Tantra

The Supreme Understanding

Tantra: 

The Supreme Understanding

Introduction

Tilopa’s Song of Mahamudra

A deep and insightful look into the underlying ideas of Tantra.

Walking the road to enlightenment by embodying the full acceptance of all that is. A commentary on Tilopa’s marvelous song.

Tilopa,

was an Indian Buddhist monk in the tantric Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism.

 He practiced Anuttarayoga Tantra, a set of spiritual practices intended to accelerate the process of attaining Buddhahood. He became a holder of this particular  tantric lineage, and  he passed on the “Way of Methods”, today known as the 6 Yogas of Naropa, and guru yoga These 6 yogas consist only of these words:

• Don’t recall.
• Don’t imagine.
• Don’t think.
• Don’t examine.
• Don’t control.
• Rest.

Or, as the translation by  Ken McLeod frames it:

1. Don’t recall. 
2. Let go of what has passed. Don’t imagine. 
3. Let go of what may come. Don’t think. 
4. Let go of what is happening now. Don’t examine. 
5. Don’t try to figure anything out. Don’t control. 
6. Don’t try to make anything happen.
   Rest. Relax, right now, and rest.

It is believed he has received Mahamudra teachings from primordial Buddha Vajradhara himself – the primordial essence of all things, the absolute Wisdom and Compassion.

This Mahamudra Song he later transmitted to Naropa near the Ganges river, when Naropa completed his twelve austerities given by his Guru.

Later Naropa gave it to Marpa Lotsawa, who translated these teachings and brought them to Tibet. Later he taught it to yogi Milarepa and many other Buddhist masters. It is considered that the Mahamudra Song Of Tilopa contains the essence of all teachings.

Tilopa’s Song of Mahamudra

Mahamudra transcends all words
And symbols, but for you, Naropa,
Earnest and loyal,
I have to say this:

The Emptiness doesn’t need support,
Mahamudra rests on nothing.
Without making any effort,
One can break the yoke
Thus – reaching Liberation.

If one sees nothing when staring into space,
If with the mind one then observes the mind,
One destroys distinctions and reaches Buddhahood.

The clouds that wander through the sky
Have no roots, no home; nor do the distinctive
Thoughts, which float through the mind.
Once the nature of mind is seen,
Discrimination stops.

In space shapes and colors form,
But neither by black nor white is space tinged.
From the nature of mind all things emerge,
The mind is not tainted by virtues or vices.

The darkness of ages cannot hide the bright sun
Nor the long kalpas of samsara
can hide the splendid light mind.
Though words are spoken to explain the Emptiness,
Emptiness for itself can never be expressed.

Though we say “the mind is a bright light,”
It is beyond all words and symbols.
Although the mind’s nature is empty,
It embraces and contains all things.

Do nothing with the body but relax,
Shut firm the mouth and keep silent.
Empty your mind and focus on nothingness.
Like a hollow bamboo, relax your body.
Without giving or taking, put your mind to rest.

Mahamudra is like a mind that clings to nothingness.
Thus practicing, you will reach Buddhahood.
The practice of Mantra and Paramita,
Instruction in the Sutras and Precepts,
And teaching of Schools and Scriptures will not bring
Realization of the Inner Truth.
If the mind with desire is looking to goal,
It only conceals the Light.

He who keeps Tantric Precepts,
Yet makes discriminations,
betrays the spirit of samaya.
Cease all activity,
abandon all desire,
let thoughts arise and disappear
like the waves of the ocean.

He who never harms the Non-abiding
Nor the Principle of Non-distinction,
Uphold the Tantric Precepts.
He who abandons craving
And doesn’t cling to this or that,
Realize the true meaning of Scriptures.

In Mahamudra all sins are burned;
In Mahamudra one is released
From the prison of this world.
This is the Dharma’s supreme torch.
Those who doesn’t believe it
Are fools who ever wallow
In misery and sorrow.

To strive for Liberation
One should rely on a Guru.
When your mind receives his blessing
Liberation is at hand.

Thus, all things of this world are insignificant,
nothing, but seeds of sorrow.
Small teachings lead you to act small;
one should follow only the great teachings.

Transcending duality is the vision of the king.
Conquer distractions is the practice of kings.
The path of non-practice is the way of all Buddhas.
One who travels that road reaches Buddhahood.

This world is transient,
like ghosts and dreams, without any substance.
Renounce it and forsake your kin,
cut the cords of lust and hatred
and meditate in the forests and mountains.

If without effort you remain
Loosely in the “natural state,”
Soon Mahamudra you will win
And attain the Non-attainment.

Cut the root of a tree
And the leaves will wither;
Cut the root of your mind
And samsara will fall.

The light of any lamp
Dispels in a moment
The darkness of long kalpas;
The strong light of the mind
In just a flash will burn
The veil of ignorance.

Whoever clings to mind sees not
The truth of what’s beyond the mind.
Whoever strives to practice Dharma,
Finds not the truth that’s beyond the practice.

To see what is Beyond both mind and practice,
One should cut cleanly through the root of mind
And observe it naked.

One should thus break away
From all distinctions and remain at ease.
One should not give or take
But remain natural,
For Mahamudra is beyond
All acceptance and rejection.

Since Alaya is unborn,
No one can obstruct or soil it;
Staying in the “Unborn” realm
All appearance will dissolve Into the Dharmata,
And the will and pride will vanish into nothingness.

The supreme Understanding transcends
All this and that.

Supreme Understanding
transcends “this” and “that”.
The supreme action
handles all situations, without attachment.
The supreme realization
is to realize immanence without hope.

At first, the yogi feels his mind
falls as a waterfall;
half of its course flows slow and placid,
as the Ganges;

In the end,
It is a great vast ocean,
Where the Lights of Son and Mother
Merge into One.

The Ultimate Experience

IN HIS SONG OF MAHAMUDRA, TILOPA SAYS: 

“MAHAMUDRA IS BEYOND ALL WORDS AND SYMBOLS, BUT FOR YOU, NAROPA, EARNEST AND LOYAL, MUST THIS BE SAID: THE VOID NEEDS NO RELIANCE, MAHAMUDRA RESTS ON NOUGHT. WITHOUT MAKING AN EFFORT, BUT REMAINING LOOSE AND NATURAL, ONE CAN BREAK THE YOKE – THUS GAINING LIBERATION.”

The experience of the ultimate is not an experience at all – because the experiencer is lost. And when there is no experiencer, what can be said about it? Who will say it? Who will relate the experience? When there is no subject, the object also disappears – the banks disappear, only the river of experience remains. Knowledge is there, but the knower is not.

That has been the problem for all the mystics. They reach to the ultimate, but they cannot relate it to those who are following. They cannot relate it to others who would like to have an intellectual understanding. They have become one with it. Their whole being relates to it, but no intellectual communication is possible. They can give it to you if you are ready to receive; they can allow it to happen in you if you also allow it, if you are receptive and open. But words won’t do, symbols won’t help; theories and doctrines are of no use at all.

The experience is such that it is more like an experiencing than like an experience. It is a process – and it begins, but it never ends. You enter into it, but you never possess it. It is like a drop dropping in the ocean, or, the ocean itself dropping into the drop. It is a deep merger, it is oneness, you simply melt away into it. Nothing is left behind, not even a trace, so who will communicate? Who will come back to the world of the valley? Who will come back to this dark night to tell you?

All the mystics all over the world have always felt impotent as far as communication is concerned. Communion is possible, but communication, no. This has to be understood from the very beginning. A communion is a totally different dimension: two hearts meet, it is a love affair. Communication is from head to head; communion is from heart to heart, communion is a feeling. Communication is knowledge: only words are given, only words are said, and only words are taken and understood. And words are such: the very nature of words is so dead that nothing alive can be related through them. Even in ordinary life, leave aside the ultimate, even in ordinary experiencing when you have a peak moment, an ecstatic moment, when you really feel something and become something, it becomes impossible to relate it in words.

In my childhood I used to go early in the morning to the river. It is a small village. The river is very very lazy, as if not flowing at all. And in the morning when the sun is not yet arisen, you cannot see whether it is flowing, it is so lazy and silent. And in the morning when there is nobody, the bathers have not come yet, it is tremendously silent. Even the birds are not singing in the morning – early, no sound, just a soundlessness pervades. And the smell of the mango trees hangs all over the river. I used to go there, to the furthest corner of the river, just to sit, just to be there. There was no need to do anything, just being there was enough, it was such a beautiful experience to be there. I will take a bath, I will swim, and when the sun will arise I will go to the other shore, to the vast expanse of sand, and dry myself there under the sun, and lie there, and sometimes even go to sleep.

When I came back my mother used to ask, ”What have you been doing the whole morning?” I will say, ”Nothing,” because, actually, I had not been doing anything. And she will say, ”How is it possible? Four hours you have not been here, how is it possible that you have not been doing anything? You must have been doing something.” And she was right, but I was also not wrong.

I was not doing anything at all. I was just being there with the river, not doing anything, allowing things to happen. If it FELT like swimming, remember, if it FELT like swimming, I would swim, but that was not a doing on my part, I was not forcing anything. If I felt like going into sleep, I would go. Things were happening, but there was no doer. And my first experiences of satori started near that river: not doing anything, simply being there, millions of things happened.

But she would insist: ”You must have been doing something.” So I would say, ”Okay, I took a bath and I dried myself in the sun,” and then she was satisfied. But I was not, because what happened there in the river is not expressed by words: ”I took a bath” – it looks so poor and pale. Playing with the river, floating in the river, swimming in the river, was such a deep experience. To say simply, ”I took a bath,” makes no sense about it; or to just say, ”I went there, had a walk on the bank, sat there,” conveys nothing.

Even in ordinary life you feel the futility of words. And if you don’t feel the futility of words, that shows that you have not been alive at all; that shows that you have lived very superficially. If whatsoever you have been living can be conveyed by words, that means you have not lived at all. When for the first time something starts happening which is beyond words, life has happened to you, life has knocked at your door. And when the ultimate knocks at your door, you are simply gone beyond words – you become dumb, you cannot say; not even a single word is formed inside. And whatsoever you say looks so pale, so dead, so meaningless, without any significance, that it seems that you are doing injustice to the experience that has happened to you. Remember this, because Mahamudra is the last, the ultimate experience.

Mahamudra means a total orgasm with the universe. If you have loved somebody, and sometimes you have felt a melting and merging – the two are no more two; the bodies remain separate, but something between the bodies makes a bridge, a golden bridge, and the twoness inside disappears; one life energy vibrates on both the poles – if it has happened to you, then only you can understand what Mahamudra is. Millions and millions times deep, millions and millions of times high, is Mahamudra. It is a total orgasm with the whole, with the universe. It is melting into the source of being.

And this is a song of Mahamudra. It is beautiful that Tilopa has called it a song. You can sing it, but you cannot say it; you can dance it, but you cannot say it. It is such a deep phenomenon that singing may convey a little tiny part of it – not what you sing, but the way you sing it. Many mystics have simply danced after their ultimate experience; they could not do anything else. They were saying something through their whole being and body; altogether, body, mind, soul, everything involved in it. They were dancing; those dances were not ordinary dances. In fact, all dancing was born because of these mystics; it was a way to relate the ecstasy, the happiness, the bliss. Something of the unknown has penetrated into the known, something of the beyond has come to the earth – what else can you do? You can dance it, you can sing it. This is a song of Mahamudra.

And who will sing it? Tilopa is no more. The orgasmic feeling itself is singing. It is not a song of Tilopa; Tilopa is no more. The experience itself is vibrating and singing. Hence, the song of Mahamudra, the song of ecstasy, ecstasy itself singing it. Tilopa has nothing to do; Tilopa is not there at all, Tilopa has melted. When the seeker is lost, only then the goal is achieved. Only when the experiencer is no more, the experience is there. Seek and you will miss it – because through your seeking the seeker will be strengthened. Don’t seek and you will find it. The very seeking, the very effort, becomes a barrier, because the more you seek, the more the ego is strengthened: the seeker. Do not seek.

This is the deepest message of this whole song of Mahamudra: do not seek, just remain as you are, don’t go anywhere else. Nobody ever reaches God, nobody can because you don’t know the address. Where will you go? Where will you find the divine? There is no map, and there is no way, and there is nobody to say where he is. No, nobody ever reaches God. It is always the reverse: God comes to you. Whenever you are ready, he knocks at your door; he seeks you whenever you are ready. And the readiness is nothing but a receptivity. When you are completely receptive there is no ego; you become a hollow temple with nobody in it. Tilopa says in the song, become like a hollow bamboo, nothing inside. And suddenly, the moment you are a hollow bamboo, the divine lips are on you, the hollow bamboo becomes a flute, and the song starts – this is the song of Mahamudra. Tilopa has become a hollow bamboo, and the divine has come, and the song has started. It is not Tilopa’s song, it is the song of the ultimate experience itself.

Something about Tilopa before we enter into this beautiful phenomenon. Nothing much is known about Tilopa, because nothing in fact can be known about such persons. They don’t leave a trace, they don’t become a part of history. They exist by the side, they are not part of the main traffic where the whole humanity is moving; they don’t move there. The whole humanity moves through desiring, and persons like Tilopa move into desirelessness. They simply move away from the main traffic of humanity where history exists. And the more away they go from the traffic, the more mythological they become. They exist like myths, they are no more events in time. And this is as it should be, because they move beyond time, they live beyond time – they live in the eternity. From this dimension of our common humanity, they simply disappear, they evaporate. The moment when they are evaporating, only that moment we remember, that much they are part of us. That’s why nothing much is known about Tilopa, who he is.

Only this song exists. This is his gift, and the gift was given to his disciple, Naropa. These gifts cannot be given to anybody – unless a deep love intimacy exists. One has to be capable to receive such gifts. This song has been given to Naropa, his disciple. Before this song was given to Naropa, Naropa was tested in millions of ways: his faith, his love and trust. When it came to be known that there exists nothing like doubt in him, not even a tiny part of doubt, when his heart was totally full with trust and love, then this song was given.

I am also here to sing a song, but it can be given to you only when you are ready. And your readiness means that doubt should simply disappear from the mind. It should not be suppressed, you should not try to defeat it, because defeated it will remain in you; suppressed, it will remain part of your unconscious and it will go on affecting you. Don’t fight your doubting mind, don’t suppress it. Rather, on the contrary, you simply bring more and more energy into trust. You simply be indifferent to your doubting mind, nothing else can be done.

Indifference is the key: you simply be indifferent. It is there – accept it. Bring your energies more and more towards trust and love – because it is the same energy which becomes doubt; it is the same energy which becomes trust. Remain indifferent to doubt. The moment you are indifferent your cooperation is broken, you are not feeding it – because it is through attention that anything is fed. If you pay attention to your doubt, even if you are against it, paying attention to it is dangerous because the very attention is the food; that is your cooperation. One has just to be indifferent, neither for nor against: don’t be for doubt, don’t be against doubt.

