The three essentials
Meditation has a few essential things in it, whatever the method, but those few essentials are necessary in every method. The first is a relaxed state: no fight with the mind, no control of the mind, no concentration. Second, just watch with a relaxed awareness whatever is going on, without any interference—just watching the mind, silently, without any judgment, evaluation. These are the three things: relaxation, watching, no judgment, and slowly, slowly a great silence descends over you. All movement within you ceases. You are, but there is no sense of ‘I am’—just a pure space. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation. I have talked on all those methods. They differ in their constitution, but the fundamentals remain the same: relaxation, watchfulness, a non-judgmental attitude.
Be playful
Millions of people miss meditation because meditation has taken on a wrong connotation. It looks very serious, looks gloomy, has something of the church in it; it looks as if it is only for people who are dead, or almost dead—those who are gloomy, serious, have long faces, who have lost festivity, fun, playfulness, celebration…. These are the qualities of meditation: a really meditative person is playful; life is fun for him, life is a leela, a play. He enjoys it tremendously. He is not serious. He is relaxed.
Be patient
Don’t be in a hurry. So often, hurrying causes delay. As you thirst, wait patiently—the deeper the waiting, the sooner it comes. You have sown the seed, now sit in the shade and watch what happens. The seed will break, it will blossom, but you cannot speed the process. Doesn’t
everything need time? Work you must, but leave the results to God. Nothing in
life is ever wasted, especially steps taken towards truth. But at times impatience comes; impatience comes with thirst, but this is an obstacle. Keep the thirst and throw the impatience. Do not confuse impatience with thirst. With thirst there is yearning but no struggle; with impatience there is struggle but no yearning. With longing there is waiting but no demanding; with impatience there is demanding but no waiting. With thirst there are silent tears; with impatience there is restless struggle. Truth cannot be raided; it is attained through surrender, not through struggle. It is conquered through total surrender.
Don’t look for results
The ego is result-oriented, the mind always hankers for results. The mind is never interested in the act itself, its interest is in the result. “What am I going to gain out of it?” If the mind can manage to gain without going through any action, then it will choose the short-cut. That’s why educated people become very cunning, because they are able to find short-cuts. If you earn money through a legal way, it may take your whole life. But if you can earn money by smuggling, by gambling, or by something else—by becoming a political leader, a prime minister, a president—then you have all the short-cuts available to you. The educated person becomes cunning. He does not become wise, he simply becomes clever. He becomes so cunning
that he wants to have everything without doing anything for it. Meditation happens only to those who are not result-oriented. Meditation is non-goal-oriented state.
Appreciate unawareness
While aware enjoy awareness, and while unaware enjoy unawareness. Nothing is wrong, because unawareness is like a rest. Otherwise awareness would become a tension. If you are awake Twenty-four hours, how many days do you think you can be alive? Without food a man can live for three months; without sleep, within three weeks he will go mad, and he will try to commit suicide. In the day you are alert; in the night you relax, and that relaxation helps you in the day to be more alert, fresh again. Energies have passed through a rest period so they are more alive in the morning again. The same will happen in meditation: for a few moments you are perfectly aware, at the peak, and for a few moments you are in the valley, resting. Awareness has disappeared, you have forgotten. But what is wrong in it?
It is simple. Through unawareness awareness will arise again, fresh, young; and this will go on. If you can enjoy both you become the third, and that is the point to be understood: if you can enjoy both, it means that you are neither—neither awareness nor unawareness—you are the one who enjoys both. Something of the beyond enters. In fact, this is the real witness. Happiness you enjoy, what is wrong with it? When happiness has gone and you have become sad, what is wrong with sadness? Enjoy it. Once you become capable of enjoying sadness, then you are neither. And this I tell you: if you enjoy sadness, it has its own beauties. Happiness is a little shallow; sadness is very deep, it has a depth to it. A man who has never
been sad will be shallow, just on the surface. Sadness is like a dark night, very deep. Darkness has a silence to it, and sadness also. Happiness bubbles; there is a sound in it. It is like a river in the mountains; sound is created. But in the mountains, a river can never be very deep; it is always shallow. When the river comes to the plain it becomes deep, but the sound stops. It moves as if not moving. Sadness has a depth. Why create trouble? While happy, be happy, enjoy it. Don’t get identified with it. When I say be happy, I mean enjoy it. Let it be a climate which will move and change. The morning changes into noon, noon changes into evening, and then comes night. Let happiness be a climate around you. Enjoy it, and then when sadness comes, enjoy that too. I teach you enjoyment whatsoever is the case. Sit silently and enjoy sadness, and suddenly sadness is no longer sadness; it has become a silent peaceful moment, beautiful in itself. Nothing is wrong in it. And then comes the ultimate alchemy, the point where suddenly you realize that you are neither—neither happiness nor sadness. You are the watcher: you watch peaks, you watch valleys; but you are neither. Once this point is attained you can go on celebrating everything. You celebrate life, you celebrate death.
