 
teams are on the playing-ground. Just by throwing a coin they can decide who will win 
and who will be defeated. Why go through so much effort, unnecessarily exerting 
yourself? The thing can be decided very easily just by tossing a coin. The end will be 
there. One team can win, another can be defeated. Why work for it? But then there will 
be no meaning, no significance. The end is not meaningful, the very process is the 
meaning. Even if no one wins and no one is defeated the game was worth it. The activity 
in itself is enjoyed. 

This dimension of play has to be applied to your whole life: whatsoever you are doing, be 
there in that activity so totally that the end is irrelevant. It may come, it has to come, but 
it is not on your mind. You are playing, you are enjoying. 

That's what Krishna means when he tells Arjuna to leave the future in the hands of the 
Divine. 

The result of your activity is in the hands of the Divine, you simply do. This simply doing 
becomes a play. That’s what Arjuna finds difficult to understand, because he says that if it 
is just play, then why kill, why fight? He understands what work is but he cannot 
understand what play is. And Krishna’s whole life is just a play. You cannot find such a 
non-serious man anywhere. His whole life is just a play, a game, a drama. He is enjoying 
everything but he is not serious about it. He is enjoying it intensely but he is not worried 
about the result. What happens is irrelevant. 

It is difficult for Arjuna to understand Krishna because he calculates, he thinks in tenns 
of the end-result. He says in the beginning of the Gita, "This whole thing seems to be 
absurd. On both sides my friends and my relatives are standing to fight. Whosoever wins, 



it will be a loss, because my family, my relatives, my friends, will be destroyed. Even if I 
win, it will not be worth anything because to whom am I going to show my victory? 
Victories are meaningful because friends, relatives, family will enjoy them. But there will 
be no one, the victory will be just over dead bodies. Who will appreciate it? Who will 
say, ' Arjuna, you have done a great deed’? So whether I am victorious or I am defeated, it 
seems absurd. The whole thing is nonsense." He wants to renounce. He is deadly serious. 
And anyone who calculates will be that deadly serious. 


The setting of the Gita is unique: war is the most serious affair. You cannot be playful 
about it, because lives are involved, millions of lives are involved — you cannot be 
playful. And Krishna insists that even there you have to be playful. You don’t think about 
what will happen in the end, you just be here and now. You just be a warrior playing. 
Don’t get worried about the result because the result is in the hands of the Divine. And it 
is not even the point if the result is in the hands of the Divine or not. The point is that it 
should not be in your hands. You should not carry it. If you carry it then your life cannot 
become meditative. 

This second technique says, GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. Let your whole life be just a play. 
THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR MIND FROLICS 
INFINITELY. Your mind goes on playing infinitely: the whole thing is just like a dream 
in an empty room. While meditating, one has to look at the mind just frolicking, just like 
children playing, jumping out of overflowing energy, that’s all. Thoughts jumping, 
frolicking, just a play — don’t be serious about them. Even if a bad thought is there, don’t 
feel guilty. Or, if there is a very great thought, a very good thought — that you want to 
serve humanity and transfonn the whole world; and you want to bring heaven onto earth 
— don’t get too much ego through it, don’t feel that you have become great. 

This is just a frolicking mind. Sometimes it goes down, sometimes it comes up — it is just 
overflowing energy, taking many shapes and forms. Mind is just an overflowing spring, 
nothing else. 

Be playful, Shiva says, Gracious one, play. The attitude of the player means he is 
enjoying the activity, it is good in itself. No profit motive is involved; he is not 
calculative. Just look at a businessman. Whatsoever he is doing, he is calculating about 
the profit, what he is going to attain out of it. A customer comes. The customer is not a 
person, he is just a means. What can be profited out of him? How can he be exploited? 
Deep down he is calculating what is to be said, what is to be done. Everything is 
calculated just to manipulate, just to exploit. He is not concerned with this person, he is 
not concerned with the deal, he is not concerned with anything — he is concerned only 
with the future, the profit. 

Look at the Easfiin the villages still, a businessman is not just a profit-maker, and the 
customer has not come just to purchase something. They enjoy it. I remember my old 
grandfather. He was a cloth merchant and I and my whole family was puzzled because he 
enjoyed it so much. For hours together it was a game with the customers. If something 
was worth ten rupees, he would ask fifty rupees for it, and he knew this was absurd. And 
his customers knew it too, they knew that it must be near about ten rupees, and they will 
start from two rupees. 


Then a long haggling would follow — hours together. My father any my uncles would get 



angry. "What is going on? Why don’t you simply say what the price is?" But he had his 
own customers. When they came, they would ask, "Where is Dada, where is grandfather? 
Because with him it is a game, a play. Whether we lose one rupee or two, whether it is 
more or less, that is not the point!" 

They enjoyed it. The very activity in itself was something worth pursuing. Two persons 
were communicating through it. Two persons were playing a game and both knew it was 
a game — because of course a fixed price was possible. 

In the West now they have fixed prices because people are more calculating and more 
profit-motivated. They cannot conceive of wasting time. Why waste time? The thing can 
be settled within minutes. There is no need. You can just write the exact price. Why fight 
for hours together? But then the game is lost and the whole thing becomes a routine. 

Even machines can do it. The businessman is not needed; the customer is not needed. 

I have heard about a psychoanalyst who was such a busy man and who had so many 
patients that it was difficult to have personal contact with everyone. So he would feed his 
tape-recorder for a particular patient and the tape-recorder would say whatsoever that 
psychoanalyst wanted to say to the patient. 

Once it happened that it was the appointed time of a patient who was a very rich man. 

The psychoanalyst was entering a hotel. Suddenly he saw the patient sitting there. So he 
asked, "What are you doing here? It was your time with me." The patient said, "I am so 
busy that I have fed my words to my own tape-recorder. Both the tape-recorders are 
talking to each other. Whatsoever you have to say to me, my tape-recorder has recorded, 
and whatsoever I have to say to you, your tape-recorder has recorded it from my tape- 
recorder. This same time, and we are both free." 

If you are too calculating then persons disappear, and more and more mechanization 
comes in. Even now in villages in India the haggling goes on. It is a game and worth 
enjoying. You are playing. It is a match between two intelligences, and two persons come 
in deep contact. But it is not time-saving. Games can never be time-saving. And in games 
you don't worry about the time. You are carefree, and whatsoever is going on, you enjoy 
it right in that moment. Being playful is one of the deepest bases of all meditative 
processes. But we are businesslike; we are trained for it. So even when we meditate, we 
are looking for the end, for the result. And whatsoever happens, you will be unsatisfied. 
People come to me and they say, "Yes, meditation is growing, progressing. I’m feeling 
more happy, a little more silent, at east, but nothing else is happening." What nothing 
else? I know that people like this are bound to come some day and say, "Yes, I am feeling 
nirvana, but nothing else is happening. I am blissful, but nothing else is happening." 

What nothing else? He is looking for some profit and unless some very visible profit 
comes into his hands, something which he can deposit in a bank, he cannot be satisfied. 
Silence and happiness are so vague, you cannot possess them, you cannot show them to 
anyone. 

Every day it happens that people come to me and they say that they are sad. They are 
expecting something which should not be expected even in businesses — and they are 
expecting in their meditations. The business mind comes into meditation with the whole 
training of business — what profit can be made out of it? 