So now you will have to understand three words. One word is ”doubt,” another word is ”belief,” the third word is ”trust” or ”faith” – what in the East is known as SHRADDHA. Doubt is a negative attitude towards anything. Whatever is said, first you look at it negatively. You are against it, and you will find reasons, rationalizations about how to support your ”againstness.” Then there is the mind of belief. It is just like the mind of doubt only standing upside down; there is not much difference. This mind looks at things positively and tries to find reasons, rationalizations, how to support it, how to be for it. The mind who doubts suppresses belief; the mind who believes suppresses doubt – but they both are of the same stuff; the quality is not different.

Then there is a third mind whose doubting has simply disappeared – and when doubt disappears, belief also disappears. Faith is not belief, it is love. Faith is not belief because it is not half, it is total. Faith is not belief because there is no doubt in it, so how can you believe? Faith is not a rationalization at all: neither for nor against, neither this nor that. Faith is a trusting, a deep trusting, a love. You don’t find any rationalizations for it, it simply is so. So what to do?

Don’t create belief against faith. Just be indifferent to belief and doubt both, and bring your energies towards more and more love; love more, love unconditionally. Not only love me, because that is not possible: if you love, you simply love more. If you love, you simply exist in a more loving way – not only towards the master, but towards everything that exists around you: towards the trees and the stones, and the sky and the earth. You, your being, your very quality of being, becomes a love phenomenon. Then trust arises. And only in such a trust can a gift like the song of Mahamudra be given. When Naropa was ready Tilopa gave this gift.

So remember, with a master you are not on a ”headtrip.” Doubt and belief are all ”head-trips.” With a master you are on a ”heart-trip.” And heart doesn’t know what doubt is, heart doesn’t know what belief is – heart simply knows trust. Heart is just like a small child: the small child clings to the father’s hand, and wherever the father is going the child is going, neither trusting nor doubting; the child is undivided. Doubt is half, belief is half. A child is still total, whole; he simply goes with the father wherever he is going. When a disciple becomes just like a child, then only these gifts of the highest peak of consciousness can be given.

When you become the deepest valley of reception, then the highest peaks of consciousness can be given to you. Only a valley can receive a peak. A disciple should be absolutely feminine, receptive, like a womb. Only then such a phenomenon happens as is going to happen in this song. Tilopa is the master, Naropa is the disciple, and Tilopa says: MAHAMUDRA IS BEYOND ALL WORDS AND SYMBOLS, BUT FOR YOU, NAROPA, EARNEST AND LOYAL, MUST THIS BE SAID…. It is beyond words and symbols, all words and all symbols. Then how can it be said? If it is really beyond all words and symbols, then how can it be said? Is there any way then? Yes, there is a way: if there is a Naropa there is a way; if there is really a disciple there is a way. It depends on the disciple whether the way will be found or not.

If the disciple is so receptive that he has no mind of his own – he does not judge whether it is right or wrong, he has no mind of his own, he has surrendered his mind to the master, he is simply a receptivity, an emptiness, ready to welcome whatsoever is given unconditionally – then words and symbols are not needed, then something can be given. And you can listen to it between the words, you can read it between the lines – then words are just an excuse. The real thing happens just by the side of the words. A word is just a trick, a device. The real thing follows the words like a shadow. And if you are too much of the mind, you will listen to the words, then it cannot be communicated. But if you are not a mind at all, then the subtle shadows that follow the words, very subtle, only the heart can see them, invisible shadows, invisible ripples of consciousness, ”vibes”… then communion is immediately possible. Remember this, says Tilopa:

… BUT FOR YOU, NAROPA, EARNEST AND LOYAL, MUST THIS BE SAID….

That which cannot be said, must be said for a disciple. That which cannot be said, which is absolutely invisible, must be made visible for the disciple. It depends not only on the master – EVEN MORE it depends on the disciple. Tilopa was fortunate to find a Naropa. There have been a few masters, unfortunate, who never could find a disciple like Naropa. So whatever they had gained disappeared with them, because there was nobody to receive it.

Sometimes masters have traveled thousands of miles to find a disciple. Tilopa himself went from India to Tibet to find Naropa, to find a disciple. Tilopa wandered all over India and couldn’t find a man of that quality, who would receive such a gift, who would appreciate such a gift, who would be able to absorb it, to be reborn through it. And once the gift was received by Naropa, he became totally transformed. Then Tilopa is reported to have said to Naropa, ”Now you go and find your own Naropa.”

Naropa was also fortunate in that way: he was able to find a disciple whose name was Marpa. Marpa was also very fortunate; he was able to find a disciple whose name was Milarepa. But then the tradition disappeared, then no more disciples of that great caliber. Many times religion has come to the earth and disappeared; many times it will come and disappear. A religion cannot become a church; a religion cannot become a sect. A religion depends on PERSONAL communication, on personal communion. The religion of Tilopa existed only for four generations, from Naropa to Milarepa; then it disappeared. Religion is just like an oasis: the desert is vast, and sometimes in tiny parts of the desert an oasis appears. And while it lasts, seek it; and while it is there, drink of it – and it is very very rare.

Jesus says many times to his disciples, ”A little while more I am here. And while I am here, you eat me, you drink me. Don’t miss this opportunity” – because then thousands of years… and a man like Jesus may not be there. The desert is vast. The oasis sometimes appears and disappears; because the oasis comes from the unknown it needs an anchor on this earth. If the anchor is not there it cannot remain here. And Naropa is an anchor. The same I would like to say to you: While I am here, a little while more, don’t miss the opportunity. And you can miss it in trivial things: you can remain occupied with nonsense, with mental garbage. You can go on thinking for and against – and the oasis will disappear soon. You can think for and against later on. Right now, drink of it, because then there will be many lives for you to think for and against, there is no hurry for it. But while it lasts, drink of it.

Once you are drunk with a Jesus or a Naropa, you are totally transformed. The transformation is very very easy and simple, it is a natural process. All that is needed is to become a soil and receive the seed; to become a womb and receive the seed. MAHAMUDRA IS BEYOND ALL WORDS AND SYMBOLS, BUT FOR YOU, NAROPA, EARNEST AND LOYAL, MUST THIS BE SAID…. It cannot be uttered, it is unutterable – but it has to be said for a Naropa. Wherever a disciple is ready the master appears, has to appear. Wherever there is a deep need, it has to be fulfilled. The whole existence responds to your deepest need, but the need must be there; otherwise you can pass a Tilopa, a Buddha, a Jesus, and may not be even able to see that you passed a Jesus.

Tilopa lived in this country. Nobody listened to him – and he was ready to give the ultimate gift. What happened? And this has happened in this country many times; there must be something behind it. And this has happened more in this country than anywhere else, because more Tilopas have been born here. But why does it happen that a Tilopa has to go to Tibet? Why does it happen that a Bodhidharma has to go to China? This country knows too much, this country has become too much of a head. That’s why it is difficult to find a heart – the country of brahmins and pandits, the country of great knowers, philosophers. They know all the Vedas, all the Upanishads, they can recite by memory the whole scriptures: a country of the heads. That’s why it has been happening so many times.

Even I feel, so many times I feel it, that whenever a brahmin comes it is difficult to communicate. A man who knows too much becomes almost impossible – because he knows without knowing. He has gathered many concepts, theories, doctrines, scriptures. It is just a burden on his consciousness, it is not a flowering. It has not happened to him, it is all borrowed, and all that is borrowed is rubbish, rot – throw it as soon as you can throw it. Only that which happens to you is true. Only that which flowers in you is true. Only that which grows in you is true and alive. Remember it always: avoid borrowed knowledge.

Borrowed knowledge becomes a trick of the mind: it hides ignorance – it never destroys it. And the more you are surrounded by knowledge, deep inside at the center, at the very root of your being, is ignorance and darkness there. And a man of knowledge, borrowed knowledge, is almost closed within his own knowledge; you cannot penetrate him. And it is difficult to find his heart, he himself has lost all contact with his heart. So it is not incidental that a Tilopa has to go to Tibet, a Bodhidharma to China: a seed has to travel so far, not finding a soil here.

Remember this, because it is easy to become too addicted to knowledge – it is an addiction, it is a drug. And lsd is not so dangerous, marijuana is not so dangerous. And in a way they are similar, because marijuana gives you a glimpse of something which is not there; it gives you a dream of something which is absolutely subjective – it gives you a hallucination. And knowledge is also the same: it gives you an hallucination of knowing. You start feeling that you know because you can recite the Vedas, you know because you can argue, you know because you have a very very logical, keen mind. Don’t be a fool! Logic has never led anybody to truth. And a rational mind is just a game. All arguments are juvenile.

Life exists without any argument, and truth needs no proof – it needs only your heart; not arguments, but your love, your trust, your readiness to receive. MAHAMUDRA IS BEYOND ALL WORDS AND SYMBOLS, BUT FOR YOU, NAROPA, EARNEST AND LOYAL, MUST THIS BE SAID: THE VOID NEEDS NO RELIANCE, MAHAMUDRA RESTS ON NOUGHT. WITHOUT MAKING AN EFFORT, BUT REMAINING LOOSE AND NATURAL, ONE CAN BREAK THE YOKE – THUS GAINING LIBERATION. You cannot find more significant words ever uttered. Try to understand every nuance of what Tilopa is trying to say. THE VOID NEEDS NO RELIANCE….

If there is something, it needs support, it needs a reliance. But if there is nothing, emptiness, there is no need for any support. And this is the deepest realization of all the knowers: that your being is a non-being. To say it is a being is wrong because it is not something, it is not like something. It is like nothing: a vast emptiness, with no boundaries to it. It is an ANATMA, a no-self; it is not a self inside you. All feelings of self are false. All identifications that ”I am this and that” are false. When you come to the ultimate, when you come to your deepest core, you suddenly know that you are neither this nor that – you are no one. You are not an ego, you are just a vast emptiness. And sometimes if you sit, close your eyes and just feel who you are – where are you? And go deeper and you may become afraid, because the deeper you go, the deeper you feel that you are nobody, a nothingness. That’s why people become so scared of meditation. It is a death. It is a death of the ego – and the ego is just a false concept.

Now physicists have come to the same truth through their scientific research deepening into the realm of matter. What Buddha, Tilopa and Bodhidharma reached through their insight, science has been discovering in the outside world also. Now they say there is no substance – substance is a parallel concept of self. A rock exists; you feel that it is very substantial. You can hit somebody’s head and blood will come out, even the man may die; it is very substantial. But ask the physicists: they say it is a no-substance, there is nothing in it. They say that it is just an energy phenomenon; many energy currents crisscrossing on this rock give it a feeling of substance. Just as you draw many lines criss crossing on a piece of paper: where many lines cross a point, a point arises. The point was not there; two lines crossing and a point arises: many lines crossing and a big point arises. Is that point really there? Or just lines crossing give an illusion of a point being there?

Physicists say that energy currents crisscrossing create matter. And if you ask what are these energy currents – they are not material, they have no weight, they are nonmaterial. Nonmaterial lines criss-crossing give an illusion of a material thing, very substantial like a rock. Buddha achieved this illumination twenty-five centuries before Einstein, that inside there is nobody; only energy lines criss-crossing give you a feeling of the self. Buddha used to say that the self is just like an onion: you peel it, one layer comes off, another layer is there. You go on peeling, layer by layer, and what remains finally? The whole onion is peeled and you find nothing inside. Man is just like an onion. You peel layers of thought, feeling, and finally, what do you find? A nothing. This nothingness needs no support. This nothingness exists by itself. That’s why Buddha says there is no God; there is no need for a God because God is a support. And Buddha says there is no creator because there is no need to create a nothingness. This is one of the most difficult concepts to understand – unless you realize it. That’s why Tilopa says:

MAHAMUDRA IS BEYOND ALL WORDS AND SYMBOLS.

Mahamudra is an experience of nothingness – simply you are not. And when you are not, then who is there to suffer? Who is there to be in pain and anguish? Who is there to be depressed and sad? And who is there to be happy and blissful? Buddha says that if you feel you are blissful you will again become a victim of suffering, because you are still there. When you are not, completely not, utterly not, then there is no suffering and no bliss – and this is the real bliss. Then you cannot fall back. To attain nothingness is to attain all.

My whole effort with you is also to lead you towards nothingness, to lead you to a total vacuum.

THE VOID NEEDS NO RELIANCE MAHAMUDRA RESTS ON NOUGHT. WITHOUT MAKING AN EFFORT, BUT REMAINING LOOSE AND NATURAL, ONE CAN BREAK THE YOKE – THUS GAINING LIBERATION.

The first thing to understand is that the concept of self is created by the mind – there is no self in you. It happened: a great Buddhist, a man of enlightenment, was invited by a king to teach him. The name of the Buddhist monk was Nagasen, and the king was a viceroy of Alexander. When Alexander went back from India, he left Minander as his viceroy here; his Indian name is Milanda. Milanda asked Nagasen to come and teach him. He was really interested, and he had heard many stories about Nagasen. And many rumors had come to the court: ”This is a rare phenomenon! Rarely it happens that a man flowers, and this man has flowered. He has an aroma of something unknown around him, a mysterious energy. He walks on the earth, but he is not of the earth.” He became interested; he invited him.

The messenger who went to Nagasen came back very much puzzled, because Nagasen said, ”Yes, if he invites, Nagasen will come – but tell him there is no one like Nagasen. If he invites I will come, but tell him exactly that there is no one like ’I am.’ I am no more.” The messenger was puzzled, because if Nagasen is no more, then who will come? And Milanda was also puzzled. He said, ”This man talks in puzzles. But let him come.” And he was a Greek, this Milanda, and the Greek mind is basically logical.

There are only two minds in the world, the Indian and the Greek. The Indian is illogical, and the Greek is logical. The Indian moves into the dark depths, wild depths, where there are no boundaries, everything is vague, cloudy. The Greek mind walks on the logical, the straight, where everything is defined and classified. The Greek mind moves into the known. The Indian mind moves into the unknown, and even more into the unknowable. The Greek mind is absolutely rational; the Indian mind is absolutely contradictory. So if you find too many contradictions in me, don’t be bothered. It is the way… in the East contradiction is the way to relate.

Milanda said, ”This man seems to be irrational, gone mad. If he is not then how can he come? But let him come, I will see. I will prove: just by coming he is proving that he is.” Then came Nagasen. Milanda received him at the gate and the first thing he asked, he said, ”I am puzzled: you have come and still you said that you are not.” Nagasen said, ”Still I say. So let us settle it here.”

