Desires are of the Conscious Mind & Needs are of the Unconscious Mind. 

When you start watching your dreams, you will find five types of dreams happening.

First type of dream is just rubbish. And many thousands of psychoanalysts are just working on that rubbish. It is simply useless. It happens because in the whole day, working the whole day, you gather much rubbish.

       

 

Just like the body gathers dust and you need a bath, you need a cleaning, in the same way the mind gathers dust. And there is no way how to give a bath to the mind, so the mind has an automatic mechanism to throw all dust, rubbish. The dream is nothing but the rising of the dust that mind is throwing - the first type of dream - and this is the biggest portion of dreams, almost ninety percent. Almost ninety percent dreams are simply dust being thrown; don't pay much attention to them. And by and by, as your awareness will grow, you will be able to see what is dust.

The second type of dream is a sort of wish-fulfillment. There are many needs, natural needs, but the priests and the so-called religious teachers have poisoned your mind. They won't allow you even to fulfill your basic needs. They have condemned them completely and the condemnation has entered in you, so you hunger for many of your needs. Those hungry needs demand fulfillment. And the second type of dreaming is nothing but wish-fulfillment. Whatsoever - because of the priests and other poisoners - you have denied to your being, in dreams the mind tries to fulfill it in some way or other.

Just the other day a young man came - very sensible very sensitive - and he asked me that "I have come to ask a very significant question - because my whole life depends on it. My parents are forcing me to get married, and I don't see any meaning in it, so I have come to ask you: Is marriage meaningful or not? Should I move into marriage or not?"

I told him that "When you feel thirsty, do you ask whether drinking is meaningful or not? Should I drink water or not? The question of meaning doesn't arise. It is a question of whether you are thirsty or not. Maybe there is no meaning in water and no meaning in drinking, but that is irrelevant. The relevant thing is whether you are thirsty or not. And I know that even if you drink again and again, you will become thirsty. So the mind can say: 'What is the meaning in it, what is the purpose of it - drinking again and again, and again becoming thirsty? - it seems to be just a rut. There seems to be no meaning in it.'"

This is how the conscious mind has been trying to dominate your whole being, because meaning belongs to conscious mind. The unconscious knows no meaning. It knows hunger, it knows thirst, it knows needs; it knows no meaning. In fact, life has no meaning. If you ask, you are asking for suicide. Life has no meaning; it simply exists, and exists so beautifully without meaning that there is no need. What is the meaning of a tree existing, or the sun rising every day in the morning, or the moon in the night? What is the meaning when a tree comes to bloom? And what is the meaning when the birds sing in the morning, and the stream goes on flowing, and the waves, tremendous waves of the ocean go on shattering on the rocks again and again and again? What is the meaning?

Meaning is not of the whole. The whole exists so beautifully without meaning. In fact, if there was any meaning the whole would not have been so beautiful. Because with meaning comes calculation, with meaning comes cunningness, with meaning comes reason, with meaning comes division: this is meaningful, that is meaningless, this is more meaningful, that is less meaningful. The whole exists without any distinctions. Everything is absolutely beautiful not because of any meaning, but just by being there. There is no purpose.

So I told to the young man that "If you ask about meaning, you are asking a wrong question, and you will be led in a wrong way." That's how priests became so powerful: you asked wrong questions, they supplied wrong answers. I told him, "You just watch your own being. Do you need a woman to fulfill you? Does your whole being hanker for love? Because love is a hunger, a thirst. When you see a beautiful woman passing by, does something suddenly happen in you? - a wave, something invisible, a change? Or nothing happens? You go on moving the same way as you were moving as if the woman had not passed. If you move on a road and a beautiful woman passes, and you go on moving the same way as you were moving before she came, nothing has happened, no wave in your being, not even a ripple, then there is no need for marriage. But don't ask about the meaning. If something happens, you start walking a little faster, or you start humming a tune, or you start looking at the beautiful woman, or you start avoiding her... if something happens this way or that - I am not concerned whether you start moving in the same direction the woman is going, or you start running into the opposite direction, it is not relevant - if something happens then you have a need, and that need is to be fulfilled. Because a need exists to be fulfilled. There may come some day when you will pass on the road and a woman makes no difference. That too is good, but this too is good.

Everything is holy and sacred. There is a time to be in love and there is a time to move beyond it. There is a time to be related and enjoy the relationship, and there is a time to be alone and to enjoy the beauty of being alone. And everything is beautiful."

But one should look to the need, not to the meaning. Meaning is of the conscious mind, need is of the unconscious, and that's how the second type of dream comes into existence: you go on cutting your needs, then the mind fulfills them in dream. You may not get married because you have read great books and you are poisoned by thinkers, and they have molded your mind in certain patterns. And you are no more open to existence itself; philosophies have blinded you. Then you will start cutting your needs. Then those needs will bubble up, surface in the dream, because the unconscious knows no philosophies; the unconscious knows no meaning, no purpose. The unconscious knows only one thing: what is needed for your being to become fulfilled.

Then the unconscious forces its own dreaming. This is the second type of dream; very meaningful to understand it and meditate on it. Because the unconscious is trying to communicate to you that "Don't be a fool! You will suffer for it. And don't starve your being. Don't be suicidal, and don't go on committing a slow suicide by killing your needs."

Remember: desires are of the conscious mind, need of the unconscious. And the distinction is very very meaningful, very significant to be understood.

Desires are of the conscious mind. The unconscious knows no desires, the unconscious is not worried about desires. What is a desire? A desire comes out of your thinking, training, conditioning. You would like to be the president of the country; the unconscious does not bother about it. The unconscious is not interested in being the president of the country, the unconscious is interested only how to be a fulfilled organic unity. But the conscious mind says, "Become a president, and if in becoming the president you have to sacrifice your woman, then sacrifice. If you have to sacrifice your body - sacrifice. If you have to sacrifice rest - sacrifice. First become the president of the country." Or gather too much wealth; that is of the conscious mind. The unconscious knows no wealth. The unconscious knows only the natural. It is untouched by the society. It is like animals or the birds, or like the trees. The unconscious has not been conditioned by the society, by the politicians. It remains yet pure.

Listen to the second type of the dream and meditate on it, and it will communicate you what is your need. Fulfill the needs and don't bother about the desires. If you really want to be blissful, fulfill the needs and don't bother about desires. If you want to be miserable, cut the needs and follow the desires.

That's how you have become miserable. Simple is the phenomenon, whether you are miserable or blissful; very simple is the phenomenon. A man who listens to his needs and follows them, just like a river flows to the ocean... The river doesn't say whether to flow to the east or to the west, it simply seeks the way. East or west makes no difference. The river flowing to the ocean knows no desires; it knows only its needs. That's why animals look so happy - having nothing, and so happy? - and you having so many things and so miserable? Even animals surpass you in their beauty, in their bliss. What is happening? The animals don't have a conscious mind to control and manipulate the unconscious; they remain undivided.

Second type of dream has much to reveal to you. With the second type you start changing your consciousness, you start changing your behavior, you start changing your life pattern. Listen to your needs, whatsoever unconscious is saying. Always remember: unconscious is right, because it has the wisdom of the ages. Millions of lives you have existed. The conscious belongs to this life; it has been trained in the schools and the universities, and the family and this society in which you are born, coincidentally born. But the unconscious carries all the experiences of all your lives. It carries the experience when you were a rock, it carries the experience when you were a tree, it carries the experience when you were animals - it carries all, the whole past. Unconscious is tremendously wise and conscious is tremendously foolish - has to be so because conscious is just of this life, very small, with no experience; it is very childish. Unconscious is eternal wisdom. Listen to it.

Now the whole psychoanalysis in the West is doing only this and nothing else: listening to the second type of dreaming and changing your life pattern accordingly. And psychoanalysis has helped many people. It has its own limitations, but it has helped because at least this part, listening to the second type of dreaming, makes your life more relaxed, less tense.

Then there is a third type of dream. This third type of dream is a communication from the superconscious. The second type of dream is a communication from the unconscious. The third type of dream is very rare, because we have lost all contact with the superconscious. But still it comes because the superconscious is yours. Maybe it has become a cloud and moved into the sky, evaporated, maybe the distance is very far, but it is anchored still in you.

The communication from the superconscious is very rare. When you become very, very alert, only then you will start feeling it. Otherwise, it will be lost in the dust that the mind throws in dreams, and the wish-fulfillment that the mind goes on dreaming about - things incomplete, suppressed. It will be lost. But when you become aware, it is just like a diamond shining - absolutely different from all the stones around.

When you can feel and find a dream which is coming from the superconscious, watch it, meditate on it, because that will become your guidance, that will lead to your Master, that will lead you to the way of life that can suit you, that will lead you to the right discipline. That dream will become a deep guide inside. With the conscious you can find a Master, but the Master will be nothing more than a teacher. With the unconscious you can find a Master, but the Master will not be more than a lover - you will fall in love with a certain personality, with a certain type. But only the superconscious can lead you to the right Master. Then he is not a teacher; you are not infatuated with what he says, you are not infatuated with what he is. Rather, on the contrary, you are guided by your superconscious that this man will suit you, that this man will be the right possibility for you to grow with, that this man can become your soil.

Then there is a fourth type of dream which comes from the past lives. Not very rare - many times it comes, but everything is a mess inside you; you cannot make any distinctions. You are not there to make distinctions.

In the East we have worked very hard on this fourth type of dream. Because of this dream we stumbled upon the phenomenon of reincarnation. From this dream, you become by and by aware of your past lives. You move backwards, backwards in time. Then many things start changing in you, because if you can remember, even in a dream, who you were in your past life, many things will become meaningless, and many new things will become meaningful. The whole pattern will change, your gestalt will change.

Because you accumulated too much wealth in a past life, you died the richest man in the country and deep down a beggar, and again you are doing the same in this life... Suddenly the gestalt will change. If you can remember what you did and how it all came to nothing, if you can remember many lives, many times you have been doing the same again and again - you are like a stuck gramophone record, a vicious circle: again you start the same and you end the same - if you can remember a few of your lives you will be suddenly surprised that you have never done a single thing new. Again and again you accumulated wealth; again and again you tried to be powerful politically; again and again you became too much knowledgeable; again and again you fell in love, and again and again the same misery that love brings. When you see this repetition, how can you remain the same? Then this life suddenly is transfigured. You cannot remain in the same rut anymore.

       

 

That's why in the East people again and again have been asking, for millennia, "How to get out of this wheel of life and death?" It seems the same wheel. It seems to be the same story again and again a repetition. If you don't know it, then you think you are doing new things, and you are so much excited. And I can see you have been doing these same things again and again.

Nothing is new in life; it is a wheel; it moves on the same route. Because you go on forgetting about the past, that's why you feel so much excitement. Once you remember, the whole excitement drops. In that remembrance happens sannyas.

Sannyas is an effort to get out of the rut of sansar. It is an effort to jump out of the wheel. It is to say to yourself that "Enough is enough! Now I am not going to participate anymore in the same old nonsense. I am getting out of it." Sannyas is a perfect dropping out of the wheel - not out of the society, but out of your own inner wheel of life and death. This is the fourth type of dream.

And then there is a fifth type of dream, and the last type. The fourth type is going backwards into your past, the fifth type is going forwards into the future. Rare, very rare - it happens only sometimes; when you are very very vulnerable, open, flexible, the past gives a shadow and the future gives a shadow, reflects in you. If you can become aware of your dreams, someday you will become aware of this possibility also: that future looks into you. Just suddenly a door opens and the future has a communication with you.

These are the five types of dreams. The modern psychology understands only the second type. Past Soviet Russian psychology understood only the first type. The three types, the other three types are almost unknown, but yoga understands them all.

       

 

If you meditate and become aware of your inner being in dreams, many more things will happen. The first: by and by, the more you become aware of your dreams, you will be less and less convinced of the reality of your waking hours. Hence, Hindus say that the world is like a dream.

Right now just the opposite is the case: because you are so much convinced of the reality of the world in your waking hours, you think while you dream that those dreams are also real. Nobody feels while dreaming that the dream is unreal. While dreaming it looks perfect, it looks absolutely real. In the morning of course you may say it was just a dream, but that is not the point because now another mind is functioning. This mind was not a witness at all; this mind has only heard the rumor. This conscious mind that wakes in the morning and says it was all dream, this mind was not a witness at all. So how this mind can say anything? - he has simply heard a rumor. As if you are asleep and two persons are talking, and you just - in your sleep, because they are talking so loudly - hear some words from here and there and just a hodge-podge impression is left.

