The two difficulties
1. The ego
There are only two difficulties on the path of meditation: one is the ego. You are continuously prepared by the society, by the family, by the school, by the church, by everybody around you, to be egoistic. Even modern psychology is based on strengthening the ego. The whole idea of modern psychology, modern education, is that unless a person has a very strong ego he will not be able to struggle in life where there is so much competition that, if you are a humble man, anybody will push you aside; you will always remain backward. You need a very steely, strong ego to fight in this competitive world; then only can you become a success. In any field โit may be business, it may be politics, it may be any professionโyou need a very assertive personality, and our whole society is geared to produce the assertive personality in the child. From the very beginning we start telling him, โCome first in your classโ; when the child does come first in the class, everybody. praises him. What are you doing? You are feeding his ego from the very beginning. You are giving him a certain ambition: โYou can become the president of the country, you can become the prime minister of the country.โ He starts the journey with these ideas, and his ego goes on becoming bigger and bigger as he succeeds. In every way the ego is the greatest disease that can happen to man. If you succeed, your ego becomes bigโthat is a danger, because then you will have to remove a big rock which is blocking the path. Or if the ego is small, you have not been successful, you have proved to be a failure, then your ego will become a wound. Then it hurts, then it creates an inferiority complexโthen too it creates a problem. You are always afraid to enter into anything, even meditation, because you know you are a failure, that you are going to failโthat has become your mind. Everywhere you have failed, and meditation is such a great thingโฆ you cannot succeed. If you enter into meditation with this ideaโthat failure is bound to be, that it is your destiny, that it is your fateโthen of course you cannot succeed. So if the ego is big it prevents you. And if the ego is very small it becomes a wound which also prevents you. In each case the ego is one of the problems. ยง In the motherโs womb each child is profoundly blissful. Of course he is unaware of it, not knowing anything about it. He is so one with his bliss that there is no knower left behind. Blissfulness is his being, and there is no distinction between the knower and the known. So of course the child is not aware that he is blissful. You become aware only when you have lost something. It is so. It is very difficult to know something without losing it, because when you have not lost it you are so totally one with it. There is no distance: the observer and the observed are one; the known and the knower are one. Every child is in a profoundly blissful state. Psychologists also agree with this. They say that the whole search of religion is nothing but a way to again find the womb of the mother. They use it as a criticism of religion, but to me it is not criticism at all. It is simply true. Yes, the search for religion is again a search for the womb. The search for religion is again a search to make this whole existence a womb. The child is absolutely in tune with the mother. The child is never out of tune with the mother. The child does not know that he is separate from the mother. If the mother is healthy the child is healthy; if the mother is ill the child is ill. If the mother is sad the child is sad; if the mother is happy the child is happy. If the mother is dancing the child is dancing; if the mother is sitting silently the child is silent. The child has no boundaries of his own yet. This is the purest bliss, but it has to be lost. The child is born, and suddenly he is thrown off-center. Suddenly he is uprooted from the earth, from the mother. He loses his moorings and he does not know who he is. There was no need to know it when he was with the mother. There was no need to knowโhe was all, and there was no need to know, there was no distinction. There was no โyouโ, so there was no question of โI.โ The reality was undivided. It was adwaitaโpure adwaita, pure non-duality. But once the child is born, the umbilical cord is cut and he starts breathing on his own; suddenly his whole being becomes a quest to know who he is. It is natural. Now he starts becoming aware of his boundariesโhis body, his needs. Sometimes he is happy, sometimes unhappy; sometimes he is fulfilled, sometimes not fulfilled; sometimes he is hungry and crying and there is no sign of mother anywhere; sometimes he is on the motherโs breast, again enjoying oneness with the mother. But now there are many moods and many climates, and he will start, by and by, to feel the separation. A divorce has happened; the marriage is broken. He was absolutely married to the mother; now he will always be separate. And he has to find out who he is. For the whole life one goes on trying to find out who one is. This is the most fundamental question. First the child becomes aware of โmineโ, then of โmeโ, then of โyouโ, then of โI.โ This is how it proceeds. This is precisely the procedure, exactly in this order. First he becomes aware of โmine.โ Watch it, because this is your construction, the structure of your ego. First the child becomes aware of โmineโโthis toy is mine, this mother is mine. He starts possessing. The possessor enters first; possessiveness is very basic. Hence all the religions say: become non-possessive, because with possession hell starts. Watch small children: very jealous, possessive, each child trying to snatch everything from everybody else and trying to protect his own toys. And you will see children who are very violent, almost indifferent to othersโ needs. If a child is playing with his toy and another child comes you can see an Adolf Hitler, a Genghis Khan, a Nadirshah. He will cling to his toy; he is ready to hit, he is
ready to fight. It is a question of territory, a question of domination. Possessiveness enters first; that is the basic poison. And the child starts saying, โThis is mine.โ Once the โmineโ enters, then you are a competitor with everybody. Once the โmineโ enters, your life will now be a life of competition, struggle, conflict, violence, aggression. The next step after โmineโ is โme.โ When you have something to claim as yours, suddenly through that claim arises the idea that now you are the center of your possessions. The possessions become your territory, and through those possessions arises a new idea: โme.โ Once you are settled with โmeโ, you can see clearly that you have a boundary, and those who are outside the boundary are โyou.โ The other becomes clear; now things start falling apart. The universe is one, it is a unity. Nothing is divided. Everything is connected with everything else; it is a tremendous connectedness. You are connected with the earth, you are connected with the trees, you are connected with the stars; stars are connected with you, stars are connected with the trees, with the rivers, with the mountains. Everything is interconnected. Nothing is separate; nothing can be separate. Separation is not possible. Each moment you are breathingโyou breathe in, you breathe outโ continuously there is a bridge with existence. You eat, existence enters into you; you defecate, it becomes manureโthe apple on the tree will become part of your body tomorrow, and some part of your body will go and become manure, will become food for the treeโฆa continuous give-and-take. Not for a single moment does it stop. When it stops, you are dead. What is death?โseparation is death. To be in unity is to be alive, to be out of unity is to be dead. So the more you think, โI am separate,โ the less sensitive you will be, more dead, dragging, dull. The more you feel you are connected, the more this whole existence is part of you and you are part of this whole existence. Once you understand that we are members of each other, then suddenly the vision changes. Then these trees are not alien; they are continuously preparing food for you. When you breathe in, you take oxygen in, when you breathe out, you give carbon dioxide; the trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygenโthere is a continuous communion. We are in tune. The reality is a unity, and with the idea of โmeโ, โyouโ, we are falling out of reality. And once a wrong conception settles inside, your whole vision becomes upside downโฆ. โMeโ, then โyouโ, and then as a reflection arises โI.โ โIโ is the subtlest, the most crystallized form of the possessiveness. Once you have uttered โIโ, you have committed sacrilege. Once you have said โIโ, you are broken completely from existenceโnot really broken, otherwise you would die; but in your ideas you are completely broken from reality. Now you will be in a continuous fight with reality. You will be fighting your own roots. You will be fighting with yourself. Thatโs why Buddha says: โBe a driftwood.