A crowd gathered, the whole court came there, and Nagasen said, ”You ask.” Milanda asked, ”First tell me: if something is not, how can it come? In the first place it is not, then there is no possibility of its coming – and you have come. It is simple logic that you are.” Nagasen laughed and he said, ”Look at this RATHA” – the bullock cart on which he had come. He said, ”Look at this. You call it a ratha, a cart.” Milanda said, ”Yes.”

Then he told his followers to remove the bullocks. The bullocks were removed and Nagasen asked, ”Are these bullocks the cart?” Milanda said, ”Of course not.” Then, by and by, everything from the cart was removed, every part. Wheels were removed and he asked, ”Are these wheels the cart?” And Milanda said, ”Of course not!” When everything was removed and there was nothing, then Nagasen asked, ”Where is the cart I had come in?… and we never removed the cart, and all that we have removed you confirmed that this is not the cart. Now where is the cart?” Nagasen said, ”Just like this Nagasen exists. Remove parts and he will disappear.” Just crisscrossing lines of energy: remove the lines and the dot will disappear. The cart is just a combination of parts.

You are also a combination of parts, the ”I” is a combination of parts. Remove things and the ”I” will disappear. That’s why when thoughts are removed from consciousness, you cannot say ”I,” because there is no ”I” – just a vacuum is left. When feelings are removed, the self disappears completely. You are and yet not: just an absence, with no boundaries, emptiness. This is the final attainment, this state is Mahamudra, because only in that state can you have an orgasm with the whole. Now there is no boundary, no self exists; now there is no boundary to you to divide. The whole has no boundaries. You MUST become like the whole – only then there can be a meeting, a merger. When you are empty, you are without boundaries. Suddenly you become the whole. When you are not, you become the whole. When you are, you become an ugly ego. When you are not, you have all the expanse of existence for your being to be.

But these are contradictions. So try to understand: become a little like Naropa, otherwise these words and symbols will not carry anything to you. Listen to me in trust. And when I say listen in trust, I mean I have known this. This is so. I am a witness, I bear witness for it, this is so. It may not be possible to say it, but that doesn’t mean that it is not. It may be possible to say something, that doesn’t mean that it is. You can say something which is not, and you may be incapable of saying something which is. I bear witness about it, but you will be able to understand me only if you are a Naropa, if you listen in trust. I am not teaching a doctrine. I would not have been at all concerned with Tilopa if this was not my own experience also. Tilopa has said it well: THE VOID NEEDS NO RELIANCE, MAHAMUDRA RESTS ON NOUGHT.

On nothing Mahamudra rests. Mahamudra, the literal word, means the great gesture, or the ultimate gesture, the last that you can have, beyond which nothing is possible. Mahamudra rests on nothing. You be a nothing, and then all is attained. You die, and you become a god. You disappear, and you become the whole. Here the drop disappears, and there the ocean comes into existence. Don’t cling to yourself – that’s all you have been doing all your past lives: clinging, afraid that if you don’t cling to the ego, then you look down: a bottomless abyss is there….

That’s why we cling to tiny things, really trivial, we go on clinging to them. The clinging shows only that you are also aware of a vast emptiness inside. Something is needed to cling to, but your clinging is your SAMSARA, is your misery. Leave yourself in the abyss. And once you leave yourself in the abyss, you become the abyss itself. Then there is no death, because how can an abyss die? Then there is no end to it, because how can a nothingness end? Something can end, will have to end – only nothing can be eternal. Mahamudra rests on nothing.

Let me explain it to you through some experience that you have got. When you love a person, you have to become a nothing. When you love a person, you have to become a no-self. That’s why love is so difficult. And that’s why Jesus says God is like love. He knows something about Mahamudra – because before he started teaching in Jerusalem, he has been to India. He has been to Tibet also. He met people like Tilopa and Naropa. He remained in Buddhist monasteries. He learned about what it is that these people call nothingness. Then he tried to translate his whole understanding into Jewish terminology. There everything got messed up.

You cannot translate Buddhist understanding into Jewish terminology. It is impossible, because the whole Jewish terminology depends on positive terms, and the Buddhist terminology depends on absolutely nihilistic terms: nothingness, emptiness. But here and there in Jesus’ words there are glimpses. He says, ”God is love.” He is indicating something. What is the indication? When you love, you have to become nobody. If you remain somebody, then love never happens. When you love a person – even for a single moment love happens and flows between two persons – there are two nothingnesses, not two persons. If you have ever had any experience of love, you can understand.

Two lovers sitting by each other’s side, or two nothingnesses sitting together – only then the meeting is possible because barriers are broken, boundaries thrown away. The energy can move from here to there; there is no hindrance. And only in such a moment of deep love is orgasm possible. When two lovers are making love, and if they are both no-selves, nothingnesses, then orgasm happens. Then their body energy, their whole being, loses all identity; they are no more themselves – they have fallen into the abyss. But this can happen only for a moment: again they regain, again they start clinging. That’s why people become afraid in love also.

In deep love people are afraid of becoming mad, or going to die – of what will happen. The abyss opens its mouth, the whole existence yawns, and you are suddenly there and you can fall into it. One becomes scared of love, then people remain satisfied with sex and they call their sex ”love.” Love is not sex. Sex can happen in love, it can be a part, integral part to it, but sex itself is not love – it is a substitute. You are trying to avoid love through sex. You are giving yourself a feeling that you are in love, and you are not moving into love. Sex is just like borrowed knowledge: giving a feeling of knowing without knowing; giving a feeling of love and loving without loving. In love you are not, the other is also not: then only, suddenly, the two disappear. The same happens in Mahamudra. Mahamudra is a total orgasm with the whole existence.

That’s why in Tantra – and Tilopa is a Tantra master – deep intercourse, orgasmic intercourse, between lovers is also called Mahamudra, and two lovers in a deep orgasmic state are pictured in tantric temples, in tantric books. That has become a symbol of the final orgasm. 

MAHAMUDRA RESTS ON NOUGHT. WITHOUT MAKING AN EFFORT, BUT REMAINING LOOSE AND NATURAL…. And this is the whole method of Tilopa, and the whole method of Tantra: WITHOUT MAKING AN EFFORT… because if you make an effort, the ego is strengthened. If you make an effort, YOU come in. So love is not an effort, you cannot make an effort to love. If you make an effort, there is no love. You flow into it, you don’t make an effort, you simply allow it to happen, you don’t MAKE an effort. It is not a doing, it is a happening: WITHOUT MAKING AN EFFORT…. And the same is the case with the total, the final: you don’t make an effort, you simply float with it… BUT REMAINING LOOSE AND NATURAL. This is the way, this is the very ground of Tantra. Yoga says make an effort, and Tantra says don’t make any effort. Yoga is ego-oriented, finally it will take the jump, but Tantra is, from the very beginning, non-ego-oriented. Yoga, in the end, attains to such significance, such meaning, such depth, that it says to its seeker, ”Now drop the ego” – only in the end; Tantra from the very beginning, from the very first step….

I would like to say it in this way, in such a way: where Yoga ends, Tantra starts. The highest peak of Yoga is the beginning of Tantra – and Tantra leads you to the ultimate goal. Yoga can prepare you for Tantra, that’s all, because the final thing is to be effortless, ”loose and natural.”

What does Tilopa mean by ”loose and natural”? Don’t fight with yourself, be loose. Don’t try to make a structure around yourself of character, of morality. Don’t discipline yourself too much; otherwise your very discipline will become the bondage. Don’t create an imprisonment around you. Remain loose, floating, move with the situation, respond to the situation. Don’t move with a character jacket around you, don’t move with a fixed attitude. Remain loose like water, not fixed like ice. Remain moving and flowing; wherever the nature leads you, go. Don’t resist, don’t try to impose anything on you, your being. But the whole society teaches you to impose something or other: be good, be moral, be this and that. And Tantra is absolutely beyond society, culture and civilization. It says if you are too much cultured you will lose all that is natural, and then you will be a mechanical thing, not floating, not flowing. So don’t force a structure around you – live moment to moment, live with alertness. And this is a deep thing to be understood.

Why do people try to create a structure around them? So that they don’t need alertness – because if you have no character around you, you will need to be very very aware: because each moment the decision has to be taken. You don’t have a prefabricated decision, you don’t have an attitude. You have to respond to the situation. Something is there, and you are absolutely unprepared for it – you will have to be very very aware. To avoid awareness people have created a trick, and the trick is character. Force yourself into a certain discipline so that whether you are aware or not, the discipline will take care of you. Make a habit of always saying the truth; make it a habit, then you need not be worried about it. Somebody asks, you will say the truth, out of habit – but out of habit a truth is dead.

And life is not so simple. Life is a very very complex phenomenon. Sometimes a lie is needed, and sometimes a truth can be dangerous – and one has to be aware. For example, if through your lie somebody’s life is saved, and through your lie nobody is harmed and somebody’s life is saved, what will you do? If you have a fixed mind that you have to be true, then you will kill a life. Nothing is more valuable than life, no truth, nothing is more valuable than life. And sometimes your truth can kill somebody’s life. What will you do? Just saving your own old pattern and habit, your own ego that ”I am a truthful man,” you will sacrifice a life – just being a truthful man, just to be that? This is too much, you are completely mad! If a life can be saved, even if people think that you are a liar, what is wrong in it? Why bother too much about what people say about you?

It is difficult! It is not so easy to create a fixed pattern because life goes on moving and changing, and every moment there is a new situation and one has to respond to it. Respond with full awareness, that’s all. And let the decision come out of the situation itself, not prefabricated, not imposed. Don’t carry a built-in mind just remain loose and aware and natural. And this is how a real religious man is; otherwise, the so-called religious persons are just dead. They act out of their habits, they go on acting out of their habits – this is a conditioning, this is not a freedom. Consciousness needs freedom. Be loose: remember this word as deeply as possible. Let it penetrate you. Be loose – so in every situation you can flow, easily, water-like; so if the water is poured into a glass, it takes the shape of the glass. It doesn’t resist, it doesn’t say, ”This is not my form.” If the water is poured into a jar, into a jug, it takes the shape of that. It has no resistance, it is loose. Remain loose like water.

Sometimes you will have to move south and sometimes north, you will have to change directions; according to the situations you will have to flow. But if you know how to flow, it is enough. The ocean is not very far away if you know how to flow. So don’t create a pattern – and the whole society tries to create a pattern, and all the religions try to create a pattern. Only very few enlightened persons have been courageous enough to say the truth – the truth that: Be loose and natural! If you are loose you will be natural, of course. Tilopa doesn’t say, ”Be moral,” he says, ”Be natural.” And these are completely, diametrically opposite dimensions. A moral man is never natural, cannot be. If he feels angry he cannot be angry because the morality doesn’t allow it. If he feels loving he cannot be loving because the morality is there. It is always according to the morality that he acts; it is never according to his nature.

And I tell you: if you start moving according to moral patterns and not according to your nature, you will never reach the state of Mahamudra, because it is a natural state, the highest peak of being natural. I tell you: if you feel angry, be angry – but perfect awareness has to be retained. Anger should not overpower your consciousness, that’s all. Let anger be there, let it happen, but be fully alert to what is happening. Remain loose, natural, aware, WATCHING what is happening. By and by, you will see many things have simply disappeared, they don’t happen any more – and without making any effort on your part. You never tried to kill them and they have simply disappeared. When one is aware, anger by and by disappears. It becomes simply stupid – not bad, remember, because ”bad” is a loaded value. It becomes simply stupid! It is not that because it is bad you don’t move into it, it is simply foolish; it is not a sin, but simply stupid. Greed disappears, it is stupid. Jealousy disappears, it is stupid.

Remember this valuation. In morality there is something good and something bad. In being natural there is something wise and something stupid. A man who is natural is wise, not good. A man who is not natural is stupid, not bad. There is nothing bad and nothing good, only wise things and foolish things. And if you are foolish you harm yourself and others, and if you are wise you don’t harm anybody – neither others, nor you. There is nothing like sin and there is nothing like virtue – wisdom is all. If you want to call it virtue, call it virtue. And ignorance is there if you want to call it sin – that is the only sin. So how to transform your ignorance into wisdom? That is the only transformation – and you cannot force it: it happens when you are loose and natural.

… REMAINING LOOSE AND NATURAL, ONE CAN BREAK THE YOKE – THUS GAINING LIBERATION.

And one becomes totally free. It will be difficult in the beginning, because constantly the old habits will be there forcing you to do something: you would like to be angry – but the old habit simply starts a smile on your face. There are people that, whenever they smile, you can be certain that they are angry. In their very smiles they show their anger. They are hiding something, a false smile spreads on their faces. These are the hypocrites. A hypocrite is an unnatural man: if anger is there he will smile; if hate is there he will show love; if he feels murderous, he will pretend compassion. A hypocrite is a perfect moralist – absolutely artificial, a plastic flower, ugly, of no use; not a flower at all, just a pretension. Tantra is the natural way: be loose and natural. It will be difficult because the old habits have to be broken. It is difficult because you will have to live in a society of hypocrites. It will be difficult because everywhere you will find a conflict with the hypocrites – but one has to go through it. It will be arduous because there are many investments in false, artificial pretensions. You may feel completely alone, but this will be only a passing phase. Soon others will start feeling your authenticity. And remember, even an authentic anger is better than a pretended smile, because at least it is authentic. And a man who cannot be authentically angry, cannot be authentic at all. At least he is authentic, true to his being. Whatever is happening, you can rely on him that it is true.

And this is my observation: that a true anger is beautiful and a false smile is ugly; and a true hate has its own beauty, just like true love – because beauty is concerned with truth. Neither is it concerned with hate, nor with love – beauty is of the truth. Truth is beautiful in any form. A truly dead man is more beautiful than a falsely alive man, because at least the basic quality is there of being true. Mulla Nasruddin’s wife died, and the neighbors gathered, but Mulla Nasruddin was standing there completely unaffected, as if nothing had happened. Neighbors started crying and weeping and they said, ”What are you standing there for, Nasruddin? She is dead.” Nasruddin said, ”Wait! She is such a liar – at least for three days I have to wait and see whether it is true or not.” Remember this – that beauty of truth, authenticity. Become more authentic and you will have a flowering. And the more authentic you become, by and by you will feel many things are falling away – of their own accord. You never made any effort to do it; they are falling of their own accord. And once you know the knack of it, then you become more and more loose, more and more natural, authentic. And, says Tilopa: … ONE CAN BREAK THE YOKE – THUS GAINING LIBERATION.