The businessman is not playful. And if you are not playful, you cannot be meditative. Be 
more and more playful. Waste time in play. Just playing with children will do. Even if 
there is no one, you can jump and dance alone in the room and be playful. Enjoy. But 
your mind will go on insisting, "What are you doing, wasting time? You can earn 



something out of this time. You can do something, and you are just jumping, singing, and 
dancing. What are you doing? Have you gone mad? Try it. Snatch whatsoever time you 
can get out of your business, and be playful. Whatsoever. You can paint, you can play on 
a sitar, anything you like — but be playful. Look for no profit out of it, see no future in it, 
just the present. And then, then you can be playful inside also. 

Then you can jump on your thoughts, play with them, throw them here and there, dance 
with them, but not be serious about them. 

Many people are just unconscious as far as their mind is concerned. Whatsoever happens 
in their mind, they are unconscious about it; they are drifting in it without knowing where 
the mind leads them. If you can be aware of any track of the mind you will be puzzled at 
what is happening. Mind moves through associations. A dog barks on the street. The bark 
comes to your head — and now you have started. You may move to the very end of the 
world through this barking of the dog. You may remember some friend who had a dog. 
Then this dog is dropped and that friend has come into the mind and he had a beautiful 
wife and the wife was beautiful... and now you are moving. You can go to the very end of 
this world and you will never remember that just a dog played a trick on you; it just 
barked, and put you on the track, and you started to move. 

You will feel very awkward at what scientists say about this. They say that this track is 
fixed in your mind. If the same dog in the same situation barks again, you will follow this 
track again: the friend, the dog, the wife — the beautiful wife — you will go the same way 
again. 

Now they have tried many experiments with electrodes in the human brain. They touch a 
particular spot in the brain and then a particular memory is released. 

Suddenly you see that you are five years old, playing in a garden, running after a 
butterfly. Then the whole sequence is there: you feel pleasant, everything is nice, the air, 
the garden, the smell, everything comes alive. It is not simply memory, you relive it. 

Then the electrode is pulled out and the memory stops. If the electrode again touches the 
same spot, again the same memory comes again. It is just as if you are remembering 
something mechanical. And it always starts from a certain beginning and ends at a 
particular end; and then starts from the beginning... just as you record something on a 
tape-recorder. Your brain has millions of memories, millions of cells recording, and it is 
all mechanical. 

These experiments on the human brain are very strange and very revealing. Memories 
can be revived again and again, again and again. One experimenter tried three hundred 
times and the memory was the same — it was recorded. The person on whom the 
experiment was done became aware and he felt that it was very, very weird because he 
was not the master, he could not do anything. When the electrode touched the place, the 
memory started and he had to see it. During three hundred times he by and by became a 
witness. He started seeing the memory but then he became aware that he was different 
and this memory was different. This experiment can be helpful, very helpful, for 
meditators, because when you know your mind is nothing but a mechanical recording 
around you, you are separate. 


This mind can be touched. Now scientists say that sooner or later we will cut all the 
centers which give you anguish, anxiety, because again and again the same thing is 



touched and the whole thing has to be relived. 

I have been trying many experiments with many disciples. Do the same thing and they 
move in the same vicious circle, again and again, again and again — unless they become a 
witness that this is a mechanical thing. You are aware that if you say the same thing to 
your wife each week, the same thing, she will react. After seven days, when she has 
forgotten, say the same thing: she will react. Then record — the reaction is going to be the 
same. You know, your wife knows, a pattern becomes fixed — and it goes on. Even a dog 
can start your pattern just by barking. Something is touched, an electrode has entered. 
You have started on a journey. 

If you are playful in life then you can be playful inside with the mind also. Then be as if 
you are watching something on a TV screen: you are not involved, you are just a 
spectator, an onlooker. Look, and enjoy it. Don’t say good, don’t say bad, don’t condemn, 
don’t appreciate, because these are serious things. If a naked woman comes onto your 
screen, don't say that this is bad, that some devil is playing a trick on you. No devil is 
there to play a trick upon you. Look at it as if it is just on the screen, a film screen. 

And be playful about it: say to the lady, "Wait". Don’t try to push her out because the 
more you push her out, the more she will come in — ladies are difficult. And don't follow 
her. If you follow then you will be in trouble. Don't follow, don't fight — this is the rule. 
Just look and be playful. Just say a "hello" or "good morning". Just look and don't be 
disturbed at all. Let the lady wait. She will go by herself, as she came: she moves on her 
own. She is not related to you, she is just something in the memory. Struck by some 
situation she came there, just a picture. Be playful with it. If you can be playful with your 
mind it will drop very soon, because mind can be there only if you are serious. 
Seriousness is the link, the bridge. 

GRACIOUS ONE, PLAY. THE UNIVERSE IS AN EMPTY SHELL WHEREIN YOUR 
MIND FROLICS INFINITELY. 

The third technique: 

SWEET-HEARTED ONE, MEDITATE ON KNOWING AND NOT-KNOWING, 
EXISTING AND NOT-EXISTING. THEN LEAVE BOTH ASIDE THAT YOU MAY 
BE. 

... MEDITATE ON KNOWING AND NOT-KNOWING, EXISTING AND NOT- 
EXISTING. Meditate on the positive aspect of life and then on the negative — then put 
both aside because you are neither. THEN LEAVE BOTH ASIDE THAT YOU MAY 
BE. 

Look at it this way. Meditate on a birth: a child is born, you are born. Then you grow, 
you become young — meditate on this whole growth. 

Then you become old, then you die. From the very beginning, imagine the very moment 
when your father and mother conceived you, and into the womb of the mother you came. 
Just the first cell. From there look to the very end, where your body is burning on a 
funeral pyre and all your relative are standing around you. Then put both aside — the one 
who was bom and the one who has died. Just put both aside and then look within. There 
you are — that which is never born and which is never going to die. 

... knowing and not-knowing, existing and not-existing. Then leave both aside that you 
may be. You can do it with any positive-negative polarity. You are sitting here. I look at 



you. I know you. When I close my eyes, you are no longer there, I don’t know you. Then 
put aside both the knowledge that I have known and the knowledge that I don’t know — 
you will be empty. Because when you put both knowledge and no-knowledge aside, you 
will be empty. 

There are two types of people: some are filled with knowledge and some are filled with 
ignorance. There are people who say, "We know." Their ego is bound up with their 
knowledge. And there are people who say, "We are ignorant." They are filled with their 
ignorance. They say, "We are ignorant. We don't know." One is identified with 
knowledge, the other is identified with ignorance, but both possess something, both 
cherish something. 

Push both aside, knowing and not-knowing, so that you are neither — neither ignorant nor 
knowing. Put aside both positive and negative. Then who are you? Suddenly the who will 
be revealed to you. You will become aware of the beyond, that which transcends. Putting 
aside both positive and negative, you will be empty. You will be no one, neither wise nor 
ignorant. Put both hate and love aside, put both friendship and enmity aside... when both 
the polarities are put aside you are empty. 