โ You can be a driftwood only if you have dropped the idea of โIโโotherwise you cannot be a driftwood; struggle will persist. Thatโs why it becomes so difficult when you come to meditate. If I say to just sit silently, you cannot do thatโsuch a simple thing. One would think it is the most simple thing; there should be no need to teach it. One should simply sit and be. But you cannot sit because the โIโ cannot allow you a moment of relaxation. Once a moment of relaxation is allowed, you will be able to see reality. Once reality is known, the โIโ will have to be dropped. Then it cannot persist. So the โIโ never even allows you a holiday. Even if you go to the hills, to the summer resorts, the โIโ never allows you a holiday even there. You take your radio, you take your TV set; you take all your problems and you remain occupied. You had gone there to relax, but you continue your whole pattern in the same way. You donโt relax. The โIโ cannot relax. It exists through tensions. It will create new tensions, it will create new worries; it will constantly manufacture new problems, it wonโt allow you any rest. Even a minuteโs rest and the whole house of the โIโ starts toppling downโbecause the reality is so beautiful and the โIโ is so ugly. One continues to fight his way unnecessarily. You are fighting for things which are going to happen of their own accord. You are unnecessarily fighting. You are desiring things which are going to be yours if you donโt desire. In fact, by desiring you will lose them. Thatโs why Buddha says: โFloat with the stream. Let it take you to the ocean.โ โMineโ, โmeโ, โyouโ, โIโโthis is the trap. And this trap creates misery, neurosis, madness. Now the problem is: the child has to go through it, because he does not know who he is and he needs some sort of identityโmaybe a false identity, but it is better than no identity. He needs some identity. He needs to know exactly who he is, so a false center is created. The โIโ is not your real center. It is a false centerโutilitarian, make-believe, just manufactured by you. It has nothing to do with your real center. Your real center is the center of all. Your real self is the self of all. At the center, the whole existence is oneโjust as at the source of light, the sun, all rays are one. The farther away they go, the farther away they are from each other. Your real center is not only your center, it is the center of the whole. But we have created small centers of our own, homemade, manufactured by ourselves. There is a needโฆbecause the child is born without any boundary, with no idea of who he is. It is a survival necessity. How will he survive? He has to be given a name; he has to be given an idea of who he is. Of course this idea comes from the outside: somebody says you are beautiful, somebody says you are intelligent, somebody says you are so vital. You gather the things that people say. Out of all that people say about you, you gather a certain image. You never look into yourself, at who you are. This image is going to be falseโbecause nobody else can know who you are, and nobody else can say who you are. Your inner reality is not available to anybody else except you. Your inner reality is impenetrable to anybody else except you. Only you can be there. The day you realize that your identity is false, put together, that you have collected opinions from peopleโฆsometime just think; just sit silently and think who you are. Many ideas will arise. Just go on watching from where they come and you will be able to find the source. Some things come from your motherโ much, about eighty to ninety percent. Something comes from your father, something comes from your schoolteachers, something comes from your friends, something from the society. Just watch: you will be able to divide from where it comes. Nothing comes from you, not even one percent comes from you. What type of identity is this, in which you have not contributed at all? And you are the only one who could have contributed, in fact, the whole hundred per cent.ย The day you understand this, meditation becomes important. The day you realize this you start seeking for some technique, some method to enter into your being; how to know exactly, really, existentially, who you are. No more collections of images from the outside, no more asking others to mirror your realityโbut to face it directly, immediately; to enter into your nature, to feel it there. What is the need to ask anybody? And whom are you asking? They are as ignorant about themselves as you are about yourself. They donโt know themselves; how can they know you?
Just see how things are functioning, how things go on functioning, how things go on happening: one falsity leads to another falsity. You are almost swindled, duped. You are conned, and those who have swindled you may not have done it knowingly. They may have been swindled by others. Your father, your mother, your teachers, have been duped by othersโtheir fathers, their mothers, their teachers. And they have duped you in turn. Are you going to do the same to your children too? In a better world, where people are more intelligent, more aware, they will teach the child that the idea of identity is false: โIt is needed, we are giving it to you, but it is only for the time being, before you yourself discover who you are.โIt is not going to be your reality. And the sooner you find out who you are, the better. The sooner you can drop this idea, the betterโbecause from that very moment you will really be born, and you will be really real, authentic. You will become an individual. The ideas that we gather from others give us a personality, and the knowledge that we come to know from within gives us individuality. Personality is false, individuality is real. Personality is borrowed; reality, individuality, your authenticity, can never be borrowed. Nobody can say who you are.ย At least one thing can never be done by anybody elseโthat is, to give you the answer to who you are. No, you have to go, you have to dig deep into your own being. Layers and layers of identity, false identity, have to be broken. Thereย is fear when one enters into oneself, because chaos comes in. Somehow you have managed with your false identity. You have settled with it. You know your name is this or that; you have certain credentials, certificates, degrees, universities, colleges, prestige, money, heritage. You have certain ways to define yourself. You have a certain definitionโhowsoever workable, but it works. Going in means dropping this workable definitionโฆthere will be chaos. Before you can come to your center, you will have to pass through a very chaotic state. Thatโs why there is fear. Nobody wants to go in. People go on teaching: โKnow thyselfโ; we listen, but we never listen. We never bother about it. There is a very certain idea in the mind that chaos will be let loose and you will be lost in it, you will be engulfed in it. Because of the fear of that chaos, we go on clinging to anything from the outside. But this is wasting your life.your mind. Everywhere you have failed, and meditation is such a great thingโฆ you cannot succeed. If you enter into meditation with this ideaโthat failure is bound to be, that it is your destiny, that it is your fateโthen of course you cannot succeed. So if theego is big it prevents you. And if the ego is very small it becomes a wound which also prevents you. In each case the ego is one of the problems. ยง In the motherโs womb each child is profoundly blissful. Of course he is unaware of it, not knowing anything about it. He is so one with his bliss that there is no knower left behind. Blissfulness is his being, and there is no distinction between the knower and the known. So of course the child is not aware that he is blissful. You become aware only when you have lost something. It is so. It is very difficult to know something without losing it, because when you have not lost it you are so totally one with it. There is no distance: the observer and the observed are one; the known and the knower are one. Every child is in a profoundly blissful state. Psychologists also agree with this. They say that the whole search of religion is nothing but a way to again find the womb of the mother. They use it as a criticism of religion, but to me it is not criticism at all. It is simply true. Yes, the search for religion is again a search for the womb. The search for religion is again a search to make this whole existence a womb. The child is absolutely in tune with the mother. The child is never out of tune with the mother. The child does not know that he is separate from the mother. If the mother is healthy the child is healthy; if the mother is ill the child is ill. If the mother is sad the child is sad; if the mother is happy the child is happy. If the mother is dancing the child is dancing; if the mother is sitting silently the child is silent. The child has no boundaries of his own yet. This is the purest bliss, but it has to be lost. The child is born, and suddenly he is thrown off-center. Suddenly he is uprooted from the earth, from the mother. He loses his moorings and he does not know who he is. There was no need to know it when he was with the mother. There was no need to knowโhe was all, and there was no need to know, there was no distinction. There was no โyouโ, so there was no question of โI.