The liberation is not very far away, it is just hidden behind you. Once you are authentic and the door is open – but you are such a liar, you are such a pretender, you are such a hypocrite, you are so deeply false; that’s why you feel that the liberation is very very far away. It is not! For an authentic being, liberation is just natural. It is as natural as anything. As water flows towards the ocean, as vapor rises towards the sky, as the sun is hot and the moon is cool, so for an authentic being is liberation. It is nothing to be bragged about. It is nothing that you have to tell people that you have gained something. When Lin Chi was asked, ”What has happened to you? People say that you have become enlightened,” he shrugged his shoulders and said, ”Happened? Nothing. I cut wood in the forest, and carry water to the ashram – carry water from the well, cut wood because the winter is approaching.” He shrugged his shoulders – a very meaningful gesture. He is saying, ”Nothing has happened. What nonsense you are asking! It is natural: carrying water from the well, cutting wood in the forest. Life is absolutely natural.” Says Lin Chi, ”When I feel sleepy,I go to sleep; and when I feel hungry, I eat. Life has become absolutely natural.” Liberation is your being perfectly natural. Liberation is not something to be bragged about, that you have attained something very great. It is nothing great, it is nothing extraordinary. It is just being natural, just being yourself. So what to do? Drop pretensions, drop hypocrisies, drop all that you have cultivated around your natural being – become natural. In the beginning it will be a very very arduous thing, but only in the beginning. Once you get attuned to it, others will also start feeling something has happened to you, because an authentic being is such a force, such a magnetism. They will start feeling something has happened: ”This man no more moves as part of us, he has become totally different.” And you will not be at a loss, because only artificial things will drop. And once the emptiness is created by throwing away artificial things, pretensions, masks, then the natural being starts flowing. It needs space. Be empty, loose and natural. Let that be the most fundamental principle in your life.

The Root Problem

THE SONG CONTINUES: IF ONE SEES NOUGHT WHEN STARING INTO SPACE; IF WITH THE MIND ONE THEN OBSERVES THE MIND, ONE DESTROYS DISTINCTIONS AND REACHES BUDDHAHOOD. THE CLOUDS THAT WANDER THROUGH THE SKY HAVE NO ROOTS, NO HOME; NOR DO THE DISTINCTIVE THOUGHTS FLOATING THROUGH THE MIND. ONCE THE SELF-MIND IS SEEN, DISCRIMINATION STOPS. IN SPACE SHAPES AND COLORS FORM, BUT NEITHER BY BLACK NOR WHITE IS SPACE TINGED. FROM THE SELF-MIND ALL THINGS EMERGE, THE MIND BY VIRTUES AND BY VICES IS NOT STAINED.

The root problem of all problems is mind itself. The first thing to be understood is what this mind is, of what stuff it is made; whether it is an entity or just a process; whether it is substantial, or just dreamlike. And unless you know the nature of the mind, you will not be able to solve any problems of your life.

You may try hard, but if you try to solve single, individual problems, you are bound to be a failure – that is absolutely certain – because in fact no individual problem exists: mind is the problem. If you solve this problem or that, it won’t help because the root remains untouched.

It is just like cutting branches of a tree, pruning the leaves, and not uprooting it. New leaves will come, new branches will sprout – even more than before; pruning helps a tree to become thicker. Unless you know how to uproot it, your fight is baseless, it is foolish. You will destroy yourself, not the tree. In fighting you will waste your energy, time, life, and the tree will go on becoming more and more strong, far thicker and dense. And you will be surprised what is happening: you are doing so much hard work, trying to solve this problem and that, and they go on growing, increasing. Even if one problem is solved, suddenly ten problems take its place.

Don’t try to solve individual, single problems – there are none: MIND ITSELF IS THE PROBLEM. But mind is hidden underground; that’s why I call it the root, it is not apparent. Whenever you come across a problem the problem is above ground, you can see it – that’s why you are deceived by it. Always remember, the visible is never the root; the root always remains invisible, the root is always hidden. Never fight with the visible; otherwise you will fight with shadows. You may waste yourself, but there cannot be any transformation in your life, the same problems will crop up again and again and again. You can observe your own life and you will see what I mean. I am not talking about any theory about the mind, just the ”facticity” of it. This is the fact: mind has to be solved.

People come to me and they ask, ”How to attain a peaceful mind?” I say to them, ”There exists nothing like that: peaceful mind. Never heard of it.” Mind is never peaceful – no-mind is peace. Mind itself can never be peaceful, silent. The very nature of the mind is to be tense, to be in confusion. Mind can never be clear, it cannot have clarity, because mind is by nature confusion, cloudiness. Clarity is possible without mind, peace is possible without mind, silence is possible without mind – so never try to attain a silent mind. If you do, from the very beginning you are moving in an impossible dimension.

So the first thing is to understand the nature of the mind, only then can something be done. If you watch, you will never come across any entity like mind. It is not a thing, it is just a process; it is not a thing, it is like a crowd. Individual thoughts exist, but they move so fast that you cannot see the gaps in between. The intervals cannot be seen because you are not very aware and alert, you need a deeper insight. When your eyes can look deep, you will suddenly see one thought, another thought, another thought – but NO MIND.

Thoughts together, millions of thoughts, give you the illusion as if mind exists. It is just like a crowd, millions of people standing in a crowd: is there anything like a crowd? Can you find the crowd other than the individuals standing there? But they are standing together, their togetherness gives you the feeling as if something like a crowd exists – only individuals exist. This is the first insight into the mind. Watch, and you will find thoughts; you will never come across the mind. And if it becomes your own experience – not because I say it, not because Tilopa sings about it, no, that won’t be of much help – if it becomes YOUR experience, if it becomes a fact of your own knowing, then suddenly many things start changing. Because you have understood such a deep thing about mind, then many things can follow.

Watch the mind and see where it is, what it is. You will feel thoughts floating and there will be intervals. And if you watch long, you will see that intervals are more than the thoughts, because each thought has to be separate from another thought; in fact, each word has to be separate from another word. The deeper you go, you will find more and more gaps, bigger and bigger gaps. A thought floats, then comes a gap where no thought exists; then another thought comes, another gap follows.

If you are unconscious you cannot see the gaps; you jump from one thought to another, you never see the gap. If you become aware you will see more and more gaps. If you become perfectly aware, then miles of gaps will be revealed to you. And in those gaps, SATORIS happen. In those gaps the truth knocks at your door. In those gaps, the guest comes. In those gaps God is realized, or whatsoever way you like to express it. And when awareness is absolute, then there is only a vast gap of nothingness. It is just like clouds: clouds move. They can be so thick that you cannot see the sky hidden behind. The vast blueness of the sky is lost, you are covered with clouds. Then you go on watching: one cloud moves and another has not come into the vision yet – and suddenly a peek into the blueness of the vast sky. The same happens inside: you are the vast blueness of the sky, and thoughts are just like clouds hovering around you, filling you. But the gaps exist, the sky exists. To have a glimpse of the sky is SATORI, and to become the sky is SAMADHI. From satori to samadhi, the whole process is a deep insight into the mind, nothing else.

Mind doesn’t exist as an entity – the first thing. Only thoughts exist. The second thing: the thoughts exist separate from you, they are not one with your nature, they come and go – you remain, you persist. You are like the sky: never comes, never goes, it is always there. Clouds come and go, they are momentary phenomena, they are not eternal. Even if you try to cling to a thought, you cannot retain it for long; it has to go, it has its own birth and death. Thoughts are not yours, they don’t belong to you. They come as visitors, guests, but they are not the host.

Watch deeply, then you will become the host and thoughts will be the guests. And as guests they are beautiful, but if you forget completely that you are the host and they become the hosts, then you are in a mess. This is what hell is. You are the master of the house, the house belongs to you, and guests have become the masters. Receive them, take care of them, but don’t get identified with them; otherwise, they will become the masters. The mind becomes the problem because you have taken thoughts so deeply inside you that you have forgotten completely the distance; that they are visitors, they come and go. Always remember that which abides: that is your nature, your TAO. Always be attentive to that which never comes and never goes, just like the sky. Change the gestalt: don’t be focused on the visitors, remain rooted in the host; the visitors will come and go.

Of course, there are bad visitors and good visitors, but you need not be worried about them. A good host treats all the guests in the same way, without making any distinctions. A good host is just a good host: a bad thought comes and he treats the bad thought also in the same way as he treats a good thought. It is not his concern that the thought is good or bad. … Because once you make the distinction that this thought is good and that thought is bad, what are you doing? You are bringing the good thought nearer to yourself and pushing the bad thought further away. Sooner or later, with the good thought you will get identified; the good thought will become the host. And any thought when it becomes the host creates misery – because this is not the truth. The thought is a pretender and you get identified with it. Identification is the disease.

Gurdjieff used to say that only one thing is needed: not to be identified with that which comes and goes. The morning comes, the noon comes, the evening comes, and they go; the night comes and again the morning. You abide: not as you, because that too is a thought – as pure consciousness; not your name, because that too is a thought; not your form, because that too is a thought; not your body, because one day you will realize that too is a thought. Just pure consciousness, with no name, no form; just the purity, just the formlessness and namelessness, just the very phenomenon of being aware – only that abides. If you get identified, you become the mind. If you get identified, you become the body. If you get identified, you become the name and the form – what Hindus call NAMA, RUPA, name and form – then the host is lost. Then you forget the eternal and the MOMENTARY becomes significant. The momentary is the world; the eternal is divine.

This is the second insight to be attained, that you are the host and thoughts are guests. The third thing, if you go on watching, will be realized soon. The third thing is that thoughts are foreign, intruders, outsiders. NO THOUGHT IS YOURS. They always come from without, you are just a passage. A bird comes into the house from one door, and flies out from another: just like that a thought comes into you and goes out of you. You go on thinking that thoughts are yours. Not only that, you fight for your thoughts, you say, ”This is my thought, this is true.” You discuss, you debate, you argue about it, you try to prove that, ”This is my thought.” No thought is yours, no thought is original – all thoughts are borrowed. And not secondhand, because millions of people have claimed those same thoughts before you. Thought is just as outside as a thing.

Somewhere, the great physicist, Eddington, has said that the deeper science goes into matter, the more it becomes a realization that things are thoughts. That may be so, I am not a physicist, but from the other end I would like to tell you that Eddington may be true that things look more and more like thoughts if you go deeper; if you go deeper into yourself, thoughts will look more and more like things. In fact, these are two aspects of the same phenomenon: a thing is a thought, a thought is a thing. When I say a thought is a thing, what do I mean? I mean that you can throw your thought just like a thing. You can hit somebody’s head with a thought just like a thing. You can kill a person through a thought just as you can throw a dagger. You can give your thought as a gift, or as an infection. Thoughts are things, they are forces, but they don’t belong to you. They come to you; they abide for a while in you and then they leave you. The whole universe is filled with thoughts and things. Things are just the physical part of thoughts, and thoughts are the mental part of things.

Because of this fact, many miracles happen – because thoughts are things. If a person continuously thinks about you and your welfare, it will happen – because he is throwing a continuous force at you. That’s why blessings are useful, helpful. If you can be blessed by someone who has attained no-mind, the blessing is going to be true – because a man who never uses thought accumulates thought energy, so whatsoever he says is going to be true. In all the Eastern traditions, before a person starts learning no-mind, there are techniques and much emphasis that he should stop being negative, because if you once attain to no-mind and your trend remains negative, you can become a dangerous force. Before the no-mind is attained, one should become absolutely positive. That is the whole difference between white and black magic. Black magic is nothing but when a man has accumulated thought energy without throwing out his negativity beforehand. And white magic is nothing but when a man has attained too much thought energy, and has based his total being on a positive attitude. The same energy with negativity becomes black; the same energy with positivity becomes white. A thought is a great force, it is a thing. This will be the third insight. It has to be understood and watched within yourself.

Sometimes it happens that you see your thought functioning as a thing, but just because of too much conditioning of materialism you think this may be just a coincidence. You neglect the fact, you simply don’t give any attention to it; you remain indifferent, you forget about it. But many times you know that sometimes you were thinking about the death of a certain person – and he is dead. You think it is just a coincidence. Sometime you were thinking about a friend and a desire arose in you that it would be good if he comes – and he is on the door, knocking. You think it is a coincidence. It is not coincidence. In fact, there is nothing like coincidence, everything has its causality. Your thoughts go on creating a world around you.

Your thoughts are things, so be careful about them. Handle them carefully! If you are not very conscious, you can create misery for yourself and for others – and you have done that. And remember, when you create misery for somebody, unconsciously, at the same time, you are creating misery for yourself – because a thought is a two-edged sword. It cuts you also simultaneously when it cuts somebody else. Just two or three years ago, one Israeli, Uri Geller, who has been working on thought energy, displayed his experiment on BBC television in England. He can bend anything just by thinking: somebody else keeps a spoon in his hand ten feet away from Uri Geller, and he just thinks about it – and the spoon bends immediately. You cannot bend it by your hand, and he bends it by his thought. But a very rare phenomenon happened on the BBC television; even Uri Geller was not aware that this is possible.

Thousands of people in their homes were seeing the experiment. And when he did his experiment, bent things, in many people’s houses many things fell and became distorted – thousands of things all over England. The energy was as if broadcast. And he was doing the experiment at a ten-foot distance, then from the television screen in people’s homes, around the area of ten feet, many things happened: things got bent, fell down, became distorted. It was weird!

Thoughts are things, and very very forceful things. There is one woman in Soviet Russia, Mikhailovna. She can do many things to things from far away, she can pull anything towards herself – just by thought. Soviet Russia is not a believer in occult things – a communist country, atheistic – so they have been working on Mikhailovna, on what is happening, in a scientific way. But when she does it, she loses almost two pounds of weight; in a half-hour experiment she loses two pounds. What does it mean? It means that through thoughts you are throwing energy – and you are continuously doing it. Your mind is a chatterbox. You are broadcasting things unnecessarily. You are destroying people around you, you are destroying yourself.

You are a dangerous thing – and continuously broadcasting. And many things are happening because of you. And it is a great network. The whole world goes on becoming every day more and more miserable because more and more people are on the earth and they are broadcasting more and more thoughts. The further back you go, you find the earth the more and more peaceful – less and less broadcasters. In the days of Buddha, or in the days of Lao Tzu, the world was very very peaceful, natural; it was a heaven. Why? The population was very very small, one thing. People were not thinkers too much, they were more and more prone to feeling rather than thinking. And people were praying. In the morning, they would do the first thing and that would be a prayer. In the night they would do the last thing – the prayer. And throughout the whole day also, whenever they would find a moment, they would be praying inside.

What is a prayer? Prayer is sending blessings to all. Prayer is sending your compassion to all. Prayer is creating an antidote of negative thoughts – it is a positivity. This will be the third insight about thoughts, that they are things, forces, and you have to handle them very carefully. Ordinarily, not aware, you go on thinking anything. It is difficult to find a person who has not committed many murders in thought; difficult to find a person who has not been doing all sorts of sins and crimes inside the mind – and then these things happen. And remember, you may not murder, but your continuous thinking of murdering somebody may create the situation in which the person is murdered. Somebody may take your thought, because there are weaker persons all around and thoughts flow like water: downwards. If you think something continuously, someone who is a weakling may take your thought and go and kill a person.

