Re: ALL PROBLEMS are UNREAL: Question 4

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #10
Chapter title: All Problems are Unreal
10 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

Question 4

SOMETIMES IT FEELS LIKE YOU ARE JUST A DREAM....

That's true. Now you have to deepen the feeling so sometimes you can feel that you yourself are a dream. Go on deepening the feeling. A moment comes when you know that everything that is, is a dream. Once you know that everything that exists is a dream, you are freed.

That's the meaning of the Hindu concept of maya. It does not say that everything is unreal; it simply says everything is a dream. It is not a question of real or unreal. How will you define a dream -- real or unreal? If it is unreal then how can it exist? If it is real then how can it disappear so easily -- you open your eyes and it is no longer there? A dream must be somewhere in between reality and unreality. It must have something of the reality and it must have something of the unreality also. Because it exists it has to be real. A dream is a bridge -- neither on this bank nor on that bank, neither here nor there.

If you take the dream as real you will become worldly. If you take the dream as unreal you will start escaping towards the Himalayas, you will become unworldly. And both viewpoints are extreme. Dream is just in the middle: it is real and unreal, both. There is no need to escape from it -- it is unreal. And there is no need to cling to it -- it is unreal. There is no need to devote your whole life to dreams -- they are unreal. And there is no need to renounce them -- because how can you renounce an unreality? They are not worth that.

And that's how my concept of sannyas arises: you live in the dream knowing it, that it is a dream. You live in the world knowing it, that it is a dream. Then you live, but the world doesn't live in you. You move into the world, but the world doesn't move within you. You remain part. In fact, you enjoy it more -- because it is a dream, you have nothing to lose. Then you are not guilt-ridden. In fact you start playing like children -- because it is a dream! You can enjoy it; you can delight in it. There is nothing to feel guilty about. A life of celebration, a life of renouncement in the world, living and yet aloof; because when you know something is a dream you can enjoy it with no guilt, and you can move away from it with no problem.

You go to a theater, you go to see a movie: it is all a dream. For three hours you enjoy it. Then, lights are on -- you remember that it was just a play, a game of light and shadow on the screen. Now the screen is empty. You come home; you forget about it. The whole world is a movie on a vast screen. When you understand, your eyes are opened. You know that it is a dream -- nothing wrong in enjoying it, a beautiful dream at that, but now you are at home.

This is difficult. To be worldly is easy, because you take it as real. To be unworldly, become a hermit in the Himalayas, is also easy because you leave it as unreal. But to live in the reality, knowing it well, that it is unreal, knowing it, that it is a dream, is the most difficult thing in the world -- and to pass through that most difficult thing helps you to grow.

Worldly people are cunning, but not intelligent; unworldly people are simple, but not intelligent. Those people who live in the market are very cunning but not intelligent, and those people who have left the world and moved to the temples and the Himalayas -- they are simple, not cunning, but they are also not intelligent, because intelligence grows only when you move in all sorts of situations -- but aware. You go through hell, but with a fully aware mind, then intelligence grows. Intelligence needs challenge to grow. If you leave the challenge, you simply rot, you don't grow. That's why I insist: be in the world,
and don't be of the world.