Beyond Mind to Awareness

 

The fourth question:

No, awareness is not part of the mind. It flows through the mind, but it is not part of the mind. It is just like this bulb - the electricity flows through it, but the electricity is not part of the bulb. If you break the bulb, you have not broken electricity. The expression will be hindered, but the potentiality remains hidden. You put another bulb, and the electricity starts flowing.

Mind is just an instrument. Awareness is not part of it, but awareness flows through it. When mind is transcended, awareness remains in itself. That's why I say even a Buddha will have to use the mind if he talks to you, if he relates to you, because then he will need flow, flow of his inner pool. He will have to use instruments, mediums, and then mind will function. But mind is just a vehicle.

You move in a vehicle, but you are not the vehicle. You go in a car, or you fly in an aircraft, but you are not the vehicle. Mind is just the vehicle. And you are not using the mind to its total capacity. If you use it to its total capacity, it will become right knowledge.

We are using our mind as if someone can use an airplane like a bus. You can cut the wings of the airplane and use it like a bus on the road. That will do; it will work like a bus. But you are foolish. That bus can fly! You are not using it to its right capacity!

You are using your mind for dreams, imaginations, madness. You have not using it in its right capacity, you have cut the wings. If you use it with the wings, it can become right knowledge; it can become wisdom. But that too is part of the mind; that too is the vehicle. The user remains behind it; the user cannot be the used. You are using it, you are awareness. And all the efforts for meditation mean to know this awareness in its purity, without any medium. Once you know it without any instrument, you can know it! And this can be known only when mind has stopped functioning. And mind has stopped functioning - you will become aware that awareness is there; you are filled with it. Mind was just a vehicle, a passage. Now, if you want, you can use the mind; if you don't want, you need not use.

Body, mind, both are vehicles. You are not the vehicle, you are the master hidden behind these vehicles. But you have forgotten completely. And you have become the cart; you have become the vehicle. This is what Gurdjieff calls identification. This is what, in India, yogis have called tadatmya - becoming one with something which you are not.

They never cease to be, but just by witnessing identification is broken. Buddha lived in his body for forty years after his enlightenment; the body has not ceased. Continuously for forty years he was talking, explaining, making people understand what has happened to him and how the same can happen to them. He was using the mind; the mind has not ceased. And when he came back after twelve years to his home town, he recognized his father, he recognized his wife, he recognized his son. The mind was there, the memory was there; otherwise recognition is impossible.

The mind has not really ceased. When we say the mind ceases, we mean your identification is broken. Now you know this is the mind and this is "I am". The bridge is broken. Now the mind is not the master. It has become just an instrument; it has fallen to its right place. So whenever you need it, you can use it. It is just like a fan! If you want to use it, we put it on, then the fan starts functioning. Right now we are not using the fan, so it is non-functioning. But it is there, it has not ceased to be. Any moment you can use it. It has not disappeared.

Just by witnessing, identification disappears, not the mind. But identification disappearing, you are totally a new being. For the first time you have come to know your real phenomenon, your real reality. For the first time you have come to know who you are. Now mind is just part of the mechanism around you.

It is just as if you are a pilot and flying an airplane. You use many instruments; your eyes are working on many instruments, continuously aware of this and that. But you are not the instruments.

This mind, this body and many functions of the body-mind, are just around you, the mechanism. In this mechanism, you can exist in two ways. One way of existence is forgetting yourself and feeling as if you are the mechanism. This is bondage, this is misery; this is the world, the samsar.

Another way of functioning is this: becoming alert that you are separate, you are different. Then you go on using, but now it makes a lot of difference. Now the mechanism is not you. And if something goes wrong in the mechanism, you can try to put it right, but you will not be disturbed. Even if the whole mechanism disappears, you will not be disturbed.

Buddha dying and you dying are two different phenomena. Buddha dying knows only the mechanism is dying. It has been used, and now there is no need. A burden has been removed; he is becoming free. He will move now without form. But you dying is totally different. You are suffering, you crying, because you feel that you are dying, not the mechanism. It is your death. Then it becomes an intense suffering.