That’s why those who have known the inner reality of man, they say that whatsoever happens on the earth, everybody is responsible, everybody. Whatsoever happens in Vietnam, not only are Nixons responsible, everybody who thinks is also responsible. Only one person CANNOT be held responsible, and that is the person who has no mind; otherwise everybody is responsible for everything that goes on. If the earth is a hell, you are a creator, you participate. Don’t go on throwing responsibility on others – you are also responsible, it is a collective phenomenon. The disease may bubble up anywhere, the explosion may happen millions, thousands of miles away from you – that doesn’t make any difference, because thought is a non-spatial phenomenon, it needs no space.

That’s why it travels fastest. Even light cannot travel so fast, because even for light space is needed. Thought travels fastest. In fact it takes no time in traveling, space doesn’t exist for it. You may be here, thinking of something, and it happens in America. How can you be held responsible? No court can punish you, but in the ultimate court of existence you will be punished – you are already punished. That’s why you are so miserable. People come to me and they say, ”We never do anything wrong to anybody, and still we are so miserable.” You may not be doing, you may be thinking – and thinking is more subtle than doing. A person can protect himself from doing, but he cannot protect himself from thinking. For thinking everybody is vulnerable.

No-thinking is a must if you want to be completely freed from sin, freed from crime, freed from all that goes around you – and that is the meaning of a buddha. A buddha is a person who lives without the mind; then he’s not responsible. That’s why in the East we say that he never accumulates karma; he never accumulates any entanglements for the future. He lives, he walks, he moves, he eats, he talks, he is doing many things, so he must accumulate karma, because karma means activity. But in the East it is said even if a buddha kills, he will not accumulate karma. Why? And you, even if you don’t kill, you will accumulate karma. Why?

It is simple: whatever Buddha is doing, he is doing without any mind in it. He is spontaneous, it is not activity. He is not thinking about it, it happens. He is not the doer. He moves like an emptiness. He has no mind for it, he was not thinking to do it. But if the existence allows it to happen, he allows it to happen. He has no more the ego to resist; no more the ego to do. That is the meaning of being empty and a no-self: just being a non-being, ANATTA, no-selfness. Then you accumulate nothing; then you are not responsible for anything that goes on around you; then you transcend. Each single thought is creating something for you and for others. Be alert!

But when I say be alert, I don’t mean that think good thoughts, no, because whenever you think good thoughts, by the side you are also thinking of bad thoughts. How can good exist without bad? If you think of love, just by the side, behind it, is hidden hate. How can you think about love without thinking about hate? You may not think consciously, love may be in the conscious layer of the mind, but hate is hidden in the unconscious – they move together.

Whenever you think of compassion, you think of cruelty. Can you think of compassion without thinking of cruelty? Can you think of nonviolence without thinking of violence? In the very word ”nonviolence,” violence enters; in the very concept it is there. Can you think of BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy, without thinking of sex? It is impossible, because what will celibacy mean if there is no thought of sex? And if brahmacharya is based on the thought of sex, what type of brahmacharya is this? No, there is a totally different quality of being which comes by not thinking: not good, not bad, simply a state of no-thinking. You simply watch, you simply remain conscious, but you don’t think. And if some thought enters… it WILL enter, because thoughts are not yours; they are just floating in the air.

All around there is a noosphere, a thoughtsphere, all around. Just as there is air, there is thought all around you, and it goes on entering on its own accord. It stops only when you become more and more aware. There is something in it: if you become more aware, a thought simply disappears, it melts, because awareness is a greater energy than thought.

Awareness is like fire to thought. It is just like you burn a lamp in the house and the darkness cannot enter; you put the light off – from everywhere darkness has entered; without taking a single minute, a single moment, it is there. When the light burns in the house, the darkness cannot enter. Thoughts are like darkness: they enter only if there is no light within. Awareness is fire: you become more aware, less and less thoughts enter.

If you become REALLY integrated in your awareness, thoughts don’t enter you; you have become an impenetrable citadel, nothing can penetrate you. Not that you are closed, remember – you are absolutely open; but just the very energy of awareness becomes your citadel. And when no thoughts can enter you, they will come and they will bypass you. You will see them coming, and simply, by the time they reach near you they turn. Then you can move anywhere, then you go to the very hell – nothing can affect you. This is what we mean by enlightenment. Now try to understand Tilopa’s sutra:

IF ONE SEES NOUGHT WHEN STARING INTO SPACE; IF WITH THE MIND ONE THEN OBSERVES THE MIND, ONE DESTROYS DISTINCTIONS AND REACHES BUDDHAHOOD. IF ONE SEES NOUGHT WHEN STARING INTO SPACE…. This is a method, a tantra method: to look into space, into the sky, WITHOUT SEEING; to look with an empty eye. Looking, yet not looking for something: just an empty look.

Sometimes you see in a madman’s eyes an empty look – and madmen and sages are alike in certain things. A madman looks at your face, but you can see he is not looking at you. He just looks through you as if you are a glass thing, transparent; you are just in the way, he is not looking at you. And you are transparent for him: he looks beyond you, through you. He looks without looking AT you; the ”at” is not present, he simply looks. Look in the sky without looking for something, because if you look for something a cloud is bound to come: ”something” means a cloud, ”nothing” means the vast expanse of the blue sky. Don’t look for any object. If you look for an object, the VERY LOOK creates the object: a cloud comes, and then you are looking at a cloud. Don’t look at the clouds. Even if there are clouds, you don’t look AT them – simply look, let them float, they are there. Suddenly a moment comes when you are attuned to this look of not-looking – clouds disappear for you, only the vast sky remains. It is difficult because eyes are focused and your eyes are tuned to look at things.

Look at a small child the first day born. He has the same eyes as a sage – or like a madman: his eyes are loose and floating. He can bring both his eyes to meet at the center; he can allow them to float to the far corners – they are not yet fixed. His system is liquid, his nervous system is not yet a structure, everything is floating. So a child looks without looking at things; it is a mad look. Watch a child: the same look is needed from you, because again you have to attain a second childhood. Watch a madman, because the madman has fallen out of the society. Society means the fixed world of roles, games. A madman is mad because he has no fixed role now, he has fallen out: he is the perfect drop-out. A sage is also a perfect drop-out in a different dimension. He is not mad; in fact he is the only sanest possibility. But the whole world is mad, fixed – that’s why a sage also looks mad. Watch a madman: that is the look which is needed.

In old schools of Tibet they always had a madman, just for the seekers to watch his eyes. A madman was very much valued. He was searched after because a monastery could not exist without a madman. He becomes an object to observe. The seekers will observe the madman, his eyes, and then they will try to look at the world like the madman. Those days were beautiful. In the East, madmen have never suffered like they are suffering in the West. In the East they were valued, a madman was something special. The society took care of him, he was respected, because he has certain elements of the sage, certain elements of the child. He is different from the so-called society, culture, civilization; he has fallen out of it. Of course, he has fallen down; a sage falls up, a madman falls down – that’s the difference – but both have fallen out. And they have similarities. Watch a madman, and then try to let your eyes become unfocused.

In Harvard, they were doing one experiment a few months ago, and they were surprised, they couldn’t believe it. They were trying to find out whether the world, as WE see it, is so or not – because many things have surfaced within the few last years. We see the world not as it is, we see it as we expect it to be seen, we project something onto it. It happened that a great ship reached a small island in the Pacific for the first time. The people of the island didn’t see it, nobody! And the ship was so vast – but the people were attuned, their eyes were attuned to small boats. They had never known such a big ship, they had never seen such a thing. Simply their eyes would not catch the glimpse, their eyes simply refused.

In Harvard they tried on a young man: they gave him spectacles with distorting glasses, and he had to wear them for seven days. For the first three days he was in a miserable state, because everything distorted, the whole world around distorted…. It gave him such a severe headache, he couldn’t sleep. Even with closed eyes those distorted figures would… the faces distorted, the trees distorted, the roads distorted. He couldn’t even walk because he couldn’t believe: ”What is true and what is given by the projection of distorting glasses?”

But a miracle happened! After the third day he became attuned to it; the distortion disappeared. The glasses remained the same, distorting, but he started looking at the world in the same old way. Within a week everything was okay: there was no headache, no problem, and the scientists were simply surprised; they couldn’t believe it was happening. The eyes had completely dropped, as if the glasses were no longer there. The glasses were there, and they were distorting – but the eyes had come to see the world for which they were trained.

Nobody knows whether what you are seeing is there or not. It may not be there, it may be there in a totally different way. The colors you see, the forms you see, everything is projected by the eyes. And whenever you look fixedly, focused with your old patterns, you see things according to your own conditioning. That’s why a madman has a liquid look, an absent look, looking and not looking together. This look is beautiful. It is one of the greatest tantra techniques:

IF ONE SEES NOUGHT WHEN STARING INTO SPACE…. Don’t see, just look. For the beginning few days, again and again you will see something, just because of the old habit. We hear things because of old habit. We see things because of old habit. We understand things because of old habit.

One of the greatest disciples of Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, used to insist to his disciples on a certain thing – and everybody resented it, and many people left simply because of that insistence. If somebody said, ”Yesterday you told…” he immediately would stop him and say, ”Don’t say it like that. Say, ’I understood that you said this thing yesterday.’ ’I understood….’ Don’t say what I said; you cannot know that. Talk about what you heard.” And he would insist so much because we are habitual.

Again you might say, ”In THE BIBLE it is said…” and he would say, ”Don’t say that! Simply say that you understand that this is said in THE BIBLE.” With EACH sentence he insisted, ”Always remember that this is YOUR understanding.”

We go on forgetting. His disciples went on forgetting again and again, and every day, and he was stubborn about it. He would not allow you to go on. He would say, ”Go back. Say first that, ’I understand you said this, this is my understanding’… because you hear according to yourself, you see according to yourself – because you have a fixed pattern of seeing and hearing.”

This has to be dropped. To know existence, all fixed attitudes have to be dropped. Your eyes should be just windows, not projectors. Your ears should be just doors, not projectors. It happened: One psychoanalyst who was studying with Gurdjieff tried to do this experiment. In a wedding ceremony he tried a very simple but beautiful experiment. He stood by the side, people passing, and he watched them and he felt that nobody at the receiving end was hearing what they were saying – so many people, some rich man’s wedding ceremony. So he also joined in and he said very quietly to the first person in the receiving line, ”My grandmother died today.” The man said, ”So good of you, so beautiful.” Then to another he said it and the man said, ”How nice of you.” And to the groom, when he said this, he said, ”Old man, it is time you also followed.” Nobody is listening to anybody. You hear whatsoever you expect. Expectation is your specs – that is the glasses. Your eyes should be windows – this is the technique. Nothing should go out of the eyes, because if something goes a cloud is created. Then you see things which are not there, then a subtle hallucination…. Let pure clarity be in the eyes, in the ears; all your senses should be clear, perception pure – only then the existence can be revealed to you. And when you know existence, then you know that you are a buddha, a god, because in existence everything is divine.

IF ONE SEES NOUGHT WHEN STARING INTO SPACE; IF WITH THE MIND ONE THEN OBSERVES THE MIND…. First stare into the sky; lie down on the ground and just stare at the sky. Only o ne thing has to be tried: don’t look at anything. In the beginning you will fall again and again, you will forget again and again. You will not be able to remember continuously. Don’t be frustrated, it is natural because of so long a habit. Whenever you remember again, unfocus your eyes, make them loose, just look at the sky – not doing anything, just looking. Soon a time comes when you can see into the sky without trying to see anything there. Then try it with your inner sky:

… IF WITH THE MIND ONE THEN OBSERVES THE MIND….

Then close your eyes and look inside, not looking for anything, just the same absent look. Thoughts floating but you are not looking for them, or at them – you are simply looking. If they come it is good, if they don’t come it is good also. Then you will be able to see the gaps: one thought passes, another comes – and the gap. And then, by and by, you will be able to see that the thought becomes transparent, even when the thought is passing you continue to see the gap, you continue to see the hidden sky behind the cloud.

And the more you get attuned to this vision, thoughts will drop by and by, they will come less and less, less and less. The gaps will become wider. For minutes together no thought coming, everything is so quiet and silent inside – you are for the first time together. Everything feels absolutely blissful, no disturbance. And if this look becomes natural to you – it becomes, it is one of the most natural things; one just has to unfocus, decondition:

… ONE DESTROYS DISTINCTIONS… then there is nothing good, nothing bad; nothing ugly, nothing beautiful, … AND REACHES BUDDHAHOOD. Buddhahood means the highest awakening. When there are no distinctions, all divisions are lost, unity is attained, only one remains. You cannot even call it ”one,” because that too is part of duality. One remains, but you cannot call it ”one,” because how can you call it ”one” without deep down saying ”two.” No, you don’t say that ”one” remains, simply that ”two” has disappeared, the many has disappeared. Now it is a vast oneness, there are no boundaries to anything.

One tree merging into another tree, earth merging into the trees, trees merging into the sky, the sky merging into the beyond… you merging in me, I merging in you… everything merging… distinctions lost, melting and merging like waves into other waves… a vast oneness vibrating, alive, without boundaries, without definitions, without distinctions… the sage merging into the sinner, the sinner merging into the sage… good becoming bad, bad becoming good… night turning into the day, the day turning into the night… life melting into death, death molding again into life – then everything has become one. Only at this moment buddhahood is attained: when there is nothing good, nothing bad, no sin, no virtue, no darkness, no night – nothing, no distinctions. Distinctions are there because of your trained eyes. Distinction is a learned thing. Distinction is not there in existence. Distinction is projected by you. Distinction is given by you to the world – it is not there. It is your eyes’ trick, your eyes playing a trick on you.

THE CLOUDS THAT WANDER THROUGH THE SKY HAVE NO ROOTS, NO HOME;NOR DO THE DISTINCTIVE THOUGHTS FLOATING THROUGH THE MIND.ONCE THE SELF-MIND IS SEEN,DISCRIMINATION STOPS.

THE CLOUDS THAT WANDER THROUGH THE SKY HAVE NO ROOTS AND NO HOME…. And the same is true for your thoughts, and the same is true for your inner sky. Your thoughts have no roots, they have no home; just like clouds they wander. So you need not fight them, you need not be against them, you need not even try to stop thought.

This should become a deep understanding in you, because whenever a person becomes interested in meditation he starts trying to stop thinking. And if you try to stop thoughts they will never be stopped, because the very effort to stop is a thought, the very effort to meditate is a thought, the very effort to attain buddhahood is a thought. And how can you stop a thought by another thought? How can you stop mind by creating another mind? Then you will be clinging to the other. And this will go on and on, ad nauseam; then there is no end to it.