โ The reality was undivided. It was adwaitaโpure adwaita, pure non-duality. But once the child is born, the umbilical cord is cut and he starts breathing on his own; suddenly his whole being becomes a quest to know who he is. It is natural. Now he starts becoming aware of his boundariesโhis body, his needs. Sometimes he is happy, sometimes unhappy; sometimes he is fulfilled, sometimes not fulfilled; sometimes he is hungry and crying and there is no sign of mother anywhere; sometimes he is on the motherโs breast, again enjoying oneness with the mother. But now there are many moods and many climates, and he will start, by and by, to feel the separation. A divorce has happened; the marriage is broken. He was absolutely married to the mother; now he will always be separate. And he has to find out who he is. For the whole life one goes on trying to find out who one is. This is the most fundamental question. First the child becomes aware of โmineโ, then of โmeโ, then of โyouโ, then of โI.โ This is how it proceeds. This is precisely the procedure, exactly in this order. First he becomes aware of โmine.โ Watch it, because this is your construction, the structure of your ego. First the child becomes aware of โmineโโthis toy is mine, this mother is mine. He starts possessing. The possessor enters first; possessiveness is very basic. Hence all the religions say: become non-possessive, because with possession hell starts. Watch small children: very jealous, possessive, each child trying to snatch everything from everybody else and trying to protect his own toys. And you will see children who are very violent, almost indifferent to othersโ needs. If a child is playing with his toy and another child comes you can see an Adolf Hitler, a Genghis Khan, a Nadirshah. He will cling to his toy; he is ready to hit, he is
ready to fight. It is a question of territory, a question of domination. Possessiveness enters first; that is the basic poison. And the child startsย saying, โThis is mine.โ Once the โmineโ enters, then you are a competitor with everybody. Once the โmineโ enters, your life will now be a life of competition, struggle, conflict, violence, aggression. The next step after โmineโ is โme.โ When you have something to claim as yours, suddenly through that claim arises the idea that now you are the center of your possessions. The possessions become your territory, and through those possessions arises a new idea: โme.โ Once you are settled with โmeโ, you can see clearly that you have a boundary, and those who are outside the boundary are โyou.โ The other becomes clear; now things start falling apart. The universe is one, it is a unity. Nothing is divided. Everything is connected with everything else; it is a tremendous connectedness. You are connected with the earth, you are connected with the trees, you are connected with the stars; stars are connected with you, stars are connected with the trees, with the rivers, with the mountains. Everything is interconnected. Nothing is separate; nothing can be separate. Separation is not possible. Each moment you are breathingโyou breathe in, you breathe outโ continuously there is a bridge with existence. You eat, existence enters into you; you defecate, it becomes manureโthe apple on the tree will become part of your body tomorrow, and some part of your body will go and become manure, will become food for the treeโฆa continuous give-and-take. Not for a single momentdoes it stop. When it stops, you are dead. What is death?โseparation is death. To be in unity is to be alive, to be out of unity is to be dead. So the more you think, โI am separate,โ the less sensitive you will be, more dead, dragging, dull. The more you feel you are connected, the more this whole existence is part of you and you are part of this whole existence. Once you understand that we are members of each other, then suddenly the vision changes. Then these trees are not alien; they are continuously preparing food for you. When you breathe in, you take oxygen in, when you breathe out, you give carbon dioxide; the trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygenโthere is a continuous communion. We are in tune. The reality is a unity, and with the idea of โmeโ, โyouโ, we are falling out of reality. And once a wrong conception settles inside, your whole vision becomes upside downโฆ. โMeโ, then โyouโ, and then as a reflection arises โI.โ โIโ is the subtlest, the most crystallized form of the possessiveness. Once you have uttered โIโ, you have committed sacrilege. Once you have said โIโ, you are broken completely from existenceโnot really broken, otherwise you would die; but in your ideas you are completely broken from reality. Now you will be in a continuous fight with reality. You will be fighting your own roots. You will be fighting with yourself. Thatโs why Buddha says: โBe a driftwood.โ You can be a driftwood only if you have dropped the idea of โIโโotherwise you cannot be a driftwood; struggle will persist. Thatโs why it becomes so difficult when you come to meditate. If I say to just sit silently, you cannot do thatโsuch a simple thing. One would think it is the most simple thing; there should be no need to teach it. One should simply sit and be. But you cannot sit because the โIโ cannot allow you a moment of relaxation. Once a moment of relaxation is allowed, you will be able to see reality. Once reality is known, the โIโ will have to be dropped. Then it cannot persist. So the โIโ never even allows you a holiday. Even if you go to the hills, to the summer resorts, the โIโ never allows you a holiday even there. You take your radio, you take your TV set; you take all your problems and you remain occupied. You had gone there to relax, but you continue your whole pattern in the same way. You donโt relax. The โIโ cannot relax. It exists through tensions. It will create new tensions, it will create new worries; it will constantly manufacture new problems, it wonโt allow you any rest. Even a minuteโs rest and the whole house of the โIโ starts toppling downโbecause the reality is so beautiful and the โIโ is so ugly. One continues to fight his way unnecessarily. You are fighting for things which are going to happen of their own accord. You are unnecessarily fighting. You are desiring things which are going to be yours if you donโt desire. In fact, by desiring you will lose them. Thatโs why Buddha says: โFloat with the stream. Let it take you to the ocean.โ โMineโ, โmeโ, โyouโ, โIโโthis is the trap. And this trap creates misery, neurosis, madness. Now the problem is: the child has to go through it, because he does not know who he is and he needs some sort of identityโmaybe a false identity, but it is better than no identity. He needs some identity. He needs to know exactly who he is, so a false center is created. The โIโ is not your real center. It is a false centerโutilitarian, make-believe, just manufactured by you. It has nothing to do with your real center. Your real center is the center of all. Your real self is the self of all. At the center, the whole existence is oneโjust as at the source of light, the sun, all rays are one. The farther away they go, the farther away they are from each other. Your real center is not only your center, it is the center of the whole. But we have created small centers of our own, homemade, manufactured by ourselves. There is a needโฆbecause the child is born without any boundary, with no idea of who he is. It is a survival necessity. How will he survive? He has to be given a name; he has to be given an idea of who he is. Of course this idea comes from the outside: somebody says you are beautiful, somebody says you are intelligent, somebody says you are so vital. You gather the things that people say. Out of all that people say about you, you gather a certain image. You never look into yourself, at who you are. This image is going to be falseโbecause nobody else can know who you are, and nobody else can say who you are. Your inner reality is not available to anybody else except you. Your inner reality is impenetrable to anybody else except you. Only you can be there. The day you realize that your identity