This is happening: while the unconscious creates dreams and tremendous activity goes on, the conscious is asleep and just hears the rumor, and in the morning says, "It is all false. It was just a dream." Right now, whenever you dream you feel it is absolutely real. Even absurd things look real, illogical things look real, because the unconscious knows no logic.

       

 

You are walking on a road in a dream, a horse you see coming, and suddenly the horse is no more horse, the horse has become your wife. And nothing happens to your mind, that "How it can be possible? The horse has so suddenly become my wife?" No problem arises, no doubt arises. The unconscious knows no doubt. Even such an absurd phenomenon is believed; you are convinced of the reality.

Just the opposite happens when you become aware of the dreams and you feel they are really dreams - nothing is real, just mind-drama, a psycho-drama. You are the stage, and you are the actors, and you are the story-writer, and you are the director, and you are the producer, and you are the spectator - nobody else there, just a mind creation. When you become aware of this, then this whole world while you will be waking will change its quality. Then you will see here also, same is the case-on a wider stage, but the dream is the same.

       

 

Hindus call this world also maya, illusory, dreamlike, mind-stuff. What do they mean? Do they mean that it is unreal? No, it is not unreal. But when your mind gets mixed into it, you create an unreal world of your own. We don't live in the same world; everybody lives in his own world. There are as many worlds as there are minds. When Hindus say that these worlds are maya, they mean the reality plus mind is maya. Reality, that which is, we don't know. Reality plus mind is illusion, maya. When somebody becomes totally awakened, a Buddha, then he knows reality minus mind. Then it is the truth, the brahman, the ultimate. Plus mind, and everything becomes dream, because mind is the stuff that creates dreams. Minus mind, nothing can be a dream; only reality remains in its crystal purity. Mind is just like a mirror. In the mirror the world reflects. That reflection cannot be real, that reflection is just a reflection. When the mirror is no more there, the reflection disappears. Now you can see the real.

       

A full-moon night and the lake is silent and the moon is reflected in the lake and you try to catch the moon. This is all that everybody has been doing for many lives - trying to catch the moon in the mirror of the lake. And of course you never succeed - you cannot succeed - it is not possible. One has to forget about the lake and look exactly in the opposite direction. There is the moon.

Mind is the lake in which the world becomes illusory. Whether you dream with closed eyes or you dream with open eyes makes no difference. If the mind is there, all that happens is dream. This will be the first realization if you meditate on dreams.

       

Mind is the Mechanism that Reflects
The Witness is the Watcher Behind Mind

 

And the second realization will be that you are a witness: dream is there but you are not part of it. You are not part of your mind, you are a transcendence. You are in the mind but you are not the mind. You look through the mind but you are not the mind. You use the mind but you are not the mind. Suddenly you are a witness - no more a mind. And this witnessing is the final, the ultimate realization. Then, whether dream while asleep or whether dream while awake makes no difference, you remain a witness. You remain in the world, but the world cannot enter in you anymore. Things are there but the mind is not in the things, and the things are not in the mind. Suddenly the witness comes in and everything changes.

It is very, very simple once you know the knack of it. Otherwise, it looks very very difficult, almost impossible - how to awake while dreaming? Looks impossible but it is not: three to nine months it will take if you every night go to sleep - while falling into sleep, trying to be alert and watching it. But remember, don't try to be alert in an active sense, otherwise you will not be able to fall asleep. Passive alertness: loose, naturally relaxed, just looking by the corner, not too much active about it, just passive awareness, not too much concerned. Sitting by the side and the river flows by and you are just watching.

       

Three to nine months this takes. Then someday, suddenly the sleep is falling on you like a dark screen, like a dark curtain, as if the sun has set and the night is descending. It settles all around you, but deep inside a flame goes on burning. You are watching - silent, passive. Then the world of dream starts. Then many plays happen, many psychodramas, and you go on watching. By and by, the distinction comes into existence - now you can see what type of dream. Then suddenly, one day you realize that this is the same as while waking. There is no difference of quality. The whole world has become illusory. And when the world is illusory, only the witness is real.

This is what Patanjali means when he says,

- and that will make you a realized one.

Meditate on the face of your beloved. Meditate. If you love flowers, meditate on a rose. Meditate on the moon, or whatsoever you like. If you love food, meditate on food. Why Patanjali says "... whatsoever appeals to you"? Because meditation should not be a forced effort. If it is forced, it is doomed from the very beginning. A forced thing will never make you natural. So from the very beginning, find out something which appeals to you. There is no need to create unnecessary conflict. And this is to be understood, because mind has a natural capacity to meditate if you give it objects which are appealing to it.

In a small school, a child is listening: the birds are chirping in the trees and he is listening, and he is raptly listening - he is in rapport. He has forgotten the teacher, he has forgotten the class. He is no more there; he is rapt attention. Meditation has happened.

And then the teacher says, "What are you doing? Are you asleep? Concentrate here on the board!" Now the child has to try, make effort. Those birds never said anything to the child that, "Look we are singing here. Be attentive!" Simply it happened because it had a deep appeal for the child. This blackboard looks so ugly and this teacher looks so murderous, and the whole thing is forced. He will try, but by effort nobody can meditate. Again and again the mind will slip. So many things are happening outside the room: suddenly a dog starts barking or a beggar passes by singing, or somebody is playing on a guitar. So many millions of things are happening outside, and he has to bring his attention again and again to the blackboard, to the ugly schoolroom.

       

 

We have made schools just like prisons. In India, the school building and the prison building has the same color, red. Schoolrooms are ugly. Nothing is appealing there: no toys, no music, no trees, no birds - nothing. The schoolroom is meant to force your attention. You have to learn to concentrate.

And this is the difference between concentration and meditation: concentration is a forced thing, meditation is natural. Says Patanjali,

- then spontaneously your whole being starts flowing. Just look at the face of your beloved. In her eyes, meditate.

Ordinary religious teachers will say, "What are you doing? Is this meditation?" They teach not to think of your beloved while you are meditating. They think that is a distraction. And this is a subtle point to be understood: there are no distractions in the world. If you make unnatural efforts, then there are distractions - you create them. Your whole being would like to watch the face of your wife, husband, your child, and the religious teacher says, "These are allurements, these are the distractors. You go to the temple, to the church; meditate on the cross." You meditate on the cross: again and again you remember your beloved. Now the face of the beloved becomes a distraction. Not that it is distraction - there is nothing special in meditating on the cross; you are simply stupid. What is the need to go and meditate on the cross? If it appeals you it is good, but there is no necessity. There is no special quality in a cross.

In fact, wherever meditation happens, there is the special quality. Meditation brings the special quality. It is not in the objects, it is in you. When you meditate on something, you give your inner being to it. Suddenly it becomes sacred, holy. Things are not holy; meditation makes them holy. You can meditate on a rock, and suddenly the rock becomes the temple. No Buddha is so beautiful like that rock when you meditate on it. What is meditation? It is showering the rock with your consciousness. It is moving around the rock, so absorbed, so deep in rapport, that the bridge is there between you and the rock. The gap disappears you are bridged. In fact, you don't know now who is the observer and who is the observed. The observer becomes the observed, the observed becomes the observer. Now you don't know who is the rock and who is the meditator. Suddenly, the energies meet and mingle, and there is the temple. Don't unnecessarily create distractions - then you become miserable.

Somebody was here and he is doing a certain type of mantra for many years, and he says, "Distraction comes again and again." I asked, "What is the distraction?" His wife has died and he loved her very much. And I used to know that woman; she was really a beautiful person. He has never remarried. He really loved her. No other woman ever attracted him. Now she is dead and the vacuum is there, and he feels the loneliness.

Because of this loneliness he went to some teacher, that "How to get rid of the memory of my wife?" So he gave him a mantra. Now, he has been chanting the mantra for at least three years, and suddenly again and again while he is chanting the mantra like a robot, the wife comes, the face appears. He has not been able to forget the wife. The mantra has not proved strong enough, so he was here, very miserable. He said, "Three years have passed and I am always haunted by her memory, and it seems that I cannot get out of it. And even this mantra has not helped. And three years, really and religiously I have been doing it."

I said, "You are a fool. There is no need to do this mantra. Repeat your wife's name; make it a mantra. Keep her photo before you: look at the photo make it the image of the divine." He said, "What are you saying? She is my distraction." So I said, "Make the distraction your meditation. Why create conflict?"

Distraction can be made the very object of meditation. And it is distraction because there is some appeal deep down, some harmony. That's why the mantra proved impotent, futile because the mantra is just overimposed. Somebody says some word and you repeat it, and the word has no appeal for you. It never existed for you before, it has no roots in you. The wife is very deep. Love is deeper than any mantra, so why waste your time? He said, "I will try." And just after few days he wrote a letter, that "This is tremendous! I am feeling so calm and so peaceful. And really, my wife is so beautiful. There is no need to think that she is distracting me."

Remember this, because you may be doing many things like that. Whenever you feel something is distracting, that simply shows that you are naturally attracted towards that, nothing else. So why create conflict? - move into the same direction; make it an object of meditation. Be natural, don't be suppressive and don't create conflict, and you will attain.

Nobody ever attains through conflict. Conflict will create a split personality. Move to the natural attraction; then you are one, then you are whole, then you are together. Then you are one piece, not a house divided against itself. And when you move as one piece there is dance in your step and there is nothing which is not divine.

      

 

You may be surprised - it happened: one great Buddhist monk, Nagarjuna, was staying in a small village. Somebody came... somebody became very attracted to him. But the man said that "Your style of life, the way you move like an emperor in the robes of a beggar, appeals deeply. I would also like to become a religious man, but there is a trouble. I have a cow, and I love her too much. And she is so beautiful. And I cannot leave her." Just a cow... He had no wife, no children, he got never married, but he loves the cow. And he felt a little foolish while he was saying this. He said, "Because I know you will understand, that's why I am saying. But this is my whole trouble: so much attachment with this cow. And I have brought her up and she has become so much one with me and she loves me. So what to do? So Nagarjuna said, "There is no need to go anywhere. If somebody loves someone so deeply, then there is no need to move anywhere. Make this love your meditation. Meditate on the cow."

Don't create any conflict. Remember, if love and meditation are in conflict, meditation will be defeated. Love will be victorious because love is so beautiful. Meditation can be victorious only on the wings of love. Use love as a vehicle.

This is what Patanjali means:

- whatsoever it is; I make no distinction. And there is no need to cling to one object, because objects may change. This morning you may feel like you love your child, and tomorrow you may not feel. Then don't create any conflict. Always find wherever your love is flowing; ride on your love. Today it is a flower, tomorrow it is a child, the day after tomorrow it is the moon - that's not the problem; every object is beautiful - wherever your appeal, flow naturally, ride on it, meditate on it. The emphasis is on being whole, undivided. In your undivided being, meditation blooms.

From the smallest to the greatest, he becomes master of all. Meditation is the door to the infinite power. Meditation is the door to the superconscious.

Conscious you are: move into the depths of the unconscious. It is going into the basement of your being. Gather more and more awareness so you can move into sleep, into dream. Start by gathering awareness in your waking hours; that will help you to move into the unconscious. Then gather more awareness into the unconscious; that will help you to move into the superconscious. Energy will be needed. Your energy right now is just like a flicker - not enough. Create more energy through awareness.

It is just like you heat water, or you heat ice. If you heat ice it melts. On a certain degree of heat it becomes water. Then you have to heat it more if you want it to evaporate. Then go on heating - then on a certain degree, a hundred degrees, suddenly it takes a jump and evaporates. Quantity changes into quality. Quantitative change becomes qualitative. Below a certain degree it is ice, beyond that degree it becomes water. Below a certain degree, again it remains water; beyond that degree it evaporates, becomes vapor. When it is ice, it is almost dead and closed - cold, not warm enough to be alive. When it is water, it is more flowing, more alive, not closed. It has melted, it is warmer. But water moves downwards. When it evaporates, the dimension has changed; it is no more horizontal, it becomes vertical; it goes upwards.

First become more and more alert in waking hours. That will bring you to a certain degree of heat. It is really a certain degree of inner heat, a certain temperature of your consciousness. That will help you to move into the unconscious. Then become more and more conscious into the unconscious. More effort will be needed, more energy will be created. Then suddenly one day you will find you are moving upwards; you have become weightless. Now the gravitation doesn't affect you. You are becoming superconscious.