Don’t fight – because who will fight? Who are you? Just a thought, so don’t make yourself a battleground of one thought fighting another. Rather, be a witness, you just watch thoughts floating. They stop, but not by your stopping. They stop by your becoming more aware, not by any effort on your part to stop them. No, they never stop, they resist. Try and you will find: try to stop a thought and the thought will persist. Thoughts are very stubborn, adamant; they are HATHA YOGIS, they persist. You throw them and they will come back a million and one times. You will get tired, but they will not get tired. It happened that one man came to Tilopa. The man wanted to attain buddhahood and he had heard that this Tilopa has attained. And Tilopa was staying in a temple somewhere in Tibet. The man came; Tilopa was sitting, and the man said, ”I would like to stop my thoughts.”

Tilopa said, ”It is very easy. I will give you a device, a technique. You follow this: just sit down and don’t think of monkeys. This will do.” The man said, ”So easy? Just not thinking of monkeys? But I have never been thinking about them.” Tilopa said, ”Now you do it, and tomorrow morning you report.”

You can understand what happened to that poor man… monkeys and monkeys all around. In the night he couldn’t get any sleep, not a wink. He would open his eyes and they were sitting there, or he would close his eyes and they were sitting there, and they were making faces…. He was simply surprised. ”Why has this man given this technique, because if monkeys are the problem, then I have never been bothered by them. This is happening for the first time!” And he tried, in the morning again he tried. He took a bath, sat, but nothing doing: the monkeys wouldn’t leave him. He came back by the evening almost mad – because the monkeys were following him and he was talking to them. He came and he said, ”Save me somehow. I don’t want this, I was okay, I don’t want

ANY meditation. And I don’t want your enlightenment – but save me from these monkeys!” If you think of monkeys, it may be that they may not come to you. But if you want not… if you want them NOT to come to you, then they will follow you. They have their egos and they cannot leave you so easily. And what do you think of yourself: trying not to think of monkeys? The monkeys get irritated, this cannot be allowed.

This happens to people. Tilopa was joking, he was saying that if you try to stop a thought, you cannot. On the contrary, the very effort to stop it gives it energy, the very effort to avoid it becomes attention. So, whenever you want to avoid something you are paying too much attention to it. If you want not to think a thought, you are already thinking about it. Remember this, otherwise you will be in the same plight. The poor man who was obsessed became obsessed with monkeys because he wanted to stop them. There is no need to stop the mind. Thoughts are rootless, homeless vagabonds, you need not be worried about them. You simply watch, watch without looking at them, simply look.

If they come, good, don’t feel bad – because even a slight feeling that it is not good and you have started fighting. It’s okay, it is natural: as leaves come in the trees, thoughts come to the mind. It’s okay, it is perfectly as it should be. If they don’t come, it is beautiful. You simply remain an impartial watcher, neither for nor against, neither appreciating nor condemning – without any valuation. You simply sit inside yourself and look, looking without looking at. And this happens, that the more you look, the less you find; the deeper you look, the thoughts disappear, disperse. Once you know this then the key is in your hand. And this key unlocks the most secret phenomenon: the phenomenon of buddhahood. THE CLOUDS THAT WANDER THROUGH THE SKY HAVE NO ROOTS, NO HOME; NOR DO THE

DISTINCTIVE THOUGHTS FLOATING THROUGH THE MIND. ONCE THE SELF-MIND IS SEEN, DISCRIMINATION STOPS.

And once you can see that thoughts are floating – you are not the thoughts but the space in which thoughts are floating – you have attained to your self-mind, you have understood the phenomenon of your consciousness. Then discrimination stops: then nothing is good, nothing is bad; then all desire simply disappears, because if there is nothing good, nothing bad, there is nothing to be desired, nothing to be avoided. You accept, you become loose and natural. You simply start floating with existence, not going anywhere, because there is no goal; not moving to any target, because there is no target. Then you start enjoying every moment, whatsoever it brings – whatsoever, remember. And you can enjoy it, because now you have no desires and no expectations. And you don’t ask for anything, so whatsoever is given you feel grateful. Just sitting and breathing is so beautiful, just being here is so wonderful that every moment of life becomes a magical thing, a miracle in itself.

IN SPACE SHAPES AND COLORS FORM, BUT NEITHER BY BLACK NOR WHITE IS SPACE TINGED. FROM THE SELF-MIND ALL THINGS EMERGE, THE MIND BY VIRTUES AND BY VICES IS NOT STAINED.

And then, then you know that IN SPACE SHAPES AND COLORS FORM. Clouds take many types of shapes: you can see elephants and lions, and whatsoever you like. In space forms, colors, come and go… BUT NEITHER BY BLACK NOR WHITE IS SPACE TINGED… but whatsoever happens, the sky remains untouched, untinged. In the morning it is like a fire, a red fire coming from the sun, the whole sky becomes red; but in the night where has that redness gone? The whole sky is dark, black. In the morning, where has that blackness gone? The sky remains untinged, untouched. And this is the way of a sannyasin: to remain like a sky, untinged by whatsoever comes and happens. A good thought comes – a sannyasin doesn’t brag about it. He doesn’t say, ”I am filled with good thoughts, virtuous thoughts, blessings for the world.” No, he doesn’t brag, because if he brags he is tinged. He does not claim that he is good. A bad thought comes – he is not depressed by it, otherwise he is tinged. Good or bad, day or night, everything that comes and goes he simply watches. Seasons change and he watches; youth becomes old age and he watches – he remains untinged. And that is the deepest core of being a sannyasin, to be like a sky, space.

And this is in fact the case. When you think you are tinged, it is just thinking. When you think that you have become good or bad, sinner or sage, it is just thinking, because your inner sky never becomes anything – it is a BEING, it never becomes anything. All becoming is just getting identified with some form and name, some color, some form arising in the space – all becoming. You are a being, you are already that – no need to become anything.

Look at the sky: spring comes and the whole atmosphere is filled with birds singing, and then flowers and the fragrance. And then comes the fall, and then comes summer. Then comes the rain – and everything goes on changing, changing, changing. And it all happens in the sky, but nothing tinges it. It remains deeply distant; everywhere present, and distant; nearest to everything and farthest away. A sannyasin is just like the sky: he lives in the world – hunger comes, and satiety; summer comes, and winter; good days, bad days; good moods, very elated, ecstatic, euphoric; bad moods, depressed, in the valley, dark, burdened – everything comes and goes and he remains a watcher. He simply looks, and he knows everything will go, many things will come and go. He is no more identified with anything. Non Identification is sannyas, and sannyas is the greatest flowering, the greatest blooming that is possible. IN SPACE SHAPES AND COLORS FORM, BUT NEITHER BY BLACK NOR WHITE IS SPACE

TINGED. FROM THE SELF-MIND ALL THINGS EMERGE, THE MIND BY VIRTUES AND BY VICES IS NOT STAINED. When Buddha attained to the ultimate, the utterly ultimate enlightenment, he was asked, ”What have you attained?” And he laughed and said, ”Nothing – because whatsoever I have attained was already there inside me. It is not something new that I have achieved. It has always been there from eternity, it is my very nature. But I was not mindful about it, I was not aware of it. The treasure was always there, but I had forgotten about it.”

You have forgotten, that’s all – that’s your ignorance. Between a buddha and you there is NO distinction as far as your nature is concerned, but only one distinction, and that distinction is that you don’t remember who you are – and he remembers. You are the same, but he remembers and you don’t remember. He is awake, you are fast asleep, but your nature is the same.

Try to live it out in this way – Tilopa is talking about techniques – live in the world as if you are the sky, make it your very style of being. Somebody is angry at you, insulting – watch. If anger arises in you, watch; be a watcher on the hills, go on looking and looking and looking. And just by looking, without looking at anything, without getting obsessed by anything, when your perception becomes clear, suddenly, in a moment, in fact no time happens, suddenly, without time, you are fully awake; you are a buddha, you become the enlightened, the awakened one. What does a buddha gain out of it? He gains nothing. Rather, on the contrary, he loses many things: the misery, the pain, the anguish, the anxiety, the ambition, the jealousy, the hatred, the possessiveness, the violence – he loses all. As far as what he attains, nothing. He attains that which was already there, he remembers.

The Nature of Darkness and of Light

THE SONG CONTINUES: THE DARKNESS OF AGES CANNOT SHROUD THE GLOWING SUN; THE LONG KALPAS OF SAMSARA NE’ER CAN HIDE – THE MIND’S BRILLIANT LIGHT. THOUGH WORDS ARE SPOKEN TO EXPLAIN THE VOID, – THE VOID AS SUCH CAN NEVER BE EXPRESSED. THOUGH WE SAY ”THE MIND IS BRIGHT AS LIGHT,” IT IS BEYOND ALL WORDS AND SYMBOLS. ALTHOUGH THE MIND IS VOID IN ESSENCE, ALL THINGS IT EMBRACES AND CONTAINS.

Let us first meditate a little on the nature of darkness. It is one of the most mysterious things in existence – and your life is so much involved in it, you cannot afford not to think about it. One has to come to terms with the nature of darkness because the same is the nature of sleep, and the same is the nature of death, and the same is the nature of all ignorance. The first thing, if you meditate on darkness, that will be revealed to you is that darkness does not exist, it is there without any existence. It is more mysterious than light. It has no existence at all; rather, on the contrary, it is just an absence of light. There is no darkness anywhere, you cannot find it, it is simply an absence. It is not in itself, it has no ”in-itself” existence, it is simply that the light is not present.

If the light is there, there is no darkness; if the light is not there, there is darkness – absence of light, it is not a presence of something. That’s why light comes and goes – darkness remains. It is not, but it persists. Light you can create, light you can destroy, but you cannot create darkness and you cannot destroy darkness: it is always there WITHOUT being there at all. The second thing, if you contemplate, you will come to realize that because it is non existential you cannot do anything to it. And if you try to do anything to it, YOU will be defeated. Darkness cannot be defeated, how can you defeat something which is not? And when you will be defeated you will think: ”It is very powerful because it has defeated me.” This is absurd! Darkness has no power; how can a thing have power which is not? You are not defeated by the darkness and its power, you are defeated by your foolishness. In the FIRST place you started fighting – that was foolish. How can you fight with something which is not? And remember, you have been fighting with many things which are not, they are just like darkness.

The whole morality is a fight against darkness, that’s why it is stupid. The whole morality, unconditionally, is a fight with darkness, fighting with something which in itself is not. Hate is not real, it is just the absence of love. Anger is not real, it is just the absence of compassion. Ignorance is not real, it is just the absence of buddhahood, of enlightenment. Sex is not real, it is just the absence of brahmacharya. And the whole morality goes on fighting with that which is not. A moralist can never succeed, it is impossible. Finally he has to be defeated – his whole effort is nonsense.

And there is the distinction between religion and morality: morality tries to fight with darkness, and religion tries to awaken the light which is hidden within. It doesn’t bother about the darkness, it simply tries to find the light within. Once the light is there, darkness disappears; once the light is there, you need not do anything to darkness – simply it is not there.

This is the second thing, that nothing can be done to darkness directly. If you want to do something with darkness, you will have to do something with light, not with darkness. Put the light off and the darkness is there; put the light on and the darkness is not there – but you cannot put on and put off darkness; you cannot bring it from somewhere, you cannot push it out. If you want to do something with darkness, you have to go via light, you have to go in an indirect way. Never fight things which are not. The mind is tempted to fight, but that temptation is dangerous: you will waste your energy and life and dissipate yourself. Don’t be tempted by the mind; simply see whether a thing has a real existence or is just an absence. If it is an absence then don’t fight with it, then seek the thing of which it is the absence – then you will be on the right track.

The third thing about darkness is that it is involved deeply with your existence in many millions of ways. Whenever you are angry, your light within has disappeared. In fact, you are angry because the light has disappeared, the darkness has entered. You can be angry only when you are unconscious, you cannot be angry consciously. Try it: either you will lose consciousness and anger will be there, or you will remain conscious and anger will not arise – you cannot be angry consciously. What does it mean? It means the nature of consciousness is just like light, and the nature of anger is just like darkness – you cannot have both. If the light is there, you cannot have darkness; if you are conscious, you cannot be angry. People come to me continuously and ask how not to be angry. They are asking a wrong question – and when you ask a wrong question it is very difficult to get the right answer. First ask the right question. Don’t ask how to dispel darkness, don’t ask how to dispel worries, anguish, anxiety; just analyze your mind and see why they are there in the first place. They are there because you are not conscious enough. So ask the right question: How to be more and more conscious? If you ask how not to be angry, you will become the victim of some moralist. And if you ask the question how to be more conscious, so anger cannot exist, so lust cannot exist, so greed cannot exist, then you are on the right track, then you will become a religious seeker.

Morality is a false coin; it deceives people. It is not religion at all. Religion has nothing to do with morality, because religion has nothing to do with darkness. It is a positive effort to awaken you. It does not bother about your character; what you do is meaningless and you cannot change it. You may decorate it, you cannot change it. You may color it in beautiful ways, you may paint it, but you cannot change it. There is only one transformation, only one revolution, and that revolution comes not by being concerned with your character, by your acts, by your doings, but being concerned with your BEING. Being is a positive phenomenon; once the being is alert, awake, conscious, suddenly darkness disappears – your being is of the nature of light.

And the fourth thing… then we can enter the SUTRA. Sleep is just like darkness. It is not accidental that you find it difficult to sleep when there is light; it is simply natural. Darkness has an affinity with sleep; that’s why it is easy to sleep in the night. Darkness all around creates the milieu in which you can fall into sleep very easily.

What happens in sleep? You lose consciousness by and by. There comes an interval period in which you dream. Dreaming means half-conscious, half-unconscious; just on the midway, moving towards total unconsciousness; from your waking state you are moving to total unconsciousness. On the path dreams exist. Dreams mean only that you are half-awake and half-asleep. That’s why, if you dream continuously the whole night, you feel tired in the morning. And if you are not allowed to dream, then too you will feel tired – because dreams exist for a certain reason.

In your waking hours you accumulate many things: thoughts, feelings, incomplete matters hang in the mind. You looked at a beautiful woman on the road and suddenly a desire arose in you. But you are a man of character, manners, civilized; you simply push it down, you will not look at it, you will go on with your work – an incomplete desire hangs around you. It has to be completed, otherwise you will not be able to fall into deep sleep. It will pull you back again and again. It will say, ”Come up! That woman was really beautiful, her body had a charm. And you are a fool, what are you doing here? Seek her – you have missed an opportunity!”