is false, put together, that you have collected opinions from peopleโฆsometime just think; just sit silently and think who you are. Many ideas will arise. Just go on watching from where they come and you will be able to find the source. Some things come from your motherโ much, about eighty to ninety percent. Something comes from your father, something comes from your schoolteachers, something comes from your friends, something from the society. Just watch: you will be able to divide from where it comes. Nothing comes from you, not even one percent comes from you. What type of identity is this, in which you have not contributed at all? And you are the only one who could have contributed, in fact, the whole hundred per cent. The day you understand this, meditation becomes important. The day yourealize this you start seeking for some technique, some method to enter into your being; how to know exactly, really, existentially, who you are. No more collections of images from the outside, no more asking others to mirror your realityโbut to face it directly, immediately; to enter into your nature, to feel it there. What is the need to ask anybody? And whom are you asking? They are as ignorant about themselves as you are about yourself. They donโt know themselves; how can they know you? Just see how things are functioning, how things go on functioning, how things go on happening: one falsity leads to another falsity. You are almost swindled, duped. You are conned, and those who have swindled you may not have done it knowingly. They may have been swindled by others. Your father, your mother, your teachers, have been duped by othersโtheir fathers, their mothers, their teachers. And they have duped you in turn. Are you going to do the same to your children too? In a better world, where people are more intelligent, more aware, they will teach the child that the idea of identity is false: โIt is needed, we are giving it to you, but it is only for the time being, before you yourself discover who you are.โIt is not going to be your reality. And the sooner you find out who you are, the better. The sooner you can drop this idea, the betterโbecause from that very moment you will really be born, and you will be really real, authentic. You will become an individual. The ideas that we gather from others give us a personality, and the knowledge that we come to know from within gives us individuality. Personality is false, individuality is real. Personality is borrowed; reality, individuality, your authenticity, can never be borrowed. Nobody can say who you are. At least one thing can never be done by anybody elseโthat is, to give you the answer to who you are. No, you have to go, you have to dig deep into your own being. Layers and layers of identity, false identity, have to be broken. There is fear when one enters into oneself, because chaos comes in. Somehow you have managed with your false identity. You have settled with it. You know your name is this or that; you have certain credentials, certificates, degrees, universities, colleges, prestige, money, heritage. You have certain ways to define yourself. You have a certain definitionโhowsoever workable, but it works. Going in means dropping this workable definitionโฆthere will be chaos. Before you can come to your center, you will have to pass through a very chaotic state. Thatโs why there is fear. Nobody wants to go in. People go on teaching: โKnow thyselfโ; we listen, but we never listen. We never bother aboutit. There is a very certain idea in the mind that chaos will be let loose and you will be lost in it, you will be engulfed in it. Because of the fear of that chaos, we go on clinging to anything from the outside. But this is wasting your life. see children who are very violent, almost indifferent to othersโ needs. If a child is playing with his toy and another child comes you can see an Adolf Hitler, a Genghis Khan, a Nadirshah. He will cling to his toy; he is ready to hit, he is ready to fight. It is a question of territory, a question of domination. Possessiveness enters first; that is the basic poison. And the child starts saying, โThis is mine.โ Once the โmineโ enters, then you are a competitor with everybody. Once the โmineโ enters, your life will now be a life of competition,
struggle, conflict, violence, aggression. The next step after โmineโ is โme.โ When you have something to claim as yours, suddenly through that claim arises the idea that now you are the center of your possessions. The possessions become your territory, and through those possessions arises a new idea: โme.โ Once you are settled with โmeโ, you can see clearly that you have a boundary, and those who are outside the boundary are โyou.โ The other becomes clear; now things start falling apart. The universe is one, it is a unity. Nothing is divided. Everything is connected with everything else; it is a tremendous connectedness. You are connected with the earth, you are connected with the trees, you are connected with the stars; stars are connected with you, stars are connected with the trees, with the rivers, with the mountains. Everything is interconnected. Nothing is separate; nothing can be separate. Separation is not possible. Each moment you are breathingโyou breathe in, you breathe outโ continuously there is a bridge with existence. You eat, existence enters into you; you defecate, it becomes manureโthe apple on the tree will become part of your body tomorrow, and some part of your body will go and become manure, will become food for the treeโฆa continuous give-and-take. Not for a single moment does it stop. When it stops, you are dead. What is death?โseparation is death. To be in unity is to be alive, to be out of unity is to be dead. So the more you think, โI am separate,โ the less sensitive you will be, more dead, dragging, dull. The more you feel you are connected, the more this whole existence is part of you and you are part of this whole existence. Once you understand that we are members of each other, then suddenly the vision changes. Then these trees are not alien; they are continuously preparing food for you. When you breathe in, you take oxygen in, when you breathe out, you give carbon dioxide; the trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygenโthere is a continuous communion. We are in tune. The reality is a unity, and with the idea of โmeโ, โyouโ, we are falling out of reality. And once a wrong conception settles inside, your whole vision becomes upside downโฆ. โMeโ, then โyouโ, and then as a reflection arises โI.โ โIโ is the subtlest, the most crystallized form of the possessiveness. Once you have uttered โIโ, you have committed sacrilege. Once you have said โIโ, you are broken completely from existenceโnot really broken, otherwise you would die; but in your ideas you are completely broken from reality. Now you will be in a continuous fight with reality. You will be fighting your own roots. You will be fighting with yourself. Thatโs why Buddha says: โBe a driftwood.โ You can be a driftwood only if you have dropped the idea of โIโโotherwise you cannot be a driftwood; struggle will persist. Thatโs why it becomes so difficult when you come to meditate. If I say to just sit silently, you cannot do thatโsuch a simple thing. One would think it is the most simple thing; there should be no need to teach it. One should simply sit and be. But you cannot sit because the โIโ cannot allow you a moment of relaxation. Once a moment of relaxation is allowed, you will be able to see reality. Once reality is known, the โIโ will have to be dropped. Then it cannot