Superconscious has all power: it is omnipotent, it is omniscient, it is omnipresent. Superconscious is everywhere. Superconscious has every power that is possible, and superconscious sees everything - it has become absolute clarity of vision.

That's what Patanjali says:

       

 

Mind is like a Bird Flying in the Sky - No Footprints are Left Behind.

WHAT IS MIND? Mind is not a thing, but an event. A thing has substance in it, an event is just a process. A thing is like the rock; an event is like the wave: it exists, but is not substantial. It is just the event between the wind and the ocean; a process, a phenomenon.

This is the first thing to be understood: that mind is a process, like a wave or like a river, but it has no substance in it. If it has substance, then it can not be dissolved. If it has no substance it can disappear without leaving a single trace behind. When a wave disappears into the ocean, what is left behind? Nothing, not even a trace. So those who have known, they say mind is like a bird flying into the sky - no footprints are left behind, not even a trace. The bird flies but leaves no path, no footprints.

      

The mind is just a process. In fact, mind doesn't exist, only thoughts, thoughts moving so fast that you think and feel that something is existing there in continuity. One thought comes, another thought comes, another, and they go on. The gap is so small you cannot see the gap between one thought and another. So two thoughts become joined, they become a continuity, and because of that continuity you think there is a mind. There are thoughts - no mind - just as there are electrons, no matter. Thought is the electron of the mind. Just like a crowd... a crowd exists in a sense, doesn't exist in another; only individuals exist. But many individuals together give the feeling as if they are one. A nation exists and exists not; only individuals are there. Individuals are the electrons of a nation, of a community, of a crowd.

Thoughts exist, mind doesn't exist. Mind is just the appearance. And when you look into the mind deeper, it disappears. Then there are thoughts, but when the mind has disappeared and individual thoughts exist, many things are immediately solved. First thing: immediately you come to know that thoughts are like clouds - they come and go - and you are the sky. When there is no mind, immediately the perception comes that you are no more involved in the thoughts. Thoughts are there, passing through you like clouds passing through the sky, or the wind passing through the trees. Thoughts are passing through you, and they can pass because you are a vast emptiness. There is no hindrance, no obstacle. No wall exists to prevent them.

You are not a walled phenomenon. Your sky is the infinitely open; thoughts come and go. And once you start feeling that thoughts come and go and you are the watcher, the witness, the mind is in control.

Mind cannot be controlled. In the first place, because it is not, how can you control it? In the second place, who will control the mind? Because nobody exists beyond the mind. and when I say nobody exists, I mean that nobody exists beyond the mind - a nothingness. Who will control the mind? If somebody is controlling the mind, then it will be only a part, fragment of the mind controlling another fragment of the mind. That is what the ego is.

Mind cannot be controlled in that way. It is not, and there is nobody to control it. The inner emptiness can see, but cannot control. It can look, but cannot control. But the very look is the control, the very phenomenon of observation, of witnessing, becomes the control because the mind disappears.

       

 

It is just like in a dark night, you are running fast because you have become afraid of somebody following you, and that somebody is nobody but your own shadow. and the more you run, the more the shadow is closer to you. Howsoever fast you run makes no difference; the shadow is there. whenever you look back, the shadow is there. That is not the way to escape from it, and that is not the way to control it. You will have to look deeper into the shadow. Stand still and look deeper into the shadow; the shadow disappears because the shadow is not; it is just an absence of light. Mind is nothing but the absence of your presence. When you sit silently, when you look deep in the mind, mind simply disappears. Thoughts will remain, they are existential, but mind will not be found.

       

 

But when the mind is gone then a second perception becomes possible: you can see thoughts are not yours. Of course they come, and sometimes they rest a little while in you, and then they go. You may be a resting place, but they don't originate in you. Have you ever watched that not even a single thought has arisen out of you? Not a single thought has come through your being. They always come from the outside. They don't belong to you. Rootless, homeless they hover. Sometimes they rest in you, that's all; a cloud resting on top of a hill. Then they will move on their own; you need not do anything. If you simply watch, control is attained.

The word control is not very good, because words cannot be very good. Words belong to the mind, to the world of thoughts. Words cannot be very, very penetrating; they are shallow. The word control is not good because there is nobody to control and there is nobody to be controlled. But tentatively, it helps to understand a certain thing which happens. When you look deeply, mind is controlled. Suddenly you have become the master.

       

 

Thoughts are there but they are no more masters of you, they cannot do anything to you; they simply come and go. You remain untouched just like a lotus flower amidst rainfall: drops of water fall on the petals but they go on slipping, they don't even touch. The lotus remains untouched.

That's why in the East lotus became so much significant, became so much symbolic. The greatest symbol that has come out of the East is the lotus. It carries the whole meaning of the eastern consciousness. It says, "Be like a lotus, that's all. Remain untouched, and you are in control. Remain untouched and you are the master."

Few things more about the mind before we can enter Patanjali's sutras. From one standpoint, mind is like waves - a disturbance. When the ocean is calm and quiet, undisturbed, the waves are not there. When the ocean is disturbed in a tide or strong wind, when tremendous waves arise and whole surface is just a chaos, mind from one standpoint... These are all metaphors just to help you to understand certain quality inside which cannot be said through words. These metaphors are poetic. If you try to understand them with sympathy, you will attain to an understanding. But if you try to understand them logically, you will miss the point. They are metaphors.

       

 

Mind is a disturbance of consciousness, just like an ocean with waves is a disturbance. Something foreign has entered - the wind. Something from the outside has happened to the ocean, or to the consciousness - the thoughts, or the wind, and there is a chaos. But the chaos is always on the surface. The waves are always on the surface. There are no waves in the depth - cannot be because in the depth the wind cannot enter. So everything is just on the surface. If you move inwards, control is attained. If you move inwards from the surface you go to the center; suddenly, the surface may still be disturbed but you are not disturbed.

The whole yoga is nothing but centering, moving towards the center, getting rooted there, abiding there. And from there the whole perspective changes. Now still the waves may be there, but they don't reach you. And now you can see they don't belong to you, just a conflict on the surface with something foreign. And from the center, when you look, by and by, the conflict ceases. By and by, you relax. By and by, you accept that of course there is strong wind and waves will arise; you are not worried, and when you are not worried even waves can be enjoyed. Nothing is wrong in them. The problem arises because you are also on the surface. You are in a small boat on the surface and strong wind comes and it is tide, and the whole ocean goes mad.

Of course, you are worried; you are scared to death. You are in danger. Any moment the waves can throw your small boat; any moment death can occur. What you can do with your small boat? How can you control? If you start fighting with the waves you will be defeated. Fight won't help. You will have to accept the waves. In fact, if you can accept the waves and let your boat, howsoever small, move with them not against them, then there is no danger.

       

 

That is the meaning of Tilopa - "loose and natural". Waves are there; you simply allow. You simply allow yourself to move with them, not against them. You become part of them. Then tremendous happiness happens. That is the whole art of surfing: moving with the waves - not against, with them - so much so that you are not different from them. Surfing can become a great meditation. It can give you glimpses of the inner because it is not a fight, it is a let-go. Once you know that even waves can be enjoyed - and that can be known when you look the whole phenomenon from the center.

Just like you are a traveler and clouds have gathered, and there is much lightning, and you have forgotten where you are moving; you have forgotten the path and you are hurrying towards home. This is what is happening on the surface: a traveler lost; many clouds, much lightning... Soon, there will be tremendous rain. You are seeking home, the safety of the home. Then suddenly you reach home. Now you sit inside, now you wait for the rains, now you can enjoy. Now the lightning has a beauty of its own. It was not so when you were outside, lost in a forest. But now, sitting inside the house the whole phenomenon is tremendously beautiful. Now the rain comes and you enjoy. Now the lightning is there and you enjoy, and great thunder in the clouds, and you enjoy, because now you are safe inside.

Once you reach to the center, you start enjoying whatsoever happens on the surface. So the whole thing is not to fight on the surface, but rather slip into the center. Then there is a control, and a control which has not been forced, a control which happens spontaneously when you are centered.

Centering in consciousness is the control of the mind. So don't try to control the mind. The language can mislead you. Nobody can control, and those who try to control, they will go mad; they will simply go neurotic, because trying to control the mind is nothing but a part of the mind trying to control another part of the mind.

Who are you who is trying to control? You are also a wave, a religious wave of course, trying to control. And there are irreligious waves. There is sex and there is anger and there is jealousy and possessiveness and hatred, and millions of waves, irreligious. And then there are religious waves: meditation, love, compassion. But these are all on the surface of the surface. And on the surface, religious, irreligious doesn't make any difference.

Religion is at the center and in the perspective that happens through the center. Sitting inside your home you look at your own surface. Everything changes because your perspective is new. Suddenly you are control. In fact, you are so much in control that you can leave the surface uncontrolled. This is subtle. You are much in control, so much rooted, not worried about the surface... In fact you would like the waves and tides and the storm - it is beautiful, it gives energy, it is a strength - there is nothing to be worried about it; only weaklings worry about thoughts. Only weaklings worry about the mind. Stronger people simply absorb, the whole, and they are richer for it. Stronger people simply never reject anything. Rejection is out of weakness - you are afraid. Stronger people would like to ab sorb everything that life gives. Religious, irreligious moral, immoral, divine, devil - makes no difference; stronger person absorbs everything, and he is richer fo it. He has a totally different depth Ordinary religious people cannot have; they are poor and shallow.

Watch ordinary religious people going to the temple and to the mosque and to the church. You will always find very, very shallow people with no depth. Because they have rejected parts of themselves, they have become crippled. They are in a certain way paralyzed.

Nothing is wrong in the mind, nothing is wrong in the thoughts. If anything is wrong, it is remaining on the surface, because then you don't know the whole and unnecessarily suffer because of the part and the part-perception. A whole perception is needed, and that possible only from the center, because from the center you can look all around in all dimensions, in all directions, the whole periphery of your being. And it is vast. In fact, it is the same as the periphery of existence. Once you are centered, by and by you become wider and wider and bigger and bigger, and you end with being brahman, not less than that.

       

 

From another standpoint, mind is like dust a traveller gathers on his clothes. And you have been traveling, and traveling and traveling for millions of lives and never taken a bath. Much dust has collected, naturally - nothing wrong in it; has to be so - layers of dust and you think those layers are your personality. You have become so much identified with them, you have lived with those layers of dust so long they look like your skin. You have become identified.

Mind is the past, the memory, the dust. Everybody has to gather it. If you travel, you will gather dust. But no need to be identified with it, no need to become one with it, because if you become one, then you will be in trouble because you are not the dust, you are consciousness. Says Omar Khayyam, "Dust unto dust". When a man dies, what happens? - dust returns unto dust. If you are just dust, then everything will return to the dust, nothing will be left behind. But are you just dust, layers of dust? Or, is something inside you which is not dust at all, not of the earth at all? That's your consciousness, your awareness.

Awareness is your being, consciousness is your being, and the dust that awareness collects around it is your mind. There are two ways to deal with this dust. The ordinary religious way is to clean the clothes, rub your body hard. But those methods cannot help much. Howsoever you clean your clothes, the clothes have become so dirty they are beyond redemption; you cannot clean them. On the contrary, whatsoever you do may make them more unclean.

It happened:

Mulla Nasrudin came once to me, and he is a drunkard. Eating, drinking tea, his hands shake, everything falls on his clothes, so all his clothes were stained with tea and pan, and this and that. So I told Nasrudin, "Why don't you go to the chemist and find something? There are solutions and these stains can be washed."

So he went. After seven days he came back; his clothes were in a worse condition, worse than before. I asked, 'What is the matter? Didn't you go to the chemist?" He said, "I went. And that chemical solution wonderful - it works. All the stains of tea and pan gone. Now I need another solution because that solution has left its own stains."

Religious people supply you soaps and chemical solutions how to wipe, how to wash the dirt, but then those solutions leave their own stains. That's why an immoral person can become moral, but remains dirty, now in moral way, but remains dirty. Even sometimes the situation is worse than before.

An immoral man is in many ways innocent, less egoistic. A moral man has all the immorality inside the mind. And new things that he has gathered: those are the moralistic, the puritan, egoistic attitudes. He feels superior. He feels he is the chosen one and everybody else is condemned to hell. Only he is going to heaven. And all the immorality remains inside, because you cannot control mind from the surface - there is no way. It simply doesn't happen that way. Only one control exists, and that is the perception from the center.