Machines help, but don’t create meditation
So many machines are being developed around the world, pretending that they can give you meditation; you just have to put on earphones and relax, and within ten minutes you will reach the state of meditation. This is utter stupidity, but there is a reason why such an idea has come to the minds of technical people. Mind functions on a certain wavelength when it is awake. When it is dreaming it functions on another wavelength. When it is fast asleep it functions on a different wavelength. But none of these are meditation. For thousands of years we have called meditation turiya, ‘the fourth.’ When you go beyond the deepest sleep and still you are aware, that awareness is meditation. It is not an experience; it is you, your very being. But these hi-tech mechanisms can be of tremendous use in the right hands. They can help to create the kind of waves in your mind so that you start feeling relaxed, as if half asleep…thoughts are disappearing and a moment comes that everything becomes silent in you. That is the moment when the waves are those of deep sleep. You will not be aware of this deep sleep, but after ten minutes, when you are unplugged from the machine, you will see the effects: you are calm, quiet, peaceful, no worry, no tension; life seems to be more playful and
joyous. One feels as if one has had an inner bath. Your whole being is calm and
cool. But if you think this is meditation then you are wrong. I will say this is a good experience, and while you are in that moment of deep sleep, if you can also be aware from the very beginning, as the mind starts changing its waves…. You have to be more alert, more awake, more watchful—what is happening?—and you will see that mind is by and by falling asleep. And if you can see the mind falling asleep…the one who is seeing the mind falling asleep is your being, and that is the purpose of all authentic meditation. These machines cannot create that l awareness. That awareness you will have to create, but these machines can certainly create within ten minutes a possibility that you may not be able to create in years of effort. So I am not against these hi-tech instruments, I am all for them. It is just that I want the people who are spreading those machines around the world to know that they are doing good work, but it is incomplete. It will be complete only when the person in the deepest silence is also alert, like a small flame of awareness which goes on burning. Everything disappears, all around is darkness, and silence, and peace—but an unwavering flame of awareness. So if the machine is in the right hands and people can be taught that the real thing will come not through the machine, the machine can create the very essential ground in which that flame can grow. But that flame depends on you, not on the machine.
You are not your experiences
One of the most fundamental things to remember is that whatever you come across in your inner journey, you are not it. You are the one who is witnessing it.
It may be nothingness, it may be blissfulness, it may be silence…but one thing has to be remembered—however beautiful and however enchanting an experience you come to, you are not it. You are the one who is experiencing it. And if you go on and on and on, the ultimate in the journey is the point when there is no experience left—neither silence, nor blissfulness, nor nothingness. There is nothing as an object for you but only your subjectivity. The mirror is empty, it is not reflecting anything. It is you. Even great travelers of the inner world have got stuck in beautiful experiences, and have become identified with those experiences thinking, “I have found myself.” They have stopped before reaching the final stage where all experiences disappear. Enlightenment is not an experience. It is the state where you are left absolutely alone, nothing to know. No object, however beautiful, is present. Only in that moment does your consciousness, unobstructed by any object, take a turn and move back to the source. It becomes self-realization. It becomes enlightenment. I must remind you about the word object. Every object means hindrance. The very meaning of the word is hindrance, objection. So the object can be outside you, in the material world; the object can be inside you in your psychological world. The objects can be in your heart, feelings, emotions, sentiments, moods, and the objects can even be in your spiritual world. And they are so ecstatic that one cannot imagine there can be more. Many mystics of the world have stopped at ecstasy. It is a beautiful spot, a scenic spot, but they have not arrived home yet. When you come to a point when all experiences are absent, there is no object, then consciousness without obstruction moves in a circle—in existence everything moves in a circle, if not obstructed—it comes from the same source of your being, goes around. Finding no obstacle to it—no experience, no object—it moves back to the source, and the subject itself becomes the object. That is what J. Krishnamurti continued to say for his whole life: when the observer becomes the observed, know that you have arrived. Before that there are thousands of things in the way. The body gives its own experiences, which have become known as the experiences of the centers of kundalini; seven centers become seven lotus flowers. Each is bigger than the other and higher, and the fragrance is intoxicating. The mind gives you great spaces, unlimited, infinite. But remember the fundamental maxim, that still the home has not come. Enjoy the journey and enjoy all the scenes that come on the journey—the trees, the mountains, the flowers, the rivers, the sun and the moon and the stars—but don’t stop anywhere, unless your very subjectivity becomes its own object. When the observer is the observed, when the knower is the known, when the seer is the seen, the home has arrived. This home is the real temple we have been searching for, for lives together, but we always go astray. We become satisfied with beautiful experiences. A courageous seeker has to leave all those beautiful experiences behind, and go on moving. When all experiences are exhausted and only he himself remains in his aloneness…no ecstasy is bigger than that, no blissfulness is more blissful, no truth is truer. You have entered what I call godliness, you have become a god. An old man went to his doctor. “I have got toilet problems”, he complained. “Well, let us see. How is your urination?” “Every morning at seven o’clock, like a baby.” “Good. How about your bowel movement?” “Eight o’clock each morning, like clockwork.” “So, what is the problem?” the doctor asked. “I don’t wake up until nine.” You are asleep and it is time to wake up. All these experiences are experiences of a sleeping mind. The awakened mind has no experiences at all.
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