persist. So the โIโ never even allows you a holiday. Even if you go to the hills, to the summer resorts, the โIโ never allows you a holiday even there. You take your radio, you take your TV set; you take all your problems and you remain occupied. You had gone there to relax, but you continue your whole pattern in the same way. You donโt relax. The โIโ cannot relax. It exists through tensions. It will create new tensions, it will create new worries; it will constantly manufacture new problems, it wonโt allow you any rest. Even a minuteโs rest and the whole house of the โIโ starts toppling downโbecause the reality is so beautiful and the โIโ is so ugly. One continues to fight his way unnecessarily. You are fighting for things which are going to happen of their own accord. You are unnecessarily fighting. You are desiring things which are going to be yours if you donโt desire. In fact, by desiring you will lose them. Thatโs why Buddha says: โFloat with the stream. Let it take you to the ocean.โ โMineโ, โmeโ, โyouโ, โIโโthis is the trap. And this trap creates misery, neurosis, madness. Now the problem is: the child has to go through it, because he does not know who he is and he needs some sort of identityโmaybe a false identity, but it is better than no identity. He needs some identity. He needs to know exactly who he is, so a false center is created. The โIโ is not your real center. It is a false centerโutilitarian, make-believe, just manufactured by you. It has nothing to do with your real center. Your real center is the center of all. Your real self is the self of all. At the center, the whole existence is oneโjust as at the source of light, the sun, all rays are one. The farther away they go, the farther away they are from each other. Your real center is not only your center, it is the center of the whole. But we have created small centers of our own, homemade, manufactured by ourselves. There is a needโฆbecause the child is born without any boundary, with no idea of who he is. It is a survival necessity. How will he survive? He has to be given a name; he has to be given an idea of who he is. Of course this idea comes from the outside: somebody says you are beautiful, somebody says you are intelligent, somebody says you are so vital. You gather the things that people say. Out of all that people say about you, you gather a certain image. You never look into yourself, at who you are. This image is going to be falseโbecause nobody else can know who you are, and nobody else can say who you are. Your inner reality is not available to anybody else except you. Your inner reality is impenetrable to anybody else except you. Only you can be there. The day you realize that your identity is false, put together, that you have collected opinions from peopleโฆsometime just think; just sit silently and think who you are. Many ideas will arise. Just go on watching from where they come and you will be able to find the source. Some things come from your motherโ much, about eighty to ninety percent. Something comes from your father, something comes from your schoolteachers, something comes from your friends, something from the society. Just watch: you will be able to divide from where it comes. Nothing comes from you, not even one percent comes from you. What type of identity is this, in which you have not contributed at all? And you are the only one who could have contributed, in fact, the whole hundred per cent. The day you understand this, meditation becomes important. The day you realize this you start seeking for some technique, some method to enter into your being; how to know exactly, really, existentially, who you are. No more collections of images from the outside, no more asking others to mirror your realityโbut to face it directly, immediately; to enter into your nature, to feel it there. What is the need to ask anybody? And whom are you asking? They are as ignorant about themselves as you are about yourself. They donโt know themselves; how can they know you? Just see how things are functioning, how things go on functioning, how things go on happening: one falsity leads to another falsity. You are almost swindled, duped. You are conned, and those who have swindled you may not have done it knowingly. They may have been swindled by others. Your father, your mother, your teachers, have been duped by othersโtheir fathers, their mothers, their teachers. And they have duped you in turn. Are you going to do the same to your children too? In a better world, where people are more intelligent, more aware, they will teach the child that the idea of identity is false: โIt is needed, we are giving it to you, but it is only for the time being, before you yourself discover who you are.โIt is not going to be your reality. And the sooner you find out who you are, the better. The sooner you can drop this idea, the betterโbecause from that very moment you will really be born, and you will be really real, authentic. You will become an individual. The ideas that we gather from others give us a personality, and the knowledge that we come to know from within gives us individuality. Personality is false, individuality is real. Personality is borrowed; reality, individuality, your authenticity, can never be borrowed. Nobody can say who you are. At least one thing can never be done by anybody elseโthat is, to give you the answer to who you are. No, you have to go, you have to dig deep into your own being. Layers and layers of identity, false identity, have to be broken. There is fear when one enters into oneself, because chaos comes in. Somehow you have managed with your false identity. You have settled with it. You know your name is this or that; you have certain credentials, certificates, degrees, universities, colleges, prestige, money, heritage. You have certain ways to define yourself. You have a certain definitionโhowsoever workable, but it works. Going in means dropping this workable definitionโฆthere will be chaos. Before you can come to your center, you will have to pass through a very chaotic state. Thatโs why there is fear. Nobody wants to go in. People go on teaching: โKnow thyselfโ; we listen, but we never listen. We never bother about it. There is a very certain idea in the mind that chaos will be let loose and you will be lost in it, you will be engulfed in it. Because of the fear of that chaos, we go on clinging to anything from the outside. But this is wasting your life.
2. The chattering mind
You cannot sit even for a single minute, the mind goes on chattering: relevant, irrelevant, meaningful, meaningless thoughts go on. It is a constant traffic and it is always rush hour. You see a flower and you verbalize it; you see a man crossing the street and you verbalize it. The mind can translate every existential thing into a word, everything is being transformed. These words create a barrier, these words become an imprisonment. This constant flow toward the transformation of things into words, of existence into words, is the barrier. It is an obstacle to a meditative mind. So the first requirement toward a meditative growth is to be aware of your constant verbalizing, and to be able to stop it. Just see things; do not verbalize. Be aware of their presence, but do not change them into words. Let things be without language; let persons be without language; let situations be without language. It is not impossible, this is natural and possible. It is the situation as it now exists that is artificial, it is a created situation, but we have become so habituated to it, it has become so mechanical, that we are not even aware of the transformation, of the translation of experience into words. The sunrise is there. You are never aware of the gap between seeing it and verbalizing. You see the sun, you feel it, and immediately you verbalize it. The gap between seeing and verbalizing is lost; it is never felt. In that interval, in that gap, one must become aware. One must be aware of the fact that the sunrise is not a word. It is a fact, a presence, a situation. The mind automatically changes experiences into words. These words are accumulated and then come between existence (the existential) and consciousness. Meditation means living without words, living non-linguistically. Then these piled up memories, these linguistic memories, become obstacles towards meditative growth. Meditation means living without words, living in a situation non-linguistically. Sometimes it happens spontaneously. When you are in love with someone it happens. If you are really in love, then presence is feltโnot language. Whenever two lovers are intimate with one another they become silent. It is not that there is nothing to express; on the contrary, there is an overwhelming amount to be expressed. But words are never there; they cannot be. They come only when love has gone. If two lovers are never silent, if they are always talking, it is an indication that love has died. Now they are filling the gap with words. When love is alive, words are not there, because the very existence of love is so overwhelming, so penetrating, that the barrier of language and words is crossed. And ordinarily, it is only crossed in love. Meditation is the culmination of love: love not for a single person, but love for the total existence. To me, meditation is a living relationship with the total existence that surrounds you. If you can be in love with any situation, then you are in meditationโฆ. Society gives you language, it cannot exist without language; it needs language. But existence does not need it. I am not saying that you should exist without language. You will have to use it, but the mechanism of verbalization must be a mechanism that you can turn on and off. When you are existing as a social being, the mechanism of language is needed; without it you cannot exist in the society. But when you are alone with existence, the mechanism must be turned off; you must be able to turn it off. If you canโt turn it off the mechanism has gone mad. If you canโt turn it offโif it goes on and on, and you are incapable of turning it off, then the