Mind is like a dust gathered through millions journeys. The real religious standpoint, the radical religious standpoint against the ordinary, is to simply throw the clothes. Don't bother to wash them, they cannot be washed. Simply move like a snake out of his old skin and don't even look back. This is what exactly yoga is: how to get rid of your personalities. Those personalities are the clothes.

This word "personality" is very interesting. It come from a Greek root persona. It means the mask that actors used in ancient Greece, in drama, to hide the face. That mask is called persona, and you have personality out of it. Personality is the mask, not you. Personality a false face, to show it to others. And through man lives and many experiences you have created many personalities, clothes; they have all become dirty. You have used them too much, and because of them the original face is completely lost.

You don't know what is your original face. You are deceiving others and you have become a victim of your own deceptions. Drop all personalities, because if you cling to the personality you will remain on the surface. Drop all personalities and be just natural, and then you can flow towards the center. And once from the center you look then there is no mind. In the beginning thoughts continue, but by and by, without your cooperation, they come less and less. And when all your cooperation is lost, when you simply don't cooperate with them, they stop coming to you. Not that they are no more; they are there, but they don't come to you.

Thoughts come only as invited guests. They never come uninvited, remember this. Sometimes you think, "This thought I never invited," but you must be wrong. In some way, sometime - you may have forgotten about it completely - you must have invited it. Thoughts never come uninvited. You first invite them; only then they come. When you don't invite, sometimes just because of old habit, because you have been an old friend, they may knock at your door. But if you don't cooperate, by and by they forget about you, they don't come to you. And when thoughts stop coming on their own, this is the control. Not that you control thoughts - simply you reach to an inner shrine of your being, and thoughts are controlled by themselves.

From still another standpoint, mind is the past, the memory, all the experiences accumulated, in a sense: all that you have done, all that you have thought, all that you desired, all that you dreamed - everything, your total past, your memory. Memory is mind. And unless you get rid of memory, you will not be able to control mind.

How to get rid of memory? It is always there following you. In fact, you are the memory, so how to get rid of it? Who are you except your memories? When I ask, "Who are you?" you tell me your name. That is your memory. Your parents gave you that name some time back. I ask you, "Who are you?" and you tell about your family: your father, your mother. That is a memory. I ask you, "Who are you?" and you tell me about your education, your degrees: that you have done the degree of Master of Arts, or you are a Ph.D., or you are an engineer or an architect. That is a memory.

When I ask you, "Who are you?" if really you look inside, your only answer can be, "I don't know." Whatsoever you will say will be the memory, not you. The only real authentic answer can be, "I don't know," because to know oneself is the last thing. I can answer who I am, but I will not answer. You cannot answer, "Who are you?" but you are ready with the answer.

Those who know, they keep silent about this. Because if all the memory is discarded, and all the language is discarded, then who I am cannot be said. I can look into you, I can give you a gesture; I can be with you with my total being - that is my answer. But the answer cannot be given in words because whatsoever is given in words will be part of memory, part of mind, not of consciousness.

How to get rid of the memories?

Watch them, witness them. And always remember that, "This has happened to me, but this is not me. Of course you were born in a certain family, but this is not you; it has happened to you, an event outside of you. Of course somebody has given a name to you. It has its utility but the name is not you. Of course, you have a form, but the form is not you. The form is just the house you happen to be in. The form is just the body that you happen to be in. And the body is given to you by your parents. It is a gift, but not you.

Watch and discriminate. This is what in the East they call vivek, discrimination. You discriminate continuously. Keep on discriminating - a moment comes when you have eliminated all that you are not. Suddenly, in that state, you for the first time face yourself, you encounter your own being. Go on cutting all identities that you are not: the family, the body, the mind. In that emptiness, when everything that was not you has been thrown out, suddenly your being surfaces. For the first time you encounter yourself, and that encounter becomes the control.

The "control" word is really ugly. I would not like to use it, but I cannot do anything because Patanjali uses it - because in the very word it seems somebody is controlling somebody else. Patanjali knows, and later on he will say that you attain to real samadhi only when there is no control and no controller. Now we should enter into the sutras.

       

 

If identified w/ mind, one's perception will be distorted. 

Now you understand what I mean by "under control": that you are at the center and you look at the mind from there; that you are sitting inside the house and you look at the clouds, and the thunder, and the lightning and the rain from there; that you have dropped all your clothes - dusty clothes and dirty clothes - because in fact there are no clothes, only layers of dirt, so you cannot clean them. You have thrown them out, thrown them away. You are simply naked and nude in your being. Or, you have eliminated all that with which you have become identified. Now you don't say who you are: form, name, family, body, mind, everything has been eliminated. Only that is there which cannot be eliminated.

That is the method of the Upanishads. They call it neti-neti. They say, "I am not this, nor that," and they go on and on and on... A moment comes when only the witness has remained, and the witness cannot be denied. That is the last stratum of your being, the very core of it. You cannot deny it because who will deny? - Now two doesn't exist, only one. Then there is control. Then the activity of the mind is under control.

So, it is not like a small child forced by the parents into the corner and they have told, "Sit there silently" - looks under control, but he is not. He looks under control, but he is restless, forced, but inside - great turmoil.

A small child was forced by the mother. He was running all around, and then three times she told him to sit silently. Then for the fourth time - the last ultimate - she said, "Now you sit silently or should I come and beat you?" 

And children understand when the mother really means. So he understood. He sat there, but he told her that, "I am sitting outside, but inside I am still running."

You can force your mind to sit still outwardly; inside it will go on running. In fact, it will run faster because mind resists control. Everybody resists control. No, that is not the way. You can kill yourself in that way but you cannot attain to the eternal life. That is a sort of crippling. When Buddha is sitting silently there is no inward running, no. In fact, inside he has become silent, and that silence has overflown to his outside, not the reverse.

You try to force yourself to be silent on the outside, and you think that by silencing the outside, the inner will become silent. You simply don't understand the science of silence. If you are silent inside, the outside will be overflowed by it. It simply follows the inside. The periphery follows the center, but you cannot make th center follow the periphery - that is impossible. So always remember the whole religious search is from the inside towards the outside, and not vice versa.

When there is perfect silence, you are rooted and centered inside, just watching whatsoever is happening. The birds are singing, the noise will be heard; the traffic is there on the road, the noise will be heard. And just the same, your inner traffic of the mind is there - words, thoughts, an inner talk. The traffic will be heard but you sit silently, not doing anything - a subtle indifference. You just look indifferently. You don't bother this way or that; whether thoughts come or not, it is the same for you. You are neither interested for nor interested against. You simply sit and the traffic of the mind goes on. If you can sit indifferently... will be difficult, will take time - but once you know the knack of being indifferent...

It is not a technique, it is a knack. A technique can be learned, a knack cannot be learned. You have simply to sit and feel it. A technique can be taught, a knack cannot be taught; you have simply to sit and feel it. Someday in the right moment when you are silent, suddenly you know how it happened, how you became indifferent. Even for a single moment the traffic was there and you were indifferent, and suddenly the distance was vast between you and your mind. The mind was at the other end of the world. That distance shows that you were at the center at that moment. If you have come to feel the knack, then anytime, anywhere, you can simply slip out to the center. You can drop in and immediately an indifference, a vast indifference surrounds you. In that indifference you remain untouched by the mind. You become the master.

Indifference is the way to become the master, and the mind is controlled. Then what happens? When you are at the center, the confusion of the mind disappears. The confusion is because you are at the periphery. Mind is not really the confusion; mind plus you at the periphery is the confusion. When you move inwards, by and by, you see that mind is losing its confusion. Things are settling, things are falling in line. A certain order arises.

All the disturbance, confusion, criss-crossing thought currents, they all settle. This is very difficult to understand that because of you at the periphery is the whole confusion. And you, in your wisdom, are trying to settle the confusion by remaining there at the periphery.

I have been talking about a small story many times...

Buddha is moving on a road and it is noon and it is very hot and he feels thirsty. And he says to his disciple Ananda that, "You go back. We crossed a small stream just two, three miles back. You bring some water for me." So Buddha rests under a tree. 

Ananda goes to the stream. But now it is difficult because just when he was reaching near it, few bullock carts passed across the stream. The stream is very shallow and small. Because of the bullock carts passing it, it has become dirty. All the dirt that was settled underneath has surfaced - old dry leaves, and every type of dirt is there. The water is not drinkable.

Ananda tries the same as you would try - he entered the stream and tried to settle things so that the water can become clean again. He dirtied it more. What to do? He came back and he said, "That water is not drinkable, and I know a certain river ahead. I will go and fetch water from there."

But Buddha insisted; he said, "You go back. I want the water from that stream." When Buddha insists, what Ananda can do? Reluctantly he went again. Suddenly he understood the point, because by the time he reached half the dirt has settled again. Without anybody trying to settle it, on its own accord it has settled. He understood the point.

Then he sat under a tree and watched the stream flow by because half the dirt is still there, few dry leaves are still on the surface. He waited. He waited and watched and he did nothing, and soon the water was crystal clear, the dead leaves have gone and the dirt has gone back to the bottom. He came running and dancing. He fell in Buddha's feet and he said, "I understood - and that's what I have been doing with my mind my whole life. Now I will just sit under a tree and let the stream of mind pass by, let it settle itself. Now I will not jump in the stream and try to make things... try to bring an order."

Nobody can bring order to the mind. The very bringing of the order creates chaos. If you can watch and wait, and you can look indifferently, things settle by themselves. There is a certain law: things cannot remain unsettled for a long time. This law you have to remember. It is one of the foundations, very fundamental, that things cannot remain unsettled in a state for long because unsettled state is not natural. It is unnatural. A settled state of things is natural; an unsettled state of things is not natural. So the unnatural can happen for a time being, but it cannot remain forever. In your hurry, in your impatience, you may make things worse.

In Japan they have a certain method, in Zen monasteries, for treating mad people. In the West they have not yet been able to find anything. They are still groping in the dark. Even ordinary crazy people seem to be beyond help. And psychoanalysis takes three years, five years, seven years. And then too, nothing much comes out of it. You dig the whole Himalaya and you don't find even a mouse coming out of it. So only very rich people can afford it, as a luxury. Psychoanalysis is a luxury. People brag about it, that they have been psychoanalyzed by a very great psychoanalyst for five years continuously they were psychoanalyzed - as if it is something of an attainment - and nothing happens. People go from one psychoanalyst to another.

In Japan they have a very simple method. If somebody goes mad he is brought to the monastery. They have a very small cottage separate from the monastery, in a corner. The man is left there. Nobody takes much interest in him - never take much interest in a madman, because interest becomes the food - a madman wants the attention of the whole world; that's why he is mad. In the first place, he is mad because he demands attention. That has led him to madness.

So nobody takes much... They care, but they don't give attention. They give him food and they make him comfortable, but nobody goes to talk to him. Even the people who will bring food and other needs will not talk to him. He is not allowed to talk because mad people like talking. In fact, too much talking has led them to this state.

It is just the opposite of psychoanalysis: psychoanalyst goes on talking and he allows the patient to talk for hours, and the mad people enjoy it very much - and somebody so attentively listening - it is beautiful!

Nobody talks in the Zen monastery to the madman. Nobody pays any attention, any special attention. In a subtle indifference, they take care, that's all. For three weeks nobody talks to him, and because nobody talks he can talk to himself, that's all. And he relaxes, sits or silently lies down on the bed, and does nothing - no treatment in fact - and within three weeks he is completely okay.

Now the western psychoanalysts have become interested, because this is impossible - just leaving the madman to himself. But this is the Buddhist attitude, the attitude of the yogis: to leave things, because nothing can remain unsettled for long if you leave it to itself. If you don't leave it, it can remain unsettled for long because you will be continuously unsettling it again and again.

Nature abhors chaos. Nature loves order. Nature is all for order, so chaos can only be a temporary state. If you can understand this, then don't do anything with the mind. Let this mad mind be left to itself. You simply watch. Don't pay any attention. Remember: in watching and in paying attention there is a difference. When you pay attention, you are too much interested. When you simply watch, you are indifferent.

Upeksha, Buddha calls: indifference - absolute total indifference. Just sitting by the side, and the river flows by and things settle and dirt goes back to the bottom, and the dry leaves have flowed on. Suddenly, the stream is crystal clear.