But this is a trick of the mind: it can put one aside but never the two together. It can put 
one aside — you can put ignorance aside, then you cling to knowledge. You can put pain 
aside, but then you cling to pleasure. You can put enemies aside, but then you cling to 
friends. And there are a few people who do just the verse: they will be put friends aside 
and cling to the enemies, they will put love aside and cling to hate, they will put wealth 
aside and cling to poverty, and they put knowledge, scriptures, aside and cling to 
ignorance. These people are great renouncers. Whatsoever you cling to they put it aside 
and cling to the opposite — but they cling all the same 

Clinging is the problem, because if you cling you cannot be empty. Don’t cling — this is 
the message of this technique. Just don’t cling to anything positive or negative because 
with non-clinging you will find yourself. 

You are there but because of the clinging, you are hidden. With non-clinging you will be 
exposed, you will be uncovered. You will explode. 

The fourth technique: 

ENTER SPACE, SUPPORTLESS, ETERNAL, STILL. 

Enter space, supportless, eternal, still. Three qualities of space have been given in this 
technique. Supportless: there can be no support in space. Eternal: it can never end. Still: 
it will be soundless, it will be silent. Enter this space, it is within you. 

But the mind always asks for support. People come to me and if I say to them, "Just sit 
silently, with closed eyes, and don’t do anything," they say, "Give me some 
AVALAMBAN, some support. Give me some mantra as a support, because I cannot sit." 
Just sitting is difficult. If I give them a mantra, it is okay. They can go on repeating the 
mantra. Then it is easy. With support you are never empty, that's why it is easy. 
Something must go on, you must be doing something. Doing, the doer remains: doing, 
you are filled. You may be filled with Aumkar, Aum, Ram, Jesus, Ave Maria, anything — 
you may be filled with anything, but you are filled. Then you are okay Mind resists 
emptiness. It wants always to be filled by something else, because if it is filled it can be. 
If it is not filled it will disappear. In emptiness you will attain no no-mind. That's why 



mind asks for support. 


If you want to enter inner space, don't ask for support. Drop all supports, mantras, gods, 
scriptures, whatsoever gives you a support. If you feel you are supported, drop it, and just 
move inside — supportless. It will be fearful; you will feel scared. You are moving to 
where you can be lost completely. You may not be able to come back because all 
supports will be lost. Y our contact with the bank is lost and where this river will lead 
you, no one knows. Your support is lost. You may fall into an infinite abyss. Hence, fear 
grips you, and you ask for some support. Even if it is a false support, you enjoy it. Even a 
false support is helpful. Because for the mind it makes no difference whether a support is 
real or false — it must be a support, that’s the point. You are not alone, something is there 
and supporting you. 

It happened once that a man came to me. He was living in a house where he felt there 
were spirits and ghosts. And he was very worried. Through worries, he started seeing 
more illusions. Through worries, he became ill, weak. His wife said, "If you live any 
longer in this house, I am leaving." His children were sent to some relative's house. 

The man came to me and he said, "It has become very difficult now. I see them clearly. 
They walk in the night. The whole house is filled with spirits.You help me." So I gave 
him one of my pictures and said, "Take it. Now I will tackle those spirits. You simply 
sleep silently, you need not worry. Really, I will tackle them, I will see to them. Now it is 
my business. And don't interfere. Now you need not be concerned." The man came the 
next day. He said, "I slept, it was so beautiful! You have done a miracle!" 

And I had not done anything but give a support. Through support the mind was filled. It 
was no longer vacant; someone was there. 

In ordinary life you are leaning on many false supports, but they help. And unless you 
become strong enough, you will need them. That’s why I say that this is the ultimate 
technique — no support. 

Buddha was dying and Anand asked him, "Now you are leaving us, what shall we do? 
How shall we attain? How shall we proceed now? When the master is gone, we will be 
wandering in darkness for many, many lives. No one is there to lead us, to guide us, the 
light is going out." So Buddha said, "It will be good for you. When I am no more, you 
become your own light. Move alone, don't ask for any support, because support is the last 
barrier." 

And it happened. Anand had not become enlightened. For forty years he was with 
Buddha, he was the closest disciple, he was just like a shadow to Buddha, moving with 
him, living with him; he had had the longest contact with him. For forty years Buddha's 
compassion was falling over him, raining over him — for forty years. 

But nothing happened, Anand remained as ignorant as ever. And the day after Buddha 
died, Anand became enlightened — the next day, the very next day. The very support had 
been the barrier. When there was no more Buddha, Anand could not find any support. It 
is difficult. If you live with a Buddha, and the Buddha goes, then no one can be a support 
to you. Now no one will be worth clinging to. One who has been clinging to a Buddha 
cannot cling to anybody else in this world. This whole world will be vacant. Once you 
have known a Buddha and his love and compassion, then no love, no compassion can 
compare. Once you have tasted that, nothing else is worth tasting. So Anand was alone 
for the first time in forty years, totally alone. There was no way to find a support. He had 



known the highest support; now lower supports would not do. The next day he became 
enlightened. He must have moved into the inner space, supportless, eternal, still. 

So remember, don't try to find any support. Be supportless. If you are trying to do this 
technique, then be supportless. That is what Krishnamurti is teaching, "Be supportless. 
Don’t cling to a master. Don’t cling to a scripture. Don’t cling to anything." 

That is what every master has been doing. A master's whole effort is first to attract you 
towards him, so that you start clinging to him. When you start clinging to him, when you 
become close and intimate with him, then he knows that the clinging must be cut. 

And you cannot cling to anyone else now — that is finished. You cannot move to anyone 
else — that is impossible. Then he cuts the clinging and suddenly you are left supportless. 
It will be miserable in the beginning. You will cry and you will weep and you will 
scream and the whole being will feel that you are lost. Into the very deepest depth of 
misery you will fall. But from there one arises alone, supportless. 

ENTER SPACE, SUPPORTLESS, ETERNAL, STILL. That space has no beginning, no 
end. And that space is absolutely soundless. There is nothing — not even a sound 
vibrating, not even a ripple. Everything is still. 

That point is just within you. Any moment you can enter it. If you have the courage to be 
supportless, this very moment you can enter it. The door is open. The invitation is for all, 
all and everyone. But courage is needed; courage to be alone, courage to be empty, 
courage to dissolve and melt, courage to die. And if you can die within to your inner 
space, you will attain to the life which never dies, you will attain to AMRIT, to 
immortality. 


THE END. 



Chapter 80: All and nothing mean the same 


The first question: 

Question 1 

YOU SAID THAT REALLY THERE IS NO ONE INSIDE US, THERE IS ONLY A 
VOID, AN EMPTINESS, BUT THEN WHY DO YOU OFTEN CALL IT THE BEING, 
THE CENTER? 

Being or non-being, nothing or all — they look contradictory but they both mean the 
same. All and nothing mean the same. In dictionaries they are opposites but in life they 
are not.Nobody understands. Look at it in this way: if I say that I love all, or if I say that I 
love no one, it means the same. If I love someone, then only is there a difference. If I love 
all, it means the same as loving no one. There is no difference then. The difference is 
always in degrees, relative. And these are both two extremes, they have no degrees: the 
total and the zero have no degrees. So you can call the total a zero, or you can call a zero 
the total. That's why some enlightened persons have called the inner space emptiness, 
SUNYA, the void, nothingness, non-being, ANATMA — and some have called it the 
inner being, the absolute being, the BRAHMA, ATMA, the supreme self. These are the 
two ways to describe it. One is positive, the other is negative. Either you have to include 
all or have to exclude all — you cannot describe it with any term which is relative. An 
absolute term is needed. Both the contradictory poles are absolute tenns. 