mechanism has taken hold of you. You have become a slave to it. Mind must be an instrument, not the master. But it has become the master. When mind is the master, a non-meditative state exists. When you are the master, your consciousness is the master, a meditative state exists. So meditation means mastering the mechanism, becoming a master to the mechanism. Mind, and the linguistic functioning of the mind, is not the ultimate. You are beyond it and existence is beyond it. Consciousness is beyond linguistics; existence is beyond linguistics. When consciousness and existence are one, they are in communion. This state is called meditation. The communion between consciousness and existence is meditation. Language must be dropped. I donโt mean that you must push it aside, that you must suppress it or eliminate it. What I mean is that something which is needed in society has become a twenty-four-hour-a-day habit for you and is not needed as such. When you walk, you need to move your legs but they must not move when you are sitting. If your legs go on moving while you are sitting then you are mad, then the legs have gone insane. You must be able to turn them off. In the same way, when you are not talking with anyone, language must not be there. It is a talking instrument, a technique to communicate; when you are communicating something, language should be used; but when you are not communicating with anybody it should not be there. If you are able to do thisโand it is possible if you understand itโthen you can grow into meditation. I say โyou can growโ because life processes are never dead additions, they are always a growing process. So meditation is a growing process, not a technique. A technique is always dead; it can be added to you, but a process is always living. It grows, it expands. Language is needed, it is necessary, but you must not always remain in it. There must be moments when you are existential and there is no verbalizing. When you just exist, it is not that you are just vegetatingโconsciousness is there, and it is more acute, more alive, because language dulls consciousness. Language is bound to be repetitive but existence is never repetitive. So language creates boredom. The more important language is to you, the more linguistically- oriented the mind isโthe more bored you will be. Language is a repetition, existence is not. When you see a rose, it is not a repetition. It is a new rose, altogether new. It has never been and it will never be again. For the first time and the last time, it is there. But when we say this is a rose, the word โroseโ is a repetition: it has always been there; it will always be there. You have killed the new with an old word. Existence is always young, and language is always old. Through language you escape existence, through language you escape life, because language is dead. The more involved you are with language, the more you are being deadened by it. A pundit is completely dead because he is language, words and nothing else. Sartre has written his autobiography. He calls it: Words. Meditation means living, living totally, and you can live totally only when you are silent. By being silent I do not mean unconscious. You can be silent and unconscious, but that would not be a living silenceโagain, you would have missed. So what to do? The question is relevant. Watchโdonโt try to stop. There is no need to do any action against the mind. In the first place, who will do it? It will be mind fighting mind itself. You will divide your mind into two: one that is trying to boss over, the top-dog, trying to kill the other part of itselfโwhich is absurd, it is a foolish game. It can drive you crazy. Donโt try to stop the mind or the thinkingโjust watch it, allow it. Allow it total freedom. Let it run as fast as it wants. You donโt try in any way to control it. You just be a witness. It is beautiful! Mind is one of the most beautiful mechanisms. Science has not yet been able to create anything parallel to mind. Mind still remains the masterpieceโso complicated, so tremendously powerful, with so many potentialities. Watch it! Enjoy it! Donโt watch like an enemy, because if you look at the mind like an enemy, you cannot watch. You are already prejudiced; you are already against. You have already decided that something is wrong with the mindโyou have already concluded. And whenever you look at somebody as an enemy you never look deep. You never look into the eyes; you avoid. Watching the mind means: look at it with deep love, with deep respect, reverenceโit is a gift from existence to you!Nothing is wrong in mind itself. Nothing is wrong in thinking itself. It is a beautiful process as other processes are. Clouds moving in the sky are beautifulโwhy not thoughts moving in the inner sky? Flowers coming to the trees are beautifulโwhy not thoughts flowering in your being? The river running to the ocean is beautifulโwhy not this stream of thoughts running somewhere to an unknown destiny? Is it not beautiful? Look with deep reverence. Donโt be a fighter, be a lover. Watch the subtle nuances of the mind; the sudden turns, the beautiful turns; the sudden jumps and leaps; the games that mind goes on playing; the dreams that it weavesโthe imagination, the memory; the thousand and one projections that it creates.
Watch! Standing there, aloof, distant, not involved, by and by you will start
feelingโฆ. As your watchfulness becomes deeper, your awareness becomes deeper, gaps start arising, intervals. One thought goes, another has not come; there is a gap. One cloud has passed, another is coming; there is a gap.
In those gaps, for the first time you will have glimpses of no-mind, you will have the taste of no-mind. Call it the taste of Zen, or Tao, or yoga. In those small intervals, suddenly the sky is clear and the sun is shining. Suddenly the world is full of mystery because all barriers are dropped. The screen on your eyes is no longer there. You see clearly, you see penetratingly; the whole existence becomes transparent. In the beginning these will be just rare moments, few and far in between. But they will give you glimpses of what samadhi is. Small pools of silenceโthey will come and they will disappear. But now you know that you are on the right trackโyou start watching again. When a thought passes, you watch it; when an interval passes, you watch it.Clouds are beautiful; sunshine also is beautiful. Now you are not a chooser. Now you donโt have a fixed mind: you donโt say, โI would like only the intervals.โ That is stupidโbecause once you become attached to wanting only the intervals, you have decided again against thinking. And then those intervals will disappear. They happen only when you are very distant, aloof. They happen, they cannot be brought. They happen, you cannot force them to happen. They are spontaneous happenings. Go on watching. Let thoughts come and goโwherever they want to goโ nothing is wrong! Donโt try to manipulate and donโt try to direct; let thoughts move in total freedom. And then bigger intervals will be coming. You will be blessed with small satoris, mini-satoris. Sometimes minutes will pass and no thought will be there; there will be no trafficโa total silence, undisturbed. When the bigger gaps come, you will not only have clarity to see into the bigger gaps you will have a new clarity arising; you will be able to see into the inner world. With the first gaps you will see into the world: trees will be more green than they look right now. You will be surrounded by an infinite musicโthe music of the spheres. You will be suddenly in the presence
of godlinessโineffable, mysterious, touching you although you cannot grasp it; within your reach and yet beyond. With the bigger gaps, the same will happen inside. Godliness will not only be outside, you will be suddenly surprisedโit is
inside also. It is not only in the seen; it is in the seer alsoโwithin and without. But donโt get attached to that either. Attachment is the food for the mind to continue. Non-attached witnessing is the way to stop it without any effort to stop it. And when you start enjoying those blissful moments, your capacity to retain them for longer periods arises. Finally, eventually, one day, you become master. Then when you want to think, you think; if thought is needed, you use it; if thought is not needed, you allow it to rest. Not that mind is simply no longer thereโmind is there, but you can use it or not use it. Now it is your decision. Just like legs: if you want to run you use them; if you donโt want to run you simply restโlegs are there. In the same way, mind is always there. No-mind is not against mind; no-mind is beyond mind. No-mind does not come by killing and destroying the mind; no-mind comes when you have understood the mind so totally that thinking is no longer needed. Your understanding has replaced it.