This is what Patanjali says:

And when the mind becomes like pure crystal, three things are reflected in it.

... the object, the subject, and the relation between the two.

When the mind is perfectly clear, has become an order, is no more a confusion, things have settled, three things are reflected in it. It becomes a mirror, a three dimensional mirror. The outside world, the world of objects is reflected. The inside world, the world of subjectivity, consciousness, is reflected & the relationship between the two - the perception - without distortion.

It is because of you - meddling too much in the mind - the distortion comes in. What is the distortion? Mind is a simple mechanism, just like the eyes; you look through the eyes and the world is reflected. But the eyes have only one dimension: they can reflect only the world, they cannot reflect you. The mind is a very three dimensional phenomenon, very deep. It reflects all, and without distortion. Ordinarily, mind distorts. Whenever you see a thing, if you are not different from the mind, the thing will be distorted. You will see something else. You will mix your perception in it, your ideas. You will not look at it in a purity of vision. You will look with the ideas, and your ideas will become projected on it.

      

If you are born in an African tribe, you think that thin lips are not beautiful; thick... In many African tribes they go on making lips thicker and thicker. They make all devices to make the lips thicker and thicker, particularly women, because thick lips are beautiful that is the idea. In the whole history of the race they have maintained it. If a girl is born with a thin lip, she feels inferior.

In India they love thin lips. If they are a little thicker you are thought ugly. And these ideas go inside the mind, and these ideas become so deep-rooted that they distort your vision. Neither thin lips nor thick lips are beautiful nor ugly. Beautiful and ugly are in fact distortions. They are your ideas, and then you mix them in the reality.

There have existed tribes which don't value gold at all. When they don't value gold at all, they are not gold-obsessed. Then the whole world is there, gold-obsessed: just the idea and the gold becomes very valuable

In the world of things, reality, nothing is more valuable or less valuable. Valuation is brought by the mind, by you. Nothing is beautiful, nothing is ugly. Things are as they are. In their suchness they exist. But when you are on the surface and get mixed with the ideas, and you start saying, This is my idea of beauty. This is my idea of truth" - then everything is distorted.

When you move to the center and the mind is left alone, and you watch from the center at the mind, you are no more identified with it. By and by, all ideas disappear. Mind becomes crystal clear. And in the mirror three dimensional mirror of the mind, the whole is reflected: the object, the subject, and the perception, the perceiver, the perception, and the perceived.

There are two types of samadhis: one Patanjali calls savitarka, the other he calls nirvikalpa, or nirvitarka. These are two states. First one achieves savitarka samadhi, that is, the logical mind is still functioning - samadhi, yet based on the rational attitude - the reason is still functioning, you are making discriminations. This is not the highest samadhi, just the first step. But that too is very, very difficult because that too will need a little going towards the center.

Just for example: the periphery is there, where you are right now, and the center is there, where I am right now, and between the two, just in the middle, is savitarka samadhi. It means you have moved away from the surface, but you have not reached the center yet. You have moved away from the surface, but still the center is far away. Just in the middle you are; still something of the old is functioning, and something of the new has entered - halfway. And what will be the situation of this halfway state of consciousness?

Real knowledge is that knowledge when the mind does not distort at all, when the mind, in a sense, has completely disappeared. It has become so transparent that whether it is there or not makes no difference. In this mid-state, the yogi is in a very deep confusion. The confusion comes: something from the real, something from his knowledge that he has gathered in the past from words, scriptures, teachers - that too there. Something from his own reasoning what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false, and something from his sense perceptions - eyes, ears, nose - everything Is there, mixed.

This is the state where the yogi can go mad. If there is nobody to take care in this state, the yogi can go mad because so many dimensions meeting and such a great confusion and chaos... It is a greater chaos than he was ever in when he was on the surface, because something new has come in.

From the center now some glimpses are coming towards him, and he cannot know whether it is coming from the knowledge that he has gathered from the scriptures. Sometimes he suddenly feels aham brahamasmi - "I am God." Now he is unable to differentiate whether this is coming from the Upanishad that he has been reading, or he himself has reasoned it out. It is a rational conclusion that, "I am part of the whole and the whole is God, so of course I am God"... whether it is a logical syllogism or it is coming from sense perceptions.

Because sometimes, when you are very quiet and the doors of the senses are clear, this feeling of being a god arises. Listening to music, suddenly you are no more a human being. If your ears are ready and if you have the musical perception, suddenly you are elevated to a different plane. Making love to a woman you love - suddenly, in the peak of the org@sm, you feel you have become a god. It can happen through sense perceptions. It can happen through reasoning. It may be coming from the Upanishads, from the scriptures you have been reading, or it may be coming from the center. And the man who is in the middle doesn't know from where it is coming. From all the directions millions of things are happening - strange, unknown, known. One can be in a real mess.

That's why schools are needed, where many people are working. Because these are not the only three points. Between the periphery and the center, there are many. A school means: where many people of many categories live together. Just a school: the first grade people are there, the second grade people are there, the third grade people are there; the primary school, the middle school, the high school, then the university. A perfect school is from the kindergarten to the university. Somebody exists there at the very end, on the center, who becomes the center of the school.

And then many people, because they can be helpful... you can help somebody who is just behind you. A person from the high school can come to the primary school and teach. A small boy from the primary school can go to the kindergarten and help. A school means: from the periphery to the center, there are many stages, many points. A school means: where all types of people exist together in a deep harmony, as a family from the very first to the very last, from the beginning to the very end, from the alpha to the omega. Much help is possible that way, because you can help somebody who is behind you. You can say to him, "Don't be worried. Just go on. This comes and settles by itself. Don't get too much involved in it. Remain indifferent. It comes and it goes - somebody to stretch a hand to help you. And a Master is needed who can look through all the stages, from the very top to the very valley, who can have a total perception of all the possibilities.

Otherwise, in this stage of savitarka samadhi, many become mad. Or, many become so scared they run away from the center and start clinging to the periphery, because there is at least some type of order. At least the unknown doesn't enter there, the strange doesn't come there. You are familiar; strangers don't knock at your door.

But one who has reached to savitarka samadhi if he goes back to the periphery, nothing will be solved never he can be the same again; never he can belong to the periphery now, so that is not of much help. He will never be a part of the periphery. And he will be there more and more confused, because once you have known something, how can you help yourself not to know it? Once you have known, you have known. You can avoid, you can close your eyes, but it is still there and it will haunt you your whole life.

If the school is not there and a Master is not there you will become a very problematic case. In the world you cannot belong, the market doesn't make any sense to you; and beyond the world you are afraid to move.

That's why in Upanishads there are no proofs, in Patanjali there are no proofs. Patanjali simply describes, gives no proof. This is the difference: when a man knows, he simply describes; when a man doesn't know, first he proves that it is so. Those who have known, they simply give the description of that unknown. They don't give any proofs.

In the West, Christian saints have given proofs for God. In the East, we laugh about it because it is ridiculous. Man trying to prove God is ridiculous. How can you prove? And when you prove something like God, you invite people to disprove it. And because of these Christian saints who try to prove God, the whole West became by and by anti-God, because people always can disprove. Logic is a double-edged sword; it cuts both the ways. If you prove anything, it can be disproved, it can be argued against. Because of Christian saints who try to prove God, the whole West has become atheistic. In the East, we have never tried, we have never given any proof. Look at the Upanishads - not a single proof exists. They simply say, "God is." If you want to know, you can know. If you don't want to know, it is your choice. But there is no proof for it.

That state is nirvitarka samadhi, samadhi without any reasoning. That samadhi becomes for the first time existential. But that also is not the last. One more final step exists. We will be talking about it later on.

      

 

 

 

MIND IS MEMORY; it is like a computer. To be exact, it is a biocomputer. It accumulates all that is experienced, known. Through many lives, through millions of experiences the mind gathers memory. It is a vast phenomenon. Millions and millions of memories are stored in it. It is a great storehouse.

All your past lives are stored in it. Scientists say even in a single moment thousands of memories are being collected continuously - without your knowing, the mind goes on functioning. Even while you are asleep, memories are being formed. Even while you are asleep... somebody cries and weeps, your senses are functioning and collecting the experience. You may not be able to recall it in the morning because you were not conscious, but in deep hypnosis it can be recalled. In deep hypnosis, everything that knowingly and unknowingly you have experienced ever, can all be recalled back - your past lives also. The simple expanse of mind is really vast. These memories are good if you can use them, but these memories are dangerous if they start using you.

A pure mind is that mind who is Master of its own memories. An impure mind is that mind who is continuously impressed by the memories. When you look at a fact, you can look without interpreting it. Then the consciousness is in direct touch with reality. Or, you can look through the mind, through interpretations. Then you are not in touch with reality. The mind is good as an instrument, but if the mind becomes an obsession and the consciousness is suppressed by the mind, then the reality will also be suppressed by the mind. Then you live in a maya; then you live in illusion.

Whenever you see a fact, if you see it directly, immediately, without the mind and the memory coming in, only then it is a fact. Otherwise, it becomes an interpretation. And all interpretations are false because all interpretations are loaded by your past experience. You can see only things which are in tune with your past experience. You cannot see things which are not in tune with your past experience, and your past experience is not all. Life is bigger than your past experience. Howsoever big the mind may be, it is just a tiny part if you consider the whole existence - so small. The known is very little; the unknown is vast and infinite. When you try to know the unknown through the known, then you miss the point. This is the impurity. When you try to know the unknown by the unknown inside you, then there is revelation.

It happened: Mulla Nasrudin caught a very, very big fish in the river. A crowd gathered, because nobody has ever seen such a big fish. Mulla Nasrudin looked at the fish, couldn't believe that it is possible - such a big fish! With bulging eyes he moved around the fish but still couldn't believe. He touched the fish but still couldn't believe, because he had heard about such a big fish only in fishermen's tall tales. The crowd was also standing there with unbelieving eyes. Then Mulla Nasrudin said, "Please help me to throw this fish back into the river. It is no fish, it is a lie."

Anything is true if it fits with your past experience. If it doesn't fit, it is a lie. You cannot believe in godliness because it doesn't fit with your past experience. You cannot believe in meditation because you have always lived in the market, and you only know the reality of the market, of the calculating mind, of the business mind. You don't know anything about celebration - pure, simple, for no reason at all, uncaused. If you have lived in a scientist's world, you cannot believe that there can be anything spontaneous because the scientist lives in the world of cause and effect. Everything is caused; nothing is spontaneous. So when the scientist hears that something is possible which is spontaneous - when we say spontaneous we mean that it has no cause, suddenly out of the blue - the scientist cannot believe it. He will say, "It is no fish at all, it is a lie. Throw it back into the river."

But those who have worked in the inner world know that there are phenomena which are uncaused. Not only that they know this, they know that the whole existence is uncaused. It is a different, totally different, world from the scientific mind.

Whatsoever you see, even before you have seen it, the interpretation has entered. Continuously I watch people; I am talking to them - if it fits, even they have not said anything, they have given me an inner nod, "Yes." They are saying, "Right." If it doesn't fit with their attitudes, they have not said anything, the "no" is written on their face. Deep down they have started saying, "No, it is not true."

Just the other night I was talking with a friend. He has come just few days before, very new. He believes in fasting, and when I was talking to him... said, "Fasting can be dangerous. And you should not go on your own; you should ask an expert. And if you listen to me, I'm not for fasting at all, because fasting is a sort of suppression. The body is real. The body's hunger is real; the body's need is real. Don't eat too much, because that too is against the body and a sort of suppression. And don't go on a fast, because that too is unreal and that too is suppressing. That too is not in accord with nature. That's why I call it unreal."

 

 

Whenever you go on a fast your energy becomes low, has to become because the food is needed to keep it constantly flowing. After three, four days of fasting, your energy is so low that the mind cannot get any quota out of it, because mind is a luxury. When the body has too much, then it gives to the mind. Mind is a later, very late arrival in the world. Body is basic and primary. First, body needs should be fulfilled - only then mind.

It is just like when you are hungry; you cannot support a philosopher in the town. When you are hungry the philosopher has to move from there; he cannot live there. Philosophy comes only when the society is affluent, rich. Religion comes only when the society is rich, when the basic needs are fulfilled. And the same is the economy in the body: first the body, second comes the mind. If the body is in trouble and is not getting the necessary quota for it, then the quota for the mind will be immediately cut.