But there have been some enlightened persons who have remained totally silent. 

They have not called it anything, because whatsoever you call it — whether you call it 
being or non-being — the moment you give it a name, a term, a word, you have erred, 
because it includes both. 

For example, if you say, "God is alive," or "God is life," it is meaningless, because then 
who will be death? He includes all. He must have death in him as completely as life, 
otherwise to whom will death belong? And if death belongs to someone else and life 
belongs to God — then there are two Gods, and then there will be many problems which 
cannot be solved. God must be both life and death. God must be both the creator and the 
destroyer. If you say God is the creator, then who is the destroyer? If you say God is 
good, then who will be evil? Because of this difficulty, Christians, Zoroastrians, and 
many other religions have created a Devil side by side with God, because to whom will 
the evil belong? They have created a Devil. But nothing is solved — the problem is only 
pushed one step back because then it can be relevantly asked, "Who has created the 
Devil?" If God himself creates the Devil, then he is responsible. And if the Devil is 
something independent, not related to God, then he himself becomes a God, a supreme 
power. And if God has not created the Devil, how can God destroy him? It is impossible. 
Theologians go on giving some answers to a question but that answer again creates more 
questions. 


God created Adam, then Adam became evil. He was expelled. He disobeyed God and he 
was expelled from the heavenly world. It has been asked again and again, and relevantly, 
why did Adam become evil? The possibility must have been created by God in him — the 
possibility to be evil, to go wrong, to disobey. If there was no possibility, no inherent 



tendency, then how could Adam go wrong? God must have created the tendency. And if 
the tendency for evil was there, another thing is also certain: the tendency to overcome it 
was not so strong, the tendency to fight it was not so strong. The evil tendency was 
stronger. Who created this strength? No one except God can be responsible. Then the 
whole thing seems to be a hoax. God creates Adam: he creates an evil tendency in him, a 
strong evil tendency which he cannot control; then he goes wrong; then he is punished. 
God should be punished, not Adam! Or, you have to accept that some other force exists 
side by side with God. And that other force must be stronger than God, because the evil 
can tempt Adam and God cannot protect him. The Devil can provoke and seduce and 
God cannot protect. The Devil seems to be a stronger God. 

There is a church, recently bom in America, called the church of Satan, the church of the 
Devil. They have a high priest, just like the pope of the Vatican. And they say that history 
proves that the real God is the Devil. 

And they look logical. They say, "Your God, the God of good, has always been defeated, 
and the Devil has always been the victorious. The whole of history proves it. So why 
worship a weak God who cannot protect you? It is better to follow a strong God who can 
seduce you but who can protect you also — because he is stronger." The church of the 
Devil is now a growing church. And they seem logical. This is what history proves. 

This duality — to save God from the negative pole — creates problems. In India we have 
not created the other pole. We say God is both: the creator and the destroyer, the good 
and the bad. This is difficult to conceive of because the moment we say "God" we cannot 
conceive of him being bad. But in India we have tried to penetrate the deepest mystery of 
existence — that is, oneness. Somehow, good and bad, life and death, negative and 
positive, meet somewhere, and that meeting point is existence, oneness. What will you 
call that meeting point? Either you will have to use a positive tenn, or a negative one, 
because we don’t have any other terms. If you use positive terms, then you call it "Being" 
with a capital B — God, Absolute, BRAHMA. Or if you want to use s negative term, then 
you call it nirvana, nothingness, SUNYA, non-being, ANATMA. Both indicate the same. 
It is both and your inner being is also both. That is why sometimes I call it being, and 
sometimes I call it non-being. 

It is both. It depends on you. If the positive appeals to you, then call it being. If the 
negative appeals to you, then call it non-being. It depends on you. Whatsoever feels 
good, whatsoever you feel will give you maturity, growth, evolution, call it that. 

There are two types of persons: one who cannot feel any affinity with negativity and the 
other who cannot feel any affinity with the positive. Buddha is the negative type. He 
cannot feel affinity with the positive, he feels affinity with the negative. He uses all 
negative terms. Shankara doesn't feel affinity with the negative. He talks about the 
ultimate reality in positive terms. Both say the same thing. Buddha calls it SUNYA, and 
Shankara calls it BRAHMA. Buddha calls it the void, nothing, and Shankara calls it the 
Absolute, the All. But they are saying exactly the same thing. 

Ramanuja, one of Shankara's greatest critics, says that Shankara is just a hidden 
Buddhist. He is not a Hindu, he only appears to be because he uses positive terms. That is 
all the difference there is. Wherever Buddha says nothing, he says BRAHMA — all else is 
the same. Ramanuja says that Shankara is the great destroyer of Hinduism because he has 
brought Buddhism in from the back door by just using a trick — wherever a negative tenn 
is used, he uses a positive term, that's all. He calls him a "PRACHANNA-BOUDDHA", a 



crypto-Buddhist. 


And he is right in a way because there is no difference. The message is the same. 

So it depends on you. If you feel an affinity with silence, nothingness, then call that great 
being Emptiness. If you don't feel an affinity, if you feel afraid, then call that emptiness 
The Great Being. But then your techniques will be different. If you feel scared with 
emptiness, aloneness, nothingness, then the four techniques I talked about last night will 
not be of much use to you. Forget them. There are other methods about which I have 
been talking. Use positive techniques. 

But if you are ready and have the courage to be supportless, to move into emptiness, 
alone, ready to cease completely, then these four techniques will help you tremendously. 
It depends on you. 

The second question: 

Question 2 

IF THERE IS ABSOLUTE EMPTINESS INSIDE AN ENLIGHTENED ONE, THEN 
HOW IS IT THAT HE SEEMS TO BE MAKING DECISIONS, DISCRIMINATING, 
LIKING THIS OR DISLIKING THAT, SAYING YES OR NO? 

This will really look a paradox. If an enlightened one is simply emptiness, then for us it 
becomes a paradox. Then why does he say yes or no? Why does ht choose? Why does he 
like some things and dislike other things? Why does he talk? Why does he walk? Why 
does he live at all? 

For us this is a problem; but for the enlightened one it is not a problem. 

Everything is done out of emptiness. The enlightened one is not choosing. It looks like 
choice to us but the enlightened one simply moves in one direction — that direction 
conies from the emptiness itself. 

It is just like this. You are walking. Suddenly a car comes in front of you and you feel 
that an accident will happen. You don’t decide what to do. Do you decide? How can you 
decide? There is no time. A decision will take time. You will have to ponder and think, 
weigh up the pros and cons, decide whether to jump this way or that. You don’t decide. 
You simply jump. From where does that jump com? Between the jump and you there is 
no thinking process. Suddenly you become aware that the car is in front of you and you 
jump. The jump happens first. Then later on you can think. In that moment you jump 
through hastiness; your whole being jumps without any decision. 