False methods
Meditation is not concentration
Meditations can be wrong. For example, any meditation that leads you deep into concentration is wrong. You will become more and more closed rather than becoming open. If you narrow down your consciousness, concentrate on something, and you exclude the whole of existence and become one-pointed, it will create more and more tension in you. Hence the word โattention.โ It means โat-tension.โ Concentration, the very sound of the word, gives you a feeling of tenseness. ยง Concentration has its uses but it is not meditation. In scientific workโin scientific research, in the science labโyou need concentration. You have to concentrate on one problem and exclude everything elseโso much so that you almost become unmindful of the remaining world. Only the problem that you are concentrating upon is your world. Thatโs why scientists become absent-minded. People who concentrate too much always become absent-minded because they donโt know how to remain open to the whole world. I was reading an anecdote. โI have brought a frog,โ said a scientist, a professor of zoology, beaming at his class, โfresh from the pond, in order that we might study its outer appearance
and later dissect it.โ He carefully unwrapped the package he carried and inside was a neatly prepared ham sandwich. The good professor looked at it with astonishment. โOdd!โ he said, โI distinctly remember having eaten my lunch.โ
That goes on happening to scientists. They become one-pointed and their whole mind becomes narrow. Of course, a narrow mind has its use: it becomes more penetrating, it becomes like a sharp needle; it hits exactly the right point,
but it misses the great life that surrounds it. A buddha is not a man of concentration; he is a man of awareness. He has not been trying to narrow down his consciousness; on the contrary, he has been trying to drop all barriers so that he becomes totally available to existence. Watchโฆexistence is simultaneous. I am speaking here and the traffic noise is simultaneous. The train, the birds, the wind blowing through the treesโin this moment the whole of existence converges. You listening to me, I speaking to you, and millions of things going onโit is tremendously rich. Concentration makes you one-pointed at a very great cost: ninety-nine percent of life is discarded. If you are solving a mathematical problem you cannot listen to the birdsโthey will be a distraction. Children playing around, dogs barking in the streetโthey will be a distraction. Because of concentration, people have tried to escape from lifeโto go to the Himalayas, to go to a cave, to remain isolated, so that they can concentrate on God. But God is not an object, God is this wholeness of existence, this moment; God is the totality. Thatโs why science will never be able to know God. The very method of science is concentration and because of that method, science can never know God. So what to do? Repeating a mantra, doing Transcendental Meditation, is not going to help. Transcendental Meditation has become very important in America because of the objective approach, because of the scientific mindโit is the only meditation on which scientific work can be done. It is exactly concentration and not meditation, so it is comprehensible for the scientific mind. In the universities, in the science laboratories, in psychological research work, much is being done about TM, because it is not meditation. It is concentration, a method of concentration. It falls under the same category as scientific concentration; there is a link between the two. But it has nothing to do with meditation. Meditation is so vast, so tremendously infinite, that no scientific research is possible. Only if a man becomes compassion will it show whether he has achieved or not. Alpha waves wonโt be of much help because they are still of the mind and meditation is not of the mind, it is something beyond. So, let me tell you a few basic things. One, meditation is not concentration but relaxationโone simply relaxes into oneself. The more you relax, the more to feel yourself open, vulnerable, the less you are rigid. You are more flexible, and suddenly existence starts penetrating you. You are no longer like a rock, you have openings. Relaxation means allowing yourself to fall into a state where you are not doing anything, because if you are doing something, tension will continue. It is a state of non-doing: you simply relax and you enjoy the feeling of relaxation. Relax into yourself, just close your eyes, and listen to all that is happening all around. No need to feel anything as a distraction. The moment you feel it is a distraction, you are denying the godliness of existence. This moment godliness has come to you as a birdโdonโt deny it. It has knocked at your door as a bird. The next moment it has come as a dog barking, or as a child crying and weeping, or as a madman laughing. Donโt deny; donโt rejectโaccept, because if you deny you will become tense. All denials create
tensionโaccept. If you want to relax, acceptance is the way. Accept whatsoeveris happening all around; let it become an organic whole. It isโyou may know it or you may not know itโeverything is interrelated. These birds, these trees, this sky, this sun, this earth, you, me, all are related. It is an organic unity. If the sun disappears, the trees will disappear; if the trees disappear, the birds will disappear; if the birds and trees disappear, you cannot be here, you will disappear. It is an ecology. Everything is deeply related with each other. So donโt deny anything, because the moment you deny, you are denying something in you. If you deny these singing birds then something in you is denied. If you relax, you accept; acceptance of existence is the only way to relax. If small things disturb you then it is your attitude that is disturbing you. Sit silently; listen to all that is happening all around, and relax. Accept, relax, and suddenly you will feel immense energy arising in you. And when I say watch, donโt try to watch; otherwise you will become tense again, and you will start concentrating. Simply relax, remain relaxed, loose, and lookโฆbecause what else can you do? You are there, nothing to be done, everything accepted, nothing to be denied, rejected. No struggle, no fight, no conflict. You simply watch. Remember, simply watch.
Meditation is not introspection
Introspection is thinking about yourself. Self-remembering is not thinking at all: it is becoming aware of yourself. The difference is subtle, but very great. Western psychology insists on introspection, and Eastern psychology insists on self-remembering. When you introspect, what do you do? For example, you are angry: you start thinking about anger, how it is caused. You start analyzing why it is caused. You start judging whether it is good or bad. You start rationalizing that you had been angry because the situation was such. You brood about anger, you analyze anger, but the focus of attention is on the anger, not on the self. Your whole consciousness is focused on the anger: you are watching, analyzing, associating, thinking about it, trying to figure out how to avoid, how to get rid of it, how not to do it again. This is a thinking process. You will judge it โbadโ because it is destructive. You will take a vow that โI will never commit the same mistake again.โ You will try to control this anger through will. Thatโs why Western psychology has become analytical: analysis, dissection. Eastern psychology says, โBe aware. Donโt try to analyze anger, there is no need. Just look at it, but look with awareness. Donโt start thinking.โ In fact if you start thinking then thinking will become a barrier to looking at the anger. Then thinking will garb it. Then thinking will be like a cloud surrounding it; the clarity will be lost. Donโt think at all. Be in a state of no thought, and look. When there is not even a ripple of thinking between you and the anger, the anger is faced, encountered. You donโt dissect it. You donโt bother to go to its source, because the source is in the past. You donโt judge it, because the moment you judge it, thinking starts. You donโt take any vow that โI will not do it,โ because that vow leads you into the future. In awareness you remain with the feeling of anger, exactly here now. You are not interested in changing it, you are not interested in thinking about itโyou are interested to look at it directly, face to face, immediate. Then it is self-remembering. And this is the beauty of it: that if you can look at anger it disappears. It not only disappears in that momentโthe very disappearance of it by your deep look gives you the keyโthere is no need to use will, there is no need to make any decision for the future, and there is no need to go to the original source from which it comes. It is unnecessary. You have the key now: look at anger, and anger disappear. And this look is available forever. Whenever anger is there you can look; then this looking grows deeper. There are three stages of looking. First, when the anger has already happened and gone; as if you look at a tail disappearingโan elephant has gone; only the tail is there. When the anger was there, you were so deeply involved in it you could not really be aware. When the anger has almost disappeared, ninety-
nine per cent goneโonly one per cent, the last part of it, is still going, disappearing into the far horizonโthen you become aware. This is the first state of awarenessโgood, but not enough. The second state is when the elephant is thereโnot the tailโwhen the situation is ripe. You are really angry to the peak, boiling, burningโthen you become aware. Then there is still a third stage: the anger has not come, is still comingโnot the tail but the head. It is just entering your area of consciousness and you become aware, then the elephant never materializes. You killed the animal before it was born. That is birth control! The phenomenon has not happened; then it leaves no trace.