Just by witnessing, mind doesn't cease and the brain cells will not cease. Rather, they will become more alive because there will be less conflict, more energy. They will become more fresh. And you can use them more rightly, more accurately, but you will not be burdened by them and they will not force you to do something. They will not push and pull you here and there. You will be the Master.

But how does it happen just by witnessing? Because it has happened, the bondage has happened, by not witnessing. The bondage has happened because you are not alert, so the bondage will disappear if you become alert. The bondage is only unawareness. Nothing else is needed: becoming more alert, whatsoever you do.

You are sitting here listening to me. You can listen with awareness, you can listen without awareness. Without awareness also listening will be there, but it will be a different thing, the quality will differ. Then your ears are listening, and your mind is functioning somewhere else.

Then somehow, few words will penetrate you. And they will be mixed, and your mind will interpret them in its own way. And it will put its own ideas into them. Everything will be a muddle and a mess. You have listened, but many things will be bypassed, many things you will not listen. You will choose. Then the whole thing will be distorted.

If you are alert, the moment you become alert thinking ceases. With alertness you cannot think. The whole energy becomes alert, there is no energy left to move into thinking. When you are alert even for a single moment, you simply listen. There is no barrier. Your words are not there which can get mixed. You need not interpret. The impact is direct.

If you can listen with alertness, then what I am saying may be meaningful or may not be meaningful, but your listening with alertness will always be significant in meaning. That very alertness will make a peak of your consciousness. The past will dissolve; the future will disappear. You will be nowhere else, you will just be here and now. And in that moment of silence when thinking is not, you will be deep in contact with your own source. And that source is bliss, and that source is divine. So the only thing to be done is to do everything with alertness.

The last question:

When you are not, only then it can become possible. If you are, then it cannot become possible. If you are not, if the host has completely disappeared, then the guest becomes the host. So the guest may be Lao Tzu, the guest may be Patanjali. The host is not there, so the guest takes place completely, he becomes the host. If you are not, then you can become Patanjali; there is no difficulty. You can become Krishna, you can become Christ. If you are there, then it is very difficult. And if you are there, whatsoever you say will be wrong.

That's why I say these are not commentaries. I am not commenting on Patanjali. I am simply absent, allowing Patanjali. So it is not a commentary. Commentary means that Patanjali is something separate. And I am something separate, and I am commenting on Patanjali. It is bound to be distorting because how I can comment on Patanjali?

Whatsoever I say will be my saying and whatsoever I say will be my interpretation. It cannot be of Patanjali himself. And that's not good. That is destructive. So I am not commenting at all. I am simply allowing, and this allowing is possible if you are not.

If you become a witness, the ego disappears. And when the ego disappears, you become a vehicle, you become a passage, you become a flute. And the flute can be put on Patanjali's lips, and the flute can be put on Krishna's lips, and the flute can be put on Buddha's lips - the flute remains the same. But when it is on Buddha's lips, Buddha is flowing.

So this is not a commentary. This is difficult to understand because you cannot allow. You are so much inside you cannot allow anyone. And these are not persons. Patanjali is not a person: Patanjali is a presence. If you are absent, his presence can function.

And if you ask Patanjali, the same he will say. If you ask Patanjali, he will not say that these sutras have been created by him. He will say, "These are very ancient - sanatan." He will say, "Millions and millions of seers have seen them. I am just a vehicle. I am absent and they are speaking." If you ask Krishna, he will say, "I am not speaking. This is the ancient most message. It has been always so. And if you ask Jesus, he will say, "I am no more, I am not there."

Why this insistence? Anybody who becomes absent, who becomes a non-ego, starts functioning as a vehicle, as a passage - passage for all that is true, passage for all that is hidden in existence, that can flow. And you will be able to understand whatsoever I am saying only when even for moments you will be absent.

If you are too much there, your ego is there, then whatsoever I am saying cannot flow in you. It is not an intellectual communication only. It is something deeper.

If you are even for a single moment a non-ego, then the impact will be felt. Then something unknown has entered in you, and in that moment you will understand. And there is no other way to understand.

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