Remember, decision is always of the part, it can never be of the whole. Decision means 
that there was a conflict. One part of your being was saying, "Do this," another part was 
saying, "Don’t do this." That's why the decision was needed. You had to decide, argue, 
and one part had to be pushed aside. That's what decision means. When your totality is 
there, there is no need to decide. There is no alternative. An enlightened one is total 
within himself, total emptiness. So whatsoever comes out, it comes out of his totality, not 
out of any decision. 

If he says "yes" it is not a choice: there was no "no" to be chosen, there was no 
alternative. "Yes" is the response of his total being. If he says "no", then "no" is the 
response of his total being. That's why an enlightened man can never repent. You will 
repent always. Whatsoever you do, it makes no difference — whatsoever you do, you will 



repent. If you want to marry a woman, if you decide "yes", you will repent, if you decide 
"no", you will repent. Because whatsoever you decide is a partial decision, the other part 
is always against. If you decide, "Yes, I will marry this woman," one part of your being is 
saying, "Don’t do this, you will repent." You are not total. 

When difficulties arise.... They are bound to arise because when two different persons 
start living together, difficulties are bound to arise. There will be conflicts, there will be a 
struggle to dominate, there will be power politics. Then the other part will say, "Look! 
What did I say? I was insisting that you shouldn’t do this, and you have done it." But that 
doesn’t mean that if you had followed the other part, there would have been no 
repentance. No! The repentance would have been there, because then you would have 
married some other woman, and the conflict and the struggle would have happened. Then 
the other part would go on saying, "I was saying marry the first woman. You have missed 
an opportunity. 

A heaven is lost, and you are married to a hell." 

You will repent, whatsoever the case, because your decision cannot be total. It is always 
against a part, and that part will take revenge. So whatsoever you decide, if you do good 
you will repent, if you do bad you will repent. If you do good, then your mind, the other 
part, will go on saying that you have missed an opportunity. If you do bad, then you will 
feel guilty. An enlightened being never repents. Really he never looks backwards. There 
is nothing to look backwards at. Whatsoever is done is done with his totality. 

So the first thing to be understood is that he never chooses. The choice happens to his 
emptiness; he never decides. That doesn't mean that he is indecisive. He is absolutely 
decisive, but he never decides. Try to understand me. The decision happens in his 
emptiness. This is how his whole being acts: there is nothing more to it. If you are 
walking and a snake crosses your path, you jump suddenly — that's all. You don’t decide. 
You don’t consult a master and a guide. You don't go to look into books in the library 
about what to do when a snake crosses the path — how to do it, what the technique is. 

You simply jump. And remember, that jump is coming from your total being, it has not 
been a decision. Your total being has acted that way. That is all. There is nothing more to 
it. To you it seems as if an enlightened one is choosing, deciding, discriminating, because 
you are doing that every moment. 

And you cannot understand something which you have not known at all. An enlightened 
one happens to be doing things without any decision, without any effort, without any 
choice — he is choiceless. But that doesn’t mean that if you give him food and stones, he 
will start eating stones. He will eat the food. To you it will look as if he has decided not 
to eat the stones, but he has not decided. That is simply foolish. It doesn’t occur to him. 

He eats the food. This is not a decision — only an idiot person would decide whether to 
eat stones or food. Stupid minds decide; enlightened minds simply act. And the more 
mediocre the mind, the more effort has to be made for a decision. 

That's what worry means. What is worry? There are two alternatives and no way to 
decide between them — and the mind goes on, one moment this side, another moment that 
side. This is what worry is. Worry means you have to decide and you are trying to decide, 
but you cannot decide. So you are worrying, puzzled, moving in vicious circles. An 
enlightened one is never worried. He is total. Try to understand this. He is not divided, he 
is not split, there are not two beings in him. But in you there is a crowd: not only two, 
there are many, many persons living in you, many voices, just a crowd. An enlightened 



one is a deep unity, he is a universe. You are a "multiverse". This word "universe" is 
beautiful. 

It means one — "uni". You are a "multiverse", there are many worlds in you. 

The second thing to be understood is that whatsoever you do, before doing it, there is 
thinking, thought. Whatsoever an enlightened person is doing, there is no thinking, no 
thought. He is doing it. 

Remember, thinking is needed because you have no eyes to see. Thinking is a substitute. 
It is just like a blind man groping his way on a path with a stick. A blind man can ask 
people who have eyes how they grope, what type of sticks they use to grope their way on 
the path. And they will simply laugh; they will say that they don’t need sticks. They have 
eyes. They simply see where the door is, they need not grope for it. And they never think 
about where the door is. They see and they pass through it. But a blind man cannot 
believe that you can simply pass through a door. First you will have to think about where 
the door is. First you will have to inquire. If someone is there you will have to ask where 
the door is. And even if the direction is given, you will have to grope for it with your 
stick — and then too there may be many pitfalls. But when you have eyes, if you want to 
go out, you simply look... you don’t think about where the door is, you don't decide. You 
simply look, the door is there, you pass through it. You never think that this is a door — 
you simply use it and you act. 

The same is the situation with unenlightened minds and enlightened minds. 

An enlightened mind simply looks. Everything is clear. He has a clarity. His whole being 
is light. He looks around and he simply moves, acts — he never thi nk s. You have to think 
because you don’t have eyes. Only blind men think; they have to think because they don't 
have eyes. They need substitute eyes, and thinking provides that. 

I never say that Buddha or Mahavira or Jesus are great thinkers. That would be just 
nonsense. They are not thinkers at all. They are knowers, not thinkers. They have eyes, 
they can see, and through their seeing they act. Whatsoever comes out of a Buddha 
comes out of emptiness, not out of a mind filled with thoughts. It has come out of an 
empty sky. It is the response of emptiness. 

But for us it is difficult because nothing comes to us in that way. We have to think about 
it. If someone asks a question, you have to think about it. And even then you can never be 
certain that whatsoever you are saying is the answer. A Buddha answers; he doesn't think. 
You question him, and the emptiness simply responds. That response is not a thought- 
over thing. It is a total response. His being behaves that way. That’s why you cannot ask 
for consistency from a Buddha. You cannot. Thought can be consistent, a thinker is 
bound to be consistent — but an enlightened person cannot be consistent, because each 
moment the situation changes. And each moment things come out of his emptiness. 

He cannot force. He cannot think. He does not really remember what he said yesterday. 
Every question creates a new answer. And every question creates a new response. It 
depends on the questioner. 

Buddha enters a village. One man asks, "Is there God?" Buddha says, "No." In the 
afternoon, another man asks, "Is there God?" Buddha says, "Yes." Then in the evening, a 
third one asks, "Is there God?" Buddha remains silent. In just one day: in the morning, 
no; in the afternoon, yes; in the evening, silence — neither yes nor no. 

Buddha's disciple, Anand, became puzzled. He had heard all three answers. In the night 



when everyone had retired, he asked Buddha, "Can I ask you a question? Just in one day 
you have answered one question in three ways, not only differently, contradictorily. My 
mind is puzzled. I cannot sleep if you don't answer. What do you mean? In the morning 
you say yes, in the afternoon no, in the evening you remain silent. And the question was 
the same." Buddha said, "But the questioners were different. And how can different 
questioners ask the same question?" This is really beautiful, very deep. He said, "How 
can different questioners ask the same question? A question comes out of a being, it is a 
growth. If the being is different, how can the question be the same? In the morning when 
I said yes, the man who was asking was an atheist. He had come to get my confirmation 
that there is no God. 