Tricks of the mind
Donโt be fooled by experiences
All experiences are just tricks of the mind, all experiences are just escapes. Meditation is not an experience, it is a realization. Meditation is not an experience; rather, it is a stopping of all experience. ยง Experience is something outside you. The experiencer is your being. And this is the distinction between true spirituality and false: if you are after experiences, the spirituality is false; if you are after the experiencer, then it is true. And then you are not concerned about kundalini, not concerned about chakras, not concerned about all these things. They will happen, but you are not concerned, you are not interested, and you will not move on these by-paths. You will go on moving towards the inner center where nothing remains except you in your total aloneness. Only the consciousness remains, without content. Content is the experience; whatsoever you experience is the content. I
experience misery; then the misery is the content of my consciousness. Then I experience pleasure; the pleasure is the content. I experience boredom; then boredom is the content. You can experience silence; then silence is the content. You can experience bliss; then bliss is the content. So you go on changing the contentโyou can go on changing ad infinitumโbut this is not the real thing. The real is the one to whom these experiences happenโto whom boredom happens, to whom bliss happens. The spiritual search is not what happens, but to whom it happens. Then there is no possibility for the ego to arise.
Mind can enter again
In meditation sometimes you feel a sort of emptiness that is not really emptiness. I call it just โa sort of emptiness.โ When you are meditating, for certain moments, for a few seconds, you will feel as if the thought process has stopped. In the beginning these gaps will come. But because you are feeling as if the thought process has stopped, this is again a thought process, a very subtle thought process. What are you doing? You are saying inside, โThe thought process has stopped.โ But what is this? This is a secondary thought process which has started. And you say, โThis is emptiness.โ You say, โNow something is going to happen.โ What is this? Again a new thought process has started. Whenever this happens again, donโt become a victim of it. When you feel a certain silence is descending, donโt start verbalizing it, because you are destroying it. Waitโnot for somethingโsimply wait. Donโt do anything. Donโt say, โThis is emptiness.โ The moment you have said that, you have destroyed it. Just look at it, penetrate into it, encounter itโbut wait, donโt verbalize it. What is the hurry? Through verbalization the mind has again entered from a different route, and you are deceived. Be alert about this trick of the mind. In the beginning it is bound to happen, so whenever this happens, just wait. Donโt fall in the trap. Donโt say anything, remain silent. Then you will enter into emptiness, and then it will not be temporary, because once you have known the real emptiness you cannot lose it. The real cannot be lost; that is its quality. Once you have known the inner treasure, once you have come in contact with your deepest core, then you can move in activity, then you can do whatsoever you like, then you can live an ordinary worldly life but the emptiness will remain with you. You cannot forget it. It will go inside. The music of it will be heard. Whatsoever you are doing, the doing will be only on the periphery; inside you will remain empty.
Mind can deceive you
There are patterns the seeker gets entangled with. The first thing is: most seekers get lost in an illusory feeling that they have arrived. It is like the kind of dream in which you feel you are awake. You are still dreamingโyour feeling of being awake is part of the dream. The same kind of thing happens to the seeker. The mind is capable of creating the illusion that โnow there is nowhere to go, you have arrived.โ The mind is a deceiver, and the function of the master for one in this condition is to make him alert that this is not the reality but only a dream, that he has not arrived. This can happen at many points, again and again. And one can get very irritated and annoyed with the master for the simple reason that whenever you feel you have got it, he simply takes it away and puts you back into your ignorant state. For example, it was happening to a German disciple continuallyโhe would get the feeling that he had become enlightened. And the force of the illusion wasso much that he could not keep it to himself, he would tell others. He was so certain. This happened three times, and because of his certainty he came to India to get my blessings. Naturally, it shows his certainty that he came for my
blessings. Each time I had to tell him, โYou are just being deceived by your own mind. Nothing has happened to you, you are simply the old manโthe new man has not arrived. And all that you are doingโwriting letters to the UN., to other
governmentsโare just ways of the ego. You are in the grip of the ego.โ It is very easy to live in a beautiful dream. It is hard to see your dreams shattered by reality. In the ancient scriptures of the East it is called the power of maya. Mind has the hypnotic power to create any illusion. If you are after a certain thing, desperately, it is one of the functions of the mind to create the illusion to stop your desperateness. It happens every day to everybody in their dreams, but people donโt learn things. If at night you go to bed hungry, that night you are going to have a dream about eating delicious food. The mind is trying to help you so that your sleep is not disturbed; otherwise you are hungry and you are bound to be awakened by your hunger. The mind gives you a dream that you are eating delicious food of your choice, which satisfies your mind. The hunger remains but sleep is not disturbed. The hunger is covered by the illusion of the dream; it protects your sleep. You feel in sleep that your bladder is full. If the mind does not create the dream that you have gone to the toilet, come back and gone to sleep again, then your sleep will be disturbedโand sleep is a great necessity for the body. The mind is taking care that you are not disturbed again and again; you can have a long sleep, rest, so in the morning you are rejuvenated. This is the ordinary function of the mind; on a higher plane the same thing happens. One is an ordinary sleep and an ordinary awakening that mind prevents. On the path, it is an extraordinary sleep and an extraordinary awakening, but the mind is programmedโit is just a mechanical thing. It simply does its work without bothering, because it has no way of checking whether it is ordinary sleep or spiritual sleep, ordinary awakening or spiritual awakening. To the mind it is all the same. Its function is to keep your sleep intact and create a barrier for anything that disturbs your sleep. If you are hungry it gives you food; if you are desperately in search of truth, it gives you truth, it gives you enlightenment. You ask for anything, and it is ready to give it to you. It can create the illusion of the real thingโthat is its intrinsic power.
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