And this is the trick that people have been playing with their own bodies: when the quota with the mind is cut, the mind cannot think because thinking needs energy. And people think they have become meditative because the mind has no more thoughts. It is not true. Give them food and thoughts will come back. When the energy is not flowing, the mind becomes like a summer river bed - the river is not flowing but the banks are there, everything is ready. Whenever there will be rain, again the river will flow. Whenever there will be energy, again the serpent will raise its head. The serpent is not dead - simply in a coma because the energy is not being supplied.

Fasting is a trick to create a false meditative state. And fasting is also a trick to create a bogus brahmacharya, celibacy - because when you fast, energy is not high, and the sex center cannot get energy.

There is again a question of economy: the individual lives through food; the society lives through sex, the race lives through sex. You are here because your parents loved each other, moved into sex. Your children will be here, you will be gone, if you move into sex. If you don't move into sex then no more future. You don't help the race to be here. If everybody becomes a brahmachari, a celibate, then the society will disappear.

Through food the individual body survives; through sex the body of the race. But the first is individual, because if the individual is not there, then how can the race survive? So individual is primary, race is secondary. When you are full of energy and the body is feeling good, then immediately the energy is supplied to the sex center. Now you have enough and you can share with the race. When the energy is flowing low, sex disappears. Just go on a fast of ten days, and by the tenth day you will feel that you are not interested in women. If you go on a longer fast of fifteen days, by the fifteenth day, even very beautiful playboy and playgirl magazines are there, you will not be able even to open them. They will lie there and dust will collect on them. You will not be tempted. By the twenty-first day, if you continue fasting, even nude women may be dancing there, and you will sit Buddha-like. Not that you have become Buddha-like... just good food for one day, and the next day you are interested in the playboy and the playgirl. And by the third day energy is flowing again; you are interested in women.

In fact, psychologists have made it a criterion: if a man is not interested in woman, then something is wrong. If a woman is not interested in man, then something is wrong; energy is flowing low. And out of hundred cases, ninety-nine cases - they are true, they are right. Only with the hundredth case they will not be right, because he will be a Buddha - not that energy is flowing low; energy is the highest, at its peak, at its greatest. But now he is a different man moving in a different dimension where he is not interested in the other because he has become so satiated with himself. There is no movement for the other - not that the energy is lacking.

When I was talking to this newcomer, I could see on his face that he is shaking his head "no". He has not said a single word but I know that he is saying that "I cannot trust this." And then he said, "But I am a believer in fasting, and I have come here because I believe in fasting. And whatsoever you are saying, I cannot feel in tune with it."

You cannot listen because of the memory; you cannot see because of the memory; you cannot look at the facticity of the world because of the memory. Memory comes in - your past, your knowledge, your learning, your experiences - and they color reality. The world is not illusory, but when interpreted, you live in an illusory world. Remember this.

       

 

Hindus say the world is maya, illusory. When they say it, they don't mean the world that is there, they simply mean the world that is inside you, the world of your interpretations. The world of facticity is not unreal; it is the brahma itself. It is supreme reality. But the world that you have created through your mind and memory and in which you live, which surrounds you, like an atmosphere around you... and you move with it and in it. Wherever you go you take it around you. It is your aura, and through it you look at the world. Then whatsoever you are looking at is not a fact, it is an interpretation.

Patanjali says:

Interpretation is the obstruction. Interpret, and the reality is lost. Look without interpretation and the reality is there, and always has been there. The reality is every moment there. How it can be otherwise? Reality means that which is real. It has not moved from its place even for a single moment. Just you live in your interpretations and you create a world of your own. The reality is common, illusion is private.

       

 

You must have heard the story, very old, ancient Indian story. Five blind men came to see an elephant. They had never seen it; it was absolutely new in the town. Elephants didn't exist in their part of the country. They all touched, they all felt the elephant, and they all interpreted whatsoever they felt. They interpreted through their experience. One man said, "An elephant is like a pillar," because he was touching the legs of the elephant - and he was true. He touched, himself, by his own hands, and then he remembered the pillars - and exactly like the pillars. And so on, so forth, they all interpreted.

It happened in a primary school in America: a teacher told this story to the boys and girls without telling them that the five persons who came to the elephant were blind. And the story is so well known, and she expected that the children will understand. Then she asked, "Now tell me, who were those five persons who came to see the elephant?" One small boy raised his hand and said, "Experts."

Experts are always blind. That boy was really a discoverer. This is the essence of the whole story. In fact, they were experts because an expert knows too much about too little. He becomes more and more narrow, narrow, narrow - almost blind to the whole world. Only in a particular direction he is with eyes; otherwise, he is blind. His vision becomes narrower and narrower and narrower. The greater an expert, narrower the vision. An absolute expert must be completely blind. They say that an expert is a man who knows more and more about little and little.

Few centuries before there were physicians, doctors, who knew everything about the body. There were no experts. Now, if you have something wrong with your heart then you go to an expert, something wrong with your teeth, you go to another expert. And I have heard a story that a man came to a doctor and he said that "I am in much difficulty. I cannot see properly. Everything seems to be misty." The doctor said, "First things first. First you tell me which eye is in difficulty, because I am the expert only of the right eye. If your left eye is in trouble, you go to another expert just in front of me." Soon, the left eye experts and the right eye experts will be separate. It has to be so because expertise becomes narrower, and narrower, and narrower. All experts are blind, and experience makes you an expert.

To know reality you don't have to be an expert. To know reality you don't have to be narrow, exclusive. To be in tune with reality you have to put down all your knowledge, put it aside and look at it with the eyes of a child, not with the eyes of an expert - because those eyes are always blind. Only a child has real eyes wide looking, looking everywhere, all around in all directions - because he doesn't know anything. He is moving in all directions all the time. The moment you know, and you are hooked somewhere. If you can become a child again and can look at reality without any obstruction, interpretation, experience, knowledge, expertise, then Patanjali says, nirvitarka samadhi is attained. Because when there is no interpretation, memory is purified and the mind is able to see the true nature of things.

Patanjali divides samadhi into many layers. First he talks about savitarka samadhi. It means samadhi with reasoning. You are still a reasoning person, logical. Then he calls second samadhi nirvitarka, samadhi without reasoning. Now, you are not arguing about reality. You are not even looking at reality with your knowledge. You are simply looking at reality.

The man who looks at reality with logic, reasoning never looks at reality. He projects his own mind on the reality. The reality works like a screen for him to project himself. And whatsoever you project, you will find there. First you put it there, and then you find it there. It is a deception because you yourself put it there, and then you find it there. It is not real.

Nasrudin once told me that "My wife is the most beautiful woman in the world." I asked him, "Mulla, how you came to know about it?" He said, "How? - simple. My wife told me!"

This is how it goes on in the mind: you put it in the reality, and then you find it there. This is the attitude of the savitarka mind. The nirvikalpa mind, nirvitarka mind, puts nothing; it simply looks at whatsoever is the case.

Why you go on putting into reality something from your mind? - because you are afraid of reality. A deep fear of reality is there. It may be that it is not of your liking. It may be that it is against you, your mind. Because the reality is natural; it doesn't bother who you are. You are afraid: the reality may not be your wish-fulfillment, so it is better not to see it; go on seeing whatsoever you desire. This is how you have lost many lives - fooling around. And you are not fooling anybody else, you are fooling yourself, because by your interpretations and projections the reality cannot be changed. Only you suffer unnecessarily. You think there is a door and there is no door; it is a wall and you try to pass through it. Then you suffer, then you are shocked.

       

 

Unless you see the reality, you will never be able to find the door out of the prison in which you are. The door exists, but the door cannot exist according to your desires. The door exists; if you drop the desires you will be able to see it. And this is the trouble: you go on wish-fulfilling; you just go on believing and projecting, and every time, a belief is shattered and a projection falls. Because it will happen many times, because your daydreams cannot be fulfilled by reality. Whenever a dream is shattered, a rainbow falls down, a desire dies, you suffer. But immediately you start creating another desire, another rainbow of your wishes. Again you start making a new rainbow bridge between you and reality.

Nobody can walk on a rainbow bridge. It looks like a bridge; it is not a bridge. In fact, a rainbow doesn't exist; it only appears. If you go there you will not find any rainbow. It is a dream-like phenomenon. The maturity consists in to have come to the realization that "Now no more projections, interpretations. Now I am ready to see whatsoever is the case."

Wittgenstein, one of the very keen intellects of this age, starts his tremendously valuable book TRACTATUS with the sentence, "The world is all that is the case. You can go on dreaming around it; it will not help. You stop dreaming and see. The world is all that is the case." You unnecessarily don't waste your life and time and energy in trying to see something that is not there. Stop dreaming and look at reality. 

That is the meaning of nirvitarka samadhi, samadhi without any reasoning. It is just a pure look. You don't reason about it, you simply look at it. You don't do anything about it, you simply allow it to be there and penetrate you. In savitarka samadhi you try to penetrate into reality. In nirvitarka samadhi you allow the reality to penetrate you. In savitarka samadhi you try the reality to be according to you. In nirvitarka samadhi you try yourself to be according to the reality.

       

Vulcan Mind Meld

Then, Patanjali brings two other words, savichara and nirvichara. Savichara means with contemplation, and nirvichara means without contemplation. They are the higher states of the same phenomenon he calls savitarka and nirvitarka. Savitarka samadhi, if followed, will become savichara.

If you think about it logically, and go on thinking, and go on thinking, logic has a boundary to it. It is not infinite. Logic cannot be infinite. In fact, logic denies all infinities. Logic is always within a boundary. Only then it can remain logical, because with the infinite enters the illogical; with the infinite enters the mysterious, with the infinite enters the miraculous. With the entry, the Pandora's box is open. So logic never talks about the infinite. Logic says everything is finite, can be defined. Everything is within boundaries, can be understood. Logic is always afraid of the infinite. It looks like a vast darkness; logic trembles to move into it. Logic keeps itself on the highway, it never moves into the wild. On the highway everything is safe and you know where you are going. Once you step aside and move into the wild, you don't know where you are going. Logic is a very deep fear.

If you ask me, logic is the greatest coward. People who are courageous always go beyond logic. People who are coward always remain within the confinements of logic. Logic is a prison, beautifully decorated, but it is not like a vast sky. The sky is not decorated at all. It is undecorated, but it is vast. It is freedom, and freedom has its own beauty; it needs no decorations. The sky is enough unto itself. It needs no painter to paint it, no decorator to decorate it. The very vastness is its beauty. But vastness is terrific also, because it is so tremendous. The mind simply boggles before it; the mind seems so puny. The ego gets shattered before it, so the ego creates a beautiful prison of logic, definitions - everything clean-cut, everything known, of the experience - and closes its doors to the unknown, makes a world of itself, a separate world, a private world. That world doesn't belong to the whole; it has been cut. All the relationships with the whole have been cut.

       

 

That's why logic will never lead anybody to the divine, because logic is human, and it has broken all the bridges with the divine. Divine is wild; it is mysterium and tremendum. It is a great mystery that cannot be solved. It is not a riddle that you can solve, it is a mystery. Its nature is such that it cannot be solved. But if you go on continuing to logically think, there comes a moment when you reach to the boundary of logic. If you go on thinking more and more, then logical thinking changes into contemplation, into vichar.

The first step is logical thinking and, if you continue, the last step will be contemplation. If a philosopher continues, goes on moving, is not stuck somewhere, he is bound to become a poet someday, because when the boundary is crossed, suddenly there is poetry. Poetry is contemplation; it is vichar.

Think it this way: a logical philosopher is sitting in the garden and looking at a rose flower. He interprets it. He classifies it - he knows what type of rose is this, from where it comes, the physiology of the rose, the chemistry of the rose: everything logically he thinks about. He classifies it, defines it, works around and around - in fact, never touching the rose at all - moves just around and around, around and around, beating the bush around, leaving the rose there.

Because logic cannot touch a rose. It can cut it, it can put it into pigeonholes, it can classify, it can label it - but it cannot touch it. The rose won't allow logic to touch it. And even if logic wants, it is not possible. Logic has no heart, and only the heart can touch the rose. Logic is just a head affair. The head cannot touch the rose. The rose will not allow its mystery for the head because the head is just like a rape. And the rose opens itself only for love, not for a rape.