And I could not confirm his atheism, because he was suffering because of it. And because 
I could not be a part in his suffering, and I wanted to help him, I said, "Yes, God exists." 
That's how I tried to destroy his so-called atheism. In the afternoon, when the other 
person was there, he was a theist and he was suffering through his theism. I couldn’t say 
yes to him because that would have been a confirmation — which he had come for. Then 
he would go and say, 'Yes, whatsoever I was saying is right. Even Buddha says so.’ And 
the man was wrong. I could not help a wrong man in his wrongness so I had to say no to 
destroy whatsoever he is, to shatter his mind. And the man who came in the evening was 
neither. He was a simple, innocent man and he was not asking for any confirmation. He 
had no ideology; he was really a religious person. So I had to be silent. I said to him, "Be 
silent about this question. Don’t think about it." If I had said yes, it would have been 
wrong because he was not there to find a theology. If I had said no, it would have been 
wrong, because he was not to be confirmed in any atheism. He was not interested in 
thoughts, in ideas, in theories, doctrines, no; he was a real religious man. How can I utter 
any word before him? I had to be silent. He understood my silence. When he went away, 
his religiousness had deepened." 

Buddha said, "Three persons cannot ask the same question. They can fonnulate it in a 
similar way — that is another thing. The questions were all "Does God exist?" Their 
formulation was the same, but the being from where the question was coming was totally 
different. They meant different things by it; their values were different; their associations 
with words were different." 

I remember, once it happened that Mulla Nasruddin came back to his house one evening. 
The whole day he had been involved in a football match. He was a fan. IN the evening 
when he entered the house, his wife was reading a newspaper, and she said, "Look, 
Nasruddin, there is something for you. It is reported here that a man has given his wife in 
return for a season ticket for the football matches. You are also a fan, a mad fan, but I 
cannot conceive that you would do the same. Or would you? Could you exchange me just 
to get a season ticket for the football matches?" 

Nasruddin thought hard, and then he said, "Of course I would not — because it is 
ridiculous and criminal. The season is half over." 

Every mind has its own orientation. Y ou may use the same words but because you are 
different, those same words cannot be the same. 

Then Buddha said another thing, and that is even more significant. He said, "Anand, why 
are you disturbed? You were not a party. You should not listen, because not a single 
answer was given to you. You should remain indifferent, otherwise you will go mad. 


Don’t move with me because I will be involved with many, many types of persons. And if 



you listen to everything that is not said to you, you will get confused and crazy. You just 
leave me. Otherwise remember to listen only when I speak to you; at other times don’t 
listen. Whatsoever I say is not your business. It was not said to you and it was not your 
question at all. So why should you be worried? You were not related. Someone asked, 
someone else replied. Why are you unnecessarily worried about it? If you have the same 
question, ask, and then I will answer. But remember, my answers are not to the questions, 
but to the questioners. I respond. I look at the man, I see through the man, the man 
becomes transparent — and this is my response. The question is irrelevant; the questioner 
is relevant." 

You cannot ask for consistency from an enlightened person. Only unenlightened, 
ignorant persons can be consistent, because they don't have to look. They just follow 
some ideas. They carry dead ideas, consistently. For their whole life they will carry 
something and they will remain consistent to it. They are stupid, that's why they can 
remain consistent. They are not alive. They are dead. Aliveness cannot be consistent. 

That doesn’t mean that it is wrong — aliveness is consistent, but very deeply, not on the 
surface. Buddha is consistent in all the three answers, but his consistency is not in the 
answers — his consistency is in his effort to help. 

He wanted to help the first man. He wanted to help the second man. He wanted to help 
the third man. For all three, compassion was there, love was there. He wanted to help 
them — that is his consistency. But it is a deep current. His words are different, his 
answers are different, but his compassion is the same. 

So when an enlightened person speaks, answers, that answer is a total response of his 
emptiness, of his being. He echoes you, he reflected you, he is a mirror. He has no face of 
his own. Your face is mirrored in his heart. So if an idiot comes to meet a Buddha, he 
will meet an idiot — Buddha is just a mirror. And that man will go and spread the rumor 
that Buddha is an idiot. He has seen himself in Buddha. If someone sensitive, 
understanding, mature, grown up comes, he will see something else in Buddha: he will 
see his own face. There is no other way — you go on seeing mirrors in persons who are 
totally empty. Then whatsoever you carry is your interpretation. 

It is said in old scriptures that when you reach an enlightened person, remain totally 
silent. Don’t think, otherwise you will miss the opportunity of meeting him. Just remain 
silent. Don’t think. Absorb him, but don’t try to understand him through your head. 

Absorb him, drink him, allow your total being to be open to him, let him move within 
you, but don’t think about him — because if you think, then your mind will be echoed. 

Let your total being be bathed in his presence. Only then will you have a glimpse of what 
type of being, of what type of phenomenon you have come in contact with. Many came to 
Buddha. They came and went. They carried their own opinions, and they went out and 
they spread them. Very few, really very few, understood — and that is how it should be, 
because you can understand only according to you. If you are ready to melt and change 
and be transformed, only then can you understand what an enlightened person, what an 
enlightened being is. 

The third question: 

Question 3 

YOU SAID THAT NOISE AND DISTURBANCES ARE NOT OUTSIDE IN THE 
WORLD, BUT ARE BECAUSE OF YOUR OWN MINDS AND EGO. BUT WHY DO 



THE SAINTS AND MYSTICS ALWAYS LIVE IN UNNOISY, UNCROWDED 
PLACES? 


Because they are still not saints and mystics. They are still endeavoring, still working. 
They are seekers, not SIDDHAS. They have not reached. Noise will disturb them, the 
crowd will disturb them. The crowd will pull them back to its own level. They are still 
weak, they need protection. They are still not confident. They cannot move into 
temptation. They have to protect themselves in the lonely solitude where they can grow 
and become strong. When they are strong there will be no problem. Mahavir moved into 
the wilderness. For twelve years he was alone, silent, not talking, not moving in villages 
or cities. 

Then he became enlightened. Then he came back to the world. Buddha was in total 
silence for six years. Then he came back to the world. Jesus or Mohammed, or anyone — 
when they are growing they need protected conditions. When they have grown, then there 
is no problem. 

So if you find a mystic afraid of moving in a crowd, then know well that he is still a 
child, growing. Otherwise why should a mystic be afraid of moving in crowds? Nothing 
can be done to him by the crowd, by the noise, by the world, by the objects of the world. 
With all this madness around him, nothing can be done to him. He cannot be touched. He 
can move and he can live — anywhere it happens for his emptiness to live, he can live. 

But in the beginning it is good to be alone, to be in a hannonious, natural surrounding. So 
remember, don't think that because you live in a noisy Bombay you are a mystic, or you 
have grown up and have become a SIDDHA. If you want to grow you will also have to 
move sometimes, for some definite periods, into loneliness — out of the crowd, out of the 
concerns of the world, relations of the world, objects of the world — into such a place 
where you can be alone and not disturbed by others. As you are now you can be 
disturbed, but once you have the strength, once you have the inner power, once you are 
crystallized and you know that now no one can shatter your inner center, you can move 
anywhere. 