The desire hanging there will not allow you to fall into sleep. The mind creates a dream: again you are on the road, the beautiful woman passes, but this time you are alone without any civilization around you. No manners are needed, no etiquette is needed. You are like an animal, you are natural, no morality. This is your own private world; no police constable can enter into it, no judge can judge it. You are simply alone, there will not be even a witness. Now you can play with your lust: you will have a sexual dream. That dream completes the hanging desire, then you fall into sleep. But if you continuously dream, then too you will feel tired.

If your dreams are not allowed…. In the United States they have many sleep labs, and they have come to discover this phenomenon: if a person is not allowed to dream, within three weeks he will go mad. If he is awakened again and again whenever he starts dreaming…. There are visible signs. When a person starts dreaming you can awake him. Particularly his eyelids start fluttering fast; that means he is seeing a dream. When he is not seeing a dream his eyelids rest, because when he starts seeing a dream his eyes are functioning. Awake him and do this the whole night – whenever he starts dreaming, awake him. Within three weeks he will go mad.

Sleep doesn’t seem to be so necessary. If you awake a person… whenever he is not dreaming awake him: he will feel tired, but he will not go mad. What does it mean? It means dreams are a necessity for you. You are such… you are so illusory, your whole existence is such an illusion – what Hindus have called MAYA – that dreams are needed. Without dreams you cannot exist: dreams are your food, dreams are your strength, without dreams you will go mad. Dreams are a release of madness, and once the release happens you fall into sleep. From waking you fall into dreaming and from dreaming you fall into sleep. Every night a normal person has eight cycles of dreaming, and just a few moments between two dreaming cycles he has of deep sleep. In that deep sleep all consciousness disappears, it is absolutely dark. But still you are near the boundary, any emergency will awake you. The house is on fire, you will have to run back to your waking consciousness; or you are a mother and the child starts crying, you will run, rush, towards waking – so you remain on the boundary. You fall into deep darkness, but remain on the boundary.

In death you fall exactly to the center. Death and sleep are similar, the quality is the same. In sleep, every day, you fall into darkness, complete darkness; that means you completely become unconscious, the very opposite pole of buddhahood. A buddha is totally awakened, and every night you fall to total unawakened state, absolute darkness.

In the GITA, Krishna says to Arjuna that when everybody is fast asleep, the yogi is still awake. That doesn’t mean that he never sleeps: he sleeps, but only his body sleeps, his body rests. He has no dreams because he has no desires, so he cannot have incomplete desires. And he has no sleep like you – even in deepest rest his consciousness is clear, his consciousness burns like a flame. Every night you fall into sleep, you fall into deep unconsciousness, a coma. In death you fall in a deeper coma. These are all like darkness. That’s why you are afraid of darkness, because it is deathlike. And there are people who are afraid of sleep also, because sleep is also deathlike.

I have come across many people who cannot sleep, and they want to sleep. And when I tried to understand their mind, I came to realize that they are basically afraid. They say they would like to sleep because they feel tired, but deep down they are afraid of sleep – and that is creating the whole trouble. Ninety percent insomnia is fear of sleep; you are afraid. You are afraid of darkness; you will be afraid of sleep also, and the fear comes from the fear of death. Once you understand that these are all darknesses and your inner nature is that of light, things start changing. Then there is no sleep for you, only rest; then there is no death for you, only a change of clothes, of bodies, only a change of garments. But that can happen if you realize the inner flame, your nature, your innermost being.

Now we should enter the sutra: THE DARKNESS OF AGES – CANNOT SHROUD THE GLOWING SUN; – THE LONG KALPAS OF SAMSARA – NE’ER CAN HIDE THE MIND’S BRILLIANT LIGHT. Those who have awakened, they have come to realize that… THE DARKNESS OF AGES CANNOT SHROUD THE GLOWING SUN.

You may have been wandering in darkness for millions of lives, but it cannot destroy your inner light because darkness cannot be aggressive. It is not. Something which is not, how can it be aggressive? Darkness cannot destroy light – how can darkness destroy light? Even a small flame, darkness cannot destroy it, darkness cannot jump on it, cannot be in conflict with it – how can darkness destroy a flame? How can darkness shroud a flame? It is impossible, it has never happened because it cannot happen. But people go on thinking in terms of conflict: they think darkness is against light. This is absurd! Darkness cannot be against light. How can the absence be against that of which it is the absence? Darkness cannot be against light: there is no fight in it; it is simply the absence, sheer absence, sheer impotency – how can it attack?

You go on saying, ”What could I do? – I had an attack of anger” – it is impossible; ”I had an attack of greed” – it is impossible. Greed cannot attack, anger cannot attack: they are of the nature of darkness – and your being is light; the very possibility doesn’t exist. But anger comes; that shows only that your inner flame has been completely forgotten, you have become completely oblivious of it, you don’t know it is there. This forgetfulness can shroud it, but not darkness.

So the real darkness is your forgetfulness, and your forgetfulness can invite anger, greed, lust, hate, jealousy – they don’t attack you. Remember, you send the invitations first and they accept it. Your invitation is there – they cannot attack, they come as invited guests. You may have forgotten that you ever invited them, you can forget because you have forgotten yourself, you can forget anything. Forgetfulness is the real darkness. And in forgetfulness everything happens. You are just like a drunkard: completely forgotten yourself, who you are, where you are going, for what you are going. All direction is lost, the very sense of direction is not there. You are like a drunkard. That’s why all basic religious teachings insist on self-remembering. Forgetfulness is the disease, then self-remembering is going to be the antidote.

Try to remember yourself – and you will say, ”I know myself and I remember myself! What are you talking about?” Then try it: just keep your wristwatch before you, and look at the hand that shows seconds and remember only one thing: ”I am looking at this hand which is showing seconds.” You will not be able to remember for even three seconds together. You will forget many times – just a simple thing: ”I am looking and I will remember this, that I am looking.” You will forget. Many things will come in your mind: you have made an appointment; just looking at the watch the association will come in the mind: ”I have to go at five o’clock to meet a friend.” Suddenly the thought comes and you have forgotten that you are looking at it. Just by looking at the watch you may start thinking of Switzerland because it is Swissmade. Just by looking at the watch you may start thinking, ”How foolish I am. What am I doing here wasting time?” But you will not be able to remember, even for three consecutive seconds, that you are looking at the hand showing seconds moving.

If you can attain to one minute’s self-remembering, I promise you to make you a buddha. Even for one minute, sixty seconds, that will do. You will think, ”So cheap, so easy?” – it is not. You don’t know how deep is your forgetfulness. You will not be able to do it for one minute continuously, not a single thought coming in and disturbing your self-remembering. This is the real darkness. If you remember, you will become light. If you forget, you become dark. And in darkness, of course, all sorts of thieves come, all sorts of robbers attack you, all sorts of mishaps happen.

Self-remembrance is the key. Try to remember more and more, because whenever you try to remember more and more, you become centered, you are in yourself; your journeying mind falls back to one’s own self. Otherwise you are going somewhere: the mind continuously creating new desires, and you are following and chasing the mind simultaneously in many directions. That’s why you are split, you are not one, and your flame, inside flame, goes on wavering – a leaf in a strong wind.

When the inner flame becomes unwavering, suddenly you are going through a mutation, a transformation, a new being is born. That being will be of the nature of light. Right now you are of the nature of darkness, you are simply an absence of something which is possible. In fact, you are not yet, you are not yet born. You have taken many births and many deaths, but you have not yet been born. Your real birth is still going to take place, and this will be the work: that you transform your inner nature from forgetfulness to self-remembering. Do whatsoever you do. I don’t give you any discipline, and I don’t say to you, ”Do this and don’t do that.” My discipline is very easy. My discipline is: Do whatsoever you like – but do it with self-remembering; remember yourself that you are doing it. Walking, remember that you are walking. You need not verbalize this because verbalization will not help; that itself will become a distraction. You need not walk and say inside, ”I am walking,” because if you say, ”I am walking, I am walking,” this ”I am walking” will be the forgetfulness; then you will not be able to remember. Simply remember; there is no need to verbalize it.

I have to verbalize because I am talking to you, but when you are walking you simply remember the phenomenon, the walking; each step should be taken with full awareness. Eating, eat. I don’t say what to eat, and what not to eat. Whatsoever you like, eat, but with the self-remembrance that you are eating. And soon you will see many things have become impossible to do.

With self-remembering you cannot eat meat, impossible. It is impossible to be so violent if you remember. It is impossible to harm somebody when you remember, because when you remember yourself, suddenly you see that the same light, the same flame is burning everywhere, within each body, each unit. The more you know your inner nature, the more you penetrate the other. How can you kill for eating? It becomes simply impossible. Not that you practice it – if you practice it, it is false. If you practice not to be a thief it is false; you will be a thief, you will find subtle ways. If you practice nonviolence, your nonviolence… there will be violence hidden behind it.

No, religion cannot be practiced. Morality can be practiced; that’s why morality creates hypocrisy, morality creates false faces. Religion creates the authentic being, it cannot be practiced. How can you practice being? You simply become more aware and things start changing. You simply become more of the nature of light, and darkness disappears. THE DARKNESS OF AGES CANNOT SHROUD THE GLOWING SUN….

For millions of lives, for ages together, you have been in darkness – but don’t feel depressed and don’t feel hopeless, because even if you have lived in darkness for millions of lives, this very moment you can attain to the light. Just look: a house has remained closed for one hundred years, dark, and you go into it and you light a light. Will the darkness say, ”I am one hundred years old and this light is just a baby”? Will the darkness say, ”I am not going to disappear. You will have to burn light at least for one hundred years, only then…”? No, even a baby flame is enough for very very ancient darkness. Why? In one hundred years the darkness must have become engrained. But no, darkness cannot become engrained because it is NOT. It was simply waiting for the light – the moment the light comes in, the darkness disappears; it cannot resist because it has no positive existence. People come to me and they say, ”You teach that sudden enlightenment is possible. Then what will happen of our past lives and our past karmas?” Nothing – they are of the nature of darkness. You may have murdered, you may have been a thief, a robber, you may have been a Hitler, a Genghis Khan, or somebody, the worst possible, but that doesn’t make any difference. Once you remember yourself, the light is there; the whole past disappears immediately; not for a single moment can it stay there. You murdered, but you cannot become a murderer; you murdered because you were not. aware of yourself, you were not aware what you are doing.

Jesus is reported to have said on the cross, ”Father, forgive these people because they know not what they are doing.” He was saying simply, ”These people are not of the nature of light, they don’t remember themselves. They are doing in complete forgetfulness, in darkness they are moving and stumbling. Forgive them, they are not responsible for whatsoever they are doing.” How can a person be responsible who does not remember himself? If a drunkard kills somebody, even the court forgives him if it can be proved that he acted when he was completely unconscious. Why? Because how can you make a person responsible? You can make him responsible for drinking, but you cannot make him responsible for murder. If a madman kills somebody, he has to be forgiven because he is not himself. Responsibility means remembering.

Whatsoever you have done, I tell you, don’t be worried by it. It has happened to you because you were not aware. Alight your inner flame – find it, seek it, it is there – and suddenly the whole past disappears, as if it all happened in a dream. In fact, it has happened in a dream, because you were not conscious. All karmas have happened in a dream, they are made of the same stuff as dreams are made. You need not wait for your karmas to be fulfilled – then you will have to wait for eternity. And even then you will not be out of the wheel because you cannot simply wait for eternity: you will be doing many things meanwhile; then the vicious circle cannot be completed ever. You will move on and on and on, and you will go on doing things, and new things will make you entangled in more future things – then where will the end be? No, there is no need. You simply become aware and suddenly all karmas drop. In a single moment of intense awareness, the whole past disappears, becomes rubbish.

This is one of the most fundamental things the East has discovered. Christians cannot understand it; they go on thinking of judgment, and the Last Day of Judgment, that everybody has to be judged by his acts. Then Christ is wrong when he says, ”Forgive these people because they know not what they are doing.” Jews cannot understand it, Mohammedans cannot understand it. Hindus are really one of the most daring races, they have penetrated to the very core of the problem: the problem is not action, the problem is being. Once you realize your inner being and the light, you are no more of this world; whatsoever happened in the past happened in a dream. That’s why Hindus say this whole world is a dream – only you are not a dream, only the dreamer is not the dream; otherwise, everything is a dream.

Look at the beauty of this truth: only the dreamer is not a dream, because the dreamer cannot be a dream; otherwise the dream cannot exist. At least somebody, the dreamer, has to be a real phenomenon. In the day you are awake; you do many things: you go to the shop, you go to the market, you work in a farm, or in a factory, and you do millions of things. By the night when you are asleep, you forget everything about it; it disappears – a new world starts, the world of the dream. And now scientists say that the same time has to be given to dream as you give to awakening. The same waking hours have to be given to dreaming. In sixty years’ time, if twenty years have been devoted to work in the waking state, twenty years have been devoted to dreaming; the SAME time, exactly the same time, has to be devoted to dreaming. So dreaming is not less real, it has the same quality. In the night you dream, you forget about your waking world. In the deep sleep you forget about your waking world, your dreaming world. In the morning again the waking world comes into existence, you forget about your dreaming and you sleep. But one thing continuously remains – you. Who remembers the dreams? In the morning who says, ”I dreamt last night”? In the morning who says, ”Last night I had a very very deep sleep without any dreams”? Who? There must be a witness to it who stands aside, who always stands aside and goes on looking. Waking comes, dreaming comes, sleep comes – and somebody stands by the side and goes on looking. Only this is the real, because it exists in every state. Other states disappear, but it has to remain in every state, it is the only permanent thing in you.

Attain to this witness more and more. Become more and more alert, and become more and more a witness. Rather than being an actor in the world, you be a witness, a spectator. Everything else is a dream, only the dreamer is the truth. He has to be true, otherwise where will dreams happen? He’s the base; illusions can happen only because… if he is there. And once you remember, you start laughing. What type of life existed without remembering? You were a drunkard, moving from one state to another, not knowing why, drifting with no direction. But:

THE DARKNESS OF AGES – CANNOT SHROUD THE GLOWING SUN; – THE LONG KALPAS OF SAMSARA… many many ages, eons of this world, kalpas, … NE’ER CAN HIDE THE MIND’S BRILLIANT LIGHT. It is always there, it is your very being. THOUGH WORDS ARE SPOKEN TO EXPLAIN THE VOID, – THE VOID AS SUCH CAN NEVER BE EXPRESSED. – THOUGH WE SAY ”THE MIND IS BRIGHT AS LIGHT,” – IT IS BEYOND ALL WORDS AND SYMBOLS.

One thing will be helpful to understand. There are three approaches towards reality. One is the empirical approach, the approach of the scientific mind – experiment, experiment with the objective world, and unless something is proved by experiment, don’t accept it. Then there is another approach, of the logical mind. He does not experiment; he simply thinks, argues, finds pros and cons, and just by mind-effort, reason, he concludes. And then there is a third approach, the metaphorical, the approach of poetry – and of religion. These three approaches are there; three dimensions, one reaches towards reality.