       

 

Science is rape; poetry is love. If somebody continues, like Einstein, then the philosopher or the scientist or the logician becomes a poet. Einstein became a poet in his last days. Eddington became a poet in his last days. They started talking about the mysterious. They had come to the boundary of the logic. People who always remain logical are people who have not gone to the very extent, to the very end of their logical reasoning. They are not really logical. If they really go, then a moment is bound to come where logic ends and poetry starts.

Vichar is contemplation. What a poet does? - he contemplates. He just looks at the flower, he doesn't think about it. This is the distinction, very subtle: the logician thinks about the flower, the poet thinks the flower, not about it. And "about it" is not the flower. You may talk and talk about it, but it is not the flower. The logician goes round and round, a poet goes direct and hits the very reality of flower. For a poet, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose - not "about". He moves inwards, into the flower. Now the memory is not brought in. The mind is put aside; it is a direct contact.

This is a higher stage of the same phenomenon. The quality has become refined but the phenomenon is the same.

That's why Patanjali says,

In savichara, the poet - and anybody who enters savichara becomes a poet - thinks the flower, not about it, but immediate and direct, but there is still division. The poet is separate from the flower. The poet is the subject and the flower is the object. The duality exists. The duality is not transcended: the poet has not become the flower, the flower has not become the poet. The observer is the observer, and the observed is still the observed. The observer has not become the observed; the observed has not become the observer. Duality exists.

In savichara samadhi logic has been dropped, but not duality. In nirvichara samadhi even duality is dropped. One simply looks at the flower, not thinking of himself and not thinking of the flower; not thinking at all. That is nirvichara: without contemplating, beyond contemplation. One simply is being with the flower, not thinking about, not thinking - neither like the logician nor like the poet.

Now comes the mystic, the sage, who is simply with the flower. You cannot say that he thinks about, or he thinks. No, he is simply with. He allows the flower to be there and allows himself to be there. In that moment of allowing, there comes suddenly a unity. The flower is no more the flower, and the observer is no more the observer. Suddenly energies meet and mingle and become one. Now the duality is transcended. The sage doesn't know who is the flower and who is watching it. If you ask the sage, the mystic, he will say, "I don't know. It may be the flower who is watching me. It may be I who is watching the flower. It changes," he will say, "it depends. And sometimes, there is neither I nor the flower. Both disappear. Only a unified energy remains. I become the flower and the flower becomes me." This is the state of nirvichara, of no contemplation but of being.

Savitarka is the first step, nirvitarka is the last step in the same direction. Savichara is the first step, nirvichara is the last step in the same direction, on two planes. But Patanjali says the same explanation applies. The highest, up to now, is nirvichara.

Patanjali will come to higher stages also, because few more things have to be explained, and he moves very slowly - because if he moves very fast it will not be possible for you to understand. He is going deeper and deeper every moment. He is leading you, by and by, to the infinite ocean, step by step. He is not a believer of sudden enlightenment - gradual, that's why his appeal is so great.

Many people have existed who have talked about sudden enlightenment, but they have not appealed to the masses because it is simply unbelievable that sudden enlightenment is possible. Tilopa may say, but that is not the point - that Tilopa says. The point is: does anybody understand it? - that's why many Tilopas have disappeared. Patanjali's appeal continues, because nobody can understand those wild flowers like Tilopa. They suddenly appear just out of the blue and they say, "Suddenly, you can also become like us." This is incomprehensible. Under their magnetic personality you may listen to them, but you cannot believe them. The moment you leave them you will say, "This man is saying something which is beyond me. It goes over my head."

Tilopas have lived, talked, tried, but they have not been able to help many people. Rarely somebody will understand them. That's why Tilopa had to go to Tibet to find a disciple - this vast country of India, and he couldn't find a single disciple - and Bodhidharma had to go to China to find a disciple. This ancient country, for thousands of years working on the religious dimension, and he couldn't find a single disciple. Yes... difficult for Tilopa, difficult for Bodhidharma to find a single disciple.

To find someone who can understand Tilopa is difficult because he talks of the goal, and he says, "There is no path and no method." He is standing on the hilltop and he says, "There is no path," and you are standing in the valley, dark, damp, in your misery. You look at Tilopa and you say, "Maybe... but how, how one reaches?" You go on asking, "How?"

Krishnamurti goes on telling people there is no method, and after each talk people ask, "Then how? Then how to reach?" And he simply shrugs his shoulders and becomes angry that "I have told you there is no method, so don't ask how, because how is again asking for the method." And these are not new people who ask. Krishnamurti has people who have been listening to him for thirty, forty years. Very old, ancient people you will find in his talks. They have been listening him continuously; religiously they listen to him. They come always - whenever he is there, they come always and they listen. You will find almost the same faces for years and years and years, and again and again they ask from their valleys, "But how? - and Krishnamurti simply shrugs his shoulders and says, "There is no how. You simply understand, and you reach. There is no path."

Tilopa, Bodhidharma, Krishnamurti, they come and go; they are not much help. The people who listen to them enjoy listening to them - even come to a certain intellectual understanding - but they remain in the valley. I myself have come across many people who listen to Krishnamurti, but I have never seen a single person who has gone beyond his valley by listening to him. He remains in the valley, starts talking like Krishnamurti, that's all; starts telling to other people that there is no way and no path, and remains in the valley.

Patanjali has been a tremendous help, incomparable. Millions have passed through this world by the help of Patanjali because he doesn't talk according to his understanding, he moves with you. And as your understanding grows, he goes deeper and deeper and deeper. Patanjali follows the disciple; Tilopa would like the disciple to follow him. Patanjali comes to you; Tilopa would like you to come to him. And of course, Patanjali takes your hand and, by and by, he takes you to the highest peak possible, of which Tilopa talks but cannot lead because he will never come to your valley. He will remain on his hilltop and will go on shouting from there. In fact he will irritate many people because he will not stop; he will go on shouting from the top that, "This is possible! And there is no way, and there is no method. You can simply come. It happens; you cannot do!" He irritates.

When there is no method, people get irritated and they would like him to stop, not to shout. Because if there is no way, then how to move from the valley to the top? You are talking nonsense. But Patanjali is very sensible, very sane, he moves step by step, takes you from where you are, comes to the valley, takes your hand and says, "One by one, take steps."

Patanjali said, "There is a path. There are methods." And he is really very, very wise. By and by, he will persuade you in the end that drop the method and drop the path - there are none - but only at the end, at the very peak, just when you have reached, when even Patanjali leaves you, there is no trouble; you will reach by yourself. At the last moment he becomes nonsensical. Otherwise, he is sensible. And he has remained so sensible the whole way that when he becomes nonsensical, then too he appeals, then too he looks very sensible. Because a man like Patanjali cannot talk nonsense. He is reliable.

      

 

 

By and by, the object of meditation has to be made more and more subtle. For example, you can meditate on a rock, or you can meditate on a flower, or you can meditate on the fragrance of the flower, or you can meditate on the meditator. And then things go more subtle and subtle and subtle and subtler.

For example, you can meditate on the sound AUM. The first meditation is to say it loudly so it resounds all around you. It becomes a temple of sound all around you: AUM, AUM, AUM. You create vibrations all around you - gross, the first step. Then you close your mouth. Now you don't say it loudly. Inside you say, AUM, AUM, AUM. Lips are not allowed to move, not even the tongue. Without the tongue and without the lips you say, AUM. Now you create an inner atmosphere, inner climate of AUM. The object has become subtle. Then the third step: you don't even recite it, you simply listen to it. You change the position - from the doer, you move to a passivity of a listener. In the third state you don't pronounce the AUM inside also. You simply sit and you hear the sound. It comes because it is there. You are not silent; that's why you cannot hear it.

AUM is not a word of any human language. It doesn't mean anything. That's why Hindus don't write it in the usual alphabetical order. No, they have made a separate form for it just to distinguish it, that this is not part of the alphabet. It exists on its own, separate, and it means nothing. It is not a word of human language. It is the sound of the very existence itself; the sound of the soundless, the sound of the silence. When everything is silent then it is heard. So you become the hearer. It goes on and on, more and more subtle. And in the fourth stage you simply forget about everything: the doer, and the hearer, and the sound - everything. In the fourth stage there is nothing.

      

You must have seen ten oxherding pictures of Zen. In the first picture a man is looking for his ox - the ox has gone somewhere in the wild forest, no sign, no footprints - just looking all around, trees and trees and trees.

      

In the second picture he looks happier - footprints have been found. In the third he seems a little bewildered - just the back of the ox is seen near a tree, but difficult to distinguish.

      

The forest is wild, thick. Maybe it is just a hallucination that he is seeing the back of the ox; it may be just a part of the tree, and he may be projecting.

      

Then in the fourth, he has caught hold of the tail.

      

In the fifth, he has control by the whip; now the ox is in his power.

      

In the sixth, he is riding on the ox. He is coming back towards the home with a flute, singing a song, riding on the ox.

      

In the seventh, the ox in the stable, he is in the home, happy; the ox has been found.

      

In the eighth, there is nothing; the ox has been found, and the ox and the seeker, the seeker and the sought, both have disappeared. The search is over.

In the ancient days these were the eight pictures. It was a complete set. The emptiness is the last.

      

But then a great Master added two more pictures. The ninth - the man is back, again there.

      

And in the tenth not only the man is back, he has gone to purchase few things to the market, and not only things, he is carrying a bottle of wine. This is really beautiful. This is complete. If it ends on emptiness, something is incomplete. The man is back again, and not only back, he is in the market. Not only in the market, he has purchased a bottle of wine.

The whole becomes more and more subtle, more and more subtle. A moment comes when you will feel it is the perfect, the most subtle. When everything becomes empty and there is no picture, the seeker and the sought both have disappeared. But this is not really the end. There is still a subtleness. The man comes back to the world totally transformed. He is no more the old self - reborn, and when you are reborn, the world is also not the same. The wine is wine no more, the poison is no more poison, the market is no more market. Now everything is accepted. It is beautiful. Now he is celebrating. That is the symbol: the wine.

More and more subtle becomes the search, and more and more stronger becomes the consciousness. And a moment comes when the consciousness is so strong that you live like an ordinary being in the world, without fear. But move with Patanjali step by step. The objects of meditation are more and more subtle.

This is the eighth picture. The province of samadhi that is connected with these finer objects becomes more and more finer, and a moment comes when the form disappears and it is formless.

The energies are so subtle you cannot make a picture out of them, you cannot carve them; only the emptiness can show them: a zero - eighth picture. By and by you will understand how these two other remaining pictures come in.

Patanjali - I call him the scientist of the religious world, the mathematician of mysticism, the logician of the illogical. Two opposites meet in him. If a scientist reads Patanjali's Yoga Sutras he will understand immediately. A Wittgenstein, a logical mind, will feel immediately an affinity with Patanjali. He's absolutely logical. And if he leads you towards the illogical, he leads you in such logical steps you never know when he has left the logic and taken you beyond it. He moves like a philosopher, a thinker, and makes so subtle distinctions that the moment he takes you into nirvichara, into no-contemplation, you will not be able to watch when the jump has been taken. He has cut the jump into many small steps.

With Patanjali you will never feel fear, because he knows where you will feel fear. He cuts the steps smaller and smaller, almost as if you move on the plain ground. He takes you so slowly that you cannot observe when the jump has happened, when you have crossed the boundary. And he is also a poet, a mystic - a very rare combination. Mystics are there, like Tilopa; great poets are there like the rishis of Upanishads, great logicians are there like Aristotle, but you cannot find a Patanjali. He is such a combination that since him there has been no one who can be compared to him.

It is very easy to be a poet because you are out of one piece. It is very easy to be a logician - you are made of one piece. It is almost impossible to be a Patanjali because you comprehend so many opposites, and in such a beautiful harmony he combines them all. That's why he has become the alpha and the omega of the whole tradition of yoga.

In fact, it was not he who invented yoga; yoga is far ancient. Yoga had been there for many centuries before Patanjali. He is not the discoverer, but he almost became the discoverer and founder just because of this rare combination of his personality. Many people had worked before him and almost everything was known, but yoga was waiting for a Patanjali. And suddenly, when Patanjali spoke about it, everything fell in line and he became the founder. He was not the founder, but his personality is such a combination of opposites, he comprehends in himself such incomprehensible elements, he became the founder - almost the founder.