Then the whole world is lonely. Then wherever you are is wilderness. Then the space of 
silence moves with you because you are the creator of it. Then around you, you create 
your own inner silence, and wherever you move, you are in silence. No one can penetrate 
that silence. No noise can disturb it. 

But unless the crystallization has happened, don’t believe that you will not be disturbed. 
You are disturbed, whether you know it or don’t know it. Really, you are so disturbed that 
you cannot know it. You have become accustomed to disturbance. Every nerve is on 
edge; you are continuously disturbed. Right now you don’t feel the disturbance — to feel 
the disturbance sometimes you need to be not disturbed. Only then can you feel it in 
contrast. You are continuously disturbed but you have become accustomed to it, 
habituated to it. You think this is how life is. It would be good if you move into the 
Himalayas for some time. It would be good to go into some remove village, a remote 
forest, and be alone for a few days' silence — as if the whole of humanity has disappeared. 
Then come back to Bombay. Then you will know what disturbance you have been living 
in. You will be suddenly disturbed. Now you have a contrast. You had an inner music, 
now it is shattered. For seekers solitariness is good; for SIDDHAS it is irrelevant. 

And there are two types of wrong people. With the first type, if you say to them that it is 



they who are disturbed, the situation is irrelevant, then they will never go into solitariness 
to have a glimpse of what silence is. 

Then they will remain here and they will say, "Nothing disturbs us. It is us really, not the 
surrounding. So we remain here." And they are disturbed but their theory will become a 
rationalization. Then there are other people, the other type of wrong people, who, if you 
tell them to move into silence, to solitude, because it will help, they will move — but then 
they will never come back. Then it becomes an addiction and they will remain weak 
forever, they will always feel afraid of coming back to the world. Then their solitariness 
has not been a help; rather, it has become a hindrance. They are not stronger through it, 
they have become weaker. Now they cannot move in the world. Both these types are 
wrong. 

Be the third type, which is the right type. In the beginning, know well that you are 
disturbed by circumstances; so sometimes try, manage, to move out of them. Then when 
you are out of them, whatsoever silence you attain, bring it back to your circumstances 
and try to preserve it. If you can preserve it in the circumstances, then only will the 
theory have become an experience. Then you know that nothing disturbs. Then you know 
it is you ultimately who are disturbed or not disturbed. But make it an experience — just 
as a theory it is useless. 

The fourth question: 

Question 4 

IT IS ONE THING TO REALIZE COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS ON EARTH, AND 
TRANSCEND BODY. 

BUT HOW DO REALIZED ONES KNOW FOR SURE THAT THIS 
CONSCIOUSNESS IS ETERNAL AND WILL REMAIN AFTER THE DEATH OF 
THE BODY? 

The first thing is they don't bother about it. They are not worried about whether it will 
remain or not. It is you who are worried. They don't think of the next moment. The next 
life is just irrelevant; even the next day, the next moment, is not a point of concern. It is 
you who always ask about something in the future, something of the future. Why? 
Because your present is just empty, your present is just nothing, your present is just 
rotten, your present is such a suffering that you can tolerate it only if you go on thinking 
of the future and the paradise and the life ahead. Just here now there is no life so you 
pitch your mind into the future just to escape from the present, the ugly present. One who 
is realized is here and now, totally alive. All that can happen has happened. There is no 
future to it. Whether death is going to kill him or not is not a concern at all. It is the same. 
Whether he disappears or remains, it makes no difference. This moment is so rich, so 
absolutely rich, this moment is so intense, that his whole being is here and now. 

Anand asked Buddha again and again, "What will happen to you when your body dies?" 
And Buddha insisted again and again, "Anand, why are you so concerned about the 
future? Why don’t you look at me, at what is happening now?" But again, after a few 
days, he will ask, "What happens to an enlightened one when his body dies?" He is afraid 
about himself. 


He is afraid. He knows that when the body dies there is no possibility of reviving it, there 



is no possibility of remaining, there is no possibility of being. And he has not attained 
anything. The light will just go out — it has been a futile thing. If that happens without his 
attaining anything, he will simply disappear. So the whole thing was meaningless, the 
whole suffering was meaningless, leading nowhere. He was concerned; he wanted to 
know if something survives after the body. But Buddha says, "I am here and now. What 
will happen in the future is not a concern at all." 

So the first thing is that a realized one is not bothered. That is one of the signs of a 
realized one — he is not bothered by the future. 

And the second thing — you asked, how does he know for sure? Knowledge is always 
sure. Certainty is inherent, intrinsic, to knowledge. You have a headache. Can I ask you, 
"How can you say for sure that you have a headache?" You will say, "I know." I can ask, 
"But how are you sure that your knowledge is right and not wrong?" But no one asks 
such nonsensical questions. When the headache is there, it is there — you know it. 
Knowledge is intrinsically certain. When one is enlightened, he knows he is enlightened; 
he kn ows that he is not this body; he knows that inside he is just a vast space. And space 
cannot die. Things can die, space cannot die. 

Just think about this room. 

We can destroy this building, this "Woodlands", but we cannot destroy the roominess in 
this room. Can you destroy it? The walls can be destroyed, but we are sitting here in this 
roominess, space. The walls can be destroyed, but how can you destroy this room — not 
the walls, the space here? The whole of "Woodlands" may disappear — it will disappear 
one day — but this space will remain. Your body will disappear and because you don’t 
know the inner space, you are afraid. You want to know it for sure. But an enlightened 
man knows that he is the space — not the body, not the walls, but the inner space. The 
walls will drop, they have dropped many times, but the inner space will remain. It is 
something he has to find proofs for, it is his immediate knowledge. He knows it, that's all. 
Knowledge is intrinsically certain. 

If your knowledge is uncertain, then remember it is not knowledge. People come to me 
and they say, "Our meditation is going very well. We are feeling very happy." And then 
suddenly they ask me, "What do you say about it? Is our happiness really there? Are we 
really happy?" They ask me! They are not certain about their happiness. What type of 
knowledge is this? They are simply pretending. But they cannot deceive themselves. 

They are thinking, they are hoping, they are wishing — but they are not happy. Otherwise 
what is the need to ask me? I will never go to ask anybody whether I am happy or not. 

Why should I? If I am happy, I am happy. If I am not, I am not. Who else can give proof 
of it? If I cannot be a witness, who will be a witness for me, and how can the other be a 
witness? So sometimes I play games. Sometimes I say, "Yes, you are happy. You are 
absolutely happy." And they become more happy just by hearing me. And sometimes I 
say, "No, you don’t show anything. There is no indication. You are not happy. You must 
have been dreaming." And they drop, their happiness disappears, they become sad. What 
type of happiness is this? Just by saying that you are happy it increases; and just by 
saying that you are not, it disappears! They are just trying to be happy but they are not. 
This is not knowledge, this is just wish-fulfillment. They hope, and they think they can 
deceive themselves. By thinking that they are happy, believing that they are happy, 
finding some proof, finding some certificate from somewhere that they are happy, they 
think that they will create happiness. It is not so easy. When something happens in the 



inner world, you know it has happened. You don’t need any certificate, you don't need 
one! The very search for someone to approve is childish. It shows that you long for 
happiness, but you have not attained it. You don't know it. It has not happened to you. 
One who has realized is always certain, and when I say certain, sure, absolutely sure, I 
don’t mean that he feels some uncertainty somewhere, and against that uncertainty he 
feels certain — no. 