Science cannot go beyond the object, because the very approach makes a limitation. Science cannot go beyond the outer, because only with the outer experiments are possible. Philosophy, logic, cannot go beyond the subjective, because it is a mind-effort, you work it out in your mind. You cannot dissolve the mind, you cannot go beyond it. Science is objective; logic, philosophy, is subjective. Religion goes beyond, poetry goes beyond: it is a golden bridge, it bridges the object with the subject. But then everything becomes a chaos – of course, very creative; in fact, there is no creativity if there is no chaos. But everything becomes indiscriminate, divisions disappear. I would like to say it in this way. Science is a day approach: in the full noon, everything is clear, distinct, boundaries, and you can see the other well. Logic is a night approach; groping in the dark only with the mind, without any experimental support, just thinking. Poetry and religion are twilight approaches; just in the middle. The day is no more there, the brightness of the noon has gone, things are not so distinct, clear. The night has not yet come; the darkness has not enveloped all. Darkness and day meet, there is a soft grayness, neither white nor black – boundaries meeting and merging, everything indiscriminate, everything is everything else. This is the metaphorical approach.

That’s why poetry talks in metaphors – and religion is the ultimate poetry; religion talks in metaphors. Remember, those metaphors are not to be taken literally, otherwise you will miss the point. When I say ”the inner light,” don’t think it in terms of literal understanding, no. When I say ”the inner is like light,” it is a metaphor. Something is indicated, but not demarked, not defined; something of the nature of light, not exactly light – it is a metaphor. And this becomes a problem because religion talks in metaphors; it cannot talk otherwise, there is no other way. If I have been to another world and I have seen flowers which don’t exist on this earth, and I come to you and talk about those flowers, what will I do? I will have to be metaphorical. I will say ”like roses” – but they are not roses; otherwise why say ”like roses,” simply say ”roses.” But they are not roses, they have a different quality to them.

”Like” means I am trying to bridge my understanding of the other world with your understanding of this world – hence the metaphor. You know the roses; you don’t know those flowers of the other world. I know those flowers of the other world and I am trying to communicate to you something of that world; I say they are like roses. Don’t be angry at me when you reach to the other world and you don’t find roses; don’t drag me to a court – because I never meant it literally. Just the quality of a rose is indicated; it is just a gesture, a finger pointing to the moon. But don’t catch hold of the finger, the finger is irrelevant – look at the moon and forget the finger. That is the meaning of a metaphor; don’t cling to the metaphor. Many people are in deep murky waters because of this: they cling to the metaphor. I talk about the inner light – immediately, after a few days, people start coming to me, they say, ”I have seen the inner light”! They have found the roses in the other world… they don’t exist there. Because of this metaphorical language, many people simply become imaginative.

P.D. Ouspensky had coined a word; he used to call it ”imaginazione.” Whenever somebody came and he started talking about inner experiences: ”The KUNDALINI has arisen; I have seen a light in the head; CHAKRAS are opening,” he would stop him immediately and say, ”Imaginazione.” So people would ask, ”What is this ’imaginazione’?” He would say, ”The disease of imagination,” and he would simply drop the matter. Immediately he would say, ”Stop! You have fallen a victim.”

Religion talks in metaphors – because there is no other way to talk, because religion talks of the other world, of the beyond. It tries to find similes in this world. It uses words which are irrelevant, but somehow those irrelevant words are the only available words; you have to use them. Poetry you can understand easily; religion is difficult, because with poetry you already know it is imagination so there is no trouble. Science you can understand easily because you know it is no imagination, it is an empirical fact. Poetry you can understand easily, you know it is poetry, a mere poetry, finished – it is imagination. Good! Beautiful! You can enjoy it – it is not a truth.

What will you do with religion? – and religion is the ultimate poetry. And it is not imagination. And I tell you, it is empirical, as empirical as science – but it cannot use scientific terms, they are too objective. It cannot use philosophical terms, they are too subjective. It has to use something which is neither, it has to use something which bridges both – it uses poetry.

All religion is ultimate poetry, essential poetry. You cannot find a greater poet than Buddha. Of course, he never tried writing a single poem. I am here with you. I am a poet. I have not composed a single poem, not even a HAIKU, but continuously I am talking in metaphors. Continuously I am trying to bridge the gap that is created by science and philosophy. I am trying to give you the feeling of the whole, undivided.

Science is half, philosophy is half – what to do? How to give you the feeling of the whole? If you move deep into philosophy, you will come to what Shankara came to. He said, ”The world is illusory, it doesn’t exist – only consciousness exists.” This is too one-sided. If you move with scientists you will come to what Marx came to. Marx and Shankara are the polar opposites. Marx says, ”There is no consciousness – only the world exists.” And I know both are true and both are wrong. Both are true because they are saying the half truth; and both are wrong because they are denying the other half. And if I have to talk about the whole, how to do it? Poetry is the only way, metaphor is the only way out. Remember this:

THOUGH WORDS ARE SPOKEN TO EXPLAIN THE VOID, – THE VOID AS SUCH CAN NEVER BE EXPRESSED. That’s why sages go on insisting, ”Whatever we are saying, we cannot say. It is inexpressible, and still we are trying to express it.” They always emphasize the fact, because the possibility exists that you may take them literally. The void is a void in the sense that nothing of you will be left there; but the void is not a void in another sense, because the whole will descend in it – the void is going to be the MOST perfect, fulfilled phenomenon. So what to do? If you say ”void,” suddenly the mind thinks there is nothing; then why bother? And if you say it is not a void, it is the most perfect being, the mind goes on an ”ambition trip”: how to become the most perfect being. Then the ego enters in it.

To drop the ego the word ”void” is emphasized. But to make you alert, the void is not really a void, it is filled with the whole. When you are not, the whole existence comes into you. When the drop disappears, it becomes the ocean. THOUGH WE SAY ”THE MIND IS BRIGHT AS LIGHT,” says Tilopa, – IT IS BEYOND ALL WORDS AND SYMBOLS.

Don’t be deceived by the metaphor, don’t start imagining a light inside. It is very easy – ”imaginazione.” You can close the eyes and imagine a light; you are such a dreamer, you can dream so many things, why not light? Mind has a faculty to create anything that you want, just a little persistence is needed. You can create beautiful women in the mind, why not light? What is wrong in light? You can create so many beautiful women in your mind, that any woman in real life will be unsatisfactory because she will never come up to the standard. You can create a whole world of experiences inside. Every sense has its own imaginative center behind it.

In hypnosis it happens: the imagination starts working with absolute functioning, and reason drops completely because reason goes into sleep in hypnosis. Hypnosis is nothing but a sleep of reason, the doubter; then the imagination functions perfectly. Then there is no brake on it, only an accelerator – you go on and on, no brake is there.

In hypnosis anything can be imagined: you give an onion to a person who is lying hypnotized and say, ”It is a beautiful apple, very delicious,” and he will eat the onion and will say, ”It is really beautiful. I have never tasted such a delicious apple before.” You give him an apple and say, ”This is an onion,” and his eyes will start dropping tears and he will say, ”Very very strong” – and he is eating an apple. What is happening? The doubter is not there; it is a hypnosis, the doubter has gone to sleep. Now imagination functions, there is no check on it – that is the problem with religion also.

Religion needs trust. Trust means: the doubting faculty of the mind goes to sleep. It is like hypnosis. So when people say to you, ”This man, Osho, has hypnotized you,” they are right in a way. If you trust me it is like hypnosis: fully awake, you have dropped your reason – now imagination functions with a total capacity, now you are in a dangerous situation.

If you allow imagination, you can imagine all sorts of things: kundalini is arising, chakras opening; any sorts of things you can imagine, and they will all happen to you. And they are beautiful – but not true. So when you trust a person, in the very trusting you have to be aware of imagination. Trust, but don’t become a victim of imagination. Whatsoever is being said here is metaphorical. And remember always, that all experiences are imagination; all experiences, I say, unconditionally. Only the experiencer is the truth. So whatever you experience, don’t pay much attention to it, and don’t start bragging about it. Just remember that all that is experienced is illusory – only the one who experiences is true. Pay attention to the witness; focus on the witness and not on the experiences. However beautiful, all experiences are dreamlike and one has to go beyond all of them.

So, religion is poetic, one has to talk metaphorically. The disciple is in deep trust, he can fall a victim easily of imagination – one has to be very very alert. Trust, listen to the metaphors, but remember they are metaphors. Trust – many things will start happening, but remember: all is imagination except you. And you have to come to a point where there is no experience; only the experiencer sits in his abode silently, no experience anywhere, no object, no light, no flowers flowering, no – nothing. Somebody asked Lin Chi – he was sitting in his monastery, a small monastery on a hilltop. He was sitting under a tree, near a rock, and somebody asked, ”What happens when one has attained?” And Lin Chi said, ”I sit alone here – clouds pass, and I watch; and seasons come and I watch; and visitors come sometimes and I watch. And I sit alone here.”

Just finally the witness, the consciousness, remains watching everything. All experiences disappear, only the very background of all experiencing remains. You remain, everything is lost. Remember this, because with me you trust and I talk metaphors – and then imagination is possible. ”Imaginazione”: be aware of that disease. THOUGH WE SAY ”THE MIND IS BRIGHT AS LIGHT,” – IT IS BEYOND ALL WORDS AND SYMBOLS. ALTHOUGH THE MIND IS VOID IN ESSENCE, – ALL THINGS IT EMBRACES AND CONTAINS. These assertions look contradictory: you say the mind is void, and the next moment you say it contains all and everything. Why these contradictions? It is just the nature of the whole religious experience. Metaphors have to be used – and immediately you have to be alerted not to become a victim of the metaphors.

It is void in essence, but it contains all things. When you become totally empty, only then will you be fulfilled. When you are no more, only then for the first time will you be. Says Jesus, ”If you lose yourself, you will attain. If you cling to yourself, you will lose. If you die, you will be reborn. If you can efface yourself completely, you will become eternal, you will become the very eternity.” These are all metaphors – but if you trust, if you love, if you allow your heart to be open towards me, then you will be able to understand. That understanding passeth all understanding. It is not intellectual, it is heart-to-heart. It is an energy jump from one heart to another.

I am here and I am trying to talk to you, but that is secondary. The basic thing is if you are open I can pour myself into you. If my talking to you can help only this much, that you become more and more open, it has done its work. I’m not trying to say something to you, I am just trying to make you more open – that is enough. Then I can pour myself into you… and unless you taste me, you will not be able to understand what I am saying.

Be Like a Hollow Bamboo

THE SONG CONTINUES: DO NOUGHT WITH THE BODY BUT RELAX; SHUT FIRM THE MOUTH AND SILENT REMAIN; EMPTY YOUR MIND AND THINK OF NOUGHT. LIKE A HOLLOW BAMBOO REST AT EASE WITH YOUR BODY. GIVING NOT NOR TAKING, PUT YOUR MIND AT REST. MAHAMUDRA IS LIKE A MIND THAT CLINGS TO NOUGHT. THUS PRACTICING, IN TIME YOU WILL REACH BUDDHAHOOD.

First, the nature of activity and the hidden currents in it have to be understood, otherwise no relaxation is possible. Even if you want to relax, it will be impossible if you have not observed, watched, realized, the nature of your activity, because activity is not a simple phenomenon.

Many people would like to relax, but they cannot relax. Relaxation is like a flowering: you cannot force it. You have to understand the whole phenomenon – why you are so active, why so much occupation with activity, why you are obsessed with it. Remember two words: one is ”action,” another is ”activity.” Action is not activity; activity is not action. Their natures are diametrically opposite. Action is when the situation demands it, you act, you respond. Activity is when the situation doesn’t matter, it is not a response; you are so restless within that the situation is just an excuse to be active.

Action comes out of a silent mind – it is the most beautiful thing in the world. Activity comes out of a restless mind – it is the ugliest. Action is when it has a relevance; activity is irrelevant. Action is moment to moment, spontaneous; activity is loaded with the past. It is not a response to the present moment, rather, it is pouring your restlessness, which you have been carrying from the past, into the present. Action is creative. Activity is very very destructive – it destroys you, it destroys others. Try to see the delicate distinction. For example, you are hungry then you eat – this is action. But you are not hungry, you don’t feel any hunger at all, and still you go on eating – this is activity. This eating is like a violence: you destroy food, you crush your teeth and destroy food; it gives you a little release of your inner restlessness. You are eating not because of hunger, you are simply eating because of an inner need, an urge to be violent.

In the animal world violence is associated with mouth and hands, the fingernails and the teeth; two are the violent things in the animal kingdom. In food, while you are eating, both are joined together; with your hand you take the food, and with your mouth you eat it – violence is released. But there is no hunger; it is not an action, it is a disease. This activity is an obsession. Of course, you cannot go on eating like this because then you will burst. So people have invented tricks: they will chew PAN or gum, they will smoke cigarettes – these are false foods, without any nutritious value in them, but they work well as far as violence is concerned. A man sitting chewing pan, what is he doing? He is killing somebody. In the mind, if he becomes aware, he may have a fantasy of murdering, killing – and he is chewing pan: a very innocent activity in itself. You are not harming anybody – but very dangerous for you, because you seem to be completely unconscious of what you are doing. A man smoking, what is he doing? Very innocent in a way: just taking the smoke in and bringing it out, inhaling and exhaling; a sort of ill PRANAYAMA, and a sort of secular transcendental meditation. He is creating a MANDALA: takes smoke in, brings it out, takes it in, brings it out – a mandala is created, a circle. Through smoking he is doing a sort of chanting, a rhythmic chanting. It soothes; his inner restlessness is relieved a little.

If you are talking to a person, always remember – it is almost hundred percent accurate – if the person starts finding his cigarette, it means he is bored, you should leave him now. He would have wanted to throw you out; that cannot be done, that will be too impolite. He is finding his cigarette; he is saying, ”Now, finished! I am fed up.” In the animal kingdom he would have jumped on you, but he cannot – he is a human being, civilized. He jumps on the cigarette, he starts smoking. Now he is not worried about you, now he is enclosed in his own chanting of the smoke. It soothes. But this activity shows that you are obsessed. You cannot remain yourself, you cannot remain silent, you cannot remain inactive. Through activity you go on throwing your madness, insanity. Action is beautiful, action comes as a spontaneous response; life needs response. Every moment you have to act, but the activity comes through the present moment. You are hungry and you seek food. You are thirsty and you go to the well. You are feeling sleepy and you go to sleep. It is out of the total situation that you act. Action is spontaneous and total. Activity is never spontaneous, it comes