Now yoga will always be known with Patanjali. Since Patanjali, many have again worked and many have reached new corners of the world of yoga, but Patanjali towers like an Everest. It seems almost impossible anybody ever will be able to tower higher than Patanjali - almost impossible. This rare combination is impossible. To be a logician and to be a poet and to be a mystic, and not of ordinary talents... It is possible: you can be a logician, a great logician, and a very ordinary poet. You can be a great poet and a very ordinary logician, third-rate - that's possible, that's not very difficult. Patanjali is a genius logician, a genius poet, and a genius mystic; Aristotle, Kalidas and Tilopa all rolled in one - hence the appeal.

Try to understand Patanjali as deeply as possible, because he will help you. Zen Masters won't be of much help. You can enjoy them - beautiful phenomena. You can be awe-struck, you can be filled with wonder, but they won't help you. Rarely will there be somebody who has the courage within and take the jump into the abyss, as it is the case with Zen. Patanjali will be of much help. He can become the very foundation of your being, and he can lead you, by and by. He understands you more than anybody else. He looks at you and he tries to speak the language that the last amongst you will be able to understand. He is not only a Master, he is a great teacher also.

Educationists know that a great teacher is not one who can be understood only by the topmost few students in the class, just the first benchers, four or five in a class of fifty. He is not a great teacher. A great teacher is one who can be understood by the last benchers. Patanjali is not only a Master, he is a teacher also. Krishnamurti is a Master, Tilopa is a Master - but not teachers. They can be understood only by the topmost. This is the problem - the topmost need not understand. They can go by their own. Even without Krishnamurti they will move into the ocean and reach to the other shore; a few days sooner or later, that's all. The last benchers who cannot move on their own, Patanjali is for them. He starts from the lowest and he reaches to the highest. His help is for all. He is not for the chosen few.

       

 

 

 

Patanjali's Yoga Sutras say,

CONTEMPLATION is not meditation. There is a vast difference, and not only of quantity but of quality. They exist on different planes. Their dimensions are altogether different; not only different, but diametrically opposite.

This is the first thing to be understood. Contemplation is concerned with some object; it is a movement of consciousness towards the other. Contemplation is outgoing attention, moving towards the periphery, going away from the center. Meditation is moving towards the center, away from the periphery, away from the other. Contemplation is arrowed towards the other, meditation towards oneself. In contemplation, duality exists. There are two, the contemplator and the contemplated. In meditation there is only one.

The English word "meditation" is not very good, does not give the real sense of dhyana or samadhi, because in the very word meditation, it appears that you are meditating upon something. So try to understand: contemplation is meditating upon something; meditation is not meditating upon something, just being oneself, no movement away from the center, no movement at all... just being yourself so totally that there is not even a flickering; the inner flame remains unmoving. The other has disappeared; only you are. Not a single thought is there. The whole world has disappeared. The mind is no more there; only you are, in your absolute purity. Contemplation is like a mirror mirroring something; meditation is simply mirroring, not mirroring anything - just a pure capacity to mirror but not actually mirroring anything.

With contemplation you can attain up to nirvichara samadhi - samadhi with no thought - but in nirvichara one thought remains, and that is the thought of no-thought. That too is a thought, the last, the very last, but it remains. One is aware that there is no thought, one knows that there is no thought. But what is this knowing of no-thought? Vast change has happened, thoughts have disappeared, but now, no-thought itself has become an object. If you say that "I know emptiness," then it is not enough emptiness; the thought of emptiness is there. The mind is still functioning, functioning in a very, very passive, negative way - but still functioning. You are aware that there is emptiness. Now what is this emptiness you are aware of? It is very subtle thought, the most subtle, the last beyond which the object completely disappears.

So whenever a disciple comes to a Zen Master very happy with his attainment and says that "I have attained emptiness," the Master says, "Go and throw this emptiness away. Don't bring it to me again. If you are really empty then there is no thought of emptiness also."

      

This is what happened in the famous story of Subhuti. He was sitting under a tree with no thought, not even the thought of no-thought. Suddenly, flowers showered. He was amazed - "What is happening?" He looked all around; flowers and flowers from the sky. Seeing that he was amazed, gods told him that "Don't be amazed. We have heard the greatest sermon on emptiness today. You have delivered it. Celebration we are making, and we are throwing these flowers on you as a symbol, appreciating and celebrating your sermon on emptiness." Subhuti must have shrugged his shoulders and said, "But I have not spoken." The gods said, "Yes, you have not spoken, neither have we heard - that is the greatest sermon on emptiness."

If you speak, if you say "I am empty," you have missed the point. Up to the thought of no-thought it is nirvichara samadhi, with no contemplation. But still the last part... the elephant has passed; the tail has remained - the last part - and sometimes the tail proves bigger than the elephant because it is so subtle. To throw away thoughts is easy. How to throw emptiness? - how to throw no-thought? It is very, very subtle; how to grasp it? That's what happened when the Zen Master said to the disciple, "Go and throw this emptiness!" The disciple said, "But how to throw emptiness?" Then the Master said, "Then carry it away; go throw it, but don't stand before me with emptiness in your head. Do something!"

It is very subtle. One can cling to it, but then the mind has deceived you at the last point. Ninety-nine point nine you had reached; just the last step, and hundred degrees would have been complete and you would have evaporated.

Up to this point, Patanjali says it is samadhi without contemplation - nirvichara samadhi. If you attain to this samadhi you will become very, very happy, silent, serene. You will always be collected inside, together. You will have a crystallization; you will not be an ordinary man. You will look almost superhuman, but you will have to come back again and again. You will be born, you will die.

      

The wheel of reincarnation will not stop because the no-thought is just like a subtle seed; many lives will come out of it. The seed is very subtle, the tree is big, but the whole tree is hidden in the seed. The seed may be a mustard seed, so small, but it carries it within it. It is loaded, it has a blueprint; it can bring the whole tree again and again and again. And from one seed millions of seeds can come out. One small mustard seed can fill the whole earth with vegetation.

No-thought is the most subtle seed. And if you have it, Patanjali calls this "samadhi with seed", sabeej samadhi. You will continue coming, the wheel will continue moving - birth and death, birth and death. It will be repeated. Still you have not burned the seed.

If you can burn this thought of no-thought, if you can burn this thought of no-self, if you can burn this thought of no-ego, only then nirbeej samadhi happens, samadhi with no seed. Then there is no birth, no death. You have transcended the whole wheel, you have gone beyond. Now you are pure consciousness. The duality has dropped; you have become one. This oneness, this dropping of duality is the dropping of life, death. The whole wheel suddenly stops - you are out of the nightmare.

Now we will enter into the sutras. They are very, very beautiful. Try to understand them. Deep is their significance. You will have to be very, very aware to understand the subtle nuances.

THESE SAMADHIS THAT RESULT FROM MEDITATION ON AN OBJECT...

You can meditate on any object, whether material or sacred. The object may be money, or the object may be moksha, the final attainment. The object may be a stone or the object may be the kohinoor diamond; it makes no difference. If the object is there, mind is there; with object, mind continues. Mind has a continuity through the object. Through the other, the mind is fed continuously. And when the other is there you cannot know yourself; the whole mind is focused on the other. The other has to be removed, utterly removed, so there is nothing for you to think, there is nothing for you to give your attention to, there is nowhere you can move.

      

With the object, Patanjali says there are many possibilities: you can be in relationship with the object as a reasoning being; you can think about the object logically - then Patanjali gives it the name of savitarka samadhi. It happens many times: when a scientist is observing an object he becomes completely silent; no thoughts move in the sky, in his being, he is so much absorbed with the object. Or sometimes a child playing with his toy is so absorbed that the mind has completely, almost completely, stopped. A very deep serenity exists. The object takes all your attention; nothing is left behind. No anxiety is possible, no tension is possible, no anguish is possible, because you are totally absorbed in the object, you have moved in the object.

A scientist, a great philosopher... It happened to Socrates:

He was standing one night; it was a full moon night and he was looking at the moon, and he became so absorbed... He must have been in what Patanjali calls savitarka samadhi, because he was one of the most logical men ever born, one of the most rational minds, the very peak of rationality. He was thinking about the moon, about the stars and the night and the sky, and he forgot himself completely. And the snow started falling, and by the morning he was found almost dead, half his body covered with snow, frozen, and still he was looking at the sky. He was alive but frozen. People came to search where he has gone, and then they have found him standing; the whole night he was standing under the tree. And when they asked, "Why didn't you come home back? - and the snow is falling and one can die," he said, "I completely forgot about it. For me, it has not fallen. For me, time has not passed. I was so much absorbed with the beauty of the night, and the stars and the order of existence and the cosmos."

Logic always is absorbed with the order, with the harmony that exists in the universe. Logic moves around an object - goes on moving around and around and around - and the whole energy is taken by the object. This is samadhi with reason, savitarka, but the object is there. The scientific, the rational, the philosophical mind attains to it.

Then Patanjali says that there is another samadhi, nirvitarka, the aesthetic mind - the poet, the painter, the musician attains to it. The poet goes directly into the object, not around and around, but still the object is there. He may not be thinking about it, but his attention is focused on it. It may not be the head functioning, it may be the heart, but still the object is there, the other is there. A poet can attain to very deep, blissful states, but the cycle of rebirth will not stop, neither for the scientist nor for the poet.

Then, Patanjali comes to savichara samadhi: logic has been dropped, just pure contemplation - not about it - just looking at it, watching at it, witnessing it. Deeper realms open but the object remains there, and you remain obsessed with the object. You are yet not in your own self - the other is there. Then Patanjali comes to nirvichara.

In nirvichara, by and by, the object is made subtle. This is the most important point to be understood: in nirvichara, the object is made more and more subtle. From gross objects you move to subtle objects - from a rock to the flower, from the flower to the fragrance. You move towards subtle. By and by, a moment comes the object becomes so subtle, almost as if it is not.

For example if you contemplate on emptiness; the object is almost not, if you meditate on nothingness. There are Buddhist schools which emphasize only one meditation, and that is on nothingness. One has to think, one has to meditate, one has to imbibe the idea that nothing exists. Continuously meditating on nothingness, a moment comes when the object becomes so subtle that it cannot withhold your attention; it is so subtle that there is nothing to contemplate, and one goes on and on and on. Suddenly, one day the consciousness bounces upon oneself. Not finding any standing ground there in the object, not finding any foothold, not finding anything to cling to, the consciousness bounces upon itself. It returns, comes back to its own center. Then it becomes the highest, the purest, nirvichara.

The highest, nirvichara, is when the consciousness bounces upon oneself. If you start thinking that "I have attained to no-thought, and I have attained to nothingness," again you have created an object and the consciousness has moved away. This happens many times for a seeker. Not knowing the inner mysteries, many times you bounce upon yourself. Sometimes you touch your center, and again you have gone out. Suddenly, the idea arises, "Yes, I have attained." Suddenly, you start feeling "Yes, here it is. Satori has happened, samadhi has been attained." You feel so blissful it is natural for the idea to arise. But if the idea arises, again you have become a victim of something which is objective. Subjectivity is lost again; oneness has become two. Duality again is there.

One has to be aware not to allow the idea of no-thought. Don't try - whenever something like this happens, remain into it. Don't try to think about it, don't make any notion about it; enjoy it. You can dance, there will be no trouble, but don't allow verbalization, don't allow language. Dancing won't disturb because in dancing you remain one.

In Sufi tradition, dance is used to avoid mind. In the last stage, Sufi Masters say that "Whenever you come to a point where object has disappeared, immediately start dancing so that the energy moves into the body and not in the mind. Immediately do something; anything will help."

Zen Masters when they attain start laughing a real belly laugh, roar-like, a lion's roar. What are they doing? Energy is there and for the first time energy has become one. If you allow anything else in the mind, immediately the division is again there, and division is your old habit. It will persist for few days. Jump, run, dance, give a good belly laugh, do something so that the energy moves into the body and not into the head. Because energy is there and the old pattern is there, it can move again...

Many people come to me, and whenever it happens, the greatest problem arises - the greatest I say, because it is no ordinary problem. The mind immediately grabs hold of it and says, "Yes, you have attained." The ego has entered, the mind has entered, everything is lost. A single idea and a vast division immediately is there. Dancing is good. You can dance - there will be no trouble about it. You can be ecstatic, you can celebrate. Hence I emphasize on celebration.

After each meditation celebrate, so celebration becomes part of you, and when the final happens, immediately you will be able to celebrate.