He is simply certain. There is no question of uncertainty. I am alive. Am I certain about 
it, sure about it? There is no question. There is no question of certainty. It is absolutely 
certain. It does not have to be decided. I am alive. 

Socrates was dying and someone asked him, "Socrates, you are dying so easily, so 
happily. What is the matter? Are you not afraid? Are you not scared?" Socrates said a 
very beautiful thing. He said, "Only two things are possible after I am dead: either I will 
be or I will not be. If I am not, then there is no question. No one is there to kn ow it, to 
know that 'I am not’. The whole thing simply disappears. And if I am there, then there is 
no question — 'I am’. Only two are the possibilities: either I will be, or I will not be, and 
both are okay. If I am, then the whole thing continues. If I am not, then there is no one to 
know, so why be worried?" 

He is not an enlightened one, but he is a very wise man. Remember, this is the difference 
between a wise one and an enlightened one. A wise one thi nk s deeply, penetrates 
intellectually into everything, and comes to a conclusion. He is a very wise man. He says 
that there are two alternatives. Logically he penetrates into the phenomenon of death: 
"only two are the possibilities: either I simply disappear, I am no more; or I will remain." 
Is there any third alternative? There is no third alternative. 

So Socrates says, "I have thought about both. If I remain, then there is no question to be 
worried about. If I am no more, there is no one to worry. So why be worried now? I will 
see what happens." He is not in the know, he doesn't know what is going to happen, but 
he has thought about it wisely. He is not a Buddha, he is the keenest intellectual possible. 
But if you can become wise — not enlightened, because enlightenment is neither wisdom 
nor ignorance, the duality has been transcended — even if you can become wise, you will 
feel relaxed; even if you can become wise, you can feel very contented. 

But wisdom is not the goal of Tantra or yoga. Tantra and yoga aim for the superhuman, 
the point where wisdom and ignorance are both transcended: where one simply knows 
and does not think, where one simply looks and is aware. 

The last question: 

Question 5 

I CERTAINLY WANT TO BECOME ENLIGHTENED. BUT IF I DO, WHAT 
DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD? 

But why are you worried about the rest of the world? Let the world worry about itself. 
And you are not worried about what will happen to the rest of the world if you remain 
ignorant.... 

If you are ignorant, what happens to the rest of the world? You create misery. Not that 
you knowingly do it, you are misery — so whatsoever you do, you sow seeds of misery all 
around. 



Your hopes are meaningless; your being is significant. You may think you are helping 
others — you hinder them. You may think you love others — you may be simply killing 
them and murdering them. You may think you are teaching others, but you may be 
simply helping them to remain ignorant forever — because what you hope, what you 
think, what you wish, is not significant. What you are is significant. 

Every day I see people around who are loving to each other — but they are killing each 
other. They think they are loving, and they think they are living for the other, and without 
them the life of their family, their beloveds, their children, their wives, their husbands, 
will be miserable — but it is miserable with them. And they try in every way but 
whatsoever they do, it goes wrong. It is bound to be so, because they are wrong. Doing is 
not of much importance, the being from where it comes, originates, is. If you are 
ignorant, you are helping the world to become a hell. It is already. This is what has 
happened through you. Wherever you touch, you will create hell. 

If you become enlightened, whatsoever you do — or you need not do anything — just your 
being, your presence will help others to flower, to be happy, to be blissful. 

But that should not be your concern. The first thing is how to be enlightened. You ask 
me, "I want to be enlightened." But that wanting seems to be very impotent because 
immediately you say "but". 

Whenever "but" comes in, it shows the desire is impotent. "But what will happen to the 
world?" Who are you? What do you think about yourself? Does the world depend on 
you? Are you running it? Managing it? Are you responsible? Why give so much 
importance to yourself? Why feel so important? 

This feeling is part of the ego and this worrying about others will never allow you to 
move to a peak of realization, because that peak is achieved only when you drop all 
worries. And you are so efficient in accumulating worries that you are simply wonderful. 
Not only your own, you go on accumulating others' worries — as if yours are not enough. 
You go on thinking about others, and what can you do? You can only get more and more 
worried and mad. 

I was reading a viceroy's journal. Lord Wavell's journal. The man seems to be very 
sincere, deeply honest, because some remarks he makes are just superb. One remark he 
makes in a journal is, "Unless these three old men, Gandhi, Jinnah, and Churchill, die, 
India will be in trouble." These three men, Gandhi, Jinnah, Churchill — and these three 
were helping in every way! Churchill's own viceroy writes in a journal that these three 
men should die soon. And he hopefully even gives their ages: Gandhi, 75, Jinnah, 65, 
Churchill, 68. Because these three are the problems. Can you think of Gandhi imagining 
that he is the problem — or Jinnah, or Churchill? All are doing their best to solve the 
problem of this country! And Wavell said that these three are the problem, because all the 
three are adamant, stubborn; every one of these three has the absolute truth and the other 
two are absolutely wrong. 

These three absolutes cannot meet anywhere — the other two are simply wrong. There is 
no question about it. 

Everyone thinks as if he is the center and he has to worry about the whole world, and 
change the whole world, transform the whole world, create a utopia. All that you can do 
is just change yourself. You cannot change the world. You can create more mischief 
trying to change it; you can create more chaos; you can harm; and you can puzzle. 
Already the world is too puzzled. You can puzzle it more and confuse it more. 



Please leave the world to itself. You can do only one thing, and that is, you can achieve 
inner silence, inner bliss, inner light. If you achieve this, you have helped the world very 
much. Just by changing one ignorant spot into an enlightened flame, just by changing one 
person from darkness into light, you have changed apart of the world. And this changed 
part will have its own chain reactions. Buddha is not dead. Jesus is not dead. They cannot 
be dead because there is a chain reaction — from one lamp, from one flame, another flame 
takes over. And a successor is created, and they go on living. 

But if your light is not there, if your lamp is without a flame, you cannot help anyone. 

The first basic thing is that you must attain your inner flame. Then others can share. Then 
you can kindle others' light also. Then it becomes a succession. 

Then you may disappear from the body but your flame goes on passing from hand to 
hand. Up to eternity it goes on and on. Buddhas never die, enlightened persons never die, 
because their light becomes a chain reaction. And unenlightened persons never live, 
because they cannot create any chain, they don't have any light to share, no flame to 
kindle someone else's flame. 

Please be concerned with yourself only. Be selfish, I say, because that is the only way 
you will become selfless, that is the only way you can become a help and a blessing to 
the world. Don’t be worried about it; that is not your concern. The greater your worries 
are, the greater you think your responsibilities are. And the greater your responsibilities, 
the more you feel yourself as being great. You are not. You are simply mad. Get out of 
this madness of helping others. Just help yourself. That’s all that can be done. 

And then many things happen... but they happen as a consequence. Once you become a 
source of light, things start happening. Many will share it, man will be enlightened 
through it, many will attain life, more life, abundant life through it. But don’t think about 
it. You cannot do anything about it consciously. Only one thing can be done and that is: 
you can become conscious. Then everything follows. 

THE END.