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 dreaming—your 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 “now there is nowhere to go, you have arrived.” 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 continually—he 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, “You are just being deceived by your own mind. Nothing has happened to you, you are simply the old man—the new man has not arrived. And all that you are doing—writing letters to the UN., to other governments—are just ways of the ego. You are in the grip of the ego.” 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 don’t 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 disturbed—and 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 programmed—it 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 thing—that is its intrinsic power.